The Empress Dowager and Lotus Fragrance

Can anyone shed any light on this anecdote from James Agate’s memoirs (I mentioned I was reading the theatre critic James Agate’s memoirs of the 1930s, Ego3, in a previous post)? Agate was a dinner on Christmas Day 1937 with, among others, (the wonderfully named) Herschel Vespasian Johnson, an American diplomat. Johnson recalled that a friend of his (unnamed sadly but presumably another long serving member of the US Diplomatic corps) has once overheard the Dowager Empress of China (Cixi) interrupt a political conversation to say, as an aside to a courtier, ‘I must have Lotus Fragrance thrown down a well.’

Very amusing, but who was Lotus Fragrance – a concubine, a servant? – and why did she deserve to be thrown down a well? And is it in any sense a true anecdote? Does anyone know. The little known NCpedia (an online encyclopedia about North Carolina) notes rather lovingly, ‘Herschel attended the Charlotte public schools, and from the beginning was an able student and an omnivorous reader, never athletic, and as a child not especially sociable.’ I know the feeling!