Sir Robert Hart by Juliet Bredon
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Juliet Bredon >> Sir Robert Hart
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9 [Illustration: _Sir Robert Hart, G.C.M.G._]
SIR ROBERT HART
_THE ROMANCE OF A GREAT CAREER_
TOLD BY HIS NIECE JULIET BREDON
SECOND EDITION
1910
CONTENTS
A WORD OF INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I
EARLY YEARS
CHAPTER II
FIRST YEARS IN CHINA--LIFE AT NINGPO--THE ALLIED COMMISSION AND SIR
HARRY PARKES--RESIGNATION FROM THE CONSULAR SERVICE
CHAPTER III
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE IMPERIAL CHINESE CUSTOMS--A VISIT TO
SIR FREDERICK BRUCE--THE SHERARD OSBORNE AFFAIR--APPOINTED
INSPECTOR-GENERAL
CHAPTER IV
ORDERED TO LIVE AT SHANGHAI--FIRST MEETING WITH "CHINESE GORDON"--THE
RECONCILIATION BETWEEN GORDON AND LI HUNG CHANG--THE TAKING OF
CHANG-CHOW-FU--DISBANDMENT OF "THE EVER-VICTORIOUS ARMY"--REWARDS FOR
GORDON
CHAPTER V
ORDERED TO LIVE IN PEKING--"WHAT A BYSTANDER SAYS"--A RETURN TO
EUROPE--MARRIAGE--CHINA ONCE AGAIN--THE BURLINGAME MISSION--FIRST
DECORATION--THE "WASA" OF SWEDEN AND NORWAY
CHAPTER VI
BIRTH OF A SON--THE MARGARY AFFAIR AND THE CHEFOO CONVENTION--A SECOND
VISIT TO EUROPE--THE PARIS EXHIBITION OF 1878
CHAPTER VII
YUAN PAO HENG SUGGESTS PROHIBITION OF OPIUM SMOKING IN CHINA--NEW
BUILDINGS FOR THE INSPECTORATE--THE FIRST INFORMAL POSTAGE
SERVICE--THE FRENCH TREATY OF 1885--OFFERED POST OF BRITISH MINISTER
CHAPTER VIII
AN IMPORTANT MISSION TO HONGKONG AND MACAO--THE BEGINNING OF A
PRIVATE BAND--DECORATIONS, CHINESE AND FOREIGN--THE SIKKIM-THIBET
CONVENTION--FORMAL ESTABLISHMENT OF THE POST OFFICE--WAR LOANS
CHAPTER IX
THE PROLOGUE TO THE SIEGE--BARRICADES AND SCALING LADDERS--THE SIEGE
PROPER--A MESSAGE FROM THE YAMEN AND AN IMPORTANT TELEGRAM--RELIEF AT
LAST--NEW QUARTERS--NEGOTIATIONS--THE CONGRESS OF PEKING--AN IMPERIAL
AUDIENCE
CHAPTER X
SOME QUIET YEARS--A CHANGE OF MASTERS--INSOMNIA--A FAREWELL
AUDIENCE--AN HONOUR AND ITS ADVERTISEMENT--AH FONG AND
OTHERS--DEPARTURE FROM PEKING--"A SMALL, INSIGNIFICANT IRISHMAN"
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
SIR ROBERT HART
THE CANAL: THE ROUTE BY WHICH SIR ROBERT HART FIRST CAME TO PEKING
A VIEW OF OLD PEKING SHOWING CONDITION OF ROADS
A ROAD IN OLD PEKING DURING THE RAINY SEASON
SIR ROBERT HART ABOUT 1866
UNDER THE PEKING CITY WALL TOWARDS TUNGCHOW--ALONG THE GRAND CANAL
A PICNIC IN OLD PEKING--TOWARDS YUEN MING YUEN
WELL NEAR THE CANAL, BRITISH LEGATION, BEFORE 1900
SIR ROBERT HART IN 1878
OUTSIDE SIR ROBERT HART'S HOUSE BEFORE 1900
PEKING: A MESSENGER CARRYING MAILS IN THE RAINY SEASON
A SECRETARY GOING TO THE INSPECTORATE OFFICES DURING THE RAINY SEASON
STABLES OF SIR ROBERT HART IN THE RAINY SEASON
THE INSPECTORATE STREET BEFORE 1900
ENTRANCE TO THE INSPECTORATE OF CUSTOMS BEFORE 1900
SIR ROBERT HART'S BAND IN THE EARLY 'NINETIES
SIR ROBERT HART'S CHINESE BAND
SIR ROBERT HART'S STABLES IN 1890
SIR ROBERT HART'S PRIVATE CART
THE IMPERIAL CHINESE POST OFFICE ENTRANCE ON A RAINY DAY IN THE
'NINETIES
A GARDEN PARTY GIVEN BY SIR ROBERT HART TO GOVERNOR TRUePPEL (OF
KIAOCHOW) AND PARTY
LADY HART
SIR ROBERT HART IN HIS PRIVATE OFFICE
SIR ROBERT HART AND A GROUP OF CUSTOMS PEOPLE
SIR ROBERT HART AND MISS KATE CARL
PEKING PEACE PROTOCOL, 1901
A CORNER OF SIR ROBERT HART'S GARDEN: A WINTER VIEW
ANOTHER WINTER VIEW OF SIR ROBERT HART'S GARDEN
TING'RH, OR CHINESE PAVILION, IN SIR ROBERT HART'S GARDEN, PEKING
SIR ROBERT HART AND HIS STAFF (FOREIGN AND CHINESE), PEKING, 1903
SIR ROBERT HART WISHING MISS ROOSEVELT "BON VOYAGE" ON HER DEPARTURE
FROM PEKING, SEPTEMBER 16, 1906
FRONT DOOR OF SIR ROBERT HART'S HOUSE, PEKING
FRONT VIEW OF SIR ROBERT HART'S HOUSE
A WORD OF INTRODUCTION
Seventy-three years ago a little Irish boy lay in his aunt's lap
looking out on a strange and mysterious world that his solemn eyes
had explored for scarcely ten short days, while she, to whom the
commonplaces of everyday surroundings had lost their first absorbing
interest, was busily engaged in braiding a watch-chain from her
splendid, Titian-red hair. These chains were the fashion of the hour,
and the old family doctor, friend as well as physician, paused after
a visit to the boy's mother, to joke her about it: "You're making a
keepsake for your sweetheart, I see."
"No, indeed," she answered gaily with a toss of her bonny head, "I'm
making a wedding present for this new nephew of mine when he marries
your daughter."
It was a long-shot prophecy. The doctor was even then a man past his
first youth; the neighbours looked upon him as a confirmed bachelor;
he seemed as unlikely ever to possess a daughter as a diamond mine.
Yet, all these improbabilities notwithstanding, he had taken to
himself the luxury of a wife within a very few years, and soon
children were climbing on his knees. I cannot say whether this
red-haired young woman had the gift of second sight or whether, by
some subtle power of suggestion, she willed the doctor to carry
out her prophecy. I only know that the prophecy _was_ startlingly
fulfilled, for among his children was one little girl who, when
she grew to womanhood, _did_ marry the nephew and _did_ get the
watch-chain as a wedding gift.
The doctor's daughter was an aunt of mine, and her romantic marriage,
by tying our two families together, gave me some slight claim on her
husband's affection. Propinquity afterwards ripened what opportunity
had begun; we lived long side by side in a far-away corner of the
world, and from the formal relationship of uncle and niece soon
slipped into that still better and warmer companionship of friend and
friend.
For me the friendship has ever been, is, and always will be, a thing
to take pride in, a thing to treasure. Nor will you wonder when I
confess that he of whom I speak is none other than the great Sir
Robert Hart, the man whose life has been as useful as varied, as
romantic as successful.
The story of it can be but imperfectly written now. There are many
shoals in the form of diplomatic indiscretions to steer clear of;
there is much weighing and sifting of political motives for serious
historians to do, but the time has not come for that. Much of the
romance of his long career in China lies over and above such things,
and of the romantic and personal side I here set down what I have
gathered from one and from another--chiefly from those who have had
the opportunity to collect their information at first hand, who either
knew him sooner than I or were themselves concerned in the events
described--in the hope that some readers may sufficiently enjoy the
romance of a great career to forgive any imperfections in the telling
for the sake of the story itself.
CHAPTER I
EARLY YEARS
Robert Hart began his romantic life in simple circumstances. He was
born on the 20th day of February, 1835, in a little white house
with green shutters on Dungannon Street, in the small Irish town of
Portadown, County Armagh, and was the eldest of twelve children. His
mother, a daughter of Mr. John Edgar, of Ballybreagh, must have been a
delightful woman, all tenderness and charity, judging from the way her
children's affections became entwined around her. His father, Henry
Hart, was a man of forceful and picturesque character, of a somewhat
antique strain, and a Wesleyan to the core. The household, therefore,
grew up under the bracing influence of uncompromising doctrines; it
was no unusual thing for one member to ask another at table, "What
have you been doing for God to-day?" and so rigidly was Sunday
observed that, had the family owned any Turners, I am sure they would
have been covered up on Saturday nights, just as they were in Ruskin's
home.
When the young Robert was only twelve months old the Harts moved to
Miltown, on the banks of beautiful Lough Neagh, remaining there barely
a year. Then they moved again--this time to Hillsborough, where he
attended his first school. It came about in this way. One afternoon
he was called into the parlour by his father. Two visitors--not by
any means an everyday occurrence in Miltown--were within. One was
a stoutish man with sandy hair, the other a very long person like a
knitting-needle. The stout man called the boy to him, passed his hand
carefully over the bumps of his head, and then, turning to the father,
said, "From what I gather of this child's talents from my examination
of his cranial cerebration, my brother's system of education is
exactly the one calculated to develop them," The men were two brothers
named Arnold, who proposed to open a little school in Hillsborough and
were tramping the country in search of pupils.
At the impressionable age of six or thereabouts an aunt fired the
boy's imagination with stories of the departed glories of the Hart
family. She used to tell him how their ancestor, Captain van Hardt,
came over from Holland with King William, fought at the Battle of
the Boyne and greatly distinguished himself; how afterwards, in
recognition of his gallant services, the King gave him the township of
Kilmoriarty as a reward; how the gallant captain settled himself down
there, kept his horses, ate well, drank deep, and left the place so
burdened with debt that one of his descendants was obliged to sell it.
"When I'm a man," the little fellow would say solemnly after hearing
these things, "I'll buy back Kilmoriarty--and I'll get a title too."
Of course she laughed at him quietly, thinking to herself how time and
circumstances would separate the lad from the goodly company of his
ambitions. Yet, after all, he saw clearer than she; he never wavered
in the serious purpose formed before he reached his teens, and he
actually did buy back Kilmoriarty when it came on the market years
afterwards. As for a title, he gained a knighthood, a grand cross and
a baronetcy--thus fulfilling the second part of his promise grandly.
From the care of the phrenologist brothers Arnold, Robert Hart was
taken over to a Wesleyan school in Taunton, England, by his father.
This journey gave him his first sight of the sea and his first
acquaintance with the mysteries of a steamer. The latter took firm
hold of his imagination; he long remembered the name of the particular
vessel on which they crossed, the _Shamrock_, and many years later he
was destined to meet her again under the strangest circumstances.
In England he stayed only a year, just long enough to make his first
friend and learn his first Latin. The friend he lost, but recovered
after an interval of forty years; the Latin he kept, added to, and
enjoyed all his life long.
When the summer holidays came, one of the tutors, a North of Ireland
man himself, agreed to accompany the lad back to Belfast; but in the
end he was prevented from starting, and the Governor of the school
allowed the eleven-year-old child to travel alone. He managed the
train journey safely as far as Liverpool, betook himself to a hotel,
and called, with a comical man-of-the-world air, for refreshment. Tea,
cold chicken and buns were brought him by the landlady and her maids,
who stood round in a circle watching the young traveller eat. His
serious ways and his solemn air of responsibility touched their
women's hearts so much that when the time came for him to sail they
took him down to the dock and put him on board his ship.
Henry Hart met his son at Belfast, and was so angry, at finding he
had been allowed to travel alone that he vowed the lad should never
go back to Taunton, and therefore sent him to the Wesleyan Connexional
School in Dublin instead. Here his quaint, merry little face, his
ready laugh, and above all his willingness to perform any trickery
that they suggested, made him a favourite among the boys at once. To
the masters he must have been something of a trial, I imagine, with
his habit of asking the why and wherefore of rules and regulations and
his refusal to submit to them without a logical answer. One day, for
instance, when a certain master spoke somewhat sourly and irritably to
him, Robert Hart then and there took it upon himself to deliver him a
lecture which, in its calm reasoning, was most disconcerting.
"It is wonderful the way you treat us boys," he said, "just as if you
were our superior; just as if you were not a little dust and water
like the rest of us. One would think from your manners you were our
master, whereas you are really our servant. It is we who give you your
livelihood--and yet you behave to us in this high-handed manner." That
tirade naturally made a pretty row in the school, but the obdurate
young orator melted under the coaxings and cajolings of the Governor's
gentle and distressed wife, and duly apologized.
The slightest of excuses served to turn him suddenly from a clever,
scatterbrained imp of mischief into a serious student. It happened
that the whole school met on an equality in one subject--Scripture
History. The head of that class, therefore, enjoyed a peculiar
prestige among his fellows, and it was clearly understood that a
certain Freckleton, a senior and the good boy of the school, should
hold this pleasant leadership. What was more natural, since he was
destined to "wag his head in a pulpit?" But Robert Hart could not see
the matter in this light. Some spirit of contradictoriness rising in
him, he thought a little dispute for first place in Scripture would
add spice to a naughty boy's school life and both amuse and amaze.
So on Sundays, while the rest of the boys were otherwise occupied, he
would walk up and down the ball alley secretly studying Scripture.
When the examination day came the whole school was assembled;
questions flew back and forth. Now one boy, now another dropped out
of the game; at last only Freckleton and Hart were left, the big boy
prodigiously nervous, rubbing his hands on his knees, the small one
aggravatingly cool and collected. At last the examiner called for a
list of the Kings of Israel. Freckleton stumbled. The question passed
to Hart, and, while the boys sat tense with excitement, he answered
fluently and correctly. The first place was his, and a hearty cheer
greeted his unexpected success.
After this little victory the Governor of the school remarked to him:
"Now you see what you can do when you try, Hart; why don't you try?"
Why not, indeed? Here was a new idea. He accepted it as a challenge,
took it up eagerly, and from that day on devoted himself to study with
an enthusiasm as thorough as sudden. Everything there was to study,
he studied--even stole fifteen minutes from his lunch hour to work
at Hebrew--till the boys laughingly nicknamed him "Stewpot" and the
"Consequential Butt."
The result was that at fifteen he was ready to leave the school the
first boy of the College class, and his parents were puzzled what to
do with him next. His father considered it unwise to send such a
young lad away to Trinity College, Dublin, where he would be among
companions far older than himself; and the end of the matter was
that he went to the newly founded Queen's College at Belfast instead
because that was nearer Hillsborough and the family circle.
He passed the entrance examinations easily, and of the twelve
scholarships offered he carried off the twelfth--nothing, however,
to what he was to do later. The second year there were seven
scholarships, and he got the seventh; the third there were five, and
he got the first. He heard the news of this last triumph one afternoon
in a little second-hand book-store where the collegians often
gathered. It was a gloomy day wrapped in a grey blanket of rain, and
he was not feeling particularly confident--his besetting sin from the
first was modesty--when suddenly a fellow-student rushed up and said,
"Congratulations, Hart. You've come out first."
"What," retorted Hart, astonished, "is the list published already?"
They told him where it was to be seen, and he hurried off to look for
himself. Quite likely they were playing a joke on him, he thought. But
it was no joke after all; his name stood before all the others--though
he could scarcely believe his own eyes, and did not write home about
it till next day, for fear that the good luck might turn to bad in the
night.
Unfortunately these successes left him little time for the sports
which should be a boy's most profitable form of idling. He ran no
races after he left Taunton, where he was known for the fleetest
pair of heels in the school; he played no games, neither cricket nor
football, not even bowls or rounders--but these amusements he probably
missed the less as they were not popular at Belfast, the College being
new and without muscular traditions, and the students chiefly young
men of narrow means and broad ambitions.
On the rare occasions when he had time for recreation, he either made
a few friends in the world of books--Emerson's "Essays" influenced him
most--or tried his own hand at literature. Once he even went so far as
to write a poem and send it to a Belfast newspaper, signing it "C'est
Moi." It was printed, and, being short of money at the time, he wrote
his father that his first published writing had appeared, and received
from his proud parent L10 by way of encouragement.
But his literary success was short-lived. When he tried the same
editor with another effusion signed with the same pen-name, the
unfeeling man actually printed in his columns: "'C'est Moi's' last is
not worth the paper it is written on." Alas! for the prophet in his
own country. Years afterwards he got another criticism just as harsh
from another Irish paper. It was a review of his book "These from the
Land of Sinim," and the Irish reviewer for some unknown reason rated
the book thoroughly, declared its opinions were ridiculous, its
English neither forcible nor elegant, and concluded with the biting
remark, "We hear that the writer has also composed poems which were
lost in the Peking Siege, thank God."
In 1853 Hart was ready to pass his final Degree Examinations.
They were held in Dublin, where the three newly established Irish
Colleges--Cork, Galway and Belfast--took them together. Belfast had
been fortunate the year before in carrying off several "firsts," and
the men were anxious to do as well as, or even better than on the
previous occasion. So they arranged amongst themselves that each
should cram some particular subject and try for honours in it.
Young Hart, with his character compounded of energy and ambition,
agreed to take two as his share. One was English, the other Logic,
which he had studied under the famous Dr. McCosh, which he delighted
in, and which undoubtedly developed his natural talent for getting
directly at the point of an intricate matter. He worked eighteen hours
a day during the last three weeks before the Literature Examination,
and when it came he did well--at least, so he supposed.
The rule was that only those in each class who had shown marked
ability and knowledge of their subject at the "pass" examination
should be recommended for re-examination for honours. But to his
surprise, when the list was read out, Hart's name was not even amongst
the successful candidates. The Belfast students were thoroughly angry.
They felt the honour of the College was at stake; he had not done his
share in upholding it, and they did not hesitate to tell him so. Hart
listened to their reproaches and answered never a word, but quietly
went on, in the week that intervened between the pass examination and
the final, with his preparations for the latter. The ability to do so
showed courage and character--and he hath both in an unusual degree.
The very night before the "final" his reward came. Some one hurried
up his stairs and burst into his little sitting-room. It was the
Professor--the famous George Lillie Craik--who had set the papers for
the Literature class.
"I come to apologize to you for a mistake," he said very kindly, "and
to explain why you have not been chosen for re-examination. The truth
is you answered so well at the 'pass' that I wrote your name on the
first sheet, and nobody else's--as nobody came near you. Unfortunately
this page, almost blank, was mislaid, and that is how it happened that
you, who should have been chosen before all the rest, were overlooked.
Now I want to ask you to come up for re-examination to-morrow, and, at
the same time, wish you the best of luck."
Robert Hart went--and won. He received a gold medal and L15 for this
subject, a gold medal and L15 also for Logic and Metaphysics, and
sufficient honour and glory besides to turn a less well-balanced head.
Meanwhile the choice of a future career naturally filled the young
man's thoughts. First he seriously debated whether he should become
a doctor, but gave up the idea when he found he came home from every
operation imagining himself a sufferer from the disease he had just
seen treated. Next there was some talk of putting him into a lawyer's
office--talk which came to nothing; and finally a lecture he heard on
China at seventeen almost decided him to become a missionary to the
heathen, but he soon abandoned this plan like the others.
After taking his B.A., he went instead to spend a post-graduate year
at Belfast, and read for a Master's degree--this in spite of the fact
that he was worn out with the strain of eighteen hours' work a day,
and used to see authors creeping in through the keyhole and wake in
the night to find illuminated letters dancing a witches' dance around
his bed.
Then, just at the critical moment of his life--in the spring of
1854--the British Foreign Office gave a nomination for the Consular
Service in China to each of the three Irish Queen's Colleges, Belfast,
Cork and Galway. He immediately abandoned all idea of reading for
a fellowship, and applied. So did thirty-six others. A competitive
examination was announced, but when the College authorities saw
Hart's name among the rest, they gave the nomination to him, _without
examination_.
Two months later he presented himself at the Foreign Office in London
and saw the Under-Secretary of State, Mr. (afterwards Lord) Hammond,
who gave him some parting advice. "When you reach Hongkong," said he,
"_never_ venture into the sun without an umbrella, and never go snipe
shooting without top boots pulled up well over the thighs." As no
snipe have ever been seen on Hongkong, the last bit of counsel was as
absurd as the first was sensible.
He actually started for China in May 1854. It is not easy to imagine
in these feverish days of travel what that journey must have meant to
a young Irish lad brought up in a small town lad to whom even London
probably seemed very far away. But the mothers of other sons can
give a pretty shrewd guess at how the mere thought of it must have
terrified those he was leaving behind. "Will he come back a heathen?"
one might ask, and another--but never aloud--"Will he come at all?"
But, whatever they felt, none would have selfishly held him back;
on the contrary, they were all encouragement, and the last thing
his father did was to put into the young man's hand a roll of fifty
sovereigns--a splendid piece of generosity on the part of one whose
whole income at the time did not amount to more than a few hundreds a
year--and later, splendidly repaid.
It is interesting to review the curious series of incidents that
guided Robert Hart towards the great and romantic career before him.
Had it not been for the tutor's detention, the subsequent move from
Taunton to Dublin, and the sudden awakening there of his mischievous
ambition over Scripture History, he would probably never have
developed into the ardent student he did at a very early age, or left
school so young.
Again, had it not been for his extreme youth, his family would
probably have sent him to Dublin instead of to Belfast--and Dublin
received no nomination for the Consular Service in China. Such
nominations were not usually given to Colleges, and the only reason
that the three colleges comprising the Queen's University in Ireland
received them was because the University was new, and the Foreign
Office (at which, by the way, the Chief, Lord Clarendon, was also
Chancellor of the Queen's University) desired to give it some
recognition and encouragement.
Surely if ever a boy was "led," as the Wesleyans say, to do a certain
work, Robert Hart was that boy.
CHAPTER II
FIRST YEARS IN CHINA--LIFE AT NINGPO--THE ALLIED COMMISSION AND SIR
HARRY PARKES--RESIGNATION FROM THE CONSULAR SERVICE
The journey out to Chinn in 1854 was not the simple matter that it
is now. No Suez Canal existed then, and the _Candia_ that took Robert
Hart from Southampton left him at Alexandria. Thence he had to travel
up the Mahmudi Canal to the Nile, push on towards Cairo, and finally
spend eighteen cramped and weary hours in an omnibus crossing
the desert to Suez, where he got one steamer as far as Galle, and
another--the _Pottinger_ from Bombay--which called there took him on
to his destination.
He remained three uneventful months in Hongkong as Student Interpreter
at the Superintendency of Trade, awaiting the return of Sir John
Bowring, H.B.M.'s Minister to China, who was away at Taku trying to
open negotiations with the Peking Government. It was this same Sir
John Bowring, by the way, who first aroused Robert Hart's interest
in Chinese life and customs--subjects on which so many foreigners in
China remain pitifully ignorant all their lives. "Study everything
around you," said he to the young man. "Go out and walk in the street
and read the shop signs. Bend over the bookstalls and read titles.
Listen to the talk of the people. If you acquire these habits, you
will not only learn something new every time you leave your door, but
you will always carry with you an antidote for boredom."
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