The Faraway Bride

The Faraway Bride

By Stella Benson.

Table of Contents

1. Titlepage
2. Imprint
3. Author’s Note
4. Author’s Request to Reader
5. The Faraway Bride
   1. I
   2. II
   3. III
   4. IV
   5. V
   6. VI
   7. VII
   8. VIII
   9. IX
   10. X
   11. XI
   12. XII
   13. XIII
   14. XIV
6. Appendix
   1. I
   2. II
   3. III
   4. IV
   5. V
   6. VI
   7. VII
   8. VIII
   9. IX
   10. X
   11. XI
   12. XII
   13. XIII
   14. XIV
7. Endnotes
8. Colophon
9. Uncopyright

Imprint

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Author’s Note

A rereading of the Apocrypha, while I was living in Kanto, Manchuria, some years ago, seemed to me to show a curiously exact parallel between the position of the exiled Jews of Tobit’s day and that of the exiled White Russians in ours. Even most of the details of Tobit’s story it seemed to me, might be read as referring, without irrelevance or even improbability to the adventures of a White Russian refugee family. I am therefore very anxious that any reader of this book should keep, as it were, one eye on the Apocrypha, and, for this reason, I have included a complete copy of Tobit at the end of my book. I have not added Judith, since she makes but a shadowy and vicarious appearance in my story.

It is difficult for me now to read the Book of Tobit with an impartial eye. Perhaps over-frequent rereadings have thrown the book rather out of focus in my view, and perhaps I have identified too elaborately my Russians with the ancient Jews. Certainly the rather complacent narrative of old Tobit leaves me with the impression that he wrote down the experiences of his family as he would have liked them to happen, rather than as they did happen. Tobit’s partly tacit insistence on the I-told-you-so and father-always-knows-best motifs, suggests a wistfully self-compensating diary, rather than an impersonal record of facts, and his conception of his son’s exclusively filial orientation makes a modern reader sceptical as to whether a few thousand years could make so much difference to youthful human nature as all that. The Book of Tobit seems to me to give, in fact, purely Tobit’s side of what must have been a many-sided story. Old Tobit was the center of his picture, as Old Sergei in my book would have liked to be the center of his. My narrative discounts this patriarchal bias.

With regard to the setting of my story, my friend, the late Sir Valentine Chirol, and my husband, J. C. O’G. Anderson, have kindly supplied me with facts from their superior knowledge, to supplement and explain my own ignorant observations of the bewildering confusion of tongues and nationalities in the midst of which I have set my scene. This confusion is a commonplace of life in Manchuria, but may seem fantastic to readers unfamiliar with that part of the world.

Kanto, the part of Manchuria in which my Malinins live, is the Japanese name for a territory about the size of Wales, in the most southerly corner of the east side of Manchuria. To the south of it is Korea, to the east⁠—shutting it off from the sea⁠—is the Maritime Province of Russian Siberia and Vladivostok. To the north and to the west is the rest of Manchuria.

Kanto, though a part of Chinese Manchuria, is chiefly populated by Koreans. The next most important element numerically is the Chinese; then come Japanese, and finally a sprinkling of Russians. I do not here include the few European and American missionaries, who are not permanent residents.

In the days when Korea was a tribute-paying dependency of China, the exact frontier between Korea and Chinese Manchuria was not a matter of great importance, and was probably never very clearly defined. In 1909, however, with the Japanese annexation of Korea⁠—of 1910⁠—in sight, China and Japan signed the Chientao (or Kanto) Agreement, determining what would shortly be the frontier between the two countries. This agreement awarded Kanto to China, although Koreans constituted an enormous majority of the population. The reason for this seemingly illogical award was doubtless that the T’umen River, to the north of which Kanto lies, offered an excellent natural boundary line from the military and geographical points of view, ethnological claims not having in those days the weight which they have since acquired. The decisions of governments did not affect⁠—and have not affected to this day⁠—the development of the soil of Kanto by Koreans. The fertility of this soil, and the prosperity of the original Korean residents of this region, have attracted, and continue to attract, large numbers of immigrants from the south bank of the river⁠—i.e., from Korea proper.

The fact of Chinese sovereignty sufficiently accounts for the presence of Chinese in Kanto. But here, as nowhere else in Manchuria,