XII
Saturday, October 27.
I wanted to see the Violet City and its throne rooms once more before going away, and to enter it this time, not by round-about ways and back doors and secret posterns, but by the great avenues and gates that have been for centuries closed, so that I might try to imagine beneath the destruction of to-day what must have been in former times the splendor of the sovereigns' arrival.
No one of our European capitals has been conceived and laid out with such unity and audacity, with the idea of increasing the magnificence of a pageant always dominant, especially that of imparting an imposing effect to the appearance of the Emperor. The throne is here the central idea. This city, as regular as a geometrical figure, seems to have been created solely to enclose and glorify the throne of the Son of Heaven, ruler of four hundred millions of souls; to be its peristyle, to lead up to it by colossal avenues which recall Thebes or Babylon. It is easy to understand why the Chinese ambassadors, who came to visit our kings in the times when their immense country was flourishing, were not particularly dazzled by the sight of the Paris of those days, of the Louvre or of Versailles.
The southern gate of Pekin, by which the processions arrive, lies in the axis of this throne, once so awe-inspiring, and six kilometres of avenues, with gateways and monsters, lead up to it. When one has crossed the wall of the Chinese City by this southern gate, first passing two huge sanctuaries,—the Temple of Agriculture and the Temple of Heaven,—one follows for half an hour the great artery that leads to a second boundary wall, that of the Tartar City, higher and more commanding than the first. An enormous gate looms up, surmounted by a black dungeon, and beyond this the avenue goes on, flawlessly straight and magnificent, to a third gate in a third wall of a blood-red color,—the wall of the Imperial City.
Even after entering the Imperial City it is still some distance to the throne to which one is advancing in a straight line,—to this throne which dominates everything and which formerly could never have been seen; but here its presence is indicated by the surroundings. From this point the number of marble monsters increases; lions of colossal size grin from their pedestals at right and at left; there are marble obelisks—monoliths encircled with dragons—with the same heraldic beast always seated at the summit,—a thin kind of jackal with long ears, which has the appearance of barking or howling in the direction of the extraordinary thing which is on ahead, namely, the throne of the Emperor. Walls are multiplied,—blood-colored walls thirty metres thick,—which cross the road, and are surmounted by queer roofs and pierced by low gates,—narrow ambushes that send a thrill of terror to your heart. The defending moats at the foot of the walls have marble bridges, triple like the gates, and from here on the road is paved with superb big slabs crossing one another at an angle, like the boards of a parquetry floor.
After it reaches the Imperial City, this avenue, already a league in length, is absolutely unfrequented, and goes on even wider than before between long regular buildings intended for soldiers' barracks. No more little gilded houses, no more small shops, no more crowds! At this last imprisoning rampart the life of the people stops, under the oppression of the throne; and at the very end of this solitary roadway, watched over by the slender marble beasts surmounting the obelisks, the forbidden centre of Pekin becomes visible, the retreat of the Son of Heaven.
The last wall which appears ahead of us—that of the Violet City—is, like the preceding ones, the color of dried blood; there are numerous watch-towers upon it, whose roofs of dark enamel curve up at the corners in wicked little points. The triple gates are too small, too low for the height of the wall, too deep and tunnel-like. Oh, the heaviness, the hugeness of it all, and the strangeness of the design of the roofs, so characteristic of the peculiarities of the yellow colossus!
Things must have begun to go to pieces here centuries ago; the red plaster of the walls has fallen in places, or it has become spotted with black; the marble of the obelisks and the great squinting lions could only have grown so yellow under the rains of innumerable seasons, and the green that pushes through wherever the granite is joined, marks with lines of velvet the design of the pavement.
The last triple gates, given over since the defeat to a detachment of American soldiers, will open to-day for any barbarian, such as I, who carries a properly signed permit.
Passing through the tunnels, one enters an immense marble whiteness,—a whiteness that is turning into ivory yellow and is stained by the autumn leaves and the wild growth that has invaded this deserted spot. The place is paved with marble, and straight ahead, rising like a wall, is an extraordinary marble terrace, on which stands the throne room, with its sturdy blood-red columns and its roof of old enamel. This white enclosure is like a cemetery—so much green has pushed its way up between the paving-stones,—where the silence is broken only by the magpies and the crows.
On the ground are ranged blocks of bronze all similar and cone-like in shape; they are simply placed there among the brown leaves and branches, and can be moved about as if they were ninepins. They are used during the formal entry of a procession to mark the line for the flags and the places where even the most magnificent visitors must prostrate themselves when the Son of Heaven deigns to appear, like a god, on top of the marble terrace, surrounded by banners, and in one of those costumes with breastplate of gold, monsters' heads on the shoulders, and gold wings in the headdress, whose superhuman splendor has been transmitted to us by means of the paintings in the Temple of Ancestors.
One mounts to these terraces by staircases of Babylonian proportions and by an "imperial path," reserved for the Emperor alone, that is to say, by an inclined plane made of one block of marble,—one of those untransportable blocks which men in the past possessed the secret of moving. The five-clawed dragon displays his sculptured coils from the top to the bottom of this stone, which cuts the big white staircase into two equal parts, of which it forms the centre, and extends right to the foot of the throne. No Chinese would dare to walk on this "path" by which the emperors descend, pressing the high soles of their shoes on the scales of the heraldic beast, in order not to slip.
The room at the top, open to-day to all the winds that blow and to all the birds of heaven, has, by way of roof, the most prodigious mass of yellow faience that there is in Pekin, and the most bristling with monsters; the ornaments at the corners are shaped like big extended wings. Inside, needless to say, there is that blaze of reddish gold which always pursues one in Chinese palaces. On the ceiling, which is of an intricate design, dragons are everywhere entwined, entangled, interwoven; their claws and their horns appear, mingled with the clouds, and one of them, which is detached from the mass and seems ready to fall, holds in his hanging jaw a gold sphere directly above the throne. The throne, which is of red and gold lacquer, rises in the centre of this shadowy place on a sort of platform; two large screens made of feathers, emblems of sovereignty, stand behind it, and along the steps which lead up to it are incense-burners similar to those placed in pagodas at the feet of the gods.
Like the avenues through which I have come, like the series of bridges and the triple gates, this throne is in the exact centre of Pekin, and represents its soul; were it not for all these walls, all these various enclosures, the Emperor, seated there on this pedestal of lacquer and marble, could see to the farthest extremities of the city, to the farthest openings in the surrounding walls; the tributary sovereigns who come there, the ambassadors, the armies, from the moment of their entrance into Pekin by the southern gate, would be, so to speak, under the inspiration of his invisible eyes.
On the floor a thick carpet of imperial yellow reproduces in a much worn design the battle of the chimæras, the nightmare carved upon the ceiling; it is a carpet made in one piece, an enormous carpet of a wool so thick and close that one's feet sink into it as on a grassy lawn; but it is torn, eaten by moths, with piles of gray dung lying about on it in patches,—for magpies, pigeons, and crows have made their nests in the roof, and on my arrival the place is filled with the whirring of frightened wings up high against the shining beams, amongst the golden dragons and the clouds.
The incomprehensible fact about this palace, to us uninitiated barbarians, is that there are three of these rooms exactly alike, with the same throne, the same carpet, the same ornaments, in the same places; they are preceded by the same great marble courts and are constructed on the same marble terraces; you reach them by the same staircases and by the same imperial paths.
Why should there be three of them? For, of necessity, the first conceals the two others, and in order to pass from the first to the second, or from the second to the third, you must go down each time into a vast gloomy court without any view and then come up again between the piles of ivory-colored marble, so superb, yet so monotonous and oppressive!
There must be some mysterious reason connected with the use of the number three. This repetition produced on our disordered imaginations an effect analogous to that of the three similar sanctuaries and the three similar courts in the great Temple of the Lamas.
Copyright, 1901, by J. C. Hemment
Priceless Porcelains and Bronzes in the Third Palace, Forbidden City
I had already seen the private apartments of the young Emperor. Those of the Empress—for she had apartments here too, in addition to the frail palaces her fancy had scattered over the parks of the Yellow City—those of the Empress are less gloomy and much less dark. Room after room exactly alike, with large windows and superb yellow enamelled roofs. Each one has its marble steps, guarded by two lions all shining with gold, and the little gardens which separate them are filled with bronze ornaments, heraldic beasts, phœnixes, or crouching monsters.
Inside are yellow silks and square arm-chairs of the form consecrated by time, unchanging as China itself. On the chests, on the tables, a quantity of precious articles are placed in small glass cases,—because of the perpetual dust of Pekin,—and this makes them as cheerless as mummies and casts over the apartment the chill of a museum. There are many artificial bouquets of chimerical flowers of neutral shades in amber, jade, agate, and moonstones.
The great and inimitable luxury of these palace rooms consists of the series of ebony arches so carved as to seem a bower of dark leaves. In what far-away forest did the trees grow that permitted such groves to be created out of one single piece? And by means of what implements and what patience are they able to carve each stem and each leaf of light bamboo, or each fine needle of the cedar, out of the very heart of the tree, and to add to them birds and butterflies of the most exquisite workmanship?
Behind the sleeping-room of the Empress a kind of dark oratory is filled with Buddhistic divinities on altars. An exquisite odor still remains, left behind her by the beautiful, passionate, elegant old woman who was queen. Among these gods is a small creature made of very old wood, quite worn and dull from the loss of gilding, who wears about his neck a collar of fine pearls. In front of him is a bunch of dried flowers,—a last offering, one of the guardian eunuchs informs me, made by the Empress to this little old Buddha, who was her favorite fetish, at the supreme moment before her flight from the Violet City.
To-day I have reached this retreat by a very different route from the one I took on my first pilgrimage here, and in going out I must now pass through the quarters where all is walled and rewalled, the gates barricaded and guarded by more and more horrible monsters. Are there hidden princesses and treasures here? There is always the same bloody color on the walls, the same yellow faience on the roofs, and more horns, claws, cruel forms, hyena smiles, projecting teeth, and squinting eyes than ever; the most unimportant things, like bolts and locks, have features that simulate hatred and death.
Everything is perishing from old age; the stones are worn away, the wooden doors are falling into dust. There are some old shadowy courts that are given up to white-bearded octogenarian servants, who have built cabins, where they live like recluses, occupied in training magpies or in cultivating sickly flowers in pots under the eyes of the everlasting grinning old marble and bronze beasts. No cloistered green, no monk's cell, was ever half so gloomy as these little courts, so shut in and so dark, overshadowed for centuries by the uncontrolled caprices of the Chinese emperors. The inexorable sentence, "Leave hope behind, all those who enter here," seems to belong here; as one proceeds, the passages grow narrower and more intricate; it seems as though there were no escape, as though the great locks on the doors would refuse to work, as though the walls would close in upon and crush you.
Yet here I am almost outside, outside the interior wall and through the massive gates that quickly close behind me. Now I am between the second rampart and the first, both equally terrible. I am on the road which makes a circle around this city,—a sort of ominous passageway of great length that runs between two dark red walls and which seems to meet in the distance ahead of me. Human bones and old rags that have been parts of the clothing of soldiers are scattered here and there, and one sees two or three crows and one of the flesh-eating dogs prowling about.
When the boards which barricade the outside gate are let down for me (the gate guarded by the Japanese), I discover, as though on awakening from a dreadful dream, that I am in the park of the Yellow City, in open space under the great cedars.