I am shown first into an ante-room which might be that of any small country villa, and our coats are hung on racks which have every appearance of having come straight from Tottenham Court Road. And then we step into a drawing-room, which I prefer to call a waiting room, an exact replica of those dreary places where we are compelled to waste so many hours of our lives. It might belong to a dentist, a doctor, or a public official at home.
In the centre there is a huge table with the kind of books which nobody ever dreams of reading. The furniture is featureless, but not altogether unpretentious, and the engravings and pictures are of a sort that nobody cares for. I was told by way of compliment to the West that the Court arranged this apartment for foreign receptions, and I wonder if it was entirely without sarcasm or pardonable malice that visitors are confronted with a room that makes all the faults of modern Western taste so manifest. It was a climax of all that is banal.
Whilst waiting we are entertained by His Excellency the Master of Ceremonies, the Lord Chamberlain, and several A.D.C.'s. They all wear European uniforms, dark marine-blue tunics, with many black and gold badges and heavily braided dark red trousers. Everything is of the best material and highly finished, apparently made far beyond Korea's frontiers. Some of the officials talk French, some English, and all are most interesting and entertaining. They have charming manners and all the natural refinements of an ancient race.
Two of them are old acquaintances. I met them years ago at Buckingham Palace, on the occasion of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. Prince Min is an accomplished man of the world. He has just built a new house on the outskirts of the city, "with all the most modern improvements," but I am rather sorry he has left his old home, lost in the maze of the inner town and buried in the shade of a few fine chestnut trees. It was such a typical old Korean home, looking outside like a hut built of mud and covered with thatch, but inside looking like a white paper box. Its tiny rooms were carpeted with silky matting, and for furniture it had half a dozen silk cushions—for ornamentation, but a single flower stand.
There is a striking contrast between this modern waiting-room and the old Korean house; a contrast of vulgarity and refinement. I am sorry to say I saw only a few of these quaint old places, and I fear that on my next visit they will all have disappeared. To pass the time, tea, champagne-cup, and cigarettes, are handed round, as they would be in any Western house.
The New Palace and its diplomatic receptions are managed by a Western lady.
There are some other Westerners holding Court appointments here, some with the title of teacher of languages, and many others under different pretexts. But few of them render services that are ever required.
The building of this New Palace is unquestionably strange and antagonistic, but I will confine myself to observing the material sides. Its conception and architecture are equally incoherent; it is such an unintelligible mixture of old and new, national and foreign. Near the hall, built exactly like an old yamen, there stands a shed of corrugated iron, and a wonderful old gate leads to a passage furnished with Viennese chairs. The whole palace was built as opportunity offered, without previous plans. It came to be erected in the following way. During the last revolution, the Empress lost her life: she was dragged out of her room, atrociously tortured, and stabbed by ruffians, or, as some say, by foreign soldiers. Afterwards, her body was burned in the adjoining deer park, at the foot of the eastern hills. The Emperor himself escaped only with the greatest difficulty, in a disguise, carried on men's shoulders, as Anchises was out of the burning ruins of Troy. He never returned to those ill-fated walls, but took refuge in the Russian Legation, and remained there for a long time to be in greater security.
After this, land was secured near the legations, amidst the foreign settlement, and there the New Palace was erected. It is not completed yet, and I am afraid it will remain unfinished for many years, and offer a source of income to the commercial, trading, labouring, and idling classes of the country.
At last His Majesty awoke from his siesta and was ready to receive me. There are no ushers and no Court functionaries, and little or no display. The servants who came with the message wore a red calico kaftan to the ground, with a red calico hood that looked like a domino. It is the Court livery, simple to make and cheap to buy. Calico is the national material, that everybody wears at all seasons of the year—in winter padded with cotton-wool or sheepskin. There are over 10,000,000 purchasers of calico in Korea, and it has become quite an interesting commercial question whether Japan's Osaka or England's Manchester will secure the future market.