The letters which never reached him

Front matter

r -WT.* & % -sms s

^*0

<lK

LETTER I Vancouver, August 1899

YOUR letter which awaited me here has made me very happy — all the more so because it does not sound so bad as I had feared. It would be almost humiliating if Peking without me were not to appear a trifle greyer and lonelier to you, and I should like you to miss me a little — but not too much. It is all a question of shadings, and you, who have studied colouring on the softest and most mellow of old Chinese brocades, have probably learnt there to find out the very tint which would be welcome to me.

And therefore I thank you for your letter and for so much else.

A

Our short holidays in Japan have passed with that alarming rapidity which is the property of good times. I will wisely abstain from sending youabelated description of our journey, as you know Madame Chrysantheme’s home so much better than I do. I will only tell you that I thought much of you there, for, thanks to all that you had told me and through the books you had lent me, I already knew Japan when I got there. It seemed like meeting many old friends. The tea-house girls, who served the rickshaw coolies with the same graceful politeness as us, the labourers who waded knee-deep in the muddy rice-fields; and, during rainy weather, covered themselves with reed-mats, whose sticking-out points gave them the appearance of big, busy hedgehogs : they all seemed like figures out of a well-known picture-book to whom one is inclined to say, ‘Oh yes, that’s you and you — I am pleased to meet you once more.’

But the most delightful meetings I had in Japan were those with the many flowers, whom I had already known elsewhere as japonicum or japonica, and whom I now saw in their own home, the same, but so much sweeter and more beautiful — just as truly nice people are always the nicest in their own house.

Japan is the first and only foreign country in which I should like to settle and to stay ‘ for good/ or rather ‘ for better for worse/ which means so much more.

On our last morning at Yokohama two things happened without which Japan would not have been quite Japan. We were awakened by an earthquake, and we saw Fuji. Till then the big white gentleman had surlily worn a cap of clouds, but just when we were being rowed out to the steamer the mist lifted and we saw the snow-white peak, looking just as improbable in reality as in the thousands of Japanese pictures. And I thought how natural it is that the lonely high mountain-tops are so given to retiring behind cloudy veils, for even to younger and lesser beings than they the sight of the world is apt to become a bore. Out here they say that he who sees Fuji on the day of his departure will come back to Japan. You know that I am just a little superstitious — -faute de mieux — so now I will see if my nomad life ever takes me again to that land of flowers and smiles.

The first person whom we met on board our steamer was Bartolo, the great concessionhunter, who stayed so many months at the Hotel de Pekin, during a time when you were gone on one of your mysterious expeditions to some unknown place in one of the darkest parts of China, whose existence one has to take for granted. In those days Bartolo wished to provide the non-existing Chinese army with a gun of his own invention ; later on he tried to sell to the Chinese Government a plan for the irrigation of the Gobi desert. He who has heard some of the many devices which Bartolo and others like him untiringly invented for the benefit of the Chinese, can understand the deep pity with which you used to say, ‘ Poor, poor China.’ You showed, however, far less sympathy with the different foreign ministers, who all possessed some Bartolos by whom they were harassed with demands of political support for their fantastic concessions. In the opinion of the sanguine speculators the ministers never did enough for them, and these feelings often found vent in newspaper attacks and in parliamentary interpolations.

Bartolo was all beaming smiles, and told us that he had obtained his newest concession, not the one of the Gobi desert, but a more recent one for the right of exploitation of ruby mines. At first he had been somewhat doubtful for which Chinese province to claim this privilege, Kwangsu or Kwangtung, as he did not feel positive in which of them rubies were found ; finally he had decided on Kwangtung, after looking the matter up a little in Richthofen’s book, that gospel of all the disciples of the new faith : ‘Salvation through China.’

My brother and I were astonished at Bartolo’s having obtained this concession so quickly, all the more as just lately the Chinese have established a board for mining concerns, whose foremost duty it is to drag such questions into endless length. But Bartolo told us that the most influential members of this board were old Tsu and young Tsi — for young Tsi he procured the acquaintance of a foreigner from

Tientsin, as obliging as she was beautiful, and to one of the ‘ second wives ’ of old Tsu he sent, under cover of night, a golden tea-set. After that it had all been smooth sailing, and the Chinese only made a few little difficulties about his claim, pro forma , and to * save their faces/

Bartolo now is on his way to England, to float a great joint-stock company for the working of the ruby mines, from which he expects millions. He had provided himself for the voyage with a lot of tinned goods and special little luxuries, and at all meals on board he sent them freely round to his different friends. He is at bottom very good-natured, and he seemed to wish that we all should partake of his future riches.

It always makes me sad to hear people talk with such evident illusions about all the wealth they intend getting out of China, when I remember the infinite, heart-breaking poverty which I have seen there, worse than anywhere else in the world. Where are all the riches to come from ? But perhaps I am prejudiced, as I only know the hopelessly miserable north of China : possibly rubies do pave the roads in Kwangtung, about which I know as little as Bartolo.

I must now end this letter, for we are going out into the woods, but I shall write more to you from here, for we intend staying some days, that I may rest from the voyage and gather strength for our further journey. This first greeting is only to tell you that I have landed safely on the other side of the great waters. And now my imagination, which has ever been an audacious architect, builds up a gigantic bridge spanning the ocean from here to China, and a thousand thoughts and memories cross that bridge and travel to you.

LETTER II Vancouver, August 1899

My letter of yesterday, dear friend, dealt so exclusively with Bartolo, that you might be led to fancy that we had been the only passengers with him on that long voyage, but I will go on writing to-day and tell you about our other travelling companions.

Two Japanese interested me most. They were taking a wee bit of home with themselves, in the shape of a box, two feet square, and filled with earth, in which stones and dwarfed trees represented a miniature garden. They cared for this small garden with touching anxiety. Both evidently suffered much from sea-sickness, and their sallow complexions had gradually acquired queer greenish and purplish tints, but no matter how ill they were, as soon as a sunbeam stole through the heavy grey clouds, they crawled out of their cabin and brought their little box on deck, and as soon as the wind rose they tottered down again, carrying their wee bit of Japan with them. They were going to America to study, and on the way each and all served as object-lessons. They evidently were filled with a great sense of responsibility, especially for the time allotted to them, a responsibility about which most people are not so particular, and which in reality is the most serious of all. Each one of our travellers might have been the small Japanese school child of whom we are told that it was found after a violent earthquake sitting unharmed amongst the debris and going on diligently with the sum it had begun just before.

There were also Russian travellers on board, and English and Belgian engineers who came back from Peking, where they had tried to obtain rights for the construction of railways, which perhaps will be begun in tens of years, but more likely never at all. I remember so well how you told me that this general scramble for railway concessions embittered the Chinese almost more than anything else. And most of these grants, which had only been obtained by threats, were without any value for many years to come, and had only been claimed to forestall other competitors. In Peking captured concessions were bragged about as the Indians used to pride themselves on the number of scalps they had made. Nowhere as in China have I been so conscious of the infiniteness of space, yet nowhere as in Peking did it seem as if the wide world were not sufficient for the demands of men. The battle of existence was carried on there with that envious jealousy which would much rather see a country waste and barren than leave it to the hands of others. However rich and big the world is, the weak will always be left empty-handed, for the covetousness of the strong is larger than the largest space.

On the ship we heard endless arguments about the future of China, about ‘open door’ and ‘spheres of influence/ dismemberment and the claims of the different countries. But what in Peking was only hinted at, here amongst these travellers found loud expression with brutal frankness. One suddenly stood face to face with the bete humaine as it really is ; ever does it find its own share too small and that of the others too large. The secret desire of each was unveiled with harmless naivet£\ for oneself walled in large spheres of influence, but at the neighbour’s house a wide open barn-door.

They were only unimportant, isolated people who talked thus, yet their words opened wide, dreary perspectives on future strife and oppression, revealing the general tendency of the age, its grasping unscrupulousness, its servility before success, and its cruelty towards all those

WHICH NEVER REACHED HIM n on earth who cannot defend themselves. The two Japanese listened to all this, and although they said little, one could notice that for them Buddha and his teachings lay in the same forgotten distance as for the others Christ and His Word, and that they had fast acquired the Americano - European precept, ‘ Eat, if thou wouldst not be eaten.’

It was very foggy, very grey, and icily cold.

Occasionally a passenger would inquire if there were no fear of collisions. But then he was reassured by the answer that in these northern latitudes no other steamers plough the seas, and that if the unlikely were to happen, and we should meet some small sailing-craft, we were by far the weightier, carrying all down before us.

Thus we went on in the thick fog, and in long, regular intervals the fog-horn sounded weirdly.

Some of the passengers had gone to the smoking-room, and others had retired to their cabins. I was alone on deck, wrapped in my warmest furs. The fog had grown thicker than ever before, the visible world seemed shrunk to the space of a few feet; beyond that range, everything was a uniform dismal grey which rose and sank in silence. An immense weight oppressed me, so that I scarcely dared to breathe — and this weight was a nameless fear of that grey something out there which filled the whole world. A feeling of intense desolateness crept over me. I seemed to be quite alone, the last living being drifting in searching anguish through endless, empty space. And as I thus gazed out into vacancy, the grey masses began to move, to wave to and fro ; it seemed as if the wind swept heavy veils away, and suddenly there lay disclosed right before me a sheet of cold, dark northern sea. A rock rose out of it, snow-covered, and carrying on its crags long icicles which hung down to the sinisterlooking water. On the top of the rock sat a huge polar bear ; his paws were holding the carcass of the last animal he had found in this wilderness, and he looked triumphantly around as if to say, ‘ Now am I sole lord of the world.’ But already the black waters moved and gurgled, and out of them arose the shining body and the huge fins of a snake-like monster ; his walrus head carried a real mane, and from his mouth hung seaweed and the remnants of some small fish — the last he had found in the sea. His glassy, greenish eyes stared about, and they also seemed to say, ‘ Now I am quite alone, master of the world/ But suddenly the huge white bear and the sea-monster caught sight of each other : the enormous fins beat the waves, the cruel paws clawed at the rock. Both were yet gorged with food, but already they were measuring one another with angry looks like future adversaries. They had devastated the whole world, and now they met in this desolate waste for the ultimate fight. That would decide who remained lord of the world.

* To-day we passed quite near the Aleutians/ the captain said at dinner ; ‘ for a moment one could even see one of the smallest islands through the mist/

But I believe that for a moment the clouds which ever surround us had lifted, allowing me to catch a glimpse of the history of the world ; which often is a history of wild beasts.

LETTER III Vancouver, August 1899

We are still here, and for no special reason but that we enjoy the cool air of approaching autumn and the colouring of the foliage. This short rest gives us the illusion of being like other people who have a settled home.

In most of the streets here, rows of green trees have been planted, and in the morning rosy-cheeked children pass under them going to school on bicycles. Everywhere the gardens are aglow with late roses, larkspur, and asters ; bright nasturtiums cover the walls, and along the narrow gravel-paths rows of dahlias and hollyhocks are drawn up in lines, standing stiff and prim. Gardens in such northern countries have a touching charm of their own ; it seems as if the plants would achieve as much as possible in the short summer-time, and the flowers, which are in such a hurry to blossom, remind us, that we all do not know how long the time may be measured out in which the sun yet shines for us.

In the well-trimmed gardens stand pretty cottages that all have a comfortable, well-todo look, putting me in mind of that class of English novels which girls are allowed to read, and in which the heroes take three square meals a day and afternoon-tea with cream and cake besides.

The people who live in this port, surrounded by pine-woods and mountains, all look active and wide awake ; one feels at once that they are free and strong personalities who have founded here their homes, as independent of governmental help as they are unhampered by superior tutelage. They are proud of what they have already made out of this remote bay, and for the future they look with full confidence to their own strength of expansion and to the impulsive force which drives their race onward to new manifestations of its activity. For in contrast to so many others, the English colonies rest on the only healthy basis, an efficient middle class, which develops itself freely and untrammelled ; whilst in those countries, where the democratic party fights the colonial movei6 ment through short-sighted love of opposition, it robs itself of one of the most fertile fields of activity, where the chances of realising its political ideals would be greater than at home. When colonies, instead of springing from the genius of the people, are created by governmental decree, they ever remain but a puny product, reminding me of an artificial homunculus in a bottle, who is fed on chemical pills, and who has never drawn his nourishment from the breast of the great mother Nature.

Here we are far away indeed from those artificially reared colonies, to whom a Privy Councillor in the capital of the mothercountry sends, as the most important foundations of a new-born commonwealth, the scheme of a registry for landed property as well as police prescriptions about the hour at which lights must be extinguished and regulations about the muzzling of dogs.

Here nobody wears muzzles.

And people also are not constantly being governed. The laws have grown out of the necessities and experiences of the place itself ; they were not imported ready made.

I miss it so much not to be able to talk about all this and a thousand other things with you, dear friend. Who knows when I shall get an answer from you ? In your last letter, which I found here, you say that you are soon starting on another of your great exploration tours into the interior of China. I suppose all my letters will have to wait a long time at Shanghai, and will only reach you on your return. How I wish I could give wings to the white envelopes, so that they might follow you on your expedition like so many carrier-pigeons — every evening, when you arrived tired at some miserable Chinese inn, or at a Mongol tent-camp, you would find such a messenger from me, who would whisper to you how often I think of you, and how much I wish that you were never more going out on those journeys into the wilds, when you seem to vanish into space — for I am always so anxious about you.

B i8

LETTER IV Vancouver, August 1899

My great joy here is to be able once more to take long walks in the shade of old trees. Whoever has grown up in woodlands will always feel a yearning for them. Trees are like living beings to me, and each possesses an own individual physiognomy and expression, resulting from special events and experiences — just as it is with men also. I can so well understand the ancient Germans who looked upon trees as the abode of special divinities, and I remember that as a child I always had an aversion against St. Boniface who felled their sacred tree.

Often have I spoken to you of my longing for shaded wood-paths, when we had ascended the Peking town-wall after the day’s heat was over, and we were walking up and down on that only clean road which the Chinese capital can boast of. Do you remember ? Far below us the great town stretched out, all the little one -storied houses of a uniform grey, tile roofs curved up, with rows of small stone lions sitting on their edges. From above we could look right into the courtyards of th< next houses, and what we saw there was always the same — the same incomprehensible beings who led the identical existence which other similar beings have led since thousands of years. There was always the unchanging throng of numberless people, who appeared so enigmatical to our eyes in their monotonous similarity, and whose ivory brows are like doors shut on worlds into which we shall never penetrate. Year after year the same crowd passed through the streets, which were filled during months with thick, black, sticky mud, whilst they disappeared during the rest of the year in dense clouds of grey dust. And never was the slightest attempt made to change or to improve anything, for as it was so had it ever been, nobody had known other and better conditions, nobody was disturbed by them — particularly none of those who lived behind the reddish walls and under the yellow glittering roofs of the Imperial Town, leading an existence even more mysterious and more enigmatical than all the others.

V

Do you remember how often we have stood on the high walls looking across to the Forbidden City with its pitiable, crumbling splendour? I always had the impression as if a great nightmare - like weight were slowly descending on the whole town, as if the shadows of some terrible coming evil were gradually creeping over it. With what intense feeling of infinite remoteness have I not looked out on the endless plains and thought of other countries where incomprehensibility is not so ever present, where the people speak and bow, mourn and rejoice as we do. On the eve of my departure we have stood once more up there together, and you repeated the words which you had said so often during the last weeks: ‘Yes, it is better that you should go — it is better.’

Then we went home across the canal bridge, and as we were passing the small temple in whose yard a curio dealer had established his little shop of queer old rubbish, you said to me : ‘ Soon you will take other walks in other countries under old shady trees, as you have wished it here so often.’

You seemed so sad, dear friend, as you were saying that, and yet it was you who urged my brother to accept the appointment in New York, and even made us hurry our departure — why?

And now I am in a country of green, shady trees, and since we are here I go out daily for hours far into the woods. The most beautiful spot here is the Victoria Park, with its ancient trees, its splendid views on the sea, but better than all that, with its repose, its silence, and peace. How deeply would an artist like Boecklin enjoy this forest, which seems yet so near to an undisturbed primeval condition, that I should scarce wonder at meeting fauns and unicorns wandering over the soft, thick moss.

Yesterday I stayed very long in the Park. I had walked on dreamily till I arrived at its farthest end, where it reaches the most narrow point of an inlet of the sea. There the rocky coast falls down abruptly, and deep below the water rushes past. I sat down between ferns and creepers and looked into the depth of that narrow channel through which all ships must pass that come to Vancouver from the Far East. And I dreamt how delightful it would be to have a little house here hidden in the woods ; then I should go daily to this farthest point of land and sit under the old trees and look out for ships coming from far-away Cathay. And at last a ship would come on which you would be standing, and from my rock I should throw a large bunch of wild wood-flowers down to you.

For surely you will only stay in China as long as it is absolutely necessary? Already now, I think out so many beautiful plans for the time when I shall see you again.

When, where, will that be?

LETTER V Banff, September 1899

The early morning sun shines into my room, dear friend, the sparrows are chirping and they seem to mistake the seasons, thinking still of spring idyls now in the beginning of autumn. I will begin the day by calling out a good -morning to you, out into unfathomable distance. May a friendly breath of air bring my greeting to you wherever you are, and may it be as beautiful there as it is here.

This hotel is built on a wooded hill, and in its profound solitude it reminds me of some mediaeval manor in the Tyrol. From our windows we have an extensive view on a valley surrounded by mountains ; deep below between fir - trees a little river is running past hurriedly, and it grows into a rushing torrent at the time when the ice melts. In the background rise steep walls of rocks with snow-covered tops.

After the long journey I enjoy all the comfort here. It is delightful to sleep once more in a bed which neither rolls nor shakes, and to take meals without fear that the train could dash off, or that the traveller sitting opposite might get sea-sick.

Close to the hotel is a large, open-air swimming-bath, which is fed by warm sulphur springs. Firs stand around it, and the tepid water, the sunshine, and the exquisitely aromatic forest air form such a delightful whole that in summer one must wish to stop there for hours. Farther down towards the valley are natural grottos with bubbling springs and deep green ponds which disappear mysteriously under the rocks. The water is so clear that you see on its bottom the glimmering white sand and each little sparkling pebble. I keep thinking here of fair Undine. In such deep, clear waters she surely swam about in unconscious happiness like the little silvery fish, until she rose up to the earth and grew unhappy, because she fancied that it was necessary to possess a soul. What a pity that some world-wise, well-informed person did not enlighten poor Undine and tell her that of all possessions that of a soul can most easily be dispensed with, and that nobody glides better through life than the cold, slippery little fish with the greenish eyes that look so mysterious and deep, and in whose depth there is nothing at all.

We have met here an officer who commands the Mounted Police of the district. In winter, when the hotel is closed and the whole world far and wide is buried under the deep snow, that must be a truly solitary post. But in summer, and now in the beautiful autumn days, Captain White seems to lead quite a pleasant life. He is constantly at the hotel, and all the ladies seem to look upon him as a kind of Master of the Revels. In the hall, where great logs burn in the chimneys, and the floor and wall are covered with splendid skins and fur rugs, Captain White flirts with blue-eyed, sport-loving Canadians ; he flirts with American summer girls, who have thought it more original to spend a season in Canada than in Europe ; and he flirts with pale, faded-looking Englishwomen, who come in yearly increasing numbers from Hong-kong, to rest here from that enervating climate. Every day long excursions are undertaken, at which Captain White drives the favoured ones in his coach. He is an excellent whip, but it often looks most perilous when he drives his team up the corkscrew roads, which rise in such sharp curves, that sometimes the first pair of horses stands just one story above the second with the carriage. He goes on joking at the most appallingly dangerous turns, and he told me much about Canadian winter sports and about the fastdisappearing Indians. ‘But they are well cared for by the Government/ he said, with the deep tones of white mankind’s self-complacency. Thus it always is : the white man comes and takes a country away from its poor coloured owner, and thinks he has done much for the poor benighted savage if, in exchange, he gives him his own diseases and vices and a little religion on the top with which to atone for them and smooth the road to inevitable oblivion.

Yesterday we drove to the Devil’s Lake, which is of the deepest blue and surrounded by high rocky ranges. I was not able to ascertain why it got this name. But it is so frequent in all countries that it seems as an indication that the belief in the devil’s ubiquity is far more deeply rooted in the convictions of mankind than the faith in another omnipresence. And probably the belief in ghosts and bad spirits is really much older than the belief in a god, for out of the fear of mischievous, inexplicable powers all cult has sprung up ; its earliest forms are all of a defensive kind, to protect poor human beings from the pursuits of evil sprites — and that is probably the reason why so many people even now look upon their deity as an angered being which must be appeased and propitiated.

This Canadian devil’s lake reminded me of a small lake in the Pyrenees which I saw years ago. A small cross stands there on a rock, and our Basque guide took off his broad woollen b£ret, crossed himself, and said that at that place a pair of lovers had been drowned. Young as I then was, this impressed me very much ; but when I had climbed up the rock, I read such an ancient date on the cross that, if the lovers, instead of being drowned, had grown old enough to see their grandchildren, they yet would have been dead long ago. That cooled my emotion. At one time or another a little cross would always have marked the end — perhaps it was better thus.

LETTER VI Banff, September 1899

Dear Friend, — The world is so glorious here that I must again write to you. I am afraid that this beginning is not very logical, but you will understand it all the same, as you have always understood everything — spoken and unspoken words.