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.
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 summerhouses 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 latticework, 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
