China under the Empress Dowager

by J. O. P. Bland; Sir E. Backhouse

Photo, Betines, Peking.

“Ti Wang Miao” or Temple to the Memory of Virtuous Emperors of Previous Dynasties.

Photo, Betines, Peking.

XXVIII
CONCLUSION

“All sweeping judgments,” says Coleridge, “are unjust.” “Comprendre,” says the French philosopher, “c’est tout pardonner.” To understand the life and personality of the Empress Dowager, it is before everything essential to divest our minds of racial prejudice and to endeavour to appreciate something of the environment and traditions to which she was born. In the words of the thoughtful article in the Spectator, already quoted, “she lived and worked and ruled in a setting which is apart from all western modes of thought and standards of action, and the first step in the historian’s task is to see that she is judged by her own standards and not wholly by ours.” Judged by the rough test of public opinion and accumulating evidence in her own country, Tzŭ Hsi’s name will go down to history in China as that of a genius in statecraft and a born ruler, a woman “with all the courage of a man, and more than the ordinary man’s intelligence.”[131]

Pending that reform and liberty of the press which is still the distant dream of “Young China,” no useful record of the life and times of the Empress Dowager is to be expected from any Chinese writer. Despite the mass of information which exists in the diaries and archives of metropolitan officials and the personal reminiscences of those who knew her well, nothing of any human interest or value has been published on the subject in China. From the official and orthodox point of view, a truthful biography of the Empress would be sacrilege. It is true that in the vernacular newspapers under European protection at the Treaty Ports, as well as in Hongkong and Singapore, Cantonese writers have given impressions of Her Majesty’s personality and brief accounts of her life, but these are so hopelessly biassed and distorted by hatred of the Manchus as to be almost worthless for historical purposes, as worthless as the dry chronicles of the Dynastic annals. Reference has already been made to the best known of these publications, a series of letters originally published in a Singapore newspaper and republished under the title of “The Chinese Crisis from within,”[132] by a writer who, under the nom-de-plume of “Wen Ching,” concealed the identity of one of K’ang Yu-wei’s most ardent disciples. His work is remarkable for sustained invective and reckless inaccuracy, clearly intended to create an atmosphere of hatred against the Manchus (for the ultimate benefit of the Cantonese) in the minds of his countrymen, and to dissuade the foreign Powers from allowing the Empress to return to Peking. Drawing on a typically Babu store of “western learning,” this writer compares the Empress to Circe, Semiramis, Catherine de Medici, Messalina, Fulvia, and Julia Agrippina; quoting Dante and Rossetti to enforce his arguments, and leavening his vituperation with a modicum of verifiable facts sufficient to give to his narrative something of vraisemblance. But his judgment is emphatically sweeping. He ignores alike Tzŭ Hsi’s undeniable good qualities and her extenuating circumstances, the defects of her education and the difficulties of her position, so that his work is almost valueless.

Equally valueless, for purposes of historical accuracy, are most of the accounts and impressions of the Empress recorded by those Europeans (especially the ladies of the Diplomatic Body and their friends) who saw her personality and purposes reflected in the false light which beats upon the Dragon Throne on ceremonial occasions, or who came under the influence of the deliberate artifices and charm of manner which she assumed so well. Had the etiquette of her Court and people permitted intercourse with European diplomats and distinguished visitors of the male sex, she would certainly have acquired, and exercised over them also, that direct personal influence which emanated from her extraordinary vitality and will-power, influence such as the western world has learned to associate with the names of the Emperor William of Germany and Mr. Roosevelt. Restricted as she was to social relations with her own sex amongst foreigners, she exerted herself, and never failed, to produce on them an impression of womanly grace and gentleness of disposition, which qualities we find accordingly praised by nearly all who came in contact with her after the return of the Court, aye, even by those who had undergone the horrors of the siege under the very walls of her Palace. The glamour of her mysterious Court, the rarity of the visions vouchsafed, the real charm of her manner, and the apparently artless bonhomie of her bearing, all combined to create in the minds of the European ladies who saw her an impression as favourable as it was opposed to every dictate of common sense and experience. In certain notable instances, the effect of this impression reacted visibly on the course of the Peace Protocol negotiations.

From the diary of Ching Shan we obtain an estimate of Tzŭ Hsi’s character, formed by one who had enjoyed for years continual opportunities of studying her at close quarters—an estimate which was, and is, confirmed by the popular verdict, the common report of the tea-houses and market places of the capital. Despite her swiftly changing and uncontrolled moods, her childish lack of moral sense, her unscrupulous love of power, her fierce passions and revenges, Tzŭ Hsi was no more the savage monster described by “Wen Ching,” than she was the benevolent, fashion-plate Lady Bountiful of the American magazines. She was simply a woman of unusual courage and vitality, of strong will and unbounded ambition, a woman and an Oriental, living out her life by such lights as she knew, and in accordance with the traditions of her race and caste. Says Ching Shan in the Diary: “The nature of the Empress is peace-loving: she has seen many springs and autumns. I myself know well her refined and gentle tastes, her love of painting, poetry and the theatre. When in a good mood she is the most amiable and tractable of women, but at times her rage is awful to witness.” Here we have the woman drawn from life, without arrière pensée, by a just but sympathetic observer, the woman who could win, and hold, the affectionate loyalty of the greatest men of her time, not to speak of that of her retainers and serving maids; the woman whose human interest and sympathy in everything around her, were not withered by age nor staled by custom; yet who, at a word, could send the fierce leaders of the Boxers cowering from her presence. Souvent femme varie. Tzŭ Hsi, her own mistress and virtual ruler of the Empire at the age of twenty-four, had not had much occasion to learn to control either her moods or her passions. Hers, from the first, was the trick and temper of autocracy. Trained in the traditions of a Court where human lives count for little, where power maintains itself by pitiless and brutal methods, where treason and foul deeds lie in waiting for the first signs of the ruler’s weakness, how should she learn to put away from the Forbidden City the hideous barbarities of its ways?