THE SHŌGUN OR TYCOON
In the beginning of 1867 there was a great stir in Japanese politics, and
it was evident to those who, like ourselves, were more or less behind
the scenes that we were on the eve of what might prove to be a critical
state of affairs whichever party gained the upper hand. Meanwhile the
Shōgun Iyémochi had died on the 19th of September, 1866, and Tokugawa
Kéiki, who, as I have already said, was the third son of the Lord of
Mito and whose rise was due to the intrigues of his father, succeeded
to the office; he soon announced his intention of receiving the foreign
ministers at Ōsaka, an ugly city of rivers and canals, a great and
important trade centre, but with no claim other than its waterways to be
called, as it sometimes was, the Venice of the Far East. In the first
week of February Mr. Satow and myself were sent in a man-of-war to make
the necessary arrangements and settle all the questions of etiquette and
procedure which might crop up. We had with us as guests Captain Cardew of
the 9th Regiment and Lieutenant Thalbitzer of the Danish Navy.
We landed at Hiōgo and rode to Ōsaka. Besides a mounted escort of
officers soldiers were posted at intervals all along the road, and as
we passed each post the men fell in and followed behind us, so that by
the time we reached our destination we had a tail of between two and
three thousand men. This was pretty good evidence of the anxiety of the
Government for our safety.
On landing we heard that the Mikado Komei had died of smallpox on the
3rd of February—as a matter of fact he had died on the 30th of January,
but for some mysterious reason the date was given as four days later.
His successor, the famous Emperor Mutsu Hito, was then a boy of fifteen.
Those who knew him had great faith in his ability and predicted great
things for him if he should be properly trained. Their forecast was well
justified. Had the Emperor Komei, who was a deadly foe to all foreign
intercourse, lived the events of the next few months must have been very
different.
When we reached Ōsaka we found that a pretty little shrine in a street
more or less devoted to temples had been prepared for our reception. We
were feasted and treated right royally, and everything was done to make
our duties easy and our stay agreeable. It will astonish the tourist of
to-day to hear that we were looked upon as such curiosities that the
street in which we lived was so crowded with sightseers as to be almost
impassable and the hucksters and costers of Ōsaka set up a fair outside
our temple, where they did a roaring trade in fruit, sweetmeats, cheap
toys and the like.
Although our mission to Ōsaka was nominally intended to arrange the
ceremonial to be observed at the approaching reception by the Tycoon
of the Foreign Representatives, and especially of Sir Harry Parkes,
it gave an excellent opportunity for obtaining information as to the
political situation in Kiōto. It was during this visit that I first
made acquaintance with some of the leading men of the clans—men who
were destined to play a great part in the days that were to follow. We
were visited by representatives of both the rival parties, that of the
discontented Daimios and that of the Tycoon. Foremost among the latter
were some of the northerners of Aidzu, men who were ready to lay down
their lives, and did actually die, for the honour of the Tokugawa; others
from the Satsuma, Chōshiu, Tosa and Uwajima clans were moving heaven and
earth for the deposition of the Shōgun.
We learned much about the intrigues that were going on at Kiōto, plots
and counterplots of which the interest has long since faded away owing
to the very greatness of the results which have issued from them. The
men themselves who kept us so well informed have almost all, one by one,
been gathered to their fathers. Komatsu of the Satsuma clan, whom we saw
almost daily during our stay in Ōsaka, Prince Ito of the Chōshiu clan,
Kido of the same clan, the most brilliant of all—Gotō of Tosa whose
statue stands in Tokio, Nakai, and others all gone! The last of our
special friends, Marquis Inouyé, one of the elder statesmen, died a month
since. I doubt whether there can be six men alive who played a leading
part in those stirring events. And during the last twelve months the
great Mikado, whose reign will always be so famous, and the Shōgun whom
he magnanimously forgave, have themselves gone to the realm of shadows,
living only in history.
We had to be very careful in arranging our interviews, for naturally we
were pretty closely watched by the blessed spies who were attached to us
“for our protection.” Still we did manage once or twice to escape from
the Argus-eyed and to have at least two interviews from which even the
less important men of the Daimio party were shut out.
One message which I was desired to give to Sir Harry Parkes was, read
by the light of subsequent events, supremely interesting. It was to the
effect that the object of the Prince of Satsuma and of the coalition of
Daimios was not to upset the government of the Shōgun, but to prevent
it from making a bad use of its powers. That Satsuma hoped to see the
Mikado restored to the ancient honours of his race, because that would
contribute to the weal of the country; that their plans and hopes all
tended not to revolution against the Shōgun but to the benefit of the
country at large—that if Sir Harry, on reaching Ōsaka, would moot the
question of a new treaty with the Mikado direct, the Daimios would at
once give their adherence to the proposal and flock to Kiōto to carry out
this great work. Let Sir Harry help them to this very small degree and
they would answer for the rest.
Truly a modest programme; but _l’appétit vient en mangeant_; a few short
months later it would have excited ridicule.
We did a great deal of shopping during our stay in Ōsaka, for, of course,
we wished to carry away some of the _mei-butsu_, special wares, for which
the great city was famous. Lacquer, quaint pipes of many patterns, fans,
and brocade were temptations not to be resisted. Wherever we went we were
pursued by huge crowds through which a way was cleared for us by petty
officials, armed only with the _Wakizashi_ or dirk, who kept shouting
a sort of crow-like cry of _Kan! Kan!_ But the mob, friendly but very
persistent, was not to be shouted away. The attraction was too great.
When, after having fulfilled our mission at Ōsaka, we reached Yedo we
found that a tragedy had taken place in the Legation during our absence.
There were a good many men who were unable to get over the constant dread
of murder at the hands of the armed swashbucklers who used to ruffle
along the streets of Yedo, scowling at the hated foreigners and sometimes
making as though they would draw their keen heavy swords, to deliver that
first deadly blow which would cut a man almost from shoulder to waist—a
blow so well known that we were advised if we saw an inch of steel bared
to shoot the ruffian at sight. One of our young student interpreters
was so possessed by the terror which haunted him by day and by night
that he never went outside the gates of the Legation and even petitioned
the Chief to send home for a couple of Armstrong guns for our better
protection, though we already had a company of the 9th and our mounted
escort.
One night the poor fellow could stand it no longer. He dined quietly
with the others and then went off to his room. Two shots were heard.
His hand must have trembled, for he missed himself with the first, the
bullet of which was found in the wall; the second shot was fatal. They
say that suicide is infectious; within a week there were two more cases
in Yokohama. It is hard to realize nowadays the conditions of life in the
early times of our intercourse with Japan. For nearly four years I never
wrote a note without having a revolver on the table, and never went to
bed without a Spencer rifle and bayonet at my hand. Think of that, you
who walk through the streets of Yedo and Kiōto, swinging a dandy cane
with as great safety as you would in Regent Street or Piccadilly, and
thank your stars that the carrying of sword and dirk has been abolished
by law.
In the month of May, 1867, Sir Harry Parkes and the rest of us went to
Ōsaka for the first reception by the Shōgun.
The Castle of Ōsaka was, and still is, so far as its outer fortress is
concerned, a most stupendous monument of feudalism, the crowning glory
of Hidéyoshi, commonly spoken of as Taiko Sama, the son of a woodcutter
in the province of Owari, who, towards the end of the sixteenth century,
became the supreme _de facto_ ruler of Japan and the conquerer of
Corea. Its walls, “seven fathoms thick,” as old Kämpfer puts it, were
built of great blocks of granite piled irregularly one above the other
without mortar in cyclopean pattern or rather no pattern, massive,
wonder-raising. Walls moated by two rivers, the Yodo and the Kashiwari.
Some of the stones are more than thirty feet long and nearly twenty
feet high, sent, as it is said, by way of tribute by the lords of many
provinces. It is a noble structure, moated, very plain and simple,
featureless with the exception of the curved roofs of the great towers,
its very simplicity adding to its grandeur; against a host armed with
bows and spears, with perhaps a few matchlocks, an impregnable fortress.
Here Hidéyori, the son of Hidéyoshi, was born, and here he lived with his
mother, a woman of great character, in full security, and for a while in
friendship with Iyéyasu. The end of that friendship and the fall of the
castle of Ōsaka rank among the romances of history.
Over and over again the great stronghold was attacked by the Tokugawa;
twice it was nearly lost by treachery—but the garrison always beat off
their assailants, until at last a fire broke out within the castle and
there was a panic. Hidéyori and his gloriously brave mother were never
seen again: they must have perished in the flames; and Iyéyasu triumphed
only to die some months afterwards from the effects of a wound received
during the siege. After his death he was deified, or perhaps I should
rather say canonized, as an incarnation of Buddha under the title of
Gongen Sama.
It was in this great historic castle that our reception by the Shōgun
took place. Never can anything of the kind be seen again. The Shōgunate
has disappeared and is now only spoken of in Japan as something
prehistoric; the last of the Shōguns died a few months ago; the castle
itself no longer exists as it then was. The outer shell still stands but
the magnificent palace which it contained was gutted and burnt by the
Shōgun’s own people when, after the battle of Fushimi they came back in
bitter despair, aching with the pain of defeat, and many of them stung
to the quick by the flight of their lord.
How cruelly this sorrow ate into the hearts of the faithful retainers
and adherents of the great House of Tokugawa may be felt from the
following true story. I am anticipating by a year, but I am not writing a
consecutive history; only jotting down stray notes of a sort of “voyage
en zigzag” across my memory. When the defeated Shōgun reached Yedo and
was safely lodged (for a short while!) in his ancestral castle, a member
of his second Council, one Hori Kura no Kami, went to him and urged him
to perform _hara-kiri_ as the only way to wipe out the stain which had
smirched the august Family. To prove his sincerity he declared himself
ready to do the same. The Shōgun is reported to have laughed at him,
saying that such barbarous customs were out of date. Upon this Hori Kura
no Kami prostrated himself, making due obeisances and retiring to an
adjoining chamber, stripped to the waist, drew his dirk, and plunging it
into himself died the death of a noble samurai.
Tokugawa Kéiki was wrong when he said that _hara-kiri_ was out of date as
a barbarous custom. It is to this day the end of constancy and honour;
witness the death of the great Satsuma General Saigo, whom I knew well,
in the rebellion of 1877; witness the self-immolation of my gallant old
friend, General Nogi, the hero of Port Arthur, two years ago (in 1913);
broken by grief at the death of the Mikado Mutsu Hito he would not
outlive the master whom he loved, and so he died, and that faithful lady
his wife died with him.
During our stay at Ōsaka we had three interviews with the Shōgun; of
these the first was naturally the most interesting, although it was
only semi-official, for not only had it the taste of novelty, but it
also afforded the opportunity for a more intimate interchange of ideas
than would be possible on a state occasion. Accompanied by a number of
dignitaries of the Shōgun’s government and escorted not only by our own
men, seventeen splendid Lancers picked from the Metropolitan Police,
and a company of the 9th Regiment, but also by a small army of Japanese
soldiers, we rode to the castle in solemn procession. We were privileged
to remain on horseback beyond the place where all Japanese, high and
low, were required to dismount, and only left our horses at an inner
gate, immediately opposite the enormous hall of the palace, which was,
indeed, an inner castle surrounded, as was the outer one, by a moat.
Here we were received by a number of officials of high rank, who led us
to a waiting-room where tea and various dainties were served. I take the
account of our reception from a letter which I wrote at the time, on May
the 6th, 1867.
The interior of the palace was far more magnificent than anything that
I had seen in Japan. The walls were covered with gold leaf, decorated
with those glorious paintings of trees, flowers, birds and beasts, for
which the Kano school of artists is famous. The hangings were the finest
rush mats, suspended by gilt hooks from which hung huge silken tassels
in tricolour—orange, red and black—the colours of the Zingari ribbon.
The upper panels formed a frieze, deeply carved by some native Grinling
Gibbons in the highest style of Japanese art, lavishly gilt and painted;
every panel was different, no two alike. Peacocks and cranes strutting
in all the pride of beauty, delicate groups of tender-coloured azaleas,
bamboos bending their graceful feathers to the wind, pine trees with
foliage almost black with age, were the subjects chosen. The uprights
and cross-beams were of plain unpolished keaki wood, fastened with metal
bolts, capped with niello work. The ceiling was coffered in squares,
carved, gilt and painted, and the divisions were richly lacquered in
black and gold. Sumptuous as it all was there was nothing tawdry or
glaring in this fever of splendour, for it was all two hundred years old,
softened and subdued by the patina of time.
If old Kämpfer’s account, or rather, the story told by his informant, was
correct, there once stood inside the palace precincts a tower “several
stories high, whose innermost roof is covered and adorned with two
monstrous large fish, which, instead of scales, are covered with golden
obang, finely polished, which, on a clear, sunshiny day reflect the rays
so strongly that they may be seen as far as Hiōgo. This tower was burned
down about thirty years ago, to compute from 1691.” These monstrous
fishes were examples of the mystic Shachihoko, which are seen on so many
roofs, and the obang was the great oval gold coin, some five or six
inches long, flat like a scale, which must have made a rare jacket for a
fish.
We were kept some little time in the first room talking with the various
dignitaries, as is natural in every land, about the weather, and then we
were led into the reception hall, where, in deference to European habits,
a table was set out with eight seats, and at one end a richly lacquered
chair for the Shōgun. Here we were met by the Gorôjiu (the Council of
State, literally “Elders”), and the members of the Second Council, and
were told that the great Prince would immediately make his appearance.
A few seconds afterwards two of the tall sliding screens which wall
a Japanese room were slowly and noiselessly drawn aside, and that
long-drawn “hush” caused by the drawing-in of breath which announces the
coming of a great personage thrilled all through the whole palace like
the most delicate _pianissimo_ of a huge orchestra; for a second or two
the Tycoon, motionless as a statue, stood framed in the opening between
the screens, an august and imposing figure. All the Japanese prostrated
themselves, with the exception of the Gorôjiu and the members of the
Second Council, who, presumably, only were excused this reverence in
order that there might be no difference between them and us. The great
man stepped into the room, bowed, shook hands with Sir Harry Parkes “in
barbarum,” as Tacitus puts it, and we all sat down—four Japanese on one
side of the table, Sir Harry, Mr. Locock, Mr. Satow and myself on the
other. Then the Shōgun rose very gracefully and asked after the health of
Queen Victoria. This was responded to by Sir Harry standing and inquiring
after the Mikado. He then led the conversation into business questions.
The great man, in the course of this unofficial and more or less
confidential talk, showed that he was well posted as to all that had
taken place during the early days after the signing of the Elgin Treaty
and up to the then present time. He spoke frankly and without reserve
of the troublous years that we had gone through. He deplored the
difficulties which had stood in the way of any satisfactory intercourse
between his countrymen and ours, and announced his determination to
inaugurate a better order of things. His manner was quite charming. He
was at first, not unnaturally, a little shy and nervous, for he had some
awkward admissions to make, but his great natural distinction and kindly
courtesy soon shook off all restraint, and he talked freely and easily.
Certainly Prince Tokugawa Kéiki, the last of the Shōguns, was a very
striking personality. He was of average Japanese height, small as
compared with Europeans, but the old Japanese robes made the difference
less apparent. I think he was the handsomest man, according to our ideas,
that I saw during all the years that I was in Japan. His features were
regular, his eye brilliantly lighted and keen, his complexion a clear,
healthy olive colour. The mouth was very firm, but his expression when
he smiled was gentle and singularly winning. His frame was well-knit and
strong, the figure of a man of great activity; an indefatigable horseman,
as inured to weather as an English master of hounds. When I saw him again
forty years later age had altered him but little. He had retained all his
charm of manner, and though the face was lined his features had undergone
hardly any change, and the distinction of race was as evident as ever. He
was a great noble if ever there was one. The pity of it was that he was
an anachronism.
After about an hour spent in very friendly conversation the Shōgun asked
to see our escort, who were waiting in an inner court of the palace.
They showed him lance and sword exercise, with which he seemed highly
delighted, but what interested him the most was the size of our horses,
Gulf Arabs, rather a good-looking lot which we had imported from India,
and he, as a horse-lover, commented a good deal upon their superiority to
the Japanese native ponies, which certainly are about as mean a breed of
the genus horse as exists anywhere.
The Shōgun had invited us to stay for dinner. In these days (1915) a
banquet served in the French fashion in the palace of a Japanese grandee
is an everyday affair, but at the time of which I am writing for four
Englishmen to find themselves hobnobbing with the Tycoon and his Gorôjiu
was an unprecedented occurrence, impossible anywhere out of dreamland.
The great man presided, and we were waited upon by the Ministers of
Foreign Affairs and the pages of honour. In the middle of dinner the
Shōgun rose and proposed the Queen’s health, a compliment till then
absolutely unknown in the Land of Sunrise, and therefore all the more
indicative of the desire to please. Sir Harry responded with a toast in
honour of our host. After dinner we adjourned into an inner room where
the Shōgun gave each of us a present of two pieces of crape, and a pipe
and tobacco-pouch of silk embroidered by the ladies of the palace.
But the prettiest compliment, so gracefully offered, was yet to come. The
room in which we were was hung round with a number of portraits of poets
and poetesses which had been presented to one of the Tokugawa Shōguns by
some Daimio about two hundred years before. We were looking at these with
no little curiosity when the Tycoon insisted on having one of them taken
down and presenting it to Sir Harry in memory of his visit. Sir Harry
naturally demurred to accepting it, pointing out what a pity it would be
to break the set; but the Prince would take no denial, saying that “when
he looked on the vacant space it would give him pleasure to think that
the picture that had once filled it was in the possession of the British
Minister.” Could courtesy find a higher expression?
We remained at the palace till past nine o’clock and it was a
satisfaction to hear next day that the occasion of his first introduction
to Englishmen had afforded our princely host as much pleasure as it had
given us.
The State ceremony was, of course, far more stiff and formal, but it
was also infinitely more quaint, for there was no taste of Europe about
it. We were living through a chapter, or perhaps I should rather say
a paragraph of a chapter, taken out of the old-world romance of the
furthest East. The Shōgun and his nobles were clad in the immemorial
Court dress; flowing trousers as long as the train of a Buckingham Palace
great lady, loose hempen jackets, and the curious little black lacquer
caps like boxes (_yéboshi_) on their heads. You may see them portrayed on
golden screens and old paintings. In no country that I have seen is Court
dress triumphant in beauty, but here it was absolutely grotesque, forcing
the wearers into the most ungraceful shuffling movements. I have no doubt
that we seemed equally absurd to our hosts, for the cocked hat, now the
coveted privilege of every Japanese official, was then a mystery unknown
as the future which has given birth to it.
On the following day the Shōgun returned to Kiōto for a meeting of
Daimios whom he had summoned to confer upon the affairs of the Empire.
Meanwhile our negotiations had gone smoothly; the great man had shown
himself to be most friendly, and we were in high hopes that the opening
of Ōsaka in the following January would be the harbinger of new and
happier relations between Japan and the Western world.
There was a talk of my being removed from Japan at this time. I was very
unwilling to leave the country at so interesting a moment. In a letter
written home I find the reason of my reluctance. “If I go I shall miss
the opening of Ōsaka and Hiōgo to foreign trade which will be the _last
event of political importance in Japan_ in our time.” What a blind
prophet! I stayed on, but I was fated to see a good many events of
greater “political importance” than the opening of the two ports.
END OF VOLUME I
_Printed at The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Surrey._
FOOTNOTES
[1] The name Wansbeck is derived from “want,” the old English word for a
mole: the beck or stream of the mole. The word, by the by, is still alive
in Gloucestershire, where a molehill is an “unt-yeave.”
[2] Midford = between the fords.
[3] Sir Robert Bertram’s name is given as Richard in Burke’s “Landed
Gentry,” where it is further said that he was a son of the Lord of Dignam
in Normandy.
[4] The Duchess of Cleveland’s “Battle Abbey Roll.”
[5] The Duchess of Cleveland’s “Battle Abbey Roll.”
[6] “Battle Abbey Roll” _ut supra_.
[7] Painted by Jackson.
[8] Painted by Romney.
[9] Painted as a young man by a French artist in the manner of Nattier.
Also as an old man by ——?
[10] Painted by Prince Hoare of Bath—foreign corresponding secretary of
the Royal Academy.
[11] Painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
[12] Portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Heathcote by Owen.
[13] A pastel of her as a little girl with a pet goldfinch in a cage, by
Russell—generally regarded as Russell’s best work.
[14] Shipston on Stour, where the guardians meet.
[15] Afterwards Earl of Westmorland, grandfather of the present earl.
[16] The caricaturists used to make famous fun of Louis Philippe’s head,
with its hair brushed up in a sort of cone that made the stem of the pear.
[17] Mr. John Hawtrey (cousin of the Head Master) kept a house at
the corner of Keate’s Lane reserved for boys of the lower school.
There was no fagging in his house—but his boys were liable to outside
fagging. He afterwards kept preparatory schools at Slough and later at
Westgate-on-Sea. He was the father of Mr. Charles Hawtrey, the famous
actor.
[18]
“Sive tu Lucina probas vocari,
Seu Genitalis.”—Horace, “Carmen Seculare,” 15.
[19] The lower master; afterwards Provost of King’s College, Cambridge.
[20] “Dictionary of National Biography.”
[21] See Maxwell Lyte’s “History of Eton College,” p. 526, Ed. 1899.
[22] There can be very few people now living who have seen and talked
with the famous Dr. Keate, who was nailed in his desk during the great
rebellion and flogged eighty boys in one day. My father, on one of his
visits to Eton, took me up to see him in the cloisters at Windsor, where
he was canon. In appearance he was exactly like the many caricatures
that one used to see of him, but the truculent hero of the birch and
block, so faithfully painted by Kinglake in “Eothen,” had grown into a
gentle, mild, little old man, of whom it was difficult to believe that
he had ever flogged a boy or uttered a harsh word. He had abandoned “the
fancy dress, partly resembling the costume of Napoleon and partly that
of a widow woman” (“Eothen,” p. 276, Ed. 1896), and was now garbed as a
commonplace Early Victorian parson.
[23] At a distribution of prizes at one of the public schools at Paris,
as boy after boy was brought up, he said, “Continuez, jeune homme!
Premier prix de mathématiques, très bien. Continuez, jeune homme.” At
last a Haytian boy was brought up to him. “Ah, c’est vous le nègre.
Continuez, jeune homme, continuez!”
[24] “Leaving money” has now been done away with. In my day a sixth form
boy on taking leave of the Head Master, laid on his desk an envelope
containing £15. For other boys the fee was £10. It was an ignoble custom,
rightly abolished.
[25] ἄνδρες δικασταί = jurymen.
[26] Those tapestries are now one of the chief ornaments of the British
Embassy at Paris.
[27] Lord Ranelagh’s long hair and beard gave him a certain look of
Garibaldi. He was one of the best of good fellows, and had been a gallant
soldier in Spain, though in the opposite camp to Wylde. He did much to
make the volunteer movement popular.
[28] The Prince Consort died on the 14th December.
[29] Bishop Wilberforce’s answer to a friend who asked him why he was
nicknamed “Soapy Sam.”
[30] “The Life of Lord Lyons,” by Lord Newton. 2 vols. Edward Arnold,
1913.
[31] Not the 10th Hussars, as Sir Sidney Lee has it. Of the 10th he was
titular Colonel-in-Chief.
[32] In his youth he worked hard at the violin, and it is said with
success.
[33] “Miscellaneous Writings,” Vol. VII. p. 123.
[34] He appeared on the stage for the last time in _Macbeth_ at Drury
Lane in February, 1851. But I heard him read long after that.
[35] A most picturesque and splendid actor. A Frenchman to all intents
and purposes, speaking English with a strong French accent. There was
a story that he was born in England, but that is doubtful. He died in
America in 1879. (See “Dictionary of National Biography.”)
[36] “Annual Register,” 1863.
[37] Lord Salisbury—“Foreign Policy,” p. 198.
[38] Brockhaus—“Conversations Lexicon,” Art. Polen.
[39] Curiously enough, by one of those ineptitudes for which private
secretaries are famous, the brother of this very gentleman, the son of a
Polish mother, had been shortly before attached to the British Embassy at
St. Petersburg.
[40] “Briefe Kaiser Wilhelm’s des Ersten,” Insel Verlag, Leipzig, 1911,
p. 106.
[41] The Grand Duke Nicholas Alexandrovitch, the eldest son of the Tsar.
He was in wretched health and died in April, 1865, and the Princess
became betrothed to his next brother, who after his father’s murder
reigned as Alexander the Third.
[42] Winterbottom, the great trombone player, once said to me, “The notes
of a G trombone ought to go _rolling_ through Exeter Hall like footballs.”
[43] Written some years ago (1915).
[44] 18th February, old style; 2nd March, new style.
[45]
“Ia bui v’ miesto phonaria
Katorii svietiet v’ niepagodu
Vieshal bui golovu Tsaria
I provosglocil svobodu.”
[46] _Measure for Measure._
[47] The father of the present (1915) Commander-in-Chief of the Russian
army in Poland and Galicia.
[48] An excellent and hospitable club, “Anglais” only in name, of which
the _corps diplomatique_ were made honorary members.
[49] A Tartar word signifying “Citadel.”
[50] Revelation ii. 8.
[51] The “Gallery of Illustration” was a place of entertainment famous
in those days under the direction of Mr. and Mrs. German Reed (Miss
Priscilla Horton), with whom were joined Arthur Cecil and Corney Grain.
They produced, among other famous pieces, Sullivan and Burnand’s _Cox and
Box_.
[52] See the preface to “Le Nabab.”
[53] Po Hsing—“the hundred names” = the οἱ πολλοί.
[54] Pinus Bungeana.
[55] Sir Rutherford retired in 1871. But he lived for many years
afterwards in London, devoting himself to all manner of work for the
benefit of the poor, but especially in connection with hospitals, for
which his early training and technical knowledge specially fitted him. He
died, greatly respected, in 1897 at the age of eighty-eight.
[56] “China under the Empress Dowager,” I.O.P. Bland and E. Backhouse.
[57] See Messrs. Bland and Backhouse.
[58] Bland and Backhouse; cf. “C’est pis qu’une faute, c’est une erreur”
(Talleyrand on the murder of the Duc d’Enghien).
[59] Bought at my sale by my old friend Sir Augustus Franks, and now in
the collection bequeathed by him to the British Museum.
[60] “The Attaché at Peking.” Macmillan, 1900.
[61] Years afterwards, when Descharmes was military attaché in London, he
came to dine with us. Joachim was of the party and had brought his violin
quite unexpectedly. He asked for an accompanist. I had asked no one for
the purpose, little thinking that it would be required. Descharmes sat
down and played the accompaniments at sight, to Joachim’s amazement and
great satisfaction. Both violinist and pianist are now alas! dead.
[62] See Professor Longford’s admirable “Story of Old Japan,” p. 312.
[63] See Mr. Longford _ut supra_.
[64] See my “Tales of Old Japan.”
[65] This is borrowed from the Chinese classics; it seems that in the
days of the Sung dynasty in China a tower called “the Tower of the
Dancing Horse” was burnt down, since which time a great fire is called
after it.