Empress Dowager Tu Du

In a small room, by the light of an oil lamp, a mother sits close beside her child and tells a story from long ago. Her name was Phạm Thị Hằng. She was born in 1810 in the Gò Công area. Later the whole country would know her by a very gentle name, Từ Dũ.

Her father was Phạm Đăng Hưng, a high official at the royal court. She grew up in a well-known family in the south of the country.

The girl from the river country left home for the capital and became the wife of Emperor Thiệu Trị. The son she bore later took the throne as Emperor Tự Đức. A mother from the countryside of Gò Công, and yet in 1847 the whole court honored her as Empress Dowager, the title of an emperor's mother. She received a gentle name, Từ Dũ, and it stayed with her ever after.

As the mother of an emperor, she could have lived in silk and had whatever she wished. She chose the opposite. She still kept a worn coat, an old keepsake that she treasured. She lived simply and carefully, and she did not care for show or luxury.

What was finest in her was a mother's heart. It is easy to picture the evenings. The room grows quiet, and only the oil lamp throws a warm yellow shadow on the wall. She draws her child close and, in a very soft voice, begins a tale from long ago. A mother. A lamp. A story each night. Perhaps it was the tale of a gentle, kindly person whom everyone loved and cherished, told slowly until the child's eyes began to close. Each story was like a small seed that she quietly planted in the child's heart, a seed of love and goodness.

Her words were so precious that her son did not want to lose them. Emperor Tự Đức wrote down what his mother had taught him and gathered it into a book called Từ Huấn Lục. It is rare for a son to treasure his mother's words so much that he copies them into a book to keep forever.

She lived a very long life. It lasted until 1902, and she reached the age of 92. Over a whole long life like that, what she left behind was not gold or silver. It was the picture of a gentle mother and a kind grandmother who always put goodness first.

Because of that kind heart, people of later times still remember her name with love and respect. In her memory, a large maternity hospital in Ho Chi Minh City has carried the name Từ Dũ since 1948. That is a place where very many babies come into the world. It is lovely that the name of a gentle mother belongs to the place where babies first arrive in the world.