In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Before he made the journey to Manchuria, Johnston spent his spring and summer holidays at Eilean Righ. In April 1935, one of his guests was Mrs Elizabeth Sparshott, who was making her first visit to the island with her daughter, Jessica. Johnston mentioned to Stewart Lockhart that he was playing host to them, describing Mrs Sparshott as a widow. It was the first, but not the last, lie he was to tell for the woman who was the final love of his life. Elizabeth Sparshott was a Londoner, born Elizabeth Tebbitt in 1893. At twenty-four, in the middle of the Great War, she had married Tom Sparshott. A year later, in 1918, her only daughter was born, but the marriage did not last: ‘She was a war bride, her marriage from early on was not a success, and I believe he [Tom] did not support her and that she left him many years ago.’1 Elizabeth Sparshott first met Johnston in 1934, following the publication of Twilight in the Forbidden City. She had written to him at the university, ‘asking to meet the author’.2 Johnston liked the tall, handsome, and very smartly dressed woman he met, and gradually they got to know one another. By the spring of 1935, he was sufficiently close to her to invite her to his residence in Scotland. ‘To save the proprieties’, her daughter was invited too.3 During that first visit, Johnston organised picnics when the weather was fine. From the shore of the little island, they watched seals play and searched for oysters. Sparshott also remembered her first visit to the island: ‘We spent so much time in the library together and he had not even unpacked it all when I first came here so we finished arranging it together.’4 By all accounts, Elizabeth Sparshott was a shy, rather quiet woman. For Johnston to share his beloved library with her was a high compliment indeed. Here was a woman with no great academic background , not even a great knowledge of China, but she had an obvious attraction for Johnston. He fell deeply in love with her. Elizabeth reciprocated his love, even though she was still married to Tom Sparshott. The marriage had certainly broken down long before she met Johnston, but there was an enormous stigma attached to Chapter 14 The Final Fling (1935–1938) 238 Scottish Mandarin extramarital affairs in the 1930s, hence Johnston’s description of her as a widow. In any event, Johnston was never one to let social niceties stand in his way and was apparently unconcerned about her marital status. They spent more time at Eilean Righ. By the summer, the house was in sufficiently good shape for Johnston to let it out to an old friend from China, Virginia Southcott, while he was in Manchuria. Rather as his houses in London had been, Eilean Righ was furnished in a mixture of European and Chinese styles. Unlike Eileen Power, Elizabeth Sparshott loved this strange amalgamation. The dining room boasted walnut chairs, dining table, and sideboard in European style, but also a Chinese gong on a wooden stand. The lounge featured a large leather chesterfield and a display cabinet, but all the ornaments—the ivories, jades, enamels, and silver—were Chinese.5 Puyi had given him over the years several pieces of fine Chinese porcelain from the imperial collections, as well as a ‘green jade carved with mountain scenery and with imperial autograph poem’, several jade jars, and fans.6 In a cabinet room beside the lounge, Johnston displayed some of his Chinese scrolls and a small silver shrine, as well as vases and jades he had collected himself or been given. The sitting room was furnished with a similar mixture of leather chairs and tables in the European style and Chinese artefacts and objects. Johnston commissioned additional pieces from Betty Joel, including a cocktail cabinet. In typical fashion, Johnston did not store cocktails in it ‘but pieces of jade and porcelain, gifts of the Manchu Emperor’.7 Elsewhere in the house, particularly in the bedrooms and bathrooms, he favoured oak furniture. It was a comfortable house, designed for relaxation. As well as Chinese paintings, photographs decorated the available wall space. Taken during his many travels, or featuring notable people he had met, there were several in every room. The dining room walls were decorated with group photographs from Magdalen days, the one part of his youth he remembered with fondness.8 Johnston left Eilean Righ...

Share