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The Young Empress and Ladies of the Court
The young Empress, the first Lady of the Court after Her Majesty the Empress Dowager, was, to me, a charming character. She is the daughter of the Duke Chow, General of one of the Manchu Banner Corps and a brother of the reigning Empress Dowager. She is thus a first cousin of the Emperor, and is his senior by three years. Her mother, a lady of high birth, ancient lineage, and great distinction, brought her up with much care. She also had the advantage of being a great deal at the Court with her august Aunt, and is highly accomplished, according to Chinese standards. She was affianced at an early age to the Emperor, but, as the custom is, their marriage did not take place for several years later. It was celebrated with great pomp at the Winter Palace in February, 1889, the week before the young Emperor himself took in hand the reins of Government, held, up to that time, by the Empress Dowager, and became Emperor in reality.
The young Empress has the erect carriage and light, swift walk of Her Majesty the Empress Dowager. She is small, not quite five feet tall, with exquisitely dainty hands and feet, of most patrician type. She has a narrow, high-bred face, with a thin, high nose. Her eyes are more of the Chinese type, as we conceive it, than either the Emperor’s or Empress Dowager’s. Her chin is long and of the type generally called strong. Her mouth is large and extremely sensitive. Her eyes have so kindly a look, her face shines with so sweet an expression, criticism is disarmed and she seems beautiful. She has a sweet dignity, charming manners, and a lovable nature, but there is sometimes a look in her eyes of patient resignation that is almost pathetic. I should not say she possessed any great executive ability, though full of tact, but while Her Majesty the Empress Dowager was in retirement and she was the first Lady at Court, she is said to have shown great capability in her conduct of affairs. Her dignity, perfect breeding, and natural kindness of heart would insure this.
The next Lady, after the young Empress, is the only secondary wife of the Emperor. She is said to have been extremely beautiful at the time she was chosen as his second wife by the Empress Dowager. She belongs to an excellent family, being the daughter of a Viceroy, but though only twenty-eight years old when I knew her, she was already very stout, and there were few remains visible of great beauty. She has very large, full-orbed, brown eyes, and still has a beautifully clear complexion, but her nose is flat, her mouth large and weak; the contour of her face is marred by layers of flesh, her forehead does not indicate much intelligence, and she has very little distinction in appearance. She seems good-natured, but is neither very clever nor tactful. She is not a favorite among the Ladies generally, and is not nearly so interesting, in any way, as the young Empress. She is, however, treated with the most kindly consideration by the young Empress and has precedence over all the other Ladies, and her position at Court is second only to that of the young Empress. Whenever I mention the young Empress, it may be understood that the secondary wife followed immediately after her, coming before the Princesses or any other of the Ladies forming the Court of Her Majesty. I have often seen allusions made to the “Imperial Harem”; there is no such thing as an Imperial Harem at the Court of His Majesty the Emperor Kwang-Hsu. He has only these two wives.
Her Majesty’s Ladies-in-waiting are principally Princesses of the Blood or the widows of Imperial Princes. Her first Lady, Sih-Gerga (Fourth Princess), daughter of Prince Ching, the Prime Minister, is a widow of twenty-four. She married, at the age of sixteen, a son of a high Manchu official, Viceroy of Tientsin, and was left a widow a few months later. She is a beautiful young woman, with face a perfect oval, large brown eyes, and a clear, magnolia-leaf complexion of exquisite texture. She would be called beautiful, judged by any standard. She has no children of her own, but, like most ladies of position who are widows or childless, has an adopted son. Adopted children in China are much closer relationships than is a child, by adoption, with us. In many instances their own parents are still living when they are adopted, and even these parents speak of their child as the son of the adopted mother or parents, and bow to her wishes in bringing up the child.
