With the Empress Dowager of China
Katharine Augusta Carl
9781465576712
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
In April, 1903, while I was visiting in Shanghai, I received a letter from Mrs. Conger, wife of the Minister of the United States to Peking, in which she said there was a question of Her Majesty the Empress Dowager’s having her portrait painted, and asking me if such a thing should be arranged would I be willing to come to Peking and undertake it. Mrs. Conger hoped, if the project should materialize, that Her Majesty might later consent to send the portrait to the Exposition at St. Louis. She thought such a portrait would be of great interest to the American people and might prove an attractive feature to the Exposition, in which she and Mr. Conger were, naturally, much interested. She also felt, as she had had an opportunity of seeing a good deal of the Empress Dowager, that if the world could see a true likeness of her, it might modify the generally accepted idea which prevailed as to Her Majesty’s character. I answered Mrs. Conger’s letter, saying I should be delighted to undertake the work, should it be decided upon, and I awaited further developments. The idea of sitting for her portrait met with Her Majesty’s approval, and she said she would arrange an Audience and set a day for beginning. But the “mills of”—Chinese Officialdom “grind slowly,” and not until July did Mrs. Conger receive an official notification from the Wai-Wu-Pu (Chinese Foreign Office) requesting “Her Excellency Mrs. Conger to present the American artist, Miss Carl, to Her Imperial Majesty on the fifth day of August, for the purpose of painting a portrait of Her Majesty.” Mrs. Conger immediately informed me of the reception of this document, and I left Shanghai for Peking on the 29th of July. I was cordially received, on my arrival in Peking, by Mr. and Mrs. Conger at the American Legation, and on the fifth of August was presented by Mrs. Conger to Her Majesty the Empress Dowager at the Summer Palace in private Audience. As it was a great innovation in Chinese customs and a breaking away from long-established tradition for an Imperial portrait to be painted, there was no precedent to follow and all arrangements were of the vaguest kind; and when I went into the Palace for my first Audience, I did not know whether I would have one sitting or ten, and no one else seemed to have any more definite information. All was uncertainty. Everything depended upon Her Majesty’s inclination, and future developments must be awaited. I felt that I was really going into the Palace on trial and that my reception and the work depended upon the fantasy and whims of a great Personage from whom, according to current reports, I had but little to expect. On the day of my first Audience, I was told at the Foreign Office that Her Majesty was to give me but one sitting, hence it was not in a very tranquil state of mind that I went up to be presented to the Great Empress Dowager, Tze-Shi! But all this was changed when I saw her. She received me kindly, was very gracious. A Palace was set aside for me, and every facility afforded me for my work: during my sojourn at the Chinese Court I painted not only the portrait for the Exposition at St. Louis, but three others of Her Majesty. Unique as my experiences at the different Palaces of Their Celestial Majesties were, I concluded, after I had lived at Court for a few months, I would never make these experiences public. The Empress Dowager received me in so friendly a manner, I met with such consideration at her hands and such unfailing courtesy from all with whom I came in contact, I felt I should requite this kindness by an equal consideration, and that it was my duty to respect Chinese prejudices and conform to their ideas of “Propriety” by refraining from any relation of my charming experiences.
