A Most Immoral Woman

by Linda Jaivin

  Other foreigners of Morrison’s acquaintance were wont to declaim at length about the quotidian delights of the ancient capital. His friend Lady Susan Townshend was even writing a book about them—My Chinese Notebook, she was going to call it. She had shown him the draft. It was full of vivid descriptions of such adventures as riding in rough Peking carts (once was enough for Lady Susan) and visiting opium dens. Morrison was not immune to the exotic, the strange, the constant sensory assault that was China. Yet he could not help but feel that such literary effusions were the proper domain of women, dilettantes and professional travellers—not the professional journalist. Since the publication of An Australian in China almost ten years earlier, he’d barely confessed them to his journal.

  Coming now upon a crowd gathered around some entertainment, he happily joined the throng. At its centre stood a man holding a stick on which three songbirds perched. A flick of the showman’s wrist sent the birds wheeling through the air. When he whistled, they landed back on the stick in turn, taking their bows by bobbing up and down. The onlookers laughed and applauded, rewarding him with a rain of copper coins.

  Finally, Morrison arrived at his destination, Liu Li Chang, originally the site of the imperial kilns that produced the thousands of golden roof tiles for the palaces within the Forbidden City. Liu Li Chang was a thriving street of curio merchants and booksellers and one of Morrison’s favourite haunts in the capital. Past the ornate shopfronts lay treasure troves of rare books, fine calligraphy, old paintings and stone rubbings, as well as bibelots such as jade archery rings, snuff bottles and belt ornaments. The clicking of abacuses, the chink of lidded teacups on saucers and the rolling hum of negotiations were sounds that gladdened Morrison’s heart today more than usual.

  Half an hour later, a small paper-wrapped parcel under his arm, Morrison passed whistling back through Ch’ien-men Gate. In a generous mood, he felt in his pocket for a few coins to throw the hollow-eyed beggars who were huddled against the wall like sacks of rags. These were the survivors; every morning a cart came to collect the bodies of those who had not made it through the night.

  Back in the Tartar City, Morrison quickened his footsteps in the direction of Rue Marco Polo in the eastern part of the Legation Quarter, not far from the Ch’ien-man Gate, and the home of Sir Robert Hart, Inspector-General of the Chinese Customs Service. Hart was the most influential foreigner in the entire Celestial Empire—‘Our Hart’, the Empress Dowager called him.

  ‘Ah, Dr Morrison.’ Hart emerged from his cluttered study with Morrison’s calling card in his hand. He was immaculate in grey-striped trousers and black vest and coat, his white beard neatly combed. The only discordant note in the ensemble was a tie of blue ribbon. Once, on a holiday in Peking’s Western Hills, Hart had famously reached for what he thought was his black tie, recoiling just in time, for the ‘tie’ was in fact a small, venomous snake. Since then, the Inspector-General had only worn ties of blue.

  Though he was greeted cordially, Morrison never could escape the sensation that Hart viewed him with a similar wariness to that with which he beheld narrow black ties. He knew that Hart disapproved both of his harsh views on the Empress Dowager and his warmongering on behalf of Japan. For his part, Morrison suspected the Irishman, who had only returned to Europe twice in forty years and who had scandalously taken a native concubine, of viewing the world through Chinese lenses. Hart had outrageously described the Boxers as patriotic, their movement ‘justifiable’ in theory. It made Morrison’s blood boil. Yet for all his acquaintances in the Mandarinate, he trusted only Hart to provide him with an accurate sense of the court’s thinking on the war.

  On this day, Morrison managed to extract only the most general sort of information from Hart: China would most likely remain neutral. With ongoing threats to Chinese and particularly Manchurian lives and property, however, Hart warned that neutrality might not be enforceable. The court should not be held responsible if there was some resistance to the Japanese incursion by the population. Beyond this, Hart could not or would not say.

  As Morrison was taking his leave, Hart’s niece, the charming and clever Juliet Bredon, came in from a walk, apples in her cheeks. Five years earlier, on a group excursion to the Western Hills, Morrison and Juliet, then eighteen, had ducked into a Chinese temple to hide from a tedious old missionary. The crusty old man of God had found them anyway and insisted they join him for biscuits and tea. ‘Bad biscuits, worse tea,’ Morrison had observed afterwards, and young Juliet had laughed musically.

  ‘Hello, Dr Morrison,’ she greeted him with a happy smile. ‘We haven’t seen you for such a long while.’

  ‘Hello, Juliet.’ He smiled back. ‘You’re looking lovely this fine morning.’

  ‘Dr Morrison was just leaving,’ her uncle said.

  Useless old sleevedog, thought Morrison as he trudged towards his next appointment. It was with a Mandarin named Hwang and was ostensibly to congratulate him on winning one of the Ch’ing Court’s highest honours. Hwang and his interpreter, Kwang, received the Australian with elaborate courtesy, a plate of sesame-flavoured sweets, and cups of fragrant leaf tea from Hunan. Yet when Morrison tried to steer the topic on to the war, Hwang brought up the invasion of Tibet by British forces several months earlier.

  ‘The Tibet Expedition is wholly in China’s favour,’ Morrison argued. ‘The Russian Empire, as you know, is trying to encircle British India. If they succeed, it will benefit neither of our countries. And yet, as you are aware, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama is so friendly with the Russians he has a Russian courtier. It was widely rumoured that the Ch’ing Court was thinking to allow him to invite in the Russians. England does not wish Tibet to remain a wild and barbarian country without rulers. But neither does it want to see Tibet fall under the shadow of the Tsar’s empire. No, it must become another province of China, governed as Yunnan and Szechuan are.’

  Kwang translated for Hwang and then conveyed Hwang’s response: ‘Does England itself really have no territorial designs on Tibet?’

  ‘We would not take one foot. It is China that must make Tibet strong.’

  ‘Correct me if I am mistaken,’ Kwang said after a thoughtful pause, ‘but I recall that in 1900, Mr Younghusband wrote a letter to your own honourable newspaper. I read it and memorised it, for a facility for memorisation is the benefit of my poor education in the Chinese classics. If you will permit me, I’d like to recite a line in the letter that I have never forgotten…’

  Morrison nodded, setting his jaw against the inevitable. He had a fair idea of what he was about to hear.

  ‘He said, and I quote, “The earth is too small, the portion of it they occupy is too big and rich, and the intercourse of nations is now too intimate to permit the Chinese keeping China to themselves.”’ Kwang translated what he had said for Hwang before returning his attention to their guest. ‘What do you think of that, Dr Morrison?’

  ‘I do believe,’ Morrison replied in a voice that didn’t admit any doubt, ‘that the intercourse of nations has benefited China as it benefits Britain.’

  Hwang, upon receiving the translation, smiled and urged more tea on his guest. Morrison understood that to be a signal to take his leave.

  Damned stupid day, Morrison thought as he trudged home. But then he noticed the glow of buds on the tendrils of the capital’s willow trees and how the canals had begun to thaw, though a fringe of ice still clung to the edges of the man-made lakes. A swooping music filled the air. Lifting his gaze, he watched a flock of snow-flower pigeons soar past, lacquered bamboo whistles fastened to their tails with fine copper wire. The birds circled against a brilliant blue sky, looping over the sparkling golden roofs of the palace. His spirits rose. The remnants of his gloom evaporated in the spring sunshine. He picked up his pace.

  Back home, Cook’s new lark was singing in its bamboo cage and the Lion’s Head goldfish, beloved of all his servants, chased the dragonflies that hovered over their blue-and-white ceramic tub. The potted orchids lovingly cultivate
d by Kuan had days earlier erupted in delicate white-and-pink blooms. Grass was sprouting anew between the paving stones of the courtyard and in tufts from the roof tiles. Nature’s pulse was quickening. Morrison would not wait on the mail or fret for one minute longer.

  ‘Kuan!’

  His Boy hurried out of the house in response.

  ‘We’re going to Tientsin.’ Then his face fell, for Kuan handed him a telegram. Lionel James was on his way to Peking. Tientsin would have to wait. Whilst a visit from Granger wouldn’t have kept Morrison from his travels, James, unfortunately, was a different story.

  More than two weeks had passed since he’d met Miss Mae Ruth Perkins, and one month since the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War. Both seemed as distant as history.

  In Which the Famous War Correspondent

  Describes a Skirmish with Tofu and Morrison

  Enlists Himself in the Battle for the

  Future of Correspondence

  ‘So there we are in Yokohama, in this room with walls made out of, what, toothpicks and paper, and I’ve got my boots off. I don’t feel happy about that at all. We’re sitting cross-legged. It’s putting my legs to sleep. Brinkley’s pushing all these damned oddly shaped little dishes at me. I hardly recognise a thing. All very pretty but it doesn’t look like food. This is food.’ Lionel James pointed to his plate of boiled mutton with caper sauce. ‘You know what all that sushi-shimi stuff looked like to me? It looked just like the titbits of information on the war that the Japanese government is doling out to correspondents in lieu of access to the front. Nicely packaged, wholly insubstantial. This doesn’t bother our colleague Brinkley, though. Neither the quality of the information nor the food. Our man in Japan has gone completely native. Speaks the lingo, eats raw fish with sticks, has taken a little Japanese missus. He’s telling me the Japanese have the most developed aesthetic in the world; couldn’t be more proud of his adopted country’s achievements if they were his own. He pushes a plate towards me. On it is something that looks like wet shoelaces left behind by leprechauns. “Seaweed,” he says, as if that will really make me go for it. Then he urges on me something that looks like a block of milk. It falls apart on my camp fork and tastes like damp. He tells me it has as much protein as a plate of chops. That’s when I know he has passed the point of no return. I had a damned hard time keeping him on the subject.’

  ‘Did you meet his wife?’ Morrison asked.

  ‘No. I hear she is a pretty sort.’

  ‘That she is. It’s interesting to observe them together, for you can find the key to Brinkley in their interaction. She appears frail and ladylike, and makes a great show of deferring to her husband. In truth, she leads him by the nose no less surely than if she’d put a ring through it, as the farmers here do with their buffalo. Our uxorious colleague submits to her—and to her country—as wholeheartedly as a Mohammedan submits to Allah. I am guessing that your plan to report from the scene of the action makes him nervous, though he chooses an approach of Oriental indirectness by which to communicate his concerns.’

  ‘I don’t understand his reservations. The plan is a boon to our mutual employer and to journalism itself!’ James thumped the table. The crockery danced. Kuan poked his head in to see if anything was the matter. ‘Sorry, old chap,’ James apologised as the vibrations settled.

  When Morrison had described James earlier to Dumas, he’d mentioned his determination. He’d forgotten that his colleague’s other leading quality was rampant excitability.

  ‘G.E.,’ James continued, ‘I’ve reported from Africa and India. I’ve had to get my reports out by pigeons, camels, horses, skin-floats, heliographs, bottles, field telegraph, boats and flags, cutthroat Pathans and long-limbed Ethiopians. It is ludicrous in this modern age, with all the advances made in wireless telegraphy, that we must take such risks. We have steam-powered rotary presses that can print hundreds of thousands of newspapers in an hour. But what’s the point if the news is stale?’ He went to bang on the table again but stopped himself just in time. ‘The public deserves better. We deserve better. The future of correspondence rests with the science of Hertzian waves.’

  ‘Indeed. This is the twentieth century after all.’ Morrison unexpectedly found himself infected with his colleague’s enthusiasm.

  A grateful smile lit James’s face for a moment as he fumbled in his pockets for tobacco pouch and pipe.

  ‘Here’s the problem with Brinkley,’ Morrison said, watching James prepare his smoke with practised, yellow-stained fingers. ‘It’s two problems really. One is pressure from the Japanese. They’re worried about the difficulty of censoring your reports. As you know, they’re fanatical about controlling news from the battlefield. Brinkley knows that if the Japanese have any complaints, they will go to him.’

  ‘I will take full responsibility for my reports.’

  ‘That’s not how it works in the Orient.’

  ‘I’m not an Oriental. What’s the second problem?’

  ‘It’s obvious. The Japanese have been refusing all journalists, and most military attachés, access to the front. And so any news that they had given The Times permission to steam straight into the Siege of Port Arthur, on its own boat no less, would incite the rest of the correspondents violently. Your reports will make their dispatches look even more belated and second-hand than they are. Never mind the Japanese navy—the other correspondents will be watching you like a hawk. This naturally places Brinkley, as your colleague, in a deucedly awkward position.’

  James sucked on his pipe, unmoved, filling the room with the scent of tobacco and a cloud of stubbornness. ‘That’s not my concern.’

  Morrison liked James. He wanted him and The Times to succeed. He would try to make it happen—no, he would make it happen. It occurred to him that he was at an age and in a position in life where he ought to be able to forgo the sort of compromises forced upon youth. He did not need to sleep in short beds any longer. He had been recently unbalanced by romantic obsession and underemployment; a focus, a mission, would restore him. ‘We will get Britain’s minister in Japan, Sir Claude MacDonald, to help us.’ Morrison heard himself say the words ‘we’ and ‘us’. He was committed. It felt good.

  ‘Do you know Sir Claude?’ James asked hopefully. ‘Brinkley said that Sir Claude has already told him that we’re wasting our time and our employer’s money. Noel, the admiral in charge of the China Station, is apparently applying considerable pressure on the minister to go against us. Brinkley says Noel is furious at the thought that through some blunder or indiscretion we might compromise British neutrality. Or create some sort of precedent by which journalists could demand access to any future theatre of war and the right to report from it unhindered. I suspect that is the real problem, franchement.’ James pronounced the French word like a true Englishman, biting down on the ‘ch’ as though it were crackling.

  ‘You’d be right about that,’ Morrison said. ‘The thing about MacDonald is that he may have been a good military officer but he doesn’t have the marrow for diplomacy. He needs to be able to stand up to the likes of Noel. You know, they say Lord Salisbury only appointed MacDonald minister because Salisbury believed that MacDonald was in possession of evidence proving that he, Salisbury, was Jack the Ripper.’

  James’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. ‘Is there any truth—’

  ‘No of course not,’ Morrison replied. ‘It’s just scuttlebutt. But it’s true that MacDonald is a vacillating and selfish old dry-as-dust who, just as water always flows downhill, will always do what’s easiest for himself. Especially if he is being pressured. You know the old joke about the difference between a diplomat and a virgin?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘If a diplomat says yes, he means perhaps. If a diplomat says perhaps, he means no. If a diplomat says no, he’s no diplomat.’

  ‘And the virgin?’

  ‘If a virgin says no, she means perhaps. If a virgin says perhaps, she means yes. If a virgin says yes—well, she’s no
virgin.’

  ‘Ha. I must remember that one.’

  ‘Anyway, the point is—best to act discreetly for the time being. And work on the Japanese. The rest will fall into line if you can get past them.’

  ‘I am the soul of discretion,’ James asserted. ‘And I am working on the Japanese.’

  There was something in the way James said this that made Morrison think there was something else to the story. But if he had been hinting at something, he offered no further clues.

  ‘All right then,’ Morrison said after a pause. ‘I shall write to Sir Claude forthwith. I shall not mention anything about the neutrality issue as that could be tricky. Instead, in my letter I shall impress upon him how, if you are allowed to report directly from the front, The Times will be the paper of record on this war. It will reflect well on all of us and be to the glory of Britannia. I shall compliment him on the foresight and spine that he will have displayed in standing with us and make it clear that his hand will be one of those that has written this new page in the history of journalism.’

  Morrison drank in the admiration on James’s face like a tonic.

  In Which Jameson Shows That, Whilst

  Undeniably Vile, He Is at Least Consistent, and

  Our Hero Reads a Most Immoral Book

  When Dumas arrived from Tientsin on the evening train, Morrison related the gist of his conversation with Lionel James.

  ‘Let us hope permission is forthcoming,’ Dumas said. ‘Where is your man now?’

  ‘On his way back to Japan.’

  ‘And your plans?’

  ‘I am stuck here for another day doing the rounds of the ministers and attachés on his behalf. As for my own best plan of action, I am still mulling that over.’