by Chang, Jung
Katharine Carl, whose brother worked in the Chinese Customs, was recommended, and came into the court in August 1903. Cixi had only committed to one sitting, and for this she was splendidly decked out, as befitted the empress dowager of China. She wore a brocade gown of imperial yellow, richly embroidered with threads of pearls in a wisteria pattern. Hanging from the top button on her right shoulder was a string of eighteen enormous pearls separated by pieces of jade. Also suspended from the button was a large ruby, with yellow silk tassels that terminated in two immense pear-shaped pearls. A pale-blue embroidered silk handkerchief was tucked under one arm and a scent-bag with long, black silk tassels under another. The headdress was packed with jewels of different kinds, as well as large fresh flowers. Her arms and hands were adorned with bracelets and rings and, as if to extend the area for more decoration, bejewelled nail-protectors capped two fingers on each hand. The feet were not neglected: the square-fronted embroidered satin shoes were covered with small pearls, leaving bare only the centimetres-high soles. Walking on those impossible soles, Cixi advanced animatedly towards Miss Carl and asked where the Double Dragon Throne, her seat, should be placed. And so the painter began work, in a hall where she counted eighty-five clocks ticking and chiming, and feeling the eyes of her sitter ‘fixed piercingly upon me’.
Those eyes judged Miss Carl to be a straightforward person with an open and strong character. Cixi liked her. After the sitting, wrote Carl, she ‘asked me, looking straight into my eyes the while, if I would care to remain at the palace for a few days, that she might give me sittings at her leisure’. The artist, who had very quickly warmed to Cixi, was overjoyed. ‘The reports I had heard of Her Majesty’s hatred of the foreigner had been dispelled by this first Audience and what I had seen there. I felt that the most consummate actress could not so belie her personality . . .’
Carl stayed on for nearly a year. Through her, Cixi was allowing the outside world into the mysterious Chinese court. She also enjoyed Carl’s company. The painter lived in the palaces, saw Cixi practically every day and mingled with people in the court. With an observant and sensitive eye, she came closer to Cixi than most. She noticed her awesome authority, not least through the fact that her portrait was treated ‘with the respect a reverent officiant accords the Holy Vessels of the Church’. Even the artist’s painting materials were invested with a sort of semi-sacred quality. ‘When Her Majesty felt fatigued, and indicated that the sittings were finished, my brushes and palette were taken by the eunuch from my hands, the portrait removed from the easel and reverently consigned to the room that had been set aside for it.’ The brushes and palette were gingerly placed in specially made large flat boxes, which were locked and the keys entrusted to the head eunuch.
Katharine Carl saw how Cixi got her way, in this case by presenting her requests about the painting diffidently, as if asking for a favour. ‘She took my hand in hers, and said in an almost pleading way, “There is a bit of trimming that is not well finished. You will arrange it for me, will you not . . .?”’ She would apologise for her requests: ‘I am giving you a great deal of trouble, and you are very kind.’ One request most tentatively and anxiously made concerned the date when the portrait would be finished. It had to be an auspicious one: the painter could not simply finish when she wished. The almanacs were consulted, and it was decided that 19 April 1904 was the right day, and four o’clock in the afternoon the ideal time. Miss Carl readily accepted and Cixi looked hugely relieved.
Carl was very struck by Cixi’s passion for her gardens: ‘however careworn or harassed she might be, she seemed to find solace in flowers! She would hold a flower to her face, drink in its fragrance and caress it as if it were a sentient thing. She would go herself among the flowers that filled her rooms, and place, with lingering touch, some fair bloom in a better light or turn a jardiniere so that the growing plant might have a more favorable position.’
The painter also shared Cixi’s love of dogs. The empress dowager had a large and luxurious kennel, which Carl often visited. Noticing this, Cixi gave her a pet of her own. One day ‘some young puppies were brought to be shown the Empress Dowager. She caressed the mother and examined critically the points of the puppies. Then she called me up to show them to me, asking me which I liked best . . . she called my attention to their fine points and insisted upon my taking each of them up.’ As Carl felt awkward about taking one, Cixi had one delivered to her as a present: ‘a beautiful white-and-amber-colored Pekingese pug’. This was in fact Carl’s favourite puppy, in which she had shown particular interest when she visited the kennel. Cixi had clearly made it her business to find out.
Carl experienced the most thoughtful side of Cixi, in a personal and feminine way. One day they were out walking: ‘As the day was fading and as I was thinly clad, Her Majesty thought I was cold, and, seeing I had no wrap, she called to the Chief Eunuch to bring me one of hers. He selected one from the number that were always brought along for these promenades, and gave it to Her Majesty, who threw it over my shoulders. She asked me to keep it and to try to remember to take better care of myself in the future.’ When the cold season was coming, Cixi sent a maid to Carl’s apartments to get one of her tailor-made European dresses, and had the palace tailors copy this in padded silk. She gave Carl a long, soft sash to tie at the side, which she said made it look more graceful. As the weather got colder still, Cixi designed for Carl a long fur-lined garment, a hybrid of European and Chinese styles, which the painter thought not only pretty, but comfortable to paint in. The empress dowager also picked a sable hat for Carl, choosing a colour that she felt would complement Carl’s blonde hair, and a design that she said would bring out her strong character.
These non-European outfits were presented to the painter delicately, as Cixi was mindful that the American lady might not like the costume of another culture. Cixi’s own clothes were expressions of her ethnic identity. The only time she did not wear Manchu dress was during her flight, when she wore the clothes belonging to County Chief Woo’s family, which were Han. She told Carl that her new clothes were only for practical purposes and would not violate her personality. Showing the same sensitivity, when she gave a garden party for the diplomatic ladies, Cixi would arrange for Carl to be taken out of the palace to join Mrs Conger and re-enter with the American Legation ladies – in case Carl might be embarrassed to appear as though she were a member of the empress dowager’s entourage. Going for walks in the gardens, Cixi would pick small flowers and tuck them behind Carl’s ears, in a gesture of intimacy that Carl realised was ‘to insure a similar treatment of me by the Ladies and eunuchs’. Cixi also saw to it that Carl was included in all enjoyable activities. The beginning of the kite-flying time in spring was one such, when grandees and literati ran around like children. It was customary for the first kite to be sent up by the empress dowager. On that day Cixi invited Carl to the garden and, after letting out the string and expertly handling the kite, handed it to Carl and offered to teach her how to fly it.
Cixi behaved to Miss Carl like a girlfriend. They had a lot in common. No one appreciated Cixi’s gardens as keenly as the American painter: ‘The exquisite pleasure the contemplation of this glorious view gave me made me tremble with delight.’ They laughed together. One day Cixi went to see her chrysanthemums, which were in full bloom, while Carl remained at her work. When she returned, the empress dowager brought Carl a new variety and said, ‘I will give you something nice if you guess what I have named this flower.’ Carl thought the curious bloom, with hair-like petals and compact centre, resembled the bald head of an old man, at which a delighted Cixi exclaimed, ‘You have guessed. I have just given it the name of the Old Man of the Mountain!’ There was a casual intimacy between them. At one of her garden parties, Cixi scanned Carl’s grey dress, and took a pink peony from a vase and pinned it on her, saying that a little colour would be nice. They chatted about clothes. Cixi praised European fashions for their ‘pretty colors’, but said that while ‘the foreign cos
tume was very becoming to well-made and well-proportioned people’, ‘it was unfortunate for any one who was not so blessed’. The Manchu costume, on the other hand, ‘falling in straight lines from the shoulder, was more becoming to stout people, for it hid many defects’. (The empress dowager refrained from criticising Western corsets to the American painter. She apparently responded to a court lady, who had lived abroad and told her about this fashion item with some exaggeration, ‘It is truly pathetic what foreign women have to endure. They are bound up with steel bars until they can scarcely breathe. Pitiable! Pitiable!’)
Staying with Cixi for almost a year, seeing her virtually daily in her own milieu, Katharine Carl felt that she ‘had come to really love’ Cixi. The feeling was mutual. Cixi invited Carl to stay on for as long as she wanted and suggested that she paint other ladies in the court – and maybe even spend the rest of her life in Beijing. Carl gently declined, feeling that ‘The world beyond the Palace gates called me.’
Her painting of Cixi was an unremarkable one. Western portraits have shadows on the face, but in the Chinese tradition a face with black shadows was a ‘Yin-Yang Face’, which pointed to a dubious character – a double-crosser. Heavy pressure, however tactfully exerted, was put on Miss Carl to iron out the face. ‘When I saw I must represent Her Majesty in such a conventional way as to make her unusually attractive personality banal, I was no longer filled with the ardent enthusiasm for my work with which I had begun it, and I had many a heartache and much inward rebellion before I settled down to the inevitable.’ However, she wrote a book about her unique experience, With the Empress Dowager, published in 1906, which painted a memorable picture of Cixi. The empress dowager had made another loyal Western friend.
Meanwhile, Carl’s portrait was presented to the US government after the St Louis Exposition. In the Blue Room of the White House on 18 February 1905, the Chinese minister to Washington told President Theodore Roosevelt and the assembled company that the empress dowager’s gift was intended to show her appreciation of America’s friendship for China and ‘her abiding interest in the welfare and prosperity of the American people’. In accepting the portrait ‘in the name of the Government and people of the United States’, President Roosevelt said, ‘It is fitting this mutual friendship should exist and be maintained and strengthened in all practicable ways, whether in the larger field of international relations or by pleasing incidents like that which brings us together today.’ The portrait, he said, ‘will be placed in the National Museum as a lasting memorial of the good-will that unites the two countries and the strong interest each feels in the other’s well-being and advancement.’
A third woman, similarly involved with Cixi’s efforts to build ties with the West, became close to her from 1903. This was Louisa Pierson, the daughter of a Boston-born American merchant in Shanghai and his local Chinese wife. At the time, the 1870s, there were many Eurasian liaisons, and their children were invariably looked down on as half-casts. Robert Hart had ‘a Chinese girl kept by me’, he wrote. He lived with her for years, until he discarded her to marry a British girl. Their three children were sent to England to be raised by the wife of a bookkeeper, and neither parent set eyes on them again. His behaviour was deemed ‘generous in the extreme, almost quixotic’, by the standards of the day, as other foreigners tended simply to desert their mixed-race children. How Louisa Pierson was treated by her American father, who died in Shanghai, is unknown, but she was married as a proper wife by an unusual Chinese official, Yu Keng, who did not take her as a concubine or treat her as a kept woman. Their liaison was not an easy one. The Chinese called Louisa ‘quasi foreign devil’ (gui-zi-liu), and the foreign community shunned them. But the pair lived happily together with their children, completely unashamed and unapologetic about their union. Somewhat grudgingly Hart acknowledged that ‘the marriage, I believe, was a love affair’, while remarking, ‘The Yu Keng family are not well thought of anywhere, but the old man himself has powerful backing – I don’t know why.’
The backing came from unprejudiced sponsors, not least Cixi herself. Yu Keng had been working under Viceroy Zhang, who put him in charge of dealing with clashes between the local population and Christian missions in his provinces. The bilingual Louisa Pierson was able to talk to both sides, helping to smooth out misunderstandings and resolve disputes. Viceroy Zhang thought highly of the couple and recommended them to Beijing. There Yu received rapid promotion, first as minister to Japan, then as minister to France. While Hart grumbled (‘I don’t like the appointment!’), Yu Keng and Louisa Pierson went to the hub of Europe with their ‘noisy family of English speaking children’.
In Paris, they led a cosmopolitan life. According to the Western press, who were fascinated by the couple, Louisa Pierson ‘speaks French and English perfectly, with a slight accent, which recalls the Bostonian twang, together with something indefinable which is doubtless purely Chinese. She is a most wonderful artist, drawing on silk in the fashion of the old Chinese masters with a skill and a certainty of metier which makes French painters open their mouths wide with astonishment.’ She ‘presides over the embassy receptions with exceeding charm and refinement’. At a fancy-dress ball the couple gave to celebrate the Chinese New Year in 1901, one of their sons, Hsingling, dressed up as a convincing Napoleon. A Catholic, he went on to marry a French piano teacher in a church in Paris. The wedding, for which the bridegroom wore a Manchu sky-blue robe with red coral buttons, was attended by the American Ambassador to France, General Horace Porter, and was widely reported in the press, described as ‘the most picturesque and interesting marriage recently seen here’ and ‘a Novel Event’. (The marriage did not survive their subsequent return to China.) The two daughters, Der Ling and Rongling, wrote the New York Times, ‘are adorably pretty, and they dress in the European style with a finish and skill to which something of Oriental charm is added which makes them the cynosure of all eyes when they enter a drawingroom [sic]’. Louisa and her husband gave their daughters unheard-of freedom to enjoy Paris to the full. They socialised, frequented the theatre (where they were mesmerised by Sarah Bernhardt) and took dancing lessons with the famed Isadora Duncan. They performed at their parents’ parties and danced European-style ballroom dancing with close body contact with foreign men. The family’s lifestyle, including Louisa letting a Frenchman kiss her hand, raised not only eyebrows but also rancour: the family was denounced to the throne by outraged mission officials.
But Cixi liked what they were doing and waited impatiently for their return. After Yu Keng’s term ended, and after a whirlwind tour of major European cities, the family arrived back in Beijing in early 1903. At once, Cixi invited Louisa Pierson and her daughters to the palace to be her ladies-in-waiting, and placed them ahead of most other court ladies. The two daughters, both speaking English and French, interpreted for Cixi in her increasingly frequent contacts with Westerners. When she heard that the younger daughter, Rongling, had studied music and dance in Paris, Cixi was enthusiastic. She said that she had always felt it a tremendous pity that Chinese dancing had almost disappeared, and that she had tried unsuccessfully to find someone to research court records and revive it. ‘Now Rongling can do it,’ said the empress dowager. So Rongling began a career that established her reputation as ‘the First Lady of modern dancing in China’. Urged on by Cixi, she studied court and folk dances and, combining them with ballet and other types of Western dancing, choreographed a series of dances, which she performed in front of a greatly delighted Cixi. Accompanying her was a Western-style orchestra set up by General Yuan, as well as the court ensemble.
Louisa Pierson was Cixi’s most-valued general consultant about the outside world. At last having someone close to her who had first-hand knowledge of Europe and Japan, and whose views she respected, Cixi sought her advice daily. One early interpreter, a girl who had been to Germany with her father, an attaché in the Chinese Mission, had told Cixi that the German court was ‘very simple’. Trying to gauge how extravagant her own
court was by international standards, Cixi asked Louisa, who said that although she had not been to any German palaces, she understood that they were in fact quite grand. Cixi was reassured. Intelligent and competent, Louisa Pierson was far more than a source of information or adviser on diplomatic etiquette. Even international politics fell within her orbit. When Japan and Russia looked set to go to war in Manchuria in late 1903, Cixi often talked to her about Japan, where Louisa had been stationed with her husband. One day the wife of the Japanese minister, Uchida Kōsai, requested a visit. Cixi was very fond of the lady and had given her a Pekinese puppy, as she had to Mrs Conger. Such friendly gestures were of course also for the benefit of Tokyo. Cixi knew the lady’s visit at this moment had a political agenda, and that Tokyo wanted to sound out her real thoughts about Japan, which she had no wish to divulge. Louisa Pierson helped Cixi decide to have Rongling as the interpreter, who, on her mother’s instruction, mistranslated the Japanese lady’s probing and politically charged questions, turning them into harmless chatting. Louisa was so indispensable to Cixi that when she occasionally went away to see her sick husband, Cixi would urge her, however tactfully, to hurry back. It was with reluctance and resignation that Cixi let Louisa leave the court altogether when her husband was extremely ill – indeed dying – in 1907.
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fn1 A view she later revised. ‘Looking back, I often regret them and wish I had them now. They were the cleanest people imaginable, and the quietest in their service. They never gave the slightest trouble and never wanted an evening off!’