SSF/EE Tells of Her Career
Sui Sin Far. “Sui Sin Far, the Half Chinese Writer, Tells of her Career.” Boston Globe 5 May 1912.
As the Globe thinks that my experience in life has been unusual, and that a personal sketch will be interesting to its readers, I will try my best to furnish one. Certainly my life had been quite unlike that of any literary worker of whom I have read. I have never met any to know—save editors.
I have resided in Boston now for about two years.
I came her with the intention of publishing a book and planting a few Eurasian thoughts in Western literature. My collection of Chinese-American stories will be brought our very soon, under the title, “Mrs. Spring Fragrance.” I have also written another book which will appear next year, if Providence is kind.
In the beginning I opened my eyes in a country play in the county of Cheshire, England. My ancestors on my grandfather’s side had been known to the county for some generations back. My ancestors on my grandmother’s side were unknown to local history. She was a pretty Irish lass from Dublin when she first won my grandfather’s affections.
My father, who was educated in England and studied art in France, was established in business by his father at the age of 22, at the Port of Shanghai, China. There he met my mother, a Chinese young girl, who had been educated in England, and who was in training for a missionary. They were married by the British Consul, and the year following their marriage returned to England.
As I swing the door of my mental gallery I find radiant pictures in the opening, and through all the scene of that period there walks one figure-the figure of my brother, Edward, a noble little fellow, whose heart and intelligence during the brief years of early childhood led and directed mine. I mention this brother because I have recently lost him through an accident, and his death has affected me more than I can say.
At the age of 4 years I started to go to school. I can remember being very much interested in English history. I remember also that my mother was a fascinating story teller and that I was greatly enamored of a French version of “Little Bo-Peep,” which my father tried to teach me
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Arrival in America
When I was 6 years old my father brought us to America. Besides my first brother, who was only 10 months older than myself, I had now here sisters and another brother. We settled in Montreal, Can, and hard times befell, upon which I shall not dwell.
I attended school again and must have been about 8 years old when I conceived the ambition to write a book about half Chinese. This ambition arose from my sensitiveness to the remarks, criticisms and observations on the half Chinese which continually assailed my ears, also from an impulse, born with me, to describe, to impart to others all that I felt, all that I saw, all that I was. I was not sensitive without reason. Some Eurasions may affect that no slur is cast upon them because of their nationality; but I dislike cant and desire to be sincere. Wealth, of course, ameliorates certain conditions. We children, however, had no wealth.
I think as well my mind was stimulated by the reading of my teacher, who sought to impress upon her scholars that the true fathers and mothers of the world were those who battled through great trials and hardships to leave to future generations noble and inspiring truths.
I left school at the age of 10, but shortly thereafter attracted the attention of a lovely old lady, Mrs. William Darling of Hochelaga, who induced my mother to send me to her for a few hours each day. This old lady taught me music and French. I remember her telling her husband that I had a marvelous memory and quoting “Our finest hope is finest memory,” which greatly encouraged me, as compared with my brother and sister, who both had splendid heads for figures, I ranked very low intellectually. It was Mrs. Darling who first, aside from my mother, interested me in my mother’s people, and impressed upon me that I should be proud that I had sprung from such a race. She also inspired me with the belief that the spirit is more than the body, a belief which helped me through many hours of childish despondency, for my sisters were all much heavier and more muscular than I.
When my parents found that family circumstances made it necessary to withdraw me from Mrs. Darling, my old friend’s mind seemed to become wrought with me, and she tried to persuade them to permit her to send me to a boarding school. My father, however, was an Englishmen, and the idea of having any of his children brought up on charity, hurt his pride.
I, now in my 11th year, entered into two lives, one devoted entirely to family concerns; the other, a withdrawn life of thought and musing. This withdrawn life of thought probably took the place of ordinary education with me. I had six keys to it; one, a great capacity for feeling; another, the key of imagination; third, the key of physical pain; fourth the key of sympathy; fifth, the sense of being differentiated from the ordinary by the fact that I was an Erusian [sic]; sixth, the impulse to create
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Little Lace Girl
The impulse to create was so strong within me that failing all other open avenues of development (I wrote a good deal of secret doggerel verse around this period) I began making Irish crochet lace patterns, which I sold to a clique of ladies to whom I was known as “The Little Lace Girl” I remember that when a Dominican exhibition was held in Montreal a lace pattern which I sent to the art department won first prize—a great surprise to all my people as I was the only little girl competing. My mother was very proud of my work. I remember that when the church asked her to donate something she got me to crochet her a set of my mats as a gift.
At the age of 14 I succumbed to a sickness which affected both head and heart and retarded development both mentally and physically. Which is the chief reason, no doubt, why an ambition conceived in childhood is achieved only as I near the close of half a century. But for all this retardation and the fact that I suffered from recurrent attacks of the terrible fever, I never lost spirit and always maintained my position as the advisory head of the household. We had a large family of children and my father was an artist.
The wiseacres tell us that if we are good we will be big, healthy and contented. I must have been dreadfully wicked. The only thing big about me were my feelings; the only thing healthy, my color; the only content I experienced was when I peeped into the future and saw all the family grown and settled down and myself, far away from all noise and confusion, with nothing to do but write a book.
To earn my living I now began to sell my father’s pictures. I enjoyed this, and no doubt, it was beneficial, as it took me out into the open air and it brought me into contact with a number of interesting persons. To be sure, there was a certain sense of degradation and humiliation in approaching a haughty and contemptuous customer, and also periods of melancholy when disappointed in a sale I had hoped to effect or payment for a picture was not made when promised. But the hours of hope and elation were worth all the dark ones. I remember staring out one morning with two pictures in my hand and coming home in the evening with $20. How happy was everybody!
This avocation I followed for some years. Besides affording me opportunities to study human nature, it also enabled me to gratify my love for landscape beauty—a love which was and is almost a passion.
My 18th birthday saw me in the copying room of the Montreal Star, where for some months I picked and set type. While there I taught myself shorthand.
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Became Stenographer
As [sic] last I took a position as stenographer in a lawyer’s office. I do not think a person of artistic temperament is fitted for mechanical work and it is impossible to make a success of it. Stenography, in particular, is torturing to one whose mind must create its own images. Unconsciously I was stultified by the work I had undertaken. But it had its advantage in this respect, that it brought me into contact and communion with men of judgment and mental ability. I know that I always took an interest in my employers and their interests, and therefore, if I did not merit, at least received their commendation.
I recall that the senior member of the firm, now Judge Archibald of Montreal, occasionally chatted with me about books and writers, read my little stories and verse as they appeared, and usually commented upon them with amused interest. I used to tell him that I was ambitious to write a book. I remember him saying that it would be necessary for me to acquire some experience of life and some knowledge of character before I began the work and I assuring him seriously that I intended to form all my characters upon the model of myself. “They will be very funny people then,” he answered with a wise smile.
While in this office I wrote some humorous articles which were accepted by Peck’s Sun, Texas Siftings and Detroit Free Press. I am not consciously a humorous person; but now and then unconsciously I write things which seem to strike editors as funny.
One day a clergyman suggested to my mother that she should call upon a young Chinese woman who had recently arrived from China as the bride of one of the local Chinese merchants. With the exception of my mother there was but one other Chinese woman in the city besides the bride. My mother complied with the clergyman’s wishes and I accompanied her.
From that time I began to go among my mother’s people, and it did me a world of good to discover how akin I was to them.
Passing by a few years I found myself in Jamaica, WI, working as a reporter on a local paper. It was interesting work until the novelty wore off, when it became absolute drudgery. However, it was a step forward in development I had reached my 27th year.
Sir Henry Blake was the Governor of the island while I was there, and I found the Legislative Council reporting both instructive and amusing. How noble and high principled seemed each honorable member while on the floor! How small and mean while compelled to writhe under the scorn and denunciation of some opposing brother! I used to look down from the press gallery upon the heads of the honorable members and think a great many things which I refrained from putting into my report.
I got very weary and homesick tramping the hot dusty streets of Kingston; and contracted malarial fever, the only cure for which, in my case was a trip up North.
I remained in Montreal about a year, during which period I worked, first, as a stenographer for Mr Hugh Graham (Now Sir Hugh) of the Star, and then in the same capacity for Mr G.T. Bell of the Grand Trunk Railway. Both of these positions I was compelled to resign because of attacks of inflammatory rheumatism.
At last my physicians declared that I would never gain the strength in Montreal, and one afternoon in June what was left of me—84 pounds—set its face westward. I went to San Francisco, where I had a sister, a bright girl, who was working as a spotter in one of the photograph galleries. I fell in love with the City of the Golden Gate, and wish I had space in which to write more of the place in which all the old ache in my bones fell away from them, never to return again.
As soon as I could I found some work. That is, I located myself in a railway agency, the agent of which promised me $5 a month and as well an opportunity to secure outside work. But despite this agency’s fascinating situation at the corner of a shopping highway I made slight progress financially, and had it not been for my nature and my office window might have experienced a season of melancholy. As it was, I looked out of my window, watched a continuously flowing stream of humanity, listened to the passing bands, inhaled the perfume of the curbstone flower sellers’ wares, and was very much interested.
To eke out a living I started to canvas Chinatown for subscribers for the San Francisco Bulletin. During my pilgrimages thereto I met a Chinese whom I had known in Montreal. He inquired if I were still writing Chinese stories. Mr Charles Lummis made the same inquiry. Latent ambition aroused itself. I recommenced writing Chinese stories. Youth Companion accepted one.
But I suffered many disappointments and rejections, and the urgent need for money pressing upon me, I bethought me of Seattle. Perhaps there Fortune would smile a little kinder. This suggestion had come some months before Lyman E. Knapp, ex-Governor of Alaska, who had dropped into my office one day to get some deeds type-written. Observing that I understood legal work, he advised me to try “the old Siwash town,” where, he added, he was sure I would do better than in San Francisco
To Seattle I sailed, and the blithe greenness of the shores of Puget Sound seemed to give me the blithest of welcomes. I was in my 29th year, and my sole fortune was $8. Before 5 o’clock of the first day here I had arranged for desk room in a lawyer’s office and secured promise of patronage from several attorneys, a loan and mortgage company and a lumber and shingle merchant. I remember that evening I wrote my mother a letter, telling her that I had struck gold, silver, oil, copper, and everything else that luck could strike, in proof of which I grandiloquently shoved into her envelope a part of my remaining wealth.
As always on account of my inaccuracy as a stenographer and in my inability to typewrite continuously, my earning capacity was small; but I managed to hold up my head, and worked intermittently and happily at my Chinese stories.
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Chinese Mission Teacher
Occasionally I taught in a Chinese mission school, as I do here in Boston, but learned far more from my scholars than ever I could impart to them.
I also formed friendships with women who braced and enlightened me, women to whom the things of the mind and the heart appealed; women who were individuals, not merely the daughters of their parents, the wives of the husbands; women who taught me that nationality was no bar to friendship with those whose friendship was worth while.
Ever [?] and again, during the 14 years in which I lived in Seattle, whenever I had a little money put by, some inward impulse would drive me to work my way across the Continent, writing advertisements for the different lines. Once when I saved up $85 toward a rest in which to write the book of my dreams news from home caused me to banish ambition for a while longer; and I sent my little savings to pay a passage out West for one of my younger sisters. This sister remained with me for seven months, during which time I got her to learn shorthand and typewriting, so that upon her return to Montreal she would be enabled to earn her living. Thus did the ties of relationship belate me; but at the same time strengthen.
A year later, a shock of sudden grief so unfitted me for mechanical work that I determined to emancipate myself from the torture of writing other people’s thoughts and words with a heart full of my own, and throwing up my position, worked my way down South as far as the city of Los Angeles. Arrived there, I gave way to my ruling passion—the passion to write all the emotions of my heart away Bu it was hard work—artistic expression, if I may so call it. I had been so long accustomed to dictation that when I sat down to compose, although my mind teemed with ideas tumultuously clamoring for release, I hesitated as if I were waiting for a voice behind me to express them. I had to free myself from that spell. My writings might be imperfect, but they had got to bear the impress of thoughts begotten in my own mind and clothed in my own words.
I struggled for many months. The Century Magazine took a story from me but I remained discontented with life, however. If there was nothing but bread to eat and water to drink, absorbed in my work I was immune to material things—for a while. You have to come back to them in the end.
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Located in Boston
As I have already said, two years ago I came East with the intention of publishing a book of Chinese-American stories. While I was in Montreal my father obtained for me a letter of introduction from a Chinese merchant of that city to his brother in Boston, Mr Lew Han Son. Through Mr Lew Han Son I became acquainted with some Americans of the name of Austin who live in Dorchester and who have been my good friends ever since. I am also acquainted with a lady in Charlestown, Mrs Henderson, who is a sister of one of my Western friends Save, however, some visiting among Chinese friends, I do not mingle much in any kind of society. I am not rich and I have my work to do.
I have contributed to many of the leading magazines.
During the past year I have been engaged in writing my first book, and completed it a couple of months ago. In this undertaking I was encouraged by the managing editor of the Independent. Truth to tell, if I had not received some such encouragement I could not have carried the work to a successful completion, as I am one of those persons who have very little staying power.
To accomplish this work, or to enable me to have the leisure in which to accomplish it, I was obliged to obtain some financial assistance, for one cannot live upon air and water alone, even if one is half-Chinese. Two of my lawyer friends in Montreal kindly contributed toward this end. I hope soon to be in a position to repay them.
My people in Montreal, my mother in particular, my Chinese friends in Boston and also American friends are looking forward to the advent of “Mrs Spring Fragrance” with, I believe, some enthusiasm. I am myself quite excited over the prospect. Would not any one be who had worked as hard as I have—and waited as long as I have—for a book?