by Jane Brown
Willard had an attractive voice and loved to tell of his adventures. Dorothy listened spellbound as he told her about the Russo-Japanese War and his journey by train, riverboat and on horseback north through the Amur Region to the Sea of Okhosk. He had found a place of ruins, with a wonderful garden that he believed was Coleridge’s Xanadu, or Shangtu.51 E.H. ‘Papa’ Harriman had found him his new job as American Representative for the quartet of Western bankers making loan agreements with the Chinese government. As Imperial China crumbled the aim was to encourage the Chinese people into the modern world. Dorothy gasped, ‘What great and worthwhile work!’ When, at the end of June, Willard called to say goodbye as he was off to Peking, she laughed, ‘Another wonderful adventure?’
‘Well, you must come,’ he replied.
Three: ‘Destiny and Intricate Affairs’
Dorothy did not stop to question why she would cross America and the Pacific Ocean to meet a man she really did not know very well; she leapt into action. She wrote to Senator Root, who replied saying that he had such fond memories of her father and her family since she was a baby that she ‘fell heir to his affection’. He sent introductions to the American Representatives she would meet on her journey along with the State Department’s carte blanche:
Miss Whitney is not a mere sightseer but a close student of human events able to appreciate most thoroughly any insight you may give her into the destiny and intricate affairs of China.52
‘Papa’ Harriman’s Union Pacific office arranged their travel, and the intrepid four, Dorothy, Beatrice, Mrs Bend and Louisa, set out in mid-July. It was a royal progress in the Whitney family’s private railcar, Wanderer, which was attached to the Chicago express, then presumably shunted around to meet their travel plans. They stayed at Denver to visit the Grand Canyon, then travelled north to Seattle, the Northern Cascades and Glacier Peak, where they explored and rested, eventually reaching San Francisco. Dorothy did not explain their rambling course (did the train schedules force Wanderer to be true to its name?), but she did note how strange it felt to be so far from her usual haunts when she heard of Harry’s triumphs in England with his ‘Big Four’ polo team, and that Louis Bleriot had flown across the English Channel on 25th July.
At San Francisco they boarded SS Korea bound for Yokohama and Tokyo. Dorothy’s great-uncle, Commodore Matthew Perry, in his frigate Susquehanna had sailed into these very waters some fifty-five years earlier, his ‘gunboat diplomacy’ persuading the Japanese to sign the Treaty of Kanagawa, thereby opening trade with America and the West after two centuries of isolation. Dorothy does not mention this, nor does she say much about Japan. The people she met in diplomatic circles had westernised manners overlaying the infinitesimal courtesies of the Orient, and she may have found them dull. A few years earlier Mary Fraser, the wife of the British Minister, had been bewitched by the beauty she found, she thought Tokyo one of the fairest cities she had ever seen, its streets and houses ‘seemed to have grown up by accident – and are of no importance as compared with the flowers’. Dorothy was there in the chrysanthemum season and the huge golden blooms were everywhere with their sombre scent, perhaps a poor second to the springtime azaleas and plum and cherry blossoms? (Japanese cherry trees and azaleas were later to be her garden favourites but she was never to share the American popular taste for ‘Mums’.) Undoubtedly, simply travelling occupied them, settling in and out of hotels, encountering the strangeness of the food and everything else: Dorothy’s maid Louisa Weinstein quickly adapted to the cities of the East because she found cheerful and willing hands to help with her three ladies’ wardrobes, keeping them happily dressed.
From Tokyo they went south to Mount Fuji; Mary Fraser felt that the merest glimpse of the perfect cone-shaped Fuji-San was enough to lift her spirits, and surely Dorothy would have appreciated her sentiments: ‘That one cannot think of Fuji as a thing, a mere object in the landscape – she becomes something personal, dominating, a factor in life. No day seems quite sad or aimless in which one has had a glimpse of her.’53 These travellers apparently passed by and onwards to Nagoya, where Dorothy complained that the hotel was ‘horribly dirty’, then to Kobe and Kyoto – where surely the sublime temple gardens detained her, or was she simply getting impatient for Peking? It was not until 22nd October that they sailed from Shimonoseki, crossing the Korea Strait to Busan on the southern tip of the peninsula, and then taking the train to the French colonial capital of Seoul. Willard had expected them much earlier, for his welcome to Dorothy was dated in early September, saying that China awaited her, ‘red carpets and brass bands straining at the leash – we place the keys of the American compound in your hands, they are of brass and very heavy’.54 She did not dare tell her fellow travellers of Willard’s impatience, or her own. Seoul was within his diplomatic reach and he smoothed their path north to Mukden (now Shenyang) where there was a fire at their hotel – ‘a very fortunate escape’, reported Dorothy, a bad memory soon banished by seeing the Great Wall by moonlight.
On 1st November they arrived in Peking, at 8.20 in the morning. Willard was there to meet them and walked them to their lodging, returning to accompany them to the Legation for lunch with the president of the Board of Chinese Foreign Affairs. ‘Such a nice day,’ recorded Dorothy; ‘Miss Whitney v charming,’ noted Willard.55
Willard shared his house with Henry Prather Fletcher, a career diplomat of thirty-six and former Rough Rider from Roosevelt’s Cuban campaign. Fletcher, or Prather as Dorothy called him, was a tough and touchy bachelor and a bit of a cynic, and as opposite temperaments he and Willard suited each other. Willard called him ‘Elder Brother’ from the reverential title Ta-a-ko, ‘Great Elder Brother’, given to the Qing dynasty heir apparent P’u-chun. Between them they decided that their guests must have their house and servants, and they would sleep in the Legation.
The next day they explored the Legation Quarter and walked through the five courts of the ‘wonderfully picturesque’ Lama Temple. Their first dinner was with Legation friends and Prince P’u Lun – P’u Lun Beitzu, one of the claimants to the throne the previous year when Hsuan-T’ung (Proclamation of Fundamental Principles), born P’u-Yi (whose story is told in the film The Last Emperor), had been enthroned.56 A dust storm kept them indoors the following day, and on their fourth morning Willard sent greetings in French, asking what they would like to do. ‘Such gorgeous days,’ wrote Dorothy, ‘Mr S took us this morning to the Drum Tower, where we climbed for the beautiful view. Then we went outside on the walls of the Yellow Temple. Exquisite.’ With some Legation ladies they called on Princess P’u Lun, while Willard was playing polo; on the Sunday morning he arranged a picnic, the ponies and the lunch ready at noon. The next day, Monday 7th November, was ‘One of the Golden Days!!’ They drove out to the Summer Palace ‘& after going through that glorious place took “rikishas” to the Imperial Jade Spring where we had a picnic lunch – purple hills on one side, distant Peking on the other. Long talk tonight with Mr Straight – so long and interesting.’ The 7th November remained a special anniversary for Willard: he wrote, ‘Summer Palace and Yu Chuan San – quiet dinner and long talk by lantern light – the best day for many moons.’ The Summer Palace was a favourite residence of the Empress Cixi who had it restored when she returned in 1902 after the Boxer Rising. She had died the previous year, but the ‘civility of bribes’ would have gained entry for Willard to this enchanted world – to the Garden of Harmonious Interest with the porcelain pagoda, the ornate boat houses fringing innumerable waters, the Fish-knowing Bridge and roofed walkways, the ancient twisted trees and Fragrant Hills.57
Dorothy managed to ride alone with Willard, ‘the best ride I have ever had’. His version was, ‘Record breaker. Beautiful day, lunch at Wan Show Sze – rode along the Jade Canal afterwards, quiet dinner en famille, with a juggler afterwards. A little music.’ Music meant that he played his guitar in the firelight, and sang ‘his own melodies to Kipling’s songs of the East – songs of the far flung battle lines of Empire�
��.58
They went by train to the Great Wall, and on their next-to-last day by train to the Ming Tombs. Mrs Little’s description of four years earlier held good – the approach through millet fields and persimmon orchards with all the ornamental trees felled, then ‘clumps of foliage become visible in the distance, enclosing the golden roofed buildings clustering around the different tombs, some at three, some at four miles distance, but all alike beautifully enshrined in the bosom of the hills, at the upper end of the long wide valley’.59 For Dorothy, isolated as she was from all reality in a landscape pitched between great antiquity and imminent destruction, the wreckage wrought by the ‘Harmonious Fists’, the Boxers, all too evident in the smashed statues and broken trees, was travelling in a fantasy land, wonderful to her yearning nature. The visit to the Ming Tombs was her never-to-be-forgotten day; they dined alone, Willard reading to her from his travel journals. He kept her up too late and apologised the next morning; ‘Cannot though – honestly – say that I am penitent,’ he told his diary.
On their last day they inspected the house Willard had chosen for his permanent quarters: ‘The Princesse went through the house with me, and suggested here and there. It was hard not to ask her to stay on and live there.’ After a ‘wonderful’ ride into the sunset they had a quiet dinner with ‘a little choking at the throat, I think’. Next morning he saw them off at the station.
Leaving Hankow, Dorothy wrote:
Oh Wise Man of the East – you have made us very lonely and very homesick for the purple hills and for your own companionship. I don’t think I realized what a sad break our departure was going to be until I stood on the wall with you yesterday morning and said goodbye to the great city and the distant hills – and hardest of all to you. And then when we stood on the station platform and the whistle suddenly blew and we all said goodbye, I had a lump in my throat that was very hard to smile away, for the veil was being drawn then over two of the happiest weeks I have ever known.
Walking beside the river at Hankow she and Beatrice had talked of Willard and Prather, ‘but we can’t even tell each other how much we think of you both’. On deck in the starlight Dorothy lit an incense wand for Willard, breathed a prayer for him and for herself, ‘that I might be more like you’. She felt that if she tried to thank him for all his generosity and consideration, ‘words would only belittle the gratitude I feel, and I know you understand how much it all meant. I can only thank you for being the sort of man you are... and have faith always that there can never be in the future such a thing as lack of understanding between us. Goodbye – and may you find true happiness in the future, for you deserve the best there is... Goodbye.’60
Willard had written, ‘Princesse – I thank you for coming here – and for all the sunshine you have brought us with your bonny laugh – Peking will be very different now – dearer because you have been here – and more lonely because you have gone – please be careful, you are very precious, WS.’ Her letter from Hankow made him ‘proud and happy’, but he ended, ‘It is not Goodbye – is it Princesse?’
Dorothy, sailing from Shanghai on 26th November, addressed her ‘Dear Guardian of Borderland’.61 His letters and telegrams had made her feel close but now they were turning southwards and sailing farther and farther away: ‘I think the incense will have to burn twice as long these months when a vast distance separates us.’ She had been reading Emerson, ‘which reminded me at once of you – it is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after our own – but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude’.
‘A perfect trip from Shanghai to Hong Kong’ was enjoyable for finding three Ivy League college boys on board, ‘so we all had meals together, played bridge and did tricks in the gymnasium and laughed at our fellow passengers’. At a last night dance on board she was amazed at herself ‘waltzing on the decks with strangers’. Dorothy and Mrs Bend explored the curio shops in the backstreets of Canton and climbed a five-storey pagoda; Dorothy’s nightmares were peopled with Buddhas, figures dressed in mandarin coats and curious carvings of jade. They took the ferry across the Pearl River to Macao – ‘light and sunny and flowery Macao’ – where they eyed the gambling casinos with interest but thought the Dutch merchants in their ‘pyjamas’ very unattractive. Back in Hong Kong it was dinner at Mr Murray Stewart’s of Jardine Matheson, whose table talk put up Dorothy’s rating of the place by fifty per cent. She scoured the market stalls for books, especially copies of J.O.P. Bland’s Houseboat Days in China with Willard’s illustrations, for him and for her friends. On 10th December a postcard from Saigon headed Willard’s way: ‘We think the Frenchmen here in their pure white clothes are just lovely!!’ to which Beatrice added, ‘We almost disappeared for months to Cambodia and Siam but think we will be safely on our way tonight to Singapore.’ It became clear that Beatrice and Prather Fletcher were tip-toeing into a relationship.
On Raffles Hotel notepaper, with which she was well stocked, Dorothy wrote her longest letters to Willard. On 27th December (still 1909):
The great excitement of Christmas morning was the opening of your large envelope containing our three real gifts of the day, and I don’t believe that any gifts were ever more appreciated. Marraine and Beatrice were tremendously touched by theirs, and as for mine – the poem and the picture made Borderland seem very real and wonderful – the purpling hills, the misty plain – remain as they were that last afternoon for you have painted the picture for me.
With the New Year, 1910, Dorothy was coming out of her oriental dream, thinking about her old life at home, and preparing those she loved for her new: to her cousin Kate Barnes she wrote:
Peking was so wonderful – the best part of it all was the real friendship we made with Messrs Straight and Fletcher and they are two of the strongest men I have ever known – every evening we used to turn out the light and sit by the fire, Mr Straight brought out his guitar and sang to us. He is really a very remarkable person with a great deal of force and a really wonderful power of sympathy. He is a famous man all over China – we used to hear words of praise of him on every side... it is really extraordinary the power which he and Mr Fletcher wield in China, they are serving their country in a way that makes one proud.62
In Peking Willard made light of his New Year gloom:
‘Strange Action of Heretofore Docile Guitar’ – in local musical circles comment has been caused by the strange obstinacy of Mr W. D. Straight’s guitar. Its frets are of no avail. Nothing will bring the strings into harmony – a sensible old thing, having served you, will serve no other... Today I rode alone – over the Northern plain, where we went that day to the Yellow Temple – I silliquized [sic] and told the scenery that it couldn’t plume itself any longer, that India had won your heart, and that [China] now lay thumbed and a little ragged, like a month-old magazine – still on the table, eclipsed by the Special Indian Number.
The intrepid four had indeed reached India, Dorothy reading Kipling’s Kim on the way. She celebrated her twenty-third birthday in Benares en route to Delhi, where Elihu Root’s diplomatic reach ensured that they were entertained by the Viceroy, the 4th Earl of Minto, who had known Dorothy’s father while in his previous posting as Governor-General of Canada. Willard need have had no fear; India did not win her heart. She telegraphed him on his thirty-first birthday, and he thought her message ‘the best of the day’. Then there was the long trip from Bombay across the Indian Ocean and through the Suez Canal to Cairo, where they were in mid-March. Dorothy found thirty letters waiting for her, some from Willard, but also disturbing news of her sister Polly’s poor health. To her delight the Theodore Roosevelts were in Cairo, Kermit and his father on their return from shooting in Africa meeting Ethel and her mother who had been holidaying in the Mediterranean. As a family the Roosevelts liked Willard and were happy to have news of him and Dorothy’s adventures. For Dorothy it was relaxing: ‘Ethel and I played around togeth
er every day’; Ethel Roosevelt, aged nineteen and rather shy, conceived an almost worshipping affection for Dorothy and theirs became a treasured friendship on both sides. As for T.R., Dorothy thought him ‘simply splendid, and I was overcome by his sitting down and talking to foolish, ignorant me... he sure is a great man – and I am all for him!’ The girls accompanied him to the Moslem University where everything was very solemn and dignified, ‘although T.R. gave Ethel and me the wink once or twice’. To Willard, she finished in triumph, ‘Of course he is going to be President again – don’t you think so? Then you will be Secretary of State – and USA will immediately annexe China!! Banzai!!’63
She ‘had a grand welcome from Sister & the kids’ at St Raphael south of Cannes where Polly was recuperating, and after a week playing bridge – Polly’s favourite pastime – Dorothy headed back to Florence and the Bends. Displaying every symptom of ‘in loveness’ she wandered alone, in and out of churches, around the Piazza del Duomo, climbing the 414 steps of Giotto’s Campanile for the views. ‘Oh, I love Florence,’ she told her diary. Then in quick despair, ‘The weather is overcast & tomorrow Halley’s comet is going to finish off the earth,’ her earth that was now so much more familiar and full of treasures. To Willard she questioned, ‘And so are you really coming – are you?’ He had given her his deadline, 28th April, for completion of the loan negotiations when he would leave Peking for London. He was going to leave in any case to avoid ‘loss of face’, but the Agreement was not yet signed. In Florence Dorothy bought an expensive present for Beatrice Bend, a string of pearls, as a thank you for their great journey; or was Beatrice anxious to get home and being persuaded to stay? For Dorothy was frankly kicking her heels.