THE JEZEBEL OF CHINA.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 279, 19 November 1908, Page 4

THE JEZEBEL OF CHINA.

WROTE VERSES, AND NEVER. ■SPARED THE ROD. Under the heading of "The Jezebel of China," ■•Current Literature - ' some time ago published a remarkable article on Thzc llsi, the Empress Dowager. Bom on November 17, 1834, this wonderful woman was nearly 74 years of age at her dtath, and she had hud her hand, more or less, on the reins of gov- ' eminent in China for about half a century. _ "Current Literature" prints k quite fascinating .photograph of the septuagenarian Empress Dowager, and under it explains: '-The Empress Dowager is enabled to look thus young, thus unwriuklcd, and thus spontaneously marriageable in consequence of the perfecting, and .pudding has attained ut the court of Peking. The Empress Dowager has false teeth, false hair, false cyehrow.s, and a. false, figure; but no one, the world is assured by the well-inform-ed, ,would ever suspect it. She makes up too well." Tsze Hsi (or, to use the spelling .sometimes adopted, Tsi Hsu) was versed in the most outrage literature of China, and had made so careful

n study of Chinese jurisprudence thut the mandarins used to refer to her their disputes on points of law and etiquette. Ik'r poetry used to dazzle the Chinese literati. Wc quote from "Current Literature" as under: Tim KiiI'UKSS AND VI'AN SIII-KAI. Tile deportment uf Tsi Hsu to all persons unconnected with her domestic establishment is .pronounced "enchanting and affable, simple yet distinguished, reserved but not repelling." As a murk of great favour, she will discuss the literature .she likes with oilk'hils 01 rank sullicicutly exalted to entitle them to that much notice. The influence of

ChangChih-Tiiiig, the viceroy so detested liy the friends of Yuan Shi-Kai, the father of China's modern army, originated, we are asked to believe, in some felicitous criticism of one of 'i'si Hsu's verses. Yuan Shi-Kai has tin; inisfortuiie to be no poet, to be destitute of all knowledge of metrical composition, and to be unable to join in a conversation on the subject of the classics. To this deficiency in culture and not to any aversion on her Majesty's part to Ms reforming innovations must be attributed, it now seems, the recent obscuration of the great Viceroy of Ch-Li by the literary coterio surrounding | Prince Clung. Upon considerations of the same nature will yet depend, it is predicted, the Knipcror Dowager's choice of an heir apparent. Years of .study have made her Majesty such a perfect mistress of the language of her educated subjects that her conversation is the model upon which the stylists of the court circle form themselves. Her rhetoric aecords strictly with the nicest canons of the most correct taste. She never opens her mouth, wc are told, unless she has framed in her mind beforehand the whole sentence she is about to utter. The well-informed in these matters affect to discern a significance in the order of words used by an educated Chinaman that would be meaningless to the unlettered. Chinese conversation in the Peking court circle is the very esotericisni of talk, the accentuation of the syllable as much, as the meaning of the syllable itself, determining what is to be said, and what it shall signify after it is said. There is an etiquette of attitude in this mysterious matter likewise. Simply to listen to Tsi Hsu, therefore, is to the literati to enjoy the greatest intellectual treat their world affords. She may lfl; said to cease, for the time being, to .speak in the character of Empress Dowager and to become the first citizen in a republic of letters so tinely governed that no western mind can make head or tail ol it. This is the great secret of her Majesty's sway over her cultured countrymen. ' A FURIOUS TEMPER. Revelation of the excess into which Tsi Hsu is led by the fury of her temper are, therefore, all the more sitprising. Her Majesty would appear to be a Chinese mother-in-law in the very worst sense ■of the word, Castigations administered to.young ladies who paint the imperial eyebrows with,too pronounced an arch are credibly reported to he ixcruciating. She will throw Jier cup at the head of an offender in the domestic circle and n. setiquette tolerates no dodgi ing of the missile, more, than one court beauty las gone about scalded or with an inelegant cut on the cheek. Tsi Hsu , la SCCUaed flf tearing £ho head-dress from a young lady in disfavor and of slapphg whom she pleases. When she quarrels with any 01 her escort in the course of a boat ride, the offending maiden is pitched overboard without ado, and left to wade ashore with what decorum she I may. A few of the more amazing of these stories may be the result of malice, others art! perhaps due to that spirit of exaggeration alleged to animate a few correspondents in Peking, but the evidence available is overwhelming on the subject of the imperial temper. It is a hot one. The Empress Dowager is now s'o bent by her recurring attacks of paralysis that she lias quite forfeited the divinity of tallness, once hers. Were she, not the absolute ruler of n great court she would be called very fat. Her double chin has .been massaged ill efforts at Kduction so vain that the lives of her young ladies are miserable. The. feet of Tsi Hsu were never bound in the peculiar Chinese fashion. She can walk with dignity, but not at all with case. She imbibes tea inordinately. Age has made her miserly. Her diversion, apart from the 'exercise of her faculty for poetical composition, is the painting or JJans. She expends infinite pains in the production of effects highly praised by the favoured mortals to whom the fans are given. The highest mark of favour at the Chinese Court, however, jb the gift of one of the Empress Dowager's poems, iwriUcu in hieroglyphics by her own hand. Romantic love, the practice of lilial piety and .perseverance in acts of virtue afford the happiest themes to the imperial muse. Great significance is attached to the recent bestowal upon a son ot Prince Ching of an unusually long poetical piece, Tsi Hsu's masterpiece of verse Is now possessed by the Haiilin College at Peking, the Harvard of the empire, whither more than one mandarin repairs to refresh his memory with the effusion, it is highly didactic on the subject of unselfishness. Her Majesty spent eight years upon the effort, and is affirmed to think it an ordinary' production, but the literati profess* extravagant admiration of its lechnic. HER ORICIN. There was never the least basis for a prevalent western impression that Tsi Ilsu is Hie offspring of an itinerant Tartar's union with a Shanghai dancing girl. This legend has Tsi Hsu sold at a tender age to a Chinese soldier, who passed her on to a Manehu mandarin. The fact is that the Dowager Empress is descended in unbroken succession from the founder of the oldest Manchn familv known to genealogists. Her features were ulwavs characteristically Tartar. Her hoauty is tradition 10-day. but autlieiilie accounts of it show tint in her viuith the Kmpi'ess Dowager w-vs tall, black-haired, large-eyed, finely formed. Such traits made her available as a third-class wife for the son of Heaven, a distinction she shared with eighty other women of about her own age . Tsi Hsu became the mother of a line boy, and thus earned promotion to the status of a more or less lawful v.i'e. The reigning empress failed to prcsc'it her lord with a son. His Majesty died, the son of Tsi Ilsu was the only available heir, a regency undertook- the government and at last, by a lint delia ice of tradition that set all Chinese experience at naught, 'Tsi Hsu herself undertook to rule the country.

She has doin> it ever since. She had married lier meek little son to a meeker girl of twelve. Hut when her own power seemed assured, the source of all of it, her sou died suddenly. In the 'einergenev she set up Kwung-llsn, then three years old. Tsi Hsu had to snatch the ti'nv creature from his sleep ami hurry with him into the council cha-ii-ber.' It was midnight. The maadarius, tager for another candidate, and cv?',l more, eager to get rid of Tsi llsu ■protested. Tsi Hsu quelled the objectors with blows from a whip. 'Thus runs an account from one well-informed quarter. 'l'lie people rebelled. Tsi Hsu »y plied blows to them with the as-istuii'-o of Id Hung (.'hang. ' i "~us began her biug regency as foster-mother of the s"ii of heaven. Kvery time the nominal sovereign outgrew his docility he was soundly spanked. To this very day. it is hinted, lie is liabl;. to corporal punishment whenever the slate of her imperial Majesty's health warrants so much exertion; Indeed the wife of the son of heaven—to snv nothing of the concubines-is said to have been shaped into meekness by the Empress Dowager, whose aiifhorii.y liolh in and out of the domestic circle has always bem based upon the theory that to spxre Hie rod it to spoil the dynasty.