Frenchmen pleasant travelling companions--The limitations--Vicomte de
Vogue, the innkeeper and the Ikon--An early oil-burning steamer--A
modern Bluebeard--His "Blue Chamber"--Dupleix--His ambitious scheme--A
disastrous period for France--A personal appreciation of the Emperor
Nicholas II--A learned but versatile Orientalist--Pidgin
English--Hong-Kong--An ancient Portuguese city in China--Duck junks--A
comical Marathon race--Canton--Its fascination and its appalling
smells--The malevolent Chinese devils--Precautions adopted
against--"Foreign Devils"--The fortunate limitations of Chinese
devils--The City of the Dead--A business interview.
M. Des Etangs, the French traveller to whom I have already alluded,
agreed to accompany me to the Far East, an arrangement which I
welcomed, for he was a very cultivated and interesting man.
Unexpectedly he was detained in Ceylon by a business matter, so I went
on alone.
I regretted this, for on two previous occasions I had found what a
pleasant travelling companion an educated Frenchman can be. I do not
think that the French, as a rule, are either acute or accurate
observers. They are too apt to start with preconceived theories of
their own; anything which clashes with the ideas that they have
already formed is rejected as evidence, whilst the smallest scrap of
corroborative testimony is enlarged and distorted so that they may be
enabled to justify triumphantly their original proposition, added to
which, Frenchmen are, as a rule, very poor linguists. This, of course,
is speaking broadly, but I fancy that the French mind is very definite
and clear-cut, yet rather lacking in receptivity. The French suffer
from the excessive development of the logical faculty in them. This
same definite quality in the French language, whilst delighting both
my ear and my intelligence, rightly or wrongly prevents French poetry
from making any appeal to me; it is too bright and sparkling, there is
no mystery possible in so clear-cut a medium, added to which, every
syllable in French having an equal value, no rhythm is possible, and
French poetry has to rely on rhyme alone.
It is not on the cloudless summer day that familiar objects take on
vague and fantastic shapes; to effect that, mists and a rain-veiled
sky are wanted. Then distances are blotted out, and the values of
nearer objects are transformed under the swirling drifts of vapour,
and a new dream-world is created under one's very eyes. This is,
perhaps, merely the point of view of a Northerner.
As far back as 1881, I had made a trip down the Volga to Southern
Russia with that most delightful of men, the late Vicomte Eugene
Melchior de Vogue, the French Academician and man-of-letters. I
absolve Vogue from the accusation of being unable to observe like the
majority of his compatriots, nor, like them, was he a poor linguist.
He had married a Russian, the sister of General Anenkoff of Central
Asian fame; spoke Russian fluently, and very few things escaped his
notice. Though he was much older than me, no more charming companion
could be imagined. A little incident at Kazan, on the Volga, amused me
enormously. We were staying at a most indifferent hotel kept by a
Frenchman. The French proprietor explained to us that July was the
month during which the miraculous Ikon of the Kazan Madonna was
carried from house to house by the priests. The fees for this varied
from 25 roubles (then 2 pounds 10s.) for a short visit from the Ikon of
five minutes, to 200 roubles (20 pounds) for the privilege of sheltering
the miracle-working picture for an entire night. I must add that the
original Ikon was supposed to have been dug up in Kazan in 1597. In
1612 it was removed to Moscow, and was transferred again in 1710 to
Petrograd, where a large and pretentious cathedral was built for its
reception. In 1812, when Napoleon captured Moscow, the Kazan Madonna
was hastily summoned from Petrograd, and many Russians implicitly
believe that the rout of the French was solely due to this
wonder-working Ikon. In the meanwhile the inhabitants of Kazan
realised that a considerable financial asset had left their midst, so
with commendable enterprise they had a replica made of the Ikon, which
every one accepted as a perfectly satisfactory substitute, much as the
Cingalees regarded their "Ersatz" Buddha's tooth at Kandy as fully
equal to the original. The French landlord told us that in view of the
strong local feeling, he was obliged, in the interests of his
business, to pay for a visit from the Ikon, "afin de faire marcher mon
commerce," and he invited Vogue and myself to be present at the
ceremony.
Next day we stood at the foot of a small back-staircase which had been
prepared in Russian fashion for the reception of the Madonna. Both the
steps and banisters of the stairs were entirely draped in clean white
sheets, to which little sprigs of fir branches had been attached. On a
landing, also draped with sheets, a little white-covered table with
two lighted candles was to serve as a _reposoir_ for the Ikon.
The whole of the hotel staff--all Russians--were present, as well as
the frock-coated landlord. The Madonna arrived in a gilt
coach-and-four, a good deal the worse for wear, with a coachman and
two shaggy-headed footmen, all bareheaded. The priests carried the
Madonna up to the temporary altar, and the landlord advanced to pay
his devotions.
Now as a Roman Catholic he had little respect for an Ikon of the
Eastern Church, nor as a Frenchman could he be expected to entertain
lively feelings of gratitude to a miracle-working picture which was
supposed by Russians to have brought about the terrible disasters to
his countrymen in 1812. Confident in his knowledge that no one
present, with the exception of Vogue and myself, understood one word
of French, the landlord fairly let himself go.
Crossing himself many times after the Orthodox fashion, and making the
low prostrations of the Eastern Church, he began: "Ah! vieille planche
peinte, tu n'as pas d'idee comme je me fiche de toi." More low
prostrations, and then, "Et c'est toi vieille croute qui imagines que
tu as chasse les Francais de ce pays en 1812?" More strenuous
crossings, "Ah! Zut alors! et re-zut, et re-re zut! sale planche!"
which may be Englished very freely as "Ah! you old painted board, you
can have no conception of what I think of you! Are you really
swollen-headed enough to imagine that it was you who drove the French
out of Russia in 1812? Yah! then, you ugly old daub, and yah! again!"
The Russian staff, not understanding one word of this, were much
impressed by their master's devotional behaviour, but Vogue and I had
to go into the street and laugh for ten minutes.
The wife of a prominent official boarded the steamer at some
stopping-place, with her two daughters. They were pretentious folk,
talking French, and giving themselves tremendous airs. When they heard
Vogue and me talking the same language, she looked at us, gave a
sniff, and observed in a loud voice, "Evidently two French commercial
travellers!" Next morning she ignored our salutations. During the
great heat of the day she read French aloud to her daughters, and to
my great joy the book was one of Vogue's. She enlarged on the beauty
of the style and language, so I could not help saying, "The author
will much appreciate your compliment, madame, for he is sitting
opposite you. This is M. de Vogue himself." I need hardly say that the
under-bred woman overwhelmed us with civilities after that.
The Volga steamers were then built after the type of Mississippi
boats, with immense superstructures; they were the first oil-burning
steamers I had ever seen, so I got the Captain's permission to go down
to the engine-room. Instead of a grimy stokehole full of perspiring
firemen and piles of coal, I found a clean, white-painted place with
one solitary but clean man regulating polished taps. The Chief
Engineer, a burly, red-headed, red-bearded man, came up and began
explaining things to me. I could then talk Russian quite fluently, but
the technicalities of marine engineering were rather beyond me, and I
had not the faintest idea of the Russian equivalents for, say,
intermediate cylinder, or slide-valve. I stumbled lamely along somehow
until a small red-haired boy came in and cried in the strongest of
Glasgow accents, "Your tea is waiting on ye, feyther."
It appeared that the Glasgow man had been Head Engineer of the river
steamboat company for ten years, but we had neither of us detected the
other's nationality.
On another occasion, whilst proceeding to India in a Messageries
Maritimes boat, I made the acquaintance of an M. Bayol, a native of
Marseilles, who had been for twenty-five years in business at
Pondicherry, the French colony some 150 miles south of Madras.
M. Bayol was a typical "Marius," or Marseillais: short, bald, bearded
and rotund of stomach. It is unnecessary to add that he talked twenty
to the dozen, with an immense amount of gesticulation, and that he
could work himself into a frantic state of excitement over anything in
two minutes. I heard on board that he had the reputation of being the
shrewdest business man in Southern India. He was most capital company,
rolling out perpetual jokes and _calembour_, and bubbling over with
exuberant _joie de vivre_. I think M. Bayol took a fancy to me on
account of my understanding his Provencale patois, for, as a boy, I
had learnt French in a Provencale-speaking district.
All Englishmen are supposed in France to suffer from a mysterious
disease known as "le spleen." I have not the faintest idea of what
this means. The spleen is, I believe, an internal organ whose
functions are very imperfectly understood, still it is an accepted
article of faith in France that every Briton is "devore de spleen,"
and that this lamentable state of things embitters his whole outlook
on life, and casts a black shadow over his existence. When I got to
know M. Bayol better during our evening tramps up and down the deck,
he asked me confidentially what remedies I adopted when "ronge de
spleen," and how I combated the attacks of this deplorable but
peculiarly insular disease, and was clearly incredulous when I failed
to understand him. This amazing man also told me that he had been
married five times. Not one of his first four wives had been able to
withstand the unhealthy climate of Pondicherry for more than eighteen
months, so, after the demise of his fourth French wife, he had married
a native, "ne pouvant vivre seul, j'ai tout bonnement epouse une
indigene."
M. Bayol insisted on showing me the glories of Pondicherry himself, an
offer which I, anxious to see a Franco-Indian town, readily accepted.
There is no harbour there, and owing to the heavy surf, the landing
must be made in a surf-boat, a curious keel-less craft built of thin
pliant planks _sewn_ together with copper wire, which bobs about on the
surface of the water like a cork. At Pondicherry, as in all French
Colonial possessions, an attempt has been made to reproduce a little
piece of France. There was the dusty "Grande Place," surrounded with
even dustier trees and numerous cafes; the "Cafe du Progres"; the
"Cafe de l'Union," and other stereotyped names familiar from a hundred
French towns, and pale-faced civilians, with a few officers in
uniform, were seated at the usual little tables in front of them.
Everything was as different as possible from an average Anglo-Indian
cantonment: even the natives spoke French, or what was intended to be
French, amongst themselves. The whole place had a rather dejected,
out-at-elbows appearance, but it atoned for its diminishing trade by
its amazing number of officials. That little town seemed to contain
more bureaucrats than Calcutta, and almost eclipsed our own post-war
gigantic official establishments. On arriving at my French friend's
house, the fifth Madame Bayol, a lady of dark chocolate complexion,
and numerous little pale coffee-coloured Bayols greeted their spouse
and father with rapturous shouts of delight. Later in the day,
M. Bayol, drawing me on one side, said, "We have become friends on the
voyage; I will now show you the room which enshrines my most sacred
memories," and drawing a key from his pocket, he unlocked a door,
admitting me to a very large room perfectly bare and empty except for
four stripped bedsteads standing in the centre. "These, mon ami, are
the beds on which my four French wives breathed their last, and this
room is very dear to me in consequence," and the fat little
Marseillais burst into tears. I have no wish to be unfeeling, but I
really felt as though I had stumbled undesignedly upon some of the
more intimate details connected with Bluebeard's matrimonial
difficulties, and when M. Bayol began, the tears streaming down his
cheeks, to give me a brief account of his first wife's last moments,
the influence of this Bluebeard chamber began asserting itself, and it
was all I could do to refrain from singing (of course very
sympathetically) the lines from Offenbach's _Barbe-Bleue_ beginning:
"Ma premiere femme est morte
Que le diable l'emporte!"
but on second thoughts I refrained.
M. Bayol's garden reminded me of that of the immortal Tartarin of
Tarascon, for the only green things in it grew in pots, and nothing
was over four inches high. The rest of the garden consisted of bare,
sun-baked tracts of clay, intersected by gravel walks. I felt certain
that amongst these seedlings there must have been a two-inch high
specimen of the Baobab "l'arbre geant," the pride of Tartarin's heart,
the tree which, as he explained, might under favourable conditions
grow 200 feet high. After all, Marseilles and Tarascon are not far
apart, and their inhabitants are very similar in temperament.
I was pleased to see a fine statue of Dupleix at Pondicherry, for he
was a man to whom scant justice has been done by his compatriots. Few
people seem to realise how very nearly Dupleix succeeded in his design
of building up a great French empire in India. He arrived in India in
1715, at the age of eighteen, and amassed a large fortune in
legitimate trade; he became Administrator of Chandernagore, in Bengal,
in 1730, and displayed such remarkable ability in this post that in
1741 he was appointed Governor-General of the French Indies. In 1742
war broke out between France and Britain, and at the outset the French
arms were triumphant. Madras surrendered in 1746 to a powerful French
fleet under La Bourdonnais, the Governor of the Island of Reunion, and
a counterattack on Pondicherry by Admiral Boscawen's fleet in 1748
failed utterly, though the defence was conducted by Dupleix, a
civilian. These easy French successes inspired Dupleix with the idea
of establishing a vast French empire in India on the ruins of the
Mogul monarchy, but here he was frustrated by the military genius of
Clive, who, it must be remembered, started life as a civilian "writer"
in the East India Company's service. Dupleix encountered his first
check by Clive's dashing capture of Arcot in 1751. From that time the
fortunes of war inclined with ever-increasing bias to the British
side, and the decisive battle of Plassey in 1757 (three years after
Dupleix's return to France) was a death-blow to the French aspirations
to become the preponderant power in India.
Dupleix was shabbily treated by France. He received but little support
from the mother country; the vast sums he had expended from his
private resources in prosecuting the war were never refunded to him;
he was consistently maligned by the jealous and treacherous La
Bourdonnais, and after his recall to France in 1754 his services to
his country were never recognised, and he died in poverty.
G. B. Malleson's _Dupleix_ is a most impartial and interesting account
of this remarkable man's life: it has been translated into French and
is accepted by the French as an accurate text-book.
The whole reign of Louis XV. was a supremely disastrous period for
French Colonial aspirations. Not only did the dream of a great French
empire in the East crumble away just as it seemed on the very point of
realisation, but after Wolfe's victory on the Heights of Abraham at
Quebec, Canada was formally ceded by France to Britain in 1763, by the
Treaty of Paris.
This ill fortune pursued France into the succeeding reign of Louis
XVI., for in April, 1782, Rodney's great victory over Count de Grasse
off Dominica transferred the Lesser Antilles from French to British
suzerainty.
The same sort of blight seemed to hang over France during Louis XV.'s
reign, as overshadowed the Russia of the ill-starred Nicholas II.
Nothing could possibly go right with either of them, and it may be
that the prime causes were the same: the assumption of absolute power
by an irresolute monarch, lacking the intellectual equipment which
alone would enable him to justify his claims to supreme power--though
I hasten to disclaim any comparison between these two rulers.
Between Louis XV., vicious, selfish and incapable, always tied to the
petticoat and caprices of some new mistress, and the unfortunate
Nicholas II., well-intentioned, and almost fanatically religious, the
affectionate father and the devoted husband, no comparison is
possible, except as regards their limitations for the supreme
positions they occupied.
I have recounted elsewhere how, when Nicholas II. visited India as
Heir Apparent in 1890, I saw a great deal of him, for he stayed ten
days with my brother-in-law, Lord Lansdowne, at Calcutta and
Barrackpore, and I was brought into daily contact with him. The
Czarevitch, as he then was, had a very high standard of duty, though
his intellectual equipment was but moderate. He had a perfect craze
about railway development, and it must not be forgotten that that
stupendous undertaking, the Trans-Siberian Railway, was entirely due
to his initiative. At the time of his visit to India, Nicholas II. was
obsessed with the idea that the relations between Great Britain and
Russia would never really improve until the Russian railways were
linked up with the British-Indian system, a proposition which
responsible Indian Officials viewed with a marked lack of enthusiasm.
The Czarevitch was courteous, gentle and sincere, but though full of
good intentions, he was fatally inconstant of purpose, and his mental
endowments were insufficient for the tremendous responsibilities to
which he was to succeed, and in that one fact lies the pathos of the
story of this most unfortunate of monarchs.
To return from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and from the
disastrous collapse of the French Colonial Empire to my own infinitely
trivial personal experiences, I regretted the business which had
detained M. Des Etangs in Ceylon, and deprived me of the company of so
agreeable and cultivated a man-of-the-world.
There was a Dr. Munro on board the liner. Dr. Munro, at that time
Principal of a Calcutta College is, I believe, one of the greatest
Oriental scholars living. On going into the smoking-room of the
steamer one morning, I found the genial rotund little Professor at
work with an exquisitely illuminated Chinese manuscript before him. He
explained to me that it was a very interesting Chinese document of the
twelfth century, and that he was translating it into Arabic for the
benefit of his pupils. The amazing erudition of a man who could
translate off-hand an ancient Chinese manuscript into Arabic, without
the aid of dictionaries or of any works of reference, amidst all the
hubbub of the smoking-room of an ocean liner, left me fairly gasping.
Dr. Munro had acquired his Oriental languages at the University of
St. Petersburg, so, in addition to his other attainments, he spoke
Russian as fluently as English.
There was another side to this merry little Professor. We had on board
the vivacious and tuneful Miss Grace Palotta, who was making a
concert-tour round the world. Miss Palotta, whose charming personality
will be remembered by the frequenters of the old Gaiety Theatre, was a
Viennese by birth, and she sang those tuneful, airy little Viennese
songs, known as "Wiener Couplets," to perfection. She readily
consented to give a concert on board, but said she must be sustained
by a chorus. Dr. Munro himself selected, trained and led the chorus;
whilst I had to replace Miss Palotta's accompanist who was prostrate
with sea-sickness.
And so the big liner crept on slowly into steaming, oily, pale-green
seas, gliding between vividly green islands in the orchid-house
temperature of the Malay Peninsula, a part of the world worth
visiting, if only to eat the supremely delicious mangosteen, though
even an unlimited diet of this luscious fruit would hardly reconcile
the average person to a perpetual steam bath, and to an intensely
enervating atmosphere. Nature must have been in a sportive mood when
she evolved the durian. This singular Malay fruit smells like all the
concentrated drains of a town seasoned with onions. One single durian
can poison out a ship with its hideous odour, yet those able to
overcome its revolting smell declare the flavour of the fruit to be
absolutely delicious.
It is a little humiliating for a middle-aged gentleman to find that on
arriving in China he is expected to revert to the language of the
nursery, and that he must request his Chinese servant to "go catchee
me one piecee cuppee tea." On board the Admiral's yacht, it required a
little reflection before the intimation that "bleakfast belong leady
top-side" could be translated into the information that breakfast was
ready on deck. Why adding "ee" to every word should render it more
intelligible to the Celestial understanding, beats me. There are
people who think that by tacking "O" on to every English word they
render themselves perfectly clear to Italians and Spaniards, though
this theory seems hardly justified by results. "Pidgin English," of
course, merely means "business English," and has been evolved as an
easy means of communication for business purposes between Europeans
and Chinamen. The Governor of Hong-Kong's Chinese secretary prided
himself on his accurate and correct English. I heard the Governor ask
this secretary one day where a certain report was. "I placed it in the
second _business_-hole on your Excellency's desk," answered Mr. Wung
Ho, who evidently considered it very vulgar to use the term
"pigeon-hole."
Considering that eighty years ago, when it was first ceded to Britain,
Hong-Kong was a barren, treeless, granite island, it really is an
astonishing place. It is easily the handsomest modern city in Asia,
has a population of 400,000, and is by a long way the busiest port in
the world. It is an exceedingly pretty place, too, with its rows of
fine European houses rising in terraces out of a sea of greenery, and
it absolutely hums with prosperity. If Colombo is the Clapham
Junction, Hong-Kong is certainly the Crewe of the East, for steamship
lines to every part of the world are concentrated here. With the
exception of racing ponies, there is not one horse on the island.
Macao, the old Portuguese colony, is only forty miles from Hong-Kong.
The arrangements on the river steamers are rather peculiar, for only
European passengers are allowed on the spar deck. All Chinese
passengers, of whatever degree, have to descend to the lower decks,
which are enclosed with strong steel bars. Before the ship starts the
iron gates of communication are shut and padlocked, so that all
Chinese passengers are literally enclosed in a steel cage, shut off
alike from the upper deck and the engine-room. These precautions were
absolutely necessary, for time and time again gangs of river-pirates
have come on board these steamers in the guise of harmless passengers;
at a pre-arranged signal they have overpowered and murdered the white
officers, thrown the Chinese passengers overboard and then made off
with the ship and her cargo. An arms-rack of rifles on the European
deck told its own story.
Macao has belonged to Portugal since 1555. Its harbour has silted up,
and its once flourishing trade has dwindled to nothing. Gambling
houses are the only industry of the place. There are row and rows of
these opposite the steamer landing, all kept by Chinamen, garish with
coloured electric lights, each one clamorously proclaiming that it is
the "only first-class gambling house in Macao." A crowded special
steamer leaves Hong-Kong every Sunday morning for Macao, for the
special purpose of affording the European community an opportunity to
leave most of their excess profits in the pockets of the Chinese
proprietors of these places. The Captain and Chief Engineer of the
boat, who, it is almost superfluous to add, were of course both Clyde
men, like good Scots deplored this Sabbath-breaking; but like equally
good Scots they admitted how very lucrative the Sunday traffic was to
the steamboat company, and I gathered that they both got a commission
on this.
The old town of Macao is a piece of sixteenth and seventeenth century
Portugal transplanted into China. It is wonderful to find a southern
European town complete with cathedral, "pracas," fountains, and
statues, dumped down in the Far East. The place, too, is as
picturesque as a scene from an opera, and China is the last spot where
one would expect to find lingering traces of Gothic influence in
carved doorways and other architectural details. As far as externals
went Camoens, the great Portuguese poet, can scarcely have realised
his exile during the two years, 1556-1558, of his banishment to Macao.
He most creditably utilised this period of enforced rest by writing
_The Lusiads_, a poem which his countrymen are inclined to over
rate. All the familiar characteristics of an old Portuguese town are
met with here, the blue and pink colour-washed houses, an ample
sufficiency of ornate churches, public fountains everywhere, and every
shop-sign and notice is written in Portuguese, including the
interminable Portuguese street names. The only thing lacking seemed the
inhabitants. I presume the town must have some inhabitants, but I did
not see a single one. Possibly they were taking their siestas, or were
shut up in their houses, meditating on the bygone glories of Portugal,
tempered with regrets that they had neglected to dredge their harbour.
Admiral Sir Hedworth Meux, the Naval Commander-in-Chief in the
Pacific, who happens to be my sister's son, told me that he was
sending a destroyer for three or four days up the Canton River, on
special service, and asked if I would care to go, and I naturally
accepted the offer. The Admiral did not go up himself, but sent his
Flag-Captain and Flag-Lieutenant. The marshy banks of the Canton River
are lined with interminable paddy-fields, for, as every one knows,
rice is a crop that must be grown under water. After the rice harvest,
these swampy fields are naturally full of fallen grain, and thrifty
John Chinaman feeds immense flocks of ducks on the stubbles of the
paddy-fields. The ducks are brought down by thousands in junks, and
quack and gobble to their hearts' content in the fields all day,
waddling back over a plank to their junks at night. At sunset, one of
the most comical sights in the world can be witnessed. A Chinese boy
comes ashore from each junk with a horn, which he blows as a signal to
the ducks that bedtime has arrived. In his other hand the boy has a
rattan cane, with which he administers a tremendous thrashing to the
last ten ducks to arrive on board. The ducks know this, and in that
singular country their progenitors have probably been thrashed in the
same way for a thousand years, so they all have an inherited sense of
the dangers of the corporal punishment threatening them. As soon as
the horn sounds, thousands of ducks start the maddest of Marathon
races back to their respective junks, which they never mistake, with
such a quacking and gobbling and pushing of each other aside, as the
ungainly fowls waddle along at the top of their speed, as must be
witnessed to be credited. The duck has many advantages: in his wild
state, his extreme wariness and his powerful flight make him a
splendid sporting bird, and when dead he has most estimable qualities
after a brief sojourn in the kitchen. Domesticated, though he can
scarcely be classed as a dainty feeder, he makes a strong appeal to
some people, especially after he has contracted an intimate alliance
with sage and onions, but he was never intended by Nature for a
sprinter, nor are his webbed feet adapted for rapid locomotion.
Sufferers from chronic melancholia would, I am sure, benefit by
witnessing the nightly football scrums and speed-contests of these
Chinese ducks, for I defy any one to see them without becoming
helpless with laughter.
The river in the neighbourhood of Canton is so covered with junks,
sampans, and other craft, that, in comparison to it, the Thames at
Henley during regatta week would look like a deserted waste of water.
One misses at Canton the decorative war-junks of the Shanghai River.
These war-junks, though perfectly useless either for defence or
attack, are gorgeous objects to the eye, with their carving, their
scarlet lacquer and profuse gilding. A Chinese stern-wheeler is a
quaint craft, for her wheel is nothing but a treadmill, manned by some
thirty half-naked coolies, who go through a regular treadmill drill,
urging the boat along at perhaps three miles an hour. In addition to
their deck passengers, these boats have rows of little covered niches
for superior personages, and in every niche sits a grave, motionless
Chinaman, looking for all the world like those carved Chinese cabinets
we sometimes see, with a little porcelain figure squatting in each
carved compartment.
We had a naval interpreter on board, a jovial, hearty, immensely fat
old Chinaman. Our destroyer had four funnels, but as we were going up
the river under easy steam, only the forward boilers were going, so
that whilst our two forward funnels, "Matthew" and "Mark," were
smoking bravely, the two after ones, "Luke" and "John," were unsullied
by the faintest wisp of a smoke pennant trailing from their black
orifices. Our old interpreter was much distressed at this, for, as far
as I could judge, his countrymen gauged a vessel's fighting power
solely by the amount of smoke that she emitted, and he feared that we
should be regarded with but scanty respect.
The British and French Consulate-Generals at Canton are situated on a
large artificial island, known as Sha-mien. Here, too, the European
business men live in the most comfortable Europe-like houses,
surrounded with gardens and lawn-tennis courts. Here is the
cricket-ground and the club. Being in the Far East, the latter is, of
course, equipped with one of the most gigantic bar-rooms ever seen.
The British Consul-General had ordered chairs for us in which to be
carried through the city, as it would be derogatory to the dignity of
a European to be seen walking on foot in a Chinese town. Our business
with the Consul-General finished, we started on our tour of
inspection, the party consisting of the Flag-Captain, the
Flag-Lieutenant, the interpreter and myself, together with a small
midshipman, who, being anxious to see Canton, had somehow managed to
get three days' leave and to smuggle himself on board the destroyer.
The Consul-General warned us that the smells in the native city would
be unspeakably appalling, and advised us to smoke continuously, very
kindly presenting each of us with a handful of mild Borneo cheroots.
The canal separating Sha-mien from the city is 100 feet broad, but I
doubt if anywhere else in the world 100 feet separates the centuries
as that canal does. On the one side, green lawns, gardens, trees, and
a very fair imitation of Europe. A few steps over a fortified bridge,
guarded by Indian soldiers and Indian policemen, and you are in the
China of a thousand years ago, absolutely unchanged, except for the
introduction of electric light and telephones. The English manager of
the Canton Electric Co. told me that the natives were wonderfully
adroit at stealing current. One would not imagine John Chinaman an
expert electrician, yet these people managed somehow to tap the
electric mains, and the manager estimated the weekly loss on stolen
power as about 500 pounds.
No street in Canton is wider than eight feet, and many of them are
only five feet broad. They are densely packed with yellow humanity,
though there is no wheeled traffic whatever. There are countless miles
of these narrow, stifling alleys, paved with rough granite slabs,
under which festers the sewage of centuries. The smells are
unbelievably hideous. Except for an occasional canal, a reeking open
sewer, there are no open spaces whatever. And yet these narrow alleys
of two-storied houses are marvellously picturesque, with coloured
streamers and coloured lanterns drooping from every house and shop,
and the shops themselves are a joy to the eye. They are entirely open
to the street in front, but in the far dim recesses of every one there
is a species of carved reredos, over which dragons, lacquered black,
or lacquered red, gilded or silvered, sprawl artistically. In front of
this screen there is always a red-covered joss table, where red lights
burn, and incense-sticks smoulder, all of which, as shall be explained
later, are precautions to thwart the machinations of the peculiarly
malevolent local devils. In food shops, hideous and obscene entrails
of unknown animals gape repellently on the stranger, together with
strings and strings of dried rats, and other horrible comestibles; in
every street the yellow population seems denser and denser, the colour
more brilliant and the smells more sickening. We could not have stood
it but for the thoughtful Consul-General's Borneo cigars, though the
small midshipman, being still of tender years, was brought to public
and ignominious disaster by his second cheroot. After two hours of
slow progress in carrying-chairs, through this congeries of narrow,
unsavoury alleys, now jostled by coolies carrying bales of merchandise
suspended from long bamboos resting on their shoulders (exactly as
they did in the pictures of a book, called _Far Off_, which I had
as a child), now pushed on one side by the palanquin of a mandarin, we
hungered for fresh air and open spaces, less crowded by yellow
oblique-eyed Mongolians; still, though we all felt as though we were
in a nightmare, we had none of us ever seen anything like it, and in
spite of our declarations that we never wished to see this
evil-smelling warren of humanity again, somehow its uncanny
fascination laid hold of us, and we started again over the same route
next morning. The small midshipman had to be restrained from indulging
in his yearning to dine off puppy-dog in a Chinese restaurant, in
spite of the gastric disturbances occasioned by his precocious
experiments with cheroots.
I imagine that every Chinaman liable to zymotic diseases died
thousands of years ago, and that by the law of the survival of the
fittest all Chinamen born now are immune from filth diseases; that
they can drink sewage-water with impunity, and thrive under conditions
which would kill any Europeans in a week.
The inhabitants of Canton are, I believe, mostly Taoists by religion,
but their lives are embittered by their constant struggles with the
local devils. Most fortunately Chinese devils have their marked
limitations; for instance, they cannot go round a corner, and most
mercifully they suffer from constitutional timidity, and can be easily
frightened away by fire-crackers. Human beings inhabiting countries
subject to pests, have usually managed to cope with them by adopting
counter-measures. In mosquito-ridden countries people sleep under
mosquito-nets, thus baffling those nocturnal blood-suckers; in parts
of Ceylon infested with snakes, sharpened zig-zag snake-boards are
fastened to the window-sills, which prove extremely painful to
intruding reptiles. The Chinese, as a safeguard against their devils,
have adopted the peculiar "cocked hat" corner to their roofs, which we
see reproduced in so much of Chippendale's work. It is obvious that,
with an ordinary roof, any ill-disposed devil would summon some of his
fellows, and they would fly up, get their shoulders under the corner
of the eaves, and prise the roof off in no time. With the peculiar
Chinese upward curve of the corners, the devils are unable to get
sufficient leverage, and so retire discomfited. Most luckily, too,
they detest the smell of incense-sticks, and cannot abide the colour
red, which is as distasteful to them as it is to a bull, but though it
moves the latter to fury, it only inspires the devils with an abject
terror. Accordingly, any prudent man can, by an abundant display of
red silk streamers, and a plentiful burning of joss-sticks, keep his
house practically free from these pests. A rich Chinaman who has built
himself a new house, will at once erect a high wall immediately in
front of it. It obstructs the light and keeps out the air, but owing
to the inability of Chinese devils to go round corners it renders the
house as good as devil-proof.
We returned after dark from our second visit to the city. However much
the narrow streets may have offended the nose, they unquestionably
gratified the eye with the endless vista of paper lanterns, all softly
aglow with crimson, green, and blue, as the place reverberated with
the incessant banging of firecrackers. The families of the shopkeepers
were all seated at their supper-tables (for the Chinese are the only
Orientals who use chairs and tables as we do) in the front portions of
the shop. As women are segregated in China, only the fathers and sons
were present at this simple evening meal of sewage-fed fish, stewed
rat and broiled dog, but never for one instant did they relax their
vigilance against possible attacks by their invisible foes. It is
clear that an intelligent devil would select this very moment, when
every one was absorbed in the pleasures of the table, to penetrate
into the shop, where he could play havoc with the stock before being
discovered and ejected. Accordingly, little Ping Pong, the youngest
son, had to wait for his supper, and was sent into the street with a
large packet of fire-crackers to scare devils from the vicinity, and
if little Ping Pong was like other small boys, he must have hugely
enjoyed making such an appalling din. Every single shop had a stone
pedestal before it, on which a lamp was burning, for experience has
shown how useful a deterrent this is to any but the most abandoned
devils; they will at once pass on to a shop unprotected by a guardian
light.
We had been on the outskirts of the city that day, and I was much
struck with an example of Chinese ingenuity. The suburban inhabitants
all seem to keep poultry, and all these fowls were of the same
breed--small white bantams. So, to identify his own property, Ching
Wan dyed all his chickens' tails orange, whilst Hung To's fowls
scratched about with mauve tails, and Kyang Foo's hens gave themselves
great airs on the strength of their crimson tail feathers.
It is curious that, in spite of its wealth and huge population, Canton
should contain no fine temples. The much-talked-of Five-Storied Pagoda
is really hardly worth visiting, except for the splendid panorama over
the city obtained from its top floor. Canton here appears like one
endless sea of brown roofs extending almost to the horizon. The brown
sea of roof appears to be quite unbroken, for, from that height, the
narrow alleys of street disappear entirely. We were taken to a large
temple on the outskirts of the city. It was certainly very big, also
very dirty and ill-kept. Compared with the splendid temples of Nikko
in Japan, glowing with scarlet and black lacquer, and gleaming with
gold, temples on which cunning craftsmanship of wood-carving, enamels
and bronze-work has been lavished in almost superfluous profusion, or
even with the severer but dignified temples of unpainted cryptomeria
wood at Kyoto, this Chinese pagoda was scarcely worth looking at. It
had the usual three courts, an outer, middle, and inner one, and in
the middle court a number of students were seated on benches. I am
afraid that I rather puzzled our fat Chinese interpreter by inquiring
of him whether these were the local Benchers of the Middle Temple.
The Chinese dislike to foreigners is well known, so is the term
"foreign devils," which is applied to them. Our small party met with a
most hostile reception that day in one part of the city, and the crowd
were very menacing until addressed by our fat old interpreter. The
reason of this is very simple. Chinamen have invariably
chocolate-coloured eyes, so the great distorted wooden figures of
devils so commonly seen outside temple gates are always painted with
light eyes, in order to give them an inhuman and unearthly appearance
to Chinese minds. It so happened that the Flag-Captain, the
Flag-Lieutenant, the midshipman and myself, had all four of us
light-coloured eyes, either grey or blue, the colour associated with
devils, in the Chinese intelligence. We were unquestionably
foreigners, so the _prima facie_ evidence of satanic origin
against us was certainly strong. We ourselves would be prejudiced
against an individual with bright magenta eyes, and we might be
tempted to associate every kind of evil tendency with his abnormal
colouring; to the Chinese, grey eyes must appear just as unnatural as
magenta eyes would to us. We were inclined to attribute the hostile
demonstration to the small snottie, who, in spite of warnings, had
again experimented with cheroots. His unbecoming pallor would have
naturally predisposed a Chinese crowd against us.
The feeling of utter helplessness in a country where one is unable to
speak one word of the language is most exasperating. My youngest
brother, who is chairman of a steamship company, had occasion to go to
the Near East nine years ago on business connected with his company.
The steamer called at the Piraus for eight hours, and my brother, who
had never been in Athens, took a taxi and saw as much of "the city of
the violet crown" as was possible in the time. He could speak no
modern Greek, but when the taxi-man, on their return to the Piraus,
demanded by signs 7 pounds as his fare, my brother, hot with indignation
at such an imposition, summoned up all his memories of the Greek
Testament, and addressed the chauffeur as follows: "_o taxianthrope,
mae geyito!_" Stupefied at hearing the classic language of his
country, the taxi-man at once became more reasonable in his demands.
After this, who will dare to assert that there are no advantages in a
classical education?
All the hillsides round Chinese cities are dotted with curious stone
erections in the shape of horseshoes. These are the tombs of wealthy
Chinamen; the points of the compass they face, and the period which
must elapse before the deceased can be permanently buried, are all
determined by the family astrologers, for Chinese devils can be as
malignant to the dead as to the living, though they seem to reserve
their animosities for the more opulent of the population.
It is to meet the delay of years which sometimes elapses between the
death of a person and his permanent burial, that the "City of the
Dead" exists in Canton. This is not a cemetery, but a collection of
nearly a thousand mortuary chapels. The "City of the Dead" is the
pleasantest spot in that nightmare city. A place of great open sunlit
spaces, and streets of clean white-washed mortuaries, sweet with
masses of growing flowers. After the fetid stench of the narrow,
airless streets, the fresh air and sunlight of this "City of the Dead"
were most refreshing, and its absolute silence was welcome after the
deafening turmoil of the town. We were there in spring-time, and
hundreds of blue-and-white porcelain vases, of the sort we use as
garden ornaments, were gorgeous with flowering azaleas of all hues, or
fragrant with freesias. All the mortuaries, though of different sizes,
were built on the same plan, in two compartments, separated by pillars
with a carved wooden screen between them. Behind this screen the
cylindrical lacquered coffin is placed, a most necessary precaution,
for Chinese devils being fortunately unable to go round a corner, the
occupant of the coffin is thus safe from molestation. Other elementary
safeguards are also adopted; a red-covered altar invariably stands in
front of the screen, adorned with candles and artificial flowers, and
incense-sticks are perpetually burning on it. What with the
incense-sticks and abundant red silk streamers, an atmosphere is
created which must be thoroughly uncongenial, even to the most
irreclaimable devil. The outer chapel always contains two or four
large chairs for the family to meditate in.
It must be remembered that the favourite recreation of the Chinese is
to sit and meditate on the tombs of their ancestors, and though in
these mortuaries this pastime cannot be carried out in its entirety,
this modified form is universally regarded as a very satisfactory
substitute. In one chapel containing the remains of the wife of the
Chinese Ambassador in Rome, there was a curious blend of East and
West. Amongst the red streamers and joss-sticks there were metal
wreaths and dried palm wreaths inscribed, "A notre chere collegue
Madame Tsin-Kyow"; an unexpected echo of European diplomatic life to
find in Canton.
The rent paid for these places is very high, and as the length of time
which the body must rest there depends entirely upon the advice of the
astrologers, it is not uncharitable to suppose that there must be some
understanding between them and the proprietor of the "City of the
Dead."
We can even suppose some such conversation as the following between
the managing-partner of a firm of long-established family astrologers
and that same proprietor:
"Good-morning, Mr. Chow Chung; I have come to you with the melancholy
news of the death of our esteemed fellow-citizen, Hang Wang Kai. A
fine man, and a great loss! What I liked about him was that he was
such a thorough Chinaman of the good old stamp. A wealthy man, sir, a
_very_ wealthy man. The family are clients of mine, and they have just
rung me up, asking me to cast a horoscope to ascertain the wishes of
the stars with regard to the date of burial of our poor friend. How
inscrutable are the decrees of the heavenly bodies! They may recommend
the immediate interment of our friend: on the other hand, they may
wish it deferred for two, five, ten, or even twenty years, in which
case our friend would be one of the fortunate tenants of your
delightful Garden of Repose. Quite so. Casting a horoscope is _very_
laborious work, and I can but obey blindly the stars' behests.
Exactly. Should the stars recommend our poor friend's temporary
occupation of one of your attractive little Maisonettes, I should
expect, to compensate me for my labours, a royalty of 20 per cent. on
the gross (I emphasize the gross) rental paid by the family for the
first two years. They, of course, would inform me of any little sum
you did them the honour to accept from them. From two to five years, I
should expect a royalty of 30 per cent.; from five to ten years, 40
per cent.; on any period over ten years 50 per cent. Yes, I said
fifty. Surely I do not understand you to dissent? The stars may save
us all trouble by advising Hang Wang Kai's immediate interment. Thank
you. I thought that you would agree. These terms, of course, are only
for the Chinese and Colonial rights; I must expressly reserve the
American rights, for, as I need hardly remind you, the Philippine
Islands are now United States territory, and the constellations _may_
recommend the temporary transfer of our poor friend to American
soil. Thank you; I thought that we should agree. It only remains for
me to instruct my agents, Messrs. Ap Wang & Son, to draw up an
agreement in the ordinary form on the royalty basis I have indicated,
for our joint signature. The returns will, I presume, be made up as
usual, to March 31 and September 30. As I am far too upset by the loss
of our friend to be able to talk business, I will now, with your
permission, withdraw."
Had I been born a citizen of Canton, I should unquestionably have
articled my son to an astrologer, convinced that I was securing for
him an assured and lucrative future.