We sailed to Shanghai and went from there straight to Peking, where we became the guests of Colonel and Mrs. Robertson, who had gone in with the American troops in the Allied Armies and were quartered in no less a place than the Temple of Heaven. The casual tourist looking now upon that glorious collection of ancestral shrines would find it difficult to believe that they once served as barracks for American soldiers. Most people who visit the Temple of Heaven find in it an atmosphere of peace and serenity such as is achieved by few structures in the world, and to have this deep calm invaded by business-like “foreign-devil” troops must have ruffled the spirits of the high gods. But the soldiers had to be quartered somewhere and this great, clean, tree-sheltered enclosure in the heart of the Chinese city offered ample space.
Mr. Conger was then our Minister to China, and after spending a few very busy days sightseeing we went to the Legation to visit him. The Legation quarter, which had been laid in ruins during the Boxer troubles, had not yet begun to assume an aspect of orderliness, and many were the evidences of the weeks of horror through which the besieged foreign representatives had lived.
As the Empress Dowager and her court had not yet returned, we hoped to be able to see all the mysteries of the Forbidden City, but order had been restored to a point where it was possible to make the palaces once more “forbidden,” so we were shown only enough to whet our curiosity. But the wonderful walls and the temples, the long, unbelievable streets and the curious life of the people were sufficient to save us from any feeling of disappointment in our visit. At a dinner given for us by our Minister we met a number of men and women who had been through the siege, and I sat next to Sir Robert Hart, of the Imperial Chinese Customs, the most interesting man, perhaps, that the great occidental-oriental co-operation has ever produced.
When we returned to Shanghai on our way down from Peking I was greeted by two cablegrams. It just happened that I opened them in the order of their coming and the first one contained the information that my husband was very ill and said that I had better return at once to Manila, while the second read that he was much better and that there was no cause for alarm. There was no way of getting to Manila for several days, because there were no boats going. So I decided to take a trip up the Yangtse River on the house-boat belonging to the wife of the American Consul. If I had been doing this for pleasure instead of for the purpose of “getting away from myself” I should have enjoyed it exceedingly, but as it was I have but a vague recollection of a very wide and very muddy river; great stretches of clay flats, broken here and there by little clumps of round mounds which I knew were Chinese graves, and bordered by distant, low hills; an occasional quaint grey town with uptilted tile roofs; and a few graceful but dreary-looking pagodas crowning lonesome hill-tops. And in addition to all of this there was a seething mass of very dirty and very noisy humanity which kept out of our way and regarded us with anything but friendly looks.
I had left my husband apparently perfectly well, but I subsequently learned that the night after I left Manila he developed the first symptoms of his illness. It was diagnosed at first as dengue fever, a disease quite common in the Philippines which, though exceedingly disagreeable, is not regarded as dangerous. It was about two weeks before a correct diagnosis was made, and it was then discovered that he was suffering from an abscess which called for a serious emergency operation. He was taken to the First Reserve Army hospital and the operation was performed by Dr. Rhoads, the Army surgeon who afterward became his aide when he was President.
The children must have been much frightened. They had never seen their father ill before, and he told me afterward that he should never forget the way they looked as he was being carried out of Malacañan on a stretcher borne by six stalwart American policemen. They were all huddled together in the great hall as he passed through, and while Bob and Charlie were gazing at the proceedings in open-eyed astonishment, Helen was weeping.
For twenty-four hours after the operation the doctors were not at all certain that their patient would live, nor did their anxiety end at that time. The abscess was of long growth, the wound had to be made a terrible one, and there was great danger of blood poisoning. Mr. Taft rallied but a second operation was necessary. By the time I reached Manila he was well on the way to recovery, though even then there was no prospect of his being able to move for many weeks to come.
He used to lie on his cot in the hospital and recite to his visitors a verse of Kipling’s which he thought fitted his case exactly:
“Now it is not well for the white man
To hurry the Aryan brown,