
Luke Batterham
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LYTTON STRACHEY'S TRAGIC CHINESE MELODRAMA: A Son of Heaven, written in 1912, was described by Strachey as a 'tragic melodrama' set in Peking during the Boxer Rising of 1900. The play was based in part on the book China under the Empress Dowager (1910), which Bland, the recipient of this letter, had written in collaboration with the fraudster Edmund Backhouse.
In 1921 Strachey wrote to Bland asking whether, in his opinion, he ought to allow A Son of Heaven to be produced, and Bland advised against it on the grounds that he 'followed the historical course of events so precisely, and reproduced the chief actors in the Boxer Crisis in such a manner, as to necessitate, I think, accuracy in depicting them; and this is lacking...The play is to me unconvincing, because it lacks the correct oriental atmosphere, and the characters talk like Europeans' (Bland's letter quoted by Michael Holroyd, Lytton Strachey: A Biography, revised edition 1971, p.897). In our letter Strachey replies to Bland's comments. The play was to receive two moderately successful charity performances in 1925; a notable feature of which, however, was the incidental music contributed by William Walton, influenced – or so Constant Lambert thought – by George Gershwin, who had taken London by storm that year.