With the Empress Dowager of China

Ladies in their sitting-room at the left of Her Majesty’s Throne-room and there await dinner. The young Empress would then teach me Chinese. She was very particular about my accent and seemed to take a real interest in my progress. The Chinese language is very difficult for a beginner, even for one who has a good ear, for the “tone” or inflection with which you pronounce the word may change its meaning. Sometimes one after the other of the Princesses would repeat the same word in different tones and make me repeat it and then give the meaning of each tone. They would sometimes make puns on words, or give me a string of difficult words for the accent and to improve my enunciation, as the French teach the children, “Trois gros rats dans trois gros trous.” When I would finally get quite tangled up with these words I would retaliate with “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.” This would end the lesson for that day, for they would all try to say it and get so hilarious that there was no effort at further study, and dinner would be announced in the midst of the fun.

Sometimes the young Empress and the Ladies would play cards in the evenings. Her Majesty seemed only to like her fairy game! The cards were narrow slips of pasteboard with curious devices on each, but little more than an inch wide, and there were one hundred and fifty in a pack. I never succeeded in getting into the merits of the game. Sometimes when the Ladies felt industriously inclined, they would weave a kind of braid. The threads, gold, silver, or silk, were attached to the center of a wooden table and were weighted at the ends. They would weave these in and out into cunningly fashioned braids and ribbons. The Princesses did a great deal of beautiful embroidery, making their own shoes, which are of exquisitely embroidered satin, but they could not do this at night, for only candles are used in the two Peking Palaces, the Summer Palace being the only one in China lighted by electricity.

One night at dinner the young Empress asked me to come earlier than usual the next morning, as there was something she wished me to see. Several eunuchs were waiting at the gate of the Palace to conduct us to the young Empress when we arrived at nine o’clock the next morning, and I then learned this was her Birthday. I hurried in and found the Imperial Princess and all the Ladies of the Palace, besides a number of visitors, standing in front of the young Empress’s pavilion. They told me she had asked them to wait to present their congratulations until I came, and said that I was to go in first. I did so, and there, on a throne, sat the young Empress in full Court dress, wearing the Court coiffure, with its veil of pearls, which was most becoming to her narrow patrician face. She was looking very sweet and gracious and held out her tiny hand to me on my entrance. I bowed low over it and kissed it, and wished her from the bottom of my heart “ten thousand” years of happiness and all kinds of “felicitous omens.” I then started to move out, but she told me to remain in the room at one side and watch the Princesses and Ladies as they came in. Each made the prostrations before her and presented a jade ruyie,8 which she received with due ceremony⁠—the same ceremony as for the Emperor’s and Empress Dowager’s Birthday!

But these winter days were not all given up to the Theater and festivals. There were some days of sadder import. Days of mourning were often celebrated at the Palace. The anniversary of the deaths of some Emperor or Ancestor was of frequent occurrence. It seemed to me they celebrated the anniversary of the death of every Emperor of the Dynasty! On these days there would be sacrifices at the ancestral tablets and religious ceremonies early in the mornings. The Empress Dowager and the whole Court would wear mourning for the day and there was never any sort of amusement. White, which is full mourning, is not worn on these anniversaries after the third, but violet and blue (second mourning) is put on. The flowers worn in the coiffure were also in violet, white or blue, the mourning colors. One night at dinner the young Empress, who acts as Mistress of Ceremonies in the Palace, told me the following was a day of mourning. She asked me if I would wear one of the mourning colors, as it was the anniversary of the death of the Emperor Tung-Chih (the Empress Dowager’s son).

The next day I put on a black dress, our mourning, and wore violet flowers in my hair. When we entered, Her Majesty was sacrificing at the small shrine in her sitting-room. She was dressed in dark violet, heavily trimmed with black, and had not a flower of any kind in her hair⁠—only a few pearls. She looked very sad and was more earnest and reverent at the sacrifice than usual, but when she had finished her sacrifice, she bade us “Good morning” and inquired after our health, with her usual consideration. We soon left the Throne-room for my working-hall, and I did not see her again until after our dinner with the Empress and Ladies, when we went into the Throne-room to make our adieus. As I had not been wearing black for some time (as Her Majesty said she didn’t like it), she now noticed that I had it on and she asked Lady Yu-Keng, in an aside, “why.” She was told that when I knew what anniversary it was, I had put it on on that account. She seemed much touched, took my hand in both hers, and said, “You have a good heart to think