With the Empress Dowager of China

[1]

From a Chinese poet—written when Her Majesty
was twenty-five years old.

[2] Confucius says “Purity is the Essence of Heaven.” Did the Manchus call theirs the “Dynasty of the Great Purity” with a knowledge of Confucian teaching, that the descendants of the Dynasty of the Great Purity (Essence of Heaven) might become literally the “Sons of Heaven,” the appellation borne by the Emperors of China?

[3] Generally written “jui,” but pronounced as I have written it.

[4] My Chinese name.

[5] “Buddha’s hand,” a very fragrant fruit of the family of lemons, which is shaped like a hand, with long, curving fingers. Pyramids of this fruit are used for their perfume.

[6] It has been said by foreigners, that Her Majesty the Empress Dowager obliges the Emperor and Empress to make the prostrations before her on her Birthday as an indignity to them and to show her authority. The truth is, that every son in China kneels before his parents on their birthdays, and should the Emperor fail to do so, the whole of China would be horrified and cry out against his unfilial conduct. Her Majesty is not only the wife of his uncle, the Emperor Hsien-Feng, but the sister of his mother, and, more than all else, the Empress Dowager is the Emperor’s adopted mother. The duties of an adopted child to his adopted parents are the same, in China, as to his own parents. In the Viceroy Chang-Chih-Tung’s famous ode to the Emperor, he speaks of this filial piety as one of the Emperor’s greatest qualities: “Who does not admire the filial reverence and piety with which he waits upon his august mother? Setting a brilliant example to all, he inquires early and late after her well-being and watches over her meals in person. Let us now add a new ode, extolling to the skies our Emperor’s fidelity to his Imperial mother.”

[7] Her Majesty said my individuality was not lost in these costumes, and that I was clothed in attire suitable to the Chinese interior. She had now devised a costume for me which was really in harmony with my new environment. Our rough tweeds and somber garments, outlining and defining the figure, looked mesquin and out of place in these great halls. The bright colors and simple lines of the gowns of the Chinese ladies are much more in keeping with their interiors. Her Majesty’s artistic taste had divined this, and she had made several attempts to devise something for me that was in harmony with the Chinese “milieu” and at the same time comfortable.

[8] Also spelled jiu.

[9] Since the above was in type I find the following in F. Laur’s “Siège de Péking.” In speaking of the cause of the Boxer rising, he quotes Dr. Matignon as saying:

“C’est l’Europe tout entière qu’il faut mettre en cause. C’est parce qu’elle n’a pas compris les Chinois, c’est parce qu’elle a cru que ce peuple doux, somnolent, passif, pouvait, sans regimber, accepter toutes les innovations, toutes les humiliations, que l’Europe s’est laissée entrainer, et par ses missionnaires, et par ses ingénieurs....

Voilà pourquoi le mouvement Boxeur s’est produit. Ce mouvement, c’est l’éveil du patriotisme chinois, avec toute l’intransigeance d’un nationalisme aveugle, ignorant, mais légitime.”