On a Chinese Screen · Chapter
XXV: The Grand Style explained
The narrator reflects on an elderly doctor, over eighty, who arrived in China fifty-seven years ago as a ship's doctor.
What happens
The narrator reflects on an elderly doctor, over eighty, who arrived in China fifty-seven years ago as a ship's doctor. Now serving as vice-consul in a small anchorage, he embodies an old-world gentlemanliness marked by classical education, antique courtesy, and a grand, adventurous spirit. The chapter contrasts his dignified style with modern manners, attributing his distinction to a bygone era's solid reading, Latin quotations, and a sense of style akin to Swift's prose.
Themes in this chapter
Colonial Ennui and Isolation
The doctor's life in a remote anchorage with only seven white men's houses and a handful of Chinese reflects the isolation and quiet routine of colonial outposts, where his vice-consul duties and medical practice provide just enough occupation to stave off idleness.
Search for Meaning and Identity
The doctor's plans to retire and visit the West Indies, his reflections on England and Ireland, and his embodiment of a bygone 'grand style' suggest a search for meaning and identity in a changing world, clinging to the values and manners of his youth.
Characters to notice
- The Doctor
An elderly Irish doctor, over eighty, who came to China fifty-seven years ago as a ship's doctor. He is tall, thin, with bright blue eyes and a deep voice, now serving as vice-consul in a small anchorage. He embodies old-world gentlemanliness, classical education, and a grand style.
Key passages
“He was a very old man. It was fifty-seven years since he came to China as a ship's doctor and took the place in one of the Southern ports of a medical officer whose health had obliged him to go home.”
The doctor is extremely old, having arrived in China fifty-seven years ago as a ship's doctor to replace a medical officer who returned home due to illness.
Establishes the doctor's long tenure in China and his advanced age.
“I think the men of that time were, if not more adventurous than the men of ours, more adventurous in the grand manner: now a man will risk his life with a joke from Comic Cuts on his lips, then it was with a Latin quotation.”
The narrator believes that men of the past were adventurous in a more dignified, classical way, facing danger with Latin quotations rather than modern jokes.
Highlights the contrast between the old 'grand style' and modern casualness.