"A Might Have Been on the Other Side":
Laurence Oliphant's Missions to China and Japan in Margaret Oliphant's Memoir (1891)
Arisa Nakagoe
Introduction
Laurence Oliphant was a prominent and problematic celebrity in his time, being a traveller, a diplomat, a writer,a Member of Parliament, a British intelligence agent, and a spiritualist. Margaret Oliphant was not exactly his close
relative, but a very good family friend who may have shared an ancestry. Two years after his death, she published
Memoir of the Life of Laurence Oliphant and of Alice Oliphant, His Wife (1891). The retelling of Laurence's life inthe Memoir will be studied in this presentation, with particular attention to Chapter Six, "The Mission to China,"
which also includes his experiences in Japan. This is one of the most intriguing chapters in the Memoir, not only
because Laurence's real-life adventure in East Asia was indeed an exciting one, but also because it owes to Margaret'sretelling and editing. This presentation investigates how Margaret has established Laurence's image as an intrepid
achiever by integrating the exotic representations of China and Japan.
I also wish to connect Margaret's own unfulfilled sentiments concerning her own life with the Memoir. Margaret
once confessed that she "used to be intensely impressed in the Laurence Oliphants with that curious freedom fromhuman ties" (Autobiography 15). In contrast, Margaret later says she "always had to think of other people, and to plan
everything ... always in subjection to the necessity which bound me [her] to them" (Autobiography 16). Though she
comforts herself by saying that she "did with much labour what I [she] thought the best, and there is only a might
have been on the other side" (Autobiography 16) (original italics), her obsession with Laurence to the extent of writinga three-hundred-pages biography seems undiminished. This may be, I would argue, because Laurence was also an
acclaimed writer like Margaret herself, not just a free-spirited wanderer of the world, hence embodying her idea of"a might have been."
Laurence in China
Laurence gladly accompanied Lord Elgin to China as a private secretary during the Second Opium War. Up tothat point in Laurence's biography, Margaret had established the early image of Laurence as a young "heaven-born
diplomat" (Memoir 12), who was not a "creation of school or college" (Memoir 13). She also portrayed him as amommy's boy; especially in the earlier half of the biography, she alludes to him as a darling "Lowry" with a"chivalrous tenderness for his mother" (Memoir 12). This may be a reflection of her own experience of motherhood
to four boys. Margaret, who struggled with bringing up her own sons though she loved them dearly, may have felt
envious of such a strong stable bond between mother and son.
Margaret remarks at the end of Chapter Five that Laurence "was so far independent that he had the means ofmoving about at his pleasure without any absolute necessity to work for daily bread, - a fact which gives wings to
impatience, and makes every sudden movement practicable" (Memoir 115) (my italics). This is subtly a reversal of
Margaret's situation as written in her own autobiography, where she confesses about how she envies Laurence's
freedom and ponders what she could have done with her life or what she "might have been" without her hardship.
Margaret claims that she "have had a great deal of my own way ... but only at the cost of infinite labour, and ofcarrying a whole little world [her family] with me whenever I moved" (Autobiography 16) (my italics). In a nutshell,
Margaret and Laurence were opposites in terms of wealth, mobility, and domestic responsibility.
Despite the chapter being entitled "The Mission to China," Margaret limits her retelling of the Chinese part toless violent scenes and most of all dedicated her pages to the discussion of Laurence's religious thoughts. Her main
intention was probably to establish herself as an intimate and advantaged biographer who can access confidential
letters and delve into his enigmatic spirit and spiritualism that later came to the attention of Victorian society. On theother hand, it seems that the stories set in China were a mere prequel for the upcoming journey. The reader'sdissatisfaction towards the sense of stagnation or lack of vivid elements in China as portrayed by Margaret isrecuperated by the latter half of the chapter: his adventures in Japan.
Laurence in Japan

During the long wait upon the sea before the final ratification of the Treaty of Tientsin, Lord Elgin's expedition
including Laurence had a chance to briefly visit Japan, which impressed them in comparison to their stressful
experience in China. Consequently, as Laurence had wished, he returns to "Yedo" or Tokyo in June 1861 as First
Secretary of Legation under Sir Rutherford Alcock. Naturally, Laurence is thrilled about this new opportunity in acountry that he pictured as a dreamland. However, it can be observed that Margaret did not necessarily take his
representation of Japan at a face value. Margaret carefully implies that Laurence favoured Japan because he wanted
to escape from China, where the British had many diplomatic troubles. Margaret cautiously discerns that Laurence'sexperience in Japan was "when all was novel and fresh, and the strangers were received with naive enthusiasm before
any complication had arisen" (Memoir 150).
The climax of Laurence's adventure in Japan is the First Tozen-ji Incident, in which the British Legation locatedin the Zen temple in Shinagawa was attacked by anti-foreign ronins in the middle of the night of July 5th. In order tofeature this attack dramatically, one of the techniques she used was to quote from a peaceful letter written only a few
days before the outrage. According to the letter, Laurence initially felt that "[w]ith entire humility one is in no danger
whatsoever and a truly sincere Christian ... might live here [in Japan] in perfect safety all his life" (Memoir 152).
Even after suffering from the attack, from which he did not fully recover physically, it seems that Laurence was
not at all disillusioned by Japan. Although he never returned to Asia afterwards in his life, he occasionally lectured
about Japan at universities in Scotland, and when some Japanese students from Satsuma came over to London, hekindly guided them as their mentor in society. Moreover, it is known that he even took six of them to Brocton, NewYork, to introduce them intimately to the mystic utopian community of Thomas Lake Harris.
The reason why Laurence kept his sympathy to Japan throughout his life may come from various factors. For
one thing, Laurence seems to have been satisfied with the Japanese government's explanation that the Legation attack
was "an expression of private hatred alone, and entirely unconnected with any official" (Memoir 156). Margaret also
quotes Laurence's thought-provoking words: "The result of our forcing ourselves upon people who never wanted us,
has been to place us in the dilemma from which the only escape is one or other of the courses I have proposed"(Memoir 156). It is hinted here that Laurence might have harboured an ambivalent feeling towards Britain's imperial
endeavours in Asia, especially after witnessing the controversial war with China. The bottom line is that he isintrospectively aware that they are "forcing" themselves upon foreign nations and he sees the attack as its "result," asif to say that the British brought it on themselves.
Conclusion
Margaret's Memoir can be read as a structured bildungsroman of Laurence Oliphant in epistolary style. Her main
objective was to honour him and to promote her privileged connection with the distinguished family, heavily using
private letters that only she could obtain. Her intensive focus on Laurence and Lady Oliphant's mother-and-son
relationship, and her sympathetic representation of Laurence as an adorable boy or lively youth that obscures hisfaults, may come from Margaret's own maternal mindset and her difficult but nonetheless cherished experience withher own sons. Simultaneously, the Memoir importantly reflects her own yearning for freedom and mobility coupledwith her intricate idea of gender identity, or the idea of "a might have been". While Margaret self-deprecatingly
assesses herself as "a fat, little, commonplace woman, rather tongue-tied" (Autobiography 17), she also writes that
she has "learned to take perhaps more a man's view of mortal affairs" (Autobiography 10). As for Chapter Six of theMemoir, or the retelling of Laurence's adventures in China and Japan, it well reflects the above characteristic of thebiography as a whole. Not only that, but the chapter also highlights Margaret's ingenuity in reconstructing hisadventures, effectively highlighting Laurence's activity in Japan in contrast to the previous toned-down observationin China. Concurrently, Margaret keeps her own reserved attitude towards Laurence's infatuation with Japan. The
Memoir, though it is hardly read today, still holds significance when looking at issues of life writing, gender, andempire.
Works CitedOliphant, Margaret. Memoir of the Life of Laurence Oliphant and of Alice Oliphant, His Wife. William
Blackwood and Sons, 1892.
---. The Autobiography of Margaret Oliphant. Edited by Elisabeth Jay, Oxford UP, 1990.