Eastern Starlight, a British Girl's Memoir of Warlord China

By Jean Elder with Reg Mitchell

Eastern Starlight, a British Girl's Memoir of Warlord China by Jean Elder with Reg Mitchell

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638857242

Book preview

Chapter 1

Trans-Siberian to the Orient: To Return and Reunite

Beyond the U-Boat Blockade—Nothing could jolt a person awake faster than the screech of our brakes, slowing the train to a crawl. The rolling rhythm of the wheels along the rails, so comforting to me as a child, was quickly replaced with the constant howl of a polar wind at our window. We had made many crossings on jittery trestles like the one that loomed ahead, brief moments of anxiety amid thunderous reverberation and clanking of heavy steel, but none like this one high above the ice floes of the Sungari on our way into Harbin.

It was a city that a young girl could only dream of, a doll-house world of dancing illusions, silver silhouettes of onion-shaped domes, and slender spires that glistened in the Manchu starlight. Unseen were the grand avenues of urban life, all but vanished in a soft sea of whiteness with only the street lamps marking the way through an airbrushed haze.

Since the snowpack avalanches at Tsitsihar east of the passage through the Khingan’s, we had advanced along the Mongolian border deep into the northeast reaches of China where peace and tranquility were ethereal dreams as fluid as a watercolor moon on the tip of an artist’s brush. With the exception of war, nothing about life seemed permanent at the dawn of 1917.

Curled up on the seat with a blanket around me, I turned toward my mother and caught her glancing down at me with a look of devotion and pride and returned it with the same unmistakable meaning. She wasn’t one to show physical affection, more interested in being attentive to me by being instructive but always in moderation.

Are we close to home? I asked in a gentle voice, weary and drained of emotion but not of enduring faith in her. Father will be anxious.

In the morrow, Jeannie, she answered in her stern and snippy manner reinforced by a thick brogue. Meanwhile, ye’re aye to keep alert with a cheery spirit.

Mother came into this world during Victoria’s dour and gloomy reign when women were expected to be glaciers that never melted, and judging by her own immeasurable character and dignity, she was ice-carved in the queen’s own image.

As a pragmatic person, she was under no illusion about the risks of life in China, or that it was hardly the place to seek shelter from violence or sights unworthy of smelling salts that all women carried. "China has created a force of armed brigands which she no longer can control," wrote the Peking correspondent of The London Times. Elizabeth Elder, on the contrary, had what no other Western woman in China would ever have for self-protection—the personal friendship of one of the most feared brigands of them all, Marshal Chang Tso-lin, bandit, warrior, warlord, and now ruler of China’s northeastern provinces of Fengtien, Kirin, and Heilungkiang, known as Manchuria.

Our return to China was long overdue after what should have been a brief trip to Scotland in the spring of 1914 to deposit, Hugh, the eldest, in prestigious Glasgow University to pursue his degree in electrical engineering.

There’ll aye be time to renew bonds with the family in Lanark, Mother declared the day we leased a quaint and comfortable house at 44 John Street in Coatbridge near her sister (my Aunt Aggie) and my Uncle James Boak, adding, We’ll be China-bound, port-side passage out before fall and back in Father’s arms.

Fate intervened. The Guns of August turned our plans upside down and brought us The Great War with its horrific bloodshed on the continent. The waters around Britain were declared by Germany to be a war zone in which all merchant shipping, although unarmed, were considered fair targets including eventually the great passenger liner, Lusitania.

What is a U-Boat? I asked my mother.

It’s a German submarine that can hide under water and sink our ships, she said. Here in Britain, a cluster of islands, we happen to be surrounded by U-Boats at the moment and therefore unable to put back to sea.

In one of my sister’s letters to Father, she wrote in her best penmanship, I pursue my love of music at the Glasgow Athenaeum, Royal Scottish Academy for Music and Drama, while James is taking well to the Boys Higher Grade School, Class T. C. You would be proud to know that Jeannie is learning to read and write and Jim is teaching her to speak in Mandarin. Your loving daughter, Agnes.

The Victorian precept that patience is a virtue had been hand-carried into the twentieth century along with the Bible’s message in Romans 12:12, Be patient in tribulation. Of the many sacrosanct rules of polite society, none were more advisable than not being in a hurry about anything, a notion held in such high esteem that it had been adapted to modern European battlefields where stalemates were in vogue.

When not being home-schooled, I spent many misty mornings trudging through dark, cloistered abbeys and stone castles. In the late afternoons, dressed to the nines, I sat stiff and erect on the edge of Aunt Ag’s Victorian walnut sofa, careful never to touch the scrolled wood parts or scattered cushions while enduring a lifetime of ladies’ teas. On occasion, it was expected that I say something that made me sound more mature for my age. It was a brutal form of child abuse, but it was the indisputable British way of teaching manners, confidence, and self-discipline to ensure it all sunk in like a plant being overwatered.

Smile and be still, Mother demanded of me before each of these insufferable sessions in an era that encouraged older ladies to fawn over little girls and admire their white lace dresses and shoulder-length line curls. One of my first lessons learned was the difference between admiration and praise. I much preferred the latter knowing that it had to be earned since Mother reserved praise for her children as though she were handing us the Victoria Cross.

Ye’re aye becoming a young lady, my aunt declared with enough pride in her voice to create a sea of approving smiles in the room. I knew then that I had reached an important milestone in life and that it was all worthwhile, but in truth, I longed to have the man whose picture I kept on my dresser, the father I called Dear Daddy but could hardly remember, back in our lives.

At last, in late December of 1916, Germany offered a peace plan. Attacks on British merchant ships ceased temporarily, but not before 436 of them had been torpedoed with huge loss of life. Fearing neither the Foreign Office, nor the danger of mines, nor German deceit, Mother seized the opportunity. Together with my older siblings, Jimmy and Agnes, the four of us slipped away from the docks of Aberdeen under cover of darkness aboard a tramp steamer bound for Bergen, Norway.

A Clyde Bank vessel this one, lass, with Scottish steel in her, the grizzly old Captain boasted as he leaned down in my face and clouded me in the warm breath of a Glasgow brewery. With skin the touch of goat hide, he led me by the hand to our quarters with the others trailing behind. He had the look of a pirate, the first man I’d ever seen with metal teeth that shined—at least the ones not missing. But it was his eyes that I’ll never forget—those of a blockade runner, dancing red like the fires of the doomed vessels he boasted he’d seen in flames never as bright as on the Jutland horizon last May. To be exact, I’ve aye been home three of the past twenty years, he remarked with unconcealed pride.

It was all the endorsement Mother needed to forge ahead with her brazen plan, risk be damned, to avoid the belligerents, as she called them, and brave the most fearsome of Russian winters homeward bound to China.

If this wrinkled reef relic of a ship captain wanted realism in an abandon-ship drill, he couldn’t have picked a better time than midnight in the North Sea taking forty-footers. The bloodcurdling alarm had us up and dressed in a bolt of lightning and careening down the passageway to the door leading out to the davits. He never bothered to announce it as a drill, not that it would have diminished the undeniable fright of going through the experience.

My brother, Jim, at age thirteen, pushed hard, deafening our ears in a sudden instant with the immense sound of the wind and the waves lashing us head on. Adjusting to the ship’s lumbering rolls with slippery ocean sloshing our decks and drenching us to the bone, we held the inboard rail for dear life, comedic-looking with our tiny heads popping up from our puffy gray life preservers.

The number 2 boat holds sixteen, and we’ve a compass, fresh water, canned food, oars, and a sail, the mate shouted in a deliberate cadence at the top of his lungs. Nod to acknowledge, he demanded as I gasped for air with my heart pounding.

No fears, young lass, Agnes said in a steady voice.

Not a one, Ag, I answered as firmly as I could. She expected no less of me.

It was of no little comfort to feel my sister’s arm locked around me, and perhaps God’s as well, but with all due respect to the crew, the chances of us even getting aboard the lifeboat far less being lowered upright into such a maelstrom were roughly nil.

Pay attention were among the first words Mother ever said to me, but after what we had just been through, the meaning of those words couldn’t have been clearer.

If we ever have to abandon a sinking ship at sea, she explained, we’ll know what do.

There’s no safety in a lifeboat since the Germans shoot survivors at sea, Jim declared, quoting an article he read in The Glasgow Herald.

Why would they do such a thing? I asked him, now that I had been made aware of an even more compelling reason why removing one’s self from a ship in the Atlantic with no land in sight was a terribly bad idea.

The Germans have a different view of morality than we do, he replied.

Enough of the low road, Mother interrupted. It’s our own morality that matters. Facing danger from torpedoes was the least of her worries, having sailed more than a few oceans aboard British coal-burners into the eyes of typhoons as if that were what all women did with themselves.

From the port of Bergen, our treacherous journey across Norway’s higher elevations led to Stockholm, where we embarked yet another steamer, a pitiful creaking iron vessel the size of a ferry. By God’s mercy, we were able to smash our way through the winter white caps of the Baltic Sea on a fifteen-hour crossing into the ice-cleared harbor of Helsinki.

Russia on the Eve of Revolution—Wasting no time, Mother had us aboard a coach train to Petrograd and a Pullman overnight to Moscow in spite of the ominous warning we had been given from the ticket agent in Finland, Empty seats are there for the taking, since crossing the Russian border is about as good an idea as strolling into a pitch-black ammunition bunker and striking a match for a better view.

We’re British citizens, Mother scoffed, reminding us that our passports guaranteed that no harm would come to us, although it had thus far never been put to the test.

Arriving at one of Petrograd’s many stations, we were greeted by a blizzard of epic proportions. Snowflakes the size of oak leaves continued to fall for the entire two days of our stay as armies of workers toiled with relentless determination to clear Nevsky Prospekt. Against this onslaught, trolleys inched forward, and horses and mules with terrified frost-covered eyes and icicles clinging to their mains struggled to pull monstrous loads.

People and animals in Tsarist Russia were equally expendable judging by the mounds of ice-glazed corpses of both species piled at the curbs.

Don’t look, Mother insisted, yanking on my arm as she hurried us out of our cab and into our hotel. I disobeyed and tuned long enough to commit to memory the stench in the air and the sad sight of the horror, even if she could put it all aside.

None of us knew then that in a mere few weeks the Germans, given their love of war, music, and literature in that order, would abandon the temporary truce, or that a month from now the four of us would have been swept up in the merciless Bolshevik Revolution with our fate in the hands of Russia’s peasant hoards.

Bathed in the light of the spectacular dome above Moscow’s Yaroslavski Station, we boarded the legendary Trans-Siberian Railway, Rossia to the Russians, for our five-thousand-mile odyssey to the Orient. By then, I had acquired a love of trains, even the most ordinary of them, and I looked forward to the journey with enormous anticipation. I wasn’t to be disappointed.

We’ve two of the nine soft-class compartments in our sleeper, Mother informed us as we climbed the stairway to our car, and we’re to have double-berthing and private lavatories in each.

What I couldn’t have imagined was the breathtaking splendor of the interior as we made our way down the carpeted center aisle—the vibrant colors, the exquisite craftsmanship, and the comfort for sleeping. My eyes were in constant motion, drawn like my curious hands to the window curtains, gas lamps, sofas that became beds, double-pane glass to keep us warm, and even the ornate ashtrays.

Trains in those day had their own peculiar way of forging a union with one’s consciousness so that little went unnoticed—the doors to the vestibule between cars being opened for a few seconds suddenly replacing the familiar clatter along the track with a violent rush of noise before clicking shut, the squeaky sound of privacy curtains being drawn closed, the jerky sideways movement that jostled us about like rag dolls, and our own ghostly night-faces appearing and disappearing in the ever-changing luminous drama in the glass.

The opulence more than made up for the interminable stops. Yet for all of its luxury, the TSR seemed to have emerged from a bygone era, carrying with her the last vestiges of old-world etiquette, elitism, and egalitarianism, each clinging to life like brightly-feathered Brazilian birds in a dying rainforest. While aboard, we were living in that era, breathing, smelling, and tasting it, even believing in it.

In no other space aboard did the Age of Romanticism come to life than in the quiet elegance of the TSR’s dining salon. Being observed, admired, and perhaps even envied took precedence over the culinary masterpieces being served, not to mention the delight of experiencing the ambiance and grace of such an inspiring setting.

Preparing ourselves for each meal was a time-consuming affair that required us all to pay absurd attention to our appearance. Contorting our bodies in the little space available in order to change clothes, put on stockings, lace up corsets and shoes, and examine each other for threads and lint without being banged to pieces gave us hours of exercise. In those days, tradition served as society’s stabilizing force to always right the ship.

Tables in the dining car were arranged with four high-back red lacquered seats creating a sense of enclosure and a touch of privacy. Proper appearance demanded good posture and a complete absence of twitching about in garments that itched and scratched.

Mother had her opinions and expressed them without reservation, but to her credit, she wasn’t the type of parent to be forever correcting or nagging and never at the dinner table. I could speak my mind with the understanding that manners, grace, and civility were the channel markers to steer clear of the shoals.

Regardless of the time spent dressing and undressing and the etiquette that we followed to the letter, every meal became a pleasurable experience and a welcome respite. Menu choices rivaled the best of European haute cuisine, but nothing appealed to me more than our own bread freshly baked in the galley served with Danish butter.

Mother allowed me to have tea and taught me the finer points of how to introduce a dash of Danish crème and Belgian sugar, even how to balance a cup and saucer in my lap, and I took great pride in having her show confidence in me.

She insisted that my hair be styled in drop-down spiral curls and assigned Agnes the evening ritual of performing this labor-intensive task that took hours to complete. Prior to bedtime, my entire head was transformed into segments of hair curled tight and tied at the top with rag curlers cut from strips of cloth. I had to patiently endure each one of these sessions uttering no more than an occasional ouch.

Mind you, there’ll be no moving about on your pillow during the night, my sister cautioned me.

Young ladies must look presentable, Mother added. Few words in the English language were more important than that one.

We were living in two extraordinary worlds, one of them forever flying past our windows and the other a fashion show pirouetting down our aisle, each cloaked in its own panache and intrigue and each a feast for the eyes vying for our attention and never disappointing. Although joined at the hip to both, I found solace in reading and even sitting still, letting my heart be stolen away in the infinite horizons of forests and farmlands where man’s irrelevancy had become even more of a certainty than the odds against his very survival.

Our best moments were during the give-and-take of conversations in which we all offered our own thoughts. Sometimes we joined together in our favorite song, The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond. By the third verse, Mother would even smile and orchestrate with her hands and lend her voice in harmony. Her feelings were there for the world to see in her smooth and unblemished face. But her lustrous blue eyes are what I remember most, warm and translucent and approving when not casting a withering gaze in the presence of bad behavior.

Seated across from me with her rosebud cheeks, azure pupils, and soft blond curls spilling over her shoulders, Agnes Henderson Elder was a portrait of Scottish beauty that leapt out of the pages of Burns. Armed with her inherited head-strong nature, she’d hurled off the home-spun quilt of Mother’s Clan Campbell pragmatism and emerged in her teens like a monarch fluttering free in the sunshine. Other than her spontaneity even in an era that cried out for caution, the two of us shared much in common: our love of family and of each other, a mind of our own, and a positive attitude that enabled us to see beyond temporary setbacks.

Bright beyond her years, Agnes devoured books and devoted herself to learning. Yet she found the time to be a part of my life. Like a mother in her own loving way, she took a keen interest in my early childhood education, and in her hands I became a quick learner. I looked up to my sister and accepted all the tender embracing she had to give me. She was the one I confided in and laughed loudest with, the one whose arms were always around me, and the one who taught me to read books, count numbers, and write in cursive.

Jeannie, ask me any question your heart desires, she said. You can count on an honest answer.

Well, I do have one question, Ag. Why do we have to change clothes before each meal? What difference does it make since we’re on a train?

Because it’s the proper thing to do, she replied, with no more to say on the subject.

From the window seat next to her, glazed-over eyes peered out from a young boy’s handsome but expressionless face well-practiced by the age of thirteen in concealing emotion and most of all the mystery and mischief that were so much a part of him. Wrapped beneath layers of winter clothing, James Carey Elder looked like one of the sacks of potatoes we’d taken aboard at Omsk. He’d been counting the days to get back to the truest friend he would ever have in his life, Chang Hsiao Liang (Han Chen), eldest son of Chang Tso-lin and known in Manchuria as the Young Marshal, warlord-in-training.

We’ve had quite enough of that annoying camera in our faces, young man, Agnes cautioned James in front of us. The one and six could have been better spent on a new pair of shoes in Lanark, I’ll wager.

In due time, however, the camera was back in action taking anything but surreptitious photos of our fellow travelers, nervous souls, most of whom were Russian and not the least bit amused to be captured on the new sharper-image Kodak film in posh surroundings while still west of the Urals. Some like fellow traveler Igor Boykin, a congenial Ukrainian with an oval-shaped bald head and a wrinkled face the color of a Burgandy wine spill on white linen, were extroverts always interested in conversation.

Pray tell, what, is your destination, madam? he inquired of my mother.

Mukden in Fengtien Province, sir.

God help you, he mused in our doorway, pausing to light up a cigarette extracted from a Sterling silver vest-pocket case.

You’ve been there, have you? she replied with eyebrows raised.

From what I’ve read, you’d best take care, he cautioned through near-perfect smoke rings expanding from his pursed lips. Warlords and the like, and the Japanese are up to no good.

Is that so? Mother quipped, adding with her sharp-edged repartee. Then ’tis fortunate I am to have a person with your wealth of library knowledge to advise me about the Orient.

In her view, Russia had all the trappings of a primitive and uncultured land compared to Japan and well-deserving of having lost their fleet to the Emperor’s battleships in the Tsushima Strait. Nonetheless, we developed an amicable relationship with this self-proclaimed gentleman of noble birth.

I listened as Mr. Boykin spun his share of intriguing tales of the glorious years gone by in a homeland he might never see again since the Russia of old was fast-becoming eclipsed by the absence of humanity. In this lull before the storm, one lived longer as a chameleon, able to sense the political winds as to which class to belong to at any given moment.

As the conductor announced the strange-sounding names of the villages, I strained my head at the window anticipating the reward of yet another charming-looking station. I was intrigued by the distinctive platform sheds, each with fancy ornamental iron or timber columns and beams supporting often elaborate roof structures. These colorful works of art seemed to emerge out of nowhere, a sudden intrusion into our privacy offering rare insights to an amalgam of races and cultures.

Chattering crowds in fanciful clothing were there to greet us at Ekaterinburg, Tyumen, Novosibirsk on the Ob, Krasnoyarsk on the Yenisei, Tayshet, and Nizneudinsk as vendors pushed up against the train with no more than twenty-five minutes to hawk their wares. I was spellbound at the sight of the brisk bartering at open windows, through which fingers touched and goods flowed fast amid enticing scents of potato cakes, char-broiled fish, beef stroganoff, borscht soup, and caviar. In the cacophony of unfamiliar dialects being spoken, words quickly became puffs of breath in the freezing air.

Woven into this timeless patchwork quilt, the sliced-open heart of mother Russia lay bare before us—the desperate faces of the sick and malnourished, the underfed horses and mules hitched at the head of their wagons, and human misery that would have given pause to the darkest souls of man.

Protruding from shabby woolen garments were the forlorn faces of the elderly, craggy and creased with sun-burnt skin drawn taught over high cheekbones. Bloodshot eyes, slivers of magenta sunsets floating in the sockets of skeletons, pleaded for God’s mercy with hands straining to hold on to our train more tenaciously than crab claws.

Beggars in tattered rags sat astride the shoulders of others, hoping for a glimpse beyond the shiny glass into the elegance of our passenger cars with their lavish rouge color scheme and exquisite décor. In the most ruthless mockery of poverty itself, the dining car was always prepared for the next meal with place settings of silverware, glistening china, expensive crystal, and fresh flowers at every table.

Can I give them some of my food? I appealed to my mother at one station, having had enough of pretending the hunger crisis didn’t exist.

It’s not our place to be feeding Russian peasants, lass.

Well, It’s the right thing to do, I continued, taking care to be respectful. I’ve more than I need on my plate and I’ll never finish it.

Feed one and they’ll be swarming at our throats, my sister observed, lending her full support to our mother’s wishes.

Then who will take care of them? I asked, still staring from the window.

No one, Jeannie. Many will starve to death, Agnes whispered to me in a voice more suitable for a confessional booth aware of the passion in my eyes. May they not perish, she had the decency to add, but the images of those famished souls pleading for a loaf of bread, even the crusts and crumbs, were drilled deep into my eyes that day and implanted forever.

The Trans-Siberian had become an escape passage from hell and high water, the arc itself for the fortunate few of the soft-skinned perfumed émigrés of upper-class Russia to survive, the princes and their brides and according to rumor, members of the Romanov family. Fate had brought us all together in a chariot of steel in the last days of a Tsarist Pompeii soon to erupt in a revolution that would devour the land and anyone unfortunate enough to appear well dressed and well fed.

Giant tunnels afforded us passage through the high elevations, but we had many a worrisome steep incline that forced us to push our steam engine to its limits.

Mother, look, I exclaimed, raising my voice in surprise. Isn’t that Mr. Boykin sprinting by and waving to us?

So it is, and good riddance, she huffed. Perhaps he’ll tire and we’ll outrun the grinning fool this time since we’ve less of a hill to climb.

Oh my, we couldn’t leave him behind. We haven’t seen a village since the Ob, and he’ll die in the snow.

Don’t fret, Jean, Jim assured me. Mum’s just joking.

On the ninth morning out of Moscow, the invincible Trans came to a full stop in a snow-covered landscape flat to the horizon with not a sign of life. Sensing trouble at hand, I followed my mother’s lead and adopted her disciplined calm demeanor. I had faith in our ability to survive the situation knowing that she did as well, and so did Agnes.

After several hours had passed with more than sufficient reason to be worried, my sister’s patience had worn thin with our fellow Russian passengers in nearby compartments.

Well, she observed, it seems that our powder-puff princes and pretenders have given up hope and been reduced to singing fateful ballads.

Worse by far than being isolated on a single-track line, we were forced to listen to their distressed off-key voices as they concluded each song with the clinking of glasses and the unlikely toast, May we die with honor, as if such a reward came without courage attached to it.

No one’s going to die, Mother declared, sending our spirits soaring and adding in case anyone doubted it. The Russians may be inept at war, but they know how to run a railroad.

She could light a fire under us with her own will, but nothing she said that ominous morning silenced our voices