Now when statesmen were most lukewarm about Tibet the inevitable English adventurer came to the front. And it is a curious circumstance that it was just when our relations with the Tibetans were at their coldest that the only Englishman who ever reached Lhasa before the Mission of 1904 achieved this success. He was not an accredited agent of Government sent to bring into effect a deliberate policy such as that conceived by Warren Hastings. He was a private adventurer, and he went up in spite of, and against the wishes of, the Government of the time.

His name was Manning. At Cambridge he was the friend of Charles Lamb, and was of such ability that he was expected to be at least Second Wrangler, but he was of an eccentric nature, and “had a strong repugnance to oaths,” and left the University without a degree. He conceived, however, a passionate desire to see the Chinese Empire. He studied the Chinese language in France and England, afterwards made his way to Canton, remained there three years, and in 1810 procured a letter of introduction from the Select Committee of Canton to Lord Minto, then Governor-General of India, asking him to give him every practicable assistance in the prosecution of his plans. But he received little or no aid from the Government, and was left to his own resources, without official recognition of any description.

Manning, attended by a Chinese servant, proceeded to Tibet through Bhutan, and on October 21, 1811, arrived at Phari, at the head of the Chumbi Valley. His description of the Jong then precisely corresponds with our own experiences in Tibet on many an occasion since: “Dirt, dirt, grease, smoke. Misery, but good mutton.”

A Chinese Mandarin arrived there about the same time, and Manning gave him two bottles of cherry-brandy and a wineglass. This, and probably Manning’s very original manners, evidently unfroze his heart, for he asked him to dinner, and promised to write immediately to the Lhasa Mandarin for permission for him to proceed. Manning also received applications to cure soldiers, and his medicines “did wonderfully well, and the patients were very grateful.” They even petitioned for him to go with the Mandarin towards Gyantse, and the Mandarin granted their request.

Altogether, Manning made a very favourable impression on the Chinese who, he remarked, lorded it in Tibet like the English in India, and made the Tibetans stand before them. And he considered then that there were advantages in having the Chinese in this superior position. “Things are much pleasanter now the Chinese are here,” he says; “the magistrate hints about overtures respecting opening a commercial intercourse between the Chinese and the English through Bhutan. I cannot help exclaiming in my mind (as I often do) what fools the Company are to give me no commission, no authority, no instructions. What use are their Embassies when their Ambassadors cannot speak to a soul, and can only make ordinary phrases pass through a stupid interpreter? No finesse, no tournure, no compliments. Fools, fools, fools, to neglect an opportunity they may never have again!”

Poor Manning experienced very severe cold, and travelled to Gyantse in great discomfort, and felt these discomforts acutely, so that the greater part of his diary is filled with quaint denunciation of his Chinese clerk; of a vicious horse which kicked and bit him; of the “common horse-furniture,” which was “detestable”; of the saddle which was so high behind and before that he sat in pain unless he twisted himself unequally; of another pony “which sprang forward in a full runaway gallop, with the most furious and awkward motion he ever experienced”; of yet another that was “so weak, so tottering, and so stumbling, and which trembled so whenever he set his foot on a stone, which was about every other step,” that he could “hardly keep up with the company”; of his being “so eaten up by little insects” that he had to sit down in the sunshine and get rid of as many as he could, for he “suffered a good deal from these little insects, whose society he was not used to”; of his at last finding “a very pleasant-going horse with a handsome countenance,” which he was tempted to buy, “but was checked by the prudent consideration that he might encumber me at Lhasa,” and too much disencumber his lean purse. Strange that the first Englishman ever to visit Lhasa should have been incommoded for want of a five-pound note with which to buy a rough hill pony.

At Gyantse the Chinese Mandarin and General, in whose train Manning had come, appointed him a little lodge in the courtyard of the principal house, and whatever he required was soon supplied by the Chinese soldiers and others who wished medical treatment from him. “One brought rice, one brought meat, another brought a table, another brought a little paste and paper and mended a hole in the window, another brought a present of a pen and candles.” Every Chinaman in the town came to see him. The General was “vastly civil and polite,” and invited him to dinner. But though he was “very much of a gentleman,” Manning concluded that he was “really no better than an old woman.” The dinner was tolerably good, and the wine excellent, but the cooking was indifferent.

On the other hand, the Mandarin was impressed by Manning’s beard. He had known men with better moustaches than Manning’s, for he had, “for convenience of eating, song, and drink,” cut his short in India, and it had not yet grown again. But the beard never failed to excite the General’s admiration, and he declared he had never seen one nearly so handsome. The General, likewise, approved of his “countenance and manner.” He pretended to skill in physiognomy and fortune-telling, and foretold very great things of Manning.

Manning also visited the Tibet Mandarin, who lived “in a sort of castle on the top of a hill,” the Jong, which General Macdonald attacked and captured in 1904, and they discussed Calcutta and Tibet together for half an hour, but what they said Manning does not record. The Tibetan intimated that he would return the visit the next day, and he sent “some rice and a useful piece of cloth, but did not come himself.”

With his medical practice Manning had a greater success. To one Chinaman and his wife, who were suffering from “an intermittent fever,” he gave “opium, Fowler’s solution of arsenic, and afterwards left them a few pages of bark. The mother-in-law, also, who had the complaint of old age, he cheered up with a little comforting physic.”

The General often came to see him, “for, like many other Generals, he had nothing to do, and was glad of a morning lounge.” He managed, however, to foist a Chinese servant on to Manning as cook. This man’s cooking was bad, but “in drying and folding up linen he saved him infinite trouble,” for, says Manning, “I never could to this day fold up a shirt or other vestment. A handkerchief or a sheet I can manage, but nothing further.”

Manning, hearing that the General was fond of music, and “no bad performer,” took the opportunity “one day, while he was smoking his pipe in my courtyard, of introducing the subject, and paying my court to him by requesting the favour of hearing music. This brought me an invitation to take an evening repast and wine with him, which was just what I liked. He gave us a very pretty concert.... The Chinese music, though rather meagre to a European, has its beauties.... The General insisted upon my giving him a specimen of European (Calcutta) music on the Chinese flute. I was not acquainted with the fingering of that instrument, but I managed to produce something, which he politely praised.”

The answer from the Lhasa magistrate to his request to be permitted to proceed to Lhasa arrived a few days after his arrival at Gyantse. A passport was given him, transport and supplies furnished, and as he neared Lhasa he was met by a “respectable person on horseback, who dismounted and saluted,” and who had been sent out by the Tibetan authorities to welcome him and conduct him to Lhasa.

The view of the Potala, “of the lofty, towering palace, which forms a majestic mountain of a building,” excited his admiration, but if the palace had exceeded his expectations, he says, the town as far fell short of them. There was “nothing striking, nothing pleasing, in its appearance. The habitations were begrimed with smut and dirt.... In short, everything seemed mean and gloomy, and excited the idea of something unreal.”

His first care was to provide himself with a proper hat, and, having found one, he proceeded to pay his respects to the Chinese Mandarin. Coming into his presence, he for the first time in his life performed the ceremony of ketese, or kneeling. The Mandarin received him politely, and said he had provided him with quarters. On the following day he visited two of the chief Tibetan officials.

On December 17, 1811, he went to the Potala to salute the Grand Lama. He took with him as an offering some broadcloth, two pair of china ewers, and a pair of good brass candlesticks, which he had “clean and furbished up,” and into which he put “two wax candles to make a show.” He also took “thirty new bright dollars, and as many pieces of zinc,” and, besides this, “some genuine Smith’s lavender-water ... and a good store of Nankin tea, which is a rarity and delicacy at Lhasa, and not to be bought there.”

Arrived in the great hall he made due obeisance, touching the ground three times with his head to the Grand Lama, and once to the Ti-mi-fu. While he was bowing, "the awkward servants contrived to let fall and break the bottle of lavender-water." Having delivered his present to the Grand Lama, he took off his hat, and “humbly gave his clean-shaved head to lay his hands upon.”

This ceremony over, he sat on a cushion, not far from the Lama’s throne, and had suchÉ brought them. But “the Lama’s beautiful and interesting face and manner engrossed almost all his attention.” His face was, he thought, poetically and affectingly beautiful. He was at that time about seven years old, and had the simple and unaffected manners of a well-educated, princely child. Sometimes, particularly when he looked at Manning, his smile almost approached to a gentle laugh. “No doubt,” naÏvely remarks Manning, “my grim beard and spectacles somewhat excited his risibility.”

The little Grand Lama addressed a few remarks to Manning, speaking in Tibetan to the Chinese interpreter, the interpreter in Chinese to Manning’s Chinese Munshi, and the Munshi in Latin to Manning. “I was extremely affected by this interview with the Lama,” says Manning. “I could have wept through strangeness of sensation.”

Here in Lhasa, as at Gyantse, Manning had many applications made to him for medicine, and he treated both Chinese and Tibetans. But spies also came, and “certainly,” says Manning, “my bile used to rise when the hounds looked into my room.” The Tartar General detested Europeans. They were the cause, he said, of all his misfortunes. Sometimes he said Manning was a missionary, and at other times a spy. “These Europeans are very formidable; now one man has come to spy the country he will inform others. Numbers will come, and at last they will be for taking the country from us.” So argued the Mandarins, and, indeed, there were rumours that the Chinese meant to execute Manning. He had always fully expected this possibility, and writes: “I never could, even in idea, make up my mind to submit to an execution with firmness and manliness.”

Yet, on the whole, he was not badly treated. He remained on at Lhasa for several months, paying many visits to the Grand Lama, and eventually orders came from Peking for him to return the way he came. He left Lhasa on April 19, and reached Kuch Behar on June 10, 1812.

Manning’s own object was “A moral view of China, its manners, the degree of happiness the people enjoy, their sentiments and opinions so far as they influence life, their literature, their history, the causes of their stability and vast population, their minor arts and contrivances; what there might be in China to serve as a model for imitation, and what to serve as a beacon to avoid.” Having been foiled in this his main object, he does not appear to have regarded the subsidiary circumstance that he had reached Lhasa as of particular interest. And he seems to have been so disgusted with the Government’s refusal to support him, that when he returned to Calcutta he would give no one any particulars of his journey. The account which Markham published sixty years later was only discovered long after his death.

It is a meagre record of so important a journey, yet it exemplifies one or two points which are worthy of note. It showed that an individual Englishman, with delicacy of touch and with a real sympathetic feeling towards those among whom he was travelling, could find his way even into the very presence of the Dalai Lama in the Potala itself. It showed, too, that he could get on perfectly well with the Chinese personally. But it showed likewise that at the back of the minds of both the Tibetans and Chinese was a strong dread of the British power, which made them fear to allow a single Englishman to remain in Tibet or even pass through the country.

Yet Manning confirmed what Bogle and Turner had also noticed—that, while the Tibetans dreaded the Chinese, they disliked them intensely. He says that the Chinese were very disrespectful to the Tibetans. Only bad-charactered Chinamen were sent to Tibet, and he could not help thinking that the Tibetans "would view the Chinese influence in Tibet overthrown without many emotions of regret, especially if the rulers under the new influence were to treat the Grand Lama with respect; for this is a point in which those haughty Mandarins are somewhat deficient, to the no small dissatisfaction of the good people of Lhasa." These words would be very fairly applicable to the situation at the present day.

After Manning, no Englishman, in either a private or official capacity, visited Lhasa till the Mission of 1904. This seems to show want of enterprise on the part of Englishmen in India; but some did make the attempt, and many more would have if they could have obtained the necessary leave from all the authorities concerned. British officers in India are keen enough to go on such adventures, but leave can very rarely be obtained. I had myself planned out such a journey in 1889. I had interviewed the Foreign Secretary, now Sir Mortimer Durand, and not only obtained permission, but even some pecuniary assistance, when, at the last moment, I was refused permission by the Colonel of my regiment. Such restrictions must, I know, have prevented many another besides myself. Still, efforts were made by individual officers, unsupported by Government, to explore Tibet, and, if possible, reach Lhasa. Moorcroft explored Western Tibet, and, according to some reports, actually reached Lhasa and died there; Richard and Henry Strachey visited the sources of the Brahmaputra and the Sutlej; Carey, Littledale, Bower, Wellby, Deasy, and Rawling explored in Northern Tibet; and native surveyors mapped even Lhasa itself, to which point Sarat Chandra Das also penetrated at great risk and brought back most valuable information.

These and other efforts to explore the country by the Russian travellers Prjevalsky, Pievtsoff and Kozoloff; by the Frenchmen Huc and Gabet, Bonvalot, Prince Henri d’OrlÉans, Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard; and by that indefatigable and courageous Swedish traveller, Sven Hedin, have all been brought together by Sir Thomas Holdich in his recent work on exploration in Tibet. It is not necessary here to do more than refer to the fact that efforts to gain a knowledge of the country were almost continuously being made through the second half of last century; my object is rather to describe the effort, not so much to explore the country, as to regularize and foster the intercourse which already existed with its people.