Kuang Hsu deserves a place in history as the prize iconoclast. He sent a cold shiver down the spine of the literati by declaring that a man's fitness for office should not depend upon his ability to write a poem, or upon the elegance of his penmanship. This was too much. The literati argued that at the rate at which the Emperor was going, it might be expected that he would do away with chop-sticks and dispense with the queue.—Rounsevelle Wildman in "China's Open Door."
The year that Kuang Hsu ascended the throne a great calamity occurred in Peking. The Temple of Heaven—the greatest of the imperial temples, the one at which the Emperor announces his accession, confesses his sins, prays and gives thanks for an abundant harvest, was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. When the Emperor worships here it is as the representative of the people, the high priest of the nation, and his prayers are offered for his country and not for himself. There are no idols in this temple, and his prayers go up to Shang-ti the Supreme Being "by whom kings reign and princes decree justice." When therefore instead of giving rain Heaven sent down a fiery bolt to destroy the temple at which the Son of Heaven prays, the people were struck with dismay.
The pale faces of the women, the apprehensive noddings of the men, and the hushed voices of our old Confucian teachers as they spoke of the matter, indicated the concern with which they viewed it. Here was a boy who had been placed upon the throne by a woman; he was the same generation as the Emperor who had preceded him, and hence could not worship him as his ancestor. It augured ill both for the Emperor and the empire, and so the boy Emperor began his reign in the midst of evil forebodings.
During the nine years that Kuang Hsu had nominal control of affairs a series of dire calamities befell the empire. Famines as the result of drought, floods from the overflow of "China's Sorrow," war with Japan, filching of territory by the European countries, while editorials appeared daily in the English papers of the port cities to the effect that China was to be divided up among the powers. Then too Kuang Hsu was childless and there was no hope of his giving an heir to the throne.
Times and seasons have their meanings for the Chinese. Anything inauspicious happening on New Year's day is indicative of calamity. Mr. Chen, a friend of mine, had become a Christian contrary to his mother's wishes. When his first child was born it was a girl, born on New Year's day. His mother shook her head, looked distressed, and said that nothing but calamity would come to his home. His second child was a boy, but the old woman shook her head again and sighed saying that it would take more than one boy to avert the calamity of ones first baby being a girl born on New Year's day, and it was not until he had five boys in succession that she was finally convinced.
There was an eclipse of the sun on New Year's day of 1898 which foreboded calamity to the Emperor. During the summer of this year he began his great reform, and in September the Empress Dowager took control of the affairs of state and Kuang Hsu was put in prison, never again to occupy the throne. His prison was his winter palace, where, for many months, he was confined in a gilded cage of a house, on a small island, with the Empress Dowager's eunuchs to guard him. These were changed daily lest they might sympathize with their unhappy monarch and devise some means for his liberation. Each day when the guard was changed, the drawbridge connecting the island with the mainland was removed, leaving the Emperor to wander about in the court of his palace-prison, or sit on the southern terrace where it overlooked the lotus lake, waiting, hoping and perhaps expecting that his last appeal to Kang Yu-wei in which he said: "My heart is filled with a great sorrow which pen and ink cannot describe; you must go abroad at once and without a moment's delay devise some means to save me," might bring forth some fruit.
Whether this confinement interfered with the health of the Emperor or not it is impossible to say, but from the first he was made to pose as an invalid. As his failing health was constantly referred to in the Peking Gazette, the foreigners began to fear that it was the intention to dispose of the Emperor, and such pressure was brought to bear on the government as led them to allow the physician attached to the French legation to enter the palace and make an examination of His Majesty. He found nothing that fresh air and exercise would not remedy and assured the government that there was no cause for alarm, and from that time we heard nothing more of his precarious condition.
One day not long after the coup d'etat a eunuch came rushing into our compound, his face scratched and bleeding, and knocking his head on the ground before me, begged me to save his life.
"What is the matter?" I inquired.
"Oh! let me join the church!" he pleaded.
"What do you want to join the church for?" I asked.
"To save my life," he answered.
"But what is this all about?" I urged, raising him to his feet.
"You know the eunuch who came to you to buy books," he said.
I assured him that I knew him.
"Well," he continued, "I am a friend of his. The Empress Dowager has banished him, burned all the books he bought for the Emperor, and I am in danger of losing my head. Let me join the church, and thus save my life."
All I could do was to inform him that this was not the business of the church, and after further conversation he left and I never saw him again.
Day after day as the Emperor received the Peking Gazette on his lonely island he saw one after another of his coveted reforms vanish like mist before the pen of his august aunt. Nor was this all, for often the rescinding edicts appeared under his own name, and by the New Year, when he was brought forth to receive the foreign ministers accredited to his court, scarcely anything remained of all his reforms but the Peking University and the provincial and other schools. It is not to be wondered at therefore that he was reticent and despondent. What promises of good behaviour it was necessary for him to make before he was even allowed this much liberty, it is useless for us to conjecture.
Following this audience the Empress Dowager, who up to this time had been seen by no foreigner except Prince Henry of Prussia, decided to receive the wives of the foreign ministers. Her motives for this new move it is impossible to determine. It may have been to ascertain how the foreign governments would treat her who had been reported to have calmly ousted "their great and good friend the Emperor," to whom their ministers were accredited. Or it may have been that she hoped by this stroke of diplomacy to gain some measure of recognition as head of the government. She would at least see how she was regarded.
The audience was an unqualified success. The seven ladies received were charmed by the gracious manner of their imperial hostess, who assured them each as she touched her lips to the tea which she presented to them that "we are all one family," and up to that period of her life there was nothing to indicate that she did not feel that the sentiment she expressed was true. Up to the time of the coup d'etat, as Dr. Martin says, "she herself was noted for progressive ideas." "It will not be denied by any one," says Colonel Denby, "that the improvement and progress" described in his first volume, "are mainly due to the will and power of the Empress Regent. To her own people, up to this period in her career, she was kind and merciful, and to foreigners she was just." From the time of her return to the capital after their flight in 1900 till the time of her death she became one of the greatest reformers, if not the greatest, that has ever sat upon the dragon throne. One cannot but wish therefore in the interests of sentiment that it were possible to overlook many things she did from 1898 to 1900, which in the interests of truth it will be impossible to disregard. Nevertheless we should remember that she was driven to these things by the filching of her territory by the foreigners, and by the false pretentions of the superstitious Boxers and their leaders, and in the hope of preserving her country.
Her first act after imprisoning Kuang Hsu was to offer a large reward for his adviser Kang Yu-wei either alive or dead. Failing to get him, "she seized his younger brother Kang Kuang-jen, and with five other noble and patriotic young men of ability and high promise, he was beheaded September 28th, while protesting that though they might easily be slain, multitudes of others would arise to take their places." One of my young Chinese friends who watched this procession on its way to the execution grounds told me that,—
"The scene was impossible to describe. These five young reformers," after expressing the sentiments quoted above from Dr. Smith, "reviled the Empress Dowager and the conservatives in the most blood-curdling manner."
I have already spoken of Wang Chao the secretary of the Board of Rites who presented the memorial which caused the dismissal of the six officials of that body, and, indirectly, the fall of the Emperor. Some time before writing this petition he called at our home requesting Mrs. Headland to go and see his mother who was ill. When his mother recovered he sent her to Shanghai, and at the time of the coup d'etat he failed to get out of the city and went into hiding. Some days afterwards a closed cart drove up to our home and to our astonishment he stepped forth. We expressed our surprise that he was still in Peking, and asked:
"Has the Empress Dowager ceased prosecuting her search for you reformers?"
"Not yet," he answered.
"And what is she doing?" we inquired.
"Killing some, banishing others, driving many away from the capital, while still others are going into self-imposed exile."
"Does the Emperor know anything about this?" we inquired.
"No doubt," he replied. "Everybody knows it, why not he?"
"That will make his imprisonment all the harder to bear," we suggested.
"Quite right," he answered.
"There is general alarm in the city that the Emperor himself will be disposed of; what do you think about it?"
"Who can tell? He has not a friend in the palace except the first concubine, and, I am told, that she like himself is kept in close confinement. The Empress stands by her aunt, the Empress Dowager, while the eunuchs now are all her tools. The officials who go into the palace to audiences are all conservative and hence against him, though I suppose they never see him."
"Do you suppose he ever sees the edicts issued in his name?"
"Not at all. They are made by the conservatives and the Empress Dowager and issued without his knowledge."
"And what do you propose to do?" we inquired.
"I shall leave for Shanghai as soon as I can safely do so," he replied.
Before the year had passed the Empress Dowager had been induced or compelled to select a new Emperor. We cannot believe that she did it of her own free will, and for several reasons. First, the child selected was the son and the grandson of ultra conservative princes, and we cannot but believe that as she had placed herself in the hands of the conservative party, it was their selection rather than hers. Second, it must have been a humiliation to her ever since she discovered that her nephew, whom she had selected and placed upon the throne in order to keep the succession in her own family, being the same generation as her son who had died, could not worship him as his ancestor, and hence could not legally occupy the throne, though as a matter of fact such a condition is not unknown in Chinese history.
But if her humiliation was great, that of our boy-prisoner was still greater, for he was compelled to witness an edict, proclaimed in his own name, which made him say that as there was no hope of his having a child of his own to succeed him, he had requested the Empress Dowager to select a suitable person who should be proclaimed as the successor of Tung Chih, his predecessor, thus turning himself out of the imperial line. That this could not have been her choice is evidenced, further, by the fact that just as soon as she had once more regained her power, she surrounded herself with progressive officials, turned out all the great conservatives except Jung Lu, and dispossessing the son of Prince Tuan, at the time of her death selected her sister's grandchild and proclaimed him successor to her son and heir to the Emperor Kuang Hsu, in the following edict:
"Inasmuch as the Emperor Tung Chih had no issue, on the fifth day of the twelfth moon of that reign (January 12, 1875) an edict was promulgated to the effect that if the late Emperor Kuang Hsu should have a son, the said Prince should carry on the succession as the heir of Tung Chih. But now the late Emperor has ascended upon the dragon to be a guest on high, leaving no son, and there is no course open but to appoint Pu I, the son of Tsai Feng, the Prince Regent, as the successor to Tung Chih, and also as heir to the Emperor Kuang Hsu," which is quite in keeping with the conduct and character of the Empress Dowager all her life except those two bad years.
During the days and weeks following the dispossession of Kuang Hsu of the throne, in 1899 many decrees appeared which signified that at no distant date he would be superseded by the son of Prince Tuan. The foreign ministers began again to look grave. They spoke openly of their fear that Kuang Hsu's days were numbered. They pressed their desire for the usual New Year's audience, and once more the imprisoned monarch was brought forth and made to sit upon the throne and receive them. But when the ladies asked for an audience they were refused, the Empress Dowager being too busy with affairs of state. She was at that time seriously considering whether or not the government should cast in its lot with the Boxers and drive all the foreigners with all their productions into the eastern sea.
One of the princesses told Mrs. Headland that before coming to a decision the Empress Dowager called the hereditary and imperial princes into the palace to consult with them as to what they would better do. She met them all face to face, the Emperor and Prince Tuan standing near the throne. She explained to them the ravages of the foreigners, how they were gradually taking one piece after another of Chinese territory.
"And now," she continued, "we have these patriotic braves who claim to be impervious to swords and bullets; what shall we do? Shall we cast in our lot with their millions and drive all these foreigners out of China or not?"
Prince Tuan, as father of the heir-apparent, uneducated, superstitious and ignorant of all foreign affairs, then spoke. He said:
"I have seen the Boxers drilling, I have heard their incantations, and I believe that they will be able to effect this much desired end. They will either kill the foreigners or drive them out of the country and no more will dare to come, and thus we will be rid of them."
The hereditary princes were then asked for an expression of opinion. The majority of them knew little of foreigners and foreign countries, and as Prince Tuan, the father of the future Emperor, had expressed himself so strongly, they hesitated to offer an adverse opinion. But when it came to Prince Su, a man of strong character, widely versed in foreign affairs, and of independent thought, he opposed the measure most vigorously.
"Who," he asked, "are these Boxers? Who are their leaders? How can they, a mere rabble, hope to vanquish the armies of foreign nations?"
Prince Tuan answered that "by their incantations they were able to produce heaven-sent soldiers."
Prince Su denounced such superstition as childish. But when after further argument between him and Prince Tuan the Empress Dowager assured him that she had had them in the palace and had witnessed their prowess, he said no more.
The imperial princes were then consulted, but seeing how Prince Su had fared they were either in favour of the measure or non-committal. Finally the Empress Dowager appealed to Prince Ching who, more diplomatic than the younger princes, answered:
"I consider it a most dangerous undertaking, and I would advise against it. But if Your Majesty decides to cast in your lot with the Boxers I will do all in my power to further your wishes."
It is not a matter of wonder therefore that the Empress Dowager should be led into such a foolish measure as the Boxer movement, when the Prince who had been president of the Foreign Office for twenty-five years could so weakly acquiesce in such an undertaking.
"The Emperor," said the Princess, "was not asked for an expression of his opinion on this occasion, but when he saw that the Boxer leaders had won the day he burst into tears and left the room."
Similar meetings were held in the palace on two other occasions, when the Emperor implored that they make no attempt to fight all the foreign nations, for said he, "the foreigners are stronger than we, both in money and in arms, while their soldiers are much better drilled and equipped in every way. If we undertake this and fail as we are sure to do, it will be impossible to make peace with the foreigners and our country will be divided up amongst them." His pleadings, however, were disregarded, and after the meeting was over, he had to return to his little island, where for eight weeks he was compelled to sit listening to the rattling guns, booming cannons and bursting firecrackers, for the Boxers seemed to hope to exterminate the foreigners by noise. He must have felt from the books he had studied that it could only result in disaster to his own people.
When the allies reached Peking and the Boxers capitulated the Emperor was taken out of his prison and compelled to flee with the court.
"What do you think of your bullet-proof Boxers now?" one can imagine they hear him saying to his august aunt, as he sees her cutting off her long finger nails, dressing herself in blue cotton garments, and climbing into a common street cart as an ordinary servant. "Wouldn't it have been better to have taken my advice and that of Hsu Ching-cheng and Yuan Chang instead of having put them to death for endeavouring in their earnestness to save the country? What about your old conservative friends? Can they be depended upon as pillars of state?" Or some other "I-told-you-so" language of this kind.
From their exile in Hsian decrees continued to be issued in his name, and when affairs began to be adjusted, and the allies insisted on setting aside forever the pretentions of the anti-foreign Prince Tuan and his son, banishing the former to perpetual exile, our hopes ran high that the Emperor would be restored to his throne. But to our disappointment the framers of the Protocol contented themselves with the clause that: "Rational intercourse shall be permitted with the Emperor as in Western countries," and with the return of the court in 1902 he was still a prisoner.
Every one who has written about audiences with the Empress Dowager tells how "the Emperor was seated near, though a little below her," but they never tell why. The reason is not far to seek. The world must not know that he was a prisoner in the palace. They must see him near the throne, but they may not speak to him. The addresses of the ministers were passed to her by her kneeling statesmen, and it was they who replied. No notice was taken of the Emperor though he seemed to be in excellent health. The Empress Dowager however still relieved him of the burdens of the government, and continued to "teach him how to govern."
"I have seen the Emperor many times," Mrs. Headland tells me, "and have spent many hours in his presence, and every time we were in the palace the Emperor accompanied the Empress Dowager—not by her side but a few steps behind her. When she sat, he always remained standing a few paces in the rear, and never presumed to sit unless asked by her to do so. He was a lonely person, with his delicate, well-bred features and his simple dark robes, and in the midst of these fawning eunuchs, brilliant court ladies, and bejewelled Empress Dowager he was an inconspicuous figure. No minister of state touched forehead to floor as he spoke in hushed and trembling voice to him, no obsequious eunuchs knelt when coming into his presence; but on the contrary I have again and again seen him crowded against the wall by these cringing servants of Her Majesty.
"One day while we were in the palace a pompous eunuch had stepped before the Emperor quite obliterating him. I saw Kuang Hsu put his hands on the large man's shoulders, and quietly turn him around, that he might see before whom he stood. There were no signs of anger on his face, but rather a gentle, pathetic smile as he looked up at the big servant. I expected to see him fall upon his knees before the Emperor, but instead, he only moved a few inches to the left, and remained still in front of His Majesty. Never when in the palace have I seen a knee bend to the Emperor, except that of the foreigner when greeting him or bidding him farewell. This was the more noticeable as statesmen and eunuchs alike fell upon their knees every time they spoke to the Empress Dowager.
"The first time I saw him his great, pathetic, wistful eyes followed me for days. I could not forget them, and I determined that if I ever had opportunity I would say a few words to him letting him know that the world was resting in hope of his carrying out the great reforms he had instituted. But he was so carefully guarded and kept under such strict surveillance that I never found an opportunity to speak to him. Nor did he ever speak to the visitors, court ladies, the Empress Dowager, or attendants during all the hours we remained.
"One of the ministers told me that one day after an audience, when the Empress Dowager and the Emperor had stepped down from the dais, Her Majesty was engaged in conversation with one of his colleagues, and as the Emperor stood near by, he made some remark to him. Immediately the Empress Dowager turned from the one to whom she had been talking and made answer for the Emperor.
"On one occasion when there were but four of us in the palace, and we were all comfortably seated, the Emperor standing a few paces behind the Empress Dowager, she began discussing the Boxer movement, lamenting the loss of her long finger nails, and various good-luck gourds of which she was fond. The Emperor, probably becoming weary of a conversation in which he had no part, quietly withdrew by a side entrance to the theatre which was playing at the time. For some moments the Empress Dowager did not notice his absence, but the instant she discovered he was gone, a look of anxiety overspread her features, and she turned to the head eunuch, Li Lien-ying, and in an authoritative tone asked: 'Where is the Emperor?' There was a scurry among the eunuchs, and they were sent hither and thither to inquire. After a few moments they returned, saying that he was in the theatre. The look of anxiety passed from her face as a cloud passes from before the sun—and several of the eunuchs remained at the theatre.
"I am told that at times the Empress Dowager invites the Emperor to dine with her, and on such occasions he is forced to kneel at the table at which she is seated, eating only what she gives him. It is an honour which he does not covet, but which he dare not decline for fear of giving offense."
Prince Chun the Regent of China gave a remarkable luncheon at the Winter Palace to-day to the foreign envoys who gathered here to attend the funeral ceremonies of the late Emperor Kuang Hsu. The repast was served in foreign style. Among the Chinese present were Prince Ching, former president of the Board of Foreign Affairs and now adviser to the Naval Department; Prince Tsai Chen, a son of Prince Ching, who was at one time president of the Board of Commerce; Prince Su, chief of the Naval Department; and Liaing Tung-yen, president of the Board of Foreign Affairs. After the entertainment the envoys expressed themselves as unusually impressed with the personality of the Regent.—Daily Press.
The selection of Prince Chun as Regent for the Chinese empire during the minority of his son, Pu I, the new Emperor, would seem to be the wisest choice that could be made at the present time. In the first place, he is the younger brother of Kuang Hsu, the late Emperor, and was in sympathy with all the reforms the latter undertook to introduce in 1898. If Kuang Hsu had chosen his successor, having no son of his own, there is no reason why he should not have selected Pu I to occupy the throne, with Prince Chun as Regent, for there is no other prince in whom he could have reposed greater confidence of having all his reform measures carried to a successful issue; and a brother with whom he had always lived in sympathy would be more likely to continue his policy than any one else.
But, in the second place, as we may suppose, Prince Chun was selected by the Empress Dowager, whatever the edicts issued, and will thus have the confidence of the party of which she has been the leader. It is quite wrong to suppose that this is the conservative party, or even a conservative party. China has both reform and conservative parties, but, in addition to these, she has many wise men and great officials who are neither radical reformers nor ultra-conservatives. It was these men with whom the Empress Dowager allied herself after the Boxer troubles of 1900.
These men were Li Hung-chang, Chang Chih-tung, Yuan Shih-kai, Prince Ching, and others, and it is they who, in ten years, with the Empress Dowager, put into operation, in a statesmanlike way, all the reforms that Kuang Hsu, with his hot-headed young radical advisers, attempted to force upon the country in as many weeks. There is every reason to believe that Prince Chun, the present Regent, has the support of all the wiser and better element of the Reform party, as well as those great men who have been successful in tiding China over the ten most difficult years of her history, while the ultra-conservatives at this late date are too few or too weak to deserve serious consideration. We, therefore, think that the choice of Pu I as Emperor, with Prince Chun as Regent, whether by the Empress Dowager, the Emperor, or both, was, all things considered, the best selection that could have been made.
Prince Chun is the son of the Seventh Prince, the nephew of the Emperor Hsien Feng and the Empress Dowager, and grandson of the Emperor Tao Kuang. He has a fine face, clear eye, firm mouth, with a tendency to reticence. He carries himself very straight, and while below the average in height, is every inch a prince. He is dignified, intelligent, and, though not loquacious, never at a loss for a topic of conversation. He is not inclined to small talk, but when among men of his own rank, he does not hesitate to indulge in bits of humour.
This was rather amusingly illustrated at a dinner given by the late Major Conger, American minister to China. Major and Mrs. Conger introduced many innovations into the social life of Peking, and none more important than the dinners and luncheons given to the princes and high officials, and also to the princesses and ladies of the court. In 1904, I was invited to dine with Major Conger and help entertain Prince Chun, Prince Pu Lun, Prince Ching, Governor Hu, Na T'ung, and a number of other princes and officials of high rank. I sat between Prince Chun and Governor Hu. Having met them both on several former occasions, I was not a stranger to either of them, and as they were well acquainted with each other, though one was a Manchu prince and the other a Chinese official, conversation was easy and natural.
We talked, of course, in Chinese only, of the improvements and advantages that railroads bring to a country, for Governor Hu, among other things, was the superintendent of the Imperial Railways of north China. This led us to speak of the relative comforts of travel by land and by sea, for Prince Chun had gone half round the world and back. We listened to the American minister toasting the young Emperor of China, his princes, and his subjects; and then to Prince Ching toasting the young President of the United States, his officials, and his people, in a most dignified and eloquent manner. And then as the buzz of conversation went round the table again, and perhaps because of their having spoken of the YOUNG Emperor and the young President, I turned to Governor Hu, who had an unusually long, white beard which reached almost to his waist as he sat at table, and said:
"Your Excellency, what is your honourable age?"
"I was seventy years old my last birthday," he replied.
"And he is still as strong as either of us young men," said I, turning to Prince Chun.
"Oh, yes," said the Prince; "he is good for ten years yet, and by that time he can use his beard as an apron."
"It is an ill wind that blows no one good," says the proverb, and this was never more forcibly illustrated than in the case of the death of the lamented Baron von Kettler. Had it not been for this unfortunate occurrence, Prince Chun would not have been sent to Germany to convey the apologies of the Chinese government to the German Emperor, and he would thus never have had the opportunity of a trip to Europe; and the world might once more have beheld a regent on the dragon throne who had never seen anything a hundred miles from his own capital.
Prince Chun started on this journey with such a retinue as only the Chinese government can furnish. He had educated foreign physicians and interpreters, and, like the great Viceroy Li Hung-chang, he had a round fan with the Eastern hemisphere painted on one side and the Western on the other, and the route he was to travel distinctly outlined on both, with all the places he was to pass through, or to stop at on the trip, plainly marked. He was intelligent enough to observe everything of importance in the ports through which he passed, and it was interesting to hear him tell of the things he had seen, and his characterization of some of the people he had visited.
"What did Your Highness think of the relative characteristics of the Germans and the French, as you saw them?" I asked him at the same dinner.
"The people in Berlin," said he, "get up early in the morning and go to their business, while the people in Paris get up in the evening and go to the theatre."
This may have been a bit exaggerated, but it indicated that the Prince did not travel, as many do on their first trip, with his mouth open and his eyes closed.
After his return to Peking he purchased a brougham, as did most of the other leading officials and princes at the close of the Boxer troubles, and driving about in this carriage, he has been a familiar figure from that time until the present. As straws show the direction of the wind, these incidents ought to indicate that Prince Chun will not be a conservative to the detriment of his government, or to the hindrance of Chinas progress.
It is a well-known fact that the Empress Dowager, in addition to her other duties, took charge of the arrangement of the marriages of all her nieces and nephews. One of her favourite Manchu officials, and indeed one of the greatest Manchus of recent years, though very conservative, and hence little associated with foreigners, was Jung Lu. As the affianced bride of Prince Chun had drowned herself in a well during the Boxer troubles, the Empress Dowager engaged him to the daughter of the lady who had been Jung Lu's first concubine, but who, as his consort was dead, was raised to the position of wife.
"This Lady Jung," says Mrs. Headland, "is some forty years of age, very pretty, talkative, and vivacious, and she told me with a good deal of pride, on one occasion, of the engagement of her son to the sixth daughter of Prince Ching. And then with equal enthusiasm she told me how her daughter had been married to Prince Chun, 'which of course relates me with the two most powerful families of the empire.'
"I have met the Princess Chun on several occasions at the audiences in the palace, at luncheons with Mrs. Conger, at a feast with the Imperial Princess, at a tea with the Princess Tsai Chen, and at the palaces of many of the princesses. She is a very quiet little woman, and looked almost infantile as she gazed at one with her big, black eyes. She is very circumspect in her movements, and with such a mother and father as she had, I should think may be very brilliant. Naturally she had to be specially dignified and sedate at these public functions, as she and the Imperial Princess were the only ones belonging to the old imperial household, the descendants of Tao Kuang, who were intimately associated with the Empress Dowager's court. She is small, but pretty, and, as I have indicated, quiet and reticent. She was fond of her father, and naturally fond of the Empress Dowager, who selected her as a wife for her favourite nephew, Prince Chun, to whom she promised the succession at the time of their marriage. After her father's death, and while she was in mourning, she was invited into the palace by the Empress Dowager, where she appeared wearing blue shoes, the colour used in second mourning.
"'Why do you wear blue shoes?' asked Her Majesty.
"'On account of the death of my father,' replied the Princess.
"'And do you mourn over your dead father more than you rejoice over being in the presence of your living ruler?' the Empress Dowager inquired.
"It is unnecessary to add that the Princess 'changed the blue shoes for red ones while she remained in the palace, so careful has the Empress Dowager always been of the respect due to her dignity and position."
Having promised the regency to Prince Chun, we may infer that the Empress Dowager would do all in her power to prepare him to occupy the position with credit to himself, and in the hope that he would continue the policy which she has followed during the last ten years. Whenever, therefore, opportunity offered for a prince to represent the government at any public function with which foreigners were connected, Prince Chun was asked or appointed to attend. I have said that it was the murder of the German minister, Baron von Kettler, that gave Prince Chun his opportunity to see the world. And just here I might add that an account of the massacre of Von Kettler, sent from Canton, was published in a New York paper three days before it occurred. This indicates that his death had been premeditated and ordered by some high authorities,—perhaps Prince Tuan or Prince Chuang, Boxer leaders,—because the Germans had taken the port of Kiaochou, and had compelled the Chinese government to promise to allow them to open all the mines and build all the railroads in the province of Shantung.
After the Boxer troubles were settled, the Germans, at the expense of the Chinese government, erected a large stone memorial arch on the spot where Von Kettler fell. At its dedication, members of the diplomatic corps of all the legations in Peking were present, including ladies and children, together with a large number of Chinese officials representing the city, the government, and the Foreign Office, and Prince Chun was selected to pour the sacrificial wine. He did it with all the dignity of a prince, however much he may or may not have enjoyed it. On this occasion he used one of the ancient, three-legged, sacrificial wine-cups, which he held in both hands, while Na Tung, President of the Foreign Office, poured the wine into the cup from a tankard of a very beautiful and unique design. It is the only occasion on which I have seen the Prince when he did not seem to enjoy what he was doing. I ought to add just here that I have heard the Chinese refer to this arch as the monument erected by the Chinese government in memory of the man who murdered Baron von Kettler!
It is a well-known fact that the Boxers destroyed all buildings that had any indication of a foreign style of architecture, whether they belonged to Chinese or foreigner, Christian or non-Christian, legation, merchant, or missionary. In the rebuilding of the Peking legations, missions, and educational institutions, there were naturally a large number of dedicatory services. Many of the Chinese officials attended them, but I shall refer to only one or two at which I remember meeting Prince Chun. I believe it was the design of the Empress Dowager, as soon as she had decided upon him as the Regent, to give him as liberal an education in foreign affairs as the facilities in Peking would allow.
For many years the Methodist mission had tried to secure funds from America to erect a hospital and medical school in connection with the mission and the Peking University. This they found to be impossible, and finally Dr. N. S. Hopkins of Massachusetts, who was in charge of that work, consulted with his brother and brother-in-law, who subscribed the funds and built the institution. This act of benevolence on the part of Dr. Hopkins and his friends appealed to the Chinese sense of generosity, and when the building was completed, a large number of Chinese officials, together with Prince Chun and Prince Pu Lun, were present at its dedication. A number of addresses were made by such men as Major Conger, the American minister, Bishop Moore, Na Tung, Governor Hu, General Chiang, and others of the older representatives, in which they expressed their appreciation of the generosity which prompted a man like Dr. Hopkins to give not only himself, but his money, for the education of the Chinese youth and the healing of their poor. And I might add that Dr. Hopkins is physician to many of the princes and officials in Peking at the present time.
During this reconstruction, a number of the colleges of north China united to form a union educational institution. One part of this scheme was a union medical college, situated on the Ha-ta-men great street not a hundred yards north of the Von Kettler memorial arch. To the erection of this building the wealthy officials of Peking subscribed liberally, and the Empress Dowager sent her check for 11,000 taels, equal to $9,000 in American gold, and appointed Prince Chun to represent the Chinese government at its dedication. At this meeting Sir Robert Hart made an address on behalf of the foreigners, and Na Tung on behalf of the Chinese. Although Prince Chun took no public part in the exercises, he privately expressed his gratification at seeing the completion of such an up-to-date hospital and medical school in the Chinese capital.
I have given these incidents in the life of Prince Chun to show that he has had facilities for knowing the world better than any other Chinese monarch or regent that has ever sat upon the dragon throne, and that he has grasped the opportunities as they came to him. He has been intimately associated with the diplomatic life of the various legations, which is perhaps the most important knowledge he has acquired in dealing with foreign affairs, as these ministers are the channels through which he must come in contact with foreign governments. He has been present at the dedication of a number of missionary educational institutions, and hence from personal contact he will have some comprehension of the animus and work of missions and the character of the men engaged in that work. He may have as a councillor, if he so desires, the Prince Pu Lun, who has had a trip around the world, with the best possible facilities for seeing Japan, America, Great Britain, Germany, France, and Italy, and who has been in even more intimate contact with the diplomats and other foreigners than has Prince Chun himself. My wife and I have dined with him and the Princess both at the American legation and at his own palace, and when we left China, they came together in their brougham to bid us good-bye, a thing which could not have happened a few years ago, and an indication of how wide open the doors in China are now standing.
On the whole, therefore, Prince Chun begins his regency with a brighter outlook for his foreign relations than any other ruler China has ever had. What shall we say of his Chinese relations? Being the brother of Kuang Hsu, and himself a progressive young man, he ought to have the support of the Reform party, and being the choice of the Empress Dowager, he will have the support of the great progressive officials who have had the conduct of affairs for the last quarter of a century and more, and especially for the past ten years, since the Emperor Kuang Hsu was deposed.
The innermost enclosure is the Forbidden City and contains the palace and its surrounding buildings. The wall is less solid and high than the city wall, is covered with bright yellow tiles, and surrounded by a deep, wide moat. Two gates on the east and west afford access to the interior of this habitation of the Emperor, as well as the space and rooms appertaining, which furnish lodgment to the guard defending the approach to the dragon's throne.—S. Wells Williams in "The Middle Kingdom."
During the past ten years, since the dethronement of the late Emperor Kuang Hsu, I have often been asked by Europeans visiting Peking:
"What would happen if the Emperor should die?"
"They would put a new Emperor on the throne," was my invariable answer. They usually followed this with another question:
"What would happen if the Empress Dowager should die?"
"In that case the Emperor, of course, would again resume the throne," I always replied without hesitation. But during those ten years, not one of my friends ever thought to propound the question, nor did I have the wit to ask myself:
"What would happen if the Emperor and the Empress Dowager should both suddenly snap the frail cord of life at or about the same time?"
Had such a question come to me, I confess I should not have known how to answer it. It is a problem that probably never presented itself to any one outside of that mysterious Forbidden City, or the equally mysterious spectres that come and go through its half-open gates in the darkness of the early morning. There are three parties to whom it may have come again and again, and to whom we may perhaps be indebted both for the problem and the solution.
When the deaths of both of their Imperial Majesties were announced at the same time, the news also came that the Japanese suspected that there had been foul play. With them, however, it was only suspicion; none of them, so far as I know, ever undertook to analyze the matter or unravel the mystery. There is no doubt a reasonable explanation, but we must go for it to the Forbidden City, the most mysterious royal dwelling in the world, where white men have never gone except by invitation from the throne, save on one occasion.
In 1901, while the court was in hiding at Hsianfu, the city to which they fled when the allies entered Peking, the western half of the Forbidden City was thrown open to the public, the only condition being that said public have a certificate which would serve as a pass to the American boys in blue who guarded the Wu men, or front gate. I was fortunate enough to have that pass.
My first move was to get a Chinese photographer—the best I could find in the city—to go with me and take pictures of everything I wanted as well as anything else that suited his fancy.
The city of Peking is regularly laid out. Towards the south is the Chinese city, fifteen miles in circumference. To the north is a square, four miles on each side, and containing sixteen square miles. In the centre of this square, enclosed by a beautifully crenelated wall thirty feet thick at the bottom, twenty feet thick at the top and twenty-five feet high, surrounded by a moat one hundred feet wide, is the Forbidden City, occupying less than one-half a square mile. In this city there dwells but one male human being, the Emperor, who is called the "solitary man."
There is a gate in the centre of each of the four sides, that on the south, the Wu men, being the front gate, through which the Emperor alone is allowed to pass. The back gate, guarded by the Japanese during the occupation, is for the Empress Dowager, the Empress and the women of the court, while the side gates are for the officials, merchants or others who may have business in the palace.
Through the centre of this city, from south to north, is a passageway about three hundred feet wide, across which, at intervals of two hundred yards, they have erected large buildings, such as the imperial examination hall, the hall in which the Emperor receives his bride, the imperial library, the imperial kitchen, and others of a like nature, all covered with yellow titles, and known to tourists, who see them from the Tartar City wall, as the palace buildings. These, however, are not the buildings in which the royal family live. They are the places where for the past five hundred years all those great diplomatic measures—and dark deeds—of the Chinese emperors and their great officials have been transacted between midnight and daylight.
If you will go with me at midnight to the great gate which leads from the Tartar to the Chinese city—the Chien men—you will hear the wailing creak of its hinges as it swings open, and in a few moments the air will be filled with the rumbling of carts and the clatter of the feet of the mules on the stone pavement, as they take the officials into the audiences with their ruler. If you will remain with me there till a little before daylight you will see them, like silent spectres, sitting tailor-fashion on the bottom of their springless carts, returning to their homes, but you will ask in vain for any information as to the business they have transacted. "They love darkness rather than light," not perhaps "because their deeds are evil," but because it has been the custom of the country from time immemorial.
Immediately to the north of this row of imperial palace buildings, and just outside the north gate, there is an artificial mound called Coal Hill, made of the dirt which was removed to make the Lotus Lakes. It is said that in this hill there is buried coal enough to last the city in time of siege. This, however, was not the primary design of the hill. It has a more mysterious meaning. There have always been spirits in the earth, in the air, in every tree and well and stream. And in China it has ever been found necessary to locate a house, a city or even a cemetery in such surroundings as to protect them from the entrance of evil spirits. "Coal Hill," therefore, was placed to the north of these imperial palace buildings to protect them from the evil spirits of the cold, bleak north.
Just inside of that north gate there is a beautiful garden, with rockeries and arbours, flowering plants and limpid artificial streams gurgling over equally artificial pebbles, though withal making a beautiful sight and a cool shade in the hot summer days. In the east side of this garden there is a small imperial shrine having four doors at the four points of the compass. In front of each of these doors there is a large cypress-tree, some of them five hundred years old, which were split up from the root some seven or eight feet, and planted with the two halves three feet apart, making a living arch through which the worshipper must pass as he enters the temple. To the north of the garden and east of the back gate there is a most beautiful Buddhist temple, in which only the members of the imperial family are allowed to worship, in front of which there is also a living arch like those described above, as may also be found before the imperial temples in the Summer Palace. This is one of the most unique and mysterious features of temple worship I have found anywhere in China, and no amount of questioning ever brought me any explanation of its meaning.
Now if you will go with me to the top of Coal Hill I will point out to you the buildings in which their Majesties have lived. There are six parallel rows of buildings, facing the south, each behind the other, in the northwest quarter of this Forbidden City, protected from the evil spirits of the north by the dagoba on Prospect Hill.
Perhaps you would like to go with me into these homes of their Majesties—or, as a woman's home is always more interesting than the den of a man, let me take you through the private apartments of the greatest woman of her race—the late Empress Dowager. She occupied three of these rows of buildings. The first was her drawing-room and library, the second her dining-room and sleeping apartments, and the third her kitchen.
One was strangely impressed by what he saw here. There was no gorgeous display of Oriental colouring, but there was beauty of a peculiarly penetrating quality—and yet a homelike beauty.
No description that can be written of it will ever do it justice. Not until one can see and appreciate the paintings of the old Chinese masters of five hundred years ago hanging upon the walls, the beautiful pieces of the best porcelain of the time of Kang Hsi and Chien Lung, made especially for the palace, arranged in their natural surroundings, on exquisitely carved Chinese tables and brackets, the gorgeously embroided silk portieres over the doorways, and the matchless tapestries which only the Chinese could weave for their greatest rulers, can we appreciate the beauty, the richness, and the refined elegance of the private apartments of the great Dowager.
I went into her sleeping apartments. Others also entered there, sat upon her couch, and had their friends photograph them. I could not allow myself to do so. I stood silent, with head uncovered as I gazed with wonder and admiration at the bed, with its magnificently embroidered curtains hanging from the ceiling to the floor, its yellow-satin mattress ten feet in length and its great round, hard pillow, with the delicate silk spreads turned back as though it were prepared for Her Majesty's return. On the opposite side of the room there was a brick kang bed, such as we find in the homes of all the Chinese of the north, where her maids slept, or sat like silent ghosts while the only woman that ever ruled over one-third of the human race took her rest. The furnishings were rich but simple. No plants, no intricate carvings to catch the dust, nothing but the two beds and a small table, with a few simple and soothing wall decorations, and the monotonous tick-tock of a great clock to lull her to sleep.
If Shakespeare could say with an English monarch in his mind, "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown," we might repeat it with added emphasis of Tze Hsi. For forty years she had to rise at midnight, winter as well as summer, and go into the dark, dreary, cold halls of the palace, lighted much of the time with nothing but tallow dips, and heated only with brass braziers filled with charcoal, and there sit behind a screen where she could see no one, and no one could see her, and listen to the reports of those who came to these dark audiences. Then she must, in conjunction with them, compose edicts which were sent out to the Peking Gazette, the oldest and poorest newspaper in the world, to be carved on blocks, and printed, and then sent by courier to every official in the empire. Ruling over a conquered race, she must always be watching out for signs of discontent and rebellion; being herself the daughter of a poor man, and beginning as only the concubine of an emperor, and he but a weak character, she must be alert for dissatisfaction on the part of the princes who might have some title to the throne. She must watch the governors in the distant provinces and the viceroys who are in charge of great armies, that they do not direct them against instead of in defense of the throne.
When her husband died while a fugitive two hundred miles from her palace, she must see to it that her three-year-old child was placed upon the throne with her own hand at the helm, and when he died she must also be ready with a successor, who would give her another lease of office. Even when he became of age and took the throne she must watch over him like a guardian, to prevent his bringing down upon their own heads the structure which she had builded. Nay, more, when it became necessary for her to dethrone him and rule in his name, banishing his friends and pacifying his enemies, keeping him a prisoner in his palace, it required a courage that was titanic to do so. But she never flinched, though we may suppose that many of her poorest subjects, who could sleep from dark till daylight with nothing but a brick for a pillow, might have rested more peacefully than she.
She had a myriad of other duties to perform. She was the mother-in-law of that imperial household, with the Emperor, the Empress, sixty concubines, two thousand eunuchs, and any number of court ladies and maid-servants. Their expenses were enormous and she must keep her eye on every detail. The food they ate was similar to that used by all the Chinese people. I happen to know this, because one of her eunuchs who visited me frequently to ask my assistance in a matter which he had undertaken for the Emperor, often brought me various kinds of meat, or other delicacies of a like nature, from the imperial kitchens.
I want you to visit three of the imperial temples in these beautiful palace grounds. The first is a tall, three-story building at the head of that magnificent Lotus Lake. In it there stands a Buddhist deity with one thousand heads and one thousand arms and hands. Standing upon the ground floor its head reaches almost to the roof. Its body, face and arms are as white as snow. There is nothing else in the building—nothing but this mild-faced Buddhist divinity for that brilliant, black-eyed ruler of Chinas millions to worship.
Standing near by is another building of far greater beauty. It is faced all over with encaustic tiles, each made at the kiln a thousand miles away, for the particular place it was to occupy. Each one fits without a flaw, a suggestion to American architects on Chinese architecture.
The second of these temples stands to the west of the Coal Hill, immediately to the north of the homes of their Majesties. One day while passing through the forbidden grounds I came upon this temple from the rear. In the dome of one of the buildings is a circular space some ten feet in diameter, carved and gilded in the form of two magnificent dragons after the fabled pearl. It is to this place the Emperor goes in time of drought to confess his sins, for he confesses to the gods that the drought is all his doing, and to pray for forgiveness, and for rain to enrich the thirsty land. The towers on the corners of the wall of the Forbidden City are the same style of architecture as the small pavilion in the front court of this temple.
Now as the buds of spring are bursting and the eaves on the mulberry-trees are beginning to develop, will you go with the Empress Dowager or the Empress into a temple on Prospect Hill, between the Coal Hill and the Lotus Lake, where she offers sacrifices to the god of the silkworm and prays for a prosperous year on the work of that little insect? Above it stands one of the most hideous bronze deities I have ever seen—male and naked—in a beautiful little shrine, every tile of which is made in the form of a Buddha's head. During the occupation tourists were allowed to visit this place freely, and their desire for curios overcoming their discretion, they knocked the heads off these tiles until, when the place was closed, there was not a single tile which had not been defaced.
One other building in the Forbidden City is worthy of our attention. It is the art gallery. It is not generally known that China is the parent of all Oriental art. We know something of the art of Japan but little about that of China. And yet the best Japanese artists have never hoped for anything better than to equal their Chinese teacher. In this art gallery there are stored away the finest specimens of the old masters for ten centuries or more, together with portraits of all the noted emperors. Among these portraits we may now find two of the Empress Dowager, one painted by Miss Carl, and another by Mr. Vos, a well-known American portrait painter.