With the Empress Dowager of China

Katharine A. Carl

Illustrated by the Author and with Photographs

New York The Century Co. 1907

Published November, 1905.

PORTRAIT OF THE EMPRESS DOWAGER

This is the portrait which was exhibited at the St. Louis Exposition, is now owned by the United States Government, and is in the National Museum at Washington

TO SIR ROBERT HART

To whose helpful encouragement I owe so much, I affectionately dedicate this account of my experiences at the Court of the country he has so long and faithfully served.

Katharine A. Carl.

New York, May, 1905.

Contents
PAGE
[Chapter I].	3
My Presentation and First Day at the Chinese Court Drive Out to the Summer Palace—Presentation—Beginning the Portrait—Luncheon—The Palace Theater—My Pavilion within the Precincts.
[Chapter II].	18
Personal Appearance of Her Majesty—A Chinese Repast—Boating Second Sitting—The Siesta—Her Majesty’s Barge—A Promenade on the Lake.
[Chapter III].	27
The Palace of the Emperor’s Father A Chinese Palace—Gardens—The Chinese Poem—Tombstones of Pets—The Highway from Peking to the Summer Palace—Chinese Modes of Locomotion—The Seventh Prince.
[Chapter IV].	34
Her Majesty’s Throne-room Clocks—Third Sitting—A Promenade in the Gardens—The Orchard—The Empress Dowager’s Love of Flowers—Customs as to Fruits and Flowers.
[Chapter V].	42
The Young Empress and Ladies of the Court The Young Empress—The Secondary Wife—The Princesses—Children by Adoption—Chinese Widows—The Princess Imperial—The Relationships of the Princesses of the Blood—The Maids and Tiring-women—Women of the Eighth Banner—The Chinese Woman at Court—Slaves.
[Chapter VI].	50
Continuation of the Portrait Advantages and Disadvantages of Painting in the Throne-room—The Empress Dowager’s Voice—Chinese Opinion as to Portraits of Royalty—Walks with Her Majesty—Her Dogs—Their Pavilions—Cats—The Empress Dowager’s Gift of “Me-lah.”
[Chapter VII].	57
Festivities at Court The Celebration of His Majesty’s Birthday—Invitation from the Empress Dowager to be Present—Birthday Plays—The Imperial Actors—Birthday Decorations of the Palace Courts and Buildings—Presents—First Gala Performance—Luncheon in the Court of the Theater—The Mat-sheds at the Palace—Visitors—Chinese Courtesy—The Imperial Theater at Summer Palace—Actresses—Customs of Manchu Women.
[Chapter VIII].	64
His Majesty the Emperor Beginning of his Reign—The Name of an Emperor—The Manchu Dynasty—Personality of the Emperor—Appearance—His Orientalism—His Dreams of Progress—His Edicts—Despatches—The Emperor’s Palace and Attendants—His Studies and Talents—Early Rising—His Meals—Conventionalities Observed—Dislike of Public Functions.
[Chapter IX].	73
The Emperor’s Birthday Morning Salutations—His Majesty’s Throne-room—The Imperial Pearl-Buttons Denoting Rank of Officials—Manchu Buttons—“Lever” of the Empress Dowager—Court Costume—Young Empress in Court Attire—Going in State to Audience Hall—Official Congratulation by High Officials and Princes—The Young Empress’s Palace—Presentation of Jade Emblem (Ruyie)—Young Empress’s Official Congratulation to the Emperor—Simplicity of Attire of Empress Dowager—Grand Theatrical Representation at Palace Theater—Imperial Congratulatory Poem—Splendid Costumes—Luncheon in the Court of the Theater—Children at Court—The Emperor’s Presents to the Manchu Nobles and High Officials—The Finale at the Theater—Spectacular Procession—Thanks of the Princes and Nobles—Bowing to the “Great Ancestress”—The Procession to the Hall of Ancestral Tablets.
[Chapter X].	87
Peking—The Sea Palace His Majesty’s Sacrifice to his Ancestors—The Empress Dowager’s Favorite Summer-house—The Sacred Picture—The United States Legation at Peking—Mrs. Conger’s Relations with Chinese Ladies—The Sea Palace—The Boats of the Lake—Our Resting-place at the Sea Palace—Promenade on the Lake—The Eunuch Li-Wun-ti—Memory—Story-telling—The Island—Temple Gardens—Two Temples—Cathedral within the Precincts—Theater.
[Chapter XI].	100
Some Characteristics of Her Majesty—Second Visit to the Sea Palace The Empress Dowager’s Magnetic Personality—Interesting Study—Her Chinese Appellations—Hall of Mongolian Princes—Dragon Wall—Fruits Sent to the Palace—Repast at the Sea Palace—Promenade in the Train of Her Majesty—The Imperial Gourds—A Promenade in the Rain—Rest in Hall of Mongolian Princes—Archery in China—The Sunset Call.
[Chapter XII].	111
Return to the Summer Palace The Empress Dowager as a Psychological Study—Seeing Her Face to Face—Work on Portrait Resumed—Easels and Cases for Materials for Work on Sacred Picture—Walks—Refreshments for the Promenades—Imperial Tea—The Empress Dowager’s Tea and Tea-cups—Her Deftness with her Fingers—Her Thoughtfulness.
[Chapter XIII].	117
The Steam-launch—Semi-annual Sacrifices to Confucius Chinese Tolerance in Religious Matters—Halls of Confucius—The Odes to Peace—Burning the Offerings.
[Chapter XIV].	123
The Palace Eunuchs Their Grades—The Chief Eunuchs—Li Lien Ying—His Power with the Courtiers—“L’Eminence Grise” of the Court—The Shut-in Position of Chinese Imperial Rulers—Need of an Unofficial Messenger—Personal Appearance of Li Lien Ying—Sui, Her Majesty’s Second Eunuch—Punishment of Eunuchs—Pupils—Opium Smoking—Pets—Good Manners of the Eunuchs.
[Chapter XV].	130
Literary Tastes and Accomplishments of the Empress Dowager The Empress of the Eastern Palace—Co-Regency—Her Majesty’s Literary Tastes—Her Love of Heroic Poems—Her Memory—The Chinese Joan of Arc—The Empress, Widow of Tung-Chih—The Empress Dowager’s Reader and her Favorite Authors—Her Love of the Theater—Her Humor—A Great Stickler for Purity of Language—Li-Hung-Chang’s Chinese—How the Empress Dowager Speaks It—Her Writing of the Great Characters—The Chinese Written Character—Painting—Embroidery—Her Designs for Floral Decorations—Cultivation of her Person—The Empress Dowager an Epicure—Her Soaps and Perfumes—Her Personal Magnetism as a Power over Animals—The Escaped Bird—The Katydid.
[Chapter XVI].	142
The Great Audience Hall Hours of the Audiences—The Audience Hall at Summer Palace—Its Interior—Ancient and Modern Thrones and Dais—Audiences of Heads of Departments—The Grand Council—Official Despatches—Telegrams—The Cushions for Members of the Grand Council—Special Audiences—The Introducing Eunuch—Amusing Subterfuge of Officials at Audience—The Young Emperor and Tiresome Official—Sacred Quality of the Imperial Person—Mode of Address of Courtiers—The Kow-tow.
[Chapter XVII].	149
The Summer Palace The Empress Dowager’s Favorite Palace—The Marble Terrace—The Hills of the Summer Palace—The Temple of the Ten Thousand Buddhas—Memorial Arches—The Marble Bridge—The Canals—Camel-back Bridges—Chinese Architecture—Utilitarian Spirit of the Chinese—Flowers and Fields in the Park of Summer Palace—Grand Peony Mountain—The Sacred Buddha-Temple of the Ten Thousand Buddhas—Ruins of Old Summer Palace—Views from the Summer Palace Belvederes—When Their Majesties Go Abroad.
[Chapter XVIII].	156
Festival of the Harvest Moon The Chinese Love of Festivals—The Fruit of Immortality—The Little Handmaiden and her White Rabbit—The Play at the Palace Theater on the Mid-Autumn Festival—Dinner in the Imperial Loge—Procession to the Moonlit Terrace—Floral Pai-lou to the Moon—“Bowing” to the Moon—The Poem to the Moon—The Burnt-Offering—Return to the Palace on the Moonlit Lake—Continuation of the Portrait—Some Disadvantages of Too Much Pleasure—Hospitality of the Empress Dowager—Chinese Conventions and Traditions—Wonderful Opportunities for Picturesqueness in Painting the Empress Dowager—Restrictions Imposed by Chinese Tradition—First Exhibition of the “Sacred Picture”—Description of First Portrait of the Empress Dowager—How I Should Have Liked to Paint Her.
[Chapter XIX].	165
A Garden Party Reception to the Diplomatic Corps and Ladies of the Legation—The Ceremony of Reception of the Ladies—The Empress Dowager’s Cordiality—Taking Tea in the Audience Hall—Luncheon in the Throne-room—Promenade on the Lake—Visit to the Palace and Temple on the Island—The Marble Boat—Lack of Harmony among the Guests at Garden Party—Chinese Comment on our Costumes and Appearance—Dislike of Blonde Hair.
[Chapter XX].	171
Beginning a Second Portrait of the Empress Dowager Putting the Characters Representing Her Majesty’s Titles and her Two Seals on the Portrait—Beginning the Small Portrait—Toilette d’Intimité—“Hailo” and “Shadza”—The Palace Painters—Their Manner of Working—New Variety of Chrysanthemum—The “Peafowl Feather”—The Audience Hall Pianos—Her Majesty’s Ideas of Dancing.
[Chapter XXI].	178
A European Circus at the Palace The Posters—Sites for the Ring—The Turnip Field—Their Majesties Go in State across the Lake—The Houseboats—The Young Empress’s State Boat—The Imperial Loges at the Circus—Invited Officials—Bands of Music—A Glimpse of the Manchu Princes and Some High Officials—The Son of the Imperial Princess—The Opera Glasses of Their Majesties—What Interested Them Most.
[Chapter XXII].	185
Palace Customs Early Rising—When the Empress Dowager Sleeps—Her Bedroom—Irregular Hours except for the Audience—Domestic Duties—Her Favorite Game—Her Luck—Her Meals—Conventions Observed at the Empress Dowager’s Table—Her Dishes—The Hour of the Siesta—Her Promenades—The Days of the Theater—When Their Majesties Dine Together—Rigorous Observance of Fasts at the Table of the Empress Dowager—Court Etiquette—The Graceful Bow—Rigid Observance of Court Customs—Her Majesty’s Reproof of Too Indulgent Mother.
[Chapter XXIII].	194
Her Majesty’s Anxiety—Her Birthday Her Anxiety—Exterior and Interior Troubles—Preparations for Her Majesty’s Birthday—Her Desire to Have Everything as Simple as Possible and to Spare Expense—The Emperor’s Wish to Celebrate with the Usual Pomp, and Desire to Bestow a New Title upon the Empress Dowager—Difference of Her Majesty’s Interest in her Own and the Emperor’s Birthday—When She Received the Congratulations—Early Hour of Congratulation—The Interior of the Throne-room and Decorations for the Birthday—Winter Court Dress of the Ladies—The Empress Dowager’s Fatigue.
[Chapter XXIV].	200
The Winter Palace The Empress Dowager’s Love of the Summer Palace—Return to Peking—Young Empress and Ladies Precede and Receive Her on the Threshold of her Own Throne-room—City of Peking, the Palace within the Forbidden City—Its many Walls within Walls—The Guard-Houses—The Ceremony of Reception—The Throne-room of the Winter Palace—The Interior Dome—Her Majesty’s Sitting-room—Private Chapel—Portraits of Queen Victoria—The Three Great Halls—The Spirit-Stairway—The Central Hall—Presents from European Royalties—Where I was to Paint—The Emperor’s Precincts—Tradition at the Winter Palace.
[Chapter XXV].	211
Peking—Beginning the Portrait for St. Louis Legation Quarter—Morning Ride to the Palace—Splendid Walls of the Palace and City—The Streets in the Forbidden City—A Funeral—The Mongolians—Beggars at the Gate—Unsatisfactoriness of Studio at Winter Palace—Her Majesty Orders It Remodeled—Beginning Portrait for St. Louis—Imperial Paraphernalia and Insignia of Royalty—Importance of Propriety—The Throne—Her Majesty’s Costume for the Portrait—Pearl Mantle—First Sketch—Stretching the Great Canvas.
[Chapter XXVI].	219
Some Social Customs Manchu Ladies of the Palace—Presentation, on Their Marriage, of Manchu Noblewomen—Bridal Costume—Sedan Chairs—By Whom Bride is Presented—The Young Empress’s Graciousness—A Daughter in a Manchu Family—Comparison of Manchu and American Girl—The Unmarried Daughter of the Manchus—Her Position in the Family—Social Qualities—The Manchu Men—Sports—Costume—Young Dandies—Concubinage—Early Marriages of Men—Secondary Wives—The Family—Secondary Wives of an Emperor—Their Rank—Position in the Palace—Title.
[Chapter XXVII].	230
Present-Giving The Palace as the Heart of Empire—Occasions on which Presents are Given (Private, Official, and Festivals)—Style of Presents Given by the Empress Dowager—Presents to the Ladies of Legation—Birthday Presents—Some Presents Received by Me from Her Majesty.
[Chapter XXVIII].	237
Some Winter Days at the Palace The Portrait for America—Details and Accessories of the Same—Days at the Palace—The Meals in Winter—Winter Evenings—Learning Chinese—Occupations of the Ladies—The Young Empress’s Birthday—Days of Mourning at the Palace—Anniversary of Death of the Emperor Tung-Chih—The Empress Dowager’s Sorrow.
[Chapter XXIX].	245
Religious Rites The Three Great Religions—The Temple of Heaven—The Emperor as High Priest—Preparations for the Sacrifice to Heaven—Buddhism and Taoism—Confucius—Origin of Chinese Religious Ceremonies—Vitality of China as a Nation—Its Amalgamation of Conquering Races—The Manchus—Some Nature Worship—The Festival of the Awakening of Spring at the Palace—Guardians of the Cocoons.
[Chapter XXX].	253
Her Majesty the Empress Dowager Her Family—Presentation at Court—Fifth Wife of the Emperor Hsien-Feng—Favorite of Empress Mother and First Wife—Birth of a Son—Death of Emperor Hsien-Feng—Empress of Western Palace—Co-Regents for Young Emperor Tung-Chih—Friendliness of the Two Co-Regents—State of China at Beginning of Regency—Intrigue—The Anti-foreign Princes—Prince Kung—First Political Act of Young Empress of Western Palace—Support of the Princes of the Blood—The Emperor Tung-Chih Begins to Reign—Death of Tung-Chih—Resumption of the Regency by the Empress Dowager—Minority of Kwang-Hsu—Death of Empress of Eastern Palace—Policy of Empress Dowager—The Emperor Kwang-Hsu Begins to Reign—His Policy—The War with Japan—Change of Policy by the Emperor—The Progress Party—The Ultra-Conservatives—Return from Retirement of the Empress Dowager—The Emperor’s Edict—So-called Coup d’État—Rout of Progress Party—Punishment of Ringleaders—Effect on the Emperor—Reign of Emperor “Assisted” by Empress Dowager—The Secret Society of the Boxers—Its Growth—Boxers in the Capital—Boxers among the Princes of the Blood—The Outbreak in Peking—Reported Cause of Outbreak—The Emperor and Empress Dowager’s Attempt to Check Movement—The Imperial Military Forces—Position of Legation Quarter in Peking—British Legation—Return of Their Majesties to Peking—Edicts Issued—Arrival of Allies in Peking—Flight of Her Majesty and the Court—The Route to Singan Fu—Hardships Endured—Incidents.
[Chapter XXXI].	270
Her Majesty the Empress Dowager (Continued) Her Charities—Incident of the Boxer Rising—Widows’ Petition to the Empress Dowager—Her Majesty’s Action thereon—Her Extravagance—Extravagance in the Palace—Efforts of Past Emperors for Economy—Cost of Food in the Palace—Her Majesty’s Personal Extravagance—Her Jewels—Wardrobe—Examples of Her Economy—Her Patriotism—Scheme of Taxation—Her Penetration—Her Judgment—Her Prejudices—Sarcasm—Her Determination—Tact—Social Instinct—Reception of Young German Prince.
[Chapter XXXII].	279
The Chinese New Year Greatest Festival of the Year—Decorations of the Palace—Imitation Money—New Year’s Presents—Work on Portrait—Some Changes—Removal of the Court to Sea Palace—My Studio at Sea Palace—New Year’s Audience of Ladies of the Legation—Congratulations—Lantern Festival—The Illuminated Procession—The Double Dragon—The Flaming Pearl—Fireworks in the Palace—Day Rockets—Old Customs as to the Fireworks in the Palace Grounds.
[Chapter XXXIII].	287
Continuation of the St. Louis Portrait Propitious Date for Finishing it—Changing Ornaments—Frame for Portrait—Spring Days—Her Majesty’s Walks—Inspecting the New Buildings—The Jinrikisha—The Miniature Railway—Her Majesty’s Automobiles—Kite Flying—His Majesty the Emperor Plows and Sows the Seed of a Furrow.
[Chapter XXXIV].	294
Finishing and Sending off the Portrait Nineteenth Day of April—Invitations to Ladies of the Legation to see the Portrait—Visit of the Ladies to the Palace—The Portrait—Princes and Nobles see the “Sacred Picture”—Attempt to Photograph—Portrait taken to Wai-Wu-Pu—Visit of Corps Diplomatique—Packing the Portrait—Special Railway built from Foreign Office to Railway Station—Departure of Picture—En route—Tientsin—Shanghai—Embarkation for San Francisco—Reception by Prince Pu L’un and Imperial Commission at St. Louis—Unveiling the Portrait—Placing the Portrait in the Gallery of Fine Arts—Arrival at Washington—Presentation to the Government.
[Chapter XXXV].	300
Return to the Summer Palace Return to the Summer Palace—The Palace of the Emperor’s Father in Spring—The Grounds of the Summer Palace—The Studio—At Work Again—The Theater—His Majesty’s Theater Program—Work of the Vermilion Pencil—His Majesty’s Interest in the Russo-Japanese War—Spring Garden Party to the Ladies of the Legation—Another large Portrait of Her Majesty—Showing it to the Ladies—Her Majesty’s Desire for Highly Finished Detail—Her Delight in her New Hobby—Final Days.

List of Illustrations

Portrait of the Empress Dowager	[Frontispiece]
FACING PAGE
The Empress and the Ladies of the Court in the Imperial Barge	[24]
Princesses of the Court	[40]
The Young Empress Ye-Ho-Na-Lah	[44]
At the American Legation, Peking	[88]
Chinese Architecture	[104]
On the Road from Peking to the Summer Palace	[112]
The Empress Dowager Writing a “Great Character”	[136]
The Empress Dowager in the Gardens of the Summer Palace	[140]
The Official Audience of Their Majesties	[146]
Old Ruins in the Summer Palace	[152]
The Secondary Wife of the Emperor	[168]
Pai-lou in the Grounds of the Summer Palace—on the Shore of the Lake	[176]
Princesses of the Court	[188]
Court in the Winter Palace—“Her Majesty Comes”	[204]
Confucian Temple—“Spirit-Stairway” in Central Flight of Steps	[208]
Prince Ching	[216]
The Author in Chinese Costume	[234]
Temple of Heaven—Peking	[246]
Altar to the Invisible Deity	[250]
Slave Girls	[280]
The Portrait of the Empress Dowager in its Frame	[304]

INTRODUCTORY

In April, 1903, while I was visiting in Shanghai, I received a letter from Mrs. Conger, wife of the Minister of the United States to Peking, in which she said there was a question of Her Majesty the Empress Dowager’s having her portrait painted, and asking me if such a thing should be arranged would I be willing to come to Peking and undertake it. Mrs. Conger hoped, if the project should materialize, that Her Majesty might later consent to send the portrait to the Exposition at St. Louis. She thought such a portrait would be of great interest to the American people and might prove an attractive feature to the Exposition, in which she and Mr. Conger were, naturally, much interested. She also felt, as she had had an opportunity of seeing a good deal of the Empress Dowager, that if the world could see a true likeness of her, it might modify the generally accepted idea which prevailed as to Her Majesty’s character.

I answered Mrs. Conger’s letter, saying I should be delighted to undertake the work, should it be decided upon, and I awaited further developments. The idea of sitting for her portrait met with Her Majesty’s approval, and she said she would arrange an Audience and set a day for beginning. But the “mills of”—Chinese Officialdom “grind slowly,” and not until July did Mrs. Conger receive an official notification from the Wai-Wu-Pu (Chinese Foreign Office) requesting “Her Excellency Mrs. Conger to present the American artist, Miss Carl, to Her Imperial Majesty on the fifth day of August, for the purpose of painting a portrait of Her Majesty.” Mrs. Conger immediately informed me of the reception of this document, and I left Shanghai for Peking on the 29th of July. I was cordially received, on my arrival in Peking, by Mr. and Mrs. Conger at the American Legation, and on the fifth of August was presented by Mrs. Conger to Her Majesty the Empress Dowager at the Summer Palace in private Audience.

As it was a great innovation in Chinese customs and a breaking away from long-established tradition for an Imperial portrait to be painted, there was no precedent to follow and all arrangements were of the vaguest kind; and when I went into the Palace for my first Audience, I did not know whether I would have one sitting or ten, and no one else seemed to have any more definite information. All was uncertainty. Everything depended upon Her Majesty’s inclination, and future developments must be awaited. I felt that I was really going into the Palace on trial and that my reception and the work depended upon the fantasy and whims of a great Personage from whom, according to current reports, I had but little to expect. On the day of my first Audience, I was told at the Foreign Office that Her Majesty was to give me but one sitting, hence it was not in a very tranquil state of mind that I went up to be presented to the Great Empress Dowager, Tze-Shi! But all this was changed when I saw her. She received me kindly, was very gracious. A Palace was set aside for me, and every facility afforded me for my work: during my sojourn at the Chinese Court I painted not only the portrait for the Exposition at St. Louis, but three others of Her Majesty.

Unique as my experiences at the different Palaces of Their Celestial Majesties were, I concluded, after I had lived at Court for a few months, I would never make these experiences public. The Empress Dowager received me in so friendly a manner, I met with such consideration at her hands and such unfailing courtesy from all with whom I came in contact, I felt I should requite this kindness by an equal consideration, and that it was my duty to respect Chinese prejudices and conform to their ideas of “Propriety” by refraining from any relation of my charming experiences.

After I returned to America, I was constantly seeing in newspapers (and hearing of) statements ascribed to me which I never made. Her Majesty was represented as having stood over me in threatening attitudes, forcing me to represent her as a young and beautiful woman! It was reported that she refused to give me any compensation for the portraits, and a number of other statements, equally false, were daily appearing in the papers. The London “Times,” in speaking of the Empress Dowager, said: “Some one has said ‘she has the soul of a tiger in the body of a woman,’ and Miss Carl found the old lady shrewd and tempestuous.” The latter statement, which I never made, seemed to me enough to have on my shoulders, but the article was copied in American papers and I was put down as the author of the first, as well as of the second statement. The power of the Press has become such that it cannot be ignored. It is of no avail to say nothing in such a case as mine; when you do this, words are put into your mouth and sentiments ascribed to you at the will of the newsmongers. If a correction be made, it never seems to get the same circulation or publicity as the first statement. These erroneous statements continue to appear, and I have finally decided that, in justice to my August Patroness as well as to my humbler self, it is incumbent upon me to correct them, and it seems to me the only proper way to do so is to write a full and true relation of my life at the Palace and my experiences while painting the portraits of Her Majesty the Empress Dowager.

I know I publish this account at the risk of offending the sensibilities of my Chinese friends, for many of them will never know what called it forth. I know that by so doing I may change any favorable opinion they may have formed as to my good-breeding and discretion. I was on sufficiently intimate terms with Her Majesty and the Ladies of the Court to know that this account will be looked upon by them as an “indiscretion,” to say the least of it.

In this story of my life at the Palace, I must naturally give some description of Their Majesties and necessarily make some comment upon their characters. In doing this, I will transgress another long-established rule of Chinese Propriety, which makes any comment, favorable or unfavorable, upon the Sacred Persons of Their Majesties, a breach of etiquette. No act of theirs is ever criticized, no report in reference to them is ever explained, no slander about them is ever refuted by loyal Chinese, and the generality of Chinese are loyal. Thus the falsest statements, not being refuted by those in a position to know, gain in credence until they are reported as facts.

If my comment on Their Majesties and discussion of their acts be favorable, this will be no palliation from the Chinese standpoint. Any sort of comment will be looked upon as a breach of hospitality. I have absolutely nothing to gain, should I suppress any disagreeable facts I may have learned as to Her Majesty. Should I be willing to sacrifice the truth, in order to please my Chinese friends, this would avail me nothing, for should my account of Her Majesty be construed by them into an apology for her, I would be considered most presumptuous and the enormity of my offense aggravated. Thus I am between two fires. Those who read my account may imagine I am trying to justify Her Majesty and thereby gain her favor; and should the Chinese put this construction on it, my indiscretion will become an offense. Knowing all this, and with the memory of the charming consideration I received at the Chinese Court, I nevertheless feel it is my duty to publish a simple and truthful narrative of my experiences, and I hope I may be pardoned for thus breaking Chinese conventions.

The Boxer rebellion was a frequent topic of conversation at the Palace and I heard a great deal about it from the Ladies of the Court. It was not considered at all indiscreet to ask questions on this subject, and I did not hesitate to inform myself by asking about things I wished to know. If it be true, as the philosophers say, that “the proper study of mankind is man under his own environment,” I had an opportunity of studying Her Majesty on the right principles. My account of her should, therefore, have some little value, for I am the only European who has ever had a chance to study this remarkable woman in her own milieu, or to look upon the facts of her life from the standpoint within her own circle.

In this simple relation of what I saw of the customs, religious rites and ceremonies, I have also preferred to rest upon my own personal interpretation of the same, rather than to study the learned explanations of the many clever Sinologues, whose works abound. These works may be consulted by those who desire to enter more deeply into things. I had no time to make a comprehensive study of any works on the subject, and I purposely have read nothing and consulted no books on China, wishing to give a fresh impression. As all their curious ceremonies were a matter of course to the Chinese, they had become so petrified by long use and tradition, as to have, in many instances, lost their original signification to most of those who went through them. I could thus get very little help from the Chinese and was forced to put my own interpretation upon things. I feel that, with my limited capacities, and my inexperience as a writer, the only reason for my entering this field at all lies in the interest of what I saw, as I saw it. Notwithstanding the attitude of the Court in this matter, I have decided to run the risk of incurring their displeasure and reprobation, for I feel assured that what I have to say may serve to clear up certain misapprehensions and place Her Majesty the Empress Dowager in more favorable light. What follows is but the simple narration, the unsophisticated interpretation, of an observant painter.

WITH THE EMPRESS DOWAGER OF CHINA

CHAPTER I MY PRESENTATION AND FIRST DAY AT THE CHINESE COURT

The day of my first Audience at the Chinese Court, August 5th, we were up betimes at the American Legation, for it takes full three hours to drive out to the Summer Palace from Peking; and punctuality is the etiquette of Oriental as well as of Occidental potentates. Our audience was for half-past ten o’clock, and the portrait of the Empress Dowager was to be begun at eleven; that hour, as well as the day and the month, having been chosen, after much deliberation and many consultations of the almanac, as the most auspicious for beginning work on the first likeness ever made of Her Majesty.

We left the Legation at seven A.M. in the trap of the United States Legation Guard, that being the only vehicle available large enough to carry the party, Mrs. Conger and her interpreter and myself and my painting materials, which included a large canvas and a folding easel. After leaving the City, the drive out to the Summer Palace is through fertile fields and a fair, smiling landscape. It had rained the night before and everything was beautifully fresh. The wet, stone-paved road stretched ahead like a shining stream; the wheat and corn fields along the road were of a brilliant green, with here and there the somber note of a clump of arbor-vitæ, out of which rose the walls of a temple! The distant hills, where lay the Summer Palace, were delicately limned against a soft blue-gray sky, and the whole made an entrancing picture.

Soon after leaving Peking the mounted official Legation servants that followed Mrs. Conger’s carriage were joined by a Chinese Guard of Honor sent by the Wai-Wu-Pu (Foreign Office) to escort us to the Palace. After an hour and a half’s drive we rattled through a busy village, past the yellow ruins of a great lama temple, and along the park walls of the summer homes of several Princes of the Imperial Family, and soon came within sight of the beautiful grounds of the Summer Palace with its hills, valleys, canals, and lakes; the hills crowned with tea-houses and temples, the waters of the canals lapping the marble terraces of the Palaces. The red walls and glazed tiles of the yellow and green roofs, the brilliant foliage, freshened by the rain, made a gay picture; and the temples, arches, pagodas, and the many buildings that constitute a Chinese palace gave it the appearance of a whole town rather than of a single palace.

As in all Oriental palaces, upon the very threshold of the outer courts sit the beggar, the lame, the halt, and the blind, gathering rich harvests from the generosity of the high nobles and officials and their myriad retainers as they pass in and out of the Foreign Office and the outer courts of the Palace. The Foreign Office, during the residence of the Court at the Summer Palace, sixteen miles from the Capital, has offices on the left of the great Imperial entrance, in order that state business may be more easily transacted while Their Majesties are in villeggiatura.

We alighted at the Foreign Office and were met by a number of officials with their interpreters, coming out to receive us. After readjusting ourselves in the waiting-room, we were met, when we came out, by the Chief Eunuch of the Palace, who conducted us to the red-covered Palace chairs, each carried by six men. They bore us past the Imperial gateway (used only for Their Majesties), through a door of entrance at the left, when we were within the sacred precincts of one of the residences of the Sons of Heaven and within the walls of the favorite Palace of the Empress Dowager! Before we could take in our surroundings, we had been rapidly carried through various courts and gardens, and had come at last to a larger, quadrangular court, filled with pots of rare blooming plants and many beautiful growing shrubs. Here the bearers put down our chairs; we descended and walked through the court, preceded and followed by a number of eunuchs. The great plate-glass doors of the Palace in front of us, blazing with the huge red character “Sho” (longevity), were swung noiselessly back, and we were at last within the Throne-room of Her Imperial Majesty the Empress Dowager of China!

A group of Princesses and Ladies-in-waiting stood to receive us. The Ladies Yu-Keng, wife and daughter of a former Chinese Minister to France, stood near the Princesses; and their perfect knowledge of both Chinese and English rendered them delightful mediums of communication between the Princesses and ourselves. Having known these ladies in Paris, it was almost like seeing old friends. They seemed a link between the real, every-day world and this Arabian Nights Palace into which we had been wafted. As we arrived at a quarter-past ten, we were in the Throne-room a few moments before Their Majesties appeared! Their entrance was so simply made, so unobtrusive, that the first I knew of it, noticing a sudden lull, I looked around and saw a charming little lady, with a brilliant smile, greeting Mrs. Conger very cordially. One of the Ladies Yu-Keng whispered, “Her Majesty”; but even after this it seemed almost impossible for me to realize that this kindly looking lady, so remarkably young-looking, with so winning a smile, could be the so-called cruel, implacable tyrant, the redoubtable “old” Empress Dowager, whose name had been on the lips of the world since 1900! A young man, almost boyish in appearance, entered the Throne-room with her: this was the Son of Heaven, the Emperor of China!

After greeting Mrs. Conger, the Empress Dowager looked toward me, and I advanced with a reverence. She met me half-way and extended her hand with another brilliant smile which quite won me, and I spontaneously raised her dainty fingers to my lips. This was not in the protocol program. It was an involuntary and surprised tribute on my part to her unexpected charm. She then turned and with graceful gesture extended her hand toward the Emperor and murmured “The Emperor,” and watched me closely while I made His Majesty the formal reverence. He acknowledged the salutation by a slight bow and a stereotyped smile, but I felt that he, too, was closely scrutinizing me as his shrewd glance swept my person.

After a few moments’ conversation, interpreted by the Ladies Yu-Keng, Her Majesty ordered my painting things brought in, while she retired to be dressed in the gown she had decided upon as appropriate for the portrait.

After she had left the Throne-room, I tried to take in the conditions of the place for painting. The hall was large and spacious, but the light was false, the upper parts of the windows being covered with paper shades. The only place in the hall where there was any sort of light for painting was in front of the great plate-glass doors, and this was but a small space in which to begin so large a picture. To get a light upon the portrait, as well as upon the sitter, I should be forced to place my canvas very near the throne where she was to sit; and, with so large a portrait as I was to paint, this would be a great disadvantage. When I thought I must paint here, and begin at once upon the canvas which was to be the final picture, my heart fell! Her Majesty wished, above all, to have a large portrait, and I was told she would not understand my beginning on a small canvas or making any preliminary studies—that if I did not begin on the big canvas at once she would probably not give me any more sittings; in fact we had that morning been told at the Foreign Office that Her Majesty was to give me but two sittings, so there was no alternative! There could be no preliminary poses, no choice from several sketches, and only a few moments in which to choose the pose, which must be final—and I totally ignorant of the possibilities of my sitter or her characteristics.

Luckily, I had but a few moments to consider all these adverse circumstances, for Her Majesty soon returned! She had been clothed in a gown of Imperial yellow, brocaded in the wistaria vine in realistic colors and richly embroidered in pearls. It was made, in the graceful Manchu fashion, in one piece, reaching from the neck to the floor; fastened from the right shoulder to the hem with jade buttons. The stuff of the gown was of a stiff, transparent silk, and was worn over a softer under-gown of the same color and length. At the top button, from the right shoulder, hung a string of eighteen enormous pearls separated by flat pieces of brilliant, transparent green jade. From the same button was suspended a large, carved pale ruby, which had yellow silk tassels terminating in two immense pear-shaped pearls of rare beauty! At each side, just under the arms, hung a pale-blue, embroidered silk handkerchief and a scent-bag with long, black silk tassels. Around her throat was a pale-blue, two-inch-wide cravat, embroidered in gold with large pearls. This cravat had one end tucked into the opening on the shoulder of her gown, and the other hanging. Her jet-black hair was parted in the middle, carried smoothly over the temples, and brought to the top of the head in a large, flat coil.

Formerly all Manchu ladies who have marvelous hair carried the hair itself out from this coil over a golden, jade, or tortoise-shell sword-like pin, into a large-winged bow. The Empress Dowager and the Ladies of the Court have substituted satin instead of the hair, for this wing-like construction, as being more practicable and less liable to get out of order. So satin-like and glossy is their hair that it is difficult to tell where it ends and the satin begins. A band of pearls, with an immense “flaming pearl” in the center, encircled the coil. On either side of the winged bow were bunches of natural flowers and a profusion of jewels. From the right side of the head-dress hung a tassel of eight strings of beautiful pearls reaching to the shoulder.

She wore bracelets and rings, and on each hand had two nail-protectors, for she wore her nails so long the protectors were necessary adjuncts. These nail-protectors were worn on the third and fourth fingers of either hand; those on the left being of brilliant green jade, while those on the right hand were of gold, set with rubies and pearls.

Her Majesty advanced with animation and asked me where the Double Dragon Throne was to be placed. After the eunuchs had put it where I said, she took her seat. Although not more than five feet tall, as she wears the Manchu shoes with six-inch-high, stilt-like soles, to avoid throwing the knees up higher than the lap she must sit upon cushions, and when she is seated she looks a much larger woman than when standing. She took a conventional pose and told me I might make any suggestion I wished; but I had made up my mind that the pose and surroundings must be as typical and characteristic as possible, and as I had had no time to study my August Sitter I thought she would know best as to her position and accessories.

It was nearing eleven!

Beginning anything is momentous. Every artist knows how the wonderful possibilities of the bare canvas in its virgin purity standing before him inspires him with almost a feeling of awe; how he hesitates about beginning, so great is the responsibility. This bare canvas may become a masterpiece, the full expression of his thought, or it may come forth a maimed and distorted effort. To-day in these strange surroundings, with these unusual and unfavorable conditions, my hesitancy was greater than usual; for upon this beginning depended my being able to go on with the portrait.

My hands trembled! The inscrutable eyes of the wonderful woman I was to paint, fixed piercingly upon me, were also disconcerting; but just then the eighty-five clocks in this particular Throne-room began to chime, play airs, and strike the hour in eighty-five different ways. The auspicious moment had come! I raised my charcoal and put the first stroke upon the canvas of the first portrait that had ever been painted of the Empress Dowager of Great China, the powerful “Tze-Shi.” The Princesses, Ladies-in-waiting, the high eunuchs and attendants, stood in breathless silence around, intently watching my every movement, for everything touching Her Majesty is a solemnity.

For a few moments I heard the faintest ticking of the eighty-five clocks as if they were great Cathedral bells clanging in my ears, and my charcoal on the canvas sounded like some mighty saw drawn back and forth. Then, happily, I became interested, and absolutely unconscious of anything but my sitter and my work. I worked steadily on for what seemed to be a very short time, when Her Majesty turned to the interpreter and said “enough work had been done for that day”; the conditions had been fulfilled and the picture begun at the auspicious moment. She added that she knew I must be tired from our long drive out from Peking, as well as from my work. She said I must rest and we must partake of some refreshments. She then descended from the throne and came over to look at the sketch.

I had blocked in the whole figure and had drawn the head with some accuracy. So strong and impressive is her personality, I had been able to get enough of her character into this rough whole to make it a sort of likeness. After looking critically at it for a few moments, she expressed herself as well pleased with what had been done, and paid me some compliments on my talent as an artist! I felt instinctively, however, this was due more to her natural courtesy—her desire to put me at ease—than to an actual expression of her opinion. After she had looked at the portrait, she called Mrs. Conger and the Princesses to see what had been done, and it was discussed for a few moments. Then she turned to me and said the portrait interested her greatly, that she should like to see it go on. She asked me, looking straight into my eyes the while, if I would care to remain at the Palace for a few days, that she might give me sittings at her leisure.

This invitation filled me with joy. The reports I had heard of Her Majesty’s hatred of the foreigner had been dispelled by this first Audience and what I had seen there. I felt that the most consummate actress could not so belie her personality, and I accepted, without a moment’s hesitation, the invitation so graciously tendered. I thought thus I should be able to get a good beginning for a satisfactory likeness of this most remarkable and interesting woman. My sanguine heart even leaped forward to the possibility of probably finishing the portrait entirely at the Palace. Her Majesty seemed pleased at my acceptance and said she would try to make me happy. She then withdrew and we were served to luncheon.

The Empress Dowager always eats alone. When she has guests the Princess Imperial, as the first of the Ladies of the Palace, acts as hostess. The guests of honor are placed at her right and left. The Princesses, Ladies Yu-Keng, Mrs. Conger, and myself formed the guests on this occasion.

The table, decorated with flowers and fruit, groaned under the many Chinese dishes placed thereon. Foreign dishes were served à la Russe. The Chinese dishes, attractive to the eye as well as to the senses of smell and taste, appealed to me at once; though I had been told one must cultivate a taste for them. There were foreign table waters and wines as well as Chinese drinks. We did full justice to the viands, tasting everything and trying to use the chop-sticks, though knives and forks were also placed for each of the guests.

After the repast Her Majesty and the young Empress, the first wife of the Emperor Kwang-Hsu, came in. Her Majesty presented the young Empress with the same grace with which she had indicated the Emperor at the morning Audience, repeating her title, “The Empress,” as she did so. Immediately behind the young Empress was the only secondary wife of the Emperor, who was also presented by the Empress Dowager.

Then Her Majesty told Mrs. Conger she had her Players at the Theater that day, and she invited us to come and hear them. The Empress Dowager and Mrs. Conger led the way and I followed with the young Empress and Princesses. We passed through several courts, all gay with flowers, and finally reached the largest of all, the Court of the Theater. The Theater projects into this rectangular court and consists of a covered rostrum, open on three sides with doors at the back for the entrance and exit of the actors. In front of the stage and across the open, flower-filled court, with splendid bronze ornaments here and there, is a building which might be called the Imperial loge. This is from sixty to eighty feet long with a pillared stone verandah and occupies one entire side of the court. Huge panes of plate-glass, the full height of the building, enable Her Majesty and the Emperor to see, from within, all that passes on the stage, and they can, of course, hear everything perfectly. The buildings which form the other sides of this court, those which run at right angles to the Imperial loge, are divided into small stalls, each about the size of an ordinary opera box. There are no chairs in these boxes, the occupants sit Turkish fashion upon the floor, for no courtier can occupy a chair when in the presence of Their Majesties. These side rooms are for the use of the high officials and Princes who are sometimes invited by Their Majesties to be present at the Imperial Theatrical Representations.

On my first day at Court there were no other invited guests; the Players had been summoned in our honor. Her Majesty sat in a yellow-covered chair on the red-pillared verandah of the Imperial loge. The Emperor was seated on a yellow stool at her left, the place of honor in China. Mrs. Conger and I were on Her Majesty’s right, the young Empresses, Princesses, and Ladies-in-waiting standing around. After seeing two or three acts of a play of which we understood little more than the pantomime, but which was interesting from its very novelty, Mrs. Conger arose to take leave of Their Majesties and the Princesses. After this was accomplished, I accompanied her to one of the outer courts and there told her good-by.

When she left, I was alone in the Palace, the first foreigner to be domiciled in any residence of a Son of Heaven since the time of Marco Polo, and the only foreigner who had ever been within the Ladies’ Precincts. I had a curious feeling of having been transported into a strange world. A sense of loneliness crept over me, and I feared the strangeness of my position might affect my work, and that, after all, I should not accomplish what I had remained in the Palace to do. I stood for a few minutes pondering my position, but was soon joined by the Ladies Yu-Keng with a message from the Empress Dowager that I need not return to the Theater, as she had gone to rest. She sent word that she thought it would be well for me to go to my apartments and try to sleep a little. She hoped I would be happy in the Palace and find the pavilion she had set aside for me comfortable. She added that I must not hesitate to order anything I wished and must make myself perfectly at home.

The Summer Palace, like all Chinese palaces and temples, and even the dwelling-houses of the rich, consists of a series of verandahed buildings, built on stone foundations which rise about eight feet from the ground, generally of one story, around the four sides of rectangular or square courts, connected by open verandah-like corridors. The apartments set aside for my private use, while in the Precincts, were to the left of the Empress Dowager’s Throne-room and quite near it—in order that I might go and come to my painting with ease. These apartments occupied an entire pavilion. It was charming. Its shining marble floors and beautifully carved partitions, its painted walls and charming outlook over flowery courts, made it a delightful spot. These pavilions at the Palace have movable partitions and the rooms may be made as small as closets or as large as the whole building.

My pavilion consisted of two sitting-rooms, a dining-room, and a charming bedroom, separated from each other by screen-like walls of beautifully carved open woodwork, with blue silk showing through the interstices. In the larger spaces were artistic panels of flowers painted on white silk, alternating with poems and quotations from the classics, in the picturesque, ideographic writing of the Chinese. On one of the solid walls was a large water-color painting on white silk, representing a realistically painted peafowl in a flowery field; an immense mirror formed the other solid wall. The plate-glass lower windows had blue silken curtains, the upper windows of white paper were rolled down, and the rich perfume of the flowers in the court came in. In my honor, several foreign “objets de virtu” adorned the tables and window-shelves. The bed, a couch built into an alcove, was covered with blue satin cushions; and the windows were shaded from the outside by blue silken awnings, which gave a soft subdued light to the room, that made it very cool and restful-looking. I found the couch so inviting I was soon really resting, and the events of the day passed before my mental vision in kaleidoscopic array. Although the cushions of the bed were harder than I had been accustomed to, and the dozen or more eunuchs, who had been set aside for my service, were whispering just outside my window to be ready for any call, I soon fell asleep from sheer exhaustion and reaction from the unusual events of the day.

At five o’clock one of the Ladies Yu-Keng knocked at my door to tell me the Empress Dowager was awake, and had asked that I come up to the Throne-room as soon as I was ready. When we went up she called me to her side and said she hoped I had rested well, that I found my apartments comfortable; she repeated again the wish that I would be happy with her. She said we would not paint any more for that day, but on the morrow we would have another and longer sitting for the portrait. She begged me to let her know if there was anything I cared for particularly, that she might order it for me.

The Empress Dowager then dined alone, after which the young Empress and the Princesses led me into the Throne-room, and we dined at Her Majesty’s table, her seat being left vacant. The young Empress occupied the place at the left of this vacant seat, and had me on her left. When we had finished dinner, at which the young Empress and the Ladies were most considerate of me, seeming to try to make me feel at ease, we went up to take our leave of the Empress Dowager. After this was accomplished we left the Throne-room, and made our adieus to the young Empress and Princesses, and left the Imperial inclosure for the Palace of the Emperor’s Father, which Her Majesty had set aside for the use of the Ladies Yu-Keng and myself while I was at work on the portrait.

CHAPTER II PERSONAL APPEARANCE OF HER MAJESTY—A CHINESE REPAST— BOATING

I was eager to be off the next morning, to have the promised long sitting from Her Majesty. The sitting of the day before had but whetted my desire for further work on the portrait. When we arrived within the Precincts we met the Empress Dowager and the Emperor coming out of the Great Audience Hall from their joint Audience. When Her Majesty saw us she stopped, as did the whole train of her attendant Ladies and eunuchs. She called me up to her side, took my hand, and asked me how I had rested and “whether I felt ready for work.” This question showed her penetration, for she had seen the day before, from my eagerness and the breathless haste with which I used every moment, that my work was my first object, and she smiled when she put the query. I walked along by her side from the Audience Hall to the Throne-room where I had begun the portrait of the day before. When we reached the Throne-room she was divested of her official vestments, took a cup of tea, and called one of her tiring-women to bring her the dress and ornaments worn the day before, and she prepared to sit for me the second time.

At this second sitting I looked at the Empress Dowager critically. I feared that the agreeable impression I had formed, the day before, of herself and her personal appearance had probably been too hasty, the result of the unusual glamour in which I had begun the portrait; I thought perhaps the Oriental environment had dazzled me and prevented my seeing the Empress Dowager as she really was, and I looked forward to a disillusion. As she sat there, upon the throne, before she was quite ready for me to begin, before she had transfixed me with her penetrating glance, before she knew I was looking at her, I scanned her person and face with all the penetration I could bring to bear, and this is what I saw:

A perfectly proportioned figure, with head well set upon her shoulders and a fine presence; really beautiful hands, daintily small and high-bred in shape; a symmetrical, well-formed head, with a good development above the rather large ears; jet-black hair, smoothly parted over a fine, broad brow; delicate, well-arched eyebrows; brilliant, black eyes, set perfectly straight in the head; a high nose, of the type the Chinese call “noble,” broad between the eyes and on a line with the forehead; an upper lip of great firmness, a rather large but beautiful mouth with mobile, red lips, which, when parted over her firm white teeth, gave her smile a rare charm; a strong chin, but not of exaggerated firmness and with no marks of obstinacy.[1] Had I not known she was nearing her sixty-ninth year, I should have thought her a well-preserved woman of forty. Being a widow, she used no cosmetics. Her face had the natural glow of health, and one could see that exquisite care and attention were bestowed upon everything concerning her toilet. Personal neatness and an excellent taste in the choice of becoming colors and ornaments enhanced this wonderfully youthful appearance, and a look of keen interest in her surroundings and remarkable intelligence crowned all these physical qualities and made an unusually attractive personality.

When I was so far in my study of her appearance, the Empress Dowager had finished speaking to her attendants, had settled herself to her satisfaction on the throne, and she turned to me and asked “what part of the portrait I was to work on.” I had been told she would be much pleased if I would paint in the face. Thinking it was important to please her at the outset, instead of perfecting and advancing the drawing of the whole figure, as I should have done, I began on the face; first correcting the drawing as far as possible and then putting in a thin wash of color. During the sitting the Ladies, attendants, and eunuchs were coming and going; she took tea and conversed, but she seemed to understand that she must keep her head in the same position, and she would look over apologetically at me when she moved it. I did not wish her to be stiff, and preferred her moving a little to sitting like a statue. Her Majesty, like all Oriental ladies, smokes, and during the sitting the eunuchs or some of the Princesses brought her either the graceful water-pipe, of which she would take a few whiffs, or she would indulge in European cigarettes. She never allowed the latter to touch her lips, but used a long cigarette-holder. She was extremely graceful in her use of both the cigarette and water-pipe.

After little more than an hour’s work Her Majesty decided that enough had been done for the morning and that we both needed rest! She came over to look at the face, and it was easy to see that she liked it much better now that the color was being put in. She stood behind me, discussing it for some time, and said she wished it were possible for some one else to pose for the face, so that she might sit and watch it grow. She thought it very wonderful that on the flat canvas the relief of the face could be represented. She then turned to me and said she knew I must be tired both mentally and bodily, as I stand to my work, advised me to go to my pavilion, have lunch, and rest, and added that she would try to give me another sitting in the afternoon before we went out for some sort of promenade.

I returned to my pavilion with the Ladies Yu-Keng, whom Her Majesty had appointed to keep me company for the meals in my own quarters. There was a young Manchu girl at Court whose father had been an attaché at Berlin, who spoke German and English; she, also, had been ordered by Her Majesty to take her meals with us, so that I might have pleasant company and be able to converse in my own language and have proper relaxation during my meals. Besides, I did not know enough Chinese to direct the servants or make my wants known, and these Ladies were Her Majesty’s interpreters.

The meals at the Palace were all of the most lavish description, twenty or thirty dishes being placed upon the table at the beginning of the meal, while macaroni, rice, and a few other things were served from a side table. The Chinese are passed masters in the culinary art, and the delicacies seen at good Chinese tables are fit for a repast of Lucullus. Sharks’ fins, deers’ sinews, birds’ tongues, rare fish, bird’s-nest soups, fish brains, shrimps’ eggs, and many other extraordinary dishes make up the every-day menu. No one can cook goose, duck, and in fact all fowls and game, to such perfection as the Chinese. Their soups are of a delicacy and flavor quite unequaled. Their breads and cakes seem to the foreigner, at first, the least delectable of their viands; their bread particularly, which is steamed instead of baked, is not tempting; but when you get over or rather through the raw-looking outside, with its five cochineal spots surmounting its pyramidal form, it is very sweet and wholesome. It is made of gray flour, as the Chinese do not believe in whitening the flour as we do. They make delicious creams, as to consistency; and these and their sweets generally are much esteemed by the foreigners.

At the Palace the food is served in tall dishes of painted Chinese porcelain, and everything is placed upon the table at once—soups, roast, sweets, all except the rice and macaroni. These latter dishes the Chinese eat boiling hot, and they are kept on chafing-dishes until served. Each person has a bowl, a small saucer, and a pair of chop-sticks. A small square of very soft cloth is used as a napkin. There is never any salt upon the table. The small saucer at the side of each guest contains a very salty sauce; if extra salt is needed, this sauce is used. The Chinese consider powdered salt too coarse for seasoning food after it is cooked!

They rarely drink at meals, and when they do, only tiny cups, about the size of a liqueur-glass, of heated wine. This is poured out of silver teapots, and is kept hot by being placed in receptacles containing boiling water. Their wines are more like liqueurs than ours; they are generally distilled with flowers and herbs and have a delightful “bouquet.” Some of these wines have most poetic names, such as “Dew from the Early Morning Rose,” and “Drops from the Hands of Buddha.” The Chinese never drink cold water, nor do they take tea at meals. For me, being a foreigner, champagne was always provided, as well as claret or Burgundy. The Chinese do not drink coffee. After leaving the table, they take tea without milk or sugar.

The middle of the day is set aside for the siesta, and during the heat of the summer, every one goes to her apartments for two hours after luncheon. As I found the Chinese bed-cushions too hard to rest well upon, I took to my pavilion a foreign, eiderdown cushion, which I used for several days, until one day, on going to my room, I found two lovely new cushions with pale-blue silk, removable slips. On touching them, I found them to be soft and deliciously cool and fragrant as well. They were made of tea-leaves and had been sent as a present from the Empress Dowager. I found them a great improvement over eiderdown or feather cushions, especially for summer use. Though I did not care for this long midday rest, I was forced to go to my room and remain there, as there was nothing else to do.

When Her Majesty awakes, the news flashes like an electric spark through all the Precincts and over the whole inclosure, and every one is on the “qui vive” in a moment. The young Empress and the Princesses go up to Her Majesty’s Throne-room to be present at her “lever.” When her afternoon toilet is made, the Empress Dowager comes out of her private apartments into the Throne-room and generally partakes of some light refreshment, or drinks a cup of tea or some fruit juice.

She gave me a short sitting after her nap this second day and then ordered the boats for a row on the lakes. Attended by the young Empress and Princesses, and with the usual train of attendants and eunuchs, we went out into the court of the Throne-room, passed through a small pavilion opening directly upon the beautiful white marble terrace, with its quaintly carved marble balustrade, which stretches all along the southern side of the lake. Her Majesty’s own barge lay at the foot of the marble steps and numbers of other barges and boats lay around, forming quite a little fleet. She descended the steps and entered the barge. The young Empress, Princesses, and Ladies followed. Her Majesty sat in the yellow, throne-like chair in the middle of the raised platform of the barge. The young Empress, Princesses, and Ladies took their places as decreed by centuries-old tradition. They sat upon cushions placed upon the carpeted floor of the raised platform of the barge.

THE EMPRESS AND LADIES OF THE COURT IN THE IMPERIAL BARGE

On the Lake of the Summer Palace

When I stepped on, Her Majesty motioned me to come near her and sit at her right. The young Empress was on her left. Several of the high eunuchs stood at the back of the Empress Dowager’s chair with her extra wraps, bonbons, cigarettes, water-pipes, etc. There were two rowers on the barge who stood with their long oars to guide it, for it was attached by great yellow ropes to two boats, manned by twenty-four rowers each, and was towed along by them. Only the eunuchs of the highest rank, Her Majesty’s personal attendants, went on the barge with her, and the two boatmen simply guided it. All the Palace boatmen stand to their oars, for they cannot sit in the presence of Her Majesty, even though not upon the Imperial barge. And it is only on the barge that the Empress and Ladies sit in the presence of the Empress Dowager without being invited by her to do so.

A number of flat boats followed the Imperial barge with the army of eunuchs that go to make up the train of Their Majesties when they move about the Palace or grounds. One boat carried portable stoves and all the necessary arrangements for making tea, as this is taken so frequently by Her Majesty and the Ladies, it may be called for at any time.

We were rowed across the lake to one of the islands; and when we looked back at the Palaces, the memorial arches, the temple-crowned hills, the curious camel-back bridges, and the beautiful white marble terraces jutting out into the lake with its islands, the scene was indeed fairy-like. We were then rowed into a field of beautiful lotus flowers, and Her Majesty ordered some pulled by the eunuchs to be given to the Ladies. She seemed delighted at my sincere admiration of this beautiful water-plant, so dear to the Chinese. After an hour on the lake, we were rowed back to our starting-point and disembarked. This time the Princesses and Ladies left the barge first and stood to receive the Empress Dowager when she landed. When she had dined she asked us to dine with the young Empress and Ladies at her table in her Throne-room, after which we made our adieus and returned to our own Palace, without the Precincts.

CHAPTER III THE PALACE OF THE EMPEROR’S FATHER
(PRINCE CH’UN, THE SEVENTH PRINCE)

The Palace of the Emperor’s Father, which the Empress Dowager had set aside for me to live in while I was at work on her portrait, was a splendid demesne, with a noble park and spacious buildings. It had been much injured by the foreign troops in 1900 and had been unoccupied since, until Her Majesty decided it would be a suitable dwelling-place for her “Portrait Painter.” She had it hastily restored and refurnished for our occupation, but many of the pavilions and summer-houses in the grounds were in ruins, and the stables but partly rebuilt. Except the grounds immediately surrounding the buildings in which the Yu-Kengs and I lived, which were well kept and garnished, the greater part of the extensive park was in a fascinating state of natural wildness. The Palace, like all others in China, consisted of a network of verandahed pavilions built around spacious courts. There was a small Theater with the Prince’s loge and stalls for his guests, and numerous tea and summer houses were scattered over different parts of the grounds.

I selected, as my abiding-place, a charming group of buildings in a walled-in garden, fronting on a lotus-covered lake, with a winding stream at the back, spanned by a picturesque bridge. The principal pavilion of this group had a lofty central hall, out of which opened, on one side, bedrooms and dressing-rooms, and on the other dining-room and dependencies. Great doors in the center of the hall, which I had decided to use as my living-room, opened on a wide verandah which ran the whole length of the building. Marble steps led from this into a court filled with flowering shrubs. Two sides of the charming court had smaller pavilions similar to the central hall, and opposite this latter was a quaint stone wall, the upper part of tiled lattice-work, with curiously shaped openings at irregular intervals. In the center of this wall, massive wooden doors opened out on a beautiful terrace, shaded by fine old elms, over the lake. It was a charming dwelling-place, and this group of buildings soon came to be known as the “Ker-Gunia Fu,” “Ker-Gunia” being “Miss Carl” rendered into Chinese, and “Fu” meaning “Palace,” for the Chinese are very fond of nicknames. I learned later that these pavilions had been the dwelling-place of the Seventh Prince’s son, the present Emperor Kwang-Hsu, after he had been chosen as Heir to the Throne and until he went to live regularly at the Imperial Palace.

As Her Majesty gave me my morning sittings after the Audience was finished (which lasted from eight A.M. to ten or eleven), I had plenty of time, after my cup of tea, to explore the grounds of our Palace, and I discovered new beauties each day. The Park was inclosed by high walls, for the Chinese are jealous of their privacy. Parts of the grounds were gently undulating, and all the eminences, where views could be had, were surmounted by charming summer-houses and belvederes. In one of these, where I loved to go in the early morning to refresh myself by the contemplation of the calm and peaceful lake beneath, and drink in the faint perfume of the stately lotus flowers, which grew in rich profusion on its bosom, I found an inscription on a large flat stone at the left of the entrance. I had seen enough of Chinese characters to know the inscription looked like a “poem.” The Chinese poem is rarely more than a phrase: the expression, in elegant and concise form, of some dainty fancy, some bit of philosophy, and is more properly a “verse” than a poem.

I found, later, the inscription on the stone at the entrance of the summer-house was really a “poem,” and had been written by no less a personage than the Seventh Prince himself! This had been his favorite place for rest and contemplation, and one day, as he reclined upon a cushion at the entrance, he had written this poem on the flat stone which lay conveniently near. The Chinese write with a brush well charged with liquid India ink, and their writing accommodates itself to almost any surface. Their characters, one for each word, take up less space than our combination of letters, and are infinitely more picturesque! Chinese gentlemen, or some attendant, generally carry about with them tablets of writing-ink and a brush, and they thus have the means at hand for jotting down a thought as it comes to them.

This little poem had been written with a brush, and some of the Prince’s followers had afterward cut the characters in the stone, so that it became a permanent record of a fleeting thought. It had evidently been inspired by the lotus flowers growing beneath; so gloriously beautiful to-day, and to-morrow shorn of their splendor. It was a plaint on the [transience] of worldly glory—

... Which to-day, like the lotus fair,
Lifts its head in pride;
But to-morrow lies low,
Bathed in the stagnant waters of oblivion.

One day I came upon a number of small tombstones, in a beautiful shady corner, near the stables. I learned that these marked the last resting-places of the Prince’s favorite dogs and horses. Each stone had an inscription with the name, and extolled the virtues of the favorite, whose bones lay beneath it. The Prince was a great lover of animals, and is said to have had the best kennels and stables of any of the Imperial Princes.

In my morning rambles, I also often came upon stones engraved with some character or a phrase from the classics. The ideographic Chinese characters, always picturesque, are doubly so when deeply engraved, or standing out in high relief on some rugged stone in a charming spot in the landscape. The picturesque form of the characters is sometimes heightened by being painted in vermilion or gilded; and the glowing color makes a delightful contrast with the cool gray of the stone. Even though I could not decipher the characters, nor read the phrases, I loved to come upon them in my morning walks. How much more interesting they must have been to the scholarly Chinese who understood them! How fine, when out for rest and contemplation, to come upon some thought of their great Sages cut in the living rock, or to see some character meaning “Peace” or “Prosperity” standing out, in bold relief or glowing color, from some shady nook, as if to bless him!

From another of the summer-houses in the Park I could see the stone-paved highway leading from the Capital to the Summer Palace. During Their Majesties’ residence at the Summer Palace, this is a busy thoroughfare. When I did not care for peaceful contemplation or quiet rambles over the grounds, I would go to this summer-house, whence I could see the carts and “chairs” of the officials, with their outriders, going to and from the Palace; messengers galloping past, bearing despatches; all sorts of itinerant venders, with their wares; heavily laden wagons, with small yellow banners flying, which showed they carried supplies to the Palace. Sometimes a group of horsemen would dash gaily past, the retainers of some splendidly attired young Prince, who rode in their midst on a red-saddled, handsomely caparisoned horse with silver trappings. Anon, the cumbersome, red, fringe-bedecked cart of some Princess, preceded and followed by from fifteen to thirty outriders, according to her rank in the Princely hierarchy, the black carts of her women bringing up the rear.

One can tell the rank of the Chinese from the outsides of their chairs or carts. Only a reigning Emperor and Empress can go abroad in yellow chairs. The Emperor’s secondary wives ride in orange-colored chairs. The relicts of an Emperor, first or secondary, go in yellow or orange-colored carts. Princesses go abroad in red carts. Mandarins of the first and second degrees ride in green chairs; those of the third and fourth in blue chairs; and there is still another shape and style of chair for the ordinary individual, who may prefer a chair to a cart. The rank and file go in carts. These carts, peculiar to Peking, curious two-wheeled vehicles with heavy, iron-studded wheels, are uniformly covered in blue cloth. The wealth and standing of their occupants are discernible from the quality of the cloth and its trimmings, and the richness of the harness and trappings of the mule which is always used in the Peking carts. The mule in North China is a magnificent animal, much finer than the Chinese horse, which is only a pony.

The Seventh Prince (Prince Ch’un) must have been a most interesting personality. He was brother to the Emperor Hsien-Feng, the husband of the present Empress Dowager; and his wife, the mother of the present Emperor, was Her Majesty’s sister. This Prince was a valued friend of the two Empresses, the present Empress Dowager and She of the Eastern Palace, while they were Co-Regents during the minority of the late and a part of that of the present Emperor, and he remained, up to the time of his death, one of the most trusted advisers of the Regency. He was recognized by foreigners, as well as by the Chinese, to be an enlightened Prince as well as a man of fine character. The esteem in which he was held may have had something to do with the choice of his second son as the Successor of the late Emperor Tung-Chih, who died childless. The Chinese Emperors and their Council may choose the Successor to the Throne. If there be but one son, he is chosen as the next Heir; if there be a number, a selection may be made from them of the one seeming to be most suited for the exalted position. If there be no sons, the Successor is chosen from the nephews without reference to their age or to their being the sons of an elder or younger brother. The present Emperor’s Father, Prince Ch’un, was the seventh brother of the Emperor Hsien-Feng, hence his Chinese name of “Seventh Prince.”

CHAPTER IV HER MAJESTY’S THRONE-ROOM—SOME PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS

We arrived at the Palace in good time the next morning, as Her Majesty and suite were coming out of the Great Audience Hall. She greeted us with a charming smile and made her usual inquiry for my health. We joined her suite and went along to the Throne-room where the portrait had been begun. This Throne-room is a very spacious and lofty hall; one side of the great room is almost entirely of glass, with only the wooden columns that support the roof between the windows—the lower half of plate-glass, the upper of lattice-work with Corean paper as shades. In the center of this side of windows is a huge plate-glass door, reaching from ceiling to floor. The other three sides of the hall, which separate it from the apartments at the side and back, are of the same beautiful, open woodwork carving I have mentioned as serving as partitions in my pavilion. Those in Her Majesty’s Throne-room were, however, of greater delicacy of workmanship and were more beautiful as to the painted panels. The poems, written on white silk, and alternating with the painted panels, were from Her Majesty’s favorite authors, original poems written by an Emperor or Empress, or laudatory verses dedicated to Her Majesty. There were satin portières at the doorways, and blue silk curtains over the plate-glass windows. Blue, being the Empress Dowager’s favorite color, is used for all the hangings in the Palaces which are not intended for official purposes; where yellow is the color.

On the right of the Throne-room is a small chapel with an altar, over which presides a figure of the contemplative Buddha seated on the lotus. This altar was always sweet with offerings of fresh flowers and fruit. In front of the figure of Buddha stood the incense-burner, with perfumes constantly burning. On the left of the Throne-room are Her Majesty’s sleeping apartments, and behind the open-work partition at the back of the hall is a large ante-chamber where the attendants and Ladies await their turn to make their entrance into the Throne-room. In the rear of the hall is a magnificent five-leaved screen of teakwood, inlaid with lapis lazuli, chalcedony, and many other semi-precious stones. In front of this screen, on a dais, stood an immense, couch-like throne, with a large footstool. These couch-like thrones, where Their Celestial Majesties may recline when holding Audiences, are not at all favored by the Empress Dowager, who always sits extremely erect, without leaning upon a cushion or the back of the throne. Except in the Great Audience Hall, where she uses the traditional throne of state of the Dynasty, she prefers a much lighter and quite modern one, which she has introduced into the Palaces. The thrones favored by Her Majesty are of open carved teakwood, circular in form, with cushions of Imperial yellow. One of these stood in the front part of this hall, on which she sat for the portrait.

The great throne, which I have described above, was hence relegated to the back of the Throne-room and kept for the sake of tradition, but never used by Her Majesty. On either side of it stood two immense, processional fans of peafowl feathers, with ebony handles placed in magnificent cloisonné supports. Superb cloisonné vases stood at either side of these ceremonial fans; and huge bowls of rare old porcelain held pyramids of fruits—apples, sweet-smelling quince, and the highly perfumed “Buddha’s hand.”

And there were flowers everywhere! It was the season of the year when bloomed a sort of orchid, of delicious fragrance, of which Her Majesty is very fond. These were growing in rare porcelain jardinières, placed at intervals around the hall. There were also vases of lotus flowers and bowls of lilies. The combined odors of all these fruits and flowers gave a subtle, composite perfume quite indescribable and delightful, but not at all overpowering, for the Empress Dowager is so fond of fresh air that there are always windows open in the Palace, even in the coldest weather.

Aside from the fruits and flowers, clocks were the dominant feature of this Throne-room, as well as of every other one I ever went into in any of the Chinese Palaces. The love of the Chinese for clocks and timepieces is well known, and there are thousands in each of the Palaces I visited. In this Throne-room there were, as I have said before, eighty-five: magnificent jeweled and gold clocks, and specimens of all the varieties that were ever made; some with chimes; some with crowing cocks and singing-birds; some with running water; some with musical-box attachments, and others with processions of figures that came out at every hour and moved around the dial; some rare works of art and some commonplace examples of the clockmaker’s trade. There are many foreign ornaments in the Palace, but, aside from the clocks and watches, Her Majesty the Empress Dowager does not seem to care much for European “objets de virtu.” Unfortunately, what they have at the Palaces, aside from a few presents from European sovereigns, are generally very poor specimens of European art, and compare but lamentably with the beautiful Chinese curios. They are principally cheap modern stuff, bought by the Chinese nobles when abroad and sent as presents to Their Majesties. These presents, when they are accepted, are placed in apartments of the Palace not in general use.

When Her Majesty had her official garments removed (she always changed her dress after the morning Audience), and when the portrait had been placed upon the easel, she came over to look at it. After studying it for some time, she concluded that the nail-protectors on both hands were not artistic, and that she would have the gold ones (set with pearls and rubies) taken off, and show the uncovered nails on the right hand. I was delighted at this decision, for the nail-protectors destroyed the symmetry of the hand and hid the beautiful tips of her fingers. I had, of course, not presumed to make any suggestions as to her costume or ornaments. As the nail-shields are characteristic of the high-class Chinese ladies, it was well to have them on one hand.

After this change had been decided upon, she went over to a great vase, standing near, and took from it a lotus flower, held it up, in a charmingly graceful way, and asked me if that would not be pretty in the portrait, adding that the lotus was one of her attributes. As the color did not harmonize with the general scheme, I did not care for this suggestion, but temporized by saying “I was not ready to put it in then.” After a little more than an hour’s work, with the usual interruptions, she decided that enough had been done for that morning. When I suggested that I might work even after Her Majesty was tired, she said “No,” that if she were tired sitting still, I could not fail to be more so doing the work and standing as I did. She said there was no hurry, that I had plenty of time to finish the picture, and must not run the risk of making myself ill.

After a short sitting in the afternoon Her Majesty ordered the boats, and we went out to the marble terrace, beneath which lay moored the Palace fleet, manned by blue-gowned oarsmen. We again took the Imperial barge, the Empress Dowager in the center, on her yellow chair, the young Empress and Princesses sitting around, Turkish fashion, on cushions. The barge, drawn along by the two great boats, glided as gently as a swan over the still waters of the lake. The air was soft and balmy. Two of the eunuchs were ordered to sing, and the minor chords of a curious air mingled their rhythm with the soft swish of the water. Beyond us lay the hills, the beautiful Western Hills, unchanging in form, but ever varying in color—sometimes blurred and gray, or a soft, warm violet; again a clear, deep blue, as if hewn out of lapis lazuli, and now and then, as a cloud passed over the sun, dark and threatening almost. I drank in deep breaths of delight!

The quaint picturesqueness of the marble-terraced banks, the summer-houses, the green and yellow-tiled roofs, the vermilion walls and lacquered columns of the buildings, the curious fleet silently moving along, the eunuchs singing, the Empress Dowager sitting in state surrounded by her Ladies, the camel-back bridges—everything was strange, and, stranger still, I formed a part of this curious pageant! Only the beautiful hills beyond seemed familiar.

After drifting about for some time, we landed and went into the orchards and among the apple trees. The apple is a favorite fruit of the Chinese, and esteemed as much for its fragrance as its taste. It is emblematic of Peace and Prosperity, and is always placed among the offerings to Buddha, hence has also a sacred quality; but, though beautiful in form and color, the Chinese apple has very little taste, and the least savor of any of their fruits.

Her Majesty walked about among the trees and ordered several apples gathered, which she ate with greater relish than I could, for she graciously offered me one, and then told me to pull some for myself. A eunuch brought a basket and took them as I gathered them, and she told me to have them taken to my own apartments.

From the orchard she continued her walk to the flower gardens, where she picked some small blooms and placed them behind her ears, Spanish fashion, telling the Ladies to do likewise, and herself choosing some for me and placing them over my ears. I knew these little marks of favor she showed me were not due so much to regard for me as to her desire to make the “stranger” feel at home. She hoped by showing me these special favors to insure a similar treatment of me by the Ladies and eunuchs. I have already alluded to Her Majesty’s love of flowers. This was the one of her characteristics which seemed most incompatible with the idea I had formed of her from what I had heard, and her love of flowers and all nature caused me first to change that idea. It seemed to me no one could love flowers and nature as she did and be the woman she had been painted.

She had flowers always about her. Her private apartments, her Throne-rooms, her loge at the Theater, even the Great Audience Hall where she only went to transact affairs of state and hold official Audiences, all were decorated with a profusion of flowers, cut and growing—never, though, of but one kind at a time. She wears natural flowers in her coiffure always, winter and summer, and however careworn or harassed she might be, she seemed to find solace in flowers! She would hold a flower to her face, drink in its fragrance and caress it as if it were a sentient thing. She would go herself among the flowers that filled her rooms, and place, with lingering touch, some fair bloom in a better light or turn a jardinière so that the growing plant might have a more favorable position.

PRINCESSES OF THE COURT

THE PRINCESS IMPERIAL, FIRST LADY OF THE COURT
A PRINCESS IN WINTER COSTUME — A PRINCESS IN SUMMER COSTUME

The Chinese do not place certain cut flowers in water, but keep them dry in bowls or vases, to get their full fragrance. The Empress Dowager had some quaint conceits about the arrangements of these. She would have the corollas of the lily bloom or the fragrant jasmine placed in shallow bowls in curious, star-like designs, beautiful to look at, as well as most fragrant.

Her passion for flowers being generally known among the courtiers, Princes, and high officials, they send daily offerings to the Palace of all that is rare and choice in the way of plants and flowers, for they know this is one present Her Majesty will always accept and appreciate.

There are some quaint customs in the Palace, as to flowers and fruits that grow within the Precincts. Though the Princesses and Ladies have the freedom of the gardens and may pull as many flowers and cull as many fruits as they wish, it is not etiquette for them to gather the smallest flower or to touch a fruit when in the presence of the Empress Dowager, unless they are especially told to do so. When Her Majesty tells them to pull a flower or fruit, the permission is gratefully accepted and that special flower or fruit religiously kept. The first fruits of every tree and vegetable, the first flowers of every plant and growing shrub in the Palace grounds, are considered sacred to Their Majesties, and no Princess, attendant, or eunuch would touch a flower or fruit until the Empress Dowager had been presented with the first of them. All these, apparently trivial, marks of respect to the Sacred Persons of Their Majesties were religiously observed!

CHAPTER V THE YOUNG EMPRESS AND LADIES OF THE COURT

The young Empress, the first Lady of the Court after Her Majesty the Empress Dowager, was, to me, a charming character. She is the daughter of the Duke Chow, General of one of the Manchu Banner Corps and a brother of the reigning Empress Dowager. She is thus a first cousin of the Emperor, and is his senior by three years. Her mother, a lady of high birth, ancient lineage, and great distinction, brought her up with much care. She also had the advantage of being a great deal at the Court with her august Aunt, and is highly accomplished, according to Chinese standards. She was affianced at an early age to the Emperor, but, as the custom is, their marriage did not take place for several years later. It was celebrated with great pomp at the Winter Palace in February, 1889, the week before the young Emperor himself took in hand the reins of Government, held, up to that time, by the Empress Dowager, and became Emperor in reality.

The young Empress has the erect carriage and light, swift walk of Her Majesty the Empress Dowager. She is small, not quite five feet tall, with exquisitely dainty hands and feet, of most patrician type. She has a narrow, high-bred face, with a thin, high nose. Her eyes are more of the Chinese type, as we conceive it, than either the Emperor’s or Empress Dowager’s. Her chin is long and of the type generally called strong. Her mouth is large and extremely sensitive. Her eyes have so kindly a look, her face shines with so sweet an expression, criticism is disarmed and she seems beautiful. She has a sweet dignity, charming manners, and a lovable nature, but there is sometimes a look in her eyes of patient resignation that is almost pathetic. I should not say she possessed any great executive ability, though full of tact, but while Her Majesty the Empress Dowager was in retirement and she was the first Lady at Court, she is said to have shown great capability in her conduct of affairs. Her dignity, perfect breeding, and natural kindness of heart would insure this.

The next Lady, after the young Empress, is the only secondary wife of the Emperor. She is said to have been extremely beautiful at the time she was chosen as his second wife by the Empress Dowager. She belongs to an excellent family, being the daughter of a Viceroy, but though only twenty-eight years old when I knew her, she was already very stout, and there were few remains visible of great beauty. She has very large, full-orbed, brown eyes, and still has a beautifully clear complexion, but her nose is flat, her mouth large and weak; the contour of her face is marred by layers of flesh, her forehead does not indicate much intelligence, and she has very little distinction in appearance. She seems good-natured, but is neither very clever nor tactful. She is not a favorite among the Ladies generally, and is not nearly so interesting, in any way, as the young Empress. She is, however, treated with the most kindly consideration by the young Empress and has precedence over all the other Ladies, and her position at Court is second only to that of the young Empress. Whenever I mention the young Empress, it may be understood that the secondary wife followed immediately after her, coming before the Princesses or any other of the Ladies forming the Court of Her Majesty. I have often seen allusions made to the “Imperial Harem”; there is no such thing as an Imperial Harem at the Court of His Majesty the Emperor Kwang-Hsu. He has only these two wives.

Her Majesty’s Ladies-in-waiting are principally Princesses of the Blood or the widows of Imperial Princes. Her first Lady, Sih-Gerga (Fourth Princess), daughter of Prince Ching, the Prime Minister, is a widow of twenty-four. She married, at the age of sixteen, a son of a high Manchu official, Viceroy of Tientsin, and was left a widow a few months later. She is a beautiful young woman, with face a perfect oval, large brown eyes, and a clear, magnolia-leaf complexion of exquisite texture. She would be called beautiful, judged by any standard. She has no children of her own, but, like most ladies of position who are widows or childless, has an adopted son. Adopted children in China are much closer relationships than is a child, by adoption, with us. In many instances their own parents are still living when they are adopted, and even these parents speak of their child as the son of the adopted mother or parents, and bow to her wishes in bringing up the child.

THE YOUNG EMPRESS YE-HO-NA-LAH

First Wife of the Emperor of China

The next two Ladies of the Court are two Duchesses—also widows. Widows in China never remarry, or if they do, they lose caste and reputation. They are not sacrificed on the funeral pyres of their departed husbands, as in India; but a voluntary suicide on the part of a widow in China is still looked upon as a noble act. A widow who remains faithful to the memory of her husband during a long life is rewarded by the greatest respect and consideration during her life, and honored after death.

If a girl prefers to remain unmarried, if a widow remains faithful to the memory of her husband, she is honored after her death with much pomp and ceremony! And great memorial arches are erected in her memory! All over China, one is constantly coming upon these arches to widows and virgins. If the family is not sufficiently wealthy to raise these monuments themselves, public subscriptions are taken, all the relatives contribute, and often the inhabitants of the village or the country where the heroine lived beg to be allowed to have their part in raising a monument to her memory. These arches, of stone or wood, are elaborately carved, sometimes with remarkable sculptures of fabulous animals, flowers, and thousands of birds of every kind (these latter showing the immortality the soul has acquired). Across the entablature of the arch, cut deep into the stone or wood, and gilded or painted in glowing vermilion, shines the name of the virgin or widow to whom it is erected, and on the sides of the arch is inscribed an account of her virtuous acts.

A girl is sometimes affianced at the early age of from six to eight years, and the affianced is from that time spoken of as her husband. Should he die before they marry, which is never earlier than sixteen for the bride, she is considered a “widow,” and must henceforth live the life of a recluse. She can never marry any one else. She may adopt a son, who will call her “mother”; but she may never hope for the joys of family life of her own, without calling down upon her head the obloquy of all whose respect she desires. She wears deep mourning the first three years after his death, and then second mourning; and she can never again put on the festive red, joyous green, or any other color except blue or violet—second mourning.

The Northern Chinese and the Manchu ladies use a great deal of paint and powder on their faces; but a widow can never add one artificial iota to the rose of her cheek, to the cherry of her lips, or the lily of her brow. She can nevermore use paint or powder. In most instances the Chinese ladies are but the prettier for this, for they have beautiful skins, and the use of powder and paint is carried to such an excess as to be quite unnatural.

There are only eight of Her Majesty’s Ladies who live always in the Palace, but this number is increased about four times on festive occasions. The Princess Imperial, the Empress Dowager’s adopted daughter, is the first of the Princesses at Court, and, when she comes to the Palace, ranks next to the Empress and the secondary wife of the Emperor.

One evening, at dinner, in the Throne-room, Sih-Gerga undertook to tell me the relationships of the different Princesses to each other and to the young Empress. Incidentally, this made them related to the Emperor and the Empress Dowager, but neither of Their Majesties’ names was mentioned in this connection, for such would have been a great piece of presumption, amounting almost to sacrilege. They might be related, but no Princess would dare mention such a thing. It would be against all the laws of Chinese proprieties. I found, after this explanation of Sih-Gerga’s, that the Ladies were all related by consanguinity or marriage to each other and to the young Empress.

There are a number of tiring-women and maids in the Palace who are called by outsiders “slaves”; but they are not slaves, or, if they are so, it is but for a time, a space of ten years. Every spring, the daughters of the lowest of the Manchu families, the Seventh and Eighth Banners, are brought into the Palace to be chosen from, by the Empress and Empress Dowager, for maids and tiring-women. One day, on going to the Palace, I saw a number of ordinary carts near one of the Postern Gates, and I learned they had brought crowds of these girls of the families of the Eighth Banner. They are first passed in review by the Head Eunuch, and he selects from them, those he thinks may please Her Majesty. These pass before her, and she tells the Head Eunuch which ones are to remain in the Palace. They are brought to the Palace from the ages of ten to sixteen years. They remain in service for ten years, after which time they are allowed to return to their families; and in case they have been satisfactory and pleased Their Majesties, they are given a comfortable dot and are provided with a handsome marriage outfit, which causes them to make much better marriages than they would otherwise do. During their so-called ten years’ slavery in the Palace, they live upon the fat of the land, have beautiful clothes and many advantages. They wear, while in Her Majesty’s service, blue gowns, with their hair plainly parted at the side and braided in a single long braid (tied with red silk cords), which hangs down the back. They wear bunches of flowers over each ear. The young Empress and secondary wife, as well as each of the Princesses, have their own maids and tiring-women, who remain in the private quarters of these Ladies.

Besides these young maids, there are in the Palace a number of old women, servants of Her Majesty, who have been married and have children; these overlook the younger women, direct the work of the lower eunuchs, and are in a position somewhat similar to housekeepers with us. Among these is a Chinese woman who nursed Her Majesty through a long illness, about twenty-five years since, and saved her life by giving her mother’s milk to drink. Her Majesty, who never forgets a favor, has always kept this woman in the Palace. Being a Chinese, she had bound feet. Her Majesty, who cannot bear to see them even, had her feet unbound and carefully treated, until now she can walk comfortably. Her Majesty has educated the son, who was an infant at the time of her illness, and whose natural nourishment she partook of. This young man is already a Secretary in a good yamen (Government Office).

No Chinese lady of position ever dresses herself or combs her own hair, and she generally has three or four personal maids. These are, in many instances, bought outright from their parents, and might be considered really slaves; but they are treated with great consideration and even friendliness by their mistresses, and have in most instances a happy lot. As these maids are bought when they and their mistresses are children, they grow up together, and though the maid never forgets the respect due her mistress, they are on a much more friendly footing than mistress and maid could ever be in Europe in such cases.

The first of a lady’s maids stands behind her at table, no matter how many servitors there may be; goes out with her, sits with her, and sleeps either in her room or at her door, and is almost her constant companion. When the time comes for them to marry, they are given a comfortable outfit by their mistresses, and are cared for to the third and fourth generation; but the children of the so-called slaves are free, unless the mother or parents decide, of their own free will, to sell them, as they have been sold, to some good family.

CHAPTER VI CONTINUATION OF THE PORTRAIT—HER MAJESTY’S DOGS

I had daily morning sittings from Her Majesty for the portrait, but always surrounded by the whole Court, with eunuchs coming and going. The sittings were long enough, for I had an hour in the morning and a half-hour in the afternoon with Her Majesty, but she did not expect me to work except when she posed, and this was not enough to make any headway on the picture, as there was a great deal I might have done at other times. Though there was so much going and coming in the Throne-room, it was a great advantage working in Her Majesty’s own “milieu,” surrounded by her favorite furniture, flowers, and fruits. This was some compensation; but I saw, if Her Majesty insisted upon my resting when she did—if I were allowed to work only in the Throne-room and only when she posed—the work could not go on as it should. Sitting for her portrait seemed to be looked on somewhat in the light of an amusement by the Empress Dowager, as a time for conversation and relaxation. She put me many questions while she sat, and I felt she was studying me as closely as I was studying her during that time.

My interest in the personality of this wonderful woman increased each day. I loved to watch the extreme mobility of her countenance when she was at ease and was not invested in her official expression, nor her Buddha-like pose. Her voice was most musical, with no indication of age in it. Her enunciation was clear, and I loved to hear her talk. Though understanding but little of what she said, the music of her voice, the grace of her gesticulations, and the charm of her smile made her conversation most delightful to watch and listen to.

I was delighted that Her Majesty seemed to like me, and I appreciated her consideration in not wishing me to tire myself out with my work, and her kind hospitality which desired to make me acquainted with the charms of the Summer Palace and which allowed me to participate in her promenades and the simple amusements of her Ladies; but I felt it was important to advance the work on the portrait as quickly as possible. I knew that the “favor of kings” is uncertain, and I feared Her Majesty might soon tire of this new departure, of having her portrait painted! I feared the openly expressed opposition of the Chinese to a foreign lady being made a member of the Court circle, their superstition regarding the painting of a portrait of one of Their Majesties, which was against all Chinese tradition, might any day put a stop to the work; but, notwithstanding my fears and my desire to work, the days passed with little painting, and this was the only flaw in my perfect enjoyment of the fairy-like days and the unique experiences through which I was passing.

The walks with Her Majesty had all the pomp and ceremony of the boat-rides—Her Majesty’s and the Empress’s yellow satin sedan chairs, with their six bearers, leading off, followed by the red chairs of the Princesses and Ladies-in-waiting, according to their rank, with a rigorous adherence to precedence, and attended by an army of eunuchs and chair-bearers, etc. No one ever knew what our destination was to be when we started out on these walks, Her Majesty directing her chair-bearers as she was carried along, and the others following this lead; but we were always taken to some interesting spot, where there was something quite worth seeing. When Her Majesty’s chair stopped, all the others were immediately put down by the bearers, and the Ladies got out and went up to where the Empress Dowager’s yellow camp-stool was placed. She had excellent taste in the choice of stopping-places, and the views were always picturesque. She seemed to take great pleasure in showing off the charming points of view, as well as the flowers, grounds, and buildings.

On one of our walks, her dogs were brought out by their attendant eunuchs. Dogs are great favorites with all the Chinese, and especially with the Empress Dowager. She has some magnificent specimens of Pekingese pugs and of a sort of Skye terrier. The pugs are bred with great care and have reached a high state of perfection, their spots being perfectly symmetrical and their hair beautifully long and silky, and they are of wonderful intelligence. The King Charles spaniels are said to have been bred out of the first of these dogs ever carried to Europe. The Empress Dowager has dozens of these pets, but she has favorites among them, and two are privileged characters. One of these is of the Skye variety, and is most intelligent and clever at tricks. Among other tricks, he will lie as dead at Her Majesty’s command, and never move until she tells him to, no matter how many others may speak to him. Her other favorite she loves for his beauty. He is a splendid, fawn-colored Pekingese pug, with large, pale-brown, liquid eyes. He is devoted to her, and she is very fond of him, but as he was not easily taught, even as a puppy, she called him “Shadza” (fool). Her dogs all have most appropriate names, given by herself. They know Her Majesty’s voice and will obey her slightest word.

The Empress Dowager does not care for the small sleeve-dog; she hates the thought of their being stunted by being fed only on sweets and wines. She says she cannot understand animals being deformed, at man’s pleasure. The day we first met the dogs in the garden was the first time I had seen them. They rushed up to Her Majesty, not paying the slightest attention to any one else. She patted their heads and caressed and spoke to her favorites. After a while they seemed to notice that a stranger was present, and they bounded over toward me. Some of them growled and showed other evidences of displeasure, some seemed surprised almost to fear; but as the instinct of a dog never deceives him as to who is his friend, this was all soon changed to friendly greetings. I bent down to caress them, and forgot my surroundings, in my pleasure at seeing and fondling these beautiful creatures. I glanced up, presently, never dreaming Her Majesty had been paying any attention to me, as I was standing at a little distance behind her, and I saw on her face the first sign of displeasure I had noticed there. It seems her dogs never noticed any one but herself, and she appeared not to like her pets being so friendly with a stranger at first sight. Noticing this, I immediately ceased fondling them, and they were presently sent away. It was but a momentary shadow that passed over her face, and I quite understood the feeling. One does not like to see one’s pets too friendly with strangers, and I had been tactless in trying to make friends with them at once.

A few days later, on another of our walks, some young puppies were brought to be shown the Empress Dowager. She caressed the mother and examined critically the points of the puppies. Then she called me up to show them to me, asking me which I liked best. I tried not to evince too much interest in them this time, but she called my attention to their fine points and insisted upon my taking each of them up. She seemed to be ashamed of her slight displeasure of the day before, and to wish to compensate for it.

The dogs at the Palace are kept in a beautiful pavilion with marble floors. They have silken cushions to sleep on, and special eunuchs to attend them. They are taken for daily outdoor exercise and given their baths with regularity. There are hundreds of dogs in the Palace, the young Empress, the Princesses and Ladies, and even the eunuchs, having their own. Some of the eunuchs are great fanciers and breeders of them. One of them still breeds the sleeve-dog. Her Majesty’s known dislike to these latter is probably the cause of fewer being bred in the Palace now than formerly; and the race is slowly dying out. All the other dogs in the Palace, except Her Majesty’s, are kept in the apartments and courts of their owners, and are not seen by her.

She dislikes cats very much, but some of the eunuchs have very fine specimens of the felines. They keep them, however, “sub rosa” and within rigid bounds, on no condition allowing them to come within Her Majesty’s ken.

The pavilion at the Summer Palace where the Empress Dowager’s dogs were kept was near her Throne-room, and also near the pavilion she had set aside for me. When the Court was taking its siesta, I used to go out where the dogs were basking in the sun in their court and look at and play with these interesting little animals. I was free to do as I pleased, and no one but the dogs’ guardian eunuchs saw me there.

Among the younger set, of these pampered pets, was one that caught my fancy—one of those which had been brought for Her Majesty to look at in the garden. He was a beautiful white-and-amber-colored Pekingese pug. He soon learned to know me and would come running to me when I crossed the threshold of the court. Not long after I had discovered where the dogs were kept and had been paying them my daily visits, one night, when we had finished dinner at Her Majesty’s table, one of her eunuchs brought in this very little dog and put it in my arms, saying Her Majesty had presented it to me from her own kennel! She had evidently learned of my visits to the dogs, though none of the eunuchs around her person had seen me go there, at least so I thought! I was delighted to own this beautiful animal, and when the Empress Dowager came into the Throne-room from her own apartments, I went up to her and kissed her hand and thanked her for it. She seemed much pleased that I liked it, and remarked that she had heard it was my favorite of her dogs, that I was to call him “Me-lah” (Golden Amber), from the color of his spots. Her Majesty and the Princesses were all much amused at the way he followed me around, not leaving my side for an instant, nor paying any attention to their frequent efforts to attract his attention. From that day, he became my constant companion and faithful friend.

CHAPTER VII FESTIVITIES AT COURT

Preparations were now beginning at the Palace for the celebration of His Majesty the Emperor’s Birthday. This is not celebrated on the anniversary of the day he was born, but two days earlier. His Majesty must make the Autumnal Sacrifices to his Ancestors three days after the real date of his Birthday, and he must prepare himself for these sacrifices by a rigorous fast of three days. As it would be impossible to accomplish the ceremonial prescribed for the Imperial Birthday while fasting, the celebration of the Birthday was advanced, a special edict having been issued by the two Empresses, when Co-Regents for the young Emperor, ordering the Birthday celebrations to be advanced by two days, for the date of the sacrifices could not be changed—the sacrifice to one’s Ancestors being the most sacred of obligations to the Chinese, and most rigidly and religiously observed. Even the Chinese Emperor’s Birthday is not celebrated for two years after the death of his predecessor, so rigorous are the rules of respect to the dead and the rites accorded to one’s Ancestors in China.

I knew no painting could be done during these festivities, and I expected to go back to the United States Legation. I never dreamed I should be invited to participate in this celebration, hitherto unseen by any foreigner. A week before the Birthday itself, when out for one of our walks with Her Majesty, she called me up to her side and said the Emperor’s Birthday was to be celebrated the next week, and invited me to remain in the Palace for these festivities. I was, of course, overjoyed at this gracious mark of her favor, and delighted to be able to see the Oriental pomp and pageantry that accompanied these ceremonial celebrations in China.

There were to be magnificent theatrical performances, splendid fireworks and decorations, and all sorts of pageants. The Imperial company of actors had already begun rehearsing special poems and plays, written to celebrate the occasion. Eunuchs were constantly bringing Her Majesty specimens of the work of the decorators and painters who were carrying out her designs as to special scenes and tableaux, or coming to ask for further instructions. The literati, who were preparing the original poems, sent in their manuscripts, that she might judge of their merits and make suggestions. She herself overlooked every detail, and seemed most interested and anxious to have everything successful.

The festivities began four days before the Birthday with gala performances at the Theater. Each day the decorations of the buildings, the courts, and gardens increased in beauty. In the principal courts, magnificent bronzes, all sorts of antique instruments of music, used only on these great occasions, were brought out as decorations; for music forms part of every ceremonial, official or religious, in China. Among the curious instruments were splendid bronze frames, with several superposed octaves of triangular musical-stones suspended therefrom; elaborately carved supports for different-toned bells; huge “triangles”; immense bronze “tam-tams,” curiously and beautifully wrought; big drums on splendid bronze stands; wonderfully chased bells; and many other quaint instruments, used only for official and state processions in honor of Their Celestial Majesties.

The slanting and projecting, upturned roofs of the different buildings forming the Palaces were decorated with scarfs of vari-colored silk, knotted into a curious sort of fringe of rosettes, about two feet long; yellow, the Imperial color, and red, the festive color, predominating, but other colors were introduced into the color-scheme to accentuate these.

The large Square in front of the Imperial gateway, outside the Precincts, was filled with huge, tent-like, yellow satin umbrellas, with deep curtains around the edge. These umbrellas are used for all great festivities in China, and are generally of red. Those for the Emperor’s Birthday were, of course, of the Imperial yellow, and were richly embroidered with emblematic designs. Presents for the Emperor were arriving daily from all parts of the Great Empire, and though everything was directed by splendid system the commotion was nevertheless great.

Finally, there was the first gala performance at the Theater. Her Majesty occupied her loge nearly all day, overlooking every detail, sending now and then to the stage one of her eunuchs to transmit her Imperial commands as to the speaking of certain lines or the using of certain postures. On the day of this gala performance she invited all the Ladies of the Palace to lunch, for the first time since I had been there, in the court of the Theater. Her Majesty lunched in the Imperial loge, and then ordered our repast to be served in the court, where tables were laid and served with all the pomp and ceremony that characterized the meals at the Palace. Even this “al-fresco” entertainment was ceremonious.

Most of the large courts of the Summer Palace have roofs of matting erected over them, to keep out the sun. These mat-roofs make, of the flower-filled courts, delightfully cool, outdoor parlors. The mat-sheds at the Palace are almost works of art. Tall poles, reaching from twenty to thirty feet above the roofs surrounding the courts to be protected from the sun, are painted in festive designs, and they support transversal beams, also gaily painted. Over these roof-beams are stretched strips of the beautiful matting which the Chinese excel in making. Matting-curtains drop from the roof of the sheds to a level with the Palace roofs. These side-curtains, as well as huge sections of the matting-roof, are movable, and may be opened and raised by means of cords and pulleys attached to the supporting pillars. The whole structure, supporting pillars and transversal beams, is tied together with ropes the same color of the beams, and not a nail is used. The mat-sheds are put up in June and taken down in September.

New ladies were arriving at the Palace every day for a week before the Birthday—members of the Imperial Family from a distance, and the wives and daughters of Manchu nobles who were of sufficient rank to present their congratulations in person. The young Empress never failed to introduce me to these ladies. A foreigner in the Chinese Court is a much more extraordinary circumstance than a Chinese at a European Court would be, and this was, in most instances, the first meeting of these Princesses with any foreigner; but they were uniformly courteous and even cordial, never evincing the slightest curiosity as to my dress or my habits. I doubted whether a Chinese at a European Court, or at our White House, would have been treated with the same consideration by all, even to the servants. The children, of whom there were several at Court at this time, were as well-bred as their elders in their treatment of the “foreign lady.”

After our first lunch in the court of the Theater, when the theatrical performance of the day was finished and the actors had left, I approached the stage of the Theater and began examining, with interest, its construction and appointments. The Palace Theater is raised about twelve feet from the ground, and its main floor is on a level with the Imperial loge. The building consists of three stories and a cellar. The latter is used for the few pieces of scenery of the scenic plays, and is where the simple devices used for moving it are manipulated. Like the Greek theater, the stage is open on three sides; and the actors come out and speak their parts, their entrance being to the left and the exit to the right of the stage.

Her Majesty was within her loge while I was examining the construction of the Theater; but she evidently noticed my movements, for the eunuchs soon threw open the great plate doors and she descended the steps of the Imperial loge and came across the court to where I was standing. She asked me if I would not like to go on the stage and look over the building and examine things thoroughly. She added, “You probably may never have such a chance to see a good Chinese theater again.” She, herself, went up the steps leading from the court to the stage, and told me to follow her.

The stage is about twenty-five feet square, is roofed over, and projects into the court, its three sides being open. The fourth side has doors and curtains for the entrance and exit of the actors. There are no actresses in China. The men perform the parts of women, and represent them with such success that I was much surprised when I learned there were no actresses. At the back of the stage sit the musicians, who accompany all the theatrical performances in China.

Her Majesty, herself, led the way across the stage and we went behind the scenes. Here, I examined closely a number of “Floats” that were to be used, in the procession in honor of the Emperor, on the day of the Birthday. These floats had all been designed by the Empress Dowager. After we had looked at these, she suggested that I had better see the upper floors. These latter are not in general use in Chinese theaters. The theaters, even at the other Palaces, have but one stage. The steps which lead to the second stage, and thence to the third stage, are behind the scenes. The two upper stages are used for spectacular plays and tableaux, when certain of the players group themselves in pyramidal form on these superposed stages and speak their lines therefrom. The upper stages have also trap-doors and pulleys for use in the spectacular plays. Her Majesty went up, herself, to show me these stages. She mounted the steep and difficult steps with as much ease and lightness as I did, and I had on comfortable European shoes, while she wears the six-inch-high Manchu sole in the middle of her foot, and must really walk as if on stilts.

Neither the Empress Dowager nor any of the Manchu ladies bind their feet; that custom prevailed in China before the Manchu conquest. The Manchus have adopted many of the manners and customs of the Chinese, but the Manchu women have retained their own individuality; and to-day, after more than two hundred and fifty years in China, they still wear their native costume, entirely different from the Chinese women. They still dress their hair in the picturesque Manchu fashion. They not only have never bound their feet, but they have as great a horror of it as Europeans have. Manchu ladies are not bound by the same rigid social conventions as are the Chinese women. They are less circumscribed and have more individual freedom than any other Oriental women. In fact, the Manchu woman seems to be, to other Oriental women, what the modern American woman is to her European sisters.

CHAPTER VIII HIS MAJESTY THE EMPEROR KWANG-HSU

The Emperor Kwang-Hsu was barely eighteen years old when Her Majesty the Empress Dowager, Regent of the Empire, handed over to him the reins of Government, admonishing him in a parting Imperial Decree to “discipline his body, develop his mind, love his People, and give unceasing attention to the administration of Government,” which Decree His Majesty responded to in fitting terms, by another Decree, begging “Her Majesty the Empress Dowager to continue to advise him in important affairs,” saying he “would not dare to be indolent,” that only after prayer and sacrifice “to Heaven and Earth and his Ancestors would he Himself begin to administer affairs of State on the 15th day of the First moon of the 13th year of his Reign”! He began to reign by our count the 25th day of February, 1889, under the appellation of “Kwang-Hsu” (Glorious Succession). The name under which an Emperor of China reigns is not his own, but one chosen for him, and has generally some appropriate signification or some symbolic meaning.

His Majesty Kwang-Hsu is the twelfth Emperor, who has reigned over China, of the Dynasty of the “Great Purity,” as the Manchu Dynasty is called.[2] His reign began at the age of five years, under the Co-Regency of the Empress of the Eastern and Empress of the Western Palaces. The former died in 1881, and from that time on Her Majesty, the present Empress Dowager, ruled alone as “Regent.” His reign, counting the years of the Regency, has already lasted thirty years, the third in point of length of any of the Emperors of the Manchu Dynasty.

His Majesty the Emperor Kwang-Hsu was nearing the completion of his thirty-second year when I was first presented to him. I found him an interesting study, but not to the degree of Her Majesty the Empress Dowager, who has charm and is so fascinating. The Emperor is singularly devoid of this quality of “charm,” and has but little personal magnetism. He interests one, nevertheless. Her Majesty is Universal, the Emperor is typically Oriental. In person he is of slight and elegant figure, not more than five feet four in height. He has a well-shaped head, with the intellectual qualities well developed, a high brow, with large brown eyes and rather drooping lids, not at all Chinese in form or setting. His nose is high and, like most members of the Imperial Family, is of the so-called “noble” type. A rather large mouth with thin lips, the upper short with a proud curve, the lower slightly protruding, a clear-cut, thin jaw, a strong chin a little beyond the line of the forehead, with not an ounce of superfluous flesh on the whole face, give him an ascetic air and, in spite of his rather delicate physique, an appearance of great reserve strength. His complexion is not so white and clear as that of the other members of the Imperial Family, for the Manchus have whiter skins than the Chinese; but this seems more the result of delicacy than natural with the Emperor. His luxuriant, very long hair, a characteristic of the Manchus, is beautifully silky and glossy and always arranged with the greatest care. It is said he much dislikes being shaved, but tradition, immutable in China, does not allow a man under forty, even if he be the “Son of Heaven,” to wear a mustache or whiskers. Like all well-bred Chinese, he has small feet and hands, the latter long and thin and most expressive. The Emperor dresses with extreme neatness and great simplicity, wearing few ornaments and no jewels except on State occasions. His face is kindly in expression, but the glance from his rather heavy-lidded eyes is shrewd and intelligent. His manner is shy and retiring, but this does not seem to be so much from a lack of confidence in himself as from the absence of that magnetic quality, which gives one an appearance of assurance.

He seemed to me the ideal of what one would imagine an Oriental potentate to be, whose title is the “Son of Heaven.” There is a Sphinx-like quality to his smile. In his eyes one sees the calm, half-contemptuous outlook upon the world, of the fatalist. There is an abstractness in the subtilty of his regard, an abstractness that embodies one’s idea of the “Spirit of the Orient.” At first it is difficult to tell whether this comes from a sense of power or from a knowledge of the lack of it, but that firm and fleshless jaw, that ascetic face and keen eye, show there must be reserve strength, that there can be no lack of power, should he wish to exert it. Over his whole face there is a look of self-repression, which has almost reached a state of passivity.

Does he dream of future greatness for the Empire? Does he feel that though his first efforts at governing have failed, he can bide his time—that all things will come to him who waits? Enigma, difficult to divine! But it almost seems so! He appears to fully realize, now, that he made a mistake in the choice of his instruments and time, in his efforts for Progress. But the look of eternal patience in the half-veiled regard of those large eyes seems to show that he will yet try to accomplish China’s salvation—that he is but waiting his opportunity.

There is no evidence of the Emperor’s feeling any animosity toward the Empress Dowager. Their relations, though rigidly formal, as is necessary from their exalted positions, seem to be most friendly. If there is any feeling on his part as to the check his Government received by the “coup d’état” of 1898, he does not seem to feel that Her Majesty is responsible for it. It was not she who put a momentary stop to his dreams of Progress. It was Chinese conservatism, a coalition of powerful ministers who put up the barriers of the “coup d’état” before him when His Majesty thought to drive on to Progress.

The Empress Dowager returned from her retirement and took up the reins of Government again, at the earnest prayers of the wisest Statesmen of China. She was persuaded by them, and she also believed, that the Emperor was driving the Chariot of State too fast over the difficult and ill-kept roads of traditional Chinese routine. She felt that His Majesty, as well as the state, would soon be dashed to pieces if he continued as he was then going. It seems as if the Emperor realizes it all now. His unfathomable eye hides an infinity of possibilities, perchance a world of events. Is he quietly studying how to seize opportunity, when it next passes, and leap upon its back and lash it on to Progress or to—Ruin? He would meet either with that same stoical, Sphinx-like smile, I feel confident.

He seems, now, to give but little advice. He holds Audiences, however, and sees many of the officials alone. He issues edicts independent of Her Majesty; but on all grave affairs, and at the meeting of the Grand Council, Her Majesty is always present, and the decisions are the results of their two opinions. When despatches were brought into Her Majesty’s Throne-room when the Emperor was present, they were first handed to her, and, after glancing them over, she would give them to him. He, after carefully reading them, handed them back to her with rarely a comment. One could see, though, that this was not from ignorance of the subject, but that he trusted, for the time being, to Her Majesty’s greater experience.

Though the Emperor does not seem to feel that the time has come for him to act, he studies every event with the closest attention, and is well informed upon every subject connected with the welfare of the state. As long as the Empress Dowager sits upon the throne with him, I think he will not try to make any of his ideas paramount to hers. He knows that she also wishes Progress for China, and that her methods, more conservative and necessarily slower than his, may, in the end, accomplish just as good results. He seems to trust her thoroughly, and to be willing to have her take the lead. He knows, and the world will soon see, that Her Majesty the Empress Dowager is also vowed to Progress for China; that she is not anti-progressive, nor against reform, now that she feels the time has come for Progress and Reform. Her late edicts show this.

Whether the remodeling of China’s laws, which will bring her into line with the Great Nations of to-day, will come during the Emperor’s life; whether his power of waiting and his patience may enable him to reach the time when accomplishment shall crown his efforts, who can tell! In the meantime, he fulfils his duties as Official Head of the Empire, rigidly observing all public and private ceremonies incumbent upon him as Emperor.

The Emperor occupies a Palace fronting on the Great Lake as elegant and luxurious as Her Majesty’s. He has his own eunuchs and attendants, and leads his own life, quite independent of Her Majesty and the Ladies. He pays his respects to his “august aunt and adopted mother” every morning before the Audience, and they go together to transact affairs of state, after which he returns to his own Palace and follows his own pursuits. On festivals, when the Theater is going, he comes into the Imperial loge during the representations, and, on these days, joins the Empress Dowager and the Ladies in their walks around the gardens or in boating on the lake. He also dines with Her Majesty on these occasions. He does not seem to care as much for the Theater as she does, nor to follow it with so much interest. He often leaves the Imperial loge in the middle of a play, and goes to his own Theater Throne-room, just behind the great Imperial loge, where he passes the time in reading or smoking, which he never does in the presence of Her Majesty.

He occupies himself daily with his studies, among which is English. He is a great reader. There is a special official, at the Palace, who buys His Majesty’s books, and they say this is no sinecure, as he does not devote himself only to Chinese literature and the classics, but devours translations of foreign works and is constantly calling for new ones. They say he always reads a book a day, besides attending to his other duties.

He is passionately fond of music, plays on a number of Chinese instruments, and has even tried the piano. He has a good ear for music, and can pick out any air he has heard upon any instrument at his disposal. He is very clever, also, in a mechanical way, and can take to pieces and put together a clock, with fair success. He has been known, however, to fail in getting the very complicated mechanism of some of the Palace clocks properly together again. The Empress Dowager is constantly fearing that His Majesty will take some of her favorite clocks to pieces and not be able to put them into working order again; and he will not allow any one else to finish what he has begun.

He is a very early riser, often getting up as early as two A.M. When there was some ceremony in Peking or some sacrifice to his Ancestors, he would go the sixteen miles, perform the ceremony or sacrifice and return in time for the Audience at eight o’clock, and it takes two hours and a half for the Emperor’s swift runners to carry him the sixteen miles between the Summer Palace and Peking. He does not seem to care for young associates, either men or women, though he is very fond of children. He had but few favorites in the Palace, and quite ignored the pretty young girls and women of Her Majesty’s “entourage.” He seems to have great respect for cleverness.

There are certain distinctions made with reference to Her Majesty and the Emperor, which are rather curious. Her Majesty, being his Ancestress, is first in everything. She sits upon the Throne in the Great Audience Hall, while His Majesty sits on a stool at her left. He walks beside her chair when they go out, and stands in her presence, but when they dine together he sits in the place of honor at the end of the table. When Her Majesty dines alone, her chop-sticks and spoons, as well as the covers of her yellow porcelain dishes, are of silver. When Their Majesties dine together, the covers of the dishes are of gold, and His Majesty’s chop-sticks and spoons are also of gold. I never knew what kind of covers or chop-sticks were used when the Emperor dined alone; for this was always in his own Palace, and I never saw his Palace except from the outside. It was not considered good taste, nor according to the “Proprieties,” even to look that way when the Ladies happened to pass it in their promenades.

When His Majesty walked in the grounds with only his own attendants, without being in the train of the Empress Dowager, his walks were in parts of the grounds not frequented by the Ladies. On Festival days, when he went out in the Imperial barge, or walked with Her Majesty and the Ladies, as he sometimes did, he went through these promenades with his usual courteous demeanor, but he did not seem to enjoy them, and when they were finished he would return with his own attendants to his own Palace. He assisted Her Majesty when she was entertaining the Foreign Representatives, but one, who knew him, could plainly see that he was bored by these Audiences. He would slip away at the first opportunity, not because he objected to the foreigners, but that these state functions were not to his taste. Her Majesty would have preferred him to do his share in the entertainment of the Foreign Representatives and be more “en évidence.” Though never out of temper or disagreeable on these occasions, and while he seemed to wish to do his duty, he seemed anxious to get them over. Whether from shyness or dislike at the functions, I could not tell.

CHAPTER IX THE EMPEROR’S BIRTHDAY

We went to the Palace early the day of His Majesty’s Birthday, and were in the Empress Dowager’s Throne-room at six o’clock in the morning; but long before that time, the outer court was filled with the red and yellow chairs and carts of the visiting members of the Imperial Family, who had come in from Peking and from the neighboring Palaces for the day. The high eunuchs were in gala costume, wearing silken gowns of great beauty, embroidered in the Double Dragon. The eunuchs of lower rank were more simply gowned, as the representation of the Double Dragon on the Court gown is only allowed to those of a certain rank. Our chair-bearers were clad in the festive red, with brocaded figures, representing the characters for Longevity.

We passed through the beautifully decorated courts, past the gaily decked Palaces to the Throne-room of Her Majesty, where the Emperor had come to receive the private congratulations of the Princesses of the blood and the Ladies of the Court. It would have been against the laws of Chinese etiquette for these Ladies to go into the Emperor’s Palace to congratulate him, even on such an occasion as his Birthday. When we entered the Throne-room, the Emperor was seated, or rather, reclining upon a lounge in the most informal manner. He was not averse, as was Her Majesty, to the reclining position when on the Throne. His greater Orientalism was evidenced here, for the Oriental proverb says, “’Tis better to be sitting than standing, to be lying than sitting,” etc. He sat up a little straighter on our entrance, and the Ladies made the formal Chinese bow, which he returned by a friendly nod and kindly smile. I made the European reverence as usual.

His Majesty was dressed a little more elaborately than usual, in a yellow gown, tightly belted in around his slender waist with a handsome belt buckle of jade. At this morning salutation by the Ladies of his family, his hat lay beside him on the couch, which showed it was unceremonious, for ceremonies are carried on by the Emperor and all Chinese with their hats on. The great Imperial Pearl, one of the most precious of the Imperial jewels, formed the button of his hat on his Birthday. The seven official ranks of Mandarins are shown by the different colors of the buttons worn on their hats. The color of these buttons denotes the rank acquired by their wearers, those of the Manchu Princes, alone, being hereditary. The buttons of these latter are generally of jewels or semi-precious stones. The Emperor, the most simply dressed man I saw in China, wears, as a rule, a plain red silk button, but the Pearl, which can only be worn by a reigning Emperor, is used on state occasions.

After we had greeted His Majesty, we moved further into the Throne-room to await the “lever” of the Empress Dowager. When she came out of her sleeping apartments, the Ladies fell upon their knees and simultaneously repeated the words of greeting used every morning to Her Majesty, “Lao-Tzu-Tzung Chee-Siang” (Great Ancestress, be happy). After acknowledging their salutations, she advanced and held out her hand to me, and I took it and, as was now my custom, raised the tips of her fingers to my lips. I, of course, never made any but a European salutation to either Her Majesty or the Emperor. She was very gracious and said I would be the first foreigner who had ever seen the birthday celebration of any of the Sons of Heaven, and she hoped I would enjoy it! She then commented on my dress and ornaments, examining the few jewels I wore. After this she turned to the Ladies and, with a quick glance, took in all the details of their Court costumes, calling their attention to the way their official beads hung and signaling any little deviation from traditional forms that she noticed in their attire. She was extremely rigid as to all the details of Court dress.

The Court costume of the Ladies is magnificent. That worn at the Emperor’s Birthday (the summer costume) was of the stiff transparent silk I have described in the gown worn by Her Majesty for the portrait. The Court costume of the married ladies is of dark red, embroidered in golden dragons. The widows wear blue; the unmarried girls, bright red—all with the Double Dragon embroidered thereon. The married ladies and widows, when in Court attire, wear a magnificent court head-dress with jeweled crown. The young girls, even in Court dress, wear the ordinary Manchu coiffure, with the long red silk tassels falling to their shoulders. The young Empress was charming on the Birthday. Her head-dress was of golden filigree, thickly set with jewels. Across the front, nine beautifully chased golden phenix, with jeweled tails outspread, held in their bills strings of pearls that fell to her shoulders and veiled her forehead. Square, conventionalized bunches of flowers projected from either side of this curiously and elaborately wrought head-dress. Her gown was of the Imperial yellow, embroidered with the golden Double Dragon. She had, around her neck, a solid piece of chased gold, like a huge open ring, with balls at the ends; and she wore the official beads that are always worn in Court dress by Princes and Officials and their wives. The Emperor and Empress Dowager are the only members of the Court who wear, neither the Double Dragon on their Court dress, nor the official beads. Suspended from the Empress’s neck was a magnificently embroidered stole, about four inches wide, which reached to the hem of her gown. This stole is only worn by the wives of Emperors, during their husband’s lifetime. The young Empress seemed unusually happy to-day, and this was the first time I had ever seen her and the Emperor in conversation. Next to the young Empress came the only secondary wife of the Emperor. She was dressed exactly as the young Empress was; the same gown, the same head-dress, the same embroidered stole, only her jewels were not so handsome, and her dress, instead of being of the Imperial yellow, was of orange. Yellow can only be worn by the first wife of an Emperor!

After the salutations to the Emperor and Empress Dowager in Her Majesty’s private Throne-room, Her Majesty went out into the court and took her place in her yellow chair of State, the Emperor following, on foot, as was his custom. The cymbals clashed. The flutes sounded and all the instruments of the Imperial Band played the curious minor air, with its tragic undertone of sound, its rhythm like a Gregorian chant, which is only played at the passing of Their Majesties for some great ceremony or official function, and which I soon called the “Imperial Hymn.” This is the only approach to a National air that I ever heard in China.

Their Majesties went in ceremonious procession to the Great Audience Hall, where the Princes, Nobles, and high Officials privileged to enter Precincts, were to present their homage and congratulations to the Son of Heaven on the happy occasion of his Birthday. Besides these privileged visitors, there were a number of officials whose rank was not high enough to allow them to enter the Great Hall of Ceremonies. These kneel and make the prostrations in the outer courts.

The young Empress and Ladies of the Court did not follow Their Majesties to the Great Hall, but stopped at the Palace of the young Empress, to await there their turn for the official congratulations, which were not to be made until after those of the Princes and Nobles. The young Empress is a charming hostess, and her eunuchs and women handed us tea and cigarettes while we were waiting. She also had her dogs brought in for me to see. Her apartments opened on a sunny court, full of flowering shrubs and fruit trees. Around the other three sides of the court were built the pavilions for the use of her attendants and ladies. We spent half an hour in her pavilion, waiting for the congratulations of the Princes and Nobles to be finished.

The Emperor, for these official congratulations, was seated upon the Dynastic Throne, erect and stiff as an archaic figure; no longer the shy boy, but the Monarch clothed in all his power, and, for to-day, alone upon his great ancestral Throne. He was attended by his Master of Ceremonies, gorgeously attired, who stood in the rigid attitude prescribed for this ceremony.

Each splendidly garbed Prince and Noble knelt and made the prostration prescribed by the Book of Rites, and each presented His Majesty with a jade emblem, called by the Chinese “ruyie,”[3] erroneously supposed to be a scepter by most foreigners; but the “ruyie” is simply an emblem of Good Luck, and may be presented on festive occasions to any one whom the givers wish to honor, and is not an emblem of Imperial authority. The Emperor held each of these “ruyie” in his hands for a few seconds after their presentation, bowed profoundly to the kneeling Prince, and then handed the emblem to an attendant eunuch, who placed it on a Dragon table at the left of the Emperor. When the Princes and Nobles had congratulated His Majesty and left the Throne-room, the young Empress and secondary wife, followed by the Princesses and Ladies, went in to make their official congratulations. The greeting in Her Majesty’s Throne-room in the morning had been but a friendly salutation, without any official signification. The young Empress knelt and made her bow first and presented—as did each of the Ladies—a “ruyie.” She made the same official salutation as did the others, but her “ruyie” was of a much richer style than those presented by the other Ladies.

After the ceremony of formal congratulations was over, Her Majesty, the Emperor, and Empress, followed by the Ladies and attendants, went in state to the Theater, with the same ceremonial and pomp with which they had gone into the Hall of Ceremonies. The Empress Dowager, who was always the most gorgeously attired person at Court, was, on His Majesty’s Birthday, dressed with an extreme simplicity that amounted almost to plainness, and she wore no jewels. This plainness of attire was not an accident, but had been arranged with her usual forethought. She wished the Emperor and Empress to be the central figures of this day’s festivities, and did not wish to vie with the Empress even in her attire.

The Princes and Nobles, who had come to the Palace for the official congratulations, were invited to the theatrical performance. They occupied the boxes that ran at right angles to the Imperial loge, which I have already described as forming the other two sides of the court of the Theater. A huge screen of painted silk, twelve feet high, was stretched from the last of the boxes occupied by the Princes to the stage—allowing the latter to be perfectly seen by the occupants of the boxes, but cutting off their view of the Imperial loge, whence Their Majesties, the Empress, and Ladies viewed the play. These invited guests are thus neither seen by the Imperial party, nor can they see the latter.

When Their Majesties and the Empress were seated in their loge, the principal actors came to the front of the stage, knelt, and “kow-towed” to the Imperial box. Then the play began. There was first a noisy burst of weird music, then the chief actor recited a laudatory, congratulatory poem in honor of the Birthday of the Emperor, wishing His Majesty “ten thousand years” of happiness and all the blessings possible. The poem was intoned like a chant by the actor, dressed in the gorgeous historic costume of an Imperial Herald of the time of Kublai Kahn. This poem was most impressive. One of the verses ran thus:

“The vast merits of His Imperial Majesty’s August Ancestors have been handed down to Him from generation to generation.

“To the wisdom of His whole Dynasty we owe it, that we have lived in happiness,

“Ever ready to comply with the lofty teaching of our Rulers, leading us unto Good....”

The poem went on to recite His Majesty’s merits as a son, his respect for his August Mother, his filial piety, and ended with a wish that Great China might flourish and prosper—grow strong outwardly and inwardly, through the blessings of his reign and his desire for Progress.

After this poem had been intoned by the chief actor, with the whole company of players grouped around on the lower, as well as on the two superposed stages, all in splendid historic costumes, there was another noisy clash of weird music and the play itself began. The Chinese theater, which goes on from morning to night with a series of plays, generally begins with a short one, a curtain-raiser of a quarter to half an hour’s length. To-day it began at once, after the poem was intoned, with a great historic drama. The exploits and high deeds of former Emperors were shown, and the actors were magnificently costumed in superb historic gowns which had been handed down from antiquity and were absolutely authentic.

At half-past eleven, with the Theater still in full swing, the eunuchs brought out tables of sweetmeats on the verandah of the Imperial loge, and set them before the young Empress and the Princesses and Ladies, and we were served to refreshments. Sweets and fruits in China are served between the regular meals. The sweetmeats to-day were “birthday food,” and were all inscribed with some character meaning “Longevity,” “Good Luck,” “Happiness,” “Peace,” etc. There were pyramids of the delicious crystallized fruits which the Chinese excel in making; macédoines of queer fruits, nut pastes, almond creams, and all the fresh fruits in season. With this preliminary repast were served, also, some delicious Chinese wines.

Soon after the repast of sweetmeats was finished, we were served in the court of the Theater this time to the regular meal. It was an immense table to which we sat down on the Emperor’s Birthday. There were so many Princesses, Duchesses, and Ladies of high degree from a distance, that our usual number was more than quadrupled. The repast was a joyous one. The Chinese are very witty and gay, and though I could not understand all the scintillations of wit, their gaiety was contagious! Each gave me special delicacies that she liked, to try, and each seemed to vie with the other in endeavoring to make the “stranger” feel at ease. Some of the Ladies drank champagne in my honor, and held up their glasses toward me as they had seen the foreigners do. When the elders had finished eating, the young people sat down. These were the children of the Princesses and Nobles who had been invited to join their parents for these festivities at the Palace. No girl or boy under sixteen is allowed to sit down with their elders to a ceremonious dinner at the Palace.

Soon after we had finished our gay luncheon in the court of the Theater the Ladies retired within their loge, next to that of Their Majesties, and the screen which hid the visiting Princes and Nobles from the Imperial party was removed by the attendant eunuchs. When it was taken away, there sat, Turkish fashion, the great Princes and high Nobles in their splendid Court dress. Those of the highest ranks occupied the boxes nearest the Imperial party. The Princesses pointed out to me, from their box, their brothers and kinsmen and others whom they recognized; but we saw without being seen, and were only looking from behind the scenes.

The eunuchs then handed around refreshments to the Princes and gentlemen, sweetmeats and fruits, such as we had partaken of before our luncheon. Then there were some huge steaming silver caldrons brought into the court, and from these caldrons the eunuchs ladled into bowls some sort of white drink. As we had had nothing of this kind at our repast, I was curious to know what it might be. I knew it could not be wine, for that is served only in tiny cups, and this was served in the ordinary-sized eating-bowls. I was much surprised to learn that this drink was simply hot milk, flavored with almonds, and slightly sweetened, a drink of which the Manchus are very fond, and which is a special mark of Imperial favor, given only on great occasions. The gentlemen raised their bowls to their lips with both hands and drank it off with great ceremony, as if it were a sacred beverage, and seemed, in drinking it thus, to pledge the Emperor’s Health and Happiness.

After the Princes had partaken of these refreshments, and while some eunuchs were removing the caldrons and dishes, another army of eunuchs came in, in pairs, each pair carrying between them trays of Imperial yellow, decorated with the red characters for Longevity. These trays contained presents from the Emperor to each of the invited guests, for His Majesty gives as well as receives presents on his Birthday! There was no difference made in the presents given, each tray being the exact counterpart of every other. Each contained a pair of porcelain vases from the Imperial Potteries, a bronze Incense-burner, a scroll with a quotation from the classics or an aphorism of Confucius written thereon. The scrolls were inclosed in silken covers, tied with the Imperial colors. There was also a jade “ruyie” in each tray, such as had been handed the Emperor at the morning ceremony, and an Archer’s ring. After the contents of the trays had been delivered to each gentleman present, and the empty trays borne away by the Palace eunuchs, the dividing screen was again placed between the visiting Princes and Their Majesties, and the young Empress and Ladies went out of their loge to the verandah once more, and the theatrical performance again went on. In fact, it had been going on throughout our luncheon and the subsequent entertainment of the Princes, but we had paid no attention to it.

At four o’clock there was the grand “finale.” The three superposed stages were occupied by all the gorgeously attired actors, and another Hymn of praise to the Emperor was intoned. He was extolled as the Son of Heaven and representative on earth of Buddha, and other extravagant wishes for “ten thousand years” of happiness were made. When this Hymn was finished, the floats, which we had seen the day before behind the scenes, came out in procession. These floats represented mythical animals, Buddhas, fairies, and personifications of the higher attributes. There were gigantic fruits which opened, disclosing figures representing eternal beauty, perfect happiness, and serene old age. Prominent among the gigantic fruits was the peach, the emblem of Longevity. Last of all, in this curious procession, came the Imperial Dragon, of huge proportions. Its contortions, as it struggled for the Flaming Pearl, emblematic of the unattainable, were most curious. All these figures made their obeisances to Their Majesties and the Empress. They were accompanied by splendidly clothed warriors, heralds, princes, and many gorgeously attired attendants, bearing banners and escutcheons. After the procession had made the tour several times, the dragon stopped with his huge head in the middle of the stage, made an obeisance to His Majesty, then raised it with a mighty roar and spouted forth—a copious shower of fresh spring water, which sprinkled the whole flower-filled court! The Empress and Princesses were all in the secret and knew what was coming, but they kept it from me, and much enjoyed my start of surprise as some of the spray fell upon me, as I had advanced to the very edge of the verandah in order to miss nothing.

When all was finished, the screen was again removed and the great glass doors of the Imperial loge were thrown open, so that Her Majesty and the Emperor could be seen. The visiting Princes and Nobles came forward from their places and knelt in a body, though still observing the laws of precedence as to their ranks. They knelt three times, and bowed their heads to the ground nine times to thank Their Majesties for the entertainment they had received. To receive these prostrations from the Princes, the Emperor and Empress Dowager assumed their Buddha-like poses and acknowledged the genuflexions by a formal inclination of their heads. When the Princes had retired, the actors, clothed in their usual garments, came to the front of the stage and knelt and “kow-towed,” but Their Majesties did not return this salutation.

When the Princes and players had left and the Imperial party was alone, cushions were brought into the middle of the court, the Emperor and Empress and secondary wife knelt thereon, while their “Great Ancestress,” the Empress Dowager, preceded by acolytes, swinging golden incense-burners which gave forth azure clouds of perfumed smoke, came down the steps to the weird accompaniment of the flutes and cymbals playing the “Imperial Hymn.” The Emperor and Empress knelt to do Her Majesty homage, as the greatest living member of their Ancestors. When she reached them, they arose and followed her, and the three moved along in stately procession to the slow beating of the cymbals, followed by the Princesses and Ladies and all the attendant eunuchs. The subtle perfume of the incense, the stately rhythm, the splendid costumes, the flashing jewels and brilliant colors, made a magnificent picture never to be forgotten. The Imperial procession moved through several sunlit courts until it finally came to the entrance of the Sacred Hall, containing the Ancestral tablets; here the Empress Dowager stopped at the threshold until His Majesty and the young Empress had passed within, to complete the ceremonies of the day by worshiping and kneeling together before the tablets of their Ancestors. The music ceased. The ceremony was finished. His Majesty the Emperor Kwang-Hsu had accomplished another year.

CHAPTER X PEKING—THE SEA PALACE

The Autumnal Sacrifices to his Ancestors and His Majesty’s consequent three days’ abstinence, to prepare for them, put a stop to further festivities after the Birthday, which would have otherwise continued for several days longer. The day after the Birthday was a quiet one at the Palace. Her Majesty was feeling tired and did not care to pose, after the Audience in the morning. The visiting Princesses and Ladies were preparing to leave the Palace; the eunuchs and Her Majesty’s maids were bustling around, preparing for the moving of the Court to Peking, for Her Majesty and the Court, as well as the Emperor, were to go into one of the City Palaces the following day. Her Majesty ordered luncheon to be served in one of the beautiful summer-houses in the gardens, about a mile from the Palace, for she said a change would be good for all.

This summer-house, or rather Palace, situated on a hill overlooking the lake, was one of Her Majesty’s favorite resorts. She often went to it, after a tiring Audience, and spent the rest of the day there, lunching and dining, and even taking her siesta there. Whenever she went to any of these Palaces inside the inclosure, she always invited all the Ladies of the Court to accompany her. It made a change in the monotony of their lives. This Palace was very luxuriously fitted up, and contained a splendid library, with thousands of volumes of the classics and Her Majesty’s favorite authors. The view from its broad verandahs and fair marble terraces was one of the finest, even of the many beautiful ones, in the grounds. We lunched on the wide verandah and drank in the beauty of the scene. No wonder Her Majesty loved this spot! Beneath lay the beautiful grounds of the Summer Palace, with its calm lake and winding streams. On an eminence beyond, the graceful seven-storied pagoda that forms so characteristic a feature in all the views of the Summer Palace, proudly reared its stately height. On the right lay the temple-crowned hills, the upturned roofs of their buildings nestling on their slopes like a flight of gigantic gaily-hued birds, with wings outspread. In the distance, beyond a soft gray undulating landscape, with fields of brilliant green here and there, lay Peking, with its walls and towers, enveloped in a golden haze.

AT THE AMERICAN LEGATION, PEKING

After luncheon and the siesta, Her Majesty called me up and said she was to go into Peking on the morrow, and asked whether I wished the portrait to be taken in for the three days the Court was to remain in the City. She said she would be much occupied with ceremonies and sacrifices, and there would be but little time for painting, but if I wished to work she might be able to give me a short sitting! I told her I did not care to have the portrait taken into the City, for I knew it would not be possible to get a room with the same light as that in which I had begun the picture. When she found I did not care to paint in Peking, she suggested that I go to the United States Legation and spend the time of the Court’s sojourn at the Sea Palace. It had been more than two weeks since I had seen Mrs. Conger, or been in the Legation quarter, and I was delighted at Her Majesty’s kind forethought in allowing me to spend these days at the Legation. She, however, suggested that, as I had not seen the Sea Palace, where the Court was to go, I might enjoy coming there for the day—and spending some of the time in seeing the Palace and grounds. She knew how I enjoyed seeing these beautiful Palaces, and this was another proof of her consideration. She said she would be much occupied with the ceremonies, but that she would map out a nice day for me, and would herself take me for a walk! She added, “This will give you a chance to study me, so your time will not be entirely spent in vain.” She said we would resume the portrait on the Court’s return to the Summer Palace.

After our return to her Throne-room, and when we had finished dinner, she told me I had better go into the room where the portrait and my materials were kept, when I was not working on it, and said I had better overlook its being put away myself. She followed me into the room, and herself aided and directed the arrangement of things. She ordered the “sacred picture” (for this is what the Chinese call a likeness of a reigning Emperor or Empress) to be attached to the wall with yellow cords and covered with a transparent yellow silk, box-like screen, which had been especially made to protect it from dust. The portrait was treated, from its very beginning, as an almost sacred object, with the respect a reverent officiant accords the Holy Vessels of the Church. Even my painting materials seemed to be invested with a sort of semi-sacred quality. When Her Majesty felt fatigued, and indicated that the sittings were finished, my brushes and palette were taken by the eunuch from my hands, the portrait removed from the easel and reverently consigned to the room that had been set aside for it.

The next morning early, I preceded the Court into Peking and went directly to the United States Legation, where I was warmly welcomed by my kind friends, Mr. and Mrs. Conger. The United States Legation occupied, at this time, a Chinese temple near the “Water Gate.” This building had been given to the United States Government by the Chinese after the Boxer rebellion, and was occupied temporarily by the Minister of the United States during the construction of the new Legation on Legation Street. The temple had been transformed into a comfortable American dwelling-place—its Chinese individuality having been preserved wherever possible, consistent with comfort. The shaded court, filled with beautiful, growing flowers (many of them gifts from the Empress Dowager to Mrs. Conger), was a charming spot. While distinctly American as to its artistic comfort and furniture, the interior construction and decoration of the drawing-room were purely Chinese, which gave a touch of Oriental “couleur locale” to this pleasant haven of American hospitality, where Mr. and Mrs. Conger dispensed their kindly favors.

Mrs. Conger, by her own individual initiative, has done much to bring about a friendly social feeling between the Chinese and foreign ladies. It was she who first thought of entertaining the Princesses and Ladies of the Court in her own home; and the United States Legation was the first of the Legations in Peking to issue an invitation to the Ladies of the Court, or to entertain them. It is the first Legation to entertain other Chinese ladies, wives of officials or of the gentry. Several other Legations have since entertained the Ladies of the Court, but in doing so they were only following Mrs. Conger’s initiative. While doing so much to bring about friendly social relations with the Chinese, Mr. and Mrs. Conger receive all Americans, regardless of their importance or social position, with a kind cordiality. I was delighted to be in their charming family circle once more. I found my room at the Legation, with its sweet touches of homeliness, a delightful haven, and my visits to the Legation seemed always like going home.

The next morning at seven, a green official chair with its bearers came to take me to the Sea Palace. I was first carried to the Hsien-Liang-Hsu, the “Temple of the loyal and virtuous,” where Li-Hung-Chang formerly had his home in Peking, and a part of which the Yu-Kengs had arranged for their home after their return from their mission at Paris, their own semi-foreign house having been destroyed by the Boxers. At the Hsien-Liang-Hsu I was joined by the Ladies Yu-Keng, and we continued on to the Sea Palace. Our chairs, with their bearers, were preceded and followed by mounted attendants.

The Sea Palace is a comparatively new Palace, most of it having been built within the last fifty years. Our chairs were met at the northern entrance by the same eunuchs who had been set aside for our service at the Summer Palace. They led us to the boats in waiting to carry us across the lake, to the buildings occupied by Her Majesty and the Court. These boats were of the houseboat variety, with an inclosed cabin forming the center, and a platform running all around, on which the rowers walked up and down propelling it. The interior was carpeted, with a cushioned lounge, tea-tables, and chairs. The eunuchs and attendants sat outside on the prow. It takes twenty minutes to row across the lake in one of these boats, but the movement is delightful. When we reached the other side, we landed and went through several courts to that of one of Her Majesty’s private chapels. She, herself, had just been making an offering here, and was coming out, preceded by acolytes swinging incense-burners, the musicians playing the “Imperial Hymn.” When she saw us, Her Majesty called us to her side, asked if I had had a good trip into Peking, and how Mrs. Conger was. She then ordered the eunuchs to show us our apartments. We were led through corridors and courts to a charming pavilion which was to be our resting-place while at the Sea Palace. It had exquisitely and elaborately carved woodwork arches with heavy satin curtains, which divided it into five rooms. After we had rested a few moments here, we returned to the Throne-room. Her Majesty told me she had arranged for me to go out in one of the boats, and that I was to be shown all that I cared to see, or at least as much as I could see in that day. A eunuch standing near her held a number of strips of embroidery in his hand. They were embroidered head-dresses, which are placed upon the heads of the Buddhas during the great ceremonies in the Palace temples. She explained their use to me and then dismissed us, and we went out to the landing-place on the lake.

A number of boats lay at the foot of the steps—among them a charming open barge with blue silken awnings. As I had not been in a boat of this kind before, and as I was told to choose, I selected it for our row; and we started off, followed by several other boats carrying eunuchs and refreshments, with the necessary utensils for serving them. Our head eunuch, one of the six highest in the Palace, who had been appointed to look after me and the “sacred picture,” was very intelligent, an enlightened lover of Chinese art, and a great collector of old Chinese paintings and curios. He had been, in his youth, one of Her Majesty’s favorite players, was said to have great dramatic talent, and, when he was younger, had a fine voice for singing. Memory is among the most esteemed of the intellectual faculties by the Chinese and reaches a high state of cultivation with[ them. ] Many of the eunuchs can repeat whole pages from the classics, and some are accomplished literati. This eunuch had a good speaking voice, and recited poems and told stories in a charming way. As we were rowed along, he stood at the prow and recited verse after verse of classic lore and told stories of the heroic times. He intoned them like a recitative—the rhythm so perfectly observed, the intoning so musical, it was a pleasure to listen to him, though I could not understand.

I lay back among the cushions, as we glided softly along, past beautiful pavilions, with splendid trees overhanging the lake and lovely flowers growing wherever there was a place to plant them. The tall figure of the splendidly attired eunuch, standing in the prow, repeating, with rhythmic cadence, poems and stories, gave one the illusion and charm of the “Arabian Nights,” which I had fed upon in my childhood, and which I seemed to be living through to-day.

We soon came to a tiny islet in the lake, with a sort of open temple built over a black marble tablet which bore an incised inscription. I asked to land and examine it, and San-Gunia, the eldest of Lady Yu-Keng’s daughters, a remarkably clever girl and well posted in Chinese literature, translated the characters. The inscription was a poem, a tribute to the Great Father who had graciously placed there this island, which “by night was bathed in the glory of the Moon and Sun-kissed by day, while the crystal waters of the lake formed a brilliant necklace on its breast.”

Beyond the island I saw a temple. There was no landing-place, and the temple was under repair. The head eunuch, however, seeing how much I wished to go up, had the boat draw near and steps brought, up which we clambered, as best we could.

This was one of the temples so ruthlessly destroyed and unnecessarily desecrated by the Allies during their occupation of Peking. We passed through the vegetable garden of the monks—all shorn of its glory, but where a few vegetables and flowers still grew—and we went on through a beautiful grove of arbor-vitæ, with centuries-old trees, planted in the form of a cross, and came into the court of the temple. Even in its dilapidated state, with the workmen still in it, it was beautiful, and before it was so injured it must have been a splendid example of Chinese temple architecture. The cells of the lama monks were now unoccupied, and there were no officiating priests. Workmen were repairing and regilding the Great Buddha, and most of the effigies of the saints and images of the personified attributes were standing in dejected rows in the corridors awaiting the completion of their niches and chapels. The interior, of splendid proportions, glowed in beautiful somber colors. The carved wood ceilings were in [pendentive] designs, recalling those I had seen in the Alhambra; but the painting, in primary colors, of this elaborately carved ceiling gave it a greater richness of coloring and lent to the interior a warmer, deeper harmony than the white Moorish designs. The chapels behind the high altar were separated from the main temple and from each other by beautifully carved wooden screens, with rich brocaded silk of brilliant green (the color of Buddha), stretched behind the open-work and showing through the interstices of the carving. These chapels are for the Sacred writings and for the vestments of the priests, and are also used for robing- and retiring-rooms for the officiants. They correspond to the sacristies of the Catholic Churches in Europe.

The space behind the altar was of apse-like form, and opened upon a semi-circular marble terrace, thirty feet high, with a balustrade of the conventionalized lotus design so dear to the Chinese architects. From this terrace we had a beautiful view of the Coal Hill, surmounted by the curious Dagoba, so well known in all views of the Imperial City, as well as of the belvedere that marks the spot where the last Emperor of the Mings committed suicide when he was conquered. At the two extremities of the terrace were charming octagonal summer-houses, where the priests could go for rest and contemplation, and, while murmuring their prayers, could feast their eyes upon a charming view. After a few moments on the terrace, enjoying the beautiful view, we passed through the cells of the monks, which were large and comfortable, and, finally, out again into the sun-flecked shade of the marble-paved court, where we sat under low-hanging boughs of a splendid elm, and the eunuchs brought out tables and served us with tea and refreshments.

Then we took the boats and were rowed on further, till we came beneath a steep battlemented wall, surmounted by the rich green of arbor-vitæ trees. I was surprised to learn that this was another temple, for it looked more like an old feudal castle than a peaceful temple to the mild Buddha. We landed at the foot of the beautiful white Marble Bridge that spans the narrow northern portion of the lake, just under the stone wall on which the temple was built. We were carried up the steep, winding incline in our chairs. It was a most picturesque approach, and when we reached the top, with the beautiful temple lying peacefully on these martial heights, we found it well worth the climb.

There was a grove of arbor-vitæ trees leading to this temple. These trees seem to be sacred to the temples and burial-places in China, for all I ever visited in China were either built in a grove of arbor-vitæ, or had some of these evergreens growing near. Did the Greeks get their idea and name of the ever-living tree from the Chinese, who regard the arbor-vitæ as the tree of life and emblem of Immortality? This temple has a great Buddha of white jade, with jeweled stole and cuffs. Its expression of placid contemplation and kindly thought is typically Chinese. When Buddhism was first brought into China from India, the Buddhas had an Indian type; and not until the religion had taken firm hold of the people, was its divinity clothed in a Chinese personality, and a national individuality assumed. The day of our visit, the great jade Buddha was decked in a mantle of Imperial yellow satin, with a richly embroidered Manchu hood, such as I had seen that morning in Her Majesty’s Throne-room, on its head. Tall, lighted candles, fresh offerings of fruit and flowers, and the smoking censer standing on the altar, showed there had been services that morning, and added to the religious atmosphere of the interior. The service had been a continuation of the commemorative celebrations in honor of the Emperor’s Birthday and his sacrifice to his Ancestors.

The principal court of this temple is one of the most picturesque in the Sea Palace, shaded by magnificent cedars and stately elms. In the center, there was a magnificent cistern of verd-antique, splendidly carved in dragons. Over this cistern was a marble portico, its columns supporting a curious concave, copper roof. This roof had been a Palace “cooking utensil,” that had been used in former times to prepare food for the poor; hence its extraordinary size. When it was worn out in this capacity it was used as the interior of the dome over the temple well, where the poor and weary could come to rest under its shadow and drink of the water of the well it protected. There were cells and outhouses for the monks in this temple also. But as we sat in the shady court, looking across the sunlit lake, the sky became suddenly overcast, and we took our chairs and hurried down the steep, paved road that led from the temple to the lake. We did not take the boats again on reaching the lake, but were carried, in our chairs, across the beautiful Marble Bridge. Just beyond us, we saw the towers of the first Catholic Cathedral ever built in Peking. It was built on land given to the Catholics by the Emperor; but, when finished, its towers were found to overlook the Palace grounds; so the Cathedral was bought by the Emperor, and land was given the Mission further on, and another Cathedral was built. The first Cathedral is now within the Walls of the Sea Palace, and is visible from every part of the grounds of the two Peking Palaces. It seems a strange anomaly to see this Christian Church within the Precincts of the Palace of an Oriental potentate, who is one of the representatives on earth of the “Great Buddha.”

It began to rain, and the chair-bearers ran along to the Palace without stopping again, and we were soon called to dinner in the Throne-room, overlooking the small Theater, for there are two Theaters in the Sea Palace, one for winter use and one for summer. The latter is built on piles over the waters of a canal. Building the stage over water is supposed to give a peculiar musical resonance to the voices of the actors, softening the sounds and making them more pleasant to the ear.

After dinner in the beautiful summer Throne-room, with the rippling waters just beneath the windows, we made our adieus, first to Her Majesty and then to the young Empress and Ladies, and went out to be again rowed over the beautiful lake to the outside gates. The sun was setting! The arches of the Marble Bridge had become a beautiful, deep violet hue, and spanned the waters of the lake, now a gleaming mass of liquid gold. The sky beyond shone through the masses of foliage with a golden glow, and the towers of the old Cathedral were strongly silhouetted against this brilliant background. The scene was an ideal one. A beautiful silence pervaded everything, made the more rhythmic and intense by the regular movement of the oars in the water. When we reached the other side of the lake we were conducted to our green chairs, which were waiting without the gate, and were swiftly carried back to the Legation.

CHAPTER XI SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF HER MAJESTY—SECOND VISIT TO THE SEA PALACE

I spent the next day at the Legation, and thoroughly enjoyed it, but I was glad to think that I was to spend the following day at the Palace again. The study of Her Majesty had now become to me like a thrilling novel. I could not bear to lay it down; and when I was forced to do so, I was longing to be able to resume it. She was such a delightful surprise to me. I had heard and read so much of her, before I went to the Palace, and nothing that I had heard or read had at all prepared me for the reality, so charming, so unusual was her personality. Not charming and interesting by fits and starts, but always so! She was so considerate and tactful, and seemed so really kind in her relations with those who surrounded her. I had been now nearly a month in daily contact with her. I saw her, not only when she sat for the portrait; I was with her the greater part of the day, and I began to let myself go in my admiration of her. The days seemed flat and stale when I could not see her—so full of interest and charm I found her. She was a woman of such infinite variety! There was always something new and fresh to study in her. She was the very embodiment of the Eternal Feminine. She was at once a child and a woman with strong, virile qualities. She would go into the Audience Hall, transact weighty affairs of State for three hours, and then go for her walks or excursions, and take a childish interest in the simplest pleasures. She would be seated in one of her Throne-rooms in trivial conversation with her Ladies, when an Official Despatch, in its yellow silk case, would be brought in, and presented by the eunuch on bended knees. Her face would immediately become full of serious interest; she would bend her brows and become the statesman; a few moments later, when she had duly considered, and given orders relative to the despatch, she became again the woman, full of interest in her flowers, dresses, and jewels.

A distinguished Frenchman once said of Her Majesty the Empress Dowager, “C’est le seul homme de la Chine,” and she deserves the appellation of “man,” if it goes to mean superior intelligence and executive ability; but it was not the “statesman” that I had the best opportunity of studying. It was the woman in her private life; and I had unusual advantages for this study, and the more I saw of her, the more remarkable I found her! Her favors to the Ladies of the Court were very impartially distributed. She had her favorites, but she did not allow them to gain any supremacy over her, nor to warp her judgment. Although her “entourage” never expressed an opinion contrary to hers, in her presence, and though she always accepted their expressed views in the most courteous manner, one could see she was not imposed upon, and that she knew, perfectly well, their real opinions, so great was her natural penetration.

I was astonished to find in what veneration the Empress Dowager was really held by the Ladies of the Court and her “entourage.” Her favorite title, and that by which she has been longest known to the courtiers, is, “Lao-Fo-yeh,” the “Old Buddha,” which shows that they invest her with sacred qualities. After her return from Hsi-An Fu, where the Court went when the allied troops occupied Peking, and where the sacred Persons of Her Majesty and the Emperor suffered so many hardships and endured them so bravely, the courtiers gave her another, a closer and more affectionate appellation, “Lao-Tzu-Tzung” (The Old Ancestress). This was the title by which she was called in the Palace, by the Emperor, Empress, and Princesses, and by which she allowed me to address her.

On our arrival at the Sea Palace, the day of my second visit there, after making our bows to Her Majesty, we started, in our chairs, to the Hall of the Mongolian Princes. This is a magnificent hall in the northeastern part of the park, some distance away from Her Majesty’s and the Emperor’s Palaces. It is of one story, as usual, but this nearly forty feet high. The interior is spacious, with only a few dragon tables and chairs and no ornaments or other furniture. There is a raised dais at the back, with several steps leading up to it. Upon the dais stood a splendid Throne of archaic design, and over the Throne there are two huge tablets of black marble, with inscriptions in Chinese and Manchu characters. This great hall is used only for receiving the Mongolian Princes on their annual visit to Peking, when they come in state, with hundreds of followers and retainers, to pay homage and tribute to the Emperor of China. The rear of the hall opens on a court surrounded by smaller buildings, which are used as waiting-rooms for the retainers and followers of the Princes.

From this hall we were carried in our chairs along the banks of the lake, beyond the Marble Bridge to a distant part of the grounds, where stands the famous Dragon Wall. Most of the Chinese houses have a sort of stone screen opposite the principal gate of entrance. This screen, called “A Wall of Respect,” often has some sort of painted or carved representation of a dragon, which is supposed to chase away evil spirits. This superstition does not seem to obtain as regards the residences of the Son of Heaven, for I never saw a dragon wall built in front of any of the entrances to the buildings in the Palace inclosures. Perhaps the Son of Heaven is immune from the visit of demons, or is it that the rampant Double Dragon on everything Imperial serves as sufficient protection to the Palace? The Dragon Wall, in the Sea Palace, must have formed a part of some of the outside palaces or temples which were brought into the sacred inclosure when the Emperor Hsien-Feng decided to make it a place of residence and enlarge its domain. Many foreigners in Peking can remember when the beautiful Marble Bridge, of such noble proportions, of such exquisite design, now within the Precincts, was used by the public. However it got there, the Dragon Wall is at present within the Palace inclosure, though in an unused part of the grounds—not in front of any “residence,” and hence not filling its mission as a “Wall of Respect,” to keep the wicked spirits from crossing the threshold. This Dragon Wall of beautiful white marble is of great beauty, exquisitely carved in its minutest details, and fine in general conception and line.

CHINESE ARCHITECTURE

Her Majesty had returned from the Audience when we got back to the Palace from our morning promenade. She was now attending to household affairs. The eunuchs were bringing up, for her inspection, the baskets of splendid fruits, which are daily sent into the Palace. Among others, there was a basket of magnificent grapes. She was delighted with their beauty, and held up one splendid bunch against the light, before she tasted them, remarking that “the beautiful color lent an added zest to the delicious fruit.” Her Majesty then lunched, while we joined the Empress and Princesses on the verandah, after which we lunched again in this beautiful Throne-room. The meals taken with the young Empress and Ladies of the Court had now come to be gay reunions. Her Majesty would ask us every day to lunch or dine at her table, and I rarely took a meal in my own quarters. I had discarded the knife and fork and was learning to use the chop-sticks. I thought them such graceful implements when wielded by the beautiful hands of the Chinese Ladies, that I determined to learn their use. Though I never became an adept with them, I found these dainty implements perfectly adapted for eating the Chinese food. They are used both in the same hand like twin fairy wands, and seemed to me much more delicate and graceful than a knife and fork. My efforts at using them, and my desire to try all the new dishes, amused and pleased the Ladies. Each would give me special tidbits from her favorite dishes; they tried to teach me the Chinese names of the viands. My efforts at pronouncing these names, or my giving them to the wrong dishes, sometimes raised peals of laughter from the whole table. Her Majesty often heard the merriment, and would ask us, when we went into her private apartments after the meal, what had been the cause; and sometimes she would say, “What has ‘Kergunia’[4] said?”

We had scarcely finished luncheon, on this my second day at the Sea Palace, before the chairs were ordered for a promenade. It had begun to rain, and the air was chilly; but Her Majesty had made up her mind to have a walk at that hour, and nothing ever interfered with her plans, in so far as she was able to carry them out. No weather, however disagreeable or severe, ever kept her from an outdoor promenade that she had planned. The open chairs were brought, as if the day were fine. Her Majesty and the Empress took their seats in their yellow chairs. Their attendant eunuchs unfurled the huge yellow umbrellas, used only for Their Imperial Majesties and the young Empress; the second Empress took her orange-colored chair; the Princesses and the rest of us seated ourselves in our red chairs, and our eunuchs raised the red umbrellas over us. Her Majesty the Empress and Princesses, clothed in the brilliant colors daily worn, the eunuchs still wearing their richly embroidered gala costumes, the chair-bearers still clad in the festive red, the yellow and red chairs with the big yellow, orange, and red umbrellas made a quaint procession, bright with color, that started off through the courts into the gardens.

Her Majesty loves every phase of nature and every kind of weather; but it seemed to me as if she particularly loved rain. She once said it lent such a poetic charm to the landscape, bathing it in a soft mystery and washing away all defects. Peking is a dry place, and rain is a rarity, which probably accounts for this predilection. Her Majesty was in great good humor, but her partiality for rain was not shared by the other Ladies of the Palace, and these rainy promenades were never indulged in by them with any great show of delight. Her Majesty likes moving swiftly, and the chair-bearers always run when she leads the procession. We sped along for about fifteen minutes, when the chairs suddenly stopped. I looked to see for what reason, as we were in the open, with no shelter anywhere near, and the rain still falling. I was surprised to see Her Majesty was already out of her chair and walking off toward a “gourd-arbor” at the side of the paved walk.

The gourd is much esteemed by the Chinese. It is emblematic of Fruitfulness and Prosperity, and is a special favorite of Her Majesty’s. Those cultivated at the Palace, and known all over China as the “Imperial Gourd,” have long been famous; but have reached a greater state of perfection than ever before, under the special care and training given them during Her Majesty the Empress Dowager’s reign. They are of one shape only, with a contracted neck and two equal parts above and below; but they are of all sizes, from one to twelve inches, the one-inch size being as perfect as the larger ones. They are grown on trellises, about seven feet high, and the vines are very carefully trained, so that each of the much-prized fruit may attain its best development and have its proper quota of light and sun.

Her Majesty walked through the mud to the arbor. The white kid six-inch-high soles of her shoes sank deep into the soft, rain-soaked soil. The eunuchs made vain attempts to protect her from the rain, but she went imperturbably on and was soon under the gourd-arbor. Here she leisurely tried several of the gourds, to see if they were properly ripe; for they must be pulled at a certain time or they do not dry well. After looking at and trying a number, she had several gathered and went back to her chair. The young Empress and the other Ladies had, of course, got out of the chairs when Her Majesty stopped. Luckily, she did not ask us to go into the arbor with her; but etiquette obliged us to stand on the marble walk, which though not muddy and not so disagreeable as the walk to the gourd-arbor, was, however, running with water. When Her Majesty took her chair again, we resumed ours, with a sigh of relief; for, though we were unprotected even in the chairs, we felt the truth of the Oriental saying, “It is better to be sitting than standing,” etc.

After another quarter of an hour, the chair-bearers stopped again. We had come to another gourd-arbor! Her Majesty got out of her chair and examined the gourds in this arbor with the same deliberation and interest as she had looked at those where we first stopped. The rain was now falling in torrents, but Her Majesty’s spirits seemed to go up in proportion to its coming down. The Ladies were again obliged to get out of their chairs! They stood in two dejected lines, with the eunuchs holding, as best they might, the red umbrellas over each, and they vainly tried to keep up an appearance of interest and enjoyment. The brave finery of the eunuchs, who may not carry umbrellas when on service, was now hanging in limp folds about them, and their fine feathers were much bedraggled. The Chinese Ladies had their two-inch-high, kid-covered cork soles to protect their feet from the water; but mine, in thin kid slippers, were soaking. The picture of the dejected Ladies, the rain-soaked eunuchs, was, however, so amusing, that I quite forgot my own discomfort and thoroughly enjoyed the situation. After another twenty minutes’ run, with the rain still falling, Her Majesty gave the word and the procession turned toward the Hall of the Mongolian Princes. The great doors were thrown open, and we were, at last, under shelter.

A yellow chair was placed for Her Majesty in front of the dais, and she had some of the gourds she had gathered brought to her. She selected one for herself, gave one to her principal Lady-in-waiting, Sih-Gerga, and handed one to the Chief Eunuch Li—the Princess and the Chief Eunuch both being proficient in the art of scraping them. A sharpened piece of bamboo was brought to Her Majesty and she began to work on the gourd she had taken, scraping off the outer skin. She told me to stand near and watch her scrape it, as it was a very difficult thing to do well! She certainly did it well, and it was most interesting to watch her beautiful little hands, as they gracefully moved the piece of bamboo back and forth, quickly removing the outer skin, in the most approved way. Though apparently thoroughly interested in scraping her gourd, she asked me how I had enjoyed my promenade of the day before, and what I thought of the Sea Palace. She called my attention to the inscriptions on the tablets behind the Throne, saying they were in Manchu and Chinese characters, pointing out their difference of form and also speaking of the differences in the two languages. She said she thought Manchu would be easier for a foreigner to learn than Chinese, as Manchu has an alphabet and is constructed more on the lines of a European language. Presently Her Majesty turned to speak to some one else, and I immediately withdrew, as is the custom at the Palace. We went out and joined the Empress and Princesses, who had already retired from the Throne-room and were having tea and cigarettes reclining on the couches in one of the rooms in the rear. After an hour’s rest in the Mongolian Hall, the rain having ceased, we continued our promenade through the grounds much more pleasantly than we had begun it, and Her Majesty took me for a walk in the Gardens of the Sea Palace, as she had promised.

After dinner, we were rowed over the lake to the Gates. Just beyond them a company of archers was practising with their bows and arrows; for archery is still in vogue in China, and fine marksmanship among the archers is rewarded by substantial advancement in the army. Archery is also practised as a sport by the young Manchu nobles. It is said to educate the eye and materially develop the chest and arms. The Chinese pay great attention to position in archery. They stand stiffly erect, the chest thrown well forward, the head held high, the bow and arrow at rigidly prescribed angles; and if this position be not observed, however true the flight of the arrow, it goes for naught. From the shelter of my chair, I watched the company’s practice until I heard the “Sunset call” resounding through the Palace grounds; echoed and reëchoed until it reached the outer gates, which began to move upon their huge hinges until they clanged together for the night.

CHAPTER XII RETURN TO THE SUMMER PALACE

The next day the Court returned to the Summer Palace. The festivities and sacrifices in connection with the Emperor’s Birthday being now over and the Court settled down to its usual routine, I hoped I might be allowed to go regularly to work on the portrait, and that Her Majesty would allow me to paint when she was not posing. There was much I could do between times, and she could pose but for a short time each day. Up to that time, Her Majesty had treated me as a guest at Court, whose amusement was the most important thing to be looked after. She seemed much interested in the work, but my painting was an incident and even the “Sacred Picture” a secondary consideration. All these walks, these delightful excursions, were perfectly charming, and, had I gone to the Palace to enjoy myself, or to study Her Majesty and Chinese manners and customs, I would have been perfectly satisfied. I had, in the Empress Dowager, a psychological study full of ever varying and constant interest. I was living through a unique experience, seeing what I could never hope to see again, but I was not allowed to paint on the portrait as much as I should have liked. Could I but have had permission to work more, I should have been very happy. Had I been able to speak Chinese well enough, I felt I would obtain what I desired; she had shown herself so uniformly kind. She probably felt I was enjoying myself more in this way than working at my painting.

While I thoroughly enjoyed the promenades with Her Majesty, I loved the daily sittings. Every portrait painter knows the sort of intimacy that establishes itself between him and his sitter, however unsympathetic the latter may be at first sight, which was certainly not the case in this instance. The effort of the painter to get under the exterior and discover the real person of his sitter; the desire to see the best side and make the most of it, meets generally with a sympathetic response. If the “rapport” is properly established, they get to know each other better by the time the portrait is finished than they could otherwise have done, perhaps in years. Though I saw Her Majesty so intimately at other times, I felt I was not seeing her “face to face” (figuratively speaking), except at the sittings.

ON THE ROAD FROM PEKING TO THE SUMMER PALACE

The morning after our return to the Summer Palace, my easel was again placed in the Throne-room. The portrait was taken down from its resting-place and work resumed. Her Majesty gave me a long sitting, and the portrait made a step ahead. If I had only had a place to work alone, where I might study the picture, when she was not posing, I could have made so many improvements! But I was obliged to possess my soul in patience, and work along for the short space of an hour or so a day and stop the moment Her Majesty felt fatigued, when my brushes and palette were whisked away, as if by magic. There was no chance to study the portrait or to do anything, except when the Empress Dowager and the crowd of attendants were present.

I had taken to the Palace only a small folding easel, which was not at all suitable for regular work on so large a portrait, but it was impossible to get a better one in Peking. Her Majesty, who observed everything, noticed that it was not convenient, and suggested that I draw a design for a large easel and give it to the Palace carpenters to copy. She thought they would be able to make me one. I did so, and they made me a very satisfactory working easel. When the eunuchs found that this Palace easel suited me, five others of different sizes were made. I asked for what reason, and was told that everything for Her Majesty was made in sixes. It would have been establishing a precedent, making an innovation, to have fewer than six easels for her portrait.

Her Majesty also ordered some large flat boxes, with lock and key, to be made for my materials. These boxes were covered in yellow, for they were to be used for the Sacred Picture, and must be in the Imperial color. I forgot to say the six easels had all been stained a bright yellow! A table, surmounted by one of these yellow boxes, occupied a prominent place in the Throne-room during the whole time this portrait was being painted. When I finished painting each day, the Chief Eunuch, himself, removed the picture from the easel, and a number of others came and took my brushes and palette, put away the easel and closed the yellow box and locked it. Our head eunuch carried the key to the box.

When the afternoon sitting was finished, we went out for another of those delightful promenades around the grounds. The days were now growing visibly shorter, and the evenings were beginning to be cool. As we went through the gardens, Her Majesty stopped at all her favorite points and looked for a few moments at the view, as if to greet it again, after her absence. She loved the Summer Palace and it always seemed a pleasure to her to return to it. We had tea in one of the tea-houses where there were tables and seats. She ordered the eunuchs to make a sort of blanc-mange of lotus-root flour, which was delicious, and, as she said, most wholesome. When the Empress Dowager goes for a walk, portable stoves and all the paraphernalia necessary for cooking a light repast are taken along. It seemed wonderful to me to see the way the Chinese could cook, with apparently so few conveniences. After this we had tea. The finest tea in China is sent to the Palace. The first leaves of the plantations all over the Great Empire are reserved for Their Majesties. Her Majesty, who is a great epicure, has her choice of these chosen leaves. She adds to the delicacy of its already fine flavor by putting into her tea-cup the blooms of dried honeysuckle, the flowers of jasmine, or other fragrant blooms. The honey from these flowers slightly sweetens the tea, besides giving it a delicate, subtle flavor, quite unique. These dried blooms are brought in a jade bowl, with two long cherry sticks, with which Her Majesty takes the flowers and places them in her cup, stirring them into the tea with these graceful wands. The Chinese never use a teaspoon. Her Majesty drinks her tea from a jade cup, which is placed in a curiously fashioned, cunningly wrought, open-work, silver saucer. The Chinese take their tea boiling hot, and the jade does not get so hot as a porcelain cup.

We continued our walk through the gardens after leaving the tea-house, and when we were passing a bed of flowers Her Majesty spied some curious grass, which she ordered the eunuchs to gather. When it was brought to her she deftly wove several blades of it into a perfectly recognizable representation of a rabbit. She did it so quickly I did not realize she was trying to make anything until she tossed the finished result over to me and asked me what I thought it was. It was unmistakable.

When we reached our objective point, one of the highest eminences in the grounds, with the whole panorama of the Western Hills spread out beneath us, and the setting sun glowing over all in brilliant splendor, it was a glorious scene. She called me up to her side and made a graceful, sweeping gesture of the hand that said, “This is all mine, but you may share it with me.” She had that sense of possession of nature’s beauties which all artistic souls feel, for their appreciation makes what they view their own. She felt it was hers, because she loved it so, and she knew I would appreciate it, which few of her “entourage” did, as none of them were such passionate lovers of nature as the Empress Dowager, and custom had dulled their perception of the beauty of the scene. The exquisite pleasure the contemplation of this glorious view gave me, made me tremble with delight. As the day was fading and as I was thinly clad, Her Majesty thought I was cold, and, seeing I had no wrap, she called to the Chief Eunuch to bring me one of hers. He selected one from the number that were always brought along for these promenades, and gave it to Her Majesty, who threw it over my shoulders. She asked me to keep it and to try to remember to take better care of myself in the future.

CHAPTER XIII THE STEAM-LAUNCH—SEMI-ANNUAL SACRIFICES TO CONFUCIUS

We began now to go out on the lake in the steam-launches, instead of the picturesque Imperial barge. The Empress Dowager is artistic and conservative enough to like the old-fashioned barge; but she is also intelligent enough to appreciate the advantages of other modes of locomotion, and has no prejudices; in fact, she rather likes trying new things. When the days were long, the air soft, and the bosom of the lake engirdled with its chain of blooming lotus, she preferred the barge; but when the shorter and cooler days came, when the lotus were no longer in bloom, she ordered the steam-launch for our promenades. She seemed now to like its swift and noisy progress as much as she had before enjoyed the softly gliding motion of the barge. Her Throne on the launch was on the prow, just outside and above the cabin, where the Princesses and Ladies sat. Her Majesty always wanted the fresh air and the view, and never went inside. The young Empress and the Ladies sat within the luxuriously fitted up cabin with its lounges and tables.

The first day we went out in the launch the engineer seemed not to have it quite under control, and we soon ran aground in a field of water-plants near the island. There was great consternation among the eunuchs when it was found the launch could not advance, even by putting on full steam. The engineer didn’t seem to know what to do. Her Majesty ordered the engines reversed, and this was tried, but it was some time before the launch moved. The Princesses and eunuchs became quite excited, but Her Majesty was perfectly unconcerned, and laughed at their fears for her safety. She said it would be no great matter for her to walk over to the island. It would only mean one pair of shoes the less! When the launch finally moved, the Chief Eunuch, not wishing to run the risk of another mishap, wanted to give word to the engineer to return; but Her Majesty would not hear of this, and insisted upon completing the excursion as she had at first planned it. We had several other mishaps, and the launch finally ran aground; and no effort of the engineers, no putting on of extra steam, was able to get us off again. Her Majesty kept her good humor, ordered her barge brought alongside, and we were all “transshipped.” We finished our tour on the lake as she had planned it, but in the barge instead of the launch. She is too intelligent not to use any means at hand to attain her ends, and she is intelligent enough to see that these ends can be attained, by some means or other, before she fixes upon them.

The Emperor of China, with the usual Chinese tolerance,—and the Chinese are the most tolerant people in the world as to religious faith,—is not only the head of one church, but of all the churches in China. He is, as Emperor, the Great High Priest of Heaven, the High Priest of Buddhism and Taoism, and is, of course, a Confucian; though this is a philosophy rather than a religion. But though a philosophy, there are certain rites and ceremonies observed by the Confucians. All the great ceremonies of the different cults are celebrated in the Palace temples with rigid impartiality and equal pomp. Whatever may be the individual leanings of the Emperor, and, of course, he must have his own preferences, he participates in each of these celebrations. But his official, public exercise of religion, is limited to the worship of Heaven and Earth, to which he makes annual public sacrifices in the Great Temple of Heaven at Peking.

The afternoon of our first steam-launch excursion, finished in Her Majesty’s barge, there was a splendid ceremony in the chapel at the foot of the hill crowned with the Temple of the Ten Thousand Buddhas, to the memory of Confucius, the great Sage, whose philosophy has directed the lives and laws of the Chinese people for nearly twenty-five hundred years. Though a philosopher like Plato, he is appreciated and his teachings followed by the masses, as well as the classes, in China. He is not a religious leader but an ethical teacher, and though many temples have been erected to his memory, they are like Halls of Science and not temples to a divinity. There are no images either of Confucius or the Sages in these temples. They are classic halls, bare of all church-like ornamentation. Quotations from the “analects,” painted on scrolls, cut into wood, and carved out of stone, adorn the walls, not only of the interiors of the temples, but of the courts and verandahs of the buildings. At the place where the altar would be in a temple, there is a plain niche, painted in red with a tablet bearing an inscription in gold, “The Seat of the Perfect One.” On either side are similar niches, containing the tablets of four other great Sages, among whom was Mencius. These semi-annual sacrifices are in commemoration of Confucius as an ethical teacher, a wise philosopher, a Sage. At this service in the Palace, the participants and celebrants were all in full Court dress. There was an address to the memory of the great Sage, with music and hymns; the latter were rhythmic verses, containing some truth inculcated by the Sage. There was an altar with a dragon table in front for offerings. There were sacrifices, incense, and music. The altar was rich with splendid vases, rare old bronze bowls, and incense-burners, and sweet with flowers and fruit. On the dragon table, which stood in front, were offerings of millet, meat, and wine. Tall cressets of open iron-work containing huge, burning pine-knots were placed in front of the raised platform, on which stood the altar, which was beautifully illuminated with tall candles in square, silver candelabra. The court in front of this temple, as well as the surrounding buildings, were hung with charming painted lanterns.

Their Majesties, with the Empress and Ladies, preceded and surrounded by eunuchs and officials, in full Court dress, went in ceremonious procession through the verandahed corridors, from Her Majesty’s Throne-room to the temple. Their approach was accompanied by the slow beating of drums. When they reached the temple, three yellow cushions were placed on the paved floor for Their Majesties and the Empress, and red cushions for the Ladies. The music was played in rhythmic strains, while Their Majesties knelt and prostrated themselves three times; the Empress and Ladies doing likewise. The officials and other participants knelt outside in the court. When the prostrations were finished, a yellow chair was brought for the Empress Dowager. She sat during the rest of the service, but the Emperor, the Empress, and Ladies remained standing during the whole celebration. This consisted of a number of genuflexions and prostrations by the celebrants, and a moving about of the offerings on the dragon table in a ceremonious and reverent manner. The chief officiant read the address from a long scroll. After finishing it, he placed it on a casket on the altar. The first part of the ceremony took place inside the temple, then the celebrants went out into the court and intoned the six hymns and made renewed prostrations. I was not able to understand enough of the hymns, or to get them sufficiently translated to make out their meaning. They were all of uniform length. They were in praise of Confucius and were called “Odes to Peace.” When all the verses were intoned, the scroll with the address, some of each of the offerings, were placed in the huge iron incense-burner, that stood in the center of the outer court, and set on fire by the chief celebrant, while one of the several flagons of wine that had made part of the offerings was poured over the blaze.

I had not expected to enter the temple with Their Majesties and the Ladies, but when we reached the door, the Empress drew me in with her. They seemed to realize that I enjoyed seeing these celebrations and to perfectly understand my not taking any active part in them. I always remained standing, but I listened reverently to the intoning of the hymns and the reading of the address. I conducted myself as I would at any religious ceremony, and they seemed to appreciate it.

When all was finished, Her Majesty told me to go up to the altar and examine the rare, old, bronze ornaments, the candelabra, etc. They explained to me that the address, which had been read, was burned, as it had filled its mission when it was read; that the ashes of a literary essay were a most fitting offering to the memory of Confucius, the great philosopher. When all was over, Their Majesties ordered the boats to come to the foot of the terrace, where the last part of the celebration had been made, and we returned to the Palace by way of the lake.

CHAPTER XIV THE PALACE EUNUCHS

The internal affairs of the Palace are managed by eunuchs, among whom there are all grades, all sorts and conditions. Some are clever literati given to study; some have the polished, insinuating manners of the courtier; some have a Mandarin rank of high degree; some are menials. There are actors and singers, cooks and gardeners, teachers and pupils, writers and readers. They occupy all sorts of positions, from Their Majesties’ body-guard to gate-keepers. In this hierarchy, Their Majesties’ Chief Eunuchs held the first place. Under each of these there are six eunuchs of high rank, all exceptionally clever, who have raised themselves to the positions they occupy in the Palace by their own efforts or by some special qualification.

Each of the hundreds of pavilions and palaces in the inclosures has a corps of eunuchs, presided over by a head eunuch. These act as guards to the premises, as well as servants, and keep things in readiness for a visit from Their Majesties. There is a head eunuch who directs the large corps of Palace gardeners; another who presides over the dozens of cooks in the Imperial kitchen; one is at the head of each of the departments, and each of these head eunuchs, chiefs of the different departments, is under the jurisdiction of the Chief Eunuch, for Her Majesty’s Chief Eunuch may be called the real Chief Eunuch of the Palace. He is not only older than the Emperor’s Chief Eunuch, but is more capable. The two Chief Eunuchs, from their position near the sacred persons of Their Majesties, have unusual power. They may make or mar the career of the eunuchs beneath them; and they not only have this power inside the Palace, but from their exceptionally fine opportunities to present petitions, to speak for or against certain people, they also have a great deal of power with people outside the Palace. Her Majesty’s Chief Eunuch has almost the power in Peking, among officials and courtiers, that “Son Eminence Grise” had at the Court of Louis XIII of France. He is courted and fawned upon, receives magnificent presents, and nobles of high degree wait upon his pleasure; but while he occupies this high position with outsiders, in the Palace I saw no evidence of his having any unusual power with Her Majesty, beyond that of one who has been in the life-long service of his master and who has the privileges resulting therefrom.

The peculiar position of a Chinese Emperor, which shuts him in his Palace like a Buddha in a temple, makes some sort of confidential private messenger an absolute necessity. There is much business of an unofficial kind, which must be transacted in a private way. The Chief Eunuchs are naturally called upon in such cases. When the Ruler of the Celestial Empire is a woman, the Palace becomes more of a gilded prison, a shut-in shrine, than even in the case of an Emperor. She cannot see officials, or even members of the Imperial clan, except in the Audience Halls. Thus a Chief Eunuch under an Empress would have even greater power than under an Emperor; and in this instance, Her Majesty’s Chief Eunuch, Li Lien Ying, is really of exceptional ability!

In person he is tall and thin. His head is, in type, like Savonarola’s. He has a Roman nose, a massive lean jaw, a protruding lower lip, and very shrewd eyes, full of intelligence, that shine out of sunken orbits. His face is much wrinkled and his skin like old parchment. Though only sixty years old, he looks seventy-five, and is the oldest eunuch in the Palace. He has been there since the age of ten. He has elegant, insinuating manners, speaks excellent Chinese—having a fine enunciation, a good choice of words, and a low, pleasant voice. If one may judge from appearances, he possesses ability in a marked degree. Of His Majesty’s Chief Eunuch I can say nothing. I only saw him on the days of the Theater, or some festival, when His Majesty passed the day with the Empress Dowager and the Ladies, when he was always accompanied by his suite.

Her Majesty’s second eunuch, Sui, who is of equal rank with Li Lien Ying, is as unlike him as two people could possibly be, both as to person, character, mental and moral nature. This one has none of the qualities of the intriguer—no [Machiavellian] schemes would be forwarded by him. He is almost a giant in size, tall and heavy. He is forty-six years old, and has a round, full face, without a line—a typical Chinese face, as we know it from pictures, benevolent and kind. He, also, is a good Chinese scholar, and, of course, speaks it elegantly. Her Majesty will have no one around her person who does not speak it well. If it be true that Her Majesty, in choosing her ministers, tries to have them the opposites of each other, so that she may thus hear the different sides of a question and arrive at more just conclusions, her two Chief Eunuchs seem to have been chosen in the same way.

There is a eunuch appointed to administer the punishment, ordered by Their Majesties for the eunuchs around their persons. For the higher eunuchs, this is generally the deprivation of a certain amount of their annual wages, or the loss of their buttons, for the buttons on the hats of Chinese denote their rank, and to be deprived of a button, or to have one of lower rank given, is considered a disgrace. I once saw Her Majesty very angry over the failure to carry out one of her orders, by two of the high eunuchs, and she ordered them to be deprived of two months’ pay. The head eunuchs of the different departments administer whatever punishment they see fit, to those over whom they are placed. This punishment is generally corporal. Sometimes they abuse their authority and are very cruel in administering this, but, as a rule, the eunuchs seem to be of a mild and peace-loving nature, rather than cruel and vindictive—inclined to condone the faults of their inferiors rather than punish them to the full extent of their authority. There seemed to be a feeling of “esprit de corps” among them—a spirit of mutual helpfulness.

Each of the higher eunuchs has a number of pupils among the lower grades, who call him “Master,” and whom he trains in manners and teaches his own specialties. The higher eunuchs seemed to take the liveliest interest in the good conduct, and literary, or other, advancement of these pupils, and they push their interests with Their Majesties in every way possible—each one, of course, trying to advance his pupils beyond those of some other eunuch.

Her Majesty has a great horror of opium smoking. If a eunuch, however high his position, indulged in it, the severest punishments she ever ordered were administered. They were not only deprived of so many months’ pay and loss of their buttons, but were sometimes banished from the Palace for a certain length of time, and even severe corporal punishment would be ordered. These stringent measures did not prevent some of them, however, from indulging surreptitiously in the narcotic, but they took the most extreme precautions to prevent its being found out. Her Majesty has unusually acute olfactories, especially for opium. This, it seems, can be detected by its odor, which hangs around the clothes, and, like the odor of the rose, one “can break the vase, it lingers there still.” But it seems the eunuchs have special linen clothes, which they put on for smoking, and these are given to be washed, immediately the fascinating pipe is finished. Unless one is an habitual smoker, the drug has very little outward effect and, except by the odor, it cannot be detected.

The eunuchs are very fond of all sorts of pets, and have in their quarters dogs without number, cats and birds. While the younger eunuchs generally depend for their advancement upon their teachers, who report favorably on them to Their Majesties, they sometimes attract the attention of Their Majesties, and may be raised out of their places by Imperial favor. Among the eunuchs assigned to my service in the Palace, was one who was fortunate enough to attract the Emperor’s notice. His Majesty had happened to notice him, carrying my wraps on one of the promenades with Her Majesty. He liked his face and manners and took him into his own service. The eunuch had a “button” bestowed on him and promised to mount very fast in grade. This eunuch had been in the Palace about fifteen years; and had His Majesty not happened to notice him, he might have lived and died in oblivion, and never had a button, for his “master” was dead and he had no protector to push his interests!

When one realizes that the Palaces of the Chinese Emperor are like towns, that their affairs are administered principally by the eunuchs, one can see there must be a good deal of intelligence among them, as well as great opportunities to add to their personal wealth.

I heard, before I went into the Palace, of the great power and unscrupulousness of the Chief Eunuchs; that it would be necessary to be very conciliatory toward them and make them many handsome presents. I did not find it so. I never made an effort to conciliate any of them, nor gave any handsome presents, and I found them all respectful, and I had every consideration shown me by them, and found them, on the whole, pleasant enough to deal with. Some of them were clever and interesting even, and they all had very good manners. In fact, I cannot too highly praise the manners of the Chinese, as a race. I quite concur in the opinion of a clever Frenchman, who said of China, “Aujourd’hui c’est là où les bonnes manières se sont refugiées.”

CHAPTER XV THE LITERARY TASTES AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF THE EMPRESS DOWAGER

When Her Majesty the Empress Dowager was Empress of the Western Palace, Co-Regent with the Empress of the Eastern Palace, who died in 1881, the Empress of the Eastern Palace was known as the “Literary Empress.” All State affairs were left to the stronger executive ability of the Empress of the Western Palace; while she of the Eastern Palace gave herself up to literary pursuits and led the life of a student. She was a woman of such fine literary ability that she, herself, sometimes examined the essays of the aspirants for the highest literary honors in the University of Peking. She was also a writer of distinction.

During the long Co-Regency of these two remarkable women, widows of the Emperor Hsien-Feng, one led the life of a student; the other, the active, militant life of the ruler. For the present Empress Dowager has been the real ruler of the great Chinese Empire for the last forty-five years. Had the Empress of the Eastern Palace not been such an exceptional light as a literary woman and had not Her Majesty, Tze-Hsi, possessed so many other and more remarkable qualities, the latter’s name might also go down to history as a “literary Empress,” for the Empress Dowager has literary qualities of no mean kind. She writes a graceful poem, is able to express herself in elegant Chinese, as well as in the ruder, more forcible Manchu language. She can write in literary style, fine idiomatic Chinese, and this is a rare accomplishment for a woman. The written Chinese language is quite different from that spoken by even the most cultivated. Imagery and figure abound to such a degree, literary form is so important, that many fine scholars are unable to write the language acceptably, except for practical purposes. Aside from Her Majesty’s literary acquirements, she has an enlightened taste, is a great reader of the classics, and a fine critic. She also loves poems of heroic adventure. One of her favorite historical characters is the Chinese Jeanne d’Arc, the warlike Maiden, Whar-Mou-Lahn, who went forth to battle in masculine guise, had many heroic adventures in her twelve years’ service, and, through them all, remained a virgin pure.

The Empress Dowager has a wonderful verbal memory. Memory, so highly esteemed by the Chinese, is most carefully cultivated, and is generally better developed with them than with us. Her Majesty’s memory is, however, considered exceptional, even among the Chinese. She can repeat pages, not only of the classics, but of her favorite authors. One of the widows of her son (the Emperor Tung-Chih), who came regularly every week to pay her respects to Her Majesty, is a very clever woman and a great favorite of her august mother-in-law. This lady also possesses a remarkable memory. On her visits to the Palace I used to hear Her Majesty and this Empress quoting from some of their favorite classics or poems. The quotations would pass from one to another, sometimes for a half-hour without stopping, and, at times, they would repeat in concert some favorite phrase. I will never forget how they looked: Her Majesty sitting at her Throne-table with her flowers or some light occupation, her daughter-in-law standing beside her, each of their faces lighted up with pleasure as they repeated line after line.

When the Empress Dowager went to her own apartments for her “siesta,” her reader would come bringing volumes of her favorite authors. Some days I could hear his voice rising and falling in regular cadence during the whole time she was resting in her apartments. When she was particularly interested in what had been read to her she would have the book taken out when she went for her daily promenade and would sit and read as she was carried along in her open chair, or was rowed along on the barge. This did not often happen, however, for she took such keen delight in all its manifestations, she preferred to read in Nature’s book when out-of-doors.

She is a great lover of the theater and prefers the classic, the old plays, to the modern Chinese drama. She had one new play staged, while I was in the Palace, with which she seemed to be much pleased. She studied the play for several days before it was given for the first time, and, at the first representation, she followed every line with intense interest. She sent her eunuchs several times to the stage to suggest changes in the rendering of certain parts and in the interpretation of certain lines. The Theater generally begins with a short play, which is often a light farce. She seemed sometimes to enjoy these very much and would laugh heartily at the good hits, which were often original additions by the actors, allusions to some passing event. Contrary to my preconceived idea as to the Chinese, they are witty and appreciate humor in others. The Empress Dowager has a fine sense of humor. She not only sees the point of a joke, but she can turn one very cleverly herself.

She is very particular about the way Chinese is spoken, a great stickler for purity of expression and elegance of style. There are as many dialects in China as there are Provinces in the Great Empire; and although the literati and gentry speak, what is called Mandarin Chinese, some of the most highly educated of the literati from the Provinces speak it with an accent. Her Majesty, who has a musical ear and great discernment as to sounds, gets very impatient when listening to Chinese spoken with an accent. It is said, other things being not quite equal, she will give the preference, in an appointment, to an official who speaks perfect Chinese and who has a good voice, especially if his office brings him often into the Presence. However, particular as she is, bad Chinese in a man of merit is not a bar to advancement, for Li-Hung-Chang, whom she appreciated so highly, and to whom she gave such preferment, is said to have spoken very indifferent Chinese.

Whether it be, that Her Majesty’s musical and exquisitely modulated voice, so fresh and silvery, so youthful, adds to the charm of her Chinese, when she speaks it, it sounds like beautiful rhythmic poetry. She speaks it so graphically, with such expression and graceful gestures, that it charms one even who does not understand the language.

One day when she was out for a walk, one of the directors of the gardeners was brought up to explain something to her, some change in the laying out of new flower beds. She listened a few moments, but I saw her frown and begin to look impatient. After a few more words from the poor man, who was evidently overcome by timidity and probably speaking worse Chinese than usual, Her Majesty turned to the Chief Eunuch and said, “Let him tell you and you can translate to me; I can’t stand any more of that language,” and she walked away, still frowning.

Another day, I heard the Empress Dowager tell one of the Ladies at Court (her daughter-in-law), who was also a great purist in the matter of language, about her own Chinese having been misunderstood by one of the eunuchs. There are many Chinese words almost exactly alike in sound, which are only differentiated by the inflection or tone. Thus there must be great accuracy of enunciation, and there must also be great accuracy of ear. Her Majesty had given an order to one of the eunuchs. The stupid fellow had misunderstood the inflection and had done the exact opposite. She was so amused and astonished, when she found that her tone had been misunderstood, that she did not reprove him for his stupidity.

One day, she corrected one of the Princesses for the pronunciation of a word, and she said (in an aside) it was not strange this Princess did not speak better, for her father’s Chinese was “execrable,” thus showing that even Princes do not always speak the language correctly.

One of the most precious gifts the Empress Dowager makes, and which is sacredly treasured by its recipients, is a scroll with a single great character written upon it by Her Majesty’s own hand. This is considered one of the most difficult feats of a Chinese writer. These characters are sometimes four feet long. One day we were invited to go into the Throne-room to see Her Majesty make some of these characters. When I went into the Great Hall, Her Majesty and the Ladies were already there. She was stirring a great bowl of India ink, for she is very particular as to its consistency and fluidity. When the ink suited her, she took from a eunuch standing near, who held a number, a huge short-handled brush, which she could hardly clasp in her small hand. She tried two or three, before she found one that pleased her, and, turning to me, said, “You see I also have my choice in brushes.” I asked Lady Yu-Keng to tell her that I thought her large brushes were more suitable for my hands and that my smaller ones would have been more appropriate for her. She laughingly replied she preferred the Chinese brush, and that her hands, small as they were, were able to wield it very satisfactorily, which was no vain boast.

When all was ready, and the huge scroll spread out before her on a table, she dipped her brush into the bowl of ink, held by the eunuch, and began the first stroke of one of these famous characters, in which she is said to equal the most proficient writers in China. I was amazed to see the firmness of her wrist and the beautiful clearness of her stroke, which deviated not a hair’s breadth from the line she wished to follow. She made six great characters on six of the scrolls. These characters meant “Peace,” “Prosperity,” “Longevity,” etc. When she had finished these, she said she feared her hand had no longer the firmness necessary for doing another.

While she was writing, the young Empress, the Princesses, and the eunuchs stood around, watching her with intense interest. They seemed to take great pride in her firmness of touch and her accuracy of line.

The Chinese written character must be made in a certain way. It must begin at a given part. The strokes must follow a given direction. The transversal strokes must be placed with mathematical precision. Nothing is left to the caprice or individuality of the writer. Any one, knowing the Chinese written characters, can tell you whether these complicated hieroglyphs were begun at the proper place or made in the proper way. They may look perfectly correct to the uninitiated observer who has a most accurate eye, and still not be so considered by the connoisseur.

THE EMPRESS DOWAGER WRITING A “GREAT CHARACTER”

The firmness of Her Majesty’s touch is also very apparent in her painting, for she is very artistic, and paints flowers in a charming way; in fact, she is remarkably clever with her fingers. She does not embroider now, as she formerly did, nor does she paint so much, for she says her eyes are not so good as they were, though she does not and has never worn glasses. There are a great number of artificial flowers made in the Palace, as no Manchu lady’s coiffure is considered complete without flowers. Her Majesty is very particular about the way these flowers are made, and when they were brought to her for inspection, with a deft touch she would give a defective flower the required form.

She often makes new designs for the flowers, having them woven into quaint figures, or having a number of small blooms made into a representation of some large flower. She sometimes had her diadem made of the snowy blooms of the fragrant jasmine, set with leaves and other small flowers, representing jewels, and she would wear this instead of her real jewels.

She is a great believer in one of the rules that Confucius lays down for the attainment of “Illustrious Virtue”; she “cultivates her person.” She is always immaculately neat. She designs her own dresses, and has her jewels set according to her own directions. She is very artistic in the arrangement of her flowers and jewels, and sees that they harmonize with her toilet. She has excellent taste in the choice of colors, and I never saw her with an unbecoming color on, except the Imperial yellow. This was not becoming, but she was obliged to wear it on all official occasions. She used to modify it, as much as possible, by the trimmings, and would sometimes have it so heavily embroidered that the original color was hardly visible.

She is a great epicure, and often designs new and dainty dishes. She has perfumes and soaps for her own use, made in the Palace. Although there are quantities of French and German soaps and perfumes bought for the Palace, she prefers an almond paste that she has made and often uses the soap made in the Palace. The maids would make these under her supervision. I have frequently seen them bring the mortar in which they were stirring it to Her Majesty, that she might see its progress, and she would energetically stir it herself. She is also a great lover of perfumes, and herself combines the oils of different flowers so as to produce most subtle and delightful perfumes. The Chinese say “colors, odors, and perfumes are good for the soul.” The Empress Dowager’s soul was certainly well cared for in this respect.

The Chinese are so near to nature, so simple in every way, that their influence over animals and birds is extraordinary, and seems to us almost magical. They are very fond of all animals, and especially so of birds. They train and teach these latter in wonderful ways. I have often seen a Chinese go near a singing bird’s cage and tell it to sing, and it would pour forth its little heart in melody. Birds never seem to have any fear of them. In the afternoons, in early spring, or on a fine day in winter, one may see hundreds of well-dressed and dignified men each carrying a covered bird cage, taking the birds out for the air. When they arrive at some open space in the city, or beautiful spot in the environs, they uncover the cages and hold them aloft, or simply sit with them on their knees, and the bird will sing as if its little throat would burst. They have absolutely no fear, and, though caged, seem to have a perfect understanding with their owners and obey their voices. They are often let out of the cages when taken out for exercise, but they will return to them at the call of their owners; and these birds are not hatched in cages—they are taken from the forests and trained.

Two of the religious precepts of the Chinese—“Hurt no living thing,” “Protect all living things”—are carried so far, they will allow an animal to live in misery rather than put him out of it by a speedy death. They love all animals and fear none. They say if you do not attack an animal, however dangerous he is, he will not harm you.

The Empress Dowager seemed also to possess this almost magical power over animals. Her dogs never paid the slightest attention but to her voice, and would obey her slightest gesture; but, fond as she was of them, she rarely caressed them; and she was so particular about her hands that, when she did stroke or fondle one of her pets, she would immediately after have a cloth wrung out of hot water brought to wipe her fingers. I never saw a dog in her arms but once, and this was a puppy which she took a fancy to when visiting her kennels one day, and she brought him back to the Throne-room in her arms and played with him for some time.

On one of our promenades in the park I saw a curious instance of her wonderful personal magnetism and her power over animals. A bird had escaped from its cage, and some eunuchs were making efforts to catch it, when Her Majesty and suite came into that part of the grounds. The eunuchs had found it impossible to entice the bird back into its cage; nor would it come upon a long stick with a perch attached, which they held up near the tree where it rested. The eunuchs scattered at the approach of Her Majesty, and she inquired the cause of their being here. The Chief Eunuch explained what they were doing, and the Empress Dowager said, “I will call it down.” I thought this was a vain boast, and in my heart I pitied her. She was so accustomed to have the whole world bow to her, she fancied even a bird in the grounds would obey her mandates, and I watched to see how she would take her defeat. She had a long, wand-like stick, which had been cut from a sapling and freshly stripped of its bark. She loved the faint forest odor of these freshly cut sticks, and in the spring often had one when she went out. They were long and slender, with a crook at the top. I used to think she looked like the pictures of fairies when she walked with these long, white wands. She would use them for pointing out a flower she wished the eunuchs to gather, or for tracing designs on the gravel when she sat down. To-day she held the wand she carried aloft and made a low, bird-like sound with her lips, never taking her eyes off the bird. She had the most musical of voices, and its flute-like sound seemed like a magical magnet to the bird. He fluttered and began to descend from bough to bough until he lighted upon the crook of her wand, when she gently moved her other hand up nearer and nearer, until it finally rested on her finger!

THE EMPRESS DOWAGER IN THE GARDENS OF THE SUMMER PALACE—CALLING A BIRD

I had been watching with breathless attention, and so tense and absorbed had I become that the sudden cessation, when the bird finally came upon her finger, caused me a throb of almost pain. No one else, however, of her entourage seemed to think this anything extraordinary. After a few moments she handed the bird to one of the eunuchs, and we continued on our promenade.

I saw another instance of her magnetic power, this time with a katydid. One of the Princesses, seeing one on a bush, tried to catch it, but in vain. Her Majesty held out her hand toward the beautiful insect, made a peculiar sound like their own cry, and advanced her outstretched finger until it rested upon it. She stroked it gently for a few moments, and then removed her fingers, and the katydid made no effort to fly until she put it down!

With the Empress Dowager of China

With the Empress Dowager of China

List of Illustrations

INTRODUCTORY

CHAPTER I MY PRESENTATION AND FIRST DAY AT THE CHINESE COURT

CHAPTER II PERSONAL APPEARANCE OF HER MAJESTY—A CHINESE REPAST— BOATING

CHAPTER III THE PALACE OF THE EMPEROR’S FATHER(PRINCE CH’UN, THE SEVENTH PRINCE)

CHAPTER IV HER MAJESTY’S THRONE-ROOM—SOME PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS

CHAPTER V THE YOUNG EMPRESS AND LADIES OF THE COURT

CHAPTER VI CONTINUATION OF THE PORTRAIT—HER MAJESTY’S DOGS

CHAPTER VII FESTIVITIES AT COURT

CHAPTER VIII HIS MAJESTY THE EMPEROR KWANG-HSU

CHAPTER IX THE EMPEROR’S BIRTHDAY

CHAPTER X PEKING—THE SEA PALACE

CHAPTER XI SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF HER MAJESTY—SECOND VISIT TO THE SEA PALACE

CHAPTER XII RETURN TO THE SUMMER PALACE

CHAPTER XIII THE STEAM-LAUNCH—SEMI-ANNUAL SACRIFICES TO CONFUCIUS

CHAPTER XIV THE PALACE EUNUCHS

CHAPTER XV THE LITERARY TASTES AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF THE EMPRESS DOWAGER

CHAPTER XVI THE GREAT AUDIENCE HALL—SOME OFFICIAL CUSTOMS

CHAPTER III THE PALACE OF THE EMPEROR’S FATHER
(PRINCE CH’UN, THE SEVENTH PRINCE)