A Journey to Lhasa in 1811
Victor Allan describes the Cambridge tutor in mathematics, friend of Charles Lamb, who became the first Englishman to walk the streets of the Tibetan capital.
In the gallery of the explorers, there are few more shadowy portraits than that of Thomas Manning. The fault for the obscurity into which he has fallen lies with himself, for his commanding qualities of intellect, courage and resolution were blurred by indolence, levity and wasted endeavour.
The man and his achievement lost the way to fame among the confused bypaths of his own idiosyncrasies. Yet Manning stands in the foremost rank of world travellers. He was the first Englishman to enter the sacred city of Lhasa, and the story of his remarkable journey reveals how much a single man may accomplish where embassies and expeditions fail.
It is hard to associate an adventurer with the ailing child born in the Norfolk village of Broome on November 8th, 1772. His health in boyhood was so frail that his clergyman father—who had then become Rector of Diss—undertook his schooling at home. It proved a substantial grounding, for, moving on to Caius College, Cambridge, he showed equal brilliance in science and the arts, and finally settled down at the university as a tutor of mathematics.
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