KOREA
It was the first diplomatic mission from the hermit kingdom to any
Western power, and they wanted someone with _savoir faire_ to look after
them. He accepted the post, landing in San Francisco with his charges on
September 2nd, and crossing to New York, where the Embassy was received
by President Arthur. After spending six weeks in the United States he
returned by the Pacific with the greater part of his colleagues,
reaching Japan in November. They felt grateful for what he had done, and
he was invited to go on with them to Korea as the guest of the King—a
chance not to be lost, so he went, and after sundry wearisome delays in
transit came to Söul, the capital of the Kingdom, just before Christmas,
1883.
Evidently he had not intended so long a sojourn and study as he was
destined to make, for in a letter to his mother on December the 20th,
just after landing at Chemulpo, the port of Söul, he writes: “I purpose
to study the land a little and then return overland either to Pusan”
(the Japanese treaty port at the extreme southern end of the peninsula)
“or after some travelling in the interior here, Gensan.” He had as yet
no idea of the impossibility of travel in Korea in the winter,
especially for an occidental, but he learned it the following day when
with much discomfort he went half way to Söul, the whole distance from
the port to the capital being twenty-seven miles. Another and stronger
reason for his prolonged stay was the hospitality tendered and the
solicitude for his comfort. At Nagasaki, where the ship stopped on the
journey from Japan, his Korean colleagues, observing his preference,
engaged a Japanese familiar with European cooking to become a member of
his household, and they brought along also chairs for his use. In the
letter to his mother just quoted he writes; “I think I shall either take
a house of my own or, perhaps better, have a part of a Corean’s to my
exclusive use.... I shall of course be asked to stay at our minister
Foote’s, but I shall fight shy of it in order to be less tied
politically.[2] You see there are national parties even in this small
state, and I think it best for me to be, at any rate at first, on the
cross benches. Out in the Far East the ministers of foreign countries
are always mixed up in national politics, and Corea is no exception to
the rule.” A shrewd observation in view of the fact that hardly a year
passed before there was bloodshed between the adherents of China and
Japan in the government, when the Japanese legation was attacked and
fought its way to the sea.
He found that there had been prepared for him a house, or rather group
of buildings forming a part of the Foreign Office, of which he was
formally a member as having been Counsellor to the Embassy to America.
“From the street,” he writes, “you enter a courtyard, then another, then
a garden, and so on, wall after wall, until you have left the outside
world far behind and are in a labyrinth of your own. Before you lies a
garden; behind another surrounded by porticoes. Courtyards, gardens,
porticoes, rooms, corridors in endless succession until you lose
yourself in the delightful maze.” He speaks of the painting of
landscapes on the walls, of a door cut out as a circle in the wall into
which fit two sliding panels beautifully painted on both sides. “Floor,
ceiling, walls all are paper. But you would hardly imagine that what you
tread upon, to all appearance square stone slabs, is oil paper so hard
as even in sounds under your footfalls to resemble flags.... Through the
thick sliding windows sifts the golden light into the room, and for the
nonce you forget that outside is the dull grey of a cloudy sky and a
snow decked land of a December afternoon.”
There he spent the winter under strangely favorable conditions; one of
the first men of European race to enter the country with an official
position and no official duties or restraints, and a couple of officers
detailed to care for him, without hampering him by constant attendance
on his movements. In fact he seems to have been more free than anyone in
the land. It was beneath the dignity of a higher official to go through
the streets except in a palanquin; and all others, save blind men, must
not be out of their houses after night-fall on pain of flogging. But
finding that to be carried squatting on the cold floor of a box two and
a half feet square was intolerable, he took to his feet; and, being an
official, he walked all over the city at any hour of the day or night,
without this foreign eccentricity shocking either the high or the lowly.
He was received in special audience by the King and the Crown Prince,
and later photographed them; was visited and entertained abundantly,
made many acquaintances and some warm friends. On February 2nd, he wrote
to his mother: “I think it will please your maternal ear to hear of the
esteem in which your boy is held and of the honors and great kindness
which are lavished upon him. On New Year’s Eve[3] he received some gifts
from the King, made on purpose for him, a description of which you will
find in a letter to Katie. They were accompanied by the wish on the part
of His Majesty ‘that in view of my speedy return, he hoped that I would
come back next year.’ I had informed them of my departure before long,
which they do not view favorably. I was also told that I was constantly
in the King’s thoughts. He is hospitality and kindness itself to
everyone. I have seen several houses of the highest nobles in the land
and there is none to compare with the establishment they have given me.
I have been consulted on foreign business, my requests for others
granted, talked to on home matters, in short I am looked upon as a
friend of the government and cared for in corresponding style.”
Delightful as the experience was, there came over him in time a desire
to go back to more familiar surroundings, and as spring approached he
spoke of his intention. They tried to dissuade him, and did induce him
to delay his departure; but at last he sailed with no little feeling of
sadness in leaving a country where he had been so kindly treated and
which he was never to see again. In a letter to his sister Bessie, on
February 17, not long before his departure he wrote: “I have already
taken fifty-three negatives of scenes in and about Söul, groups and
individuals. I am not only expected by the Coreans but urged to write a
book; but as I have a wholesome dread of publication I reserve my
decision. I am to send as a present to His Majesty a collection of my
photographs printed in Japan on my return.”
[Illustration: PERCIVAL LOWELL AND THE MEMBERS OF THE KOREAN
EMBASSY]