Free The Ginger Tree by Oswald Wynd Page A

in some way. I was quite silent. I have never heard anyone, least of all a woman, talking about Royalty the way Madame was talking about the Czar who is, after all, closely related to our Royal Family.
    It was an interesting evening. I will never be able to, but I would still like to guide the talk at my own dinner table as Madame does. Richard, though, would hate that. We walked home from the dinner, only a short distance and the night fine, this all right for Mrs Harding who had her sables, but in my cloth coat I was quite chilled. I was beside Mr Harding who had been sparing of personal opinions during my stay in his house and, perhaps to provoke him, I asked what he thought of Madame? He said at once that she intended to make her husband French Ambassador to London or Berlin and though he wasn’t a betting man he would backher all the way to do it. This made me laugh. Richard looked around, I think because he had heard, and though the street was ill lit I had a feeling he was staring at me. Could he perhaps be wondering whether a Scotch wife will try to make him a General or a Field Marshal?
    Another thing that Madame de Chamonpierre has done for me is to make me dissatisfied with the way I dress. I would like her for a friend. As we were leaving she said: ‘You will call me Marie.’ So I shall.
Letter from Mary Mackenzie to her mother
    Legation Quarter, Peking
February 28th, 1903
    Dearest Mama – I can now give you the address of my home-to-be in Peking even though I still haven’t seen it. If this seems strange it is because as soon as the house became available, the day before yesterday, Richard moved in from his bachelor quarters and so far Mrs Harding has not been free to accompany me as chaperone. It is very necessary to observe all the proprieties here for the gossip is like a village and I do not wish to give any excuse for talk about what I am doing. I’m sure you will approve of this.
    My address after the wedding will be 157 Hutung Feng-huang. It may surprise you that our house has a number just as at home, though the Chinese system of numbering is rather erratic and Richard tells me that our neighbour on one side is eighty-four and on the other one hundred and twenty-three. The hutung means lane and Feng-huang is translated rather vaguely as fabulous bird, which I gather means a bird that is both male and female. So your daughter will be living in the lane of the fabulous bird. I expect that, like so many narrow streets in this city, it will be rather smelly, for there is a system of open drains along the edges of all of them. Even in the winter freeze-up these are noticeable and what they will be like under summer heat I cannot imagine, for they only get washed out by rain. However, we seem to be behind quite a high wall, a little compound of our own, so that may help.
    Our house has quite an interesting history. The Germans have nowreturned home and Richard bought over their furniture, paying a hundred and twenty pounds for everything, which is quite a bargain even if a lot of the things are not to my taste. I can make changes slowly. We are really very lucky for houses are hard to find in Peking since the destruction. Before the Boxer Troubles ours belonged to quite a high court official (it has fourteen rooms not including kitchen and servants’ quarters) who was one of the men backing the Empress Dowager in her wicked policies against Europeans. After order had been restored the Allies demanded the execution of certain ringleaders of the Boxers and the owner of our house was one of the ones who had his head cut off at a public execution. I don’t know what happened to the dead man’s family for the house was empty when the Germans found it. If all this seems rather gruesome to you then you must remember that the Boxers were ruthless and cruel and certain reparations were called for.
    Richard has so far engaged a houseboy, a kind of butler, and a cook and a handyman, which does not seem many