DURING the MacLehose era the Queen's Birthday was celebrated with a tea party on the lawn at Government House. No alcohol was served; but there was a choice between tea and a fluorescent pink drink, with a cherry in it, called a ''cocktail.'' There were little cakes and bloater paste sandwiches. It was rumoured that the bloater paste was flown in specially from England for the occasion, as it was unobtainable in Hong Kong at the time.
A hundred years earlier, in Governor Sir John Pope Hennessy's day, it was a much grander affair. In 1880, Prince Henry of Prussia, the younger brother of the future Kaiser Wilhelm II, was in town, and the Governor decided to celebrate Queen Victoria's Birthday with a sumptuous banquet.
Unfortunately the Governor had quarrelled with the Commander of British Forces, Major-General E. W. Donovan. The General hated the Governor and refused to let the only military band in the colony perform at the Governor's party.
The band was scheduled to play at a rival Queen's Birthday Banquet, organised by Donovan, in direct competition to the Governor's party.
Prince Henry offered to lend the Governor his ship's band. Hennessy was delighted and invited the Prince to co-host the dinner. This was a breach of protocol, and it caused a storm in London. Eventually the War Office instructed the General to provide the Governor with a band.
The quarrel between the two cantankerous Irishmen was about hygiene. Among other things, the Governor was violently opposed to the introduction of flush toilets and had stopped building reservoirs because, he claimed, they were against Chinese tradition.