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CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
MY FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE ORIENT To travel far and wide—out of the beaten paths, and to enjoy it, is to have a great career. I know no other impersonal delight that is so endless as the delight of learning new places. To see new flora, a new type of people having new customs, and then to realise that it is Damascus or Kabul, Calcutta or Canton,—a place which has been to you all your life a meaningless dot on a map, but is now—and for ever will be to you—a vivid, vital reality,—that is an exquisite
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
ANDREW We are poor sometimes, we two Nomads, but we are never without a retinue. There are two reasons for this. I am a helpless, incapable woman, with an acute need of servants. My husband, on the other hand, is phenomenally good to servants. They seem to know this instinctively. They flock to him, and install themselves in his service, and he always feels it difficult to dislodge them. We went into Colombo a party of six. I am not speaking of our company of twenty odd artists (more or less), b
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
OUR DAY OUT Three Grecian cities strove for Homer dead Where Homer living begged his daily bread. And the locale of the Garden of Eden is claimed by at least three of the Eastern islands that we have visited. The island of Penang appealed the most seductively to my credulity; but before I saw Penang, I was convinced that Ceylon was in reality the site of the Garden of Eden. Colombo impressed me; Mount Lavinia convinced me. Mount Lavinia is the Richmond of Colombo. The Mount Lavinia Hotel is the
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
MY FIRST ’RICKSHAW RIDE My husband would not ride in a jinrickshaw, nor did he wish me to do so. Of course, I was curious—very curious—to know how it felt to be rushed along, drawn by a “human horse.” He thought it wrong to use men in that fashion, and would neither step into a jinrickshaw nor countenance my doing so. The night before we left Colombo it rained furiously. I suppose every one feels caged, once in a while. I felt caged that night. I remember walking up and down our long sitting-roo
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
IN THE BURRA BAZAAR We all grumbled when we were put off the boat at Diamond Harbour, and were told that we must go to Calcutta by train. The treacherous Hooghly was at the moment unsafe for so large a vessel. Of course, every one blamed the Steamship Company. But the very contretemps at which we grumbled gave us a first view of Bengal—a view that was extremely lovely. Our little train went slowly through the peaceful Bengali country. It was early sunset. Strange scarlet flowers hung from the ta
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CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
A CHRISTMAS DINNER ON A ROOF Is it only three years ago that we ate our Christmas dinner on the roof of an old Calcutta palace? How hot it was! The starlit sky was murky and shimmering. The air trembled and throbbed with the electrical heat. But when the plum-puddings came in we had to stop the punkah wallahs; the swing of their big hand punkahs blew the flaming brandy out. The Major had been saying nice things to me through all the courses. He was so polite and attentive that he only had one of
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
ORIENTAL OBSEQUIES A Hindoo Burning Ghât The arch-devil death is so unconquerable a foe that the veriest atheist must easily find it in his heart to forgive the theist who has invented the consolatory theory of immortality. If we believe death to be but the imaginary boundary between two lives, then death ceremonials become very inconsequential. If we believe death to be the end, the last sad rites assume a terrible significance. Strangely enough, the most elaborate funeral customs prevail among
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CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
ORIENTAL NUPTIALS A Hindoo Marriage To Hindoo women, marriage is of even more importance than it is to women in general. Indeed, I know no race to whose women it is more important; for marriage is the sum total of a Hindoo woman’s existence. She has no interests beyond her home, no possibility of outside compensation if her marriage is a failure. Even conventional, conservative India is beginning to throb with nineteenth century restlessness and Occidental changeableness. There is a great deal t
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CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
KING THEEBAW’S STATE BARGE We went from Calcutta to Rangoon. In Burmah the shadow of a great personal sorrow fell upon us. Our reminiscences of Burmah are too sad and too sacred to be put between the covers of a book. But there is a great deal that is interesting that I may try to tell about Burmah before I catch up my little personal narrative in China. Burmah has almost unprecedented natural wealth. Minerals, woods, marbles, and gems are in Burmah in seemingly inexhaustible stores. Useful vege
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CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
ORIENTAL OBSEQUIES Burmese Burials The Burmese are very philosophical. They have no belief in another life; but they make the most of this one. They take everything very easily—everything but death; they hate to die. That is natural on the part of a people who enjoy life so thoroughly, and who live in such a pleasant, sunny land. I have seen a Burmese funeral train in a gale of merriment, but I have never seen a Burmese man or woman who was willing to die. They are not afraid of death; but they
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CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
ORIENTAL NUPTIALS Burmese Bridals In Burmah, marriage is not a failure; it is a stupendous success. The Burmese women are sweetly pretty. They have dainty ways and happy faces. It would be very ungrateful of them to be less than happy, for they hold a position unique among the women of the East. I know of but one other race of women who are upon so entire an equality, socially, legally, and financially, with men as are the Burmese women,—the American woman is as free as the Burmese woman, but no
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CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
A JAUNT IN A HOUSE-BOAT—THROUGH THE HOME OF THE WILD WHITE ROSE I have been lying in a steamer chair, in which I have crossed half the large bodies of water in the world, and trying to recall the absolute stillness of the night I drove from the theatre in Shanghai to the canal up which we were going into China,—Chinese China, I mean; not semi-European China! Nothing moved. The crunching of our carriage wheels was the only sound we heard. The pungent Chinese flowers scented the air, and the clear
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CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIII
AN OPIUM DEN IN SHANGHAI There are two Shanghais. New Shanghai is under the control of three Western powers. Over one section of it floats the French Tricolour; over another part waves the Stars and Stripes of the United States; above the third flies the Union Jack. The Chinese who live in New Shanghai are more or less Europeanised; they speak “pidgen” English or a quaint burlesque French. They adapt themselves to their pale neighbours—in many ways, I have eaten in Shanghai with a Chinaman who w
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CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XIV
MEMORIES OF HONG-KONG Hong-Kong exemplifies the national reserve of two great nations. Hong-Kong is the home of countless Chinamen, and the residence of many Englishmen, but the two know little of each other. After having lived for some months in Hong-Kong, I have concluded that there are no two nations, one Oriental and the other Occidental, that so closely resemble each other as do the English and the Chinese. Englishmen are intensely Western; Chinamen are intensely Eastern. But those are, aft
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CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XV
A GLIMPSE OF CANTON What can I write of Canton? If Hong-Kong was wonderful, if Shanghai was interesting, if Burmah was picturesque, what was Canton? It was superlative! I know that Europeans go into Canton and come out of it with stolid faces, and sneer languidly as they speak of it. I know a woman who preferred poor little, colourless, on-sufferance Sha-mien, to great, mysterious, unfathomable, lurid Canton. Ah, well! it takes all sorts to make a world—and I dare say I revolted her as much as s
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CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVI
CHINESE PRISONERS The Chinese people are law-abiding. With those of their own number who are law-breakers they have but little sympathy, and the Government has none at all. I like China. I like the Chinese. Moreover, I respect them. But in two details of their national life they merit unqualified condemnation. Their hospitals and their prisons are unmitigated national disgraces. On second thought I withdraw the word unmitigated. The Chinese hospitals through which I went were almost everything t
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CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVII
THE CHINESE NEW YEAR If one had a great many debtors and no creditors one might well wish on New Year’s Day to be among the Chinese a Chinaman. Every Chinaman, unless he is a very Mongolian blackleg indeed, pays his debts on New Year’s Day, or on the last day of the old year, that he may start afresh with fresh books. Think what a splendid arrangement if huge sums of money were owing to one! Picture the cruel inconvenience if one were deeply in debt! I remember one long-ago morning in old Los An
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CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XVIII
ORIENTAL OBSEQUIES Chinese Coffins If I may say so, without appearing over-anxious to advertise my Irish ancestry, the most important event in a Chinaman’s life is his funeral. A Chinese crowd is the culmination of human noise; and the Chinese are never so noisy as at a funeral. They have hearty appetites at all times, but they never eat so much as they do at a funeral feast. When I first lived in China I used to find it almost impossible to distinguish between a funeral procession and a marriag
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CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XIX
ORIENTAL NUPTIALS Chinese Espousals There are no marriages in China for a hundred days following the death of an Emperor. But on all other days, marriage processions of various degrees of gorgeousness follow each other along the streets in interminable succession. Theoretically the Emperor is the only Chinaman who sees the face of his wife before their marriage. As a matter of fact, in the poorer classes, boys and girls grow up together, play together, work together, and fall in love with each o
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CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XX
CHINESE SHOES The Chinese women have enormous feet. They are reputed “small footed,” but our reputations often wrong us. No Chinese woman has a small foot. But even a Chinese woman’s huge great toe looks small when in its solitary deformity it masquerades as an entire foot. There is nothing so characteristic of the Chinese as thoroughness. The Chinese are the least beautiful of all civilised peoples; but when they undertake to be beautiful—even in the mere matter of their women’s feet—they do it
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CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXI
JAPANESE TOUCH With the Japanese art is an inspiration. They are incapable of bad taste in art. If their work is not always great, it is always fine. It sometimes lacks depth, it never lacks grace. Lightness of touch, exactness of touch, characterise all Japanese work; but it would be grossly untrue to say that all Japanese work lacks strength, depth, and force. Much that the Japanese do, they do “from the shoulder.” Their cloisonné is rich, their carvings are masterly, and on the stages of thei
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CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXII
FOUR WOMEN THAT I KNEW IN TOKIO Mrs. Keutako Three of them were Japanese. One was the Anglo-Saxon wife of a Japanese gentleman. Two of them I had known in America. Two of them I met for the first time in Japan. The two girls whom I knew at Vassar College as Stamatz Yamakawa and Shige Nagai had become the Countess Oyama and Mrs. Uriu. My new acquaintances were Mrs. Keutako and Madame Sannomiya. Mrs. Keutako was a dear bit of Japanese femininity whom I always longed to seize upon and cuddle. We we
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CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIII
FOUR WOMEN THAT I KNEW IN TOKIO The Countess Oyama [1] and Mrs. Uriu Stamatz Yamakawa was born very near the top of the Japanese social ladder. Shige Nagai came into the world a few rungs lower down. Assimilation is the forte of the Japanese. They create nothing, but they improve everything they touch. Japan was once conquered by China. The Japanese retaliated by completely mastering every detail of Chinese art, and developing from it a Japanese art system, superior to anything the Chinese artis
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CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXIV
FOUR WOMEN THAT I KNEW IN TOKIO Madame Sannomiya I thought her the most picturesque bit in the picture of Tokio life: a European woman living among the Japanese, speaking their language or her own indiscriminately, as occasion dictated, preserving her individuality and her national traits, and yet wielding an almost incredible influence at the conservative Court of the Mikado. In one way my fellow-Occidentals were a great trial to me in the Orient. Their ungainly presence was always blotching so
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CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXV
TOM STREET I had been in Yokohama about half an hour when he opened our sitting-room door and informed me in charmingly broken English that he was my jinrickshaw coolie that my husband had engaged him, and that he was ready to start as soon as I was. As it was about ten o’clock at night, as it was dark, as I was very hungry, and our dinner was just coming in, I entreated him to defer until the morning the appointment my husband had been kind enough to make. “You did not lose much time in getting
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CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVI
ORIENTAL OBSEQUIES A Japanese Funeral In Japan it is chiefly the middle class that has become Europeanised. The upper nobility and the poorer peasantry are the classes most tenacious of the old national customs. The upper middle class is the travelled class. The masses are too poor, the nobles are too tied by grave responsibilities, to go far from Japan. It is the son of some petty nobleman or well-to-do gentleman who goes to Oxford or Harvard for his education, and returns home a very Westernis
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CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVII
ORIENTAL NUPTIALS Japanese Wedlock Confucius wrote: “The man stands in importance before the woman; it is the right of the strong over the weak. Heaven ranks before earth; the prince ranks before his minister. This law of honour is one.” The Occidental reformers who would fain place the women of China and Japan on an equality with the men of those countries, must first disabuse the Chinese and the Japanese minds of their deeply-rooted reverence for Confucius. That will be very difficult. Confuci
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CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXVIII
BAMBOO The Orient is wreathed with bamboo. A considerable proportion of the houses in the East are built of bamboo. And at one season of the year many thousands of natives are fed on bamboo. There is nothing else that I should find so impossible to wipe from my memoried picture of the East as bamboo. It is the one characteristic common to all the East. Indigo, rice, opium, tea, coffee, cochineal, gems, spices—they all mean the East, but no one of them means the entire East. Bamboo is symbolic of
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CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXIX
ON THE HIMALAYAS From Tokio we turned back. Again we stayed in Yokohama, in Kobe, and stopped just long enough to play once in Nagasaki. We spent some time at Hong-Kong. At Penang our boat waited a day, and our English friends came aboard to wish us God-speed. The man we had known best and liked most was not among them. I had named him “Saint of the Camera.” He was a capital amateur photographer, and had tramped about Penang most generously for me when we had been there before, and had fed with
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CHAPTER XXX
CHAPTER XXX
MY AYAH A thornless , black blossom grew upon the hills that stretch between Poona and Bombay. When I was domiciled in a bungalow on those hills, I had the good luck to gather that black blossom into the garland of my personal retinue. By birth she was a Hindoo, a high-caste Hindoo; by profession and necessity she was an ayah. I never knew a sweeter-natured woman. Unlike most of her people, she had learned very little from the Europeans. Her mental horizon had scarcely widened through her contac
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CHAPTER XXXI
CHAPTER XXXI
SAMBO He had but one shirt and it was very ragged. He washed it every few nights after dark. He was too young for a coolie, and too old for a chokera. When I was cross with him I called him “coolie,” and he hung his head. When I was pleased with him I called him “chokera,” and he looked up and smiled. We never could pronounce his name. It is not the custom in India to call your native servants by name, but we quarrelled with the custom. Failing to gain the mastery over his proper appellation, my
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CHAPTER XXXII
CHAPTER XXXII
HOW WE KEPT HOUSE ON THE HILLS We lived for six months absolutely among the natives. Half of that time my husband was not with us at all, but in Calcutta. The latter half he was at home occasionally, but only occasionally, for he was working in Bombay. Nothing ordinary could have been more complete than our isolation from Europeans. For months we saw no white faces but our own. It was not a thrilling experience, because we were in no danger, we suffered no inconvenience, and we could telegraph t
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CHAPTER XXXIII
CHAPTER XXXIII
ORIENTAL OBSEQUIES The Parsi Towers of Silence Our company had divided and respectively gone where all bad actors and where all good actors go,—to Australia and to London. We lingered on in India for a few months. We were going through the cantonments of the Punjab before we sailed for home. We had engaged two other professionals and had made out programmes that reminded me of our Canton Recital. My husband had me down for a recitation in almost every programme; but when the time came I very rar
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CHAPTER XXXIV
CHAPTER XXXIV
ORIENTAL NUPTIALS A Parsi Wedding The Parsi gentlemen are charming. The Parsi women are delicate in appearance, refined and womanly, and, I thought, rather stupid; but very possibly what I was rude enough to think stupidity was reserve. I found it quite impossible to get acquainted with them, or at least to pass beyond the barriers of slight acquaintance. I “made friends” with but one Parsi woman. She was dainty in all her ways, gracious and hospitable to a degree, an ideal housekeeper, from a P
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CHAPTER XXXV
CHAPTER XXXV
AT SUBATHU, WHERE THE BAGPIPES PLAY AND THE LEPERS HIDE We went from Bombay to Mhow,—such a desolate cantonment!—such a dâk bungalow! But we had a charming audience for our first funny little performance. The last time I had played—some months before in Bombay—the bill had been the Merchant of Venice , and we had had ample accessories of scenery and supernumeraries. This was very different; there were only four of us. When we were not on the stage we were rushing madly into another costume and a
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CHAPTER XXXVI
CHAPTER XXXVI
IN THE OFFICERS’ MESS People who have seen both tell me that my performance of Polly Eccles is inferior to that of Mrs. Bancroft. But I have, I fancy, excelled Mrs. Bancroft in one particular: I have doubled Polly and the Marquise. I did it in Simla—did it with éclat . The generous friend who was coming from Subathu to play the Marquise was detained at the last moment. We were in despair. The house was beautifully sold for that, our first night in Simla, and we could ill afford to return the mon
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CHAPTER XXXVII
CHAPTER XXXVII
AT THE MOUTH OF THE KHYBER PASS The two names in India most fascinating to me were Kashmir and Afghanistan. I longed to see Afghanistan even more than I longed to see Kashmir. I knew hosts of men who had been in Kashmir; I knew four or five women who had lived there. I knew two or three men who had been in Afghanistan, but no woman, and the men had not stayed there long, nor had they seen much. One of them was a fairly high official. He had ridden out every morning in Kabul. He was attended by a
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CHAPTER XXXVIII
CHAPTER XXXVIII
AN IMPROMPTU DINNER-PARTY IN THE PUNJAB We had finished the last of several brief but delightful theatrical engagements in Rawal Pindi—if one may use the phrase “theatrical engagement,” in connection with so small a band of strolling players as we had been. The afternoon train was carrying the last of our little company to Bombay. In twenty-four hours we two were going on—by a pleasantly broken route—to Karachi. But, in the meantime, we are going to give a dinner-party. How it all comes back! We
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CHAPTER XXXIX
CHAPTER XXXIX
SALAAM! How shall I say good-bye to India and to all that I left there? I can’t say it. I say instead, “Salaam, burra salaam.” Hopes are impotent things often; but I hope that some day I may go back to the East. I wish that I could have written more adequately of the Orient—I wish it very much. There are many places to which my heart goes back eagerly, but of which I have not found time to write a sentence. We passed some dreadful but delightful months in the cantonments of the Punjab, when the
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