A Curious Life for a Lady

by Pat Barr

  There she discovered that, for once, her unflappability had not paid off: it was war and she had landed herself in the thick of it. ‘Japanese transports were landing troops, horses and war material in steam launches, junks were discharging rice and other stores for the commissariat department, coolies were stacking it on the beach, and the movement by land and sea was continuous…. On landing, I found the deadly dull port transformed: the streets resounded to the tread of Japanese troops in heavy marching order, trains of forage carts blocked the road. Every house in the main street of the Japanese settlement was turned into a barrack and crowded with troops, rifles and accoutrements gleamed in the balconies, crowds of Koreans, limp and dazed, lounged in the streets or sat on the knolls, gazing vacantly at the transformation of their port into a foreign camp.’

  III

  The Sino-Japanese war, though not officially declared for several weeks, was virtually under way. It eventually resulted in agonies of loss and humiliation for the Chinese, new forms of national chaos and frustration for the Koreans, and, for the victorious Japanese, triumphs which soon lost their savour and turned to gall. Ostensibly, Japan had sent the troops which Isabella saw to help the Korean King quell the Tong-hak rebellion which had indeed broken out, and to protect its own nationals. In reality, their coming was the result of long-term military and political strategy aimed at ousting China from its traditional position as suzerain over Korea, and implementing instead a Japanese policy of reform and indirect control. Already the Chinese whom Isabella saw that eventful June day in Chemulpo seemed to have foreseen the worst results of this exercise. They had quite lost their heads, she says, and ‘frenzied by race-hatred and pecuniary loss’ were transformed into madmen.

  Another man in Chemulpo who lost his head that day was the British Vice-Consul, who arrived in a very agitated state at Isabella’s inn to say that, in his view, the situation was perilously explosive and that she, a defenceless elderly widow, should leave the country immediately. Indeed he positively insisted, and she reluctantly obeyed, though under protest, for she had left her decent clothes, passport and money in Seoul whither she had been bound. ‘It is one of my travelling rules never to be a source of embarrassment to British officials,’ she explained, and so boarding a little Japanese steamer, she went to Chefoo on the China coast. She arrived wearing her dirty, travel-stained tweed suit and with just four cents in her pocket, and hung shyly around the British Consulate for some time, summoning courage to approach its suddenly imposing portals. ‘I experienced,’ she admits, ‘something of the anxiety and timidity which are the everyday lot of thousands, and I have felt a far tenderer sympathy with the penniless, especially the educated penniless, ever since.’ She need not have worried; her name was passport enough. The Consul welcomed her warmly and arranged for her bank credit, his wife made up a bundle of summer clothes, she tiffined with one Lady O’Connor and was very soon on her pilgrimage again.

  At first, it was a series of minor disasters. She went from Chefoo to Newchwang in Manchuria and from there up the River Liao in a ‘pea-boat’ as she called it, towards Mukden. She lay for several days in the pea-boat’s cabin stricken with severe fever while the worst tempests for years tore the countryside apart around her, and swamped the hold so that her bed and belongings were sodden with filthy bilge-water. Still, in the resultant floods, also the worst for years, the best place to be was in a boat, for, during the rest of the lunatic journey, they floated past children paddling about in wash-tubs and people perched in tree-tops holding babies, pigs and hens in their arms. For the last stage of the adventure she hired a wooden cart, which overturned in a quagmire, rolled down a bank and deposited her on a house-roof, with a broken arm and many bruises.

  Nevertheless, by 1 August, when the Sino-Japanese war was officially declared, Isabella, battered but undefeated, was in Mukden, describing and photographing the Chinese troops as they went tramping through the old Tartar city on their way to Korea. They looked the losers they would be, she thought. Their clothes were stagy and unserviceable – loose-sleeved red jackets, blue or apricot trousers, boots of thick black cotton cloth; their weapons were of mainly historical value – muzzle-loading muskets, spears and bayonets; and their general impedimenta were medieval – paper fans and umbrellas, silk banners and singing birds tethered to sticks. It was a sad, colourful pageant shambling loosely through the muddy streets; ‘It was nothing but murder to send thousands of men so armed to meet the Japanese with their deadly Murata rifles’. And murder it was during the next few months as the Japanese relentlessly pushed the Chinese back out of Korea during a series of sharp, cruel encounters.

  While these were in progress, Isabella ‘was hunted from pillar to post by “scares” with which I had no sympathy,’ she complains to John Murray, seeming to look upon the conflict as something of a personal affront, and eventually, in early November, she ‘escaped from the grandmotherliness of consuls and the fortunes of war in a little German vessel trading to Vladivostock’. While in Russia she visited the Korean settlements in Siberia that were the main object of her journey. The settlers, living in neat, prosperous villages in the region of Possiet Bay, were proof, in her eyes, that the Korean could develop into an industrious, honest, orderly worker if conditions were favourable. Consequently, a principal thesis in her book on Korea is that the people were redeemable and had great potential; it was the corrupt and oppressive system of government that had so impoverished and devitalised the country.

  In January 1895, Isabella was at last able to return to Korea, whose affairs had dominated her interest during the six months’ absence. In Manchuria the war still raged and the Japanese were still winning it; in Korea, according to the Almanac, ‘The wild goose stands with its face to the north and the magpie builds for itself a nest. The crow of the pheasant is heard on his hillside, hens feed on milk and the lake’s stomach becomes solid.’ But the lake was one of the few solid things left in the land during this period of flux and chaos. The Japanese, headed by astute Count Inouye, were in control and were trying to impose their policy of reform and modernisation on the stubborn, reactionary Koreans. Inouye, as ‘adviser’, attended every meeting of the Korean cabinet; the King ‘had become little more than a “salaried automaton”’; the Six Boards by which the country had been misgoverned for so long – of Civil Affairs, Ceremonies, War, Revenue, Punishments and Works – had been swept away and replaced by Ministerial Departments with Japanese supervisors and go-ahead titles such as Education, Justice and Foreign Affairs. The situation was politically complex and fascinating, and Isabella responded to it with the fervour of a keen foreign correspondent. In a letter to a friend, she explained, ‘I am staying with Mr Hillier, the British Representative, and find the new regime wonderfully absorbingly interesting, and I have all facilities for studying it. The weather is superb; the severe cold suits me. I have freedom and you know how I love that! I have a Korean soldier of the Legation Guard to go out with me and carry my camera and a horse and a charming host…. I am utterly steeped in the East. I think, taken altogether, that this journey is wider and more absorbing in its interests than any I have ever had. I am so thankful for my capacity for being interested. What would my lonely life be without it?’

  Thus engrossed in Korea, Isabella was very much pleased to be granted an audience with its King and Queen in the Kyeng-pok Palace. The Korean Queen was very much the power at the side of the throne, a ruthless, sharp-witted, conservative woman who favoured continued alliance with the Chinese instead of the Japanese – a predilection that would soon cost her her life. ‘A nice-looking slender woman’ she was, Isabella recorded, ‘with glossy raven-black hair and a very pale skin, the pallor enhanced by pearl powder. The eyes were cold and keen, and the general expression of brilliant intelligence. As soon as she began to speak, and especially when she became interested in conversation, her face lighted up into something very like beauty’. Beside this brilliant personage, dressed in blue and crimson brocades, the King droope
d, ‘short and sallow, certainly a plain man wearing a thin moustache and a tuft on the chin’, with nervous twitching hands and mild frightened eyes. This unhappy pair, surrounded as they were by secret enemies and court intrigue, were won over by Isabella’s air of confident and sympathetic integrity. She was summoned to three further audiences, and during the last, held in strict privacy, the King entrusted her with a top-secret communication for the Foreign Office in London. Isabella was rather taken aback by this, and not knowing quite what to do with such a very august missive, eventually sent it to her resourceful publisher. John Murray, opening the latest news from his most astonishing lady traveller, must have been rather startled to read: ‘Dear Mr Murray, The enclosed is a confidential message from the King of Korea to the British Foreign Secretary …’

  The trouble was that practically all Koreans, from the royal family downwards, traditionally and thoroughly hated the Japanese, and the Japanese, pursuing their policy of modernisation with the hot-headed zeal of the newly converted, lacked tact and consistency of judgement. They poured a series of proclamations over the heads of the sullen people: ‘One day a decree abolished the three-feet-long tobacco pipes which were the delight of the Koreans of the capital; another, there was an enlightened statute ordering the planting of pines to remedy the denudation of the hills around Seoul, the same Gazette directing that duly-appointed geomancers should find “an auspicious day” on which the King might worship at the ancestral tablets! One day barbarous and brutalising punishments were wisely abolished; another, there appeared a string of vexatious and petty regulations calculated to harass the Chinese out of the kingdom and appointing as a punishment for the breach of them a fine of 100 dollars or a 100 blows!’

  One of the many consequences of these indiscriminate reforms was an epidemic of government resignations on the time-honoured oriental ground of ‘official sickness’. To these, the King usually published, in that same Official Gazette, a standard reply: ‘We have examined your resignation. These are times of re-organisation when the entire realm is affected and things profitable and harmful are to be determined. Why then do you plead sickness? Resign not, but take up your duties and attend immediately (or soon) at your Department.’ Probably the official thus ‘advised’ did return to his department; equally probably he did nothing much when he got there. Yang-bans were past masters of the arts of inertia and passive non-cooperation, and the Japanese soon found that it was much easier to defeat the Chinese in battle than to reform the Koreans at home. In April 1895, the treaty of Shimonoseki brought the Sino-Japanese war to an end, and as the Japanese had been completely victorious they naturally expected to retain supremacy in Korea – but the opportunity was bungled.

  Meanwhile, Isabella had left Korea for the summer, but had decided to stay in the East. ‘I find it quite impossible to tear myself away,’ she told Murray – her health was so much improved, events were all so fascinating. So she went to China for a few months, where she lectured to the Hong Kong Literary Society on Korea and Lesser Tibet and then travelled by houseboat to Swatow, Hangchow and Shao Hsing. At the latter place, she stayed with the Rev. W. G. Walshe, and he put on record for Anna Stoddart’s biography one of the very few really lively, revealing accounts of Isabella at this restless period in her life. ‘Her visit to me was very interesting in every way. I introduced to her notice some new features of interest daily, and her stock of photographic plates soon came to an end in her endeavour to secure lasting pictures of the ancient buildings and monuments in which our city abounds. She usually rode in a sedan chair on her expeditions, and, though generally very much exhausted when the close of the day came, she appeared to be tireless so long as anything of interest remained to claim her attention. She was very easy to entertain, and my bachelor establishment had no difficulty in supplying her wants, so long as she was provided with indigestible things in the way of pastry. She generally breakfasted in her room and rose late, retiring at night about 11 p.m. apparently worn out; but she always had sufficient reserve of strength to occupy an extra hour or two in the development of her photographs…. A special fancy of hers was the study of our local flora and fauna, and new varieties of trees and shrubs were her particular delight. Her absolute unconsciousness of fear was a remarkable characteristic; and even in remote places, where large crowds assembled to witness her photographic performances, she never seemed in the least to realise the possibility of danger. Had she done so, she would have missed a great deal of what she saw and learned. On more than one occasion I was conscious of a feeling of nervousness, though I flattered myself that I knew something of the character of the people among whom I lived; but even in the face of the largest and noisiest crowds, Mrs Bishop proceeded with her photography and observations as calmly as if she were inspecting some of the Chinese exhibitions in the British Museum.

  ‘On her return to the coast, via Ningpo, I insisted on escorting her by canal to the river, where a house-boat was to await her; but she entirely declined to accept any further attention and I reluctantly took leave of her there, with a journey of two days before her to be accomplished without any companionship. I shall never forget the picture of the white-haired lady sitting alone in the front of the boat, as she waved her farewells – it was so characteristic of her to stand alone and independent of help, even when most cheerfully volunteered. She would not even accept a reasonable provision for the journey and contented herself with a few necessaries, including filtered water and some fresh eggs; and as it happened she was not destined to enjoy even these, for, owing to her ignorance of the language, she was not able to express her wishes to the boatmen, and as a result they boiled the eggs in the filtered water for the first meal, leaving her without any drinking water for the rest of the journey. Mrs Bishop was very anxious to conciliate the natives of whatever country she passed through, and when travelling in the interior of China, she generally adopted a costume which was designed to fulfil the Chinese canons of good taste. The principal feature of it was a large loose jacket, or mantle of “pongee” which effectively disguised the figure of the wearer, but which unlike Chinese garments generally was furnished with the most capacious pockets, in which she carried all sorts of travelling paraphernalia, including some articles of her own design. Amongst other things she used to produce from one of the pockets a portable oil lamp, ready for use at a moment’s notice, and it seemed rather remarkable that the oil did not leak…. Mrs. Bishop impressed me as being a woman of unusual gifts, not only as a speaker and writer, but also as an observer and collector of information, possessing so much courage and force of character as to make her practically fearless, undismayed by obstacles, and undeterred by physical weakness; and yet there was nothing of that masculinity which is so common a feature of women who have made their mark in distinctively masculine fields of activity. Her nature was most sympathetic and wherever she went her first consideration was to study the social condition of the country, the position of women, the treatment of the sick, etc., and to devise means for the alleviation of pain and distress. My association with her, though covering but a short period, will ever be one of my happiest memories.’ The Walshe vignette is interesting because it suggests, without maliciousness, her slight dottiness, and confirms that in her old age she was sustained by that same blend of fearlessness, resourcefulness and womanly sympathy which had so impressed people twenty-five years before.

  After leaving China, Isabella went briefly to Japan: ‘I am ill with rheumatism and sciatica, and am going next week to Tokyo for the best advice and afterwards to some baths’, she explained to a friend. ‘My plan is to get quietness and seclusion if possible, and to wear Chinese dress, in which it is possible to be easy and comfortable. I am in rags and most of my stockings have no feet. My boots were so absolutely done that I had to wear straw shoes over them, but I have now got Japanese shoes.’ However long Isabella travelled she never learned to cope with shoes and stockings; they, together with servants and doorbells, were among the most infuriating of
civilisation’s ‘everyday drudgeries’.

  Her ailments and desire for quiet seemed to evaporate when, in early autumn, she heard rumours of fresh disasters in Korea and, like a good war reporter on the scent, took the next steamer back to Chemulpo. The rumours were true, Seoul was in uproar and things were as bad as they could be. The Korean Queen had been murdered, and the assassination, it turned out, had been perpetrated with the connivance of the new Japanese Resident, Viscount Miura, an unscrupulous man of military background who had replaced Count Inouye in office the month before. The killing itself, as Isabella reconstructs it from eyewitness accounts, was accomplished with brutal efficiency. ‘Japanese troops entered the Palace, and formed in military order under the command of their officers round the small courtyard of the King’s house and at its gate protecting the assassins (Korean troops, drilled by Japanese). As the Japanese entered the building, the unfortunate King hoping to divert their attention and give the Queen time to escape, came into a front room where he could be distinctly seen. Some of the Japanese assassins rushed in brandishing their swords, pulled His Majesty about and beat and dragged about some of the Palace ladies by the hair…. The Crown Prince, who was in an inner room, was seized, his hat torn off, and threatened with swords to make him show the way to the Queen…. The Crown Prince saw his mother rush down a passage followed by a Japanese with a sword, and there was a general rush of assassins for her sleeping apartment…. Kyong-jik, Minister of the Royal Household, seems to have given the alarm, for the Queen was dressed and was preparing to run and hide herself. When the murderers rushed in he stood with outstretched arms in front of Her Majesty, trying to protect her, furnishing them with the clue they wanted. They slashed off both his hands and inflicted other wounds, but he contrived to drag himself into the King’s presence, where he bled to death. The Queen, flying from the assassins, was overtaken and stabbed, falling as if dead, but one account says, that recovering a little, she asked if the Crown Prince, her idol, was safe, on which a Japanese jumped on her breast and stabbed her through and through with his sword.’