Her good health and vitality were always extraordinary. She herself attributed them chiefly to early rising, regular habits, and the frequent consumption of milk, which she usually took curdled, in the form of a kind of rennet. She ate frugally but well, being an epicure at heart and delighting in dainty and recherché menus. Opium, like other luxuries, she took in strict moderation, but greatly enjoyed her pipe after the business of the day was done. It was her practice then to rest for an hour, smoking at intervals, a siesta which the Court knew better than to disturb. She fully realised the evils wrought by abuse of the insidious drug, and approved of the laws, introduced by the initiative of T’ang Shao-yi and other high officials, for its abolition. But her fellow-feeling for those who, like herself, could use it in moderation, and her experience of its soothing and stimulating effect on the mind, led her to insist that the Abolition Decree (November 22nd, 1906) should not deprive persons over sixty years of age of their accustomed solace. She was, in fact, willing to decree prohibition for the masses, but lenient to herself and to those who had sufficiently proved their capacity to follow the path of the happy mean.
Such was Tzŭ Hsi, a woman whose wonderful personality and career cannot fail to secure for her a place amongst the rulers who have become the standards and pivots of greatness in the world’s history. The marvellous success of her career and the passionate devotion of her partisans are not to be easily explained by any ordinary process of analysis or comparison; but there is no doubt that they were chiefly due to that mysterious and indefinable quality which is called charm, a quality apparently independent alike of morals, ethics, education, and what we call civilisation; universal in its appeal, irresistible in its effect upon the great majority of mankind. It was this personal charm of the woman, combined with her intense vitality and accessibility, that won for her respect, and often affection, even from those who had good reason to deplore her methods and deny her principles. This personal charm, this subtle and magnetic emanation, was undoubtedly the secret of that stupendous power with which, for good or evil, she ruled for half a century a third of the population of the earth; that charm it was that won to her side the bravest and best of China’s picked men, and it is the lingering memory and tradition of that charm which already invest the name of the Old Buddha with attributes of legendary virtue and superhuman wisdom.
Europeans, studying the many complex and unexpected phases of her extraordinary personality from the point of view of western moralities, have usually emphasised and denounced her cold-blooded ferocity and homicidal rage. Without denying the facts, or extenuating her guilt, it must, nevertheless, be admitted that it would be unjust to expect from her compliance with standards of morals and conduct of which she was perforce ignorant, and that, judged by the standards of her own predecessors and contemporaries, and by the verdict of her subjects, she is not to be reckoned a wicked woman. Let it be remembered also that within comparatively recent periods of English history, death was dealt out with no niggard or gentle hand to further the alleged interests of the State; men were hanged, drawn and quartered in the days of Elizabeth and Mary Stuart, gentle ladies both, and averse to the spilling of blood, for the greater glory of Thrones, and in defence of the Christian religion.
Tzŭ Hsi died as she had lived, keen to the last, impatient of the bonds of sickness that kept her from the new day’s work, hopeful ever for the future. Unto the last her thoughts were of the Empire, of that new plan of Constitutional Government wherein she had come to see visions of a new and glorious era for China and for herself. And when the end came, she faced it, as she had faced life, with a stout heart and brave words, going out to meet the Unknown as if she were but starting for a summer picnic. Reluctantly she bade farewell to the world of men, to the life she had lived with so keen a zest; but, unlike England’s Tudor Queen, she bowed gracefully to the inevitable, leaving the scene with steadfast and Imperial dignity, confident in her high destinies to come.
FINIS.
The Imperial Daïs in the Ch’ien Ch’ing Hall.
Photo, Ogawa, Tokio.