Volume 1

The Chinese Empire illustrated : being a series of views from original sketches, displaying the scenery, architecture, social habits etc. of that ancient and exclusive nation / by Thomas Allom ; with historical and descriptive letterpress by G.N. Wright. The work will also contain a succinct account of the history of China : a narrative of British connexion with that nation, the opium war of 1840, and full details of the causes and events of the present war.

  • Allom, Thomas, 1804-1872.
Date:
[1858?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Chinese Empire illustrated : being a series of views from original sketches, displaying the scenery, architecture, social habits etc. of that ancient and exclusive nation / by Thomas Allom ; with historical and descriptive letterpress by G.N. Wright. The work will also contain a succinct account of the history of China : a narrative of British connexion with that nation, the opium war of 1840, and full details of the causes and events of the present war. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    hundred ways, will indeed come too late—his mortal body will die—his property, which you, husband and wife, have sought to keep together, will not descend to his children, but be fought for by multitudes of kindred and relations ; and you will have injured not one person—not your husband only—but even yourself; for who shall take charge of your coffin and your tomb ? Who shall bury you or offer sacrifices ? Alas! your orphaned spirit shall pass nights in tears. It is sorrowful to think of. There are some wives who do control their jealousies, and allow their husbands to take concubines to themselves; but they do so (ungenerously) as if they were drinking vinegar, and eating acids—they beat Betty by way of scolding Belinda*—there is no peace in the inner house. But I beseech you to act as a prudent and virtuous woman. If you have no children, provide with openness and honesty a concubinef for your husband. If she bear him children, to you he will owe that the arteries and veins of his ancestral line are continued ; his children will honour you as their mother, and will not this comfort you ? Give not way to the malignant jealousy of a wicked woman! Prepare not a bitterness which you yourself must swallow.” Generally, however, the wife willingly coincides with the husband in introducing into the household any number of concubines whom he is able to maintain, since she exercises over them an undoubted authority, and the child of a concubine is bound to pay higher respect to the first wife than to its own mother. The Chinese illustrate all the domestic relations by imagery, and are wont to say that, as the husband is the sun, and the wife the moon, so the concubines are the planets and the stars of the domestic firmament. And it has been often truly observed that, though the Chinese may be called sensualists, there is no deifica- tion of the grosser sensualities such as is found in the classical pantheons, and in many of the oriental forms of faith. Tales of the amours of their gods and heroes seldom figure in their historical books or traditional legends. The dresses and external habits of the women in China are invariably modest, and on the whole the social arrangements must be considered friendly to an augmentation of the human race. The domestic affections are strong. Parents are generally fond and proud of their children, and children obedient to their parents. Order is, indeed, the first law of Confucius—authority and submission the apex and basis of the social pyramid. The sentiment of dishonour attached to the extinction of a race by the want of descendants through whom the whole line of reverential services (which some have called religious worship) rendered to ancestors is to be perpetual, is by no means confined to the privileged classes in China. One of our female servants—a nominal Christian—expressed her earnest desire that her husband should have another wife in her absence, and seemed quite surprised that any one should suppose such an arrangement to be in any respect improper. The marriage of children is one of the great concerns of families. Scarcely is a child born in the higher ranks of life ere the question of its future espousal becomes a frequent topic of discussion. There is a large body of professional match-makers, whose business it is to put all the preliminary arrangements in train, to settle questions of dowry, to accommodate differences, to report on the pros and cons of suggested alliances. There being no hereditary honours in China, except those which reckon upwards from the distinguished son to the father, the grandfather, and the whole line of ancestry, which may be ennobled by the literary or martial genius of a descendant—the distinctions of caste are unknown, and a successful student even of the lowest origin would be deemed a fit match for the most opulent and distinguished female in the community. The severe laws which prohibit marriages within certain degrees of affinity (they do not, however, interdict it with a deceased wife’s sister), tend to make marriages more prolific, and to produce a healthier race of children. So strong is the objection to the marriage of blood relations, that a man and woman of the same Sing or family name cannot lawfully wed. Soldiers and sailors are in no respect prevented from marrying. I expect there is, from the number of male emigrants—from the greater loss of men by the various accidents of life, and their abstraction in many circum- stances from intercourse with women—a great disproportion between the sexes, tending naturally enough to the lower appreciation of woman; but correct statistics are wanting in this, as, indeed, in every other part of the field of inquiry. The proportion of unmarried to married people is (as would be deduced from the foregoing observations) exceedingly small. To promote marriages seems everybody’s affair. Matches and betrothings naturally enough occupy the attention of the young, but not less that of the middle-aged and the old. A marriage is the great event in the life of man or woman, and in China is associated with more of preliminary negotiations, ceremo- nials at different steps of the negotiations, written correspondence, visitings, protocols, and conventions, than in any other part of the world. * Chang for Lee—i.e., they punish the concubine’s servants to be revenged on the concubine. t Genesis, xxx., 1—13. j From the Perfect Colkction of Household Gems.