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

Illustrations

1. Sarah Pike Conger during her husband’s tenure as Iowa congressman in the 1880s 2. An 1885 campaign button for Edwin Hurd Conger 3. Lombard College’s “Old Main” 4. Laura Conger Buchan, Sarah’s daughter 5. View from the Tartar wall looking north 6. The drawing room of the American legation in Beijing, post-1900 7. American doctor, and friend of Edwin and Sarah Conger, N. S. Hopkins on the Great Wall of China with two lady companions, pre-1900 8. Sarah Conger, Laura Conger Buchan, and Edwin Conger at the Three Hills Nunnery in the Western Hills, pre-1900 9. A view of the Beijing Observatory before 1900 10. A Manchu funeral in Beijing, circa 1925 11. Members of the diplomatic corps at the Tomb of the Princesses outside Beijing, circa 1900 12. The diplomatic wives attending the first audience with the empress dowager in December 1898 Illustrations (Following p. 88) x Illustrations 13. The northeast corner of the Forbidden City’s moated wall 14. The Congers’ Number One Boy, Wang, and his family 15. Sketch from a photograph showing Edwin Conger, painter Cecile Payen, and servant having tiffin atop the Great Wall, May 1900 16. Cecile Payen’s watercolor of Dr. Poole’s bungalow at the British legation, painted in July 1900 17. The burning of the Qianmen Gate on June 18, 1900 18. Liu Wuyuan, the messenger who went to Tianjin with an S. O. S. from the besieged residents of the legations and back again to Beijing 19. A map of the besieged Legation Quarter, reproduced from Ethel Hubbard’s 1905 biography of missionary Mary Porter Gamewell 20. Laura Conger Buchan with the pony Wang saved from the siege dinner table 21. Idealized illustration of Iowan Calvin Pearl Titus lifting the American flag above the Beijing city wall 22. British soldiers on the empress dowager’s Marble Boat at the Summer Palace in August 1900 23. Sarah, Edwin, and Laura Conger walking toward the Forbidden City’s Meridian Gate in September 1900 24. A rare shot of the empress dowager in her chair during her return to Beijing on January 7, 1902 25. Carved and gilded memorial tablet given to Edwin Conger by the Chinese Christians of Beijing 26. The denuded platform of the Beijing Observatory 27. A view of the new American legation, its cornerstone laid by Sarah Conger on April 19, 1904 28. The silver trowel used by Sarah Conger to set the cornerstone of the new American legation 29. One of many photographs Sarah had made of guests to her tiffins for Chinese ladies 30. Lao Hu, the Pekingese given to Sarah Conger by the empress dowager 31. Dowager Princess K’e 32. Sarah Conger Buchan (Mrs.Theodore E. Jewell), circa 1905 xi Illustrations 33. A group of Sarah’s Han Chinese friends, photographed outside the American legation after tiffin, circa 1904 34. The gate at the Summer Palace leading to the chambers where the painter Katherine Carl lived while working on the empress dowager’s portrait in 1904–05 35. The first portrait of Cixi completed by Katherine Carl (1904), in a frame of carved camphorwood designed by the dowager 36. A view to the picture gallery at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition, showing Katherine Carl’s second portrait of the empress dowager 37. Photograph of the Empress Dowager Cixi, with Sarah Conger, three unnamed foreign women, and Lili, daughter of the photographer, Xunling 38. A room of the Conger house in Pasadena, showing the scroll painting of chrysanthemums given to Edwin Conger by the Empress Dowager Cixi 39. A room in the Congers’ Pasadena home, showing a portrait of their son, Lorentus, on the wall 40. Sarah Pike Conger with her granddaughter Sarah Buchan Jewell, and the latter’s mother, Laura Conger Buchan ...