Imperial Masquerade: The Legend of Princess Der Ling

12 Scandal

12 Scandal For the present, Yu Keng had no objection to Der Ling performing in the little production of Sweet Lavender, which was soon to be staged at the legation. “My father thought it would amuse and interest me,” she wrote. Blinded by her dreams of following in the footsteps of Bernhardt, Der Ling also knew that performing in a play, even if before friends, was likely to draw criticism from the conservative members of her father’s staff. She had noticed, the day of the rehearsal, when Bernhardt had beckoned to her afterward, that the wife of Yu Keng’s secretary had spirited her ten-yearold son out of the room after watching Der Ling and a boy actor embrace in innocent sentimentality. During this scene, not even prim and proper Louisa had stepped forward to stop the proceedings — it was a Pinero play, after all. This was not, however, how the secretary’s wife saw it. In fact, from this time, when Der Ling was in her sixteenth year, we can date the creation of a reputation she may have done little to avoid, but which she certainly did not deserve — that of Westernized Chinese sex-pot. But this trouble began with the death in January 1901 of Queen Victoria. Her son acceded to the throne as King Edward VII, his 114 Imperial Masquerade coronation scheduled for June 1902. Illness made it necessary to postpone the ceremonies till August. To attend the celebrations in London, a party of high-born and prominent Chinese was sent from Beijing: 26-year-old Prince Zaizhen, the handsome, scandal-attracted son of Prince Qing; Sir Chengtung Liang-Cheng, a Guangzhou native knighted by the British Crown in 1897; and “Jack” Wang, one of the earliest Chinese graduates from an Ivy League United States university (Yale), along with a suite of some seven or eight officials and ten servants. The party was to embark at Shanghai on April 22, with projected arrival by the end of May or early June in London, where they were being put up at the Hotel Cecil.1 En route to the coronation, Prince Zaizhen and his party had been entertained by Yu Keng at Marseilles, and on their return from London they stopped in Paris, where they began to spend time at the Chinese legation. It is obvious that both Sir Chengtung Liang-Cheng and Prince Zaizhen were quite taken with both Der Ling and Rong Ling — Liang reported back to China that both girls “would quite fascinate the Empress Dowager if they go to Peking.” One source indicates that Cixi may already have been interested in having Louisa and her daughters at court a few years before this.2 “My sister and I liked Prince Zaizhen immensely,” Der Ling remembered. “He was little more than a boy [perhaps meant figuratively; Zaizhen was over ten years Der Ling’s senior], very handsome, well educated, and his tastes were the same as ours in many things.” She adds that while she and the prince were prone to quarrel, Zaizhen paid court to her softer, prettier sister. Sir Chengtung Liang-Cheng also found himself drawn to Rong Ling. A widower since 1900, Liang was even linked with Rong Ling by the venerable but gossipy Sir Robert Hart, according to whose rumor sources “Sir Liang . . . is to remarry and . . . the bride will be one of the daughters of Yu Keng (Paris).” Der Ling confirms that Liang’s interest lay not with her but with her sister, and a New York Times article from March 30, 1903, when the family was already back in China, maintained that “Miss Nellie Yu-Keng” was to marry Sir Chengtung Liang-Cheng and “can hardly fail to be a popular acquisition to diplomatic society in Washington.”3 Der Ling, Rong Ling, Sir Chengtung Liang-Cheng and Prince Zaizhen appeared together as dance partners at the Chinese legation and 115 Scandal elsewhere. (It was useful to Zaizhen that Der Ling and her sister spoke fluent French, as he himself knew only Chinese.)4 Yu Keng’s daughters were eager to show their fellow Manchus all the sights of Paris — sights the flashy novelties of which delighted the prince and his educated retinue but shocked the Confucian sensibilities of many of their staff. Der Ling does not seem to have been entirely unaware of Zaizhen’s frowning functionaries, but her judgment was very...