Meet Dr. Fu Manchu

The following is from Meet the Detective, 1935. Reprinted in The Rohmer Review No. 10, March, 1973.

Whenever I hear Big Ben striking I realize how important a part Big Ben has played in the adventures of Dr. Fu Manchu, for Dr. Fu Manchu first appeared in London within sound of Big Ben. Now I come to think of it, that deep old bell has run like a sort of London counter-melody through the stories. This was accidental; it had never occurred to me until the present moment. Perhaps the possibility of Fu Manchu's existence first dawned upon me in Limehouse, where many years ago I had an office. I used this office simply as a base of exploration. I was a journalist in those days, but preparing to become a fiction writer - and Chinatown intrigued me.

I made many friends in the Chinese quarter, with its background of river noises, its frequent fogs, its sordid mystery. I found nothing to inspire romance. Then one night, and appropriately enough it was a foggy night, I saw a tall and very dignified Chinaman alight from a car. He was accompanied by an Arab girl, or she may have been an Egyptian, and as I saw the pair enter a mean-looking house, and as the fog drew a curtain over the scene, I conceived the character of Dr. Fu Manchu. In that hour, I believe, that old man of the sea was born.

That strange secrecy of the Chinese which underlies their native honesty, those invisible links which bind then, so that in any part of the world you will find members of the mysterious Tongs, this power, I said, controlled by a great dominating influence, a personality exceeding the normal, here would be a force which could upset Governments, and perhaps change the course of civilization. Beauty would be one of this superman's instruments. And the woman was beautiful.

He would be remorseless as an ancient Roman. As I walked on through the fog I imagined that inside that cheap-looking dwelling-house, unknown to all but the chosen few, unvisited by the watchful police, were luxurious apartments, Orientally furnished, cushioned, and perfumed, a spot of Eastern magnificence, a jewel inset in the fogs of Limehouse.

by Jim Starlin (digitally remastered)

That night, alone in my room, I searched through my memories of the Fast, finding a pedigree for the girl I had seen in the fog. And she became Karamaneh, the unwilling slave and instrument of the Chinese doctor. Daylight was not far away when at last I had created Fu Manchu, a genius of princely rank holding degrees of three European universities. I had found as his opponent, Nayland smith, an officer of Indian police, and I had selected (quite unknown to him) a friend of mine, a general practitioner, practising in a south-west suburb of London, as the friend and confidant of Nayland Smith.

We know in these scientific days that thoughts are things. When one makes a character one makes something which really exists, and so that night, or that morning, I knew that I had succeeded in the task which I had set myself; for, closing my eyes, I could both see and hear Dr. Fu Manchu.

He stood before me tall, lean, and high shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare's and a face like Satan; a close-shaven skull and long magnetic eyes of the true cat green. He spoke, and I listened:

"You have sought for and you have found me," he said. "I am here. You have followed me through the forests of Burma. You have tracked me to my palace in Kiang Su. Because you have made, you think that you know me. Do you dream that your Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith can conquer me? That my mastery of the secret sects of the East can be met by the simple efficiency of the West? I shall prove a monster which neither you nor those you have created to assist you can hope to conquer..."

He was so real that I answered him. One listening must have assumed that I, sitting alone in my room with the grey light of dawn just beginning to peep through the curtains, had become demented. It was not so. I had created something, and it was to the Mandarin Fu Manchu that I replied: "It will be a square fight, but a fight to the finish, Dr. Fu Manchu."

"A member of my family," he answered, "a mandarin of my rank, never breaks his word. For myself I ask nothing. I hold the key which unlocks the hearts of those who belong to every secret society in the East, including the Thugs. I command every Tong in China. My knowledge of medicine exceeds that of any doctor in the Western world. I shall restore the lost glories of China - my China. When your Western civilization, as you are pleased to term it, has exterminated itself, when from the air you have bombed to destruction your palaces and your cathedrals, when in your blindness you have permitted machines to obliterate humanity, I shall arise. I shall survey the smoking ashes which once were England, the ruins that were France, the red dust of Germany, the distant fire that was the united States. Then I shall laugh. My hour at last! Your Nayland Smith, your Scotland Yard, your Dr. Petrie, yourself, all will be blotted out. But China - my China - its willing millions awaiting my word - China, then, will come into her own. The dusk of the West will have fallen: the dawn of the East will have come."

"And you, Dr. Fu Manchu?"

"I shall be Emperor of the World!"

''And I..."

"You?" He laughed -- high, shrill laughter. "You will be forgotten with your Nayland Smith, your Dr. Petrie, and even my Karamaneh, your soldiers, your statesmen, all will be forgotten. But I, the Mandarin Fu Manchu, I shall go on, triumphant. It is your boast that you have made me. It is mine that I shall live when you are smoke.

So, you see, I had really created Dr. Fu Manchu. I had set him out upon his great march to conquer the Western world. I had challenged him to sweep aside the white races and to win domination for his own. Since thoughts are things, perhaps in my extravagance I had nevertheless made something not far short of what the future nay hold. I sometimes wonder.

I have wandered far from the sound of Big Ben since that night when I brought Dr. Fu Manchu to life, and in the reluctant East, birthplace of the Mandarin doctor, I have sometimes thought that there was a greater wisdom, a deeper understanding of the essential things of life. But I am afraid I must close. I hope you understand Dr. Fu Manchu as I have tried to understand him. Perhaps one day he may conquer the world. It would be a queer world, but I am not sure that it would be any worse or any better than the world we live in. Big Ben? London? Would there be any Big Ben, any London, under the Empire of Dr. Fu Manchu?

Note: This is one of five accounts concerning the origin of Fu Manchu. While all of them are likely to be partially true, none of them are likely to be entirely true or accurate. Links to the other four are below. 

Source

Additional Resources
True Origin of Fu Manchu from This Week September 29, 1957. Reprinted in The Rohmer Review No. 2, January 1969.
The Birth of Fu Manchu from the Daily Sketch, May 24, 1934. Reprinted in The Rohmer Review, No. 17, August 1977.
Pipe Dreams: The Birth of Fu Manchu from The Manchester Empire News, Sunday January 30, 1938.
The Limehouse Incident from Master of Villainy, 1972.