Thanks to your good wishes, we have hitherto escaped from the 96 diseases, the 24 dangers and the 11 calamities. (I'm commencing Buddhist, you see, before I get to Rangoon, and this is the proper Buddhist way of beginning a letter.)
[They travel from Rangoon in a gorgeous railway carriage of which Gertrude enumerates and describes the furniture. In the middle of a description of the scenery: "we have just discovered nine more cupboards."
They stop at a village and go for a walk while their carriage waits for them on a siding].
... At one of the little shops there was a basket of Pineapples, of which we wished to buy one. The lady of the shop was having her midday sleep; her small and entirely naked son roused her when he saw us fingering the pineapples. She just woke up enough to say " Char, anna " (which is 4d.) and then went to sleep again. We paid the 4 annas to the small boy and walked off with the pineapple.
To F.B.
ON THE IRRAWADDY. March 2, 1903.
We came to a very small steam boat. We said "To Pakukku," very loud and clear and our guides seemed to assent. A steep and slippery plank led out to the boat. I took my courage in both hands, crept along it, lifted the awning, and received a broadside of the hottest, oiliest, most machinery laden air, resonant with the snores of sleepers. I lit a match and found that I was on a tiny deck covered with the sheeted dead, who, however, presently sat up on their elbows and blinked at me. I announced firmly in Urdu that I would not move until I was shown somewhere to sleep. After much grumbling and protestations that there was no place to sleep there (which, indeed, was obvious) one arose, and lit a lantern; together we sidled down the plank and he took us back to one of the mysterious hulks by the river bank. It was inhabited by an old Hindu and a bicycle and many cockroaches. We woke the Hindu, and, at the suggestion of our guide, he climbed a stair, unlocked a trap door and took us on to an upper deck where, oddly enough, there were deck cabins with bunks in them. In these we made our beds — it was now 11:30 — and went to sleep. What the place was, we haven't to this hour the least idea, but we believe it to have been Maya, pure illusion, for directly we left, it hid itself behind another barge, which was not there before, and has been no more seen. Next morning we caught the small and smelly ferry, and in company with a party of Burmese, steamed down the river to Pakukku ... .
[They go down the Irrawaddy.]
... and into the monasteries, where I was hailed by an old monk on a balcony, who begged me, by sign and gestures, to come up and take a picture of the pagoda. By great good luck a little monk appeared, who had a smattering of English. I explained to him that I would go and fetch my brother and that we would then take pictures. We had the funniest visit. The monks haven't enjoyed anything so much for a long time; they laughed till their yellow robes fell off their bare shoulders. We all sat cross-legged together under the carved roofs and discussed our various ages and the price of Hugo's watch, while an immense concourse of children gathered round close and closer. I was of no account at all when Hugo appeared, until it came to the picture taking. We had to drive the children away while I photographed the monks, but, at my friend's request, I then took a consolation picture of all the children sitting in a row. The camera may be a horrid modern invention, but it's a universal letter of credit in strange parts. H. questioned the little monk closely as to what he did all day. He replied blandly "Nothing!" One of them was sewing the silk wrapper of a Pali book. They showed us the books, palm leaf books written in gold lacquer, and we made the monk read us a sonorous Pali sentence. He asked us if we could understand and we were obliged to admit that we couldn't, but I don't think he could either. The little monk took us into a second monastery, where we found an extremely old party in yellow, asleep on a chatpoy. He was enchanted to see Us, however, and had all the doors opened that we might see the frescoes on the walls. H. taught the little monk to shake hands when we came away, but he wouldn't shake hands with me. He oughtn't even to have looked at me, according to the rules of the order... Hugo bought a whole orchestra of Musical instruments from a gentleman almost naked except for a pair of spectacles. Our tastes then drew us irresistibly to the monasteries, where we spent a happy twilight hour walking about on gilded balconies and teaching the monks the names, in English, of the beasts carved upon their doors. They can't pronounce the consonants at the end of our words — but we can't pronounce the consonants at the beginning of theirs, so we're quits.
[Gertrude was anxious to see the dancing and was taken by a learned Chinaman to the house of a charming old Burman who had been Theebaw's private secretary. The dance is described. The host produces some of his old court dresses, and the insignia of the Minister's rank, gold ornaments of various kinds. A travelling companion of Gertrude's had accompanied her on this visit.]
"A 12-stringed chain was sent to Mr. Gladstone. I wonder what he did with it?" said the unknown man. "Mr. Morley will tell us that," replied the Chinaman, cheerfully. You might have knocked me down with one of the Burmese lady's tail feathers: the last time I had talked of John Morley's Life of Mr. G. was in the Pollocks' drawing room at Hind Head. One dancer retired to appear as a boy. The change was not overwhelming, for instead of one tight trouser she now wore skirts rather voluminous in front.
To F.B.
BATAVIA, March 16, 1903
We have at last got out of England and are now travelling on the Continent. No one knows what comfort on the sea can be till he travels by a Dutch boat... .
[They go to Singapore where they stay with Sir Frank Swettenham. Hugo was very ill here with some sort of malaria. Sir Frank Swettenham was endlessly kind to him, and kept him and looked after him until he was well enough to go away.]
To F.B.
ASTOR HOUSE, SHANGHAI, April 4th, 1903.
The hotel is most comfortable, when we arrived we found a note left for us by the kind Russells giving us some introductions to people here. It really was very thoughtful of them. We landed on Easter Sunday and had to do all our own getting ashore. The Chinese natives surrounded us and offered to carry our luggage, to carry us, to carry the ship, I fancy, if we would give them a long enough bamboo pole. I adore Chinamen with a passion that amounts to mania. They are the most delightful people in the world. They do everything to perfection. They'll make you a shirt in three hours, a petticoat in two, wash your clothes before you can wink, forestall your every wish at table, fan you day and night When you have the fever — you should have seen the Chinese boys sitting by Hugo's bedside at Singapore and fanning him all day long... .
(Please give my love to Sir Ian, when you see him next!)
So we went to a silk shop, and the most delightful gentleman in China showed us for two hours the loveliest stuffs I have ever seen. Kings will leave their thrones in the hope of catching sight of me when I wear a brocade I bought there, and crown princes will flock after Elsa and Moll when they are clothed in some Chinese crêpe I design for them. Hugo addresses all Chinamen as Gnome, but as they don't understand they aren't offended. I like travelling in China. Hugo nods and becks to everyone he meets and they nod back delighted.
[They travel northward through China, sight seeing on the way and being much interested all the time.]
To F. B.
PEKING, 26th April, 1903.
[To Peking, where Claude Russell was then at the Legation, also Sir Walter and Lady Susan Townley.
Gertrude gives a detailed and very interesting description of Peking, of which however so many descriptions have been written already by other travellers that it is not worth while reproducing hers here. She also gives details of the Boxer Rising and contrasts it with the peace of China at that moment (1903). It is of interest to read this passage in 1927, with an intensified sense of contrast.]
You can't conceive what the horrible fascinating streets of Peking are like. Full, full of people, a high mud causeway down the middle, crowded booths on either side and a strait and uneven way between them and the shops. Your rickshaw dashes in and out, bumps over boulders, sub
sides into ditches, runs over dogs and toes and the outlying parts of booths and shops, upsets an occasional wheelbarrow, locks itself with rickshaws coming in the opposite direction and at a hand gallop conveys you, breathless, through dust and noise and smells unspeakable to where you would be.
[They see the Temple of Heaven. They dine with the French Minister, M. Dubail, a great connoisseur, and then go shopping with him. Gertrude remarks in her letter to me " I'm so glad I speak French so well, aren't you?]
To H.B.
TAIREN March 20th, 1903.
We may as well back out. I've seen Dalny and I know. We may just as well back out. Five years old and a European town. Roads — you don't know what that means in China — fine streets of solid brick houses, a great port, destitute of shipping as yet, but that will come, law courts, two hotels, factories in plenty, six lines of rails at the station, a botanical garden in embryo, but still there. It contains some deer, an eagle and two black bears — note the symbolism! Do you remember a story of Kipling's in which a Russian officer is well entertained by an English Regiment? He gets up after dinner to make a speech. "Go away, you old peoples," he says. "Go away you — old — peoples!" and falls drunk under the table. That's the speech Dalny is making and I feel inclined to take its advice. In fact there is no alternative. We arrived at 7 a.m. on Thursday, went ashore and breakfasted at the Gastinnea Dalny where the proprietor fortunately spoke German. They take nothing but roubles, being in Russia, and we had to go to the renowned Russo-Chinese bank to change our notes — having paid for our breakfast, our friend, the proprietor, put us into a droschky — a pukha droschky — and we drove round the town. Our driver was a cheerful Kurlander who knew a little German too. He came out last autumn and meant to stay 2 years. "Business is good?" said I, observing his fat and smiling face. "Recht gut," said he, "sometimes one earns 18 roubles a day." No wonder he smiled and grew fat. The railway cutting is being widened, the station is not yet finished. Both were black with thousands of Chinese coolies working for dear life. How long is it, therefore, between project and completion in Russian hands? Hugo gnashed his teeth, but I did nothing but admire. They deserve to rule Asia-and they mean to rule Asia. Go away, you old peoples!
[They sail for Japan.]
To H.B.
Tokyo, May 23rd, 1903.
I spent my time in the train learning Japanese so that when we arrived at Miyajima I was able to explain that we wanted to leave our heavy baggage at the station! (At this moment came in a gnome with a most exquisite grey alpaca gown he has just made me an exact copy of one of Denise's but that cost 6 pounds and this 3! I am glad to have it, for Peking dust put a final touch to my dilapidated toilette.) I was delighted to have Lord Lovelace's enchanting letter. He writes like someone in the beginning of last century, touches of politics, social anecdotes, all with a perfect style and in an exquisite hand.
[Gertrude's friendship with Lord Lovelace was always a great pleasure to her. Their companionship ranged over literature, gardening, mountaineering, — whatever else came to hand. I include here one or two extracts from her letters to him, in reply to those she describes.]
To the Earl of Lovelace. August 5, 1902.
What a series of successes you have had!... . isn't it delightful and wonderful to step on to a hilltop where no one has been before! you have had this sensation very often, I know.
To the same.
July 12, 1902.
[Writing of Alpine flowers.]
No other flowers have the same delicate exquisiteness except indeed those that Fra Angelico puts beneath the feet of dancing saints; but then they are dream flowers. And so are these, I believe growing in delicious dream gardens that exist only for us mountain people.
To the same.
September 28th, 1903.
Oh the tariff — I cannot keep so philosophically remote as you do though I have enough self-control to realise that I value one couplet of Imrul Kais above all the fiscal pamphlets in the world.
To the same.
s April 22, 1904.
I have been reading the Buddhist scriptures and making the 'école buissonnière' between and I don't know which is the more profitable occupation.
To H.B.
TOKYO, Sunday, 24th May, 1903.
I spent a delicious morning wandering about temples and gardens under the charge of my rickshaw man. In one of the temples, a wonderful place all gold lacquer and carving set in a little peaceful garden, a priest came up to me and asked if I were an American. I said no, I was English. He bowed and smiled: "So — is that how it is? the English are very good!" I replied in Japanese, in which tongue the conversation was being conducted — "English and Japanese are one." This was greeted with great satisfaction to judge by the expression of my friends, the priests; what they said I could not understand. Aubrey Herbert came to lunch and we all went sightseeing together afterwards, but we were so busy talking that we didn't pay much attention to the sights.
To H. B.
Thursday, 28th May, 1903.
(They meet the Colliers, and Reginald Farrar, "who is a great gardener."]
They and Mr. Herbert all came to see us, and carried Hugo to a tea house to spend the evening in the company of geisha! I wonder how he comported himself. Eric said he appeared to be quite at his ease... .
[To Yokohama, then across the ocean to Vancouver. Gertrude's first experience of America.]
To F.B.
LAKE LOUISE, ROCKY MOUNTAINS, June 30, 1903.
Need I tell you that I am now climbing the Rocky Mountains!
We arrived at Glacier after a wonderful morning through the great canyons of the Selkirks. And at Glacier whom do you think I found, pray? 3 Swiss guides from the Oberland, ropes and ice axes and everything complete. So we fell into one another's arms, and they said, "Ach wass! it was Fraulein Bell! how did the Gracious Fraulein enjoy the Finstetaarhorn?" We discussed politics at dinner with our waiter at Vancouver. Says he: "There's only one man understands the Colonies: that's Chamberlain." G.B. loq.: "I think you'll have to pay some of the cost if you want to call so much of the tune." Waiter, loq. "I guess that's so, but they don't seem to think so out here." And he handed me the potatoes.
To H.B.
July 8th, 1903. In the train.
[On the way to Chicago they stop at Moose Jaw — they are delighted with the strips of green, the prairie dogs, the people " A Lancashire man recently come out who is prospering and pleased with everything." They stop to photograph a widow's house and fall into talk with the owner of it.]
She wouldn't live in Moose jaw for worlds; it's to crowded for her. If you could only see Moose jaw, You would realise the force of that statement. It's Just a little more crowded than the desert.
[So to Chicago.] . . . Raymond Robins came to see us. He talked uninterruptedly for one and a half hours. He is rather like Lisa, talks like her, throws back his head and speaks with bursts of eloquence... Hugo and I listened to him, breathless for an hour, and a half. He is a very striking person; I fancy he is going to be a big power. Hugo was so enthralled by his accounts that he is actually going back to Chicago to spend four days with him. I encouraged this notion, for Raymond is exactly the kind of person Hugo ought to be with. He is so entirely outside the bounds of any stereotyped creed. But he was desperately busy the next three days, so we decided that Hugo should come with me to Niagara. as arranged, and then return, by which time R. will be free to show him about... .
[They go to] a sort of Earl's Court called Sans Souci, where we dined and saw the shows and enjoyed ourselves. I may say we had then the experience of a lifetime, for we went on a switchback that looped the loop. I can't say it was nice. Hugo says he was distinctly conscious of being upside-down — which we were for the fraction of a second — but I only knew a rush and a scramble and my hat nearly off. Now Hugo and I part company. Lisa meets me in Boston to-morrow afternoon and Hugo goes back to Raymond... .
[Gertrude and Hugo landed at Liverpool on July 26th of this year. Sh
e was then in England until the following February, when we find her and her father staying at the Embassy in Berlin, after which she returned home.]
CHAPTER IX
1903-1909 - ENGLAND, SWITZERLAND, PARIS
[Our youngest daughter Molly was married to Charles Trevelyan on January 6th, 1904. As Gertrude was then at home with us and also during most of the preceding year, there are no letters to us concerning Molly's engagement in the previous November, or her marriage. Some letters are included here which Gertrude wrote at this time to a young cousin, Edward Stanley, second son of the 4th Lord Stanley of Alderley, afterwards Lord Sheffield.
Edward Stanley went out to Nigeria as Civil Commissioner in 1903. He was a boy of great ability, keen about his work and ready to shoulder responsibility and to face danger. Gertrude cared very much about this young cousin, and kept in touch with him. He was not gregarious, he had not many intimates, and at times when the life in front of him, with its ambitions and possibilities, seemed to him bewildering, he found in Gertrude the most sympathetic of confidantes and correspondents. As usual, none of her letters have the date of the year, and the envelopes of these letters have not been kept, but they seem to have been written between 1903, when he went out to West Africa, and 1908. His early death at his post in the summer of 1908 was one of the great sorrows of Gertrude's life.]
To N. J. Stanley.
Yes Marcus Aurelius is a good counsellor, if one can follow his advice. I mostly find myself rebelling against it, with an uncanny sense of being too hopelessly involved in the mortal coil to profit by it. What is the use of bending all one's energies to the uncongenial thing? One is likely to do little enough anyway, but if half one's time is taken up persuading oneself one likes it or at least conquering distaste there is Very little left to achieve success with.
Find the thing that needs no such preparatory struggle and then do it for all you are worth if you can. There will always be black or grey moments when it is sufficiently difficult to do even the thing you like.
Letters From Baghdad Page 17