Tairen Maru. Dearest Father. We may as well back out. I've seen Dalny [Dalian (Lüda, Dairen)] and I know. We may just as well back out. Five years old and a European town. Roads - you don't know what that means in China - fine streets of solid brick houses, a great port, destitute of shipping as yet, but that will come, law courts, two hotels, factories in plenty, six lines of rails at the station, a Botanical Garden in embryo and a Zoological Garden very much in Embryo, but still there. It contained some deer, an eagle and two black bears - note the symbolism! Do you remember a story of Kipling's in which a Russian officer is well entertained by an English Regiment? He gets up after dinner to make a speech. "Go away you old peoples" he says "Go away you - old - peoples!" and falls drunk under the table. That's the speech Dalny is making and I feel inclined to take its advice. In fact there is no alternative. We arrived at 7 AM on Thursday, went ashore and breakfasted at the Gastinnia[?] Dalny where the proprietor fortunately spoke German. They take nothing but roubles, being in Russia, and we had to go to the renowned Russo Chinese bank to change our notes. Having paid for our breakfast, our friend the proprietor put us into a dorschky - a pukka dorschky - and we drove round the town. Our driver was a cheerful Kurlander who spoke a little German too. He came out last autumn and meant to stay 2 years. "Business is good?" said I, observing his fat and smiling face. "Recht gut" said he "sometimes one earns 18 roubles a day." No wonder he smiled and grew fat. The railway cutting is being widened, the station is not yet finished. Both were black with thousands of Chinese coolies working for dear life. How long is it, therefore, between project and completion in Russian hands? H. [Hugo] gnashed his teeth, but I did nothing but admire. They deserve to rule Asia - and they mean to rule Asia. Go away you old peoples! Now on Friday, sailing over exquisite bright cold seas, we arrived at Chemulpo [Inch'on] - the accent is on the last syllable - and lay to in the outer anchorage, between many islands and some two miles from the shore. We proceeded thither, as the F.O. would say - in sampans towed by a launch and arrived just in time to miss the 12 o'clock train. All regrets were, however, absorbed in the joy of watching the Koreans. They wear the most absurd costume ever invented by man. They dress in long white cotton coats, which it takes all the labour of all their many womenkind to keep clean, white trousers, white and shapeless wadded socks and straw shoes - no protection at all, you observe, against any kind of weather. There [sic] hats are similarly contrived to offer the greatest amount of trouble and the least possible service. They are top hats with a wide brim, transparent, made of black, or if the wearer is in mourning, white woven strips of very fine bamboo, very expensive, very fragile and so small in the crown that they poise on the top of the skull and have to be fastened by strings under the chin. So swathed and bonneted, the Korean stands for the greater part of his life with his hands behind his back gazing vacantly at nothing at all. The women wear white also, very full short ungainly skirts and bodice 6 inches long leaving an appreciable interval between its hem and the beginning of the waistband, and long green coats. You think they put their arms in the sleeves? Not at all. The coats are worn over the head with the sleeves flapping down on either side of the face. A more nonsensical dress it would be difficult to imagine. We went up to the Consulate, which stands on a bluff overlooking the charming bay and the Consul's wife kept us to lunch. After which he - his name is Lay - sent a boy with us to show us the bank and the telephone for we had to change money and send a message to McCleavy Brown, the Chief Commissioner of Korean Customs, who, under Providence, rules Korea. Morrison had given us a letter to him. So we caught the 2.25 train to Seoul [Soul] where we arrived about 4, a pretty journey through green country and grassy hills, and valleys in which the rice was just sprouting in the flooded fields. You would laugh to see the white clad Korean working up to his knees in the mud of the paddy fields. We did. We found Mr Brown waiting for us at the station, a big striking oldish man, Irish, with a most engaging manner and a heart of gold, I feel persuaded. He walked with us up to the hotel where he had taken our rooms and having invited us to breakfast and made all our arrangements for us, he left us. Seoul lies enclosed by hills on the north, east and southern side, hills so bare and rugged and so fine in outline that they look like the tops of great Alps. Some of the views along the wide streets, closed by these jagged crests, reminded me of Innsbrück. The silly town wall runs laboriously to the very summit of them and makes its difficult way along the ridge, enclosing a vast area of rock and sand besides that of the town, which is already very large. The northern part is entirely occupied by unused palaces; in one of them the queen was murdered, in another a snake dropped from the roof into the room of the Crown Prince, these are the reasons given for their abandonment by the court. The real reason is that the King is in mortal terror for his life and has therefore built himself a new palace close under the hill on which the Legations stand, where he feels himself more or less under foreign protection, safe from his own subjects and from the Japanese. The wide clean streets are entirely due to Mr Brown who has cleared them and laid the roads. He holds the purse strings and the King comes begging to him for money. It's an extraordinary position; he seems to me to have done a great deal, but Morrison says he ought to have done much more, that he might have done anything being the only man in the country who has money in his hands, but that he lets things slide. I was very sorry not to see our minister, Jordan, who is said to be an able man, one of the coming men of the Far East. Mr Townley had given us a letter to him, but he was away for a few days. We went to see the sights, which are neither many nor fine, but the streets were too delicious and to watch a gentleman in a white frock coat and a transparent top hat catching the electric train is an enchanting spectacle. They never abandon their top hats; our waiter always wore his - no it was a mitre, waiters, naturally, wear transparent black mitres - and everytime he handed us a dish Hugo murmured ecstatically "Funny, funny gnome!" We breakfasted with Mr Brown; he lives in a charming native house, his own having been pulled down to make room for the new palace. He talked and talked; he told us about the Jubilee. The King was so much fired by the accounts of the Queen's Jubilee that he determined to hold one himself. He has only reigned 40 years, but he said he had entered the decade in which he would reign 50 years if he lived, and besides he was 52. These arguments were conclusive. It had to be put off last year because of cholera, and it's just been put off again because one of the princes has smallpox, but he has spent more money over a jubilee that didn't come off than would be spent over a Korean War. Given the hats and the general line of conduct of Gnomeland that seems quite reasonable. You will readily understand that the building of the new palace - it's not finished - had to be put off too while the prince was ill, because every nail that was driven in would have caused a pit on his face. The part that's being built closely resembles the Parthenon; we saw the plans of it. Mr Brown took us walking about the town, showed and expounded. It was most amusing. I discovered that I had a friend here, Mlle Sontag, an old Russian whom I met on the Salasic. She is the King's housekeeper. So we went to call with Mr Brown and she was enchanted to see us and told us how all she saved for the king was thrown out of window tenfold forthwith, but she had the satisfaction of doing her duty. I've been warmly invited both by her and by Mr Brown to come and stay, in fact there is quite the heated rivalry as to which of them I shall stay with next time I'm in Seoul. So we lunched and left and found the customs launch waiting to take us on board at Chemulpo and the ship waiting for us to arrive and here we are. I must tell you about the white granite pagoda in Seoul. The top of it was knocked off by the Japanese in their invasion in the 17th century and lies uninjured[?] at the foot of the column. Mr Brown has been repairing and enclosing it and he wished to complete his work by replacing the top. But the court necromancers said No, great misfortunes would befall the country if that top were restored to the pagoda. So it lies on the ground still. On Sunday 10th we arrived at Mokpo, a place so small that it can scarcely be called a place at all. H. heard one of the Americans, our fellow passengers - there are nothing but Americans on board - inquiring if that was the City? The Customs Officer - his name slips in and out of my head like a mouse, it's out now - made us welcome, introduced us to his Japanese wife and took us round to see the sights, which are nonexistent. So after walking about for an hour we returned to our ship. The main part of "the City", like all these Korean coast places, is Japanese. The coast is very lovely and broken. We ran through more islands than I thought existed in the whole world. On Monday 10th we got to Fusan [Pusan], another Japanese village in a charming bay. The Customs boat took us ashore after lunch and we walked up a pine planted hill on top of which was a Shinto temple, empty, silent, the wind rustling through its straw rope offerings and paper tassels and a little Japanese child playing under its stone lanterns. I was, however, seriously indisposed by a violent cold in the head and when I got back to the ship I went to bed and stayed there, having a good deal of fever and many aches and pains. H and the Misses Warchopes [sic] were reduced to playing Bridge with dummy, none of the uncivilized Americans being able to make a fourth. The Misses Wanchopes are dear old things, the old Miss Wanchope a sensible capable nice woman, the very old Miss Wanchope so completely vague that you wonder how her sister manages to pilot her so successfully.

Tues 12. [12 May 1903] We reached Nagasaki very early and H [Hugo] went on shore after breakfast and came back with mails and many rumours of war. Russia is buying up all the provisions and all the coal she can lay hands on and sending ship loads of meat from America to Vladivostock [Vladivostok]. I wonder what is going to happen! We had 2 letters from Mother written just before she left London, I gather, the beginning of April; only postcards from you. We shall find more at Kobe. I was still rather a poor thing, but we went on shore after lunch and wandered about the delicious clean Japanese town, flowers in all the shops and vistas of tiny Japanese gardens through the open doorways. A delightful gnome took us up to the Shinto temple and we asked him what he thought of the prospects of war. "Yes, yes!" said he hissing his breath "come soon, come soon!" If it does, Nagasaki will have a merry time of it. We looked round the pretty smiling bay, the hills clothed with wood and corn, and the wide stretching town nestled at their foot - it's the arsenal of Japan for all its peaceful air.

Wed 13. [13 May 1903] In streaming wet windy weather we reached Shimoneschi[?] [Shimonoseki] and landed after breakfast with all our baggage which was well customhoused - they opened everything and taxed nothing, indeed I don't know what is dutiable - dutyable, is it a word? We spent a profitable morning in an excellent clean little hotel, packing up a chest full of things to send to England and after lunch we stepped into a corridor train and went off along the lovely Inland Sea, of which, however, we saw little because of the weather. They gave us an extremely good dinner on the train - railway travelling has considerably improved in the last five years. And things have altered, there's no doubt of it. Far more people are in European dress, there are more factories, more advertisements, but there is the same pretty daintiness about it all, people and houses and flowery landscape. Indeed we are back in Civilization for the first time since we left Marseilles [Marseille]. I spent my time in the train learning Japanese so that when we arrived at Miyajiama I was able to explain that we wanted to leave our heavy luggage at the station! Obliging gnomes took us down to the water's edge in the black dark and in a tossing sampan we crossed the arm of the Inland Sea that separates the sacred island from the mainland and landed in a fine wood just opposite our hotel. It was a Japanese hotel; I had a little paper house all myself, Hugo was accommodated with a paper room in the main building, the waiting maids spread out the piles of padded quilts which were our beds and we went to sleep wrapped in the sense of the spotless exquisiteness of our surroundings.

Thurs 14. [14 May 1903] It was exquisite! next morning when we woke to sunlight we saw how charming it was. My house stood by the edge of a miniature torrent tumbling down between pine trees, with a garden behind of sanded paths and tiny fountains and azaleas and peonies blossoming in pots. A wooden bridge connected me with the rest of the world. I walked across it while my bed was being rolled away and our breakfast laid, and found myself in the grove of pines under which we landed, the sea washing up to the foot of them, a regiment of stone lanterns leading to a temple hard by where people come all day and clap their hands and say a tiny prayer, and beyond, in the middle of the bay, the famous water torii which stands before the sea-built temple of Miyajima. There is something deliciously fantastic and suggestive about this great gateway standing in the middle of the water. Phantom flotillas ought to come by night under the moon along that blue and shifting roadway under the gate. The tilted lines of its huge beams and the wash of the water beneath on which it seems to stand give it an unsubstantial look in spite of its great size and strength, imponderous, airily poised between shifting water and changing sky. We spent a delicious day wandering about the temple and village and climbing through the woods to the topmost point of the island which is all beset with shrines and has lovely views up and down the Inland Sea. Azaleas were blooming in masses in the woods.

Next day Fri. 15 [15 May 1903] we left early, rowed across to our train and travelled all day here where we arrived at 8 PM and were met at the station by the 2 Colliers. We had a very merry dinner and sat on my balcony afterwards talking till bedtime.

Sat. 16. [16 May 1903] Our hotel (Yaami) stands up on the hillside and has a wonderful view all across Kyoto. It is very comfortable besides, a huge great place - it was a tiny, half Japanese inn 5 years ago. We spent the day sightseeing with the Colliers, palaces, temples, gardens, wonderful rooms all decorated by great artists - they are supreme decorators the Japanese, temple or house or garden, there's no one to touch them. The Colliers went away after dinner; they're off to the northern island to see Ainus[?] and we meet them later at Nikko. H [Hugo] and I went in the evening to see the Cherry dance, which is a special Kyoto dance, and the most exquisite sight possible. H. agreed with me in thinking it perfectly delicious.

Sun 17. [17 May 1903] And today we joined with the nice old Miss Wanchopes and made an expedition down the rapids of Arashiyama, a most amusing thing to do. We took our lunch with us and eat it at a tea house by the water's edge. The river sides were covered with azalea and wisteria and weigelia in full flower. The Miss W's brought another woman with them, a Miss Crocker whom I didn't much like.

Mon 18. [18 May 1903] Was a grey day which turned later to pouring rain. H. [Hugo] went to Kobe on shipping matters and I to Osaka to see the Exhibition. We travelled so far together. It was a very remarkable Exhibition, quite real with a water chute and all complete. Everything Japan makes and grows and pickles and aspires to was there - which covers a very wide field, specially the pickling and the aspirations. But they make everything, from chopsticks to delicate surgical instruments. Eastern and Western every manufacture was represented. The Govt exhibited guns and models of men of war and elaborate charts about chemical manures and noxious insects and how to destroy them. And the gnomes were walking round with their notebooks and taking heaps of notes. The entrance fee was one halfpenny! The art exhibition was poor, the pictures painted in the European style lamentable, even some of their own screens and kakemonos were clearly influenced by Western art and bad in proportion. But I noticed that all the common china, household furniture and utensils, native textiles were as good as ever they could be. There was scarcely an ugly thing amongst them, and the variety of form and ingenuity of imagination were admirable. We left Kyoto in the evening, had a sleeping carriage and a most comfortable journey to Tokyo (Tues 19 [19 May 1903]) where we arrived at 9 in the morning and established ourselves in an excellent hotel. H. went to lunch with Aubrey Herbert and we spent the afternoon leaving cards on people. We had letters at Kobe - a very long delightful one from you describing the end of your travels and your Bodley bothers over which we feel most sympathetic. I wish, I do wish, that tiresome affair were over. Here too we found a mail. Photographs, letters from Mother - we do hope the matinÇe has been a great success. The letter from Lord Lovelace has not arrived - did you send it? I have one from Justice Holmes. We laughed to see our Indian experiences in the Exhibition Gazette - but I think the letters needed a little more editing! "the ahl sarts" is not a phrase for publication. Fortunately it appears as "the ahl goats" and is therefore unintelligible.

Wed. 20. [20 May 1903] We went to the Botanical Gardens in the morning and saw irises and a lovely water garden. Then we called on a Japanese to whom we had a letter - Mr Tokiwo Yokoi, sometime minister of industries and a most charming man. He talks English as well as we do. We sat on the floor for an hour and conversed. His father was one of the authors of the revolution of Meiji and was murdered in 1869 by a reactionary - so that he has paid his price for New Japan. He was a Samurai; he got out and showed us 2 sets of the double swords of his ancestors, wonderful pieces of delicate and strong work by great swordsmiths. He is a Christian; he seems to think that the present generation feels deeply the want of an organised religion and is turning to a very wide sort of Christianity for it. His own is so wide that he scarcely admits the divinity of Christ. His wife came in presently, a pretty charming woman, talking a little English, and we drank tea together. They both wore Jap. clothes. Aubrey Herbert came to tea with us - he is a delightful creature, I am looking forward to seeing more of him. He took Hugo off to the Club afterwards.
Now this letter must go - there's a mail tomorrow. My dear love to Mother to whom I haven't written for a long time. I will next mail. We delighted in Wee Macgregor. Our only regret was that you hadn't sent us a box of Taiblets [sic]. Ever your affectionate daughter Gertrude.

Eddy says 6d paper novels would be the greatest boon to him. I will send him some from America and the family might keep him supplied from time to time.