HER MAJESTY’S ANXIETY--HER BIRTHDAY
Her Majesty was looking tired and anxious these days; the Audiences
were unusually long, and despatches were arriving all during the day.
She would often go to the Gardens immediately after her Audience for
solitary walks, unattended by the Ladies, and when she went out for
the walk, accompanied by the Empress and Princesses, she would sit
distraught and abstracted before the finest views and those she loved
most. She seemed absent-minded, and when some eunuch with the official
message would kneel before her, awaiting her order to deliver his
message, she would recall herself with an effort. One day when we were
out, after days of this anxiety, and she was sitting alone in front of
the “Peony Mountain,” the Empress and Princesses standing in a group at
a little distance, she looked a pathetic figure. Her strong face looked
tired and worn. Her arms hung listlessly by her sides and she seemed
almost to have given up, and I saw her, furtively, brush a tear away.
The days were so like each other at the Palace, the Chinese dates being
different from ours, I lost my reckoning until I had a Tientsin paper,
and I saw that the date on which the Russians had promised to evacuate
Manchuria had passed and they were making no move toward doing so;
and that there were rumors of war between Japan and Russia. This,
then, must be what was weighing upon the mind of the Empress Dowager.
A few days later a telegram was handed her in the Throne-room while
she was posing, that seemed to greatly agitate her. It was from Kwang
Hsi, and reported the ineffectual attempts of the authorities to put
down a serious rebellion there. Thus, there were interior as well as
exterior troubles to make her anxious. She seemed to take these State
troubles to heart; and it was touching to see her anxiety, which she
made but little effort to conceal when surrounded only by the Ladies.
The Emperor, on the contrary, preserved his usual calm exterior, and
if he was racked by anxiety, showed no evidence of it. This may have
been because he had schooled himself to hide his feelings. Be that as
it may, his face had always that enigmatic smile lurking around the
corners of his mouth. I fancied, though, his eyes looked more resigned
and sadder than usual.
The date of the Empress Dowager’s Birthday (November 16) was
approaching, and preparations to celebrate it were beginning. She
was determined to keep this celebration very simple. She issued
edicts prohibiting the high Officials and Viceroys from sending the
extravagant presents which always pour in at the celebration of the
birthday of any one of her age in China. She recommended great economy
in expenditures for the celebration, saying it would be improper and
unworthy at this time of National distress, when the Foreign Indemnity
was not yet paid, to make a large outlay for her Birthday. The
celebration of a birthday in China is a great event, almost a religious
ceremony, and is observed with great rejoicings by all classes. The
poorest in the land, if they are not able to keep any other festival,
always celebrate with as much pomp as possible the birthdays of their
parents. This is one of the duties enjoined by the Book of Rites, and,
in spite of Her Majesty’s expressed wishes on the subject, the Emperor
could not allow her Birthday to pass without a fitting celebration.
The Emperor beseeched Her Majesty “on bended knee” to allow him to have
her Birthday celebrated with the same pomp as usual--to permit him to
add another honorific title to the sixteen she already possessed--but
though she was very proud of her titles, which the Ministers and
Emperor had conferred upon her at different times, she was inexorable
on this point, for the adding of a new title would necessitate an
annual grant of twelve thousand dollars in gold. She also insisted that
everything must be on a smaller scale than usual. She was, one could
well see, in no happy frame of mind. There was none of the enthusiasm
she had shown over the preparations for the Emperor’s Birthday. Then
she was in gay good humor. She then evidently fully believed that
things were going well for the State, that China would soon obtain
her full rights in Manchuria again; then everything seemed brighter
for the Nation’s outlook than now. It was her duty, however, to go
through these Birthday celebrations, which, curtail as she would, must,
nevertheless, be very elaborate, owing to her age as well as to her
high rank. The Empress Dowager’s wishes as to the adding of a new
title were observed, and it was not conferred, but the preparations for
the Birthday went on, on a magnificent scale. Presents came pouring
into the Palace, and even more elaborate festive decorations than those
used for the Emperor’s Birthday were being put in place.
Her Majesty was to receive the prostrations of the Emperor and
Empress,[6] Princesses, and members of the Imperial Family, on a
Throne in the Palace, that was built half-way up the terraced hill
crowned by the Temple of Ten Thousand Buddhas. She did not receive
these prostrations in the Great Audience Hall: this was set aside,
by tradition, for the Emperor, alone. Had she been reigning for him,
she would have received them there, but as she was reigning with him,
she received them in the other Palace. The elevation of this Palace
permitted all who were allowed to enter the Precincts to offer their
congratulations, to get a glimpse of Her Majesty. As the weather was
getting cold, the marble steps leading up to this Palace, the courts,
and even a large part of the terrace over the lake, were covered with
carpets of gala red.
[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.”
The congratulations and prostrations were to begin at 2 A.M., the
hour of her birth. There were three pairs of huge silver candelabra
standing at either side of the Throne to hold the enormous wax candles
of Imperial yellow, entwined with golden dragons, which weighed fifty
pounds each. They stood five feet high. Lanterns with the ever-present
character “Sho” and others inscribed “Wan-Sho-Wu-Chiang” (no limit to
Imperial longevity) stood on each step of the long flight leading up
to the Palace. The whole terrace below, all the temples and buildings
in the grounds, were brilliantly illuminated with splendid lanterns,
elaborately ornamented with tassels of red silk, with the characters
for longevity emblazoned thereon in vermilion.
With the few changes necessitated by the different season of the year
of the Empress Dowager’s Birthday, everything was carried out as for
the Emperor’s except on a larger scale, as she was celebrating more
years than His Majesty. The Palace was filled to overflowing with the
many ladies invited to be present. Some came from the heart of distant
Manchuria, the cradle of the Dynasty. The winter Court dress of the
ladies, worn for Her Majesty’s Birthday, was of satin, lined and
trimmed with fur, with sable collars. Like the summer Court dress, the
winter gown was elaborately embroidered in the golden double dragon.
The picturesque summer coiffure had also been replaced by winter hats
of fur with jewels across the front and an elaborate crown, studded
with precious stones. Brilliant bunches of flowers were worn on either
side of the coiffure, in winter as in summer.
The celebration of birthday festivities in China is always accompanied
by rites and worship of the ancestral tablets, and Her Majesty was
obliged to go into Peking several times during the celebration. The
ceremonies, themselves, were also very tiring. All this effort to keep
up, and to properly carry out her part of the ceremonies, added to her
real anxiety, made the forced celebration of her sixty-ninth Birthday
far from a happy event to the Empress Dowager of China, who found
the Empire she was trying to guide, in so perilous a position--war
threatening on its confines, foreign complications of all kinds to
deal with, and rebellion within.