SEOUL
Ifyou should fall asleep over a volume of the “Arabian Nights” as I have done many times in childhood and should awaken in Seoul, you would not find the transition in the least startling.
There is no city which could better fit in its glowing pages. Its coloring is as fantastic as are the episodes of the “thousand and one nights,” and to be accurate when therein describing its manifold glories, as I saw them, is to me impossible.
The editor of one of the very spicy journals which keep the Japanese busy asked me to give my impressions and when I did, said they were far and away too poetical and too imaginative for a daily paper, but they did not approach the reality; not by half!
There are two railway stations in Seoul and they are modern and very brisk in their air as we whirled into the second one late at night after a day’s ride in this wonderland of amber and gold mountains. I was too sleepy to do aught but fall into the comfortable bed of the “Astor House,” one of the best kept hotels in the Orient if you refer to the cuisine.
The next morning I awoke to find myself up under the shadow of a huge Chinese wall and beyond were fascinating towers and spires and distant flag poles of consulates and not many hours were lost before we took a Sunday morning stroll uphill and thru gigantic gates flashing with mural paintings of dragons and wild impressionisticcolors and weird symbolism, and found ourselves in front of a Russian church where the bells were ringing. We entered to the strains of that Slavic harmony which allures as no other and there we found blond priests, with long hair, worn in the same way as in the old Greek paintings and the profile of the angelic Northern saint type; it was a strange paradox to be in this chapel which represented a power now a removed obstacle to Japanese dominion, and see its worshipers calmly allowed to go on singing as of old. “One day they will come singing back again,” said a bright young American observer. All Korea has two influences very marked in its civilization, Arabic and Chinese, and a still more unique aspect of a Grecian tradition. It is all three and Indian above all three!
There is something of the wild free stride of all mountain peoples in their walk as you watch them in their flowing white robes and pot hats along the highroads and there is a wild glance in the eyes of the men not fierce, but the glance of some gentle animal untamed. The women, as all know, are the household drudges and are completely under the thumb of the male element, having neither name nor station apart from these very self-important masters.
They are kept in rich houses quite as in Turkey and they wear a silk mantle over their faces when in the street. You can see their large wondering furtive eyes looking out as you pass from station to station, where the dapper Japanese officials keep them in check.
They wear the most delicious shoes in the world, these same shy sisters; they are Turkish and turned up slightly at the toes and are silk besides, and very dainty in shade.The upper class wear this flowing garment and the mantle of white silk in the street and the middle class the green mantle.
The poorest class, as is so often the case, gives the most picturesque tone to the city streets and we have had our breath quite taken away by meeting some woman, whose fancy ran a riot of color which would have eclipsed Turner himself!
I was invited to an evening entertainment at one of the hospitals, where the girls were in their house costume, and it consists of a bolero jacket and baggy trowsers, or divided skirt, it appeared to be. Many of the girls were pretty and as animated as one could wish. A debate was held and for diplomatic reasons I will not give the subject, but it was as full of fire as a Greek patriot’s and carried on amid the roars of laughter a school girl’s performance usually meets with.
One of the faces of the nurses was so beautiful and so pathetic I could not help remarking on its sublimity and my chief hostess told me a little of its tragedy.
The face was minus a nose, which a jealous husband in a moment of frenzy cut off.
The woman is a christian and the meek glory of her face will remain one of the memories of a lifetime.
No Madonna I ever saw in Europe equals it for sweetness.
Another inmate of this hospital, so admirably bringing medical aid and training to Korean women, was a little girl without arms or legs, but still smiling and happy!
All the world has heard of the great wave of Christianity which swept over Korea in these last years and theglory of it belongs to the rare, very rare men and women, who are there; men and women talented in letters as in religious devotion and their fame is great, such asDr.James Gale and others.
But oh, the streets of Seoul! Wander up on the citadel and gaze from its ramparts down on the palace gardens, the new palace where you can of a morning see the Emperor ride forth to visit his mother’s tomb or go to meet a distinguished guest as we saw him the morning the Crown Prince of Japan came, when the brilliant city was decorated with the magic talent of those past masters of scenic effect, the Japanese.
By one of the arches we saw the most unique spectacle as the Emperor and suite and the two young princes side by side swept on in that silent awe of Oriental homage, so unlike our own.
We saw Togo and Ito and the others who have made the most brilliant history of modern times, Togo laughing like a school boy, at all the parade, which without him would never have been. We wondered if thru his modest head any such thoughts passed!
Flags of Korea and Japan were in every possible nook and corner and arches of pine so solid in their construction that they did not look paltry beside the superb wall, which girts the whole city and with true Chinese irony runs up the hills and towards the sky and where the wondrous Korean mountains stand bare, bleak and awful.
Koreans have cut all timber from their peaks and left them like their kingdom exposed from shiftlessness, a prey: now Japan is to make them again, to wave with Nature’s fairest plumes the giants of the forest.
These gaunt rocks made, however, a truly majestic and fantastic background to the oriental brilliancy of the streets with their rows on rows of open shops, full of tempting wares such as we cannot often find.
You can buy in Seoul furniture that is a marvel of luxury and usefulness and the mother of pearl inlaid ornaments and the wonderful brass decorated articles are almost an enthrallment. The American Consulate in Seoul is as rich in its interior beauty of decoration, as in its hospitality. Its mistress is one of the most lovely women of our land, or of any land. There we met the forceful Englishwoman who had tutored the Crown Prince, until he left for Japan; a charming personality whose reminiscences would fill volumes of delightful romance, as she has been in the “inner circle” for years and that, indeed, in a country as full of brilliant scenes and of thrilling events as a drama of the most Victor Hugan sort.
You can buy amber and silk and the wonder of Eastern fabrication and you can exhaust your prose and your purse and your vocabulary over it both, in admiration and exasperation.
Seoul is in part modern, that is, a little modern, and it has a street car line very much like we used to have in Manila in the good old days “before de war.”
I always took it with the thrilling sense of not knowing where I was to land and indeed, altho Seoul looks easy to the traveler, you can get lost as quickly as in Boston. I was lost several times, but found myself again just where I started.
After dark the streets are lighted with huge Chinese lanterns and small Korean lanterns which are carried in thehands and you can follow your neighbor, as you do very gratefully, home this way.
Seoul has a new boulevard since the Japanese occupation and the streets are, oh, marvel of marvels, being cleaned!
Koreans would never have thought of that in all their years of philosophical wandering into the unseen, where they like so much to go!
My trip to Seoul proved to be of more importance than I anticipated, as I had a hole in one of the principal streets filled up, to my great astonishment, again proving that “where there is a will there is a way.” It had threatened for some time to break many hundreds of legs, which passed that way every hour of the day and Stygian night!
Seoul lies in a cup of gigantic hills and it must be not a little like Jerusalem, in situation a “joy of the whole earth.” It has superb moonlight nights and radiant days and it is as majestic and dreamy and sad and glorious as a Greek tragedy.
If you go into the parks of the two ancient palaces and wander for hours and hear the birds sing and watch the tall fading on castle walls and the glory that was Seoul and the grandeur that was Korea and watch thru the trees, arches and bridges of lovely shape and the pagodas richly tinted, where rested the lovely forms of long ago and see the art and the dead, forgotten beauty of an age when beauty was enough, when an emperor sued within those bowers and the days were long and careless and the great lotus flowers now on their stems, as then lulled to sleep all of man’s longings, why you will have to literally tear yourself away, not to want to drop to sleep never to wakeup, as you did over the book which told it all, how they lived and dreamed and loved and hated in—Seoul, yes, so long ago when there was a king who had a son beautiful and good and a daughter as fair as the moon, you remember!