" INDISCRETIONS " OF LADY SUSAN.*
Tins book is more worthy than its catchpenny title would suggest of the attention of people who like an autobiography in spite of, not because of, its indiscretions. Lady Susan Townley tells us that she "was in fifty minds" as to whether she should write the last chapter—the chapter in which she felt called upon to justify the title of her book. We wish she had been in fifty-one minds and had suppressed it. But the section on America might well be described by an even stronger adjective than "indiscreet." We must enter a protest as to the way in which the author has used the close insight into the intimacies of American social life which her official position gave her to expose with very ill-natured derision all fancied weaknesses and shortcomings. Why, too, should her quarrel with the American Press be recalled from the oblivion into which it had sunk, and not only revived but illustrated ?
These two blemishes are especially to be regretted as the rest of the book is such excellent reading. We follow the author round the world with extreme interest and enter- tainment. Lisbon, Berlin, Constantinople, Buenos Ayres, Bucharest and Teheran—she has something diverting to tell us of all of them. The account of her marvellous race with time in her drive from Teheran to Enzeli, on the Persian side of the Caspian Sea, will fill the reader with admiration, both for her pluck and determination and for the extraordinary resource displayed by Bell, her chauffeur. More interesting still is the account of her days at The Hague during the War. But, entertaining as all this is, it is overshadowed by the chapter on Peking in the first year of the present century, where Lady Susan struck up a kind of unofficial friendship with the Empress-Dowager. Her first visit to the Imperial Palace, to the gateway of which the diplomatic ladies were carried in their green official chairs, there to be transferred into the red satin palace chairs, is most picturesquely described :—
"She (the Empress-Dowager) sat on a kind of Turkish -divan covered with figured Chinese silk of a beautiful yolk-of-egg colour, her feet (which were of normal size, she being a Manchu) barely touching the ground. She wore dark trousers, loose at the ankle, and a long coat of diaphanous pale blue silk covered with delicate Chinese embroidery of vine leaves and grapes. Her hair, accord- ing to the Manchu fashion, was parted in front and brushed smoothly back over the ears to the back . of the head, where it was caught up and looped high over a kind of paper-cutter of beautiful green jade, set, like an Alsatian bow, crosswise on the summit of the head. The ends of this paper-cutter, which pro- jected on both sides over the ears, were decorated with great bunches of artificial flowers, butterflies, and banging crimson tassels."
The Imperial lady did not like modern innovations. Lady Susan was present
"when for the first time public opinion forced her to permit two of her Ladies-in-Waiting to appear before her in European dress. . . . The Empress was cold at first, but curiosity overcoming her annoyance and no foreigner besides myself being present, she gradually softened towards them. Before very long she was Fated on a divan between them trying a Parisian shoe on the Imperial foot."
This strange, unscrupulous woman, with her malevolent • " Indiscretions" of Lady Susan. By Lady Susan Townley. London : Thornton Butterworth. [21e. net.]
genius for statecraft, knew also a gentler art—that of bird- taming. Lady Susan tells us how on one occasion
" I saw her hold out a twig and softly whistle to a bird which flew down from a tree and settled on the twig."
A most amusing account is given of the funeral ceremonies of Li-Hung-Chang.
"In the court-yard were arranged a whole menagerie of weird cardboard beasts, more than life-size, whose coats and plumage were represented by dried fir-twigs stuck on—I noticed an immense and most comically-shaped 'Pekingese' dog among others. There were also a regiment of life-sized horses, constructed on light bamboo frames covered with paper, and coloured to imitate life. Each one was mounted by a cardboard Chinaman in correct official dress, with hat, boots and pigtail complete. These stuffed cavaliers, in their coloured paper garments, appeared so lifelike at a distance as almost to deceive one. Looked at closely, how- ever, it was impossible not to laugh at the fixed expressions of man and beast. The comic side of them was still further accentu- ated when presently they were bodily hoisted up and carried away, topsy-turvy, with the horses' legs sticking in the air, to the place of their execution, for all were burnt in the evening in order that the deceased statesman might have the use of them in the spirit world to which he was supposed to have retired. In the same way were sent after him the effigies of his servants, Peking carts, family shrines, official chairs, and wives."
lathe section on Constantinople Lady Susan tells the following story of a Sudanese girl-slave which had been told her by a distinguished Turkish gentleman :—
" One day, when the girl's civilization was apparently com- plete, she was out with his daughters when she caught sight of an English naval officer in uniform. Zoe's eyes glistened. Smack- ing her lips, she gurgled to the terrified girls : ' C'est bon ca. Dana mon pays on mange ca. La peau est tres blanche. On fait bien bouillir, puis on met la graisse sur du pain et on mange.'" Again, the strangeness of the Turkish marriage customs is described, Lady Susan having been entertained by a Turkish official, Noury Bey, at dinner with "indiscreet stories about his own domestic affairs and his country. He told me that his mother had been a beautiful Circassian, but that when she was carried off at an early age by the scourge of cholera his father was so-lonely that he married three wives straight away, so that his little boy was in the unenviable position of having three quarrelsome stepmothers at one time. His father had yet other wives in the course of time and buried no fewer than seven."
The book throughout is full of interesting and amusing information about the intimate life of the places described. It is another question whether the information is always accurate. It is, at any rate, entertaining.
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