Desmond Parsons

In 1934, Desmond Parsons, a brilliant linguist, went to China to reach his friend, and possible lover, Harold Acton who was in Beijing lecturing at the Peking National University.^[3] According to Acton's friends, Parsons was Acton's "one true love of his life".^[5][4]

In China Parsons visited the caves at Dun Huang. He removed a wall painting using tools and was caught when he tried to carry it away in his vehicle.^[6] He was released after the British government intervened. His photographs of the place were later acquired by the Courtauld Institute of Art.^[3]

Parsons was also the great, but unreciprocated love of Robert Byron, a travel writer. In 1934 they lived together in Peking, where Parsons developed Hodgkin's Disease.^[7] His brother, who was visiting him, managed to bring back Parsons to Europe where he died on 4 July 1937.^[3] Byron died in 1941 when the ship he was travelling on was attacked during World War II.^[1]

At the beginning of the World War II, Acton sent back to Birr Castle Parsons' collection of Chinese Art.^[3] The journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, of which he had become a resident member in the year of his death,^[8] honoured him with an obituary noting his "unusual capacity for observation" and "fine scholarly instinct" as well as "charming personality and transparent honesty of purpose".^[9]