Part 7

The Prince of Kung is the brother of the late Emperor, and in 1860 was entrusted by him with the negotiations with Lord Elgin and Baron Gros. During the minority of the present Emperor, who is about twelve years old, the two Empresses-dowager[7] are nominally regents; but the Prince has the care of the Emperor’s education, and is virtually the regent of the empire. He was very nearly meeting with the fate of Humpty-Dumpty a little while back, for he was accused of selling places, abuse of patronage, and insolence in the Presence. His accuser was supposed to have been instigated by one of the Empresses who is hostile to him, and to have been made cat’s-paw of by a court intrigue. However that may be, the Empresses issued an edict in the style of the chorus in the _Agamemnon_ which shows how prosperity leads to insolence, and insolence to retribution, and the Prince was deprived of all his offices and glories. For a few days he remained in disgrace, but his brothers came to the rescue, a Grand Council was held, and the Prince was reinstated in the office of Foreign Affairs in consideration of his great services. This, however, did not look well for the Prince, as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs carries with it such unpopularity that its possession alone might be esteemed a doubtful pleasure; and it was not until his former honours were one by one restored to him that he could be said to be reinstated in court favour. The charges against him were declared unfounded, and it was agreed that the question of insolence was a family matter, and should not interfere with public affairs. Meanwhile his accuser goes about at large, but about as free as a mouse that a cat lets slip out of her claws for a second or two. I would not be in his skin for something.

A little before the hour fixed for the Prince’s visit, Hêng-Chi and Tung, two of the Board of Foreign Affairs, arrived to meet him. Hêng-Chi is the man whose name became known in Europe during the war in 1860, and during Parke’s and Loch’s captivity. He is a little thin old man very like Mr. Meadows, the actor at the Princesses’ Theatre, and a great dandy. He wore a pearl gray silk dress turned up with blue. His fan-case, chopstick-case, and other knick-knacks which he wears at his girdle, are richly embroidered, and mounted with seed pearls and a peculiar clouded pink coral which the Chinese call baby-face coral. His snuff-bottle is of the finest Fei Tsui, or emerald green jade, which is worth its weight in diamonds here, but of all his possessions none is in his eyes more charming than a large silver Geneva turnip watch which he displays with much pride. In his boot, which is of black satin, he carries his pipe with its tiny silver bowl, and a gorgeous Fei Tsui mouthpiece, together with sweetmeats, pills, and other trifles. His white cap with the red tassel of office hanging all round it, has a pink coral button (Hêng-Chi is a mandarin of the first button), and the peacock’s feather which falls from it is mounted in more Fei Tsui. To crown all, he wears a pair of spectacles as big as saucers, with broad silver rims. Never was a little old man so pleased with himself; his little airs and graces and _petit-maître_ ways are very funny. Tung is a jolly, fat, old mandarin and a great contrast to Hêng-Chi. He is a great man of letters, and has translated Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life” into Chinese verse. That is, Wade gave him a literal version of the English, and he made a poem of it, which is said to have great merit.

In due course of time the Prince arrived in his chair attended by a number of running footmen, and an escort mounted on ponies. Wade and I received him, and I was presented to him as Mi-ta-jên, the official name by which my arrival was announced to the Chinese Foreign Office—we are all obliged to have monosyllabic names for our intercourse with the Chinese. Sir F. Bruce was Pu-ta-jên (the Chinese cannot pronounce an R, so they rendered his name as Pu-lu-su), Wade is Wei-ta-jên. Ta-jên, literally “great man,” is a title denoting official rank, and is that which is borne by the mandarins.

The Prince is a young man about 28 years of age, judging by appearances. He is pockmarked, as indeed is almost every Chinaman I have seen. He is very shortsighted, and has the same trick of screwing up his eyes that I have, and I could not help thinking what a caricature we should have made as we sat opposite each other making faces. As soon as the Prince had taken his seat he drew his pipe out of his boot, and one of his own attendants brought him fire, serving him kneeling on one knee. Tea was brought as a matter of course, and then the conversation began. The great man had a short, flippant manner, and this it was that so nearly brought him to grief. He was immensely amused by an English bell-pull, and a mother-of-pearl paper-knife which lay on the table. My single eyeglass was a real boon to the Prince. Whenever he was getting the worst of an argument, and was at a loss for an answer, he would stop short, throw up his hands in amazement, and pointing at me cry out, “A single eyeglass! marvellous!” By thus creating a diversion at my expense he gave himself time to consider his reply. He seemed very friendly with Wade, and full of jokes and fun—of course I could not understand a word of what was said, but I took refuge behind a big cigar, and looked on vastly amused by our guest’s ways. I thought I detected a cruel, cunning look behind all his affectation of good-humour.

When the Prince had gone, Hêng-Chi, who, besides being part-Minister for Foreign Affairs, is also a general officer, and many other things, for pluralism is the order of the day, invited us to a review and breakfast afterwards on the 3rd of June, at six in the morning.

It may be a calumny, but I strongly suspect Hêng-Chi of dyeing his tail.

_Note._—The senior Empress-dowager, who had been the first wife of the Emperor Hsien Fêng, appears to have been more or less a cypher. The real power was wielded by the Empress-mother Tsu Hsi. This remarkable lady was according to some accounts a slave girl, according to others the daughter of a member of the imperial family. Nor are the two statements incompatible in a country where adoption of children holds good. The Emperor wishing to raise a girl in his harem to the highest position would only need to command one of his relations to adopt her, and she would at once be an imperial princess as much as if she had been born in the purple, or rather in the yellow.

The senior Empress-dowager, or Eastern Empress as she was called, died on 18th April 1881, and the power was then absolutely and solely in the hands of the Empress-mother. The latter’s son, the Emperor Tung Chi, had died without issue in 1875, and his cousin, a child of four, was raised to the Lung Wei or Dragon’s throne in his stead. The regency remained as before with the two Dowager-empresses.

Dr. Wells Williams, in his _Middle Kingdom_, a perfect encyclopædia on all Chinese matters, says, “The Empress-dowager is the most important subject within the palace, and His Majesty does homage at frequent intervals, by making the highest ceremony of nine prostrations before her. When the widow of Kia King reached the age of sixty in 1836 many honours were conferred by the Emperor. An extract from the ordinance issued on this festival will exhibit the regard paid her by the Sovereign:—

“Our extensive dominions have enjoyed the utmost prosperity under the shelter of a glorious and enduring state of felicity—our exalted race has become most illustrious under the protection of that honoured relative to whom the whole court looks up. To her happiness, already unalloyed, the highest degree of felicity has been super-added, causing joy and gladness to every inmate of the Six Palaces. The grand ceremonies of the occasion shall exceed in splendour the utmost requirements of the ancients in regard to the human relations, calling forth the gratulation of the whole Empire. It is indispensable that the observances of the occasion should be of an exceedingly unusual nature, in order that our reverence for our august parent and care of her may both be equally and gloriously displayed.... In the first month of the present winter occurs the sixtieth anniversary of Her Majesty’s sacred natal day. At the opening of the happy period the sun and the moon shed their united genial influences on it. When commencing anew the revolution of the sexagenary cycle the honour thereof adds increase to her felicity. Looking upward and beholding her glory, we repeat our gratulations, and announce the event to heaven, to earth, to our ancestors, and to the patron-gods of the empire. On the nineteenth day of the tenth moon, in the fifteenth year of Tao Kwang, we will conduct the princes, the nobles, and all the high officers, both civil and military, into the presence of the great Empress, benign and dignified, universally placid, thoroughly virtuous, tranquil, and self-collected, in favours unbounded; and we will then present our congratulations on the glad occasion, the anniversary of her natal day. The occasion yields a happiness equal to what is enjoyed by goddesses in heaven, and while announcing it to the gods and to our people, we will tender to her blessings unbounded.”—_Middle Kingdom_, vol. i. p. 410.

Rations to soldiers, honours, promotions, pardons, etc., were ordered in honour of the day—“Every perfectly filial son or obedient grandson, every upright husband or chaste wife, upon proofs being brought forward, shall have a monument erected with an inscription in his or her honour.” Soldiers who had reached the age of ninety or one hundred received money to erect an honorary portal, and tombs, temples, and bridges were ordered to be repaired; but, as Dr. Williams slily remarks, “how many of these exceedingly great and special favours were actually carried into effect cannot be stated.”

This edict of the Emperor Tao Kwang is of high interest at this moment (1900), as illustrating the position of the present Dowager-empress Tsu Hsi, which has seemed so incomprehensible to us Westerns. An ambitious woman, with the master mind of an Elizabeth or a Catherine, would, it is easy to perceive, find opportunities which she has certainly turned to the best, or worst, advantage.

_4th June._

I wished my friend General Hêng-Chi with all his soldiers a long way off when my boy came to pull me out of bed at daybreak yesterday morning. We had had a great storm the night before, so the dust was laid, but _en revanche_ the streets were a sea of mud, and many of them regular rivers, and we had to flounder on, our horses putting their feet in holes at every step. It took us nearly an hour and a half of this work to get to the parade ground on the Anting plain. The ground was kept by means of sticks and red string, with a soldier at each stick. We were shown straight to a small blue tent, where the general received us with much ceremony. When we had drunk tea the three generals, the Russian Embassy, and ourselves left the tent and took up our place on a small mound. Our appearance was the signal for the military music to strike up. The band was composed of about twelve Chinamen, and their instruments were large sea shells or conches, out of which they produced the most dismal and distressing and continuous howl that it ever was my bad luck to listen to. I hardly know what to compare it to. You have heard the noise in a shell—it was like that, but magnified a million times. As soon as we had taken our position, a soldier in front of us waved a huge flag, and the business of the day began. There were about two thousand soldiers, and they were to exercise, not with the swords, and bows, and shields of “the Braves,” but according to our drill book, which Wade has translated for them, and with rifles and guns given them by the Russians. They went through their evolutions respectably, so said Wade, who is an old soldier and a first-rate drill; but I own that when they advanced close up to us and delivered a volley bang in our faces, I felt that it was not unlikely that, as at our Volunteer reviews, a stray ramrod might have been left in a rifle. However, no accident occurred, barring the bursting of the powder box of one of the big guns, by which four men were severely scorched and five put _hors de combat_, for the lieutenant in charge of the gun was then and there collared and summarily bambooed, _coram populo_, for carelessness in giving the word to fire before the powder box was closed. Such is discipline!

The sun was beginning to be very powerful, so it was a great relief when the review was declared to be over, and it was announced that each of the men was to receive three halfpence for his good conduct that day in the field. Upon the hearing of this joyful intelligence, the army to a man went down on one knee, in token of gratitude, though they knew perfectly well that they never would see the money. Poor devils!

Breakfast was served in a temple hard by. When we sat down Hêng-Chi was not to be found. It turned out that, with a thoughtfulness which would have done credit to many a more civilised host, he had gone to see that the men of our and the Russian escorts were well cared for.

A Chinese meal exactly reverses the order of the things which is practised in Europe. First came cups of tea, and when these were all cleared away two tiny saucers were placed before each person. Then the dessert and sweets were put upon the table; oranges, apples, candied walnuts, sweets of all kinds, hemp seed done up with flour and sugar, apricot kernels preserved in oil and dried, and other delicacies. Next came the savoury meats—of these the most remarkable were sea-slugs, like turtle-soup in taste, bamboo sprouts, sharks’ fins, and deers’ sinews—all gelatinous dishes are the most highly prized; the famous bird’s-nest soup is just like isinglass not quite boiled down. Finally came a sort of soup of rice. I found it very difficult at first to eat with chopsticks. The manner of eating is to dip your chopsticks into any one of the bowls, and transfer a morsel to your own saucers, which are not changed, neither are the chopsticks wiped, during the whole proceeding. If you wish to pay a person a compliment, you select a tit-bit with your own chopsticks and put it on your neighbour’s plate, and he does the same in return. This gives the entertainment the appearance of an indecorous scramble, for one is continually leaning across two or three people to repay some civility. The dishes are very rich, and I should think unwholesome in the extreme. There were upwards of sixty different eatables put upon the table, and I must own that although my chopsticks went into nearly every little bowl, there was not one which did not please my taste. Native wine was served to us in little cups of the size of our liqueur glasses; it had rather a pleasant taste, and was very dry. As soon as breakfast was over the Chinese gentlemen produced out of their boots—which seem an inexhaustible receptacle for everything, from tobacco to state papers—small pieces of paper, with which they wiped their mouths and ivory chopsticks, and then came a piece of Chinese politeness which is very offensive to Europeans; for it is good manners here, out of compliment to the host, and in token of having eaten well and been satisfied, to produce the longest and loudest eructations, and Hêng-Chi and the two generals left nothing to be desired in that respect, making a great display of good breeding. Tea and conversation in the court of the temple brought my first Chinese entertainment to a close. I can’t tell you how strange it seemed to me to begin with dessert and end with soup!

LETTER VI

PEKING, _23rd June 1865_.

Since I wrote to you last I have neither seen nor done anything worth recording. The thermometer has been standing at from 95° to 107° in our courtyard, so there is not much temptation to go sight-seeing, or even to move outside the Legation; inside, the days are as like as twins. However, there is a bag going to-day, so I must try and patch up a letter.

We are thinking of making a move to the hills next Monday; we have almost decided on a temple called Pi Yün Ssŭ, about 12½ miles from this. I shall be very glad to go, for the town is becoming abominably stuffy and hot, and the dust is something beyond belief. We shall probably stay six weeks or two months, coming into Peking on mail days. We are forced to take our whole establishment with us, so it is not worth while going for a shorter time.

By the bye my establishment has been increased by a teacher; not as in Europe, a master who is paid so much to come for an hour a day, but a man who regularly enters my service, and is at my beck and call whenever I want him. I have taken a header into Chinese, and am floundering about in a sea of difficulties. One great disadvantage that one labours under is that the native teachers, and there are no others, of course don’t speak a word of any language but their own. At first, therefore, Ku, that’s my man’s name, and I used to sit and look at one another in a hopeless state of unintelligibility, until either he got bored, made signs of having a stomach-ache, and took his leave, or I could stand him no longer and dismissed him. However, it is surprising how quick a man may pick up, not the language of a strange country, but a jargon that will pass current, if he is dependent upon it for the everyday necessaries of life. Teachers, servants, cooks, and grooms, all must receive their orders in Chinese; shopping and bargain-driving increase one’s stock of words; so one way or another Ku and I get on pretty tolerably. He will accompany me to the hills, and as I mean to get through much work there, I hope that by the time you get this letter I shall be well started up the stream.

A pleasanter addition to my personnel, and a sweeter, for he does not eat garlic nor smoke opium, is a small Manilla poodle, Nou-nou by name, whom I have inherited. He has consoled the exile of a succession of diplomatists at Peking, and has finally fallen into my hands. He is the jolliest little dog, and has the most companionable ways. Although only a shade bigger than your Tiny, he is as plucky as Tom Sayers, and is the terror of strange dogs and Chinamen; indeed his valour being much too great for his body often brings him to trouble. For many years he would fly at any dog that he saw in any part of the Legation, and bid him get out of his majesty’s way; but now he is no longer in his _première jeunesse_, having received much hard usage from dogs over whom as puppies he had been used to exercise a terror, especially from one big black retriever, who won’t stand any nonsense. Nou-nou has taken possession of our courtyard, where by tacit consent the other dogs seem to respect his authority. If one of them so much as shows his nose there, Nou-nou pricks his ears, his tail curls as crisply as of old, and he flies at the intruder, who quickly disappears. Here Nou-nou leads a happy life; every one has a kind word for him, and his only grievance is, that on Mondays and Thursdays he is carried off by a big Chinaman, from his holy looks like a pre-Raphaelite picture, known as “the apostle,” and summarily washed.

We have better news from Shantung. The Imperialist troops have driven back the rebels. There is now no danger of this province being invaded, which might have been a serious thing for us, and certainly would have resulted in the sacking of Tientsing. It is really provoking, after all the pains that have been taken to induce this wretched Government to save itself, which it could easily do by the most ordinary exertion, to see half a dozen archers outside the gates making such practice at a target twenty yards off as any girl of eighteen, member of a toxophilite club at home, would be ashamed of. Yet this is the stuff which the Chinese Government are content to accept as the means of putting down the insurrection. The troops that they are drilling in the European fashion are merely a sop to foreign representatives, and not the evidence of earnest wishes to improve. Self-help and self-improvement seem repugnant to the nature of this belly-patting Buddhist nation. They are willing enough to get foreign officers, especially Englishmen, in whom the example of Colonel Gordon has given them unbounded confidence, to drill and lead their troops; but they will do nothing for themselves; and there is a class of superior officers (such as Li, the governor of the province in which Shanghai is situated) who, having acquired a certain reputation for valour and military ability among their own people, consider it beneath their dignity to serve under foreign officers. The obstacles which such men throw in the way of the latter, together with the uncertainty of being able to obtain supplies and pay for the troops under their command, render their position intolerable, as Colonel Gordon found on more than one occasion. The English officers who have been lent to instruct the Imperialists have found their way in many instances anything but smooth, and have had great difficulty in carrying out the measures which they deemed necessary. Under these circumstances, it is not to be wondered at that the rebels, whose ranks are swelled by the local banditti, secret societies, and Imperialist soldiers mutinous for want of pay, should still show a head.

With this internal difficulty pressing them sorely, the Chinese continue persistently to break their treaty engagements with the Great Powers, any of which, if it were so minded, has a handle for blowing up the whole concern. Wên-Hsiang, who is the chief of the Board of Foreign Affairs [which he virtually directs, although the Prince of Kung is nominally at its head], and who is the most advanced and patriotic man in the Government, is fully conscious of the danger of the situation; but unfortunately he is a timid man, and it is one thing to convince a Chinaman, and another to induce him to act upon his conviction. So the treaties continue to be broken, and the existence of the present dynasty in China hangs upon the patience of foreign governments, who have too great a stake in the country to sink the ship so long as there is a hope of her floating.