Biography of Percival Lowell

by A. Lawrence Lowell

PERCIVAL LOWELL AND THE MEMBERS OF THE KOREAN EMBASSY

CHAPTER IV
HIS FIRST BOOK, “CHOSÖN”

He did write the book, and published it in 1885, under the title of “Chosön—the Land of the Morning Calm—A Sketch of Korea” It is an account of his personal experiences, under peculiarly favorable conditions, in a land of Asiatic civilization almost wholly unknown to the outer world, and as such it was, and after fifty years remains, a highly interesting book of travel. Although there is too much clever play on words, a natural temptation to a brilliant young writer, the story is graphically told, with much appreciation and many poetic touches on men and scenes. But the book is far more than this. It is a careful study of the land and its people, their customs, ideas and manner of life. He describes the geography of the country and of the walled capital, then little known, the legends and government; the houses and mode of life of the upper and lower classes, then sharply distinguished; the architecture, landscape gardening and costumes, some of them very peculiar; for while much of the civilization had been derived from China, and parts of it bore a close relation to the conditions in Japan, it was in many ways quite distinct and unlike anything else even in the Far East. Three things struck him greatly, as lying at the base of the mode of life, and these he called the triad of principles. They were the strange lack of individual variation, which he called the quality of impersonality, of which we shall hear more in connection with the Japanese; the patriarchal system, with the rules of inheritance and the relation of children to the fathers, which was carried very far; and the position of women, in which the principle of exclusion, universal as it is in Asia, was more rigidly enforced than elsewhere in the Far East.

He was also impressed by the absence of what we understand by religion, in substance or in manifestation, unless the ethics of Confucius can be so called. Save for a few monasteries there were no ecclesiastical buildings, no temples, no services, public or observable. Buddhist priests had long been excluded from the walled cities, and the ancient cult that developed into Shinto in Japan died out or never developed. On the other hand, there was a general belief in a multitude of demons, some good, but, so far as they affected man, evil for the most part, and kept away by trivial devices, like images of beasts on the roofs and wisps of straw over the doors.

How he succeeded in acquiring all the knowledge set forth in the book it is difficult to conceive, for he was there only about two months, came with the slight knowledge of the language he could have picked up from his colleagues on the Mission to America; and there were only two men, it would seem, who could speak both Korean and any European tongue,—one of them a German in the Foreign Office, and the other an English schoolmaster who had been there but a short time. His chief source of information must have come through people who spoke Korean and Japanese, but his own knowledge of the latter was still very limited, for he had spent only a few months in Japan, and his secretary, Tsunejiro Miyaoka, afterward a distinguished lawyer in Tokyo, who knew English, was desperately ill almost all the time he was in Korea. To have absorbed and displayed so clearly all the information in “Chosön” makes that work, if not one of his greatest contributions to knowledge, yet a remarkable feat. Most books of travel are soon superseded, but this one has a distinct permanent value, because the life he portrays, especially that of the upper class, which was almost all connected with the holding of public office, has been swept away, never to reappear, by the conquest and ultimate incorporation of the country by Japan.

CHAPTER V
THE COUP D’ETAT AND THE JAPANESE MARCH TO THE SEA

One more event in Korea interested him deeply, for it meant life or death to some of his nearest native friends, and under the title of “A Korean Coup d’Etat,” he gave a graphic account of it in the Atlantic Monthly for November 1886. Although not himself present, since it took place in the December after he had left, it was not unconnected with the Mission to America of which he had been a member; for the policy of opening Korea to the world had not met with universal favor among the officials, and all those who had gone on the Mission did not take it very seriously. In fact the two groups rapidly drew apart, one side seeking to extend foreign contacts and the use of foreign methods, the other preparing to resist this. The latter began to strengthen themselves by enrolling what they called a militia,—really a rough body of men devoted to their interests,—until the progressionists, as their opponents were called, saw that they would be crushed unless they struck quickly. Among their leaders was Hong Yöng Sik, who had been especially attentive to Percival during his stay in Söul, and he with his partisans decided to get control of affairs by the method whereby changes of ministry are often effected at a certain stage of political evolution, that is, by removing objectionable ministers both from office and from the world. The occasion selected was a banquet to celebrate the creation of a post office, that institution being regarded as typical of good or evil in foreign habits. The chief victim was wounded but not killed, whereat the progressionist leaders, pretending to be alarmed for the safety of the King, went to the palace and slew such of the leading opponents as they could lay their hands on; but, having no troops, sent in His Majesty’s name to ask the Japanese minister for the protection of his force of one hundred and twenty guards. Not suspecting the real nature of the disturbance, he complied, but was soon attacked by a body of six hundred Chinese soldiers, naturally in sympathy with the conservatives, and at their back the Korean militia. For two days the Japanese guards held off the assailants with little loss to themselves compared with that of their foes, until the King placed himself in the hands of the Korean militia, when there was nothing for the Japanese to do but to get back to their legation as best they could. The rest of the tale he felt so much and told so well in the ephemeral form of a magazine article that it is given here in his own words:[4]

Night had already wrapped the city in gloom, as the column defiled from the palace gate into the black and tortuous streets of the town. No resistance was made to their exit, for, under cover of the darkness, the Korean soldiers had all secretly slipped away. A pall-like obscurity and silence had settled over everything. It seemed the spirit of death. The streets of Söul are for the most part hardly more than wide alleys, crooked and forbidding enough in the daytime. Night converts them into long cavernous passages, devoid of light, like the underground ramifications of some vast cave; for, by a curious curfew law, they are denied any artificial illumination. Through this sombre labyrinth the Japanese column threaded its way, with nothing to light its path but the reflection in the sky of fires in distant parts of the city,—a weird canopy to an inky blackness. Before long, however, even night failed to yield security from man. At the cross-roads and wherever a side-street offered an opportunity for attack were gathered bands of braves, mixed masses of soldiers and populace, who fired upon them or hurled stones, according to the character of the individuals. Still they pushed steadily forward, though utterly uncertain what they might find at their journey’s end; for they had not been able to hear from the legation since the attack on the palace, and were in grave fear for its safety. As they came to the top of a bit of rising ground, they made out by the lurid light of the fires their own flag, the red ball on the white field, flying from its flagstaff, and thus learnt for the first time that the buildings were still standing and in Japanese hands. As they neared the legation the crowds increased, but, sweeping them aside, the troops at length reached their destination at eight o’clock at night, having been absent forty-eight hours.

That the legation was yet safe was not due to any neglect or forbearance on the part of the Koreans. From the moment of the attempted assassination of Min Yöng Ik, the city had fallen a prey to disturbances that grew hourly graver and graver in character, and began to be directed more and more against the Japanese merchants and traders scattered through the town. Such of these as took alarm first hastened to the legation for protection. In this way about seventy of them had collected in the buildings, and they, together with the servants and a score of soldiers that had been left there, had successfully defended the place until the return of the troops. For two whole days the little improvised garrison had kept the besiegers at bay.