THEIR IMPERIAL HIGHNESSES THE CROWN PRINCE AND PRINCESS
In her maiden days, she became the mistress of a Chinaman; tiring of him she passed into the grace and favour of a Cabinet Minister. He introduced her to the service of the late Queen, whose acquaintance she made at the house of her father, a Palace attendant of low degree, with quarters within the walls. By the time that she became a woman in the service of her Majesty, the Lady Om had presented a child to each of her respective partners. As the virtue of the women in attendance upon the Queen had of necessity to be assured, her previous admirers kept their counsel for the safety of their own heads. The Lady Om boasted abilities which distinguished her among the other maids in attendance. She sang to perfection, danced with consummate grace; painted with no little delicacy and originality, and could read, write, and speak Chinese and Korean with agreeable fluency. The Queen took a fancy to her apparently innocent, guileless, and very lovable attendant. Imitating the excellent example of his illustrious spouse, his Majesty sealed the rape of virtue with a kingly smile. The Queen grew restless. Suspicion, confirmed by appearances, developed into certainty, and the Lady Om fled from the Palace to escape the anger and jealousy of her late mistress. The third child, of whom Lady Om became the mother, was born beyond the capital, in the place of refuge where the errant Griselle had taken up her abode. Meanwhile, Lady Om avoided the parental establishment within the purlieus of the Palace. Upon the death of her third child she sought the protection of another high official. With him she dwelt in safety, peace, and happiness, becoming, through her strange faculty of presenting each admirer with evidences of her innocence, the subject of some ribald songs. Since her return to Imperial favour, these verses have been suppressed, and may not be uttered upon pain of emasculation.
It now seemed as if the Lady Om had settled down, but the events of 1895, culminating in the foul murder of the late Queen, prompted her to renew her acquaintance with the unhappy Emperor. She became a Palace attendant again, and at once cleverly succeeded in bringing herself before the Imperial notice. She was sweetly sympathetic towards his Majesty; her commiseration, her tenderness, her suppliant air of injured innocence, almost immediately captivated him. She was raised to the rank of an Imperial concubine; money was showered upon her, and she proceeded immediately to exercise an influence over the Emperor which has never relaxed. She became a power at Court and once again a mother. Her influence is now directed towards the definite maintenance of her own interests. She wishes her son to be the future Emperor; she is now living in a palace, and, since she is the apple of his Majesty’s eye, she permits nothing to endanger the stakes for which she is playing. Recently Kim Yueng-chun, an official of importance but of precarious position, wishing to secure himself in the consideration of his sovereign, introduced a new beauty, whose purity and loveliness were unquestioned. Lady Om heard of Lady Kang and said nothing. Within two weeks, however, the Minister was removed upon some small pretext, and subsequently tortured, mutilated, and strangled. The Lady Kang found that if the mills of Lady Om grind slowly, they grind exceedingly small.
Lady Om is a lover of ancient customs; by ancient customs she made her way; by ancient customs she proposes to keep it. Her power increases daily, and a stately edifice has been erected in the centre of the capital to commemorate her virtues. A few months before her marriage to the Emperor, when there was ample indication of the trend of events, the Emperor published a decree which declared that Lady Om had become an Imperial concubine of the First Class. This did not give her Imperial status; but it conferred upon her son Imperial rank. By reason of this decree, however, he will, at some future date, ascend the throne, while it opened a way for Lady Om to secure recognition in Korea as the lawful spouse of her royal admirer.
A MINOR ROYALTY
CHAPTER VI
The passing of the Emperor—An Imperial pageant
The Emperor passed one morning in procession from the Imperial Palace, which adjoins the British Legation upon its south wall, to the newly erected Temple of Ancestors, the eastern wall of which marks the limits of the Legation grounds. The festival was in no way public; yet, such was the splendour of the pageant, that this progress of eight hundred yards, leaving the Palace by its south gate and entering again by the eastern gate, cost over two thousand pounds. No warning of the Imperial plans was given to his Majesty’s subjects. Just before the hour of his departure, however, the Emperor expressed the hope that the British Minister and myself would be interested in the procession, inviting us to watch the spectacle from the Legation domain. Information of the movements of the Court was, of course, bruited abroad. Large crowds gathered around the precincts of the Palace and the Temple, attracted by the efforts which the soldiers were making to form a cordon round the scene. Hundreds of soldiers were told off to guard the approaches to the Temple. One battalion of infantry was installed in the grounds of the Imperial Korean Customs, another occupied the gates and garden of the British Legation.