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 theFireflyto 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—theFireflyhad 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—theirsoldiers, who had foughthim, 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 rôle 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 theywerein, 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 £3,000 (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 hewouldaccept. "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.
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 THEGRAND 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 aterra 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 altogetheren 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 theTaitai[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 theTaitaiwould 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 onebon 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 notdone. It isread. 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.
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.
À proposof 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 yamêns 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 newcontretempswas 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 Yamên. "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 yamên—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 hisch'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 theTaitai" (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 yamêns 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 bygamins. 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 magnificentsoiréeat 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 Élysée; 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 Maréchale 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.