With the Empress Dowager of China

girls, and when the family went up to bow and repeat the salutation to Her Majesty, the younger daughter, only five years old, refused either to make the bow or repeat the salutation, but sat down on the floor and cried! The Empress Dowager waited patiently for the mother to correct the little girl, for she is very fond of children and disposed to condone their faults. The little girl would not, however, listen to reason and continued to show temper. Her Majesty could not allow such a breach of the “Proprieties,” even in a child of this age, and the high rank of the family of the little girl made it the more imperative that she should conform to the rules of Propriety and observe the etiquette of the Court. When Her Majesty saw that all efforts at bringing her to reason were fruitless, she ordered the child to be taken away. Whereupon the mother began crying, and begged her not to be offended with the little girl. She replied, “Do you think a person of superior intelligence could be offended with a baby? I send you out of the Palace to teach you a lesson, which you must teach your child. I do not blame her; I blame you and pity her; but she must suffer as well as yourself. You must teach your child that ‘it is by the rules of propriety that the character is established’ (Confucius)”; and she was inexorable. The family left the Palace and was not invited again for some time.

XXIII

Her Majesty’s Anxiety⁠—Her Birthday

Her Majesty was looking tired and anxious these days; the Audiences were unusually long, and despatches were arriving all during the day. She would often go to the Gardens immediately after her Audience for solitary walks, unattended by the Ladies, and when she went out for the walk, accompanied by the Empress and Princesses, she would sit distraught and abstracted before the finest views and those she loved most. She seemed absentminded, and when some eunuch with the official message would kneel before her, awaiting her order to deliver his message, she would recall herself with an effort. One day when we were out, after days of this anxiety, and she was sitting alone in front of the “Peony Mountain,” the Empress and Princesses standing in a group at a little distance, she looked a pathetic figure. Her strong face looked tired and worn. Her arms hung listlessly by her sides and she seemed almost to have given up, and I saw her, furtively, brush a tear away. The days were so like each other at the Palace, the Chinese dates being different from ours, I lost my reckoning until I had a Tientsin paper, and I saw that the date on which the Russians had promised to evacuate Manchuria had passed and they were making no move toward doing so; and that there were rumors of war between Japan and Russia. This, then, must be what was weighing upon the mind of the Empress Dowager. A few days later a telegram was handed her in the Throne-room while she was posing, that seemed to greatly agitate her. It was from Kwang Hsi, and reported the ineffectual attempts of the authorities to put down a serious rebellion there. Thus, there were interior as well as exterior troubles to make her anxious. She seemed to take these State troubles to heart; and it was touching to see her anxiety, which she made but little effort to conceal when surrounded only by the Ladies. The Emperor, on the contrary, preserved his usual calm exterior, and if he was racked by anxiety, showed no evidence of it. This may have been because he had schooled himself to hide his feelings. Be that as it may, his face had always that enigmatic smile lurking around the corners of his mouth. I fancied, though, his eyes looked more resigned and sadder than usual.

The date of the Empress Dowager’s Birthday (November 16) was approaching, and preparations to celebrate it were beginning. She was determined to keep this celebration very simple. She issued edicts prohibiting the high Officials and Viceroys from sending the extravagant presents which always pour in at the celebration of the birthday of anyone of her age in China. She recommended great economy in expenditures for the celebration, saying it would be improper and unworthy at this time of National distress, when the Foreign Indemnity was not yet paid, to make a large outlay for her Birthday. The celebration of a birthday in China is a great event, almost a religious ceremony, and is observed with great rejoicings by all classes. The poorest in the land, if they are not able to keep any other festival, always celebrate with as much pomp as possible the birthdays of their parents. This is one of the duties enjoined by the Book of Rites, and, in spite of Her Majesty’s expressed wishes on the subject, the Emperor could not allow her Birthday to pass without a fitting celebration.

The Emperor beseeched Her Majesty “on bended knee” to allow him to have her Birthday celebrated with the same pomp as usual⁠—to permit him to add another honorific title to the sixteen she already possessed⁠—but though she was very proud of her titles, which the Ministers and Emperor had conferred upon her at different times, she was inexorable on this point, for the adding of a new title would necessitate an annual grant of twelve thousand dollars in gold. She also insisted that everything must be on a smaller scale than usual. She was, one could well see, in no happy frame of mind. There was none of the enthusiasm she had shown over the preparations for the Emperor’s Birthday. Then she was in gay good humor. She then evidently fully believed that things were going well for the State, that China would soon obtain her full rights in Manchuria again; then everything