Sir Robert Hart Part 4

CHAPTER V

ORDERED TO LIVE IN PEKING--"WHAT A BYSTANDER SAYS"--A RETURN TO EUROPE--MARRIAGE--CHINA ONCE AGAIN--THE BURLINGAME MISSION--FIRST DECORATION--THE "WASA" OF SWEDEN AND NORWAY

When his share in the arrangements for the disbandment of "The Ever-Victorious Army" was completed, the I.G. received a second order directing him to live at Peking. In those days Peking was the very last corner of the world. Eighty miles inland, not even the sound of a friendly ship's whistle could help an exiled imagination cross the gulf to far-away countries, while railways were, of course, still undreamed of.

The only two means of reaching the capital were by springless cart over the grey alkali plains, or by boat along the Grand Ca.n.a.l.

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 n.o.bly 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 a.s.sorted 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 pa.s.sers-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 munic.i.p.al 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: UNDER THE PEKING CITY WALL TOWARDS TUNGCHOW--ALONG THE GRAND Ca.n.a.l.]

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 sh.o.r.es 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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed from mouth to mouth. No more obstinacy, no more hesitation; all of them clamoured to sign, willing, even eager to yield to any demand that a man gifted with the supernatural power of taking out his eye and replacing it at pleasure, might make.

On his return from Formosa the I.G. wrote a famous paper called "Pang Kwan Lun" ("What a Bystander Says"), full of useful criticisms and suggestions on Chinese affairs. Some were followed, others were not, but he had the satisfaction of hearing from the lips of the Empress-Dowager herself--when she received him in audience in 1902--that she regretted more of his advice had not been taken, subsequent events having proved how sound and useful it all was.

In 1866, having worked twelve years in China--seven of those years for the Chinese Government--Robert Hart felt a very natural desire to see his own country and his own people again. He therefore applied for leave, and was granted six months--none too long a rest after the strenuous work he had done.

Just before starting he said to the Chinese, "You will soon be establishing Legations abroad. Do you not think that my going will be an excellent opportunity for you to send some of your people to see a little of the world?" Yes, they agreed it would be; but--though they never told him so--I think the older conservative generation had grave doubts whether the adventurous ones would return alive. Europe was then a _terra incognita_. There might easily be pirates in the Seine and cannibals in Bond Street, not to mention the hundred mysterious dangers of the great waters and the fire-breathing monsters that traversed them.

Well, in the end, the prejudices melted and the party started, chaperoned by the I.G. Five in all there were, a certain Pin Lao Yeh, an ex-Prefect, his son and three students from the Tung Wen Kwan or College of Languages. Old Pin Lao Yeh, being the senior, wrote a book about his experiences, describing all he saw for the benefit of his timid homekeeping countrymen, and giving careful measurements of everything measurable--the masts of the steamers, the length of the wharves, the height of the Arc de Triomphe, as if in some mysterious way statistics could prove a prop to the faint-hearted. Of the four lads in the "experiment," two afterwards filled high diplomatic posts. A certain Fang I was made Charge d'Affaires in London and later Consul-General in Singapore, while Chang Teh Ming was made Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James.

The voyage home was uneventful, the little party's first adventure coming at their last port. Here the Customs had to be pa.s.sed. 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, "Pa.s.se en amba.s.sade!"

Accordingly the "mission" pa.s.sed--in true Chinese style. The first man by had a dried duck over his shoulder, the next a smoked ham, the third a jar of pickled cabbage, none too savoury, while all the attaches and servants were equally weighted down by pieces of outlandish baggage from which nothing in the world would have induced them to part, since nothing in the world could have replaced them in the markets of the West.

From Ma.r.s.eilles 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 pa.s.sed the Customs in London. What a difference from Ma.r.s.eilles! About sixty pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.s."

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 d.i.c.k 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 antic.i.p.ation 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, gla.s.s 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 lat.i.tude 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, paG.o.das 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 b.a.l.l.s of golden, fruit, overhung its grey walls.

The original construction in semi-foreign style from plans by the early Jesuit Fathers was doubtless still easy to trace; an ornate facade brought unexpected memories of Versailles, while on crumbling walls old European coats-of-arms, carved, for the sake of their decorative beauty, beside Oriental dragons and phoenixes, remained to surprise and delight the eye.

Unluckily business too often stood in the way of pleasure, for the 'sixties were very busy years. China was just beginning to realize that she could no longer remain in peaceful self-sufficiency; intercourse with foreign nations she must have, willing or no; that meant drastic changes--changes in which the I.G.'s advice would be valuable. Thus circ.u.mstances 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A PICNIC IN OLD PEKING--TOWARDS YUEN MING YUEN.]

Much of this advisory work, too, was of the most delicate nature: some involved intricate dealings with several Powers having conflicting interests. The slightest false move would often have been sufficient to snap the frail thread of negotiation. It is not to be wondered at if he made some mistakes--he would have been scarcely human otherwise--but as a rule his tact and energy carried to a successful issue whatever he began.

"What is your secret power of settling a difficult matter?" a friend once asked him. "Whenever I deal with other people, and especially with Chinese," was the answer, "I always ask myself two questions: what idea that I do not want them to have will my remark suggest to them, and what answer will my remark allow them to make to me?"

The habit of deliberating before he made a statement grew upon him, as habits will, exaggerated with time, and provided an excuse for at least one _bon mot_. A certain French Professor whom he had brought out with him for the Tung Wen Kwan once went to interview his chief.

"Well," said his colleagues on his return. "What did the I.G. say about such and such a thing?" The Frenchman shook his head ruefully: "He rolled the answer back and forth seven times, and then he did not make it." Probably the I.G. had learned by experience that a person can seldom pick up a hasty speech just where he dropped it.

Another time a very charming lady went up to him at a soiree with a rose in her hand. "May I offer you my boutonniere?" said she, smiling.

The mere fact of a question having been asked him suddenly put him instinctively upon his guard; an uncommunicative look spread over his face, and to her horror and his own subsequent amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 gla.s.s 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."