Sir Robert Hart Part 1

Sir Robert Hart.

by Juliet Bredon.

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, t.i.tian-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 circ.u.mstances. 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 G.o.d 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 Sat.u.r.day 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, pa.s.sed his hand carefully over the b.u.mps 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 t.i.tle too."

Of course she laughed at him quietly, thinking to herself how time and circ.u.mstances 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 t.i.tle, 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 circ.u.mstances.

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 cla.s.s, 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 a.s.sembled; 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 pa.s.sed 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 b.u.t.t."

The result was that at fifteen he was ready to leave the school the first boy of the College cla.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed 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 amus.e.m.e.nts 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 10 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 G.o.d."

In 1853 Hart was ready to pa.s.s 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 cla.s.s who had shown marked ability and knowledge of their subject at the "pa.s.s" 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 pa.s.s 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 cla.s.s.

"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 'pa.s.s' that I wrote your name on the first sheet, and n.o.body else's--as n.o.body 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 15 for this subject, a gold medal and 15 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 compet.i.tive 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.