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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sir Robert Hart, by Juliet Bredon
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Sir Robert Hart
+       The Romance of a Great Career,  2nd Edition
+
+Author: Juliet Bredon
+
+Release Date: May 14, 2004 [EBook #12344]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIR ROBERT HART ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Leah Moser and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+Produced from images provided by the Million Book Project.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[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."
+
+When the Minister came back in September, Robert Hart was appointed
+to the British Consulate at Ningpo, and started off immediately,
+travelling up to Shanghai in a trim little 150-ton opium schooner
+called the _Iona_. The voyage should have taken a week; it took three.
+At first a calm and then the sudden burst of the north-east monsoon
+made progress impossible; the schooner tacked back and forth for a
+fortnight, advancing scarcely a mile, and all this time her single
+passenger could just manage to take seven steps on her little deck
+without wetting his feet. Then, to make matters worse, provisions
+gave out, and the ship's company was reduced for twelve days to an
+unsavoury diet of water-buffalo and peanuts--all they could get from
+a nearby island. Was it any wonder that Hart could never afterwards
+endure the taste of peanuts, or that at the mere sight of a passing
+water-buffalo his appetite was clean gone for the day?
+
+He found Shanghai in the hands of the Triads (rebels), and a friend,
+one of the missionaries, took him to see their famous chief, who was
+said to have risen, not from the ranks, but from the stables of an
+American merchant. With Mr. (afterwards Sir Rutherford) Alcock he also
+went into the other camp to visit the commander of the Imperialist
+forces, a Mongol, the Governor of the Province and a man of fine
+presence. He was the first specimen of the Mandarin class that Robert
+Hart had seen, and consequently the details of the interview remained
+in his memory.
+
+In later years he would sometimes describe what interested him most
+as, silent and inconspicuous, he observed the doings of his seniors.
+It was not the crowd of petty officials standing about, though they
+were curious enough to a newcomer in their long official robes and
+hats decorated with peacock's feathers; it was not the conversation
+going on between Alcock and the Governor; it was simply the way the
+latter, by his excessive dignity and dramatic manner, turned a simple
+action into a ceremony. What he did was to draw carefully from
+his official boot a wad of fine white paper, detach one sheet, and
+solemnly blow his nose upon it. The action was nothing, the method
+everything. He then proceeded to fold the paper into a cocked hat,
+and, calling a servant to him, gave it into his hands with a grand
+bow, just as if he were presenting the man with some specially earned
+honour. As for the servant, he took his cue excellently well, received
+the paper like a sacred relic, and, still as if he were taking part in
+some ceremony; opened the flap of the tent and threw it away.
+
+[Illustration: THE CANAL: THE ROUTE BY WHICH SIR ROBERT HART FIRST
+CAME TO PEKING.]
+
+Still more adventures awaited Robert Hart on the short trip from
+Shanghai to Ningpo; indeed I think the best and the most romantic
+adventures took a certain pleasure in following him always. At any
+rate, this time he was to have such a one as even Captain Kettle
+might have envied; he was to be chased by a pirate junk, a Cantonese
+Comanting, with a painted eye in the bow, so that she might find her
+prey, with a high stern bristling with rifles and cutlasses, so that
+she might destroy it when found, and with stinkpots at her mastheads
+and boarding-nets hung round her. Of course he was to escape in the
+end, but so narrowly that all possible sail had to be crowded on to
+his little ship, and the whole crew set to work the big oar at the
+stern, while every soul on board shivered and shook as men should when
+pirates are after them.
+
+Ningpo itself in 1854 was the quietest place under the sun. A handful
+of merchants lived there, buried without the trouble of dying; one or
+two consulates had been built, but roads were non-existent, and the
+few houses were separated from one another by a network of paddy
+(rice) fields. The new consular assistant shared his house with a man
+called Patridge, for whom he had conceived a liking, a jolly fellow
+and a capital messmate, yet not without certain peculiarities of his
+own. I believe he took a special delight in posing for fearful and
+radical ideas like the abolition of the House of Lords, and could
+never be made to see why a man should not sit in the presence of his
+Sovereign, or wear his hat either if he felt so inclined.
+
+The other youngsters laughed at his notions; one or two even went so
+far as to accuse him of being a snob and to twit him on having changed
+the spelling of his name and dropped the first "r" for the sake of a
+stylishness he pretended to despise. He protested hotly; they stuck
+to their assertion. He declared his name was Patridge, always had been
+Patridge, and never could be anything else; they disbelieved him, and
+so the dispute remained a drawn battle for want of an umpire till
+long afterwards, when Robert Hart himself proved the point in a very
+curious way.
+
+A word or two about Patridge's early history must be told in order to
+show how he did it. Patridge, as a young boy, was on board a vessel
+carrying opium along the coasts of China, when in 1842 she and another
+engaged in the same trade were wrecked on the island of Formosa, and
+both crews--175 Bengalis and 13 white men in all--were captured by
+the natives and taken to the capital, Tai-Wan-Foo. The Bengalis were
+beheaded immediately. It was touch and go whether the white men
+would suffer the same fate, when a brilliant idea struck the ship's
+carpenter. Why not seek to soften the hearts of his captors by a
+_kotow_ as profound as it was novel; why not stand on his head? He
+did, with the happiest results. The Formosans, delighted with this
+feat of submission, spared the lives of himself and his companions and
+kept them in prison instead of decapitating them.
+
+But for a long time it was doubtful whether they would ever regain
+their liberty, and, as a record for friends who might later search for
+them in vain, they made a schoolboy's calendar on the walls of their
+cramped and dirty prison, ticked off each day, and signed their names
+below. It is nice to know that they got away free at last, though
+their fate has little to do with my story.
+
+The record remained. More than twenty years afterwards, when Robert
+Hart, then Inspector-General of the Chinese Customs, had occasion to
+go to Formosa on business, he found it in an old rice hong (shop), and
+Patridge's name among the rest, spelled with two "r's" (Partridge),
+whereupon he could not resist the temptation of cutting off the list
+with his penknife and, on his return to Shanghai, triumphantly handing
+it to his old messmate.
+
+In 1855, owing to a dispute with his Portuguese colleague, the British
+Consul at Ningpo was suspended from duty, and young Hart put in charge
+of affairs for some months. His calm judgment and good sense during
+this first period of responsibility gained him favourable notice with
+the "powers that be," for a little later at Canton, when the British
+General Van Straubenzee remarked, on introducing him to Mr.(afterwards
+Sir Frederick) Bruce, "This young man I recommend you to keep your eye
+on; some day he will do something," the latter answered, "Oh, I have
+already had my attention called to him by the Foreign Office."
+
+The Portuguese were much in evidence in the Ningpo of those days. They
+were numerous; they had power, and they abused it: with the result
+that retribution came upon them so sure, so swift, so terrible that
+not only Ningpo but the whole of China was deeply stirred by the
+horror of it.
+
+I am thinking now of that dreadful massacre of June 26th, 1857,
+the culmination of years of trouble between the Cantonese and the
+Portuguese lorchamen, who with their fast vessels--the fastest and
+most easily managed ships in the age before steam--terrorized the
+whole coast, exacted tribute, refused to pay duties, and even fell
+into downright piracy, burning peaceful villages and killing their
+inhabitants.
+
+Rumours of Cantonese revenge began in the winter of 1856, when news
+came that all the foreigners in Ningpo would be massacred on a
+certain night. Some one thereupon invited the whole community to dine
+together; but Robert Hart refused, thinking that men who sat drinking
+hot whiskey punch through a long evening would be in no condition to
+face a disturbance if it came. Thus, while the others kept up their
+courage in company, he slept in a deserted house--the terrified
+servants had fled--with a revolver under his pillow, and beside his
+bed an open window, through which he intended to drop, if the worst
+came to the worst, and try to make his way on foot to Shanghai.
+Nothing happened then, however; but the talk of the tea-shops had not
+been unfounded--only premature.
+
+The 26th of June saw the vengeance consummated. With great bravery and
+determination the Cantonese under Poo Liang Tai swept the Portuguese
+lorchas up the entire coast and into Ningpo. The fight began afloat
+and ashore. Bullets whistled everywhere; the distracted lorchamen
+ran wildly about, hoping to escape the inevitable. Some of the
+poor wretches reached the British Consulate, alive or half alive,
+clamouring for shelter; but Mr. Meadows, then Consul, refused to let
+them in, fearing to turn the riot from an anti-Portuguese disturbance
+into an anti-foreign outbreak, and the unfortunate creatures
+frantically beat on the closed gates in vain.
+
+Perhaps much of their fate was well deserved--some historians say
+so--but it was none the less terrible when it came; and I can imagine
+that the predicament of Meadows and young Hart, standing behind the
+barred gates of the Consulate, could have been little worse, mentally,
+than that of the wretches outside praying to them in the name of
+Heaven and the saints for shelter.
+
+All were hunted down at last, dragged out of their hiding-places in
+old Chinese graves among the paddy fields, butchered where they stood
+defending their lodging-house, or taken prisoners only to be put on
+one of their own lorchas, towed a little way up the river and slowly
+roasted to death. Then, "last scene of all," the Cantonese stormed the
+Portuguese Consulate, pillaged and wrecked the building, and were
+just climbing on to the flat roof to haul down the flag when a stately
+white cloud appeared far down the river, serenely floating towards the
+disturbed city.
+
+It was the French warship _Capricieuse_, under full sail. She had
+come straight from South America and put in at Ningpo after her long
+voyage, all unconscious of the terrible events passing there. Was
+ever an arrival more providential? I greatly doubt it; for had she not
+appeared in this miraculous fashion, who knows what would have come to
+the handful of white men left in that last outpost of civilization?
+
+Such was Robert Hart's first experience of a fight, but it was by no
+means to be his only one. Bugles have sounded in his ears from first
+to last, and a wide variety of military experiences--he was present
+at the taking of one city and during the siege of another--has come to
+him without his seeking it.
+
+From Ningpo he was transferred to Canton in March 1858, and made
+Secretary to the Allied Commission governing that city. Life was very
+different there from what it had been in Ningpo. Instead of the small
+community to which he had been accustomed, he found himself in a town
+filled with troops--British and French. Instead of living alone
+or with one companion, he occupied quarters in a big yamen full of
+officers and men--a change which probably benefited a character too
+given to seriousness and introspection.
+
+The work in Canton was exceedingly interesting. He was much more
+in the centre of affairs than he had been before, and he had the
+opportunity of serving under Sir Harry Parkes. With some of the
+erraticness that is said to belong to genius, Parkes enjoyed doing
+things at odd hours. He liked to fall asleep after dinner, for
+instance, with a big cigar in his mouth, then wake refreshed and
+energetic at midnight, and work till morning. But he never expected
+his staff to follow his example, and was consideration itself to those
+under him--especially to young Hart, whom he liked from the first, and
+whom he always took with him on his expeditions around or outside the
+city.
+
+There was no lack of these, since he was a man of indomitable energy,
+matured his plans with astonishing rapidity, and often had them
+carried out before any one suspected they were maturing.
+
+The story of one particular little _coup d'etat_ is well worth the
+telling. A new Viceroy was expected in Canton, and Parkes heard that
+the man who was filling the Acting Appointment was anxious to go out
+of the city to meet his successor. At the same time he was told that
+if the official left the city, the occasion would be taken to make a
+disturbance, so he determined to use a sudden and vigorous stratagem
+to keep the Acting Viceroy within the walls, willing or no.
+Accordingly one morning he invited all the officials to discuss
+matters at the said Viceroy's yamen, and went himself to the
+rendezvous with Hart and an escort of military police.
+
+He greeted the assembled officials cordially, and, after some
+preliminary remark, went on to say: "I hear that you are all anxious
+to go and meet the new Viceroy. Very natural, I'm sure; very natural
+and obviously your duty. But we really do not want you to leave Canton
+just at this particular moment. Ugly rumours are floating about which
+only your presence here keeps in check. Therefore, as we realize that
+if you do not go to meet your colleague, you will be accused in Peking
+of lack of courtesy towards him, that none of your excuses will be
+believed, I have brought a few men with me to keep guard outside
+your rooms here. You can consequently say with truth that you were
+_prevented from fulfilling_ your duty."
+
+Astonished and angry as they were at the turn of events, the Chinese
+were shrewd enough to see they were helpless. The soldiers stayed.
+Hart went every day to inquire after the prisoners, and listened to
+their complaints about the ceaseless tread of the sentries under their
+windows all night. "They never seem to sit down like other people,"
+one of the Chinese said pathetically. "They walk all night, all
+night, and we cannot sleep." Parkes sent sympathetic messages, but he
+remained courteously firm. Perhaps he thought a few wakeful hours were
+not too high a price to pay for keeping Canton quiet.
+
+There was one official, however, who had not been caught with the
+rest. He was Fantai, or Provincial Treasurer, who remained quietly
+hidden in a temple in one of the western suburbs till Parkes ferreted
+him out. He and Hart and the mounted police then made a second
+expedition. As soon as they reached the outer door of the place,
+Parkes jumped off his pony and rushed in with such impetuosity that
+the crowds of servants running before him had no time to warn their
+master of the intruders' arrival. Parkes continued his rapid career
+straight into the inner room, where the Fantai himself sat at a table
+strewn with papers, absolutely calm, serene and unmoved. Parkes began
+to talk; the Fantai remained silent. No matter, Parkes was very adroit
+at carrying on a one-sided interview, and conversation did not flag.
+
+"I've come to pay you a visit," said he; "and though you have not
+mentioned your pleasure at meeting a new acquaintance, I am sure it
+is none the less deep. Ah," he went on, looking over the paper-strewn
+table, "you have even been kind enough to lay aside your work on my
+account. Let us see. You were writing letters," and Parkes thereupon
+read the finished and unfinished despatches under the Fantai's very
+eye, then profusely thanked him for the useful information.
+
+The Chinese sat superbly contemptuous through it all, and finally spat
+over his shoulder, putting enough scorn into the action to freeze
+the boldest. Yet Parkes had the gift of looking unconscious the whole
+time, and babbled on gaily:
+
+"You don't seem very talkative to-day--but of course, sometimes one
+feels more in the mood for conversation than others. Besides, there
+is no need for you to tell me any of your news. I have found out
+everything I wanted to know from these papers here." He had indeed;
+they contained the most important revelations as to the prospective
+movements of the Chinese troops outside the city, and also showed
+exactly how far the officials inside were co-operating with them.
+
+There was no further need to prolong the interview, and Parkes began
+to make his adieus. In China, these are not the slight things they are
+with us. Host and guest have mutual obligations; the former, unless
+he is willing to risk being thought uncivil, must escort a visitor of
+rank to the outer gate himself. But the Fantai cared little whether he
+was thought civil or not, and he sat stolidly in his chair when Parkes
+made a move to go. He reckoned without his--guest, who was not the man
+to be slighted.
+
+"I am sorry to take you away from your pressing business," said Parkes
+affably, "but if you should neglect to s'ung (literally, bid farewell
+in the ceremonial manner) me, people might think that we are not the
+good friends we are; people might even suspect that our political
+relations are unsatisfactory. Therefore I must with great reluctance
+trouble you." The Fantai, helpless, accompanied him grudgingly to the
+door of the inner courtyard, whence he was about to beat a retreat
+when Parkes said again, insinuatingly and half under his breath, "Oh,
+come a little farther, please do; there are not enough people here to
+see our good-byes."
+
+The same scene was gone through at each successive courtyard, and in
+a big Chinese temple they are neither few nor small. Hart, who was
+behind the other two, could scarcely stifle his amusement at the
+half-snarling, half-contemptuous face of the Fantai as Parkes in one
+phrase insisted _sotto voce_ on his coming farther, and in the next,
+spoken a little louder for the benefit of listening servants and
+secretaries, thanked him profusely for his great courtesy and
+hospitality in seeing a humble guest so far. Only at the outermost
+gate, around which a crowd had collected, all, in Chinese fashion,
+asking who was within and what he had come about, was the irate Fantai
+permitted to return to his interrupted labours--after he had satisfied
+every canon of the elaborate courtesy.
+
+Hart left his work under Sir Harry Parkes with real regret in October
+1858, when he was promoted and appointed interpreter at the British
+Consulate in Canton under Sir Rutherford Alcock; but in May 1859 he
+resigned to enter the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs. It was the
+Viceroy Laou Tsung Kwang who invited him to do so, for he was one of
+Hart's special friends, a shrewd judge of men, clever enough himself
+and progressive for his day. He had been quick to notice the success
+of the new Custom House at Shanghai, and presently asked young Hart if
+he could not draw up a set of regulations for the collection of duty
+at Canton, and undertake the work of supervision.
+
+To this invitation Hart replied that Mr. H.N. Lay was in charge of the
+Customs; that he, Hart, knew nothing about the business, having had
+no experience of the sort, and could not therefore agree to the
+proposals. But what he did agree to do was to write to Mr. Lay and
+see if something could not be done to bring Canton into line with
+Shanghai. The result of the correspondence, briefly put, was that
+Mr. Lay first offered Robert Hart a position as interpreter, which
+he refused, and later the post of Deputy-Commissioner of Customs
+at Canton, which he accepted. Of course he had meanwhile asked the
+British Government if he might resign from the Consular Service. Their
+reply gave the desired permission, but stipulated at the same time
+that he must not expect the acceptance of his resignation to imply
+that he might return to the British service whenever he pleased.
+Neither they nor he guessed then that he was beginning a work from
+which he would have no wish to turn back, or that it would be they who
+would finally beg him to return to their service, not as Consul, but
+as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE BEGINNINGS OF THE IMPERIAL CHINESE CUSTOMS--A VISIT TO
+SIR FREDERICK BRUCE--THE SHERARD OSBORNE AFFAIR--APPOINTED
+INSPECTOR-GENERAL
+
+
+When Robert Hart joined the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, the
+service was already four years old. 1854--the very year he passed
+through Shanghai on his way to Ningpo--saw its beginning as an
+international institution. A Chinese Superintendent had hitherto
+collected duties for his Government, but, owing to the capture
+of Shanghai by the rebels, affairs became so disorganized that he
+appealed to the three Consuls of Great Britain, France and the United
+States for help, and they responded by each appointing one of
+their nationals to assist him in securing an honest and efficient
+administration.
+
+As far as the Chinese Government was concerned, the triumvirate
+gave immediate and entire satisfaction. Duties increased, smuggling
+diminished--all as a result of the new system, which was continued, by
+the express desire of the Chinese officials, even after the city was
+recaptured by the Imperial troops.
+
+But the merchants on their side had no praise for an arrangement that
+cut large slices off their profits. They found it exceedingly annoying
+to be obliged to give the correct weight of their tea and silk under
+penalty of forfeiture; as for calmly landing and shipping their goods
+without permits, this was now out of the question. Yet what could they
+do to circumvent these innovations? Nothing--but put every conceivable
+difficulty, large and small, ingenious and obvious, in the way of the
+new inspectors.
+
+The Frenchman presently withdrew, the American, a consular official,
+resigned in 1856, and the Englishman, Mr. (afterwards Sir Thomas)
+Wade, a sensitive man, unable to endure the social boycott imposed on
+him, did likewise. Mr. H.N. Lay, Vice-Consul and Interpreter in the
+British Consulate at Shanghai, was then appointed to succeed Mr. Wade,
+and, as the two other Powers concerned did not appoint successors
+to their original nominees, he thereafter managed Chinese Customs
+business alone.
+
+Such, briefly told, is the history of the service which Robert Hart
+joined as Deputy-Commissioner at Canton in 1859 at the suggestion of
+the Canton Viceroy, Laou Tsung Kwang--which he was to build up and in
+which he was to make his great name and reputation. From the first
+he did better than well. He set to work at once on a series of
+regulations for Custom House management. They were greatly needed--all
+the internal arrangements of the infant service were in a chaotic
+condition--and they were also greatly praised. The Viceroy himself was
+delighted. Here was his own young _protege_, by his diligence, by
+his practical business capacity, by his unusual willingness to accept
+responsibility and by the promises of administrative ability he was
+giving, proving himself the very man to make the newly organized
+Customs a success. The Viceroy had chosen better than he knew.
+
+Two years--from 1859 to 1861--Robert Hart spent in Canton setting
+affairs in order and working very hard in a hot, damp climate.
+Curiously enough he was never ill, though many men of far greater
+physical strength, of far tougher build, wilted in that steaming
+atmosphere; he himself was always too busy, I think, for symptoms and
+sickness.
+
+During those years he had an unexpected meeting with an old friend.
+Word having been brought to him that a ship from Macao was expected to
+load teas at Komchuk--a place inland not open to trade--he started off
+with a posse of tidewaiters on the revenue cruiser _Cumfa_, to seize
+her. She was a shabby little vessel; her paint was scratched, her name
+almost obliterated. Almost, but not quite; he was able to make out the
+word _Shamrock_ at her bow, and on careful inquiry identified her as
+the very vessel on which he had travelled to England as a boy; but
+alas! a _Shamrock_ fallen on evil days, dilapidated by doubtful
+adventures in distant seas, and debased to the low company of
+smugglers.
+
+In 1861 chance, luck, or Providence--call it what you will--once
+again interfered in the humdrum routine of events to give Hart the
+opportunity he had come half-way across the world to meet. A riot
+broke out at Shanghai, and Mr. Lay, as he was walking down the main
+street, was attacked by a man with a long knife and so severely
+wounded that he was obliged to go to England on two years' leave in
+order to recover his health.
+
+Two of his subordinates were made Officiating Inspector-Generals in
+his place: Fitzroy, formerly private secretary to Lord Elgin, at that
+time Shanghai Commissioner, and Robert Hart. Both men had excellent
+qualities; but while Fitzroy, who knew no Chinese, was content to
+remain at Shanghai, his more active and energetic colleague travelled
+to and fro establishing new offices.
+
+The Tientsin Treaties having recently opened more ports to trade, and
+the Chinese Government having repeatedly approved of the golden stream
+of revenue pouring into their Treasury, Customs administration was
+extended up and down the coasts as fast as the ports could be declared
+"open"--to Ningpo, Foochow, Amoy, Swatow, Chinkiang, even so far north
+as Tientsin, and British, French or German Commissioners put in charge
+of each, in order that the original international character of the
+service might be preserved.
+
+Most of these ports welcomed the new order of things; but at one,
+notably Hankow, difficulties arose, and Hart promptly started to clear
+them up. At the time of his going both Wuhu and Nanking, two cities
+on the Yangtsze, were still in the hands of the rebels, and the
+river-steamer captain warned his passengers that the ship would stop
+at Wuhu to get her papers from them. "Take my advice," said he, "and
+remain quietly in your cabin from the time we stop until we leave, for
+the rebels have the habit of coming on board, and were they to find
+a man like yourself, a Government agent on Government business, they
+would certainly take you ashore. They usually only look about the
+saloon, however, and do not examine the cabins, so you will be safe
+enough if you stay in yours."
+
+Robert Hart gratefully accepted the advice, and, sitting on the edge
+of his bunk, listened to the rebels talking in the saloon outside,
+till, with a sigh of relief, he heard them leave the ship and allow
+her to proceed on her way. That the danger had been real enough the
+deserted river proved; terror of these same revolutionaries had
+swept the usually busy waterway clean of craft, and nothing further
+disturbed the quiet but the hoarse honk of wild geese and the whirring
+of ducks' wings.
+
+At Hankow the Viceroy, Kwan Wen, was as friendly personally as he
+was obstinate officially. He did not desire to see the new system
+enforced. Again and again he politely told Robert Hart that he was
+wasting his time--that it was quite useless his remaining longer.
+
+But as Robert Hart listened with equal politeness and remained,
+the Viceroy's patience finally began to wear thin. He then sent
+a subordinate official to make one last effort to persuade the
+Officiating Inspector-General to go. This failed, just as the other
+attempts at persuasion had failed. Hart simply told the man that he
+was acting under orders, and further hinted that when he reported to
+Peking and the Emperor Tung Chih heard that difficulties had been made
+about the establishment of the Customs at Hankow, it would not look
+well. "But the Emperor's name is not Tung Chih," remarked the Taotai
+scornfully. "You should know that as well as I." "To me," retorted
+Robert Hart calmly, "it seems equally strange that you as a Chinese
+official do not know the name of your own Emperor."
+
+He thereupon went to a drawer, took out a new _Peking Gazette_
+announcing the famous _coup d'etat_ of November 2nd, 1861, when Prince
+Soo Sun's party was absolutely overthrown by the party of Prince Kung
+and the Emperor's official style altered from Chi Hsiang ("Lucky") to
+Tung Chih ("Pull Together"), and handed it to him. The man was utterly
+surprised. This was the very first news of the important event
+to reach Hankow, and as soon as it became generally known all the
+officials who had hitherto shaped their actions to please Prince Soo
+were quick to change their attitude. Even the Viceroy promptly sent
+for Hart and begged him, with every expression of cordiality, to do
+just as he pleased about everything; above all, to proceed with his
+business immediately.
+
+A few weeks later, all being in working order, the Officiating
+Inspector-General was on his way down the river again. He had a
+message for the other Yangtsze Viceroy, Tseun Kuo Fan, and accordingly
+paid five hundred taels (L70) to stop the little steamer _Poyang_
+for two hours at Nanking in order to deliver it. This message was
+comparatively prosaic, concerning as it did nothing more interesting
+than the Viceroy's views relative to some unimportant trade matters.
+
+But the Viceroy's answer is worth recording. "You have asked me my
+opinion on many matters," said old Tseun. "Some of these must be
+settled direct with the Wai-Wu-Pu (the Foreign Office at Peking).
+But I will tell you this much now. Whatever is good for Chinese and
+foreigners I will support; whatever is good for foreigners and does
+not harm Chinese I will approve; but whatever is bad for Chinese, no
+matter how good it is for foreigners, I will die rather than consent
+to." In this grand old statesman's confession of his political faith
+it is good to find a convincing answer to the arguments of those who
+pretend that there are no patriots in China.
+
+Robert Hart's next mission was to Peking itself, the grey, wall-ringed
+mediaeval city where he was afterwards to spend so many years,
+and where he stayed with Sir Frederick Bruce at the British
+Legation--then, as now, housed in a fine old Chinese building.
+
+[Illustration: A VIEW OF PEKING SHOWING CONDITION OF ROADS.]
+
+Sir Frederick Bruce was a most striking type of man, like a straight,
+healthy tree, most cordial in manner, with a beautiful voice that made
+even oaths sound like splendid oratory, a keen intelligence flavoured
+with a pinch of humour, and a great gift of diplomatic suavity.
+
+Between himself and young Robert Hart a bond of friendship rapidly
+grew--strong enough to bear the lapse of time and even the occasional
+bursts of frank criticism to which the host treated his guest. At
+least on one occasion it was very sharp indeed. Hart and another young
+man (afterwards Sir Robert Douglas) had gone riding in the outer city
+of Peking on the fifth of the fifth moon--a feast day--when, on their
+way home, a yelling mob collected around them, shouting disrespectful
+names and even throwing things at them. True, they did it all in a
+spirit of playfulness, but a moment or a trifle might easily have
+turned mischief into malice, and, realizing this, Hart pulled up
+at one of the shops in the big street and asked the shopkeeper, a
+respectable greybeard, to tell the crowd not to pass his shop door.
+
+"But," said the old fellow, "we have nothing to do with these people."
+
+"I know that," was the reply, "but if they misbehave themselves I
+shall not be able to report them, because they are vagabonds who
+will disappear into the holes and corners of the city. They would
+be impossible to find again, but you are a man with a fixed place of
+residence; it will be easy enough to find you. I see, by the way, your
+shop is called 'Renewed Affluence' on the signboard. And if you plead
+that the affair was no business of yours, people will never believe
+that a word from a respectable man like yourself would not suffice to
+control a crowd of ragamuffins."
+
+Hart's use of this argument, so peculiarly Chinese in its reasoning,
+showed how well he already understood the character of the people--how
+well he appreciated the underlying principle of their community
+life, the responsibility of a man for his neighbour's behaviour. The
+shopkeeper was, of course, duly impressed. He spoke to the crowd and
+they melted away.
+
+But when at luncheon Hart told his host how narrowly he had escaped
+rough treatment, all the satisfaction he got was: "Served you right,
+you two young fools, riding about where you were not wanted. Served
+you right, I say. If I had been there I'd have had a shy at you
+myself."
+
+This remark was characteristic of Sir Frederick Bruce, who, either
+from character or experience, or both, took a conservative view of
+everything--even of trifles. I know Robert Hart afterwards attributed
+some of his own caution to his friend's example. "In all things go
+slowly," Bruce was wont to say in his booming, bell-like tone.
+"Never be in a hurry---especially don't be in a hurry about answering
+letters. If you leave things long enough and quiet enough they answer
+themselves, whereas if you hurry matters balanced on the edge of a
+precipice, they often topple over instead of settling and remaining
+comfortably there for ever."
+
+During Hart's visit to Peking a very important question arose
+concerning the policing of the China Seas. Great Britain had
+hitherto been doing the work, but the arrangement was considered
+unsatisfactory. The first idea that China should invest in a fleet of
+her own came up in the course of a friendly conversation between the
+British Minister and the Officiating Inspector-General.
+
+Later, when they had talked the subject over at length, and Bruce
+asserted that Great Britain would probably be willing to lend officers
+and sell ships of war to China for the nucleus of the proposed
+navy, Hart laid the matter before Prince Kung. There were endless
+negotiations, the difficulty and delicacy of which cannot be
+exaggerated. But they ended satisfactorily.
+
+[Illustration: A ROAD IN OLD PEKING DURING THE RAINY SEASON.]
+
+Prince Kung memorialized the Throne, with the result that L250,000
+was directed to be set aside for the purpose. Then, at Robert Hart's
+suggestion, the money was sent to the Inspector-General--Mr.
+Lay--to be spent by him in England, together with a long letter
+of instructions (written by Prince Kung) urging Lay to purchase
+everything as soon as possible, and to see that the "work put into the
+vessels should be strong and the materials genuine."
+
+This delicious phrase, a true touch of human nature, is solemnly
+recorded in one of the despatches, and may still be seen in the
+correspondence on the subject in the Blue Book for the year.
+
+It is only fair to point out that it was Robert Hart who stated that
+"the ability of the Inspector-General is great; that he possesses
+a mind which embraces the minutest details, and is therefore fully
+competent to make the necessary arrangements with a more than
+satisfactory result," when he might so easily have used his great and
+growing personal influence with the Chinese (he was a _persona grata_
+with them from the beginning) to undermine his chief.
+
+How the fleet "of genuine materials" came out with all despatch under
+the celebrated Captain Sherard Osborne and various other officers
+lent by the Admiralty, is a matter of history. The reputations of its
+commanders--for all were men of distinction--should have ensured its
+success if anything could have done so. But from the very moment the
+fleet reached Shanghai there were misunderstandings. Captain Osborne
+found himself subject to local officials whose control he resented.
+
+The truth was Lay had somewhat altered the regulations drawn up by
+Robert Hart and approved by Prince Kung, and had then told Captain
+Osborne that of course the Chinese would agree to anything he wished.
+Subsequent events proved him wrong, and showed that he had made the
+fatal mistake of committing his employers too far. Perhaps this was
+not unnatural considering that he was just then receiving the most
+flattering notice from the British press and a C.B. from the British
+Government for his services--yet it was none the less disastrous.
+
+In May 1863 Lay returned to Shanghai, and, Robert Hart's acting
+appointment having come to an end, he was made Commissioner at
+Shanghai, with charge of the Yangtsze ports, the position being
+specially created for him by Prince Kung in order to give him more
+authority than would belong to the simple Commissioner of a port. That
+same autumn the Sherard Osborne affair came to a crisis. Returning
+from a trip up the Yangtsze, Hart found Lay and Li Hung Chang at
+daggers drawn. The former had just peremptorily demanded a large sum
+of money to provision the fleet, and the latter had flatly refused to
+put his hand in his pocket without official orders to do so,
+Robert Hart, who very shrewdly guessed at the real cause of the
+misunderstanding, offered to go and see Li and explain. Very tactfully
+he told Li that all Lay and Captain Osborne wanted was his formal
+sanction to present at the bank, as without this the transaction would
+not have the necessary official character. Li agreed readily enough
+when the matter was presented in this light; what he had objected to
+was Lay's abrupt demand to pay so many thousand taels out of his own
+pocket immediately.
+
+But no small manoeuvre such as this, however successful, could arrange
+the larger matter. The fleet had been an utter failure. Osborne
+himself was disgusted; the Chinese were dissatisfied. They therefore
+made the best of a bad bargain, and sent the ships back to be sold
+in England in order to prevent their falling into the hands of the
+independent and quarrelsome Daimios of Japan, or, as Mr. Burlingame,
+the United States Minister, greatly feared, into the hands of the
+Confederates.
+
+Thus ended a very curious incident which, by closing as it did,
+undoubtedly set back the clock of reform in China. It may be that from
+the political point of view this was as well; that, had the venture
+been an unqualified success, the Chinese might have thrown themselves
+too much into the arms of foreign Powers and tried to reform too
+fast by slavish imitation instead of slowly working out their own
+salvation.
+
+As far as he was personally concerned the disastrous and expensive
+failure long preyed upon Robert Hart's mind. He reproached himself
+bitterly for the mistake. But the Chinese never attached the least
+blame to him; they showed him no diminution of respect, rather an
+increase. It was on the Inspector-General H.N. Lay that their wrath
+fell. They considered that he had treated the whole matter too
+high-handedly, and within three months they had dismissed him and
+offered the post to Robert Hart. Of course the change gave rise to
+much discussion, and Sherard Osborne went frankly to Hart and told him
+how ill-natured people were hinting that he had intrigued against
+Lay. The malignity of idle gossip, however, could not turn him back.
+Knowing that he had worked as loyally for his chief as for himself, he
+simply replied that if the public looked at it in that way, instead of
+refusing he would certainly accept the post. I wonder if any instinct
+told him that the great day of his life was when he _did_ accept it,
+or if he had any premonition of the useful and romantic career before
+him?
+
+The characters of the two Inspector-Generals, the one outgoing, the
+other incoming, contrasted very strangely. Lay was inclined to be
+dictatorial and rather impatient of Chinese methods; an excellent
+and clever man, but with one point of view and one only. Hart, on the
+other hand, was tactful, patient, and, above all else, tolerant
+of other people's prejudices. "To grow a little catholic," says
+Stevenson, "is the compensation of years." But Robert Hart was
+catholic in this broad sense even when he was young. He would
+sometimes say that the habit of toleration he acquired at college, and
+through the most simple incident.
+
+Seven or eight of the Belfast students were one day asked to describe
+what would seem to be the simplest thing in the world to describe--a
+packing-case. And yet every man, after stating the simple fact that he
+saw a packing-case, had something different to say about it. One, who
+stood on the right, described an address written in black letters;
+another, who stood at one end, dwelt on the iron hoops that bound the
+box; a third gave prominence to the long nails studding a corner.
+Thus each, according to his view-point, saw that same commonplace
+packing-case in a different way. After this practical demonstration
+Robert Hart never in his life could grow impatient with a man who did
+not see exactly what he saw when both were standing on opposite sides
+of a question.
+
+
+
+
+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
+
+
+The first order transmitted by Prince Kung to the new
+Inspector-General--or the I.G., as he was always familiarly
+called--was that he should live at Shanghai. This gave him the
+opportunity of meeting and working with the famous "Chinese Gordon,"
+to whom the suppression of the Taiping Rebellion was so largely due.
+For the history of that rebellion--how one soldier of fortune after
+the other attempted to suppress it; how the picturesque American
+Burgevine, on changing masters and seeking to better his fortune with
+the rebels, was succeeded by the prosaic failure Holland; how at last,
+on General Staveley's recommendation, Charles Gordon was lent with
+several other young officers to the Imperialist cause--the reader must
+go (and will thank me for sending him) to some of the many historians
+who have immortalized the struggle.
+
+Nothing remains to be told about that terrible war--except the part
+that Robert Hart accidentally played in it.
+
+His first meeting with Gordon was planned for October 1863, when
+Major-General Brown, commanding the troops at Hongkong, came up
+to Shanghai for the express purpose of seeing the brilliant young
+commander of what was already known as "The Ever-Victorious
+Army." Gordon sent the _Firefly_ to take the General and the
+Inspector-General up the Soochow Creek to Quinsan, where he then
+was, and on a certain Sunday morning they intended to have started.
+Fortunately, as it afterwards turned out, Fate interfered at this
+point.
+
+The English mail arrived suddenly on Saturday night with important
+despatches; the General sent his A.D.C. to say that he could not
+possibly leave until they were answered; and so, reluctantly, the
+visit was postponed--as the two men thought, for a few days, but in
+reality for much longer. Next morning the A.D.C. hurried round
+again almost before Hart was out of bed, and this time with the most
+sensational news--the _Firefly_ had been boarded as she lay at her
+moorings by foreign friends of the rebels, carried up stream, and
+burnt. Both her European engineers had mysteriously disappeared.
+
+The whole affair, of course, was a plot as deep laid as diabolical,
+hatched by the rebels for the purpose of getting rid of General Brown,
+who they feared was about to reinforce Gordon. But for the timely
+arrival of those pressing despatches it would have succeeded, and he
+and the I.G. would have been trapped and quietly murdered.
+
+Not till the spring of 1864 did the delayed meeting finally take
+place. There had been a serious difference of opinion between Gordon
+and Li Hung Chang--a difference which arose over the taking of
+Soochow. When the city, thanks to Gordon's co-operation, was captured,
+certain of the Taiping princes agreed to surrender. General Ching went
+to interview them outside one of the city gates, taking Gordon with
+him. His idea was that if the great General Gordon showed the rebels
+that he had actually been concerned in the successful operations
+against them, they would be the more likely to consider further
+resistance hopeless. Gordon, on the other hand, thought his presence
+would be taken by them to mean surety for their safety. It was not an
+unnatural misunderstanding, seeing that Gordon spoke no Chinese, that
+neither the rebels nor General Ching understood English, and that
+there was no interpreter present.
+
+In the end the rebellious princes surrendered, not from any feeling
+that Gordon's presence would ensure the sparing of their lives, but
+because they believed--just as General Ching shrewdly guessed they
+would--that his presence in Soochow made it useless to continue the
+struggle. Had they only been wise enough to retire gracefully from
+the field, all would have been well. But they swaggered into
+Li's presence. "They appeared"--so an eyewitness described the
+scene--"rather like leaders in a position to dictate terms than men
+sharing in an act of clemency." They even had the audacity to suggest
+that Li should pay their soldiers--_their_ soldiers, who had fought
+_him_, mind you--and divide the city of Soochow by a great wall,
+leaving half of it in rebel hands.
+
+Naturally he refused to do either of these things; how could he
+possibly agree to such quixotic demands? But through his refusal, he
+found himself face to face with the problem of what to do with
+the surrendered Wangs. He might keep them prisoners--that would be
+difficult; or he might summarily behead them--and that would be easy.
+The latter action must certainly be open to the ugly suspicion of
+treachery, but he had as his excuse that the city was under martial
+law, and that prompt and vigorous measures might be the means of
+saving more bloodshed in the end. Accordingly he ordered the immediate
+execution of the surrendered chiefs.
+
+When Gordon heard of it he was as angry as only a passionate nature
+such as his could be. The idea that his unspoken word of honour to
+helpless prisoners had been broken for him made him mad with fury. Out
+into the city he went, revolver in hand, to look for Li, and to avenge
+what he called the "murder." His sense of his own guilt was certainly
+morbid; morbid too was his treatment of the head of the Na Wang,
+which he found exposed in an iron lantern on one of the city gates.
+He brought it home, kept it for days beside him, even laying it on his
+bed, and kneeling and asking forgiveness beside it. The Na Wang's son
+he adopted into his bodyguard. No father could have treated his
+own child more tenderly. I believe not once but a dozen times in an
+afternoon he would turn to the boy and ask wistfully, "Who are you?"
+receiving the same soft answer, "I am your son," each time with the
+same pleasure.
+
+Almost immediately after the decapitation of the Wangs, Gordon, still
+fuming with rage, suddenly determined to break off all relations with
+Li, to retire to Quinsan, and to take his "Ever-Victorious Army" with
+him. Though his friends, singly and in company, did their best to
+dissuade him from this rash course, and pointed out the consequences,
+he would not listen, and he went.
+
+The Chinese Government took fright at Gordon's dramatic move--there
+was no knowing what he might do next--(I wonder if in the back of
+their minds they had a sneaking fear he might join the rebels like
+Burgevine?)--and consequently they thought it wisdom to send the I.G.
+to make peace--since peace was so badly needed.
+
+Robert Hart, in his new role of military arbitrator, left Shanghai
+on January 19th by boat, creeping slowly through the canals. The
+desolation along both banks was pitiful; every village had been
+burned, every field trampled; not a living thing was in sight--not
+even a dog--but the creeks were choked with corpses. No man could
+pass through such a dreary waste unmoved, least of all one who had the
+slightest power to alter the sad conditions, and Robert Hart met Li at
+Soochow with his determination to do all in his power to reconcile him
+with Gordon, and so end the war quickly, greatly strengthened.
+
+Li promptly explained his action by justifying his policy from his own
+point of view, and finally ended by saying, "Do tell Gordon I
+never meant to do it; I meant to keep my word as to the Princes'
+safe-conduct; but when I saw those fellows come in with their hair
+long, the very sign of rebellion, and only wearing the white badge
+of submission in their buttonholes, I thought it such insolence that
+anger overcame me, and I gave the order for their execution. But it
+was my doing, not Gordon's; my safe-conduct, not Gordon's, that had
+been violated. Tell him that I am ready to proclaim far and wide that
+he had nothing to do with it, so that he loses no reputation by it.
+Can you not make peace with him for me?"
+
+To find Gordon at that time was no easy matter. He was moving
+about very rapidly. With his wonderful eye for country, he saw at a
+glance--almost by instinct--a point that ought to be taken in order to
+command other points, and wasted no time over the taking of it. Thus
+he was never long in any particular spot, and Robert Hart had a
+week's search before he came up with him at Quinsan. Truly that was
+an exciting week's journey, I can promise you, dodging up and down
+canals, expecting every moment to run round a corner into a rebel
+camp--yet fortunately never doing it--in fact, doing nothing at all
+more exciting than listening to the cries of startled pheasants.
+
+Gordon greeted the I.G. very cordially and held a parade in his
+honour, just by way of celebrating his arrival. That march past was
+unforgettable. Though the soldiers were commonplace enough, plain
+and businesslike the officers, of whom Gordon had about thirty of all
+ages, sizes and tastes, usually designed their own uniforms, which
+were sometimes fantastic, to say the least. On this great occasion you
+may be sure none had neglected to appear in the fullest of full dress,
+with highly comical results. Indeed their efforts amused Gordon so
+much that all the time they were advancing he kept repeating as he
+rubbed his hands gleefully together, "Go it, ye cripples; go it, ye
+cripples!"
+
+By contrast, he himself, the commander of them all, appeared so simple
+in his long blue frock coat--the old uniform of the Engineers--with
+his trousers tucked roughly into his big boots and a little cane, the
+only weapon he ever carried--"I am too hot tempered for any other" he
+would often say laughingly of himself--in his hand. This simplicity,
+this utter absence of affectation, was the keynote to his
+character--just as it was the keynote of Robert Hart's character.
+Because both possessed it to an unusual degree, each understood the
+other--and at once.
+
+[Illustration: SIR ROBERT HART ABOUT 1866.]
+
+Within a week of the I.G.'s arrival Gordon's fit of gloom, brought on
+by the affair of the Wangs, was dissipating; within two it was gone,
+for a character of such violent "downs" must have equally mercurial
+"ups"; within three he capitulated to argument and agreed to go back
+to Soochow and see Li. Impulsive and generous as ever, he then wished
+that Hart should say he (Hart) had induced him to come to Li. "That
+will give you immense influence with the Chinese," he declared. But
+Hart would not have it so; he preferred to tell Li that Gordon
+had come of his own free will, knowing that this would please Li
+personally far more.
+
+The three-cornered meeting passed off well. As little as possible
+was said about past disagreements, as much as possible about future
+agreements, and the end of it was that Gordon agreed to take the field
+again. At the same time the I.G. took care to suggest the removal of
+an excuse for future misunderstandings in the person of an officious,
+inefficient interpreter whom Robert Hart himself described as a
+"'Talkee talkee, me-no-savey,' the sort of person whose attempt at
+Mandarin [official Chinese] is even viler than his English."
+
+There then remained nothing more to do in Soochow, and Hart and Gordon
+started back together to Quinsan, though not before they had visited
+the historic Soochow stockades together, and Gordon, taking his friend
+over every disputed foot of ground, had vividly described the bloody
+fighting there--the victory so pleasant to remember, the tragedy so
+difficult to forget.
+
+I doubt if anything he ever did in China gave Robert Hart greater
+pleasure than this reconciliation, or if there was any other single
+episode in his career in which he took more pride; though he spoke of
+it so seldom and so modestly that scarcely any one--certainly not
+the public--knew of what he had done. It cost him a few friends among
+minor officials who thought that negotiations should have passed
+through their hands rather than his. But his old friend Sir Frederick
+Bruce, to whom he wrote a report of the whole affair (afterwards
+included in the Blue Book for 1864), took genuine pleasure in his
+success, while the Chinese gratitude was unbounded; they realized very
+clearly what the extremity had been and the difficulty from which they
+had been rescued.
+
+Three months after the reconciliation (April 28th) Robert Hart
+went once again to see Gordon and to be present at the taking of
+Chang-Chow-Fu. This was one of those typical water cities of Central
+China, walled in of course and with a canal--the Grand Canal in this
+case--doing duty for a moat. Gordon's headquarters were in boats,
+and Hart and his little party--one of whom, Colonel Mann Stuart,
+afterwards helped to keep the line of communications open for Gordon
+in Khartoum--moored his flotilla alongside. The largest vessel of the
+fleet was the common dining-room, and owed its excellent ventilation
+to two holes opposite each other torn out close to the ceiling by a
+shell while Gordon had been lunching a few days before.
+
+This taking of Chang-Chow-Fu was to be a sight worth seeing--the
+culminating point of the whole campaign. Nowhere had the rebels fought
+with greater obstinacy or gathered in greater numbers. One spy told
+Gordon that he had forty thousand soldiers against him; another
+fifty thousand; a third a hundred thousand. It was impossible to get
+accurate information. He only knew that twice the rebels were strong
+enough to repulse the Imperialist attacks and that he himself was
+determined to lead the third--from which there could be no turning
+back. "You," said he to Robert Hart, "must arrange with Li that, if
+I fall, some one is ready to take my place." Major Edwardes, also a
+Royal Engineer, was the man chosen; but, after all, his services were
+not needed.
+
+The great attack was fixed for the 11th of May. On the 10th Gordon
+determined to find out all he could about the position of the rebels
+on the city wall, so taking a small party, which included Hart and two
+of his faithful bodyguard, he went out to reconnoitre. No sooner had
+the Taipings recognized the Ever-Victorious Leader than they pelted
+shots at him. The wooden screen behind which he took shelter looked
+in a very few minutes as if it were suffering from an acute attack of
+smallpox.
+
+But Gordon, with his usual miraculous luck--in his fighting before
+more than twenty cities he was only once wounded--escaped scot-free,
+though one of his bodyguard got a bullet in his chest. With all
+possible haste the poor fellow was taken back to the doctor's boat,
+and the surgeon began poking his fingers into the wound to find the
+ball. It was not a pleasant operation for the guardsman, and he made
+some grimaces, much to the amusement of several of his companions, who
+stood on the bank and jeered at his lack of courage. Those jeers, in
+addition to the pain, exasperated him greatly, and Hart, whose
+boat was moored next to the doctor's overheard the man say to his
+companions, "Yes, it's all very well for you to laugh, but if you had
+a rebel fiend's bullet in your chest, and a foreign devil's fingers
+groping after it, you would make more fuss than I do."
+
+Very early in the morning of the 11th all was in readiness. The guns
+from the various batteries around the city began to play. They barked
+and roared until noon, when Gordon gave the order to "Cease fire."
+"You see," he remarked to Hart by way of explanation, "those beggars
+inside will be completely thrown off their guard by the silence. They
+will take it that we have finished work for the day."
+
+Gordon then snatched a hasty lunch, and at one o'clock the signal
+was given for the big attack by four soldiers waving red flags on the
+little hill where Li Hung Chang's tent stood. From this hill Hart
+and Li stood together to watch the operations. Three rushes were
+made simultaneously--two feints, and one led by Gordon himself. How
+splendidly he called his men on, how he flourished his little cane,
+just as though it had been a lance with flying pennant! I can imagine
+how the watchers held their breath with excitement. "They're in--no,
+they're out; no, they're in," one said to the other, I'm sure, till at
+last they _were_ in, Gordon himself the very first to dash through
+the narrow breach, his too reckless exposure of his own precious life
+redeemed by the inspiring audacity of his presence.
+
+The spectacular moment was over, but work still remained to be
+done. The rebels immediately attempted a turning movement, which if
+successful, threatened the artillery camp, and Gordon sent post haste
+to Li with a request for more troops to help him. Li turned to the
+I.G. in despair. "What can I do?" he said. "All my men are scattered
+over the city looting by this time. How shall I collect them?" Hart
+persuaded Li to send messengers and try. Meantime, luckily, the rebels
+dispersed and the city fell.
+
+They fled wildly in every direction, dropping flags, rifles, and the
+fans without which no Chinese soldier of the old regime ever went to
+war, as they ran. From the grey belt of city wall the I.G. looked down
+on the whole tragic panorama. Fires were burning north, east, south
+and west. In one street he saw an old woman hobble out of a house
+supported by her two sons. Just before they could reach shelter a
+narrow stone bridge over a pond had to be crossed. The old woman
+limped pitifully to the middle, when a shrill ping rang out. A
+sharpshooter's bullet struck her; she toppled over into the water,
+while the men took to their heels and fled back into the smoke of the
+burning building.
+
+Similar horrors took place in nearly every lane; men were struck down
+in the attitudes of escape, and the hateful lean dogs that infest
+Chinese cities crept stealthily out of holes and corners.
+
+As Robert Hart turned away from these sights and descended the ramp of
+the wall, he noticed a dozen little boys following him, naked urchins
+with uncombed hair on shoulders. Some of Li Hung Chang's men, seeing
+them too, rushed up, rolling their sleeves high and flourishing
+swords. Here, thought they, was an excellent opportunity to gain
+favour with their master by cutting off some rebel heads and
+exaggerating the exploit into a severe fight. But the I.G. immediately
+stepped between, showed his revolver, and threatened to shoot the
+first man who stirred a step nearer to the boys. "Are you not ashamed
+to fight with children?" said he, and they slunk off.
+
+At the end of the day, when he returned to the boats, the whole ragged
+troop was there waiting, their number increased by a little fellow
+of six or seven years, the son of the Taiping Wang (Prince) of
+Chang-Chow-Fu, who had been left behind in the confusion and rescued
+by Gordon from his father's burning palace. He was adopted at once by
+the party, made much of, petted, and consoled for his fall from high
+estate by being placed in the seat of honour; and he caused great
+amusement to the assembled company by the matter-of-fact way in which
+he accepted his dignity and looked about with serious eyes, as if to
+say, "This is just what I am accustomed to."
+
+Yet he ill repaid the care that was lavished on him till he grew to
+manhood. Clothes, food, some education, and finally a position on one
+of the Customs cruisers, were given to him. He wasted no breath in
+thanks to his generous captors; but one day, when the wild fighting
+blood in his veins asserted itself, disappeared. Nor from that day to
+this has anything been heard of the errant princeling.
+
+What to do with the other children was a problem. All could not be
+adopted: so the youngest, a winning little fellow of ten years, who
+lisped out "Lo Atsai" when asked his name, remained at headquarters,
+while the rest were sent off to find their friends.
+
+Lo Atsai was promptly handed over to the cook--with no cannibal
+intent, but simply to be washed. "The energy and enthusiasm that cook
+put into his task," the I.G. would remark when telling the story,
+"made the whole operation most ludicrous. Into the river the child was
+plunged again and again, our chef holding him stoutly by the hair all
+the time as he bobbed up and down between the boats and the unsavoury
+corpses sticking there, till he was considered clean enough to be
+hauled on board again."
+
+This little child, son of humble parents, was destined to rise far
+higher in the world than the prince's son who sat in the place of
+honour while Lo Atsai ingratiated himself with the servants in the
+confined kitchen quarters of the boat. Because of his whole-hearted
+allegiance, the I.G. sent him to school in Hongkong, where he improved
+his opportunities so well that the Head Master, reporting on him,
+could only say, "He is too conscientious; he will kill himself with
+study."
+
+He was truly wearing himself out with diligence, when a rich merchant
+took a fancy to him and gave him a good position; then another gave
+him a better, so that in a few years he had become a very rich man.
+
+It is nice to add--for the benefit of those who sneer at Chinese
+gratitude--that at every new year he would travel, no matter how far
+away he might be, to see his old patron and friend. Nor did he ever
+grow too grand to go into the kitchen afterwards and gossip with
+the servants, sitting down in his sable robes and peacock's feathers
+without thought of snobbery, without desire to make himself appear
+great in humble eyes.
+
+Chang-Chow-Fu was the last city Gordon took. Its fall closed his
+career, and the I.G. arranged most of the details regarding the
+disbandment of the famous "Ever-Victorious Army." He did more; once
+again he smoothed out a difficulty for the too impulsive Gordon. At
+the close of the rebellion the Chinese showed towards Gordon a warmth
+of feeling which it has seldom been their habit to show to foreigners.
+They thereupon begged Sir Frederick Bruce to advise them as to what
+would be a suitable reward to offer him for his valuable services to
+the Imperial cause. Finally a gratuity of L3,000 (Tls. 18,000) was
+decided upon; but when Gordon got wind of this, he was so furious at
+being treated like what he called "an adventurer," that he chased the
+messenger out of the camp.
+
+Now the Chinese were utterly at a loss to understand a man who grew
+furious at the offer of a large sum of money, such an occurrence being
+without precedent. As usual in times of perplexity, they asked the
+ever-tactful I.G. to sound Gordon as to what he _would_ accept. "Tell
+Wen Hsiang" (then Premier), was Gordon's answer, "that though I have
+refused the money, I would like a Chinese costume." Accordingly, by
+Imperial Decree, a costume was sent him, and, on Hart's suggestion,
+the famous Yellow Jacket was added. Gordon afterwards had his
+portrait painted in the full regalia, and, like a glorified Chinese
+Field-Marshal in his quaint garb, he still looks down from over the
+mantelpiece in the Royal Engineers' mess-room at Chatham.
+
+Once again before his tragic death this strange soldier of destiny
+was to see China, though on this second visit he did not meet his old
+friend Robert Hart. He came in the early eighties direct from India,
+where he had been Private Secretary to the Viceroy. The position never
+suited his too independent character, and when the Chinese, perplexed
+over Russian questions, invited him to the Middle Kingdom, he gladly
+accepted their invitation.
+
+Unfortunately the visit was a failure. His advice was unpractical, and
+though, as the first prophet of "China for the Chinese," he found
+a fundamental truth, he found it too soon for immediate utility. On
+political matters he and the I.G. disagreed; the latter was far too
+wise to hold with Gordon's somewhat visionary idea that China could
+raise an army as good as the best in the twinkling of an eye; and when
+Gordon left Peking after a very short stay, he left disappointed and
+disgusted.
+
+It was, however, characteristic of him that before he had got farther
+than Hongkong he wrote an affectionate letter to his old friend,
+acknowledging himself in the wrong and giving the highest praise to
+that friend's policy. This, with all the rest of Gordon's letters to
+the I.G., was burned in the Boxer outbreak of 1900.
+
+But what nothing could destroy was Robert Hart's admiration for the
+soldier hero. If the apparent inconsistencies of his character were
+numerous, all of them added force and picturesqueness to it, and only
+served to increase the affection of one who knew him and understood
+him most thoroughly.
+
+
+
+
+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
+
+
+When his share in the arrangements for the disbandment of "The
+Ever-Victorious Army" was completed, the I.G. received a second order
+directing him to live at Peking. In those days Peking was the very
+last corner of the world. Eighty miles inland, not even the sound of
+a friendly ship's whistle could help an exiled imagination cross the
+gulf to far-away countries, while railways were, of course, still
+undreamed of.
+
+The only two means of reaching the capital were by springless cart
+over the grey alkali plains, or by boat along the Grand Canal.
+Both were slow; neither was enjoyable, but since the latter perhaps
+presented fewer discomforts, Robert Hart chose to spend a week in the
+monotonous scenery of mudbanks, and land at Tungchow, a little town
+some fifteen miles from his destination. Thence he made his way over
+a roughly paved stone causeway--one of those roads that the Chinese
+proverb says is "good for ten years and bad for ten thousand"--between
+endless fields of high millet to the biggest gate of Peking itself.
+
+To step through the gate was to step back into the Middle Ages--into
+the times of Ghenghiz Khan. The street leading from it was nobly
+planned--broad, generous; but rough and uneven like the hastily
+made highway from one camp to another. Rough, too, were the vehicles
+traversing it; the oddly assorted teams, mules, donkeys and Mongolian
+ponies, went unclipped and ungroomed; the drivers went unwashed.
+Loathsome beggars sat in the gilded doorways of the fur-shops, the
+incongruity of their rags against the background of barbaric splendour
+evidently appealing to none of the passers-by who hurried about their
+business in a cloud of dust.
+
+At sundown the noise and bustle ceased; the big city gates closed with
+a clang, and the municipal guard, for all the world like Dogberry and
+his watch, made their rounds beating wooden clappers, not in the hope
+of catching, but rather in the hope of frightening malefactors away.
+
+[Illustration: UNDER THE PEKING CITY WALL TOWARDS TUNGCHOW--ALONG THE
+GRAND CANAL.]
+
+Yet Robert Hart had already seen far queerer places--and lonelier. I
+am thinking now of Formosa, that strange land of adventure where the
+veriest good-for-nothings, stranded by chance, have "owned navies and
+mounted the steps of thrones," and where he spent some time in 1864
+inspecting the Custom Houses.
+
+A most amusing story was told him on his travels there--a story
+too good to leave unrepeated, though he personally had no part in
+it--unless the laugh at the end can be called a part. During one of
+those terrible storms which periodically sweep the shores of Formosa,
+an American vessel was wrecked and her crew eaten by the aborigines.
+The nearest American Consul thereupon journeyed inland to the savage
+territory in order to make terms with the cannibals for future
+emergencies. Unfortunately the chiefs refused to listen, and would
+have nothing to do with the agreement prepared for their signature.
+The Consul was irritated by their obstinacy; he had a bad temper and
+a glass eye, and when he lost the first, the second annoyed him. Under
+great stress of excitement he occasionally slipped the eye out for
+a moment, rubbed it violently on his coat-sleeve, then as rapidly
+replaced it--and this he did there in the council hut, utterly
+forgetful of his audience, and before a soul could say the Formosan
+equivalent of "Jack Robinson."
+
+The chiefs paled, stiffened, shuddered with fright. One with more
+presence of mind than his fellows called for a pen. "Yes, quick,
+quick, a pen!"--the word passed from mouth to mouth. No more
+obstinacy, no more hesitation; all of them clamoured to sign,
+willing, even eager to yield to any demand that a man gifted with the
+supernatural power of taking out his eye and replacing it at pleasure,
+might make.
+
+On his return from Formosa the I.G. wrote a famous paper called "Pang
+Kwan Lun" ("What a Bystander Says"), full of useful criticisms and
+suggestions on Chinese affairs. Some were followed, others were
+not, but he had the satisfaction of hearing from the lips of the
+Empress-Dowager herself--when she received him in audience in
+1902--that she regretted more of his advice had not been taken,
+subsequent events having proved how sound and useful it all was.
+
+In 1866, having worked twelve years in China--seven of those years for
+the Chinese Government--Robert Hart felt a very natural desire to see
+his own country and his own people again. He therefore applied for
+leave, and was granted six months--none too long a rest after the
+strenuous work he had done.
+
+Just before starting he said to the Chinese, "You will soon be
+establishing Legations abroad. Do you not think that my going will be
+an excellent opportunity for you to send some of your people to see a
+little of the world?" Yes, they agreed it would be; but--though they
+never told him so--I think the older conservative generation had grave
+doubts whether the adventurous ones would return alive. Europe was
+then a _terra incognita_. There might easily be pirates in the Seine
+and cannibals in Bond Street, not to mention the hundred mysterious
+dangers of the great waters and the fire-breathing monsters that
+traversed them.
+
+Well, in the end, the prejudices melted and the party started,
+chaperoned by the I.G. Five in all there were, a certain Pin Lao Yeh,
+an ex-Prefect, his son and three students from the Tung Wen Kwan or
+College of Languages. Old Pin Lao Yeh, being the senior, wrote a book
+about his experiences, describing all he saw for the benefit of his
+timid homekeeping countrymen, and giving careful measurements of
+everything measurable--the masts of the steamers, the length of the
+wharves, the height of the Arc de Triomphe, as if in some mysterious
+way statistics could prove a prop to the faint-hearted. Of the four
+lads in the "experiment," two afterwards filled high diplomatic
+posts. A certain Fang I was made Charge d'Affaires in London and later
+Consul-General in Singapore, while Chang Teh Ming was made Minister
+Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James.
+
+The voyage home was uneventful, the little party's first adventure
+coming at their last port. Here the Customs had to be passed. With
+some pride, I should like to write, only I am sure it was with his
+usual modesty--the kind of modesty that made strangers say, the first
+time they saw him, "Is that all he is?" and after they had spoken with
+him for ten minutes, "Can he be all that?"--the I.G. presented his
+letter from the French Legation at Peking to the Chief Custom House
+Official Profound bows immediately from this worthy, then grand
+gestures and the magic words, "Passe en ambassade!"
+
+Accordingly the "mission" passed--in true Chinese style. The first
+man by had a dried duck over his shoulder, the next a smoked ham,
+the third a jar of pickled cabbage, none too savoury, while all
+the attaches and servants were equally weighted down by pieces of
+outlandish baggage from which nothing in the world would have induced
+them to part, since nothing in the world could have replaced them in
+the markets of the West.
+
+From Marseilles Robert Hart went on to Paris. Though this was his
+first sight of the Continent, he was too impatient to be home to
+linger, and he only remained long enough to hand over his charges to
+the Foreign Minister, who promised they should be treated with the
+utmost friendliness. They were indeed. Half the courts of Europe
+entertained them; they dined with Napoleon and Eugenie; had tea with
+old King William of Prussia at Potsdam, and travelled altogether _en
+prince_.
+
+Meanwhile the I.G. declined any share in the lionizing, and slipped
+off to enjoy a quiet holiday in Ireland. The only inconvenience he
+found in being a private individual was when he passed the Customs
+in London. What a difference from Marseilles! About sixty passengers
+crowded into the examining room together, and a slouchy man with a
+short pipe came forward, eyed them critically, but instead of taking
+people in turn, spied out Robert Hart and said roughly, "I'll take
+you. Anything to declare?" pointing to his pile of trunks.
+
+"Nothing but one box of cigars--Manillas."
+
+The man scowled just as if he had discovered a gunpowder plot. Finally
+he asked Hart where he came from.
+
+"Straight from China, from Peking."
+
+"Oh," said the Examiner, softening a little, "that's such a long way I
+suppose we can let those cigars pass."
+
+Then he went over to the waiting people, waved his hand and said, "You
+can go; that's all."
+
+Robert Hart was so much amused at being picked out as the likely
+smuggler of the party that he could scarcely restrain himself from
+whipping out of his pocket a card with "Inspector-General Chinese
+Imperial Maritime Customs" on it and presenting it to the man.
+
+He found his father and mother settled at Ravarnet, as proud as happy
+to see him back again, and he dropped quite naturally into the simple
+home life, resumed his affectionate intimacy with a clan of sisters
+just as if it had never been broken off, and took the same delight
+in simple pleasures that he had taken as a boy. Some of his relatives
+wondered a little at this.
+
+"Let me look at you," said they, peering and peeking about him for
+the solution of the mystery. For mystery there must be when a great
+man--yes, that's what he was already--should look just the same on the
+outside as Tom or Dick or Harry--should even enjoy a simple breakfast
+of fresh herring and tea.
+
+"I am just like everybody else," he would answer to their
+half-quizzical inspection. "No more noses or eyes than you."
+
+Alas! this home life, delightful though it was, could not last very
+long. On August 22nd, 1866, he married that daughter of old Dr. Bredon
+of Portadown that his aunt had prophesied he would when, at the age of
+ten days, he lay upon her lap. The honeymoon was spent at the romantic
+lakes of Killarney, and very soon afterwards the young couple were on
+their way out to China again.
+
+The house in Peking had been somewhat rearranged and remodelled while
+the I.G. was in Europe, in anticipation of his wife's coming. Without
+altering the picturesqueness of the original Chinese design, it had
+been adapted to Western ideas of comfort. The pretty pavilions
+with their upturned roofs remained; the ornamental rockwork of the
+courtyards, the doors shaped like gourds or leaves or full moons,
+were left untouched. So were the odd-shaped windows, real Jack Frost
+designs; but instead of paper, glass was fitted into the quaint panes
+and the stone floors, characteristic of Chinese rooms, covered with
+wood--a very necessary alteration in a town which, although in the
+same latitude as Naples, Madrid and Constantinople, has a winter as
+severe as New York.
+
+Fortunately neither he nor his bride had a very keen taste for
+society, as in those days Peking could not boast of any. The
+Diplomatic Corps was small; no concession-hunters or would-be builders
+of battleships enlivened the capital with their intrigues, and the
+monotony of life was broken only by an occasional visitor.
+
+Rarely, very rarely, there was a dinner party--a formal affair, to
+which the I.G.'s wife went in state and, as became her rank, in a big
+green box of a sedan chair with four bearers. Indeed this was the
+only possible means of going about comfortably at night in a city
+of unexpected ditches, ruts like sword-gashes, and lighted only by
+twinkling lanterns of belated roysterers.
+
+The I.G. was therefore somewhat disconcerted when his chair coolies,
+having been six months in his service, came to say they could remain
+no longer. "It is not that we are discontented with our wages," the
+head man explained, "or that you are not a kind master, or that the
+_Taitai_ [the lady of the house] is an inconsiderate mistress."
+
+"Then you have too much work to do?"
+
+"No, that's the trouble," the man replied, "we have not enough. Our
+shoulders are getting soft and our leg muscles are getting flabby. Now
+if the _Taitai_ would only go out for twenty miles every day instead
+of for two miles every ten days as she does now, we would be delighted
+to remain in your service." Was ever stranger complaint made by
+servant to master?
+
+Whenever work permitted Robert Hart and his wife rode out into the
+country on their stocky native ponies, sometimes to one and sometimes
+to another of the picturesque temples, pagodas and monasteries which
+then abounded in the hills near by. The favourite picnicking place of
+the little community--almost the only Imperial property open in those
+days--was the ruined palace of Yuen Ming Yuen destroyed by the Allies
+in 1860. It must have been a most charming spot, at all events in the
+autumn months, when the persimmon-trees, heavy with balls of golden,
+fruit, overhung its grey walls.
+
+The original construction in semi-foreign style from plans by the
+early Jesuit Fathers was doubtless still easy to trace; an ornate
+facade brought unexpected memories of Versailles, while on crumbling
+walls old European coats-of-arms, carved, for the sake of their
+decorative beauty, beside Oriental dragons and phoenixes, remained to
+surprise and delight the eye.
+
+Unluckily business too often stood in the way of pleasure, for the
+'sixties were very busy years. China was just beginning to realize
+that she could no longer remain in peaceful self-sufficiency;
+intercourse with foreign nations she must have, willing or no; that
+meant drastic changes--changes in which the I.G.'s advice would be
+valuable. Thus circumstances helped him into a unique position, one
+without parallel in any other country; he was continually consulted on
+hundreds of matters not properly connected with Customs administration
+at all, and he was in fact, if not in name, far more than an
+Inspector-General.
+
+[Illustration: A PICNIC IN OLD PEKING--TOWARDS YUEN MING YUEN.]
+
+Much of this advisory work, too, was of the most delicate nature: some
+involved intricate dealings with several Powers having conflicting
+interests. The slightest false move would often have been sufficient
+to snap the frail thread of negotiation. It is not to be wondered
+at if he made some mistakes--he would have been scarcely human
+otherwise--but as a rule his tact and energy carried to a successful
+issue whatever he began.
+
+"What is your secret power of settling a difficult matter?" a friend
+once asked him. "Whenever I deal with other people, and especially
+with Chinese," was the answer, "I always ask myself two questions:
+what idea that I do not want them to have will my remark suggest to
+them, and what answer will my remark allow them to make to me?"
+
+The habit of deliberating before he made a statement grew upon him,
+as habits will, exaggerated with time, and provided an excuse for at
+least one _bon mot_. A certain French Professor whom he had brought
+out with him for the Tung Wen Kwan once went to interview his chief.
+
+"Well," said his colleagues on his return. "What did the I.G. say
+about such and such a thing?" The Frenchman shook his head ruefully:
+"He rolled the answer back and forth seven times, and then he did not
+make it." Probably the I.G. had learned by experience that a person
+can seldom pick up a hasty speech just where he dropped it.
+
+Another time a very charming lady went up to him at a soiree with a
+rose in her hand. "May I offer you my boutonniere?" said she, smiling.
+The mere fact of a question having been asked him suddenly put him
+instinctively upon his guard; an uncommunicative look spread over his
+face, and to her horror and his own subsequent amusement, he answered,
+"I should prefer to consider the matter before answering."
+
+In 1868 came the affair of the Burlingame Mission, with which--as with
+all the other events of the time in China--Robert Hart had much to do.
+Mr. Burlingame was then United States Minister in Peking, a personal
+friend of the I.G.'s and a most charming man with a genius for
+hospitality. Nothing pleased him more than to see half a dozen
+nationalities seated at his table. At one of these little dinners
+Burlingame noticed that a certain discussion was growing too serious
+and heated. Some of his guests were on the point of losing their
+tempers, for Envoys Extraordinary dislike being disagreed with, even
+by Ministers Plenipotentiary. He therefore picked up his glass of
+sherry in the most courtly manner in the world, held it to the light,
+studied it critically from every point of view, turning it now this
+way, now that.
+
+"Look," said he suddenly, addressing the table in his most charming
+manner, "did you ever see sherry exactly like that before? Do you
+notice its peculiar colour? See how it shines--yellow in one light,
+reddish brown in another."
+
+When he had drawn the interest, he went on to give the most delightful
+little lecture on sherries, their similarities, their differences, and
+their making, till the whole table listened with rapt attention
+and, listening, forgot their perilous discussion and the heat and
+irritation they had spent upon it.
+
+These very qualities of tact and polish, combined with dignity and
+agreeable manners, made Mr. Burlingame popular with the courtly
+Chinese officials, and when he was about to return to his own country
+some of the Wai-Wu-Pu (Foreign Office) Ministers asked him to speak a
+good word for China in the United States. "Was not that an excellent
+idea?" they asked the I.G. next day. He agreed, and out of this
+trivial incident grew the Burlingame Mission to all the courts of
+Europe. Alas! the idea was visionary rather than practical, and doomed
+to disappointment--a disappointment which, luckily, Mr. Burlingame
+himself never felt keenly, since he died at St. Petersburg while his
+tour was still uncompleted.
+
+At the same time that he was concerned with the Mission, the I.G.
+was "setting his house in order" with very practical measures. New
+Regulations for Pilotage, Rules for the Joint Investigation (Chinese
+and Consular) of Disputed Customs Cases, Rules for Coolie Emigration,
+each in turn claimed his attention, and it was he also who arranged
+with the Chinese that one-tenth of the tonnage dues--afterwards raised
+to seven-tenths--should be devoted to port improvements and lighting
+the coasts. Until he took the matter in hand, vessels had been obliged
+to grope around the difficult China coast in total darkness; to-day,
+thanks to his foresight, lighthouses are dotted from Newchang in the
+north to Hainan in the south, and a little fleet of three Revenue
+cruisers serves them.
+
+A lawsuit called him to Shanghai, when these matters were off his
+hands, and kept him there for some weeks. He had time to enter into
+the social life of the place, meet all the people worth meeting,
+and, what he enjoyed most of all, hear the sermons of a certain Dean
+Butcher, famous for his wit. The first Sunday the I.G. "sat under"
+him, the Dean dragged out his discourse so interminably--and quite
+contrary to his usual custom--that Robert Hart actually took out his
+watch. Just as he quietly got it back to his pocket again and noticed
+that he had listened for fifty minutes, the preacher looked up from
+his manuscript and made Hart start guiltily as he said, "You ask, is
+the sermon done. No, my brothers, it is not _done_. It is _read_. Be
+ye doers of the Word, not hearers only." This bit of effect at
+the end, so cleverly led up to, accounted for the unnaturally long
+discourse.
+
+Another time, when Robert Hart was present, Dean Butcher preached
+from a text in the Psalms, "If I go up to the heights, Thy Presence is
+beside me, and if I go into the utmost depths. It is there," etc. He
+had subdivided the sermon into headings--preached about God in heaven
+and God upon earth, when he suddenly began to cough a little. "The
+preacher's voice fails him," he said--cough, cough--"fails him, my
+brethren"--more coughs--"fails him"--still more gentle coughs--"and so
+we must leave God in hell till next Sunday."
+
+Some years afterwards, when the I.G. was in Shanghai again, he went to
+a luncheon at which Dean Butcher was present. Every one was asked
+to tell a story, and when Robert Hart's turn came, he told one of
+a certain clergyman of his acquaintance--the name he mercifully
+withheld--who had "left God in hell till next Sunday." The face of
+Dean Butcher during the telling was a study in sunset colours, but no
+one except himself and the I.G. remembered the particular preacher who
+had been so indiscreet.
+
+Before he left Shanghai Robert Hart received the first of his long
+series of honours. It came with delightful unexpectedness, with no
+warning of its arrival; simply, one day as he was going to see his
+lawyer, Mr. (afterwards Sir Nicholas) Hannen, a passing postman handed
+him a little brown-paper parcel with Swedish stamps on it. As he
+had neither acquaintance nor official correspondence with Sweden or
+Norway, he was completely puzzled as to what it might contain. Greatly
+to his surprise, on opening it he found an order, the "Wasa" of Sweden
+and Norway, the very first foreign recognition of his international
+work in China. Coming as it did just at that moment, it was singularly
+opportune and acceptable, and ever afterwards I know it held a
+peculiar place in his affections, even when he received a shower of
+Grand Crosses from every civilized country in the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+BIRTH OF A SON--THE MARGARY AFFAIR AND THE CHEFOO CONVENTION--A SECOND
+VISIT TO EUROPE--THE PARIS EXHIBITION OF 1878
+
+
+Three important things occurred in Robert Hart's life between the
+years 1870 and 1879. In 1873 his only son was born; 1875 was marked
+by the beginning of the famous Margary affair, and in 1878 he went as
+President of the Chinese Commission to the Paris Exhibition.
+
+_A propos_ of the birth of his son, there was a very strange--almost
+what a Highlander would call an "uncanny"--sequence of dates in
+the I.G.'s own life. The year that he himself was born, the 20th of
+February--his birthday--fell on the 23rd day of the Chinese First
+Moon. Once more it fell on the 23rd of the First Moon in 1854, the
+year he came to China, and not again until 1873, when his son first
+opened his eyes on this best of all possible worlds. A coincidence if
+you like, but still a very remarkable one all the same.
+
+In 1875 the famous Margary affair, destined to become so complicated
+later on, first appeared upon the stage of politics in the simplest
+possible form. There was one hero and one villain, with a crowd of
+shadowy accomplices looking over his shoulder. To this day it is not
+certain how many there actually were. We can distinctly follow the
+unfortunate hero--his name was Margary, his occupation Interpreter
+at a Consulate--on his journey across Yunnan to Burmah as far as
+Tengyueh. We know he was cruelly done to death there, but we cannot
+sift out truth from falsehood in the rumours that he met his death
+with the connivance--and perhaps even under the orders of--the
+provincial authorities.
+
+The simple fact of a white man's murder was, of course, bad enough;
+but when that white man was an official and on a mission, it was a
+hundred times worse. Negotiations between the British Legation and
+the Chinese began immediately. On the one side heavy compensation was
+demanded, on the other it was argued over and delayed. Neither party
+would move a step forward, and presently the Yunnan outrage got
+hopelessly mixed with every other disputed question of the day; new
+demands sprang up beside old ones; both parties, as Michie says, found
+themselves "entangled in a perfect cat's-cradle of negotiations,"
+and the Chinese in the privacy of their yamens were beginning to
+ask themselves gloomily, "Will the English fight unless we make full
+reparation?"
+
+Would they? There was the rub. But now, the crisis being safely
+passed, I may tell that they would--that they very nearly did--and
+that the thing that prevented them was nothing more nor less than
+the moving of the Customs pew in the British Legation Chapel from the
+front of the church to the back. So do great events sometimes hang
+upon trifles.
+
+After the arbitrary moving of his accustomed seat, the I.G. remained
+away from the Sunday services for more than a year. Then, just when
+the political atmosphere was most electric, Bishop Russell, an old
+friend of Ningpo days and a charming and genial Irishman, came to
+Peking on a visit. He was to preach in the Legation Chapel the next
+Sunday, and the I.G. could not resist the temptation of going to hear
+his old acquaintance.
+
+Russell was a man of an unconventional and spontaneous type. Because
+other people did things in a certain way was no reason why he should
+do the same. Consequently, instead of beginning the service by reading
+the usual verses, he said, "I would like the congregation to sing a
+hymn"; and the hymn that he chose was "God moves in a mysterious
+way His wonders to perform." It happened to be one of Robert Hart's
+favourites, but beyond feeling pleasure that this particular hymn
+should have been chosen, the incident made no great impression on him
+at the time.
+
+As soon as the service was over, he went to shake hands with the
+Bishop. Russell, however, was obliged to hurry away to address a
+Chinese meeting; there was scarcely a moment for talk then. "We must
+have a chat about old times," said he cordially; "when may I come and
+see you--on Tuesday?"
+
+[Illustration: WELL NEAR THE CANAL, BRITISH LEGATION, BEFORE 1900.]
+
+"By all means on Tuesday. Don't forget," was the answer, and the I.G.
+left the chapel with the rest of the congregation.
+
+He noticed as he went out that Sir Thomas Wade had not been in church,
+which struck him as odd. Surely in a small community like Peking,
+where a Bishop in the pulpit was a rarity, the British Minister would
+have made it a point to hear him preach--unless something very unusual
+had occurred. Hart therefore went at once to call on Wade and see what
+the news might be. News? There was enough and to spare, all of the
+most sensational kind. Another deadlock had been reached in the
+negotiations. Blacker clouds than ever obscured the horizon; war was
+as near as flesh to bone. Luckily the I.G. saw at once that the
+new _contretemps_ was due rather to accident than design. A
+misunderstanding of Chinese despatches--which are always open to
+several translations--had given Wade a wrong impression of the force
+of their contents, and the I.G. accordingly begged permission to
+explain the point at issue as he saw it.
+
+Two hours later the Minister came completely round to his view, and
+the critical moment was safely passed.
+
+On Tuesday at the appointed hour Bishop Russell went to see Robert
+Hart. They talked long over old Ningpo days, and presently Russell
+said, "D'ye know, Hart, my converts have grown to have such faith in
+me that they believe I can not only show them the way to heaven, but
+arrange matters on this earth as well. What do you think they said,
+now, before I came up to Peking? They said I was coming to prevent
+a war with England. And that to me!" added the Bishop, laughing his
+wholesome laugh, "who, as you know, am the last man in the world to
+concern myself with politics."
+
+"Well," replied the I.G. solemnly, "you have prevented war with
+England all the same." And he told the Bishop the whole story. "If
+you had not come to Peking," he concluded, "I should not have gone
+to church. If I had not gone to church, I should not have noticed the
+Minister's absence, and therefore should not have gone in to see him.
+Consequently I should never have known of the difficulty which then
+threatened the negotiations, and might not have been able to help
+remove it. Truly, Russell,
+
+'God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.'"
+
+Thus, by a romantic episode, the crisis was tided over--for a time.
+Alas! only for a time. A second set-back, more serious even than the
+first, interrupted matters again just when they seemed to be going
+on most smoothly. It occurred on a Saturday night. On Monday morning,
+without saying a word to Hart--or indeed to any one--Wade started off
+posthaste to Shanghai to "await orders from his Government." This
+bad news greatly upset and alarmed the Yamen. "You must follow him at
+once," was the order they sent the I.G., so within twelve hours he too
+was on his way to Shanghai, determined on making one more effort
+to avert the war which, like a sword of Damocles, was hanging over
+China's head.
+
+He was again successful, in so far as he obtained the British
+Minister's consent to reopen negotiations with the Chinese. But
+where?--that was the question. Should they be held at Shanghai, with
+the Viceroy from Nanking to assist, or should they be held at Chefoo,
+with the Viceroy of Chihli (who happened to be the great Li Hung
+Chang) to help? Wade decided for Chefoo, which, as a cool seaside
+resort, was especially suited for the broiling months of August and
+September; and Robert Hart immediately wired to Peking to arrange that
+Li should come to Chefoo. The Tientsin people protested vigorously
+against their Viceroy's going. They even went so far as to throw
+petitions in hundreds over the walls of his yamen--petitions all
+reminding him of the fate of Yeh Ming Shen, the Governor-General of
+Canton in 1858, whom the British seized and sent to Calcutta, where he
+died.
+
+Yet, in spite of their warnings, Li showed sufficient absence of
+superstition and sufficient patriotism to go, which was certainly
+rather noble of him, more especially as his personal inclination was
+against touching the affair at all. This he told the I.G. frankly when
+they met, and even upbraided Robert Hart rather sharply for, as he
+said, "dragging him into the business. If they fail--and there has
+been no luck about these negotiations before--I shall be blamed,
+whereas if they succeed, it is most unlikely that I shall get any
+credit."
+
+But the I.G. reassured him in answer to his complaints. "There will
+be no trouble," said he, "no trouble at all if you work with me. Say
+nothing, arrange nothing, promise nothing that we do not both agree
+upon beforehand." Every evening at ten o'clock, therefore, the I.G.
+would go to Li's house, and the two would remain talking, often far
+into the night, of what had been done during the day and what was to
+be done on the morrow.
+
+Unfortunately in some mysterious way the plans and proposals they
+discussed leaked out, allowing the other side to checkmate their best
+moves and woefully retard progress. It was really too provoking just
+as these troublesome negotiations promised to end so well; it meant
+precious time wasted; it meant unnecessary anxiety and worry. But no
+matter, history has never been made without trouble to its makers;
+the I.G. was well prepared for obstacles; he met them with patience,
+discovered their cause with rare intelligence, remedied them with
+despatch--and this time the Convention was safely signed. Pens had
+been poised over it so long that I can imagine he breathed a sigh of
+relief when the signatures were actually on the document.
+
+A big banquet celebrated the signing--a grand affair given by Li to
+the personnel of the drama. Most of the Foreign Ministers from Peking
+were present, they having come down to Chefoo to see what was going
+on. Two British admirals had put in for the same reason, so the
+banquet did not lack distinguished guests. The display of uniforms,
+medals and decorations was dazzling, while the decorations of the hall
+were as gorgeous as splendour-loving Orientals could devise.
+
+The clever Li toasted the occasion by a happy speech, in which he
+dwelt on the joy of meeting so many friends together. Most of them
+he had known (outwitted, too, I daresay) for some time, but now,
+unhindered by the restraints of public business, he could enjoy their
+society with a freedom hitherto denied him, and he concluded, "Since
+at this port of Yentai [Chefoo] beautiful scenery delights the eye
+and cool breezes give health to the body, it is fitting that our
+minds should be in harmony with the beauties of nature, cultivating
+friendship and sincerity as being the noblest traits of human
+character." All of which was very pretty sentiment, and if some poetic
+licence got mixed in with the truth, surely the occasion justified the
+alliance.
+
+Li certainly had reason to feel pleased with himself and his work. The
+Convention was excellent--though it might have been still better
+had Robert Hart had more of his own way. He wished, and the Chinese
+agreed, to include in it clauses relative to the establishment of
+a national Chinese Post Office and the opening of mints for uniform
+coinage throughout the Empire. But it did not suit all parties to
+allow one man to make too many suggestions, and so his schemes were
+frustrated.
+
+Still, over and above all petty international jealousies he had scored
+another diplomatic triumph, and the Chinese were duly grateful to him
+for his share in the work. That was, after all is said, the secret of
+his unique position--that confidence of his Chinese employers which he
+never lost. Probably the real reason he kept it so well was because
+of his calm and reticent character, because he could never be moved to
+anger and impatient words. Sir Thomas Wade, on the contrary, was a
+man of exactly the opposite type, and his _ch'i_, better translated
+as excitability than anger, often increased his difficulties at a
+difficult time.
+
+The I.G.'s association with the great Li Hung Chang by no means ceased
+after the Margary affair. Business in the succeeding months frequently
+took him to Tientsin--the nearest port, eighty miles from Peking, and
+the post of the Chihli Viceroy--and whenever he was there, he had
+a standing invitation to lunch with Li--an invitation which he very
+often accepted.
+
+What greatly appealed to him about Li's household was its absolute
+simplicity. Instead of a wearisome array of courses, never more than
+two plates were served--fish, and perhaps a dish of chicken, cooked,
+of course, in the Chinese manner and eaten with big portions of rice.
+The first was seldom touched. Li would say to his guest, "If you do
+not want any fish, we will send it in to the _Taitai_" (his wife,
+who, according to Chinese etiquette, was dining in the next room); and
+Robert Hart, always the smallest of eaters, would invariably answer
+"No," leaving the fish to go whole and untouched to Madame Li, much to
+her husband's delight.
+
+One day afterwards in Peking the I.G. happened to speak with his
+Chinese writer about Li Hung Chang's household--praising a simplicity
+so rarely to be found in the yamens of the rich and powerful. There
+happened to be a long interval before he lunched with the Viceroy
+again, and when he did, he noticed to his horror that the servants
+were bringing in an array of dishes suitable for a feast. Shark's fins
+preceded expensive pickled eggs and followed choice bird's-nest soup.
+What could the change mean? Simply that his complimentary remark,
+maimed and contorted beyond recognition by ill-informed or mischievous
+persons, had travelled to Li's ears, and that he had therefore
+determined to treat his guest with the greatest possible formality.
+
+"You shall not have the chance to go away again and say that you have
+been fed like a coolie in my house," said the Viceroy proudly at the
+end of the banquet.
+
+"Nevertheless, the very simplicity of your hospitality was what I most
+appreciated," the I.G. replied. "But if you believe that I could have
+made any such remark, and if you persist in altering the style of my
+reception, I shall not come to lunch with you again."
+
+As if the cares of treaty making and Customs supervision, coupled with
+the responsibility of being unofficial adviser to the Wai-Wu-Pu,
+were not enough for one man, the I.G., at the request of the Chinese,
+undertook to supervise China's part in the international exhibitions
+of Europe. First came the Viennese Exhibition in 1873. He set his
+various commissioners of ports collecting the products of their
+provinces--silks, porcelains, lacquers and teas. It sounds so simple,
+but often what may be told in a dozen words may scarcely be done in as
+many months, and little less than a year of writing and planning and
+directing can have elapsed before all details were in order, and
+his four Commissioners of Customs were driving, like the Marquis of
+Carabbas, in a glass coach through the streets of Vienna. The Chinese
+spared neither pains nor expense to make a good showing, and gave a
+gala performance at the Opera in return for Austrian hospitality.
+
+In 1878 came the Paris Exhibition, and to this he went himself as
+President of the Chinese Government's Commission. He arrived in Paris
+just before the Exhibition opened--just in time to be present at the
+great opening ceremony in fact. This was a very grand affair, but
+with--for him--a ludicrous climax. Coming away, he and his secretary
+lost their carriage in the crowd, and had to walk the whole way home,
+not a cab being obtainable--and this, too, in elaborate and heavy
+uniforms, and at the risk of being hooted by _gamins_. But by good
+luck, in those days gold lace and medals were so plentiful that they
+attracted no embarrassing attention.
+
+[Illustration: SIR ROBERT HART IN 1878.]
+
+Numberless functions, of course, took place in connection with the
+Exhibition, and scarcely a night passed without some gigantic official
+reception at which two or three thousand people were present. The
+Minister of Education, for example, gave a magnificent _soiree_ at
+which the old dances, the stately minuet and the graceful pavane, were
+danced in splendid and appropriate costumes. Bernhardt, then at the
+height of her powers, recited one night at the Elysee; so also did
+Coquelin. But to Robert Hart these "crushes" were often an ordeal.
+Conventional entertainments never had a great attraction for him;
+besides, these gatherings were really too big for any one's comfort or
+pleasure; conversation was nearly impossible, and nobody felt at home.
+
+What he did enjoy was a drive in the beautiful Bois with his children,
+from whom, for the sake of their education, he had already been
+separated for several years. Or else he liked to take them to the
+many excellent concerts then being held. They often went to hear the
+Norwegian singers who, so the advertisements said, had walked all the
+way from their northern home in their quaint national costume, and
+they scarcely missed a Wednesday at the Trocadero, where there were
+contests of massed bands.
+
+Music, in fact, would draw Robert Hart any day, for he loved it
+dearly. Other people might talk learnedly about various schools and
+tone poems; he took all he could get silently and with a thankful
+heart; and because in far-away Peking he could not count upon others
+playing for him, he performed the prodigious feat of learning to play
+both violin and 'cello himself without a teacher, and long after he
+was a man grown.
+
+Just before the Exhibition closed, all the fine blackwood furniture of
+the Chinese pavilion was presented to the Marechale MacMahon. The
+I.G. had to make a speech on this occasion, which he greatly dreaded,
+having none of that love of getting on his feet that is characteristic
+of the south of Ireland Irishman; but when he did so his voice,
+always soft and gentle, with the faintest trace of Irish accent, never
+wavered for a moment, and every word he said could be heard by all.
+
+Whether it was the speech making or the festivities or the hard work
+or a combination of all three I cannot say, but Robert Hart suddenly
+found himself over-tired and threatened with a breakdown of health
+by the time the Exhibition closed. Sir William Gull, the famous
+specialist, whom he consulted, put the case tersely to him: "If you
+will do work, work will do you."
+
+There was nothing for it then but six weeks of idleness at Ischl,
+with long walks in the wonderful clear air, another six weeks at
+Baden-Baden, and a quiet winter at Brighton. So, much to his regret,
+he had very little opportunity to see London or enjoy the life and
+gaiety which would have been such a happy contrast to the solitude of
+Peking. A few hasty visits--I think the longest lasted scarcely ten
+days--left him no time at all to meet the many men whose acquaintance
+would have meant so much to him.
+
+The only thing he did of a semi-political character was to accept an
+invitation from the Reform Club to address them on the opium question.
+The men he met there had all their opinions and convictions settled
+beforehand; they had really invited him, the great authority on China,
+to agree with them, and no schoolboys who had found that sixpences
+had been put into their pockets in the night could have been more
+surprised than they when he did not.
+
+At least, it is not exactly accurate to say that he disagreed; he took
+a practical view of a question which at that time was regarded with
+much heat and sentiment. He quoted statistics to them, proved that
+foreign opium was smoked by only one-third of one per cent of the
+population of China, and by the calm sanity of his views made much of
+their agitation seem unnecessary. But they were finally consoled when
+he agreed with them that even so small a percentage in so large a
+population meant millions of smokers, and that it would be well to
+rescue these from so damaging a habit.
+
+This was the last public affair in which he took part before the close
+of 1878, when, being sufficiently recovered in health, he started back
+to China, little thinking that he was not destined to see Europe again
+for thirty years.
+
+
+
+
+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
+
+
+Curiously enough, almost as soon as Robert Hart was back in Peking
+(1880) the opium question was brought to his attention again. This
+time it was by a Chinese official--one Yuan Pao Heng, an uncle of the
+famous Yuan Shih Kai, whose influence is paramount in the Flowery
+Land to-day, and who more than any other single man was probably
+responsible for the Imperial Edict (1906) which ordered the opium
+traffic to be abolished within ten years.
+
+The uncle was as bitter an enemy of the drug as his nephew, but though
+his views were sound they were in advance of his time, and the I.G.
+very properly pointed out to him that the cultivation of the poppy
+could not be stopped suddenly. However wise theoretically it might
+be to do this, practically it would be dangerous. A great source of
+revenue must not be cut off abruptly, or China might find herself in
+the position of the man in the old fable, who thoughtlessly mounted
+the tiger, and then found out too late that he had forfeited the right
+to dismount when and where he pleased.
+
+Haste in the Far East is a commodity for which it is easy to pay too
+high a price--when it is obtainable at all--which, to tell the truth,
+it generally is not. "Change slowly--if change you must" has ever been
+the motto of China, and for years the capital itself was an example
+of the saying. Improvements were not encouraged. There were no more
+public buildings in 1879 than in 1863. I doubt if a single tumble-down
+wall had been replaced--the dirt and smells still remained, and the
+roads were no smoother. Only a few more Legations had established
+themselves there, and, by clustering together, they formed what might
+by courtesy be called a Legation Quarter, which lay between the pink
+wall of the Imperial City--the innermost of the ring of three cities
+that form Peking--and the frowning, machicolated grey wall of the
+Tartar town.
+
+The Chinese, partly no doubt with the idea of keeping all the
+foreigners together and partly for the convenience of business,
+presently gave the I.G. a piece of land in this quarter, and he
+accordingly moved down to comparative civilization--as we understand
+it--from his far-away corner of the suburbs, as soon as the buildings
+were ready. He had a modest row of low offices, several houses for his
+staff, each standing, Indian fashion, in its own compound, and, in a
+large garden, his own dwelling.
+
+This, like the rest, was a bungalow--for the Chinese in those days
+objected to high buildings lest they should overlook the Palace--and
+built in the form of a letter H, partly from a sentimental connection
+with his own initial, and partly to utilise all the sunshine and
+southerly breeze possible. Two fine drawing-rooms, a billiard- and
+a dining-room filled the cross-bar of the letter: one of the
+perpendicular strokes was the west, or guest wing; the other contained
+his own private offices, a special reception-room, furnished in
+Chinese style--stiff chairs and rigid tables--for Chinese guests, and
+his living-rooms. It was characteristic of the man that these were the
+most unpretentious rooms in the whole house.
+
+Undoubtedly one of the chief reasons which allowed Peking to preserve
+its mediaeval aspect intact for so many years was the difficulty of
+communicating with the rest of the world for several months of the
+year. Its port, Tientsin, was ice-bound from November to March, and
+the foreign community was therefore completely cut off during the long
+winter. Neither letters nor papers enlivened _la morte saison_
+until the I.G. conceived the idea of arranging a service of overland
+couriers from Chinkiang, a port on the Yangtsze, to Peking. The seven
+hundred miles intervening was covered by mounted men, who took
+from ten to twelve days for the journey, and they as well as their
+mounts--the latter of course in relays--were provided on contract by
+a clever old mafoo (groom) who had the reputation of getting the best
+ponies for the Tientsin amateur race meetings, and who was in league
+with all the picturesque Mongol horse-dealers.
+
+[Illustration: OUTSIDE SIR ROBERT HART'S HOUSE BEFORE 1900.]
+
+On the whole the system worked admirably, though of course there were
+occasional hitches. Sometimes a messenger was attacked by bandits on
+the way and had his bags stolen. I know once the I.G. chuckled over
+such a disaster. It so happened that in the missing bags there was one
+letter which he had written giving an appointment in the Customs to a
+certain man. No sooner was it gone than he regretted what he had
+done, and would have recalled his decision had it been possible. Well,
+believe it or not, this and one other were the only two letters of
+that lost pouch ever discovered, and they came into the possession of
+a French Missionary Bishop and were afterwards returned by him to the
+I.G.
+
+Now and again, too, an accident happened to the incoming mails even
+after they reached Peking. Of course they were taken direct to the
+Inspectorate for sorting, and while headquarters were still in the
+_Kau Lan Hu Tung_ the messenger was more than once thrown on his
+way down to the Legations--perhaps he met one of those gong-beating
+processions which would be enough to frighten a hobby-horse--and his
+mails recklessly distributed by the terrified animal. And sometimes a
+courier would stumble into a ditch in the rainy season when the road
+was all river, and narrowly escape being drowned, but these little
+incidents were only the fortunes of war.
+
+It is not to be wondered at, considering the international work he was
+doing, that his own country decorated Robert Hart as early as 1879.
+It is only strange--to me--that they gave him no more than a humble
+C.M.G. But this was soon changed into a K.C.M.G., and, as it happened,
+at a most opportune moment---just when an American University
+conferred an LL.D. upon him. There he was within an ace of being
+called "Doctor" for the rest of his life, when the knighthood
+providentially came to save the situation. The K.C.M.G. was followed
+by a G.C.M.G., and the G.C.M.G. by a baronetcy, both the Liberals and
+Conservatives giving him honours alternately. The last, the baronetcy,
+came from Gladstone's Ministry, and with it he received a friendly
+letter from the Grand Old Man, who always admired him immensely, and
+said so when a brother of the I.G.'s--at the time in Europe acting
+as interpreter to Li Hung Chang--was presented at a big dinner to the
+Premier.
+
+[Illustration: PEKING: A MESSENGER CARRYING MAILS IN THE RAINY
+SEASON.]
+
+"So you are a Mr. Hart from China," he remarked. "You should feel very
+proud of a man who has made his name illustrious for all time."
+
+France was not long behindhand in adding to his ever-growing list of
+honours. He had the "Grand Officier" of the coveted "Legion" in 1885
+after bringing safely to a conclusion the French Treaty of that year.
+Undoubtedly this was one of the most picturesque and interesting
+incidents with which he was ever connected, and perhaps it will not
+come amiss to give some details of how it came about.
+
+The trouble began over a disputed boundary--the Tonkin frontier, to
+be exact. One side, the Chinese, wanted the Red River for the
+dividing-line, would hear of nothing else, declared loudly that this
+was the natural division; the other, France, was equally obstinate
+for the older frontier between the State of Tonkin and China proper,
+because this meant far more land for her. Meanwhile, in the disputed
+area, Liu Yung Fuh, a very famous soldier of fortune--somewhat of an
+Eastern d'Artagnan--roamed to and fro with his band of "Black Flags,"
+threw in his lot with the Chinese, and made harassing raids on
+the French side of the disputed border-line. Like the picador at a
+bullfight, he maddened his enemy with dart-pricks, and the Chinese,
+who, to continue the simile, had the toreador's part to play,
+reaped the enmity he provoked. The French gave them battle at Pagoda
+Anchorage, routed them utterly, and seized Formosa. This was the point
+where the I.G. first came upon the scene. Once again he was to play
+his old part of peacemaker. With the Nanking Viceroy Tseng Kuo Tseun
+as collaborator, so to speak, he went to Shanghai to interview the
+French Charge d'Affaires, M. Patenotre, and see what could be done.
+
+[Illustration: A SECRETARY GOING TO THE INSPECTORATE OFFICES DURING
+THE RAINY SEASON.]
+
+This Viceroy, by the way, was what we should call a self-made man;
+that is, he had not risen to office by the usual route, which in China
+is the way of a scholar. Undistinguished for any particular learning,
+he had none of those literary degrees which the conservative Chinese
+of those days prized above every other possession. He was, moreover,
+quite conscious of his limitations and spoke of them to the I.G. _a
+propos_ of the visit to Shanghai of two men who held the much-coveted
+position of Literary Chancellors.
+
+"It will not be possible for me to make a success of these
+negotiations with the French," he exclaimed ruefully, "because
+whatever I do these two men will find it out and disparage it in
+every way they can. You see their view-point is that of distinguished
+scholars, and they despise an unlettered man like me."
+
+"But what would you say," replied the I.G., "if these two learned
+gentlemen were made your colleagues in the business--if they were
+ordered to work with you and share the responsibility?"
+
+"Ah, that would be too good to be true," was the Viceroy's answer.
+Nevertheless it did come true, because the I.G. telegraphed to Peking
+about it, and shortly afterwards an Imperial Edict appointed them
+to be associated with Tseng Kuo Tseun. Did ever any one find a more
+diplomatic method of avoiding jealousies and closing the mouth of
+criticism.
+
+In government business even more than in private affairs the great
+danger always is what the wise old Chicago pork-packer described as
+"the weak mouths that let slip what they ought to retain." Indiscreet
+talk has upset many a politician's apple-cart--even the legitimate
+bumps on the road are not such serious obstacles. It almost spoiled
+the Margary affair, it threatened the French Treaty no less seriously.
+Again and again the two parties attempted to come to an agreement over
+the troublesome boundary question; again and again they failed. And
+why? Simply because the vexatious gossip that is the curse of small
+communities interfered. And then to add to the existing complications
+a Customs vessel, the _Fei Hoo_, was seized by the French as she was
+landing stores for a lighthouse in Formosa. They would not let her go,
+saying she had landed letters as well as stores. Perhaps she did--no
+one can say--but contraband mail on board or not, she had important
+duties to perform. All the lighthouses along that coast depended on
+her for supplies, could not, in fact, function without her, and all
+vessels of every nationality in China seas depended on those lights,
+so her detention was worse than aggravating.
+
+The I.G. explained this to Monsieur Patenotre and urged him to free
+her. "_Ca, c'est l'affaire de l'amiral_," was the answer, and the
+Admiral, when communicated with, refused to do anything. With many
+regrets Monsieur Patenotre told the I.G. this, adding: "You'd better
+go to Paris." He probably little thought that his advice would be
+taken _au pied de la lettre_, but within an incredibly short time
+the barren negotiations at Shanghai were abandoned, and the I.G. had
+telegraphed at length explaining the whole position to his Resident
+Secretary in London and directing him to go to Paris, see M. Jules
+Ferry, then Premier and Minister for Foreign Affairs, and try to
+settle something about the _Fei Hoo_ there. M. Ferry received him very
+cordially, said he would be interested in hearing anything such an
+authority as Sir Robert Hart might have to say, but, all civilities
+aside, the matter rested with the Admiralty, and he would be obliged
+to refer it to them.
+
+Next day the Secretary, a certain Mr. Campbell, went again for his
+answer and found it unfavourable, for the Admiralty was still in
+that state of mind which we call firm when it occurs in ourselves,
+obstinate when it occurs in others. M. Ferry personally was distressed
+over the refusal. But what could he do beyond asking Mr. Campbell
+politely if there was any other matter about which he would like to
+speak? Here was an opportunity the I.G. had luckily foreseen--and
+prepared to meet. Thanks to his foresight, Mr. Campbell was able to
+take out of his pocket several long and carefully worded telegrams
+giving a _resume_ of the situation. They suggested a workable
+compromise; it was adopted, and peace _pourparlers_ began once more.
+The I.G.'s one stipulation on entering upon them was that they should
+be kept absolutely secret. And this time they were. Except Prince
+Ching and one Tsungli Yamen Minister, nobody knew, nobody even
+guessed, that anything unusual was even "on the carpet," as the French
+say; and in order to deepen the impression that no political
+anxieties were darkening the horizon, Robert Hart embarked in private
+theatricals--a thing he had never done before, or since--and played
+Pillicoddy.
+
+Alas, the path of treaties never did run smooth! When arrangements
+were just on the point of being concluded the Court suddenly desired
+to retract some of their promises, thinking too much had been given
+away. This was a cruel blow to the I.G., who well knew that the French
+would never agree to the proposed changes and that the painstaking
+work of weeks would topple over like a house of cards. As for China's
+position in case the Treaty fell through, the less said about that the
+better.
+
+Notwithstanding, the I.G. did speak of it, and forcibly, to Yamen
+Ministers, who did not listen--not because they would not, but
+because they dared not for fear of exceeding their powers and bringing
+Imperial censure on their own heads. What the I.G. must do, said they,
+was to send a telegram immediately to Paris and say the Treaty could
+not be signed as it was. He promised to do this--what else could he
+do?--and went home from the Yamen disheartened, discouraged, and in no
+mood for work.
+
+[Illustration: STABLES OF SIR ROBERT HART IN THE RAINY SEASON.]
+
+A weaker man would have "gloomed" openly; he did nothing more
+despairing than stroll into the office of one of his secretaries and
+have some talk about indifferent matters. None the less it was an
+unusual thing for him to do, as, whenever they had business together,
+his secretaries came to him, and he must have been pushed to it by one
+of those mysterious impulses that sometimes shape men's destinies. Was
+it the same strange impulse that sent him over to the bookcase in the
+corner of the room, that made him pick out, at random, and without
+thinking what he was doing, a volume of the Chinese classics, and when
+he opened it carelessly made his eye light on the sentence "_Kung Kwei
+Yih Kwei_,"--literally, the "work wants another basket"? (The phrase
+is part of one of Confucius' sayings.) "If a man wants to build a hill
+so high," says the Sage, "he must not refuse it the last basketful of
+earth."
+
+Here was a direct answer to the I.G.'s own perplexity. Perhaps one
+more effort and his work, too, might be successful. At any rate he
+would keep back the fatal telegram for a day.
+
+Next morning he went to the Yamen again. The first thing the Minister
+said to him was, "Have you sent that telegram?" And they were all
+anxiety till they had his reply, which, strange to say, they received
+with profound sighs of relief, for once again the Court had changed
+their minds--had come to see the folly of risking a break in the
+negotiations--and the Ministers, who feared the I.G. had already
+taken the step they had insisted on so firmly the day before, were
+prodigiously relieved to find nothing definite had been done. Then,
+when he told them the reason, how Confucius had guided China from his
+grave, they were still more deeply impressed.
+
+The telegram that the I.G. _did_ send that morning to his London agent
+was "Sign the Treaty. But don't sign the 1st of April," he added,
+for they were then in the last days of March. The sudden relief from
+anxiety made him want a little joke--but he did not want it in the
+Treaty. Unfortunately nobody appreciated the sally. His Resident
+Secretary solemnly wrote on the telegram when he handed it to
+the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, "Don't sign on the 1st of
+April--_parce que c'est un jour nefasfe_--because it is an unlucky
+day." Either as a Scotchman he deplored the unseemly frivolity, or he
+thought the French could not appreciate a _poisson d'Avril_, and
+so racked his brains for a serious reason to justify the I.G.'s
+objection.
+
+It so happened that the very day this message went to Paris, Sir Harry
+Parkes's funeral took place. After a useful and eventful life he
+died, as every one knows, at the summit of his ambitions while he was
+British Minister in Peking. Just as the I.G. was going into the chapel
+for the service, one of the Legation Secretaries drew him aside to
+communicate a most important piece of news. A wire had come in only
+a few minutes before offering "the appointment of Her Britannic
+Majesty's Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary at Peking
+to Sir Robert Hart." To say the I.G. was surprised is not to say
+enough. The offer, coming as it did under such solemn circumstances,
+made an impression upon him too deep for words. Looking down at the
+coffin half hidden in flowers, he could not help feeling the vanity
+of earthly glories. "We brought nothing into this world, and it is
+certain we can take nothing out," said the voice of the preacher. The
+Envoy Extraordinary and the beggar travel towards the same goal, and
+one is scarcely more indispensable than the other. Any pride he might
+have had in the new dignity was most effectively taken out of him,
+and I think that never in his life did the I.G. feel a deeper humility
+than on this day when, invited to take the Legation, he stood the one
+black-coated coated figure amid a blaze of diplomatic uniforms.
+
+[Illustration: THE INSPECTORATE STREET BEFORE 1900.]
+
+In the evening Mr. O'Conor (afterwards Sir Nicholas), the First
+Secretary of the British Legation, came to dine with him and hear
+his answer--which was that for the present he could not take up
+the appointment as British Minister because of those Franco-Chinese
+negotiations. So well had the secret been kept this time that O'Conor
+had not the faintest idea anything important was going on; he heard
+the news with amazement. Might he telegraph it home to his Government?
+Yes, he might, provided he did not speak of the matter in Peking.
+
+At the same time the I.G. begged that his appointment might not
+be gazetted just then, for possibly the French would not care to
+negotiate with a man about to become British Minister, and even
+if they made no formal objection, the fact could not fail to have
+considerable influence on Chinese affairs.
+
+Accordingly the news was temporarily suppressed. But the I.G.
+afterwards had the personal satisfaction of hearing through a lady
+of the Court that when O'Conor's telegrams about the whole story were
+laid before Queen Victoria, she said, "I am very glad that we shall
+have for our next Minister in China the man who arranged such delicate
+negotiations as these."
+
+By all the laws of climax the incident should close here; no writer
+would dream of dragging it out further, but unfortunately in real
+life there is little respect for climaxes, and that vexatious Treaty
+coquetted with her suitors once more. Really it was enough to make
+anybody lose patience altogether. When the ground was clear at the
+very last moment, how absurd that the Black Flags and the Chinese
+should win a big victory over the French at Langson and that, in
+consequence, there should have been an interpellation in the French
+Senate causing the Jules Ferry Ministry to resign suddenly and leaving
+the Treaty still unsigned.
+
+The victory affected the Chinese no less seriously; in the twinkling
+of an eye they were split into two parties. The military side, elated
+with their success, was all for continuing the war ("Those we have
+beaten once we shall beat again," said they), and the wiser councils
+of the civil side only just carried the day, for, flushed as the
+soldiers were with victory, it was not easy to make them see that
+their success was but temporary, and the best, in fact the only thing,
+for China to do was to hurry on with the Treaty.
+
+Then the endless telegraphing began again. The I.G., by the way, had
+spent Tls. 80,000 (over L10,000) on telegrams, a sum which, had the
+Treaty failed, would not have been repaid easily. But it was too late
+to stop now. Once more he wired instructions to his Secretary.
+
+"You must face the jump. Go direct to the President and lay the matter
+before him." In those days, when he was manoeuvring for a big success,
+the I.G. sometimes risked much on the turn of a card.
+
+Mr. Campbell went to President Grevy, and later to the Foreign
+Minister de Freycinet. Things, as they seemed most desperate, took a
+brighter turn; difficulties melted away, and at last, on the 4th of
+April, 1885, M. Billot, afterwards Ambassador at Rome, was appointed
+by the French Government to sign for France, and the Resident
+Secretary of course signed for the Chinese. Thus the work was really
+completed by those last basketfuls of earth, and the long months of
+anxiety and strain brought to a happy conclusion much to everybody's
+satisfaction.
+
+Later, M. de Freycinet asked the I.G. to continue and arrange the
+detail Treaty, as the first had been really little more than a
+Protocol. The second went through without a hitch, and on June 9th Li
+Hung Chang and M. Patenotre signed it at Tientsin.
+
+Next day the I.G. had a telegram from London from Lord Granville
+saying that the Gladstone Ministry was about to resign. "If your
+appointment as British Minister at Peking is to be published before
+the new Government under Lord Salisbury comes in, it must be gazetted
+immediately." He was then able to answer. "Yes. Publish whenever you
+please. The French Treaty was signed yesterday, June 9."
+
+[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE INSPECTORATE OF CUSTOMS BEFORE 1900.]
+
+Sir Robert Hart planned to go into the Legation in August, on the
+anniversary of his wedding day. Of course you may be sure he had
+reported the matter to the Chinese and sent in his resignation in good
+time. But, as they gave him no definite answer, there was nothing for
+it but to remind them that he had agreed to go--and soon. Downcast
+faces listened; a most unconsenting silence answered.
+
+"Well, are you willing?" said he at last. "Is Her Majesty the
+Empress-Dowager agreeable to receiving me as British Minister?"
+
+"Oh, yes," they replied; "she would rather have you than any one else,
+because, with your great knowledge of China, it will be very pleasant
+to do business with you. Besides, you are an old friend of ours."
+
+"Then is she willing to have me leave the Inspectorate?" continued
+the I.G., still feeling a subtle sense of their dissatisfaction. They
+brightened up at this. It was evidently the cue they had been looking
+for. "That is the point," said one of the Ministers, plucking up
+courage. "Her Majesty would much prefer that you stayed with us."
+
+The upshot of it all was that he stayed; he felt that in the face
+of the Yamen's remarks he could not treat such kind and considerate
+employers as the Chinese otherwise. But one of the quaintest touches
+in the whole affair was that his strongest private reason for holding
+back, at first, from the splendid appointment as British Minister
+was that he did not wish to tie himself for five years longer in
+China--and yet after all he was to stay twenty-five willingly in the
+land of his exile.
+
+
+
+
+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
+
+
+Robert Hart therefore went quietly on with his work in the Customs
+(1885), setting personal ambitions calmly aside, and finding--let us
+hope--his reward in the satisfaction which the Chinese and the service
+generally expressed at his sacrifice of the British Government's
+tempting offer.
+
+The very year after it was made, an important piece of business,
+safely, even brilliantly concluded, added greatly to his reputation.
+This was the settlement of questions relating to the simultaneous
+collection of duty and likin on opium--two of the burning questions of
+the day in the south. China had long desired to levy both taxes at one
+and the same time, but without an arrangement with the Hongkong and
+Macao Governments this was impossible, as clever smugglers usually
+contrived to hurry the drug safely into either British or Portuguese
+territory before the Chinese authorities could lay their eyes, much
+less levy their duties, upon it. Moreover, once it had crossed a
+frontier, redress was impossible.
+
+To remedy this unfortunate state of affairs, the I.G., together with
+a certain Taotai, was sent on a mission. Great pourparlers were held
+with the Hongkong authorities, who finally agreed to the concessions
+he asked--provided the Macao authorities should do the same. Luckily
+they did with readiness--even with enthusiasm--as they themselves were
+anxious for a _quid pro quo_ from China.
+
+The Portuguese position in Macao had always been a peculiar
+one--unofficial is the word which best describes it--for though they
+had quietly occupied the place since the far-away days of the Mings,
+the Chinese had tolerated the strangers without recognizing them, only
+now and then murdering one by way of protest. Here, then, was their
+chance to obtain official status, and the Governor, a shrewd man,
+seized it. The matter went through without a hitch; China, in addition
+to getting her own way on the likin question, was given the right to
+open her Custom Houses at Kowloon (Hongkong) and Lappa (Macao), while
+Portugal on her side agreed never to sell or cede Macao to any other
+Power without China's consent.
+
+A slight passage-at-arms between the I.G. and a certain Chinese
+official enlivened the proceedings, and threw an amusing sidelight on
+Oriental methods. This man, when Robert Hart met him in Canton, said
+with amazing frankness, "I had a spy in Hongkong who repeated to me
+faithfully all that went on there, all that you did, all that you
+said; but I had nobody in Macao. So will you please tell me what
+happened in the latter place?"
+
+When the I.G. refused, saying the business concerned only himself and
+the Yamen, the fellow was first genuinely amazed, then righteously
+indignant, finally secretly vindictive. He nursed the grievance for
+years, and revenged himself at last by memorializing against the
+I.G.'s famous Land Tax Scheme, which, weathering a storm of bitter
+criticism, lived to enjoy great praise.
+
+Once this Mission was over, the I.G. travelled no more. Things were so
+well established by this time that there was no need for him to tour
+the ports, and increasing work kept him ever closer to his desk in
+Peking. Never was a man, I think, who lived a quieter or more orderly
+life, or who had less recreation in his days. He went little
+into society; when he did, his rare appearances were immensely
+remarked--much as the passage of a comet might have been--and if he
+made a visit, it was talked of with pride all through the community.
+Indeed, the hostess who could say "The I.G. took tea with me to-day,"
+was something of a heroine. He read much and wrote prodigiously,
+sending out--and receiving too--the mail of a Prime Minister.
+
+One extravagance, and only one, did he permit himself--I am thinking
+of his private band. Yet even that he did not deliberately seek. The
+idea came to him unexpectedly, put into his head by the Commissioner
+of Customs at Tientsin, who wrote one day that he had among his
+subordinates the very man for a bandmaster. Pathetic derelict, a
+bandmaster without a band! Acting upon a sudden inspiration--perhaps
+with some subtle intuition of the important part the music was to play
+in the life of the community in after years, and of all the pleasure
+it was to give--the I.G. sent money from his private purse to buy
+instruments and music, though until that moment the idea of a band in
+Peking had seemed infinitely remote if not utterly preposterous.
+
+[Illustration: SIR ROBERT HART'S BAND IN THE EARLY 'NINETIES, BEFORE
+IT HAD GROWN TO ITS PRESENT SIZE.
+
+Playing on the lawn in front of his house.]
+
+Some dozen promising young Chinese were at once collected and
+initiated into the complicated mysteries of chords and keys. They
+learned quickly and well--so well that within a year eight of them
+were ready to come up to the capital and teach others. A doubtful
+venture became an assured success. More and more players were added;
+a promising barber, lured, perhaps, by the playing of his friend's
+flute, abandoned his trade and set to work on the 'cello; or a
+shoemaker, forsaking his last, devoted himself to the cornet. The
+neighbouring tailor laid aside his needle; the carter left his cart,
+bewitched away from everyday things by the music. It may be the smart
+uniform had something to do with the popularity of the organization;
+there is ever a fine line between art and vanity--but why dwell upon
+an ignoble motive?
+
+Suffice it to say, whether from pure conceit or better things, the
+little company grew till it reached a score, and, under a Portuguese
+bandmaster, touched a high level of perfection, playing both on brass
+and strings with taste and spirit. The Tientsin branch flourished
+equally well and became ultimately the Viceroy's band, and the mother
+of bands innumerable all over the metropolitan province of Chihli. But
+in reputation it never equalled what was known throughout China as the
+"I.G.'s Own."
+
+[Illustration: SIR ROBERT HART'S CHINESE BAND.]
+
+In spring and autumn his musicians gave an open-air concert in the
+Inspectorate garden every Wednesday afternoon. Of course, this was the
+event of the week so far as society was concerned. Peking residents,
+as well as many distinguished strangers who happened to be passing,
+came to listen. The scene was invariably animated; ladies walked about
+under the lilacs, which in April hung over the paths like soft clouds
+of purple fog, displaying their newest toilettes; diplomats discussed
+_la situation politique_; missionaries argued points of doctrine;
+correspondents exchanged bits of news. All nationalities, classes and
+creeds were represented in this cosmopolitan corner of the world, but
+the lions and the lambs agreed tacitly to tolerate each other for the
+sake of hearing the familiar tunes, warming as good old wine to the
+hearts of exiles, and for the sake of seeing the mysterious man whose
+advice, given, as it were, under his breath, shaped the course of
+events in China.
+
+He guessed well enough what brought the people, and would sometimes
+remark laughingly, "They come; I know why they all come. It is just
+to get a sight of the two curios of Peking, the I.G. and his queer
+musicians."
+
+Occasionally Chinese guests would mingle with the rest, lending with
+their silken gowns and silken manners a touch of picturesqueness to
+the scene. I can well remember seeing the famous Wu Ting Fang, whose
+alert manner made him a general favourite. He prided himself upon
+it--and rightly. "How old do you think I am?" he asked his host one
+day. "Perhaps forty-five," was the reply. "Forty-five! What a guess!
+Sixty-five would have been nearer--and I mean to live to be two
+hundred."
+
+He went on to explain carefully how this feat was to be accomplished.
+The first thing, naturally, was diet. The man who would cheat time
+should live on nuts like the squirrels (do they contrive to do it, I
+wonder?). Under no conditions should he touch salt, lest a dangerous
+precipitate form upon his bones, and he should begin and end each meal
+with a teaspoonful of olive oil. So much for the physical side: the
+mental is no less important. "I have hung scrolls in my bedroom," Wu
+Ting Fang went on to explain, "with these sentences written upon them
+in English and in Chinese: 'I am young, I am healthy, I am cheerful.'
+Immediately I enter the room my eye falls upon these precepts. I
+say to myself, Why, of course I am, and therefore I _am_." Was ever
+simpler or saner method discovered for warding off old age?
+
+Towards the end of 1889 the Chinese Government, desirous of paying the
+I.G. a special compliment, chose to confer upon him an honour never
+before given to any foreigner. Without precedent and without warning,
+the Emperor issued an Imperial Decree raising him to the Chinese
+equivalent of the peerage. Henceforth he belonged to the distinguished
+company of Iron Hatted Dukes--at least not he but his ancestors
+did, for this was no ordinary father-to-son patent of nobility. The
+topsy-turvy honour reached backward instead of forward, diminishing
+one rank with each succeeding generation.
+
+The Chinese reason as follows: "If a man is wise or great or
+successful, it is because his forbears were studious or temperate or
+frugal. Therefore, when we give rewards, shall we not give them where
+they are justly due?" Something might be said for a point of view
+so diametrically opposed to our own, but the question of ethics has
+nothing to do with my story.
+
+The strange feature of it is that the very night before the Edict
+appeared--when the I.G. had not the slightest hint of what was in
+store for him--he dreamed of his father's father--a thing he had not
+done for years. Dressed in a snuff-coloured suit, with knee-breeches
+and shining shoe buckles, he appeared walking down the little street
+of Portadown leaning heavily upon a blackthorn stick and murmuring
+sadly, "Nobody cares for me, nobody takes any notice of me." Nobody,
+indeed?
+
+[Illustration: SIR ROBERT HART'S STABLES IN 1890.]
+
+The very next evening at a dinner party at the French Legation some
+one told the I.G. of the new honour, gazetted an hour before, and how
+an Emperor, with a stroke of his Vermilion Pencil, had deprived the
+ghost of a grievance.
+
+Equally romantic was a coincidence that happened when the I.G. was
+made a Baronet in 1893. The question of arms then coming up, he made
+all possible enquiries concerning those which his family had a right
+to use. Without doubt the Harts did bear arms in the days of William
+of Orange, when they were granted to the famous Dutchman Captain van
+Hardt who so distinguished himself at the Battle of the Boyne. But
+after his death the family grew poor; the arms fell into disuse and
+were forgotten so completely that one descendant thought they might
+have been a hart rampant, while another declared they were a sheaf of
+burning wheat.
+
+Robert Hart was not the man to grope long in a fog of mystery. He
+decided the question once and for all by submitting a blazon of his
+own choice to the College of Heralds, and his design--three fleurs
+de lis and a four-leaved shamrock--was sanctioned, as it had not been
+previously applied for.
+
+The search for the original arms was naturally given up then, but by
+the merest accident they were ultimately found. Some member of
+the family happening years afterwards to stroll through a very old
+cemetery in Dublin, curiosity or idleness led him to examine the
+tombstones. One in particular attracted his attention, perhaps because
+it was more dilapidated and tumble-down than the rest. He gently
+scraped the moss from the inscription and found that he had stumbled
+on the long-forgotten tomb of Captain van Hardt, and underneath
+the hero's name he found a coat-of-arms, half obliterated yet still
+recognizable. It showed _three fleurs de lis and a four-leaved
+shamrock_.
+
+But it must not be imagined that Robert Hart was the man to rest on
+his laurels or to regard honours as so many flags of truce entitling
+him to draw out, even for a time, of the battle of work. From 1889
+to 1903 he was deeply engaged on that very important business the
+Sikkim-Thibet Convention. The Thibetans having crossed the border into
+Sikkim, a State protected by the British, the British in return sent
+an expedition into Thibet and, since there was trouble about the
+frontier, refused to go out again. This was a very disagreeable
+predicament for China. She turned, as usual, to the man who never
+ceased labouring on her behalf, and, as usual, he rose to the
+occasion.
+
+Mr. James Hart, the I.G.'s brother, lately returned from delimitating
+the Tonkin frontier, was sent posthaste to assist the Amban, the
+Chinese Resident in Thibet. As a result of this wise choice, the
+preliminary Treaty was put through by 1890, and the Chinese Customs
+opened stations in Thibet. Three questions relative to trade, however,
+remained to be settled, and for three long years negotiations over
+these dragged on at Darjeeling.
+
+Needless to say it was a slow and often wearisome business, with the
+interest, to my mind, unfairly divided. On one side, the Thibetan
+side, there was picturesqueness enough, though not without discomfort
+too, for many a time the envoys must needs cross mountain-passes so
+deep in snow that a hundred Thibetans marched ahead treading it down,
+and not less often they must sleep in the rudest camps and eat the
+unsavoury cuisine of the country. But on the other, the Peking side,
+there was nothing but hard and dreary work, since every word that the
+Chinese Commissioners said was telegraphed back to the I.G., and then
+carefully discussed with the Yamen.
+
+No sooner was quiet restored in Thibet than anxiety about war with
+Japan began to agitate the Chinese capital. The air was as full of
+rumours as a woman of whims. One day, happening to find himself beside
+Baron Komura, the Japanese Charge d'Affaires in Peking, the I.G. half
+laughingly remarked, "So you are going to fight China after all?
+I suppose you will win." "Oh, one never knows," was the Minister's
+diplomatic reply. Strange to say the general opinion among men less
+practical and less well-informed than the Inspector-General, was that
+China would easily win a war against Japan--if it came to war--just as
+later the unanimous opinion in the Far East was that if Russia fought
+Japan, Russia must conquer.
+
+But subsequent events proved Robert Hart right. China, after a brief
+struggle, was severely beaten, and peace came as a relief. Then
+immediately the question of loans to pay off the indemnity arose.
+Two small war loans of Tls. 10,000,000 each were floated, it is true,
+during the actual hostilities, but the first big loan of L16,000,000
+was not arranged till so late as 1896.
+
+The I.G. had the matter in hand; but unfortunately, just as he was
+about to complete it, French and Russian banks offered to lend the sum
+at a cheaper rate of interest, and so it was given to them. They also
+agreed to float a second loan for L16,000,000. But at the last moment,
+either because of some hitch in the minor arrangements, or because the
+Chinese suddenly thought it might be unwise to put all their eggs in
+one basket, they turned again to Robert Hart.
+
+Late one night a Yamen messenger came clattering down the silent
+streets, the sound of his pony's hoof-beats echoing from the compound
+walls and arousing the whole quarter, there was a prodigious thumping
+on the big outer gate before a sleeping watchman could be made to roll
+out of his wadded quilts; but finally, after prolonged consultation,
+the despatch was taken in to the I.G., the messenger calmed with tea
+and a _pourboire_, and quiet once more restored. Next morning, early,
+the I.G.'s cart was at the door--a vehicle, by the way, interesting
+in itself, since it was chosen by Hung Ki, the man who liberated Sir
+Harry Parkes--and Robert Hart started for the only shop in Peking,
+ostensibly to buy toys for his children friends, as it was near
+Christmas.
+
+[Illustration: SIR ROBERT HART'S PRIVATE CART.
+
+The wheels have knobs on them to strengthen them, there are no
+springs. The carter always walks.]
+
+In those days the Legations watched his movements very closely;
+he wished them to hear that his little expedition was purely a
+pleasurable one. No doubt they did, for not a soul knew that, when
+he casually strolled into a bank near by, it was to quietly produce a
+paper from his pocket and say, as one might say "Good day,"--"I have
+here a loan agreement for L16,000,000, but I can only give it to you
+on condition that you sign immediately."
+
+Half an hour later the necessary signatures were on the document--the
+whole great matter put through. Looking back upon the success, one
+marvels at how he contrived it so rapidly that, once the news was out,
+people caught their breath with astonishment. Instinctively he must
+have felt it was a psychological moment when a man is required to take
+responsibility--to presume even on his power, and that in a moment's
+hesitation all might have been lost.
+
+In 1896 came the formal establishment of the Imperial Chinese Post
+Office--in itself the work of many a man's lifetime. Money had to
+be found for the experiment from the Customs funds first, then
+innumerable rules and regulations framed and experiments tried before
+it became a practical working institution. The I.G.'s wonderful grasp
+of detail stood him in good stead then, for a hundred details came
+daily under his notice, and he was consulted on every possible
+subject--from a design on a postage stamp to the opening of a
+new department. To him, indeed, belongs the entire credit for the
+designing and building of the greatest success of recent years in
+China--a postal service, grown beyond the most sanguine hopes,
+which not only pays its own way but is beginning to turn over some
+revenue--indirectly, of course--to the Imperial Treasury.
+
+[Illustration: THE IMPERIAL CHINESE POST OFFICE ENTRANCE ON A RAINY
+DAY IN THE 'NINETIES]
+
+Meanwhile the "five years longer" that he had privately set as the
+term of his life in China when he refused to become British Minister
+at Peking (1885) were long since passed, and five other years had
+followed them, yet he had never found it possible to return to his
+own country. Each spring he debated whether he might safely leave his
+unfinished plans, which, ranging as they did over a vast number of
+subjects, could not well be given half completed into other hands, and
+each spring some new problem claimed his attention. In 1896, however,
+he faced a harder decision than usual. The road was perhaps unusually
+open--and yet he knew that, half hidden, there were obstacles waiting
+to be met.
+
+At this crisis of indecision he decided to do what he had so often
+done before--consult the Bible. This had been a habit of his father's
+before him; in fact, his whole family had asked guidance on every
+venture they undertook, no matter how humble it might be, and the
+training of his childhood was not outgrown. He accordingly took the
+Bible lying on his desk and opened it at random one evening. There,
+truly enough, was an answer clear and unmistakable in the very
+first verse his eye lighted upon--Acts xxvii. 31: "Paul said to the
+centurion and to the soldiers, Except these abide in the ship, ye
+cannot be saved." It immediately decided him to remain in China, and
+he suffered no more from perplexity or indecision.
+
+Robert Hart was indeed deeply religious. Unlike so many men who
+have passed their lives in the East, he never absorbed any Eastern
+fatalism, nor did the lamp of his faith ever burn dimly because he
+mixed with men of other and older creeds. The Christian ideal he
+always considered the highest in the world; but once, when trying to
+live up to it, he was brought to confusion, though not through any
+fault of his own.
+
+One day, as he was leaving the gate of a certain mission where he
+had been to pay a call, a Chinese of the poorer classes, unkempt and
+dirty, came and threw an arm about his shoulders, saying, "I see you
+are also coming away from the mission, so we are brothers in Christ. I
+will accompany you on your way."
+
+The I.G. afterwards confessed that his first feeling was one of
+irritation at the man's familiarity--which amounted almost to
+impertinence--and his second, disgust at the grimy hand so near his
+collar. To summarily shake it off was a natural instinct. But, when he
+thought a moment, he clearly saw the absurdity of professing a creed
+of universal brotherhood and then, as soon as some one attempted
+brotherly familiarity, of repulsing him. Therefore he suffered the
+man's arm to remain as far as the corner of the big street, where he
+made a determined effort to get free, saying, "My way lies in this
+direction," and attempting to slip off before his companion could see
+which point of the compass "this" was.
+
+But the fellow-Christian was observant and consistent. "Oh, I will
+come with you," he said, in the tone of one doing a kindness, so the
+I.G. could do nothing but resign himself to his fate. Baronet and
+coolie made a triumphal progress down Legation Street, much to the
+amusement of the sentries on guard, and by the time he reached his own
+door the former felt a few shamefaced doubts about the advisability of
+mission methods which inculcated the equality of man irrespective of
+colour, class, and cleanliness.
+
+1899 saw the Germans take possession of Kiaochow, and the question of
+establishing a branch of the Chinese Customs there was discussed and
+settled, China finally obtaining the right to open her own Kiaochow
+Custom House, with a German staff of her own employees.
+
+This was the last important international work he undertook before
+the memorable Siege in 1900. Already the first mutterings of the storm
+sounded. The first Boxers appeared in Shantung--a little cloud
+of fanatics scarcely bigger than a man's hand. But soon they were
+spreading over all the north of China, and even spilling into the
+metropolitan province of Chihli itself.
+
+[Illustration: A GARDEN PARTY GIVEN BY SIR ROBERT HART TO GOVERNOR
+TRUePPEL (OF KIAOCHOW) AND PARTY.]
+
+
+
+
+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
+
+
+Some three weeks before the beginning of the Siege proper Peking was
+in a state of great unrest--how great no one, not even the I.G., could
+accurately judge. But as each day brought new alarms and constant
+reports of Boxer misdoings all over the city were confirmed by
+terrified eye-witnesses, it was thought wise to make some practical
+preparations for defence. The Legations were luckily provided with
+guards, whose officers, acting in concert, agreed to hold a square
+that included the whole quarter and the Customs property as well.
+Unfortunately the few troops made a pitifully thin line when they were
+spread over the area to be defended, and the Customs Staff, at the
+I.G.'s suggestion, organized themselves into a Volunteer corps, kept
+regular watches day and night, and prepared to assist generally in
+case of emergency.
+
+Indeed they did even more; with his permission they set to and
+fortified the Inspectorate compounds, turning his garden into a
+trampled wilderness. Barricades were built across what was known as
+Inspectorate Street while the I.G. stood by and refreshed the thirsty
+workers with beer from his cellar; the big gate was loopholed, the
+walls strengthened, and clumsy look-out platforms, reminiscent of
+the Siege of Troy, constructed. From these I can guess he must have
+watched--and with what feelings!--the progress of the dreadful fires
+starting over the city; must have seen, down the long straight street,
+native Christians burning like torches, and must have heard the
+fiendish shouts of "Kill!" "Kill and burn!" issuing from a thousand
+hoarse throats.
+
+The situation was terrifying enough in all conscience--yet nothing to
+what it was to be later when the handful of white men, encumbered with
+women, children and converts, were to stand against Imperial troops in
+addition to these savage hordes of Boxers, whose infinite daring, due
+to a belief in their own invulnerability, was somewhat mitigated by
+their inferior weapons.
+
+[Illustration: LADY HART.]
+
+From first to last the I.G., though no longer young, showed admirable
+coolness and courage in the face of the crisis. He sent frequent
+despatches, full of excellent and sane advice, to the Yamen. Alas!
+they went unheeded. So did the telegram he got through to Li Hung
+Chang on June 12th. This was his final effort to save a desperate
+situation, and the message ran: "You have killed missionaries; that
+is bad enough. But if you harm the Legations you will violate the most
+sacred international obligations and create an impossible situation."
+
+It did no good, unluckily; things had gone so far by this time that
+they must go still farther with inevitable motion, and whatever
+Li himself thought of the insane idea of attempting to exterminate
+foreigners, he could do nothing to stem the tide of mistaken Boxer
+patriotism.
+
+On the 13th the telegraph wires were cut; and on the 19th an ultimatum
+arrived from the Yamen giving the foreigners twenty-four hours to
+leave Peking, and offering to convoy them with Chinese troops as
+far as Tientsin. The Ministers held meeting after meeting; they were
+somewhat shaken, but, still trustful, determined to accept the Chinese
+Government's offer of an escort as far as the sea. Against this
+proposal, however, the non-diplomatic community threw the whole weight
+of its disapproval, fortunately--as things turned out--overbearing it,
+since the Chinese Government, with the best will in the world, was not
+at that moment in a position to assure the safety of any one. The very
+best proof of this, if further proof were needed, was the murder of
+Baron von Ketteler, the German Minister, on the morning of June 20th.
+
+The shock of that news filled the community with horror and
+consternation. The suddenness of the tragedy, the treachery of it,
+were appalling. Plainly no protection could be hoped for, and the same
+afternoon all non-combatants were ordered into the British Legation,
+as that was the largest compound in Peking, and the one most suitable
+for a last stand should the worst come to the worst. The I.G., of
+course, went with the rest. If it cost him anything to calmly walk
+out of the house he had occupied for years, leaving all behind him--he
+took a last look around the rooms, I remember, as though to impress
+their picture on his mind--he gave no sign, just as he showed none
+of the natural alarm which, with his responsibility for a large staff
+with wives and children, he must have felt.
+
+[Illustration: By the courtesy of "The Pall Mall Magazine"
+
+SIR ROBERT HART IN HIS PRIVATE OFFICE.]
+
+The history of the Siege proper, like the history of the Taiping
+Rebellion, has been written a hundred times. Praise and blame have
+been variously distributed; flaws picked in one another's behaviour
+by a dozen eye-witnesses, but it is not my purpose to attempt to
+arbitrate over details which each man naturally sees through his own
+glasses. Only so far as the I.G. was personally concerned with the
+events of those two unhappy months need they be touched upon here.
+
+At first the wildest confusion prevailed in the Legation.
+Misunderstandings about where a final stand should be made, doubts
+whether it should be made in Peking at all, had delayed very necessary
+preparations. There was not shelter for all the refugees, and some
+literally camped under the big _ting-erhs_ (open pavilions with roofs
+but no side walls), their hastily collected household goods lying
+around them. The Customs, however, fared better than that; they were
+given a small house, into which they packed themselves as best they
+could. The I.G., who refused to accept any special privileges, slept
+in a tiny back room and cheerfully ate the mule, which was hatefully
+coarse while it was fat and unutterably tough when it grew lean.
+Indeed, his marvellous adaptability to difficult conditions was soon
+the talk of that little company.
+
+To a man accustomed during a long life to habits regulated by
+clockwork, the jar must have been especially sharp; yet before his
+neighbours had fairly begun to wonder how he would take it, he had
+made for himself a new routine of living, and he might have been
+observed each day doing the same things at the same hours--smoking
+his afternoon cigarette as he leaned against a favourite pillar, or
+walking to and fro along a particular path--thus setting an example of
+regularity in an irregular and stormy existence.
+
+As every one expected, the Yamen soon attempted to communicate with
+him. This they did several times, throwing letters over the wall
+during the night. One enquired quite tenderly after the besieged;
+another asked him to send a message to London saying all was well with
+the Legations; a third calmly requested his advice about a ticklish
+matter of Customs business. This latter he answered in detail--just
+as if he had been in his own office--and then threw the reply over the
+wall again. It is interesting to know, by the way, that the "writer"
+who assisted him with these letters received L20 for his pains--the
+highest pay ever earned by a literary man in China at one sitting.
+
+But the message which the I.G. afterwards laughingly said was the
+most important--as far as he personally was concerned--went out of the
+Legation instead of coming into it. Addressed to no Foreign Office and
+to no Commander-in-Chief, it contained neither diplomatic nor military
+secrets. It was a domestic message pure and simple--yet sent neither
+to relative nor intimate friend. His tailor was, in fact, the man who
+received it. "Send quickly," the wire read, "two autumn office suits
+and later two winter ditto with morning and evening dress, warm cape
+and four pairs of boots and slippers. I have lost everything but am
+well. We have still an anxious fortnight to weather.--HART, Peking, 5
+August 1900."
+
+What a startling effect this message from the grave must have had upon
+people in England, who, having pictured the I.G. boiled in oil, found
+him quietly ordering clothes for a future which was still uncertain!
+As it happened his forethought was providential, for the parcel of
+warm clothing arrived in Peking on the morning of October 26th, when
+the I.G. waked to find autumn changed to winter in a night, and the
+ground thickly powdered with snow.
+
+The "anxious fortnight," he spoke of was, after all, safely weathered.
+On the night of August 13th, which happened to be fine and clear,
+the far-away guns of the relief force outside the city sounded so
+distinctly that all those in the Legation were aroused in a moment.
+The sleepers sprang to their feet; and the sentries answered the
+welcome voices of the pom-poms, careless of their own long-saved
+ammunition. Next day the relieving troops were in the city, and
+the besieged, in defiance of orders (the Chinese were still firing
+heavily), were out to meet them beyond the last barricade, and close
+by the historic water gate. No words could adequately picture the
+intense excitement of that meeting; emotion touched for a moment the
+most unemotional, and I may say, without exaggeration, that there was
+not a dry eye, blue or black, nor a voice which could give a cheer
+without a break in it.
+
+Soon after the I.G. had the dangerous pleasure of reading his own
+obituary notices, and then, very much alive again, he set to work
+once more. Not for him was a change of air and scene possible. As he
+whimsically remarked to some one who urged him to take a rest after
+the discomforts and trials of the Siege, "I have had my holiday
+already. Eight weeks of doing nothing,--what more could a man expect?"
+
+The Yamen Secretaries were seeking him out three days after the last
+shot was fired--while he still remained in the Legation--eagerly
+enquiring what he thought of the possibility of beginning negotiations
+with the Powers. How could order be brought out of chaos?
+
+[Illustration: SIR ROBERT HART AND A GROUP OF CUSTOMS PEOPLE.]
+
+As a famous Chinese, Ku Hung Ming, author of the "Papers from a
+Viceroy's Yamen," afterwards said, "All great men are optimists,
+and Sir Robert Hart was the greatest optimist we had in 1900." His
+hopefulness encouraged the officials so much that the heads of the
+Yamen soon sent word they also wished to consult him: this business,
+if there was any hope of its success, was too big to be entrusted to
+deputies. Accordingly he began a search for new offices, since the
+Legation was no place to receive such men and his own house had been
+burned down.
+
+Alas for the mournful desolation that met his eyes when he made a
+melancholy pilgrimage, as it were, to his old quarters! Nothing was
+left of the house but a few charred walls. Broken tiles lay scattered
+here and there, and he picked up the head of a pretty little Saxe
+shepherdess, of all things the most fragile and improbable to survive
+such a storm. The rest of his belongings had disappeared utterly--all
+the treasures of a lifetime had been burned or looted--priceless
+letters from Chinese Gordon and from Gladstone, the wonderful
+rainbow-silk scrolls for his Chinese patent of nobility, the
+photographs of all the famous men with whom he had been associated in
+the past--everything.
+
+He was glad enough to get two rooms behind Kierulff's shop for
+temporary living quarters. What matter if his hall door was littered
+with packing-cases, or if his sitting-room windows fronted upon waste
+ground where a herd of mules scampered? He soon learned to pick his
+way among the former; the latter, with characteristic caution, always
+respected his panes, and anyway it was not the time for finicking over
+trifles.
+
+For an office he hired a tiny little temple nestling under the walls
+of the Tartar City. It was but a small _pied-a-terre_, yet all he
+required, for the Customs Archives had been burnt, and the Deputy
+Inspector General, Sir Robert Bredon, with the Inspectorate Staff,
+left immediately for Shanghai to begin the difficult task of picking
+up the threads of Customs work there.
+
+Meanwhile the _Tajens_ (heads of boards) wrote to the I.G. asking for
+a safe convoy through the foreign lines, and he sent one of his own
+men to bring them down, since, though poor enough in other things,
+they were so rich in fears. Five came this first time, but one acted
+as spokesman to voice the grief of all over what had occurred, and to
+exonerate the Emperor and the Empress-Dowager of blame. No doubt
+the two sovereigns _were_ innocent of responsibility for what had
+happened--no one would believe it at the time, however--and _were_
+captured, as these ministers said, by "officials of another way of
+thinking, and made to appear as if approving what they disapproved and
+ordering what they really forbade."
+
+Their position is not too difficult to understand when one remembers
+that, Oriental fashion, they were shut up in their palaces, where no
+breath of impartial advice could possibly reach them, and that they
+heard only what courtiers with their own fish to fry permitted them to
+hear.
+
+The real culprits then, according to all accounts, were the officials
+who deliberately misled the Court. It was characteristic of the I.G.,
+always too big for resentment, that he could find some excuse for
+them and, though the length of his service entitled him to more
+consideration than most of those who cried out bitterly for
+"vengeance," could write in his book ("These From the Land of Sinim"),
+"In the heat of the conflict, and under the agonizing strain of
+anxiety for imperilled loved ones, many hard things have been said and
+written about the officials who allied themselves with the Boxers.
+But these men were eminent in their own country for their learning
+and services, were animated by patriotism, were enraged by foreign
+dictation, and had the courage of their convictions. We must do them
+the justice of allowing that they were actuated by high motives and
+love of country--not that these necessarily mean political ability or
+highest wisdom," The truth is--and he realized it thoroughly--that
+the real deep feeling of the Chinese people has always been to be left
+alone in peace to pursue the even tenor of their way.
+
+So enlightened a man as the great Minister Wen Hsiang--"one of the
+most intelligent and broad-minded Chinese I ever knew," as Sir Robert
+Hart sometimes said--frankly confessed this when speaking to the I.G.
+a few years after the inauguration of the Customs. "We would gladly
+pay you all the increased revenue you have brought us," were his exact
+words, "if you foreigners would go back to your own country and leave
+us in peace as we were before you came."
+
+Of course neither the wishes of the Chinese nor the question of
+Imperial responsibility or non-responsibility mattered greatly in
+1900. The nations of the world were not in a tolerant mood; they
+would, as he pointed out, care little for excuses and less for the
+Chinese anxiety about the Palace, "with its ancestral contents," or
+the Imperial Tombs. The only thing which might influence them was the
+consideration of the welfare of the Chinese people.
+
+Plans for the future must turn upon this as upon an axle. Moreover,
+to effect anything some distinguished person of high position and
+importance must come forward, and the man whom the I.G. named when he
+was asked for his advice was Prince Ching. He was the one person with
+whom the Foreign Powers would be most likely to treat, as it was to
+his influence, rumour said, that the Legations owed the merciful truce
+during the Siege. Li Hung Chang, it is true, had also been given full
+powers to negotiate with the Nations, but they looked rather askance
+at him because of two telegrams he had sent. One stating that the
+Legations had reached Tientsin in safety was a most unfortunate
+falsehood and prejudiced the world against him, more's the pity, as he
+had hitherto been considered able and powerful abroad. The other was a
+foolish request that no foreign troops should pass Tungchow--a town
+on the Grand Canal about fifteen miles from the capital. It was quite
+right and proper that, being appointed, Li should share Prince Ching's
+labours and not allow everything, criticism included, to be thrown on
+the latter alone; but the more he was discredited, the more need for
+Prince Ching to return to Peking--and quickly.
+
+[Illustration: SIR ROBERT HART AND MISS KATE CARL
+
+In the costume given her by the Empress-Dowager of China when Miss
+Carl painted her portrait for the St. Louis Exhibition.]
+
+At last the officials discovered where he was--he had fled with the
+Court but stopped _en route_--urged him to come back, and he came. I
+believe one of the first things he did was to send for the I.G., whom
+he greeted with great cordiality. "This is China's oldest friend,"
+he said to the officials standing by, "and I rely on him to help us.
+Indeed I can remember, as if it was yesterday, when we worked together
+before on the Franco-Chinese negotiations in 1885."
+
+The meeting was a memorable and decisive one. As the Chinese
+themselves knew, and as the I.G. agreed, there were but two ways of
+solving the difficulty before them. Either it must be fought out--and
+the fact that China's military strength could not arrest the steps of
+the foreign troops, and that a fort-night sufficed for them to march
+victoriously from the sea to Peking, was in itself sufficient to show
+that nothing could be hoped from the noble idea of "no surrender"--or
+at all costs some peaceful arrangement must be made.
+
+A note was accordingly drawn up requesting the doyen of the Diplomatic
+Corps to fix a day to receive the Chinese Plenipotentiaries, who
+"were ready to begin negotiations and had prepared a proposal for
+discussion," which they enclosed. A bold stroke this, and rather a
+surprise to the diplomats, who marvelled that the Chinese--injuring
+parties as they were--should have the courage--let us call it so, for
+there was truly much admirable bravery in it--to take the first step.
+
+The details of the subsequent negotiations would fill pages.
+How anxiously Li Hung Chang was waited for; how memorandum after
+memorandum was drawn up, altered, amended, discarded altogether; how
+the stricken city was gradually calmed, and traders induced to bring
+in supplies again; how the poor ladies, wives of four Emperors, who
+had been left behind in the palace almost starved to death when the
+international troops guarding the Forbidden City forbade all ingress
+and egress through the pink gates, until the I.G. saved them, in the
+nick of time, by applying to the Allied Generals, might be told at
+length.
+
+But a busy age has little patience with details, however
+romantic--suffice it to say that negotiations continued by fits and
+starts. What really complicated them was the absence of the Court! The
+I.G. frankly wrote as much to the Grand Secretary, Wang Wen Shao, and
+in so doing he only voiced the general feeling that "at such a time
+of suffering it would be well for the Emperor to be with his people."
+Prince Ching willingly testified that. Though he had been back ten
+days he had not suffered any personal indignity, and hinted that, were
+the Emperor to return, he would, of course, meet with even greater
+consideration. But the Court was obstinate. While the Palace was in
+the hands of foreign troops they would not come--and so, for the
+time, the negotiators had to get on as best they could without their
+Imperial masters.
+
+Only for a time, however. Then what persuasion had been unable to
+accomplish was brought about by a natural calamity. Famine broke
+out in the province of Shensi, and the Court suffered greatly in the
+devastated state of the country and the cramped and uncomfortable
+quarters of a Governor's yamen. Soon they were as desirous of
+returning to their capital as they had formerly been reluctant to do
+so. "Hurry up the negotiations at all costs" were the orders sent
+to the Plenipotentiaries, and hurry they did, so that by December a
+settlement was within sight, the two most difficult questions--those
+dealing with penalties and indemnities--being the last arranged.
+
+The first named long caused embarrassment to the Chinese side and
+greatly worried everybody, for there seemed no possible way to
+compromise about it. The last ultimately resolved itself into the
+simple problem not whether China would or would not pay, but what
+she would pay with. Tariff Revision was suggested as one method, the
+taxation of native opium as another. Speaking of the latter, the I.G.
+one day remarked to Prince Ching, "I lost all my memoranda about it
+when the Inspectorate was burned down." "But you have your wonderful
+memory," the Prince replied, "and you must carry it through. I count
+upon you, remember."
+
+On Christmas Eve (1900) a great meeting was held at the Spanish
+Legation--the Spanish Minister was doyen of the Diplomatic Corps at
+the time. All the Ministers then assembled to meet Prince Ching and
+Li and to hand over the final demands they had formulated. They were
+signed in French that same day, and the next telegraphed in Chinese
+word for word to the Court at Si-an.
+
+Strange to say the I.G. was not present at the meeting, and therefore
+reaped none of the kudos for his hard work. It was not for lack of
+invitation, however. The Chinese certainly urged him to come. Li Hung
+Chang, for instance, spoke continually of what he had done, and not an
+official but was sincerely grateful and would gladly have pushed him
+forward. A vainer man, a lighter character, must have yielded to the
+temptation to satisfy his vanity, but he had the strength to refuse,
+saying, "Being a foreigner, my presence would only complicate
+matters."
+
+The Court, however, did not allow his efforts to go unrewarded.
+They telegraphed another high if queer-sounding honour from Si-an.
+Thenceforth he was to be addressed as _Kung-pao_, or Guardian of the
+Heir-Apparent,--who, by the way, does not exist; not that in
+China this trifling fact makes his guardians any less important
+or honourable. The Empress-Dowager herself was well aware that the
+importance of these Peace Negotiations could not be overestimated. She
+knew that his promptness in urging the return of Prince Ching probably
+saved the dynasty--that had Count Waldersee arrived before any Chinese
+officials had taken action, it is impossible to say what might not
+have happened; and to further show her Imperial approbation she
+summoned him to a private audience on her return to Peking and said
+so.
+
+[Illustration: PEKING PEACE PROTOCOL, 1901.
+
+Left to right (seated) Secretary of Japanese Legation Baron
+d'Anthouard, Secretary of French Legation Baron (now Count) Komura,
+Japanese Minister M. Knotel, Minister for the Netherlands Marquis
+Salvago-Raggi, Minister for Italy M de Giers, Minister for Russia M.
+de Cologan, Minister for Spain Baron Czikann de Wahlborn. Minister for
+Austria M. Joostens, Minister for Belgium Baron Momin, Minister for
+Germany Sir Ernest Satow, Minister for Great Britain Mr. Rockhill,
+Minister for the United States M. Beau, Minister for France.]
+
+To him she showed her softest side, melted into kindness and
+consideration, complimented him in her velvet voice, and went so
+far as to say, when some question of the future came up, "We owe the
+possibility of a new beginning to the help you have given our faithful
+Ministers." Last of all she paid him a greater tribute still. When on
+enquiring where he lived, and being told by Prince Kung on his knees
+and in deeply apologetic tones, "Since the little accident in
+1900, when Sir Robert's house was burned, he has been living behind
+Kierulff's shop," her eyes filled with tears, and with real regret in
+her voice she said, "How can we look you in the face?"
+
+
+
+
+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"
+
+
+With the conclusion of the Peking Congress a new era began in the old
+capital. One could scarcely expect the effects of the Siege and its
+terrible aftermath to wear off at once. It was long indeed before the
+city resumed anything like a normal appearance, before people dared to
+come creeping back to their ruined shops and houses. Some, alas! found
+they had nothing to creep back to, not even ruins--for the Legations,
+determined never to be caught in the same trap a second time,
+insisted upon reserving a big area for themselves and fortifying
+it. Unfortunately those who had borne least of the heat of the day
+received the largest rewards in the newly planned Quarter, and grabbed
+most greedily and with least justice. Consideration for Chinese
+sentiments at such a time would have been almost more than human, but
+revenge carried to the point of making the I.G., because he was an
+employee of the Chinese Government, suffer for the mistakes of that
+Government, seems both unnecessary and ungenerous. This, however, was
+just what happened. His fine garden was ruthlessly chopped to pieces
+in the rearrangement, and though he did not actually lose ground, the
+long walk around the house was spoiled and he found a frowning wall
+five feet from his back windows. Moreover there was nothing he could
+do to prevent these things--the opinions of critics who accused him
+of weakness notwithstanding. These critics wanted him to shout his
+grievances aloud, to make them audible above the din of that noisy
+time. But what hope had he of being heard? The Chinese officials
+_could_ not listen and his own countrymen _would_ not, so where was he
+to turn?
+
+Nothing remained for it but to build his house on the old
+foundations--an economical plan--and try to forget about the wall near
+the back windows. The garden also was set in order. As the Psalmist
+says, "The wilderness was made to blossom," for wilderness it was.
+Judging from appearances, Chinese soldiers must have encamped there.
+They left their rice-bowls in the path and their fans under the trees.
+Probably they stayed some days and looted at leisure, then disappeared
+as suddenly as they had come, after a sharp struggle with a company
+of Boxers, for two of these patriots in full regalia--red sashes and
+rusty swords--lay dead in the long grass. Poor patriots, they owed
+their quiet graves under a barbarian's lawn to a barbarian's kindness.
+I wonder if their ghosts have a sense of humour, and if they ever
+chuckle a little over the trick Fate played on them when they were
+helpless?
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Once established again in his new-old quarters, the I.G. went back
+to his former routine of life. The band-boys, scattered by the Siege,
+returned, one having become, all of a sudden, a hero.
+
+It happened during the days immediately following the Relief, when the
+prostrate city was given up to plunderers. A company of soldiers
+chose to break into a big dwelling-house, and the Chinese inhabitants
+scampered--men and women--in wild terror. Then suddenly, in the midst
+of the confusion, a bugle call rang loud and clear on the air. The
+European soldiers, recognizing the "Retreat" and fearing a superior
+force was about to descend on them, stood not on the order of their
+going, but left at once. Yet it was no superior force after all. A
+single man by his presence of mind saved the situation--and that man
+was the I.G.'s best cornet player. Afterwards, I remember, he used to
+be pointed out to strangers at garden parties, and he had quite a deal
+of notoriety before he and his gallantry were forgotten in the daily
+round of commonplace happenings.
+
+Taking into consideration the great shock of 1900, it is wonderful how
+the I.G. could remain unaltered in all his habits, could be so unmoved
+by the changes taking place around him. The Chinese officials, for
+instance--who suddenly became as anxious for Western comforts as they
+had hitherto detested them--drove over modernized roads in carriages;
+he clung to his old-fashioned sedan chair. The majority of the
+besieged bought--or otherwise acquired loot; he never spent a penny on
+it, and never entered what the looters euphemistically liked to call
+"deserted houses."
+
+[Illustration: ANOTHER WINTER VIEW OF SIR ROBERT HART'S GARDEN,
+PEKING.]
+
+The whole community took advantage of the opening of the Temple of
+Heaven and the Temple of Agriculture, fine parks free from dust and
+the noise of the city; he never entered either. Nor at a time when the
+whole world was discussing the Winter Palace and the Forbidden City,
+did he consider that the dictates of good breeding permitted him to go
+where the rightful owners would have refused him entrance. He took his
+outings as usual either in his own garden or on the city wall, from
+which he could watch the slow rebuilding of the Legation Quarter, a
+perfect _salade Russe_ of architecture, with German gables, classic
+Venetian gateways and Flemish turrets jostling one another.
+
+This calm life continued for four peaceful years. Then he was startled
+again by a bolt from the blue. The Inspectorate of Customs was
+transferred by Imperial Edict from the Wai-Wu-Pu to the Shui-Wu-Ch'u,
+a Board specially created to control it.
+
+The real meaning of the change was not easy to fathom, but everybody
+seized the opportunity to talk at once--all the newspapers and the
+correspondents and the political experts; to criticize, to prophesy,
+to predict, to shake their heads--all but one man, the man most
+concerned. And he said nothing; he listened while the others
+authoritatively stated what he must think, what he did think, and what
+he would think later. To tell the truth he thought less of his own
+position, the prestige of which was undoubtedly affected by a move
+that turned him from a semi-political agent into a simple departmental
+head, than he did of the future of his service. Consequently, at a
+juncture when he had the best excuse for deserting a post which had
+partially deserted him, he remained to reassure outsiders as well
+as employees and to prove that radical as the Edict seemed, its real
+meaning was not half so disturbing as it appeared.
+
+[Illustration: TING'RH, OR CHINESE PAVILION, IN SIR ROBERT HART'S
+GARDEN, PEKING.]
+
+Anxiety could never have driven him away; it took insomnia to make him
+apply for the leave he so greatly needed. His brain, like Gladstone's,
+was overtaxed; the problems which he had so long considered gave him
+no rest, and by night as well as by day his too active mind thought
+and planned and considered. Rest was therefore imperative,
+and fortunately his leave was granted. At the same time the
+Empress-Dowager commanded him to an Audience. It was not the first by
+any means, as he had for the last few years always gone to the Palace
+at the Chinese New Year. But as it was typical of the others, a few
+words of description may not come amiss. He was off early in the
+morning as usual, surrounded by Palace officials mounted on shaggy
+ponies who trotted beside his sedan chair while their riders with
+shrieks and yells cleared a way for the cavalcade. The police guards
+popped out of their stations to salute him--I can tell you that hour's
+journey across the city was something in the nature of a triumphal
+progress, what with traffic airily waved aside and sentries and
+soldier-police presenting arms! At the Palace gates he alighted, and
+was met by other officials, bigger and grander, and conducted to
+the Hall of Audience. A considerable distance still remained to
+be covered; courtyard after courtyard had to be traversed and an
+artificial lake crossed in a barge before the Hall itself was reached
+and--an official having gone ahead and peeped in and announced
+his presence informally--he was shown into the presence of Their
+Majesties. Side by side on a little raised platform sat the Emperor
+and the Empress-Dowager, each with a table before them. He might have
+noticed that there were flowers on the Empress's table and none on the
+Emperor's, but that otherwise the room was not particularly large or
+imposing and very bare--without chairs, without cupboards, without
+ornamentation of any kind except the beautiful painting on the ceiling
+and the fine woodcarving on the long doors. But he had a speech
+to make--absorbing occupation--and as soon as it was over the
+Empress-Dowager was talking to him quite simply about his travels and
+asking questions about London. She shyly confessed that since her one
+and only train journey--from Si-an in 1900--she had conceived a great
+liking for travel and enjoyed seeing strange sights. Then she wished
+him a happy voyage and concluded by remarking: "We have chosen to
+give you some little keepsakes," using the word meaning a "personal
+souvenir" rather than a formal and perfunctory "present." It was
+a moment of natural excitement, and the I.G., dumb with emotion,
+received the intimation in unflattering silence. "Thank," said the
+Minister who presented him, in agonized tones; and while he stammered
+out a simple "Thank you," devoid of any conventional flourishes, the
+Minister went down on his knees and put his gratitude prettily.
+The interview was then closed; Emperor and Empress both assumed a
+Buddha-like impassivity of expression and allowed the I.G. to back
+just as if they were entirely oblivious of his presence. Such is
+the Chinese method of differentiating between the friend and the
+sovereign.
+
+[Illustration: SIR ROBERT HART AND HIS STAFF (FOREIGN AND CHINESE)
+PEKING 1902.]
+
+In the waiting-room he told his _faux pas_ to the Ministers, either
+coming from or going into the Audience Hall, and expressed his
+annoyance that the proper formula for returning thanks had slipped his
+mind when it did. They laughed heartily over the incident, and for his
+comfort told him the story of a certain man called Kwei Hsin, who had
+an even worse experience. Some time in the late 'seventies he returned
+from an audience pulling his beard, which was long and thin. He seemed
+visibly annoyed about something.
+
+"What has happened?" enquired his colleagues anxiously.
+
+[Illustration: SIR ROBERT HART WISHING MISS ROOSEVELT "BON VOYAGE" ON
+HER DEPARTURE FROM PEKING, SEPTEMBER 16, 1906
+
+On the left is admiral Hu Yue Fen]
+
+"Well," said he, "the Emperor (then little more than a child) asked me
+a question to-day which I could not answer."
+
+"And what was it?" Their minds immediately flew to knotty points
+at issue. Was it about the finances of the provinces? Could it be a
+Censor had denounced some one and enquiries were to be made?
+
+"He asked me," said Kwei Hsin slowly, "if I slept with my beard under
+the quilt or outside it, and for the life of me I could not remember,
+so I stood there dumb as a fish."
+
+Two or three days after the audience the "souvenirs" were brought to
+the I.G. by the Palace servants. In addition, they gave him a little
+surprise of their own. He found them pasting a big red placard on his
+front gate. It was their way of advertising his newest honour--the
+Presidency of a Board--and has had the sanction of society in China
+since the Flood. What if it is a little embarrassing! It would be
+worse for the newly promoted to tell his friends about his step up in
+the world himself. By this method he is spared the trouble, and while
+he theoretically knows nothing about it, the Imperial servants
+take this delicate means of making the honour known, receiving a
+substantial tip for their thoughtfulness.
+
+But the I.G., whose modesty was entirely genuine instead of
+counterfeit, was shocked at seeing himself lauded in three-inch black
+characters on a flaring red ground, and driven in desperation to
+explain that while his gratitude was unbounded, he did not want
+an admiring crowd collected on his threshold. So, much to the
+disappointment of his servants, who in China feel that their master's
+glory reflects upon themselves, the announcement was taken down.
+
+Whoever says "No man can be a hero to his own valet" is wrong, for
+the I.G. was undoubtedly a hero to his whole household--modesty
+notwithstanding. Most of his servants remained with him for thirty
+years, and at the end one and all gave him an excellent "character."
+"We have found you a very satisfactory master," said they--which
+sounds strange to us, but is the Chinese way of doing things. No
+wonder they said so. He had such a horror of asking too much from
+those he employed that he was far too lenient with them. His ear
+was too attentive to their stories, his purse too open to their
+borrowings. When their relatives died--and in China each man has an
+army of them, including duplicate mothers and grandmothers--boys,
+cooks, coolies and bandsmen rushed to "borrow" from him. I cannot
+remember hearing that one ever came to repay.
+
+At last this fact struck even the I.G., long-suffering though he
+was. "Why do you not ask me to give you this amount?" he mildly
+expostulated to the next man who came pleading for the funeral
+expenses of his brother's son's wife.
+
+"Oh," replied the fellow, pained and grieved at his master's want
+of understanding, "I couldn't do that. If I did I should lose
+'face'"--that is, prestige and standing in the community. On such a
+slender thread hangs self-respect in the Far East.
+
+The old butler, a Cantonese with the manner of a courtier, was even
+more privileged than the rest--and for the best of reasons. He
+had been with his master for almost half a century. His memory was
+wonderful, and sometimes on winter nights when he had helped to
+serve the I.G.'s solitary and frugal dinner, he would presume on his
+position, linger behind the other servants, and call up again to the
+I.G.'s mind the night in 1863--just such a bitter night as this, with
+just such a howling wind--when together they had gone to meet Gordon,
+and the sampan taking them ashore had capsized, throwing them both
+into the icy water.
+
+Occasionally then the I.G. would retaliate with reminiscences of Ah
+Fong making the Grand Tour of Europe with him in 1878--how he
+kissed his hands to the winning French chambermaids, and called out
+"Allewalla, Allewalla!" ("Au revoir, au revoir!"), or how he had
+answered the horrified ladies of Ireland who inquired about his
+duties,--"Morning time my brush master's clothes, night time my bring
+he brandy and water."
+
+[Illustration: FRONT DOOR OF SIR ROBERT HART'S HOUSE, PEKING]
+
+In this age of uninterested or inanimate "helps," a servitor like Ah
+Fong is about as rare as an archaeopteryx. Devotion and loyalty such
+as his are fast dying out of the world, but they make a pretty picture
+when one does find them, and I like to tell how the old servant
+grieved at the thought of separation from one who represented his
+whole horizon.
+
+The I.G., too, must have felt some sentiment at leaving the faces
+to which he was accustomed, the house which had grown dear in almost
+thirty years of uninterrupted solitude. It is just these associations
+which are most intangible, which sound most trivial set down in black
+and white, that often take the strongest hold upon us. Habit, the
+little old dame, creeps in one day, sits by our fire, amuses us,
+comforts us, occupies us, and--before we know it--we feel a wrench if
+we are obliged to move away.
+
+Nevertheless we must all move some time or another. Everybody
+does--even the I.G., whose going had been so often prophesied and
+again so often contradicted that he had come to be regarded as the one
+fixed star twinkling unselfishly in the heaven of duty.
+
+The morning of his going, I remember, broke fine and clear. The sky
+was beautifully blue, like an inverted turquoise bowl. The little
+railway station must have been startled half out of its wits by all
+the people flocking in. Such a thing in all its history had never
+happened before. Under the low grey roof trooped guards of honour
+sent by every nationality--all for the sake of one man who was only a
+civilian, and nothing but a private individual. There were this
+man's own nationals in the central position--a company of splendid
+Highlanders with pipers, and stretching away down the platform there
+were American marines, Italian sailors, Dutch marines and Japanese
+soldiers. And, of course, there were Chinese, no less than three
+detachments of them, looking very well in their new khaki uniforms.
+Two of the detachments had brought their bands, and the I.G.'s own
+band had come of its own accord to play "Auld Lang Syne."
+
+[Illustration: FRONT VIEW OF SIR ROBERT HART'S HOUSE.
+
+With his butler, Ah Fong, who served him for almost half a century.]
+
+As the I.G. stepped from his sedan chair at the end of the platform
+his face wore an expression of bewilderment, but only for a moment.
+Then he turned to the commanding officer, and saying "I am ready,"
+walked steadily down the lines of saluting troops while the bands all
+played "Home, Sweet Home." Just as quietly he said good-bye to the
+host of Chinese officials with whom he had been associated so long;
+then turned to the Europeans whom he had known so well, to all of
+whom he had done so many kindnesses, and none of whom could say "bon
+voyage" dry-eyed, while camera fiends "snapped" him as he shook hands
+and said last good-byes. At last he stepped on board the train and
+slowly drew away from the crowd, bowing again and again in his modest
+way.
+
+So far as his work was concerned he could go without regrets. He left
+his career behind him with no frayed edges that could tangle. He had
+fulfilled all his ambitions. He had "bought back Kilmoriarty and got a
+title too," as he promised his aunt he would while still a boy in his
+teens. He had collected an almost unprecedented number of honours,
+been decorated no less than twenty-four times, eight, however, being
+promotions in the Orders. But still that left him sixteen to wear, and
+of those sixteen, thirteen were Grand Crosses. As a matter of fact he
+never wore any of them when he could help it, and never more than one
+at a time. "I do not want to look like a Christmas tree," he would say
+in joke. This was his humility again.
+
+He certainly was humble, and he looked so. There was never the
+slightest pomp or pride about him. "A small, insignificant Irishman,"
+so some one has described him. Is he small? I dare say he is, but
+one never notices it. One notices only the long face still further
+lengthened by a beard, the domed forehead, the bright eyes, very
+inscrutable usually, very sympathetic when he chooses to make them
+so; and when he speaks, a soft voice, quiet and even-toned but often
+indistinct. Not given to demonstrativeness, he appears the same under
+all conditions--silent when depressed, silent too when cheerful; he
+may smile, but he will never laugh outright--unless called upon in
+society to make a special effort to amuse somebody. Then he does it,
+as he does all he sets out to do, well.
+
+But usually he allows other people to instruct him, listening
+patiently and giving so little hint of what he himself thinks that few
+people know him intimately and the general public stands a little
+in awe of him. What more natural? His work has been a hard
+disciplinarian, a relentless grudger of little joys; and, as is well
+known, those who make history have little time to make friends.
+
+Yet on the whole his success has been cheap as successes go. True he
+worked prodigiously--how he did work, straight on from his University
+days!--but none of his labours have been hopelessly dull, while some
+have been exceptionally interesting, and all have been flavoured with
+a pinch of romance. Further, he has had the satisfaction of filling
+his years about twice as full as other people's--of helping more men
+than most of his neighbours, and of gaining the world's respect and
+admiration.
+
+How has he done it? Shall I tell you the secret--or what he often
+laughingly said was the secret? It lies hidden in a verse which he
+wrote in his fantastic hand on the desk at which he stood for so many
+years with unremitting industry. First came two dates "1854--1908,"
+and then these lines:
+
+  "If thou hast yesterday thy duty done,
+     And thereby cleared firm footing for to-day,
+  Whatever clouds may dark to-morrow's sun,
+     Thou shalt not miss thy solitary way."
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sir Robert Hart, by Juliet Bredon
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