Authors: Cao Xueqin
EXPLICIT TERTIA PARS LAPIDIS HISTORIAE
Sandal, Musk and Skybright
In the domestic hierarchy of the Jia household a clear distinction was made between senior maids or âbody servants' who spent all their time in personal attendance on their master or mistress, and junior maids or âlittle maids' who could only enter the master's or mistress's presence when summoned and were generally subject to the orders and discipline of the senior maids. The senior maids received fixed monthly allowances, and a strict protocol governed the number of them assigned to each member of the family. The girl cousins and Li Wan seem to have had two each. Grandmother Jia appears to have had four. Bao-yu is surrounded by a whole bevy of maids, but apart from Aroma, who belonged to his grandmother and was on his grandmother's payroll until surreptitiously transferred to Lady Wang's, only four of them seem to have been seniors.
In manuscript versions of the novel Musk, who is undoubtedly a senior maid, several times has her name associated with that of another maid called âSandal'. The two names make a pair, like âCasta' and âCandida', and were obviously invented simultaneously. In the Chinese âMusk' is âShe-yue', which means âMusk Moon', and âSandal' is âTan-yun', which means âSandalwood Cloud'. (Musk and sandalwood are, of course, both perfumes.) It is clear, therefore that Sandal, like Musk, must be a senior. In chapter 24, when Crimson usurps the function of a senior maid to the great indignation of Emerald and Ripple, the absence of each of the other senior maids is accounted for: Aroma, we are told, is away doing a job for Bao-chai, Musk is on sick leave, and Sandal has gone home for her mother's birthday. In Gao E's edition this is the only prose appearance of âSandal' in the whole novel.
1
There are two other prose appearances
of âSandal' in the manuscripts, but in Gao E's edition they have been edited out. Yet the two verse instances of âSandal' occur in all extant versions of the novel, printed and manuscript alike: the first in the âSummer' poem from the âGarden Nights' sequence in chapter 23 (
The Golden Days
, p. 461)
Pale moonbeams on an opened mirror fall,
And burning sandal makes a fragrant pall.
The real meaning of the couplet is
By the bright window Musk opens the dressing-mirror,
And in the smoke-wreathed chamber Sandal burns palace incense.
The second instance comes in the âInvocation to the Hibiscus Spirit' in
chapter 78
:
The phoenix has flown and
MUSK'S
vanity-box has burst apart for sorrow;
The dragon has departed and
SANDAL'S
comb has broken its teeth for grief.
Since âSandal' belongs to an earlier version of the novel and has only strayed into the text of this version by oversight, I have got rid of her in these two verse passages, in the first instance by deliberately mistranslating the couplet and in the second instance by substituting the name of another senior maid (Ripple). As for her solitary prose appearance in chapter 24, she becomes âSkybright' there in my translation (as she was in Gao E's draft) since Skybright is the only senior maid who remains unaccounted for; but since Skybright has no mother â indeed, had never known her parents â I have changed âmother' to âcousin'. I doubt very much whether the rules of the Jia household would have allowed a maid to go home for the birthday of so junior a person as a cousin, but the strain placed on the reader's credulity by this correction does not seem to me to be a very great one.
Suncloud, Sunset and Moonrise
Apart from Golden and her sister Silver, there are two senior maids of Lady Wang who make a number of appearances in Volumes Two and Three and significantly contribute to the action: Suncloud and Sunset. Confusions in the text surrounding these two names have led me to conclude that they were meant to be one person. âSuncloud' (Chinese âCai-yun', literally âColourful Cloud') was, I believe, renamed âSunset' (Chinese âCai-xia', literally âColourful Redcloud') in the final version, but a number of âSunclouds' escaped the notice both of the author and of his collaborators and slipped through into the text. Sunset (Cai-xia) is last heard of in
chapter 72
. We are there told that she has been sent back home to her parents because of illness and is to be betrothed against her will to the hideous wastrel son of Xi-feng's servant Brightie. She is never mentioned again; but there is a strong presumption that in a fuller final version of the novel we should have been told of her death by suicide or from consumption, bringing her into the same category of unfortunate maidservants as Golden, Skybright and Chess.
The Suncloud/Sunset confusion begins in chapter 25 in which we learn for the first time that Sunset is Jia Huan's sweetheart. There is a passage early on in that chapter in which Jia Huan is making a nuisance of himself by ordering about his mother's maids. He asks one of them for a cup of tea. In one manuscript it is Suncloud he asks but Sunset who brings it, in another it is Sunset he asks and Sunset who brings it, and in a third it is Suncloud he asks and Suncloud who brings it. Later on in the same chapter all extant versions agree in making Sunset the girl who massages Bao-yu's legs, thereby becoming the unwilling cause of Jia Huan's jealous attack on his half-brother. Thereafter, in all extant editions of the text, the Jia Huan â Sunset/Suncloud relationship develops as follows:
(1) In chapter 30 Golden tells Bao-yu that if he is looking for amusement he ought to âgo into the little east courtyard and catch Sun
cloud
and Jia Huan at it'.
(2) In chapter 39 (Golden is already dead by this time) there is a discussion between Bao-yu and the girls about the various principal maids. Bao-yu and Tan-chun agree that Lady Wang's Sun
set
is a good sort, etc. No mention of Sun
cloud
.
(3) In
chapter 61
Sun
cloud
owns up to having stolen a bottle of Essence of Roses to give to Jia Huan. She has stolen for him many times, she admits, at Aunt Zhao's instigation. Bao-yu covers up for her. This makes Jia Huan very jealous, and in
chapter 62
he quarrels with her and throws out all her presents. There is no mention of Sun
set
anywhere in these two chapters.
(4) In
chapter 70
the future of the various principal maids is being discussed. We are told that Sun
cloud
has developed an incurable illness as a result of the distress caused by her breach with Jia Huan and she is sent back home to her parents. No mention of Sun
set
.
(5) In
chapter 72
Brightie's wife asks Xi-feng and Jia Lian for their help in obtaining Lady Wang's maid Sun
set
, who has been sent back home because she is ill, as a wife for their son. Aunt Zhao, who had always liked Sun
set
and hoped that she would eventually become Jia Huan's concubine, makes an unsuccessful bid to prevent the betrothal. No mention of
Suncloud
. Sun
set
thereafter disappears from the novel.
It seems to me self-evident that this is the story of a single maid, Sunset, who became Lady Wang's principal maid after Golden's suicide (Silver taking the place of Number Two). âSuncloud' is simply an earlier version of the name, probably altered to avoid confusion with the âsunny clouds' of the verses in chapter 5, which are there meant to symbolize
another
maid, Skybright (âFairweather Cirrus'). It seems unlikely that Gao E failed to notice the Suncloud/Sunset confusion when he was editing the novel. Why, in that case, did he not just alter all the remaining âSunclouds' into âSunsets'? The answer is quite simple. Lady Wang's
principal maid in the novel's last two dozen chapters is a girl called âSuncloud'. She survives there, I think, because she belongs to an earlier version of the novel in which her character had not yet been developed â no love affair with Jia Huan, no quarrels, no sickness, no tragedy: her only role was to be Lady Wang's maid, and she continued to fulfil it (since there was no reason why she should stop doing so) until the novel's end.
How do I know that Cao Xueqin did not intend to have two maids, Suncloud and Sunset, one of whom died tragically while the other one survived? Or how do I know that âSunset' is not the earlier name and âSuncloud' the later version? The answer is that paired names like âGolden' and âSilver' represent sisters. In the Chinese such pairs of names have a common element. Thus Golden in Chinese is âJin-chuan', which means âGolden Bracelet', and Silver is âYu-chuan', which means âJade Bracelet'. If Lady Wang had had, besides Golden and Silver, a pair of maids called âCai-yun' and âCai-xia' (Suncloud and Sunset), they too would have been sisters. But Sunset's younger sister Moonrise, who makes a brief appearance in
chapter 72
, has the Chinese name âXiao-xia' (âLittle Redcloud'). The common element in their names is not â
cai
' but â
xia
.' The name âSunset' therefore belongs to the âdeveloped' character and so represents the later version.
I have followed Gao E to some extent in allowing Suncloud and Sunset to be not one but two persons in the earlier part of the novel in order to prepare for Suncloud's appearance in Volumes Four and Five; but in order to make the sub-plot involving Jia Huan intelligible, I have changed âSuncloud' into âSunset' in chapters 30,
61
and
62
. This means in effect that in my translation Suncloud makes only a couple of insignificant appearances in chapters 23 and 25; but at least she exists, which is the important thing, without ruining the sub-plot by masquerading as Sunset in Volumes 2 and 3, as she does in the Chinese text.
I imagine that in a completed final version Lady Wang would have had a succession of
three
principal maids: first Golden, who was (in effect) destroyed by Bao-yu, then
Sunset, who was (in effect) destroyed by Bao-yu's half-brother Jia Huan, and finally, in the last part of the novel, perhaps Silver. In this translation it would, I suppose, have been possible to eliminate Suncloud from the first eighty chapters altogether and turn all the Sunclouds in the last forty chapters into Silvers; but I think that Gao E's principle that the text of the last forty chapters should not be tampered with except when absolutely necessary was a sound one.
You San-jie, Liu Xiang-lian and Jia Lian's Journeys
An undated marginal comment on a fragmentary copy of the Red Inkstone recension of 1754 says, with reference to the author's statement in chapter I that âA Mirror for the Romantic' was the title given to the novel after one of its revisions:
There was an earlier book by Xueqin called âA Mirror for the Romantic' with a preface [or âprefaces'?] by his brother Tang-cun. Now Tang-cun is dead. When I [= Red Inkstone?] look at the new [version?] I am reminded of the old [one?]. I have therefore continued to follow [make use of?] it.
What this comment really means has been much disputed. It seems to imply that âA Mirror for the Romantic' was originally the name not of an earlier version of
The Story of the Stone
but of a different book. The magical mirror which presumably gave Cao Xueqin's âearlier book' its name makes an appearance in chapter 12 of the version of the novel which we read today. It is given to Jia Rui by the lame Taoist in an unsuccessful attempt to cure him of his fatal infatuation with Xi-feng. The same eccentric Taoist reappears in
chapter 66
, where he is responsible for the conversion of Liu Xiang-lian after San-jie's suicide.
Both episodes, the story of Jia Rui's infatuation and death and the story of San-jie's betrothal to Liu Xiang-lian and suicide, fit rather awkwardly into the surrounding narrative, and their somewhat crude supernaturalism seems out of place. I suspect that the original
Mirror for the Romantic
was a collection of episodes in which the salacious and the supernatural were combined, loosely strung together by the appearances of the lame, eccentric Taoist with his magic mirror, and that the book was later dismembered and its more successful episodes fed into an earlier version of the
Stone
, which was then renamed after it.
The Jia Rui episode begins âin the eleventh month' and covers a period of nearly a whole year. After Jia Rui's death at the end of chapter 12 we simply move back to âthe end of the year' and carry on as if Jia Rui had never existed. The graft is a somewhat clumsy one but at least has no harmful effect â indeed no effect at all â on the surrounding tissue. But the insertion of the San-jie episode into the story of Jia Lian's secret marriage and its tragic outcome produced complications and led to a whole series of difficulties which no amount of editing could overcome.
Consider the plot as it might have been before the story of San-jie and Xiang-lian was inserted.
In
chapter 63
, towards the end of the fourth month, Jia Jing's death is announced. Mrs You and her daughters move into Ning-guo House. Cousin Zhen and Jia Lian return from the Imperial Mausoleum. After about a month in the city, they accompany the coffin to the family temple outside. On a brief visit home, Jia Rong suggests to Jia Lian that he should marry Er-jie, and on the third of the sixth month Jia Lian does so secretly and installs her in a little house in the city (
chapter 65
). Some time towards the end of the seventh month, Jia Lian is ordered by his father to go on a secret mission to Ping-an which is expected (
chapter 66
) to take âfifteen or sixteen days'. Owing to delays when he gets there it takes much longer, so that altogether he is away for about two months. While he is away, Xi-feng finds out from Joker, who has been left behind to look after Er-jie, that her husband has taken another wife. She visits Er-jie, and inveigles her into accompanying her home. Jia Lian returns to find Er-jie installed in the mansion. He is given the concubine Autumn by his father as a reward for the successful accomplishment of his mission. Er-jie, who is now three or four months pregnant, is maltreated without his knowledge, has a miscarriage, and, after much illness and wretchedness, takes her own life. Her funeral (
chapter 70
) takes place ânear the end of the year'. According to this timetable Jia Lian would have returned about the end of the tenth month and Xi-feng and Autumn would have had about six or seven weeks in which to drive Er-jie to her death.
Consider now what happens when the San-jie story is inserted into this narrative.
First of all Jia Lian has to meet Xue Pan and Liu Xiang-lian on the way to Ping-an and then return from Ping-an almost as soon as he gets there, though with an undertaking to make another trip there âin the tenth month'. The reason why he dashes back so precipitately after his first visit when on the second occasion he is prepared to wait around for weeks on end is never explained. (It is, of course, the exigency of the plot, which requires him to come back and tell San-jie about the betrothal.) He is around when Liu Xiang-lian returns to the capital (
chapter 66
) asking to have the swords back, and is present at San-jie's suicide, and at her burial, which takes place apparently on the same day (a record, if we except the case of Skybright, a maid, who was cremated on the same day after dying of consumption). Two days later (
chapter 67
) Xue Pan tells someone at a party that Jia Lian has left for Ping-an again. However, when Xi-feng learns from Joker
on the same day
about Jia Lian's secret marriage, she warns him not to tell his master that she knows. True, she tells Patience a moment later that she has thought of a plan and that âit will not be necessary to wait until Mr Lian returns'; but then in the next chapter (
chapter 68
) we are told â after some irrelevancy about Jia Lian's mission to Ping-an taking two months because of delays â that she waited until he had set out before planning to visit Er-jie, which she did on the fifteenth of the tenth month (Jia Lian had been told to revisit Ping-an âin the tenth month', remember). She found Er-jie alone, old Mrs You having apparently vanished or died (without anyone noticing) some time between San-jie's funeral and the occasion of this visit. Jia Lian returns in the middle of the twelfth month (having spent two months away) and is praised and rewarded by his father â who had signally failed to react to the successful conclusion of the first visit. The slow erosion of Er-jie's health and spirits and her miscarriage and suicide all have to take place in about a week.
I mentioned in the Preface that there are two quite different versions of
chapter 67
. The one used by Gao E is greatly
superior to the other one in style but no more successful than it in removing the absurdities created by the grafting of the San-jie story onto the plot. The most obvious of these are the puppet-like appearances and disappearances of Jia Lian: now you see him, now you don't. My solution has been to suppress Xue Pan's reference in the middle part of the chapter to Jia Lian's leaving, and Xi-feng's reference at the end of it to his being away. This means that Jia Lian is at home all the time from his return in the eighth month until his departure at the beginning of the tenth, six weeks or so after Xi-feng's discovery of his secret marriage: not a very satisfactory solution, perhaps, but the only one I can think of which does not involve drastically altering the text.