Mrs. Cornelius

“ It is like hunting a needle in a haystack to find a habitable house anywhere near the Legations, because, for blocks and blocks, almost everything is burnt. To find any decent Chinese houses one has to go too far from our lines to be really safe, as even now there are plenty of snipers still in Peking. Some wretched, dirty, and filthy temples have partially escaped burning, owing to the fact that almost up to the time that our troops arrived they were used by the Chinese as strongholds for themselves and Boxers. Into these holes people must go for lack of anything better. ”

“ She has personally nursed most of the Russian patients, for while all Russians of education speak either French or German, and the hospital nurses understand their wants, to the poor sailors, who can express themselves only in their own language, her nursing is a Godsend, and she is on duty with her suffering compatriots an incredible number of hours out of the twenty-four. A graduate trained nurse, working to make a record, could do no more than she is doing, and her physical strength, patience, and gentleness are a joy to witness. ”

“ The horror and dislike of leaving our respective Legations to concentrate in the British is nothing compared to the fact that if we leave our Legation the Boxers and Chinese soldiers will immediately burn them and loot them, and this may give them such a lust for loot and pillage that it may become an incentive strong enough to overcome their national fear of attacking, and make it most terribly difficult for us to hold out until the troops come. ”

“ Our servants, mostly native Christians, assure us that these people are all Boxers, most of them flaunting the red sash, the insignia of that Society, and that they are preparing for a general uprising when the time shall be ripe—an uprising that has for its watchword, “Death and destruction to the foreigner and all his works, and loyal support to the great Ching dynasty.” ”

“ The sky was grey, 68and the men on the Wall made agonizingly big and black silhouettes for the Chinese to aim at.
If I live to be a thousand, I could never see a queerer collection of people working together to extinguish a fire, and with the object to save themselves from a massacre—coolies, missionaries, soldiers, and Ministers Plenipotentiary working and straining every muscle for the same object. Surely Peking never before saw such unanimity of her foreign residents. ”

“ How soon people get accustomed to an idea! Now that we have prepared our minds for a possible massacre we seem to be getting back, to some degree at least, our old spirits. Now that 90I am well, how much nearer seem the soldiers who are coming to relieve us!
What a place this compound would be for an epidemic! There are barely enough mattresses for the wounded and dying at the hospital, so that, should we have one, and take a house for those taken sick, I am sure that there would be no ordinary comforts of any kind for them; they could only be isolated. ”

“ A great beam from the ceiling protruded some 4 or 5 feet down into the room, where it had been forced by a spent cannonball crashing into the side of the house, and over all this ruin was the unmistakable atmosphere which clings to a room where many people eat three times a day, and where the staff of servants is not equal to the work. ”

“ They say that in all crises, political or otherwise, some one man comes forward, takes the bull by the horns, so to speak, and does a man’s work. Mr. Squiers, as far as all the Americans here feel, is the man in Peking.
The fighting, the weak and terrorized Government, the expected attack on the Legations, the horrible massacre of the Chinese Christians, the burning of all the missions, churches, and entire Christian communities, and last, but not least, the continued attempts—made, we think, principally by Boxers—to “burn the Legations out,” all go to make these days very extraordinary ones. ”

“ We brought a small lead-lined ice-box with us from our Legation, which seemed foolish at the time, but which is a great comfort to us now. We keep our wine and drinking-water in it, and also well-water, which is very cool, so that our drink is somewhat cooled, and is not the same temperature as the air. No other mess can attempt to have things cool, and this is one of the features of our room—that we are as comfortable as we can be under these extraordinary circumstances. ”

“ But the fact remains, if the Boxers and rioters continue to increase in numbers each day as they have been doing for the past week, it will be the mob we will have to deal with, and not the Tsung-li Yamen.
In nearly every instance the persons who voice these sentiments are men who have lived in China for years, who know the country, the language, and the people. They know that the strength of the Chinese lies in clever cunning and mob violence, that they cannot be trusted under any circumstances. ”

“ Squiers’s German nursery governess, and she needed all sorts of assurances to convince her that a massacre was not in progress at that very moment.
These attacks are very terrifying, and to talk to a person two feet away one has to shriek. People one sees are either apparently most optimistic or desperately pessimistic, nothing between. It is a horrid thing to see big, strong men unable to hide their innate cowardliness, and shirking all duty of the slightest personal danger. ”

“ The rainy season and the bad time of the year par excellence has begun, and the temperature is like a Turkish bath without the clean smell. Apropos of smell, a whole story-book could be written about the Peking smell. The dry heat was nothing compared with this damp temperature, that seems to soak out of Mother Earth the most incredibly disgusting odours. There are so many dead dogs, horses, and Chinese lying in heaps all around the defended lines, but too far for us to bury or burn them. The contamination of the air is something almost overpowering. ”

“ The Protestant missionaries are now all housed in the Legation chapel, where they have turned the vestry room into a model kitchen and the altar into a table d’hôte. A herd of sheep and a cow have been corralled and installed in the stables, so we shall have meat, in case we are besieged, for several weeks. But if we are not besieged so long, the most sanguine say that the Chinese, who are a nation of cowards, will get over their awe of the foreigner when they find how easily they have made him leave his Legations and collect in the strongest one. ”

“ The proprietor of the Peking Hotel is Chamot, a Swiss who has played a wonderful part in the drama of our imprisonment. There have naturally been numbers of people without stores of any kind, and people who, if they had stores, would have no place to cook them; so Chamot stepped forward and undertook to feed daily I don’t know how many people. When we were first assembled in the British compound the confusion was something terrific, and he gave food to all those who had nothing, and later he made a permanent business arrangement to provide food for those who had no means of messing themselves. ”

“ Lippitt tells me, should be on the sick-list, and imagine how they feel with a compound full of women to defend against perhaps thousands of half-crazed fanatics who at any moment may break into the Legation. Their work is splendid, and at all times they are prepared for the worst, but the constant strain is unimaginable. ”

“ The men often make some trifling ailment an excuse to shirk all work for the common defence, and spend their time groaning over the situation, and becoming more hateful daily to the men and 130women upon whom the real responsibilities of the siege are resting; while the women who have collapsed simply spend their hours, day and night, behind the nearest closed door, and await each fresh attack to indulge in new hysterical scenes. ”

“ We take a hasty sponge-bath, and our rough-dried shirt-waists and golf-skirts are donned, and we are ready for the day. Next we roll up our straw mattress, place it in a corner, and put the small eight-sided Chinese table in the middle of the room. We boast four chairs, and as our mess ranges from eight to twelve people, the ones who come late sit on the silver trunks or on the floor. ”

“ Poole’s house, which we occupy, is damp, and all night the fleas and cockroaches that appear would horrify anyone. We sent our mosquito-nets and hair-mattresses to the hospital, so that every night we lie on our straw-stuffed bag, doing duty as a mattress, on the floor, and unless one lies in a pool of bug-powder there is no such thing as sound sleep. ”

“ Nor is this barbaric and ancient setting for a modern life made less extraordinary by the fact that one is served by quiet, intelligent, besatined servants, who glide about and look as if they had stepped into life straight from the half-fabulous days of Kubla Khan; and you feel they have always been thus, and always will be, and you wonder how it is that although the spirit of the twentieth century is certainly felt in China, it is little seen. ”

“ Of course, the variety that he supplies is not wonderful, but he gives them horse-meat, rice, occasionally 115some tinned vegetables, and a kind of coarse brown bread, made from an inferior flour, which he bakes himself. For so many people it is quite marvellous how he feeds them so regularly. He has a few coolies to help him at his hotel, which is near the French Legation, and there he personally superintends the cooking of the two messes, one at twelve and one at six o’clock, and brings it up in a Chinese cart to the British compound, always at the risk of his own life from snipers. ”

“ Every day deaths occur of our best fighting men and officers, and the question is, with men going in this painfully regular way, how long can we hold out? Soon women and children will constitute the only forces of the compound. The deaths each day are fortunately small 103in number, but a great many are wounded, some very badly, which make them as good as dead as far as fighting goes. The Russian officer in command says that we cannot hold out longer than for one week at the most, but more sanguine people say that, with good luck, three weeks can be tided over. ”

“ I could write a great deal if it were of any use—of this compound, with the shot and shell and bullets, making it dangerous for us to move about the small open place in the Legation; of weary waiting for the troops through heat and rain; of great dread over the weak places in our defences; of crowded hospital and growing cemetery, and principally of the nervous strain caused by all this worrying and fearing over the fate in store for us should we arrive at that point when we could no longer hold our own. A good sergeant or corporal is missed as much when he is wounded or killed as an officer ”

“ The Russians seemed horribly worried about so many Japanese soldiers coming, but there are rumours that the Russians have been keeping away from Tien-tsin so as not to join the allied Powers, and perhaps be forced to make some promises which they might regret later, and that they are doing some seizing of territory at the present on their own account on the plea of defending their railways. An Englishman here, being, of course, anti-Russian, insists that this nation is absolutely careless about its Minister or the other Russian people trapped here, whether they live or not. ”

“ The Tartars and Manchus are an alien race, although the rulers of China for many centuries, and have always been inimical to everything which tends to increase the power of foreigners; whereas the Chinese are cleverer, from being so constantly in contact with Europeans on the sea-coast, or anywhere where they can find gain or advantage in trading with them, and have become, compared, at least, to the ruling Manchus in Peking, progressive and modern. ”

“ When the moment arrives when they entirely lose that awe, how easy it will be for Tung Fu-hsiang alone (even he controls about 10,000 troops around 52Peking) to make a rush on us, although perhaps the only strength of his force lies in its numbers! To get in, to fire and massacre all the hated foreigners at one catch, is not at all impossible. ”

“ Velde, a surgeon of the German army, who has been detailed for three years to the Legation in Peking, is a man who for very clever and consecutive 74work has already been decorated by his Emperor. His forte is surgery, and it looks as if he would save the medical day here in Peking. Dr. Poole, I think, will consult and work with him. One of our marines has already been killed, and two are at the hospital wounded. These people, who are the first to lose their lives and get hurt, make one feel that truly this is war. ”

“ The quintessence of American interests are discussed right here in the open air, under a few scattered big trees, by people walking about 19gesticulating or standing on scorching hot flagstones, which pave part of this enclosure, arguing with one another as to how soon the coup d’état will take place, but all agreeing on one point—that a cable should be sent immediately to the State Department in Washington before telegraphic communication is lost; that nothing but a tremendous armed force can free the Americans in Peking from a surely approaching massacre ”

“ No matter what queer things happen in this world, humour is always left if one looks for it.
At the hospital an apparatus for applying X rays would have saved the lives of many. Poor Narahara, a Japanese officer, died this morning from lock-jaw produced by a bullet which pierced his thigh. He has suffered horribly for three weeks. Dr. Lippitt, after waiting four weeks for his leg to be in a condition for the surgeons to make another search for the bullet, had the pleasant news told him, after an agonizing examination, that it could not be found. ”

“ The May races having come off before the siege, most of the diplomats had not disposed of their horses and polo ponies, and the all-important question now is not if “Cochon” will win more cups in future, but if his steaks will be tender. Things are so queer now. The one cow which still gives a small amount of milk, needless to say, has not been killed for her beef, but is carefully tended for her baby-saving fluid. The president of the largest and most influential bank in Peking, besieged here with us, has received a wound which absolutely incapacitates him for active work. ”

“ With these terrible fires the Chinese are clever enough to keep up a volley of rifle-fire, so our labour is a frightful danger to every man working. The suspense was hard to bear, because it was over five hours before the most optimistic dared say, “We are comparatively out of 72danger;” and nobody knew just what would happen if this end of the compound was to go, for this British compound is looked upon by all as the strongest and last resort in Peking, and that is why, of course, all of the women and children and stores of every description have already been sent here. ”

“ Squiers’s guests are most numerous, charming, and interesting. The servants seem to be all back, and although the days are filled with incredible stories of what the different nationalities are “doing” in Peking, our evenings are always delightful, as they are made up of the companionship of the most delightful men in Peking, who, when they arrive to dine, throw off the disagreeable features of these war times, and devote themselves with happiness to this opportunity, probably their first for many weeks, of enjoying the ordinary cheerful amenities of life ”

“ The Russian Legation is so situated that at one point their defence is very weak, and they have almost nightly attacks at such close quarters with the Chinese, that the fighting is sometimes hand to hand. The men of the Russian guard were undrilled sailors, who had been forcibly enlisted from inland villages in Russia, and Von Rahden, their commander, and his under-officer, to keep them from running away when these close-range fights begin, get behind them and stick them with the ends of bayonets, so that they in turn will advance on the Chinese with fury. ”

“ So far, of course, things are not as bad as that, and fire is what we dread more than the disaffected Chinese soldiers or Boxers. Nevertheless, things got so critical the day before yesterday that food for a week for our entire Legation was sent over to the British compound, and each of us had sent over a dress suit-case with a change of linen, brushes, etc., so that in the event of our having to leave our Legation on the moment, we would not be absolutely comfortless and unprepared for a siege of several days until Seymour and McCalla could relieve us. ”