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 Chargé 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 attachés 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
façade 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 soirée with a
rose in her hand. "May I offer you my boutonnière?" 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.