Читать книгу A Woman In China - Mary Gaunt - Страница 3

Table of Contents

My grandmother's curios—Camels and elephants—Dr Morrison—Chinese in Australia—Feared for his virtues—Racial animosity—Great Northern Plain—A city of silence—A land of exile—The Holy Sea—Frost flowers on a birch forest—Chaos at Manchuria and Kharbin—Japanese efficiency—A Peking dust storm.

When I was a little girl and was taken to see my grandmother, she set out for my amusement, to be looked at but not touched by little fingers, various curios brought home by my grandfather from China in the old days when he was a sailor in the Honourable East India Company's service; beautifully carved ivory chessmen, a model of a Chinese lady's foot about three inches long, dainty mother-of-pearl counters made in the likeness of all manner of strange beasts, lacquer boxes and ivory balls; models of palankeens in ivory, and fans that seemed to me, brought up in the somewhat rough-and-ready surroundings of a new country, dreams of loveliness. The impression was made, I felt the fascination of China, the fascination of a thing far beyond me. Like the pretty things, so out of my reach it seemed that I did not even add it to the list of places I intended to visit when I grew up, for even then my great desire was to travel all over the world; I was born with the wander fever in my blood, but unfortunately with small means of satisfying it. As I grew older I used to read every travel book I could get hold of, and later on when I began to live by my pen I got into the habit of gauging my chances of seeing a country by the number of books written about it. China, judged by this standard, fell naturally into the place assigned to it by my grandmother's curios; for from the days of Marco Polo men have gone up and down the land, painfully, sorrowfully, gladly, triumphantly, and at least half of them seem to have put pen to paper to describe what they have seen. Was it likely there would be anything left for me to write about?

Then one bright Sunday morning when the sun was shining, as he does occasionally shine in England, the spirit moved me to go down the Brighton line to spend a day with Parry Truscott, a fellow storyteller. The unkind Fates have seen to it that I live alone, and arriving at Victoria that bright morning I felt amiably disposed and desirous of exchanging ideas with somebody. In the carriage I had chosen were already seated two nicely dressed women, and coming along the platform was a porter with hot-water bottles. The morning was sharp and the opportunity was not to be lost, I turned to them and asked them if they would not like a hot-water bottle. Alas! Alas! Those women towards whom I had felt so friendly evidently did not reciprocate my feelings. In chilly accents calculated to discourage the boldest—and I am not the boldest—they gave me to understand that they required neither the hot-water bottle nor my conversation, so, snubbed, I retired to the other side of the carriage and amused myself with my own thoughts and the sunshine and shadow on the green country through which we were passing. Half the journey was done when I saw, to my astonishment, a sight that is not often seen in the Sussex lanes, a train of camels and elephants marching along. It seemed to me something worth seeing, and entirely forgetting that I had been put in my place earlier in the morning I cried, “Oh, look! Look! Camels and elephants!”

Those two ladies were a credit to the English nation. They bore themselves with the utmost propriety. What they thought of me I can only dimly guess, but they never even raised their eyes from their papers. Of course the train rushed on, the camels and elephants were left behind, and there was nothing to show they had ever been there. Then I regret to state that I lay back and laughed till I cried, and whenever I felt a little better the sight of those two studious women solemnly reading their papers set me off again. When I got out at Hassocks they did not allow themselves to look relieved, that perhaps would have been expressing too much emotion before a stranger who had behaved in so eccentric a fashion, but they literally drew their skirts around them so that they should not touch mine and be contaminated as I passed.

There is always more than one side to a story; how I should love to hear the version of that journey told by those two ladies; doubtless it would not in the faintest degree resemble mine. And yet there really were camels and elephants. And so it occurred to me why not go to a country and try and write about it, although many had written before. If the gods were kind might I not find a story even in China.

Meanwhile one of my brothers had married a sister of Dr Morrison, and I had come into touch with the famous Times correspondent, an Australian like myself, and when he came to England he used to come and see me, and we talked about China. When I met him again after my elephant and camel experience I asked his opinion, would it be worth my while to go to China?

He was quite of opinion it would, more, he and his newly-wedded wife gave me a cordial invitation to stay with them, and the thing was settled. I decided to go to Peking. Accordingly, on the last day of January in the year of Our Lord 1913, I left Charing Cross in a thick fog for the Far East. It is a little thing to do, to get into a train and be whirled eastward. There is nothing wonderful about it and yet—and yet—to me it was the beginning of romance. I was bound across the old world for a land where people had lived as a civilised people for thousands of years before we of the West emerged from barbarism, for a country which the new nation from which I have sprung regards with peculiar interest. Australia has armed herself. Why? Because of China's millions to the north. Australia has voted solid for a white Australia, and rigidly excluded the coloured man. Why? Not because she fears the Kanaka who helped to develop her sugar plantations, but because she fears the yellow man and his tireless energy and his low standard of living.