The Gentleman In the Parlour (25 page)

Huë is a pleasant little town with something of the leisurely air of a cathedral city in the West of England and though the capital of an empire it is not imposing. It is built on both sides of a wide river, crossed by a bridge, and the hotel is one of the worst in the world. It is extremely dirty and the food is dreadful; but it is also a general store in which everything is provided that the colonist may want from camp-equipment and guns, women's hats and men's reach-me-downs to sardines,
pâté de foie gras
and Worcester sauce; so that the hungry traveller can make up with tinned goods for the inadequacy of the bill of fare. Here the inhabitants of the town come to drink their coffee and
fine
in the evening and the soldiers of the garrison to play billiards. The French have built themselves solid, rather showy houses without much regard for the climate or the environment; they look like the villas of retired grocers in the suburbs of Paris.

The French carry France to their colonies just as the English carry England to theirs; and the English, reproached for their insularity, can justly reply that in this matter they are no more singular than their neighbours. But not even the most superficial observer can fail to notice that there is a great difference in the manner in which these two nations behave towards the natives of the countries of which they have gained possession. The Frenchman has deep down in him a persuasion that all men are equal and that mankind is a brotherhood. He is
slightly ashamed of it and in case you should laugh at him makes haste to laugh at himself; but there it is, he cannot help it; he cannot prevent himself from feeling that the native, black, brown or yellow, is of the same clay as himself, with the same loves, hates, pleasures and pains, and he cannot bring himself to treat him as though he belonged to a different species. Though he will brook no encroachment on his authority and deals firmly with any attempt the native may make to lighten his yoke, in the ordinary affairs of life he is friendly with him without condescension and benevolent without superiority. He inculcates in him his peculiar prejudices; Paris is the centre of the world, and the ambition of every young Annamite is to see it at least once in his life; you will hardly meet one who is not convinced that outside France there is neither art, literature nor science. But the Frenchman will sit with the Annamite, eat with him, drink with him and play with him. In the market-place you will see the thrifty Frenchwoman with her basket on her arm jostling the Annamite housekeeper and bargaining just as fiercely. No one likes having another take possession of his house, even though he conducts it more efficiently and keeps it in better repair than ever he could himself; he does not want to live in the attics even though his master has installed a lift for him to reach them; and I do not suppose that Annamites like it any more than the Burmese that strangers hold their country. But I should say that whereas the Burmese only respect the English, the Annamites admire the French. When in course of time these peoples inevitably regain their freedom it will be curious to see which of these emotions has borne the better fruit.

The Annamites are a pleasant people to look at, very small, with yellow fat faces and bright dark eyes, and they look very spruce in their clothes. The poor wear brown of the colour of rich earth, a long tunic slit up the sides and trousers, with a girdle of apple green or
orange round their waists; and on their heads a large flat straw hat or a small black turban with very regular folds. The well-to-do wear the same neat turban, with white trousers, a black silk tunic and over this sometimes a black lace coat. It is a costume of great elegance.

But though in all these lands the clothes the people wear attract our eyes because they are peculiar, in each everyone is dressed very much alike; it is a uniform they wear, picturesque often and always suitable to the climate, but it allows little opportunity for individual taste; and I could not but think it must amaze the native of an Eastern country visiting Europe to observe the bewildering and vivid variety of costume that surrounds him. An oriental crowd is like a bed of daffodils at a market gardener's, brilliant but monotonous; but an English crowd, for instance that which you see through a faint veil of smoke when you look down from above on the floor of a Promenade Concert, is like a nosegay of every kind of flower. Nowhere in the East will you see costumes so gay and multifarious as on a fine day in Piccadilly. The diversity is prodigious. Soldiers, sailors, policemen, postmen, messenger boys; men in tail coats and top hats, in lounge suits and bowlers, men in plus four and caps, women in silk and cloth and velvet, in all the colours, and in hats of this shape and that. And besides this there are the clothes worn on different occasions and to pursue different sports, the clothes servants wear, and workmen, jockeys, huntsmen, and courtiers. I fancy the Annamite will return to Huë and think his fellow-countrymen dress very dully.

Annam was for long centuries under the suzerainty of China and its Emperor sent tribute to the Son of Heaven. Its civilisation was Chinese and its temples were erected
in honour of Confucius rather than of Gautama. The palace, surrounded by a moat and a wall, covers a vast extent. It is Chinese, but in a shoddy and second-hand way; it is tired and a trifle depressing. You pass down a trim road planted with little trees and on each side of this are gardens and pavilions. But in the gardens the grass grows ragged and rank; there are untidy bushes that look like ill-cared for children, and stunted trees. They are so deserted that you find it hard to believe that somewhere in the background, unseen by you, dwells surrounded by his women and eunuchs and mandarins an emperor ruling shadowy under the power of France. You feel that it is a pretence that he can hardly be at pains to keep up. You pass through throne rooms gaudily painted and decorated with gold, long dimly lit halls in which are the ancestral tablets of the Emperor, and apartments in which are displayed the gifts that from time to time have been presented to him, French clocks and Sevres porcelain, Chinese pottery and ornaments of jade; but just as at the marriage of your friends you give them a more costly present if they are rich and do not need it than if they are poor and do, so here the donors have measured their generosity with acumen.

But the ceremonies of the Tet were conducted with pomp. This is the celebration of the Chinese New Year when the Emperor, in imitation again of the Son of Heaven, receives the homage of his mandarins. I had received an invitation and at seven in the morning, feeling embarrassed in a dinner jacket and a stiff shirt, I found at the Palace gate a group of French civilians similarly dressed and a number of officers in uniform. The Résident Supérieur drove up and we followed him into the courtyard. In the large open space soldiers in bright and fantastic uniforms were lined up and in front of them two lines of mandarins according to their rank, the civil on the right and the military on the left. A little below were the eunuchs and the imperial orchestras and
on each side was a royal elephant in state caparison with a man holding a state umbrella over the howdah. The mandarins were dressed in the Manchu fashion in high boots with thick white soles, silk robes splendidly embroidered, with voluminous sleeves, and black hats decorated with gold. Bugles blew and we, the Europeans, crowded into the throne room. It was rather dark. The Emperor sat on the dais. In his gold robes he sank into the gold of the throne and the gold backcloth of the canopy over it so that at first you were hardly conscious that a living person was there. He stood up. At each comer of the dais stood a man in blue holding a state fan and behind the throne a row of servants in darker blue bore the royal utensils, the betel nut tray, the spittoon and I know not what. A little in front two soldiers magnificently dressed in orange held before them upright golden swords; they stood like images and looked neither to the right nor to the left. The Emperor too looked like an image as he stood motionless with no expression on his sallow long thin face.

The Résident Supérieur read an address and the Emperor read his reply. He read in a high-pitched voice in a sort of sing-song that made it sound like a litany. The Europeans retired to the side of the hall and the Emperor sat down. In front of the throne was a low altar and on this the Emperor's uncle, a little old man with a sparse grey beard, now placed what looked like two books wrapped in red silk. Then the two brothers of the Emperor took up their positions in front of the altar, not facing the Emperor but each other, and at the same moment the mandarins in the courtyard, who had been standing quite still during the reading of the speeches, came forward on to bamboo mats that had been set for them, but in order according to their rank and class. They also faced not the Emperor but each other. A band began to play and singers burst into song. This was the signal for the two princes of the blood and for the mandarins in
the courtyard to turn and face the Emperor. The chorus was silent and the princes and the mandarins knelt down and touched the ground with their foreheads. They moved as one. A huge gong sounded from the tower over the palace gateway and the chorus again began to sing. Then with one impressive movement like well-drilled soldiers the mandarins prostrated themselves. This was repeated five times. The emperor sat impassive and made no acknowledgement of the obeisances. He might have been a golden idol. The throne-room, which had looked so tawdry the day before, now, set off by the gorgeous clothes and smart uniforms, had if not magnificence at least a barbaric splendour. Then all the mandarins bowed three times and unceremoniously shuffled out of their ranks, the princes of the blood smiled, shook hands with their French friends and complained of the heat of their robes, the Emperor, without much dignity, stepped off his throne. He walked quickly into a sort of ante-chamber and the officials of the court and the foreigners followed him. Here in two rows stood soldiers holding the royal umbrellas and various staffs, and a band of page boys in green played drums and fifes and with vigour struck gongs. Sweet champagne was handed round with biscuits and sweetmeats and cigars. In a little while the Emperor was borne away on his palanquin, a low round gilt chair, by twelve men in red. The ceremony was over.

In the evening I went to a party at the palace. The Emperor and the Résident Supérieur sat on large gilt armchairs in the central doorway of the throne-room and the guests were gathered round about. The courtyard was lit with unnumerable little oil lamps and a native orchestra played lustily. Three fantastic figures, like those of the Chinese drama, in splendid Chinese dresses came upon the scene and trod a grotesque measure. Then the Imperial ballet, a large number of boys and youths in beautiful old-fashioned costumes that reminded one of the eighteenth century pictures of the Far East, danced
and sang. They had lanterns on their shoulders, with lighted candles in them, and they moved about in complicated patterns that formed Chinese characters wishing the Emperor good luck and prosperity. It was more like a drill than dance, but the effect was strange and pretty. They gave place to other dancers, men dressed up as huge cocks, emitting fire from their beaks, or as buffaloes and fearful dragons and they cut fantastic capers; then came fireworks and the courtyard was filled with smoke and the noisiness of crackers.

This ended the native part of the entertainment and the foreigners gathered round the buffet. The court pages, on European instruments, began to play a one-step. The foreigners danced.

The Emperor wore a tunic of yellow silk richly embroidered and on his head a yellow turban. He was a man of thirty-five, rather taller than most of the Annamites, and very thin. His face was strangely smooth. He looked very frail but incredibly distinguished. My last impression of the party was of him leaning in a careless attitude against a table, smoking a cigarette and chatting with a young Frenchman. Every now and then his eyes rested for a moment incuriously on the conquerors clumsily dancing.

It was late now and I was setting out at dawn by car for Hanoi. It seemed hardly worth while to go to bed and as I drove in my rickshaw to the hotel I asked myself why I should not spend the rest of the night on the river. It would do if I got back in time to change, bathe myself and have a cup of coffee before starting. I explained to my rickshaw boy what I wanted and he took me down to the river. There was a landing-stage just below the bridge and here we found half-a-dozen sampans moored to the side. Their owners were sleeping in them, but at least one of them was sleeping lightly, for he awoke as he heard me walk down the stone steps and put his head out of the blanket in which he was wrapped. The rickshaw
boy spoke to him and he got up. He called to a woman asleep in the boat. I stepped in. The woman untied and we slipped out into the stream. These boats have a low round awning of bamboo matting, just high enough to sit upright under, and bamboo matting on the boards. You can shut them up with shutters, but I told the man to leave the front open so that I could look at the night. In the heights of heaven the stars shone very bright as though up there too there were a party. The man brought me a pot of Chinese tea and a cup. I poured some out and lit my pipe. We went along very slowly and the sound of the paddle in the water was the only sound that broke the silence. It was delightful to think that I had all those hours before me to enjoy that sense of well-being and I thought to myself how when I was once more in Europe, imprisoned in stony cities, I would remember that perfect night and the enchanting solitude. It would be the most imperishable of my memories. It was a unique occasion and I said to myself that I must hoard the moments as they passed. I could not afford to waste one of them. I was laying up treasure for myself. And I thought of all the things I would reflect upon, and of the melancholy that I would subtly savour as you savour the first scented strawberries of the year; and I would think of love, and invent stories and meditate upon beautiful things like art and death. The paddle hit the water very gently and I could just feel the boat glide on. I made up my mind to watch and cherish every exquisite sensation that came to me.