CHAPTER XV
A GLIMPSE OF CANTON
What can I write of Canton? If Hong-Kong was wonderful, if Shanghai was interesting, if Burmah was picturesque, what was Canton? It was superlative!
I know that Europeans go into Canton and come out of it with stolid faces, and sneer languidly as they speak of it. I know a woman who preferred poor little, colourless, on-sufferance Sha-mien, to great, mysterious, unfathomable, lurid Canton. Ah, well! it takes all sorts to make a world—and I dare say I revolted her as much as she disgusted me. “Would you rather live in Canton than in Sha-mien?” some one asks me. Certainly not—at least not permanently. But I, nevertheless, regard Sha-mien as utterly insignificant as compared with Canton. The only significant thing about Sha-mien is its courage in being there at all. No; I should not prefer Canton to Sha-mien as a place of residence for myself. I should be sorry to spend twenty unbroken years in Canton, and I should be displeased to spend twenty unbroken years on the most magnificent iceberg that ever floated on the Polar Seas. But for all that I think the iceberg vastly more interesting, more fascinating, grander, more beautiful, than the snow-flakes that are feebly smudging my window-pane.
Let me introduce you for a moment to my London back-yard, as I see it at this moment. It is a grim conglomeration of rubble, dilapidated ivy, of thin snow blotches, and of burst water-pipes. Nothing could be less picturesque. No earthly eye could think it beautiful, save the eye of a plumber. Yet I would rather live here than in Canton, where a million pictures are yours for the looking. In all Canton I never saw one unpicturesque bit. And once I almost felt like tearing up my sketch-book—not because of my own incompetence, for to that I am accustomed, but because for every sketch I tried to make I must leave ten thousand unattempted. That made selection very difficult.
We sent Mr. Paulding from Hong-Kong to Canton, to see if we could give a performance at Sha-mien. He wrote back, “There are not a hundred Europeans in the place, and there is no theatre. It is expensive getting here. But if the ‘burra memsahib’ is determined to come, I think we might clear our X.’s. Leave the company in Hong-Kong, and you two give a Shakespearian recital in the hotel dining-room. What do you say?” Perhaps I should explain that “X.’s” means expenses. It is not theatrical slang, it is dramatic abbreviation. That letter entailed upon me a mental struggle. I was anxious to see Canton, and my husband insisted that if I went I must “help him out” with the recital. In all my wicked life I had never given a recitation—or at least not since I was a nice little girl with a nice pink sash. Moreover, I had said that I never would give a recitation. I did not approve of them; for that matter, I do not approve of them now; but Canton tempted me, and I was weak.
We made out a programme and mailed it to Mr. Paulding. Mine friend was prepared with any number of recitations, but the only one I knew was “Bingen on the Rhine,” and my associate feared that the audience might have heard that before. Finally, I was put down for two recitations, but it was not specified what they were to be. My husband selected his three recitations, and we added to the list four scenes from Shakespeare.
Early one morning, before our babies were awake, we steamed slowly up the Canton River. I put the thought of the horrid recital out of my mind; and settled into my cosy steamer chair and said to myself, “If there be an Elysium on earth it is this—it is this.” The day was perfect. Ah! how many perfect days this old world has seen, and yet how she throbs and smiles and blushes into beauty, and looks quite like a bride, the disreputable weather-beaten old jade, and welcomes the kisses of each new perfect day, and beneath those kisses assumes the virtue of loveliness, even though she have it not!
We were carrying some hundreds of coolies, and some thousands of fish to Canton. The coolies were tightly packed behind a secure grating. The fish were poured by hundreds into holes, purposely made in the side of the boat. How they sprang for their freedom, the scaly, silvery, speckled things, and with what splendid splutter and splash they fell back into the water-filled hole!
There were four cabin passengers on the delightful little bark. I was the only woman on the boat—fore or aft. When I am the only woman among a boat-load of men, and the weather behaves itself, I always say to myself, “If there be an Elysium on earth it is this—it is this!” The three gentlemen were—the Editor of a Hong-Kong paper, a charming fellow and a good friend of ours; an interesting German who spoke French fluently and told me a great deal about Canton; and last, but if you please, not least, that extremely fortunate individual who is my husband.
What a pleasant fellow the captain was! He will, most probably, never see these lines, and I feel it my duty to describe him. He was my fellow countryman—and the kind of man who causes you to hold up your head and say, “It’s a good thing to be an American.” I am supposed to be a bad American. I don’t quite plead guilty to the accusation; but I certainly do not fill Sir Walter Scott’s ideal of patriotism. I fear he would even consider my soul dead. My cosmopolitanism is far more than my patriotism. But it always gives me a deep thrill of real pleasure to meet in a foreign land—delightful Americans. I think of my compatriots as some one thought of a little girl whom they immortalised in the lines,
When she was good, she was very, very good.
But when she was bad, she was horrid.
No one is more charming, more admirable, than a charming American. I know Americans whom the children of no other nation can excel. If patriotism consists in praising the shrilly cackling, over-diamonded women, and the ill-educated, shallow, opinionated men of our hoi polloi—why then I am not patriotic. They, beyond everything else human, set my teeth on edge, do Americans the vulgar. But because I cry out at them with genuine American acrimony, it does not follow that I am stupid enough to think them the only Americans. There is another type of American of whom I would far rather think, and I wish that he travelled more. I mean the man who stands hat in hand to welcome you on to the porch of his Virginia home. I mean the man who is superlatively a gentleman even when he carries our flag through the wigwams of the wild west. I mean—oh! well, I mean all that ilk!
Our captain was a courtly, cultivated gentleman. He was highly educated, and had lived in China intelligently. He was quite a perfect host.
Everything combined to make our little trip enjoyable. The Chinese butler not only understood his duty but did it. Dinner was eminently successful. But it was on deck that we were happiest.
China! China! For all your great antiquity, how new and fresh and fascinating you were to me!
Fortresses and pagodas dotted the banks, with here and there a scattered collection of squalid huts. The sky was royal, and the perfumed air swayed the branches of a dozen, to us unknown, trees.
Just before we reached Canton we passed the leper boats. The population of Canton is too dense for the most truly paternal Government on earth to risk the presence of lepers in the midst of the Cantonese myriads. The miserable lepers looked out at us from the windows of their boat-prisons. Had we been nearer they would have cried to us for food and cash. The sufferings of the Asiatic lepers are not exaggerated. I never went amongst them (and in India I went amongst them often) without thinking, “How long, O Lord! how long?”
Nothing impressed me as more unique in unique China than the perseverance of the Roman Catholic Church in her desperate attempt to convert the unconvertible Chinese.
The following telegram was recently sent from Shanghai:—“The Roman Catholic Mission at Lichuen, near the Szechuen border of the province of Hu-Peli, has been attacked by a mob. The priests escaped into the neighbouring provinces.”—Reuter. Similar messages have been flashed to us before; similar messages will be flashed to us again. So long as Europe overstrains the forbearance of Asia, the blood of a few Europeans must dampen the ire of the Asiatic populace.
I met in Canton a venerable churchman who has been for many years eminent in Roman Catholicism in China. Like all men eminent in the Church of Rome, he was a man of the world, open-minded, cultivated, and charmingly companionable. I ventured to ask him, “How many Chinamen have you converted during your long residence here—converted in the fullest, most absolute significance of the word?”
The old man looked across the Canton river, upon which we were at the time. To our left lay the floating prisons of the Cantonese lepers. To our right, floated the “flower boats” of the Cantonese frail. Then he answered me: “Daughter, none! But”—pointing with his thin white hand to the left—“we have alleviated suffering, and”—pointing to the right, “we have checked sin. There is yet great sin and great suffering calling out to us for help; and we are paving the way for the spiritual success of the priests unborn. Rome of the seven hills was not built in a day. Rome, the spiritual, will not be made perfect and entire in a generation. Little by little we are gaining ground here. A Chinaman pretends a conversion he does not experience—for the sake of benefits we confer on him. His children grow accustomed to our blessed symbols and our holy rites. It is our great hope that his grandchildren, or perhaps his great-grandchildren, may become truly and entirely sons of the true Church. In the meantime, we hope and pray and work, and do what good we may.” This then is the hope of Rome concerning China—to make possible the conversion of the Chinese of the future.
For this possible future accomplishment Rome spends vast sums of money—erects superb edifices—risks many noble lives. The Chinese accept the comforts bought with the money. They take shelter—when it suits their convenience—in the buildings that they demolish when it pleases their enraged whim; and they destroy the lives dedicated wisely, or unwisely, to their service.
CHINESE ACTORS. Page 136.
Rome fails, and I believe will fail. The religion and the life of the Chinese are one. It is the same with all Eastern peoples except the Japanese. In the East, religion stands for social sanctities, for hygienic regulations. Above all, it is the national expression of patriotism. Moreover, the religions of the East suit the peoples of the East. The Christian religion does not. The Church of Rome, with her fine Machiavelian wisdom, does her utmost to make her belief appropriate to the Mongolian temperament and mentality. Rome fails—because she attempts the impossible. The religion of China (although in one sense little respected) is the poetry of China, the art of China, the tradition of China. It will make way, as the religion of the North American Indians has made way, when the Chinese are exterminated and ground in their native dust, as the North American Indians have been crushed and spiritually exterminated.
Can we blame the Chinese for their allegiance to a form of religion which has satisfied their extremest ethical need for thousands of years? I, for one, cannot unqualifiedly condemn them for their cruel inhospitality, when I recall scenes I have seen in the Chinese quarters of San Francisco and of Melbourne. I have seen a joss house demolished by the hands of civilised Anglo-Saxons; but I deplore that China’s not unnatural retaliation should fall upon a self-sacrificing body of men who only seek the good of China and the glory of the God in whom they earnestly believe.
Three years ago, almost to a day, I visited the Roman Catholic Mission which recently was destroyed by the infuriated Chinese. What a waste of art and life!
Every Englishman living in China, who is not blinded by an overplus of religious enthusiasm, will, I think, bear me out that the Chinese cannot be converted. An Anglican clergyman lived and preached for twenty odd years in Shanghai; he failed to make many converts. But he consoled himself inasmuch as he had snatched one brand from the burning. His “boy,” to whom he paid unusual wages, was a most devout Christian. When the divine left China he reluctantly parted with “Foo Sing,” bestowing upon him several Bibles and many yen. Half an hour after the English mail had sailed, a friend of the churchman’s met “Foo Sing.”
“Well, Foo Sing,” said the European, “what are you going to do now Dr. —— has gone?”
“Me,” said Foo Sing, “Me go chin chin my own joss. English joss all played out.”
Rome is attempting a great thing in China. Her methods are dignified; and the Chinese deal with Rome with proportional brutality. At the American Missionaries, the men of whom wear false “pigtails” and the women modified pantaloons, the Chinese merely laugh. One of the Chinaman’s chief characteristics is his sense of humour.
On the other side of our good ship (to return to our first entry into Canton), opposite to the poor leper boats, floated the famous flower boats of Canton. They were the prison palaces of the moral lepers of Canton. It was daylight now, and the small boats floated demurely on the rippled water. The matting blinds were down. The women were sleeping. When the sun had set, the little boats of sin would sparkle with a thousand lanterns and tinkle with a hundred guitars, and shameless mandarins would smoke long opium pipes and sip small cups of hot, perfumed wine.
The unfortunate women of China are at least less scourged by public opinion than are their Occidental sisters. Nor are they sneered at by their righteous half-sisters, nor slapped in the face by Mrs. Grundy’s wee white hands. They live apart.
We anchored some few yards from Canton, and then began what we thought rare fun. A world of sampans pushed about us, and the women coolies rushed on deck, demanding our luggage and begging to row us ashore. The women of the coolie class do all such work in Canton. We fell into the clutches of a good-natured old thing called “one-eyed Sarah.” She was very fat, very rich, and very jolly. Our friend the Editor chaffed her roundly, but she took it all in good part, and gave as good as she took. When we had accepted her as our boatman, she screamed to two young girls, who ran lightly up and shouldered our luggage quite calmly. My box was heavy, and we had quite a collection of little things. Sarah carried nothing, but she helped us all into her boat, and I learned afterwards that she would willingly have carried me because she thought I looked little and helpless. I am at least a head taller than Sarah.
How wonderfully those women guided their boat! They are wonderful watermen, the sampan women of Canton. We were jammed among some hundreds of other boats, and our position seemed inextricable and perilous. But it was neither the one nor the other. In and out they pulled, away from the steamer, up the narrow water-way that stretches between Canton and Sha-mien, until they landed us at the steps of the Sha-mien hotel. Then Sarah did lift me out on to terra firma, to the great delight of my disrespectful husband. “Little girl,” she said patronisingly, “but plenty heavy.”
Europeans are not allowed to live in Canton. Even to go into Canton they must have a pass or permit, which must be shown to the guards at the city gate. Sha-mien is the European concession. There live all the Occidentals who have diplomatic or other business at Canton. They are only a handful—the European permanent residents at Sha-mien; eighty odd, I think, they numbered when we were there—all told I mean; men, women and children. They live with their lives in their hands. The moral force of Europe is great, but if the Cantonese become vicious enough, they will rally across that narrow bridge and massacre every European in Sha-mien. They have done it before; they will do it again, if they grow angry enough. I hope that they never may. It is to be hoped that they will be given no cause.
The hotel was a pleasant, clean, white place. It stood upon green grass among green trees. A pretty little donkey came and begged a biscuit from me. It was the pet of Europe in Sha-mien. Our bills were profusely displayed in the hotel hall. They made me shudder a bit, for our recital was to be that night.
“Do you know yet what you are going to recite to-night?” asked my husband meanly.
“I think we’ll cut my recitations out,” I said sweetly.
“No we won’t,” said my husband. He even offered to accompany me up to our rooms and try to teach me some recitations; but I refused flatly. When the night came, I would get through it in some desperate fashion. But now I was going into Canton.
Canton lay just across the canal. It was walled, as almost every Chinese city is. We could catch no glimpse of the city itself from Sha-mien. That made me the more impatient to be off.
There are at least three wonders in the East that can never be exaggerated: the Taj Mahal, sunrise on the Himalayas, and Canton.
I forget our guide’s name—we could not go into Canton without a guide; but he appeared very much of a gentleman and spoke accurate English. We went into quaint box-like palanquins. There were four chairs, two for us, one for our Editor, and one for the guide. Three coolies carried each chair. Across the bridge; through the guarded gateway: We were in Canton!
If I could describe it as perfectly as I remember it! I had expected noise and crowds, new sights, new sounds, new smells, long endless streets, and tall, tall houses. But what I found was ten times more. The streets were often so narrow that, if two chairs wished to pass, one had to retreat into the nearest shop until the other had gone on. The houses were so tall that they seemed to lean toward each other and to touch at the vertical point of sight. Indeed many of them did almost meet—they were so built out with balconies. I don’t know what was in the upper rooms of those houses; but certainly everything appeared to be on the balconies. What clothing a poor or middle-class Chinaman possesses beyond that on his back usually hangs on his balcony. The Chinese have more cleanliness than they are accredited with by the generality of Europeans.
We went for miles in Canton without seeing the sky. The density of the city, the swarming, seething inhabitants, the variety of shops and trades, are indescribable.
The first shop at which we stopped was the studio of painters on rice paper. And a very unstudio-like place it was. The artists (two of them were famous) sat at workman-like tables, doing their careful work. The rice paper is lovely of itself, and the painting was exquisitely done. Chinese art is a difficult subject. The Chinese execution is often very delicate; the Chinese sense of colour is very true, though with the exception of their dull predominant blue, all their colours are brilliant in the extreme. But even their characteristic blue they use rather sparingly in their painting. Chinese drawing impressed me as primitive, but not inexact; but if I were less ignorant about Chinese art, I might regard it very differently.
I have a dozen or more of the dainty “rice pictures” that were being painted in that queer unartistic Cantonese studio. Not one picture has been painted by one man. For instance, I have among them the figure of a mandarin. It is not over six inches high, but it represents the considerable work of three artists, one of them noted throughout China. He painted the mandarin’s face, and told me that for thirty odd years he had painted faces, and done no other thing, save to sleep a little, eat a great deal, worship his ancestors, and chin chin his joss sometimes. He was a courtly old gentleman, and smilingly allowed me to spoil several sheets of rice paper, and waste sundry brushfuls of colour, trying to imitate his methods. The draperies of my little figure were painted by another artist, and the hands were the work of a third man who paints nothing but hands. There were men there who painted nothing but leaves—others who painted only flowers. There were other men who spent all their lives painting one picture again and again. The picture they painted one week, they copied the next. And one artist in that room painted only caterpillars—he had painted nothing else for ten years. He painted them exquisitely. It will be readily understood that their execution was deft and exact in the extreme, but that their work lacked breadth, great atmosphere, and inspiration of design.
Next we stopped at a jeweller’s. They were making queer silver things, and inlaying them with infinitesimal bits of bright blue feather. The finished ornaments were more curious than beautiful; but the wings that lay upon the workmen’s trays were magnificently beautiful. Thousands of kingfishers are murdered every year to deck these foolish Chinese baubles. I believe that the meat of the birds is utilised for food; and that, of course, makes the crime nil—if we are to eat slaughtered innocents at all.
We bought ivories at one shop, and carved ebonies at another. We saw baskets full to the brim with rare pearls; we saw seed-pearls sold by the pound.
Our journalistic friend had come to Canton on business; but he was neglecting it that he might help us to see more thoroughly the city, which he probably knew as well as any Englishman in China.
We pressed in between the busy looms in a big weaving establishment. The men talked learnedly of looms and like machinery all over the world; and I gloated over the marvellous silks and satins. We went through such gorgeous collections of black furniture. My husband, who rarely longs for any creature comfort beyond a cigar, a rowing boat, and a horse, was as tempted as I—I, who am always and so easily tempted,—and wanted to buy a boat-load of the great, grotesque, carved things.
On our way back to the city gate, we stopped at a silk shop, and my husband bought me a shawl that I kissed for its sheer loveliness, and crêpes that I patted and stroked, and, when we were home, threw in great, soft, silken heaps on the bed.
Chinese and Japanese embroideries are very different. Each excels in some qualities. The Japanese are the more admirable in the use of gold and silver; the Chinese are the superior in the use of many and mingled colours.
When we reached the hotel—none too soon,—my spirits fell. We had a hurried but merry dinner, and then we went upstairs, with just an hour and a half to spare before our great “Shakesperian Recital.”
“James,” said my husband, severely,—he calls me James when I’m bad—“James, you’re a villain.”
“But you are a saint,” I said in my most wheedling accents. “And you know you recite superbly. You do all the recital. Tell them I’m dead—make a speech before you begin, you know. And I will sit at the door, and take tickets, and lead the applause.”
But he was uncoaxable. So I had to dress, and descend into the little ante-room off the dining-room. I took with me a book of “Fine Poetical Selections,” and searched feverishly for something to read. I boast of having an exceptionally quick “study,” but, of course, I could not memorise three poems in one hour and five minutes; so I had necessarily determined to read, and not to recite.
I was the unhappiest woman in China that night.
My husband was in a gale of delight. He had trapped me into a recital for once.
Well, it began at last. All the Europeans in Sha-mien—save one, I believe—were there.
Our little stage was very wonderful. While we had been palanquin riding through Canton, three or four coolies had brought into the dining-room pieces of bamboo of different lengths. These had not been nailed together; they had tied them together with wisps of bamboo until the stage was shaped. Then across the top they had laid smooth planks. Into these even they had not driven a nail, they had tied them in place. The result was a perfect little stage.
My confrère opened the, to me, ghastly entertainment. When he came off, I seized my book desperately, and marched to my doom. They gave me a cordial little reception. I could have shaken them. Our friend the Editor, who knew the full measure of my unpreparedness, sat in the front row, trying manfully to look respectful. Mr. Paulding stood gracefully near the door. He looked anxious and nervous, and appeared contemplative of flight.
I thought of Demosthenes, and wondered how it would do to begin by saying, “Men and women of Sha-mien.” But really they looked too gentle; so I said instead, “Ladies and gentlemen.” My husband giggled in the ante-room. I could hear him. I opened the book—opened it by chance at “Ostler Joe.” It wasn’t quite long enough, so I prefaced it with a speech. In that speech I told all I knew, and a good deal that I didn’t know, about the history of the piece, the author of the piece—an American woman who had made it famous in Washington; and I remember that I contrived to say something about the Princess of Wales. At that they broke into hearty applause. Then I began to read. The print was bad, and the light was worse, but I struggled through in some sad fashion. When I had finished, it was the most astonished little audience you ever saw; and Mr. Paulding had left.
I won’t chronicle my other two selections, nor record how they were received. But, I assure you, on my word of honour as an actress, that I was not a success.
However, I am, I believe, justified in saying that the second part of the programme was worse than the first. The second part comprised four scenes from Shakespeare—so the programme said. Mr. Paulding says that I wrote the programme; I say that he wrote it. My husband, who, with all his faults, is a gentle, peace-making man, says that the mistakes in the programme were made by the Chinese printer. Mr. Paulding and I are both reluctant to parent the programme when we recall how it was carried out. The details of the “Four Scenes from Shakespeare” were—
A Scene from Romeo and Juliet.
A Scene from Macbeth.
A Scene from Antony and Cleopatra.
A Scene from The Fool’s Revenge.
At least so the Chinese printer said, but who could expect a Cantonese compositor ever to have heard of Tom Taylor?
I do not know which of the four tragic selections was the funniest.
Picture Romeo, Macbeth, Antony, and Bertuccio in a nice new dress suit, nice new patent-leather shoes, nice new white kid gloves; picture Juliet, Lady Macbeth, Cleopatra, and sweet, simple little Fiordelisa in a long, black, jetted, sleeveless French frock, ridiculously long tan gloves, and shoes that were monstrous Parisian burlesques of the “human foot divine!”
Need I say that there was no scenery? I tried to do my duty as a soldier of the mask should. But my husband, who is a very shameless person, was in an unseemly state of hilarity. And indeed, for all my trying, I cannot say that Juliet’s impassioned words fell “trippingly from my tongue.”
It was over at last, and the kind, patient audience went sadly out. Across the globe I send them my greeting. Perhaps they will forgive me the dire distress I must have inflicted upon them if they ever learn that their misspent yen enabled me to see Canton.
How good, how English they were, those patient people! They would have taught me, had I not known long before, that, whatever an English audience may think, it is incapable of showing disapprobation to a woman.
When the poor audience had escaped we had supper; our editor, Mr. Paulding, my husband, and I. The editor said that he preferred my acting to my reciting. Mr. Paulding said he had enjoyed the entertainment immensely—especially after he left. My husband laughed and laughed, and I ate my supper and suggested a midnight prowl through Canton.
But that, like much I say, was easier said than done. The Canton gate was shut. So we said good-night and retired as nice English people should. I lit a big flare of joss sticks in our chamber, for I had no mind to forget, even in my sleep, that I was in Cathay.
We sat for a few moments on our balcony and spun strange webs of fancied thought about Canton. We struck, with our mental fingers, a thousand copper gongs and weaved big fabrics of Mongolian romance. And all the while Canton was asleep.
The Chinese are a very normal people. Though their industriousness prods them to lamp-lit work, they, as a rule, sleep as soon after sunset as they can.
The next day broke in big Oriental splendour. There was to be no Shakespearian Recital that night. We were going to spend the week in Canton, and I was the happiest woman in Asia.
When we had paid to the Chinese dawn the weak obeisance of buttered toast, fried fish, and superlatively hot coffee, we sallied forth into Canton. How shall I describe that week? I can’t describe it. I can only say, “Go East—go East—go East!”
We found the same chairs awaiting us. Our guide looked brisk and ready; he had not attended our Shakespearian Recital. They carried us first to the Cantonese execution-grounds. We did not go into them. I am a curious, inquisitive, not to say a tautological female, but I did not care to penetrate into that place of slaughter.
Three or four of our boys went from Hong-Kong to Kowloon to see an execution. That was what they said; but revelations over which they had no control led me to believe that they, in part at least, went to pit the hard-earned wages of histrionic genius against the oblong gold pieces of Chinese exchange.
They, knowing what a free-lance I was, asked me to go with them to observe the extinguishment of sinful Chinese life; but my imagination is more than my courage, and I declined. My husband was (what husband would not have been?) madly angry.
I have never known whether the boys were joking or not; but I am inclined to give them and myself the benefit of the doubt and to believe that they were.
At all events, our Cantonese guide was in grim earnest, and evidently felt injured because he was prevented from showing us what he apparently thought the chief glory of his native city.
If you too, good reader, feel deprived of your sanguinary rights, I must refer you to the printed records of more strongly-minded travellers. There have been many such, and in their pages you will find your just due of gory Chinese swords and of ghastly, trunkless Chinese heads in big brown jars.
We spent several hours in a fascinating shop where old Chinese robes and marvellous antique embroideries were sold. My husband bought me a charming, magnificent cape that had belonged very many years before to a mandarin. It was coarsely designed, but superfinely executed open-work. Roses, leaves, and butterflies were the burden of its embroidered song. The points of its irregular edges were finished with queer, silky, crimson knobs and wee golden bells. Last summer I took off the balls and the bells and three of the most prononcé butterflies, and the former cape of the noble yellow man made an inexpressibly effective zouave on my prettiest house gown.
We were a little disappointed in the temple of the five thousand genii and in the five-storied pagoda. But the flowery pagoda was a marvel of quaint beauty; and the changing, panoramic wonder of the streets never palled upon us.
We had a Chinese lunch with a Chinese dignitary, and he let me prowl about his mansion and the ridiculous courtyard. He introduced me to his wife, and she introduced me to her husband’s concubines, with whom she seemed to be on the best of terms.
In China “concubine” means something very analogous to the “handmaiden” of Biblical times. She is not a wife, but to Occidental ears the term is best understood if it is translated “underwife—lesser wife.”
After lunch we visited the sanctum of a Cantonese editor, and from there we went to one of the large popular markets. Shall I describe it? Shall I try? Yes; there were—black ones and white ones and gray ones. The black ones are considered far the most choice. Isn’t it horrible to think of human creatures eating cats and dogs and rats? Is it not most horrible? And yet—why? Can we allege one single sound reason against it? I think not. And yet as I stood in that Cantonese market I did feel for a moment very much as Hamlet felt when he held Yorick’s earthy skull in his hands. As for my husband; he fled. I wonder why men are in so many ways daintier than women?
It was a gruesome sight, that busy market-place, with great piles of meat cut from animals we scarcely mention when we eat. Poor pussies! they looked very pathetic. And I could have cried over the massacre of the puppies. The rats hung in countless numbers upon long, stretched strings. Probably I would better not describe more minutely. It did revolt me. And yet I do not know why it should have done so.
Unless we adopt vegetarianism and abstain from eating aught that has possessed animal life and consciousness, I do not see how we can consistently condemn the Chinaman, because he is less erratic than we in his selection of food, and because he is the creature of a sterner necessity than ours. If we consider the vast numbers of Chinese that must eat to live,—if we consider the proportional density of the population,—I am sure that we shall be just enough to realise that the Chinese must utilise every available atom of wholesome food.
Emperors and heroes have supped off strange flesh in time of war. According to some historians Napoleon’s larder was reduced to cat’s flesh, during the retreat from Moscow.
The most elegant woman I ever knew, a French woman who went through the Commune, told me once, “Ze meat of ze horse, it iz very nasty, but ze meat of ze rat it is nice, if you know not what it iz.”
“The hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.”
We tip-tilt our nice European noses at a great deal, because we have had no usage of it. Sometimes we are condemned as unreasonable. Prejudice and lack of sympathy are near akin to injustice and misjudgment.
We left Canton reluctantly. As we neared Hong-Kong my comrade said to me—
“James, would anything on earth induce you to repeat that recital?”
“My friend,” I said, “if I could have another long day’s prowl about Canton I would stand up and recite the whole play of Hamlet all by myself,—and to an audience of three.” And I meant it.