And she had blazed out at him:
“You dirty yellow man …!”
I wonder what she felt when she learned that Baron Takamini returned directly to his home after saying good-by to me, had bathed and perfumed his body, had brought his trusted servants round him, had taken a short sword encased in an ivory scabbard and beautifully engraved, and had cut himself open, returning to his glorious ancestors and becoming a Shinto god, then and there, to inspire the Japanese to hate more and more these blond foreigners who were insinuating themselves and their hateful creeds into this beautiful Land of Poppies.
I lost a friend. One of the best, one of the kindest, one of the most glorious men I have ever known.
“Dirty yellow man …!”
Mrs. Grundy, there’s one for you.
Ships off the coast of Nagasaki in Japan, c. 1860s.
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But I promised you another story about “virtue.”
This one brings me to Nagasaki, the Beach of the World. Time counts for little in a hit-or-miss book like this. I went there years after the things I have been talking about, but it applies right here in the story.
There was an American in Nagasaki who had fallen from grace. By that I mean that he had lost his birthright of manliness – had, according to the Grundy standard, “gone soft.”
His name was Brandon. I suppose that it was not the correct one, but no matter. He was technically known as a beachcomber. That means a sort of groveling, spineless man who has lost his grip and who lives upon gratuities and leavings of the beach crowd. Furthermore, he was a drunkard. And doubly furthermore, he had “gone native,” which means that he had a Japanese girl that he lived with … if you can call it living.
Brandon was a sort of land-mark.
They pointed him out to you as a horrible example of what can happen to a fine, clean-cut man when the East “gets” him. He had been a port officer for one of the shipping companies and had lost his job through drink. That, at least, was the story.
As a matter of fact, I discovered later that he had lost his job because of his relations, quite public, they were, with the Japanese girl, and that he had taken to drink through losing it.
Be that as it may.
One day the whole colony was excited over news that spread from somewhere … as news will. Brandon had appeared at one of the good hotels for foreigners, well dressed, well groomed, clean and sober. He had a certain poise. He had money. He “affected,” so they expressed it, a superior air. He dined, and made arrangements for a passage back to America. He paid for it in full and in cash.
And how the speculative tongues wagged.
Brandon left, and it was some weeks before the foreign colony learned that he had inherited valuable property and an estate from his grandfather. That seemed to be that.
“What a pity,” said everyone. “How unfortunate that it had to go to such a weakling, such a tramp.”
I had the good fortune to meet and to talk with the “girl he left behind him.” She was a pretty thing, like a doll. She spoke very plausible English, and she was not at all unhappy at his departure. I asked her if she did not care.
“Honorable Mistress,” she said, “know that there is no departure. He has not gone. Only his body has been removed.”
Curious, this reply. I asked her what she meant, and I learned something more curious still.
She understood precisely what it meant that he should return to the land of his people when the head of his tribe should cease to exist. She understood that it was his duty to go away. But she was equally sure that only an earthly part of him had gone, but that his soul remained with her. And, Eastern, she had placed a charm over his body which should keep him from harm and bring him safe back to her.
It did.
And they bought a little house with one of those far-famed Japanese gardens where flowers are less in evidence than mossy stones, rivulet and curved red bridges, and they lived there happily ever afterwards, as the story book says.
And of course the colony was anxious to please, now that he had wealth, and a good name, and sartorial elegance. But he drank just as much, and enjoyed it, and no marriage ceremony was ever performed over him and his “wife,” and … it is amusing, they were never “at home” to visitors.
Thus the beachcomber.
1585 Tattoo by S. Ogawa, c. 1890s.
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I wish I could write fiction. I ought to be able to, because there has been such a succession of characters moving across the screen of my life. But I am too old to try now, and it is useless for me to attempt to do more with these characters than to tell about them as I saw them and to show what they meant to me.
While we are in Japan, there is Hori Tchio. Anybody who looked for the odd or the exotic in life would have been thoroughly satisfied with Hori Tchio.
He was an artist by profession and a gambler by preference, and a rather remarkable fellow in every way. To look at him, you would believe that he had stepped out of a gaudy melodrama during the intermission and had just neglected to remove his make-up and change his costume.
Hori Tchio went in for color and luxury in his clothes in a way that is not much in the nature of the Japanese … rather more like the Chinese. I am not sure that Hori did not have some Chinese blood, as a matter of fact. His kimonos were of gorgeous, blazing silk, embroidered with symbolic designs or pastoral scenes. In fact, anything that was surprising or unusual could be looked for in the costumes of Hori Tchio.
And even more in the man himself.
Hori did a great service to both Japanese and foreigners. He tattooed them. Now, this does not mean the cheap anchor and flowers and ladies’ heads that you see on the arms and shoulders of sailors. Not Hori. He was an artist of the first water and his designs were really magnificent. He did tricks with them, too. For instance a design could be so arranged that it represented one thing when your muscles and skin were relaxed, and a totally different idea when they were flexed and tightened. It could be very surprising and effective.
An amusing story about Hori occurred in this way. There was a French attaché who was uxorious to a degree. His wife was young and beautiful and had him under a spell that was charming to see and also a little pathetic.
M. Rivaudin (if I recall his name correctly) brought his charming little spouse to Hori Tchio for a portrait. The great artist received them in this manner. There was tea. There were many servants who responded to a clapping of hands. There were heavy hanging curtains and rich tapestries and prints. Hori took his tablets and his brushes and studied the beauty of the lovely Western woman and translated it into paint. Many studies he made, and much conversation. Then he proposed an innocent game, the name of which I forget, but which is popular for gambling in the East.
Madame Rivaudin withdrew, pleading household duties, and went away in one of Hori’s own beautifully decorated ’rikishas.
Monsieur Rivaudin played with Hori and was entranced with the man’s brilliant conversation, his mellow wit and philosophy, his courtly manners.
Incidentally, he lost about £100 … on credit, naturally, since everything is done on credit in Japan.
But the crux of the story is that after a certain amount of saki and a certain number of hours with the curious artist, he was so impressed by the likenesses of his wife done by that master hand, that he decided to have one of them reproduced by tattooing on his person.
An appointment was made. Hori Tchio was not a slap-dash worker. His art was his mistress. And the job to be done was the height of his art. Therefore it would take about six months of careful work to reproduce Madame’s beautiful features, life size, in a manner such that not one line, not one ray of her sunshine should be lost … (he was not noted for modesty, this Hori Tchio) … even the work of God might be made more splendid by the hand of Hori.
So it was arranged.
For three months Rivaudin went to his not unpainful sittings. The beautiful features of Madame grew and were glorified. But
one fatal day came when he discovered that his charming and innocent wife had been deceiving him with Hori Tchio, artist and philosopher, ever since the day he had brought her there for her portrait.
It was a predicament.
The face was half done. His wife was lost to him. To efface the tattooing was not only painful, but would mean, under his contract with Hori, that he would be out not only the half but the full sum for the great artist’s work. To carry on and have the work completed would take three months more. He would suffer the indignity of allowing the man who had stolen his love to decorate his person with the image of her who had destroyed his faith in humans. And all his life he would carry about with him the haunting and ironical features of this false lady.
You can imagine the story this made at the men’s clubs. The solution, if one can call it that, was even more absurd and more like Hori Tchio.
Raging, our Frenchman went to the great Artist and Lothario. Calmly and philosophically he was received. There was a brief moment of storm … on Rivaudin’s part, naturally. But the calm and poise of the oriental, subtle and magnificent in his self-control, carried the day.
Hori proposed the following plan.
Rivaudin owed him $500 (Mexican) for work already accomplished. Likewise he owed him $500 (Mexican) for work contracted for. And he was now suggesting that he should cheat the Great Artist not only by refusing payment but also demanding that the work of his hand be destroyed, removed, therefore lost to posterity. Hori was injured, really wounded in his pride.
But Hori was always generous, always sporting, always magnificent.
It was true that, through her weakness and his natural charm which no woman could resist, the Western wife of the Honorable Rivaudin had permitted him certain indulgences. It was also true that according to the absurd code of Europeans, Rivaudin was entitled to feel himself injured by such a trifling circumstance.
So they would bargain. They would make a sporting bargain, a true gambler’s bargain. They would play. And the stakes would be the following: if the Honorable Rivaudin should win, he, Hori Tchio, would remove the magnificent work of art from the person of the unappreciative Westerner, and would release him from any payment … for what payment could atone for the destruction of a masterpiece? And he would engage to free the wife of the honorable Rivaudin from the spell of his Eastern charms so that she might return to her barbarian home where shoes are worn indoors.
But if he, Hori, should win – ah, that would be different!
Then the Honorable Rivaudin would pay him the entire sum of $1000 (Mexican) for the creation of a magnificent work of art upon his white-skinned person. He would permit that Hori Tchio, unequaled Artist, should complete the Masterpiece and earn the money which he had so fairly won. Furthermore, the Great Artist should retain his influence over the blond wife of the Westerner … until such time as he grew tired of her – a time, perhaps, not far away … but no matter. This was justice. This was fairness itself. This was even a concession.
And Monsieur Rivaudin agreed. And Monsieur Rivaudin lost.
Photo of a Japanese courtesan by Felice Beato. c. 1890s.
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But there is another story that is interesting, and a bit more personal. It concerns me and my husband, who returned to Japan as planned, after he had arranged his business.
The story is about the Geisha girls, a subject which can scarcely be missing from this or any other book on Japan.
In the first place let me say right here that the popular conception of Geisha girls is a wrong one. They are not in any way to be confused with prostitutes. Quite the contrary.
There were nearly two thousand Geisha houses in Japan when I was there. Here lived the girls, beautiful, doll-like creatures. They were professionally trained dancers, perfectly chaperoned, perfectly protected, perfectly educated. Their business was dancing: just that.
Like the Russian Ballet of the ancien régime, the girls were trained from babyhood almost, and became as nearly perfect in their art as it is possible for human beings to become. Japan was and is proud of them. Japan protects them and trains them and educates them. And if you are giving a reception you may employ them … at a rather high cost … to furnish part of the entertainment. Also you can go to their houses and spend an afternoon of high artistic value.
And when I see in the newspapers that a troupe of Geisha girls were excluded from a ship’s entertainment on one of those round-the-world cruises … because they were supposed to detract from the moral tone … it makes me furious.
But to my story.
When my husband arrived he came with some men who were typical American business men “away from home” and on a spree. I overheard them proposing to secure the most famous Geisha house in Tokio for the night, and I understood that they had a wrong conception of what those little girls were. I was anxious to save them from a scandal, but I knew better than to show them how I felt, for they were rather merry after a day at the Club and plenty of whisky.
But I formed a plan.
Enlisting my hotel proprietor, a nice German fellow, my Japanese “courier,” who was a sweet, active and methodical little woman, and a few friends whom I knew well enough to explain to, I formed a caravan of ’rikishas and went to the Geisha house before Friend Husband and his company got there, and made on the spot the arrangements necessary to hire it for the night.
It was not long before the stag party came and presented themselves at the door. They likewise had a courier … a man … who endeavored to rent the place. No avail. The old gentleman in gray kimono and pointed cap who was a sort of director (whatever his real title is I have no idea) politely but firmly told them that the place had already been taken. He was positive. No, the money made no difference. He was very sorry. No, not even for twice that sum, not for ten times. It was very sad, but it was so.
And we hid on the balcony and watched the chagrin of my husband and his party, who, slightly aflame with good Scottish liquid, went away again to some other place of amusement, leaving the fragrant Japanese air behind them rather blue with language which was not what the “Jeune Fille” should hear.
The Clipper Grassendale at Sea, Hong Kong School, 19th century.
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And so I could go on, almost endlessly I feel, with the little personal notes, the anecdotes, the tiny-but-curious little experiences and stories. But when I have so much to tell, why stop with Japan?
The door of the Orient had opened wide before me. I would plunge through as into a bright garden. There was China lying ahead of me, and India and Borneo, and Sumatra and Java and all the others, calling me, inviting me.
Circumstances favored me. They favored my traveling by hurting my heart. I returned to America with my husband, only to find that our life together was not advisable. We agreed to separate, and the divorce followed shortly. That is not an interesting story.
The earlier day that I set sail in my own ex-missionary ship, alone, for the South Seas, an eager, bewildered little girl on a lark, was not more exciting to me than that day some years later when I left the Golden Gate once more, in a steamer, for Hong Kong. There was a sense of finality about it. On my first escapade I had been “through with love and men.” This time I was even more “through.” Marriage I had tried, and tried rather fully. The Sea of Matrimony, the “young girl’s birthright,” had no glamor for me. I had also had enough of Western ideas, of Western forms and principles and conventions. I would go back and into that glorious, age-old East, which was rich in thought before Greece, before Rome, before Egypt, and where millions upon millions of yellow men spend a lifetime seeking the philosophy of that lifetime.
There is one incident of that trip which must be told, for it was the first time in my life that I came into contact with crime. But I fear I shall have to distort my story slightly, for the crime was in all the papers, and the criminal is still alive. I do not, at my age, wish to be held as material witness after-the-fact in a case which flared and died over thirty
years ago.
It begins with dinner on the first day out.
Sitting at my table were two very unusual-looking persons, man and wife. He was about 65 years old, was possessed of one of the most beautiful faces I had ever seen on any male, beautiful in spite of whitening gray hair. His meticulously trained and combed mustachios which, over the merest zeste of a goatee, classed him immediately to anyone who knew the Southwest. He was of that fine rare type who settled in Southern California, grew to money and power, and built for themselves something which resembled a little feudal state.
He was Spanish. His name was something like Don José d’Almeida y Calledos. He wore a costume that accentuated the grand air of dignity which was naturally his … black velvet jacket and silken stock. His English was accurate, but tinged with a slight accent.
But his wife was even more astounding.
She had green eyes.
When I say “green,” I do not mean gray-green nor greenish nor anything but sheer emerald hue. I have never since seen anything like it. And they contrasted with the vivid copper-red hair, a skin as white as wax, and the exquisitely carved features of the unmistakable aristocrat … or the supposedly unmistakable aristocrat.
But Donna d’Almeida was no Spanish lady. She was an American from New Orleans, as I soon discovered in conversation, and she was only 35 years of age. Furthermore, there was something about her … I could not for the life of me have defined it … that was out of tune. I took it to be some trick of her strange eyes … but you shall see.
On the fifth day of our long voyage, Don José did not appear for dinner. He was indisposed, his wife told me. And she and I were drawn more than ever into conversation. More than ever I felt that there was something strange about the woman, but I liked her. She was unusual, and far more than handsome.
And I'd Do It Again Page 8
