Imperial Twilight, Red Fire

Henry I. A delegation of rich mandarins and erstwhile potent nobles, their silken garments rustling, their smiles unctuous, sought audience last week with Super-Tuchun Wu Pei-fu, co-conqueror of Peking with Super-Tuchun Chang

Tso-lin (TIME, May 3). They came in behalf of "The Son of Heaven," the abdicated Emperor Henry P'u-yi, a handsome clear-skinned boy just turned 20, who ascended the throne in his nurse's arms at the age of two, and toddled down from it, an obliging six-year-old, after the Republican revolution of 1912. For Henry the petitioning delegates asked justice: fulfillment of the abdication agreement of 1912 whereby he is entitled to receive an income of $4,000,000 a year and to retain the incalculably valuable Imperial estates. The delegates reminded Super-Tuchun Wu that Henry P'u-yi, who now resides quietly in the Japanese quarter of Tientsin, has not even received the absolute minimum of $500,000 per annum promised him (TIME, Nov. 17, 1924) when he was forced to sign his "supplemental abdication" by Super-Tuchun Feng Yu-Hsiang, former War Lord of Peking. Would not Super-Tuchun Wu, cried the delegates, add luster to his reputation as the exponent of China's former aristocracy by restoring a clinking golden aura to "The Son of Heaven?" Super-Tuchun Wu would not. Courteous but firm, he sent the delegates packing, declared that to accede to their request would lay him open to the charge of attempting to restore the Empire. . . . Meanwhile, at Tientsin, Henry P'u-yi and his consort, Elizabeth, continued their placid, adequate existence. He often pounds a type- writer--often reads his poems in Chinese magazines. She (never an Empress, for they were not married until 1923) possesses a physical beauty as striking as his own good looks. Because of his admiration for Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth he has bestowed upon himself and his consort the given names of those spry sovereigns.