Page:China Under the Empress Dowager - ed. Backhouse and Bland - 1914.pdf/13



Authors have been honoured by the following communication from His Royal Highness Prince Henry of Prussia concerning his audience with the Empress Dowager on the 15th of May 1898. The account herein given of the circumstances which led to the first reception of the ladies of the Diplomatic Body at the Court of and the Authors gratefully avail themselves of the opportunity which presents itself, in preparing the revised edition of this work, to make Peking it is of permanent interest, public.

"Whilst holding an appointment as Rear-Admiral, Second in Command of the German Cruiser Squadron in China in 1898, I had the opportunity of visiting Peking and of being admitted to an audience before the late Empress Dowager and the late Emperor.

"I was given to understand that an audience of this kind was quite out of the common, and that no European had, in the past, ever stood before a Chinese Empress so long as Chinese history existed, but that it had been Her Majesty's particular wish to receive me on this occasion, probably much against the wishes of her advisers, though perhaps her object was to prove that she was the sovereign in power.

"The audience took place on the 15th of May 1898, at the Summer Palace, Wan Shau-Shan, on which occasion all