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After reading my first draft of the history of the first American traders in Shanghai, the head Jamaih told me that everything I had written was alright, but that the problem was that I had not personally met any of those merchants, except for the three first American merchant - consuls. I talked with them mostly about politics and social life. and just a little bit about trade, so according to Jamaih, there were still a lot of elements missing. I spent several hours each day reading old foreign newspapers and books in the Shanghai Library in order to gain some basic knowledge of these American traders whom I was to meet in person. Piltrix’s version of the Shanghai Library looks exactly like it was in late 19th century Shanghai. It is built on two floors and has 12 rooms. It is divided into a Chinese style area on the first floor for Chinese-language materials in Chinese and a Western-language section on the second floor. The library is located in the northwestern part of Piltrix, on a university campus frequented by many researchers of nineteenth-century Chinese history.
Since Seward's plan was to meet with Samuel Wadsworth Russell who lived in some deeper layer of hell, lower than Limbo, we waited to get all possible permissions from the infernal hierarchies to make that visit possible. George told me the bare essentials of Mr. Russell’ biography, so I learned that he died in 1862 at the age of 73. His ancestor Noadiah Russel was the founder of Yale College and his cousin William Huntington Russell was the founder of the Yale University secret society Skull and Bones, but he also had several other famous ancestors and descendants.
After finally getting all the necessary permits, we set off on our road to hell, which took us a few days by bus, boat and train. George Seward warned me to be careful, because the inhabitants of that part of hell used tricks to stun visitors to trap them by lowering their light frequencies. A considerable number of of angels and blessed people remained trapped there without the possibility of finding their way out to the light. Many of them would have been trapped there forever if not for the ever-blessed psychopomps hadn’t helped get back to the heavens where they belonged. Unfortunately, some of the captured blessed souls could not be found and helped.
Since Seward's plan was to meet with Samuel Wadsworth Russell who lived in some deeper layer of hell, lower than Limbo, we waited to get all possible permission from the infernal hierarchies to make that visit possible. I had never been so deep in hell. Even those murderers from the American Settlement and the warriors from the Shanghai War Zone were on a slightly higher level of hell compared to where Mr. Russell had his mansion. As I was very nervous about how we would handle this visit, George Seward assured me not to worry because there were much deeper layers of hell. Besides, Samuel W. Russell was a good friend of his who would surely give us a friendly welcome and see to it that nothing bad happened to us.
Mr. Russell’s villa is located in a special region of Shanghai hell that was far below Limbo, but not yet so low as to be completely covered by the rule of princes, counts, marquises and other demonic hierarchies headed by Beelzebub, Balliar or Lucifer. His supervisors were, to limited extent, still Abbetira, Giria, Siria, Pafessa, Nephasser, and other heads of the Earth Zone who oversaw wealth, fortune and happiness, which meant that the gates of heaven were still not entirely closed to him. If you went below that area of hell, all influence of the heads of the Earth Zone would cease, and down from there would the complete rule of the lords of hell would begin. So, I continued our journey more encouraged after I realized that Mr. Russell was not yet a total lost cause and that his soul was not yet completely dark.
If that part of hell was not too low, it was certainly low enough for me. George Seward said that Mr. Russell still acted like a typical general manager “taipan” and that his villa still looked like a 19th century “hong.” Gripped by chills, when we arrived, I noticed that Samuel Russell clearly had good taste in art, with the fact that his mansion’s interior decoration was demonic in nature, with numerous sculptures of fallen angels, demons, inverted pentagrams and other magical symbols hanging on the walls. His Asmodeus-style furniture was highly prized in the lower layers of hell, but was a rarity in these regions.
Samuel Russell had a very long nose, small eyes, a sharp look, and thin lips. His face was elongated and pointed, so he looked like a fox to me. His waistcoat was elaborately made of jacquard woven silk and embellished with embroidery and he had exquisitely tied white cravat and neckerchief in use in the 1830s. I was not feeling good, so I readily accepted Mr. Russell’s offer of whiskey, thinking that a little alcohol would help me relax. He was honest enough to warn me that his whiskey was very strong because its taste was adapted to the denizens of hell, but I took it anyway. To me, it was actually better and tastier than the whiskey you might find in heaven, so after the first glass I soon ordered another.
Meanwhile, while talking about the life of the early American merchants in China, Mr. Russell said, “Unlike many of my ancestors, I had a modest beginning. I received no significant inheritance and did not attend college. Instead, I began my career as clerk for a maritime trade merchant. I arrived in Canton in 1819, engaging in trade for the Edward Carrington & Co. in various goods and products, including opium. I founded Russell & Co. in 1824, but withdrew in 1836.”
Talking about his life, Mr. Russell said that he was a “factor” when he was young, but after he gathered experience and money, he became a “taipan” himself. After retirement, he returned to America, and lived in his mansion in Connecticut until his death in 1862. He was then transferred to this place of hell where he continued to live more or less the same way.
Mr. Russell spoke kindly to us, but I also noticed occasional evil flashes in his eyes as he spoke. For a moment it seemed to me that his fox face turned into a devilish one. “Gentlemen, no one can decline that I was an exceptional host when I was alive, but now will see see how I usually entertain my friends down here in hell.”
Suddenly Russell’s butler came over to whisper something in his ear. A smile appeared in Russell's sly face, and a second later he said happily, “I just heard there are new guests coming!"
He asked his servant to escort his newly arrived guests to the main guest hall and then invited us to follow them. My head was already spinning. I could hardly walk, because the whiskey had a good hold on me, though I had not drunk more than two glasses. As I noticed, George Seward took a lot more shots than I did, but held his own better, as he had apparently become accustomed to the strength of the whiskey from this part of hell.
Albert Heard, the first of the other guests to arrive, was an extremely intelligent person, which you could tell by just a mere look at him. His suit consisted of two simple pieces that helped him get dressed without a whole lot of fuss, but I was surprised how polished he was from head to toe. His jacket and trousers were more modern than Russell's, but that was because he was 44 years younger. Around the time Russell retired, that was when Albert was born, but here in hell that age difference did not seem to matter.
Albert Heard said: “During my term as head of the company, I had fought of serious competition from the rival firm Russell & Co, but here in hell, we put most of our differences aside. More or less now everyone over here gets along well with each other!”
Mr. Russell laughed and said, “The only reason my family made peace with your family was that you had the best wine in Shanghai and also knew how to enjoy it.”
They laughed, so did I, as it probably was supposed to be a joke. At that moment an American and a Chinese lady came to the party, both dressed in lovely traditional Chinese costumes. The way how Albert Heard presented the Chinese lady to me was stunning: “She is my protected Chinese woman and her name is Lam Kewfong.”
“What does a protected woman mean?” I asked him.
“This is the way we defined a woman acquired by and living with a foreigner in China. I left China in May 1873, having first conveyed a parcel of land in Hong Kong to Lam Kewfang.”
I suspected that I heard Albert Heard all wrong, when he also introduced me to the American lady: “This is my wife Mary Allen Livingstone. I married her back in America.”
Noticing a surprise in my face, Albert Heard explained to us what kind of relationship the three of them were in: “We all get along great together, so we live in polygamy.”
Mary and Lam went to the bar where they ordered Stinger cocktails. In the meantime, several more guests came to Mr. Russell’s mansion. One of them, John Perkins Cushing, was already dead drunk, but I gathered from his rumblings that he was Caleb Cushing’s cousin whose opium smuggling had made him a very wealthy man with a house claimed to be the largest and the most beautiful in and around Boston. Maybe I was too drunk to understand everything he spoke, but I did realize that he was talking more about women than anything else.
It seemed to me that Russell’s hall had suddenly become so large that it could have easily accommodated more than 100 guests. New guests kept arriving, and among them, as I could swear, there were a few demonesses as well.
Samuel Russell approached me with a gentleman, introducing him as William C. Hunter. Then he said, “If we put the wealth of all of us together in a pile, that would be a shadow of the wealth possessed by William C. Hunter.”
I was thinking to myself how strange it was that Mr. Russell should thus introduce Mr. Hunter, when I heard all the people exclaim, “Mrs. Irvins is coming!”; which indicated that she was popular in that circle of people.
I turned in the direction everyone was looking, and there she was, a beautiful female with blonde hair, burning with fire and lust. With every step Mrs. Irvings took, she seemed to want to let everyone know that she was a woman who knew how to enjoy life. Several of the ladies were wearing mid-nineteenth century dresses, but Mrs. Irving was dressed in a skin-tight bright red goatskin costume with black halters. Of all people, she approached me, and said with a smile, “I’m offering my heart to you, and if you win it, I’ll help you win happiness and wealth.” I also heard her say that as a female she stood for the some of the most carefree and pleasurable aspects of the fire element.
Shouts of approval and applause from the audience accompanied her words. She was a seductress, so she sat next to me and began to intimate, when a gentleman came to introduce himself: “My name is George Griswold Gray, and I am Mrs. Irvins’ husband.”
I thought that he was jealous, because I forgot for a moment that we were in a part of hell where different rules of values and behavior applied. He said, “ I achieved fame in the 1850s as a bachelor for my dinner parties which set all New York and Shanghai talking. The parties I later gave with my wife Irvins in the world of the living and here in hell were no less popular.”
I was not surprised to find out that George Griswold Gray was a partner of Russell & Co. Mr. Gray said to me: “Look at her! Isn’t she beautiful? She refused to let herself grow old while she was alive, but she hasn’t aged a day since she came to hell either. I think her dress would look better with her breasts out, don’t you think?”
I didn't have time to say anything, because at that moment William Shepherd Wetmore arrived with wives from two of his marriages. When his first wife Eshter died in 1843, he married Antiss Derby Rogers. Soon, all the American merchants from the US and China were shocked by her indiscretion, when she ran away with Wetmore’s coachman. No one ever heard what became of them while they were alive. Now Antiss looked like she was still 21, the age when she ran away with the coachman.
More and more people came into the room, such as Augustine Heard, John Augustine II, George Washington Jr, Warren Delano Jr., Paul Simen Forbes and Francis Blackwell Forbes. Mr. Russell’s mansion suddenly had more guests than I could count. I did not know what was happening to me. I was so drunk and intoxicated that I lost any control of my actions.
As Antiss Derby Rogers talked about her adventures with the coachman, she took off her red dress, and that’s when I stopped thinking about history. I kept on drinking my Manhatten cocktails and looking around in wonder. George Griswold Gray soon came to offer me a Cuban cigar, which I also gladly accepted. A few female and male members of the Forbes’ and Heard families also took their clothes off and started to dance.
Suddenl all the lights went out, except for the big black candles, and everyone fell silent. Some very important guest entered the hall and at that moment everyone fell on their knees in his direction. I looked for George Seward, and saw him also kneeling with the others.
First someone shouted, "Paimon!", and then everyone else started shouting "Hail Paimon!" Whether it was because of the fear of not standing out from the crowd, whether I myself was enchanted by that unexpected scene or for some other unknown reason, I behaved like everyone else in the hall, greeting the name of this mysterious guest. Paimon was a very handsome and strong man with an effeminate face, wearing a precious crown. As soon as we went silent, he roared like a lion with a loud voice, after which came a multitude of his demons came in the form of men and women playing trumpets, cymbals, guitars, violins and all other kinds of musical instruments. Their demonic symphony enchanted us all so that I no longer understood what was happening and where I was, except that at that moment the room completely changed. Hundreds of statues of unknown demons and fallen angels could be seen everywhere. Some of them seemed alive to me. About half of the guests were still wearing nineteenth-century Western clothing or traditional Chinese costume, while the other half were dressed in provocative fetishistic manner.
I was drinking my Manhattan cocktails with a few members of the Forbes’ and Heard’s families, when in the blink of an eye, Mrs. Irvins, the beauty who refused to age, shamelessly stripped naked in front of everyone. Lam Kew-fong was still in her beautiful traditional Chinese costume with the difference that now she struck her bare breasts out. Mary Allen Livingstone was now wearing a red leather miniskirt, stilleto heel boots, black lace halters and latex gloves. She also carried a riding crop as an accessory.
Not far of us was also Eshter Wetmore, William Wetmore’s first wife in the company of her father Samuel Wetmore. He was in a nineteenth-century jacket, but she was wearing white wedding dress that was almost completely see-through lace. He led her towards Paimon, while greeted with applause and exclamation. Gentlemen were still mostly in jackets and top hats, but most of the women now wore corsets and high heels. Some of them were in the stylized outfits of French maids.
Eshter kissed Paimon’s hand and said “Master, I am yours tonight!” He then grabbed her by the waist, lifted her off the ground and kissed her passionately. “You’ll not only be mine, but also my servants’!” At that moment, there were fireworks outside, which marked the moment when we all stepped into a new level of madness.
Now I was laying with other men and women on the sofa passionately kissing Mr. Irvings. You could clearly see that there were also demonesses and nymphs in this passion-crazed crowd, but also giants and all kinds of demons. I came to my senses briefly when I tried to see where Mr. Seward was to ask him to help me out of there, but then I saw that he already was in the bed with Lam Kew-fong, Horatio Nelson Twombly, an unknown woman and two demonesses. I just waved at him in greeting. I only remember a few segments from the next three days we spent at Mr. Russell’s house party. Scenes of naked men and women come to mind, as do items such as chokers, fishnet pants, corsets, thigh-high boots or details such as straps, buckles, pierced rings and chains. The time either stopped or started moving differently than usual. In the center of attention of all present were Paimon and Esther, because the theme of the party was the role-play wedding of the beauty and the demon.
It was a huge orgy from which people and demons took a break just to drink or eat at lavish banquet tables, play cards, gamble or take drugs. Adjacent to the main hall were opium dens, but people also consumed heroin, cocaine, LSD, and all sorts of other drugs.
On the third day, I regained some consciousness, and I approached Seward to ask him: “Who is Paimon?”
He said: “One of the kings of hell, more obedient to Lucifer than other kings are, the commander of 200 legions of demons. By teaching all arts, philosophies, sciences and secrets, he also reveals all mysteries of the Earth and everything the man wants to know.” Upon the appearance of some mischievous seductive fairies, my consciousness clouded and I again entered into a frenzied state of madness.