Empress and Mrs. Conger, The: The Uncommon Friendship of Two Women and Two Worlds

6 - Imperial audience

6 Imperial audience “The wives and the ladies of the diplomatic corps had never been recognized,” wrote Eliza Scidmore, “during the thirty-eight years that Legations had been established at Peking.” That was about to change. On the frigid morning of December 13, 1898, Sarah and the wives of six other foreign ministers were up and primping before the sun had risen. They had been invited by the Empress Dowager for an audience in Zhongnanhai, the Sea Palaces complex.1 The idea had been broached over six months earlier. In May 1898, Prince Henry of Prussia, the light-hearted younger brother of Kaiser Wilhelm II, was granted an audience, Cixi’s first known meeting with a foreign male. We know that Lady MacDonald, the British minister’s wife, asked the prince if he would put in a good word with the court on behalf of the foreign ladies, who wished to be presented to Her Majesty. Since her resumption of power in the Guangxu emperor’s name, Cixi’s availability for audiences was greatly reduced, so a delay followed while court astrologers and feng shui specialists sought the most auspicious date for such a meeting. Cixi’s watch-and-wait nature probably also played a part. She needed time to think Lady MacDonald’s request over, 60 The Empress and Mrs. Conger and had to find that time in between the minor cataclysm of quashing of the Hundred Days of Reform and tightening control of the radical conservatives at court, who may have put pressure on her not to meet with foreigners at all. According to Sir Robert Hart, the ladies themselves caused much of the trouble by not being ready on the day Cixi asked for them, disagreeing on a translator, and being held up because the first secretaries’ wives and daughters wanted to be included. It was “another instance,” pointed out Sir Robert, “of the way international jealousies and individual crankiness shunt China on to a wrong line the moment she wants to get on a right one!”2 Finally, the day arrived, and at 10 a.m., a Chinese escort rode up to each legation to fetch the wives of the ministers. Two sartorial standouts were Lady MacDonald in bold stripes and Russian Madame de Giers in a hat with plumes spouting like a public fountain. The other ladies (Baroness von Heyking, Mme Pichon, and Mme Knobel) were draped in enough bright yardage for a velvet circus tent. Only the Japanese minister’s wife, Mme Yano, in a sedate kimono, and Sarah, in dark silks, treated the occasion as one for understatement. Each lady folded her skirts and plumes into her sedan chair and, hoisted by five bearers, and each with two grooms on horseback, started from the British legation at 11 a.m. for the jouncing trip to the Sea Palaces. On reaching the first gate (Xinhuamen), the ladies were seated in open court chairs lined in red satin, the Chinese color of happiness, which many of them must have been feeling. They did not progress far. Just inside the next gate, they stepped from their chairs into a train coach, a gift from France to China that was, unsuccessfully, meant to be a promotional gesture. Ironically this carriage, which Lady MacDonald remembered as “worn and shabby,” had no “fire-wheel cart” to pull it, but instead was pushed by eunuchs dressed all in black, like the stage attendants at a kabuki play. The coach was rolled a short distance before stopping for a reception with officials. The ladies then made their way to the audience hall.3 Complaints about what venue was appropriate for the reception of “foreign devils” at the imperial court dated back to Lord Macartney’s audience with the Qianlong emperor in the late eighteenth century. The Ziguangge or Pavilion of Purple Light had been used by Cixi’s son the 61 Imperial audience Tongzhi emperor for foreign audiences; being among the Sea Palaces, it was located away from the sacred inner precincts of the Forbidden City proper. But Cixi had another reason for choosing this venue: she did not like the Forbidden City. She was put off by the darkness and gloom of the Ming-period buildings. The Forbidden City was also discomforting to her because it was literally a museum, not just of Chinese history but of Cixi’s own humble beginnings.4 The audience hall was somewhat...