Two of a kind, Canaan Lane

Image: © kim traynor Taken: 10 Dec 2012

Two cottages which contribute to the character of the district known as 'Canaan'. The building directly behind them is 'Goshen House', just one example of the tradition of giving Morningside villas biblical names. In 1874, it was the birthplace of Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston who, after studying at Edinburgh and Oxford, joined the Hong Kong civil service in 1898. He was district officer and magistrate in the Chinese province of Weihaiwei from 1906 to 1917, and from 1919 to 1925 English tutor to Pu Yi, the last Emperor of China (1908-12). Pu Yi was ousted from power in Sun Yat Sen's revolution of 1911 and later installed as the puppet-ruler of 'Manchukuo' following Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931. Johnston's reminiscences of China were recorded in his memoir 'Twilight in the Forbidden City', published in 1934; and Peter O'Toole played him in Bernardo Bertolucci's film 'The Last Emperor' (1987). In 1931, he was appointed director of the Chinese Department of the School of Oriental Studies at the University of London, a post he held until his retirement in 1937 and return to Edinburgh shortly before his death in 1938. One of his pupils in London was Chiang Yee who, in 1948, wrote a book about Edinburgh, his mentor's home town, as part of his 'Silent Traveller' series.

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