Inside Canton/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI.
Madame Li, the legitimate wife of Pan-se-Chen, daughter of a powerful minister at the Court of Pekin, was one of the most aristocratic beauties of the Flowery Land. This frail and delicate little creature resembled a sprig of jessamine swayed by the wind; her loveable and tenderly chiselled features wore an expression in which smiling and sadness were blended; one might have fancied her thoughts were rosy white as the hue which art had lent to her cheeks. Her eyes, like two black pearls, sent from behind the shelter of her silken lashes soft languorous glances, or sparkling rays of innocent womanly malice. Notwithstanding a little want of grace in its curve, her nose would not have disfigured an European countenance. Madame Li was ladylike after the manner of a charming young girl; her dignity was infantine in its grace. And as on one of the great sofas of black wood she sat see-sawing her legs backwards and forwards, showing her feet encased in slippers broidered with gold, and her ancles hung with bracelets, picking the leaves off an eyulan flower with her pretty little fingers, murmuring musically rather than talking—you could hardly help feeling as if you could eat her up like an orange-flower. It was impossible to confound Madame Li with her twelve satellites when she was in the midst of them. It was not that she had in perfection that air of imposing simplicity which bespeaks a woman of gentle blood, or that she was more elegantly dressed; but that she had the habit of command—a certain conscious superiority of carriage, sometimes breaking out into caprice, perhaps sometimes into anger, but which made you exclaim, "This is the mistress here." Madame Li wore mourning weeds all the time she was under my notice, and as therefore very simply attired: she appeared in a cham of a very clear shade of blue, and had an ornament in the shape of a comb in her long, black, low-falling tresses, but had she been got up like a picture on rice paper, she could not have been more charming.
The twelve tsié represented all ages, all heights, and all degrees of plumpness; they were there, apparently, to testify to the capricious longings of Pan-se-Chen, and to give us the approximate date of the first year of his amours! A date, alas! which was written only too plainly on more than one of these faces; though it should be added that a certain air of real distinction effaced from these charming countenances the furrows which time had wrought. You might have fancied, even, from the subdued, reticent manners of those who aspired simply to the title of friend, that our mandarin had not chosen them himself, but that the affectionate hand of a mother or a sister had guided his then inexperienced adolescent taste. We had pointed out to us the two girls from the flower-boats, of whom our friend had spoken to us: they were among the youngest there. These were two spirited and frolicsome little beings, less, much less pretty than Madame Li, and less distinguished in their manners than their companions. They served, among those soberer beauties, the purpose of condiments at a well-furnished feast they had a way of swinging their arms, of walking, of arranging their head-dress, of wearing their clothes, which made them very attractive women, and very different from their friends. Another trait of resemblance between Chinese civilisation and our own! Have not we, also, women amongst us of restless, rather stormy habits, whose carriage and demeanour have a spice of recklessness, which women of the world sometimes imitate, when perhaps they wish to convey the impression that they are out of their places?
When we penetrated into the interior apartments, the whole swarm of women buzzed about us, measured us off with keen, inquisitive eyes, not without little short, ringing, satirical laughs, and overwhelmed Callery with questions. One day when we entered into the court of the women's quarter, we heard a soft, plaintive voice singing. I lifted up my eyes to the façade, painted and varnished like a lacquered box, and beheld through the window of trellised bamboo-work the pretty little head of Madame Li, above which swung the boughs of a weeping willow. The charming creature made us a good-natured bow, and kept her place at the window, singing away like a caged nightingale.
We entered into the aviary of our friend Pan-se-Chen. On this occasion it seemed to us that the pretty birds led a pleasanter life than usual. These women led a very easy life in this wealthy home. During the day they congregated in little groups, and did their work or gossiped. Their occupations had nothing laborious about them: they did embroidery, played a little music, or perhaps kneaded rice-flour, and made sweetmeats for confectionery luncheons. Our presence in this part of the house caused as much flutter in that usually calm retreat as the visit of a bishop to a hamlet. The whole bevy of fascinating little beings made an irruption into the hall where we were received, and prattled away like a flock of nuns. A table, covered with sweatmeats, preserves, and tarts, was set in the middle of the room, and first one and then the other came nibbling and pecking as she pleased, with the tips of her chopsticks. Young domestics, with hair hanging down their backs, brought us tea on trays of red lacquer; and the nurses of the children, babies in hand, came in and went out, studying us with curious glances. It is impossible to describe the affecting solicitude of which the dear little ones were the incessant objects. Looking at all these women, eagerly crowding around them and smothering them with fond caresses, it was out of the question to guess which were the mothers of particular children. We had many opportunities of observing that the affectionate cares lavished upon these little Chinese are really intelligent and well-directed: if the temperature sank upon a sudden ever so little, the tender creatures were sure to be wrapped up gingerly in long robes of silken cloth, lined with that fine cotton which resembles down.
Pan-se-Chen will leave a numerous seed behind him, if Heaven spares his life; he had at this period four babies in swaddling-bands all at once! All four were dressed with exaggerated splendour: they wore gold-broidered hoods, and had several ornamental playthings about them—in fact, all those trappings with which children used to be harnessed in France fifty years ago. Madame Li had not had the good fortune to be a mother; yet, notwithstanding Chinese ideas upon this subject, she did not seem to fret because that happy privilege had been denied to her. It is true that she was handsomely indemnified for the privation by the fecundity of her companions for they made her a mother several times in the coarse of every year. I use the word "mother" advisedly in this place. By the Chinese law, the regular wife is the sole legal mother of a man's offspring; and she alone is called mother by the children. Beckoning thus, Madame Li was mother to sons not ten years younger than herself. This is the Celestial travesty of the celebrated maxim of Roman jurisprudence—Ea mater est quam nuptiæ demonstrant.
In marrying Madame Li, Pan-se-Chen had followed the famous Chinese proverb which says, "In a union, the doors must correspond;" which we have, in our own style, rendered in the song—
"II faut des èpoux assortis,
Dans les liens du mariage."
Here the husband and the wife were of the same station in society, of corresponding birth and education. The young mistress exercised an absolute sway in her domestic realms—tolerating the tsié, but upon condition that they acknowledged their subordination, and minded her. One day Callery spoke to Madame Li of some little ornamental chefs-d'œuvre in needlework executed by French ladies. The great lady of the Celestial Empire seemed desirous to prove to us that she, too, was not idle, and knew how, with her fairy fingers, to produce pretty little wonders of the same order; so she ordered one of the satellites to go and fetch her a piece of unfinished work from a neighbouring apartment. The poor little club-footed messenger was a long time in executing her errand, and Madame Li now and then manifested signs of impatience. When the concubine made her appearance at last, bringing the desired article, the legitimate wife rose from her seat, went up to her, snatched the work away, and with her own slender hands gave her two smart boxes on the ear, which shook from her cheeks a powder of white and pink mingled. The unlucky tsié, a charming young person, the one who most nearly resembled the mistress of the house, fled into a corner, crying and sobbing, and not a soul, in all this feminine assembly, dared to speak a word of protest against the punishment.
We had other proofs of the despotic authority exercised by this young lady under her own roof. In her presence, the tsié were respectful and almost timid; they trembled to take any liberty without formal leave given; and the mistress must pass the word for free speech and innocent mirth before they dared to laugh and joke. When Madame de Lagrené went to visit the house of Pan-se-Chen, it was Madame Li who received her. She always went through her duties as hostess and mistress of the household with ease and dignity. After the customary compliments and salutations, she offered her hand—covered with her long clothes—to the great lady of the West, and made her sit at her side by a table tastefully served. The tsié, at a distance behind these ladies, elegantly dressed, with their heads profusely decked with flowers, and trembling on their small feet like a tumbler standing tiptoe as Mercury, looked like figurantes at the opera. By-and-bye, as soon as the young Chinese had become a little familiarised with Madame the Ambassador's wife, her childlike simplicity resumed its influence, and she examined, item by item, all the particulars of the Parisian toilette. Every object provoked a murmur of admiration: a pretty bracelet, a masterpiece of jewellery, quite captivated her, and in her gestures and the tones of her voice she so broadly betrayed her wish to have it, that Madame de Lagrené took it off and fastened it on the arm of the fair Chinese, who took care not to refuse the gift, and expressed her delight at possessing the desired object by warbling a charming little song, full of caressing turns, tender and effortless, characteristic in fact of this spoilt child. The first moments of pleasure over, she grew calm, and said to the Ambassador's lady:—
"Since you give me your most precious jewels, you love me, I know; tell me, then, what I must do to have, like you, a complexion white as the jessamine and ruddy as the peach?"
At this question, Callery, who alone understood the young lady, replied with a smile:—
"It is a privilege of the women of the West to have cheeks coloured thus; they use no artificial means to produce it."
Madame Li was quite incredulous. She called for a soft towel, and having moistened it, took the hand of Madame de Lagrené and rubbed it vigorously. When she found that there was not a grain of either white or red powder on the skin, she held up the hand to her companions, exclaiming, in accents of astonishment:—
"It is true! it is true! the women of Europe have naturally a skin delicately coloured like the flowers in our gardens!"
To dress so as to please is the leading idea of the life of a Chinese woman; perhaps, indeed, of the women of all countries. Madame Li, grateful for the present of the bracelet, volunteered to instruct Madame de Lagrené in some of the secrets of the art of beauty practised at the toilettes of Chinese ladies.
"You have," said she, "a sweet mouth, small and red as that of an infant newly-born; but it would be smaller still if you would adopt the method we employ."
"What is that?" inquired the Ambassador's lady.
"I will show you!"
They brought to the young Chinese a saucer containing a pink paste; she took some up on the tip of her little finger, and very neatly made in the middle of the lower lip of Madame de Lagrené an artificial dimple, which fixed the eye of the observer, and diminished the apparent size of the mouth. This device ought to find favour at the hands of the artists of our fashion-books, whose model women have mouths much smaller than their eyes.
While conversing with Pan-se-Chen about his house and his ménage, I begged Callery to ask him how it happened that, having so lovely and every way worthy a partner as Madame Li, he allowed himself the luxury of these tsié?
"What would you have me do?" answered the great mandarin; "I had them before I got married, and I cannot send them away now."
"Very good," I rejoined; "but it appears to me that you have bought some since."
"Undoubtedly! To be sure! It is a matter of luxury, of course; one cannot help certain superfluities in the way of expenditure. I am told that in your country rich men buy horses!"
"Yes; but after having bought them they do not for that reason keep them for ever in their stables; when their humour is satisfied they sell them, or exchange them …
"That is wise," said Pan-se-Chen, shaking his head sagely; "but a woman is not like a horse. She is tenderer; she does not kick, and she seldom bites; but she can speak; and it is not so easy to get rid of her, when she asks you to keep her, as it is to dispose of a horse!"
Pan-se-Chen, in the course of these communications, informed us of many things relating to the mysteries of the women's quarter. A thorough demoralisation is the rule there. The semi-sequestration of which women are the subjects is not a guarantee against all conjugal accidents. And the mandarin told us, with a groan, that a multiplicity of wives involved the certainty that the husband would be deceived frequently, and with impunity; these ladies draw up the ladder of their own love secrets after them! He confessed quite frankly that there was not one of his wives whom he trusted; and, as a last characteristic trait of the demoralisation which infects this unfortunate country, he related to us several stories of real life, in order to prove that disorder and vice find their way into Chinese homes by means of the relatives of the tsié, the servants, and, above all, by the children!
"They marry young, very young," added he, "and very speedily a man has children, who become his rivals with the tsié of his own establishment!"
"Well, then, the remedy is at hand," said Callery; "follow the rules of sound, orthodox morality, and do not have any tsié unless you are without male issue, as the sages lay it down."
"Good! You are right!" cried Pan-se-Chen; "but there are inveterate evils which one really cannot remedy."
The conversation had now taken such a turn that we resolved to seize the opportunity of sounding our mandarin thoroughly; we endeavoured to ascertain the strength of his affection for his wives.
"Polygamy," resumed Callery, "must lead to many embarrassments, vexations, and troubles. Women are not exempt from sickness any more than other created beings, and when they die it is a source of sorrow and mental suffering."
"When they die," replied Pan-se-Chen, "we buy them a coffin: that is expensive, but it is a cheap suit, after all, for one has not to renew it by-and-bye."
This utterly heartless answer did not startle me in the least. I had already been enabled to understand the feelings with which the Chinese regard their women. When at Macao, I went one day to call upon my friend Dr. Pitter, and found in the vestibule of his house one of his porters, weeping silently in a corner, almost concealed from observation, whilst his companion appeared to be chiding him for his grief. Now, a Chinese weeping with common decency, like a man in real affliction of soul, is a phenomenon. The children of the Flowery Land laugh and smile incessantly; but when they weep, they launch out into obstreperous howlings. I called the attention of Pitter to what I had observed. My friend said:—"I will go and see what is the explanation of this reversal of natural laws in China."
He called the two men, who ran up directly.
"What are you weeping for?" he asked of the lachrymose individual.
The person questioned did not breathe a syllable.
His companion, however, spoke for him:—"Don't mind him, Nhon: the silly fellow is crying because his wife died this morning."
"Poor man! it is natural enough for him to cry," said Fitter. "And you are scolding him for it, I suppose?"
"Come, Nhon, you are as unreasonable as he is! Do you weep when you tear up an old coat? Do you weep when you lose something that has been useful to you for a long time? Then why weep for a wife? She is just like a best suit in your wardrobe. It is not worth while to fret about losing her; it is easy to go and buy another!"
Yet these Chinese, who have no natural affection for their wives and their tsié, are tender and respectful towards their mothers, even to the length of positive idolatry. Pan-se-Chen, the millionaire, the voluptuary, the savant, the man of intellect, never held himself released from those duties to his mother, which are so sacredly enjoined. As soon as he reached home, his first care was to salute her, his next, to inquire if anything had vexed her in his absence—if everybody in the house, great and small, had been respectful, attentive, and obedient. Yet, the old lady was the legitimate wife of the old Poun-tin-Quoua; she was only the legal mother of our mandarin, who was, in truth, the son of a concubine.
This circumstance prepares the way for a very singular fact—it is, that the mourning for a natural mother is not worn, probably, in the same manner as for a legal mother. In China a white robe is the sign of grief; the individual supposed to be wounded in his affections wears no loud colours; he abstains from all kind of ornament, and disuses for the time even the insignia of his office, if he be a public man. Now, while we were at Canton, Pan-se-Chen happened to lose his real mother; his visiting cards indicated the nature of his affliction; yet nevertheless he went about dressed like other people, and nothing in his external appearance denoted any internal sorrow, except that he sometimes put on his long cham of deep blue trimmed with glass buttons, which he had informed us was a mourning garment.
Our friend introduced us to Madame Poun-tin-Quoua. The old lady had reached a time of life at which her sex cease to employ any artificial means to dissimulate their age, so we saw her as she really was. Her white hair was not plaited, it was simply gathered above the forehead in the style of women in humble life, and supported by long pins. Her dress was very simple: the robe, the trousers, and the cham, were of green edged with black velvet. Upon her bosom, suspended by a button of the cham, she wore an oval case, prettily broidered, to hold her spectacles. Madame Poun-tin-Quoua had given up cosmetics, whether white or red. Her venerable wrinkles spread undisguised over her yellow face, which was slightly emaciated, but she was not in the least decrepid. Her manners were noble and distinguished, and she appeared much pleased with the tokens of respect which we paid to her. In this conjuncture we for once threw off our European stiffness, and imitated Pan-se-Chen in all his bowings and salutations.
Madame Poun-tin-Quoua said to us:—
"I used to see Europeans during my husband's lifetime. I am glad to see them friendly with my son as they were with his father."
We spent some hours with the old lady, who catechised us much more closely upon our impressions of China than upon the customs of Europe.
When we took our leave of her, she wished us long life, and especially an early return to our country and the bosom of our families. In leaving Madame Poun-tin-Quoua, we said to Pan-se-Chen:—
"Here is one woman, whom you love and respect!"
"Certainly; of course," exclaimed the mandarin; "she is my mother."
"Well; among the women of your house there are women who are also mothers!"
"Quite another thing, I assure you—that is my children's business; they are taught to love and honour Madame Li. But, as for me, my mother is the object of all my affection, my reverence, and my tenderness. I undertake nothing without first consulting her, and, I must say, she has a sagacity which always astonishes me! A mother!" cried the mandarin, with an enthusiasm not at all usual with him; "a mother is gifted with faculties superior to those of all other beings!"
This respect, affection, almost worship, for mothers, is in flagrant opposition to that insensibility towards women in general, which is affected by the Chinese; but it is not only in the Flowery Empire that these inexplicable contradictions may be found.
The elder sons of Pan-se-Chen were in constant communication with the women of his establishment: one was a great boy of seventeen, with a not very intelligent physiognomy; and the other a little fellow of eight years old. This last had a frank, affectionate, winsome, playful address. When he saw the daughters of Madame de Lagrené, he took a fancy to them. In particular he testified a lively preference for Mademoiselle Olga; and when he discovered that she had not had her feet compressed like his sisters, and that she could leap and run, he displayed his satisfaction by clapping his hands and jumping about. Then he took the arm of his new acquaintance, and led her away to show her over every part of the fine house of Che-pa-Pou.
He showed her from the terrace the Tartar city and the Chinese city, of which the roofs can be dimly seen, and I am sure he thought his companions very absurd to shut the door rudely in the face of his charming friend. The two sons of Pan-se-Chen were brought up in the house: they had a professor of deportment, a small, pedantic person, whom the elder of the boys appeared to take for a model.
I have thus introduced to my reader nearly all the individuals composing the household of our mandarin. Now, if he will take into account the army of domestics required to wait upon this little world,—the number of palaquin-bearers necessary for carrying about such a multitude, of whom not one will go on foot through the streets,—the enormous consumption of food, of clothing, of articles of luxury, which goes on in such an establishment,—he will readily comprehend that the Chinese, even the richest, can be at no loss in spending their enormous fortunes.
Of late years, Chinese women have been seen in Europe; and those who have had opportunities of examining them, will perhaps find my account of the beauty of their countrywomen very exaggerated. Let me, therefore, say a few explanatory words upon this topic. There is in China a vast difference between the women of the populace and the women of the upper classes; the women of the first description are almost uniformly ugly—the others are generally pretty. This is accounted for by a very simple fact. A Chinese woman is a work of art, and not a natural product! Infinite care, uninterrupted superintendence, and a special training, are necessary to make a Chinese beauty; and, as soon as the article has been painstakingly got up, it becomes the exclusive property of the wealthy. If it be a young girl of good station, she is sought in marriage by wealthy men; if of humbler rank, the same men buy her through the intervention of some matron, or perhaps after she has been submitted to the criticism of amateurs in a flower-boat or a flower-house.
In China there is nothing discreditable in the possession of a courtezan, or the position of a concubine. In a poor, but respectable home, parents will bring up their daughters for those positions, just as in France and England girls are educated for governesses, companions, or artists. This facility in disposing of the girls is the reason that the poorer population is, year by year, skimmed of its finest products in the fair sex; so that foreigners, who do not, in an ordinary way, penetrate into Chinese interiors or flower-houses, scarcely see the most favourable types of the race; and that the yellow-skinned traffickers who bring to Europe the girls of Kuang-ton, or Fo-kien, can only make recruits of unfortunates whose feet have been crushed in their infancy, and whose blighted beauty has deceived the hopes of their worthy parents. In a word, in England and France, the only Chinese women beheld as yet have been—the rejected of the flower-boats of Canton!
For the rest, in order to comprehend the beauty of the Chinese women, it is necessary to comprehend the style of Chinese art; to be able to look kindly upon their contorted architecture, their fantastic decorations, their dragons with notched and twisted tails, their impossible flowers, their childish tastes, and even their stumpy, etiolated, and moss-eaten trees. These conditions granted, you may find many charms in that strange product of human whim, that being in whom the vital forces have been sapped, whose physical development has been arrested, in order that she may never expand to the full, and may remain all her life a pitiable, suffering creature—a Chinese woman. You may really come at last to love these elegant and graceful creatures, with their helmet-like masses of black hair, whose slanting eyes wear an expression of goodness and sweetness unutterable; who resemble, in their little caressing, wilful ways, artful, spoiled children. Everything in them will seem loveable, even their little feet, bound with rings of gold, and imprisoned in red bandages!
The sentiment of unity, of congruity, is profoundly active, and ever present in the human mind. Whatever man creates links itself with some other thing; borrows completeness from its environment, and bestows it in its turn. The law of association will always rule; and a Chinese woman, to be seen as I have painted her, must be seen in the gilded prison which man has made for her. You must watch her tottering along, screen in hand, over those brilliant floors which reflect her features; watch her seated in her porcelain chair, her little body swaying to and fro without cessation; watch her eating with the mother-of-pearl chopsticks, which so well become her little fingers and her little mouth! Removed from these native conditions, the Chinese woman is a caricature; as the Turkish woman is a caricature, out of the harem.
Still, it does strike me that if Madame Li had visited France—and the idea was really just started for a moment—she would have been enthusiastically admired; that sonnets, madrigals, and odes, would have been at her truncated feet in showers. I have a foundation for this opinion: a lady friend of mine, having seen Madame Li a year after I had seen her, replied to my inquiry, as to what she thought of her:—"I thought her the most graceful, the most charming, the very prettiest, creature I ever saw in my life!"
This, then, is not my impression—it is that of a woman of taste unquestionably without bias in favour of a woman of another race. But, alas! Madame Li will never visit France. She died two years ago. Probably no memorial of her remains but that which I have intrusted to these faithful pages.