Lilla's Feast by Frances Osborne

unmarried man is a ship without ballast,” he’d written home barely a few months before. And Lilla, it clearly seemed to him, was just the ballast he needed. Upon his arrival in Chefoo, Ernie must have been rapidly entranced by the charms of the Eckford women. Skirts rustled around him like paper-thin brown leaves parted by a gentle breeze. Smiles and twinkling eyes surfaced in front of him as the Eckfords’ engulfing armchairs and abundant wine threatened to lull him to sleep. Before he realized that he was thirsty, a drink was by his hand. Before he had a chance to feel hungry, plates of cakes, biscuits, sandwiches floated around the room. He sat through feast after feast at their shining dining-room table. He watched Lilla playing the piano after dinner and must have hummed along as Alice sang. He would have noticed how every room was arranged so that it both caught the eye and welcomed a visitor in, with a sense of style lacking in his own family of intellectuals and civil servants scattered around the globe. Wherever he went in the Eckford house, he would have been surrounded by tantalizing smells—flowers, scented woods, baking cakes. Seen how every dark corner had been brought to life with hand-painted friezes of flowers. He must have quickly realized that Andrew Eckford was the biggest taipan in Chefoo. And Lilla had such a pretty little face. A way of looking at him that would have made him want to grab her.

    Ernie Howell
    Ernie was an impetuous man, easily enthused by new passions. He had been a wild and out-of-control child, I’ve always been told, frequently clambering onto the roof of whichever Indian home his parents were living in at the time and refusing to come down. At the age of ten, he had been so enchanted by his first sea voyage that he had immediately decided that his future lay with the navy and insisted on going to a naval school the following year. When, at fifteen, he had failed to pass the navy’s entrance exam, he had rushed to sign up for the merchant navy as a sea cadet. It was only then that he discovered he suffered from appalling seasickness. He had to resign and join the Indian army instead.
    Here in Chefoo, Ernie was quickly dazzled by Lilla, “a charming young woman,” he wrote. “She really loves me for myself.” “She is only 19,” he continued; and “very pretty. She is very musical and plays the violin beautifully. . . . She is good as gold—no nonsense about her and quite unspoilt by contact with modern society. We shall be as happy as the day is long.”
    Rushing like a dog out of the starting trap, he proposed.
    Lilla accepted.
    It’s hard to say whose the mistake was. Was Ernie, already in his thirties, old enough to know better than to follow some impulsive affection or believe that he could transplant this domestic bliss to a tougher life in India? Or should the nineteen-year-old Lilla have been more discerning in her choice? Should she have waited, as Ada was doing, for a lengthy courtship to run its course, allowed a while for any difficulties to bubble to the surface, a while to get to know each other before they were both plunged in at the deep end, miles away from home?
    But life, especially when it comes to love or lust or whatever you want to call the forces propelling Lilla and Ernie toward each other, doesn’t always happen as it should. They didn’t have time to wait. Ernie was likely to have to leave China any day—even before Toby.
    Lilla and Ernie were married in St. Andrew’s Church, Chefoo, on October 16, 1901. For all the swiftness of the wedding’s organization, it was a full-blown affair. Alice Eckford was determined to show her daughter off at her best. Lilla wore a dress of “rich white satin, the skirt and bodice trimmed with chiffon,” said the North China Daily in an article headed “Hymen at Chefoo.” A long train trailed behind, made out of such obviously expensive silk that no decoration was needed. The bridal bouquet consisted