“Come,” said she, taking my hand in her cold little one, and hand in hand we walked, or rather I walked and she tottered, across to one of the great pavilions that had been erected, and there she sat me down and a cup of the excellent tea was brought me, and every one of the Chinese ladies present, out of the kindly hospitality of her heart towards the lonely foreigner, gave me, with her own fair and shapely little hands, a cake from the dish that was set before us by a white-clad servant. Frankly, I wished they wouldn't be so hospitable. I wanted to say I was quite capable of choosing my own cake, and that I had a rooted objection to other people pawing the food I intended to eat, but it seemed it might be rude, and I did not wish to nip kindly feelings in the bud. And then, as the evening shadows drew long, I went back to my hotel, sorry to leave the Forbidden City, glad to have had this one little glimpse of the strange and wonderful that is bound to pass away.
The Empress died in February, in March they held this, can we call it lying-in-state, but it was not till the 3rd of April that her funeral cortège moved from the Forbidden City, and the streets of Peking were thronged with those who came to pay her respect. Did they mourn? Well, I don't know. Hardly, I think, was it mourning in the technical sense. The man in the street in England is far enough away from the king on the throne, but in China it seems as if he might inhabit a different sphere.
The sky was a cloudless blue, and the bright golden sunshine poured down hot as a July day in England, or a March day in Australia, there was not a wisp of cloud in the sky; in all the five weeks that I had been in China there had never been the faintest indication that such a thing was ever expected, ever known, but at first the brilliancy had been cold, now it was warm, the winter was past, and from the great Tartar wall, looking over the Tartar City—the city that the Mings conquered and the Manchus made their own—the forest of trees that hid the furthest houses was all tinged with the faintest, daintiest green; and soon to the glory of blue and gold, the blue of the sky and the gold of the sunshine, would be added the vivid green that tells of the new-born life. And one woman who had held high place here, one sad woman, who had missed most that was good in fife, if rumours be true, was to be carried to her long home that day.
The funeral procession started from the Eastern Gate of the Forbidden City, came slowly down the broad street known now as Morrison Street, turned into the way that passes the Legations and runs along by the glacis whereon the conquering Western nations have declared that, for their safety, no Chinese shall build a house, the Europeans call it the Viale d'ltalia, because it passes by the Italian Legation, and the Chinese by the more euphonious name of Chang an Cheeh—the street of Eternal Repose—a curious commentary on the fighting that went on there in 1900, into the Chien Men Street, that is the street of the main gate through which it must go to the railway station.
It seemed to me strange this ruler of an ancient people, buried with weird and barbaric rites, was to be taken to her last resting-place by the modern railway, that only a very few years ago her people, at the height of their anti-foreign feeling, had wished to oust from the country—root and branch. But since the funeral procession was going to the railway station it must pass through the Chien Men, and the curtain wall that ran round the great gate offered an excellent point of vantage from which I, with the rest of the European population, might see all there was to be seen. And for this great occasion, the gate in the south of the curtain wall, the gate that is always shut because only the highest in the land may pass through, was open, for the highest in the land, the last of the Manchu rulers, was dead.
I looked down into the walled-in space between the four gateway arches, as into an arena, and the whole pageant passed below me. First of all marching with deliberate slowness, that contrives to be dignified if they are only carrying coals, came about twenty camels draped in imperial yellow with tails of sable, also an imperial badge hanging from their necks. The Manchus were a hunting people, and though they have been dwellers in towns for the last two hundred and fifty years the fact was not forgotten now that their last ruler had died. She was going on a journey, a long, long journey; she might want to rest by the way, therefore her camels bore tent-poles and tents of the imperial colour. They held their heads high and went noiselessly along, pad, pad, pad, as their like have gone to and fro from Peking for thousands of years. Mongol, or Manchu, or son of Han, it is all the same to the camel. He ministers to man's needs because he must, but he himself is unchanging as the ages, fixed in his way as the sky above, whether he bears grain from the north, or coal from the Western Hills, or tents and drapery for an imperial funeral. Then there were about fifty white ponies, without saddle or trapping of any kind, each led by a mafoo clad in blue like an ordinary coolie. The Peking carts that followed with wheels and tilts of yellow were of a past age, but, after all, does not the King of Great Britain and Ireland on State occasions ride in a most old-world coach. And then I noticed things came in threes. Three carts, three yellow palankeens full of artificial flowers, three sedan chairs also yellow covered, and all around these groups were attendants clad in shimmering rainbow muslin and thick felt hats, from the pointed crown of which projected long yellow feathers. Slowly, slowly, the procession moved on, broken now and again by bands of soldiers in full marching order. There was a troop of cavalry of the Imperial Guard they told me, but how could it be imperial when their five-coloured lance pennons fluttering gaily in the air, clearly denoted the New Republic? There was a detachment of mounted police in black and yellow—the most modern of uniforms—there were more attendants in gaily coloured robes carrying wooden halberds, embroidered fans, banners, and umbrellas, and the yellow palankeens with the artificial flowers were escorted by Buddhist lamas in yellow robes crossed with crimson sashes, each with a stick of smouldering incense in his hand. In those palankeens were the dead woman's seals, her power, the power that she must now give up. I could see the smoke, and the scent of the incense rose to our nostrils as we stood on the wall forty feet above. Between the various groups, between the yellow lamas who dated from the days of the Buddha long before the Christ, between the khaki-clad troops and the yellow and black police, things of yesterday, came palace attendants tossing into the air white paper discs. The dead Empress would want money for her journey, and here it was, distributed with a lavish hand. It was only white paper, blank and soiled by the dust of the road, when I picked it up a little later on, but for her it would serve all purposes.
The approach of the bier itself was heralded by the striking together of two slabs of wood by a couple of attendants, and before it came, clad all in the white of mourning, the palace eunuchs who had guarded her privacy when in life; a few Court attendants in black, and then between lines of khaki-uniformed modern infantry in marching order, the bier covered with yellow satin, vivid, brilliant, embroidered with red phoenixes that marked her high rank—the dragon for the Emperor, the phoenix for his consort. The two pieces of wood clacked together harshly and the enormous bier moved on. It was mounted on immense yellow poles and borne by eighty men dressed in brilliant robes of variegated muslin, red being the predominating colour. They wore hats with yellow feathers coming out of the crown, and they staggered under their burden, as might the slaves in Nineveh or Babylon have faltered and groaned beneath their burdens, two thousand years ago.