Sir Robert Hart

CHAPTER X. Some Quiet Years--a Change of Masters--Insomnia--a Farewell

SOME QUIET YEARS--A CHANGE OF MASTERS--INSOMNIA--A FAREWELL AUDIENCE--AN HONOUR AND ITS ADVERTISEMENT--AH FONG AND OTHERS--DEPARTURE FROM PEKING--"A SMALL, INSIGNIFICANT IRISHMAN"

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

SIR ROBERT HART

THE CANAL: THE ROUTE BY WHICH SIR ROBERT HART FIRST CAME TO PEKING

A VIEW OF OLD PEKING SHOWING CONDITION OF ROADS

A ROAD IN OLD PEKING DURING THE RAINY SEASON

SIR ROBERT HART ABOUT 1866

UNDER THE PEKING CITY WALL TOWARDS TUNGCHOW--ALONG THE GRAND CANAL

A PICNIC IN OLD PEKING--TOWARDS YUEN MING YUEN

WELL NEAR THE CANAL, BRITISH LEGATION, BEFORE 1900

SIR ROBERT HART IN 1878

OUTSIDE SIR ROBERT HART'S HOUSE BEFORE 1900

PEKING: A MESSENGER CARRYING MAILS IN THE RAINY SEASON

A SECRETARY GOING TO THE INSPECTORATE OFFICES DURING THE RAINY SEASON

STABLES OF SIR ROBERT HART IN THE RAINY SEASON

THE INSPECTORATE STREET BEFORE 1900

ENTRANCE TO THE INSPECTORATE OF CUSTOMS BEFORE 1900

SIR ROBERT HART'S BAND IN THE EARLY 'NINETIES

SIR ROBERT HART'S CHINESE BAND

SIR ROBERT HART'S STABLES IN 1890

SIR ROBERT HART'S PRIVATE CART

THE IMPERIAL CHINESE POST OFFICE ENTRANCE ON A RAINY DAY IN THE 'NINETIES

A GARDEN PARTY GIVEN BY SIR ROBERT HART TO GOVERNOR TRÜPPEL (OF KIAOCHOW) AND PARTY

LADY HART

SIR ROBERT HART IN HIS PRIVATE OFFICE

SIR ROBERT HART AND A GROUP OF CUSTOMS PEOPLE

SIR ROBERT HART AND MISS KATE CARL

PEKING PEACE PROTOCOL, 1901

A CORNER OF SIR ROBERT HART'S GARDEN: A WINTER VIEW

ANOTHER WINTER VIEW OF SIR ROBERT HART'S GARDEN

TING'RH, OR CHINESE PAVILION, IN SIR ROBERT HART'S GARDEN, PEKING

SIR ROBERT HART AND HIS STAFF (FOREIGN AND CHINESE), PEKING, 1903

SIR ROBERT HART WISHING MISS ROOSEVELT "BON VOYAGE" ON HER DEPARTURE FROM PEKING, SEPTEMBER 16, 1906

FRONT DOOR OF SIR ROBERT HART'S HOUSE, PEKING

FRONT VIEW OF SIR ROBERT HART'S HOUSE

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, Titian-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

EARLY YEARS

Robert Hart began his romantic life in simple circumstances. 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 God 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 Saturday 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, passed his hand carefully over the bumps 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 title too." Of course she laughed at him quietly, thinking to herself how time and circumstances 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 title, 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 circumstances.

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.

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