China under the Empress Dowager

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

Let us remember her time and place. Consider the woman’s environment and training, her marriage to a dissolute puppet, her subsequent life in that gilded prison of the Imperial City, with its endless formalities, base intrigues and artificial sins. Prior to the establishment of China’s first diplomatic relations with European nations, the Court of Peking and its ways bore a strong resemblance to those of Medieval Europe; nor have successive routs and invasions since that date changed any of its cherished traditions and methods. In the words of a recent writer on medieval history, the life of the Peking Palace, like that of our fourteenth century, “was one of profound learning and crass stupidity, of infantile gaiety and sudden tragedy, of flashing fortunes and swift dooms. There is a certain innocence about the very sinners of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Many of their problems, indeed, arose from the fact that this same childlike candour was allied to the unworn forces of full manhood.” Whatever crimes of cruelty and vengeance Tzŭ Hsi committed—and they were many—be it said to her credit that she had, as a rule, the courage of her convictions and position, and sinned coram publico. Beneath the fierceness without which an Oriental ruler cannot hope to remain effective, there certainly beat a heart which could be kind, if the conditions were propitious, and a rough sense of humour, which is a common and pleasing trait of the Manchus.

Let us also remember that in the East to-day (as it was with us of Europe before the growth of that humanitarianism which now shows signs of unhealthy exaggeration) pain and death are part of the common, every-day risks of life, risks lightly incurred by the average Oriental in the great game of ambitions, loves and hates that is for ever played around the Throne. Tzŭ Hsi played her royal part in the great game, but it is not recorded of her that she ever took life from sheer cruelty or love of killing. When she sent a man to death, it was because he stood between her and the full and safe gratification of her love of power. When her fierce rage was turned against the insolence of the foreigner, she had no scruple in consigning every European in China to the executioner; when the Emperor’s favourite concubine disputed her Imperial authority, she had no hesitation in ordering her to immediate death; but in every recorded instance, except one, her methods were swift, clean, and, from the Oriental point of view, not unmerciful. She had no liking for tortures, or the lingering death. In all her Decrees of vengeance, we find the same unhesitating firmness in removing human obstacles from her path, combined with a complete absence of that unnecessary cruelty which is so frequently associated with despotism. Her methods, in fact, were Elizabethan rather than Florentine.

If Tzŭ Hsi developed self-reliance early in life, the fact is not to be wondered at, for it was little help that she had to look for in her entourage of Court officials. Amongst the effete classical scholars, the fat-paunched Falstaffs, the opium sots, doddering fatalists and corrupt parasites of the Imperial Clans, she seems, indeed, to have been an anachronism, a “cast-back” to the virility and energy that won China for her sturdy ancestors. She appeared to be the born and inevitable ruler of the degenerate Dynasty, and if she became a law unto herself, it was largely because there were few about her fit to lead or to command.

Imbued with a very feminine love of luxury, addicted to pleasure, and at one period of her life undoubtedly licentious after the manner of her Court’s traditions, she combined these qualities with a shrewd common sense and a marked penchant for acquiring and amassing personal property. To use her own phrase, she endeavoured in all things to observe the principle of the “happy mean,” and seldom allowed her love of pleasure to obscure her vision or to hinder her purposes in the serious businesses of life.

Like many great rulers of the imperious and militant type, she was remarkably superstitious, a punctilious observer of the rites prescribed for averting omens and conciliating the myriad gods and demons of the several religions of China, a liberal supporter of priests and soothsayers. Nevertheless, as with Elizabeth of England, her secular instincts were au fond stronger than all her superstitions. That sturdy common sense, which played so successfully upon the weaknesses and the passions of her corrupt entourage, never allowed any consideration for the powers unseen to interfere seriously with her masterful handling of things visible, or to curb her ruling passion for unquestioned authority.

The qualities which made up the remarkable personality of the Empress were many and complex, but of those which chiefly contributed to her popularity and power we would place, first, her courage, and next, a certain simplicity and directness—both qualities that stand out in strong relief against the timorous and tortuous tendencies of the average Manchu. Of her courage there could be no doubt; even amidst the chaos of the days of the Boxer terror it never failed her, and Ching Shan is only one of many who bear witness to her unconquerable spirit and sang froid. Amidst scenes of desolation and destruction that might well shake the courage of the bravest men, we see her calmly painting bamboos on silk, or giving orders to stop the bombardment of the Legations to allow of her excursion on the Lake. How powerful is the dramatic quality of that scene where she attacks and dominates the truculent Boxer leaders at her very doors; or again when, on the morning of the flight, she alone preserves presence of mind, and gives her orders as coolly as if starting on a picnic! At such moments all the defects of her training and temperament are forgotten in the irresistible appeal of her nobler qualities.

Of those qualities, and of her divine right to rule, Tzŭ Hsi herself was fully convinced, and no less determined than His Majesty of Germany, to insist upon proper recognition and respect for herself and her commanding place in the scheme of the universe. Her belief in her own supreme importance, and her superstitious habit of thought were both strikingly displayed on the occasion when her portrait, painted by Miss Carl for the St. Louis Exposition, was taken from the Waiwupu on its departure to the United States. She regarded this presentment of her august person as entitled, in all seriousness of ceremonial, to the same reverence as herself and gave orders for the construction of a miniature railway, to be built through the streets of the capital for its special benefit. By this means the “sacred countenance” was carried upright, under its canopy of yellow silk, and Her Majesty was spared the thought of being borne in effigy on the shoulders of coolies—a form of progress too suggestively ill-omened to be endured. Before the portrait left the Palace, the Emperor was summoned to prostrate himself before it, and at its passing through the city, and along the railway line, the people humbly knelt, as if it had been the Old Buddha of flesh and blood. Incidents of this kind emphasise the impossibility of fairly judging the Empress by European standards of conduct and ideas. To get something of the proper atmosphere and perspective, we must go back to the early days of the Tudors.

Portrait of the Empress Dowager.

Painted from life by Miss Catharine A. Carl for the St. Louis Exposition, and now the property of the American Nation.