Sir Robert Hart Part 5

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 ma.n.u.script and made Hart start guiltily as he said, "You ask, is the sermon done. No, my brothers, it is not _done_. It is _read_. Be ye doers of the Word, not hearers only." This bit of effect at the end, so cleverly led up to, accounted for the unnaturally long discourse.

Another time, when Robert Hart was present, Dean Butcher preached from a text in the Psalms, "If I go up to the heights, Thy Presence is beside me, and if I go into the utmost depths. It is there," etc. He had subdivided the sermon into headings--preached about G.o.d in heaven and G.o.d 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 G.o.d in h.e.l.l 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 G.o.d in h.e.l.l 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 pa.s.sing postman handed him a little brown-paper parcel with Swedish stamps on it. As he had neither acquaintance nor official correspondence with Sweden or Norway, he was completely puzzled as to what it might contain. Greatly to his surprise, on opening it he found an order, the "Wasa" of Sweden and Norway, the very first foreign recognition of his international work in China. Coming as it did just at that moment, it was singularly opportune and acceptable, and ever afterwards I know it held a peculiar place in his affections, even when he received a shower of Grand Crosses from every civilized country in the world.

CHAPTER VI

BIRTH OF A SON--THE MARGARY AFFAIR AND THE CHEFOO CONVENTION--A SECOND VISIT TO EUROPE--THE PARIS EXHIBITION OF 1878

Three important things occurred in Robert Hart's life between the years 1870 and 1879. In 1873 his only son was born; 1875 was marked by the beginning of the famous Margary affair, and in 1878 he went as President of the Chinese Commission to the Paris Exhibition.

_a propos_ of the birth of his son, there was a very strange--almost what a Highlander would call an "uncanny"--sequence of dates in the I.G.'s own life. The year that he himself was born, the 20th of February--his birthday--fell on the 23rd day of the Chinese First Moon. Once more it fell on the 23rd of the First Moon in 1854, the year he came to China, and not again until 1873, when his son first opened his eyes on this best of all possible worlds. A coincidence if you like, but still a very remarkable one all the same.

In 1875 the famous Margary affair, destined to become so complicated later on, first appeared upon the stage of politics in the simplest possible form. There was one hero and one villain, with a crowd of shadowy accomplices looking over his shoulder. To this day it is not certain how many there actually were. We can distinctly follow the unfortunate hero--his name was Margary, his occupation Interpreter at a Consulate--on his journey across Yunnan to Burmah as far as Tengyueh. We know he was cruelly done to death there, but we cannot sift out truth from falsehood in the rumours that he met his death with the connivance--and perhaps even under the orders of--the provincial authorities.

The simple fact of a white man's murder was, of course, bad enough; but when that white man was an official and on a mission, it was a hundred times worse. Negotiations between the British Legation and the Chinese began immediately. On the one side heavy compensation was demanded, on the other it was argued over and delayed. Neither party would move a step forward, and presently the Yunnan outrage got hopelessly mixed with every other disputed question of the day; new demands sprang up beside old ones; both parties, as Michie says, found themselves "entangled in a perfect cat's-cradle of negotiations,"

and the Chinese in the privacy of their yamens were beginning to ask themselves gloomily, "Will the English fight unless we make full reparation?"

Would they? There was the rub. But now, the crisis being safely pa.s.sed, 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 "G.o.d 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?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: WELL NEAR THE Ca.n.a.l, BRITISH LEGATION, BEFORE 1900.]

"By all means on Tuesday. Don't forget," was the answer, and the I.G.

left the chapel with the rest of the congregation.

He noticed as he went out that Sir Thomas Wade had not been in church, which struck him as odd. Surely in a small community like Peking, where a Bishop in the pulpit was a rarity, the British Minister would have made it a point to hear him preach--unless something very unusual had occurred. Hart therefore went at once to call on Wade and see what the news might be. News? There was enough and to spare, all of the most sensational kind. Another deadlock had been reached in the negotiations. Blacker clouds than ever obscured the horizon; war was as near as flesh to bone. Luckily the I.G. saw at once that the new _contretemps_ was due rather to accident than design. A misunderstanding of Chinese despatches--which are always open to several translations--had given Wade a wrong impression of the force of their contents, and the I.G. accordingly begged permission to explain the point at issue as he saw it.

Two hours later the Minister came completely round to his view, and the critical moment was safely pa.s.sed.

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,

'G.o.d 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 Sat.u.r.day night. On Monday morning, without saying a word to Hart--or indeed to any one--Wade started off posthaste to Shanghai to "await orders from his Government." This bad news greatly upset and alarmed the Yamen. "You must follow him at once," was the order they sent the I.G., so within twelve hours he too was on his way to Shanghai, determined on making one more effort to avert the war which, like a sword of Damocles, was hanging over China's head.

He was again successful, in so far as he obtained the British Minister's consent to reopen negotiations with the Chinese. But where?--that was the question. Should they be held at Shanghai, with the Viceroy from Nanking to a.s.sist, 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 pet.i.tions in hundreds over the walls of his yamen--pet.i.tions 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 superst.i.tion and sufficient patriotism to go, which was certainly rather n.o.ble 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. rea.s.sured 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 r.e.t.a.r.d 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 doc.u.ment.

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 n.o.blest traits of human character." All of which was very pretty sentiment, and if some poetic licence got mixed in with the truth, surely the occasion justified the alliance.

Li certainly had reason to feel pleased with himself and his work. The Convention was excellent--though it might have been still better had Robert Hart had more of his own way. He wished, and the Chinese agreed, to include in it clauses relative to the establishment of a national Chinese Post Office and the opening of mints for uniform coinage throughout the Empire. But it did not suit all parties to allow one man to make too many suggestions, and so his schemes were frustrated.

Still, over and above all petty international jealousies he had scored another diplomatic triumph, and the Chinese were duly grateful to him for his share in the work. That was, after all is said, the secret of his unique position--that confidence of his Chinese employers which he never lost. Probably the real reason he kept it so well was because of his calm and reticent character, because he could never be moved to anger and impatient words. Sir Thomas Wade, on the contrary, was a man of exactly the opposite type, and his _ch'i_, better translated as excitability than anger, often increased his difficulties at a difficult time.

The I.G.'s a.s.sociation with the great Li Hung Chang by no means ceased after the Margary affair. Business in the succeeding months frequently took him to Tientsin--the nearest port, eighty miles from Peking, and the post of the Chihli Viceroy--and whenever he was there, he had a standing invitation to lunch with Li--an invitation which he very often accepted.

What greatly appealed to him about Li's household was its absolute simplicity. Instead of a wearisome array of courses, never more than two plates were served--fish, and perhaps a dish of chicken, cooked, of course, in the Chinese manner and eaten with big portions of rice.

The first was seldom touched. Li would say to his guest, "If you do not want any fish, we will send it in to the _Taitai_" (his wife, who, according to Chinese etiquette, was dining in the next room); and Robert Hart, always the smallest of eaters, would invariably answer "No," leaving the fish to go whole and untouched to Madame Li, much to her husband's delight.

One day afterwards in Peking the I.G. happened to speak with his Chinese writer about Li Hung Chang's household--praising a simplicity so rarely to be found in the yamens of the rich and powerful. There happened to be a long interval before he lunched with the Viceroy again, and when he did, he noticed to his horror that the servants were bringing in an array of dishes suitable for a feast. Shark's fins preceded expensive pickled eggs and followed choice bird's-nest soup.

What could the change mean? Simply that his complimentary remark, maimed and contorted beyond recognition by ill-informed or mischievous persons, had travelled to Li's ears, and that he had therefore determined to treat his guest with the greatest possible formality.

"You shall not have the chance to go away again and say that you have been fed like a coolie in my house," said the Viceroy proudly at the end of the banquet.

"Nevertheless, the very simplicity of your hospitality was what I most appreciated," the I.G. replied. "But if you believe that I could have made any such remark, and if you persist in altering the style of my reception, I shall not come to lunch with you again."

As if the cares of treaty making and Customs supervision, coupled with the responsibility of being unofficial adviser to the Wai-Wu-Pu, were not enough for one man, the I.G., at the request of the Chinese, undertook to supervise China's part in the international exhibitions of Europe. First came the Viennese Exhibition in 1873. He set his various commissioners of ports collecting the products of their provinces--silks, porcelains, lacquers and teas. It sounds so simple, but often what may be told in a dozen words may scarcely be done in as many months, and little less than a year of writing and planning and directing can have elapsed before all details were in order, and his four Commissioners of Customs were driving, like the Marquis of Carabbas, in a gla.s.s coach through the streets of Vienna. The Chinese spared neither pains nor expense to make a good showing, and gave a gala performance at the Opera in return for Austrian hospitality.

In 1878 came the Paris Exhibition, and to this he went himself as President of the Chinese Government's Commission. He arrived in Paris just before the Exhibition opened--just in time to be present at the great opening ceremony in fact. This was a very grand affair, but with--for him--a ludicrous climax. Coming away, he and his secretary lost their carriage in the crowd, and had to walk the whole way home, not a cab being obtainable--and this, too, in elaborate and heavy uniforms, and at the risk of being hooted by _gamins_. But by good luck, in those days gold lace and medals were so plentiful that they attracted no embarra.s.sing attention.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIR ROBERT HART IN 1878.]

Numberless functions, of course, took place in connection with the Exhibition, and scarcely a night pa.s.sed without some gigantic official reception at which two or three thousand people were present. The Minister of Education, for example, gave a magnificent _soiree_ at which the old dances, the stately minuet and the graceful pavane, were danced in splendid and appropriate costumes. Bernhardt, then at the height of her powers, recited one night at the elysee; so also did Coquelin. But to Robert Hart these "crushes" were often an ordeal.

Conventional entertainments never had a great attraction for him; besides, these gatherings were really too big for any one's comfort or pleasure; conversation was nearly impossible, and n.o.body 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts 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 ma.s.sed bands.