Isaac Taylor Headland

“ The prospects for a concubine are even less promising than for a serving maid, as when she once enters the palace she has little if any hope of ever leaving it. She is neither mistress nor servant, wife nor slave, she is but one of a hundred buds in a garden of roses which have little if any prospect of ever blooming or being plucked for the court bouquet. ”

“ When one remembers how China had been worsted by Japan, how all her prestige was swept away, how, from having been the parent of the Oriental family of nations, a desirable friend or a dangerous enemy, she was stripped of all her glory, and left a helpless giant with neither strength nor power, one can easily understand the eagerness of this boy of twenty-seven to restore her to the pedestal from which she had been ruthlessly torn. ”

“ This was the beginning of two important phases of the Empress Dowager's life—her affliction and her power, and her greatness is exhibited as well by the way in which she bore the one as by the way in which she wielded the other. In most cases a woman would have been so overcome by sorrow at the loss of her husband, as to have forgotten the affairs of state, or to have placed them for the time in the hands of others. ”

“ AS a man, there are few characters in Chinese history that are more interesting than Kuang Hsu. He had all the caprices of genius with their corresponding weakness and strength. He could wield a pen with the vigour of a Caesar, threaten his greatest viceroys, dismiss his leading conservative officials, introduce the most sweeping and far-reaching reforms that have ever been thought of by the Chinese people, and then run from a woman as though the very devil was after him. ”

“ We all know how this portrait had to be begun on an auspicious day; how a railroad had to be built to the Foreign Office rather than have the portrait carried out on men's shoulders, as though she were dead; how she celebrated her seventieth birthday when she was sixty-nine, to defeat the gods and prevent their bringing such a calamity during the celebration as had occurred when she was sixty, when the Japanese war disturbed her festivities. On her clothes she wore the ideographs for 'Long Life and 'Happiness,' and most of the presents she gave were emblematic of some good fortune. ”

“ When, therefore, the gates of the Forbidden City close behind the young girls who are taken in as concubines of an emperor they shut out an attractive, busy, beautiful world, filled with men and women, boys and girls, homes and children, green fields and rich harvests, and confine them within the narrow limits of one square mile of brick-paved earth, surrounded by a wall twenty-five feet high and thirty feet thick, in which there is but one solitary man who is neither father, brother, husband nor friend to them, and whom they may never even see. ”

“ I have a friend in Peking who is also a friend of one of the greatest Chinese officials. This official has gone into the palace daily for a dozen years past and knows every plot and counterplot that has been hatched in that nest of seclusion during all that time, though he has been implicated in none of them. He has held the highest positions in the gift of the empire without ever once having been degraded. One day when he was in the palace the Emperor unburdened his heart to him, thinking that what he said would never reach the ears of his enemies. ”

“ The great covered court was converted into a large shrine. One could imagine they were looking into the main hall of a temple, only that everything was so clean and beautiful. From the centre of the shrine a Goddess of Mercy looked down complacently upon the array of fruit, nuts, sweetmeats and cakes spread out before her. Many candles in their tall candlesticks were burning on every side. Before her was a great bronze incense-burner, from which many sticks of incense sent out their fragrant odour on the air. ”

“ They were highly prized by their owners, but I was anxious to know what the Lady Miao thought of her ability as an artist, and so I asked:
"Do you consider the Empress Dowager a good painter?"
"The Empress Dowager is a great woman," she answered. "Of course, as an artist, she is an amateur rather than a professional. Had she devoted herself wholly to art, hers would have been one of the great names among our artists. She wields her brush with a power and precision which only genius added to practice can give. ”

“ We know how the British and French marched upon Peking in 1860; how the summer palace was left a heap of ruins as a punishment for the murder of a company of men under a flag of truce; and how the Emperor Hsien Feng, with his wife, and the mother of his only son, our Empress Dowager, were compelled to flee for the first time before a foreign invader. Their refuge was Jehol, a fortified town, in a wild and rugged mountain pass, on the borders of China and Tartary, a hundred miles northeast of Peking. ”

“ Prostrate we reflect on how the late Emperor occupied the Imperial Throne for thirty-four years, reverently following the customs of his ancestors, receiving the gracious instruction of the Empress Dowager, exerting himself to the utmost, not failing one day to revere Heaven and observe the laws of his ancestors, devoting himself with diligence to the affairs of government and loving the people, appointing the virtuous to office, changing the laws of the land to make the country powerful, considering new methods of government which arouse the admiration of both Chinese and foreigners. ”

“ Thousands of common thieves and robbers flocked to their standards with every new conquest, impelled by no higher motive than that of pillage and gain. Rumours became rife in every village and hamlet, and as they neared the capital the wildest tales were told in every nook and corner of the city, from the palace of the young Emperor in the Forbidden City to the mat shed of the meanest beggar beneath the city wall.
My wife says: "I remember just after going to China, sitting one evening on a kang, or brick bed, with Yin-ma, an old nurse, our only light being a wick floating in a dish of oil. ”

“ Ruling over a conquered race, she must always be watching out for signs of discontent and rebellion; being herself the daughter of a poor man, and beginning as only the concubine of an emperor, and he but a weak character, she must be alert for dissatisfaction on the part of the princes who might have some title to the throne. She must watch the governors in the distant provinces and the viceroys who are in charge of great armies, that they do not direct them against instead of in defense of the throne. ”

“ VIII Kuang Hsu—His Self-Development The Emperor Kuang Hsu is slight and delicate, almost childish in appearance, of pale olive complexion, and with great, melancholy eyes. There is a gentleness in his expression that speaks rather of dreaming than of the power to turn dreams into acts. It is strange to find a personality so etherial among the descendants of the Mongol hordes; yet the Emperor Kuaug Hsu might sit as a model for some Oriental saint on the threshold of the highest beatitude.—Charles Johnston in "The Crisis in China." ”

“ XXI The Death of Kuang Hsu and the Empress Dowager Who knows whether the Dowager Empress will ever repose in the magnificent tomb she has built for herself at such a cost, or whether a new dynasty may not rifle its riches to embellish its own? Tze-Hsi is growing old! According to nature's immutable law her faculties must soon fail her; her iron will must bend and her far-seeing eye grow dim, and after her who will resist the tide of foreign aggression and stem the torrent of inward revolt?—Lady Susan Townley in "My Chinese Note Book." ”

“ The first Empress was a pampered daughter of wealth, neither vigorous of body nor strong of mind, caring nothing for political power if only she might have ease and comfort, and there is nothing that exhibits the Empress Dowager's real greatness more convincingly than the fact that she was able to live for thirty years the more fortunate mother of her country's ruler, and, in power, the mistress of her superior, without arousing the latter's envy, jealousy, anger, or enmity. ”

“ One of the most attractive of all my Chinese lady friends and patients is the niece of the great Viceroy, Li Hung-chang, the daughter of his brother, Li Han-chang, who is himself a viceroy. I have been her physician for eighteen years or more and hence have become intimately acquainted with her. She has visited me very often in my home and, of all the women I have ever known, of any race or people, I have never met one whom I thought more cultured or refined than she. ”

“ The same people who condemn the Empress Dowager for beheading the six young reformers stand ready to forgive Kuang Hsu for ordering the decapitation of Jung Lu, and the imprisonment of his foster-mother.
There were two powerful factions in Peking, the progressives, headed by Prince Ching; and the conservatives, headed by Jung Lu. Now the Empress Dowager may have reasoned thus: "The progressives and reformers have had their day. They have tried their plans and they have failed. The only result they have secured is peace—but peace always at the expense of territory. ”

“ Let us try to explain why it was that an imbecile would purchase every book that had been printed in the Chinese language, concerning foreign subjects of learning, up to the time when he was dethroned. Let us tell why it was that an imbecile would study all those foreign books without help, without an assistant, without a teacher, for three years, from the time he bought them in 1895 till 1898, before he began issuing the most remarkable series of edicts that have ever come from the pen of an Oriental monarch in the same length of time. ”

“ The Chinese woman is commonly regarded as little better than a secluded slave, who whiles away the tedious hours at an embroidery frame, where with her needle she works those delicate and intricate pieces of embroidery for which she is famous throughout the world. In reality, a Chinese lady has little time to give to such work. Her life is full of the most exacting social duties. Few American ladies in the whirl of society in Washington or New York have more social functions to attend or duties to perform. ”

“ All who have blood and breath cannot but mourn and be moved to the extreme point. We weep tears of blood and beat upon our heart. How can we bear to express our feelings!
"But we think upon our heavy responsibility and our weakness, and we must depend upon the great and small civil and military officials of Peking and the provinces to show public spirit and patriotism, and aid in the government. The viceroys and governors should harmonize the people and arrange carefully methods of government to comfort the spirit of the late Emperor in heaven. ”

“ One cannot view these imperial temples without being impressed with the potential greatness of a people who do things on such a magnificent scale. But one, at the same time, also feels that these temples, and the great Oriental religions which inspire and support them have failed in a measure to accomplish their design, which ought to be to educate and develop the people. This they can hardly be said to have done, especially if we consider their condition in their lack of all phases of scientific development, for as the sciences stand to-day they are all the product of the Christian peoples. ”

“ In every company of women that came to call on my wife from 1894 to 1900, there was at least one if not more who had read these books, while the Empress Dowager herself was a brilliant example of what a woman of the old regime could do. Where the desire for education was so great among women, that as soon as it became possible to do so, she launched the first woman's daily newspaper that was published anywhere in the world, with a woman as an editor, we may be sure that there was more than one in ten thousand during the old regime that could read. ”

“ The whole empire was aroused to indignation, and even in our Christian schools, every essay, oration, dialogue or debate was a discussion of some phase of the subject, "How to reform and strengthen China." The students all thought, the young reformers all thought, and the foreigners all thought that Kuang Hsu had struck the right track. The great Chinese officials, however, were in doubt, and it was because of their doubt—progressives as well as conservatives—that the Empress Dowager was again called to the throne. ”

“ Among the attractive sights in Peking, none are quite so interesting as the places where His Majesty worships, and of these the most beautiful in architecture, the grandest in conception, and the one laid out on the most magnificent scale, is the Temple of Heaven. ”

“ Have you never noticed that in his edicts the Emperor speaks of his Manchu slaves and his Chinese subjects?"
Among my lady friends is one whose father died when she was a child, and she was brought up in the home of her grandfather who was himself a viceroy. She had always been accustomed to every luxury that wealth could buy. Clothed in the richest embroidered silks and satins, decorated with the rarest pearls and precious stones, she had serving women and slave girls to wait upon her, and humour her every whim. ”

“ They were brilliant young men, many of them, but they so lost their heads in their enthusiasm for reform that they forgot that their government was in the hands of the same old conservative leaders under whom it had been for forty centuries.
They introduced into the palace as the private adviser of the Emperor, Kang Yu-wei, as we have already shown, to whom was thus offered one of the greatest opportunities that was ever given to a human being—that of being the leader in this great reform. ”

“ Among other things he said: "Let all take advantage of the opportunities for the new education thus open to them, so that in time we may have many who will be competent to help us in the stupendous task of putting our country on a level with the strongest of the western powers." It was not wisdom the young man was after for the sake of wisdom, but he wanted knowledge because knowledge was power, and at that time it was the particular kind of power that was necessary to save China from utter destruction. ”