Silhouettes of Peking Read online

  What the two authors achieved was an exquisite bon bon, or a finely packaged jewel. It was intended to be luxurious and slightly wicked, as is good chocolate. Can one not see a Lautrec-type poster of this scene in an opium den?

  The Baroness floating in a sea of love and kindness, her dress open, her beautiful bosom bare, said to the Count, ‘No, my friend, I am afraid of growing old, afraid of the old age of ugliness and death. I want to live, to love, to bestow myself endlessly, to be born again, to live again, to bestow myself on the whole world.’

  And the ribbon that ties this glorious chocolate box, as readers will see in this newly published edition, are the 45 glorious illustrations by the incomparable and much-loved Sapajou. The full range of his capabilities can be seen in the drawings here, perfectly capturing the changing moods of this book from the hilarious (the drawing of the ridiculous Chatours in the theater box with Chinese actors in his attempts to go native), to the picturesque (scenes of the outskirts of Peking that exactly match the fine prose descriptions) to the whimsical (cartoons of opium pipes, policemen, geishas and gods).

  The book was designed as a treasure, a memento for a future generation of a romantic past – and therefore there is a strain of melancholy throughout (but that too is self-indulgent, like a recording of Stravinsky played on a gramo-phone on a balmy summer evening).

  The novel echoes several peculiarly French genres:

  The comedy of manners and corruption – the sexual plotting of the Baroness Beaurelois and Mrs Brixton are a pale imitation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses;

  The sensual allure of native cultures – one thinks of Gauguin, Marguerite Duras and J M G de Clézio at the high end and Emmanuelle at the bottom; this book comes somewhere in between;

  The fabulous romances with Oriental themes, favored by La Fontaine and Galland;

  The fin de siècle melodramas in high-blown classical language like ‘Salome’.

  Traces of all of these styles can be found in its pages. It perhaps took a later, greater writer, the Italian Daniele Varè, who had also been a diplomat in Peking in the 1910s, to make a truly original literary masterpiece out of similar themes: colorful, curious China; the temptations into decadence; the call of the spirit, a.k.a. wisdom of the Orient; the aesthetes; the curio collectors; the impeccable taste of a European who has got to know a different culture, etc.

  But to say that Silhouettes is ‘light’ or ‘ephemeral’ is no criticism of de Martel and de Hoyer who, after all, were originally only engaged in a private amusement for their own set of friends.

  What they have left behind, for a new generation of expatriates in China, is a confectionery of the past, not as it really was but as they, and perhaps we, would (in our secret heart of hearts) have liked it to have been.

  Adam Williams

  Peking

  May 2010

  1. ‘From Revolution to Dissolution: The Quai d’Orsay, the Banque Russo-Asiatique and the Chinese Eastern Railway – 1917-1926’, by Michael Carley, International History Review, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Nov 1990).

  2. Foreigners since the nineteenth century had controlled the collection of Imperial Customs dues and tax, and these sums of money were channeled to the Chinese Government through foreign banks.

  3. In later life he was to write a book called Meditations on Plato and Buddha.

  4. Carley, ‘From Revolution to Dissolution’.

  5. Incidentally the novel, written first in French, was now being published, for commercial reasons, in English. Things had changed in 10 years and now English was the lingua franca, at least on the China Coast. But the aristocratic stamp on the work remained. It was a member of the Belgian nobility, Dorothy de Warzee, Baroness d’Hermaille, wife of the Counsellor in the Belgian Ministry in Peking, Le Maire de Warzee, Baron d’Hermaille, who was invited to do the translation. She had some experience, having translated the travel guide Peeps from Persia in 1915 during a previous posting.

  6. Sapajou’s cartoons can now be enjoyed again in his Collected Works, republished by Earnshaw Books.

  7. Privileges granted to foreigners under the ‘Unequal Treaties’ of the nineteenth century, allowing them to run their own trading concessions and be immune to Chinese law.

  8. Peonies and Ponies.

  9. The Maker of Heavenly Trousers, The Gate of Happy Sparrows, The Temple of Costly Experience.

  10. On A Chinese Screen.

  11. Peking Picnic, The Ginger Griffin.

  12. Twilight in the Forbidden City.

  13. City of Lingering Splendour.

  14. The Years That Were Fat.

  SILHOUETTES OF PEKING

  CHAPTER 1

  JEAN Maugrais, pulling towards him the last sofa cushion that still shewed some reluctance to accommodate itself to the soft outline of his body, felt so unutterably comfortable that he threw up his eyes with a look of gratitude towards the mauve storks on the ceiling.

  Pale blue stripes, like small snakes ran all over his pink silk pyjamas. His dainty slippers lay unheeded on the arabesques of the carpet, and as the smoke from his cigarette formed delicate halos round his head, his eyes rested tenderly on the gilding of the lacquer furniture, on the delightfully faded yellow of the old silks and on the insolently vivid colourings of his old Chinese porcelain. To him it was all voluptuousness. At moments during this warm and religious Sunday morning, he seemed to hear hymns of peace and happiness murmuring in his ear.

  Breaking the silence that reigned in the room he spoke aloud to himself:

  “The anticipation of a whole day of solitude makes me feel good. I cannot imagine embittered men existing, on whom life weighs as heavily as a leaden cross; or scatter-brains who throw themselves into passions and hurl themselves into catastrophes like moths into the flame of a candle; or that there are women like Mrs. Brixton, Mme. de Beaurelois and many others who seek complicated adventures outside their own homes and their placid lives.

  “A little philosophy will make for much happiness. What is that particular thing we seek for so clumsily at times? Nothing at all in reality, simply tranquillity, health, careless generosity and contagious examples. Is it really possible that those who have suffered most, if they could see me now and could read my soul, would be unable to forget their own unhappiness, and could share, without depriving me, my happiness…. . I have never felt my heart so light, so full of kindness and gentle love towards every one as I do to-day…. .”

  But suddenly his eyes fell on a blue vase placed on a small Cantonese wood table. He was conscious of a change coming over him; his boy persisted in turning towards the wall the best side of the jar — the four bonzes parading in a fancy landscape — the unadorned side of the piece of porcelain being exposed. “The lack of imagination and artistic sense is really disgusting, especially in direct descendants of the great potters of the Ming dynasty, the magnificent century of Kang Hsi.” And while these thoughts were passing through his mind, he grew angrier with his boy for the slight interest he took in works of art and also for having broken his charming dream of peace and quiet. He was even about to ring to tell the boy, probably in very unamiable terms, what he thought of him when the bell sounded. Maugrais hesitated a second, contemplating with a slight shudder the electric button, then, suddenly understanding that the maker of this noise could only be a visitor, he sought uneasily for some excuse forbidding his entrance. A door squeaked and a slender Chinese, his pigtail swinging back and fro, went towards the front door. Maugrais had just time to make him two signs as he passed, one meaning “in the drawing room opposite” the other “close the door.” He tried to recognise the voice speaking in the hall, but was unsuccessful. So he waited with the patience of a fatalist for enlightenment about the intruder. The boy came back with a card. Maugrais read the name, Baron Louis de Beaurelois.

  “At least he is not dangerous,” said Jean, but all the same he was annoyed at being disturbed.

  “He is a good sort, frank and candid…. . and perhaps not so stupid as he is supposed to
be…” He slipped his feet into his slippers, threw his cigarette away and adopting a surprised and happy air, went to meet the enemy.

  “My dear Beaurelois, how nice of you to come and see me; here, let’s have a cocktail,” and he signed to the boy to bring him the necessary ingredients.

  “Are you alone,” asked Beaurelois discreetly, glancing at the elegant negligée Jean was wearing.

  “Forgive me,” he said, “I have not been up long and I did not feel in the least inclined to dress. Had I known you were coming”…. .

  “You would have been wrong to change anything in your appearance,” interrupted Beaurelois, “you look very smart like that.”

  “Come in here, old man, we shall be able to talk better.”

  He took him into the smoking room where he had meant to pass some delightful hours. After settling his visitor into a comfortable arm chair, he sank into the corner he had just vacated.

  “What a varied and magnificient collection of curios,” said Beaurelois after a short silence. “Good taste, when it has the luck to be allied with money and curiosity can perform miracles.”

  As Maugrais busied himself with the cocktails, he thought, “After all, he does not lack judgement and he is friendly and polite.”

  “I was passing down your street,” went on Beaurelois, “and I said to myself, we never see Maugrais any more. If the mountain will not come to me… ; and I decided not to abandon you to your solitude until I had got a formal promise that we should soon see you at home.”

  The cocktails were ready; he took a glass saying as he drank it that it was the best he had ever tasted. Then he continued. “Do you know you have no right to shut yourself up as you do, depriving us of your company. You have certain duties you owe to Society for you are one of the specially chosen. Yes, I am in earnest, you have duties and, by the way, that reminds me of a proposition I should hate to see you refuse….”

  “Some new catastrophe threatens me,” thought Maugrais. Then addressing himself to his visitor, “If it depends on me, you can be sure…. .”

  “Well, I will give you my real reason for coming here. My wife was very disappointed when she got your note. She was relying on you for our dinner to-morrow; there will only be a few specially selected and sympathetic people and she is quite upset by your refusal. Make an effort, Maugrais. Do come, you have no valid reason for refusing.”

  “I am sorrier than you can think, believe me, but…”

  “Yes, I know, your diet, dry bread and milk at night. You shall have it, I promise you anything you want, though you don’t look as if you needed sympathy. You have a splendid colour, and clear eyes and you seem at peace with all the world. We shall all be green with envy to-morrow.”

  “It is always the way,” explained Maugrais who had never before appreciated his robust health as at this moment. “Massage gives me a colour and an air of health so long as I don’t move. But as soon as ever I stick my nose out of doors, or I take a few steps towards a rickshaw, I change. My legs wobble, my cheeks grow pallid and I turn giddy. I have been like that for some time, so the doctor has given me strict orders to go to bed at nine regularly for several weeks. Later on I promise you I shall be your most frequent visitor.”

  “But now I come to think about it,” said Beaurelois trying to joke, “you are going to have a great responsibility; for without you we shall be thirteen.”

  “Touch wood,” said Maugrais.

  “We thought Brixton would be back by to-morrow but he does not return for another week. Mrs. Brixton is coming alone.”

  “She is one of your guests to-morrow?”

  “Yes, of course. You ask as if that would influence you. I should not be in the least annoyed, however, if we owed your consent to such a powerful ally.”

  “My dear Beaurelois,” said Maugrais seriously, “you are quite wrong, all of you. I know Peking gossips. You will come across 20 people who would swear on the heads of their best friends that they possess absolute proof of our feelings towards each other. It is so amusing to spread a scandal when it is more or less harmless and to embellish it. Can you imagine teas, dinners, picnics where this inexhaustible mine was lacking? Whatever should we talk about? But, one evening, at Mrs. Brixton’s—I think by the way you were there,—we seemed to have talked ourselves dry. In spite of bridge and dancing, the air was full of blue devils, the conversation dragged. I must confess I was frankly bored. During dinner I was separated from our hostess by the melancholic and serious old Frissonges but she addressed herself to me more than usual. I think she mingled some subtle innuendoes in her conversation. She seemed to attack me boldly though defending herself cleverly…. .” He was silent for a minute, lost in thought.

  “She has that very rare gift of being able at times to put so much meaning into a single glance that it takes but a second more to lose one’s mental and physical balance. It’s a very disagreeable sensation and rather a terrifying one. I sensed it once before in my life in Cairo but then the transmitter was a Spanish woman for whom I had a great admiration and there was no struggle….”

  “Really, old man,” interrupted Beaurelois interestedly, “is Mrs. Brixton that sort of woman?”

  “Always be on your guard,” advised Maugrais, laughingly.

  “I must tell you everything as there is nothing to confess, and even if there were, forgive me, such a confession to a serious man who does not mix himself up in back door gossip should act as an excellent remedy for my neurasthenia.

  “I had sneaked into a small dimly lit room which happened to be empty. I had scarcely settled myself there, when I heard an exclamation of surprise from the doorway, I saw Mrs. Brixton. Her pretty hair was ruffled. She said in a tone impossible to imitate, ‘Oh there you are.’

  “She came and sat down beside me taking care not to come very close. Suddenly she turned to me and said ‘I am bored.’ As if in answer to the vague gesture I made, she went on, ‘I am sorry I couldn’t put you next to me at dinner, but old Frissonges might have been hurt.’ And she threw me a glance out of her Gorgon eyes. On a small table by the sofa was a beautiful Grecian head in marble, one of those fragments recently discovered in the Ionian Archipelago, and perhaps to change the subject I said, ‘You are lucky to possess such a master-piece of antiquity, it is so much purer and more beautiful than the fantastic morbidities of the East.’ ‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘I like that head although it is a little spoilt. When I am nervous or annoyed, bad or sad, I caress the wavy hair; the peaceful coolness of the marble seems to strengthen and console me.’ She stretched out her hand and passed her shapely fingers over the head and face; its pristine whiteness was slightly mellowed by age and had become the colour of centuries. Mechanically I put out my hand and touched that gentle face with its ever fixed expression of petrified sadness and desolate innocence. Our hands met on the marble. Thus do the hands of friends meet over the tombstone of the dead. We stayed without moving for some time. I cannot express, for I do not know, what I felt or thought, but when I recovered myself and came out of my dream, for I must have dreamt, Melle de Frissonges and Maxwell were standing behind the sofa looking at us with amused astonishment. I will spare you the rest. You know Maxwell’s tongue. All Peking now says—As a matter of fact I don’t really know what it does say, but in all probability that I am her lover.” Maugrais ceased speaking.

  “As for me,” said Beaurelois frankly, “I have never heard a word of this, and I don’t believe my wife has either.”

  “You are certainly the only people in Peking, then, for I am neither blind nor deaf and I have noticed how Society cherishes me since that adventure. ‘Chance’ brings us together all the time. I am under the obligation to redouble my attentions to this woman, to seem mysterious and at the same time familiarly discreet. I have to pretend to seek to meet her eyes while seeming to avoid them … and it is really all so different from what my feelings are or from what I should like to do and say ….”

  “You seem to be complaining,” said Bea
urelois. “The Youth of the present day is quite incomprehensible; an attractive woman finds you interesting and thinks she can take possession of you. Tired of waiting for you to make the first advances, she pathetically does it herself.”

  “Oh, no, don’t say that, it is not true …”

  “So you wear a repentant air and weep on my bosom. But tell me, what on earth do you want?”

  “Peace,” answered Maugrais after a few seconds reflection. “I am now 36; my first love affair dates a long way back. I think I was quite happy then, at least I have looked several times since for the same sweet illusions and probably have not succeeded in finding them. I consider any man over 30 has done all he can in this direction and should begin to try and follow the path of wisdom. Of course I like women and appreciate their society. For any one who flatters himself that he can read even a little into their complicated though frivolous minds, there is still much to learn from them. But if you would avoid suffering, admire them from behind the bars of indifference. Don’t stretch out your fingers or you will be bitten; don’t offer them your heart for they would burn it for the sole pleasure of playing with the ashes. All that is idiotic, isn’t it? I suppose you are astonished that this very acute attack of sentimentality should have led me to become a sort of egoist. But isn’t it natural that continuous suffering inspires people, according to their peculiar temperaments, with the firm resolve and the strong desire to suffer no more?”

  “You certainly astonish me, Maugrais, for I too have gone through all the usual accidents that happen to bachelors; but I have accepted them calmly. I have not been burnt or become embittered. I finally got married when I was 30 and I am the happiest of husbands.”

  Maugrais looked at him with a smile as he finished his cigarette. Before the eyes of his mind the beautiful figure of the Baroness flitted, offering herself to love as a flower to the desires of the bee. He asked himself if, after all, it was such a calamity to be betrayed by one’s wife.