About this time Mrs. Conger asked for a private audience, as she wanted to see Her Majesty and at the same time see how the portrait was progressing. Her Majesty replied that she would receive her and gave orders accordingly. At this private audience Mrs. Conger brought into the Court two of her relatives to be presented to Her Majesty, besides Miss Campbell and a missionary lady. As it was a private audience, the guests were conducted to Her Majesty's private Palace. They were received in the hall which was being used as studio for this lady artist, although Her Majesty was out of patience with the portrait painting, and talked to us a great deal about it, yet when she saw Mrs. Conger and the others she was extremely polite and told them that the portrait was going to be a masterpiece. She was in an unusually good humor that day and told me to give orders to the eunuchs to open all the buildings and show them to her guests. Her Majesty led the way from one room to another and showed them her curios in the different rooms, until she came to rest in one of the bedrooms, when she ordered chairs to be brought in for the guests. There were many chairs in this room, but they were really small thrones of Her Majesty's, although they looked like any ordinary chairs. The custom is that no matter what kind of a chair it may be, as soon as she uses it, it is at once called her throne and no one is allowed to sit on it thereafter unless the order is given by her.
During the time the eunuchs were bringing in the chairs kept purposely for foreigners to use, one of the ladies of the party made a mistake and sat upon one of Her Majesty's thrones. I noticed her at once, and before I had a chance to warn her, Her Majesty made a sign of annoyance to me. I went to this lady at once and told her I wanted to show her something and naturally she was obliged to get up. The trouble was this, although Her Majesty felt that no one had the right to sit upon her throne, she expected me to get this lady off the chair and at the same time not to tell her the reason why. While I was busy interpreting for her, she said in an undertone: "There she is again, sitting on my bed. We had better leave this room." After this the ladies were conducted to the refreshment room, and when they had partaken of lunch, bade Her Majesty good-bye, leaving Miss Carl with us. As usual we reported to her that we had seen the guests safely off. She said to me: "That was a funny lady: first she sat upon my throne, and then upon my bed. Perhaps she does not know what a throne is when she sees one, and yet foreigners laugh at us. I am sure that our manners are far superior to theirs. Another thing—did you notice that Mrs. Conger handed a parcel to Miss Carl out in the courtyard when she came in?" I replied that I had noticed her passing something like a parcel, but could not tell what the parcel contained. She thereupon told me to go and ask Miss Carl what it was. At that time I had received so many peculiar orders from Her Majesty that I was beginning to get accustomed to them and used my own discretion in carrying out her instructions. Therefore I did not ask Miss Carl, but set about finding out for myself. However, when I began to look around for the parcel, it had mysteriously disappeared and I could not find the thing anywhere. This naturally worried me, knowing as I did that Her Majesty liked her instructions carried out quickly. While I was searching, one of the eunuchs came in and told me that Her Majesty wanted to see me, and of course I had to go to her. Before she could say anything to me, I informed Her Majesty that I had not been able to ask Miss Carl about the parcel as she was asleep, but would do so immediately she got up. Her Majesty said: "I don't want Miss Carl to think I have told you to ask what the parcel contains, otherwise she might think I am suspicious of what is going on, so you must manage to get the information somehow without mentioning the matter; you are clever enough to do that much." Shortly afterwards, while I was walking along with Miss Carl to Her Majesty's Palace, to proceed with the portrait, I noticed that she was carrying the parcel in question, which was a great relief to me, I can assure you. On arrival at the Palace, Miss Carl said to me: "You need not trouble to pose at present, as it is rather dark, and I can be painting the throne; you can look through this magazine, if you like, to pass the time away." So I opened up the parcel, which proved to contain nothing more than an ordinary American monthly magazine. After glancing through the book, I made an excuse to hurry away and inform Her Majesty. However, she had already gone out for her usual trip on the lake, so I took my chair and followed. When I reached the lake, Her Majesty, who had seen me, sent a small boat and I was rowed out to the launch. Before I could get a chance to speak, Her Majesty said with a smile: "I know all about it, it was a book and Miss Carl handed it to you to read." I was very much disappointed that I had had my journey for nothing. I knew that the eunuchs would report it to Her Majesty at the first opportunity, but I hardly expected they would have done so already. Her Majesty was now quite satisfied, and simply asked whether Miss Carl suspected that she had enquired about the matter.
As I was about to return to Miss Carl, Her Majesty called me and said: "There is one thing I want to tell you and that is whenever any foreign ladies are visiting the Palace, always keep close to the Emperor so that in the event of their speaking to him you can interpret." I answered that so far whenever any foreigners were present I was present also and did not think that anybody had held any conversation with the Emperor whatsoever. She explained that her reason for mentioning this was that she wanted me to be just as courteous to the Emperor as I was to herself, and I was to place myself entirely at his disposal whenever visitors were present. Of course I knew very well that this was not the true reason at all but that she wanted to take every precaution to preclude the possibility of foreigners influencing the Emperor in matters of reform, etc.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN—THE MID-AUTUMN FESTIVAL
ON the fifteenth day of the eighth moon came the celebration of the Mid-Autumn Festival, sometimes called the Moon Festival.
This name is derived from the belief which the Chinese hold that the moon is not permanently round when full, but that on this particular day it is a perfect circle. The ceremony which is gone through is conducted entirely by the Court ladies and consists of worshiping the moon as soon as it appears in the sky. In other respects the celebrations are exactly the same as in the Dragon Boat Festival, presents were exchanged between Her Majesty and the Court officials. The festival concluded with a theatrical performance which describes a scene in the moon. The belief is that a beautiful maiden lives in the moon, her only companion being a white rabbit, called a Jade Rabbit. According to the play this rabbit escapes from the moon to the Earth and becomes a young and beautiful girl. A golden rooster which lives in the sun, becoming aware of the rabbit's descent to the earth, himself descends from the sun and changes into a handsome prince. Of course they very naturally meet and immediately fall in love. Now, on the earth lived another rabbit—a red one, who, on finding out what was going on, changed himself into a prince also and set about making love to the beautiful maiden with the object of cutting out the rooster. However, he was seriously handicapped inasmuch as he was unable to change the color of his face, which remained red, therefore his love making met with no success and the rooster prince had it all his own way. At this point, the beautiful maiden in the moon, on discovering her loss, sent the soldiers of Heaven to re-capture her rabbit, with the result that she was taken back to the moon and the rooster being left alone, had no alternative but to reluctantly return to his home in the sun.
During this performance the head eunuch brought a young man into the courtyard, who kowtowed to Her Majesty. This was such an unusual occurrence that everybody noticed it. I could see that he was a stranger and did not belong to the Court and I wondered who he could be. At the other end of the veranda I saw two or three of the Court ladies whispering together and smiling. They finally came over to me and asked if I knew who he was. I told them that he was a stranger to me and they ought to know better than I did as they had been at the Court much longer. Anyhow I gave it as my opinion that he was decidedly ugly. That same evening Her Majesty asked me whether I had noticed this young man, and told me that he was the son of a very high Manchu official; that his father was dead and that he had succeeded to the title and to a large amount of money. I was surprised that Her Majesty should give such a lengthy explanation about this young man, but I told her that I did not think him very handsome. Her Majesty was talking in a very serious manner but I did not think anything of the occurrence at the time but a few days later while I was posing for the portrait I heard Her Majesty whispering to my mother at the other end of the room. I saw that Her Majesty was holding a photograph in her hands which she showed to my mother, at the same time asking whether my mother considered him good looking. My mother answered "not very." On Her Majesty replying that beauty was not everything I began to suspect that there was something going on which directly concerned me. I began to think of some excuse in order to get out of what I could plainly see was a proposed marriage between myself and this gentleman. I knew that if Her Majesty had made up her mind that I was to marry him I could not help myself, but, at the same time, I made up my own mind that rather than marry anyone whom I did not like, especially one I had never seen before, I would leave the Court altogether. When Her Majesty retired for her usual afternoon rest she told me she wanted to see me for a moment. After beating about the bush for some time, she asked me whether I would like to stay with her always or whether I would like to go away again to some foreign country. I at once answered that I was quite satisfied to stay with her as long as she cared to have me but that when she was tired of me she could then send me away. Her Majesty informed me that it had been her intention to marry me to this young gentleman and asked my opinion. I told her that I did not want to get married at all, especially seeing that my father was sick at this time, and leaving home to go to live apart from my family would break his heart and perhaps be the cause of his premature death. Her Majesty said that was no excuse as I should not have to go out of China but would be able to see my father and family any time I wished. I told Her Majesty that I would much rather stay with her altogether and that I did not want to marry anybody. Her Majesty then said: "I won't listen to any excuse. I have already explained everything to your mother, but much to my surprise she said it would be better to mention it to you first, on account of your having been brought up differently from the rest of the Court ladies. Had it not been for this fact I would simply have arranged everything with your mother and the matter would have been settled so far as you were concerned." I could not say anything in answer to this, so commenced to cry. I told Her Majesty that I was not like the rest of the Court ladies who pretended they did not want to marry, when all the time they were simply looking forward to getting married, if only for the change from the monotony of Court life. I promised that I would stay with her forever, and that I had no desire to go away from China again. I explained that I should not have gone away at all had it not been that my father was transferred to Paris. Her Majesty said: "Oh, well, I am very glad that you did go away as you are more useful to me than you would have been had you stayed in China all your life." After a lot more discussion Her Majesty said: "Well, I will leave you to think the matter over. If you don't like the young man I have chosen there are plenty of others," which remark did not help me very much as I could see that she meant to marry me off anyway. However, I had managed to get out of it this time, and thought I would be able to arrange matters satisfactorily should the question come up again. Nothing further was said about the matter until nearly a month later when I heard that a marriage had been arranged between this gentleman and the daughter of one of the princes. So everything ended very satisfactorily from my point of view.
The twenty-sixth day of the eighth moon was the occasion of another celebration. At the time the Manchu Dynasty began, Emperor Shung Chih, who had fought very hard to gain the throne, found himself on the twenty-sixth day of the eighth moon, absolutely out of provisions of every kind and it was necessary for him and his army to live on the leaves of trees, which was the only form of food obtainable at the time. Thus the anniversary of this day, even up to the present time, is always celebrated by the Manchu people, who deny themselves all luxuries, especially at the Court. We did not eat any meat on that day, but only rice wrapped in lettuce leaves. Chopsticks were also discarded and the food was conveyed to the mouth by the hands alone. Even the Empress Dowager was no exception to this rule. This is done in order to remind the present generation of the privation suffered by their ancestors who established the Manchu Dynasty.
Towards the close of the eighth moon Her Majesty's gourd plants, which had been planted early in the spring, were ripening, and each day she would take us all to see what progress they were making. She would pick out those which she considered to be the most perfect in form, i. e., those with the smallest waist and tie ribbons around them so as not to lose sight of them. She pointed to one of these plants one day, and said to me: "This reminds me of yourself when dressed in foreign clothes. Surely you feel more comfortable in the clothes you are now wearing." When these gourds were quite ripe they were cut down and Her Majesty would scrape the outer skin with a bamboo knife, afterwards wiping the fruit with a wet cloth. They were then allowed to dry and after a few days they would assume a brownish color, when they were ready for hanging as ornaments in the Summer Palace. In one room alone there were over 10,000 of these gourds, of different shapes. It was the duty of the Court ladies to periodically wipe these gourds with a cloth, in order to give them a shiny appearance, and also to scrape any new ones which were pulled and prepare them for the Palace. None of us cared very much about this work excepting Her Majesty. One day whilst attending to these gourds I happened to knock the top off one of the old ones which was Her Majesty's particular favorite. I dared not go and tell Her Majesty what had happened and one of the Court ladies suggested throwing the thing away altogether and saying nothing about it as Her Majesty would not be likely to find it out, having so many of them. However, I finally decided to go and tell Her Majesty about it, and take punishment if necessary. For a wonder Her Majesty did not make much bother about it. She said: "Well it was quite an old one in any case and the top was ready to drop off at any time; it so happens that you were the one to wipe it, and of course it came off. It can't be helped." I told Her Majesty that I was very much ashamed at being so careless, especially as I knew it was one of her favorites, and there the matter ended. All the rest of the Court ladies were in the waiting room and were anxious to know how I would get out of it, and when I told them they said that had it been any of them there would have been a fine row. They laughed, and said it must be nice to be a favorite which made me feel very uncomfortable. I told the Young Empress exactly what had happened, and she said I was quite right to tell Her Majesty the truth and told me to be very careful as there was much jealousy going on.