Return to the Summer Palace
The next day the Court returned to the Summer Palace. The festivities and sacrifices in connection with the Emperor’s Birthday being now over and the Court settled down to its usual routine, I hoped I might be allowed to go regularly to work on the portrait, and that Her Majesty would allow me to paint when she was not posing. There was much I could do between times, and she could pose but for a short time each day. Up to that time, Her Majesty had treated me as a guest at Court, whose amusement was the most important thing to be looked after. She seemed much interested in the work, but my painting was an incident and even the “Sacred Picture” a secondary consideration. All these walks, these delightful excursions, were perfectly charming, and, had I gone to the Palace to enjoy myself, or to study Her Majesty and Chinese manners and customs, I would have been perfectly satisfied. I had, in the Empress Dowager, a psychological study full of ever varying and constant interest. I was living through a unique experience, seeing what I could never hope to see again, but I was not allowed to paint on the portrait as much as I should have liked. Could I but have had permission to work more, I should have been very happy. Had I been able to speak Chinese well enough, I felt I would obtain what I desired; she had shown herself so uniformly kind. She probably felt I was enjoying myself more in this way than working at my painting.
While I thoroughly enjoyed the promenades with Her Majesty, I loved the daily sittings. Every portrait painter knows the sort of intimacy that establishes itself between him and his sitter, however unsympathetic the latter may be at first sight, which was certainly not the case in this instance. The effort of the painter to get under the exterior and discover