Edmund Trelawny Backhouse

“ I promised I would do my best, should a favourable opportunity present itself, but that I could not, of course, guarantee my success, knowing nothing of the circumstances under which I would be received nor being sufficiently acquainted with Chinese etiquette. ”

“ I was given to understand that an audience of this kind was quite out of the common, and that no European had, in the past, ever stood before a Chinese Empress so long as Chinese history existed, but that it had been Her Majesty's particular wish to receive me on this occasion, probably much against the wishes of her advisers, though perhaps her object was to prove that she was the sovereign in power. ”