The Ginger Tree (8 page)

157 Hutung Feng-huang, Peking, China
March 11th, 1903

Dearest Mama – My news will make you have a little cry, I know, for I am now Mrs Richard Collingsworth. I thought about sending you a cable when the Bishop’s sudden arrival here fixed the date, but felt that it might give you a lonely feeling to know the day and hour of my marriage which you could not attend. I hope I did the right thing? No, I was
not
married by the Bishop and have not renounced my faith. There was a sort of compromise in which the Bishop agreed to
bless
the union, with his Curate performing the actual ceremony. So that is the way it was even though the arrangement made Richard cross for a while.

Everything was very simple. There was no one suitable for me to have as a bridesmaid so I asked Mrs Harding to be matron of honour, and for her husband to give me away, which may not have been very
conventional
, but in China you can’t always do things the correct way. I did not much care for the Anglican service, but ‘tholed it’ as Jessie would say, only stipulating that they must sing the twenty-third psalm in the Scottish metrical version which no one knew except me, so it made rather a poor sound with the small organ having to work very hard to make it any kind of sound at all. Being winter, the flowers were mostly plants and so on loaned from houses in the Legation Quarter, but the church looked attractive. It was chilly at first, because the stove had smoked from a blocked chimney when lit and had to be let out for
cleaning before it could be lit again, so the heat had not reached the altar when I did and I had to promise to love and obey Richard for the rest of my life through teeth that were almost chattering. However, since the English marriage service takes much longer than the Scotch, by the time we turned for Richard and me to come down the aisle together the packed church had warmed things up and I don’t think I looked blue with cold.

If it is lucky to have the sun shine on your wedding day then Richard and I should be happy for we came out into the most beautiful winter sunshine, hard cold, and much snow lying from a heavy fall two days earlier which made everything very clean and glittering. Richard and I got into the open carriage loaned by Sir Claude, the Minister, for the short journey to his residence, and there was a procession behind us of ladies in rickshas, though most of the gentlemen walked. Two years ago never in my wildest dreams would I have seen fifty rickshas, each holding a European lady wrapped in furs, at my wedding. Though I had worn my new coat to the church I refused to wear it during the drive to the reception, with Richard saying that exposing myself like that was the way to get pneumonia. I wasn’t really cold, for as you will remember my wedding dress has a high boned collar and, being of silk, quite a little warmth. Anyway, I sat under the Minister’s fur rug but looked the bride, I hope, from the waist up.

These days there are not many Chinese to be seen on the streets of the Quarter, and those who do come in are either servants or on business, so there were very few to watch this ‘foreign’ ceremony. The natives who were about didn’t look at us. I am told this is something quite new since the Boxer Troubles, that before them Europeans, especially ladies, were the object of endless curiosity wherever they went. Not now. It is almost as though there was a conspiracy not to notice us. A short time ago I went to the street of the silversmiths with Mrs Harding, who was having two condiment sets and an epergne made for her dining table, and though I was conscious of being watched, whenever I turned suddenly to see who was doing that, all I saw was downcast eyes. It is disturbing in a way to have people all around you pretending you aren’t there, and this makes
what happened to me as I was driving as a new bride somehow seem important.

The carriage went around a corner into a street quite empty except for one old woman walking along the very edge of the roadway by the drainage ditch. I think she was possibly a sewing woman from one of the legations, for she was carrying a small, cloth-wrapped bundle. She must have been quite good class, too, fallen on evil days, for she had the bound feet which are said to promote the swaying flower walk Chinese men find attractive. In older women this becomes a painful hobble on twisted bones full of rheumatism. The sound of the carriage made the old lady look up, but instead of at once dropping her eyes again she stopped by a gate and stepped back on to the boards over the drainage ditch, keeping her head high and watching. It was me she was looking at. We passed quite close to her. It is hard to tell Chinese ages but I would say from the lines on her face that she must have been at least seventy, though her hair was still jet black, dyed probably, and pulled straight back to a tight bun on her neck. Her padded long jacket and trousers were of grey material and looked cheap, but in her ears were two pieces of what I am sure was very good quality green jade, perhaps an only treasure left she would never part with.

I smiled at her. In a moment she smiled back. I don’t think she had any upper teeth left, but it was still a sweet smile and I know, as if we had been able to communicate without words, that she was suddenly
remembering
a day long ago when she had been carried in a palanquin to the house of her Lord, a man she had almost certainly never seen before, bringing with her all the fears, hidden behind a smooth face, of a young girl who is being plunged into strangeness. I had been quite composed during all the preparations for marriage and the ceremony itself, but in that moment I felt tears come into my eyes. Maybe there were tears in that old lady’s eyes, too, I don’t know, for we passed and were gone. I have only spoken of this to you, Mama, and never will to anyone else.

Sir Claude must have travelled by another route in a ricksha for he was at his residence to greet us, so the first to kiss your daughter on her wedding day, after the groom, was His Britannic Majesty’s Minister to
the Imperial Court of the Dowager Empress of China. Though he himself is a Scotch Episcopalian, I am quite sure that I heard his voice in church trying to give some
body
to the metrical twenty-third psalm.

In a way the reception was a little lonely because there was no one at it who had known me for more than a few weeks, but Mrs Harding, rather a formal lady, quite surprised me by the support she gave, as though she realised how I was feeling. Also, there was Marie de Chamonpierre of whom I have written before, from the French Legation. She has been a useful guide to me in many ways and is very gay and bright, her
dinner-parties
never a little dull like most of them here, or at least the ones I have been to. There is not much else to do in winter time when we are confined to a small district under the shadow of the city wall, with only daytime excursions to the native parts. As a newcomer I have to watch my step a little as I do not wish to become part of any cliques. It is interesting, though, the levels of contacts between the various legations, some in states of alliance with others, like the nations they represent, others only exchanging stiff formalities. My friend Marie hates the Russians, whom she says are up to no good in Manchuria, with designs on Korea and China as well, and she backs the Japanese to defeat them if it ever comes to open conflict, though Richard says this is ridiculous and just woman’s talk, much as he admires Marie. The French here are on very good terms with the Japanese, whom they are encouraging to flex their muscles, and so are the British up to a point, though with more restraint, perhaps. Richard is quite friendly with the German Military Attaché, but on the whole we British are cautious with this contact, too, for they are so often our rivals in matters concerning China. All these are things I have to know about if I am to become a hostess in Peking. You can never give a simple dinner-party here, even at small parties there is always the matter of diplomatic precedence to be considered, the ladies even more strict about this than the men. A military attaché’s position, too, is a little curious, in that he is not really permanently part of the diplomatic service, and may be returned to ordinary duties with his regiment at any time, which with Richard would be England. I don’t think he wishes this, however, so we may be in the Far East for a good many years.

I will leave a description of our house of the dragon screen to another letter, in which I will give you all the details of how we live in it. Our houseboy, Yao Tsu, has a squint eye which made me uneasy at first, but I am growing used to it. All this later.

Your loving daughter,

Mary (Collingsworth)

The House of the Dragon Screen, Peking
March 24th, 1903

I suppose other people have had honeymoons like ours, going straight to a house in a Far Eastern city, the house situated so far from the rest of the foreign community that friends can’t just drop in. Also, people have probably felt it was best to leave us alone for a time, though I wish they had not. The only contact with the Quarter since we came here is a huge bunch of purple iris (where did they come from in Peking at this time of year?) with a chitty from Marie de Chamonpierre sending her love. Unfortunately the flowers look a bit odd in the drawing-room, which is upholstered mostly in red plush, though they do match the lapis lazuli plate which seems to be Richard’s only treasure. Richard, of course, is at the Legation every day, but in spite of his having been a gay bachelor here, he does not seem to have had many close friends, and I don’t get much news of what is happening from him. The Legation squash courts have been repaired now and Richard plays on them three days a week, which means that he does not get back here until well after eight. By the time we have had dinner he is so sleepy that he just goes straight to bed.

It seems to me sometimes that I might as well have been a Chinese bride. Since coming here I have only been out of the gate once and that was last Sunday when, as a surprise, Richard had rickshas at the door after lunch and we went in them to a place called Coal Hill, which is more a mound than a hill, and from which you can see the tile roofs of the Winter Palace stretching like the waves of the sea over what seems to be a third of the city. In summer I am sure it is a very fine view with the leaves out on the trees of Peking’s famous gardens, but there is still no hint of
spring here, some snow and an icy wind blowing straight from the Gobi Desert. In spite of muff and heavy gloves my hands were like ice and my feet lead. I said to Richard that to get warm it might be a good idea if I pulled the ricksha for a while, which he did not find amusing. It was not a successful expedition. All I wanted to do was get back to the huge stove in our drawing-room which, though the ugliest thing in an ugly room, is still the real heart of our draughty Chinese house and sits glowing on cheap Manchurian coal like a private sun. If I could I would eat all my meals by it, but we have them in the dining-room where there is a much smaller stove, allowed to die down when we aren’t using the place, which means that when we do I sit in my carved German chair with a wind whistling around my ankles. When I think of the fires kept well built up by Jessie in Edinburgh I could almost weep.

Never in my life have I been so conscious of myself sitting around doing nothing. I won’t pretend that I attended to the house in any real way at home, though Mama did see that I had some lessons from Cook on how to prepare simple dishes, but there I never seemed to have enough time to spend on the things I wanted to do. Here there is nothing to do. I expected at once to take over the running of my household only to find that this is quite impossible. According to Richard, everything must be done through the houseboy. Since Yao only knows six words of English and I know as yet only three of Chinese, one of these to tell the ricksha coolie to go more slowly, it is not easy for me to give any orders. It is not that Yao has no wish to be helpful, he tries to be, and sometimes gives me his smile, which is a sad one, as though it came straight from a life that has been hard all the way, as I expect it has. I think that though he is a gloomy man to look at, and appears to have a slight palsy in that his hands always shake a little, we have been lucky with him, for I am sure his heart is kind, which is not always the case with servants, especially new ones.

The cook I never see. It is apparently the custom of the country that you never go into your kitchen, or at least the lady of the house never does. Our arrangement here is that Richard inspects the kitchen for cleanliness once a week and from what he sees then gives orders. He is
studying Mandarin and has a teacher coming to his office at the Legation most mornings, though how well he speaks I would not know. I have seen ricksha coolies and others staring at him with blank looks while he seemed to think he was making everything plain. Marie has told me that she will never attempt to learn any Chinese, that it is risky for a woman to try to because a word like ‘eat’, pronounced in a slightly different tone from the correct one, immediately takes on a completely new and sometimes shocking meaning. I think Mrs Harding quite fancies herself as a linguist, but once or twice I saw her servants, particularly the houseboy, looking as though trying not to laugh. So perhaps Marie is right here, though I intend to have Yao teach me some simple things for I don’t think he would deliberately expose me to ridicule.

Mama gave me no advice on marriage as from a mother to her daughter and all I can remember is that she once said the honeymoon can be a trying time. What I think she must have meant by that was a picture of staying in some hotel with all the other guests knowing you were newly married and watching with curiosity when you came into the
dining-room
for breakfast, and so on. She could have had no idea what was waiting for her daughter on her honeymoon and I had no idea of it either. For instance, I thought that once I was married there would be no time again for writing in notebooks and that the account of my travel out to China would be kept as a curiosity for later years. Actually I have nothing to do but write in this book, or letters home, but already letters home, even to someone of my own age like Margaret Blair, are difficult simply because half the things I might mention would have no meaning to them at all.