When We Were Strolling Players in the East

by Louise Jordan Miln

Our Consul gave us marrow-bones for supper, and said to me—“You will burrow once too often into the bowels of the Orient”; but I never did.

I know nothing of the great international issues staked upon England’s ultimate answer to the Opium Question. I am too lazy (or too wise) to attempt the quick solving of a problem that has baffled many a wise man throughout a lifetime. But I know something of the human interests at stake; and humanitarianism is so much more than internationalism that I venture to speak re this well-worn subject.

Opium has been a great blessing to Asia, and is so now. True, it is sometimes used to excess in the East. Here, I have known Englishmen to make themselves very ill by over-consumption of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding; Italian noblemen have grown gross from repeated over-feeds of macaroni; Italian peasants have become disgustingly fat on black bread and garlic.

Some Chinamen, some Indians, use too much opium; but (we must bear in mind the enormous populations of both countries) they are the exceptions, not the rule. The people of the East are naturally moderate. They are languid, and languor does nothing to excess. In India, in the Straits Settlements, or in China, a coolie goes bravely to work, after an enormous meal of rice and curry. Curry is a positive stimulant, a non-intoxicant stimulant! After some hours the coolie feels a little less like work; but his work is not half done. He thrusts his hand into one of the many mysterious recesses of his dirty loin cloth; he draws forth a yellowish ball, about the size of a wickedly big pill. It is not opium, but it contains opium. He thrusts it beneath his tongue. He does not grow sleepy; he does not grow momentarily less intelligent; but his work grows lighter. His evening-rice does not seem so sadly far off. The opium ball (ball tinged with opium, to speak correctly rather than colloquially)—the opium ball has made his flesh as strong temporarily as his patient Oriental spirit is always willing. The effect of the opium passes away. His work is over. His curry and rice is ready. He goes home to it, and to his gentle, meek, contented womankind, no jot the worse for his little indulgence. Had he worked on with tingling nerves, and trembling limbs, and craving stomach, he would have been in a miserable state physically.

Again, I acknowledge that the people of the East sometimes take opium in injurious and disgraceful quantities, but they are an infinitesimal proportion. Here in Europe people occasionally select the pleasantest means of committing suicide, and lull themselves into eternal slumber with chloroform. For their silly sakes (I might say brave sakes, did I care to deal with two controversies at once)—for their sakes shall we do away with chloroform, and make the operating rooms of our hospitals the hells of horrors they were sixty years ago?

It has often been in my heart to advocate the moderate use of opium for our own working classes. I have not done so for three reasons. In the first place I am an unknown woman with an unestablished pen. Who would listen to me merely because I love Asia and wish Europe well? Secondly, I am a moral coward; I shrink from the contumely of my own people. Last of all, and most of all, I doubt if our poor could be so trusted, as can the people of the Orient, with a drug which is blessing or curse as it is wisely or unwisely used. Self-denial has become by long usage second nature to the children of the East. Our Anglo-Saxon poor drain their pewter mugs to the dregs.

The other day at the British Museum, when searching for exact and reliable information on a nice point of Oriental law, I had the misfortune to come across a maudlin book written by a missionary. I condemn the book, not because of its author’s calling, but because it was written in a narrow spirit, and in dense ignorance of the subject embodied in its title. Among other things calculated to rather startle one who knows the East and loves it, the writer gravely proposed that we should subjugate “wicked China” by influencing the Chinese to a much larger use of opium. In Europe the victims of nameless crimes are sometimes drugged into drunken acquiescence; but I am sure that most Christians would advocate a conversion of the heathen more intelligently voluntary on the part of the converts.

Let us speak the truth about Asia or be silent; let us be just to India at least. There are many subjects vitally important to Her Majesty’s brown people, subjects intimately connected with their home lives and their physical well-being, of which most of us know nothing. If we are too indolent or too indifferent to inform ourselves on those subjects in the only adequate way—I mean by a long, studious, and sympathetic residence in India—why then, in the great name of humanity and the name of Anglo-Saxon justice, let us leave bad enough alone.

There are two classes of men who should not be allowed to write, or at all events to print. In our profession we always know that a company has fallen upon very hard times indeed when His Majesty the stage manager is cast for a part. There are analogous reasons and as strong why an editor should never dip his pen into the ink-filled well save to write, “Returned with thanks,” or “Please reduce this charming article from three columns to one.”

Re writing editors, I have said as much as I dare. “Re writing” missionaries, please let me speak. Why are they missionaries? What do they as missionaries accomplish? I have not devoted enough time to either question, nor have I asked those questions with enough sympathy, to feel justified in answering. The nineteenth century must work out its own salvation if it can, and the overplus of Anglo-Saxon population must find relief and breathing room in many a foreign clime, and through the channel of many a debatable occupation.