The Mirror of Kong Ho
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Ernest Bramah >> The Mirror of Kong Ho
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13 THE MIRROR OF KONG HO
By Ernest Bramah
Etext prepared by John Bickers, jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz.
THE MIRROR OF KONG HO
BY ERNEST BRAMAH
A lively and amusing collection of letters on
western living written by Kong Ho, a Chinese
gentleman. These addressed to his homeland,
refer to the Westerners in London as
barbarians and many of the aids to life in our
society give Kong Ho endless food for thought.
These are things such as the motor car and the
piano; unknown in China at this time.
INTRODUCTION
ESTIMABLE BARBARIAN,--Your opportune suggestion that I should
permit the letters, wherein I have described with undeviating
fidelity the customs and manner of behaving of your
accomplished race, to be set forth in the form of printed
leaves for all to behold, is doubtless gracefully-intentioned,
and this person will raise no barrier of dissent against it.
In this he is inspired by the benevolent hope that his
immature compositions may to one extent become a model and a
by-word to those who in turn visit his own land of Fragrant
Purity; for with exacting care he has set down no detail that
has not come under his direct observation (although it is not
to be denied that here or there he may, perchance, have
misunderstood an involved allusion or failed to grasp the
inner significance of an act), so that Impartiality
necessarily sways his brush, and Truth lurks within his inkpot.
In an entirely contrary manner some, who of recent years have
gratified us with their magnanimous presence, have returned to
their own countries not only with the internal fittings of
many of our palaces (which, being for the most part of a
replaceable nature, need be only trivially referred to, the
incident, indeed, being generally regarded as a most cordial
and pressing variety of foreign politeness), but also--in the
lack of highly-spiced actuality--with subtly-imagined and
truly objectionable instances. These calumnies they have not
hesitated to commit to the form of printed books, which,
falling into the hands of the ignorant and undiscriminating,
may even suggest to their ill-balanced minds a doubt whether
we of the Celestial Empire really are the wisest, bravest,
purest, and most enlightened people in existence.
As a parting, it only remains to be said that, in order to
maintain unimpaired the quaint-sounding brevity and archaic
construction of your prepossessing language, I have engraved
most of the remarks upon the receptive tablets of my mind as
they were uttered. To one who can repeat the Five Classics
without stumbling this is a contemptible achievement. Let it
be an imposed obligation, therefore, that you retain these
portions unchanged as a test and a proof to all who may read.
Of my own deficient words, I can only in truest courtesy
maintain that any alteration must of necessity make them less
offensively commonplace than at present they are.
The Sign and immutable Thumb-mark of,
Kong Ho
By a sure hand to the House of one Ernest Bramah.
THE MIRROR OF KONG HO
LETTER I
Concerning the journey. The unlawful demons invoked by certain
of the barbarians; their power and the manner of their suppression.
suppression. The incredible obtuseness of those who attend within tea-houses.
The harmonious attitude of a person of commerce.
VENERATED SIRE (at whose virtuous and well-established feet an
unworthy son now prostrates himself in spirit repeatedly),--
Having at length reached the summit of my journey, that London of
which the merchants from Canton spoke so many strange and incredible
things, I now send you filial salutations three times increased, and
in accordance with your explicit command I shall write all things to
you with an unvarnished brush, well assured that your versatile object
in committing me to so questionable an enterprise was, above all, to
learn the truth of these matters in an undeviating and yet open-headed
spirit of accuracy and toleration.
Of the perils incurred while travelling in the awe-inspiring devices
by which I was transferred from shore to shore and yet further inland,
of the utter absence of all leisurely dignity on the part of those
controlling their movements, and of the almost unnatural
self-opinionatedness which led them to persist in starting at a stated
and prearranged time, even when this person had courteously pointed
out to them by irrefutable omens that neither the day nor the hour was
suitable for the venture, I have already written. It is enough to
assert that a similar want of prudence was maintained on every
occasion, and, as a result, when actually within sight of the walls of
this city, we were involved for upwards of an hour in a very
evilly-arranged yellow darkness, which, had we but delayed for a day,
as I strenuously advised those in authority after consulting the
Sacred Flat and Round Sticks, we should certainly have avoided.
Concerning the real nature of the devices by which the ships are
propelled at sea and the carriages on land, I must still unroll a
blank mind until I can secretly, and without undue hazard, examine
them more closely. If, as you maintain, it is the work of captive
demons hidden away among their most inside parts, it must be admitted
that these usually intractable beings are admirably trained and
controlled, and I am wide-headed enough to think that in this respect
we might--not-withstanding our nine thousand years of civilised
refinement--learn something of the methods of these barbarians. The
secret, however, is jealously guarded, and they deny the existence of
any supernatural forces; but their protests may be ignored, for there
is undoubtedly a powerful demon used in a similar way by some of the
boldest of them, although its employment is unlawful. A certain kind
of chariot is used for the occupation of this demon, and those who
wish to invoke it conceal their faces within masks of terrifying
design, and cover their hands and bodies with specially prepared
garments, without which it would be fatal to encounter these very
powerful spirits. While yet among the habitations of men, and in
crowded places, they are constrained to use less powerful demons,
which are lawful, but when they reach the unfrequented paths they
throw aside all restraint, and, calling to their aid the forbidden
spirit (which they do by secret movements of the hands), they are
carried forward by its agency at a speed unattainable by merely human
means. By day the demon looks forth from three white eyes, which at
night have a penetrating brilliance equal to the fiercest glances of
the Sacred Dragon in anger. If any person incautiously stands in its
way it utters a warning cry of intolerable rage, and should the
presumptuous one neglect to escape to the roadside and there prostrate
himself reverentially before it, it seizes him by the body part and
contemptuously hurls him bruised and unrecognisable into the boundless
space of the around. Frequently the demon causes the chariot to rise
into the air, and it is credibly asserted by discriminating witnesses
(although this person only sets down as incapable of denial that which
he has actually beheld) that some have maintained an unceasing flight
through the middle air for a distance of many li. Occasionally the
captive demon escapes from the bondage of those who have invoked it,
through some incautious gesture or heretical remark on their part, and
then it never fails to use them grievously, casting them to the ground
wounded, consuming the chariot with fire, and passing away in the
midst of an exceedingly debased odour, by which it is always
accompanied after the manner of our own earth spirits.
This being, as this person has already set forth, an unlawful demon on
account of its power when once called up, and the admitted uncertainty
of its movements, those in authority maintain a stern and inexorable
face towards the practice. To entrap the unwary certain persons
(chosen on account of their massive outlines, and further protected
from evil influences by their pure and consistent habits) keep an
unceasing watch. When one of them, himself lying concealed, detects
the approach of such a being, he closely observes the position of the
sun, and signals to the other a message of warning. Then the second
one, shielded by the sanctity of his life and rendered inviolable by
the nature of his garments--his sandals alone being capable of
overturning any demon from his path should it encounter them--boldly
steps forth into the road and holds out before him certain sacred
emblems. So powerful are these that at the sight the unlawful demon
confesses itself vanquished, and although its whole body trembles with
ill-contained rage, and the air around is poisoned by its
discreditable exhalation, it is devoid of further resistance. Those in
the chariot are thereupon commanded to dismiss it, and being bound in
chains they are led into the presence of certain lesser mandarins who
administer justice from a raised dais.
"Behold!" exclaims the chief of the captors, when the prisoners have
been placed in obsequious attitudes before the lesser mandarins, "thus
the matter chanced: The honourable Wang, although disguised under the
semblance of an applewoman, had discreetly concealed himself by the
roadside, all but his head being underneath a stream of stagnant
water, when, at the eighth hour of the morning, he beheld these
repulsive outcasts approaching in their chariot, carried forward by
the diabolical vigour of the unlawful demon. Although I had stationed
myself several li distant from the accomplished Wang, the chariot
reached me in less than a breathing space of time, those inside
assuming their fiercest and most aggressive attitudes, and as they
came repeatedly urging the demon to increased exertions. Their speed
exceeded that of the swallow in his hymeneal flight, all shrubs and
flowers by the wayside withered incapably at the demon's contaminating
glance, running water ceased to flow, and the road itself was scorched
at their passage, the earth emitting a dull bluish flame. These facts,
and the times and the distances, this person has further inscribed in
a book which thus disposes of all possible defence. Therefore, O
lesser mandarins, let justice be accomplished heavily and without
delay; for, as the proverb truly says, 'The fiercer the flame the more
useless the struggles of the victim.'"
At this point the prisoners frequently endeavour to make themselves
heard, protesting that in the distance between the concealed Wang and
the one who stands accusing them they had thrice stopped to repair
their innermost details, had leisurely partaken of food and wine, and
had also been overtaken, struck, and delayed by a funeral procession.
But so great is the execration in which these persons are held, that
although murderers by stealth, outlaws, snatchers from the body, and
companies of men who by strategy make a smaller sum of money appear to
be larger, can all freely testify their innocence, raisers of this
unlawful demon must not do so, and they are beaten on the head with
chains until they desist.
Then the lesser mandarins, raising their voices in unison, exclaim,
`The amiable Tsay-hi has reported the matter in a discreet and
impartial spirit. Hear our pronouncement: These raisers of illegal
spirits shall each contribute ten taels of gold, which shall be
expended in joss-sticks, in purifying the road which they have
scorched, and in alleviating the distress of the poor and virtuous of
both sexes. The praiseworthy Tsay-hi, moreover, shall embroider upon
his sleeve an honourable sign in remembrance of the event. Let drums
now be beat, and our verdict loudly proclaimed throughout the
province."
These things, O my illustrious father (although on account of my
contemptible deficiencies of style much may seem improbable to your
all-knowing mind), these things I write with an unbending brush; for I
set down only that which I have myself seen, or read in their own
printed records. Doubtless it will occur to one of your preternatural
intelligence that our own system of administering justice, whereby the
person who can hire the greater number of witnesses is reasonably held
to be in the right, although perhaps not absolutely infallible, is in
every way more convenient; but, as it is well said, "To the blind,
night is as acceptable as day."
Henceforth you will have no hesitation in letting it be known
throughout Yuen-ping that these foreign barbarians do possess secret
demons, in spite of their denials. Doubtless I shall presently
discover others no less powerful.
With honourable distinction this person has at length grasped the
essential details of the spoken language here--not sufficiently well,
indeed, to make himself understood on most occasions, or even to
understand others, but enough to perceive clearly when he fails to
become intelligible or when they experience a like difficulty with
him. Upon an earlier occasion, before he had made so much progress,
being one day left to his own resources, and feeling an internal lack,
he entered what appeared to be a tea-shop of reputable demeanour, and,
seating himself at one of the little marble tables, he freely
pronounced the carefully-learned word "rice" to the attending nymph.
To put aside all details of preparation (into which, indeed, this
person could not enter) he waved his hand gracefully, at the same time
smiling with an expression of tolerant acquiescence, as of one who
would say that what was good enough to be cooked and offered by so
entrancing a maiden was good enough to be eaten by him. After
remaining in unruffled tranquillity for the full portion of an hour,
and observing that no other person around had to wait above half that
period, this one began to perceive that the enterprise was not likely
to terminate in a manner satisfactory to himself; so that, leaving
this place with a few well-chosen phrases of intolerable regret in his
own tongue, he entered another, and conducted himself in a like
fashion. . . . Towards evening, with an unperturbed exterior, but
materially afflicted elsewhere, this person seated himself within the
eleventh tea-shop, and, pointing first towards his own constituents of
digestion, then at the fire, and lastly in an upward direction,
thereby signified to any not of stunted intellect that he had reached
such a condition of mind and body that he was ready to consume
whatever the ruling deities were willing to allot, whether boiled,
baked, roast, or suspended from a skewer. In this resolve nothing
would move him, until--after many maidens had approached with
outstretched hands and gestures of despair--there presently entered a
person wearing the helmet of a warrior and the manner of a high
official, who spoke strongly, yet persuasively, of the virtues of
immediate movement and a quiet and reposeful bearing.
Assuredly a people who devote so little attention to the study of
food, and all matters connected with it, must inevitably remain
barbaric, however skilfully they may feign a superficial refinement.
It is said, although I do not commit this matter to my own brush, that
among them are more books composed on subjects which have no actual
existence than on cooking, and, incredible as it may appear, to be
exceptionally round-bodied confers no public honour upon the
individual. Should a favourable occasion present itself, there are
many who do not scruple to jest upon the subject of food, or, what is
incalculably more depraved, upon the scarcity of it.
Nevertheless, there are exceptions of a highly distinguished radiance.
Among these must be accounted one into whose presence this person was
recently led by our polished and harmonious friend Quang-Tsun, the
merchant in tea and spices. This versatile person, whose business-name
is spoken of as Jones Bob-Jones, is worthy of all benignant respect,
and in a really enlightened country would doubtless be raised to a
more exalted position than that of a breaker of outsides (an
occupation difficult to express adequately in the written language of
a country where it is unknown), for his face is like the sun setting
in the time of harvest, his waist garment excessive, and the undoubted
symmetry of his middle portions honourable in the extreme. So welcome
in my eyes, after witnessing an unending stream of concave and
attenuated barbarian ghosts, was the sight of these perfections of
Jones Bob-Jones, that instead of the formal greeting of this
Island--the unmeaning "How do you do it?"--I shook hands cordially
with myself, and exclaimed affectionately in our own language,
"Illimitable felicities! How is your stomach?"
"Well," replied Jones Bob-Jones, after Quang-Tsun had interpreted this
polite salutation to his understanding, "since you mention it, that's
just the trouble; but I'm going on pretty well, thanks. I've tried
most of the advertised things, and now my doctor has put me
practically on a bread-and-water course--clear soup, boiled fish,
plain joint, no sweets, a crumb of cheese, and a bare three glasses of
Hermitage."
During this amiable remark (of which, as it is somewhat of a technical
nature, I was unable to grasp the contained significance until the
agreeable Quang-Tsun had subsequently repeated it several times for
my retention), I maintained a consistent expression of harmonious
agreement and gratified esteem (suitable, I find, for all like
occasions), and then, judging from the sympathetic animation of Jones
Bob-Jones's countenance, that it had not improbably been connected
with food, I discreetly introduced the subject of sea-snails,
preserved in the essence of crushed peaches, by courteously inquiring
whether he had ever partaken of such a delicacy.
"No," replied the liberal-minded person, when--encouraged by the
protruding eagerness of his eyes at the mention of the viand--I had
further spoken of the refined flavour of the dish, and explained the
manner of its preparation. "I can't say that I have, but it sounds
uncommonly good--something like turtle, I should imagine. I'll see if
they can get it for me at Pimm's."
This filial tribute goes by a trusty hand, in the person of one Ki
Nihy, who is shortly committing himself to the protection of his
ancestors and the voracity of the unbounded Bitter Waters; and with
brightness and gold it will doubtless reach you in the course of
twelve or eighteen moons. The superstitious here, this person may
describe, when they wish to send messages from one to another,
inscribe upon the outer cover a written representation of the one
whose habitation they require, and after affixing a small paper
talisman, drop it into a hole in the nearest wall, in the hope that it
may be ultimately conveyed to the appointed spot, either by the
services of the charitably-disposed passer-by, or by the intervention
of the beneficent deities.
With a multiplicity of greetings and many abject expressions of a
conscious inferiority, and attested by an unvarying thumb-mark.
KONG HO.
(Effete branch of a pure and magnanimous trunk.)
To Kong Ah-Paik, reclining beneath the sign of the Lead Tortoise, in a
northerly direction beyond the Lotus Beds outside the city of
Yuen-ping. The Middle Flowery Kingdom.
LETTER II
Concerning the ill-destined manner of existence of the hound
Hercules. The thoughtlessly-expressed desire of the entrancing
maiden and its effect upon a person of susceptible refinement.
The opportune (as it may yet be described) visit of one
Herbert. The behaviour of those around. Reflections.
VENERATED SIRE (whose large right hand is continuously floating in
spirit over the image of this person's dutiful submission),--
Doubtless to your all-consuming prescience, it will at once become
plain that I have abandoned the place of residence from which I
directed my former badly-written and offensively-constructed letter,
the house of the sympathetic and resourceful Maidens Blank, where in
return for an utterly inadequate sum of money, produced at stated
intervals, this very much inferior person was allowed to partake of a
delicately-balanced and somewhat unvarying fare in the company of the
engaging of both sexes, and afterwards to associate on terms of
honourable equality with them in the chief apartment. The reason and
manner of this one's departure are in no degree formidable to his
refined manner of conducting any enterprise, but arose partly from an
insufficient grasp of the more elaborate outlines of a confessedly
involved language, and still more from a too excessive impetuousness
in carrying out what at the time he believed to be the ambition of one
who had come to exercise a melodious influence over his most internal
emotions. Well remarked the Sage, "A piece of gold may be tried
between the teeth; a written promise to pay may be disposed of at a
sacrifice to one more credulous; but what shall be said of the wind,
the Hoang Ho, and the way of a woman?"
To contrive a pitfall for this short-sighted person's immature feet,
certain malicious spirits had so willed it that the chief and more
autumnal of the Maidens Blank (who, nevertheless, wore an excessively
flower-like name), had long lavished herself upon the possession of an
obtuse and self-assertive hound, which was in the habit of gratifying
this inconsiderable person and those who sat around by continually
depositing upon their unworthy garments details of its outer surface,
and when the weather was more than usually cold, by stretching its
graceful and refined body before the fire in such a way as to ensure
that no one should suffer from a too acute exposure to the heat. From
these causes, and because it was by nature a hound which even on the
darkest night could be detected at a more than reasonable distance
away, while at all times it did not hesitate to shake itself freely
into the various prepared viands, this person (and doubtless others
also) regarded it with an emotion very unfavourable towards its
prolonged existence; but observing from the first that those who
permitted themselves to be deposited upon, and their hands and even
their faces to be hound-tongue-defiled with the most externally
cheerful spirit of word suppression, invariably received the most
desirable of the allotted portions of food, he judged it prudent and
conducive to a settled digestion to greet it with favourable terms and
actions, and to refer frequently to its well-displayed proportions,
and to the agile dexterity which it certainly maintained in breathing
into the contents of every dish. Thus the matter may be regarded as
being positioned for a space of time.
One evening I returned at the appointed gong-stroke of dinner, and was
beginning, according to my custom, to greet the hound with
ingratiating politeness, when the one of chief authority held up a
reproving hand, at the same time exclaiming:
"No, Mr. Kong, you must not encourage Hercules with your amiable
condescension, for just now he is in very bad odour with us all."
"Undoubtedly," replied this person, somewhat puzzled, nevertheless,
that the imperfection should thus be referred to openly by one who
hitherto had not hesitated to caress the hound with most intimate
details, "undoubtedly the surrounding has a highly concentrated
acuteness to-night, but the ever-present characteristic of the hound
Hercules is by no means new, for whenever he is in the room--"
At this point it is necessary to explain that the ceremonial etiquette
of these barbarian outcasts is both conflicting and involved. Upon
most of the ordinary occasions of life to obtrude oneself within the
conversation of another is a thing not to be done, yet repeatedly when
this unpretentious person has been relating his experience or
inquiring into the nature and meaning of certain matters which he has
witnessed, he has become aware that his words have been obliterated,
as it were, and his remarks diverted from their original intention by
the sudden and unanticipated desire of those present to express
themselves loudly on some topic of not really engrossing interest. Not
infrequently on such occasions every one present has spoken at once
with concentrated anxiety upon the condition of the weather, the
atmosphere of the room, the hour of the day, or some like detail of
contemptible inferiority. At other times maidens of unquestionable
politeness have sounded instruments of brass or stringed woods with
unceasing vigour, have cast down ornaments of china, or even stood
upon each other's--or this person's--feet with assumed inelegance.
When, therefore, in the midst of my agreeable remark on the asserted
no fragrance of the hound Hercules, a gentleman of habitual refinement
struck me somewhat heavily on the back of the head with a reclining
seat which he was conveying across the room for the acceptance of a
lady, and immediately overwhelmed me with apologies of almost
unnecessary profusion, my mind at once leapt to an inspired
conclusion, and smiling acquiescently I bowed several times to each
person to convey to them an admission of the undoubted fact that to
the wise a timely omen before the storm is as effective as a
thunderbolt afterwards.
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