Mediating Empire: An English Family in China, 1817-1927 9781912961030

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MEDIATING EMPIRE

Renaissance Books Series Imperialism in East Asia

Edited by Robert Fletcher University of Warwick

& Tehyun Ma University of Sheffield

Mediating Empire An English Family in China 1817–1927

Œ

by

Andrew Hillier

Renaissance Books Imperialism in Asia series: ISSN 2633-3007.Volume 1 MEDIATING EMPIRE AN ENGLISH FAMILY IN CHINA 1817-1927

First published 2020 by RENAISSANCE BOOKS P O Box 219 Folkestone Kent CT20 2WP Renaissance Books is an imprint of Global Books Ltd ISBN 978-1-912961-02-3 [Hardback] ISBN 978-1-912961-03-0 [eBook] © Andrew Hillier 2020 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Set in Bembo 11 on 11.5pt by Dataworks Printed and bound in England by CPI Antony Rowe Ltd., Chippenham, Wilts

To the family

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Contents Œ

Plate section faces page 122

Editors’ Preface Acknowledgments / Use of Names List of Illustrations List of Abbreviations Hillier Family Tree Medhurst Family Tree Map of Principal Locations of the Hillier & Medhurst Families, 1817–1927 Map of the Chinese Railway network, 1909 Introduction: Family, China and the British World

ix xi xiii xv xvii xviii xix xx xxi

Part 1: 1817–1860 Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4

Preparing for Entry Opening the Treaty Ports Colonising Hong Kong Strong Wives

3 29 54 78

Part 2: 1857–1927 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9

Early Influences, Early Careers The New Imperialism Intimate Empire Reform and Revolution, War and Withdrawal Conclusion

109 148 184 220 262

--

Time-line Bibliography Index

269 277 305 vii

Imperialism in East Asia Volume 1

Mediating Empire An English Family in China 1817-1927

Preface Œ

THE YEARS BETWEEN 1815 and 1920 were ones of profound change in Britain, in China, and in the relationship between them. As the three generations of one family at the centre of this book knew only too well, the recently established British presence in China became increasingly involved in the politics, economics and finances of China’s faltering imperial regime. The British presence and consequence peaked during the Boxer crisis, but was eclipsed within decades by the rising force of Chinese nationalism.’ Andrew Hillier’s book covers this remarkable period of change in the relations between China and Britain, but is also a welcome addition to the literature on empire and the family. In this book, family emerges as something greater than the sum of its parts – as a body of knowledge and, in the context of British informal empire in East Asia, of ‘best practice’; an interface between Britain and China, public and private, interests and ideals, and commerce, faith and diplomacy. In the case of the Medhurst/Hillier family, that interface worked to promote three traits in particular: evangelism (and its ‘underlying tenets of commitment and diligence’); an aptitude for the Chinese language; and what the author terms ‘the development of a cultural sensitivity towards China’. As Hillier explains, these particular family traits (just as much as family connections) – acquired and relayed through experiences and ix

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memories – proved to be particularly conducive to getting on amidst the compromises and veiled sovereignty of informal empire and the treaty port world. At the same time, Mediating Empire makes it plain that the relationship between family and empire was never instrumental, and seldom neat, tidy or convenient. It could invite accusations of nepotism, and closed minds. Family is about building connections (the author offers us glimpses of the role of ‘calling’ in deepening and extending family networks), but it is also about the drawing up of lines – most obviously, in this case, between Britons and Chinese. And empire could be brutal to families: separating couples, exacerbating risks, refusing permission for a diplomat and brother to travel to console a bereaved sister, instructing a husband to cut short attempts to resolve a failing marriage, and even, at the end, exacerbating sibling rivalries. We can only really get at the variety and significance of these tensions through close, detailed studies such as this one – and this is Hillier’s signal achievement. As such, it forms part of the ongoing work of historians of imperialism to connect that obtuse, effervescent concept of an ‘official mind’ – a concept Hillier still finds useful – to a better understanding of empire’s lived realities on the ground. In exploring this history, Hillier makes effective use of a great variety of sources, including the rich private materials now dispersed among the family – and arranged by genealogists in the past. As this book’s author reveals, the Hillier Collection contains within it many previous attempts to give shape, form and order to the messiness of people’s lives, careers and relationships, whether Eliza Hillier’s black-ribbon notebook, cuttings books, Eleanor Hillier’s journal, or a ‘Kiplingesque’ collection of illustrated reminiscences: each of them replete with their own narratives, recollections, euphemisms and acts of commemoration. As such, Mediating Empire is not merely a contribution to the important literature on family and empire and on Britain’s changing position in a changing China. Although it is not the primary aim of this book, it also challenges us to think about the evolving relationship between the development of family archives and the writing of imperial history today. Robert S.G. Fletcher and Tehyun Ma Oxford & Sheffield February 2020

Acknowledgments Œ

FOLLOWING THE DEATH of Sir Walter Hillier in 1927, his nephew, Harold Drummond Hillier, inherited a trunkful of family papers which were supplemented from other sources over the ensuing years. A keen genealogist, Harold (my grandfather) compiled a family chronicle, stretching back to the early 1700s. This provided me with an invaluable starting-point for the case-study that follows, which examines the relationship between family and empire. The papers have now been distributed amongst a number of Harold’s descendants and to them and many other members of the family, who have allowed me to draw on material in their possession (to which I refer, collectively, as ‘the Hillier Collection’), I am extremely grateful: in particular, Michael Hillier, the principal custodian, who has also painstakingly digitised the substantial photograph collection, Caroline Morris (née Hillier), Anna-Clare Hillier, Andrew and Rosemary Ennis, Sue Osman, Fiona Dunlop, Jennifer Peles, John Holliday and James M’Kenzie-Hall. Using one’s own family for the purposes of an academic study can be problematic and this project could not have got started, let alone been completed, without the support and encouragement of Robert Bickers, who courageously, if rashly, agreed to take me on as a superannuated student at the University of Bristol and, together with the insightful Jonathan Saha, guided me through my Ph.D.1 Although my debt will be clear in what follows, it should not be assumed that the content reflects their views. It was Jim Hoare, who first saw the potential in this material and has been my mentor for many years, making numerous suggestions as to how it should be approached and commenting on an earlier draft, whilst also introducing me to my publisher, the ever-patient Paul Norbury.Thanks also to the anonymous peer reviewers and to the general editors of this new series, Rob Fletcher and Tehyun Ma, 1

Andrew Hillier, ‘Three Brothers in China: A Study of Family in Empire’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Bristol, 2016). xi

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for their helpful comments and to John Carr for the family trees and Nick Nourse for the map on page xix. To the many libraries and archives and their unfailingly helpful staff, I also owe a huge debt: in particular, the London Library, the British Library, the National Archives, Kew, the archives of HSBC, London (Claire Twinn), Special Collections, Queens University, Belfast (Deirdre Wildy), the Archives of the School of Oriental and African Studies, and Historical Photographs of China, University of Bristol (Jamie Carstairs). The project has taken a long time to reach fruition and I can only apologise if I have omitted anyone who has helped along the way, but the following – academics, archivists, family historians and fellow travellers – deserve special mention, Terry Bennett, Marilyn Bowman, Jonathan Clennell, John Carroll, Stephen Davies, Jenny Huangfu Day, Jane Findlay, Michel Houde, Simon Landy, Emily Manktelow, Chris Munn, Robert Neff, Ena Niedergang, Robert Nield, Steve Parsons, Jeremy Parrott, Alex Thompson, Kate Thompson, Helen Wang, Joy Wheeler and Gina Worboys. However, it is my own family – Geraldine Morris, Diana and Edward – that I must thank most of all, for their, almost, unflagging interest, their constant support and their constructive if, at times, forceful, criticism. USE OF NAMES

With so many of the main characters bearing the same surname, first names have to be used, and, even then, there can be problems – respected academics have, for example, sometimes confused the two Walter Henry Medhursts – so the terms, ‘senior’ and ‘junior’, occasionally have to be inserted. Chinese names give rise to their own problems, given the difference in spelling today from the WadeGiles system in use at the time. With one or two exceptions, I have used the Hanyu Pinyin system of romanization, whilst inserting the original spelling when the name appears for the first time.

List of Illustrations Œ

Save where otherwise stated, the images are in the Hillier Collection, courtesy of Historical Photographs of China https://www.hpcbristol.net/ collections/hillier Page references indicate where the image is discussed in the text. 1.

2.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16.

Walter Henry Medhurst, water-colour by W.T. Strutt, commissioned by the LMS. 1816, cf. p.82. © CWM. Council for World Mission archive, SOAS Library, CWM/LMS/01/09/01/ Mr Medhurst in conversation with Choo-Tih- Lan. Based on a painting by G. Baxter, this forms the frontispiece to Medhurst’s China: Its State and Prospects (1838), cf. p. 21-2. Pagoda, an engraving by G. Baxter, from the opening page of Medhurst’s China, cf. p.20. Charles Batten Hillier, c.1852. The entrance to the Bogue, April 1841, water-colour, attributed to Charles Hillier, cf. p. 57. Eliza Hillier, c. 1852-1855. Obelisk and head-stone of Dr Walter Medhurst’s grave, Abney Park Cemetery, London, 2018, cf. p.105. Betty Medhurst, c 1873. Sir Walter Medhurst, c. 1884. Martha Saul, early 1880s. Student interpreters and other legation staff, Peking, 1869, cf. p.122. Legation staff, including the British Minister, Sir Thomas Wade, Peking, 1879, photograph by Lai Fong (Afong Studio), cf. p.128. Lydie Alston Hole, 1877. The grave of Lydie Alston Hillier, Pahsienjao (Baxianqiao) Cemetery, Shanghai, cf. p.193. © Original, Edward Bangs Drew Collection, Harvard- Yenching Library, Harvard College Library, Harvard University. Walter and Clare, Harry and Annie Hillier, 1878. Lunch party given by the Viceroy of the two Kiangs, attended by Harry Hillier, 1903, cf. p.172. The names of all those attending are

xiii

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17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

MEDIATING EMPIRE

listed on the mount, see Hi- s028, https://www.hpcbristol.net/collections/hillier Harry Hillier with Chinese officials, Jiujiang, 18 December, 1904, cf.p. 172. Chinese Post Office, with sedan chair and bearers, Jiujiang, December 1904. On the caption, Harry Hillier has written, ‘My official chair and bearers with official servants waiting in the garden for me to go on a round of official calls’, cf. pp.172-3. Tea on the lawn, Dennartt, Shanghai, c. 1905, cf.p.208. A sitting-room in Dennartt, Shanghai, c.1905, cf. p.208(n.78). The tablet presented to Harry Hillier in 1889, inscribed⃝⿕⅐ 㯪, p.209. The Drummond family, with Harry and Guy Hillier, Shanghai, 1 January 1890, p.210. The Commissioner’s House, Mount Kellett, Hong Kong, c. 1896, p.211 Harry and Maggie Hillier with children, Hong Kong, c. 1897, p.211. Guy Hillier, late 1890s. Ada Hillier, late 1890s. Guy’s and Ada’s children, Sussex, c.1910, cf. p.233. Guy Hillier with Hong Kong Bank staff, 1891, cf. p.146. Guy Hillier with Hongkong Bank staff, c.1898, cf. p. 157. Ella Richard with Guy Hillier and Hong Kong Bank staff, c. 1919 cf. p.249. Sir Walter Caine Hillier, KCMG, CB, c. 1906. Lady Marion Hillier, c. 1906, cf.p.226. Harry and Maggie Hillier, Burnt Oak, Waldron, Sussex, 1913, cf. p.240. Walter and Marion Hillier with Maudie Swindells, Gerald Hillier and Harold Hillier’s family, The Oaks, Bracknell, 1927, p.258. ‘The Aunts’: Florrie Irwin, Eddie Brown, Ella Hillier, Cissie Thornton and Agatha Maitland-Addison (née Swindells), taken at St John’s Wood Church, London, at the wedding of Ann Murray (Cissie’s grand-daughter) to Donald Johnson, 28 July 1962.

List of Abbreviations Œ

B&CC CCR CCR CMC DAB EIC IG LMS NCH QUB TNA

British and Chinese Corporation Chinese Central Railways Chinese Central Railways Chinese Maritime Customs (Imperial Maritime Customs) Deutsch-Asiatische Bank East India Company Inspector-General (of Chinese Maritime Customs) London Missionary Society North China Herald Queen’s University, Belfast, Library Special Collections The National Archives, Kew

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Map of the Chinese Railway network, 1909, prepared for the prospectus for the Huguang Loan (see p.177) © HSBC Group Archives

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Introduction: Family, China and The British World Œ

MEDIATING EMPIRE

ON 12 M AY 1846, Eliza Medhurst set off by boat from her family home in Shanghai, accompanied by her father, the missionary, Dr Walter Medhurst. She was on her way to Hong Kong to meet her fiancé, Charles Batten Hillier, soon-to-be appointed the colony’s Chief Magistrate. Aged seventeen, she was, as she wrote to her younger sister, Toddles, ‘miserable as a salt herring’.1 Married two weeks later, she and Charles would spend the next ten years in Hong Kong, before moving to Bangkok, where he took up his appointment as Britain’s first consul to Siam. Within months, he was dead and Eliza was making her melancholy way back to England. That same year, her parents also left China, after spending just under forty years in East and Southeast Asia. Of her immediate family, only her brother, Walter Medhurst (junior), remained, having been recently appointed consul in Foochow (Fuzhou). Three of Charles and Eliza Hillier’s five children – Walter, Harry and Guy – would later make their lives in China, serving respectively in the China Consular Service, the Imperial Maritime Customs (later the Chinese Maritime Customs, ‘the CMC’) and the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank.2 Drawing on that history, archival material and a wealth of private papers, this case-study explores the relationship between family and empire in the context of Britain’s presence in China in the long nineteenth century. It argues that family developed an agency that went beyond that of its individual members and provided a social and cultural mechanism for mediating Britain’s imperial power and authority. It did so by forging a collective 1

2

Letter, Eliza Medhurst to her sister, Martha Medhurst, written ‘On Board the Mazeppa’, 12 May 1846. For the originals and transcripts of her letters, see Correspondence of Eliza Hillier and family, SOAS Archives, GB 102 MS 381124. The Bank is hereafter called the Hongkong Bank, as it was known at the time. xxi

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mind that informed its approach to China, facilitating that presence and building connections and networks that gave substance and identity to the expanding British World. Family, both in its nuclear form and as a social structure, has long been recognised as a fertile area for inter-disciplinary examination, with Katherine A. Lynch arguing that ‘the family as a group and as a set of discrete individuals has both a private (or intimate) and a public face’ and that ‘understanding the family as a mediator between the lives of individuals and larger communities’ can help us explore the social history of the Western world in richer detail.3 More recently, Catherine Hall has taken this further by analysing, through her study of Thomas and Zachary Macaulay, how ‘the outer world was taken in and the inner world projected into wider social practices and institutions’. But, whilst, for the Macaulays, ‘family was the glue of nation and empire, holding individuals and societies together’, I take this further and suggest that, through this mutually constitutive relationship, family was a key enabler of Britain’s imperial presence in China on both a public and private level.4 Although there have been many studies of empire families, there have been remarkably few of British families in China.5 As P.D. Coates said unashamedly in his seminal work on the China Consular Service, ‘it is a book about men … in alien surroundings… and of the way they behaved in most abnormal conditions’. Of family life, he continues, ‘little can be learned … for some time there seems to have been a taboo on despatches acknowledging in plain English the very existence of wives and children…through the obscurity, shadowy wives can be discerned 3

4

5

Katherine A. Lynch, ‘The Family and the History of Public Life’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 24 (1994), pp. 665–684, quotes at p. 674 and 665; see, generally, Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, rev. ed. with Introduction, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850 (London: Routledge, 2002) and Leonore Davidoff, Thicker Than Water: Siblings and Their Relations, 1780–1920 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Catherine Hall, Macaulay and Son: Architects of Imperial Britain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), pp. xviii and 336. See, for example, Margaret Macmillan, Women of the Raj (London: Thames and Hudson, 1988), Elizabeth Buettner, Empire Families: Britons and Late Imperial India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), Vyvyen Brendon, Children of the Raj (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005), Emily J. Manktelow, Missionary Families: Race, Gender and Generation on the Spiritual Frontier (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013). For a general survey of the field, see Esme Cleall, Laura Ishiguro, Emily J. Manktelow, ‘Imperial Relations: Histories of Family in the British Empire’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 14 (2013), pp. 1–6.

INTRODUCTION

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in prematurely failing health or dying painfully young’. And when this occurred, as it did all too frequently, particularly in child-birth, official correspondence would wrap the event up in ‘curious circumlocutions... As for the children … one cannot discern even dimly how many survived infancy, at what stage they were sent home, and what happened to them when they got there ...’6 This tight-lipped masculine tone is in keeping with contemporary memoirs and biographies that were written by and about Britons in China, and that made little or no mention of wives and children. Although Henrietta Alcock, the first wife of the then British Consul to Shanghai, Sir Rutherford Alcock, was an accomplished water-colourist, her husband’s biographer makes no mention of this and refers only to her death in March 1853, when, as he says, Alcock’s ‘loving helpmeet was snatched from his side …, the calm exterior was little disturbed’.7 Similarly, of the forty years that W. Meyrick Hewlett spent in China as a consular official, the only reference to his private life in his memoirs is a passing remark that he was married and that, on one occasion, he had to travel across China with ‘wife, governess, two children, cockatoo and forty tons of luggage’. We are not even told his wife’s name and, whilst the reason was no doubt to safeguard her privacy, the effect was to write her out of a story in which she, and so many others like her, had played a significant role.8 This tone is also reflected in Catherine Ladds’ description of the CMC, which provides an invaluable portrait of the all-male staff but says little about their family life.9 6

7

8

9

P. D. Coates, The China Consuls: British Consular Officers, 1843–1943 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. vii and pp. 99–100; for the changing position in the 1900s, see p. 443. Alexander Michie, Sir Rutherford Alcock: The Englishman in China during the Victorian Era as illustrated in the Career of Sir Rutherford Alcock (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1900), Vol. 1, p. 158. W. Meyrick Hewlett, Forty Years in China, (London: Macmillan & Co, 1943), pp. 49 and 78. There is some discussion of family life in Isidore Cyril Cannon, Public Success, Private Sorrow: The Life and Times of Charles Henry Brewitt-Taylor (1857–1938): China Customs Commissioner and Pioneer Translator (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009), pp. 189–195, but it is hampered by the lack of available material; see also Donna Brunero, ‘“Ponies, Amahs, and All That …”: Family Lives in Treaty Port China’s Treaty Ports’ in Donna Brunero and Stephanie Villalta Puig (eds), Life in Treaty Port China and Japan (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 21–44. Catherine Ladds, Empire Careers: Working for the Chinese Customs Service, 1854–1949 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), seriatim and see especially pp. 8–12, 49–52 and 130–140.

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If this reflects the male perspective, there is a body of literature, written by women, which at least contains some reference to family life – memoirs by the wives of officials and missionaries,10 letters home, such as those from Dr Lockhart’s wife, Kate (referred to in Chapter 4) and the missionary wife, Jane Edkins, bursting with enthusiasm shortly after her arrival,11 journals of women travelling out of necessity and those in search of adventure and exotica.12 Mary Tiffen has written a study of ‘the Carrall Women’ and their relationship with the long-standing Inspector-General of the CMC, Sir Robert Hart, Susannah Hoe has provided a portrait of western women in Hong Kong, they figure in contemporary novels about the China Coast world and in Frances Wood’s description of treaty port life and, if only indirectly, in works about Chinese women, most famously, those of Mrs Archibald Little (also known as Alicia Bewicke), who campaigned strenuously against foot-binding.13 Although very different, there are also the moving, and at times extraordinary, accounts of the experiences of women and children, both in Peking and elsewhere, at the time of the 10

11

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13

See, for example, Lady Susan Townley, My Chinese Note Book (London: Methuen & Co,1904), describing her two years in Peking during her diplomat husband’s posting to the Legation, Mrs Thomas Francis Hughes, Among the Sons of Han: Notes of a Six Years’ Residence in Various Parts of China and Formosa (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1881), a vivid account by Hughes’ first wife, Julia, of the peripatetic life of a Customs’ family, and Lucy Soothill, A Passport to China: Being the Tale of Her Long and Friendly Sojourning amongst a Strangely Interesting People (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1931), being an account of her life as the wife of the famous missionary and Sinologue, William Soothill, in and around Wenzhou, Zhejiang. A.P. Hughes, The Lockhart Correspondence: Transcripts of Letters To and From Dr William Lockhart (1811–1896) and his family, 1839–1864 (Marlborough, England: Adam Matthew Digital, 2007), Jane R. Edkins, Chinese Scenes and People with Notices of Christian Missions … in a Series of Letters From Various Parts of China (London: James Nisbet and Co., 1863). See, for example, Hannah Davies, Among Hills and Valleys in Western China. Incidents of missionary work, with an introduction by Mrs Isabella Bishop (London: S. W. Partridge & Co, 1901), Isabella Bird, The Yangtze Valley and Beyond (London: John Murray, 1899) and Constance Fredereka Gordon Cumming, Wanderings in China (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1886). Susannah Hoe, The Private Life of Old Hong Kong (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) and Chinese Footprints: Exploring Women’s History in China, Hong Kong and Macau (Hong Kong, Roundhouse (Asia), 1996), Lise Boehm, China Coast Tales (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh Limited, 1898), Frances Wood, No Dogs and Not Many Chinese: Treaty Port Life in China, 1843–1943 (London: John Murray, 1998) and Elizabeth Croll, Wise Daughters from Foreign Lands: European Women Writers in China (London: Pandora, 1989), pp. 23–62; see also pp. 63– 101.

INTRODUCTION

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Boxer Uprising.14 Together with photographs and the occasional sketch-book, these provide glimpses of family life in treaty port China and Peking before the outbreak of the First World War.15 However, we need to go further and examine how family operated as a dynamic social unit, how it inter-wove public and private lives and how, through its intimate practices, it sustained the British presence in treaty port China and gave it its particular character; in short, how family mediated empire.That is the purpose of this study. From the early 1840s, Western families began arriving in China and, although some came only as sojourners, many established dynasties, particularly in colonial and quasi-colonial institutions. According to Coates, in the consular service, ‘for some years after 1843, nearly all recruits were appointed in recognition of services rendered in China by their relatives’. George Tradescant Lay, for example, who entered Governor Henry Pottinger’s service in Hong Kong in 1841, had four sons, who pursued careers in the consular and customs service, two of whom also contracted empire marriages:William, who married the daughter of a China missionary, had sons in the consular and customs service and a daughter who married a Japanese consular official, and his brother, Horatio Nelson Lay, who became the first official Inspector-General of Customs, married the daughter of the well-known missionary and Sinologue, Dr James Legge. Of the two Alabaster brothers, Chaloner joined the consular service in the mid-1850s and married the daughter of a surgeon in the Customs, with their son becoming Hong Kong’s Attorney-General, whilst Harry’s son joined the Customs.16 Hart brought a number of his own relations into the CMC and was keen to encourage other family connections, the Littles being a prime example.17 Such families developed an approach and set of cultural practices which passed 14

15

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For example, Mary Hooker, Behind the Scenes in Peking (London: John Murray, 1910) and see generally, Susannah Hoe, Women at the Siege: Peking, 1900 (Oxford: Holo Books, The Women’s History Press, 2000). For photographs, see, for example, the pictures of the Customs Man, Thomas Francis Hughes and his Second Wife and Family https://www.hpcbristol.net/ collections/hughes-thomas, accessed 1 November 2019, particularly those showing their home life in the treaty ports. Coates, China Consuls, pp. 73–74 and appendix II, A.C. Hyde Lay, Four Generations in China, Japan and Korea (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1952); see also Charles Drage, Servants of the Dragon Throne: Being the Lives of Edward and Cecil Bowra (London: Peter Dawnay, 1966). John K. Fairbank, Katherine Frost, Bruner, Elizabeth Macleod Matheson (eds), The I.G. in Peking: Letters of Robert Hart, Chinese Maritime Customs, 1868–1907

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down the generations, giving a sense of permanence and stability to the British presence in these ‘alien surroundings’ and ‘abnormal conditions’.18 To analyse this process, we first need to understand the nature of Britain’s presence in China and why historians refer to it as part of Britain’s ‘empire’ or, more recently, ‘the British World’. THE BRITISH WORLD

Apart from Hong Kong (1842), the Kowloon Peninsula (1860), the New Territories (1898) and Weihaiwei (Weihai) (1898), no part of China was annexed or leased by Britain during the long nineteenth century. Instead, pursuant to a series of ‘Unequal Treaties’, beginning with the Treaty of Nanjing (1842), which formally brought the First Opium War (1839–1842) to a close, Britain, along with other Western nations, established a presence in enclaves that remained part of China’s sovereign territory. In these treaty ports, as they became known, foreign nationals were entitled to reside and trade and were subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of their consul under the principle of extra-territoriality.19 Supported as it was by military force, this presence had many of the hall-marks of ‘informal empire’ but the term fails to capture its multinational nature and the ways in which, by the close of the century, western influence, including ‘railway power’, operated outside the treaty ports in commercial ‘zones’, along the coast and surrounding sea, patrolled by Royal Naval gunboats.20

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(Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1975), pp. 23–24. Robert Bickers, Britain in China: Community, Culture and Colonialism, 1900– 49 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), in particular, pp. 6 to 8, Robert Bickers ‘Britains and Britons over the Seas: Shanghailanders and Others: British Communities in China, 1843–1957,’ in Robert Bickers (ed.), Settlers and Expatriates: Britons over the Seas, The Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 269–301 at pp. 272 and 279–280. For the concept of extra-territoriality, see George William Keeton, The Development of Extraterritoriality in China (London: Longmans Green, 1928), Cassel Pär Kristoffer, Grounds of Judgment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) and Emily Whewell, ‘British Extraterritoriality in China: The Legal System, Functions of Criminal Jurisdiction and its Challenges, 1833–1943’, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Leicester (2015). For an analysis of the Western presence in China and whether it amounted to informal empire, see, especially, Peter Cain and Antony Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688–2000 (Harlow: Longman, 2002), pp. 22–43, Jürgen Osterhammel, ‘Semi-colonialism and Informal Empire in Twentieth-Century

INTRODUCTION

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Historians have recently focussed on the more flexible concept of a ‘British World’ that ‘extended well beyond the confines of the regions painted red’. ‘Based on three broad themes of diaspora, culture and identity’, it was ‘connected by a series of interlocking networks, webs and information flows, which ranged from family and community affiliations, to commercial scientific and professional bodies, to educational, philanthropic, religious and labour groups’.21 This study argues that, even allowing for its transnational character, the British presence in treaty port China can be seen as part of an emerging British World or, what John Darwin has called, ‘a British World-system’.22 Answerable only to their Consul, whilst firmly resisting any interference in their day-to-day lives, China Coast Britons equally firmly asserted their British identity. Whilst it was dependent upon a range of cultural connections, that presence could not have been sustained in the long term without a substantial degree of collaboration on the part of the Chinese people. However, as Anil Seal has observed, ‘collaboration is a slippery term’ which may cover anything from consensual acquiescence to enforced resignation with the balance between these two

21

22

China: Towards a Framework of Analysis’ in Wolfgang J. Mommsen (ed.), Imperialism and After: Continuities and Discontinuities (London: Allen & Unwin, 1986), pp. 290–314, Jürgen Osterhammel, ‘Britain and China, 1842–1914’, in Andrew Porter (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire, iii. The Nineteenth Century, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 146–69, Ann Laura Stoler, ‘On Degrees of Imperial Sovereignty,’ Public Culture, 18 (2006), pp. 125–146 and, for a penetrating critique of this literature, Alexander Thompson, ‘The British state at the margins of empire: extraterritoriality and governance in treaty port China, 1842–1927’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Bristol (2018). See also Niels Petersson, ‘Gentlemanly and Not-so-Gentlemanly Imperialism in China before the First World War’ in Shigeru Akita (ed.) Gentlemanly Capitalism, Imperialism and Global History (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 103–122 and Isabella Jackson, Shaping Modern Shanghai: Colonialism in China’s Global City (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). For ‘railway imperialism’, see Bruce A. Elleman, Elizabeth Koll and Y. Tak Matsusaka, ‘Introduction’ in Bruce A. Elleman and Stephen Kotkin (eds), Manchurian Railways and the Opening of China: An International History (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2010), pp. 1–9. Kent Fedorowich and Andrew S. Thompson, ‘Introduction: Mapping the contours of the British World: Empire, Migration and Identity’ in Kent Fedorowich and Andrew S. Thompson (eds), Empire, migration and identity in the British World (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), pp. 1–41, quote at p. 2; Carl Bridge and Kent Fedorowich, ‘Introduction: Mapping the British World’ in Carl Bridge and Kent Fedorowich, The British World: Diaspora, Culture and Identity (eds) (London: F. Cass, 2003), pp. 1–15. John Darwin, The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World-System, 1830–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 2–12 and passim.

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constantly shifting.23 If, from a British perspective, this presence was legitimate and in China’s best interests, for the Chinese, it was always contested and spawned, what in retrospect has been characterised as ‘the century of national humiliation’. No strangers to collaboration, prior to 1842, the Chinese had been able to conduct such relationships strictly on their own terms. Following the opening of the treaty ports in 1843, they became more ambiguous, mediated as they were through a range of Western or Western-style institutions. Thus, assuming a quasidiplomatic role, Robert Hart, the Inspector-General of the CMC, acted as de facto political adviser to the Chinese government and insisted that, as employees of the Qing, British Customs’ officials owed their duty of fidelity to China. However, he also stressed that, in doing so, they should ensure that British interests were never compromised.24 On the other hand, whilst members of the consular service were responsible solely to the British government, in brokering the relationship between its nationals and their Chinese counterpart (the Daotai), they also had a mediating role, acting ‘like referees in a football match, trying impartially to ensure that Chinese authorities and British merchants observed the treaty rules for the commercial game’.25 And as the Qing became increasingly dependent on foreign loans and finance, the relationship between the Chinese government and Western banks became equally ambiguous. Whilst, in principle, the Hongkong Bank was answerable only to its shareholders, given its role as both the British government’s financial instrument and the Qing’s principal banker, it had to strike a balance between these competing interests.26 If missionaries came into a very different category, they also had a mediating role, particularly in the early stages, when Britain was seeking to enter and then establish its presence in China. Being amongst the few who 23

24

25 26

Anil C. Seal, The Emergence of Indian Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), p. 9; cf. also Ronald Robinson, ‘Non-European Foundations of European Imperialism: Sketch for a Theory of Collaboration’ in Roger Owen and Bob Sutcliffe (eds), Studies in the Theory of Imperialism (London: Longman, 1972), pp. 117–142. Hans Van de Ven, Breaking with the Past: The Maritime Customs Service and the Global Origins of Modernity in China, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), pp. 4 and 66–71, Ladds, Empire Careers, pp. 28–30. Coates, China Consuls, p. 171. King, The Hongkong Bank, II, pp. 283–291; see also Osterhammel, ‘Britain and China,’ pp. 146–69.

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spoke Chinese with any fluency, they generated large amounts of information about the country and, following the opening of the treaty ports, and, in particular, Shanghai, formed an important channel of communication between the Western and Chinese communities. Collaboration was no less important in Hong Kong. Occupied during the First Opium War and subsequently declared a Crown Colony, it formed a bridge between the treaty ports and the IndoMalayan world and also a hub for the Chinese diaspora that spread across the region. Whilst, by the mid-1840s, there were still only some six hundred Westerners residing in the colony, some 20,000 Chinese had already arrived. Entering what had formally been declared part of the British World, they retained their Chinese identity and, although denied any say in the colony’s administration, they were required to subscribe to its institutions and their version of the rule of law. On a day-to-day basis, this meant the Magistrates’ Court, and the presiding Chief Magistrate.27 FAMILY, CAREERING AND INTIMATE EMPIRE

Serving these institutions over three generations, members of the Medhurst/Hillier family were instrumental in forging the sorts of collaborative relationships that were key to the shaping of Britain’s presence in China. In doing so, their approach was informed by three principal attributes. First, on both sides of the family, there was an evangelical approach that had been ignited in the early 1800s and continued throughout the century. Although the religious element became less intense as it passed down the generations, the underlying tenets in terms of commitment and diligence continued to exercise a powerful influence on the everyday life of the family and on the way its members approached their work.28 The second attribute was the facility they developed for the Chinese language. This was at the heart of Medhurst’s work as a 27

28

Christopher Munn, Anglo-China: Chinese People and British Rule in Hong Kong, 1841–1880 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2001), p. 111 and generally, pp. 109–159. Cf. Boyd Hilton, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795–1865 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 7–35, especially pp. 7–8; see also Walter E. Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830–1870 (New Haven: Published for Wellesely College by Yale University Press, 1957), seriatim, but especially the chapter on ‘Earnestness’, pp. 218–262.

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missionary and Sinologue and that of his son, Walter Medhurst in the consular service. Self-taught from his earliest days in Hong Kong, his son-in-law, Charles Hillier, also acquired a good working knowledge of the language and this was key to the confidence that he enjoyed as the colony’s Chief Magistrate. Although he died young, this family background had a powerful influence on the three Hillier children – Walter, Harry and Guy – who went on to make their careers in China. Each developed not only an excellent working knowledge of Chinese but also an understanding of the linguistic nuances in a world where ‘the battle of words and translations’ would be central.29 This brings us to the third attribute, the development of a cultural sensitivity towards China, a term which Richard Horowitz applies to Sir Robert Hart and is equally appropriate in the case of the Medhursts and Hilliers.30 Self-serving and predicated upon a belief that Britain’s presence in China was both legitimate and in China’s best interests, it provided an effective, and indeed, necessary, basis for mediating Sino-British relations. Essentially, it comprised three elements: first, understanding the political, cultural and social structures in terms of China’s, at times, labyrinthine institutions and customs and the cultural mechanisms, such as family and clan, which were at the heart of its society; secondly, understanding the philosophy underlying those structures, most obviously Confucian principles which were innately conservative and shaped almost all aspects of Chinese life, both on a public and private level; and thirdly, translating that knowledge into the conduct of relations with Chinese officials and people more generally.31 These attributes were acquired through influence and example and the family’s evolving ‘collective memory’, a concept explored in detail by Maurice Halbwachs to analyse the way in which an institutional culture can be forged, but is equally applicable in a more intimate context.32 We will see how, through a combination 29

30

31

32

Lydia Liu, The Clash of Empires: The Invention of China in Modern World Making (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), pp. 2–3. Cf. Richard S. Horowitz, ‘Politics, Power and the Chinese Maritime Customs: The Qing Restoration and the Ascent of Robert Hart’, Modern Asian Studies, 40 (2006), pp. 549–581. Jonathan D. Spence, The China helpers: Western Advisers in China, 1620–1960 (London: Bodley Head, 1969),pp. 119–120, Van de Ven, ‘Robert Hart and Gustav Detring’, pp. 631–662, Ladds, Empire Careers, pp. 27–30 at p. 27 and passim. Maurice Halbwachs, translated and with an introduction by Lewis A. Coser, On Collective Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 54–83,

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of experience, memory, understandings and practices, these attributes were passed down the generations, shaping the family’s identity and, in turn, the approach to their careers and to their life in China.33 That identity was in turn shaped by the socialisation process that took place in the course of an empire career.34 Adopting the term coined by David Lambert and Alan Lester, ‘careering’ had a number of special features in treaty port China, which led to ‘imperial discourses, practices and culture’ being constantly revised and re-formulated.35 First, there was a multi-national presence, not just in Peking, where the number of Legation and Customs staff was necessarily small, but, more importantly, elsewhere in China. By the turn of the century, there were some fifty treaty ports, each with its own set of consulates and Customs office, and a plethora of other foreign stations, including ‘open cities’, quasi-treaty ports and ‘landing stages’ along the great river system.36 Spread across these sites, there might be anything up to eight different nationalities and the resulting cosmopolitanism was a powerful antidote to the stultifying mood of middle-class England that might otherwise have prevailed.37 The second feature was that, whilst, apart from missionaries, Westerners lived and worked almost exclusively in the treaty port

33

34

35

36

37

especially pp. 56, 74 and 83; for institutions, see T.G. Otte, The Foreign Office Mind: The Making of British Foreign Policy, 1865–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 1–22, pp. 205–209 and 219–233 and, more generally, Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher, with A. Denny, Africa and the Victorians: The official mind of imperialism, (2nd edition) (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1981), pp. 1–26 ; for ‘the three guiding principles’ which formed ‘the ideological heart of the [CMC’s] ethos’, see Ladds, Empire Careers, p. 30 and, for ‘the Shanghai mind’, see Bickers, Britain in China, pp. 86–87. Cf. Lynch, The Family, pp. 679; see also examples of this process in Dowling, Home, p. 227, Davidoff, Thicker than Water, p. 2, and, more recently, Jennifer R Nájera, ‘Remembering Migrant Life: Family Collective Memory and Critical Consciousness in the Mid-century Migrant Stream’, The Oral History Review, 45, (2018), pp. 211–231. John Mangan (ed.), Making Imperial Mentalities: Socialisation and British Imperialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), pp. 1–3. David Lambert and Alan Lester, ‘Introduction: Imperial Spaces, imperial subjects’, in David Lambert and Alan Lester (eds), Colonial Lives Across the British Empire: Imperial Careering in the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 1–31, at p. 2. Robert Nield, China’s Foreign Places: the Foreign Presence in China in the Treaty Port Era, 1840–1943 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2015), pp. 8–9. Ladds, Empire Careers, pp. 52–57; cf. Orlando Figes, The Europeans: Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture (London: Allen Lane, 2019), pp. 334–338.

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settlements and concessions, these were invariably situated on the edge of a bustling Chinese City, with whose officials the consular and Customs staff had to find an accommodation.Thirdly, at Hart’s insistence, China careering was extremely peripatetic. Consular and Customs staff would often spend no more than two or three years in one posting, so that in a thirty-year career, an official might have served in at least ten extremely varied locales spread across China. There was also a degree of mobility between the two services.38 Whilst Bank staff moved less often within China, they might also be posted to London, Hong Kong and other cities in East and Southeast Asia. Moreover, in Peking, as we will see, officials like Guy Hillier worked closely with the Legation and Hart, as well as with the officials of other Western banks and their Chinese counterparts. Quite apart from the cosmopolitan culture that this generated, there was substantial cross-fertilisation of ideas and practices both within and between the institutions. Individual officers would be influenced by, and in turn, influence this process, and, where, as here, they came from a China Coast family that had, over time, developed a specific approach, so that would contribute to shaping the collective mind of the institutions.39 In this study, therefore, we will see how family shaped careers and in turn the institutions in which those careers were pursued and how they and their families were in turn shaped by those experiences. If missionary families were one of the few examples in which women would share in the work – Betty Medhurst, her sister, Sophia, and her daughter, Sarah, for example, all made a substantial contribution to the endeavour in Batavia – women would form a significant element in the colonial presence as wives, whether ‘incorporated’ like Eliza Hillier and Harry’s second wife, Maggie, or strenuously independent, like Walter’s second wife, Clare, and as mothers, producing children at regular intervals and bringing up their ever-expanding family.40 Whilst the men played a limited domestic role, it was the women who were principally responsible for running the household and providing social stability within the foreign settlement, a process, in which Western values were exemplified through architecture, public spaces 38 39

40

Coates, China Consuls, p. 137. Cf. Andrew Hillier, ‘Bridging Cultures: The Forging of the China Consular Mind’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 47 (2019), pp. 742–772. Hilary Callan and Shirley Ardener, ‘Introduction’ in Hilary Callan and Shirley Ardener (eds), The Incorporated Wife (London: Croom Helm, 1984), pp. 1–26, at p. 1.

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and cemeteries, clothing and cultural practices, and this was something of which Chinese officials were only too aware.41 Tellingly, the merchant, Gideon Nye, explained the rationale behind the ban on Western women accompanying their husbands to Guangzhou on the grounds that, if families were allowed there, they would sooner or later endanger the rights of sovereignty’.42 These practices became increasingly important as the notion of the nuclear family took hold in the 1840s and, in the words of John G. Gillis, ‘a massive accumulation of objects, images and rituals gave a new tangibility and meaning to family life’ amongst the middle classes. ‘Birth, marriage and death underwent major reritualisation, wholly transforming the events of the life cycle into moments charged with special meaning for everyone present’.The effect was to create ‘the symbolic family’ with which its members could identify, that is ‘they could live by’ even if they were not physically present together. This was of particular importance when connection had to be maintained across, what Elizabeth Vibert calls, ‘the cold space of empire’.43 Local people were also drawn into this world: domestic staff, amahs, casual workmen, rickshaw drivers, shopkeep41

42

43

G.M. Young, Victorian England: Portrait of an Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd Ed., 1953), pp. 151–153; see also Anthony S. Wohl, ‘Introduction’ in Anthony S. Wohl (ed.), The Victorian Family: Structure and Stresses (London: Croom Helm, 1978) pp. 9–19 and Davidoff, Family Fortunes, p. 74. For the image of the Victorian home, see Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind, pp. 341–347. As an indication of the importance of family in the nineteenth century, the British Library catalogues sixty-four newspapers and journals published between 1800 and 1900 that incorporate the word ‘family’ in their titles, but only fifteen for the next hundred years, see Judith Flanders, The Making of Home (London: Atlantic, 2014), p. 122. See Alison Blunt and Robyn Dowling, Home (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 150 and 142–144: see also Hall, Cultures of Empire, pp. 20–22, Dianne Lawrence, Genteel Women: Empire and Domestic Material Culture, 1840–1910 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012), seriatim but especially pp. 3 and 126. See Ladds, Empire Careers, pp. 4–22 for how these patterns played out for CMC staff and, for missionary families, see Manktelow, Missionary Families, pp. 63–64. Gideon Nye, The Morning of my Life in China, Comprising an Outline of the History of Foreign Intercourse from ... 1833 to ... 1839 (Canton, 1873), p. 70. John R. Gillis, ‘Ritualisation of Middle-Class Family Life in Nineteenth Century Britain’, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 3 (1989), pp. 213–235, at p. 214; see generally, John R. Gillis, A World of Their Own Making: A History of Myth and Ritual in Family Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); see also Elizabeth Vibert, ‘Writing “Home”: Sibling Intimacy and Mobility in a Scottish Colonial memoir’ in Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton (eds), Moving Subjects: Gender, Mobility, and Intimacy in an Age of Global Empire (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2009), pp. 67–88.

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ers and the like, who, though seldom noticed or mentioned, became unwitting collaborators in this process. But, at the same time, it reinforced the discourse of difference in relations that were often marked by cultural arrogance and insensitivity, albeit constantly shifting. On occasions, there might be constructive interaction, for example, between children and their amah (servant/ nursemaid), who, by the 1870s, would often be treated as part of the family in Hong Kong and Shanghai, where the number of European children was increasing significantly.44 As David Pomfret has argued, the presence of children ‘reshaped cultures of colonialism’ by destabilising its norms, whilst also serving as a ‘screen onto which cultural authority, prestige and ideas about the future of imperialism could be projected.’45 This raises important questions in relation to this particular family, in which three generations spent at least part of their childhood overseas. We will need to consider especially, therefore, how much the children’s presence reduced, alternatively reinforced, the discourse of racial difference, in what ways that presence projected a particular cultural authority and, irrespective of whether they grew up at home or abroad, how much their upbringing gave rise to an imperial identity, that is a sense of superiority and confidence in the legitimacy of Britain’s colonial presence. The tyranny of distance was the abiding feature of empire lives and, as Laura Ishiguro has shown, letter-writing placed family at the centre of that expanding world.46 As members of this family spread out across East and Southeast Asia, so they sustained connections by 44

45

46

Cf. Frederick Cooper, and Ann Laura Stoler, ‘Between Metropole and Colony: Rethinking a Research Agenda’ in Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler (eds), Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 1–56; Ann Laura Stoler, with Karen Strassler, ‘Memory-Work in Java: A Cautionary Tale’ in Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002), pp. 162–203; Buettner, Empire Families, p. 58 and seq.; Kenneth Gaw, Superior Servants: The Legendary Cantonese Amahs of the Far East (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. vii; see also Wood, No Dogs and Not Many Chinese, p. 214. David M. Pomfret, Youth and Empire: Trans-colonial Childhoods in British and French Asia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016), pp. 1–8. Cf. Laura Ishiguro, Nothing to Write Home About: British Family Correspondence and the Settler Colonial Everyday in British Columbia (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019), pp. 7–8 and seriatim; and see pp. 9–11 for a useful discussion of the extended meaning of ‘family’ in this context.

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means of networks, travel and correspondence and the exchange of gifts and photographs.47 More generally, by giving stability to the foreign community, family attracted men and women, whether in search of work, a marriageable partner or simply a new way of life. This process intensified as methods of communication improved, with steam replacing sail, the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the laying of undersea telegraph cables and the construction of long-distance railways, notably, the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 1880s and the Trans-Siberian Express in the 1900s. But, even as early as the 1840s, families were making extensive journeys within this British World with an extraordinary regularity, journeys in which they would exemplify Western practices and interact with a wide variety of non-European people, as well as importing into England their foreign experiences.48 Wives and mothers might have to return for reasons of health or to be with their children when they began their education. By the mid1870s, the public school ethos was increasingly focused on the empire and instilling the notion of ‘imperial sacrifice’ as a necessary component of family life. At the end of an empire career, the family might retire to a spa or place favoured by expatriates, such as Cheltenham or Bedford, where they could associate with like-minded people.Through these processes the treaty port world was incorporated into the English home and Britain’s presence in China further legitimised.49 Whilst this has been explored in relation to the Raj and Britons in China sought to draw parallels with India, theirs was a very different setting, and one which generated very different lives and experiences.50 47

48

49

50

Robert Bickers, ‘The Lives and Deaths of Photographs in China’ in Christian Henriot and Weh-hsiu Yeh (eds), Visualising China, 1845–1965: Moving and Still Images in Historical Narratives, (Leiden: Brill, 2012), p. 28; for an early example of photographs being exchanged within a family, see Wood, No Dogs and Not many Chinese, p. 112. Cf. Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton, ‘Introduction: The Politics of Intimacy in an Age of Empire’, in Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton (eds), Moving Subjects: Gender, Mobility, and Intimacy in an Age of Global Empire (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2009), pp. 1–30. Cf. Gary B. Magee and Andrew S. Thompson, Empire and Globalisation: Networks of People, Goods and Capital in the British World, c. 1850–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 46–51 and pp. 82–85, Hall and Rose, ‘Introduction: being at home with the Empire’ in Hall, At Home with the Empire, pp. 1–31, especially pp. 22–31, Darwin, Unfinished Empire, pp. 291–294. Buettner, Empire Families, pp. 110–251, seriatim but, especially, p. 144, p. 169 and 223. For the China Raj, see Bickers, Britain in China, pp. 76–77 and Robert Bickers, ‘Britain and China, and India, 1830s-1947’ in Robert Bickers and

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There is, therefore, a vibrant literature exploring new ways of examining and analysing the nature of British imperial power on both a public and private level, through empire families and through reconceptualising the area over which it extended. Building on that literature, this study breaks new ground by knitting together those various strands and showing how family blended the intimate life of empire with public careers and constituted a key cultural mechanism in the development of a part of the British World that was not subject to formal imperial rule – how, in short, the personal became the political. CHAPTER SUMMARY

Set against the forcible opening of China and the establishment of the treaty ports in the wake of the Treaty of Nanjing (1842), Part 1 covers the first two generations of the family and its life in East and Southeast Asia. Beginning with Walter and Betty Medhurst meeting and marrying in Madras in 1817, Chapters 1 and 2 describe their missionary work, first in Batavia and then in Shanghai, and how this facilitated Britain’s entry into China and also shaped the early career of Walter Medhurst, junior, who joined the China Consular Service in 1843. Chapter 3 traces the parallel career of young Medhurst’s brother-in-law, Charles Hillier, in the Hong Kong Magistracy and, briefly, in the consular service, before it was cut short by his death at the age of thirty-six. Re-tracing those first forty years through the lives of three Medhurst women-Betty Medhurst, and her daughters, Eliza and Martha, Chapter 4 examines how they also contributed to the shaping of that identity and gave substance to the British presence. By focussing on their lives in a discrete chapter, far from diminishing their role in the colonial setting, this enables them to emerge from the shadows of their husbands’ careers and this is reinforced when, returning to England in the mid-1850s, all three, recently widowed, had to start re-building their lives . By the time of their return, a distinct family identity was beginning to emerge and, pursuing this into the next generation, in Part 2, we see how this identity and the approach that went with it continued to shape and consolidate Britain’s presence. Starting with Eliza Hillier’s new life in England, Chapter 5 examines the children’s upbringing and education, the factors that led three Jonathan J. Howlett (eds), Britain and China, 1840–1970: Empire, Finance and War (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 60 and 74.

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of the four brothers to embark on China careers and the part played by family in the development of those careers, up to the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1895. A pivotal moment in China’s history and relations with the West, its defeat also marked a turning-point for all three Hillier brothers and Chapter 6 shows how, over the next fifteen years, their careers both reflected and informed Britain’s changing approach to China. Mirroring the structure of Part 1, Chapter 7 focuses on the Hillier women and explores the ways in which their lives also reflected and contributed to the emerging British World. Whilst there is less available source material, the chapter sees them in their own right and not simply as accessories to their husbands’ careers. The final chapter brings together these public and private strands during the family’s closing years in China, setting them against the seismic events taking place in China and elsewhere-the fall of the Qing and the establishment of the first Republic (1912), the outbreak of the First World War (1914) and the beginning of Britain’s slow and reluctant withdrawal from China. Whilst these events tell us much about the contrasting mind-sets of the three brothers, they also cast light on the role of women in the shaping of Britain’s imperial presence and enable us to reach some tentative conclusions about the relationship between family and empire. Whilst the Chinese still regard the era as ‘the century of national humiliation’, as the relationships that underpinned the enterprise are analysed in greater detail, it is possible to obtain a more nuanced understanding of Britain’s presence in East and Southeast Asia, one that depended on more than imperial condescension, backed up by military force. 51 Comprising as it did ‘the sum of relations-both collaborative and coercive-between imperial agents and the societies into which they had penetrated’, as John Darwin has argued, ‘we need to know more about the local 51

See, especially, Chang Zheng, Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012) and James Hevia, English Lessons: The Pedagogy of Imperialism in Nineteenthcentury China (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003, pp. 332–345. For a summary of the orthodox view of the British presence, see Zhang Shunhong, ‘British Imperialism and Decolonization: a Chinese Perspective’ in Akita (ed.) Gentlemanly Capitalism, pp. 123–142; see also Bickers, Scramble for China, pp. 4–6. For a general review of the Chinese scholarship, see C.M. Turnbull, ‘Formal and Informal Empire in East Asia’ in Robin W. Winks (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire, v, Historiography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp.379– 401. See also Paul A. Cohen, Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the recent Chinese Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984).

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agents of empire’, who were ‘the physical embodiment of the imperial project’.52 Family provides an ideal lens through which to perform that exercise and analyse the part played by these particular agents. If the detail of these lives was unusual, the overall themes that thread through this study can be explored in relation to many Western families in China. We can thereby understand the collective mind that informed Britain’s determination to enter China and underpinned its presence once that had been achieved. Although this study is necessarily Anglo-centric, there is scope for building on this approach and exploring these themes from a Chinese perspective in the context of Chinese families. Only then can we truly find the balance between the coercive and consensual nature of the collaborative mechanisms that underpinned that presence. Fundamental to the mind-set of the Medhursts and Hilliers was the spirit of evangelicalism, which ignited at the close of the eighteenth century, and influenced their work ethic and sense of public duty throughout the hundred years or so that they spent in the Far East.53 How this spirit first inspired young Walter Medhurst to embark on his mission to China is where the story begins.

52

53

John Darwin, ‘Afterword’ in Robert Bickers and Christian Henriot (eds), New Frontiers: imperialism’s New Communities in East Asia, 1842–1953 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), p. 260. Whilst some commentators consider the term, ‘the Far East’ too Euro-centric, implying that Asia was on the periphery of international concerns, given its common usage (the Foreign Office continued to have a ‘Far Eastern Department’ until the 1990s), it is used without, it is hoped, giving rise to any such inference.

PART I 1817–1860

1

Preparing for Entry Œ

CHINA’S MILLIONS

FOLLOWING THE DEFEAT and exile of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1815, Britain was the supreme global power, with a navy commanding the major sea lanes and an administration able to protect and promote the country’s interests and ideologies throughout its imperial possessions.1 Yet, when, just one year later, Lord Amherst’s embassy arrived in Peking, seeking an audience with the Jiaqing Emperor, it was rebuffed and instructed to leave. Whilst the immediate reason related to the refusal to kowtow, fundamentally, it stemmed from the way the Qing viewed China’s commanding position in the world. A vast and ancient empire, protected by a fringe of tributary states, with a diaspora spreading across Southeast Asia, the ‘Middle Kingdom’, as it was known, was the natural centre of that world and the supreme power to which all other states were subservient. There was thus neither need nor inclination to enter into a trading relationship with a subsidiary state such as Great Britain.2 Over the next twenty years, Britain’s merchants and missionaries would seek to break down this resistance by peaceful means. But, as the legitimate pursuit of free trade became subordinated to the illicit import of opium from the Indian subcontinent, so commercial 1

2

Richard Evans, The Pursuit of Power: Europe, 1815–1914 (London: Allen Lane, 2016), pp.19–20. C.A. Bayly, Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World, 1780–1830 (London: Longman, 1989), pp. 100–131. Stephen Platt, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and The End of China’s Last Golden Age (London: Atlantic, 2018), pp. 155–174, Ulricke Hillemann, Asian Empire and British Knowledge: China and the Networks of British Imperial Expansion (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 75–81; cf. Hao Gao, ‘The “Inner Kowtow Controversy” during the Amherst Embassy to China, 1816– 1817’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 27 (2016), pp. 595–614. 3

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greed and inept diplomacy made a clash between these competing empires increasingly likely. Whilst the London Missionary Society (LMS) always strongly condemned the opium trade, through its eagerness to convert China’s many millions, it became implicitly associated with, and at times facilitated, this policy of aggression, albeit unwittingly.3 Confined to the contact zone of Canton (Guangzhou) during the trading months of October to March, and without wives or family, Western merchants recognised the importance of being able to speak the language but could not avoid the power struggle that this entailed. On pain of death, the Chinese were forbidden to act as teachers or transcribers for foreigners and, save in the strictly-regulated world of the co-Hong and compradore, there was minimal contact between the two peoples.4 Merchants, therefore, looked to missionaries to circumvent this ban and, as skilled linguists and determined proselytisers, members of the LMS were willing to take on this task. Founded in 1797, as part of the evangelical movement sweeping across England, by the early 1800s, the Society had identified China as an important target for conversion. Linguistic skill and cultural interaction were key components of that campaign and three of the earliest missionaries to the Ultra-Ganges region, as it became known, proved to be outstanding Sinologues: Robert Morrison, who, in 1807, was the first Protestant missionary to enter the country, by way of Guangzhou,William Milne, who followed in 1813, and established a further bridge-head in Malacca, and Walter Medhurst, who joined Milne four years later.5 After a somewhat fractious start in Malaysia, Medhurst went on to spend twenty years in Batavia (modern-day Jakarta), before moving to Shanghai, immediately after it had opened as a treaty port. Exploiting significant advances in printing technology, as well as translating Christian works into Chinese, all three of these dedicated missionaries produced a prodigious amount of Chinarelated material in English, including books on travel and history, cultural commentaries, grammars, dictionaries and translations 3

4 5

For a detailed account of the period and the build-up to war, see Platt, Imperial Twilight, pp.177–374. Hilleman, Asian Empire and British Knowledge pp. 57–75. Boyd Hilton, A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? England, 1783–1846 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp.174–194, Brian Harrison, Waiting for China: The Anglo-Chinese College at Malacca, 1818–1843, and Early Nineteenth-Century Missions (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1979), pp. 1–31.

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of Chinese philosophical texts. This information would be key to the understanding of China by missionaries, merchants and administrators as well as by a rapidly-expanding reading public in Great Britain. But, unlike Morrison and Milne, Medhurst also had an insatiable energy for travel. For countless generations, the Chinese diaspora had been expanding throughout the archipelagos of Malaysia and Indonesia resulting in a spread of loosely-knit communities of small traders and low-level administrators. It was here that Medhurst concentrated his efforts and, whilst he failed to make any significant number of converts, by extensive preaching across the region, he increased knowledge about Britain, its culture and religious beliefs.6 At the same time, by learning the language and studying the country, he acquired a substantial quantity of information about China’s culture which he could relay back and help pave the way for entry.7 Accordingly, although his contribution is largely overlooked today, this study argues that Medhurst played a key role not only following the opening of the treaty ports but also during this preparatory phase. To understand how he achieved this, we need to examine his mind-set. Whilst Britain sought to justify its entry into China by reference to the principles of free trade, the LMS first determined upon the country’s conversion without regard to such principles and, indeed before they had come into fashion. Instead, as C.A. Bayly has shown, ‘the Second British Empire’ was characterised by an ‘imperial style which emphasised hierarchy and racial subordination’ and, in line with this approach, missionary societies sought ‘respectability and distance from the earlier stigma of radicalism’.8 It was against this background that the LMS’ project to convert the Chinese was conceived and that Medhurst’s approach to his missionary work must be understood. Moreover, despite the onset of a more liberal imperialism in the 1840s and his own brand of cultural sensitivity, that inherent conservatism would continue to inform his approach when he began work in Shanghai. It was one that would have a direct influence on his son, Walter, and, indirectly, on his son-in-law, Charles Hillier, and, 6

7

8

Orne Arne Westad, Restless Empire : China and the World Since 1750 (London: Bodley Head, 2012), p.66, Darwin, Unfinished Empire, pp. 298–299. Paul Cohen, ‘Christian Missions and their Impact to 1900’, in John K. Fairbank and Kwang-Ching Liu, The Cambridge History of China, 10, Late Ch’ing, 1800–1911, Part 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 543–551. Bayly, Imperial Meridian, pp. 4, 9, 11 and 109.

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through them, on Hillier’s three sons, when they embarked on their China careers. FIRED WITH MISSIONARY ZEAL

As the Amherst embassy was struggling to make its presence felt in Peking, the twenty-year-old Walter Medhurst was preparing to leave England and begin the first leg of his journey to Southeast Asia. The son of an inn-keeper in Ross-on-Wye, he had completed his apprenticeship as a printer with a Gloucester newspaper, but, in keeping with the evangelical mood, after attending a meeting in Bristol, ‘he became fired with zeal to become a missionary’.9 Seeing an LMS advertisement for a printer to go to South Africa, he applied for the post. Although unsuccessful, he was told that the Society was also looking for a printer to join the newly-established station in Malacca. He needed no second asking. Urgently required, he was given just three months to absorb the LMS approach and did not undergo the usual more intensive training that took place at Gosport, an omission which would later be held against him.10 Strictly non-denominational, and loosely allied to the Congregational Church, the Society stressed the importance of the Bible in mediating the personal relationship with God. Dismissive of anything which interfered with that relationship, such as priest-craft, hierarchy and idolatry, it was God’s Word that was to be preached. That could not be done without a battery of missionary assistants to translate and print the Bible and religious tracts. Impressed by Medhurst’s ‘unceasing activity of mind and remarkable gift for languages’, the Society had no doubts about commending ‘this very ingenious young man’, to William Milne in Malacca.11 On 30 August 1816, having stowed a new fount of English type, Medhurst and a fellow missionary, John Pearson, set sail in the 9

10

11

Memorandum by Augusta Bates, 10 October 1912 (Hillier Collection). For Medhurst’s family and upbringing, see John Holliday, Mission to China: How an Englishman Brought the West to the Orient (Stroud: Amberley Publishing, 2016), pp. 9–22 and 38–42. Written by one of his descendants, this is the most detailed and certainly the most entertaining account of Medhurst’s life, albeit some of the content is deliberately fictionalised. Christopher A. Daily, Robert Morrison and the Protestant Plan for China (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013), pp. 165–166. Harrison, Waiting for China, quote at p. 31.

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General Graham, bound for Madras, where he hoped to find a ship to take him the last leg to Malacca. As his first letters to the LMS show, Medhurst’s zeal to convert ‘the heathen’ was matched only by his distaste for Roman Catholicism and its idolatrous practices, which he witnessed on reaching Madeira: The horrid superstition of the Romish church prevails here, a specimen of which we had an opportunity of observing which made us pity them and shudder at their condition.12

Later, when he came to understand the struggles of the Catholic missionaries in China, he would become more tolerant but would always be unequivocal in his renunciation of Romish doctrines.13 After three months at sea, he arrived in Madras and immediately began looking for a ship to take him to Malacca. But, although now permitted to reside in India, missionaries continued to be unpopular with the East India Company and, with the monsoon season just starting, he had to wait a further three months before obtaining a passage. During this time he lodged with an LMS family, the Loveless, and used the time to teach himself Chinese, as well as some Hebrew. He also had time to woo the young governess who was looking after the Loveless’ children, Betty Braune. Aged only twenty-one, she was a widow with a young son and had already had an extraordinary life, as we will see in a later chapter. Initially reluctant to submit to this impetuous young man, it was only when he was about to leave that she accepted his proposal of marriage. The ceremony took place the next day and they immediately set off for the two months’ voyage to Malacca, arriving on 1 July 1817. Occupied by Britain during the Napoleonic wars, the portcity would be returned to Holland the following year and then recovered six years later in exchange for Bencoolen. It was already Protestant-friendly territory and the LMS were happy to minister to both the British and Dutch congregations, as well as the local communities, in what was, even by Malaysian standards, an extremely cosmopolitan world. With a sizeable Chinese population of small traders and sojourners, it was a suitable bridgehead from which to 12

13

Letter, Medhurst to LMS, 9 September 1816, SOAS, CWM/LMS/Ultra-Ganges/ Incoming correspondence. Walter Medhurst, China, Its State and Prospects, with Especial Reference to the Spread of the Gospel (London: John Snow, 1838), pp. 229–250, especially pp.247–250.

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prepare for the conversion of China.14 Moreover,unlike Guangzhou, it was not an international entrepôt and there was less risk of the mission station being associated with the aggressive approach of British merchants and the opium trade.15 Under Milne’s direction, mission buildings had been put up, together with a printing press, a library and facilities for a language school. Plans were also in hand for opening an Anglo-Chinese College, which would become a key part of the Society’s preparations for entering China. Established as an academic centre for fostering cross-cultural exchanges as well as a training base for missionaries, it would promote the translation of both religious material and a wide range of Chinese texts, including the seminal Four Books. Milne would also produce the Indo-Chinese Gleaner (1817-1822) as an organ for disseminating knowledge of the Protestant mission and a critical journal of Sinology. Through these processes, the LMS ‘hoped not only to inform China about the West, but also the West about China … and more particularly, how much it was in need of the civilising influence of Christianity’.16 Although Medhurst was less involved in the College’s activities than Milne and the two men would have a serious falling-out, his approach would reflect these early influences. By the time Medhurst arrived in Malacca, the station had a staff of twenty but, with Milne and his wife both suffering from illhealth, Medhurst found himself almost immediately left in charge. He soon made clear he had no intention of confining himself to printing duties and began spreading the Word.17 Eighteen months later, in April 1819, he was ordained and was said to be so ‘productive’ that the Society agreed to send out a further printer ‘to liberate [him] from the mechanical part of his operations’.18 In the event, George Huttmann would only arrive the following year but 14 15

16

17 18

Cf. Daily, Robert Morrison, pp. 156–157. Harrison, Waiting for China, pp. 11–12, 16–27. For British attitudes towards the Chinese diaspora in Malaysia at this time, see Hillemann, Asian Empire and British Knowledge, pp. 120–130 and 135–149. Elizabeth L. Malcolm ‘The Chinese Repository and Western Literature on China 1800 to 1850’, Modern Asian Studies, 7 (1973), pp. 165–178, quote at 165; for the foundation of the College, see Harrison, Waiting for China, pp. 33–55; see also Peter J. Kitson, Forging Romantic China: Sino-British Cultural Exchange, 1760–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 80–97. LMS 25th Report (1819), pp. 19–29; Medhurst, China, pp. 306–329. Harrison, Waiting for China, pp. 19–32; SOAS, CWM/LMS/ Ultra Ganges Malacca/Incoming/

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Medhurst’s energetic approach was already apparent. Unlike Morrison and Milne, who had spent much of their time on the literary aspects of missionary work, he was already travelling extensively, both to inform himself about the country and to spread the gospel in outlying areas. Having taught himself Mandarin Chinese and Malay, he began learning Hokkien, the dialect primarily spoken by the Fukien (Fujian) Chinese whom he wished to target, and setting up Chinese-language schools. By 1819, there were three such schools in Malacca and the following year, on a visit to Penang, he persuaded the Governor to support the founding of Chinese schools in the island.19 Energetic and evangelical, Medhurst was also stubborn and abrasive, attributes which made him a difficult colleague when differences arose, as they inevitably did amongst this group of dedicated individualists. It was not long before he and Milne were in dispute over who should run the new mission station which was to be opened in Penang. In 1820, without warning, Medhurst left Malacca, taking with him a portable press and type – in Milne’s view,‘an ill-advised, imprudent, precipitate step’.Then, to the consternation of the missionaries at Penang, he proceeded to establish a new mission station and an orphan school at Jamestown, a few miles to the south. Successful though this was – the annual census records 1200 ‘native’ Christians – his behaviour caused much resentment and within the year, he was instructed to move to Batavia. This would be his base for the next twenty years.20 Whilst it would soon be overtaken by Singapore, Batavia was still an important entrepôt and, with Java’s substantial Chinese population, it was an important bridgehead. However, whereas the missionary efforts of Morrison in Guangzhou and Milne in Malacca have been well covered in the literature, Medhurst’s work has received less attention.21 This may be because it took place outside Britain’s imperial remit and is, therefore, seen only as relevant to missionary history, rather than as part of the empire project. How19

20 21

Harrison, Waiting for China pp. 57–58; LMS 27th Report (1821), p.25 and LMS 28th Report, p.52. Harrison, Waiting for China, pp. 51–53 and 62–65. Cf. Harrison, Waiting for China, seriatim, Kitson, Forging Romantic China, pp.72– 97, Hillemann, Asian Empire and British Knowledge, 148. The fullest accounts of Medhurst’s time in Batavia are to be found in his reports and letters to the LMS in London, SOAS, CWM/LMS/Ultra-Ganges/Java/Incoming Correspondence, the Transactions of the Mission Society 1827–1832 and the Quarterly Chronicle and in Medhurst, China, pp. 329–360.

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ever, this is to ignore the fact that the archipelagos of Indonesia and Malaysia formed one vast transit area for trade, culture and religion in which the substantial expatriate Chinese population, commonly called the ‘Nanyang’ (the term derived from the geographical area which they inhabited), played a leading role. Just as they viewed the region as a frontier zone for trading operations, so the LMS considered it as a contact zone from which to enter the country. Accordingly, although Malays formed part of his congregation and Medhurst spoke the local language fluently, his main focus would be on the Nanyang: as potential converts, as a means for channelling the Christian message to their families at home, and as the best source of information about China and ‘the Chinese mind’, to feed back to the Directors of the LMS in London and all those in England whom he hoped would embrace the cause. Coupled with the intelligence reaching London from Malaysia and Guangzhou, this would contribute to shaping the idea of China both within the Society and more generally.22 Occupied by Britain for five years during the Napoleonic wars, Java had been returned to the Dutch in 1816 and, by the time of Medhurst’s arrival, the influence of that inter-regnum had largely disappeared. However, the incoming Commissioners of the Netherlands Government replicated the British approach in marginalising what Jean G. Taylor calls, ‘the old Indies elite’ and the polyglot mestizo culture that had evolved over the last 200 years. Instead, with all civil service positions being reserved for Dutchborn men, ‘a new Indies colonial character’ took root. Emphasising adherence to European manners and decorum and the values of the Reformed Church, it nevertheless developed a luxurious life-style, serviced by the indigenous people, that would reach its culmination at the end of the century. Although this was only beginning to emerge during Medhurst’s time, it already provided a stable Westernised ambience from which to run the mission station and launch his endeavours across the archipelago.23 Arriving in January 1822, he found the mission-station run down with few attending the services which were conducted only in English. The man in charge, John Slater, had effectively lost control and there were serious concerns about his mental health and personal behaviour, including his keeping a number 22 23

Cf. Hillemann, Asian Empire and British Knowledge, p. 148. Jean Gelman Taylor, The Social world of Batavia: Europeans and Eurasians in Colonial Indonesia (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009), pp. 96–134, quote at p. 134.

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of female slaves, a common occurrence in Batavian society at that time.24 Medhurst was put in an extremely awkward situation and spent the first three years attempting to deal with the problems, which finally resolved themselves when Slater died from a fever in September 1825. Only then could he begin work on rebuilding the station.25 Often the only fully-qualified missionary on site, he was dependent on his wife, Betty, to run the station during his long absences, when he journeyed far and wide to spread the Word and gather information about the region. Although the rate of conversions was always disappointingly low, by the 1830s, with Betty’s assistance, there was a thriving missionary presence, with a newly-built chapel, a dispensary, library and school, together with an orphanage at Parapattan, built with the help of local subscriptions. Importantly, he also installed a sophisticated printing press, brought from England, capable of lithography, typography and wood-block printing. It produced a steady flow of works, original and in translation, religious and secular, including thirty in Chinese and nine in Malay and some, even, in Japanese, yet another language which Medhurst taught himself.26 Having established a good relationship with the Dutch administration, he was allowed to travel and preach, unhampered by any restrictions. Standing on the steps of the temple or in some other prominent place, he would first try to engage his audience’s attention by discussing their history and beliefs and only then introduce the subject of Christianity. Sympathetic to much of Confucian philosophy, which he saw as ‘a scheme of ethics and politics’ albeit one from which ‘all things spiritual and divine’ had been wrongly excluded, he believed it could be used as the framework for introducing the Christian message.27 To Medhurst, the truth of this message was as obvious as a mathematical theorem and he could not understand how the Chinese with their ‘acute, intelligent, vigorous and independent mind’ were so unwilling to accept that their origins were to be traced back to a supreme being.28 This was the question which 24 25 26

27

28

Gilman, Social World of Batavia, pp. 125–126; the practice only finally ceased in 1860. LMS Quarterly Chronicle, 1821–1824, pp. 281–285. See Su Ching, ‘The Printing Presses of the LMS among the Chinese’, unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of London, (1996), pp. 203–231. For an example of this approach, see letter from Medhurst, 12 January, 1825, LMS Quarterly Chronicle, III, p. 275. Medhurst, China, pp. 184–186.

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he would endlessly pose and discuss with scholars and laymen, firmly believing that they would finally become convinced by his arguments. Emphatic though he was, it was a two-way discussion, through which he began to internalise the role and values of the Chinese scholar-teacher and gradually become intellectually, if not culturally, ‘as firmly planted in the Chinese tradition as in his own.’29 This is key to understanding why, despite setbacks, for the rest of his life, he remained convinced that, he would be able to unlock the Chinese mind and open the way to conversion. And if he failed to make many converts, he believed that he would at least exert an influence which would filter back to China’s mainland to prepare the ground for when the LMS arrived. In addition, by transmitting and interpreting the history and values of China to a British audience, he was able to stimulate interest in the country and its eventual evangelisation. If Medhurst was indefatigable in his endeavours, there was one missionary who would match him in energy and zeal, if not integrity. In 1827, Karl Gutzlaff, who came from Pomerania and was, for a short time, a member of the Netherlands Missionary Society, arrived in Batavia with three other Dutch missionaries. Accompanying Medhurst as he journeyed through the island, Gutzlaff was impressed by his mentor’s linguistic ability and preaching style, as well as by the rapport which he had built up with the Chinese community.30 With a similar determination to enter China, in due course he would become an excellent linguist and a renowned itinerant missionary scholar. For the four months that he spent in the mission station, Gutzlaff was somewhat in awe of Medhurst, but, in the long term, the balance of the relationship would shift, with Medhurst seeking to accompany Gutzlaff on his expeditions and to assist in his revised translation of the Bible. An eccentric and unapologetic self-publicist, who was happy to cut corners to achieve his objectives, Gutzlaff has tended to overshadow Medhurst, partly because of his colourful personality, and partly because he became a respected, albeit later discredited, member of the British administration, first, in Guangzhou, during the First Opium War, and then in Hong Kong.31 29

30

31

J.K. Leonard, ‘W.H. Medhurst: Rewriting the Missionary Message’ in S. Barnett and J. Fairbank (eds), Christianity in China: Early Protestant Missionary Writings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 47 – 60, at pp. 48 and 59. Letter, Medhurst to LMS, 15 January 1827, SOAS, CWM/LMS/Ultra Ganges, Batavia, Java/Incoming Correspondence. Platt, Imperial Twilight, pp. 240–243 and 258–264; cf. Thoralf Klein, ‘Biography and the Making of Transnational Imperialism: Karl Gützlaff on the China Coast, 1831–

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However, both men were strong personalities and they would eventually fall out when Gutzlaff ’s ill-fated Chinese Christian Union in Hong Kong threatened to undermine the credibility of the missionary cause. EXPEDITIONS

With their shared passion for travel, they planned a joint expedition up the Malay coast to Siam. However, when Medhurst reached Singapore in late September 1828, he found his fellowmissionary had already left and so he embarked, instead, on a solo two-month journey up the east coast of the Malay Peninsula.32 The following year, accompanied by his fellow missionary, Jacob Tomlin, he set off on a month-long expedition to the Northeast coast of Java and Bali but found the local people were ‘in a state of great ignorance and barbarity and almost entirely given up to vice and sensuality’ and, having suffered a bad attack of jungle fever, he cut the visit short.33 Surprisingly, apart from one passing reference, nowhere in his reports, nor, later, in his book, China, does he make any mention of the Java War, which had begun in 1825 with a major uprising against the Dutch administration. Lasting for five years, it devastated the country and left some 200,000 Javanese dead, mainly through disease and famine. Whilst the rebellion included calls for social reform, it was fundamentally a nationalist movement against the Dutch administration, seeking to restore the old Javanese order and customs, most especially, the Javanese language. ‘Unique in its sheer size and social scope’, it was eventually suppressed and the colonial government assumed undisputed control of the region.34 Apart from assuring London that the mission premises did ‘not appear likely to meet with disturbance’, Medhurst remained aloof from these events.35 Even if he did have concerns about the colonial presence or the existing social order,

32

33 34

35

1851’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 47 (2019) pp. 415–445. Harrison, Waiting for China, pp. 92–94; see also the Evangelical Magazine, 1829, pp. 512–514 and Medhurst, China, p.353. Transactions of LMS (1829), pp. 257–267. Peter Carey,‘Origins of the Java War (1825–30)’, English Historical Review, 91(1976), pp. 52–78, quote at p.78. Letter, Medhurst to LMS, 15 January 1827, SOAS, CWM/LMS/Ultra-Ganges; cf. Susan Thorne, Congregational Missions and the Making of an Imperial Culture in Nineteenth Century England (Stanford,Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999), pp. 22–39.

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he was content to work within it, fearing that any criticism might jeopardise his relationship with the Dutch authorities and undermine the missionary endeavour. It was an approach that he would carry into his work in China. Returning from his Bali journey just as the uprising was coming to an end, he continued with his missionary and scholarly work, including producing a dictionary of the Hokkien dialect for the use of traders and missionaries.36 However, by 1834, he and his superiors in London were becoming impatient at the overall lack of progress, particularly as significant changes were taking place at Guangzhou.The East India Company (EIC) had lost its monopoly and, instead, a Chief Superintendent of Trade had been appointed to protect and further British interests in the port-city and beyond. With a changing image of China in England, a more aggressive approach was developing towards the expansion of trade, most especially in relation to opium.37 Although officially banned by the Qing, there had been little attempt to enforce the regulations, not least because many officials benefitted from the huge profits that it generated. In return, British merchants, having shipped the drug from India, carried on a thriving business, selling it to receiving ships moored in the Whampoa estuary or sailing up the eastern coast where there was a ready market. Fortunes were being made and, however much they voiced disapproval, the missionaries were increasingly associated with the trade, particularly as Morrison, until his untimely death in 1834 at the age of fifty-two, had been engaged as an interpreter for the merchants as well as for the British administration.38 As one of the principal architects of this aggressive approach, Gutzlaff epitomised this dichotomy. Having spent two years in Siam, living amongst the Chinese, he had then made three journeys up the East China coast, the first in disguise in a junk and the second as interpreter to the East India Company. However, the third had been made in a Jardine Matheson opium smuggler which plainly compromised the missionary image.39 In response, Medhurst and 36

37

38

39

W.H. Medhurst, A Dictionary of the Hok-Keen Dialect of the Chinese Language (Macao, 1832). For the build-up during this period, see John M. Carroll, ‘”The usual intercourse of nations”: The British in pre-Opium war Canton’, in Bickers, Britain and China, pp. 22–40. Cf. Hillemann, Asian Empire and British Knowledge, pp. 171–183, Kitson, Forging Romantic China, pp. 88–90. C. Gutzlaff, Journal of Three Voyages Along the Coast of China in 1831, 1832 & 1833 (London, 1834) and, for the second voyage under Hugh Hamilton Lindsay, see also

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his LMS colleagues expressed their unequivocal abhorrence of the trade and, whilst their zeal to enter China may have been open to misinterpretation, pace Julia Lovell, it is going too far to claim that they became ‘natural allies of the smugglers’ nor were they willing to endorse such means to achieve their objective.40 They were, on the other hand, in the forefront in contributing to cultural initiatives such as the Chinese Repository, designed to promote their cause. Established in May 1832, the periodical’s opening issues included an account of Gutzlaff ’s first journey as well as articles discussing the various approaches, both hostile and placatory, that might open China to the West. Edited by the American missionary, Elijah Coleman Bridgman, until it ceased publication in 1851, the journal provided an important forum for debate and information-gathering.41 In November 1834, ‘The Society for the Diffusion of Useful knowledge in China’, was founded which, under Gutzlaff ’s editorship, published a Monthly Magazine in Chinese. Four months later, the Morrison Education Society was set up with the aim of founding schools in China, where children could learn Chinese and English and read the Bible.42 In 1835, the Opthalmic Hospital was established in Guangzhou by American medical missionary, Peter Parker, and three years later the recentlyfounded Medical Missionary Society set up a hospital in Macao.43 Through these initiatives, missionaries and others sought to win the hearts and minds of the Chinese.44 Underpinning this approach was the belief that ‘ordinary’ Chinese people were only too keen to welcome and trade with Westerners and that the problem lay with Qing officials. However, this contrasted sharply with the experience in Guangzhou where local people allied themselves with the official hostility shown to missionaries, and British merchants were still wholly dependent on the co-hong and their extortionate practices. Given these differing accounts, despite the prohibition on visiting the mainland, Medhurst wanted to see the position for himself, both on the coast and in the interior. By chance, just as his plans

40

41 42 43 44

Bickers, Scramble for China, pp. 18–44. Julia Lovell, The Opium War, Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China (London: Picador, 2011), pp. 4 and 26–28. Malcolm ‘The Chinese Repository’, pp. 165–178, at p.166. Hillemann, Asian Empire and British Knowledge, pp. 98–99 and 176. Carroll, ‘The usual intercourse of nations’, pp. 22–40, at pp. 31–35. Chen Song-chuan, Merchants of War and Peace: British Knowledge of China in the Making of the Opium War (Hong Kong: HKU Press, 2017), pp. 61–81.

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were taking shape, he received instructions from London to proceed to China ‘to ascertain whether the country was open to the Gospel’, and confirmation that funds would be available.45 Leaving his assistant, Revd William Young, in charge of the mission station, he made his way to Macao. However, unlike Gutzlaff, he was determined not to be carried in an opium ship and rejected such a passage when it was offered.46 There was, therefore, a long delay before he could find a suitable ship willing to embark on such a risky journey. In the meantime, he was happy to assist Gutzlaff and John R. Morrison (now Secretary to the Superintendent of Trade) in producing a revised edition of Morrison’s father’s translation of the Bible. Eventually, an American merchant, David Olyphant, who had been instrumental in bringing the first American missionaries, Bridgman and David Abeel, to China, arranged for an American brig to take on Medhurst and Reverend Edwin Stevens, a colleague of Gutzlaff ’s, who already had some experience of the China coast. After some haggling, terms of charter were agreed, a crew assembled and stores laid in, together with several hundred bags of rice in case they encountered famine-stricken areas. Twenty boxes of books and tracts were stowed in the hold and on 26 August 1835, the Huron set out on this highly unorthodox voyage.47 Given the restrictions on entering China, a missionary intent on preaching and distributing tracts, let alone making conversions, was risking his life. For Medhurst, however, discretion was not the better part of valour. He and Stevens spent just over two months sailing up the coast, putting into ports and harbours, and preaching to anyone who would listen. In general, if their accounts are to be believed, they were well-received by the ordinary people, naturally curious to see these strange figures and keen to get hold of their tracts. The officials, by contrast, did their utmost to stop them and, to discourage any fraternising, they seized and burned their books whenever they could. All this would later be described by Medhurst in his lively and pugnacious style. Their visit to Shanghai gives the flavour. Clambering ashore from their rowing boat, they made for the Tianhou Temple, causing consternation just as Gutzlaff ’s arrival had done three years 45 46

47

Medhurst, China, Introduction. Letter, Medhurst to LMS, 24 August 1835, SOAS, CWM/LMS/South China/ Incoming Correspondence. Medhurst, China, pp. 359–370.

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earlier. An opera was in full swing and there could not have been a more symbolical clash between the two cultures; for the Chinese, the temple was not just a sacred place for worship but also a forum for daily life and entertainment; for Medhurst, it was the embodiment of heathenism and idolatry. Courteous but determined, he ‘saluted them in their own tongue, to which they cheerfully responded, and a little acquaintance with each other, soon taught both parties to lay aside their suspicions’. Told to stand when introduced to the Chief Magistrate, he walked out, insisting he would only return if he was allowed to sit. When informed that the Magistrate was ‘the greatest Chinese in Shang-hae’ he replied, ‘well, then, … the individual who now addresses you is the greatest Englishman in Shang-hae, and does not choose to compromise the honour of his country’. Some twenty years since the failure of Amherst’s mission, there seemed to have been little progress in agreeing audience protocol. Leaving the temple, they continued distributing tracts, but eventually realising they would not be allowed to enter the walled city, they left. In total, they had distributed about one thousand volumes but Medhurst knew the Chinese had little interest in their contents.48 After another two months, they made their way back to Guangzhou. If they had made no conversions, they had generally encountered, he said, ‘a cheerful and willing people’ and been met ‘with politeness and respect’.49 Having landed at Lintin Island, Medhurst made for Macao, where he could not resist helping Gutzlaff and Morrison complete their translation project before finally returning to his family.50 Reaching Batavia in January 1836, he was greeted with the news that an American missionary, Henry Lockwood, who had only recently arrived, had fallen in love with his daughter, Sarah, and had proposed marriage. As we will see in more detail in a later chapter, the Medhursts readily consented, not least because it suited their own plans. It had long been Medhurst’s intention to return to England both for a rest and to ‘plead the cause of China with the British public’ and now there would be someone who could 48

49 50

Medhurst, China, pp. 371–521; for Shanghai, see pp. 451–463; see also Bickers, Scramble for China, pp. 51–54. Medhurst, China, p. 497. Letter, Medhurst to LMS, 9 January 1836, SOAS, CWM/LMS/South China, Patrick Hanan, ‘The Bible as Chinese Literature: Medhurst, Wang-tao and the Delegates’ Version’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 63 (2003), pp. 197–239, at pp. 203–206.

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take over the running of the mission station in his absence.51 With Lockwood in charge, and the happy couple married, there was no need for any further delay. On 6 April 1836, they set sail, taking with them the three youngest children, their son, Walter, having already been sent to school in England. Accompanying them was Chooh-Tih-Lang (Chu Tak-leung), a scholar from Guangdong, who assisted with revising drafts of the new Bible translation. After four months at sea, they reached Southampton in August 1836 and were put up in lodgings in Hackney. Although one of the purposes of the visit was for Medhurst to rest and recover his health, almost immediately, he set off on a punishing lecturing tour to the west of England. Breaking off when winter effectively prevented longdistance travel, the following year, he made another extensive tour to the north of England. Held in a wide variety of halls, chapels and other such venues, the meetings attracted large audiences and considerable publicity.52 With non-conformists making up onetenth of the population in England and a half of adults going to church every Sunday, there was little difficulty in rallying support for such causes, particularly if they were promoted by an enthusiastic missionary such as Medhurst.53 And he did not disappoint his audience. When some four thousand turned up to the LMS’ Annual Meeting held on 11 May, at Exeter Hall (a venue already closely associated with evangelicalism, the anti-slavery movement and other social causes), he told them: ‘My soul is with the Chinese … Where they are, I will be’. Six months later, on 23 November, he was back at the same venue, this time speaking at an anti-slavery meeting. In the main, however, he concentrated on China, informing audiences about the country and its readiness for conversion, as well as soliciting funds. With few opportunities for associating outside formal chapel meetings, these would be popular events, drawing large numbers. They would be eagerly awaited and widely advertised and ‘remembered for years if not decades’.54 It is a mark of Medhurst’s eloquence and the commitment of ordinary working people that in just one week, three chapel meetings and one public meeting produced 51 52 53

54

Cf. letter, Medhurst to LMS, 1 November 1835, SOAS, CWM/LMS/Central China. Holliday, Mission to China, pp. 178–194 Hilton, A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People?, pp. 524–528, Thorne, Congregational Missions, pp. 5–21. Susan Thorne, ‘Religion and Empire at home’ in Hall, At Home with the Empire, pp143–165 at pp. 155–156.

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£11,019.55 Not only did they mobilise support for the missionary cause in China but they embedded the idea of the expanding British World.56 Although his audiences were enthusiastic and responsive, Medhurst noted how little they knew of ‘the political, moral and spiritual condition of the Chinese’.57 It was this that led him to embark on writing his book, a task that would dominate his last months in England and become a much larger project than he had envisaged. More than five hundred pages long, it covered a wide range of themes – part topographical, part history, part religious and part travelogue, describing his wide-ranging journeys, and providing a comprehensive account of the country.58 Although Medhurst was surprised at how little his audiences knew about China, his was just one of a number of books that came out at this time, describing the country for the common reader. Gutzlaff had of course produced his highly readable account and, in 1836, it was followed by John Davis’ detailed description of the country, its history and culture.59 A leading Sinologist of the Canton School, like Medhurst and Gutzlaff, Davis believed that speaking and understanding Chinese were key to furthering Britain’s interests in the region and eventual entry into China. After spending some twenty years in Guangzhou, in the employ of the East India Company and then as Britain’s first Chief Superintendent of Trade, he was now back in England, but there is no evidence that he and Medhurst ever met.60 Had they done so, it would probably not have been successful, given their similar temperaments – Davis’ abrasive manner during his time as governor of Hong Kong would later alienate almost the entire Western community as we shall see. Comprehensive though it was, apart from opium, Medhurst’s book makes no reference to social issues relating, for example, 55

56 57 58

59

60

Missionary Magazine, June 1837, p.293; for the Exeter Hall meeting see Morning Post, 24 November 1837 and Holliday, Mission to China, pp. 186–193. Thorne, Congregational Missions, pp. 5–6 and 21. Medhurst, China, Introduction. The full title was China: Its State and Prospects, with special reference to the spread of the gospel containing allusions to the Antiquity, Extent, Population, Civilization, Literature and Religion of the Chinese. John Francis Davis, The Chinese: A General Description of the Empire of China and its Inhabitants (London: Charles Knight, 1836). G.B. Endacott, A Biographical Sketch-book of Early Hong Kong, with a new introduction by John M. Carroll (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005), pp. 23–25, Kitson, Forging Romantic China, pp. 106–125.

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to the conditions in which ordinary Chinese lived and the treatment of women, who do not feature at all. He did not see a link between Christianity and social issues and, whilst Susan Thorne suggests that the LMS were ‘on the left wing of the evangelical spectrum’, it is difficult to see Medhurst in that light.61 His was a conservative approach and conversion was the only objective and, with that in mind, the last two chapters of China sounded a passionate call to arms. ‘No-one’, he wrote, ‘after the perusal of the foregoing pages, will hesitate to admit that the Chinese stand in need of conversion; and no-one, believing the Christian scriptures, will doubt the future and final triumph of the Gospel, in that populous and important empire’. But it would need a substantial number of missionaries – ‘pious, enterprising and zealous men, well-acquainted with the language and habits of the people …to carry the Scriptures and tracts to every part of the coast of China’, teachers ‘to compete with the native schoolmasters’, ‘pious physicians and surgeons’, a new translation of the Bible, improved methods of printing, and funds ‘of no ordinary amount for this great object’.62 This no doubt reflected his style of oratory and it was powerful stuff. The tone is informative and in many ways positive about China’s culture.63 However, it is scathing about many of the country’s practices and this is reinforced by the woodcut illustrations of the well-known engraver and printer, George Baxter. Although picturesque, a number depict scenes of idolatry and barbarism. Two will already have been familiar to English readers from other works. The first, ‘Judicial Process’ shows a prisoner on his knees with a rope round his neck, unsuccessfully pleading for mercy before a judge and officials, the second, captioned ‘Summary Execution’, shows the prisoner about to be decapitated with various bystanders looking on. Although public hangings still attracted large crowds in England, these images will have reinforced the sense of a barbarous country, whilst the next set of images, captioned ‘Buddhist Priest on a Stage’, Adoration of a Celebrated Devotee and Service in a Chinese Temple, were designed to convey its idolatrous practices. The final image, taken almost exactly from an early print by William Alexander, shows Medhurst and Stevens, being rowed ashore at Woosung 61 62 63

Susan Thorne, Congregational Missions, p.19. Medhurst, China, p.522 Cf. Chen, Merchants of War and Peace, p. 69.

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(Wusong) before making their way to Shanghai, their top hats conveying an image of western civilisation in a barbarous land.64 Published to considerable acclaim shortly before Medhurst left England, 5,000 copies were sold within the first two years. Less successful was the new translation of the Bible on which he had worked with Gutzlaff and Morrison. An initial draft had already been heavily criticised and rejected by the British and Foreign Bible Society and, at the end of the year, the LMS also refused to endorse it.65 Disappointed, not to say incensed, Medhurst would have to wait another five years before taking control of the next translation project. Shortly before leaving England, he had time for one more journey, this time to Paris. He had already been impressed by what he had read and seen of the presses operated by the celebrated printer, Marcellin Legrand, and the form of Chinese type that he had invented. He spent two weeks in France, visiting the printing works in Paris and acquainting himself with the latest technology, information which he then hastily recorded in his last letter to the LMS as his ship lay at anchor. He was later able to use this to persuade the LMS to acquire the most up-to-date equipment which would have a major impact on printing in Shanghai.66 Shortly afterwards, on 31 July 1838, he and the family, including young Walter, set off back to China. Returning with them was Medhurst’s Chinese assistant, Chu Tak-leung. Chu had had a somewhat unsatisfactory stay in England. For most of the time he had remained in London attending school and learning English, for which the LMS had paid. Only at the end, after he had been baptised, did he accompany Medhurst and on these occasions he was invited to address the audience.67 Whilst this will have reinforced the message that the Chinese were fit for conversion, Chu may have seen himself as being on display rather than as a fellow Christian to be respected as an equal. He is probably best-known today from Baxter’s frontispiece to Medhurst’s China (Plate 2), where he is seen conversing with the author in an oriental setting. Two years later, Baxter would use a similar setting in William Milne’s posthumous memoirs, but in that case, Milne 64

65

66

67

See ‘Temporary Buildings at Tientsin’, William Alexander, The Costumes of China (London: William Miller, 1805), plate 44. Hanan, ‘The Bible as Chinese Literature’, pp. 197–239, at pp. 200–213, Medhurst, China, pp. 547–555. Letter, Medhurst to LMS, 31 July 1838, headed, ‘On board George IV, off the Forelands’, SOAS, CWM/LMS/Home/Incoming Correspondence. Holliday, Mission to China, pp. 192–193.

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was seated with his wife, not his assistant.68 For Medhurst, it was more important to be depicted as the European sage, dictating to his Chinese student and bringing his learning to the East. The ambivalent approach that the LMS had to their Chinese converts would lead to particular problems when Chu arrived back in China. Engaged as a teacher to William Milne’s son in Macao, he found it difficult to adhere to the LMS’ strict moral code and, having been reprimanded for smoking opium, he wrote a strongly-worded letter, complaining of the hypocritical way he was being treated and, with that he disappears from the LMS. Although he exempts Medhurst from his complaint, it highlights a recurring problem for the LMS and one that would resurface in Shanghai where Chinese converts were marked out as being of ‘weaker faith’ than the ‘civilised people’.69 Also accompanying the Medhursts on their way home was a doctor, whose passion to convert the Chinese had been ignited at one of Medhurst’s meetings. Having immediately joined the LMS, the twenty-seven year-old, Dr William Lockhart, had been assigned as its first medical missionary to China with instructions to set up a hospital in Macao.70 This was the start of a close relationship that would last until Medhurst’s death. It also saw the start of a relationship between Lockhart and his future wife, Catherine (Kate) Parkes, culminating in their marriage, as we will see in in a later chapter. With his boundless energy and the publication of China, Medhurst had done much to familiarise the British public with a new idea of China and its readiness for conversion. But, eager though he was to enter the country, he was becoming concerned about the increasingly strident tone being adopted by British merchants and issued the following warning: 68

69

70

Robert Philip, The Life and Opinions of ... W. Milne, D.D., Missionary to China, Illustrated by Biographical Annals of Asiatic Missions from Primitive to Protestant Times, etc. (London, 1840). Letters, Milne to LMS, 1 June 1840 and 5 December 1840 enclosing Chu’s letter, SOAS, CWM/ LMS /South China/Incoming Correspondence, and see Carl T. Smith, Chinese Christians: Elites, Middlemen and the Church in Hong Kong (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 175–181; see also letter from Medhurst to LMS, 17 November 1838, in which he refers to having had to ‘reprove’ Chu for his behaviour ‘among his countrymen’ shortly after their arrival in Batavia, SOAS,CWM/LMS/ Ultra-Ganges/Java and cf. Esme Cleall, Missionary Discourses of Difference: Negotiating Otherness in the British Empire (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012), p. 3. A.P. Hughes, William Lockhart: A Short Biography (privately-printed) p. 11; see chapter 4, below.

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The Chinese see the rapid strides which Europeans are making towards conquest and power in the eastern world …[and] could not but be alarmed for their safety and the integrity of their empire … If China is closed against us, we may thank ourselves for it.71

Moreover, he added, Britain certainly did not have the moral high ground, given the vast profits which its merchants were making from sales of opium. He called for an immediate end to the trade in ‘our intoxicating drugs’, for the two countries to come together and, through a greater understanding of their respective cultures, both merchants and missionaries to be allowed to enter the country peacefully. What influence this had we cannot know but it was an important part of the mood that was building in England against the British merchants’ aggression. Whilst some of that opposition was expressed by the sort of people that Medhurst had been addressing at his meetings, paradoxically, some of those would interpret his enthusiasm as endorsing the more strident approach that was also gathering pace and would quickly lead to war.72 THE FIRST OPIUM WAR

By the time Walter Medhurst reached Batavia in November 1838, the situation in Guangzhou was becoming critical.73 With the merchants refusing to comply with Chinese efforts to stop the opium trade and the Superintendent of Trade, Charles Elliot, unable to impose any control, the Qing was beginning to realise the devastating effects the drug was having both socially and economically. In late December, the Emperor Daoguang appointed Lin Zexu as Imperial Commissioner with instructions to take all necessary steps to eliminate the trade. In March 1839, Lin arrived in Guangzhou and ordered the foreign mer71 72

73

Medhurst, China, pp. 135–136. Cf. Thorne, Congregational Missions, pp. 23–39, Hillemann, Asian Empire and British Knowledge, pp. 183–187, Andrew Porter, Religion, Missionary Enthusiasm and Empire, in Andrew Porter(ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire, iii, pp. 222–246 at pp. 235–236. For this and the following paragraphs on the war, see Platt, Imperial Twilight, pp. 323–374; see also Lovell, The Opium War. For a Chinese perspective, see Mao Haijian, The Qing Empire and the Opium War: The Collapse of the Heavenly Dynasty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016) and Chen, Merchants of War and Peace, p. 82–126.

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chants to surrender their stocks of opium, which were stowed on board ships in the river estuary, and blockaded them into their factories until they complied. After threat and counter-threat, Elliot persuaded the merchants to give up all their stocks, on the undertaking that they would be compensated by the British government. After further fraught negotiations, some 20,000 chests were surrendered and later destroyed and the British returned to Macao in late May. However, by this time Elliot had finally lost patience with what he saw as Lin’s un-co-operative behaviour and petitioned Palmerston for military intervention so that ‘a swift and heavy blow’ would teach the Chinese a lesson. Tension mounted when Portugal expelled the British from Macao following Elliott’s refusal to hand over some drunken sailors who had killed a Chinese villager. With the British merchants confined to ships in Hong Kong harbour, it was clear that Elliot’s policy of upholding their rights without antagonising Lin had failed. By November, Parliament had given lukewarm approval for the despatch of a fleet from India and the first shots of the war had been fired. For Medhurst and Lockhart, who had joined him when the British were expelled from Macao, the war presented a dilemma.74 Opposed to it both in principle and because of its connection with the opium trade, they nonetheless knew that it would secure entry into China. Moreover, once war had been declared, they will have felt bound to support the armed forces, particularly when Medhurst’s son, Walter, was taken on as an interpreter by Elliot’s Secretary, John Morrison. Sailing back to Macao in June 1840, Lockhart’ letter to the LMS encapsulated the problem: As to the justice or otherwise of the war, I will say nothing but I do think that it will be a means of doing much good to the Chinese nation – the strife is against the officials and not against the people who are for the most part very friendly …75

Reflecting a naïve, not to say disingenuous, narrative that this was a war against the officials and not the people, his letter shows 74

75

Letter, Lockhart to his father, 30 August 1839, Hughes, Lockhart Correspondence, pp. 130–133. Lockhart to LMS, 5 June 1840, SOAS, CWM/ LMS /South China/Incoming Correspondence.

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how difficult it was for the LMS to dissociate itself from British aggression.76 By the time Lockhart reached Macao, that aggression was all too apparent. A fleet, comprising sixteen men-of-war, four steamers and transports carrying four thousand British and Indian troops, had weighed anchor off Hong Kong and then sailed north. The next twelve months saw a mix of conflict and compromise, ending in a stale-mate. Chusan (Zhousan) was captured almost without a shot being fired, and as the ships proceeded further north, Daoguang panicked and dismissed Lin, replacing him with a seemingly more conciliatory official, Qishan. Elliot was persuaded to return to Guangzhou, with a view to resuming negotiations.These resulted in a draft agreement which both governments promptly then repudiated, leaving only one important provision in place – the permanent cession of the island of Hong Kong, which was followed up by a detail of marines taking possession of the island. Growing impatient, Palmerston replaced Elliot with Sir Henry Pottinger, a more belligerent character, who, arriving in August, promptly sailed north with a greatly-reinforced fleet and instructions to secure a speedy and conclusive victory. Sailing with him was young Medhurst. Whilst he had not become a missionary, he had plenty of his father’s evangelical zeal. Writing to London, Medhurst senior told the LMS that his son had joined the church and ‘longs to spend more time in the cause of the Redeemer’ and ‘though his time and attention are taken up with secular duties, his ear is interested in the conversion of China’ and, by this stage, it was conversion at any price.77 Present at the re-capture of Zhousan in October, he had first-hand experience of the brutal cost in Chinese lives. Putting up a stronger but hopeless resistance, bodies littered the hill-sides, whilst the British losses were minimal. When the fleet sailed north, Medhurst remained behind as official interpreter to the garrison. Lockhart had also arrived with instructions to establish a hospital, in which the wounded on both sides were treated. With the island acting as an important source of supplies, the Chinese found themselves reluctant collaborators whilst Medhurst and Lockhart watched the war reach its inevitable denouement.78 76 77

78

Cf. Chen, Merchants of War and Peace, seriatim, and, especially, pp. 2–9 and 76–81. Letter, Medhurst to LMS, 12 April 1841, SOAS, CWM/LMS/ Ultra Ganges/ Batavia/Java/Incoming Correspondence. Lieutenant John Ouchterlony, The Chinese War: An Account of all the Operations of the British Forces (London: Saunders & Otley, 1844),pp. 177–186 and W.D. Bernard,

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Even the British troops were appalled at the scale of Chinese losses, their later accounts recording a begrudging respect for men who ‘could maintain to the last such steady coolness and indomitable valour’.79 Facing a force of 25 warships, 14 steamships and over sixty transports carrying some 20,000 men, the Qing finally sued for peace.80 On 29 August 1842, terms were agreed on board HMS Cornwallis. These included the formal cession of the island of Hong Kong ‘in perpetuity’, the opening of five treaty ports, each with a consul with exclusive jurisdiction over British subjects and the payment of a massive indemnity. With the conclusion of the Treaty of Nanjing, Britain was finally able to enter China.81 For Medhurst, senior, this was the moment for which he had been waiting for some twenty-five years. As early as April 1842, he had sought permission to close the mission station in Batavia, arguing that there was no longer any purpose in the LMS having a presence there – in part, so he said, because a ban on Chinese immigrants by the Dutch administration had drastically reduced their numbers. However, London Headquarters took some convincing and it was not until June 1843 that he was finally permitted to leave. The premises were sold to the English congregation and the presses and type sent to Hong Kong, to await further instructions.82 Although he had achieved few converts, the LMS had established an impressive presence, including setting up schools, a medical centre and an orphanage, which exists to this day. For the Chinese, however, the principal achievement was the technical revolution in printing that Medhurst had brought about, one which would have long-term consequences not only in Batavia but also in China and throughout the Chinese diaspora.83 Medhurst had familiarised himself and those entering China with a knowledge of the country and its culture and this had contributed

79

80 81

82

83

Narrative of the Voyages of the Nemesis, from 1840 to 1843 (2 vols) (London: Henry Colburn, 1844), p. 315, Christopher Munn, ‘The Chusan Episode: British Occupation of a Chinese Island, 1840–1846’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 25 (1997) pp. 82–112. Ouchterlony, The Chinese War, pp. 269–281, at pp. 280–281; see also Lovell, The Opium War, pp. 211–213. Mao, The Qing Empire, p.384 and generally for this last phase of the war, pp. 372–414. Bickers, Scramble for China, pp. 84–86; China ratified the treaty on September 15 and Britain on 28 December 1842. Letters, Medhurst to LMS, 22 April and 28 October 1842 and 5 July 1843, SOAS, CWM/LMS/ Ultra-Ganges/Java. Su, ‘Printing Presses’, p. 232.

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to its opening to the West. He would now be able to translate his experiences into practice. Having decided to re-locate its Ultra-Ganges headquarters, the LMS also moved the Anglo-Chinese College from Malacca to Hong Kong, where it was to be run as a seminary rather than as a secular college and where a meeting was held in August 1843 to decide on the next steps. After considerable debate, it was decided that Medhurst and Lockhart would set up a mission station at Shanghai and plans were also drawn up for beginning a new translation of the Bible under Medhurst’s supervision. In early October 1843, Dr Medhurst, as he had now become, having received an honorary Doctorate from the University of New York, and Revd W.C. Milne left for their respective treaty ports. However, almost immediately, they encountered atrocious weather and were forced to return to Hong Kong, and Medhurst, having lost his library and most of his possessions, only finally reached Shanghai in early December. There, he was greeted by his son, who had been appointed interpreter to the newly-established consulate.84 CONCLUSION

For those caught up in the First Opium War, whether directly or indirectly, the causes would always be contested. For some, it had been an immoral exercise designed to promote the opium trade, whilst for others, it was part of Britain’s civilising mission, intended to break down barriers in order to spread commerce and Christianity.85 Thus, according to the recently-founded Illustrated London News, it had been … a great war for mankind … It opened the eyes of millions of human beings who were buried in the dark recesses of idolatry and unfurled the wings of commerce in regions where they had hitherto been kept both chained and clipped … it exhibited some of the finer influences of humanity and Christianity.86

It had required, so it was said, considerable sacrifice and, if it had failed to achieve as much as was hoped, this was because the gov84

85 86

Letters, Medhurst to LMS, 21 0ctober, 11 November and 26 December 1843, SOAS, CWM/LMS/South China/Incoming Correspondence. Platt, Imperial Twilight, pp. 400–413. Illustrated London News, 18 February 1843, p. 106

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ernment had been too conciliatory in the terms that had been agreed and had failed to drive home the advantage: in short, there was still unfinished business, a recurring complaint that would only be resolved by the next round of hostilities which would begin thirteen years later.87 For all their disapproval of the opium trade, Medhurst and his missionary colleagues were inevitably implicated in these events and their zealous proselytising and information-gathering had facilitated and implicitly legitimised the forcible opening of the country, however much it ran counter to their intentions.88 However, during the time he had spent in Batavia, travelling, preaching and engaging in lengthy dialogue with Chinese of all classes (albeit, almost entirely men), Medhurst had developed an understanding of the Confucian principles that underpinned Chinese society and that he believed, with adjustments, could be made accessible to Christian teaching. Through his writing and lecturing, he had also relayed information back to England and had sought to encourage a more nuanced approach to the country and it was this approach that would inform his work when he arrived in Shanghai. With a new translation of the Bible planned, a substantial supply of Chinese tracts, modern printing equipment and boundless energy, he was ready to take on the task for which he had been preparing for the last twenty-five years. Formidable though this task would be, he did at least have some experience of China and the Chinese and could speak the language. The same could not be said of the first Consul appointed to Shanghai, who would be substantially dependent on both the Medhursts in his early dealings with the local officials.

87 88

Cf. Chen, Merchants of War and Peace, pp. 126–149. Cf. Hillemann, Asian Empire and British Knowledge, pp.168–187.

2

Opening the Treaty Ports Œ

THE HEROIC PERIOD

‘TWENTY-ONE YEARS AGO’, wrote Consul Walter Medhurst in 1864, ‘a small iron steamer started early one cold dull November morning from the landing place at Ting-hae, the small capital of Zhousan with half a-dozen passengers on board’. Passing Wusong, ‘where thousands of curious wondering Chinese rushed out to gaze at her, the small contemptible craft’ made its way up the Huangpu river and anchored alongside the walled city of Shanghai at sunset on 8 November 1843. The following morning, the party disembarked and HM Consul, Captain George Balfour, presented his credentials to the Chinese authorities.1 Thus, the first tentative steps were taken to establish the treaty port of Shanghai. Accompanying Balfour as his consular interpreter, Medhurst, junior, would have a major role to play during his three years in the Settlement. And, although his father had turned down the offer of an official position, he would also become one of the most prominent members of the fledgling community. This was, in Jurgen Osterhammel’s words, ‘the ‘heroic period’ of the Consular Service, in which its officials acted as ‘empire-builders, establishing a British presence in adventurous conditions and in the face of an often hostile Chinese environment’.2 Although very different and seldom mentioned in the histories of Shanghai, the early missionary presence was equally ‘heroic’. Established after some opposition on the outskirts of the Settlement, its chapel, hospital and printing press would become an 1

2

W.H. Medhurst, ‘Reminiscences of the Opening of Shanghae to Foreign Trade’, Chinese and Japanese Repository, 15 (1864), pp. 79–88. Jürgen Osterhammel, ‘Britain and China, 1842–1914’, in Andrew Porter (ed.), Oxford History of the British Empire, iii, pp. 146–161, at p. 155. 29

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important bridge between the two communities, particularly with the exponential increase in the Chinese population in the 1850s as they fled from the Taiping rebels. Focussing on the Medhursts’ experiences, this chapter examines the way in which the consulate and the mission station combined to establish the British presence in Shanghai, how this in turn shaped Medhurst junior’s approach to his consular career and how these experiences were shot through with the ambiguities that would mark the British presence. Despite the eagerness to open China, little had been done to lay the ground for the newly-appointed consuls, who were left to find their own way and adjust to whatever conditions they encountered.3 Contrary to later mythologizing, the foreign settlement was not established in a ‘wilderness of marshes’ nor was Shanghai a mere ‘fishing village’, but a largish port-city, with a thriving sea-borne trade, exporting cotton, fertiliser, tea, silk and a range of manufactured goods. There was also a sophisticated political structure well able to cope with, if not keen to welcome, the new arrivals.4 By contrast, Consul Balfour was ill-prepared. A serving soldier for all his life, he had joined the Madras Artillery at the age of fourteen and had shown good service during the recent war. Although he had learned some Chinese and impressed Pottinger by the reasonableness of his approach, now aged thirty-four, he had little or no experience to qualify him for the task he had reluctantly undertaken.5 Accordingly, despite young Medhurst’s condescending tone, the new arrivals were wholly dependent on the goodwill of their hosts; goodwill which might well have been in short supply, given the suffering that had been inflicted by the recent war. Although remote from its causes, Shanghai was too strategically placed to be left in peace during the conflict. After the British Expeditionary Force had attacked and captured the coastal port of Wusong in late 1841, a flotilla of seven warships and five transports, with at least one thousand men on board, had proceeded up-river. With its officials and wealthier citizens fleeing in panic, the city was left with no option but to surrender without a fight and for five days was subjected to a military occupation, 3 4

5

Bickers, Scramble for China, pp. 93–96. Lynda Cooke Johnson, Shanghai: From Market Town to Treaty Port, 1074–1858 (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 1995), pp. 8–10. Coates, China Consuls, pp. 25–26, Bickers, Scramble for China, pp. 93–100.

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with all that that entailed. Whilst, unsurprisingly, accounts differ as to what then took place, this much is clear. Sacred places were taken over and desecrated, including one of the most important temples, Chenghuang Miao, or the City God Temple, which was used as an army headquarters. Billeted in garden pavilions, troops tore down ‘the most exquisite ornaments’ to use for cooking fuel, and helped themselves to the luxury goods, silks and satins they found in the lavishly-stocked pawn shops. Before leaving, the city’s arsenal was emptied: 171 guns and nine tons of gunpowder were seized and all the military stores destroyed. The city was later required to contribute 300,000 dollars towards the war indemnity China was ordered to pay.6 Being based in Zhousan, young Medhurst was not directly involved in these events but he would certainly have been aware of them and of the further progress of the war, as the Chinese forces suffered increasingly heavy defeats. Moreover, within a year of the war ending, accounts by the British combatants were being published – compelling reading for men like Balfour and young Medhurst, who had no doubts about the justice of the British cause.7 The Chinese had a very different view. Not only had the people of Shanghai suffered humiliation and loss but, with British gun-boats now patrolling the river Huangpu, they were on notice that this could all be repeated if they failed to cooperate. Against this background, Balfour instructed young Medhurst to request an audience with ‘the chief civil authority on equal terms and within the city walls’ and obtain suitable accommodation. Although this had apparently been arranged by Pottinger during his earlier visit, the Daotai claimed to know nothing about it and initially asserted that it simply would not be possible.8 However, a merchant then came forward and offered them his private resi6

7

8

Edward Denison, and Guang Yu Ren, Building Shanghai: The Story of China’s Gateway (Chichester: Wiley-Academy, 2006), pp. 25 and 33–34, Johnson, Shanghai, pp. 178–182, ‘Despatches of Sir Hugh Gough’, Chinese Repository, 12 (1843), pp. 343–345, ‘Capture of Wusung and Shanghae’, Chinese Repository 12 (1843), pp. 287–293, Granville G. Loch, The Closing Events of the Campaign, the Operations in the Yang-tze-Kiang, and the Treaty of Nanking, (London, 1843), pp. 36–54 at p. 49. See, for example, Robert Jocelyn, Six Months with the Chinese Expedition (London: John Murray, 1841), Duncan McPherson, Two Years in China: Narrative of the China Expedition: Narrative of the Chinese Expedition from its Formation in April 1840 to the Treaty of Peace in August 1842 (London: Saunders and Otley, 1843), Alexander Murray, Doings in China (London: Richard Bentley, 1843), Ouchterlony, The Chinese War. For Pottinger’ visit, see Bernard, Narrative of the Voyages of the Nemesis, p. 407.

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dence – ‘a house within the city walls which was so suitable … so roomy and really so beautifully and luxuriously furnished’, that Medhurst immediately agreed terms. Over the following days, the Daotai also thawed and ‘did his best consistently with his duty to his superiors, to show the consul every civility in his power’.9 Simply and without ceremony, the process of collaboration that would be central to Britain’s presence in Shanghai had begun. Steps to found the mission station were also under way. After confronting further problems at sea, Medhurst, senior, finally arrived shortly before Christmas. It was eight years since he had last set foot on the port’s quayside and, this time, he was doing so lawfully. Climbing ashore, he was greeted, not by irate officials and bemused bystanders, but by his son. However, although young Medhurst was able to help his father and Lockhart look for premises, he almost immediately fell sick with rheumatism and pleurisy, problems that would beset his early life and was forced to return to Zhousan in search of a healthier climate. As a result, his father was asked to take over as official interpreter, a task that he was happy to carry out for the next few months. As he explained to London Headquarters, it put him in touch with Chinese officials as well as demonstrating to the English authorities that ‘missionaries are too useful to be lightly driven away or prevented from settling in ports’.10 Early in the New Year, Lockhart’s wife, Kate, arrived and four months later, young Medhurst, seemingly in better health, escorted his mother and three sisters, Eliza, Martha and Augusta, back from Hong Kong to Shanghai and these two families soon became an important hub of the small western community, providing an intimacy to its day-to-day life.11 Resuming his duties as the official interpreter, young Medhurst was responsible not only for the translation work but also for ensuring that good relations were fostered with the Chinese, both officials and local people, and for procuring land for the future settlement. A mainly rural area just north of the walled city and abutting the river was mapped out and, in due course, Land Regulations agreed, prescribing standard terms for the granting of leaseholds, a complex collaborative exercise in which patience and skilled negotiation were essential.12 As the first merchants began 9 10 11 12

Medhurst, ‘Reminiscences’, p. 82. Letter, Medhurst to LMS, 1 May 1844, SOAS, CWM/LMS/Central China. Denison, Building Shanghai, p. 51; see also chapter 4. Yu Chen, ‘ “Rent-in-Perpetuity” System and Xiamen Title Deed: A Study of Sino-Anglo Land Transactions in China’s Treaty Ports’, in Brunero, Life in Treaty

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to arrive, the Settlement began to establish its identity. However, it was not the one envisaged by the Chinese authorities, who at first looked upon them as little different to the mercantile guilds, which were required to integrate into the existing patterns of trade. Nonetheless, the Daotai, who had been chosen specifically for his tact in dealing with outsiders, was able to establish a reasonable rapport with the consular officials.13 By contrast, Balfour quickly found the British merchants difficult and querulous. Rather than joining them in the European quarter, he remained in the Chinese city and after less than three years in post, tiring of the endless disputes, he resigned. The consuls in the other treaty ports had not fared much better. Two had died by this time and one had been dismissed: none of them had been properly qualified and with Balfour’s departure, ‘the amateur phase was ending’.14 Twelve months later, Medhurst, junior, also left Shanghai. Still suffering from ill-health, he had been granted a period of sick leave in England.15 However, despite these problems, he had already made his mark, putting his linguistic ability to good use and, working closely with Balfour, the two were able to forge reasonably harmonious relations with Chinese officials. By contrast, their successors, Rutherford Alcock and his interpreter, Harry Parkes, adopted a very different approach, allying themselves unequivocally with the British merchants and taking every opportunity to challenge Chinese officials, whom they considered to be arrogant, hostile and corrupt. At the same time, they began instilling the semi-autonomous character that would be the Settlement’s defining feature, and there was an architectural style to match. With its rectilinear grid of streets lined with houses of ‘compradoric’ design, and the elegant Bund of majestic buildings fringing the water-front, it was very different from what the Chinese had expected. Safely insulated from the walled city and its 250,000 Chinese, the 250 Westerners evolved their distinct

13 14 15

Port China, pp. 185–214 at p. 186. Johnson, Shanghai, pp. 176–206 and 267, Bickers, Scramble for China, pp. 95–99. Coates, China Consuls, pp. 26–27. See Lockhart’s letters, 2 and 3 July and 5 November 1844, Hughes, The Lockhart Correspondence, pp. 205–206, 221–22 and 241–245, letter, Walter Medhurst to Martha Medhurst, 22 October 1846, Eliza Hillier correspondence, SOAS, and Medhurst to Under-Secretary for Foreign affairs, 5 January 1847 announcing his arrival in London, having been granted leave of absence for the benefit of his health, TNA, FO 17/133, no. 15, and no. 17, applying to extend his leave until January 1848.

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life-style, with each community regarding the other as ‘terra incognita’.16 Only the missionaries would bridge this divide, but they had to overcome a number of problems before doing so. THE MISSION STATION

Although keen to build constructive relationships, Medhurst and Lockhart initially had considerable difficulty in finding premises. Religious practice of any sort was prohibited and the local Chinese were fearful of reprisals if they were seen to be assisting the missionaries. Eventually, they had to content themselves with two sets of buildings, both just outside the walled city but some distance from each other; one to be used for holding services, housing the printing press, and accommodating Medhurst’s family, and the other for the hospital and Lockhart’s family. Fearful of encountering hostility, the two missionaries started cautiously but soon found the local people to be surprisingly responsive. In 1845, to their relief, the ban was lifted and they were able to build a chapel. Between 200 and 500 Chinese were soon attending services each week and there were also ex tempore sessions in the street.The mission press was already producing religious material in both mandarin and the Shanghai dialect as well as a number of secular works, including Chinese Dialogues (1844), which was designed ‘to promote commercial intercourse’ and, two years later, The English and Chinese Dictionary and Ancient China.17 The hospital was also extremely busy, catering for some 800 to 1000 out-patients per month.18 Despite Medhurst’s difficult temperament, he and Lockhart enjoyed an excellent relationship. As Lockhart wrote home, it was ‘a privilege to work with him for the cause of Christ; we have long desired to be together and God has granted our wish’.19 The mission quickly outgrew its premises and received the go-ahead from London to embark on an ambitious building programme. The Chinese authorities were also sympathetic and gave them permission to build a chapel and dispensary in the 16 17 18

19

Johnson, Shanghai, p. 7, Bickers, Scramble for China, pp. 107–111. Su, ‘Printing Presses’, pp. 289–299. William Lockhart, F.R.C.S, The Medical Missionary in China: A Narrative of Twenty Years’ experience (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1861); letter, Medhurst to LMS, 15 October 1844, SOAS, CWM/LMS/Central China/Incoming Correspondence. Letter, Lockhart to his father, 15 June 1844, Hughes, The Lockhart Correspondence, p. 217.

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walled city, provided it was constructed in the Chinese style. At the same time, although the Foreign Office discouraged Consuls from allowing missionaries to set up stations within the European quarter, Alcock, who got on well with both Medhurst and Lockhart, permitted them to use a site that was at the far west end of the Settlement and sufficiently remote not to impinge on the peace of the foreigners. Spreading over three acres, it comprised a chapel for all Christian denominations (except Roman Catholics), a mission house (including residential quarters), printing offices and a hospital (known to this day as Shandong Road Hospital), consisting of a large hall for outpatients and wards for thirty in-patients. This was also built in the traditional style on a single floor and with oyster-shell windows, to make it more acceptable to the Chinese. In the event, the Settlement developed so rapidly, that the compound was soon surrounded by Westernstyle buildings. Services were well-attended and, as patients flocked to the hospital and dispensary, the missionaries made the most of their captive audience, preaching, distributing tracts and supplying material to be passed on to family and friends. And so a steady stream of Chinese people began to make their way to and from the compound and as it did so, the mission station became a contact zone, generating a process of transculturation between the two communities.20 But, this was not enough for Medhurst; he wanted to get out into the countryside to spread the Word. THE ITINERANT MISSIONARY

He was, as we have seen, an indefatigable traveller not for its own sake but in order to discover and understand more about China and seek out potential converts. However, foreigners were prohibited from travelling more than a day’s journey from the city (out and back), a restriction both Balfour and Alcock were keen to enforce. Initially, Medhurst toed the line. However, he found it increasingly frustrating when he discovered others were flouting the rule with impunity, in particular, Roman Catholic missionaries, who were actually living outside the Settlement, often in disguise, to the knowledge of the French Consul, to whom they were answerable irrespective of nationality. 20

Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (2nd ed.) (London: Routledge 2008), pp. 6–7.

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Those involved included the Roman Catholic Bishop of Shanghai, an Italian, by the name of the Count de Besi, to whom Medhurst and Lockhart paid a visit along with Consul Balfour, who also seemed unconcerned at his living ‘in the Chinese manner’, some distance outside Shanghai.21 But there were others who were also more favourably treated. For example, Balfour had, taken no action when the Scottish explorer and naturalist, Robert Fortune, defied the restriction. On his second visit, Fortune narrated how he had been assisted by ‘two English gentlemen who were excellent Chinese scholars’. One of these will almost certainly have been Medhurst, senior, the other being either his son or Lockhart. As was well-known, Fortune had made a number of lengthy journeys from the city, which he will have described to Medhurst, and, for his expedition in April 1844, he had travelled ‘in the Chinese costume; [with] head shaved [and] a splendid wig and tail’.22 When, later that year, Medhurst heard of a Chinese sage living deep in the interior who might be interested in learning more about Christianity, he could not resist the temptation of following Fortune’s example. The information had come from a tea-planter from Hangchow (Hangzhou), Wang Sho-yeh, who had visited the Shanghai premises, having heard of the missionaries’ arrival and seen some of their publications – an indication of how the Christian message was spreading to the interior.Wang agreed to introduce Medhurst to his ‘spiritual guide’, who was, he said ‘a very enlightened Chinese who had extracted all that was good from the Confucian, and other systems within his reach, with reference to a Supreme Being’.The two men set off on 27 March 1845, Medhurst in Chinese dress, with shaven head and queue. Whilst he kept a characteristically detailed diary, his account was only published four years later, although it was well-known at the time that he had made this journey.23 21

22

23

Letter, Lockhart to father, 18 March 1844, Hughes, The Lockhart Correspondence, p. 208. Robert Fortune, Three Years Wanderings in the Northern Provinces of China (London: John Murray, 1847), pp. 115–142 and 243–254, quotes at p. 132 and pp. 252–253 and see Bickers, Scramble for China, pp. 96–98. W.H. Medhurst, A Glance at the Interior of China Obtained During a Journey through the Silk and Green Tea Districts, taken in 1845 (Shanghae: Mission Press, 1849 and London: John Snow, 1850) reprinted in part in Elizabeth H. Chang (ed.), British Travel Writing from China, 1798–1901, II, Mid-Century Explorations, 1843–1863 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2010), p. 51–146; Medhurst named his guide in his letter, 31 March 1845, SOAS, CWM/LMS/ Central China/ Incoming Correspondence, and Chang, British Travel Writing, II, p. 78.

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If meeting Wang’s mentor was the principal purpose, ‘passing’ in disguise was also an important part of the exercise, and not simply to evade detection. The process of dressing up, which he describes in elaborate detail, was important in itself, as Elizabeth Chang has argued. Medhurst was not interested in disguise as such but in ‘visual and spiritual translation’ and this could only be achieved if he experienced what it was like to be Chinese and to be seen as Chinese.24 It is a measure of his linguistic ability that he was able to go undetected, putting forward various explanations for his unusual looks, including the suggestion that he was a literary graduate proceeding to the city to try for higher honours. However, he was running a considerable risk both for himself and Wang. At one point, his queue fell off when he was sitting with a group of Chinese men and, on another occasion, he narrowly avoided having his face examined by a fortuneteller who gruffly commented on how ‘his countenance was not of the common order’.25 The problem was that, given his disguise, Medhurst could not of course preach, let alone try to make any conversions. Nor could he enter into the sort of combative but respectful dialogues which he so much enjoyed. Although he never managed to meet the elderly sage, he did meet one of his guide’s scholarly friends. Dropping his disguise, he was soon engaged in a lively conversation and this was then extended to a group of Confucian scholars who were, presumably, also let into the secret. Impressed by their erudition, Medhurst concluded that some of their views ‘would not have disgraced a Christian moralist’.26 Once again, this confirmed his belief that Confucian principles provided a basis for converting the Chinese. In Wang’s case, this proved well-founded. According to Medhurst, the two men struck up ‘a peculiar friendship’ and the following year,Wang was baptised but, after this, they seem to have lost touch with each other. The expedition was undoubtedly foolhardy and could have had fatal consequences and it provoked strong criticism from Governor Davis in Hong Kong, who instructed Balfour to condemn Medhurst’s conduct in the strongest terms should he be 24

25 26

Elizabeth Chang, ‘Converting Chinese Eyes: Rev. W.H. Medhurst, “Passing” and the Victorian Vision of China’ in Douglas Kerr and Julia Kuehn (eds), A Century of Travels in China: Critical Essays on Travel Writing from the 1840s to the 1940s (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2007), pp. 27–38, 30 and 31. Chang (ed.), British Travel Writing, pp. 131–132. Chang (ed.), British Travel Writing, p. 131.

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apprehended by the Chinese, commenting that this sort of fanaticism went beyond the bounds of reason.27 Even Medhurst may have felt chastened when he received this reprimand and this may explain why he decided not to publish his account at that time. He and his colleagues continued making regular and more modest weekly journeys into the interior to preach and gather information about potential converts. Realising that they could not travel far on foot, they purchased a boat and, threading their way through the intricate canal system, were able to cover twenty to thirty miles in a day. When the Revd George Smith visited Shanghai in the course of a fact-finding mission, he accompanied Medhurst on ‘his usual weekly excursion up river’. Well-received wherever they went but making no converts, they were home shortly before midnight.28 Three years later, one of these daily excursions almost ended in disaster and what became known, as the ‘Tsingpu Outrage’ would have long-term implications for Sino-British relations, not only demonstrating Britain’s willingness to use force whenever there was a perceived sleight to its prestige but also firmly allying Medhurst and the missionaries with this approach. On 8 March 1848, in accordance with their standard practice, Medhurst, Lockhart and Muirhead set out early for Qingpu (Tsingpu), a town some thirty miles away. Leaving their boat, they walked the last five miles, preaching and handing out texts which prompted interest but no hostility. However, at some point they were set upon by a group of unemployed boatmen who jostled them and seized their pamphlets. Having managed to get away, they were attacked again, this time more violently – Medhurst was struck on the head with a hoe and then kicked whilst on the ground, with most of their possessions being stolen. However, they were eventually rescued. ‘The inhabitants manifested the utmost sympathy’, he wrote later, and the local Magistrate provided them with a military escort back to their boat, saying the culprits would be punished. Unpleasant though the incident was, none of the missionaries suffered serious injury and, since the action had been officially condemned, the affair could have been glossed over. However, Alcock, encouraged no doubt by Parkes, seized the opportunity 27 Coates, China Consuls, p. 57. 28 George Smith, Narrative of an Exploratory Visit to Each of the Consular Cities of China and to the Islands of Hong Kong and Chusan: In Behalf of the Church Missionary Society, in the Years 1844, 1845, 1846 (London, 1847), pp. 144–148.

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to teach the Chinese officials a lesson and demanded the arrest of the culprits and suitable redress. The recently-appointed Intendant, Xianling, hesitated, unsure of his rights. Informing Governor Davis of what he was going to do, but not waiting for approval, Alcock threatened to withhold payment of all duty and to summon up gunboats to impose a blockade on one thousand 1000 tributary grain junks which were about to proceed to Peking. Xianling eventually produced ten prisoners, two of whom were identified as culprits and punished. Not content with this, however, Alcock demanded his dismissal. The new commissioner at Guangdong, keen to appease him, acquiesced and the hapless Intendant was removed in disgrace for wrongly handling ‘barbarian’ affairs. Whilst Alcock praised Medhurst and his colleagues for their ‘Christian forbearance and temper’, much of the ‘credit’ for the outcome went to Parkes, who, as the only Chinese speaker, effectively conducted the negotiations, and ‘to whose exertions, tact and zeal, its successful termination [was] chiefly due’, as the Viceconsul stated in his report, a verdict which was endorsed by Governor Bonham (who had replaced Davis) and Palmerston, who described his intervention as ‘very able and judicious’.29 Drawing on the missionaries’ accounts, the local British press also gave extensive coverage to the incident.30 It was perhaps no coincidence that, shortly after the attack, Medhurst decided to publish his account of his earlier unlawful expedition.There seems to have been an element of bravado in his eagerness to show that he could match the Chinese and overcome what he considered to be petty restrictions, particularly as he may have exceeded the permissible travel limits in this recent incident. Since Lockhart was Parkes’ brother-in-law, it was clear that not only were the LMS and the consulate closely allied but the missionaries were happy to be associated with this sort of militancy. Commended by London for his efforts, Parkes also saw it as confirmation that aggression was the preferred option. Recovered and undeterred, Medhurst and his colleagues continued with their expeditions. The travel restriction seems gradually to have been relaxed. By 1854, he was able to write to the 29

30

Stanley Lane-Poole, Sir Harry Parkes in China (London: Methuen,1900), pp. 86–97 and letter from Alcock to Davis no. 19, 10 March 1848, FO 228/89. For the missionaries’ accounts, see The Chinese Repository 1848 (17), pp. 151–157; for Alcock’s response, see Michie, Sir Rutherford Alcock, I, pp. 129–135 and FO 228/92, Jan. 19, 1849, Alcock to Bonham; Lynda Cooke Johnson, Shanghai, pp. 239–242 and 265.

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LMS describing a number of excursions that he and his fellow missionaries, Muirhead and Edkins, had made to areas never previously visited, some hundred or so miles from the city which had required overnight stays. They had gone, he wrote, ‘in our own character as missionaries, no man forbidding us’. Not only that, but the local Chinese officials seemed happy to assist them, providing them with ‘chairs and coolies’.31 In these parts of Central China at least, missionaries and, by extension,Westerners generally, were no longer seen as unwelcome intruders. Yet, just two years later, the combination of Parkes’ belligerence and anti-foreign sentiment in Guangzhou would bring the two countries once again to war. THE SCHOLAR-ADMINISTRATOR

Despite being the most senior of the LMS missionaries, Medhurst seems never to have visited the mission stations at two of the other treaty ports – Amoy (Xiamen), where there was a surprisingly successful conversion rate, and Guangzhou, where, against official resistance, Dr Hobson had established a thriving hospital. Moreover, although he had accompanied his daughter, Eliza, to Hong Kong for her wedding to Charles Hillier in 1846, he seems not to have returned to the colony, whether to visit his family or missionaries such as the young Walter Legge, who would later become the outstanding Sinologue of his generation.Whilst this may have been down to cost and lack of time, it may also have had something to do with Medhurst’s character. He had a restless energy and, having no wish to be a mere observer, if he was to be involved in a project, he needed to be at its centre and, preferably, in control. Nowhere would that be clearer than in the one to which he was about to devote the next six years of his life – the preparation of, what became known as, the Delegates’ Version of the Bible. As we have seen, Medhurst was always seeking new ways to penetrate the Chinese mind. A key reason for the lack of conversions, he believed, was the inadequacy of the Morrison-Milne translation of the Bible, which was still the principal version in use, following the rejection of the edition on which he had worked with Gutzlaff and Morrison.32 During their meeting in Hong 31

32

Letter Medhurst to LMS, 27 December 1854, SOAS, CWM/ LMS/South China. See Chapter 1.

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Kong in 1843, the LMS representatives had discussed with other Protestant missionaries the possibility of producing a new translation and it had been agreed in principle that the best way to proceed would be for the work to be undertaken by a number of delegates in different locations. In July 1847, the project had finally got under way with Medhurst in overall control. Two of the other four delegates took up residence in Shanghai, and, shortly afterwards, two new missionaries, William Muirhead and Benjamin Southwell, arrived, accompanied by Alexander Wylie, a printer, who brought with him a state-of-the-art cylinder press, which would revolutionise output. Over the next six years, the delegates applied themselves to the relentless and, at times, controversial task of producing a new translation from scratch. Relentless though it was, Medhurst still had time to publish a number of secular works which he considered would further foster knowledge about China, including detailed descriptions of Shanghai and the surrounding area, compiled from a range of local histories and guides. There were, he estimated, some 20,000 volumes relating to China: ‘no country’, he wrote, ‘certainly no pagan land, has ever produced such voluminous documents calculated to elucidate the condition of the empire’ and the work would, he hoped, render China ‘as much known as any given section of the Western world’.33 Representing only a fraction of the material being published about China and its culture, the country was becoming better-known both in London and Shanghai. The Bible, however, was the primary task and the project quickly ran into difficulties over an issue which had already become familiar to Christians of all denominations, namely, the most accurate equivalent in Chinese for God and Holy Spirit. The dispute between Medhurst and a former colleague, the American missionary Dr Boone, would occupy the pages of the Chinese Repository for the best part of a year and assume an extraordinarily bitter tone.34 Unable to let the matter rest, Medhurst would go on 33

34

Walter Henry Medhurst (ed.) The Chinese miscellany: designed to illustrate the government, philosophy, religion, arts, manufactures, trade, manners, customs, history and statistics of China (Shanghai: Printed at the Mission Press, 1849–1850), W.H. Medhurst, General Description of Shanghae and Its Environs Extracted from Native Authorities (Shanghai: printed at the Mission Press, 1850), pp. 2–3 and Chinese Miscellany 31 August 1850, p. 18. Chinese Repository (1848), pp. 104–133, 161–188, 209–242, 265–310, 321–354, 488–520. Whilst this suggests that there were sufficient subscribers with the time

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to publish a further lengthy treatise justifying his position. Arcane though it seems today, the dispute was not just about linguistic precision. In his view, it was essential to use terms which most closely mirrored Confucian concepts of ‘heaven’, ‘the Supreme ruler’ and ‘the principle of order’, and only then, would the missionaries unlock the Chinese mind.35 By July 1850, a revised New Testament had been finished in draft but with the disputed terms unresolved. The following year, the LMS members lost patience with their American colleagues and, spurred on by Medhurst, published their own New Testament and this was followed twelve months later by the Old Testament. The Delegates’ Version was finally ready to be printed and at last all Medhurst’s hard work was about to bear fruit. Moreover, it could not have happened at a better time as news was spreading of a revolutionary movement sweeping across Southern China, which was apparently designed to promote the Christian message. However, it was also causing havoc and devastation. What became known as the Taiping Movement had begun some fifteen years earlier, when a twenty three year-old student, Hong Xiuquan, was given a tract, written by the celebrated Christian convert, Liang Fa, which condemned the Qing regime and proclaimed that salvation could only come through the Christian God. Convinced that he was the brother of Jesus Christ and that his destiny was to save China from idolatry and the Qing, Hong built up a substantial following and founded a Christian community just north of Guandong. Calling itself the Taiping tianguo – the Heavenly Kingdom of Peace – three quarters of a million followers marched a thousand miles north-east to spread the Word. Fundamentalist in their approach, they slaughtered those who resisted the message and spared those who embraced it. On 19 March 1853, they captured Nanjing and, so it was feared, now had Shanghai in their sights.36 How much Western missionaries can be blamed for the start of the movement is debatable, but, despite its heterodoxy and violence,

35

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and inclination to follow the debate, it may not be entirely coincidental that, three years later, the Chinese Repository ceased publication owing to falling circulation; see Elizabeth L. Malcolm ‘The Chinese Repository and Western Literature on China 1800 to 1850’, Modern Asian Studies, 7 (1973), pp. 165–178. W.H. Medhurst, An Inquiry into the proper mode of rendering the word God in translating the Sacred Scriptures into the Chinese language (Shanghai Press, 1848). For the movement and its impact on Shanghai, see Bickers, Scramble for China, pp. 118–125.

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they became sympathetic once it began to gather momentum.37 Having met Hong in Nanjing, Medhurst reported that the Taiping espoused the Ten Commandments and Christian values generally, and, by using the term Shang dhi, showed that they understood the concept of a Christian God.They would, he thought, not only support the missionary cause and forbid idolatrous practices, but also end the obstructiveness and corruption of the Qing and the country would begin to prosper. His views were enthusiastically taken up in London and endorsed by the press. According to The Times, China had become ‘part of the world’ and the North China Herald published a lengthy analysis of Taiping literature in which Medhurst argued that many of the texts were consistent with Christian principles.38 If what he had been told was correct, he said, there had been ‘a moral revolution – it is the wonder of the age’.39 British officials, however, were more circumspect and, unless and until it became clear that the Qing was to be overthrown, neutrality was to be the order of the day. A show-down was averted, because, apart from one ill-prepared and unsuccessful attempt to attack the Settlement, Shanghai was left in peace and, instead, the Taiping headed on towards Peking. They would, however return to Shanghai and over a period of eleven years, the rebellion would claim some twenty million lives before finally being quashed. One positive outcome, however was an increased demand for the new Bible. Fortunately, the cutting-edge printing equipment imported by the LMS was well able to cope, whilst also fulfilling the jobbing orders being placed by both Western and Chinese communities.40 Adopted by the British and Foreign Bible Society, by 1859 the New Testament had reached into its eleventh edition. As well as being Shanghai’s only publishing house, the Mission Press (Mohai shuguan) became an important intellectual hub. Chinese scholars came to marvel at the press machinery, which was driven by bullocks in the adjoining wheel works, and to discuss its publications. One of these was Kuo Sung-tao (Guo Sung-tao), 37

38

39

40

See, for example, the letter from Bishop George Smith to the Archbishop of Canterbury, 23 May 1853, Endacott, The Diocese of Victoria, pp. 23–31. The Times, 30 August 1853, p. 6, The Morning Post, 30 August 1853, Johnson, Shanghai, p. 298, W.H. Medhurst, ‘Critical Review of the Books of the Insurgents’, NCH, 3,10,17 September, 1853. NCH, 26 November, 1853; see also a letter from Medhurst dated 14 December 1853, quoted in Captain Fishbourne, Impressions of China and the Present Revolution: its Progess and Prospects (London: Seeley, Jackson and Halliday, 1855),pp. 351–354. Su, ‘Printing Presses’, pp. 312–319

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a member of the Imperial Academy and a scholar with an open and inquiring mind, who was fascinated by the new equipment, which he described in his diary, as ‘a specimen of Westerners’ ingeniousness’. After some lively discussion, he took away several issues of Xia’ er Guan Zhen (Chinese Serial) a Hong Kong-based Chinese language miscellany of news, Bible stories and information about the West, edited by Medhurst’s son, Walter, his son-inlaw, Charles Hillier and James Legge. The visit seems to have had a considerable influence on his intellectual development. Some twenty years later, appointed China’s first ambassador to Britain, he would travel to England accompanied by Medhurst’s grandson, Walter Hillier, and the two of them would have enlightened discussions, as we shall see.41 Working alongside the missionaries were the Chinese assistants. Through their Confucian learning, they would be familiar with precepts such as goodness, social duty and filial piety, but they were not generally Christian converts, and so care had to be taken to ensure the sense of these terms was accurately rendered. In his memoirs, Lockhart describes how, in order to do this, Medhurst’s first assistant, Wang C’hang-kuai (Wang Zhanggui), when questioned about a word, would go to the library shelves and ‘in a few minutes return with book after book in which he would produce a large number of passages where the word occurred’.42 A respected teacher, towards the end of his life, Wang introduced his son, Wang Tao, to the missionaries. Schooled in the Confucian classics, Tao had passed the first set of official exams and plainly created a good impression, because, the following year, shortly after his father’s death, he was taken on as Medhurst’s new assistant. Thus began a relationship which, despite his wayward character, Wang Tao would always value, later commenting that Medhurst was the one Westerner with whom he felt truly intimate. Moreover, he said, Medhurst was the only missionary who did not butcher Chinese. With two older colleagues, Chiang Tun-ju (Jiang Dunju) and Li Shan-lan (Li Shanlan), these Three Odd Fellows, as they became known, made a major contribution to the translation of the New Testament, possibly resulting in the criticism that the language had been adjusted too much to accommodate Confucian 41

42

Su, ‘Printing Presses’, p. 322 and Jenny Huangfu Day, Qing Travellers to the Far West: Diplomacy and the Information Order in Late Imperial China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 16 and 150–152. Lockhart, Medical Missionary, pp. 147–148.

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thinking.43 In due course, Wang became interested in Christianity, mainly through the influence of two friends, and having set out a long statement of his beliefs, was baptised by Medhurst on 26 August 1854.44 However, he did not care for Christianity’s strict moral code and spent much of his time in the city’s brothels and night spots, such conduct being presumably unknown to his mentor. Although working with foreigners would often provoke contempt from fellow Chinese, here was a group of intellectuals – brilliant, if eccentric – happy to associate with missionaries, who represented the scholarly elite of the missionary body and had dedicated themselves to China’s conversion. Whilst the two communities remained very separate, the Shanghai Press was an important mechanism for inter-cultural exchange, not only in its publications and the influence it had on printing in China, but also in generating a social milieu in which British and Chinese intellectuals could converse.45 For all this camaraderie, however, Medhurst never shed his own cultural norms nor sought to distance himself from the British establishment, despite the discriminatory treatment it meted out to the Chinese, including Christian converts, however orthodox and devout. For the first ten years, they were not allowed to live in the Settlement and, although this restriction was relaxed with the influx of refugees from the Taiping, they continued to be treated as inferior. They were prohibited from walking in the parks and gardens and, even converts could not be buried in the British cemetery, which was open to foreigners of all Western nations and of all denominations.46 We have already seen in the last chapter how Medhurst seems to have had an equivocal approach to Chinese converts. Whilst he had good reason to be sceptical of Karl Gutzlaff ’s ill-fated Chinese Christian Union, which sought to use them to spread the Word, his reasons were as much to do with the unsuitability of the Chinese for the task in principle, as with the details of the project.47 Paradoxically, this equivocal approach to 43

44

45 46 47

Hannan, ‘The Bible as Chinese Literature’, pp. 224–228; for Wang Tao’s visits to the Mission Press, see Su, ‘Printing Presses’, p. 322, Paul A. Cohen, Between Tradition and Modernity, Wang T’ao and Reform in Late Ch’ing China (Cambridge: Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 14– 16. Report of Directors, LMS, 10 May 1855, Hannam, ‘The Bible as Chinese Literature’, appendix, pp. 235–239 and see report, W.H. Medhurst, 11 October 1854, SOAS, CWM/LMS/ Central China Incoming Mail. Su, ‘Printing Presses’, pp. 300–304 and 321–335. Johnson, Shanghai, p. 253 Jessie G. Lutz and R. Ray Lutz, ‘Karl Gutzlaff’s Approach to Indeginization: The Chinese Union’ in Daniel H. Bays (ed.), Christianity in China: From the

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the Chinese as converts may explain why Medhurst was less sceptical about the Taiping, even when it had forfeited all credibility with most Westerners. Long after the LMS had officially disowned any connection with the movement, Medhurst kept up with some of its followers, notably Hong’s relative, Hong Rengan, who became a friend of Wang’s and who stayed with Medhurst, before settling in Shanghai and working for the LMS.48 There seems to have been a lingering notion that, in China at least, heterodox converts might be better than no converts at all. Just as Shanghailanders were thinking the Settlement was no longer in danger, they found it was once again under threat, this time from a local religiously-inspired movement, which was specifically setting its sights on Shanghai. On 7 September 1853, some 3000 men, who became known as the Small Swords, entered the Chinese city, killing its Magistrate and capturing the Daotai. The following day they invaded the Settlement, occupying the Customs House, but leaving foreigners unmolested. Once again, British policy was to maintain neutrality until the outcome had become clear, although the position became confused when its leader, Liu Lichuan, began courting Western support, saying he wanted to receive instruction in Christianity. On one occasion, Lockhart courageously rescued some Chinese officials and, in the main foreigners, were able to trade with the rebels and to walk unmolested through the streets of the occupied city.49 The missionaries became particularly busy, as refugees sought shelter in the chapels and wounded soldiers were treated in the mission hospital, some even becoming converts.50 However, in view of the risk that the Settlement might get caught in the cross-fire, a corps of volunteers and marines was raised under the command of Thomas Wade, a young consular official, who was just at the start of what would be a long and distinguished career. Shortly afterwards, when Qing forces set up camp nearby, intending to attack the Chinese city, Alcock ordered them to withdraw. When they refused, the Shanghai Volunteer Corps, as it was called, sprang into action. Mythologised as a brilliant victory, the ‘Battle of Muddy Flat’ lasted two hours and saw four fatalities on the British side and thirty on the Chinese. Directed, as it

48 49 50

Eighteenth Century to the Present (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 1996), pp. 269–291. Cohen, Between Tradition and Modernity, pp. 52–54. Bickers, Scramble for China, pp. 126–127, Johnson, Shanghai, pp. 279–282. Su, ‘Printing Presses’, p. 321.

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was by two future British Ministers to Peking, Alcock and Wade, this somewhat absurd skirmish put down another marker showing how the British would respond if they encountered opposition from Chinese officialdom. However, they had no interest in the fate of those in the walled city and it would be another year before the siege was finally lifted.51 In the meantime, refugees poured into the Settlement and, as they did so, its character began to change in a way which would affect all Westerners including Medhurst. From a mere five hundred residents in 1852, in the space of two years, the Chinese population had increased to 20,000, leading to greater interaction between the two communities and the flourishing of ‘pidgin English’ as the lingua franca.52 However, this did nothing to reduce the cultural divide. On the contrary, for the Westerners, it became all the more necessary to formalise the Settlement’s institutions in order to safeguard their position and exclude the possibility of the Chinese having any say in its running, an approach strongly endorsed by the North China Herald, whose editor, Harry Shearman, ‘a man of strong Protestant conviction’, was always happy to pander to the more prejudiced members of the community.53 In addition to establishing the Shanghai Volunteer Corps, a Foreign Inspectorate of Customs was set up with the Daotai’s consent, and given responsibility for collecting and accounting for all duties leviable on export goods. This body would become one of the essential components of Britain’s presence, as we will see when we come to Harry Hillier’s career in what would become the Imperial Maritime Customs. Alongside the establishment of the Customs Service, the modest Committee of Roads and Jetties was converted into an elected body responsible for administering the municipality. Whilst all British residents continued to be answerable to the Consul, the Shanghai Municipal Council (SMC), as it became known, was a transnational, but exclusively, western body, and as such, effectively autonomous, a status that would shape the Shanghai character and be jealously guarded well into the next century. Medhurst was one of the SMC’s five founding members and as such closely identified with the new administration, as it set about forming the Shanghai 51 52

53

Bickers, Scramble for China, pp. 130. Cf. Jia Si, ‘Treaty-Port English in Nineteenth-Century Shanghai: Speakers, Voices and Images’, Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, 6 (2013), pp. 38–66. Bickers, Scramble for China, pp. 108–109.

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Municipal Police, improving roads and the water-front and securing the Settlement’s boundaries. Whilst the British would remain firmly in control of the Council, a more complex society began to evolve, one less homogeneous, in which there was a range of European nationals, together with Parsees and Sephardic Jews from India, alongside all levels of Chinese society, which were being drawn into the treaty port system.54 Despite wanting to bring the two principal communities closer together, Medhurst, the maverick missionary-scholar, had now become part of the administrative apparatus that maintained the division between them.55 However, his health was beginning to fail and, informing the LMS Directors that he could feel ‘the infirmities of age creeping over [him]’, in early 1855, he was given permission to return home for rest. It would be another eighteen months before he and Betty left and for some of that time they put up his replacement, the twenty-three year-old Griffith John, who arrived in October, 1855, with his wife, Margaret. John would become one of the foremost missionaries in China. Some fifty years later, he recalled the first year that he spent in Shanghai with ‘the venerable and venerated’ Dr Medhurst, ‘a very prince among the missionaries’, whom he found to be ‘very genial, very accessible and very helpful’.56 For someone so renowned for his irascibility, this was a touching tribute from the young acolyte. Walter and Betty set sail on 10 September 1856 and the following year, Lockhart also made his way home. Neither missionary would see Shanghai again, although Lockhart would later return to establish a Medical Mission in Peking. Little-recognised today, their contribution to the early Settlement should not be under-estimated. Although the rate of conversions had remained low, large numbers of local Chinese were flocking to the weekly services and making use of the missionary facilities – the Chinese Hospital, as it became known, which would go from strength to strength, the infirmary and a small school – and its press which was producing a prodigious amount of material for both communities, secular as well as religious.57 Much of this 54

55 56 57

Bickers, Scramble for China, pp. 127–135, Jackson, Shaping Modern Shanghai, pp. 2–5. Cohen, Between Tradition and Modernity, p. 19. Thompson, Griffith John, pp. 47–48. For the hospital, see Kerrie L. Macpherson, ‘A wilderness of marshes’ : the origins of public health in Shanghai, 1843–1893 (Hong Kong ; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 143–171.

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was down to Medhurst’s and Lockhart’s involvement and direction and, with their departure, although the LMS work would continue, it would cease to play such a prominent role in the Settlement.58 However, whilst they had generated some degree of cultural interaction, neither Medhurst nor his fellow missionaries had managed to bridge the gulf between the two communities.59 There remained mutual suspicion and, on the British side, a belief that force was the only language that Chinese officials truly understood. This reflected the attitude of men such as Rutherford Alcock, Harry Parkes and Thomas Wade and unsurprisingly, it would have a strong influence on young Medhurst in his consular career and would ultimately and inevitably lead to war. THE YOUNG CONSUL

As his parents were making their way back to England, Medhurst was settling in as British Consul in Fuzhou, following his appointment in November 1854. Since returning from England in 1848, he had seen service in Xiamen (1848), three years in Shanghai, at the end of which he was described by the North China Herald as ‘someone deservedly esteemed by the community’, followed by three years in the Governor’s Secretariat in Hong Kong.60 After eleven years’ service, he was impatient for more responsibility but, by comparison with his last two assignments, Fuzhou would be considerably quieter. Described by Alcock, when he was its Consul in 1846, as agreeable but more or less a sinecure, the treaty port was just beginning to fulfil its commercial promise as one of the principal outlets for tea exports. With the advent of the China clipper, trade was booming and the small but affluent community of foreign merchants, which included the tea magnate Robert Jardine, was able to enjoy a lavish life-style. But, outside the trading season, the Western community was minuscule, Medhurst’s Return for 1856 listing, in addition to his own staff, only ten resident 58 59

60

Significantly, there is no mention of the LMS in Jackson, Shaping Modern Shanghai. Cohen, Christian Missions, p. 62; cf. Tsou Mingteh, ‘Christian Missionary as Confucian Intellectual: Gilbert Reid(1857–1927) and the Reform Movement in late Qing in Christianity in China’, in Bays (ed.) Christianity in China, p. 78. NCH, 7 February 1852, p. 110.

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British subjects, including three tea inspectors, two merchants and a surgeon.61 Nonetheless, emulating Alcock’s and Parkes’ approach, Medhurst sought to invest as much pomp in the post as he could. Relations between British and Chinese officials in the treaty ports were conducted in accordance with an elaborate protocol, which both sides were keen to observe, partly because there was little else to occupy their time. Shortly after his arrival in April 1855, having arranged a meeting with the Chinese viceroy, Medhurst and his deputy were carried to the yamen in sedan-chairs decked in the distinctive blue material of Fuzhou. Reaching the main gate, they were received by three deputies who escorted them to the main audience hall; from there they were taken by the prefect to meet the viceroy in the inner court and then to his inner room, where they conversed affably for some twenty minutes and relations seemed to have got off to a good start. However, despite this promising beginning, Medhurst was soon on the offensive. He strongly objected to a proclamation referring to the British as barbarians – yi –, informing the prefect he could not put up with this insulting language and concluding: …we are not barbarians but in civilisation and everything else that constitutes the greatness of a nation undoubtedly your superiors. This is patent to the whole world and we might call you barbarians, yet we do not do so, because we are a courteous nation.62

The dispute over, what Lydia Liu calls, ‘the super-sign’, raised an issue that had long bedevilled Sino-British relations and continued to do so after the opening of the treaty ports, with Medhurst recently claiming in a newspaper article that its use violated the spirit of the Nanjing Treaty.63 Seemingly trivial, it typified a number of underlying tensions, which many British officials and merchants believed could only be properly resolved by another war. Foremost amongst these officials was H.M. Consul to Guangzhou, the belligerent Harry Parkes. Subjected to a long and humiliating occupation by British forces during the First Opium War, the port-city had long been 61

62 63

Consular Return, TNA FO 228/236, no. 16, Coates, China Consuls, pp. 118– 1222 and Nield, China’s Foreign Places, pp. 89–91. Coates, China Consuls, pp. 32–34. Chen, Merchants of War and Peace, pp. 143–145 and pp. 82–102, Liu, Clash of Empires, pp. 96–104.

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a flash-point, with its Chinese merchants being as reluctant as its officials to have any dealings with Westerners. Governor Davis had failed to break the dead-lock following an ill-judged raid in 1847 and Parkes was itching for another excuse to teach the Chinese a lesson.64 Hearing that the local police had seized a lorcha (a coastal junk), named the Arrow, and arrested its Chinese crew on suspicion of piracy, he had his chance. Although owned by a Chinese merchant, the vessel had been registered in Hong Kong and was thus, arguably, entitled to British protection. It also had, nominally at least, a British captain and, at his instigation, Parkes remonstrated with the Governor General,Ye Mingchen. When Ye insisted that the seizure was lawful, Governor Bowring intervened and threatened reprisals unless the crew were released. In no time, a Chinese warship had been seized, the forts at Guangzhou disarmed and naval ships were bombarding the city. Once again, a wholly needless war had begun. Lasting four years, it would see the familiar pattern of brutal slaughter and bungled negotiations, until brought to an end by the murder of Britain’s peace envoys and the retaliatory looting and destruction of the exquisite Yuan Ming Yuan, known in the West as the Summer Palace. Ratified in Peking in 1860, the terms of the Treaty of Tientsin (Tianjin) made clear what the Britain aimed to achieve by going to war: Western legations were to be established in Peking, each with its accredited Minister, additional treaty ports were to be opened and Western merchants were to have greater freedom of movement through inland China. The use of the term, yi, was also expressly prohibited in diplomatic communications and, with these issues resolved, the celestial empire could now be welcomed into the family of nations.65 Fuzhou was largely untouched by the war and, much to his disappointment, Medhurst was only able to play a minimal role in it. Still suffering from ill-health, he had spent a year convalescing in England but, then, on his return in 1858, his application for the post of Interpreter to the General Officer Commanding was turned down and, instead, he found himself back in Zhousan, acting as a subordinate interpreter.66 As the war drew to a close, he resumed his consular duties in Fuzhou and, now into his 64

65 66

For the Davis raid, see Frank Welsh, A History of Hong Kong (London: Harper Collins, 1993), pp. 177–181. Bickers, Scramble for China, pp. 136–150 and Hevia, English Lessons, pp. 31–48. Letter, W.H. Medhurst to Bruce, 25 February 1860, TNA FO 228/191.

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third marriage, having buried his first two wives, he and his family settled into the lavish new consular accommodation, alongside the rest of the Western community, just outside the city walls.67 Seeking to uphold consular prestige, he steered a course between controlling unruly British nationals – many being transient merchants and sailors, who became embroiled in the port-city’s low life-, and doing justice when disputes broke out between them and the local people. At times, this could generate its own problems. Reprimanded by the first British Minister in Peking, Sir Frederick Bruce, for seeking to resolve potentially criminal matters by the payment of compensation to the victim’s families, he was later criticised for being too partisan towards the Chinese when exercising his judicial functions.68 However, he much enjoyed the everyday life he saw around him and, sympathetic to the local people, would later ascribe anti-foreign behaviour to the ‘tendency to forget that the natives possess feelings and rights which need to be respected’.69 After six years in Fuzhou, ambitious and impatient, he hankered after the consulship at Shanghai, a settlement which, because of ‘its magnificent position and advantages, [would] always hold the first place amongst the ports of China’, as he concluded in his review of its early years.70 However, although he was made acting Consul for two years in the early 1860s, he would have to wait until 1868 before returning and another two years before being finally appointed as HBM Consul, Shanghai.71 By that time, the first of his nephews will already have begun his China career. CONCLUSION

If the Medhursts, father and son, both shared many of the more aggressive British attributes and a similar impatience in their dealings with Chinese officialdom, they were also keen to understand China and its culture and to help build better relations between the two communities. Thus Medhurst, senior, believed that, in addition to establishing the mission station, he had to engage in reasoned discourse, introducing his listeners to Western philosophy 67 68

69

70 71

Coates, China Consuls, p. 122. Coates, China Consuls, pp. 49, 60–61, 68 and 222 and Thompson, ‘The British State’, p. 109 ; see also Wright, Hart and the Chinese Customs, pp. 355–360. Coates, China Consuls, p. 222 and see his article, ‘Chinese Kites’, written anonymously, in Charles Dickens’ All the Year Round, XI (1864), pp. 17–18. Medhurst, Reminiscences, p. 88. Coates, China Consuls, p. 140 and see below.

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and adapting Christian doctrine to their Confucian principles. If this failed to produce converts, it at least stimulated constructive dialogue. Moreover, in making available a vast range of texts, the LMS printing press enabled Chinese officials and literati to develop their interest in ‘Western learning’ whilst also informing Westerners about China.72 With the recent massive influx of refugees into the Settlement, this had at least helped to provide a way of mediating between the two principal communities. Strongly influenced by his father and developing an excellent knowledge of Chinese, Medhurst, junior, had become a respected consular official, whilst seeking to do justice between British nationals and the local Chinese people, and in due course, he would write his own sympathetic account of the country and its customs.73 It is an approach that he shared with his brother-inlaw, Charles Hillier, whom he had first met in the earliest days of the colony and had come to know well when he had returned to Hong Kong to work in the Secretariat. Although the functions of the Chief Magistrate were wholly different to those of a treaty port consul, in both roles, there was the need to mediate between Britain’s colonial presence and the local people, and for this, linguistic proficiency and an understanding of China and its culture were essential. Whilst Medhurst had acquired these attributes from his father, Hillier had had no such advantage. How, despite his obscure origins and lack of relevant experience, he developed these skills and quickly rose to become Chief Magistrate is the next stage in this study.

72

73

Cf. Hsu, The Rise of Modern China, pp. 357–358; cf. Yen-p’ing Hao and Erh-min Wang, ‘Changing Chinese views of Western Relations, 1840–1895’ in Fairbank, The Cambridge History of China, vol. 10, pp. 142–202, at pp. 169–170. W.H. Medhurst, The Foreigner in Far Cathay (New York: Scribner Armstrong and Co., 1873).

3

Colonising Hong Kong Œ

THE OBSCURE ADVENTURER

LITTLE

WAS KNOWN of Charles Batten Hillier’s background and the circumstances which had first brought him to Hong Kong. According to reports at the time, this young and ‘obscure adventurer’, having arrived sometime in 1841 as the Second Mate of a merchant-ship, had left to join a trading company, which soon afterwards failed. He then disappears from view until 20 December 1842, when he is known to have joined the recently-established Magistrates’ Court as a clerk and interpreter. Promoted to Assistant Magistrate on 26 June 1843, he was appointed four years later the Colony’s Chief Magistrate, a post he would hold for the next nine years.1 Even by the standards of a fledgling colony, it was an unusual career path, particularly given the importance of the Magistrates’ Court. It was, as Christopher Munn says, ‘the arena in which government and people encountered each other most extensively, most directly, most unequally, and with far-reaching consequences’.2 And, as Governor Bonham later acknowledged, upon its successful working depended ‘the degree of respect with which the Chinese … regard our …Government generally, as well as the obedience that they will be disposed to pay to

1

2

For what was known about Hillier’s background at the time, see, Endacott, A Biographical Sketch-book, pp. 84–89 and, largely based on that information, May Holdsworth and Christopher Munn (eds), Dictionary of Hong Kong biography (Hong Kong : Hong Kong University Press, 2012), pp. 182–183. Christopher Munn, Anglo-China: Chinese People and British Rule in Hong Kong, 1841–1880 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2001), p. 111 and generally, pp. 109–159. 54

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the laws under which they are permitted to reside.’ 3 With the six hundred or so westerners out-numbered by some 20,000 Chinese, the success of this exercise was dependent upon the implicit collaboration of those people and their confidence in the Magistracy. Whilst there were serious failings in Hillier’s approach, we will see that, under his stewardship, the court generated a degree of respect from this multi-faceted community and, as a result, law and order was maintained. This was all the more surprising given the fact that, during this period, the colony would suffer from a deeply-divided administration, economic stagnation and widespread corruption. How was it, therefore, that someone seemingly so unqualified for that role was able to achieve as much as Hillier did? To answer this, we must first understand more about his early life and the circumstances that brought him to Hong Kong. CAINE’S PROTEGÉ

Born into a naval family in Rochester in 1820, Hillier joined the Indian Mercantile Marine at the age of fifteen and rose to be Second Mate of a former East Indiaman, the Minerva, which plied between Madras and London. Waiting to embark on his return voyage to England in August 1840, he was informed that the vessel had been chartered as a transport to convey the 37th Madras Native Infantry as reinforcements for the British Expeditionary Force during the First Opium War. Given little choice, he took the decision that would change his life and, having signed the ship’s articles for its next voyage, he set sail for the South China Sea. Having weathered a typhoon, the Minerva joined the fleet in November just as the first set of peace negotiations were about to begin.4 When they broke down, Hillier witnessed the full horror of modern warfare. On 7 January 1841, the fleet attacked the two forts defending the Bocca Tigris or the Bogue, as the mouth of the river leading to Guangzhou was called – Chuenpee (Chuanbi) on the east bank and Tyecoktow (Daijiatou) on the west. Some 600 men 3 4

Letter, Bonham to Grey, 27 December 1848, TNA CO 129/26, p .310. See the Asiatic Journal and Monthly Miscellany, vol. 33, Pt. 2, pp. 206–208; I am grateful to Dr Stephen Davies for this reference. The voyage is described by Duncan McPherson, M.D., who was the doctor in a sister ship, the Sophia, in Two Years in China: Narrative of the Chinese Expedition from its formation in April 1840 to the Treaty of Peace in August 1842 (London: Saunders and Otley, 1843), pp. 30–34.

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from the Madras 37th N.I. were disembarked from the Minerva and other transports and landed by steamer a couple of miles south of Chuanbi. As the warships began shelling the fort, the troops advanced against the field batteries. After little more than an hour, the fort was taken and the enemy routed. The British suffered 38 casualties and no deaths, whereas the Chinese lost 600 of the 2000 troops manning the fort.5 There was similar slaughter on the other side of the river. The local Chinese commander, Qishan, had no option but to concede defeat and, just under two weeks later, agreed to surrender Hong Kong and its deep water harbour to the British Crown. On 25 January 1841, a detachment of marines from HMS Sulphur took possession of the island and a week later, Elliott issued a proclamation informing its inhabitants that they were now subjects of the Queen of England. Although the agreement would be repudiated by both governments, the island’s annexation would be permanent. When hostilities were re-joined at the end of February, the 37th NI were engaged in two attacks in the Bogue in which the Minerva was also involved. However, when the ship was ordered to set sail on 15 March, according to its log-book, Hillier was no longer on board. The official entry for the following day, simply reads: ‘Hilliar [sic], C.B. 2nd m. deserted’… 16/3/41 Minerva’.6 Hillier had clearly failed to return to his ship and was thereby in breach of its articles and, had, technically at least, ‘deserted’. However, the entry raises a number of questions: where did he go and how did he survive without work or shelter, since on any view, this occurred before almost any settlers had arrived; and how did he change from being a deserter to joining the trading company, which he later did – Ferguson Leighton & Co. – without anyone asking any questions? Given the handful of British on the island, apart from troops, and the seriousness of failing to return to your ship in time of war, if only from a merchant transport, his presence there must have attracted attention. One possible answer is that he had succumbed to the fever that afflicted the British forces, and was being treated either on board another ship or in a mat-shed hospital on shore. A ship’s master was prohibited from allowing a member of the crew to remain in a colony without the consent of the local British official and, when Hillier failed to return, 5 6

Bernard, Narrative of the Voyages of the Nemesis, p. 119. Entry in the log-book of the Minerva, TNA BT 112/29, p. 253.

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the master, Captain Geere, would have had no option but to make the entry which he did.7 Some support for the theory that he was being treated on board another ship is provided by a number of his water-colour sketches, the final one, ambiguously captioned ‘from anchorage off Wang-Tong, April, 1841, Sophia’ which may indicate that he had transferred to that transport in order to receive medical treatment (Plate 5). Even if that is correct, it leaves open the question as to what he did and where he lived, once he had recovered and why he did not re-join the Minerva when it returned to Hong Kong, as it did, in June 1841 before sailing north. The family papers do not help. An account by his daughter, Maudie, suggests that he actually took part in the planting of the union flag on Possession Mount. Whilst he was certainly not present on the first occasion on 26 January, it was hauled down in February because of the difficulty in garrisoning the island and re-hoisted on 6 March, when the Madras N.I were on the island and it is possible that he was present on that occasion.8 Given his subsequent reputation for probity, it remains a puzzle but, whatever the explanation, it did not prejudice his future prospects. He was able to get started in his new life as a result of three factors: his background and character, the fact that he had already learned some Chinese and finally and, crucially, the patronage of Major William Caine, the Colony’s first Chief Magistrate. Both his father and grandfather had been pursers in the Royal Navy which would have placed him on the cusp of the middle class but his mother came from a well-known Rochester family, the Battens, and had inherited one of the city’s oldest and most celebrated houses on Boley Hill, and this no doubt explains why the local directory classified the Hilliers as ‘Gentry’. In early Victorian Britain, and even more so in the empire, class was extremely fluid and would be important to the Hillier family as its members made their way in their overseas careers.9 Educated at the local Classical and Mathematical School until he was fifteen, Hillier was brought up in a disciplined and socially conservative household.With his father, his grandfather and a number of uncles all having seen lengthy action in the Napoleonic Wars, 7 8

9

The Merchant Shipping Act, 1835. Geoffrey Sayer, Hong Kong: Birth, Adolescence, and Coming of Age (London: Oxford University Press, 1937), pp. 93–101. Wright’s Topography of Rochester etc. (London: J.G. Wright, 1838), Hilton, A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? , pp. 432–437.

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they will have had no doubts about Britain’s place in the postNapoleonic world. Central to the household was religion.Whilst the family’s brand of Anglican ‘evangelicalism’ took a more ‘moderate’ form than that of Medhurst and his LMS colleagues, its principles underpinned everyday life – Sundays, for example, were sacrosanct, with the Bible being the only permitted reading matter.10 According to G.B. Endacott, ‘Hillier was not a man of colourful personality’.11 Whilst this may be a little unfair, there was certainly an earnestness about him, which owed much to this upbringing.12 In due course he would acquire a reputation as someone of diligence and integrity, if not outstanding intellect, although this did not prevent him developing a working knowledge of Chinese and an esoteric interest in Chinese coinage. His two brothers were both religious and scholarly. The eldest, William, who had trained as an engineer under Isambard Brunel, died young, succumbing to typhoid in Jerusalem, where he had been sent by the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst Jews to supervise the construction of a Protestant church and mission premises on Mount Zion.13 Edward, the youngest of the three, passed out from Trinity College, Cambridge, fourth senior wrangler and was also a Hebrew scholar. Appointed to one of the College’s livings, he would spend fifty years as the Vicar of Cardington, Bedfordshire, and be a major influence on Charles’ children. As Boyd Hilton has shown, the sort of middle-class piety practised by this family was profoundly influential, fostering ‘new concepts of public probity and honour’, based on ideals of ‘frugality, professionalism and financial rectitude’. If these accounted for Hillier’s somewhat colourless personality, they nonetheless stood him in good stead in the early days of Hong Kong’s fraught and unstable society. 14 Having joined Ferguson Leighton, Hillier probably found lodgings in the communal quarters set up in one of the mat-sheds that had been hastily erected along the northern shore. However, with the 10

11 12

13

14

Cf. Ian Bradley, The Call to Seriousness: The Evangelical Impact on the Victorians (London: Jonathan Cape, 1976), pp. 17–19. Endacott, Biographical Sketch-book, p. 84. For earnestness in the Victorian age, see Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind, pp. 218–262 ‘A True Son of the Church, The Late Wm. Currie Hillier, Jun.,’ anonymous obituary (1840) in an unidentified newspaper (Hillier Collection). Cf.Hilton, The Age of Atonement, pp. 7–35, especially pp. 7–8.

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business folding in less than twelve months, he then had to live on his wits. Presumably this was when he began learning some Chinese, picking up as much as he could from local people, as well as from those few Westerners who had some knowledge of the language. This must also have been when he and Caine first met. Now in his early forties, Caine ‘had been a soldier since he was strong enough to carry a drum’, reputedly taking part in a campaign before he was ten years old. Commissioned into the Cameronians at the age of sixteen, he had seen long and distinguished service in India and during the Opium War. Reluctantly agreeing to leave his regiment when it returned to India, he accepted appointment as the settlement’s first magistrate on 30 April 1841 and was confirmed as Chief Magistrate when it became a Crown Colony in June 1842.15 Finding much in common with Hillier’s early life at sea, Caine would later say that he treated him ‘almost like a child of my own’.16 As Second Mate of the Minerva, Hillier had been responsible for discipline at a time when flogging was the standard form of punishment in both navies, as it was in the army in India, and he and Caine would translate their experiences of summary justice into their conduct of the magistracy. Despite the colony’s uncertain future, British merchants soon began to arrive. Eager to start trading free of the restrictions imposed in Guangzhou, they established themselves on the north coast, quickly moving from the mat-sheds to the stone houses that began to fringe the shore-line. Although no more than about 3000 local Chinese lived in a few fishing villages in the south, there was soon a substantial influx from the mainland, many setting themselves up in bazaars on the north coast, well-removed from the British settlement. By May 1842, Pottinger was informing Lord Aberdeen that the momentum for the creation of this new ‘Emporium’ was unstoppable and, with the signing of the Treaty of Nanjing, the future of the colony was assured.17 An administration was formally established with the Governor combining the roles of Superintendent of Trade and Minister Plenipotentiary which gave him responsibility 15

16

17

Endacott, A Biographical Sketch-book, p. 60; Sayer, Hong Kong, pp. 103 and 107, Holdsworth, Dictionary of Hong Kong biography, pp. 57–58. James William Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Court of Hong Kong from the earliest period to 1898 (Hong Kong: Vetch and Lee Limited, 1898. Re-issued, 1971), I, p. 147. Letter, Pottinger to Aberdeeen, 3 September 1842, TNA, FO 17/57, 203

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for the five treaty ports and their consuls. Within two years, the population had grown to 20,000, of whom only some five to six hundred were European, and already, the two communities were beginning to develop their very separate worlds. 18 Although Caine seems to have spoken no Chinese, there was a surprising number of Britons who did, including some aspiring Sinologues and this possibly explains how Hillier was able to pick up the language. Samuel Fearon, for example, who was the first Clerk and Interpreter to the Magistrates Court, would leave four years later to take up an appointment as Professor of Chinese at King’s College, London. Pottinger’s Chief Secretaries – initially, John R. Morrison (Robert Morrison’s son) and, on his death in 1843, Karl Gutzlaff – were both fluent Chinese speakers. Young Medhurst and Harry Parkes were also employed in the Secretariat before each, in turn, transferred to Shanghai. Thomas Wade began as a student-interpreter under Gutzlaff, was appointed Interpreter to the Hong Kong garrison, and later to the Supreme Court, and then Assistant Chinese Secretary to the Superintendent of Trade (the Governor), before being transferred to Shanghai in 1852.19 Robert Thom, an outstanding Sinologue, who played a major part in the tortuous drafting of the Treaty of Nanjing, spent two years in Hong Kong before being appointed to Ningbo in 1844, where his premature death, apparently from over-work, cut short a highly promising career. 20 Hillier, therefore, found himself in this coterie of young men, with an interest in China (even allowing for Parkes’ imperial bombast), keen to pursue successful careers and mostly enjoying a reasonably leisured life-style. In these early days, there was a sense of optimism and a feeling that, whatever its problems, the young colony was going to prosper. THE ASPIRING MAGISTRATE

Problems there certainly were, many of which had not been foreseen. Most of the Chinese arriving from the mainland in search of work had neither housing nor means and had to make do as 18

19 20

Sayer, Hong Kong, p. 154, App. XX, p. 220, Chan Wai Kwan, The Making of Hong Kong Society: Three Studies of Class Formation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 69. Endacott, A Biographical Sketch-book, p. 112 Endacott, A Biographical Sketch-book, pp. 135–140; Liu, The Clash of Empires, pp. 46–51.

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they could. There was ‘a distinct atmosphere of the Wild West’ and Caine and his protégé would often go out at night, armed with truncheons and pistols.21 Hillier obviously gave a good account of himself, and when, after some eighteen months, it was decided to establish a court on the southern part of the island at Stanley (Chuck-chu), he was considered ‘as well qualified as anyone’ to be appointed its Assistant Magistrate. 22 If little was known about Hillier’s origins, the work of the magistracy, and his part in it, has been well-covered in the literature. James Norton-Kyshe’s detailed, if somewhat eccentric, study of the Court, written in the late 1890s, provides an invaluable source and Christopher Munn’s hard-hitting, if fair, critique says much about Hillier’s contribution.23 This chapter, therefore, focuses on how, despite his lack of credentials and shortcomings, Hillier succeeded as the head of the magistracy and how this in turn contributed to the development of the family’s identity. By the time of his appointment as Assistant Magistrate, a rough and ready system of justice was developing but the magistracy was facing difficulties. Originally, it had been intended that the Chinese would be tried according to Chinese law but this proved impractical, not least because none of the British officials had a sufficient understanding of its detail. Instead, a mix of English and Chinese law applied. In the early years, there was no proper police force, with law and order being maintained by members of the military who stayed on under Caine’s command when their regiment departed.The position improved in 1845 when Charles May was appointed Superintendent of Police, bringing with him two police inspectors, who began recruiting and eventually mustered a force of some hundred and sixty men. Answerable to the Chief Magistrate and given wide powers of arrest, they used the registration and curfew laws (to which all Chinese but no Westerners were subject) to detain and remove any person whose papers were not in order or was found out at night.The gaol, which was attached to the Magistrates Court and also came within the remit of the Chief Magistrate was unsanitary, under-staffed and over-crowded and did nothing to reform its inmates, even if it was regarded as a soft option by the local British press. Shocked by what he observed on his fact-finding mission, the Revd George Smith considered that, 21 22 23

Welsh, Hong Kong, p. 164. Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Court of Hong Kong, I, p. 49. Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Court of Hong Kong,I, multiple references, Munn, Anglo-China, in particular, pp. 109–159.

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so long as the Chinese were treated in such a ‘humiliating ‘ way, there was no possibility of attracting ‘more promising subjects for Christian instruction’ and instead of their becoming friends, they would ‘become enemies of Christian conversion’.24 In an attempt to instil a more professional approach to the administration of justice, in October 1844, a Supreme Court was established and John Walter Hulme was appointed its first Chief Justice. A respected lawyer, he was appalled by the amateurism of the magistracy and made clear his views, when Hillier was appointed Acting Chief Magistrate the following year during Caine’s temporary promotion to Colonial Secretary. To Hulme, three matters were particularly serious. First, the magistracy was too subservient to the Executive and in particular to the wishes of the Governor. Secondly, legal knowledge was almost totally lacking and the most basic procedural requirements were disregarded. Thirdly, the Chinese were being subjected to harsh and inhumane sentences. Whilst each of these charges had some force, they have to be seen in context. In the earliest days, it was perhaps not surprising that Caine allied himself closely with the Governor. However, problems really began when Sir John Davis succeeded Pottinger in 1844, as he regarded the magistracy as simply an administrative mechanism under his direct control.25 Whereas Hulme was a member of the Legislative Council and thus also part of the administration, he resisted any attempt by Davis to dictate to him. However, with Caine as Colonial Secretary, Hillier was all too willing to submit to Davis’ instructions. This became clear in August 1846 in, what became known as the Pacheco and de Mello affair. Suspected of fraudulently receiving money for supplying opium, these two Portuguese traders had fled Macao for Hong Kong.The Governor of Macao wrote to Davis enclosing a request from the Chief Justice for their extradition, but as no treaty existed between the two countries, this was unenforceable and should have been ignored. However, Hillier, acting on Davis’ instructions, issued a warrant for the arrest of the two men, who were brought before him. Ignoring the fact that there was no evidence supporting the warrant, Hillier ordered them to be put on board ship and immediately returned to Macao, which was duly done. 24

25

Letter, Revd George Smith to Early Grey, 16 January 1847, Lambeth Palace Archives, OBF/5/2/7/3. Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Court of Hong Kong, I, 103–104.

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Before doing so, oblivious of the importance of impartiality, he, at one point, adjourned the proceedings, saying that he was going to consult the Governor. There was an outcry in the local press, and, having been acquitted in Macao, the two men brought a claim against Hillier personally for substantial damages, which would drag on and blight his life for well over a year. 26 A month later, showing a complete disregard for procedural niceties, Hillier came in for severe criticism from the Chief Justice. Duncan, a sail-maker, reported that his cook had absconded with $200 and was about to flee the island. A search of the harbour boats took place and a suspicious-looking craft spotted. As it was being boarded, the crew of some twenty to thirty Chinese jumped overboard. Of those that survived in the water, thirteen were arrested and muskets, daggers and spearheads were discovered. Four of those arrested were sentenced to fifty strokes of the rattan for lack of registration papers and thereafter to be returned to Kowloon, even though they claimed to be resident in Victoria. Nine others were treated as rogues and vagabonds and sentenced to three months’ imprisonment with hard labour. Both verdicts were overturned by the Chief Justice, who censured Hillier in open court for sentencing the men simply on the basis of suspicion, a reproof which, according to NortonKyshe, ‘nearly broke his heart’. The result was little comfort to the four men who had already received the lash and been returned to Kowloon. 27 The issue of flogging was giving rise to considerable concern even among Hong Kong’s merchants, hardly known for their liberal principles, and, having been raised in the House of Commons by Sir John Bowring (a future governor of the colony), resulted in a lengthy inquiry by a Select Committee in which Caine and Hillier were dubbed ‘notable floggers’.28 Given the volley of criticism, it seemed clear that, diligent though he may have been, Hillier was unsuited for the role of Acting Chief Magistrate, let alone for the permanent position. Accordingly, when the post became vacant on the confirmation of Caine’s appointment as Colonial Secretary, there was an almost unanimous view that it should be filled by a properly-qualified lawyer. 26 27

28

Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Court of Hong Kong,I, pp. 103–107. Munn, Anglo-China, 110, Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Court of Hong Kong,I, pp. 108–111. Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Court of Hong Kong,I, pp. 102–103.

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However, Hillier had shown he was a person of probity and he was also well-connected. Unlike almost everyone else in the colony, he got on well with the Governor. Whilst Davis could be charming and personable, he was also arrogant, tactless and aloof.29 Despite his aggressive approach and his taking a number of anti-Chinese measures, such as banning the carrying of arms, the British merchants and press had no time for what they considered to be his pro-China sympathies, accusing him of pandering to the Qing authorities, insisting (successfully) that newly-introduced regulations for registration should only apply to the Chinese, and opposing (not wholly successfully) attempts to raise urgentlyneeded revenue through local taxes. If Hillier managed to stay aloof from these issues, his relationship with Davis went beyond mere sycophancy and owed something to their shared interests. An outstanding Sinologue, Davis believed that knowledge of Chinese and Chinese culture was essential if the division between the two communities was to be bridged.30 Keen that his officials learn Chinese, he purchased fifty copies of Medhurst’s Chinese English grammar for government use.31 Impressed by Hillier’s family connections and his ability to speak Chinese, he went on to use him in a number of initiatives as well as encouraging his interest in Chinese culture. However, it was the evidence of the recently-retired Shanghai Consul, Captain Balfour, to the House of Commons Select Committee inquiring into affairs in China, which probably carried most weight. Balfour knew Caine from their days in India and also, most importantly the two Medhursts, and, although he had no personal knowledge of Hillier, he felt able to describe him as ‘a zealous officer [who] has well-qualified himself for the performance of his Police duties by acquiring the Chinese language’.32 Finally, we should not rule out the influence of freemasonry which was pervasive in the East India Company and the Indian Army and quickly took hold in Hong Kong, with a Grand Lodge being founded in Victoria in 1846. Caine and Balfour had almost certainly become masons during their army days, Medhurst junior, would in due course do so, and, with Hillier naming his third 29 30 31 32

Welsh, A History of Hong Kong, pp. 179–181. Welsh, Hong Kong, p. 187. Davis, Chinese Miscellanies , 4 March 1845, TNA FO 17/98 no. 35 Report of the House of Commons Select Committee on China, 12 July 1847, British Parliamentary Papers: China, 38. See also Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Court of Hong Kong,I, pp. 130–134.

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son, Harry Mason (the second was Walter Caine), there is a strong indication that he had also joined the fraternity.33 A BOLT FROM THE CLOUDS

Between them, these were sufficient to tip the scales in Hillier’s favour and, on 19 October 1847, like ‘a bolt from the clouds’, his appointment as Chief Magistrate was officially announced. Ironically, whilst Balfour’s retirement heralded the end of the amateur era in the consular service, his intervention perpetuated it in Hong Kong.34 The court’s performance during Hillier’s nine years as Chief Magistrate has to be seen against a background of increasing acrimony and disillusionment within the colony. Davis’ and Hulme’s dispute came to a head in a case in which the consul in Guangzhou fined a British merchant, Compton, for causing a riot, after kicking over a Chinese stall and beating its owner with a stick.35 On appeal, Davis upheld the decision but it was reversed by Hulme when the case came before him, on the grounds of procedural irregularity. Following this, Davis wrote to the Colonial Office making an official complaint about Hulme’s professional behaviour but also sending a private letter to Palmerston accusing the Chief Justice of drunkenness.The Colonial Office rejected the official complaint but insisted on the charge of drunkenness being investigated. Hulme returned to England, cleared his name and was reinstated. By the time he arrived back in the colony in June 1848, Davis had resigned and left to most people’s delight. Hillier, however, had continued to work closely with him. He was appointed as one of the three members of the Administrative Committee charged with oversight of three Chinese schools, for which Davis had secured funding, a position which he would hold for the next eight years. 36 He had developed an interest in China, which may have been kindled by Davis who was the Chairman of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, and, although he was never a member, he contributed two articles on Chinese 33

34 35 36

Cf. Richard Holmes, Sahib: The British Soldier in India, 1750–1914 (London: Harper Collins, 2005), pp. 450–452, Cannon, Public Success, Private Sorrow, p. 46. Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Court of Hong Kong,I, p. 147. Endacott, A Biographical Sketch-book, pp. 68–70. Endacott, History of Hong Kong, p. 136–137 and Will Peyton, ‘John Francis Davis as Governor and Diplomat on the China Coast (1844–1848)’ International History Review, 39 (2017), pp. 903–926.

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coinage to its journal.37 When Davis left the colony, to the disgust of his critics, he used the naming of streets as a reward for those who had stayed loyal and Hillier Street (⚫฼⾤ remains a lasting testament to their good relationship.38 But with Hulme continuing as Chief Justice, Hillier was frequently coming in for criticism.39 And, although the allegations of drunkenness had been dismissed, they did nothing to improve the prestige of the British administration or relations between the Colony’s principal officials and this disaffection spread through its ranks. Below the Governor, there was an intensely hierarchical structure, with the richest merchants belonging to the exclusive Hong Kong Club and social distinctions regulating the day-today life of the British community. 40 If this was fertile ground for petty disputes, the colony’s social and economic problems were giving rise to more serious concerns, which inevitably impacted on the magistracy. The Chinese community continued to comprise a mainly transient population of men without wives or families, many with criminal records and seeking whatever sort of day-work they could find, together with a mass of boat people eking out a living in the surrounding islands and answering to no authority. This made them easy fodder for the only two trades which were flourishing – opium and coolie labour. Whilst opium was still prohibited in China, it was legal in the colony’s free-port and was initially the subject of a monopoly sold by the government, which quickly developed into ‘an abusive racket run by a Chinese gangster’, and was unashamedly exploited by British merchants, who moored their receiving ships just beyond the bounds of the consular jurisdiction in the five treaty ports. Instructed by Davis to carry out an inquiry into how the trade could be better regulated, Hillier had produced a report, advising that the cost of policing the monopoly was prohibitive and ineffective, and recommending 37

38 39 40

C.B. Hillier, ‘Chinese Copper Coinage: Notes on the Tsien, or copper cash of the Chinese: extracted from a native publication, the Ta-tsing Hwuy-tien’, Article IV, Transactions of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1847 (Hong Kong: Office of China Mail, 1848), pp. 40–43; C.B. Hillier, ‘A Brief Notice of the Chinese Work, Chronicles of Tsien: a new arrangement and a key to its 329 Wood-cuts of the Coins of China and neighbourhood nations’, Article I, Transactions, Part II–1848–50 (1852), pp. 1–162. Welsh, Hong Kong, p. 170 Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Court of Hong Kong,I, pp. 199–200. Chan, The Making of Hong Kong Society, pp. 32–48.

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the introduction of a simpler and cheaper licensing system. Whilst this addressed some of the abuses, it meant that the colony was continuing to promote a trade, which was outlawed on the mainland and attracted a range of undesirables, living on the fringes of the underworld.41 Equally unsavoury was the trade in Chinese emigrants. Known as ‘coolie’ labour, this had begun in earnest in 1845, prompted by the abolition of slavery in the Caribbean, followed shortly afterwards by the gold rush to California. Shipped out on long journeys in appalling conditions, the passengers were forced to endure terrible hardship. Only later would steps be taken to introduce some degree of control, which Hillier would be called upon to enforce. Both the opium and the coolie trade depended upon networks of middlemen whose dubious practices would frequently bring them and their accomplices before the Court. They further tarnished the colony’s reputation and reinforced the image of its Chinese population as a commodity fit only for drugs and use as cheap labour.42 Try as they could to address these issues, missionaries had difficulty in finding anyone remotely interested in their message, let alone suitable for conversion. In his exploratory tour, the Revd George Smith (later to be the bishop of Hong Kong), contrasted the position with Shanghai where, as we have seen, he had met Medhurst, senior, and found the Chinese to be ‘an intelligent and friendly population’ whereas only ‘the lowest dregs of society flock’ to the colony.43 Gutzlaff ’s Chinese Christian Union, which was designed to use Chinese converts to spread the gospel, quickly fell into disrepute when many of its members turned out to be simply on the make.44 The position was summed up in the 1848 issue of the Hongkong Almanack, which stated that not one respectable Chinese merchant or family had settled in the colony.45 Given that background, it may seem surprising that the Church of England considered it a suitable place to establish a Bishopric, as it did in 41

42

43 44 45

Munn, Anglo-China, 101–103, letter, Hillier to Caine, 5 April 1847, TNA CO 129/20, 178–183, Bickers, Scramble for China, pp. 92–93, Coates, China Consuls, p. 63. Endacott, History of Hong Kong, pp. 126–128, Welsh, Hong Kong, p. 218, Munn, Anglo-China, p. 48, Persia Crawford Campbell, with a preface by W. Pember Reeves, Chinese coolie emigration to countries within the British Empire, 1898–1974 (London: F. Cass, 1971), pp. 86–160. Smith, Narrative of an Exploratory Visit, p. 508. Endacott, A Biographical Sketch-book, p. 107 William Tarrant, The Hongkong Almanack and Directory for the Year 1848, p. 508.

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1850. However, this was almost entirely due to the extraordinary ‘munificence’ of ‘an orphan brother and sister’, as they described themselves, who, in 1844, wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury offering the sum of £20,000 (which they subsequently increased) by way of an endowment to fund a Bishopric at Victoria ‘as the centre and channel of our missionary exertions directed to China’. 46 The opening of that most emblematic of English buildings, the faux Gothic Cathedral of St John in 1849, and the arrival of the somewhat pompous Revd George Smith as the first incumbent the following year, only served to reinforce the nature of the imperial presence and, with the help of the British press, insulate the English from the rest of society.47 As a port-city, Hong Kong was home to a rich mix of peoplesnot just Chinese but Indian, Malay and Eurasian, together with a large hybrid under-class, including boat-people, discharged seamen and a range of figures down on their luck, many of whom would end up in the Magistrates’ Court. With Guangzhou effectively cut off by local hostility, and the other treaty ports a perilous sea-journey away, there was little contact with the outside world, save through correspondence and newspapers. Oppressed by its climate, ill-health and a claustrophobic life-style, many slipped into alcoholism and depression. Railing against the unruly nature of the Chinese, Pottinger had earlier emphasised the need for the strictest controls and harsh punishments. 48 However, despite the arbitrary powers given to the police and the harsh sentencing policy, by 1850 there had been little improvement, with between six and eight percent of the population appearing before the Magistrates’ Court each year. It was against this background that law and order had to be maintained. Procedurally, it was an uphill task. Determining the truth in many cases was fraught with difficulties, given the propensity of complainants to bring malicious prosecutions, the ineffectiveness of the judicial oath, the reluctance of the Chinese to give evidence 46

47 48

Letter dated 21 September 1844 and ensuing correspondence, Lambeth Palace Archives, OBF/5/2/7/3; the signatories were subsequently identified as a Mr H. Sharpe and a Mrs Smart of Chiswick. Even with that gift, further funds were required and Stanton’s efforts met with considerable opposition before he achieved his objective; see George B. Endacott and Dorothy E. She, The Diocese of Victoria, Hong Kong: A Hundred Years of Church History, 1849–1949 (Hong Kong: Kelly & Walsh, 1949), pp. 9–20. Welsh, Hong Kong, pp. 219–220. Letter, Pottinger to Aberdeen, 5 May 1843, TNA CO 129/3, nos. 260–1.

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and their willingness to accept bribes when they did so.49 Language barriers were often insuperable: the court interpreters were generally incompetent and frequently corrupt and although Hillier’s Chinese was reasonably fluent, this may only have been of limited use, given the range of dialects, frequently, Hakka and Fukienese.50 The extent of the court’s jurisdiction and, in particular, whether it extended to off-shore islands, ships in transit and fugitives from the mainland, together with the complexities of applying a mix of British and Chinese law, made for further uncertainty. Underlying all this was the corruption and inefficiency of the justice system which was personified in one Percy Caulincourt McSwyney, who, despite being dismissed from the court’s staff for obtaining money under false pretences, was later appointed Coroner, a position from which he would also be dismissed.51 Charles Holdforth, the Assistant Magistrate from 1846 to 1850, resigned in dubious circumstances and the police force was notorious for its acceptance of bribes and incompetence. Comprising mainly Indian and Malay constables they spoke neither English nor Chinese and ‘their scruffy inefficiency and clumsy execution of the law attracted hostility from all sides’. A succession of cases came before Hillier, resulting in dismissals from the force, and self-policing became the preferred option of merchants in both communities, a practice which led to its own abuses. 52 Finally, there was no prison service as such but simply a Chief Gaoler and his wife (styled ‘matron’) and two turnkeys. With a derisory rate of pay, they were also open to bribes.53 The work of the Magistrates’ Court entailed day-to-day interaction with a cross-section of these communities: not only the defendants but all those connected with the judicial process – complainants, victims, witnesses, and members of the public (including the press, despite Hillier’s efforts to keep them out), attorneys, court officers and staff, including clerks and interpreters, and, outside court, the police and prison staff. For many non-Europeans, this was the only occasion they would come into 49

50

51

52 53

For oath-taking, see Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Court of Hong Kong,I, pp. 283–284 and Munn, Anglo-China, p. 119. Hillier was sufficiently proficient to be able to make translations of depositions; see those at TNA CO 129/20, pp. 262–269. Endacott, A Biographical Sketch-book, pp. 116–117, Munn, Anglo-China, pp. 293– 305, Holdsworth , pp. 311–312. Munn, Anglo-China, p. 265. Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Court of Hong Kong, I, pp. 362 and 440.

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contact with the colonial administration and everything about the court would be unfamiliar. The proceedings were quite unlike those known in China, they were conducted predominantly in English, in connection with offences that might not be understood and in a setting which was quintessentially British, the court and adjoining gaol being one of the colony’s most prominent examples of Western architecture. None of this was likely to generate confidence in the system. Moreover, the underlying problems, which have been noted earlier, had not been resolved. The magistracy continued to be perceived as unduly subservient to the administration even though Sir George Bonham was the very opposite of his predecessor, Governor Davis. Affable and conciliatory, he immediately involved the leading merchants in the administration, and generated support by expressing a deep distrust of the Chinese and of any British officials who spoke the language, fearing it betrayed an undue sympathy. However, he exempted Hillier, informing the Colonial Secretary, Earl Grey, it was essential to staff the magistracy with men ‘acquainted with the inhabitants and their peculiar character’ and that Hillier’s duties were ‘both onerous and responsible and his office [was] not one that can be filled by everyone’.54 In January 1852, Hillier’s brother-in-law, Walter Medhurst, was appointed as Chinese Secretary to Governor Bonham. The two men had been firm friends from their earliest days on the island and the relationship had been cemented when Hillier married Medhurst’s sister, Eliza, in May 1846. Although they now had three young children, Charles and Eliza were happy to invite Medhurst to stay. There he remained for the three years he spent in Hong Kong and, whilst Eliza and the children would be away in England for most of that time, he and Charles became particularly close and the bonds between the two families further strengthened.The following year, Hillier was appointed to the Legislative Council by Bonham and when Bowring became governor in 1853, he made him a member of the Executive Council and both appointments may have owed something to Medhurst’s influence. Certainly, together with that connection, they placed Hillier at the heart of the colony’s administration and, although both roles were only consultative, fuelled the criticism that he was insufficiently independent of the executive. 54

Letter, Bonham to Grey, 27 December 1848, TNA CO 129/26, p. 310 and for Bonham, see Holdsworth, Dictionary, pp. 36–38.

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This was particularly important in those areas where there was considerable discretion in the enforcement of regulations. Failing to register residence, for example, provided a convenient mechanism for removing undesirables, including those who, though genuinely resident, had inadvertently not complied with the prescribed requirements. In one early case, following a violent incident involving a police officer, fifty four Chinese men were found living in mat-sheds. Fined for not having registration tickets, they were sentenced to twenty strokes of the rattan, had their queues cut off and were removed to Kowloon.55 For many, therefore, the Court was no more than an arm of the administration, capable of acting arbitrarily and oppressively. The second problem, which arose just as Bonham arrived, was a crisis in the administration of justice, caused by the ongoing feud with Hulme, which resulted in Hillier, with Caine’s encouragement, committing all but the most trivial cases for trial in the Supreme Court. This led to massive delays and the court’s conviction rate falling to twenty five percent. The upshot of Bonham’s reforms was that the jurisdiction of the Magistrates’ Court and a newly-formed Petty Sessions, also presided over by Hillier, was extended to include a wide range of more serious offences.Whilst this reduced the Supreme Court’s workload, that of the Magistrates’ Court increased fivefold between 1846 and 1856, by which time the population had risen to sixty thousand, without any significant increase in its resources. 56 The third problem related to the serial discrimination against Chinese Defendants, with even low-class Europeans such as distressed seamen, being more leniently treated, when charged with offences such as drunkenness, brawling and petty theft. Implicitly assumed to be guilty, a Chinese Defendant was required to produce cogent evidence of his innocence, not an easy task given the reluctance of witnesses to come forward. A number of offences were directly or indirectly targeted against the Chinese, such as triad membership, street gambling, and letting off fire-crackers, as well as catch-all offences designed to maintain public order, which made it all the more likely they would be brought them before the courts. Even where offences could not be proved, they were often required to produce security (effectively bail money) to be of good behaviour and were sent to gaol until the sums could be found. 55 56

Munn, Anglo-China, pp. 140–141. Munn, Anglo-China, p. 112.

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Despite the criticism, flogging continued and its legitimacy was endorsed by a new ordinance which allowed up to thirty eight lashes of the rattan for specified offences, an extremely harsh sentence.57 Moreover, this and use of the stocks, was almost exclusively reserved for the Chinese and was carried out in public, with the individual often left tied to the flogging post, half-naked and bleeding. However, inhumane and degrading though they were, without seeking to excuse these practices, it should be remembered that, at this time in England, people flocked in their thousands to watch public executions, and things were no better on the Chinese mainland.58 Upon this rough and ready system depended the respect of both communities for the administration of law and order and, in the main, despite all the problems, under Hillier’s stewardship, the court successfully discharged that responsibility. It was able to do so for a number of reasons. First, his integrity was never called into question. Whilst this would have been taken for granted in other jurisdictions, in Hong Kong that was certainly not the case, with officials at every level, Caine included, becoming embroiled in highly-publicised scandals, which were reaching their height just as Hillier was leaving.59 Secondly, whilst it had a wide range of responsibilities, both judicial and administrative and the bulk of its business had to be transacted through Chinese staff, who spoke little or no English, the court managed to get through the workload surprisingly efficiently. This could not have been done without Hillier’s dedication and efficient management of its limited resources. Moreover, its performance was in marked contrast to that of the Supreme Court which, according to Christopher Munn, ‘more than any other institution, came to epitomise the incapacity of colonial government in early British Hong Kong’.60 As Chief Justice, Hulme did little to address the injustices that resulted nor to enhance the standing of the court. His insistence on taking a four-month vacation every year, coupled with lengthy absences through sickness, led to major delays in completing the court’s modest workload and those acting in his stead were often inadequate. Even if his integrity was not questioned, 57 58

59 60

Munn, Anglo-China, pp. 238–241. Munn, Anglo-China pp. 151–9; for Chinese punishments, see Coates, China Consuls, pp. 39–40 and Timothy Brook, Jerome Bourgon, and Gregory Blue, Death by a Thousand Cuts (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008). Munn, Anglo-China, pp. 293–328. Munn, Anglo-China, pp. 162.

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many associated with the Court were of dubious reputation, including W.T. Bridges, the Attorney-General, and Daniel Caldwell, Registrar-General of Chinese Affairs, both of whom became embroiled in scandals. Given this reputation, it was all the more important that the Magistrates’ Court was able to command public confidence. Thirdly, as one of the longest-serving members of the administration, Hillier had built up a reputation with the Chinese community. Whilst street placards frequently complained about inequality of treatment, as more respectable Chinese began to arrive with their families in the 1850s, so they looked to the court to enforce their rights and protect their interests: significantly, seventy percent of the complaints brought against Chinese Defendants in the Supreme Court emanated from Chinese complainants and there is no reason to suppose the ratio was different in the lower court. 61 Whilst, even by the standards of the time, the harsh sentencing was considered unacceptable, Hillier’s approach towards the Chinese and their community set him apart from the mainstream of the British in Hong Kong. He managed to implement a number of initiatives designed to redress some of the worst practices taking place in the Colony. For some years, together with his brotherin-law, Walter Medhurst, and the Sinologue missionary, James Legge, he edited the well-respected Chinese periodical, Xia’ er Guan Zhen (Chinese serial), a miscellany of news, Bible stories and information about the West.62 His ability to conduct his court in Chinese meant that he could address defendants, victims and members of the public in language which they could understand and, following his return from visiting England in 1853, he sought to introduce improvements in the prison system. 63 Whilst this all helped to enhance respect for the court and the rule of law, other measures also improved his standing in the community. He continued to serve on the management committee of the Chinese schools, which, in a revised form, was chaired by the Bishop of Hong Kong, Revd George Smith, and, in 1854, he coauthored a strongly-worded report, stating that the system was ‘at its lowest ebb’ and criticising the lack of adequate staff and suitable facilities and the fact that there were places for only 150 of the 8000 61 62

63

Munn, Anglo-China,p. 174 Thirty-three issues were published between August 1853 and May 1858 and were later highly-valued by Chinese officials and literati; see Yen-P’Ing Hao ‘Changing Chinese views of Western Relations’, pp. 169–170. Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Court of Hong Kong, I, p. 644.

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children on the island. This led to a number of changes including increasing the number of pupils to 873 boys and 64 girls.64 When Bowring took over as Governor, Hillier was instructed to chair a Commission of Enquiry into the coolie trade and was, subsequently, appointed to the newly-established post of Emigration Officer. However, this was of limited effect since his rigorous enforcement of the Chinese Passengers Act provoked an outcry from the merchants engaged in the trade and he was told to be more flexible in his approach. As a result, much of the trade was removed to Macao and the remainder carried in ships sailing under other flags.65 THE NEED FOR A CHANGE

After seven years in post and coming under considerable strain, Hillier was keen for a change, either by way of promotion or appointment to some other position in government service. The opportunity seemed to have come when, on Bonham’s retirement in 1854, Sir John Bowring was made titular Governor, Caine was appointed to the new post of Lieutenant Governor and he took over as Colonial Secretary. However, the ambitious Bowring was not content with what was a sinecure. Now in his early sixties, he had led a varied life, as businessman, writer, polymath and linguist, as well as sitting as a Member of Parliament. Because of straitened circumstances, he had obtained appointment as consul in Guangzhou, where he quickly developed a passion for China and its language. Determined to make Hong Kong an emblem of British civilisation, he insisted on assuming all the old powers of the Governor. Caine was consequently relieved of most of his duties, Mercer became Colonial Secretary and Hillier had no alternative but to return to his old post.66 His disappointment was compounded when two incidents once again gave rise to criticisms of the way he conducted his court. The first, in which an American subject was imprisoned without a lawful warrant being obtained, brought him into conflict with the American Consul.67 The second 64

65 66 67

Gillian Bickley, The Development of Education in Hong Kong, 1841–1897 as revealed by the early Education Reports of the Hong Kong Government 1848–1896 (Hong Kong: Proverse, 2002), pp. 1–15 and 33–48. Endacott, History of Hong Kong, pp. 126–128, Welsh, Hong Kong, p. 218. Endacott, A Biographical Sketch-book, pp. 63–64, 80 and 87. Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Court of Hong Kong, I, p. 363.

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occurred shortly after the newly-appointed Attorney-General, Thomas Chisholm Anstey, arrived in January 1856. Hillier was almost immediately in his sights when a case came before the Supreme Court, in which the depositions failed to identify the four Defendants accused of burglary and also omitted evidence favourable to them. Summoned to attend before the Chief Justice, Hillier explained that it was not his practice to record any evidence which might detract from the charges, at which Anstey exploded, describing the depositions as ‘the most slovenly and careless he had ever seen’. Hillier’s protests that he was being unfairly maligned was rejected by Hulme, whereupon he somewhat unwisely stated that, if the government was not satisfied with the way he was discharging his duties, they could ‘get someone else to do them’. 68 Whilst Bowring endorsed Hulme’s censure, he was generally supportive of Hillier and, in November 1854, the two men, together with one of Caine’s sons, made a lengthy journey up the China coast, visiting Consul Medhurst at Fuzhou and young Robert Hart at Ningbo.69 Hillier must have given a good account of himself because, shortly after their return, Bowring put him forward for the post of British consul to Siam, which had been established, as part of a diplomatic and trade treaty between the two countries that Bowring and Parkes had concluded earlier that year. 70 However, such appointments had almost always been made from inside the Service and Hillier had no relevant experience to compensate. Nonetheless, aware of the friction that was developing between him and Anstey, Bowring wanted to defuse the situation. He also knew how keen Charles and Eliza were for a change and, no doubt with Parkes’ endorsement, he felt able to inform the Foreign Secretary that there was no-one to whom he ‘should be so much disposed to confide the consulship … His judicial experience would be of great value, his knowledge of China and Chinese, especially useful.’ Since Chinese was not spoken in Siam, 68 69

70

Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Court of Hong Kong, 1, pp. 378–380. Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Court of Hong Kong,(1) p. 353, Katherine F. Bruner, John K. Fairbank, Richard J. Smith, Entering China’s Service: Robert Hart’s Journals, 1854–1863 (Cambridge: Harvard, 1986) ,p. 83. A.J. Stockwell, ‘British Expansion and Rule in Southeast Asia’, in Andrew Porter (ed.), Oxford History of the British Empire, iii, pp. 371–394 at pp. 380–381; see also Sir John Bowring, The Kingdom and People of Siam with a Narrative of the Mission to that Country in 1855 (London: John W. Parker, 1857).

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this last point was particularly questionable but, after some hesitation, the recommendation was accepted. 71 On 29 April 1856, the appointment was announced and Hillier was instructed to leave immediately for Bangkok. On 10 May, he, Eliza and Maudie made their way to the quayside, accompanied by an enthusiastic procession of Chinese followers, carrying banners and two sedan chairs, one bearing a basin of water symbolising purity and the other a looking-glass, symbolising unstained character. Addresses were delivered and a gilt tablet presented recording ‘their respect and goodwill’ and then, with the ceremonies concluded, they embarked on SS Singapore and left the colony for the last time. As they did so, Hong Kong was about to plunge into an even more turbulent time.72 Vitriolic in their criticisms of the administration, the English language newspapers would have a field-day. All the more striking, therefore, were their tributes to Hillier on his departure. According to one newspaper, he was […] an independent, painstaking and conscientious official …, in [whose] uprightness and integrity as Chief Magistrate, both natives and foreigners reposed almost unlimited confidence … the Chinese especially have lost a warm and steadfast friend …Mr Hillier’s intimate knowledge of the Chinese language and of Chinese customs enabled him to keep down abuses and elicit truth where one ignorant of the language would wholly fail.73 CONCLUSION

By the time Hillier came to leave Hong Kong, it was clear that, unlike Shanghai, the colony had failed to fulfil its early promise. It was riven by bitter in-fighting, its economy was largely dependent on opium and the coolie trade and, although some middle-class Chinese had begun to arrive, in the main it was still a rough and ready community with a high rate of petty crime. It is all the more surprising, therefore, that, despite Hillier’s lack of credentials and 71

72

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Letter, Bowring to Foreign Office, 4 December 1855, TNA FO 17/235, p. 113, Coates, China Consuls, p. 70. Christopher Munn, ‘Colonialism “in a Chinese atmosphere”: the Caldwell affair and the perils of collaboration in early colonial Hong Kong’ in Bickers, New Frontiers, pp. 12–37. For this and the preceding paragraph, see Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Court of Hong Kong, I, pp. 383–4.

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previous experience, the magistracy was able to command a sufficient degree of confidence for law and order to be maintained, particularly at a time when officials in nearby Guangzhou were fomenting anti-foreign sentiment. In part, he was able to do so by deploying similar attributes to those that the Medhursts brought to their work, including good linguistic skills and a degree of cultural sensitivity. Although he had only met his father-in-law on a handful of occasions, Medhurst’s reputation and the close relationship between Medhurst, junior, and Charles must have had some some impact on Charles’ approach as well as helping him to further his career. What all three men also shared was their evangelical faith and the attention to duty that went with it, and we will see this replicated in Hillier’s three sons when they came to make their careers in China. This approach also informed the family’s private life, a space in which the women had a crucial role to play, shaping the family’s identity and contributing to the British presence in these early years.

4

Strong Wives Œ

A SENSE OF COMMITMENT

IN

HER EARLY Seventies, Augusta Bates, the youngest daughter of Walter and Betty Medhurst, set down what she knew of her parents’ early life. She wrote:1

On 18 February 1817, my father arrived at Madras and went to stay at the house of Mrs Lovelace [sic], and it was there he met my mother and fell in love with her. She did not care for him, and resisted his attentions, but he was persistent and determined, and finally married her on May 19, 1817.

Married to Walter Medhurst for just under forty years, Betty bore him ten children (four died in infancy) and out-lived him by seventeen years. Their daughter, Eliza, bore her husband, Charles Hillier, seven children (two died in infancy) and survived him by thirty years, re-marrying when she was thirtysix, and having two more children. Her younger sister, Martha, married a Shanghai merchant, Powell Saul, and bore him four children during their pitiably short life together, and survived him by fifty years. Augusta’s memoir is part of a collection of family papers, which, together with the LMS and other records, enable us to capture the empire lives of these three women, whose husbands’ careers have formed the focus of the previous chapters. Having seen how they mediated Britain’s imperial presence in their public lives, this chapter will explore the lives of these women to see how 1

Copy of a memorandum by Augusta Liberta Bates (née Medhurst), attached to her letter to Eliza’s son, Hugh Marshall Hole, 10 October 1913 (Hillier Collection). 78

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intimacy also provided an important mediating mechanism. It did so primarily by Westernising and domesticating the British presence, providing exemplars of Western customs and practices and forging networks and connections across this emerging British world. However, whilst commitment to family was, as G.M.Young said,‘one of the two vital articles’ of the Victorian faith, in the context of empire, that commitment was often subjected to extraordinary challenges. To meet those challenges, these women needed to be not only good but also strong wives. 2 ‘A GOOD SERVANT TO THE CAUSE’

By the time Walter Medhurst arrived at the Loveless’ household in 1817, the twenty three year-old Betty Braune had already endured more than her fair share of personal misfortune. Widowed and with a young son to support, she had been taken in by the family as a governess to their two children. Born on 23 October 1794 at Tanjore, Madras, she was the eldest daughter of Lieutenant George Martin (5th Madras Native Infantry) but it is unclear who her mother was. On the original baptismal certificate, dated one year later, 12 October 1795, her mother’s name is stated as ‘unknown’ but there are two correcting certificates which have ‘illegitimate’ written on them. 3 According to Augusta, Betty believed that her parents were ‘lawfully married’, but, this seems unlikely, given these records and, assuming they were not, it is reasonable to infer, as John Holliday does, that her mother may have been of Tamil origin. 4 There is some support for this in Medhurst’s letter to the LMS, which is referred to below and, and in the fact that, some years later, when Eliza first met Betty’s younger sister, Sophia, in Singapore, she told Martha she was ‘surprised to find [her] so dark’.5 Betty, presumably, was not so dark – the only photograph taken at the end of her life is too faint to be certain. What we do know is that Betty’s parents lived together until her mother’s death in 1808, by which time her father, 2

3

4 5

G.M. Young, Victorian England: Portrait of an Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd Ed., 1953), pp. 151-153; cf. Margaret Forster, Good Wives? Mary, Fannie, Jennie & Me, 1845–2001 (London: Chatto & Windus, 2001), pp. 7–9. Madras Ecclesiastical Returns, IOR N/2/11, folios 99–100, IOR N/2/C/3, folio 35 and IOR N/2/C/5, folio 1252. John Holliday, Mission to China, pp. 23–24. Letter, Eliza Hillier to Martha Saul, 30 July 1852.

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George Martin, had been promoted to the rank of LieutenantColonel. Embroiled in a dispute between the army and the Governor of Madras, he was instructed to go to London to make representations to the East India Company on behalf of the Madras regiments. 6 Before leaving, he found Betty a husband, one George Henry Braune, a twenty-seven year-old Lieutenant in the 15th Madras Native Infantry to whom she was married on 14 October 1808, when just fourteen years old. According to Augusta’s memoir, Martin gave her ‘handsome furniture, a complete set of silver plate, her mother’s jewellery and pearls, besides other jewellery [and] entrusted his younger daughter [Sophia] to her care’ and, with that, he set sail on 2 March 1809 on the Sir Stephen Lushington. Although he re-married and then returned to India, Betty never saw him again, so far as can be gleaned from the family papers.7 Betty bore Braune two children: George, born on 10 May 1810 and Henry, three years later. In October 1815, Henry died and, the following month on 26 November, so did Betty’s husband. According to the memoir, aged twenty-one and ‘absolutely un-provided for, she sold her furniture, silver plate (with the exception of two articles) and all her jewellery to pay Braune’s debts’. She placed her sister, Sophia, in an orphan asylum in Madras, founded by English missionaries, and began her life as a governess.8 William Loveless was an LMS missionary who, together with his wife, ran a small mission station and an adjoining school.9 Betty was provided with board and lodging in return for looking after their two children. Apart from being baptised, she does not seem to have had any religious upbringing. Shortly after she joined the household, a young missionary, Richard Knill, arrived to teach in the school and, in a letter to the LMS, he referred to his having converted ‘a young widow, Mrs Elizabeth Braune’.10 However, this seems 6

7

8 9

10

The dispute and Martin’s role are described in detail in Stephen Taylor, Storm and Conquest: The Battle for the Indian Ocean, 1809 (London: Faber & Faber, 2007), pp. 127–139. He died on 17 June 1815, leaving his wife and a young child by that union, East India Company Registers, Holliday, Mission to China, pp. 32–33. Bates, Family Memorandum. For the Loveless family, see Frank Penny, The Church in Madras (London: John Murray, 1912), II, pp. 204–5. C.M. Birrell, The Life of the Revd Richard Knill (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1860), p. 65.

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inconsistent with a letter Medhurst later wrote saying that ‘she had not been admitted to any church’. Whatever the position, according to what she told Augusta, Medhurst quickly fell for her and was nothing if not ‘persistent’. Married on 19 May 1817, the happy couple set sail the following day on board the Fair Trail. Betty took her seven year-old son, George, with her, but left behind her seventeen-year-old sister, Sophia, who will re-appear later in the story, and would, seemingly, always harbour a grievance about this treatment. Informing the LMS that he had ‘entered into the Holy State of Matrimony with Mrs Elizabeth Braune’, Medhurst assured the Revd Burdon that she ‘gives every evidence of fervent piety and zeal in the great work of our redeemer in which we are engaged’. The letter, which is important for the way in which it ‘presents’ Medhurst’s wife and describes her intended role, continues: I feel great pleasure in the union I have thus formed and am happy to say it meets the approval of the brethern parties, Brother and Sister Loveless, whom I made it my business previously to consult. She has no money but has been blessed with a good education which has brought forth into exercise the powers of a good understanding. Although the character of the Indian ladies is in general sloth, luxury and inactivity yet I hope my dear wife is a perfect exception to this. Should you, however, doubt my relation, I feel Brother Loveless will on application confirm it. I think she will be a good servant to the missionary cause by studying the Chinese language and otherwise assisting her husband in the important duties of his station. She speaks Tamil as fluently as English and can also talk in Gentoo. Born in India and having travelled over the greatest parts of the peninsula living in tents under a scorching sun, she is more likely to endure the terrors of an eastern climate than one of our English ladies. 11It is true she is not a member of any Church but is a candidate for admission and if our departure had not taken place so soon would have been admitted a member of the Missionary Chapel, Blacktown. Before I made any proposals to her she displayed much love for the Heathen and zeal for their good; on one occasion at our missionary meeting she was so animated by what was brought forward as to take the gold ear-rings from her ears and consecrate them to the service of God. 11

Although this may be ambiguous, it seems to provide further support for her Tamil origins.

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He concluded the letter by stating that he had placed 260 Pagodas, being ‘the whole estate of my wife’s provision to our marriage’, in trust for George ‘until he comes of age’.12 After much debate, the LMS had decided that it was preferable for missionaries to marry before embarking overseas, partly because it would avoid the risk of racial intermarriage (which suggests Medhurst may have been concerned about their reaction to his news) but also because women were recognised as an integral part of the missionary endeavour and marriage embodied ‘permanency, stability and “civilisation”’.This, however, was subject to the overall principle of ‘mission, first; family, second’. It was Medhurst’s obligation to ensure that Betty would be ‘a good servant to the cause’. However, whilst he would receive an extra stipend for her support, she would receive nothing for undertaking her full share of missionary work.13 Marrying Medhurst was obviously a momentous decision for Betty. Her initial reluctance suggests that, unlike the more typical missionary wife, she may not have had a ‘vocation’ and that she had no wish to leave Madras, a city she knew well, let alone her sister Sophia. The Lovelace family was caring and hospitable and Betty was not only giving up the stability of that home-life and moving to somewhere completely unknown but also committing again to the treadmill of child-bearing. Moreover, as is clear from his letter and in keeping with the LMS’ approach, Medhurst was extremely patriarchal and two years after their arrival, he would decide that Betty’s nine-year-old son, George, should be sent to school in England, with a view to his being educated to become a missionary. It would be sixteen years before she saw him again. 14 However, for all this, Medhurst may have seemed an attractive catch. A pastel portrait by W.T. Strutt, done shortly before he left London, depicts more of a Regency buck than a zealous evangelical (Plate 1). He had boundless energy and dogged determination, not least in his pursuit of Betty, and it was probably this that tipped the balance, rather than any desire on her part to serve the 12

13 14

Letter, Medhurst to LMS, 20 May 1817, SOAS, CWM/LMS/ Home/Incoming Correspondence, approximately £100 in today’s currency. Cf. Manktelow, Missionary Families, pp. 30–40 For patriarchy in the LMS, see Manktelow, Missionary Families, pp. 56–58; interesting parallels can be drawn with Mary Moffatt and her daughter, Mary, who were married to the LMS missionaries, respectively, Robert Moffatt and David Livingstone, see Forster, Good Wives?, pp. 11–94. For George’s education, see letter, Medhurst to LMS, 23 November 1819, quoted in full in Holliday, Mission to China, pp. 76–77.

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missionary cause. And Medhurst, certainly, had every reason ‘to feel great pleasure in the union’. Someone of his temperament and vigour could not have managed without a ‘helpmeet’ to sustain his needs, both emotional and physical.15 After, what he unromantically described as ‘a tedious two month voyage’, the couple arrived at Malacca on 1 July 1817. William Milne and his wife, Rachel, were there to meet them and introduce them to some twenty or so mission staff. But neither of them were well and the following month, they sailed for Macao in search of a healthier climate, leaving Medhurst in charge until their return the following February. Focusing on the Chinese community, Medhurst immediately began learning the Hokkien dialect, whilst Betty, who would always find Chinese difficult, began studying the local Malay patois. By December, she had already learned enough to be able to start teaching when the school re-opened.16 The small world of the Malacca mission station was, as we have seen, fractious, with a number of strong-minded and zealous missionaries suffering from, in Harrison’s words, ‘an exaggerated spirit of independence, an impatience of interference and a resentment of criticism’.17 Witnessing her husband’s intemperate outbursts, Betty may have tried to exercise a restraining influence – she was, after all, four years older and no doubt considerably wiser, but she also had a lot on her hands. In March 1819, Rachel Milne died, leaving four children under the age of six, including a six-weekold baby, and for a short while, differences were put to one side, with Betty agreeing to take on their care. She had already lost her first child but, on 16 November 1819, she ‘presented [Medhurst] with a fine little girl’, who was baptised Sarah Sophia.18 A boy followed two years later but died the next day. Relationships continued to be strained and, after a short, even more contentious, time in Penang, Medhurst was instructed to move to Batavia. Whilst this entailed further upheaval for Betty, it also meant she could leave behind some unhappy memories as well as the bickering which had gone on between Medhurst and his fellow missionaries. 19 In late December, 1821, they set sail for Java to begin the next phase of their life. 15 16 17 18

19

Cf. Manktelow, Missionary Families, pp. 73–81. Harrison, Waiting for China, pp. 26–27 and 37. Harrison, Waiting for China, p. 51. Letter, Medhurst to LMS, 23 November 1819, SOAS/CWM/LMS/UltraGanges/Incoming. Harrison, Waiting for China, p. 63.

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BATAVIA

Despite its importance, the work of missionary wives seldom received any acknowledgment by their husbands, whether in their letters and reports to headquarters or in their memoirs.20 Morrison and Milne referred to their spouses only as wives and mothers and Medhurst made no mention of Betty’s contribution in his description of the Batavia mission in China: Its State and Prospects. However, he did refer to it from time to time in reports to the Directors of the LMS. Read to the Society’s monthly meetings, these would import into England this overseas world and it is clear from his accounts that Betty was devoting herself to missionary work as well as to her duties as a wife and mother. Difficult though that may have been, it was, as Emily Manktelow shows, the companionate nature of missionary marriages that made such a life possible and that ‘allowed missionary women in various ways to carve out a vocational place for themselves within the rising tide of the civilising mission’.21 From all that we know (including Eliza’s later letters) Walter’s and Betty’s marriage was companionate and Betty managed to carve out a ‘vocational place’ in which she was able to fulfil all three roles. Given Slater’s eccentric behaviour and his wife’s ill-health and inability to cope with their four young children, the first years were not easy. It was, therefore, a considerable relief when he died in September 1825 and his wife twelve months later, even though this left Betty to look after their children until they were sent back to England the following year. 22 Comfortably housed in the newly-built European quarter of Weltevreden, Betty was then able to enjoy a reasonably settled way of life, albeit one which was extremely demanding. With her husband frequently away on lengthy expeditions, she was expected to run the mission station, teach in its Malay school and visit and preach to the local Malay women with whom he could not associate for cultural reasons. As he proudly informed London, ‘she sits down and reads wherever she finds a few women’.23 Later, she would add to this, by translating 20 21 22

23

Manktelow, Missionary Families p. 58. Manktelow, Missionary Families, pp. 59–60 and 70–72. Holliday, Mission to China, pp. 90–98; letters, Medhurst to LMS, 6 October 1826 and 15 January 1827, SOAS, CWM/South China /Incoming Correspondence. Letter, Medhurst to LMS, 6 October 1826, SOAS, CWM/LMS/Upper Ganges/ Java.

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the catechism into Malay, some 1000 copies being printed on the local press.24 All this was in addition to bringing up the family, which included four Chinese orphans, whom they had brought with them from Penang, and producing children at regular intervals. Walter was born in November 1823 and two more children followed in quick succession, but both died from fever within a short space of each other, the first in August 1826 and the second just under a year later. Mourning these losses, Medhurst wrote to the Society in July 1827: We were called to endure a severe trial in the sudden death of our youngest child. My dear wife in particular is almost overwhelmed with this melancholy occurrence, having thus been called to part with two lovely children within about a year’s time …. I hope that this affliction will tend to detach our hearts more from this transitory world and to attach us more to heaven and heavenly things.25

This may have been why Betty asked her younger sister to come and live with them. Now in her late twenties, Sophia had probably taken Betty’s position as governess to the Lovelace family, and through them maintained contact with the LMS. Certainly, Medhurst was impressed by her religious devotion and, soon after her arrival, informed London that he hoped she would be ‘admitted to the missionary table’. He was also delighted that, unlike Betty, she was able to learn some Chinese, including speaking the Hokkien dialect, and was soon teaching in the missionary Chinese school.26 On 24 July 1828, Betty gave birth to a daughter, Eliza Mary, this time, it seems, without any complications. Although Medhurst made sure he was in the mission station during her confinement, within a month, he was off again, undertaking his most ambitious expedition – to Singapore, Malaysia and Borneo – and only re-joining his family in January of the following year. Given the unhealthy nature of the climate in Batavia and the constant risk of sickness, these were long periods to be away. Fever 24

25

26

Letter, Medhurst to LMS, 22 July 1829, SOAS, CWM/LMS/Upper Ganges/ Java. Letter, Medhurst to LMS, 16 August 1826 and 20 July 1827, SOAS, CWM/ LMS/ South China. Letter, Medhurst to LMS, 20 July 1827, SOAS, CWM/LMS/Upper Ganges/ Java.

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had already killed the two youngest children and Medhurst’s letters make frequent reference to the family being ill, as he also was on occasions. Sophia suffered the most and, unlike them, did not recover easily. In July 1829, she went to Singapore to receive treatment from a Dr Caswall and returned early the following year, resuming teaching in the Chinese boys’ school, which now also had a class for girls.27 However, although seemingly ‘restored to health’, she soon relapsed and it was decided that she would be better off moving to Singapore permanently.28 Sophia had spent five years with the family and it is clear from Medhurst’s reports that he had grown fond of his sister-in-law, as well as valuing her work. With her and Betty’s contribution, the missionary station had become a family concern, serving the local community – European, Malay and Chinese – and allowing Medhurst to spread the Word further afield. Although Sophia was leaving, young Sarah would soon show every sign of having a missionary vocation and start teaching. As well as being a hub for the community, the family provided an exemplar of Western practices to those many Chinese and Malay who visited the mission. This did not mean that there was any attempt to socialise with them beyond the scope of missionary work – preaching, nursing, teaching and operating the printing press. They remained distinctly ‘the other’.29 With Sophia settling in Singapore, the family network was also expanding. According to the LMS’ Annual Report, she was soon teaching forty Chinese children across three schools which had ‘much improved under [her] care’. She also wrote a primer of religious instruction in Chinese, which was probably a revised version of Medhurst’s earlier work.30 The following year, she married Thomas Waterman Whittle, a local merchant who had established himself in the port-city, and twelve months later, she gave birth to a baby daughter, also called Sophia. Although her husband died shortly afterwards, Sophia Whittle remained in Singapore, 27

28 29

30

Letters, Medhurst to LMS, 22 July 1829 and 21 February 1830, SOAS, CWM/ LMS/Upper Ganges/ Java. LMS, 37th Report (1831), p. 27. Manktelow, Missionary Families, pp. 64–67 and cf. Cleall, Missionary Discourses of Difference, seriatim. LMS, 37th Report (1831), p. 27 and see 38th Report (1832), p. 33; Sophia Martin, Three Character Classic, for the instruction of Females (Singapore 1832), referred to in Alexander Wylie, Memorials of Protestant Missionaries to the Chinese (Shanghae: American Presbyterian Missionary Press, 1867) p. 40.

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later founding a private school for boarders and day scholars.31 Her home and, later, that of her daughter would become an important staging post for the family, en route to and from Hong Kong and China. Again, we see family networks giving substance to a British world stretching across the Malaysian archipelago. Without Sophia to help, Betty had to run the home and the mission station with little assistance. What is more, she was pregnant again. On 7 January 1831, she gave birth to a daughter, Martha, and, two years later, to their second boy, Ebenezer. She now had five children to care for, three under the age of three. However, this did not interfere with her missionary work and teaching in the school set up for the small European community. The Mission Return for October 1834 records a congregation of thirty English/Europeans and forty Malays attending chapel and thirty European children attending the Sunday School, where Betty taught, in addition to what was called the ‘private school’. Sarah (now aged fifteen), was also teaching and working in the recentlyfounded orphanage at Parapattan.32 Towards the end of 1834, Medhurst decided that his son,Walter, who was now twelve years old, should go to school in England and, as with young George, in the hope that he would become a missionary, he sent him to Mill Hill Congregational School (a reduced fee of £50 p.a. being charged for sons of ministers). In advance of his son’s arrival, having taught him, Medhurst was able to inform the LMS that, […] he has made good progress in the ground work of English education. He reads Virgil and knows something of music and drawing. His views of religion are accurate … I hope he will be wise and good and do good to others.

And in a letter sent the following year, whilst thanking them for directing his education, Medhurst asked for ‘their particular attention with a view to the welfare of his soul’.33 In the event, devout 31

32

33

Charles Burton Buckley, An Anecdotal History of Old Times in Singapore (Singapore: Fraser & Neave, 1902), pp. 320 and 745. Letter, Medhurst to LMS, 1 December 1834, SOAS/CWM/LMS/Java and LMS 40th Report (1834), p. 27. Letters, Medhurst to LMS, 1 December 1834 and 1 November 1835, SOAS, CWM/LMS/Upper Ganges/ Java. Ernest Hampden-Cook, The Register of Mill Hill School, 1807–1926 (Mill Hill School, 1926), p. 57, shows that Medhurst was there from May 1835 to December 1836. For the school, see Roderick

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though he may have been, young Medhurst was not, as we have seen, cut out for life as a missionary. Returning to his family in early 1836 after yet another major expedition, Medhurst, senior, found that two American missionaries, whom he had briefly met in Guangzhou, had arrived, and that one of them, Henry Lockwood, had fallen in love with his daughter, Sarah. Lockwood told him that, subject to his consent, the couple wished to marry immediately. Although Sarah was only sixteen and Lockwood twenty-five, both Walter and Betty seemed happy with the match, particularly as it meant that they could leave the mission in their hands, when they set off for England. The marriage was celebrated on 17 February 1836 and, shortly afterwards, knowing that he was about to leave, Medhurst wrote his daughter a lengthy letter, which included this admonition: Remember, what is required of you as the daughter of a missionary and the wife of a missionary, that next to your own soul’s salvation, your chief attention is to be paid to the instruction of the poor and ignorant females and children around you and that you are to strive for the benefit of the Heathen. It gives me heart that you are united to a Chinese missionary and I hope that both you and he will never rest till you have attained the Chinese language thoroughly and are able to communicate religious knowledge to the sons and daughters of the greatest of nations.34

Medhurst’s wishes for his children could not have been clearer; that they should all become missionaries or at least embrace the missionary cause, preferably in connection with China. How much Betty shared this view is more doubtful. TO ENGLAND AND BACK

On 6 April 1836, Walter, Betty and the three youngest children left for England, together with Chu Tak-leung. Sailing via the Cape of Good Hope, they reached Southampton four months later and were provided with lodgings in Hackney, London, just round the corner from the LMS chapel in St Thomas’ Square. This was the first time that Medhurst had been in the country

34

Braithwaite, ‘Strikingly alive’: History of the Mill Hill School Foundation, 1807–2007 (Chichester: Phillimore & Co. Ltd, 2006), especially at pp. 48 and 75. Letter, Medhurst to Sarah Lockwood, 9 March 1836 (Hillier Collection).

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for twenty years and he was able to introduce them to his family and they were able to meet young Walter. Betty was able to see her son, George, who, had graduated at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and taken holy orders.35 Married with a daughter, he was now the curate at St John the Baptist Church in Frome, Somerset. This was Betty’s first visit to England and we know almost nothing of how she took to the country and a way of life quite different from anything she had previously experienced. For much of the time, she remained in London whilst Walter travelled extensively, preaching, lecturing and making contacts.The children were sent to a local school, the fees being paid by the LMS.36 Although Eliza makes little mention of this time in her later letters, there are hints that she did not enjoy it.37 Given Betty’s character, she also probably did not take to the bustle, noise and dirt of what was a relatively poor suburb of London. Always happiest with her family, she would not have made friends easily nor been comfortable in such surroundings. The time was also overshadowed by two family tragedies. In December 1836, they received news that shortly after they had left Batavia, Sarah had died from a fever. Familiar though such events were at the time – none more so for Betty who had lost, in total, six of her eleven children – this made it no easier to cope with such grief.38 In Sarah’s case, it was, if anything magnified by the tyranny of distance. The knowledge that, for so many months, whilst they had been imagining her as alive and enjoying her newly-married life, when she was already dead, and the need, but inability, to discover more about her final hours – there was at least a six-month turn-around for correspondence – made it all the more difficult to accept. Then, just twelve months later, as they were still coming to terms with their grief, they had to watch helplessly as little Ebenezer caught scarlet fever and died. 35

36

37 38

J.A. Venn, comp. Alumni Cantabrigiennses (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922–1954). George had been educated at Oakham School, see W.L. Sargant, A History of Oakham School (privately published), p. 68, where he is listed as ‘George Brown’ and correspondence between the author and Oakham School, 12 September 2015. Letter, Medhurst to LMS, 20 July 1837, asking for increase in pay to fund education of four children and ‘a native youth’, that is Chu, SOAS, CWM/LMS/ Home/Office, 1837–1841. Letter, Eliza Hillier to Martha Saul, 17 August 1852, Correspondence of Eliza Hillier Patricia Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 119–142, especially, p. 121.

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Given these tragedies, Betty was probably only too glad when it was time to leave. To her delight, for their return journey, they were going to be just the large sort of family party she enjoyed. In addition to young Walter, there were Harry Parkes’ elder sisters, Kate and Isabella, aged fifteen and thirteen. Having lost both their parents, the girls had been invited to live with their aunt, Charles Gutzlaff ’s wife, Mary, in Macao, and Walter and Betty, who knew Gutzlaff well, had agreed to chaperone them during the voyage.39 Completing the party was William Lockhart, as we have seen. This was the beginning of a long and close relationship between the Parkes and Medhurst families, in which the girls’ love of music would be a strong bond. It was also the beginning of a romance: Kate Parkes and Lockhart fell in love and, despite the age difference, would be married three years later.40 Stopping at Macao, where Kate, Isabella and Lockhart disembarked after four months at sea, the family arrived home. Brother Walter soon left to join Lockhart in Macao, and, without their elder sister, Eliza and Martha became very close. It was a happy time and they were delighted when, in August 1840, their mother gave birth to a daughter (she was forty-five and this was to be her last child), appropriately named Augusta. Happy though they were, however, across the South China Sea, the First Opium War had started, and although they were insulated from its immediate consequences, the family will have been worried about young Medhurst’s involvement and greatly relieved when it came to an end.With peace concluded, it was time to start packing up and saying goodbye to all their friends. Betty had spent the best part of twenty years in Batavia, a time which, so far as we can tell, she had found enjoyable and fulfilling. Despite the many tragedies she had suffered, she had brought up a family that would always be closely-knit. Although she did not have her husband’s missionary zeal, she had worked hard, and, being fluent in Malay, had taken pleasure in teaching the local children, as well as meeting Malay women, albeit without any expectation of converting them to Christianity. She had also been indispensable in running the mission station during Medhurst’s long absences, as well as providing familial support and comfort, and shouldering almost all 39 40

For Mary Gutzlaff, see Hoe, Private Life of Old Hong Kong, pp. 27–29. Letter, Lockhart to his father and sister, 23 March 1841, Hughes, Lockhart Correspondence, pp. 129 and 143.

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the domestic responsibilities. As a good missionary wife, she had managed to fuse the spiritual with the domestic.41 Whilst Batavia was part of the Dutch empire, its small British community can be seen as part of the wider British World. Medhurst’s ceaseless journeying across the Malaysian and Indonesian archipelagos, the contributions to the missionary endeavour of his wife and the wider family both in Batavia and Singapore, of Dr Lockhart in Macao, together with the LMS presence in Penang and Malacca, nurtured a sense of community and identity throughout the Ultra-Ganges region. Shipping plied between those port-cities, bringing mail, passengers and merchandise, and forging connections across the region.42 With the ending of the war, these networks were now going to be extended to include the colony of Hong Kong and treaty port China, an expanding world in which the next generation of Medhursts and their families would play a significant part. Having led a sheltered life in the mission station, although they spoke Malay, Walter, Eliza and Martha Medhurst had had little contact with either Malay or Chinese children. As with many other missionary families at this time, they had been brought up with entrenched ideas about the non-European people being ‘the other’ and this would continue to inform the approach of Eliza and Martha when they arrived in Shanghai. SHANGHAI

Setting off from Batavia, the family stopped at Singapore, where they stayed with Betty’s sister, ‘Aunt Whittle’, whom they had not seen for ten years, meeting her husband for the first time and their little daughter, Sophia. They then sailed onto Hong Kong which they reached in July, 1843.43 Whilst Medhurst was immediately engaged in meetings with his missionary colleagues, Eliza’s brother, Walter, who was now part of Governor Pottinger’s secretariat, introduced her to his friends and it was probably through him that she met Charles Hillier. Although the original plan had been for Betty to accompany her husband to Shanghai, this had to be changed when Eliza and Martha fell ill. He went on ahead and the rest of the family were put up by 41 42 43

Cf. Manktelow, Missionary Families, pp. 67–69. Cf. Magee, Empire and Globalisation, p. 27. Letter, Medhurst to LMS, 24 June 1843, SOAS, CWM/LMS/South China.

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an American missionary, Revd Samuel Brown and his wife. In December, young Medhurst left to take up his new position in Shanghai and then came down, the following June, to escort his mother and three sisters back to their new home. 44 Kate, and her sister, Isabella, had been eagerly anticipating their arrival and, for a while the four became inseparable. With typical Medhurst impetuosity, Walter fell for Isabella and, with the couple becoming engaged, the two families formed the centre of the Settlement’s social life, such as it was. However, relations cooled when, with Lockhart advising delay, Walter equally impetuously broke off the engagement. Medhurst, senior, remained indefatigable, and despite the rift between the two families, maintained his relationship with Lockhart, as well as setting off on his expedition to the interior in March 1845, which may well have provided a welcome relief from all this social intrigue and upset. Before leaving Hong Kong, the family had obviously got to know Charles Hillier well and, for Christmas that year, they invited him to stay. If Betty had match-making in mind, she would not be disappointed. By the end of his visit, he and Eliza had announced their engagement.45 HONG KONG

The wedding took place in the modest setting of the Colonial Chapel, Hong Kong, on 28 May 1846, the service being taken by the colonial chaplain, the Revd Vincent Stanton.46 The centre of a somewhat earnest circle of missionaries, people doing good works and others keen to distance themselves from the colony’s more louche life-style, Vincent and Lucy Stanton were just the right people to befriend Eliza during her early days when, as an ‘inexperienced’ eighteen-year-old, she was trying to find her feet.47 Eliza’s life with Charles Hillier is vividly conveyed in a cache of letters that she wrote to her sister, Martha, which show both how she developed into a mature and confident married woman 44

45 46 47

Letter, Medhurst to LMS, 11 July 1844, SOAS, CWM/ LMS/ Central China, letters, Lockhart to his father and sister, 15 June and 2 July 1844, Hughes, Lockhart Correspondence, pp. 217–222. Undated memorandum (Hillier Family). There is a short entry recording the marriage in The China Mail, 29 May 1846, p. 58. Cf. Hoe, Private Life of Old Hong Kong, p. 40.

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and how letter-writing placed family at the centre of empire. 48 Through these letters, it is possible to glimpse not only Eliza’s intimate life but also that of her parents, who were living in Shanghai, and of her two siblings – Martha, who, after her marriage to Powell Saul, lived first in Shanghai, and then in England and, finally, Batavia, and Walter. The letters also reflect how family legitimised and normalised the imperial presence and how such correspondence established connections across the expanding British World but how it also all too often left behind sad memorials of that presence.49 Letter-writing depended on an efficient mail service and, following the opening of the treaty ports, the Peninsular & Orient Steam Navigation Company (founded in 1837) was quick to seize this opportunity. In 1845, it opened a Far Eastern service, with SS Lady Mary Wood running monthly mails between Hong Kong and Point de Galle (Ceylon), where it linked with the Indian mail. Three years later, an unofficial mail started between Hong Kong and Shanghai, letters generally taking five to six days to arrive, assuming reasonable weather conditions, and this later developed into a regular service.50 The writing, despatch and receipt of letters became an important ritual of empire with the dates of the incoming and outgoing mail-boats being recorded in the local press. 51 Their arrival was keenly awaited, responses were written in advance and frantically completed at the last minute in order not to miss the departing ship. Once received, the letters would often be read out loud or shared. Whilst only Eliza’s letters to Martha have survived, together with a handful of brother Walter’s, it is clear that they 48

49 50

51

See the Correspondence of Eliza Hillier, SOAS; see also Andrew Hillier, My Dearest Martha, The Letters and Life of Eliza Hillier (Hong Kong: Hong Kong City University Press), forthcoming, 2020. Ishiguro, Nothing to Write Home About, pp. 3–28. Because of opposition from other merchants, an official service was not opened until 1851, David and Stephen Howarth, The Story of P & O: The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986), pp. 76–85, Freda Harcourt, Flagships of Imperialism: The P. & O. Company and the Politics of Empire from its Origins to 1867 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), pp. 100–102. See also Lane J. Harris, ‘Stumbling towards Empire: The Shanghai Local Post Office, the Transnational British Community and Informal Empire in China, 1863–97’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, (46) 2018, pp. 418–445. Buettner, Empire Families, pp. 15–16 and pp. 130–140, Gillis, A World of their Own Making, pp. 77–8.

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represented only a fraction of what was being exchanged within the family across the distance of empire. Such correspondence linked these sites both as a mechanism in itself and in providing information about family and friends living in and travelling between empire locales. Whilst none of Eliza’s letters has survived from the first two years of her life with Charles, it is clear from later comments to Martha that her marriage was highly patriarchal and that, although it was probably little different to her parents’, she did not find it easy to adjust to its demands. Moreover, she was extremely young and yet required to play her part as the wife of one of the Colony’s senior officials, following Charles’s appointment as Chief Magistrate in October 1847. Whilst he will have wished to shield her from the Wild West atmosphere entailing curfews, street patrols and the arrest and flogging of petty offenders, she cannot have been unaware of what was going on. However, her letters make almost no mention of this world and, instead, focus on her private life, beginning with Martha’s forthcoming wedding to Powell Saul. Unable to attend, she is full of excitement, writing: I must know the day in order that I may picture all the goings on. Yourself robed in “virgin white” poor child: Mama crying… Papa looking as if he was not going to stand any nonsense from anybody – much less from Saul. Of course Powell will look as all bridegrooms ought to…at the same time saying to himself that it is the last time he will have to “give in”, so he might as well do it with a good grace.

But there is also plenty of advice, When you are first married, you will often be unhappy…They marry us for love at first but afterwards they expect us to make them happy and not to be continually exacting little attentions from them. A woman’s life is one of self-denial, and the sooner she learns this lesson the better for herself and others. 52

Children were arriving in quick succession. Following the death at birth of her first child, her second, Charles, always known by his second name, Willie, had been born in February 1848; 52

Letter, Eliza Hillier to Martha Medhurst, 6 November 1848; see also letter, Eliza Hillier to Powell Saul, 17 June 1851, Correspondence of Eliza Hillier, SOAS.

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Walter Caine was born in August the following year and Harry Mason, two years later, in February 1851. By that stage, it is clear that she had begun to develop her confidence and was enjoying socialising with a wide set of friends and acquaintances.The Western presence was becoming domesticated but with it came all the petty snobberies typical of a small expatriate community, as we see in the following letter: There has been a great disturbance among the ladies here about the fancy ball to which after all the ladies had accepted their invitations the shopkeepers wives were asked – some of the aristocratic among “our set” have returned their tickets … I am out of the squabble but neither Charles nor I are going in costume – even if I go at all. 53

‘Calling’ was an important practice, albeit one which Eliza affected to dislike and detach herself from: […] we mean to start with a large pack of cards – I always learn pretty speeches beforehand … and then return home with an easy conscience and rejoice in the children and mending – for 3 months after.54

Along with a number of friends who had children of a similar age, she could ‘rejoice’ in her home life. Most importantly, it was a world defined by racial difference in which, save for servants, rickshaw-pullers and shop-keepers, there was little or no contact with the Chinese people, who are barely mentioned in the letters, and then often in a disparaging tone.55 The day when the muchloved amah would be treated as a member of the family was yet to arrive in Hong Kong.56 Instead, the three boys were looked after by an Irish nanny and, although they were still very young, familial practices both inside and outside the home, including taking them shopping, to visit friends or play in public gardens, reinforced this sense of difference.57 Exotic though her surroundings were, 53 54 55

56

57

Letter, 4 October, 1849, Correspondence of Eliza Hillier, SOAS. Letter, 17 November 1849, Correspondence of Eliza Hillier, SOAS. Letters, 20 December 1849, 16 March, 1850, 14 May 1850, 31 March 1853 and 8 May 1855, Correspondence of Eliza Hillier, SOAS. Cf. Hoe, Private Life of Old Hong Kong, pp. 78–79; for the reluctance to allow too much contact between children and servants, see Blunt, Home, pp. 155–156. Pomfret, Youth and empire, pp. 1–8.

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Eliza wanted to replicate English home life. The emphasis is thus on gentility and rendering normal what was essentially abnormal. 58 Martha and Powell were able to catch a brief glimpse of this world when they stopped off on their way to England, where Powell was to take up a new job.The two sisters had not met since Eliza had set off for her wedding five years before.With three children under the age of three and Martha having a baby daughter, Lizzie, it was not an easy re-union and one that they found all the more difficult, knowing it would be long before they met again. As Eliza wrote afterwards, ‘we were almost strangers in our own respectively new relations’.59 Whilst Eliza’s life was becoming more settled, the climate and generally unsanitary conditions were taking their toll on her health and, still recovering from the birth of Harry, she was advised by her doctor to spend some time in Shanghai, where her mother could at least help with the children. 60 On 25 August 1851, she and Charles set off, sailing by the S.S. Historian, on a journey that should only have lasted six days but, encountering severe gales, took twenty-two. This meant that no sooner had they arrived than Charles had to return to Hong Kong, leaving her to spend the next three months with her parents. 61 Whilst her father was ‘entirely occupied with the re-translation of the Bible into Chinese’, she was able to see plenty of her brother, Walter, who was working as an assistant in the consulate. However, misfortune had continued to plague his private life. Having been sent to England for a period of sick leave, he had married there and returned to China with his young bride, Ellen. Almost immediately pregnant, she had died in childbirth, leaving the infant, named Wattie, to be cared for by Walter’s mother, Betty, a task which she was happy to take on but made her over-protective and anxious.62 Shanghai was yet to be inundated by refugees from the Taiping rebellion and its small Western community enjoyed a reasonably comfortable life-style. Unusually, for the treaty ports, there was a 58

59 60 61

62

As to the notion of ‘home’, see Blunt, Home, p. 142 and for the importance attached to it by Eliza Hillier, see letter, 17 November 1849; see also Lawrence, Genteel Women, seriatim but especially pp. 3 and 126. Letter, 24 March 1851, Correspondence of Eliza Hillier, SOAS. Letter, 9 March 1850, Correspondence of Eliza Hillier, SOAS. Letter, with an initial date of 28 August 1851, Correspondence of Eliza Hillier, SOAS. Letter, Eliza Hillier, to Mary and Laetitia Hillier, 11 October, 1851, Correspondence of Eliza Hillier, SOAS.

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close relationship between the consulate and the missionaries, as a result of the family connections. Consul Alcock and his wife, Henrietta, knew the Medhursts well and invited young Walter and Eliza to dinner. She also met Kate Lockhart and her sister, Isabella, who was married to the consular chaplain, the Revd McClatchie, both of whom had started families. Whilst this made for a reasonably cordial atmosphere, Eliza could not wait to return to Charles. When news arrived that Walter had been appointed as Chinese Secretary in Hong Kong, after spending Christmas and New Year with their parents, he and Eliza travelled back together, taking little Wattie with them. Again, the weather was foul, but, after another difficult journey, they were home and Charles was ‘on board before we anchored’ looking ‘uncommonly well’. He had taken a spacious and comfortable house, large enough for his own family, Walter and young Wattie and servants, including the amah. Eliza was delighted with the arrangements, not least because Walter introduced a lighter note and the two of them had ‘such merry laughs together’. 63 However, the ill-health that bedevilled the colony continued. Both Charles and Eliza fell sick, and, pregnant again, she was advised she should have the baby in England.64 Charles was granted six months’ leave and on 23 July 1852, they set sail on board the P & O Steamer, Malta. With three children under the age of four, the journey would be a major undertaking. ENGLAND

She described it in lengthy letters, despatched from four staging posts. This sort of travel, entailing frequent transits and detours to, what Elizabeth Sinn calls, these ‘in-between places’ was a further mechanism for binding together far-flung locales of the empire and weaving the experiences into the family’s collective memory.65 Arriving in late September, much to her disappointment, 63

64 65

Letters, 24 February 1852 and 21 May 1852; see also letter, 31 August 1853 in which Eliza refers to her receiving one of his ‘laughable epistles ... I wonder if ever he will be an old man in feelings’, Correspondence of Eliza Hillier, SOAS. Letter, 24 February 1852, Correspondence of Eliza Hillier, SOAS. Elizabeth Sinn, Pacific Crossing: California Gold, Chinese Migration, and the Making of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013), pp. 8–10 and 304–307 and see Kate Hill, ‘Introduction: Narratives of Travel: Narratives that Travel’ in Kate Hill, Britain and the Narration of Travel in the Nineteenth Century: texts, images, objects (Farnham: Ashgate, 2016), pp. 1–12.

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Eliza just missed meeting Martha and Powell, as only weeks before, they had left for Batavia, where Powell was about to start another new job. Although both Charles’s parents had died, it was an exciting home-coming, being the first time that he had seen his family for over ten years. For Eliza, whilst she had come to know them well in correspondence, this was their first meeting. Edward had been appointed as Assistant Master at King Edward VI School, Bury St Edmunds, and he was living in a large town-house with his three unmarried sisters, Mary, Fanny and Laetitia. Charles spent much of his time travelling and learning about prison conditions in England and then, after three months, set off for Hong Kong, leaving Eliza and the three boys, to move in with Edward. The plan seems to have been for the children to be brought up in England and for Charles, who had already started exploring other career opportunities, to come back in three years’ time.66 In the event, the boys would never see their father again. In February 1853, Eliza gave birth to Eleanor Maud. As well as having to nurse the new baby and look after her three boys, she had to care for Walter’s son, Wattie, whom he had sent back to England.67 The following month, the pressure was eased when Charles’ sister, Sarah, and her husband, the Revd George Pieritz, agreed that he could board with them. Again, we see caring practices spreading across families. Maudie was weaned relatively quickly, and with this, comes a change in tone of the letters. Up to this point, Eliza has projected herself as a dutiful, companionate wife, capable of running the home and of taking responsibility for the children; as someone who is manifestly willing to make sacrifices to ensure the happiness and well-being of both her husband and her brother and who also feels a responsibility for her sister, Martha. Freed from what may have been the claustrophobic atmosphere of Hong Kong, a more outward-going persona takes over. Although clearly missing Charles, she begins to enjoy her independence to an extent unusual for a married woman at that time and this may in part be due to her earlier experiences of colonial life.68 66 67 68

Cf. letter, 17 November 1849, Correspondence of Eliza Hillier, SOAS. Letter, 17 February 1853, Correspondence of Eliza Hillier, SOAS. By contrast, see the depiction of marriage by Wilkie Collins in The Woman in White (London: Sampson Low, 1861), p. 162: ‘Men! ... they fasten our helpless lives to theirs as they chain up a dog to his kennel’.

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She got on particularly well with her sister-in-law, Mary, with whom she played piano duets and took up singing lessons. 69 The two visited Paris with Edward, who had clearly taken a shine to her, spent several weeks at Yarmouth with the children and travelled extensively, meeting old Hong Kong friends and relations, and staying with her half-brother, George Braune, at the Vicarage in Wistow.70 China links were reinforced when, possibly at Eliza’s suggestion and with Consul Medhurst’s support, Braune’s son, also called George, joined the Consular Service. The following summer saw Eliza embarking on a similar pattern – visiting the Crystal Palace with Caine’s wife, Mary Ann, staying with the Stantons, who had returned to England, and, finally, taking the whole family plus the nurse for a month’s holiday in Ramsgate, all of this being accomplished by rail.71 The letters were supplemented by photographs, including cartes de visite which were exchanged, displayed and pasted into albums.72 ‘Boxes’ were made up with clothes and English food – and, in return, Chinese and Japanese items were sent back.73 If she had little interest in China as such, she was nevertheless keen to acquire and domesticate its artefacts. Even though she pined for Charles, at least there was no chance of a further pregnancy, as she confided to Martha:‘…it seems as if I have done nothing else since I was married but have babies – I am thoroughly sick of it.’ 74 RETURN TO HONG KONG

However, by November 1854, Eliza decided she had ‘been away from dear Charles long enough’, particularly as he had not been well. Having arranged for the three boys to be cared for by their aunt, Sarah Pieritz, she and Maudie made the long journey back to Hong Kong. 75 On the way back, she stayed with her cousin, Sophia Little (who now had two children), and her husband, 69 70

71

72 73 74

75

Letter, 30 May 1853, Correspondence of Eliza Hillier, SOAS. Letters, 3 October and 19 November, 1853, Correspondence of Eliza Hillier, SOAS. Letters, 3 August 1854, 28 June 1854. For Mary Caine, see Hoe, Private Life of Old Hong Kong, pp. 67–69. Letters 28 June 1854 and 3 August 1854; cf. Buettner, Empire Families, pp. 136–138. Letter, 1 May 1854. Letters, 30 May 1853 and 31 March, 1853 and also, in relation to child-birth, see letter 9 July 1855. Letters, 1 November 1854 and 12 April, 1855.

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Robert, who, with his two brothers, was at the centre of the port-city’s public and social life.76 There, she and Martha were able to meet for the first time in four years. Whilst Eliza ‘would not have missed it for anything’, with so little time to themselves and so much to say, there was perhaps too much pressure for it to be successful. Martha had her three children, all under the age of four, with her, and, although it was not mentioned, was obviously pregnant again.77 However, she was living comfortably in Batavia and so far as we can tell, happily married to Powell, of whom Eliza certainly approved. Reaching Hong Kong in early April, she was effusively welcomed by Charles who ‘was on board before the anchor was down’ and beside himself with excitement at seeing his daughter, Maudie, for the first time. She ‘went to him at once, and nestled down into his arms as if she knew her right place’.78 Home at last, Eliza resumed her old way of life. Pausing there, we can see how, by this stage, the family had already forged an extensive network across the British World. In England, Charles’ siblings were caring for his and Eliza’s three boys and for Medhurst’s son,Wattie; in Hong Kong, there were Charles, Eliza and little Maudie; in Shanghai, Eliza’s parents, Walter and Betty, in Batavia, her sister, Martha and Powell and their children, and in Singapore, her aunt, Sophia, together with her daughter, Sophia, her husband, Robert Little and their wider family. To this can be added Consul Walter Medhurst, who had recently remarried, and connections were made between Fuzhou, where he was living with his wife, Isabel, and her family in Macao, where her grand-father, Samuel Burge Rawle, was the American consul. This pattern was replicated by numerous other similar families, and connected by correspondence and travel, it gave this world a distinct British identity. However, it was also a world in which intimacy was becoming undermined by the distance of empire. According to Eliza, far away in England, Willie, Walter and Harry, aged seven, five and four, ‘fretted after [her] a good deal’ and ‘wild and riotous’, though they could be, Charles and Eliza found the separation very painful. 79 Whilst the most obvious reason for their remaining in England was to avoid the unhealthy 76

77 78 79

Charles Burton Buckley, An Anecdotal History of Old Times in Singapore (Singapore: Fraser & Neave, 1902), pp. 348–351. Letter, 9 July 1855. Letter, 12 April 1855, Correspondence of Eliza Hillier, SOAS. Letter, 14 November and see letters, 11 December 1852, 16 January 1853 and 11 and 19 November 1853, Correspondence of Eliza Hillier, SOAS.

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climate and ‘the contaminating’ effect of contact with the Chinese servants, in India’s Raj, this only tended to happen when the children approached their teenage years, and it is difficult to discern why, here, it was imposed at such an early age.80 Whilst there is no reason to suppose they were not well looked after, they were living in a somewhat austere household. ‘Auntie Pieritz’ and her husband, the Revd George Pieritz, were devoutly religious – George was a Jewish convert to Protestantism, he had taught Edward Hillier Hebrew at Cambridge (which is when he met Sarah), and the two had then spent four years as missionaries in India before returning to a parish in Cambridge where they were living with their two children aged seven and five. Caring, no doubt, but perhaps they were not the most relaxed or light-hearted couple to be bringing up three boys of spirit.81 Relations with their parents had to be conducted entirely through correspondence and gifts. In what was a somewhat formulaic process, as Elizabeth Buettner says, the children’s letters will have reflected ‘a consciousness from a very early age of the feelings deemed appropriate to relate’, and probably ‘much remained unwritten or was reshaped to fit expectations’.82 Whilst Eliza’s are newsy and relaxed, Charles had not seen the children for over two years, and his are formal and somewhat stilted, being generally signed off ‘Your affectionate father, C.B. Hillier.’83 Although Eliza was delighted to be back with Charles, problems were beginning to beset the family. Walter’s and Isabel’s first baby had been still-born. Suffering badly, Isabel had gone to Singapore seeking treatment from Sophia’s husband, Dr Little, but without success, and, on 18 February 1855, she died and was buried in the cemetery beside what is now the city’s Cathedral. Then, one month after Martha’s fourth child had been safely delivered in September 1855, her husband, Powell, died of fever in Batavia.84 Appalled by the news, Walter immediately left Fuzhou and came straight to Hong Kong to ask Bowring for leave of absence so he could join his sister. However, to his dismay, this was refused. Staying with Eliza, he suggested to his mother that Martha should 80 81 82 83

84

Cf Buettner, Empire Families, pp. 59–62 for the position in late Imperial India. For Revd George Pieritz, see the obituary in the Oxford Times, 2 August 1884. Buettner, Empire Families, pp. 130–142, quote at p. 139. See, for example, letter, Charles Hillier to his children, 14 February 1856 (Hillier Collection). Powell Saul died on 21 October 1855. Eliza’s first letter following receipt of the news has not survived.

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come to live with him, in the hope, possibly that she would also be a surrogate mother for his young son, Wattie.85 She declined and, the following year, returned to England with her children. At just the same time, Maudie contracted smallpox and, although she rallied, it was ‘a terrible time of anxiety and trial’, not least because Eliza was pregnant once more.86 The baby was born in January and christened, Hugh, but although seemingly healthy, died the following month, the birth and death being recorded in successive letters to the boys in England.87 Whilst this catalogue of personal loss was not particularly unusual at this time, in the overseas setting, it assumed a particular character, in part because the death so often occurred far from members of the family and thus did not constitute ‘a good death’, and in part because the attendant rituals could not be fully performed. Instead, they had to be replaced by detailed correspondence describing the deceased’s last days, letters of condolence across the distance of empire and memorialisation in cemeteries, designed to make the final resting-place as intimate and English as possible. Walter commemorated his first wife, Ellen, with four lines of poetry inscribed on her head-stone, his second wife, Isabel, with an elaborate brass plaque mounted in Singapore’s Cathedral and their un-named little baby daughter with a simple headstone in the peaceful setting of Macao’s Protestant Cemetery. Powell Saul was buried in the cemetery at Tanah Abang in Batavia, whilst Charles and Eliza placed a single head-stone to mark the grave of their two children, Anne and Hugh, in Happy Valley Cemetery. 88 Together with their inscriptions, these became important sites of memory and emblems of the British presence.89 However, against all this sadness and still grieving for little Hughie, Charles and Eliza received the news for which they had long been waiting. 85

86

87

88

89

Letter, Medhurst (junior) to Betty Medhurst, 25 December 1855 (Hillier Collection). Letter, 28 December 1855, Correspondence of Eliza Hillier, SOAS. They also wrote to the children about Maudie’s illness (Hillier Collection). Letters, Eliza Hillier to Willie, 10 February 1856 and Charles Hillier to Walter and Harry, 14 February 1856 (Hillier Collection). The grave in Happy Valley is Plot 09/08/18, see http://Gwulo.com/node/8739, Inscriptions for Cemetery, Sections 01–09, [accessed, 20 December, 2015]; see also Patricia Lim, Forgotten Souls: A Social History of the Hong Kong Cemetery (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2015) and the photograph of the head-stone, illustration 5.4, is at p. 118. Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family, p. 4; see also Ishiguro, Nothing to write home about, pp. 151–181, especially pp. 165–166.

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SIAM

In April, 1856, Charles was informed he had been appointed HBM Consul to Siam.With it came a salary of £1200 per annum and a significant enhancement in status and, to begin with, all went well. After a rousing send-off they left Hong Kong for the last time on 12 May 1856. For the journey and the three months that Eliza and Charles spent in Bangkok, we have not only her letters but also three articles which appeared anonymously just fifteen months later in Charles Dickens’ journal, Household Words.90 From these, it is clear that, although there were considerable problems getting installed in the very indifferent accommodation with which they were provided, she relished her position as a consular wife, entertaining both Western and Siamese officials, exploring the city and attending public functions and for the first time taking a real interest in the exotic nature of her surroundings.91 However, it was in the final two months, that she would be required to demonstrate all her strength of character and perform the public role of the consul’s wife, whilst maintaining her dignity in the teeth of personal tragedy. By early September, Charles was suffering from what appeared to be serious dysentery. To avoid the stifling heat, he was taken on board an American vessel, the Don Quixote, where he received treatment from a Naval surgeon, whose survey ship, HMS Saracen, also happened to be in port. He continued to insist on working but, eventually, sank into a coma and died on board the vessel on 18 October 1856. Eliza was aged twenty-eight; she was a widow with four young children to support. What is more, she was pregnant again. 90

91

Eliza Hillier, ‘At Home in Siam’ in Charles Dickens (ed.), Household Words: A weekly journal, 21 November 1857, Vol. XVI No. 400 (London: 1857) at pp. 482–8; ‘A Pair of Siamese Kings’ in Charles Dickens (ed.), Household Words: A weekly journal, 24 April 1858, Vol. XVII No. 422 (London: 1858) at pp. 447–51;‘Siamese Women and Children’ in Charles Dickens (ed.), Household Words: A weekly journal, 11 December 1858, Vol. XVII No. 455 (London 1858) at pp. 40–42. I am grateful to Jeremy Parrott for drawing my attention to these and to the fact that they were written by Eliza Hillier. For detailed descriptions of their life, see Eliza’s letters, 11 June and 1 August 1856, Correspondence of Eliza Hillier, SOAS, and Andrew Hillier and Simon Landy, ‘At Home in Siam: Being a Consular Wife’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, forthcoming. Little has been written about the early days of the consulate but, as appears from Charles Hillier’s reports to the Foreign Office, there were a number of difficult diplomatic issues which had to be tackled and caused him considerable anxiety, see TNA FO 69/4/78 et seq.

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The correspondence not only provides a detailed picture of how she coped with the death, practically and emotionally, but also how it constituted an important way of expressing that grief across the distance of empire. Her first task was to agree the arrangements for the funeral which was ‘conducted with every mark of respect for his rank and private character. Minute guns were fired from the Man of War, and a Guard received the coffin on embarking and landing at the Cemetery. The first and second kings sent boats to accompany the procession and the whole foreign community accompanied him to his resting place’.92 Charles was buried in the Protestant Cemetery, where his grave provided a symbol of Britain’s recently-established presence in the country.93 With the formalities completed, Eliza had to inform the family and organise her return to England. She sold everything and set off, staying, first, with her cousin, Sophia, in Singapore, where she was finally able to write to Martha, although it is unclear when she finally received the letter, since she was already on her way to England, as were Eliza’s parents.94 Her brother, Walter, was desperate to help but, in the turmoil of the Taiping rebellion and the recently – declared war between Britain and China, he could not leave Fuzhou. Eliza left Singapore on 30 November and it was probably during the long voyage home that she wrote the first of a number of drafts of the long lament recording Charles’ last days. The final version is carefully written in a notebook tied with a black ribbon and its content shows it was intended as more than simply her own aide-memoire. Running to some three thousand words, it fixed the memory of his last days and retrospectively constructed ‘a good death’. 95 She and Maudie reached England on 1 January 1857 and went straight to Cambridge where she broke the news to the three boys and Charles’ family.96 Having taken the Cape route, Walter and Betty Medhurst arrived three weeks later, reaching Southend on 23 January 1857, with no knowledge of what had happened. 92

93

94 95

96

Eliza Hillier, ‘Memorandum Concerning the Last Illness and Death of Charles Batten Hillier’ (Hillier Collection). Justin J. Corfield, Bangkok: the Protestant Cemetery, & notes on other cemeteries (Putney: British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia, 1997), no. 3/12. Letter, 20 November 1856. Hillier, ‘Memorandum Concerning the Last Illness and Death of Charles Batten Hillier’. See Edward J. Hillier, Diary, 2 January 1857, ‘sad intelligence of my brother Charles’ death at Bangkok’ (Hillier Collection).

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Overwhelmed by the news and already in poor health, Walter died two days later. He was aged fifty-nine and was buried in the recently-opened non-conformist cemetery at Abney Park, London; an impressive if restrained obelisk marking his grave (Plate 7). Two memorials, one in Bangkok, with Charles Hillier’s title, HBM Consul and the inscription, Ouai Ouai, and Medhurst’s in London, bearing his name and the inscription, Forty Years a Missionary to the Chinese, reflected the reach of the British World, whilst intimately connecting the empire lives of these two members of the family. Still grieving for his wife, Isabel, young Walter Medhurst was now the only member of the family remaining in China, whilst, in England, his widowed mother and his two sisters all had to start re-building their lives. CONCLUSION

If for Betty, Eliza and Martha, much of their married life was dominated by child-birth and domestic duty, it also produced a considerable degree of fulfilment, along with a measure of independence. If Betty withdrew from missionary activity during her time in Shanghai, she had gained much satisfaction from running the mission station in Batavia during Walter’s lengthy absences. Whilst Eliza’s was always a patriarchal marriage, her letters are testament to her growing confidence which reached its fruition in her role as the consul’s wife in Bangkok. And whilst we are wholly reliant on her correspondence for knowledge of Martha, her letters both to her sister and to her brother-in-law, Powell Saul, certainly suggest that this too was a successful union. Through their experiences, we can see how family was beginning to shape the British World far to the east of the Raj. Since the Medhursts had first arrived in Malacca forty years earlier, they and the next generation had spread across Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Hong Kong and, finally, Siam. Through the rituals of family life they had maintained connections between those locales and consolidated the British presence, not just in the places themselves, but across the region. They had also experienced the reach and distance of empire, both through travel and enforced separation, experiences which formed further links across the empire but also imposed undue strains on familial relationships. Yet, for all the vastness of empire, theirs were genteel lives. Whether in Batavia, Shanghai or Hong Kong, it was the English home that was being ‘performed’. It was this that gave the family a sense of

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identity and of belonging and the children formed an important part of that performance. In contrast to the public world in which consuls, magistrates and missionaries would act as agents mediating relations between Britain and the non-European communities, the function of family on the private stage was to normalise the colonial presence, whilst holding itself largely aloof from the local people. Paradoxically, on returning to England, these experiences would be imported into the English home and Betty, Eliza and Martha would be seen as emblems of that empire world. It is against that background that Eliza’s children would be brought up.

5

Early Influences and Early Careers Œ

FIXING THE MEMORY

H AVING FIXED THE memory of Charles Hillier’s last days in her lament, Eliza now had to fix the memory of his life as a loving husband and father and significant British official, and perhaps, this was when she retrieved the letters that Martha had so carefully preserved. Even if the three Hillier brothers only had a faint recollection of their father, the letters could be used to conjure up memories of Hong Kong and to hold him out as an example to be emulated in both their private and public lives. And if Eliza was the principal narrator of that story, there were many other members of the family living nearby, who could add to it: their grandmother, Betty, their aunt, Martha, and her four children, and their aunt, Augusta, who was just approaching her seventeenth birthday and, further afield, there was their uncle, Walter Medhurst a prominent figure in treaty port China, who would return to England from time to time and be an inspirational figure for them. In examining the three brothers’ upbringing and the extent to which family helped shape their early careers, this chapter argues that it did so, not only by enabling them to enter those careers, but also by instilling the necessary attributes for successfully pursuing them, including the ability to forge the collaborative relationships that were key to sustaining the British presence. Whilst its focus is on their careers, we must also have in mind the impact of these early experiences on their intimate life and how this prepared them for the treaty port world, where they might find themselves living for long periods on the fringes of a teeming but alien metropolis. With no family and few colleagues, they would have to confront not only what has been termed 109

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‘imperial boredom’ but also the pangs of loneliness.1 We will have to consider how much, having internalised the traumatic events of their childhood – the lengthy separations from both parents, the death of their father and the grief of their mother – they were able to build inner reserves, which enabled them to cope with such conditions but which may also have made more difficult their own intimate lives.2 AN ENGLISH UPBRINGING

As the eldest sibling, Willie was probably most affected by these early experiences and this would seem to be borne out by his later unsettled, and ultimately tragic, life. Eight years old, when his mother arrived back unexpectedly to break the news of his father’s death, he was required to assume the Victorian mantle of responsibility. He had to assuage his mother’s grief but at the same time set an example to his two younger brothers and to his sister, Maudie, who had shared her mother’s melancholy journey home and was the only sibling with any real memory of their father. With their mother in the final stages of her pregnancy, the family was almost immediately plunged into the excitement and anxiety of her confinement. On 11 March 1857, (Edward) Guy was born, but the happy event was overshadowed by the short illness and death, just days before, of Walter Medhurst’s son, Wattie, who had been part of the family and, effectively another sibling. For everyone, including his father, whose application for long leave had been refused, this was just one further sadness.3 At least, there was a large network ready and willing to provide practical and emotional support to Eliza and the children. With conditions being somewhat cramped in the Pieritz household, her brother-in-law, Edward Hillier, who had recently been appointed Vicar of Cardington in Bedfordshire, invited her and the children to come and live with him and his unmarried sister, Mary, in his elegant and spacious Georgian home. 1

2 3

Cf. Jeffrey A. Auerbach, Imperial Boredom: Monotony and the British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). Cf. Buettner, Empire Families, pp. 141–144. W.H. Medhurst to Foreign Office, 19 September 1855, TNA FO 17/234, no. 46. His request for leave was granted eighteen months later: letter, 13 February 1857, TNA FO 228/236, no. 51. A note in Edward Hillier’s diary refers to his conducting Wattie’s funeral on 4 March 1857, Edward J. Hillier Diary (Hillier Collection).

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Soon afterwards, they were joined by the sons of Dr Charles Winchester, Charlie and Arthur. Winchester had been the medical officer in Hong Kong in the earliest days and had known Charles Hillier well. Now in the Consular Service and widowed, he had sent the boys to be educated in England and, with with Eliza having only £1000, as the proceeds of an insurance policy, this will have provided her with much-needed additional income.4 It will also have reinforced the sense of China connections in this domestic setting. Intensely serious and scholarly, but also affectionate, ‘grave uncle Edward’, as Eliza described him, would play a significant role in the children’s lives, both during these years and, later, as a diligent correspondent when they were grown up.5 Full of family items, including a crayon picture of Charles Hillier, which hung in the drawing-room, the Vicarage was, and would continue to be, an important place of belonging and site of family memory. However, two years after Eliza and the children arrived, Edward somewhat surprisingly married. Mary had also married and this may be why Eliza decided to move. In any event, it was time for the three eldest boys to start their formal schooling and she went to live in nearby Bedford, so that they could be educated free of charge at the local grammar school. 6 Whilst it is often assumed that, by the mid – 1850s, a middle-class schooling would inculcate imperial values, the educational system at this time was, in the words of one commentator, ‘quite chaotic’, with many of the old grammar schools (properly so-called) being grossly hampered by the terms of their outmoded and restrictive endowments.7 It was only after fundamental reforms had been introduced in the 1870s in line with the recommendations of the Taunton Commission, that these ‘public schools’, as they then became known, were converted into 4 5

6

7

Letter, Eliza Hillier to Hammond, 7 January 1857, FO 17/279, p.150. The paragraphs relating to Edward Hillier are based on his memoir, family papers and notes sent to the author by Jane Findlay, 27 December 2007, Church Archivist and an obituary notice (source unknown). See, for example, Eliza Hillier’s letter, 19 November, 1853. The Register no longer exists but the School Lists record the three Hillier boys being there from 1858–1862, letter from Gina Worboys, Bedford School Archivist to the author, 12 December 2014. T.W. Bamford, Rise of the Public Schools: A Study of Boys’ Public Boarding Schools in England and Wales from 1837 to the Present Day (London: Nelson, 1967), pp. 168–188, quote at p. 179; cf. Jeffrey Richards, Happiest Days: The Public Schools in English Fiction (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), pp. 9–16.

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‘mints for the coining of empire-builders’.8 Bedford School was, according to the Commission, one of the worst offenders and badly in need of reform.9 The curriculum was based almost exclusively on the classics – mathematics was an extra, for which a tuition fee had to be paid, and history totally absent – and teachers were generally untrained and poorly paid. Although Elizabeth Buettner suggests that, by this time, the school was growing steadily and prospering, this only began in the late 1870s. When the Hilliers were there, the numbers shrank from 187 in 1849 to 104 in 1861, due in part to the uninspiring headmastership of the Revd Frederick Fanshawe, who, according to the school’s historian, was ‘a man of his time, conservative, High Tory…dedicated to learning without being imaginative, a stern moralist and disciplinarian’.10 This was certainly one of the reasons why, four years later, Eliza decided to leave Bedford and move to Tiverton, Devon, where the boys were sent to Blundell’s School. The decision was also, prompted, according to the family papers, by a recommendation from a friend, Mrs Fagan, whose son-in-law, the Reverend Duckworth, had established a formidable reputation as the school’s Assistant Master. Although it meant a painful parting from her mother, Betty Medhurst, and her two sisters, Martha and Augusta, and from her Hillier in-laws, Eliza may also have wanted a change in her life. Despite Edward’s protests, in September 1862, she and the children, together with the two Winchester boys, left Bedford.11 As it turned out, Blundell’s was no better than Bedford. Founded in the late sixteenth century, it was also run in accordance with its original endowment and was recovering from major litigation in the Court of Chancery, in which a number of malpractices had been exposed.12 If the Hillier boys benefited from Duckworth’s teaching, 8

9

10

11

12

See David Turner, The Old Boys: The Decline and Rise of the Public School (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), pp. 93–99 and Bamford, Rise of the Public Schools, pp. 17–38; Edward C. Mack, Public Schools and British Opinion 1780– 1860 (London: Methuen, 1938), pp. 201–202. Because of its substantial endowment, Bedford was one of the schools subjected to a detailed investigation; see Schools Inquiry Commission, 1867–68 [Cmd. 3966], Vol. i, p. 529; vol. iii, pp. 327–422 and 679–700. Michael De-la-Noy, Bedford School: A History, 1552–2002 (Bedford: Bedford School, 1999), pp. 32–37; cf. Buettner, Empire Families, p. 165. See letter from Augusta Bates to Hugh Marshall Hole, 29 March 1916 (Hillier Collection). Blundell’s was investigated more briefly along with the other Tiverton schools: Schools Inquiry Commission 1867–68, Cmnd. 3966, Vol. xiv, pp. 350–352; see

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none of them stayed long enough to try for one of the school’s Oxford exhibitions. Walter left in 1864 at the age of sixteen, Willie the following year, aged seventeen, and Harry, two years later, in 1867, aged sixteen. Guy’s education is something of a mystery. The Blundell’s Register shows that he was admitted in February 1867 but left in October 1870 at the age of thirteen. There is no indication as to what, if any school, he then attended, but there is reference in the family papers to his having received a bad blow on the spine that might have meant he could not attend school for some time, and that at some point he went to live with his uncle at Cardington. 13 Although it was limited, all four boys must have derived some benefit from their education, supplemented as it was by tuition from Edward Hillier. However, neither school was designed to nurture the sort of ethos that would later be associated with empire. There was no ‘games ethic’, Bedford having only a ‘small yard’, and the facilities at Blundell’s being so limited that sport had become ‘rather farcical’.14 Although strict, discipline was imposed by the masters and not by the boys and there was less of the bullying that is at the centre of Tom Brown’s Schooldays and later became the hallmark of an empire education.15 Blundell’s had no

13

14

15

also Frederick John Snell, The Chronicles of Twyford: being a new and popular history of the town of Tiverton in Devonshire: with some account of Blundell’s School founded A.D. 1604 (Tiverton: Gregory, Son, & Tozer, 1892), pp. 297–360. Following implementation of the Taunton reforms, both Bedford and Blundell’s became ‘public schools’. Arthur Fisher, The Register of Blundell’s School, with an Introduction and Appendices: Part I, 1770–1882 (Old Blundellians Club, Exeter, 1904), pp. 179–180; the Register also shows Charles and Arthur Winchester, aged ten and eight entering the school in 1862. See also Mike Sampson, A History of Blundell’s School (Tiverton: Blundell’s School, 2011), pp. 135–149, but the references to the Hilliers at p. 161 are inaccurate. To complicate matters further, the 1871 Census specifies Guy as living away from home and with his aunt, Martha, at Silverton, Devon, RG 10/2166. Schools Inquiry Commission 1867–68, quote in relation to Bedford, at p. 400; Sampson, A History of Blundell’s School, p. 138. For the games ethic and the development of sport in grammar schools in the late nineteenth century, see J.A. Mangan, ‘Grammar Schools and the Games Ethic in the Victorian and Edwardian Eras,’ Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies,’ 15 (1983), pp. 313–335. For ‘the ideology of athleticism’ and the importance of sport to the empire, see John Mangan, Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian Public School: the emergence and consolidation of an educational ideology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 6 and passim and John Mangan, (ed.), The Games Ethic and Imperialism: Aspects of the Diffusion of an Ideal (Harmondsworth: Viking, 1986). Tosh, Man’s Place, pp. 117–118.

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tradition of preparing boys for empire careers, many of its alumni going into the Anglican Church.16 That the boys all left school at a relatively early age may also have resulted from another major change in their lives. In August 1864, their mother re-married. Eliza’s husband, Charles Marshall Hole, was a local solicitor who was also the Town Clerk of Tiverton Council, a position he would hold for a total of forty-eight years. She was thirty-six, he was thirty-two and she would bear him two children, both of whom would lead empire lives: Hugh, as an adventurer and administrator in South Africa, and Gina, who would marry an official in the China Consular Service. There is a sense that, as was often the case with step-fathers at that time, there was little relationship between Hole and the four Hillier boys. Although Maudie remained at home, we know little about her schooling, partly because the education of girls in middle-class families was not regarded as important, the fear being that scholarly attainment might prejudice marital prospects – an interesting contrast to Eliza’s missionary upbringing.17 Like her mother, Maudie became engaged when she was sixteen but, unlike her, she waited for four years before marrying. Her husband, George Cawley Swindells, came from a family of cotton spinners in Bollington, Cheshire, they would have four children and their home would become an important hub for the wider family. 18 Whilst Maudie is little-mentioned in this study, this does not imply that she was an unimportant figure in her brothers’ lives; they kept in touch and she and Guy would remain particularly close, albeit across the distance of empire. Both would convert to Roman Catholicism at almost exactly the same time in the late 1880s, an event that would cause considerable ructions in the family, and maintain a regular correspondence until his death. The fact that the three eldest boys all left Blundell’s so young suggests that Marshall Hole had made it clear he would not support his step-sons financially and that they would have to make their own way. Perhaps a little brash and certainly ambitious for selfadvancement, they were probably little different from many middleclass boys at this time – and, in the complex gradations of English society, they were at most ‘middle-class’, and certainly no better, 16

17 18

Schools Inquiry Commission 1867–68, vol. iii, pp. 400–402; Snell, Chronicles of Twyford, p. 394. Turner, The Old Boys, pp. 122–128. See Cotton Town: Bollington and the Swindells Family in the 19th Century (Wilmslow Historical Society Industrial Archaeology Group, 1973).

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however they liked to see themselves in later life.19 Whilst their formal education had placed little emphasis on the sort of ‘imperial values’ inculcated by the Clarendon and new proprietary schools, through their mother and the Medhurst family, they will have learned much about life in China and have had no doubts about the legitimacy of Britain’s imperial presence. 20 Most of all, they will have been shaped by their evangelical upbringing, inflected as it was by fashionable notions of ‘self-help’ and ‘character’, expounded by the best-selling author, Samuel Smiles. Lauding the benefits of all things English and a preference for certainty over relativism and common sense over intellectualism, this instilled a sense of confidence in both themselves and Britain’s place in the world, an approach that they would not find lacking when they reached China. As Dr James Henderson, the well-regarded surgeon to the Chinese Hospital on Shantung Road, observed in 1863, ‘England, France and America are great, because the people have strong passions; but England is greatest because her people can command their passions.’ 21 ENTERING THE CONSULAR SERVICE

Having left school at the age of sixteen, Walter Hillier first applied to join the Royal Navy, possibly at the instigation of his uncle, Walter Medhurst, who was well aware of its prestigious reputation on the China Station.22 However, to Hillier’s intense disappointment, his application was turned down because of a problem that 19 20

21

22

Cf. Hilton, A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People?, pp. 432–437. Cf. John Mangan, Benefits Bestowed? Education and British Imperialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), pp. 5–8; Kirk-Greene, Britain’s Imperial Administrators, 1858–1966 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999), pp. 8–19 and seriatim. Samuel Smiles, Self-Help with illustrations of character and conduct (London: John Murray, 1859) and Character (London: John Murray, 1871). See, Asa Briggs, ‘Samuel Smiles and the Gospel of Work’ in Victorian People (London: Pelican Books, 1965), pp. 124–147, especially, pp. 141–143, and, generally, Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind, pp. 16, 39 and 105 and passim, Peter Mandler, The English National Character: The History of an Idea from Edmund Burke to Tony Blair (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), p. 57 and passim, Krishnan Kumar, The Making of English National Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 194, Peter Cain, ‘Character, “Ordered Liberty”, and the Mission to Civilise: British Moral Justification of Empire, 1870–1914’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 40 (2012), pp. 557–578, James Henderson, Shanghai Hygiene, or Hints for the Preservation of Health in China (Shanghai: Presbyterian Press, 1863), p. 63. Coates, China Consuls, p. 46 and Gerald S. Graham, The China Station: War and Diplomacy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978).

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he had suffered with one of his legs during childhood.23 Instead, he reluctantly joined the merchant navy, and, as his father had done, began sailing clippers between London and Madras, but it was a life for which he had no inclination. It seems from a later letter that his mother had already inquired about his joining the China Consular Service and, as soon as he was eighteen, she petitioned the Foreign Secretary, Lord Aberdeen, for a nomination to sit the relevant examinations. In the absence of a university qualification, family connection was almost essential for this, and she cited Charles Hillier’s record as Chief Magistrate and H.M. Consul in Siam, and the circumstances of his untimely death. The nomination arrived shortly afterwards and Walter sat the examination on 1 October 1867.24 Designed to show whether the candidate had undergone an adequate liberal education, language skills were not tested and standards were not exacting, with crammers providing the necessary coaching. As Sir Ernest Satow (Britain’s future Minister to China), who had taken the same examination seven years earlier, observed, the system frequently sent into service ‘those who can no more learn to speak a foreign language than they can fly’.25 Tutored by his uncle, Edward Hillier, Walter passed out first of the seven candidates and was appointed a Student Interpreter on 24 December 1867. Successful though he would be, Hillier’s rejection by the Royal Navy would always rankle with him. Keen for adventure but also for social prestige, he would not hesitate to associate with its personnel whenever the opportunity arose in his consular career. Setting off from London on 20 January 1868, he arrived in Shanghai two months later. Welcomed by the consul, Winchester, whose two sons had boarded with the family in England, Walter spent the next two months in the treaty port, mainly carrying out clerical work, including transcribing documents into a fair hand. In May, he proceeded to Peking, where he joined a cohort 23

24

25

Although the exact nature of the illness is unclear, it is mentioned in two letters from Eliza Hillier, to Martha Saul, 1 May 1854 and 28 June 1854, Eliza Hillier Correspondence, SOAS. Private letter, Eliza Marshall Hole to Hammond, 27 July 1867, passed on to the Foreign Office; the affirmative response, sent on behalf of Lord Stanley, 12 August 1867, is referred to in the follow-up letter, Eliza Marshall Hole to Egerton, TNA FO 17/619, nos. 30 and 50. For details of the examination system and the need to have family connection, see Coates, China Consuls, pp. 73–82. E. Mason Satow, A Diplomat in Japan (Seeley Service, 1921), p. 19.

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of young student interpreters.26 Although the recent war was still fresh in the memory, there was a considerable optimism about future Sino-foreign relations and this will have been evident to Walter when he arrived. As we have seen, the Treaty of Tientsin appeared to herald a new era in those relations and, if British influence increased over the next twenty-five years, an ‘awakening’ China would also benefit from a time of greater stability. Whilst compelled to surrender Annam to France at the end of the SinoFrench War and to make further concessions to resolve a number of diplomatic crises, the many-faceted Self-Strengthening Movement would introduce a degree of political and economic reform and this would be supported by a range of improvements to the infrastructure, instigated by Robert Hart, the Inspector-General of the CMC.27 For young men with ability and ambition, it was, therefore, a good time to go to China, all the more so if, like Walter and his two younger brothers, they had family support and connections.28 However, if they were to succeed, they needed to understand the complex nature of the world that they were entering. Whilst the Western community enjoyed a degree of comity, its sense of identity was powerfully reinforced by its perception and treatment of the Chinese as ‘the Other’. Although the early 1870s would see the publication of a plethora of self-help manuals for foreigners coming to the treaty ports, learning Chinese was regarded as not only eccentric but potentially harmful.29 Shortly before Hillier arrived, Satow and his fellow interpreters attended a dinner in Peking, given by the Bishop of Victoria, Revd George Smith, and were asked whether they did not find that ‘the mind was weakened by close application to such a dry and unproductive form of learning’, a question which, Satow says, they were reluctant to answer.30 This attitude of indifference, if not hostility, to studying Chinese was endorsed by the British press: thirty years later, 26

27

28 29

30

Letter, Shanghai Consulate to the Legation, 23 May 1868, TNA FO 228/452/257: ‘Hillier will proceed by first steamer to Peking’. Hsu, The Rise of Modern China, pp. 261–332, Osterhammel, ‘Britain and China, 1842–1914,’ pp. 146–169, at p. 151. Cf. Coates, China Consuls, pp. 345–346. See, for example, H.A. Giles, Chinese without a Teacher being a collection of Easy and Useful Sentences in the Mandarin dialect (Shanghai, 1872). Although dedicated to ‘ladies and members of the mercantile, sea-faring and sporting communities in China’, it did little to stimulate their interest. Satow, Diplomat in Japan, p. 19.

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the respected foreign editor of The Times,Valentine Chirol, whilst lamenting the longstanding failure to gain the confidence of the Chinese, nevertheless castigated those who sought ‘to familiarise themselves with the language and customs of the people’ because of ‘the brain transformation’ which resulted.31 It was this sort of prejudice that, from the 1860s, the British Minister in Peking and his officials were required to redress, impressing on the Chinese that British policy was to be ‘moderate and conciliatory’. The Qing, for their part, although reluctant to admit the foreign legations into the city, had established the Zongli Yamen (a body, somewhat akin to a Foreign Secretariat) as a more effective channel for diplomatic communications, albeit its objective was also to avoid the emperor having to give audiences. Although the body would turn out to be somewhat ineffectual, this seemed to presage an improvement in Sino-Western relations. Underlying it was a recognition, at least amongst some Chinese officials and literati, that the country was facing a situation ‘which she had not seen in thousands of years’. It was one that would give rise to an intense intellectual debate between those encouraging the espousal of Western thinking and practices, in order to strengthen China’s position in the world order, and those who, through their deep commitment to its cultural traditions, were firmly opposed to such influences.32 However, as Jenny Huangfu Day has persuasively argued, the debate between these two extremes became considerably more nuanced, the more it was informed by knowledge derived from China’s ‘own corps of envoys, informants and diplomats’ who, visiting Western nations and serving in the recently-established legations, reported back their findings to officials and literati.33 Against this complex background, the Foreign Office sought to cultivate a new breed of consular official, someone not only fluent in the language but also able to understand and grapple with these ambivalent approaches, the linguistic subtleties of diplomatic 31

32

33

Valentine Chirol, The Far Eastern Question (London: Macmillan & Co., 1896), p. 60; see also Donna Brunero, Britain’s Imperial Cornerstone in China: The Chinese Maritime Customs Service, 1854–1949 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), pp. 27–28. Cf. Yen-p’ing Hao and Erh-min Wang, ‘Changing Chinese Views of Western Relations, 1840–95’, in John King Fairbank and Kwang-Ching Liu, The Cambridge History of China, vol. 11, Late Ch’ing, 1800–1911, Part 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 142–202, quotes at pp. 156 and 172. Day, Qing Travellers to the Far West, quote at p. 7, pp. 13–13 and passim.

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communication and the power structures underlying the Qing regime.34 Whilst it was their task to produce ‘a new knowledge about China’, they were at the same time encouraged to ‘seek an easy and familiar relationship’ with their Chinese counterparts and ‘to do their best to break down the barriers imposed by different customs and habits of thinking’.35 Spending the bulk of the next twenty years in the Legation and rising to be Chinese Secretary, Hillier’s career reflected both aspects of the consular role as it evolved during this time.36 Mastering Chinese was all-important and, for the first two years, the student interpreter had to devote himself almost exclusively to this task and to developing a degree of cultural awareness that would enable him in due course to take part in, and eventually conduct, diplomatic negotiations. It was a considerable challenge. Each student was assigned a teacher with whom he spent many hours on tone exercises, and reading and writing, and receiving further coaching in the evening from a private teacher, who, as Walter Hillier later observed, was generally uninterested and certainly under-paid.37 Supervised by the Chinese Secretary, they would have to pass a rigorous examination before being allowed to proceed to the next stage. Once over that hurdle, they were then required to attend sessions of the Zongli Yamen. These would be a testing experience, since, as Britain’s longest-serving Minister, Sir John Jordan, later recalled, there would generally be some ten to twelve officials, several of whom might be talking together in different dialects, with the interpreter struggling ‘between his Chief ’s impatience to 34 35

36

37

Cf. Liu, Clash of Empires, pp. 96–104. Coates, China Consuls, pp. 188–189, but see also pp. 372–374, Hevia, English Lessons, p. 120, Horowitz, ‘Politics, Power and the Chinese Maritime Customs: The Qing Restoration and the Ascent of Robert Hart’, Modern Asian Studies, 40 (2006), pp. 549–581, at p. 557. Some of the following section has already appeared in Hillier, ‘Bridging Cultures’, pp. 742–772. For the overall development of language training in the Far Eastern Service during these years, see Platt, The Cinderella Service, British Consuls since 1825 (London: Longman, 1971), pp. 185–188. For Wade’s eccentric teaching methods, see Coates, China Consuls, pp. 85–86; for Walter Hillier’s description of these processes, see W.C. Hillier, The Chinese Language and How to Learn it, vol. 2, (Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh, 1909), pp. 175–179, Anon. but attrib. to T.A.D., ‘Where Chineses Drive.’ English Student-Life at Peking (London: W.H. Allen & Co., 1885), pp. 64–71; for another contemporary description, see A. B. FreemanMitford, The Attaché at Peking (London: Macmillan and Co., 1900), pp. 79–82.

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gain his point and Chinese dexterity in evading it’. 38 As well as coping with the linguistic problems, the interpreters would need to be able to understand the very different approach Chinese officials adopted to such negotiations. Based on Confucianism and the labyrinthine system of imperial examination, this placed heavy emphasis on protocol and the importance of interpersonal relationships and was strongly resistant to any innovation in the way diplomatic relations were conducted.39 Through his linguistic ability, Hillier was able to make his mark, being one of the few kept on in the Legation’s chancery at the end of the two years, rather than being immediately assigned to a treaty port, and in due course he would become an outstanding Sinologue. How much this was due to family connection is obviously speculative, but since the Minister, Alcock, had been a sound friend of the Medhursts in Shanghai and the Chinese Secretary, Thomas Wade, had known Charles and Eliza Hillier well in Hong Kong, he will not have lacked support and encouragement. However, it was probably Hillier’s uncle, Walter Medhurst, who had the greatest, if not always wholly beneficial, influence on him and his two brothers. To Medhurst’s frustration, although he had served well as Shanghai’s acting consul in the early 1860s when the Taiping were again threatening the Settlement, Winchester was given the substantive appointment, which he held until going on leave in 1868. At that point, Medhurst returned as officiating consul. Although he would only be confirmed in that position two years later, he lost no time in establishing his reputation as a ‘warrior consul’. Electrifying the British community, whilst dividing official opinion, the Yangzhou Incident, as it became known, must have had a major impact on Walter Hillier, occurring as it did only months after his arrival.40 Hearing of an attack on a China Inland Mission station, without waiting for instructions, Medhurst sailed up river in a hastily-summoned 38

39

40

Sir John Jordan, ‘Some Chinese I have known’, The Nineteenth Century, 88 (1920), pp. 942–960, at p. 946. Anthony Carty and Jing Tan, ‘Confucianism and International Law in 1900: Li Hongzhang and Sir Ernest Satow Compared: A Case Study of the Crisis of Russia in Manchuria (1900–01)’ in Anthony Carty and Janne Nijman, Morality and Responsibility of Rulers: European and Chinese Origins of a Rule of Law as Justice for World Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2018), pp. 434–453 at pp. 448– 449; see also Day, Qing Travellers, pp. 3 and 17–18. Bickers, Scramble for China, pp. 238–239; for the Shanghai consulate at this time, see Coates, China Consuls, pp. 217–221.

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British warship, and threatened the Viceroy with reprisals. In considerable alarm, Hart told Campbell: Medhurst has seized Tseng-Kuo Fan’s steamers and is now at Yangchow with 300 marines. Braves are pouring into the place from all quarters and there’s quite a chance of another great local war in China.41

The crisis was abated when the viceroy caved in, two officials were dismissed and the missionaries were restored to their house.Whilst the Foreign Office was highly critical of his approach, Alcock was full of praise and thought that he should receive the Order of the Bath. If this was the first of a number of similar incidents in which he ‘preferred a bludgeon to a rapier’, he could also at times encourage a more conciliatory approach.42 In the preface to Foreigner in Far Cathay, written four years later, he would suggest that, if foreign powers ‘combine to treat China justly, and at the same time see to it that she acts as justly by them and not only will progress be possible, but no long time need elapse before a regeneration ensues ...’43 Whilst Walter Hillier could also be abrasive and dismissive of Chinese officials, it was generally this more sensitive approach that he would prefer. Like his uncle, he was also keen to get out and meet the people and write up his experiences. These included a number of lengthy expeditions into the country beyond the Wall and a visit to Peking’s execution ground, a macabre experience which had almost become a rite of passage for young officials. Combining ghoulishness and revulsion, his lengthy account concludes, ‘it was days before I had recovered from the effects of what I had witnessed and to this hour all the ghastly details are fresh in my memory’. Entertaining in its way, it objectified the Chinese world he had encountered. By distancing himself from it, he sought to ally himself with his readers at home as well as with his fellow interpreters to whom, no doubt, he read it.44 41 42 43

44

Letter, Hart to Campbell, 9 December, 1868, no. 2, Fairbank, IG in Peking. Coates China Consuls, pp. 222–223, quote at p. 222. Medhurst, Foreigner in Far Cathay, pp. 203–204; see, especially, the chapter on ‘The Character of the Chinese’; he was also a regular contributor to periodicals; see, for example, ‘Chinese Poetry’, China Review, 4 (1875–6), pp. 46–56. Walter Hillier, ‘An Execution in Peking’, December 1868 (Hillier Collection); The Times’ correspondent, G.E. Morrison (a friend of both Walter and Guy) was similarly fascinated by Chinese punishments: see Cyril Pearl, Morrison of Peking

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Although the work was hard, there was a convivial atmosphere during what was, according to Alcock’s biographer, the ‘golden age of the Legation’ and Hillier made a number of friendships that would continue throughout his life.45 The mood – neither too muscular nor too intellectual – is captured in the photograph, (Plate 11).46 After six years, Hillier was entitled to his first spell of homeleave, and, returning to England, he could feel that, if he had not particularly stood out, he had certainly proved his ability as a linguist. Moreover, Sino-British relations were continuing to improve and perceptions of China were changing, both on an official level and culturally, with the introduction of photography and publications by specialists such as John Thomson.47 However, all this was to change when, just as Hillier was returning to China in the spring of 1875, news reached Shanghai that would once again lead to threats of war and provide him with his first proper opportunity to impress. A consular colleague, Augustus Margary, who had been despatched to Yunnan to escort a British expedition entering the country from Burma, had been murdered shortly before reaching the Chinese border. Information was sparse but, to the British Minister in Peking, Thomas Wade, one thing was clear: China was responsible for the ‘outrage’ and should be held to account. Over the ensuing months, during highly-charged meetings, the authorities adamantly denied that there had been any official complicity in the attack and Wade equally adamantly demanded not only financial reparations but also that the Yunnan Governor be brought to Peking and tried, and a formal apology be issued. Eventually, after the most protracted negotiations, matters were resolved with the signing of the Chefoo Convention in September 1876.48 Since the terms included the submission of an apology to Queen Victoria, the Qing decided to use the opportunity to open its first embassy in the West. Attending high-level meetings with Wade and the Chinese Secretary, W.F. Mayers, Hillier was able to witness contrasting

45 46 47

48

(Sydney: Angus & Robertson Ltd, 1987), pp. 69–70; see also, Brook, Death by a Thousand Cuts, seriatim. Michie, Alcock, II, p. 145. Cf. Dewey, Anglo-Indian Attitudes, pp. 122–159. John Thomson, Illustrations of China and its People (London: Sampson Low, Marston Low and Searle, 1873–4). Immanuel Hsu, China’s Entrance into the Family of Nations, The Diplomatic Phase, 1858–1880 (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1960), pp. 176–180 and Bickers, Scramble for China, pp. 257–262.

1

Walter Henry Medhurst, shortly before setting off for Malacca in 1816 (‘Java’ assumed to have been added at a later date). 2

Based on an oil colour by G. Baxter and captioned, Mr Medhurst in conversation with ChooTih- Lang, attended by a Malay Boy; frontispiece to China: Its State and Prospects (1838)

3

The pagoda, depicted on the opening page of Medhurst’s China, is one of a number of engravings by Baxter 4

Charles Batten Hillier. Taken by the London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company in 1852

5

One of four water-colours showing the entrance to the Bogue, attributed to Charles Hillier, dated, April 1841 6

Eliza Hillier. The ‘likeness’ was taken when she was in England sometime between 1852 and 1855

7

Obelisk and head-stone of Dr Walter Medhurst’s grave, Abney Park Cemetery, London, inscribed, Forty Years a Missionary to the Chinese 8

Betty Medhurst, photographed shortly before her death in 1874, aged seventy-nine

9

Sir Walter Medhurst, shortly before his death in 1885, aged seventy-three 10

Martha Saul, Eliza’s sister. The photograph was taken in Torquay, c. early 1880s, when Martha was turning fifty.

11

Student interpreters and other legation staff, Peking, 1869. Walter Hillier is at the front on the left-hand-side, still beardless

12

Legation staff, Peking, 1879, including the British Minister, Sir Thomas Wade (standing second from left), Walter Hillier (sitting second left)

13

Lydie Alston Hole, shortly before her wedding to Walter Hillier in 1877 14

The grave of Lydie Alston Hillier, Pahsienjao (Baxianqiao) Cemetery, Shanghai

15

Harry Hillier, with his wife, Annie (on right-hand side) and Walter and Clare. Taken in 1878, either just before or just after Walter’s and Clare’s wedding, it is the only picture of Clare surviving in the Hillier Collection

16

Lunch party given by the Viceroy of the two Kiangs, Wei Guangdao, on the birthday of the Emperor of China, 18 August 1903, on the Marble Boat, Nanjing 17

Harry Hillier with Chinese officials, Jiujiang, 18 December 1904. From left to right: Foreign Affairs Deputy, Li , Daotai, Yung-Ling and Magistrate, Tsung

18

Chinese Post Office, with sedan chair and bearers, Jiujiang, December 1904 19

Tea on the lawn, Dennartt c. 1905 20

A sitting-room in Dennartt: a flamboyant mix of Chinese and English styles.

21

The inscribed tablet presented to Harry Hillier in 1889 by the Viceroy of the region, Tseng Kuo-Ch’uan 22

The Drummond family, together with Harry Hillier, standing on far left, Maggie, seated in front and Guy Hillier, standing second from right. 23

The Commissioner’s House, Mount Kellett, Hong Kong, c. 1896

24

Harry and Maggie Hillier, Hong Kong, c. 1897, with their children 25

Guy Hillier, late 1890s

26

Ada Hillier, Guy’s wife, late 1890s 27

Guy and Ada’s children. From left to right: Madeleine, Winifred, Maurice and Tristram c. 1910

28

Guy Hillier (second from the left) with Hong Kong Bank staff, 1891, shortly after he had been formally appointed the Bank’s Peking Agent 29

Guy Hillier (seated second from right) with Hongkong Bank staff, c.1898

30

Hong Kong Bank staff, including Guy’s personal secretary, Ella Richard, probably taken about 1919

31

Sir Walter Caine Hillier, KCMG, CB, c. 1906

32

Lady Marion Hillier, c. 1906

33

Harry and Maggie Hillier at their home, Burnt Oak, Waldron, Sussex, 1913, with children and Dorothy’s baby son 34

Walter and Marion Hillier (holding Pekingese) at The Oaks, Bracknell, 1927, with Maud (seated, now blind) and Gerald 35

The Aunts: Florrie Irwin, Eddie Brown, Ella Hillier, Cissie Thornton, Agatha Maitland- Addison (née Swindells)

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approaches to statecraft. By July, 1875, with little progress being made,Wade decided to approach Li Hung-chang (Li Hongzhang), the viceroy of Chihli (Zhili). Steeped in Confucian learning, Li was, and would continue to be for the next twenty-five years, one of China’s most powerful and able ministers but, according to Jordan, he ‘spoke a villainous dialect and was altogether a difficult person to handle’.49 Towards the end of their first meeting, Wade’s patience was exhausted and he walked out, leaving Hillier to spell out the risk of war if China failed to acknowledge her responsibility. According to Walter, Li listened patiently but, finally throwing up his hands, exclaimed, ‘But what does Mr Wade want us to do, cut open our stomachs and show him our hearts?’ To which, Walter responded by threatening that Britain would withdraw from Peking and despatch troops from Burma, unless the matter could be resolved. At that, the meeting ended. Li was unmoved but not offended, his manner being ‘more jocular than indignant’.50 On reading Hillier’s account, the Foreign Secretary, the Earl of Derby, told Wade that he considered he had ‘discharged very well the duty entrusted to him’, and to convey his approval.51 Although some progress was being made, preparations for an all-out war were proceeding and, to this end, Hillier and a consular colleague were instructed to undertake an operation that was far from the normal line of duty. Hearing that the Commander-inChief of the China Station,Vice-Admiral Ryder, wanted to explore the navigability of the Pehtang (Beitang) river and report on its feasibility for a gun-boat attack on Peking, Hillier had no hesitation in volunteering.52 More than routine intelligence-gathering, this was a clandestine expedition masquerading as a pleasure trip, entailing work which would normally have been done by military engineers in the very area which had been so devastated at the end of the Second Opium War. After ten days scouting the region, talking to local Chinese, taking depths soundings of the river and mapping the terrain, the two men drew up a detailed report, 49

50

51

52

Jordan, ‘Some Chinese I have known’, p. 949; for Li, see Yen-p’ing Hao, ‘Changing Chinese Views of Western Relations, 1840–95’, pp. 157–172. Walter C. Hillier, Memorandum of Interview with Grand Secretary Li and Tingta-jen, 29 August, 1875, TNA FO 17/701, no. 53. Letter, Derby to Wade, 16 December 1875, TNA FO 405/19, no. 197; for a similar comment, following a further meeting with Chinese officials, see letter, Wade to Derby, 24 February 1876, No. 37 and inclosure, HCPP [C.1605], p. 41. See telegram from Wade to Derby, dated 2 September 1875, TNA FO 17/701, no. 189, TNA Adm 125/106 passim and see below.

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which concluded that, although much of it was swampy marshland, for some three months the river might be navigable.53 Plainly impressed, Ryder forwarded the report to the Secretary at the Admiralty saying that the map ‘should be engraved for use in any future campaign ...’, a typical example of imperial intelligence-gathering.54 After further brinkmanship, Hart intervened and, following a series of meetings between Wade and Li in Chefoo (Yantai) in September 1876, he succeeded in brokering a compromise.55 The resulting agreement provided for the opening of four more treaty ports, the payment of compensation, a British-approved proclamation to be issued announcing the conclusion of the affair and instructing provincial officials to protect passport-holders, and a mission of apology to be despatched to London. The principal envoy to lead the mission was to be Guo Songtao, an inspired, if controversial, choice. Aged fifty-eight, he had held several court appointments, but had antagonised the conservative lobby by advocating forward-looking policies, preferring diplomacy over war, the forging of constructive relations with the West, and the development of China’s infrastructure. Reluctantly accepting a role that he considered demeaning for ‘men of rectitude’, to his disappointment, he was then informed that there had been a change in deputy and that the arch-conservative, Liu Hsi-hung (Liu Xihong), whom he disliked intensely, would be the second Minister. Appointed to the mission as Permanent Secretary to the London Legation was Sir Halliday Macartney, former Director of the Nanjing Arsenal.56 Walter Hillier was instructed to accompany the envoys, ‘not as an officer attached to the mission, but for the purpose of making 53

54

55

56

Letter, Wade to Ryder, 7 January 1876, TNA ADM 125/106, no. 244; Hillier’s report, dated November 1875, is at TNA ADM 125/106: nos. 245–261 with a map at 262. Letter, Ryder to Secretary of the Admiralty, 28 February 1876, TNA ADM 125/106, no. 243. Cf. Hevia, English Lessons; for Hart’s intervention, see letter, Wade to Derby, 28 July 1876, TNA FO 17/725, no. 248, telegram, 24 August, 1875, TNA FO 17/725, no. 311, and letter, Wade to Li, 30 August 1876, TNA FO 17/725, no. 34 and 1 September 1876, TNA FO 17/726, no. 349, and Hsu, China’s Entrance into the Family of Nations, pp. 177–178; for Hart’s relationship with Wade, see letter, Hart to Campbell, 24 August 1876, no. 153, Fairbank, IG in Peking. See generally Demetrius Boulger, The Life of Sir Halliday Macartney (London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1908), Chu, Li Hung Chang and China’s Modernisation, p. 211. Macartney would hold this position until 1905.

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himself generally useful to it’, and, in particular, of learning Guo’s Hainanese dialect.57 This was a golden opportunity to exhibit his diplomatic skills, given the fact that he had to mediate relations between Guo and Liu and also between Hart’s London agent, Campbell, and officials at the Foreign Office who would be vying for influence over the ambassadors. THE FIRST EMBASSY TO THE WEST

Bid farewell by Medhurst, as one of his last acts before retiring, the party set sail from Wusong on 2 December 1876 in the P&O Steamer Travancore. The six-week journey is described in detail in the various journals kept by the parties, including one by Hillier, which seems to have been intended only for family and friends.58 It is clear that, despite the differences between the two envoys, he established a rapport with both envoys.Amicable, if at times heated, discussions took place as to the respective merits of the two cultures, but both Guo, who, as we have seen, had been impressed by his earlier discussions with Walter Medhurst at the mission station in Shanghai, and Liu were keen to acquire knowledge, whilst also asserting their contrasting expectations of China’s future.59 Following the arrival of the envoys on 22 January, Hillier and Campbell accompanied them by train back to their new London premises, 49 Portland Place.60 Preparations then began for the Royal Audience to be held at Buckingham Palace on 7 February, an important test for those advising the envoys to ensure it went off without incident and that the ceremony was suitably impressive. Guo read out the Imperial Letter of apology which was then translated,Wade presented Hillier and the other officials to Queen Victoria and the Audience concluded with Her Majesty expressing the hope that the Emperor of China enjoyed good health.61 57

58

59

60 61

Letters, Wade to Derby, 1 January, 1877, TNA FO 17/753 and 27 February 1877, TNA FO 17/761, no. 73. NCH, 1 December 1876, p. 552. For the journals, see J. D. Frodsham, The First Chinese Embassy to the West and Day, Qing Travellers, pp. 124–154. The surviving part of Macartney’s ‘Diary of the Voyage’ is contained in Demetrius Boulger, The Life of Sir Halliday Macartney, pp. 266–76; see also Walter Hillier, ‘The Reception of the Chinese Envoys by the Queen, 1876’ (Hillier Collection). See, for example, Guo’s Journal, 23 December, 1876, and Liu’s journal, 7 December 1876, Frodsham, The First Chinese Embassy to the West, pp. 28 and 115. This continues to be the site of the Chinese Embassy to this day. Hillier, ‘The Reception of the Chinese Envoys’, pp. 21–48; see also Hevia, English Lessons, pp. 152–153.

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The envoys then embarked on their introduction to Britain, a process which might not have been straightforward, given the hostility resulting from Margary’s murder. However, both Guo and Liu were well-received during their eighteen months in the country. Immediately after the Audience, the Illustrated London News commented that […] the presence in London of the Ministers is another of the indications which of late years, China has given of her having awakened to a sense of her position among nations ... the most favourable opinion is entertained towards the Embassy by the people of every class throughout the whole of this country. 62

This was a two-way process in which the envoys gathered information and diligently relayed it to the court in Peking and at the same time, by putting themselves about, increased public knowledge of China. At the same time, Hillier was absorbing information about the envoys and their relationship with Peking and also relaying it back to the Foreign Office. Given his determination to absorb as much as he could about Britain, Guo relied heavily on Hillier for information, whilst Liu also insisted on being accompanied by Hillier him on his visits to the north of England, Scotland and Ireland. 63 However, Liu was ‘a trying travelling companion’ and, in circumstances that will be explored in Chapter 7, having recently married, Hillier was keen to return to China to resume his consular career. In October 1877, his assignment was terminated at his request and, the following month, he and his wife, Lydie, set off for their new life together. However, it was one that would prove to be all too short.64 For Hillier, these events had been a coming of age. He had participated in high-level meetings, witnessed contrasting styles of statecraft by Wade, Mayers and Hart and spent many hours talking to Guo and Liu, mediating between the two men and introducing them to Britain.Through these experiences, he had also deepened 62 63

64

The Illustrated London News, (70) 24 February, 1877, p. 171. Letters, Campbell to Hart, 3 August 1877, no. 368 and 31 August 1877, no. 376, Chen Xiafei and Han Rongfang (eds), Archives of China’s Imperial Maritime Customs: Confidential Correspondence between Robert Hart and James Duncan Campbell, 1874–1907 (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1990); see also letters, Hillier to Wade, 22 August 1877, 25 August, and 2 September 1877, TNA FO 17/756, nos. 126, 130–134 and 154. Letter, Wade to Derby, 8 October 1877, TNA FO 17/761, no. 343.

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his understanding of Qing diplomacy and of the factions competing for favour with the court and this would prove invaluable in his future career. By the time he returned in January 1878, relations between the Legation and the Zongli Yamen were back on an even keel, and, subject to continuing argument about the new terms of trade, would remain so during the next decade.Within the Legation there was a strong sense of camaraderie, reinforced by the heroic status which Margary had assumed with the publication of his letters and journal, together with a rousing additional chapter by Alcock. Work had also begun on a monument which would be unveiled on the Shanghai Bund in 1880, complete with Gothic spire and cross. All this served to strengthen the imperial nature of Britain’s presence and to justify the tough line that had been taken.65 Promoted to First Assistant Chinese Secretary and Acting Head of Interpreters, Hillier was temporarily assigned to Ningbo where he soon became heavily engaged on consular business when riots broke out against the local tax, likin, and he had to ensure that the British community was not in danger.66 He would also become involved in a number of activities which fell outside the normal remit of a consular official and, demanding a degree of cultural sensitivity, would consolidate his reputation as a trusted intermediary. The first arose in connection with a series of articles which appeared in Shenbao, a British-owned Chinese-language newspaper, published in the International Settlement, which were highly critical of Guo’s conduct as China’s Minister to Britain and led to him commencing defamation proceedings. Since the editor, Ernest Major, was a British national, the Legation felt bound to support him but, keen to resolve the matter, both parties invited Hillier to act as mediator. Shuttling between them, he eventually brokered a face-saving agreement, satisfactory to both. As Rudolph Wagner concludes, this outcome was largely attributable to the fact that he ‘enjoyed the confidence of all sides involved’, something that he could not have achieved had he not been able to manage the expectations of the various protagonists.67 65

66 67

Alcock, The Journey of Augustus Margary, Robert Bickers, Moving Stories: Memorialization and its Legacies in Treaty Port China, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 42 (2014), pp. 826–56, at pp. 832–836. Report, W. C. Hillier, 3 September 1878, TNA FO 228/613, nos. 332–344. Rudolph Wagner, The Shenbao Crisis, Late Imperial China, 20 (1999), pp. 107– 143, quote at p. 132.

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If the second extra-consular activity was triggered by a personal tragedy, it also demonstrates how he could genuinely engage with ‘ordinary’ Chinese people. Within a year of her arrival in China, Hillier’s wife, Lydie, had died in childbirth. Granted three months’ leave, he set off for the Shanxi region in January 1879, bringing funds raised by the Anglo-American Chinese Famine Relief Fund to the China Inland Mission and with instructions to report on the work being done to alleviate the disaster. Whilst this sort of philanthropy and information-gathering is often seen as a way of asserting imperial control, in this case, as Mary Rankin has argued, the relief effort was ‘a collaborative exercise’ which helped to generate ‘gradually closer and more equal co-operation’ between China and the Western powers and one to which Hillier made a small but important contribution.68 After a gruelling journey, he spent some six weeks in the region and was profoundly moved by what he found: ‘these truly were’, he wrote,‘the cities of the dead’. Highlighting the plight of the people, his report concluded that, although there were severe problems in distributing grain, this was not down to incompetence or corruption. It received substantial publicity, providing an important link between the region and the outside world.69 Two years later, Walter left for England for his next furlough. During his absence, the Qing government formally recognised his contribution, awarding him the Chinese Order of the Dragon, third class, ‘for services rendered on various occasions to China’.70 Commending him to the Foreign Secretary for ‘his tact and diplomatic acumen’, Wade also valued his scholarship and the two would collaborate on a revised edition of his vade mecum of diplomatic Chinese, shortly before Wade (cf. Plate 12). 71 68

69

70 71

Mary Backus Rankin, Elite Activism and Political Transformation in China : Zhejiang Province, 1865–1911 (Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 1986), pp. 142–147, quote at p. 142; see also Paul Richard Bohr, Famine in China and the Missionary: Timothy Richard as Relief Administrator and Advocate of National Reform, 1876–1884, Harvard East Asian Monographs (48) ((Cambridge Ma.: Harvard University Press, Harvard East Asian Monographs, 48, 1972), passim and pp. 97, 111 and 190. W. C. Hillier, ‘China Famine Relief Fund Report’, 26 March 1879, pp. 13–14 (Hillier Collection). For the Committee’s report, see NCH, 4 April 1879, p. 327. Letter, Tseng to Granville, 15 June 1882, TNA FO 17/911, no. 57. Letters, Wade to Granville, 3 June and 28 July 1882 (original copies, Hillier Collection) and letter Hillier to Tenterden, 31 July 1882, TNA FO/17/911, nos. 19 and 30; Yü Yen Tzu Êrh Chi, A progressive course designed to assist the student of colloquial Chinese, as spoken in the capital and the metropolitan department (second edition), prepared by T. F. Wade and W. C. Hillier (Shanghai, 1886).

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During his leave, Hillier re-married, the wedding taking place in September 1882. He arrived back in Peking with his new bride, Clare, in early 1883, and, soon afterwards, Wade was replaced by Harry Parkes, who had, most recently, been Britain’s Minister to Japan, but had long experience of dealing with Chinese officials. As we have seen, he had known both Walter’s parents, Charles and Eliza, and the Medhurst family well and this may have been one of the reasons why he asked Hillier to accompany him to Korea, to resume and complete negotiations for a trading agreement. They lasted just under a month and ‘after a good deal of hard labour and trials of temper and patience’, draft treaties were signed on 26 November 1883 and ratified the following year.72 As Hillier told his biographer, Stanley Lane-Poole, Parkes was a notorious task-master and ‘would work him for all he was worth … he nearly killed me,’ – a nice irony, given the general view that hard work was responsible for Parkes’ death soon after his return from Korea. Although seen as an imperialist ‘war-monger’, Parkes seems to have exercised considerable diplomatic skill and tact in his dealings with Korean officials and to have impressed Walter, who told Lane-Poole, he felt he had lost ‘a patron and honoured friend’.73 This was a telling comment, as both had lost their fathers when young, and it suggests that Walter, although now aged thirty-four, may have looked upon Parkes as the sort of father figure, for whom he had always yearned. Parkes’s successor could not have been more different. A career diplomat, Sir John Walsham made no effort to learn Chinese. He was also ‘hopelessly idle’ and, having been appointed Chinese Secretary, Hillier found that he was extremely busy, acting as ‘the indispensable channel of communication with the Yamen’.74 He was also a key source of information for the Foreign Office and intelligence services about Chinese foreign policy and strategic issues. For this he relied heavily on the military attachés as well as on the students, who were assigned to the Legation from the British Army in India, for two years of intensive training. Designed to prepare them for work in China’s borderlands, this included a 72 73

74

Lane-Poole, Sir Harry Parkes, pp. 354–363, quote at p. 360. Ibid., pp. 342–344, 355–360, and quote at 369; cf. Bickers, Scramble for China, pp. 294–5. Coates, China Consuls, pp. 166 and 351 and Coates, ‘Documents in Chinese from the Chinese Secretary’s Office, British Legation, Peking, 1861–1939’, Modern Asian Studies, 17 (1983), pp. 239–55.

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rigorous programme of Chinese study before undergoing ‘a fierce oral and written examination’ by the Chinese Secretary. 75 Since the intensification of ‘the Great Game’ between Britain and Russia in the early 1880s, this intelligence-gathering had assumed increasing importance. One of those who had grown particularly suspicious of Russian intentions was the future explorer, Francis Younghusband, who, on leave from his military duties, spent three months in Peking in the Spring of 1887. Staying with Hillier for some of this time, he later wrote: Mr Hillier was known to be a fine Chinese scholar, and to have a very intimate knowledge of the Chinese. Conversations with him were therefore especially interesting, and in my subsequent journeys, I was able to profit much by the advice he gave me.

Keen to help in any way he could, Hillier procured the necessary papers forYounghusband and drew up ‘a document which appeared as comprehensive as a royal proclamation or a lawyer’s deed’. He also lent him his servant, Liu-san, who accompanied him throughout his journey – across China, Kashmir and into India, ‘acting in turn as interpreter, cook, table-servant, groom and carter’, but also, according to Patrick French, swindling his master. 76 Hillier will have been particularly envious of Younghusband as he was now seriously disabled by his failing eyesight and, the following year, accompanied by his wife, Clare, and their two children, he went to England in search of treatment. According to his specialist, Dr W.A. Brailey, he was suffering from a form of glaucoma that was aggravated by ‘excessive work’ and, requiring a lengthy period of rest, he did not return to China until late 1888. 77 Shortly before he and Clare arrived back in Peking, a young student interpreter, Walter James Clennell, had joined the Legation and his journal and letters home provide a vivid picture of legation life at this time. Studying Chinese continued to be the 75

76

77

A.J. Farrington (ed.) British Military Intelligence in China (Leiden: LDC, 2004), p. 3, which lists all the intelligence reports submitted to the headquarters in Simla, Eric Setzekorn, ‘The First China Watchers: British Intelligence Officers in China, 1878–1900’, Intelligence and National Security 28 (2013) pp. 181–201. Francis Younghusband, The Heart of a Continent (London: John Murray, 1896), pp. 56, 62 and 65, Patrick French, Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer (London: Harper Collins, 1994), pp. 37–43 and 51. Letters, Hillier to Foreign office with enclosures, 20 July 1887 and 7 October 1887, TNA FO 17/1051 and 23 February 1888, TNA FO 17/1072.

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principal task for Student Interpreters and Hillier was a tough examiner, as Clennell found when he only just scraped through. Required to acquire a working knowledge of French (the language of diplomacy) and at least some German, these young men also had to learn how to mix with members of the other legations.78 At the same time, there was a refreshingly informal atmosphere, with a strong emphasis on friendship and the few women in the Legation playing an important part in mitigating its masculine ethos.79 Towards the end of the year, the position of Consul-General to Korea fell temporarily vacant when the incumbent, E.C. Baber, was granted leave of absence on medical grounds and Hillier was delighted to accept what he thought would be a short-term appointment. The news came as a considerable shock to his colleagues, Clennell noting in his diary how Hillier ‘had grown to be almost part of the city’.80 Whilst the Korean appointment was, as Coates says, ‘a plum China service post’, it held little promise in career terms and, when it was made permanent on Baber’s resignation two years later, Hillier seemed to be in a bit of a back-water.81 But, with the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1894, events in Seoul would take centre stage. The war would also have a significant impact on the careers of Walter’s younger brothers, Harry and Guy, who had followed him to China. A CUSTOMS MAN

Having left Blundell’s at the age of sixteen, Harry Hillier had been slow to get started. Four years later, according to the 1871 Census, he was living in Bloomsbury, London, working as a ‘tea-broker’s clerk’, and sharing the house with his elder brother, Willie, who was employed by the London and Brazilian Bank and about to be posted to Brazil, and their cousin, George, Martha Saul’s son, 78 79

80

81

See, for example, ‘Note from Peking’, NCH, 10 February 1886, pp. 147–148. Letter, Clennell to his mother, 28 December 1888, p. 143, Walter J. Clennell, ‘Destination Peking: A Young Man’s Journey into China, 1888 – 1889’, unpublished manuscript, 2008 (Private Collection). I am grateful to the family for allowing me to draw on this material. Clennell (1868–1928) became a Consul and Chinese scholar and retired in 1926. Clennell, diary entry, 12 February 1889, and letter to his mother, 13 March 1889, Clennell, ‘Destination Peking’, pp. 182 and 219. Coates, China Consuls, p. 299.

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who was also employed as a merchant’s clerk.82 On the face of it, it would be a long time, before either Harry or George had any chance of making it overseas. However, meeting Robert Hart one day, in December 1871, their uncle, Walter Medhurst, now Consul in Shanghai, suggested that his two nephews might be interested in joining the Imperial Maritime Customs. Hart responded encouragingly and, having also spoken to Walter Hillier, wrote to Harry’s mother, Eliza Marshall Hole, confirming that he and George would be appointed, subject to their showing they were ‘educated, intelligent and promising’ and satisfying his London agent, Henry Batchelor, that they had ‘received a liberal education, can write figures neatly, correctly and quickly and have no physical defects’.83 There was then a delay, possibly caused by Hart requiring photographs to be sent. For, whilst a sound middle-class background was a prerequisite to appointment to the Indoor Staff, like Samuel Smiles, Hart considered ‘character’ was crucial and that he could tell from the candidate’s face whether he would fit in. 84 Eventually, Batchelor wrote to Harry on 4 June 1872 informing him of the examinations he would have to pass, including handwriting, arithmetic and geography.85 Having knuckled down under the tutelage of Uncle Edward, Harry passed the examination but George failed, mainly on the grounds that ‘he was unable to write cogent English’ and, as Hart told Medhurst, ‘six months’ additional study will not give him what [the] documents show him to be wanting in’.86 Undeterred by this set-back, George would soon afterwards depart for the Philippines and establish himself as a successful entrepreneur, assisted by his wife, a rich Spanish-Filippina widow, but maintaining his connections with England.87 Allowed £200 for his outfit and passage, Harry arrived in Shanghai in late September 1872. Originally established by the 82 83

84

85 86 87

1871 Census: RG 10/337/6/5. Letters, Hart to Walter Hillier, 19 December 1871, and Hart to Eliza Marshall Hole, 20 December 1871 (Hillier Collection). Harry also met J.D. Campbell: see Hart letters to Campbell, 22 February 1872, no. 30, and 6 September 1872, no. 42, Fairbank, IG in Peking. See Bickers, ‘The Lives and Deaths of Photographs in China’, pp. 31–34. For entry into the CMC during Hart’s time and the nature and quality of the candidates, see Ladds, Empire Careers, pp. 49–51 and 67–71. Letter, Henry C. Batchelor to H.M. Hillier, 4 June 1872 (Hillier Collection). Letter, Hart to Medhurst, 26 September 1872 (Hillier Collection). Correspondence between the author and Amna Tabang, George Saul’s great grand-daughter, 30 August 2014 et seq.

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British during the chaos of the Taiping and Small Swords Rebellions, to ensure that customs dues were assessed on export goods (albeit then collected by the Chinese authorities), the CMC had become an important part of the Qing administration. Under the stewardship of the Ulster-born Inspector-General, Robert Hart, it was responsible not only for revenue administration but also for a whole range of functions dedicated to improving and managing the country’s infrastructure, as well as building a navy. And, whilst the brightest candidates still opted for the senior civil services, the Customs took ‘the best of the rest’ and had built up a body of foreign staff that ‘through their sociability, physical presence, and education demanded respect’.88 Accordingly, for Harry Hillier, this represented a significant improvement in his prospects. His first task was to acquire the requisite administrative skills and a working knowledge of the language and then demonstrate these to Hart’s satisfaction. But, he also had to show that he had ‘the emotional and personal flexibility to deal with China’ and adjust to the ethos of the Customs Service, that is to serve China’s best interests without prejudicing Britain’s.89 As Hart had stressed in the celebrated Circular issued in 1864, the Inspectorate was ‘a Chinese and not a Foreign Service and as such it [was] the duty of each of its members to conduct himself towards Chinese, people as well as officials, in such a way as to avoid all cause of offence and ill-feeling’.90 Set against this was Hart’s insistence that the local Commissioner should be seen as a British representative and, as such, should project British ideas in his dealings with the Chinese officials and Chinese people generally. It was this inherent ambiguity and the conflicts that surfaced when British and Chinese interests diverged that the Commissioner and his staff had to confront and seek to mediate.91 Working alongside the Chinese writers, laboriously transcribing and translating documents, Harry spent his evenings studying with whatever teacher he could find, no doubt encouraged 88

89 90

91

Hans Van de Ven, Breaking with the Past: The Maritime Customs Service and the Global Origins of Modernity in China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), quote at p. 65 and seriatim, Ladds, Empire Careers, pp. 58–61 and 66–71. Horowitz, ‘Politics, Power and the Chinese Maritime Customs,’ p. 566. Circular No. 8/1864, Documents Illustrative of the Origin, Development and Activities of the Chinese Customs Service, vol. 1/37 (Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General of Customs, 1936–40). See generally, Ladds, Empire Careers, pp. 24–48.

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by Medhurst.92 Summoned to Peking at the end of the year, he was examined by Hart, and safely over that hurdle, he set off for his first assignment, a four-day journey up the Yangzi to Hankou. There he would spend the next seven years. ‘Has my gentle reader ever visited Hankow?’ asked Shanghai’s Evening Gazette in December 1874. ‘If not, let him make tracks for that desirable place of residence with all imaginable speed.’ 93 One of the newly-opened treaty ports, in its earliest days, Hankou had been anything but desirable, but, as appears from this newspaper report, things had changed, and the Western community was now housed in a discrete and spacious Concession with an elegant bund.94 If Customs life was exceedingly quiet for most of the year, two events broke the monotony. A racecourse had been constructed and the season reached its height when, in early December, smart Shanghailanders and ‘a goodly number of ladies’ travelled downstream with their horses.95 The other excitement came during the short but frenetic tea-trading season. As the city lay at the junction of the rivers Yangzi and Han, it was one of two key points for collecting tea and shipping it on to Shanghai and Europe. During Harry’s time, competition from India had not started to bite and it was still a thriving business.96 For some ten weeks from May to July, there would be a throng of Chinese merchants, compradors and Western traders and work would be intense for the Customs staff.This was when Harry learned the Customs business and there was certainly plenty to master in the early stages. A workaholic, with little else to occupy his time, Hart micromanaged the Service through Circulars setting out exactly what was to be done and scrutinising the work of Commissioners and their staff to ensure that the detailed requirements of those Circulars were being carried out. Information about every activity directly or indirectly relating to the conduct of trade and the 92 93

94

95

96

Hevia, English Lessons, pp. 142–143, Ladds, Empire Careers, pp. 83–84. A very occasional correspondent, ‘Notes of a Trip to Hankow’, Evening Gazette, 14 December 1874, p. 1131. For its earliest days as a treaty port, see Wood, No Dogs and Not Many Chinese, pp. 111–116 and Coates, China Consuls, pp. 263–269. Austin Coates, China Races (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 58–62. See Roger Woodman, Masters under God, Vol. III of History of British Merchant Navy (History Press, 2009), pp. 303–304. In 1887, tea was overtaken by silk as China’s main export.

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collection of revenue had to be meticulously recorded and transmitted to Peking in a range of documents. Despatches, requests for authorisation, ‘semi-official’ letters, and reports of numerous kinds all had to be regularly completed in a prescribed way, if they were not to be returned with some acerbic rebuke in Hart’s inimitable and almost illegible hand. 97 It was a painstaking process involving much humdrum work, requiring good clerical skills but not much more and it was one that the young Indoor Assistant could only learn by diligent application. In a remote out-port such as Hankou, it was a life that demanded much emotional self-sufficiency and, for someone like Harry, who had only recently been enjoying the pleasures of London’s social life, it cannot have been easy.98 For most of the year, international trade, on which customs dues were levied, was not significant and only some 100 foreigners were to be found in the Concession, and, of these, only twentyfive were women.99 Social life, therefore, will have been extremely limited. However, there were some redeeming features. It was a pleasant climate and there was plenty of outdoor sport, principally fishing and shooting. Although the Western population was small, there was a spread of nationalities which gave it a certain cosmopolitanism. French and German merchants bought coal and high-quality iron ore and Russians bought the tea bricks which would be shipped across the steppes to Moscow and St Petersburg. This was reflected in the make-up of the Customs Service – in 1876, the Commissioner, A. Novion, was French, and a German, E. Specht, was also on the Indoor Staff. Quiet though life was for much of the time, we should have in mind the impact of this setting on a young Englishman coming from the English world which ‘many Europeans found …stuffy, cold and conceited’.100 This was when Harry learned to speak both French and German with a degree of fluency and, probably, first acquired a taste for the Continent, where he would later spend two lengthy periods of leave. With Hankou being the hub of some 25,000 miles of Yangzi waterways navigable from Shanghai, he will also have gained a 97

98 99

100

Cf. ‘Provisional Instructions for Guidance of the Indoor-Staff’ (Shanghai Statistical Department, 1878). Van de Ven, Breaking with the Past, pp. 75–82, Ladds, Empire Careers, pp. 87–88. See letter, Alabaster to the Legation, 12 June 1875, TNA FO 228/553/198–200; see below. Figes, The Europeans, pp. 334–338, quote at p. 336.

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good insight into the commerce of Central China, in which the rivers and their tributaries provided the main arteries.101 With a population of one million, it was certainly a lively city, in the words of William Rowe, one ‘of tea houses and poetry clubs, of Dragon Boat races and violent street brawls; of evening lantern markets and street corner swordplay drills’.102 There was, therefore, plenty of scope for exploring the more exotic aspects of China’s urban life. However, being four days journey away from Shanghai, if there were international tensions, the small Western community was extremely vulnerable, even with Medhurst being willing to summon a gun-boat at short notice. This became clear when, in the wake of Margary’s murder, the North China Herald was predicting the outbreak of war. The Municipal Council immediately established an emergency committee and, as tension increased, the Consul, Chaloner Alabaster, was asked to provide a breakdown of ‘non-Asian men’ as potential recruits for a volunteer force. 103 In his view, none of the Concession’s Chinese police – sixteen in total – could be relied on in the event of hostilities. 104 In the event, with the crisis resolved, the threat of war was lifted and, after a further three years’ routine work, Harry received instructions to proceed to the recently-established treaty port of Newchang (Niuzhuang). Pending the arrival of the new Commissioner, Lewis Stanten Palen, he was temporarily put in charge and Hart wrote him a personal letter, which typified his approach. After setting out a detailed list of specific instructions and emphasising the importance of not attempting to do anything new, he continued: I take it for granted that you know enough Chinese to be able to talk with the Taotai easily and that you are well enough up in Customs Regulations to ensure your not making a mistake in the conduct of ordinary business. 101

102

103 104

Albert Feuewerker, ‘Economic Trends in the Late Ch’ing Empire, 1870–1911’ in Fairbank, Cambridge History of China, vol. 11, Part 2, pp. 1–69 at pp. 43–45. William Rowe, Hankow: Commerce and Society in a China City, 1776–1889 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984), quote, vol. II, p. 24; for the life of a young man in Hankou, see Frances Wood, pp. 111–128. Minute, 23 August 1875, TNA FO 228/553/350. Letter, Alabaster to the Legation, 12 June 1875, TNA FO 228/553, nos. 198–200.

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The letter concluded somewhat challengingly: I trust this opportunity of showing your value will be appreciated by yourself and prove to me that I may look to you as a man fit for use in the future.

That Hillier kept the letter in his papers is proof of the value he attached to it. 105 In fact, Niuzhuang did not provide many opportunities for a Customs man to prove himself. One of the remotest treaty ports, even local trade was minimal and seasonal at best. Soya beans were shipped down for milling into bean-cake and oil and then transported to Shanghai. From mid-November to the following March, the river was iced up and the area effectively cut off from the outside world. Although Hillier was only required to spend a year there, he must have done enough to satisfy Hart, since his next assignment was to Peking, albeit still as Second Assistant. By this time, Hart knew Walter Hillier well and he may have wanted to get a closer look at his younger brother. Harry obviously made a favourable impression as he was quickly promoted to acting Assistant Audit-Secretary, a job requiring meticulous attention to detail. He also attended Hart’s social gatherings, including playing the violin in his orchestra, for which he had more enthusiasm than ability. The following year, he was posted to England, as First Assistant to James Duncan Campbell, the Manager of the London office, whose opinion Hart valued highly. 106 In circumstances which will be explored later, he travelled via America and, as previously planned, he stopped in California where he got married and, following their honeymoon, he and his wife, Annie, proceeded to England, where they arrived in the summer of 1882. Much of the three years that they spent there was over-shadowed by sickness, Annie suffering serious problems following the birth of their child, Edna, and Harry falling ill soon afterwards. When not ill, Harry was principally engaged in setting up China’s contribution to a major international 105

106

Letter, Hart to H.M. Hillier, 12 September 1879 (Hillier Collection). It should be remembered that Harry travelled across numerous different ports and the fact that these letters from Hart survived the infinite number of removals and journeys is quite remarkable. Robert Ronald Campbell, James Duncan Campbell, A Memoir by his Son (Harvard: East Asian Monographs, 1970), pp. 19–21.

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Fisheries Exhibition held in the South Kensington Museum (the fore-runner of the Victoria & Albert) in May 1883.107 Favourably reviewed by The Times’ correspondent, China’s display was a further step in familiarising the British public with the country.108 Reading the press coverage, Hart was delighted but also asked Campbell: How do you find Hillier? The objection to him here was that he gave the cold shoulder to comrades (Customs’ people) and frequented Legation etc. Does he show this in London? Does Grosvenor’s family pay him attention? He ran after the [Grosvenors] here considerably.109

Whilst we do not have Campbell’s reply, the question suggests that Hillier could at times be somewhat superior, a fault which may also have been shared by his two brothers, Walter and Guy. After a period of furlough, he and Annie returned to China in 1885, where he was assigned to Tianjin. However, weakened no doubt by her earlier problems, she soon fell ill again, this time with typhoid. She died the following summer, leaving little Edna to be sent to her grandmother in California. For Customs men, such events were all too common and left little time for grieving. In 1887, Harry was posted to Shanghai. By this stage, he had been in the Service for some fifteen years and, as was often the case, progress had been painfully slow. However, in the temporary absence of the Commissioner, Robert Bredon, Harry served as Acting Commissioner for four months. He kept an informal record of this time and two entries demonstrate the sort of cordial relationship that he was able to forge with officials, treading a fine line between maintaining his own position and not appearing subservient, whilst not alienating Chinese officialdom. 110 Whilst this could sometimes give rise to tensions, 107

108 109

110

Fairbank, I.G. in Peking; the relevant correspondence begins with letter, no. 374, 8 September 1882. The Times, 11 May 1883, p. 10. Letter, Hart to Campbell, 12 February 1883, no. 402, Fairbank, IG in Peking; the Chargé d’Affaires, the Honourable Thomas Grosvenor and his wife were leading figures at the Legation; for their farewell dinner – ‘the brightest, best, gayest, and pleasantest evening we have ever yet had at the British Legation’, see letter, Hart to Campbell, 6 October 1882, no. 379, Fairbank, IG in Peking. H.M. Hillier, Manuscript notes (Hillier Collection); Ladds, Empire Careers, pp. 86 and 105–106, Van de Ven, Breaking with the Past, pp. 72–75.

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there was no problem when the Daotai paid a visit to discuss a number of matters, including plans for replacing the old Chinese Customs House on the Bund with a Western-style office.111 Having explained the detail, Harry took the Daotai round the old building, pointing out its dilapidated state and the need to replace it. The Daotai was impressed and, as Hillier’s diary records, ‘received the proposal for rebuilding most favourably and even with enthusiasm’. The second diary entry related to a meeting between Hillier and the Viceroy, Chang Chih-tung (Zhang Zhidong), a key figure in the Self-Strengthening Movement and a leading official in China, who will feature prominently later on.112 Many of the consular body were waiting in the ante-room but Zhang said he wanted to discuss customs matters with Hillier and, after quizzing him about himself and his Customs career, went on to ask about problems in the silk industry and the extent of smuggling in Shanghai. Routine though these discussions were, they show that by this time, the process encouraged both by the Foreign Office and by Hart was bearing fruit and a reasonable rapport, free of the bombast evidenced by men like Parkes and Medhurst, was developing between British and Chinese officials, at least in this part of the country. Enjoying Shanghai’s social life, Harry soon became engaged. Maggie Drummond was the daughter of a well-known barrister, William Venn Drummond, who was also a prominent local figure and able to provide him with status, as well as involving him in a number of philanthropic projects.113 Married in October 1888, he spent a further four years in the International Settlement. Although he had demonstrated he had the necessary qualities to make a good commissioner, his next posting would be to the most unprepossessing port of Pakhoi (Beihai), which lay to the far west of Hong Kong. Only in 1895, after almost twenty-five years in the Service, would he finally obtain a Commissioner’s appointment. Given Harry’s credentials, his younger brother, Guy, could easily have entered the Customs Service. However, impatient and impetuous, he may have been discouraged by seeing such slow progress. Whilst lacking neither flair nor ambition, he would have to try a number of careers before joining the Hongkong Bank, 111 112 113

Letter, Hart to Campbell, 26 April 1891, no. 795, Fairbank, IG in Peking. For Zhang, see Hsu, The Rise of Modern China, p. 355. See below.

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and his uncle, Walter Medhurst, would play an important part in this process. THE APPRENTICE BANKER

Guy, as we have seen, left Blundell’s at the age of thirteen and, for whatever reason, he does not seem to have had any further formal schooling. At some point he went to live with his uncle Edward to be tutored by him and it was at his Cambridge college,Trinity, that he won a place as a sizar, that is one reserved for an undergraduate without means. However, contrary to what is stated in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, he did not ‘gain a BA in Chinese studies’ nor become ‘fluent in the language’ at this time.114 It was not possible to study Chinese at Cambridge until Sir Thomas Wade’s appointment as the first Professor of Chinese in 1888, and Guy later said that he only began to learn the language when he arrived in Hong Kong.115 Moreover, according to the official records, he came down without obtaining a degree.116 This may be because he had found the position of a sizar somewhat degrading, as it often provoked mockery by the other students or it may simply have been down to his impulsive character.117 Seemingly without any particular career in mind, he accepted a position as tutor to the Jardine family at their home in Castlemilk, Scotland, most probably following an introduction by Walter Medhurst, who will have met Robert Jardine in Fuzhou during the tea-trading season. Having returned to Scotland in 1860, Jardine had married, but shortly after their first son, Robert, was born, his wife had died. Brought up by his father and, no doubt, a succession of nannies, little Robert was nine when Guy arrived 114

115

116

117

Frank H. King, ‘Hillier, Edward Guy (1857–1924)’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn 2004–2013, accessed 1 December 2015). The resolution to establish the Chair was passed at a Meeting of the Board of Oriental Studies on 1 December 1887 (Cambridge University Archives, ORS 1/1/1); as to Guy first learning Chinese, see Eleanor Hillier, ‘Notes on E.G. Hillier’ (Hillier Collection). J.A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses: A biographical list of all known students, graduates and holders of office at the University of Cambridge, from the earliest times to 1900 (Cambridge at the University Press, 1947), p. 376. See, for example, the description of life for a sizar at St John’s College, in Samuel Butler, The Way of all Flesh, (New York: Dutton, 1919), p. 233. The obituaries simply state that he had been educated at Trinity College; see, ‘Death of Mr Hillier of Peking’, The Times, 13 April 1924, p. 16.

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as his tutor. Used to living in relatively modest circumstances, he will have found this a very different milieu, one dominated by hunting and other outdoor pursuits. A champion jockey in Hong Kong and a founder member of the Dumfriesshire Foxhounds, Jardine was somewhat larger than life – ‘a fine specimen of the country gentleman and a sportsman of the old school’. 118 Some of this must have rubbed off on Guy, who would become known as a fearless jockey on the race-courses of Shanghai and Tianjin and continue to ride long after losing his sight, following the faint outline of his mafoo, riding ahead of him. He will also have enjoyed having a connection with a family of such a social standing. It was most probably at his employer’s suggestion that Guy decided to join Jardines in Hong Kong. Setting off in July 1879, he spent a couple of months staying with his ‘Aunt Little’ in Singapore. Struck, no doubt, like Isabella Bird, by the city ‘ablaze with colour and motley with costume’, Guy would later say that it was the Chinese shop signs that first stimulated his interest in the language. Like Bird, he will also have noticed the discrepancy between the power exercised by British officials and the size of the local population, Malay, Chinese and Indian, a suitable prelude for what he would find when he reached Hong Kong.119 Although Guy’s second wife, Ella, would later note down what he told her about his early career, he said nothing about his time in Jardines. Whatever he hoped to achieve does not seem to have materialised and, after three years, he left to take up an opportunity that he again owed to his uncle. Five years earlier,Walter Medhurst had retired from the consular service amidst much fanfare and had been honoured with a knighthood.120 However, his personal life continued to be dogged by misfortune, and within the space of a year, he had lost his seventeen-year-old son, who died as a result of a freak poisoning accident at school, and, shortly afterwards, his third wife she was forty-five. Two of his four children were 118

119

120

Richard J. Grace, ‘Jardine, Sir Robert, first baronet (1825–1905)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan. 2004–2013, accessed 1 December 2015); Robert Blake, Jardine Matheson: Traders of The East (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999), pp. 149–151. Isabella L. Bird, The Gold Chersonee and the Way Thither (London: John Murray, 1883), pp. 85–86; non-Europeans outnumbered Europeans by about ten to one. For the valedictory ceremony when he left China in March 1877, see The Times, 21 March 1877, p. 5.

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still teenagers, and, having made arrangements for their care, he accepted an offer to join the recently-founded British North Borneo Company. Established under Royal Charter to develop and exploit territory in the northern section of the island previously known as Sabah, Sir William Hood Treacher, the British Consul on the adjoining settlement of Labuan, had been appointed the company’s first ‘governor’ and Sir Rutherford Alcock its first chairman. In June 1882, Alcock had persuaded Medhurst to join the project and take on responsibility for organising Chinese immigration from Hong Kong to the Company’s territory. Although the appointment was down to personal connection, arguably he had at least some qualifications for the task, given an article he had recently written in which he had praised the industry of the Chinese worker, whilst deploring the infamous ‘Chinese coolie’ trade.121 Having arrived in Hong Kong, Medhurst suggested Treacher take on Guy as his Private Secretary – an attractive opportunity with scope for promotion in this new type of private enterprise imperialism and extensive travel through territory which, though visited by Guy’s grandfather,Walter Medhurst, still remained relatively unknown by Westerners. 122 What Guy did not know was that the Company was already experiencing problems and these became more serious soon after he joined. Treacher was a poor administrator, he failed to introduce a structured plan for settlement of the territory and his relationship with the Board in London, presided over by Alcock, became strained, culminating in his being issued with a formal reprimand for ‘the unseemly tone’ of his comments.123 Given Alcock’s friendship with Medhurst, this put Guy in an awkward position and, seeing that he had 121

122

123

Walter H. Medhurst, ‘The Chinese as Colonists’, The Nineteenth Century, 4 (1878), pp. 515–527. For the appointment, see letter, Dent to Medhurst, TNA CO 874/118, no. 188 and Company Minute, 21 June 1882, TNA CO 874/108, no. 15. For a history of the company see K.G. Tregonning, Under Chartered Company Rule: North Borneo 1881–1946 (Singapore: University of Malaya Press, 1958); see also Michie, Alcock, ii, p. 486. Letter, 12 November 1882, Treacher to Medhurst, TNA CO 874/232, no. 242. His salary was $120 per month with $60 for living expenses: see List of officers, TNA CO 874/232, no. 321. For contemporary descriptions of the landscape and the first years of the company, see Ada Pryer, (ed.) Susan Morgan, A Decade in Borneo, first published 1894 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 2001). Letters, Treacher to Alcock, both dated 13 March 1883, TNA CO 874/293, nos. 70 and 72; response from Board to Treacher, 18 May 1883, TNA CO 874/293, no. 49.

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no real option, he resigned in April, after less than six months in post.124 Medhurst stayed on until the end of the year when the Board accepted his offer of resignation on grounds of illhealth. Whilst they thanked him profusely for his contribution, they were probably somewhat relieved as he seems to have been largely responsible for the chaotic start to the project.125 This was his last foray into public life, and, soon afterwards he left Hong Kong and retired, finally, to his house in Torquay, appropriately called Formosa. For Guy, it had been an instructive experience, working with administrators in a project designed to expand the British world. He had also had plenty of dealings with the Chinese at all levels and improved his knowledge of the language and it was this that gave him his next opportunity. Hearing that the Hongkong Bank was looking to recruit a trainee, who could speak Chinese, he successfully applied for the position and, in April 1883, set off for Shanghai to begin his training. Having weathered a difficult start in the 1860s, the Bank had become one of the few successful Western agencies in the region, carrying on business in both Hong Kong and Shanghai under its highly respected and able Manager, Thomas Jackson (who would always be known as ‘TJ’), and with strong ties to the London market.126 It had issued China’s first foreign loan in 1874 but, apart from a few further minor transactions, had failed to secure any significant business from the central government in Peking, which was extremely conservative and would only deal through the Zongli Yamen, which in turn insisted that all communications be conducted through the British Legation.127 To change this, two things were necessary. First, it had to establish a presence in Peking, a move that was bound to antagonise the Chinese banks, who jealously guarded their monopoly in the city, and secondly, the agency 124

125

126 127

See letter, Treacher to Alcock, 24 March and 9 May 1883, TNA CO 874/293, nos. 195 and 379. Tregonning, Under Chartered Company Rule, pp. 130–131, W.H. Treacher, British Borneo: Sketches of Brunei, Sarawak, Labuan and North Borneo (Singapore 1891), pp. 92–103 and 149–150. See also internal correspondence with W.H. Medhurst, TNA, CO 874/118 seriatim and Minutes, 3 October 1883 and 30 January 1884, TNA, CO 874/108, nos. 84 and 100. and Frank Hatton, North Borneo: explorations and adventures on the equator, with biographical sketch and notes by Joseph Hatton; and preface by Sir Walter Medhurst (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1886). King, The Hongkong Bank, II, pp. 4–5. King, The Hongkong Bank, 1, p. 547

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had to engage Chinese-speaking staff in order to reduce reliance on the comprador system.128 To this end, in 1881, the Bank opened a branch at Tianjin, intending it to be a bridgehead for opening relations with officials at Peking.129 But by 1883, little progress had been made, not least because of the lack of Chinese speakers. It was this that persuaded the Bank to appoint Guy Hillier. According to the Board Minute, the Shanghai Manager, Ewen Cameron, supported the application on the ground that ‘[Hillier’s] knowledge of Chinese would be useful’.130 It was in many ways a maverick appointment since Guy had no experience of banking. Nor did he have the elite public school background that was already becoming the hallmark of the Bank’s recruitment policy, but his connections, both with Medhurst and Jardine in Hong Kong and with his two brothers may have helped confer sufficient respectability.131 Establishing a good relationship with Cameron, Guy quickly acquired a reputation as ‘a Chinese scholar with a turn for business, truly, a rara avis in those days’, as Customs Commissioner, Paul King, wrote in his memoirs.132 However, by 1885, apart from occasional visits by bank representatives to the capital, no headway had been made in making contact with officials at the Imperial Court. Cameron was becoming impatient and decided to go ahead and establish a branch in the city. In, what the bank’s historian calls, a dramatic departure from its usual policy, given his inexperience, Guy was appointed to head the new venture.133 He not only spoke Chinese and had shown an ability for getting on with Chinese officials, but his brother,Walter, as Chinese Secretary in the Legation, had considerable influence: both with the Zongli Yamen and with the IG, Robert Hart, who, through the Customs revenues, had control of the principal security available to support government loans. Through these contacts, it was hoped Guy would have access to the key institutions whose support was crucial to the success of the new branch. 128 129 130 131

132 133

See generally, King, The Hongkong Bank, II, p. 188. King, The Hongkong Bank, I, p. 523. Minute of meeting of Directors, 5 April 1883, HSBC Archives, HK 0288/0008. See King, The Hongkong Bank, II, pp. 173 & 187; see also Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, p. 374. King, In the Chinese Customs Service, p. 71. King, The Hongkong Bank, II, pp. 523–525. Minutes reflecting the decision are 30 June 1885, 28 July 1885 and 3 December 1885, HSBC Archives, HK 0288/0008.

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He arrived in Peking in mid-1885, armed with a letter of introduction to Nicholas O’Conor, the British chargé d’affaires, the initial aim being to establish some informal representation of the Bank.134 Realising that the move might not receive its approval, Cameron only disclosed his hand to the Board ten days after Guy’s arrival in Peking. Although Walter was on hand to make the necessary introductions and guide Guy in his dealings with Chinese officials, the first year was not a success. This was partly due to Chinese obduracy but also to Guy Hillier’s impetuosity and failure to appreciate the extent of the hostility he would face from the Chinese banks, especially when he set up in premises immediately next to their offices and began trespassing on their long-established business of currency dealing. Not surprisingly, this ‘excited attention’, and, as Hart noted in his diary, he ‘had bought £100,000 worth of gold here and had opened in a very conspicuous place, both decidedly stupid things – though profitable’. As a result, the Bank was ‘ordered to clear out in ten days’ and Hillier had to find premises elsewhere, which he did, with the Bank setting up nearer to the Legation quarter. 135 However, there were then problems with Jardines who, with the Bank’s agreement, were also seeking to establish a presence in the city and complained that Hillier was being ‘mischievously jealous’ and undermining their position.136 This abrasive competitiveness would be a mark of Guy’s future career but at this point did not go down well. At Jardines’ insistence, in April 1886, he was instructed to return to Tianjin and there he spent the next three years, carrying out routine work, whilst the more cautious Charles Addis took over in Peking. 137 Nonetheless, it is clear that, during this short time, Guy had made his mark with Hart, who began seeking his advice on banking issues and also invited him to his select dinner parties, along with 134 135

136

137

Letter, Leith to O’Conor, 20 June 1885, TNA FO 228/816, no. 12. Journal of Sir Robert Hart, 7 November 1885, Sir Robert Hart Collection, Queen’s University, Belfast, MS 31/15/1/74; Hongkong Bank Board Minute, 3 December 1885, HSBC Archive, HK 0288/0008. David J.S. King, ‘China’s Early Loans, 1874–95 and the role of The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation’ (University of Hong Kong Centre of Asian Studies Working Paper: unpublished), vol. 1, p. 189; see also HSBC Archive, G2.3/7, pp. 257–263. For the relationship between Jardines and the Bank at this time, see Edward Le Fevour, Western Enterprise in Late Ch’ing China: a Selective Survey of Jardine, Matheson and Company’s Operations, 1842–1895 (Cambridge, Mass: East Asian Research Center, Harvard University, 1968), pp. 95–96. King, The Hongkong Bank, I, pp. 523–531.

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Walter Hillier and his flamboyant wife, Clare.138 This would pay dividends when Addis was posted to England and the Bank had little option but to reinstate Guy Hillier. Returning in 1889, two years later, he was officially confirmed as the branch’s Agent. With only a handful of staff, he initially maintained a low profile, as we see in the photograph in plate 28. If Guy combines a certain nonchalance with his cigarette and hand in pocket, there is also an edgy impatience to get going. He would hold the appointment, almost continuously, until his death in 1924. CONCLUSION

Whilst the trajectory of the Hillier brothers’ early careers was very different, there were certain features common to all three. First, family was key in terms of their upbringing and the influence that it exercised in relation to their careers. Whilst their formal education was obviously important, their home life and their Medhurst and Hillier connections most probably had more impact. If this enabled Walter to sit the consular examinations and provided all three with some status when they arrived, it was Medhurst’s influence and example that was particularly important – his enthusiasm for China and its language was infectious and was undoubtedly passed on to his three nephews. Secondly, and stemming from that influence, by the time their careers were under way, all three had developed an excellent working knowledge of Chinese and this enabled them to build a good rapport with their Chinese counterparts. Thirdly, all three had a determination to succeed, albeit in very different ways – Walter as the affable diplomat-scholar; Harry as the level-headed and meticulous administrator and Guy as the shrewd commercial operator, combining an impetuosity with an ability to deal with Chinese officials. On a more general level, their early careers provide a good snap-shot of Britain’s official presence in China, albeit one that was continually changing. Although exceptional as a scholar, Walter Hillier was otherwise little different from many of his colleagues, who would go on to make successful careers in the consular service, applying a similar skill-set and mentality, based on 138

For discussions relating to banking, see Journal of Sir Robert Hart, 25 November and 14 December 1885, Sir Robert Hart Collection, Q.U.B., MS 31/15/1/95 and 120. For his attendance at Hart’s dinner parties, see below.

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a belief that Britain’s and China’s best interests were inextricably linked. Of the eleven student interpreters appointed in his year, only three did not make it to consul and, of these, one was the unfortunate Margary.139 Harry Hillier typified the sort of Customs official who, if perhaps lacking in flair and imagination, was able to build relationships and administer the Service competently and with integrity in ways that by and large satisfied Hart, Chinese officials and the merchants. The slow turn-over ensured that the Customs culture would continue to inform the Service until well into the next century. Of the forty-three Commissioners in post in 1900, twenty-six had been appointed at the same time as, or before, Harry. Guy Hillier, for his part, was typical of a new wave of financial agents, keen to exploit China’s rich mineral resources and the financial opportunities opening up as Western powers extended their spheres of interest. All three aspects would be brought into sharp focus with China’s defeat in the Sino-Japanese War and the onset of the New Imperialism.

139

Coates, China Consuls, pp. 511–512.

6

The New Imperialism Œ

THE SINO-JAPANESE WAR AND ITS AFTERMATH

BY 1893, SINO-WESTERN relations had reached a plateau or,

what Robert Bickers calls, ‘a sullen sort of stasis’. Whilst there were growing signs of ‘anti-foreignism’ in some quarters, to many Western observers, the country seemed to be slowly ‘awakening’, with an army and navy modernising under Robert Hart’s influence and a range of other reforms generated by the Self-Strengthening Movement.1 And, from the perspective of Chinese officials, ‘the Qing had made remarkable progress in its ability to cope with a new world order’.2 Although a resurgent Japan had now entered this new world, few anticipated that it would so easily end China’s suzerainty over Korea, let alone that this would have such far-reaching geo-political implications with, in the words of T.G. Otte, the China Question becoming ‘the most pressing international issue’ over the next ten years.3 As China sought to recover from its humiliating defeat, so the Western powers began intensifying their presence, helping themselves to territory and establishing zones of influence in which the country’s industrial and mineral resources could be exploited. Whilst the risk of its dismemberment accelerated pressure for change, leading to the ‘Hundred Days’ Reform in 1898, the movement was quickly extinguished. In a complex power struggle, the Kuang-hsu Emperor was effectively excluded from any further political influence and increasing anti-Western sentiment 1

2 3

Bickers, Scramble for China, p. 323, Yen-p’ing Hao, ‘Changing Chinese Views of Western Relations, 1840–95’, pp. 161–201. Day, Qing Travellers, p. 226. Otte, China Question, p. 1. 148

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culminated in the Boxer Uprising and the Siege of the Legations in the summer of 1900.4 Throughout these events, Britain’s objective was essentially threefold: to ensure that it remained the pre-eminent international power in East Asia, whilst at the same time allowing an open door for trade, to safeguard China’s territorial integrity and, finally, to support the Qing’s attempts to introduce reform and start building a modern infrastructure. Although the policy was dictated by the Foreign Office, it was both influenced and required implementation by the three key institutions based in Peking – the Legation, the CMC and, increasingly, the Hongkong Bank. Depending, as it did, on collaborative relationships between those institutions and Chinese officialdom, men on the spot, such as the three Hillier brothers, had a major role to play and in doing so, they brought to their work the approach that had been fashioned in their earlier careers through a mixture of family and institutional influence: Guy, as the Bank’s agent responsible for securing the principal loans to China as well as administering the Boxer Indemnity, Harry as a senior Customs Commissioner, and, most immediately, Walter who, as HBM Consul in Seoul, found himself at the centre of the drama, soon after China and Japan declared war.5 HBM Consul to Korea

For the first years following his appointment in 1889, Walter Hillier had been mainly engaged in routine duties. Apart from supervising the building of the new embassy premises, he was able to leave much of the work to his two assistants, J. Scott and C.W. Campbell, entailing as it did standard correspondence with the Korean foreign office concerning such matters as trade, customs dues and the right of British subjects to reside outside the legation quarter.6 Answerable to the Minister in Peking, his official dealings were with the Korean Foreign Office rather than with the monarchy itself, a position which he sought to change by obtaining 4 5 6

Hsu, The Rise of Modern China, pp. 355–386. Bickers, Scramble for China, pp. 323–325. For the building of the embassy, see J.E. Hoare, Embassies in the East: The Story of the British and their Embassies in China, Japan and Korea from 1859 to the Present (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1999), pp. 178–184. For consular work at this time, see, generally,TNA FO 228/1071. British trade did in fact double during the year and Walter anticipated Korea becoming a major grain-producer.

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parity with his fellow Consuls, but without success.7 Nonetheless, business was conducted with much pomp, with Hillier being carried in a sedan chair by a team of Korean bearers to his official engagements. For the rest of the time, he was free to indulge his fascination with a country that had first captured his imagination when he visited with Harry Parkes, as he later described in one of his lantern-slide lectures: If you can realise what it means to find one’s self suddenly put back 500 years from the China of 1880 to the China of 1380 …you can get some idea of my delight at finding myself at last in this forbidden land – delight which was not lessened as one moved through this white-robed and old world folk.8

Whilst this might be characterised as a typical example of Western orientalism, this would be to under-estimate the genuine interest and respect he developed for Korean people and their culture. Travelling extensively, he was happy to put up in Spartan wayside inns, making a detailed photographic record, picking up sufficient of the language to be able to compile his own small dictionary and hunting down specimens of ginseng for the Director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew.9 Interesting though this was, his career was not progressing and, by 1892, as he informed his friend, William Rockhill, he was looking forward to early retirement. This may have been primarily for personal reasons – his eye-sight was deteriorating and difficulties in his marriage were probably surfacing, leading to divorce proceedings the following year, but it may also have been due to the lack of sufficient work to occupy his time.10 If so, this was about to change in dramatic fashion. 7

8

9

10

He was appointed Acting Consul with effect from 6 May 1889 and HBM Consul on 1 October 1891; see letter, Walter Hillier to Foreign Office, 27 October 1891, TNA FO 228/1071. Later, Walter gave a number of talks in relation to his time in Korea; see, for example, one given to Bedford School in 1898, where his son, Gerald, was a pupil, The Bedfordshire Standard, 8 April 1898 (Hillier Collection). See also coloured plates and photographs, taken by Hillier, of China and Korea in the archives of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS LS/60). See letters from Walter C. Hillier to Sir William Thiselton-Dyer, 21 April 1891 and 6 January 1892, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Archives: Directors’ correspondence, 150/116–117 and 151/771. See letter,W.C. Hillier to William Woodville Rockhill, 7 December 1892, Houghton Library, Rockhill Papers, MS Am 2121 (112a).Walter subsequently but unsuc-

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Beneath the placid surface of life in Korea, there was a very different country, one with ‘a weak and complaisant court, a rapacious class of officials, endemic bribery and corruption, mismanaged finances and technological backwardness,’ and against that background, exploitation by more powerful nations was almost inevitable, if and when internal order broke down.11 That moment came in 1894, when, in the wake of a local rebellion, both China and Japan went to Korea’s aid. Believing that it had no geo-strategic interest in the region, the British government was content to pursue its policy of ‘splendid isolation’, maintaining the balance of power, without alienating the main challengers to Chinese suzerainty – Russia and Japan –, whilst at the same time protecting British interests.12 But when its proposals for resolving the problem were rejected, few anticipated how quickly events would escalate, with China and Japan declaring war on 1 August, 1894. Caught unawares, Walter Hillier was in England sorting out his matrimonial affairs and, to his deputy’s annoyance, he was instructed to leave immediately and return to Seoul.13 Within months, China’s forces had been out-manoeuvred and out-gunned and, by February the following year, its government had no option but to sue for peace. By the Treaty of Shimonoseki, it formally recognised Korea’s independence, ceded rights to Japan over Taiwan and Liaotung (subsequently modified under pressure from France, Germany and Russia) and was required to pay a massive indemnity.14 Britain’s approach of abstention quickly ran into difficulty when Japan and Russia began vying for control over Korea and Walter Hillier found himself treading a fine line between the competing powers as events in Seoul reached their climax.15 Although he was not entitled to attend the official audiences, Hillier enjoyed King Konjong’s confidence and spent much of

11

12

13 14 15

cessfully applied for the Consulship at Bangkok, see O’Conor to W.C. Hillier, 17 September 1894, Churchill College, Cambridge, Archives, Ocon. 4/1/11. Peter Duus, The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1859– 1910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), p. 71. L.K. Young, British Policy in China, 1895–1902 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), pp. 6–19 and 37–42. The official correspondence relating to these events is contained in TNA FO 17/1247, FO 17/1248 and FO/1284 and can also be found in Il-keun Park (ed.), Anglo-American and Chinese Diplomatic Materials Relating to Korea, 1887–1897 (Pusan: Institute of Chinese Studies, Pusan National University, 1984, hereafter ‘ACDM’), pp. 5–810. See letter, O’Conor to Kimberley, 1 January 1895, TNA FO 17/1245, no. 2. Hsu, The Rise of Modern China, pp. 332–343 Young, British Policy in China, 1895–1902, pp. 6–19 and 37–42.

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his time with him. But, Konjong’s father, the Daiwongun, who had been regent during his son’s minority, was in the pocket of the Japanese, and an active participant when, on 8 October 1895, Japanese forces stormed the Royal Palace, intending to establish control over the king and his court officials. Hearing the news, Hillier hastened to the Palace and was by the king’s side within the hour. The next day, he sent Britain’s Minister in Peking, Sir Nicholas O’Conor, the following account: The palace was forcibly entered by the father of the King on the morning of 8th of October. He was escorted by Japanese troops and Corean troops that have been drilled by the Japanese. The King’s personal guard was driven out of the palace and the Minister of the Household with some dozen other Coreans of inferior rank were killed. The apartments of the Queen were invaded by Japanese in civilian dress carrying arms…Three or four of the ladies of the palace were killed by the Japanese and the Queen is missing but is believed to have escaped. The King’s father with a Corean guard drilled by Japanese is in possession of the palace. The Japanese troops are now withdrawn. I have seen the king who is not hurt but is much perturbed in mind. The populace is excited but orderly.16

It later transpired that the Queen had not escaped but had been dragged into the courtyard, doused in paraffin and set alight. Describing the events in vivid detail, Hillier visited the Palace daily over the next weeks and, as O’Conor informed the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, ‘handled the different questions arising out of the critical situation with considerable tact and good judgment’.17 The King remained in the Palace for the next four months, effectively a prisoner of the Japanese, albeit able to receive visitors, including Hillier, until, on the night of 10 February, 1896, the next step in this extraordinary drama took place. Russian soldiers broke into the Palace and ‘sprang’ the King into the comparative safety of their Legation. Hillier, who had been dining with the Russian Minister that same evening, but was given no forewarning, immediately cabled his report to Peking, concluding: 16

17

Letter, W.C. Hillier to O’Conor, 10 October 1895, headed ‘Revolution in Palace’, and enclosures, TNA FO 17/1248, nos. 85–99; see also Inclosure 3 in No.86, ACDM, pp. 612–615. Letter, O’Conor to Salisbury, 31 October 1895, Inclosure in No.137, ACDM, p. 672.

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There is much excitement in the city and I have asked for the guard of fifteen mariners to be sent back to this consulate-general as a measure of precaution.18

Thereafter, he continued to visit the King daily, and, shuttling between the Japanese and Russian Legations, kept the Foreign Office appraised of the situation, as negotiations between the two Powers continued. The overall aim was to broker a deal in which, without either Power assuming unqualified control, some political stability would be restored. It is clear from Hillier’s accounts that he enjoyed a reasonable relationship with the Ministers of both countries and was in his element in seeking to hold the ring. Before the outbreak of war, he had also formed a good relationship with Yuan Shikai, who, as China’s resident Minister, had spent eight years in the country. It was one to which, according to Jordan,Yuan would cling ‘with touching loyalty’ and would be key to Hillier’s later career. When Yuan was compelled to leave, at his request, Hillier assumed responsibility for the Chinese merchants, which included setting up a system of registration to ensure that they would be given safe passage and continued rights to reside and trade.19 However, as with his brother, Guy, Walter Hillier’s eyesight was fast-failing, he was increasingly dependent on the Vice-Consul, Wilkinson, and, in July 1896, to his intense regret, he had no alternative but to apply for early retirement.20 He limped on until 26 October 1896, when he was succeeded by his old friend, 18

19

20

Letter, Hillier to Beauclerk, Chargé d’Affaires, Peking, 11 February 1896, Inclosure 1 in No.32, FO 17/1284, ACDM, p. 697. Jordan, ‘Some Chinese I have known’, The Nineteenth Century, pp. 942–960, p. 955.Whilst the exact circumstances remain unclear, it was believed that the British Consulate saved Yuan’s life by alerting him to an assassination plot and smuggling him onto a British warship. Walter, however, cannot take the credit as he was in England at the time; see Lau Kit-Ching Chan, Anglo-Chinese diplomacy in the careers of Sir John Jordan and Y u˝an Shih-k’ai 1906–1920 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1978), p. 8. For the impact of Yuan’s time in Korea on his future career, see Stephen R. MacKinnon, Power and Politics in Late Imperial China: Yuan Shih-kai in Beijing and Tianjin, 1901–1908 (Berkeley: University of Calif. Press, 1980), pp. 15–25, Kirk W. Larsen, Tradition, Treaties and Trade: Qing Imperialism and Chosoˇn Korea, 1850–1910 (Cambridge Ma.: Harvard University Press, Harvard East Asian Monographs 295, 2008), pp. 241–4 and W.C. Hillier to O’Conor, 17 February 1895 and Inclosure 1 in No.167, ACDM, p. 513, and TNA FO 17/1247, no. 70. See letter, W.C. Hillier to Foreign Office, 6 July 1896, TNA FO 17/1284, nos. 543–545; letter, Jordan to Macdonald, 26 October 1896, TNA FO 17/1284, nos. 456.

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John Jordan. Regarded as a firm friend by the Chinese community, on his departure, they presented him with lavish gifts, including a traditional ceremonial umbrella. On O’Conor’s recommendation, he was awarded the KCMG as part of the Jubilee honours the following year, and, with this, his public life seemed to be at an end. However, he had established a significant reputation with the Foreign Office and the Legation, and with Hart as IG, and this would be of considerable assistance to Guy Hillier, when financial competition between the Western banks intensified and the support of these institutions became essential. The Hongkong Bank’s Peking Agent–1895–1900

Prior to the outbreak of the war, Guy had made little progress in his own career or in increasing the Bank’s profile in Peking, so much so that, in 1893, he unsuccessfully sought a transfer to another branch.This may also be why, the following year, he thought it safe to marry, believing that, although Peking was no place in which to bring up a family, he and his wife, Ada, were unlikely to be there for much longer. With China’s defeat, everything changed. The country’s need to fund the massive indemnity prescribed by the Treaty of Shimonoseki gave the Bank its first real opportunity and led to a major shift in the relationship between the European powers and the private world of high finance.21 Guy Hillier was able to use the skills and connections that he had acquired over the last ten years, including his knowledge of Chinese. He also relished the competition and the challenge of bringing the Foreign Office into an area from which hitherto it had remained aloof. The loans had significant political implications as they were secured over China’s assets, the most liquid and available of which were the revenues of the CMC. The worry for the British government was that control over those revenues would be linked to the right to appoint the IG, which it regarded as its prerogative. In the long term, it would also alter the balance of power in the region. With the governments of other European countries having a shared interest in their banks, there was every reason for the British government to support its own financial institutions in this 21

E.W. Edwards, British Diplomacy and Finance in China, 1895–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), p. 4; for the establishment of foreign-owned manufacturing and enterprises, see Feuewerker, ‘Economic Trends in the Late Ch’ing Empire’, pp. 1–69 at pp. 29–32.

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new world of international finance and thereby ensure that the loans could be successfully floated on the London market.22 The Hongkong Bank had already proved that it was able to market China loans in London, albeit hitherto only on a small scale. As its historian, Frank King, says, it was the most credible candidate for such support because of ‘its size and connections in China and Hillier’s contacts and ability’.23 However, the Foreign Office took much persuading before it became involved, despite the threat presented by the other major Powers. That threat became all too clear when France and Russia entered into a Dual Alliance in 1894 that would be pivotal globally over the next twenty years and of immediate significance in China. Having secured Annam, France was now seeking to extend its influence into Yunnan and further into Southwest China, where it had secured a provisional agreement to build a railway. At the same time, Russia was seeking to acquire exclusive rights in Manchuria and beyond, in order to further its programme of railway-building and acquire an ice-free port. In late 1895, a Franco-Russian group, with strong government support, won the battle for the first tranche of the Japanese Indemnity Loan amounting to £15.8 million, together with strategically significant railway concessions in Manchuria.24 But, whilst Lord Rosebery, the Liberal Prime Minister, had been willing to provide indirect support to the Bank during the negotiations, his Conservative successor, Lord Salisbury, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Michael Hicks Beach, had a very different approach and made it clear that the government should abstain from taking any interest ‘in the affairs of merchants and financiers’. Its support could not, therefore, be taken for granted when the banks competed for the next tranche, amounting to £16 million.25 22

23

24

25

Edwards, British Diplomacy and Finance, pp. 11–12; for a discussion of the relationship between the Bank and the British government, see also David A. McLean, ‘British Banking and Government in China: the Foreign Office and the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, 1895–1914’, unpublished Ph. D. Dissertation, Cambridge University, 1973. King, The Hongkong Bank, II at p. 342. For interesting vignettes of Guy, see also Maurice Collis, Wayfoong: The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (London: Faber, 1965). King, The Hongkong Bank, II, pp. 264–272; David A. McLean, ‘The Foreign Office and the First Chinese Indemnity Loan’, Historical Journal, 16 (1973), pp. 303–21, Otte, The China Question,p.83. McLean, ‘The Foreign Office and the First Chinese Indemnity Loan’, p. 321; but, for a contrary view, see Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, p. 276.

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Aware of the problems of competing on its own, the Hongkong Bank had already approached the Deutsch-Asiatische Bank (DAB), with a view to making a joint bid for the first tranche and, having failed, the two banks immediately entered into a formal agreement which, subject to certain exceptions, covered all future loans to the Chinese government. Founded in 1889, the DAB was a semi-state bank, set up specifically to provide ‘the commercial base for a major commercial offensive in China’.26 In the long term, as relations with Germany deteriorated, so criticism of the Hongkong Bank mounted, not least because of Hillier’s close friendship with his opposite number, Heinrich Cordes. However, the value of the alliance became clear when the two banks succeeded in obtaining the second tranche of the loan, but they did so only by the skin of their teeth, the final breakthrough coming when the Chinese placed the matter in the hands of Sir Robert Hart and in his words, ‘Hillier acted very smartly and courageously…The Bank would have lost the business had he not done so.’27 Two years later, similarly quick footwork would be necessary when the contract for the third and final tranche of the indemnity loan (also of £16 million) came up. By this time, Salisbury was beginning to understand the political implications and accepted the need to adopt a more hands-on approach, but not necessarily to the advantage of the Bank. Keen to forge a more amicable relationship with Russia, he suggested that the two governments make a joint loan on their own and to the exclusion of the Bank. At the same time, the Bank and DAB were continuing with their negotiations and, by agreeing to a significant reduction in the interest rate, Guy outflanked the opposition, including Salisbury’s initiative, and clinched the deal.28 With Salisbury magisterially, if disingenuously, informing the House of Lords that Britain had no alternative but to come to China’s assistance, this was a triumph for the Bank and Guy Hillier and its share price soared.29 Secured mainly on the Customs Revenue, the terms 26 27

28

29

Edwards, British Diplomacy and Finance, p. 4 Letter, Hart to Campbell, 22 March 1896, no. 1013, Fairbank, IG in Peking, King, The Hongkong Bank, II, pp. 275–283. King, The Hongkong Bank, II, pp. 283–291, Young, British Policy in China, pp. 56–64, Edwards, British Diplomacy and Finance, pp. 21–27. In all the loan negotiations, the discount rate on the open market would also be an important negotiating point. The Times, 2 March 1898; for favourable coverage by the Western press in China, see, China Mail, 26 February 1898, p. 3.

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stipulated that, for the present, the position of IG would be held by ‘an Englishman’ (Hart was in fact an Ulsterman), a particularly important concession given the involvement of the DAB.30 Just as he was concluding this loan, Hillier was also in negotiations in relation to the Northern (or Chinese) Imperial Railway, which ran from Peking to Shanhaiguan, and which the Chinese wished to extend beyond the Wall to Mukden (Shenyang) in Manchuria. The agreement, which was concluded with the Hongkong Bank in October 1898, provided for the redemption of existing loans and for further advances to build the extension. Underwritten by the Bank’s engineering partner, the British and Chinese Corporation (B&CC), it was secured on the existing railway (within the Wall), together with the revenue that would be earned from its extension. With Russia seeking to treat this region as its exclusive zone of influence, the need to protect British bond-holders would have major implications during the Boxer disturbances.31 By this stage, it was clear that, given the impact of financial competition on the geopolitics of the region, the British government could no longer hold itself aloof. Having forged a close relationship with the Far Eastern Department of the Foreign Office, the Bank had effectively established itself as the government’s chosen financial instrument, with Guy Hillier at the helm in Peking. The key to the Bank’s success was enterprise. In Otte’s words, it was ‘efficient, had good connections with the Chinese and was eager for loan business… It was ready in its own interests to act as the British counter to the continental state banks’ (cf. Plate 29).32 The contest for financial influence has to be seen against the background of the scramble for territory that had been triggered by Germany’s forcible acquisition of Kiaochow (Jiaozhou) in Shandong province, following the murder of two German missionaries. This was followed by Russia’s demand for a lease over the ice-free ports of Port Arthur (Lushunkou) and Talienwan (Dalianwan) and increased control over Manchuria. Since this threatened the Open Door policy that ensured equal access throughout China to all the Western powers, Britain was 30

31 32

For the brinkmanship involved in the securing of this loan, see Wright, Hart and the Chinese Customs, pp. 663–666, and see Journal of Sir Robert Hart, 1 March 1898, Sir Robert Hart Collection, Q.U.B., MS 15/1/52, pp. 13–14. King, The Hongkong Bank, II, p. 303–306, Young, British Policy in China, pp. 90–91. Cf. Otte, The China Question, pp. 83–110, Edwards, British Diplomacy and Finance, pp. 21 and quote at p. 26.

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at risk of being the principal loser, leading to intense criticism of the government. As The Times’ special correspondent, G.E. Morrison, put it, no doubt, prompted by Guy Hillier, given their close friendship, Britain had been ‘squeezed’ by the other powers.33 In response, on 1 July 1898, Britain obtained a ninety-nine-year lease of the deep-water harbour at Wei-heiwai (Weihai) and began pressurising China to grant it a lease over what became known as the New Territories, in order to secure Hong Kong’s borders.This latter acquisition would have long-term implications for the CMC and for Harry Hillier, as the Customs Commissioner responsible for Kowloon. The Customs Commissioner, Kowloon–1895–1899

Whilst a small part of the coastline at Kowloon (but excluding the city itself) had been ceded by way of lease to Britain in 1860, there was a chain of adjoining Customs posts for which the local Commissioner was responsible. As an indication of the station’s importance, its staff complement far exceeded that of any other treaty port and comprised four foreign and 40 Chinese Indoor Staff and 44 foreign and 352 Chinese Outdoor staff. Of these, some 278 were boatmen or guards, who carried out the complex and dangerous task of policing these waters.34 The Kowloon station was also unusual in that its head office was in Hong Kong and the Commissioner lived on the Peak – ‘the pinnacle of social status’, where only Europeans were permitted to reside – and was a prominent member of the local community.35 Given this setting, it was inevitable that the Commissioner would be identified with the British administration and at risk of appearing to favour its interests should a conflict arise. Appointed acting Commissioner in 1895, Harry Hillier had the further problem of being identified 33

34 35

For examples of this criticism, see The Times, 25 March 1898, p. 9 and China Mail, 25 April and 3 September, 1898, p. 284, and The Saturday Review, May 1898. For Morrison, who had joined The Times in March 1897, see Bickers, Scramble for China, p. 332 and Pearl, Morrison of Peking. For the scramble for concessions, see Hsu, Rise of Modern China, pp. 349–350. Chinese Maritime Customs Staff Lists, 1895–1899. As a result, it was almost essential in practice for Kowloon Customs officials to be British: see Ladds, Empire Careers, pp. 98–99 and p. 130; see also John M. Carroll, ‘The Peak: Residential Segregation in Colonial Hong Kong’ in Bryna Goodman and David Goodman (eds), Twentieth Century Colonialism and China: Localities, the Everyday, and the World (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 81–91, at p. 81.

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with his father, and his time as Chief Magistrate. However, unlike Peking and so many treaty ports, it was an excellent place in which to live and bring up a young family. His wife, Maggie, relished playing hostess in a busy social world and the children were able to enjoy a privileged life on the Peak. For Harry, the ambiguities in the Commissioner’s role became all too clear when the Hong Kong government opened discussions for acquiring a ninety-nine-year lease over a large part of Guangdong province, in order to secure its borders better. Since this would entail the removal of all the customs posts along the coastline of what was to become British territory, it represented a major challenge to the CMC. In October 1897, Harry Hillier was summoned to Peking to discuss the proposals with the British Minister, Sir Claude MacDonald, Hart and the Commander-inChief of British Forces in China. Whilst no details were disclosed at the time, the meeting was regarded as highly significant when news leaked out in early January the following year. Five months later, the Convention was signed on 9 June 1898.36 A deliberate lack of clarity in its terms, obtuseness on the part of the Chinese and unwarranted belligerence on the part of the British merchants, who ‘wished to see the Chinese Customs cleared bag and baggage out of the colony and of Colonial waters’, all contributed to a serious diplomatic crisis.37 When the newly-appointed Governor, Sir Henry Blake, demanded the removal of all the customs posts, Hillier, backed up by Hart, resisted, arguing that ‘British prestige would be more nobly maintained by a generous attitude to a nation that had given so much’. Since the Convention permitted Chinese officials to remain in Kowloon City, he suggested that a Customs house could be established there for the purpose of examining cargo and levying duty.38 However, the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce insisted on the withdrawal of the Chinese Customs posts to 36 37

38

China Mail, 5 January 1898, p. 3. Stanley Fowler Wright, Hart and the Chinese Customs (Belfast: W. Mullan, 1950), p. 701. For a summary of the events, see Welsh, Hong Kong, pp. 313–327 and for more detailed analyses, Peter Wesley-Smith, Unequal treaty 1898–1997: China, Great Britain and Hong Kong’s New Territories (Hong Kong, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 1–87 and Patrick H. Hase, The Six-Day War of 1899: Hong Kong in the age of imperialism (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2008). H.M. Hillier to Hart, despatch No. 3776, September 1898, pp. 11–13, Customs Archives, CPV Office Series 62 Kowloon Customs, Shanghai, 1899, quoted in Wright, Hart and the Chinese Customs, p. 707.

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Chinese territory and on the Customs officials being prohibited from collecting duty either in the Colony or its waters. With the problem unresolved, on 1 April 1899, British troops entered the New Territories, and hoisted the union flag, leading to violent protests, which were then brutally suppressed with considerable loss of life. Accusing the Chinese of ‘duplicity’ and of firing the first shots, the Hong Kong press reported with apparent satisfaction that many had been ‘slaughtered’.39 Whilst the protests were against the annexation in principle, they were directly connected with the Customs issue and the belligerent way it had been dealt with by the Hong Kong authorities. As Hart told his London agent, James Campbell, ‘the Govnt now begins to be very bitter against England: the rough way Hong Kong has handled the extension of territory riles everybody’.40 The local Viceroy, T’an Chung-lin (Tan Zhong-lin), protested at the Governor’s behaviour and was unimpressed when Lord Salisbury, Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, compromised by permitting three stations to remain for a further six months.41 Blaming Hillier for failing to do more to protect the Chinese position, Tan refused to have any further contact with him. Although Hart accepted he could not have done more, he was unable to placate the Yamen and saw no option but to transfer him, noting in his diary, ‘if Viceroy will not see Hillier, what are we to do?’42 Hillier’s long-term colleague, Paul King, was summoned to Peking, and in an obtuse interview in which he was given no explanation as to the background, he was instructed to proceed immediately to Hong Kong and take over from Hillier, who duly proceeded with his home leave.43 These events well illustrate the invidious position in which a Customs Commissioner could find himself. Living in the British colony of Hong Kong in a society vigorously endorsing its aggressive stance, it was nonetheless Hillier’s duty to resist these pressures 39

40

41

42

43

The issue had been extensively covered by the local press from the beginning of 1898; see, for example, China Mail, 22 and 26 April 1899 and for coverage of the violence , China Mail, 17 April 1899, p. 3. Letter, Hart to Campbell, 23 April 1899, no. 1138, Fairbank, IG in Peking. See also the Governor’s instructions in letter, Buckle (Colonial Secretary) to Mansfield, 16 May 1899, TNA CO 129/291, no. 540, and letter, Blake to Chamberlain, 15 June 1899, TNA CO 129/291, no. 730. Letter, Tan to Consul Mansfield (Canton), 23 April 1899, TNA CO 129/291, no. 540. Journal of Sir Robert Hart, 22 April 1899, Sir Robert Hart Collection, Q.U.B., MS 15/1/53, p. 71. King, In the Chinese Customs Service, pp. 120–122.

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and seek to protect China’s interests. If Hart was outwardly supportive, there was little he could do to generate sympathy with Legation officials. Shortly afterwards, he hosted a dinner party in honour of the Bank’s iconic manager,Tom Jackson, who was visiting Peking for the first time, at which Guy Hillier and the Legation Secretary, Bax-Ironside, were also present. After a brief discussion of the issue, Guy told Bax-Ironside that his brother would ‘be glad of a change’ and, with this, the issue was considered closed. Harry left for eighteen months’ leave and, when he returned, he would find China a very different country.44 THE BOXER UPRISING AND ITS AFTERMATH

Chinese unrest over the loss of the New Territories reinforced the anti-Western sentiment that had been building since the end of the Sino-Japanese War. Fuelled by the international scramble for concessions and by merchants and entrepreneurs pouring into the north of the country to exploit the newly-acquired railway and mining concessions, it embraced scholars, officials, gentry and the people at large. Although China’s defeat had demonstrated the need for wholesale reform, the various sporadic attempts that had resulted had come to nothing. However, fearing the country’s imminent dismemberment in early 1898, the Kuang-hsu emperor became more responsive to these initiatives. In what became known as ‘the Hundred Days’, he issued over one hundred decrees heralding reform on an unprecedented scale, many influenced by Western thinking. Fiercely opposed by the conservative faction led by the Empress Dowager, the emperor ultimately proved no match for her political cunning. In September 1898, he was stripped of his power and forced into solitary seclusion. Coinciding with natural catastrophes of drought and flooding, anti-foreigner violence, principally focussed on missionaries and their converts, escalated. Spear-headed by a secret society called the ‘Righteous and Harmonious Fists’, better-known as the Boxer Movement, it rapidly spread across Northern China and culminated in the Siege of the Legations.45 44

45

Journal of Sir Robert Hart, 4 and 6 May 1899, Sir Robert Hart Collection, Q.U.B., MS 15/1/53, pp. 141 and 143; memorandum, Bax-Ironside to Bertie, 15 May 1899 TNA FO 17/1768, no. 24. For a summary of the events, see Bickers, Scramble for China, pp. 340–352. For more detailed accounts, see Joseph W. Esherick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), Paul A. Cohen, History

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By the time the Siege began on 20 June 1900, all three Hillier brothers were out of the country. Walter had already been retired for over three years, Harry was in Lausanne, enjoying a lengthy furlough with his family, and Guy, having finally accepted the need for urgent treatment to his eyes and settled his family in Shanghai, had left in February 1900 to consult Dr Fuchs, a renowned specialist in Vienna.46 Alarmed by reports coming from China, he was also taking the opportunity to follow up connections in London. As Hart told Campbell, ‘you ought to see him … if you want to know anything about loans, railways etc.’47 Whilst Hart’s comment shows the esteem in which Guy Hillier was held in official circles, the careers of all three brothers appeared to be nearing their end. Although Harry would return the following year, the events in Hong Kong had undermined his confidence in Hart and the CMC and had certainly not improved his chances of further promotion.Whilst Walter had recovered much of his sight after a surprisingly successful operation, now in his early fifties, there seemed to be no prospect of his returning to public life.48 And with little chance of Guy’s operation being so successful, there seemed to be no future for him at the Bank. However, with the start of the Siege, all this changed.Walter was summoned out of retirement and Guy was instructed to return to China as a matter of urgency. With all three brothers closely involved as the country sought to recover from the disastrous consequences of the Uprising, we will see how the cultural sensitivity, that had been nurtured in their earlier careers and had been shaped by both family and the institutions in which they had served, would reach its fruition. Walter and Guy would work closely together and all three would become collectively influential in the China Coast world.

46

47 48

in Three Keys: The Boxers as event, experience and myth (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997); see also Victor Purcell, The Boxer Uprising: A Background Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963). Morrison’s 30,000 word account in The Times (14 and 15 October 1900) is also worth reading, given his friendship with Guy and Walter, and this is most probably what he told them; for his courageous role in these events, see Pearl, Morrison of Peking, pp. 106–134. For Guy’s failing eyesight at this point, see King, The Hongkong Bank, II, p. 165; Morrison would read the English newspapers to him, see letter, Morrison to Ethel Bell (wife of the Manager of The Times), 14 March 1899, no. 61, Hui-min L, The Correspondence of G.E. Morrison 1; letter, Kinder to Hillier, 8 February 1900, HSBC Archives, HQ SHG10255–001, pp. 156–161. Letter, Hart to Campbell, 14 January 1900, No. 1158, Fairbank, IG in Peking. For the operation, see letter, W.C. Hillier to Newman, 22 January 1897, TNA FO 17/1284, nos. 546–547.

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Walter Hillier – HM Political Adviser–1900–1901

By late June 1900, a British Expeditionary Force was already on its way to China and, much to his surprise, on 5 July 1900, Walter Hillier received a letter from the India Office instructing him that he had been appointed Principal Assistant Political Officer to its commanding officer, General Gaselee, and was to proceed to China immediately. Even with his sight partially recovered, he was an unlikely candidate for such a demanding role. However, he was chosen, so the India Office informed the Treasury, because they needed ‘an officer of diplomatic experience who knows the country and is qualified to act as adviser and interpreter’.49 Guy Hillier had also most probably played an indirect part in the appointment. In March that year, the Bank’s London Manager, Cameron, had delivered to the Foreign Office a memorandum, drafted by Guy whilst he was in England, stressing the strategic importance of Manchuria and the need to protect the interests of British bondholders in the Northern Imperial Railway. Well-received, it was clear that a Political Adviser with Walter Hillier’s connections and experience would be indispensable.50 With his wife, Clare, having only the most limited access to the children following their divorce, arrangements had to be made for them. Gerald was already attending a crammer to prepare him for the entrance examination to Britannia Royal Naval College and the two girls, Florrie and Cissie, aged seventeen and nine, were left in the care of Cissie’s governess at Walter’s home in Bedford. With this in place, he left England by ship to Canada. As he did so, rumours were circulating that wholesale slaughter had taken place in the legations and that America’s Minister had been killed. On 17 July 1900, The Times confirmed the worst and published Hart’s obituary.51 However, by the time Walter had arrived in Vancouver, British Columbia, Chinese sources were saying that, contrary to earlier reports, America’s Minister, Edwin Conger was alive. Relishing publicity as always, Walter gave a lengthy interview to the press, in which he welcomed the news, but cautioned, ‘I am not prepared to believe anything that 49

50

51

Letters, Godley (India Office) to W.C. Hillier, 5 July 1900, TNA FO 17/1443, no. 23 and India Office to Treasury, 5 July 1900, TNA FO 17/1443, no. 24. Cameron to Foreign Office, 22 March 1900, TNA FO 17/1438/123; for the enclosed memorandum – E.G. Hillier, ‘The British Position in China’, and the file note endorsing Guy’s views, see TNA FO 17/1438, nos. 126–145. The Times, 17 July 1900, p. 4.

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comes from Chinese sources for, like all Asiatics, the Chinese will lie without a moment’s hesitation if it is to their interest to do so’. A typical example of racial stereotyping, this illustrates the ambiguity that was inherent in his approach and would mark this assignment.52 With this flourish, he boarded the Empress of India and, having reached Tianjin just in time to join the Expeditionary Force, numbering some 20,000 men, he set off for Peking on 4 August. By then, it was clear that the feared slaughter had not taken place and that Hart was still alive but, equally, there was no time to lose. After a gruelling ten-day march in searing heat, interspersed by violent thunderstorms, the Expeditionary Force reached Peking, forced its way into the city and lifted the siege.53 The Manchu Court fled to Sian (Xian), the Chinese armies dispersed and the capital was left without any effective authority. With Peking divided into separate sectors, control lay in the hands of the foreign military forces but was haphazard and arbitrary. The slaughter of Boxers and alleged Boxers and the looting and devastation that then took place in the city and surrounding countryside was eagerly reported in the daily newspapers and the images that survive from that time still continue to shock.Whilst the British considered that the Russians were the main culprits, they also took part in summary executions and mass looting.54 Much of this was justified by ‘Boxerism’, a narrative that, describing the slaughter of hundreds of foreigners and thousands of Chinese Christians, would be enthusiastically propagated in memoirs, newspapers and popular fiction. In fact, the number of foreigners killed amounted to some 240, of which just under half were British, but it left a lasting legacy of fear. Leaving aside the more extreme approach, even amongst British socialists and Fabian intellectuals, there was a view that there was no alternative but for the Powers to remain and re-establish some order.55 For the local Chinese unwittingly 52

53

54 55

The interview was reported in The Province, 22 July 1900, amongst other newspapers; four of the reports were pasted into Walter Hillier’s Cuttings Book (Hillier Collection). For the march, see Rev. Frederick Brown, From Tientsin to Peking with the Allied Forces (London: C.H. Kelly, 1902). Brown marched with Gaselee and will most probably have met Hillier. See Hevia, English Lessons, pp. 195–240. Fabian News, February 1902, p. 5, quoted in Gregory Claeys, Imperial Sceptics: British Critics of Empire, 1850–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 183.

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caught up in this mayhem, it was a terrifying time and one that would remain long in their memory.56 Against this background, the newly-appointed minister, Sir Ernest Satow, charged Walter Hillier with negotiating the surrender of the remaining pockets of Chinese resistance and assisting generally in restoring relations in the surrounding countryside.57 Hillier responded with a typical display of showmanship on the one hand and sensitivity on the other. With Russian forces occupying Manchuria and threatening to take control of the Northern Railway, the Hongkong Bank was adamant that British bond-holders should be protected. Fearful of Russian reprisals, in late September 1900, the Chinese General whose troops were still holding the east end of the railway at Shanhaiguan, offered to surrender the fort to Gaselee. Hearing of this, Walter immediately approached Rear-Admiral Seymour and volunteered to accept the surrender. With an armed guard of eighteen marines, he was despatched in the Pygmy to take peaceful delivery of the fort. Although this was accomplished without difficulty, the version which gained currency in the British press gave a very different story.58 Making no mention of the prior agreement, it, instead, suggested that Hillier had tricked the General into believing that he was about to be attacked by a substantial flotilla and that the fort and its 1,000-strong garrison had been ‘captured by sheer pluck, cunning and heroism’. Hillier did nothing to correct this version which continued to surface from time to time, most probably embellished by him.59 As the Saturday Review described the events three years later, when his appointment as Professor of Chinese at King’s College, London was announced, 56

57

58

59

For the position immediately after the siege, see Hans Van de Ven, ‘Robert Hart and Gustav Detring during the Boxer Rebellion’, Modern Asia Studies, 40 (2006), pp. 631–662 at pp. 639–641, Young, British Policy in China, p. 242. For Salisbury’s appointment of Satow, see T.G. Otte, ‘Not Proficient in TableThumping: Sir Ernest Satow at Peking, 1900–1906’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 13 (2002), pp. 161–200. For the most reliable accounts, see Admiral Seymour’s Report to the Admiralty, 6 October 1900, No. 22, China Blue Book No. 5 of 1900, and the account in the papers of Commander (subsequently Admiral) Jellicoe, British Library, Jellicoe Papers, MSS 71558; see also Young, British Policy in China, pp. 208– 213, although this confusingly refers to Sir Walter Hillier ‘of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank’, p. 209. The Daily Graphic, 13 December 1900. The newspaper reports were all pasted into Hillier’s cuttings book.

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The Chinese General debated for a while and on the question of the advisability of surrender being again put to him, answered ‘Yes, certainly; but when and to whom’ ‘To me, and there is no time like the present’ replied Sir Walter promptly, ‘otherwise I shall be compelled to open fire on the forts’.60

In fact, the real contest was with the Russians who, with General Waldersee’s approval, were claiming they were entitled to occupy the strategically significant railway terminus. Here, Walter certainly did show some pluck. Seizing a train, which he himself drove for some four miles, he led a detail of British marines and captured the Shanhaiguan Station. Exciting though this was, it was of little benefit as the Russians arrived the next day and the British were ordered to surrender the station. Nonetheless, the Henty-like tale of imperial derring-do cast Hillier in exactly the role which he relished. Lasting his lifetime, it would be repeated by the Daily Mail when reporting his death twenty-seven years later under the headline, ‘Sir Walter Hillier Dead: Man who captured 5000 Chinese’.61 More effective were his efforts to restore stability in the region. Appalled by what he had witnessed, he wrote to Salisbury’s Principal Private Secretary, Sir Eric Barrington, describing how ‘from Taku to Peking, there is a continuous belt of devastated country. Not a town or village along the line of march has escaped pillage, accompanied in many instances by atrocities’.62 Later, he would frequently describe the wanton destruction of porcelain, books and treasures ‘of inestimable value’ which he had witnessed.63 Even his brother, Guy, seems to have been caught up in the frenzy, receiving a letter from Lord George Curzon,Viceroy of India, enclosing £1000 ‘to invest in curios’.64 There is no record of his response. 60 61

62

63

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The Saturday Review, 5 September 1903. The Daily Mail, 11 November 1927. These have all been pasted into Walter Hillier’s Cuttings Book (Hillier Collection). For the cult of the hero, see Berny Sebe, Heroic Imperialists in Africa: the promotion of British and French colonial heroes (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), G.A. Henty, With the Allies to Pekin: a Tale of the Relief of the Legations (London: Blackie and Son, 1904); see generally, Joseph Bristow, Empire Boys: Adventures in a Man’s World (London: HarperCollins, 1991), pp. 146–154. Letter, W.C. Hillier to Eric Barrington, 31 August 1900, SP (Salisbury papers), 106/32. See also Young, British Policy in China, p. 194. Walter later spoke of the events at a meeting of the China Society, The Saturday Review, 27 February 1907, Walter Hillier Cuttings Book (Hillier Collection). Pearl, Morrison of Peking, p. 131. Curzon had most probably met Guy when he visited Peking as part of his celebrated tour of the Far East. Certainly he had

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That Walter Hillier had some success in restraining the worst excesses is evident from a memorial erected in his honour by Chinese officials in Shanhaiguan railway station. He was also mentioned in despatches for rendering ‘invaluable service’: it was, Gaselee wrote, ‘chiefly owing to his tact and great knowledge and experience of the country that … relations with the Chinese around have been so satisfactory’.65 Attached to the British Legation as Acting First Secretary (Diplomatic), in February 1901, Hillier was appointed Special Political Officer for Chinese Affairs and, as such, was closely involved in the negotiations taking place to bring hostilities formally to an end. Of the Twelve Points that had been laid down as having to be satisfied, the most contentious were the punishments to be inflicted on the officials considered principally responsible, including the death penalty (specifically, decapitation and mandatory suicide) and banishment, and the payment of a massive indemnity.66 With the Court still in Xian, Li Hongzhang had been appointed Plenipotentiary but was stalling. Knowing him from the past, Walter Hillier paid Li a courtesy call, and was asked, as he informed Satow, if he could help mediate the negotiations.67 To this end, on 28 February, Hillier had a two hour meeting with Li and Chou-fu (Zhoufou), the Financial Treasurer of the Province of Zhili, at which he explained the importance of carrying out as many of the Twelve Points spontaneously, without waiting for them ‘to be extorted’. In particular, if the punishment of the specified officials could be carried out as required, he said, ‘half the difficulties would be over’. Pleased with the way the meeting had gone, Li suggested that Hillier should travel to Xian and meet the Kuang-hsu emperor, explain what was required to resolve matters and persuade the Court to return to Peking. Reporting back to Satow, Hillier offered, if necessary, to resign his post and go in his private capacity. Forwarding his

65

66 67

stayed with Walter when he was in Seoul: cf. George N. Curzon, Problems of the Far East (London: Longmans, 1894), Preface. The tablet no longer exists but a photograph, together with the inscription, is in the Hillier Collection; Gaselee, Report to S.O.S for India, 19 January 1901, TNA WO 28/302 (loose copy), quote on p. 21, subsequently reported in The London Gazette, 15 May 1901. Hsu, The Rise of Modern China, pp. 398–404, Hevia, English Lessons, pp. 242–259. For this and the next paragraph, see Satow to Lansdowne, 1 March 1901, TNA FO 405/105, Inclosure in No.252; see also Carty, ‘Confucianism and International Law in 1900’, pp. 434–453 at pp. 448–449. For the railway, see Young, British Policy in China, pp. 272–281.

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‘interesting memorandum’ to the Foreign Secretary, Satow, however, made clear he was firmly against the idea, since ‘such a mission by an Englishman to the Court would excite great suspicions in the minds of my colleagues’.68 In the event, the proposal was dropped and in due course, agreement was reached in the form of a Protocol, setting out, amongst other things, the punishments to be administered and the payment of an indemnity of 450 million taels. Long before this, however, Hillier had found the harsh winds of Peking bad for his eyes and had reluctantly applied to relinquish his post.69 Returning to England in May 1901, he was appointed a Companion of the Bath, in recognition of his recent services in China. His public life seemed once again to be at an end. Although Walter Hillier’s work during this period had been somewhat different from anything he had done before, it was consistent with the approach that he had been cultivating from his earliest days in the consulate: using bravura, showmanship and cultural sensitivity to play a mediating role and, as he put it to Satow ‘to do something for China’. Whilst neither Guy, with whom he had been working closely, nor Harry Hillier would have their brother’s showmanship, there were similarities in their approach which would be equally important in the forthcoming years, as China sought to recover and reform in the aftermath of the Uprising. The Boxer Indemnity

In the light of China’s parlous economy and competition between the Powers for financial advantage, the British government finally recognised the importance of proactively supporting the Hongkong Bank. Recalled to China, Guy Hillier was immediately involved in discussions with the Legation and Chinese officials.The most pressing issue was a request by the Viceroy of the Huguang provinces, Zhang Zhidong, for an emergency loan of £75,000 to pay his troops. One of the most influential officials in China, who had been in power since Harry Hillier had met him over ten years earlier, Zhang had strongly opposed the Boxers and, as a result, had the backing of the British Government who, unusually, agreed to 68

69

Letter, Satow to Lansdowne, 1 March 1901, TNA FO 800/119, nos. 69–72, quote at 70. The reasons are anticipated in a memo from Satow to Barrington, 14 February 1901, TNA FO 800/119, pp. 51–57.

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guarantee the Bank’s proposed loan. Draft terms were approved by the Treasury and, in late August 1900, believing that there was no substitute for face-to-face discussions, Guy took a steamer to Hankou to finalise the deal. In due course, Zhang would assume responsibility for financing China’s railways and this was the first of a number of visits that Guy would make to the Viceroy over the next ten years – major expeditions in themselves, which entailed spending many weeks in the treaty port, staying with the British Consul. For Guy Hillier, these meetings would be particularly instructive because, although Zhang was a moderate reformer, he was also ‘a thoroughbred Confucianist and superb scholar’ who believed that the modernisation projects should supplement but not alter basic Chinese institutions and moral teaching. Hillier, therefore, knew that he could only succeed in gaining Chang’s confidence by understanding his mindset and patiently cultivating their personal relationship. Whilst they would have major disagreements and Hillier’s patience would be sorely tried, he would always respect this ‘hale, cheerful little old man, with a frank manner’ as he described him.70 This was the first of a number of occasions, when Hillier, through a mixture of impetuosity and intuition, was prepared to take the initiative in order to secure a deal which he considered to be in the Bank’s and, by extension Britain’s, interests, conduct that would not always be well-received either by his superiors or by the British government. Realising that negotiations were reaching an impasse, he exceeded his instructions and reduced the security for the loan. Returning to Shanghai by steamer, he informed the London manager, Ewen Cameron, somewhat disingenuously, that whilst he had left the issue to Consul Fraser, the Chancellor of the Exchequer would have ‘every reason to be satisfied with [the deal]’.71 In fact, as he well knew, the Chancellor, Sir Michael Hicks Beach, had a deep distrust for ‘these Foreign Loan syndicates’ and had already made clear his distaste for any government involvement in private financial operations and with the Bank in 70

71

For details of the loan and Guy’s description of Zhang, see King, The Hongkong Bank, II, pp. 319–322; the consul, E.D.H. Fraser, also enjoyed a good relationship with Zhang, although this would eventually sour, see Coates, China Consuls, pp. 376–378. For Zhang’s career generally, see Daniel H. Bays, China Enters the Twentieth Century: Chang Chih-tung and the Issues of a New Age, 1895–1909 (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1978), pp. 58–91. Letter, E.G. Hillier to Cameron, enclosed in memorandum from Hamilton (Treasury) to Foreign Office, 30 August 1900, TNA T 1/9590b, no. 16983.

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particular, and, to no-one’s surprise, expressed his dissatisfaction at what Guy had done.72 However, with no other British undertaking in the frame, the Government had no option but to continue using the Hongkong Bank as its financial instrument, when the all-important issue of the Boxer Indemnity arose. With the amount of the indemnity agreed in the Protocol, the banks of the principal Powers met in Shanghai in January the following year to decide how to implement payment. The Hongkong Bank was nominated the administrator of the Indemnity and Guy Hillier the government’s delegate. It was an ambiguous role since Britain had been firmly against the fixing of such a large sum. Britain’s Minister, Sir Ernest Satow, considered it exceeded whatever loss the Powers could have suffered and the maximum that China in any event could pay and, according to Hart, it was ‘nothing but bad’. It was also inconsistent with Hillier’s view that ‘China should be given the chance of rehabilitation ... before proceeding to extremes which will assuredly spread the conflagration ...’73 There was now a real risk that the Indemnity might lead to the country’s economic collapse and disintegration, even though its survival was vital for both the Bank and its investors and for Britain. With Chinese officials excluded from the ensuing discussions, Guy had to mediate between the Powers and their banks, seeking an agreed mode of payment which was as fair to China and feasible as the Protocol would allow. The meetings were frequently bogged down in procedural wrangles fuelled by international jealousies but, by the end of the year, agreement had been secured and China was committed to a programme of repayment that was just sustainable but would, in all probability, last indefinitely. Returning to Peking in September 1902, in recognition of his efforts, Guy Hillier was awarded the CMG to set beside his brother’s CB.74 72

73

74

Edwards, British Diplomacy and Finance, p. 14, Young, British Policy in China, pp. 14–15 and pp. 180–81. The quote is from the postscript to a letter from Hart to Campbell, 17 July 1902, no. 3068, Chen, Archives of China’s Imperial Maritime Customs. For a detailed critique of the loan, see Frank King, ‘The Boxer Indemnity – “Nothing But Bad”’, Modern Asia Studies, 40 (2006), pp. 663–689; letter, E.G. Hillier to Morrison, 8 October 1900, no. 87, Hui-min Lo, The Correspondence of G.E. Morrison 1, p. 145. King, The Hongkong Bank, II, pp. 322–326, letters, Satow to Lansdowne, 4 February 1902, and E.G. Hillier to Lansdowne, 5 March 1902, TNA T 1/9915A, no. 6083 and T 1/9915A, no. 6634. Eventually, the loan repayments would be cancelled.

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Whilst this resolved matters on an international level, relationships between Britons and the Chinese remained tense. Atrocities and devastation had been committed by both Boxers and the Western allies in Peking and Tianjin and a large surrounding area. As was clear from the Protocol Article demanding retributive punishment, there was much bitterness but also difficulty in identifying the officials responsible. Unlike the Sino-Japanese War, when Britain had been a bystander, here it had been the focus of vehement anti-Western sentiment across Northern China, backed by the Empress Dowager and the Manchu. And whereas the Second Opium War had been blamed on Qing officials leading the people astray, on this occasion it was the Chinese people who were seen as complicit, thus justifying a policy of indiscriminate punishment and humiliation. Undoubtedly, as the allied forces ran amok, many innocent Chinese living in and around Peking and Tianjin had suffered, whether in terms of violence to themselves, their families and friends (death, rape and molestation), or in the widespread looting and destruction of their homes and crops. There was, therefore, a pressing need for mediation and conciliation, especially for those Britons whose work entailed regular interaction with the Chinese. For the foreign staff of the CMC, it was imperative to start re-building those relationships. The Changing Role of the Customs Service–1901–1908

Mediation was made no easier by the term of the Boxer Protocol which provided that the CMC would assume control of all Native Customs stations in the vicinity of the treaty ports. Since this gave access to a very substantial source of domestic revenue, a portion of which was earmarked for repayment of the Boxer Indemnity, this further alienated Chinese officials and merchants, with the Service becoming increasingly identified with imperial – particularly British – interests.75 Moreover, although Hart was adamant that the country should not suffer as a result of this recent madness, many foreign staff, who had been directly or indirectly caught up in the conflict, had become disillusioned and were beginning to 75

See Van de Ven, Breaking with the Past, pp. 156–158 and Richard S. Horowitz, ‘The Ambiguities of an Imperial Institution: Crisis and Transition in the Chinese Maritime Customs, 1899–1911’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 36 (2008), pp. 275–294; see also Chihyun Chang, Government, Imperialism and Nationalism in China: The Maritime Customs Service and its Chinese Staff (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 21–37.

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lose faith in his mission to reform China.76 This, therefore, was the position that greeted Harry Hillier when he returned to China in August 1901. He did so without his wife, Maggie, and for the next seven years, save for periods of leave, they would live apart, a separation which they would both find extremely demanding and which did not make his postings to out-ports any easier. However, for the first two years he was based in Shanghai, where he had been appointed to the prestigious position of Chief Secretary to the IG and was able to live with Maggie’s family at their sumptuous mansion, Dennartt. He was then transferred to Nanjing, where he was made not only Customs Commissioner but also the Postmaster for the region. The CMC had assumed responsibility for the Chinese postal service in 1897 and this was already producing considerable friction since Commissioners were expected to take on substantial additional duties without extra pay. However, although the work was onerous, Harry’s Letters Book, together with a number of photographs, indicates that relations with local officials were getting back to normal. For example, a lunch party given in Nanjing by the Viceroy of the Two Kiangs on the occasion of the Chinese emperor’s birthday on 18 August 1903 shows a large number of Chinese and Western officials seemingly enjoying a convivial occasion (Plate 16). Formally posed, the Chinese officials are in the forefront: immediately to the right of Harry (with wing collar and beard) are, respectively, the Superintendent of Customs, the Provincial Treasurer and the Viceroy. Circulated with the names of all those who attended carefully written on the mount, it was intended as an official record of the event, conveying an image of comity, without any sense of subservience or condescension. The second much more informal photograph (Plate 17) shows Harry and three local officials, following his appointment as Commissioner CMC in Kiukiang (Jiujiang) in 1904. Taken by an unidentified photographer, it is unusual in its casual setting, with its relaxed seating arrangements – they seem to be in a garden and are in their winter coats. Again, it seems to be intended to convey a sense of comity and, no doubt, copies were provided to the officials. The third photograph (Plate 18), also taken in Jiujiang, is one of a number Harry sent home to Maggie and displays the full 76

Robert Hart, These from the Land of Sinim (London: Chapman & Hall, 1901).

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panoply of the Commissioner’s life-style. Significantly, he has the maximum complement of eight bearers (dressed in white) to carry his chair. Whilst Chinese officials would conduct themselves in the same way, and expect this of their western counterparts, there is no doubting the imperial nature of this ‘round of official calls’. Comprising ‘a few married couples and perhaps half a dozen bachelors noted for their exuberance’, Jiujiang provided Harry with six relatively uneventful months before he was appointed Commissioner at Chinkiang (Zhenjiang) in April 1905, a posting in which the ambiguities of his role once again came into sharp focus.77 When he arrived, his brother-in-law, the genial Herbert Brady, was Consul but he was soon succeeded by Berthold George Tours, who was altogether a very different character. A survivor of the Legation Siege (during which he had nearly died of pneumonia), he was someone who did not take kindly to a Customs Commissioner with suspect loyalties.78 He quickly perceived Harry to be just such a person, as a result of a relatively trivial incident. The Daotai wanted to repossess some land adjoining the river, currently occupied by a French seminary, in order to remove the godowns and repair the bunding.79 Tours saw this as ‘a deliberate attempt ... by the Chinese authorities urged thereto by the Commissioner to deprive a British [sic] firm of a portion of land held by them under a properly sealed title deed’ and accused the Daotai of ‘an intentional act of unfriendliness, calculated to cause much trouble to everyone concerned’. He summarised the position in his quarterly report to Peking in which he accused Harry of having […] roused the Tao-tai to action by blaming him for permitting such an unorthodox appropriation of Chinese territory... The Tao-tai having been screwed up to patriotic pitch by Mr Hillier [ordered] that the godowns be demolished and handed back. 77

78

79

For Jiujiang, see Coates, China Consuls, p. 376 and Wood, No Dogs and Not Many Chinese, pp. 124–126. For a vivid if unreliable account of life for the Outdoor staff in Zenjiang at this time, see A.H. Ramussen, China Trader (New York: Crowell, 1954). For Tours, see Coates, China Consuls, pp. 167 and 346; for suspect loyalties, see Ladds, Empire Careers, pp. 28–30 and 44. The issue can be followed in Tours’ correspondence with the Legation in Peking: TNA FO 228/1592 and FO 228/1626.

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Following advice from the Legation, Tours eventually backed down but continued complaining that Harry ‘had seized the opportunity to display the increased magnitude of his office by bringing himself into conflict with foreign interests wherever possible.’ He was further incensed when Harry and his staff declined to attend the Consulate reception for King Edward VII’s birthday, particularly as they had ‘made a conspicuous parade of calling on board a German gunboat’ on the German Emperor’s birthday, action which he saw as deliberately provocative, given the worsening state of relations between the two countries. On hearing that Harry was about to depart on leave, Tours concluded: His departure will be a considerable boon to the British concession with the interests of which he has been at pains to be at variance. His attempts to undermine the authority and jurisdiction of the Concession ..., were fortunately unsuccessful; but his attitude has not been lost upon the Chinese authorities and various little impolite acts on their part towards the Concession have been undoubtedly due to his influence.80

Tours’s attitude was symptomatic of the growing unease a certain type of British official felt as Chinese officials began to assert themselves and of the antagonism displayed towards any Westerner allying himself with that stance. Lasting well over a year, the dispute will have soured relations in the close confines of the treaty port world. Cut off from the consular community, Harry had to content himself with enjoying the beautiful countryside, with the European resort of Kuling (Guling) being nearby, gardening (a passion) and ‘fiddling’ as he described playing his violin in his letters home.81 In fact, his approach to Customs work was little different from that of many of his contemporaries in the CMC, men such as Alfred E. Hippisley, James Russell Brazier and Paul King, all of whom had been schooled in Hart’s ethos.82 The trajectory of their careers, and many others like them, had given a particular 80

81 82

Tours, Intelligence Report to Legation, 14 February 1907, TNA FO 228/1659, nos. 9–10. Hillier, Letters Book. For Hippisley and Brazier, see letter, Hart to Campbell, 13 March, 1875, no. 121, note 8 and letter, 3 January 1878, no. 191, note 1, Fairbank, IG in Peking.

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character to the imperial space comprising the network of treaty ports, entailing contact and relationships between multiple nationalities, as well as with the Chinese community, from which a shared approach had been forged. However, this began to change as the Customs’ revenue became increasingly mortgaged to secure China’s debts and the Rights Recovery Movement demanded that China take back its infrastructure, principally, the mining and railway concessions that had been acquired before the Uprising. It was an issue with which Guy Hillier would be heavily engaged as the competition for railway franchises and the supporting loans intensified. Railway Loans 1902–1911

Returning to Peking in the autumn of 1902, Guy immediately offered the Bank his resignation. Having almost totally lost his sight, there seemed no prospect of his being able to continue his career. However, believing that he would be indispensable in the forthcoming railway loan negotiations, the Bank rejected the suggestion and, instead, provided him with a private secretary as an amanuensis. Whilst Guy continued to type many of his letters, this at least provided someone to read to him the voluminous and complex documentation that would be generated, in both English and Chinese, during the railway negotiations.83 For the next two years, his domestic life would continue unchanged, but, shortly after the birth of their fourth child, Tristram, in 1905, he and his wife, Ada, decided that she should return to England with the children and their amah. There they would be able to live in comfort, whilst he concentrated on his work free of outside distractions. He would remain as the Bank’s Peking agent until his death in 1924. Whilst there had been some earlier skirmishing, competition for railway franchises and the loans to support their construction had intensified during ‘the mid-summer madness’ that had taken place in 1898, resulting in China granting a number of favourable concessions, including, as we have seen, the extension of the Peking-Shanhaiguan line (the Northern Railway) to Niuzhuang, north of the great wall. Given the geo-strategic significance of these concessions, by 1899, Lord Salisbury had come to recognise that ‘the politics of China [had]...become the politics 83

King, The Hongkong Bank, II, p. 165.

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of railways’ but construction work had been very limited84 Aware of their potential, Chinese officials now felt able to adopt a more aggressive stance towards the negotiations. This presented a number of challenges for the Bank, and thus for Guy as its Peking Agent and chief negotiator. First, it had to be able to compete effectively with other Western banks, backed as they were by their governments, but also to obtain terms that would be acceptable on the London market. Second, whilst the loans needed to be adequately secured, the Bank had to accommodate China’s growing insistence that it have free rein over use of the sums advanced. Third, whilst the Bank’s engineering partners wanted the lucrative ancillary contracts for construction, materials and personnel, the Chinese were increasingly resistant to such demands and this would lead to serious conflict between Guy Hillier and the bank’s engineering partners, B&CC and Chinese Central Railways (CCR). To meet these challenges, Guy Hillier was constantly revising his approach but it was one which depended upon securing relationships through a threefold network: with Chinese officials, with whom he could negotiate in person without interpreters or gobetweens, but using his comprador and other contacts to make initial approaches and keep him appraised of Chinese thinking; with the Legation and the Foreign Office to ensure the Bank had the government ‘s support, which was essential if the loans were to be successfully floated on the London market; and, finally, with other Western banks to reduce competition through syndication of the loans. Over the next eight years, the Bank would obtain the lion’s share of the railway business, albeit increasingly in partnership with other Western banks. As a result, by 1911, a network had begun to take shape, built under the supervision of Western engineers, the most prominent being Claude William Kinder (1852–1936), who served Imperial China Railways for over thirty years, and with whom Hillier developed a close working relationship.85 Much of Guy’s success was due to his ability to cultivate personal relationships with his Chinese counterparts and maintain 84

85

Lord Salisbury, speech to the Railway Benevolent Institute, The Times, 18 May 1899, p. 12, quoted in Mary Wilgus, Sir Claude MacDonald, The Open Door and British Informal Empire in China, 1895–1900 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1987), p. 130, King, Hongkong Bank, II, pp. 303–306, Edwards, British Diplomacy and Finance, p. 43. Kinder became known as ‘the British Flag’, see his obituary, The Times, 10 August 1936.

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their confidence, often in the most trying circumstances. Although his role is well covered in the extensive literature, the emphasis tends to focus on his implementing decisions taken in London, dictated by, what Peter Cain and Antony Hopkins call, ‘impulses of gentlemanly capitalism’.86 However, this is to underestimate his role as ‘the man on the spot’, in gauging the Chinese mood and, in conjunction with the Legation, taking the necessary decisions when time was of the essence.87 Because he was known to command the confidence of his counterparts, his advice was generally accepted, albeit issues would often be hard-fought. His close working relationship with Satow can be seen in both their formal correspondence and in Satow’s journals, which record a number of social occasions when Hillier was able to nurture personal relationships through entertaining senior Chinese officials and, thereby, gain their confidence.88 This approach paid off in relation to the construction and operation of two trunk lines that, between them, would stretch across China, linking Peking and Guangzhou (with a further extension to Kowloon): the already-existing Peking-Hankou (Luhan) line and the still-to-be started Hankou-Guangzhou line (known as the Huguang Concession), (see Map p.xx). Amidst much recrimination, the Bank had failed to obtain the initial loan in respect of the Luhan line in the late 1890s, and by 1905, this was being successfully operated by a Belgian undertaking. Whilst that franchise would in due course come up for renewal, the immediate target was the Huguang Concession. In respect of both, Guy would be at the centre of fierce 86

87

88

The most thorough analysis of this complex subject is to be found in King, The Hongkong Bank, II, pp. 291–451, in which Guy Hillier’s role is detailed; see also Edwards, British Diplomacy and Finance, seriatim. Works which draw extensively on Chinese language sources are: E-tu Zen Sun, Chinese Railways and British Interests, 1898–1911, (2nd Ed.) (New York: King’s Crown Press, 1971), pp. 32–48, Lee En-han, China’s Quest for Railway Autonomy, 1904–1911 (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1977) and Ralph William Huenemann, The Dragon and the Iron Horse: The Economics of Railroads in China, 1876–1937 (Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1984); Peter Cain and Antony Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688–2000 (Harlow: Longman, 2002), pp. 372–380. For ‘men on the spot’, cf. Hirata Koji, ‘Britain’s Men on the Spot in China: John Jordan, Yuan Shikai and the Re-organisation Loan, 1912–1914’, Modern Asian Studies, 47 (2013), pp. 895–934. Ian Ruxton, (ed.), The Diaries of Sir Ernest Satow, British Envoy in Peking (1900– 06), with an Introduction by James E. Hoare (London: Lulu, 2006), 16 May, 1905, p. 189; see also 9 April 1906, p. 280 and 1 May, 1906, p. 287.

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competition between the Powers, tortuous negotiations with Chinese officials and bitter in-fighting between the Bank and its engineering partners. Negotiations for the Huguang Concession began when the Viceroy, Zhang, indicated he was seeking funds to build a railway between Hankou and Guangzhou and in response, J. O. P. Bland, acting on behalf of the Bank’s engineering partner, CCR, made the first approach. However, although fluent in Chinese, Bland had none of Guy’s tact and readiness to compromise and soon fell out with Zhang.The following year, Guy travelled to Hankou to meet Zhang, but, after a month’s fruitless negotiations, culminating in Zhang rejecting his suggestion that the French participate in the project, he returned to Peking.89 Whilst negotiations for the Huguang Concession had stalled, Guy was beginning to rethink his approach to the whole question of railway finance.90 In his view, as he advised A.M. Townsend, the Bank’s Chief Manager in Hong Kong, in July 1907, it was pointless seeking to secure the loans on China’s assets, including the railway revenues. Instead, ‘the real security’ was in ‘the credit and good faith of the Chinese government and the latent wealth of the country which it needs only financial pressure and improved conditions to bring out’.91 This was a significant change, particularly as it meant there would be less justification for retaining control over construction and management. The following year, further loans were required when the Peking-Hankow franchise came up for renewal. With a total length of 812 miles, the railway had finally been completed in 1905 and was already producing a handsome return.92 When the Bank’s London office heard in March 1908 that a Franco-Belgian syndicate was about to float the new loan, they wired Guy: ‘it must be stopped at all costs’. Although it initially rejected Guy’s advice that the loans be advanced with little control over China’s use of the funds, the Foreign Office 89

90 91

92

Edwards, British Diplomacy and Finance, pp. 101–110, TNA FO 371/228, nos. 80–165 passim and letter, Jordan to Campbell, 11 July 1907, TNA FO 35/4, no. 57. According to Guy, the negotiations had become ‘a comic opera’; see letter, E.G. Hillier to Townsend, 12 July 1907, HSBC Archive, SHG 277b. For Zhang’s attitude to Bland, see Sun, Chinese Railways, pp. 109 and 103–105 and King, The Hongkong Bank II, pp. 403–406. Bays, China Enters the Twentieth Century, pp. 103–104. Letter, E.G. Hillier to Townsend, 12 July 1907, HSBC Archive, SGH 277b, p. 12. King, Hong Kong Bank, II, pp. 388–395.

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eventually withdrew its opposition.93 Bland was incensed.94 As Jordan had previously explained to Campbell at the Foreign Office: Bland and Hillier stand for two different conceptions … Bland … wants to hedge in railway construction with nearly all the guarantees and safeguards that have been customary in the past. Hillier is honestly convinced that the day is soon coming when the Chinese may be able to give us a lesson in economical railway making and wishes to approach the whole question from a purely banker’s point of view.95

Eventually, a compromise was reached and, in September 1908, terms for a loan of £5million were closed. Not for the last time, Addis received most of the praise, recording in his diary with ‘a blush’ Thomas Jackson’s eulogistic words: ‘he says but for my determination and pluck [the loan] would never have been floated’.96 Aware of this more sympathetic approach, Zhang, who, by this time, had been appointed Grand Councillor and DirectorGeneral of Railways in Peking, re-opened negotiations with the Bank in relation to the Huguang Concession, whilst at the same time inviting the DAB to make their own bid.97 Addis and the Foreign Office had rejected Guy’s earlier advice that, to reduce such competition, DAB should be brought in as a partner together with France, but in late 1908, they changed tack and, early the following year, at Guy’s instigation, a Three Power Consortium submitted a bid.98 Bland initially led the negotiations, with a view to securing the ancillary contracts but, once again, 93

94

95

96 97

98

Letter, Jordan to Grey, 4 June 1908, TNA FO 371/422, no. 77; Foreign Office file note, 19 September 1908, TNA FO 371/422, no. 308; Jordan to Grey, 25 September 1908, FO 371/422, no. 316; letter, Jordan to Campbell, 1 October 1908, TNA FO 350/5, nos. 71–73, and generally Edwards, British Diplomacy and Finance, pp. 119–121. See, in particular, letter, Bland to E.G. Hillier, 26 June 1908, Bland Collection, Box 24a. Letter, Jordan to Campbell, 9 July 1908, TNA FO 305/4, nos. 52–61 at p. 58. For the relationship between Bland and Hillier, see also King, The Hongkong Bank, II, pp. 418–434. King, The Hongkong Bank, II, p. 395. Letter, Jordan to Grey, 14 October 1908, TNA FO 371/422, no. 462; Edwards, British Diplomacy and Finance, pp. 122–137. Letter, E.G. Hillier to Townsend, 12 July 1907 at pp. 10–12, HSBC Archive, SHG 277b.

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discussions broke down and were only resumed when Hillier contacted Zhang and took over.99 A draft agreement was concluded in May 1909 and a prospectus prepared.100 This was then followed by ‘an incredible interlude of vilification and conspiracy’ by Bland and Morrison, supported by the editor of The Times, who complained amongst other things that Addis and Hillier had preferred German over British interests. Hillier was astonished at Morrison’s attack, writing to him: It is a blow dealt at me from behind by a friend whom I have trusted and respected for over twelve years and it has hurt me more personally than anything I have experience in my life.What I resent above all is that your blow falls not only upon me personally but on the good name of the Bank which I value more than my own. I can neither forgive nor forget this.101

After two years of detailed negotiations, the agreement was finally signed on 20 May 1911.102 As Jordan told Campbell, the policy of international cooperation, had been a ‘triumphant success’.103 What he did not say was that Guy had been the principal architect of that policy. The impetus had come, therefore, from Peking: principally an alliance of Guy, on behalf of the Bank, and Jordan, on behalf of the British government, and, even if the ultimate say rested with Addis and the Foreign Office, frequently instructions were revised and obstacles overcome only because of advice coming from Peking. This was often expressed in trenchant terms, which reflected Hillier’s understanding of the position on the ground: ‘the Chinese Government’, he said, ‘have their own fixed ideas of what they want; and it is not only an entire waste of time to offer them advice but we are not likely to advance our business by an appearance of interference’.104 And again, after another 99

100 101

102

103 104

Letter, Jordan to Campbell, 1 October 1908, TNA FO 350/5, no. 78; Edwards, British Diplomacy Finance, pp. 124–125. King, The Hongkong Bank, II, p. 432. Letters, 26 and 27 July, 1909, Hui-min Lo, The Correspondence of G.E. Morrison 1, King, The Hongkong Bank II, pp. 436–438 at p. 438. King, The Hongkong Bank II, p. 439, Bays, China Enters the Twentieth Century, p. 209, Sun, Chinese Railways, pp. 113–117. Letter, Jordan to Campbell, 24 May 1911, TNA FO 350/7, no. 50 at 52. Letter, E.G. Hillier to Hunter (B & CC), 3 June 1907, HSBC Archive, SHG 277b.

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unsuccessful attempt to browbeat its officials, he referred to ‘the vanity of human ambition when it sets itself to force the Chinese along paths which are not of their choosing’.105 He had met with considerable opposition – internally and externally – but his reading of the Chinese negotiators had paid off. By 1911, some 9,244 kilometres of railway line had been built or was under construction, the bulk of this being financed by the Bank either on its own or, more usually, in conjunction with other Western banks. Whilst this created substantial debt for China, the country was at least beginning to develop an infrastructure over which it had control, in terms of both building the railways, subject to British engineering supervision, and operating them. However, whilst this seemed to auger well for the future, underlying this apparent progress was a continuing resentment against the Qing and its subservience to Western influence. The railway construction contemplated by the Huguang loan would bring matters to a head and rapidly lead to the downfall of the Qing, as we shall see in Chapter 8. CONCLUSION

China’s defeat in the Sino-Japanese War had far-reaching consequences, culminating, if only indirectly, in the Boxer Uprising. Both the war and the Uprising represented watersheds in the careers of all three Hillier brothers, requiring them to deploy the skills and attributes that they had derived from their family background and earlier experiences in China. Whilst Walter Hillier’s involvement as Consul-General in Seoul may appear low-key diplomacy, it reflected Britain’s policy of splendid isolation, comprising a mediating role in which its government stood aloof from the disputes of other powers, content to hold the ring and ensure that that there was no threat to British interests. During this time, Sir Walter Hillier, as he became, also reinforced his reputation as someone who understood and had a particular sensitivity for handling Chinese affairs and it was this that led to his appointment as Political Adviser in 1900, when he was able to exercise a significant mediating role in the aftermath of the Uprising. For Guy Hillier, in the immediate aftermath of the War, the stakes could not have been higher. As an international agency, 105

Letter, E.G. Hillier to Hunter, 18 June 1907, HSBC Archive, SHG 277b.

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the Hongkong Bank was still in its infancy and, having failed to obtain the first tranche of the Indemnity Loan, securing the second tranche was crucial. Had it failed to do so, it would in all probability have also failed in relation to the third and final tranche. Not only would the senior management have lost confidence in Hillier as its Peking agent but Britain would have been without an effective bank to pitch against the other highly competitive agencies in Peking, backed as they were by their governments, at a time when high finance was becoming inextricably linked with diplomacy. In the event, with support from Hart, Hillier outwitted the competitors and secured both loans for the Bank, in partnership with the DAB, thereby establishing what would be a long-term, if at times controversial, relationship between the two institutions. By the turn of the century, the Bank had established itself as the government’s chosen financial instrument with Hillier at the helm in Peking. With little or no relevant experience prior to these events, he succeeded as a result of his tough negotiating skills but also because of his ability to establish personal relationships with his banking partners and the relevant Chinese officials. It was these skills that he was able to carry forward into the next phase, when, again, without any relevant experience and despite fierce opposition from a number of sources, he established the Bank as the principal lender in relation to the financing of China’s railway infrastructure. Again, in order to meet China’s ability to play the Powers off against each other, he had to revise the Bank’s policy and seek alliances with its competitors. It was Harry Hillier’s career, however, that most graphically illustrated the ambiguities of Britain’s presence in China. In terms of the New Territories, he found himself pitted against British interests in Hong Kong, which had the full backing of the Foreign Office. Yet at the same time, the Foreign Office was insistent that British control of the CMC should be maintained. In the wake of the Uprising, it was the CMC which had to continue promoting Chinese interests, whilst ensuring that the Customs revenue was available for discharging China’s mounting debts. For all the difficulties he experienced, it seems clear that Harry Hillier was regarded by Hart as a safe pair of hands, as well as someone able to forge constructive relationships with his Chinese counterparts. By this stage, the acquisition of zones of influence and railway and mining concessions had resulted in foreign domination

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stretching way beyond the treaty ports into inland China. In terms of the British World, that presence needed to be underpinned by social mechanisms that gave it a coherence and identity. In that respect, intimate relations would be a key component of the British presence, as is well-illustrated by the family life of the three Hillier brothers.

7

Intimate Empire Œ

A PARADOX

FAMILY

WAS A key mechanism of Britain’s presence in China, but, paradoxically, the empire could place familial relations under an intolerable strain. For middle-class men, it might offer adventure and opportunity, but for women, the dominant features were more often the risks and uncertainties that such a life entailed. Whereas, by the 1860s, Shanghai’s International Settlement could provide a relatively secure and comfortable way of life, in the other treaty ports, the foreign communities were less well-established, and, in Peking, there was only a small, albeit, cosmopolitan world centred on the foreign legations.1 For the wife of a young British official or semi-official entering that world, it was largely a matter of chance whether she would find herself living in settled surroundings or in a remote out-port, with little or no social or material support.2 This was the challenge that faced the wives of the three Hillier brothers, who so far, have, been only briefly mentioned and whose empire lives are considered in more detail in this chapter. Examining how they both shaped and were shaped by their experiences, it explores why they were willing to take on such risks, the circumstances they encountered when they arrived and the identities they went on to forge for themselves and their families, both in China and at home in England. We have seen in earlier chapters the tensions that the distance and demands of an overseas life could impose on familial

1

2

Wood, No Dogs and Not Many Chinese, pp. 111–138, Michael J. Moser and Yeone Wei-Chih Moser, Foreigners within the Gates: The Legations at Peking (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1993),pp. 11–139. For life in the out-ports, see Robert Nield, ‘Beyond the Bund: Life in the Outports’, in Brunero, Life in Treaty Port China, pp. pp. 73–103. 184

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relations and the litany of early deaths that were so much a part of that life. This pattern would be repeated in the next generation: Walter’s first wife, Lydie, would die in childbirth, and Harry’s first wife, Annie, would also die young, leaving him with a daughter to be cared for; Walter’s second wife, Clare, a ‘new’ and independent woman, keen to fulfil her own personality, would not be able to accept the constraints of life as a consular wife and the ensuing divorce proceedings would leave a bitter legacy for her and the three children; by contrast, Harry and his second wife, Maggie, would enjoy a seemingly companionate marriage, but for that very reason, would find extremely stressful the long periods they had to spend apart; by contrast, again, for Guy’s wife, Ada, Peking was no place in which to bring up a family and, conveniently perhaps for both parties, she would leave soon after the birth of their fourth child, effectively bringing to an end their married life and any intimacy between Guy and his children. Walter also found it difficult to maintain intimacy with his children and, whilst this stemmed in part from the break-up of his marriage, as with Guy, it also reflected the difficulty that fathers had in their filial relationships at this time. By contrast, Harry enjoyed a good relationship with his children, which flourished during their time in Hong Kong but was then subjected to the same strains of separation, which he and his two brothers had had to endure in their early childhood. Apart from the risk of ‘contamination’ through contact with local people, Willie, Walter and Harry had been sent to England at such a young age because of Hong Kong’s climate and the lack of adequate medical services in the event of their falling ill. By the time they returned as adults, there was a Customs Medical Service in the treaty ports, with assigned doctors religiously preparing detailed reports, analysing the correspondence between place, race and factors such as food. How useful these were in addressing the true causes of illnesses is, however, questionable and much of the China Coast continued to be seen as unhealthy.3 Many illnesses were simply described as ‘diseases of the tropics’ and attributed to ‘environmental geography’, most of all climate, 3

For this and the next paragraph, see Stephanie Villalta Puig, ‘Treaty Ports and the Medical Geography of China: Imperial Maritime Customs Service Approaches to Climate and Disease’ in Brunero, Life in Treaty Port China, pp. 107–136 ; see also Kerrie L. Macpherson, ‘A wilderness of marshes’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).

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with practitioners advising that the best policy was ‘to make China as Europe as we can’, that is, to replicate Western conditions, in particular food and clothing. Not surprisingly, given the extremely unhealthy English diet, this was of little benefit and also meant that there was little attempt to diagnose the underlying cause. Instead, there was an undue emphasis on moving the patient to a supposedly healthier location and, for women experiencing difficulties in their pregnancy, this was often of little benefit. Whilst the seaside resort of Yantai had an excellent record in relation to childbirth, elsewhere the mortality rate was alarmingly high, but this was often due not so much to climate as to the ignorance of the local midwives. Because the practices were so dubious, there was a reluctance to summon any help until it was too late, a four-day labour being not uncommon, and if the mother survived, she was often too sick to breast-feed her child. Healthy in other respects, Shanghai was no exception, the report for 1876 stating that, of forty-one European children delivered full-term, only twenty were nursed by their mothers. Many others were suckled by local ‘agricultural women’, whose milk, ‘though abundant [was] often poor’ or bottle-fed with cow’s milk, which might also be of a dubious quality. Whilst not significantly worse than in London, there was a high infant mortality rate.4 For women, there seems to have been a remarkable lack of informed advice. Dr James Henderson, for example, produced a tract, entitled Hints for the Preservation of Health in China, which provided plenty of ‘hints’ about food, clothing and the significance of different climatic conditions, But it was written exclusively with men in mind and women are not mentioned. It follows that there were no ‘hints’ in relation to pregnancy, confinement or breastfeeding and masculine coyness led to medical certificates avoiding ‘indelicate precision about ladies’ illnesses’.5 Although not referred to in any of the literature, there were also less specific illnesses, from which Western women tended to suffer. Both Maggie and Ada complained of problems, which for a long time could not be identified and, although Ada would ultimately be diagnosed with cancer, there is a sense that, 4

5

Surgeon-General C.A. Gordon, An epitome of the reports of the medical officers to the Chinese imperial maritime customs service, from 1871 to 1882 (London: Ballière, Tindall, & Cox, 1884), pp. 217–222, Wellcome Library, http://archive.or/ detail/ b20416179 , accessed November 2019. Henderson, Shanghai Hygiene, Coates, China Consuls, p. 99.

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in both cases, the earlier symptoms may have been in part attributable to more psychological factors, including being separated from their husbands. Destructive though such separations were on an individual level, contact would be maintained through regular correspondence and, when considering their impact on the shaping of empire, we must have in mind how much these relationships were under-scored by letter-writing and how ‘these threads of family affection’ helped bind together the disparate parts of this world.6 This was the paradox of intimate empire. MARRIAGE AND LOSS

British institutions in China had an ambivalent approach to staff marrying early in their careers. On the one hand, marriage conferred respectability and reduced the risk of sexual transgression, provided it was with a ‘suitable’ partner. On the other hand, because higher salaries were required to meet the costs of maintaining a wife and family, it was discouraged on the pretext that China was too unhealthy and generally unsuitable for family life.7 The fact that ‘the Foreign office paid not a farthing towards the cost of home leave’ which could amount to as much as £700, when it included a wife and two children, was a further disincentive.8 As a result, many men – and the Hillier brothers were no exception – did not marry until they were in their thirties.This was also because of the dearth of available partners in China. In Shanghai, the 1876 census showed that, of a population of 1,673 Westerners in the International Settlement, only 296 were female, and, of these, only a fraction will have been both unmarried and ‘suitable’. Marriage to a Chinese woman was seen as wholly unacceptable and was effectively forbidden in the consular service as being detrimental to the public interest.9 For unmarried heterosexual men, sexual opportunity had to be found almost exclusively with non-Western women, whether as mistresses, concubines or more casual acquaintances. Whilst it later became less common, in the 6 7

8 9

Ishiguro, Nothing to Write Home about, pp. 31–40. Coates, China Consuls, pp. 96–99 and 341–342, Ladds, Empire Careers, pp. 149 –152, King, The Hongkong Bank, I, pp. 564 and 570–575. Coates, China Consuls, pp. 89 and 342–343. Census: SMC, Annual Report 1876, p. 14; Coates, China Consuls, pp. 441–443; see also Dyce, Personal Reminiscences, pp. 209–210.

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1860s and 1870s, the keeping of a Chinese mistress was regarded as fairly standard. In Hankou – Harry’s first posting – there were generally, according to J.O.P. Bland, ‘one or two Chinese mistresses on the strength of the Customs Mess’. Far from home, the Hillier brothers may well have been no different from many of their colleagues, despite their strong religious principles.10 Not surprisingly the family papers are silent on this subject. Given these circumstances, friendship with male colleagues was important and carefully nurtured. The Consular Service and the CMC provided accommodation for their staff which gave rise to a collegiate, if at times ‘laddish’, atmosphere,‘messing’ together being an essential part of the socialisation process.11 The Bank’s staff, on the other hand, had to fend for themselves.12 In his early days in Shanghai, Guy shared his accommodation with two friends on the Soochow Creek and spent many of his weekends in a houseboat, shooting the game that was so plentiful around Shanghai or taking part in vigorous sporting activities, including horse-racing.13 Leisure hours were spent in the port’s exclusively male clubs which, graded according to class, instilled an institutional culture. It also taught these young men how to lead emotionally self-sufficient lives, an attribute that might be reinforced for those – mainly officials and semi-officials – who were able to speak Chinese. This was the world which a middle-class Western woman would be entering and with whose norms she would be expected to comply, one in which, in the words of Joanna De Groot: […] manliness and empire confirmed one another, guaranteed one another, enhanced one another, whether in practical disciplines of commerce and government or in the escape zones of writing, travel and art.14 10

11

12 13 14

Bickers, Scramble for China, pp. 224–225 and 311, Ladds, Empire Careers, pp. 142– 153, Coates, China Consuls, pp. 59–60 and 100; cf. Ronald Hyam, Empire and Sexuality: The British Experience, Manchester : Manchester University Press, 1990), p. 2 and seriatim. Cf. The Journey of Augustus Margary, from Shanghai to Bhamo, and back to Manwyne (London: Macmillan & Co., 1876), pp. 1–11; Coates, China Consuls, p. 86. King, The Hongkong Bank, II, p. 184. Eleanor Hillier, ‘Notes on E.G. Hillier’. Joanna De Groot, ‘“Sex” and “Race”: the construction of language and image in the nineteenth century’ in Hall, Cultures of Empire, pp. 37–60, at p. 56. Of the extensive literature on this topic, see in particular, Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities in 19th Century Britain, pp. 5–8, Clare Midgley, ‘Introduction. Gender and Imperialism: mapping the connections’, in Clare Midgley (ed.), Gender and

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Some women had little difficulty in doing so and fulfilling the role of ‘the incorporated wife’, in which their social character would be ‘an intimate function of [their] husband’s occupational identity and culture’, albeit some would still retain and express a measure of independence. Others, however, would find it more difficult to adjust, either because they were too shy and ‘inexperienced’ or because they were unwilling to subscribe to these colonial norms.15 The Hillier wives would provide their full spread of examples. Despite the official discouragement of early marriage and the worries about China’s unhealthy climate, by the early 1870s, there was, according to Consul Medhurst, ‘a marrying mania amongst the young British in China’. There were, he continued, ‘many advantages awaiting any fair ladies who may contemplate going out’ for whom ‘the style of life is such that they need never be oppressed by the thought that they are residents in a comparatively barbarous country’.16 This may have been sufficient to persuade young Lydie Alston Hole to put caution to one side and accept Walter Hillier’s proposal. Sadly, she would find little basis for Medhurst’s optimism. Lydie Alston Hole

Walter fell for Lydie either during his first period of leave or, two years later in 1877, when he returned to England, accompanying the Chinese envoys. She was a niece of his stepfather, Charles Marshall Hole, and it was towards the end of that second visit that they became officially engaged. According to a family letter, Lydie was ‘very inexperienced’ and, even allowing for Walter’s credentials as a rising consular official, we need to ask why this ingenue was willing to give up family, friends and comfortable surroundings and set off for a distant and alien country, with all the problems that that might entail. To begin with, the prospects for a young middle-class woman in England were not promising. Apart from work as a governess,

15

16

Imperialism, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), pp. 1–18 at p. 14 and Andrew Hillier, ‘Three Brothers in China’, unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Bristol, 2016, pp. 31–32,113, 212, 237 and 247. Hilary Callan and Shirley Ardener, ‘Introduction’ in Hilary Callan and Shirley Ardener (eds), The Incorporated Wife (London: Croom Helm, 1984), pp. 1–26, at p. 1; see also Beverley Gartrell, ‘Colonial Wives: Villains or Victims’ in Callan, The Incorporated Wife, at pp. 167–174. Medhurst, Foreigner in Far Cathay, pp. 26–27.

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there were few employment opportunities and, in terms of marriage, there was a significant shortage of eligible men, precisely because so many had emigrated by the 1870s.17 Even at Lydie’s age – she was just twenty-two – a woman would start to worry about becoming ‘redundant’ or ‘an old maid’, and being left to care for an ageing parent or relative.18 As a result, many would resort to the empire to find a suitable husband.19 Whilst life in China was much less Anglicised than in the Raj, Lydie at least had the comfort of Medhurst’s comments, supported as they will have been by her suitor, Walter Hillier. Moreover, as the merchant, Charles Dyce, recalled in his memoirs, there was at this time a romance about anyone who had been to ‘Cathay’, with their ‘knowledge of those mysterious and turbulent parts of the world [which] gave them the right to speak with confidence’.20 In short, for Lydie, it must have seemed to be a risk worth taking. The wedding took place on 18 October 1877 at All Souls Church, Marylebone and a month later, having journeyed through France by train, the newly-married couple joined the Messageries Maritimes Steamer, Tigre, at Marseille and reached a wintry Peking early the next year.21 Promoted to 1st Class Assistant Chinese Secretary and Acting Head of Interpreters, Walter may have been expecting to return to the relative comfort of the Peking Legation but, instead, he was assigned to Ningbo. With Lydie soon expecting a baby, this was far from ideal.There was only a small Western community, malaria and dysentery were common and, in the middle of the year, major riots broke out against the local tax, likin. As Walter reported, there were scenes, ‘the like of which has not been known in the neighbourhood since the rebel occupation fifteen years ago’ and, although he emphasised that the safety of the foreign settlement was not at risk, for Lydie the unrest must have been alarming.22 Moreover, Walter was an ambitious young man and, as is clear 17

18

19

20

21 22

Philippa Levine, Victorian Feminism, 1850–1950 (London: Hutchinson, 1987), pp. 83–84. Rita Kranidis, The Victorian Spinster and Colonial Emigration: Contested Subjects (London: St Martin’s Press, 1994), pp. 37–39. Anne de Courcy, The Fishing Fleet: Husband-Hunting in the Raj (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012), pp. 2, 11, 139–140 and 202–205. Charles Dyce, Personal reminiscences of thirty years’ residence in the Model Settlement (London: Chapman & Hall, 1906), p. 5. See letter, W. Hillier to Lord Derby, 31 October 1877, FO 17/766, nos. 220–221. Coates, China Consuls, p. 217, W.C. Hillier, report, 3 September 1878, TNA FO 228/613, no. 332–344, quote at p. 332.

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from this and a number of other lengthy reports, was preoccupied with his work. It was, therefore, decided she should have the baby in Shanghai, where she would have more stable surroundings and, presumably, better facilities. However, she will have been very much on her own – Walter Medhurst had retired the previous year and returned to England with his family and so was not available to provide support.According to a letter from Walter’s half-sister, Gina Brady, ‘left to find her feet in the China of those days, [Lydie’s] health gave way very soon. She went into a decline and died when her baby was born’.23 Two short entries appeared side by side in The North China Herald, the first recording the birth of a daughter (unnamed) on 3 December 1878 in Shanghai and the second, the death of Lydie the following day.24 The child, presumably, also died, although there is no mention of this.25 What do these events tell us about life for a young married woman coming out to China? Difficulties in Lydie’s pregnancy had begun early on but it seems that she received little or no support even when she came to Shanghai.26 Devoted to his work, Walter had spent ten years as a single man in empire. Speaking Chinese fluently, he was at ease in this world that was so strange to Lydie and he may have found it difficult coming to terms with the obligations of married life. It was for her to make a home for her husband, to produce children and not to fall ill; this was part of her duty and ‘lofty status’ as a mother (or prospective mother) in empire.27 We cannot know how much her initial illness was attributable to these conditions, but they can only have reinforced her sense of isolation. Far from home and in the absence of ‘a loving and supporting family’, Lydie had been denied ‘the good Christian death’, and in the absence of the rituals, which were such an important part of Victorian grieving, the loss will have been all the 23 24 25

26

27

Letter, Gina Brady to Harold Hillier, 15 September 1960 (Hillier Collection). NCH, 5 December 1878, p. 537. This was not unusual. The tombstone of Walter Medhurst junior’s infant daughter, Ann, mentions only her date of birth. Nonetheless, the fact that she is not named on Lydie’s grave is puzzling. Cf. Clare Midgley, ‘Introduction: Gender and Imperialism’, pp. 1–18 at p. 14; see also Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities in 19th Century Britain, p. 187. Anna Davin, ‘Imperialism and Motherhood’ in Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler (eds), Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 87–151, pp. 87–97.

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more poignant for Walter.28 Moreover, it was now no longer acceptable for the bereaved, whether male or female, to weep openly ‘without shame’.29 Six years earlier Charles Darwin had declared that ‘Englishmen rarely cry’ whilst ‘savages weep copiously from very slight causes’, causing a ‘cult of manliness and masculine reserve’ to set in, particularly, in the empire.30 Without relations or intimates to carry out the final rites of dressing Lydie and laying her out, Walter had to grieve alone. His only consolation was that his brother, Harry, was in Hankou, and although it entailed a four-day boat journey up the Yangzi, it was worth making the effort in order for the two to spend Christmas together.31 As we have already seen in the case of Walter’s mother Eliza, without family on hand, letters provided the principal way of sharing grief and participating in ‘collective mourning’, with lengthy descriptions of the deceased’s last hours.32 Walter had to communicate the sad news both to his mother and to Lydie’s family, a drawn-out process, given the distances involved. AIthough an initial telegram may have been sent, it will have been in late January 1879 that the first black-edged envelopes arrived in England and sometime in late March before Walter received any response, from his and Lydie’s family. Placing Lydie’s death in a wider context, the British community would often use such events as an opportunity to mount impressive imperial pageants. By chance, the same edition of the North China Herald, that recorded Walter’s arrival from Ningbo earlier in the year, described the funeral of his immediate superior, W.S.F. Mayers, the highly respected Chinese Secretary, who had died suddenly at the age of just thirty-nine. A lavish ceremony was laid on in Shanghai: the coffin was placed on a gun carriage covered with the Union Jack drawn by a detachment from the Royal Navy, and a procession of mourners (of which Walter was no doubt one) took well over an hour to walk from Holy 28 29 30

31

32

Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family,pp. 3 and 26. Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family, p. 4. Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (London: John Murray, 1872), p. 155 and pp. 375–387; cf. Thomas Dixon, Weeping Britannia: Portrait of a Nation in Tears (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 185–205, especially pp. 195–197; Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family, p. 5. The passenger list shows Walter returning from Hankou to Shanghai per SS. Peking: NCH, 28 December 1878, p. 609. Ishiguro, Nothing to write home about, pp. 151–167.

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Trinity Cathedral to the cemetery.33 But, for the wives and children of minor consular officials there was a very different approach. Not only was there no pomp but, if there was any mention of the death, it was, as P.D. Coates says, wrapped up in ‘curious circumlocutions.’34 Lydie’s death seems to have gone unnoticed in the consular correspondence and a calm exterior was essential in the empire setting when appearances had to be maintained, certainly by the male community, in the presence of other Europeans and the local people. Photographs of Lydie were retained in the family albums and there were also photographs of her grave (Plate 14) in the Shanghai cemetery, taken about a year later.35 The setting is quintessentially English and, with the inscription referring to Walter’s position in the Consular Service, it constituted both a site of memory and a symbol of the imperial presence. Thus, death in the overseas setting might reinforce connections between the family and the bereaved, and with these mementoes, Lydie might not be wholly lost from memory.36 In Search of a Lost Brother

As we have seen, Walter Hillier immersed himself in famine relief work before returning to Peking, where his brother, Harry, joined him the following year. Just as Walter was about to leave for a period of furlough, he and Harry received news about their elder brother, Willie, that changed Walter’s plans. Always restless, Willie had quickly tired of his work in the London and Brazilian Bank 33 34 35

36

NCH, 28 March 1878, p. 322. Coates, China Consuls, p. 99. The photograph comes from the Edward Bangs Drew Collection, HarvardYenching Library. Bangs Drew was in the CMC and had known Walter in Ningbo, as is evidenced by other photographs in the Collection. Ishiguro, Nothing to write home about, pp. 151–181. For sites of memory, see Pierre Nora, Pierre, ‘Between memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire,’ trans. Marc Roudebush, Representations 26 (1989), pp. 7–25, at p. 22. For this cemetery, see Christian Henriot, ‘The Colonial Space of Death: Shanghai Cemeteries, 1844– 1949’ in Goodman, Twentieth Century Colonialism and China, pp. 108–133, and Andrew Prescott Keating, ‘The Empire of the Dead: British Burial Abroad and the Formation of National Identity’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Berkeley, University of California, 2011. For a discussion of how architectural forms can represent the imperial presence, see Ian Baucom, Out of Place: Englishness, Empire, and the Locations of Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), especially, pp. 70 and 77–82.

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and, according to the Bank’s register, had ‘left for the River Plate’.37 Where he went is unclear but pasted into a family album, there is an undated photograph, taken in Laredo, Galveston, on the borders of Texas and Mexico, showing that contact was maintained. His brothers knew that Willie was prospecting for silver and gold somewhere near the California/ Mexican border, but beyond that, it seems that they had had no contact with him. Typically adventurous, Walter decided to track down his brother and asked Harry to accompany him. His account, completed many years later, is characteristically enigmatic, being signed ‘W.H.T.’ – an amalgam of the first initial of his English name, W., and those of his Chinese name, Hsi Tsai-ming, ⚫ᅾ᫂.38 It begins in Conradian vein: In 1881, after several years’ residence in China, I found it necessary to come to England for a few months, and, as a friend from Peking was travelling through America, in order to see his brother who was at work there, I decided to travel with him.39

In fact, it was Walter who was travelling through America in order to see his brother, Willie, and the ‘friend’ accompanying him was almost certainly Harry. Having arrived in San Francisco,Walter and Harry journeyed by rail and wagon, horseback and mule through what was still ‘frontier country’. Encountering encampments of Indians, they put up in hostels where most of the men were drunk and ‘revolvers were ready to hand’. After six weeks, they finally reached Laredo, where they were told that ‘the brother’ was some twenty-five miles away across the Mexican border; so, the following day, having hired horses they set off again.After a day’s ride, they reached a camp but were told that Willie ‘had moved some distance further on’. And there, the quest ended, because, so the journal says, they ‘could not spare the time’, a somewhat implausible 37

38

39

Willie’s dates of service are recorded as 10 May 1871 to 31 August 1874, Archives of London & Brazilian Bank, London University: UCL Special Collections, BOLSA/G, Staff Register, Vol. 1, F/3/6/5.1/4. Walter’s Chinese name can be found in the Introduction to Walter Hillier, The Chinese Language and how to Learn it: A Manual for Beginners (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co Ltd., 1907), written by Wang Dixie. I am grateful to Alex Thompson for his help on this. W.H.T., ‘Across Texas in the Early Eighties’ (Hillier Collection). That it was written in 1927 is clear from a reference on page 10 but it must have been typed after Walter’s death by his wife, Marion Hillier, as the last page bears the date, October 1928, and her initials.

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explanation, given the amount of effort they had already put into the search. More probably, they knew Willie was evading them and did not want to be found. This story would have gone untold had Walter not chosen to write it up shortly before he died. To understand why he did so, it is necessary to fast-forward some fourteen years. Some contact between Willie and the family was maintained – Guy sent him money from time to time, an interesting example of how remittances provided a means of maintaining familial links within empire.40 But Willie’s luck did not change: he continued searching for gold and began to drink heavily. In August 1895, after a year’s silence, Guy received a letter sent by a Mr Woolrich in Tehuantepec, Mexico, to his correspondent in the San Francisco branch of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, telling him that Willie was dead. Having drunk away the last monies that Guy had forwarded to him, he had set off once again. The letter continues: […] poor Hillier died on the 25th of August of last year [1894], he blew out his brains at an encampment in the Chimalapa Hills… almost in the presence of his friends…leaving a note saying he was weary of life.41

That these letters were retained in the family papers may show how deeply the loss was felt. However, the true story remained concealed, the family history simply recording that he died of ‘a fever’.42 Whilst we cannot be sure as to why Willie could never settle, the experience of separation and loss in early childhood may well have contributed to his sense of insecurity. All this of course only happened many years later. Having given up the search, the brothers split up: Walter headed for New York and England and Harry began the return journey to China but, at some point, had an encounter that would change his life. Annie Lowe Hudson

Although the family papers are silent on what took place, it is clear that, when Harry set off the following year to take up his 40 41

42

Magee, Empire and Globalisation, pp. 97–105. Letter, M. Tompkins to E.G. Hillier, 24 August 1895, enclosing letter, Thomas H. Woolrich to M. Tompkins, 5 August 1895 (Hillier Collection). Harold D. Hillier, ‘Family History’ p. 54.

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appointment at the CMC’s London Office, he was already engaged – as Hart told the London manager, Campbell, before he left, ‘Hillier would probably marry in America and will be three months on the way home’. His fiancée was Annie Lowe Hudson and, as planned, the wedding took place on 7 June 1882 in Oakland, California.43 Annie’s late father, W.K. Hudson, a lumber dealer and ‘forty-niner’, who had come from the east coast in the wake of the California gold-rush, had died some nine years before, aged forty-six, leaving her mother with three children to bring up.44 Annie was still living at home and the only time that Harry could possibly have met her was during his earlier trip with his brother,Walter.Whatever the circumstances in which they became engaged, it can only have been after the briefest of courtships. Whether or not she, like Lydie, was an ingénue, Annie had to come to terms with two very different worlds – the one she encountered when she arrived in England in August 1882 and the one she encountered three years later, when she and Harry began their life in China. Given the fact that Harry’s mother, Eliza, had previously expressed considerable reservations about ‘bumptious yankees’, Annie may not have found her particularly welcoming. However, Walter was still on leave in England and had recently become engaged. As we will see below, his fiancée, Clare, was anything but inexperienced and, assuming Annie lived up to the Californian reputation of being feisty and adventurous, the two may well have found much in common. However, they can only have been together for a short time as, married in September 1882, Walter and Clare left for China early the following year. Annie’s time in England was over-shadowed by illness. Her first child, Edna, always known as Eddie, was born on 4 July 1883, but having apparently made a good recovery, she then suffered complications. By the end of August, Campbell was writing to Hart: Hillier’s wife is in a v. weak condition since her confinement and I should not be surprised if he were to lose her. The doctor having advised a change to the sea, he took her to Brighton for 10 days, 43

44

See NCH, 21 July 1882, p. 75, letter, Hart to Campbell, 28 April 1882, no. 360, Fairbank, I.G. in Peking. Cf. Mary Hill, Gold: the California Story (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California, 1999), pp. 35–61.

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but I do not think she has gained any strength; and he is now going to send her to his married sister in Cheshire.45

Staying with Harry’s sister, Maudie Swindells, will have provided a comfortable convalescence and Annie will also have been able to meet more of the family, including Maudie’s two eldest children, Geoffrey and Harry. She began to recover and, by October, Hart was able to write to Harry in light-hearted vein, commenting on the propitious date of Eddie’s birth: Congratulations on the safe arrival of Miss Edna; as that determined young person insisted on making her debut on the “glorious fourth” I wonder you don’t call her America or Columbia or July IV to mark the coincidence.46

The letter’s amicable tone – it ends with Hart saying that they are keeping up their music – is striking because, in general, he looked unfavourably on “Married Assistants” and issued a number of Circulars warning of the perils of early matrimony. It also suggests that Harry’s earlier time in Peking had gone well and the fact that he kept this letter throughout his life shows the importance he attached to it. However, just as Annie was recovering, he then became ill, following a routine operation and Campbell became extremely concerned, writing to Hart, ‘Hillier is in a precarious state. A haemorrhage came on last Friday night and several hours elapsed before it could be stopped.’47 Campbell was, again, extremely solicitous and brought in the Customs’ Physician, the highly-regarded Dr Macrae, and only then did Harry begin to recover, managing a slow return to work in March, although still weak and ‘seedy’. When the London appointment ended the following year, 1885, Harry was due some leave and he and Annie were able to spend time with his family in Devon: Eliza and her two children, Hugh and Gina, in Tiverton, Aunt Martha and her two girls, Lizzie and Millie, both of whom were still living at home, in nearby 45

46 47

Letter, Campbell to Hart, 31 August 1883, no. 1103, following an earlier letter, Campbell to Hart, 10 August 1883, no. 1094 in Chen , Archives of China’s Imperial Maritime Customs. Letter, Hart to H.M. Hillier, 26 October 1883 (Hillier Collection). Letter, Campbell to Hart, 22 February 1884, no. 1172, Chen, Archives of China’s Imperial Maritime Customs.

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Teignmouth, and Walter Medhurst, who had retired to Torquay. Returning to China, they stayed with Annie’s family in Oakland, and Harry took the opportunity to purchase some land, with a view to settling there when he came to retire.48 His first posting on his return was to Tianjin. With Guy also working there and Walter and Clare in Peking, there was scope for family get-togethers. Although it was Annie’s first experience of China, she had at least come across Chinese people given their recent influx into California in search of gold and her family employed a Chinese servant.49 However, perhaps never having full-recovered from her illness, she was soon struck down again and, this time, it was much more serious, Hart recording in his diary, ‘Mrs Hillier, Tientsin, very ill: typhoid’.50 She and Harry went to Yantai, to get the benefit of its sea air, but the case was hopeless and Annie died on 23 July 1886.51 Whilst Walter and Guy may have attended the funeral, essentially, this was another solitary bereavement, and one that will have been accompanied by mourning correspondence with both England and Annie’s family in California. Although the grave can no longer be found, she must have been buried in Yantai’s European cemetery on Temple Hill, with a suitable memorial on her headstone, and no doubt, photographs to be shared. Arrangements then had to be made for Eddie to be sent to California to be cared for by her grandmother – presumably she was entrusted to her amah or nanny for the long journey. Although this was a painful separation for both father and daughter, it meant that connections with Annie’s family would be maintained. Such deaths were all too common for Customs men and, having made the arrangements for Eddie, Harry resumed his work as normal.52 Routine though such deaths were, both shaped the narrative of Britain’s presence in China and were memorialised in ways that 48 49

50

51

52

For the land purchase, see Harold D. Hillier, ‘Family History’, p. 61. Elizabeth Sinn, Pacific Crossing: California Gold, Chinese Migration, and the Making of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013), pp. 54 and 137–189. Journal of Sir Robert Hart, 27 February 1886, Sir Robert Hart Collection, Q.U.B., MS. 15/1/31, p. 215. NCH, 23 July 1886, p. 77. For Yantai’s climate, see Stephanie Villalta Puig ‘Treaty Ports and the Medical Geography of China: Imperial and Maritime Customs Service Approaches to Climate and Disease’ in Donna Brunero and Stephanie Villalta Puig (eds), Life in Treaty Port China and Japan (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan,2018), p. 107-135 at pp. 113-116. Ladds, Empire Careers, pp. 169–171.

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formed connections across the empire. And, through his daughter, Eddie, Harry would be able to maintain contact with his Californian in-laws and, joining him when he re-married three years later, she would be a constant reminder of these events. By contrast,Walter had drawn a line under his early life. Highly respected as the Legation’s Chinese Secretary and now married with two young children, his career seemed to be thriving. However, although his wife, Clare, appeared to be enjoying her life in Peking, difficulties may already have been occurring in the marriage. Before examining how it developed, we first need to have some understanding of her character. INCORPORATED AND UNINCORPORATED WIVES

Clare St George Ord

Although she was only twenty-one years old, when she married Walter Hillier, Clare St George Ord was, unlike Lydie, far from being ‘inexperienced’. On the contrary, she was extrovert, flamboyant and independent and in some ways typified what the Saturday Review had famously described as ‘the Girl of the Period’, that is a girl who was no longer ‘tender, loving, retiring or domestic’ and, as a result, ‘does not marry easily, for men are afraid of her, and with reason’.53 If Clare was a woman of her time, she also owed some of her character to her background and to the unusual circumstances in which her mother, Almeria Ord, had married. Almeria had been brought up in Dominica by her uncle, Harry St George Ord, the island’s Colonial Governor, and, when she was just sixteen, she was informed that she was to marry his cousin, Augustus William Ord, a Colonel in the British Army who was twice her age. It was not a happy union. Clare, their only child, was born in 1861. Ord then ran into debt and was obliged to resign his commission. When Walter Hillier started courting Clare, during his leave, 53

Anon. (Mrs Lynn Linton), ‘The Girl of the Period’, Saturday Review, 14 March 1868; the term became a catchword of the day, figuring in cartoons, farces and a host of articles, many reprinted in book form in 1883, to scorn and ‘annihilate’ any woman who sought to free herself from the patriarchal straitjacket, provoking a ‘tempest of fury’ from women’s magazines – see Duncan Crow, The Victorian Woman (George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1971), pp. 184–209, pp. 329–334 and 339– 341; see also C. Willett Cunnington, Feminine attitudes in the nineteenth century (London: W. Heinemann, Ltd., 1935), pp. 167–274.

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her father was only too happy to encourage the match, particularly as she would be separated from a considerably less suitable individual, with whom she had been associating.54 Married on 13 September 1882 at St James’ Church, Teignmouth, they set off for China at the end of the year. Their first child, Florrie, was born on 27 July 1883 and their second, Gerald, two years later.55 With an amah and servants on hand, Clare was now free to pursue her favourite pastimes – dancing and amateur dramatics and entertaining Peking’s somewhat staid legation world. And she was doing so in her own right, not as an incorporated wife in order to further her husband’s career, although it was certainly not doing Walter any harm; on the contrary it was enhancing his standing in the community, with Robert Hart taking a particular shine to his vivacious wife. Straddling the public and private spheres, Clare and her ‘set’ were vitalising the otherwise dull and routine life of this small cosmopolitan world, much to the delight of the English newspapers.56 According to the anonymous contributor to the North China Herald, the 1885-86 ‘season’ had been ‘exceptionally lively’ and, ‘for the last four months the social life of our community has proved to be a most animated one…So far as dinner parties are concerned, this winter without doubt surpasses any previous one.’ Led by the Russian Minister’s wife, ‘the amiable and charming’ Madame Popoff, who gave ‘a splendid ball’ every two weeks, there were also riding and skating parties and many similar events. Invited to the Russian fancy dress ball (bal cotumé), Clare came dressed as a tambourine girl, featuring alongside William Rockhill, a secretary in the American legation, who appeared first as a Tibetan and then as a baby.57 Chinese officials were of course not invited – they would in any event have declined to attend – and these functions 54

55

56 57

This strange story, and much more, is told in a letter from Clare’s daughter, Cissie Thornton to Harold D. Hillier, 4 December 1959 (Hillier Collection). It was only retained because of Harold’s interest in the impressive genealogy of the Ord family and not because of his interest in these intimate details. For some reason, Gerald was always known as ‘Tommy’ but, to avoid confusion, I have used his real name. For the social life in Peking, see Moser, Foreigners within the Gates, pp. 36–38. ‘Note from Peking’, NCH, 10 February 1886, pp. 147–148, the Journal of Sir Robert Hart, 14 January 1886, Sir Robert Hart Collection, Q.U.B, MS.15/1/31/158. Rockhill became a close friend of Walter’s, – see letter, W.C. Hillier to William Rockhill, 7 December 1892 (Rockhill Papers) and was appointed American Minister to Peking in 1905.

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implicitly reinforced the sense of camaraderie but also the insularity of the diplomatic fraternity. In the summer months, there were weekly garden parties and, when it grew too hot, the legation staff repaired to the relative cool and tranquillity of the western hills.58 In the evenings, Clare and Walter would often attend Hart’s soirées. With Guy Hillier playing the organ, there was plenty of dancing, Hart’s diary recording how Clare looked ‘very pretty’ and was teaching him the fashionable new form of waltz, which, she told him, ‘went fairly well for a first lesson’.59 On the pretext of seeing the children, Hart called on Clare: ‘Florrie made friends with me and the little boy is a fine wee man’, and three days later he was lending her his horse.60 For Hart, this was an ideal relationship – flirtatious but without risk – one that he recorded in detail and that could only be of benefit to Walter and his two brothers, as they consolidated their network of contacts.61 With little time for this social whirl, Walter preferred to concentrate on his work and Chinese studies. But these were taking their toll on his eyesight and treatment in England was required as a matter of urgency. Significantly, perhaps, whilst Clare and the children left China in September 1886, the North China Herald ‘learning with regret we are going to lose Mrs Hillier to Europe’, Walter followed only nine months later.62 He and Clare then spent some fifteen months in England, some of it in Devon with their families. Walter’s mother, had died the previous year, leaving Gina to look after her father, whilst her brother, Hugh was about to start his career at the Bar. In April 1888, Clare gave birth to a third child, Muriel, and with Walter’s eye-sight seemingly improved, they prepared to return to China. Despite the ten year age difference, Gina got on well with Clare and asked if she could go with them, partly to look after the children but also, no doubt, to be released from looking after her father and in order to find 58 59

60

61

62

J.O.P. Bland, Something Light (London: W. Heinemann Ltd., 1924), pp. 105–106. Journal of Sir Robert Hart, 25 November 1885 and 12 February 1886, Sir Robert Hart Collection, Q.U.B., MS15/1/31/95 and 15/1/31/196. Journal of Sir Robert Hart, 9 February 1886, Sir Robert Hart Collection, Q.U.B., MS15/1/31/192. For Hart’s relationships with women, see Mary Tiffen, Friends of Sir Robert Hart: Three Generations of Carrall Women in China (Crewkerne: Tiffania Books, 2012), pp. 304–306 and passim; there is also an interesting vignette in Paul King’s memoir, In the Customs Service, p. 235; for further entries, see Journal of Sir Robert Hart, 18 November 1885 to 14 April, 1886, Sir Robert Hart Collection, Q.U.B., MS 15/1, 31/87–31/273. NCH, 4 September 1886, p. 256.

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a husband. Leaving in September 1888, they set sail for Canada, where they took the recently-opened Canadian Pacific Railway to Vancouver, and there they caught the boat for Yokohama.63 Arriving in Peking, Clare was able to pick up her old contacts, bringing them news of England and of the latest fashions. She was also able to introduce Gina to its social life – a fresh young face was always welcome and, if she was in search of a husband, the quest quickly bore fruit. Having caught the eye of the North China Herald and of Peking’s young set, within months, Gina was engaged to a genial Irishman, Herbert Brady, currently the Legation’s accountant and someone obviously destined for a successful consular career.64 These events were being closely observed and recorded by Walter Clennell, who, as we have seen, had recently arrived, as one of the Legation’s student interpreters. Captivated by the family, he told his mother, ‘little Florence Hillier is the prettiest child I have seen since I left England’ and ‘Mrs Hillier is exceedingly beautiful … She looks at her best, probably, because she has just come back from a two year visit to England’. The easy-to-use Kodak camera had just come on the market and was the latest craze and, as Clennell noted: […] the photography goes on unchecked in the Legation. Mrs Wingfield, the two Walshams, Mortimore and Brady are all constantly at it, if it is not too cold, and they talk of very little else when they are indoors. 65

Over the next twelve months, Clennell and his fellow interpreters spent a great deal of time with Clare and Gina, attending parties, skating and playing tennis and making trips to the western hills. He paints a picture of a relaxed and informal life, in which the children, although looked after by their amah, were not just seen but also heard. At the end of the year, he enthusiastically described the arrangements for Christmas: As we are all going out on Christmas Day to dinner at the Hilliers (the Walshams are not having a Legation Dinner), I intend 63 64 65

NCH, 21 September 1888, p. 322. See also Chapter 5. NCH, 29 March 1889, p. 373. Letters home, Clennell, 21 November and 5 December 1888, Clennell, ‘Destination Peking’; see also https://hpchina.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/2017/01/26/ the-kodak-comes-to-peking/ accessed September 2019.

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giving my turkey to the Mess, for New Year’s Day … After an hour or two skating at the rink, we all went round to spend the evening, according to invitation… Mr Hillier’s brother [Guy] and Mr Brady were the only other guests, so that there were two ladies (Mrs Hillier and Miss Hole) to seven men. This is about the usual proportion at Peking parties. The dinner included the usual things, and antelope. … After dinner the two Mr Hilliers told a number of very tall stories, and then we had songs Mr Brady sang some Irish songs, then Pitzipios performed, and then Mrs Hillier’s guitar was brought out; she played and sang “Swanee River” amid great applause… Mrs Hillier plays the guitar very well. Then we withdrew to play ‘snapdragon’, wherewith we burnt our fingers awhile. After that, “God Save The Queen” and “Auld Lang Syne” wound up the proceedings.66

An entertaining vignette of a happy family occasion, this also shows what a prominent figure Clare had become in the small Legation world. However, it was about to come to an end. In early January, news arrived that Walter Hillier had been appointed Consul to Korea. Although it was said to be only temporary, it meant the end of their time in Peking. Lamenting their departure, Clennell told his brother, ‘this is a great and unexpected change … I don’t think we shall know ourselves when the Hilliers have gone’.67 Leaving Peking in March 1890, Walter initially accompanied Clare to Yantai, where many Westerners spent the summer, and then, after a couple of weeks, he went onto Seoul by himself.With the move, there seems to have been a change of mood. Although Clare participated in Seoul’s social world, there was not the same set of young men to admire and flirt with her and it was, altogether, too small a milieu for her extrovert personality. Personal problems began to dominate. Their little daughter, Muriel, was killed in a tragic accident when her clothing caught fire. Walter had apparently ‘idolized’ her and he and Clare were distraught.68 Clare, pregnant once again, but apparently unwell, went to England for her confinement and Cissie was born in June 1891. Dogged by his failing eyesight, Walter became increasingly irritable. In the summer 66

67 68

Letters, Clennell to his sister, Trixie (Beatrice), 21 December 1889 and 28 December 1889, Clennell, ‘Destination Peking’, pp. 140–142. Letter, Clennell to Harold Clennell, 12 February 1889, ‘Destination Peking’, p. 182. Letter, Augustine Heard (US Minister to Korea), 9 August 1890, Robert Neff, Letters from Joseon: 19th Century Korea through the Eyes of an American Ambassador’s Wife (Seoul: Seoul Selection, 2012), p. 128.

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of 1893, taking Cissie and her maid with her, Clare left for England, supposedly because of an outbreak of malaria in Korea, but accompanied by her lover, Harry Saunderson. Saunderson had joined the Customs in January 1890 and may have first met Clare at Yantai, when she was spending the summer there without Walter.69 Three years later, he was transferred to Seoul and the affair began then, if not earlier. According to Walter’s evidence in the subsequent divorce proceedings, he had warned Clare that ‘the young man was getting a little too attentive’ and not to encourage him but, so he said, he only discovered the affair when he followed them to England. However, it seems more probable that he became suspicious when he found out that Saunderson had obtained six months’ leave and that they had travelled back together. Either way, by the time he arrived in England, the position was all too clear and he commenced divorce proceedings, citing Saunderson as the co-respondent. Following a public hearing on 7 July 1894, at which details of their various assignations were produced, and the judge read a letter from Clare admitting her ‘misconduct’, Walter was granted a decree nisi. As was inevitable in such cases, he was awarded custody of the children, with Clare being allowed only the most minimal access to them.70 Because of the disturbances in Seoul, Walter was not able to bring the children with him when he returned to Korea and, instead, Gerald was sent as a boarder to Orkney House School, Bedford, whilst the two girls travelled out the following year with their governess. They remained in Korea until Walter retired in October 1896. How significant were these events in the empire setting, both in Seoul, where Walter was Consul-General, and at the Legation in Peking? With her flamboyant style and the help of the local English newspapers, Clare had promoted the image of both the Hillier family and of the British Legation. But, unlike England where the press relished stories of marital infidelity, in China and Korea the position was different. Not a word of the scandal appeared in any of the China Coast papers. This was not to spare Clare. Her ‘guilt’ 69

70

For Saunderson ,see letters, Hart to Campbell, 20 January 1889, no. 684 and 31 August 1891, no. 809, Fairbank, IG in Peking. For the Divorce Court papers and details of the affair, see: TNA, J 77/527, no. 16106.The proceedings were reported without any sensational gloss in at least two British newspapers, The Bristol Mercury, 9 July 1894, p. 2, and The Standard, 9 July 1894, p. 2. Both reports are somewhat confused in that they refer to events taking place in Tynemouth rather than Teignmouth, Devon.

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was clear as Charles Addis indicated in a letter he wrote, after meeting Walter the following year: His wife went wrong…it was a shocking case, no less than 5 corespondents …I dare say Hillier was not always considerate to his pretty young wife. She was fond of gaiety and pleasure while he was subject to fits of morose temper and was too much occupied with Chinese to be much with her. But he loved her and she has left him a broken man.71

There was in fact only one co-respondent but it shows how fast the rumour-wheel had been turning. And Clare certainly had had other lovers, one of whom was almost definitely C.W. Campbell, the consul at Chemulpo. Some years later, when Walter was in Peking and he and Satow were discussing who might be appointed Chinese Secretary, Campbell’s name came up, and, according to Satow’s diary: Hillier said there were personal reasons of a very grave nature that wld prevent him fr. [sic] serving with C. and suggested my getting E.A. Fraser instead…72

In private, Hillier may have been ‘a broken man’ and he was certainly extremely bitter, but he seems to have maintained his public image of affability in order to safeguard both his standing and that of the Consulate. The British community closed ranks and, although, in England, divorce carried a social stigma for both parties, however innocent, it seems to have mattered less if they were engaged on imperial business overseas. Walter emerged unscathed and, with his reputation intact, received a knighthood the following year. For his daughter, Cissie, however, these events left a terrible scar. Recalling them in her eighties, she told her cousin, Harold Hillier, how their early life was ‘miserable … father was terribly unhappy and often very disagreeable’. Clare also fared less well. 71

72

Letter, Addis to Mill, 21 October 1896, SOAS Archive, PPMS 14/67/120. At the time he wrote this, Addis was visiting Seoul to explore the possibilities of the Bank establishing a branch there. Entry, 14 February 1901, Ruxton, The Diaries of Sir Ernest Satow, p. 88. Campbell did become Chinese Secretary a few months later and this may have hastened Hillier’s departure.

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She married Saunderson and bore him three children. But, to her immense distress, Walter prevented her from having access to their three children (none of whom seem to have been aware of their half-siblings), and gave instructions that all photographs of her be destroyed. Her image was erased, literally and metaphorically, from the collective memory of both the family and of the Western community in Peking and Seoul. She died from cancer in 1903, with only Florrie being allowed to see her at the end.73 It is clear from Clare’s behaviour in the early days that the empire setting could provide opportunities for a female to assert her own personality and to do so in a manner in which she probably could not have done in England. Whilst the social life of the various legations may seem trivial, it provided an important means of consolidating the diplomatic culture, knitting together the different national strands and displaying a coherent presence to Chinese officials, with whom there was a formal, if courteous, relationship. For a short time, Clare lit up that world but she paid a heavy price when things went wrong. The fact that the events were not mentioned in the press does not mean they were not well-known, as Addis’ comments make clear and the scandal will have caused considerable distress and embarrassment both for Guy, who was a close working colleague of Addis, and for Harry and his wife, Maggie, who were now leading a smart life on Hong Kong’s exclusive Peak. Maggie Drummond

As we have seen, shortly after the death of his first wife, Annie, in 1886, Harry was transferred to Shanghai as Assistant Commissioner. Soon afterwards, he met Maggie Drummond, the eldest daughter of William Venn Drummond, a prominent Shanghai barrister, and his wife, Christian (née Macpherson). Like Clare, Maggie was assertive and socially confident, but unlike her, she was determined to use these qualities to promote her husband’s career and provide a home that was an exemplar of Western values. She was thus well able to fulfil the role of being both ‘incorporated’ and independent. Much of this was, no doubt, attributable to her 73

Letter, Cissie Thornton to Harold D. Hillier, 4 December 1959 (Hillier Collection). Saunderson left the CMC at the time of the affair, became a stockbroker and died in 1947.

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parents and to the position that they occupied in Shanghai, one which would also be of considerable benefit to Harry in his career. Having left Scotland to try his hand at coffee planting in India, Maggie’s father, William Drummond, had soon found he was illsuited to this sort of work and had, instead, read for the Bar. Practising in Hong Kong, he had caught the eye of Edmund Hornby, the future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Shanghai, and joined his firm which had become well-established in the treaty port. By the mid-1870s, Drummond had already become well-known, as someone prepared to represent both Chinese and western clients. Having acted for Guo Songtao in his libel action against Shenbao (in which Walter Hillier had been asked to mediate), he was then instructed to represent the families of the sixty-three Chinese passengers who had perished following a collision between a British steamer, the Ocean, and a Chinese-owned passenger ship, the Fusing (Fuxing). The fact that almost all sixty Westerners had been saved had provoked an outcry and, after much procedural obfuscation by the Defendants, the presiding judge, Consul Medhurst, found in favour of the Claimants.74 By the time Harry met Maggie in the mid-1880s, Drummond had established a successful and lucrative commercial practice. Whilst very much a conservative in outlook, he was also a maverick and occupied an ambiguous position in the International Settlement. Speaking at least some of the language, he was strongly identified as a supporter of Chinese interests, advising some of the richest merchants and commercial guilds. Having been appointed legal adviser to the Chinese Government, he would then provoke a storm of protest from the Chamber of Commerce, when, in addition, he accepted the post of Crown Advocate, effectively the British government’s own legal adviser.75 If this antagonism was attributable to the merchants’ dislike of anyone showing pro-China sympathies, it was also because of Drummond’s abrasive manner, to which he gave full vent in the 74 75

Cassel, Grounds of Judgment, pp. 137 and 164–167. Cassel, Grounds of Judgment, p. 137, The Celestial Empire, 12 January 1894, p. 51, 26 January 1894, p. 101, and 23 March 1894, p. 365, Anatoly M. Kotenev, Shanghai: its mixed court and council: materials relating to the history of the Shanghai Municipal Council (Shanghai: North China Daily News & Herald, 1925), p. 204, correspondence, TNA FO 228/632, nos. 176–194, Douglas Clark, Gunboat Justice: British and American Courts in China and Japan (1842 to 1943) 1: The Nineteenth Century (Hong Kong: Earnshaw Books, 2014), pp. 360–367 and Cassel, Grounds of Judgment, pp. 167–170.

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local press, and to the fact that, by the late 1880s, he had made a substantial fortune, both from his exorbitant fees and his various business ventures, principally investing in Malaysian sugar through the Perak Sugar Cultivation Company.76 Happy to flaunt his wealth– he became known, no doubt disparagingly, as ‘the Squire of Shanghai’– in due course, he would build one of Shanghai’s most lavish mansions, Dennartt, a confection of Tudor Surreystockbroker styles set in substantial grounds, complete with a lake and stables for ten polo ponies (Plate 19). He combined this extravagance with a number of philanthropic projects set up for the benefit of the Chinese. One of the most significant and long-term was the Shanghai Polytechnic, which he co-founded in 1875 with Walter Medhurst, amongst others. Designed to promote scientific and Western knowledge, one of its main objectives was to bridge the cultural divide between the two communities.77 If Drummond was a somewhat larger than life figure, his wife, Christian was a good match. Brought up in India, where her father, Surgeon-General Duncan McPherson, was the Inspector-General of Hospitals in the Madras Presidency, it was there that she had met and married Drummond. By the 1880s, she had established herself as a prestigious hostess in Shanghai’s social milieu, a role that would later be described in an article in the society journal, Social Shanghai.78 The oldest of the Drummonds’ four children, Maggie had been born in India in 1865, and, after being educated in England and sent to a finishing school in Brussels, she had joined her parents in Shanghai. There she led the only life realistically open to a young woman in the treaty port, waiting to find a suitable 76

77

78

James C. Jackson, Planters and Speculators: Chinese and European Agricultural Enterprise in Malaya, 1786–1921 (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1968). pp. 161–173, D.J.M. Tate, The RGA History of the Plantation Industry in the Malay Peninsula (Kuala Lumpur, Oxford University Press 1996), pp. 124–139. Knight Biggerstaff, ‘The Shanghai Polytechnic Institute and Reading Rooms’, Pacific Historical Review, 25, (1956), pp. 128 and NCH, 12 March 1874, pp. 269– 272, Kaori Abe, ‘Intermediary Elites in the Treaty Port World: Tong Mow-chee and His Collaborators in Shanghai, 1873–1897, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 25 (2015), pp. 1–20 at pp. 12–14, ‘The Beautiful Homes of Shanghai’, Social Shanghai, 1 (1907), pp. 49–52. The house is still standing and can be found down an alley leading off the Hushuan Road; see also Arnold Wright (ed.), Twentieth Century Impressions of Hong Kong, Shanghai, and other Treaty Ports of China: Their History People, Commerce, Industries and Resources (London: Lloyd’s, 1908), pp. 37, 41A, 43.

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husband: a round of social engagements and, in her case, sporting events, including competing in the paper-chase hunts and playing tennis, in which she excelled, winning the mixed doubles championship with her father. By the time she met Harry, she had already rejected a number of suitors, including, according to family accounts, Thomas Jackson, the Chairman of the Hongkong Bank. For whatever reason, Harry proved more acceptable, his connections with Consul Medhurst, whom Drummond knew well, and Walter Hillier, whom he will also have met, no doubt, did him no harm. The couple were married on 21 March 1888 in Holy Trinity Cathedral and, following a honeymoon in Yokohama, they were joined by Harry’s daughter, Eddie.79 Now aged five, she had been separated from her father for at least two years and this must have been an emotional meeting but also a difficult one with her stepmother, with whom relations would always be somewhat strained. Although Drummond was a controversial figure and, no doubt, not an easy father-in-law, he provided Harry Hillier with a status and also involved him in a number of his philanthropic projects, including the Mansion House Famine Relief Fund, set up to raise money in the City of London, following major floods in the Shandong region. As its Secretary, Harry was responsible for administering the Fund, receiving reports from those in the field and briefing the press. The work was extensively reported and Harry and Drummond were presented with tablets by the Viceroy of the region, Tseng Kuo-Ch’uan, Harry’s bearing the inscription, ‘Showing Kindness to the Famine Stricken People’ ⃝ ⿕ ⅐ 㯪 (Plate 21).80 Harry and Maggie, therefore, were at home in this Shanghailander world, one which had its own particular identity, combining imperial self-confidence with a determination to retain its semi-autonomous status, insulated from outside influence, whether from Britain or the Chinese authorities.81 Whilst Drummond 79

80

81

Yokohama had become a fashionable resort for Westerners, boasting a grand hotel and theatre: Robert Blake, Jardine Matheson: Traders of The East (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999), p. 166. For the work of the Committee, see NCH, 5 April, 12 April 1889 and 25 April letters from H.M. Hillier explaining how the funds had been distributed, 18 May 1889, report by H.M. Hillier and 15 June 1889, letter from W.V. Drummond; letter, Viceroy to Drummond, 30 June 1889, and from Drummond to H.M. Hillier, 15 July 1889 (Hillier Collection). See Bickers, Scramble for China, p. 382, Robert Bickers, Britain in China, p. 223 and Bickers, ‘Moving Stories’, pp. 826–856 at pp. 827–829. See also Richard S. Horowitz, ‘Politics, Power and the Chinese Maritime Customs’, at pp. 566 and 580.

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strenuously defended this approach, he was unusual in having not only professional but also social contacts with his Chinese clients, thereby bridging the cultural divide. Enjoying his generous hospitality, they emulated British manners, building substantial mansions along Bubbling Well Road, wearing Western dress and sending their children to English public schools.82 Maggie’s first child, Dorothy, was born on 9 July 1889. A photograph taken eighteen months later on 31 December shows the family, with her mother presiding in matriarchal style in the centre (Plate 22). By the time Harry’s appointment was coming to an end in March 1892, Maggie’s second child was on the way. Due eighteen months’ furlough, they decided that she would have the baby in the fashionable spa of Wiesbaden. Harold was born on 19 June 1892 and the family then went on to England, staying mainly with Drummond relatives in Tunbridge Wells. When the time came to leave in September 1893, Eddie remained with those relatives and was sent to boarding school. Even with the help of servants, the six-week journey back to China was a major undertaking for a couple with two children, aged four and one. However, it was made easier by the comforts and comparative splendour of the Canadian Pacific Railway which ran from Montreal to Vancouver. Recently completed, this constituted a new dimension of the empire, greatly facilitating travel to the Far East and enabling those making the journey, in the words of a guidebook, ‘to behold the panorama of the continent’. Harry and the family then sailed by P & O Steamer to Yokohama, finally reaching Shanghai in November 1893.83 In the next two postings, Maggie had to experience the worst and then the best that life as a Commissioner’s wife could provide. Pakhoi (Beihai), lying west of Hong Kong near the Annam border, was one of the most unprepossessing treaty ports: there was no social life – the consul complained that life was so lonely, he was suffering from profound depression – and no scope for Harry to further his career. It also presented its own particular challenges as 82

83

Wright (ed.), Twentieth Century Impressions, pp. 524–572, Bryna Goodman, ‘Improvisations on a Semi-Colonial Theme, or How to Read a Celebration of Transnational Urban Community’, Journal of Asian Studies, 59 (2000), pp. 889–926. For their arrival in China, see NCH, 10 November 1893, p. 759. The route, together with the various ports, is described in Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore, Westward to the Far East: A Guide to the Principal Cities of China and Japan with a note on Korea (Canadian Pacific Railway Co. 6th ed. 1897), quote at p. 7.

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Maggie was pregnant again, local facilities were limited and there was a serious outbreak of plague, in which several hundred Chinese died.84 Geoffrey Stewart Drummond was born on 27 February 1894 and Harry’s inscription on the fly-leaf of a book given to Maggie on her birthday, six months later, suggests that for some time she was not well.85 The following year, Harry was appointed to Kowloon, and, living’; after ‘Peak’ (Plate 23) on the Peak, they began a busy social life. With a complement of staff, Maggie was able to entertain the local officials and members of the armed forces, the guests in her callers’ book, including Admirals, Commanders and young sublieutenants, who would later become Admirals.86 Whilst she was in her element, for the children, it was what Harold remembered as ‘a marvellously happy time’. He recalled being taken out by his father in the Customs’ launch and the easy relationship that he, Dorothy and Geoff enjoyed with their governess, Miss Martin, their amah and the various servants in the house. Relaxed though it was, this privileged life-style projected a distinct imperial image and instilled in the children notions of racial superiority, which they would take with them back to England. ‘Relaxed though it was, this privileged life-style projected a distinct imperial image and instilled in the children notions of racial superiority, which they would take with them back to England. ‘The house’, Harold recalled towards the end of his life, ‘always seemed to be full of “boys” who lived in their own compound at the back. We children had a large donkey … [and] our own ‘mafoo’ who never left us when we went out … Picnics were great fun, for a posse of chairs lined up outside the house with their coolies and we and the provender were loaded in and off we went in convoy, the donkey and mafoo and the three of us children mounted, bringing up the rear.87

Although these familial practices were her taking place in a colonial setting, they were replicated across treaty port China and constantly reinforced the image of the imperial presence. 84 85

86 87

The Celestial Empire, 15 June 1894, p. 767, Coates, China Consuls, p. 243. They were both keen gardeners and fittingly the book was Firminger’s Manual of Gardening for Bengal and Upper India, revised, corrected and amplified by H. St John Jackson, 4th Ed., (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Co., 1890) (Hillier Collection). The inscription reads, ‘The joint gift of a loving husband and a faithful nurse’. Callers’ Book (Hillier Collection). Harold Hillier, ‘Vita Mea’, p. 4.

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Maggie was able to keep in touch with her family and would meet her father when he was instructed to appear in some of the Colony’s leading cases. On one visit, he could not resist giving a public lecture with the somewhat grandiose title, ‘The Secret of the British Empire’.88 All this contributed to the family’s standing in the island’s tightly-knit Western community. When Harry was summoned to meet Hart in Peking, in the autumn of 1897, they stayed with Guy and his wife, Ada, and after paying Hart a social visit, he later wrote to Maggie, saying how much he had enjoyed meeting her and her ‘charming little girl’.89 As we have seen, that visit was a prelude to Britain acquiring the New Territories. But, if Harry resented the way he was treated over this issue, this was largely mitigated by the year he and the family then spent in Lausanne, where he and Maggie were able to enjoy its cosmopolitan world and the children were able to run free. Returning to England, Harry settled them into a house in Bury St Edmunds and then had the sad task of wishing his family goodbye. As Harold later wrote, his departure was […] most harrowing to us all and I remember so well, making a resolve that never would I be in a position where I must periodically leave my family and go away alone.90

In sending the children to be educated at school in England, Harry and Maggie were acting no differently to countless other British colonial families, most obviously those in India, where it was considered to be necessary for both their physical and ‘moral’ wellbeing. But, as Buettner has explored in relation to the Raj, the transition from ‘a halcyon time’ to the harsh realities of an English public school could be extremely traumatic for some children, particularly if it included long-term separation from at least one parent, whilst others seem, at least superficially, to have been able to weather it.91 In the case of Customs’ children, there were plainly practical difficulties in keeping them in China, given the peripatetic nature of the service and the limited amount of suitable secondary schooling available. 88 89

90 91

China Mail, 1 March 1898, p. 3. See Journal of Sir Robert Hart, 28 September 1897, Sir Robert Hart Collection, Q.U.B., MS 15/1/51, p. 26 and letter, Hart to Maggie Hillier, 1 January 1898 (Hillier Collection). Harold Hillier, ‘Vita Mea’, p. 9. Buettner, Empire Families, pp. 22–71 and 110–139.

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For Maggie, the next seven years would not be easy.Although she visited Harry from time to time, it would only be for short periods, and it is clear from her letters that she found it difficult bringing up two boisterous boys who were obviously missing their father, and that she longed for the time when she could again enjoy the status and perform the duties of a Commissioner’s wife. However, although she missed that way of life, Maggie did not miss the Chinese. Whilst her father spoke the language, had a network of Chinese clients and participated in Chinese philanthropic projects, neither his wife, Christian, nor Maggie seem to have had any interest in their surroundings. And, just as Walter’s fascination for the country seems to have had no influence on Clare, Harry’s does not seem to have rubbed off on Maggie. In this respect, she was no different to the standard western sojourner whose way of life slowly deepened the gulf between the two communities, whether in Peking, Shanghai, Hong Kong or Tianjin, or in the remote outports. If she longed for a more comfortable life-style, most of all, it was her life with Harry for which Maggie pined. SEPARATE LIVES

Harry and Maggie

Harry recorded the pangs of separation in his Letters Book. A meticulous summary of his and Maggie’s correspondence, it shows how living apart affected their relationship and their approach to life generally. Both became anxious about money, about the children and about their health. Maggie seems to have suffered from recurring medical problems which were never properly diagnosed and, although an operation was mooted at one point, eventually it did not go ahead. There is a sense that the problems were linked to the separation and were less evident when they were together. During the eighteen months that Harry was in Shanghai, they exchanged over eighty letters, and, whilst he was able to stay with the Drummonds at Dennartt, and much enjoyed the company of Maggie’s sixteen-year-old sister, Morna, he also found the separation very difficult.92 Early on, Maggie writes, ‘counting months before coming out – 18 at present’, to which Harry responds: 92

Morna would die from scarlet fever in 1906, one of a number of tragedies to hit the Drummond family.

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[…] depressed, want [Maggie] who apparently thinks I get on well without her as I write home cheerfully…no need to stop at home now that you have decided to send children to boarding school – as soon as they are settled better come out.93

When in Jiujiang, he enclosed carefully captioned photographs, using the letters to bridge the cold space of empire and to convey his way of life, so that the family could imagine it for themselves, enabling them ‘to live by him’ in China.94 The separations were interspersed with periods of leave but they never adjusted to this way of life. The last entry records a letter sent to Maggie, when he was Commissioner in Zenjiang in 1906. All the more poignant for being written when he was aged fifty-five and had been in the Service for some thirty-five years, it reads: ‘We must never live apart again. Mud hut together better… Poverty easy with you by me’.95 Many more such letters must have been exchanged before Harry returned on leave to England in the spring of 1907 and Maggie was then able to join him for his final years in China, whilst the two boys were sent as boarders to St Paul’s School and stayed with a kindly Vicar and his wife in Sidmouth, Devon, in the holidays. As with Maudie and Gina, less importance was attached to Eddie’s and Dorothy’s formal education, both of them being sent to finishing schools, when they were sixteen and both, later, joining their parents, as we will see in the next chapter. Such separations were a recurring feature of imperial life and had already marked the previous generation of the Hillier family, with Charles and Eliza being parted for over two years. In India, they could be justified by reference to what Elizabeth Buettner calls a ‘discourse of sacrifice’.96 But, whatever similarities treaty port China had with the Raj, it was not empire as such. There was little sense of a cause, particularly for the staff of the CMC, who were in the service of the Chinese government, and Maggie never saw the separations as justified in that way. But, for some couples, 93

94

95

96

Copy letter, Maggie Hillier to H.M. Hillier, 10 August 1901 and copy letter, H.M. Hillier to Maggie Hillier, 7 October 1901, ‘Letters Book’, pp. 5 and 10a. Cf. Elizabeth Vibert, ‘Writing “Home”; Sibling Intimacy and Mobility in a Scottish Colonial Memoir’ in Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton (eds), Moving Subjects: Gender, Mobility, and Intimacy in an Age of Global Empire (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2009), pp. 67–88. Copy letter, H.M. Hillier to Maggie Hillier, 13 February 1906, ‘Letters Book’, p. 102a (Hillier Collection). Buettner, Empire Families, pp. 112–115.

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separation could provide a welcome opportunity – avoiding the risk of any further pregnancies, whilst maintaining the formal ties of marriage and contact through regular correspondence.This was the option which Guy and Ada chose after eleven years of life together in Peking, one that may have been convenient for them but was traumatic for their children. Ada Everett

Guy did not marry until he was thirty-seven, some eleven years after joining the Hongkong Bank. Quite apart from being unable to find a suitable or willing partner, he may have waited for a number of other reasons: commitment to his work, coupled with the Bank’s disapproval of early marriage, plus ‘the flight from domesticity’, which was gathering pace in the late 1880s and chimed with his own masculine values.97 In 1890, four years before getting married, he had made a trek to a Franciscan mission station 7,500 feet up in a remote district of Central China – ‘the wildest and most desolate place I have ever found myself in’, he later wrote – an exercise that may well have been connected with his recent conversion to Catholicism, which had been inspired by the French Jesuits in Peking and, in particular, the charismatic Monsignor Favier.98 It was this talented but austere man that Ada Everett met some time in the early 1890s and agreed to marry. She was the third of four siblings to come out to China, prompted by her father’s bankruptcy, which followed the collapse of his stockbroker business – a typical casualty of the City of London at that time. Her elder brother, Frederick, had been the first to arrive and went on to spend some thirty years sailing merchant ships up the China Coast.99 Her eldest sister, May, came next, shortly after marrying 97 98

99

Tosh, Manliness and Masculinities in 19th Century Britain, p. 206. Guy Hillier, ‘A Mountain District of Central China’, The Journal of the Manchester Geographical Society, 6 (1890), pp. 370–380. Mgr. Favier spent 43 years in China, was a fluent Chinese speaker and adopted Chinese dress. He was the VicarApostolic of Peking, the head of the French missions in China and a major influence on Guy; obituary, The Times, 5 April, 1905, p. 10. See NCH, 10 June, 1936, p. 458, which, when reporting his death ‘aged about 72’, referred to his ‘sailing up and down the China coast and [being]…at one time master of one of the Butterfield & Swire ships’. The story resurfaced recently when Rupert Everett, the actor and great grandson of Frederick Everett (junior), took part in the BBC television series, ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’; see http:// www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/episode/rupert-everett accessed November 2019. Frederick (junior) and his sisters seem to have been eliminated

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the editor of the North China Daily News, Bob Little, following his divorce from his first wife. No doubt encouraged by her, Ada arrived in 1891, in search of work and, more importantly, a husband and joined the Little family in Jiujiang, where she acted as companion and governess to their children. It was through them that she probably met Guy.100 They were married on 8 June 1894 at the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Peking. The third sister, Marian or, as she was always known, ‘Dolly’, followed her soon afterwards, probably also in search of a husband, and, successful in her quest, married E.G. (later, Sir Edward) Pearce, another well-known Shanghai figure and later Chairman of the Shanghai Municipal Council.101 A classic example of chain migration, and one where each of the Everett sisters, whose future in England, despite their middle-class credentials, must have looked bleak, married well and were able to negotiate their way out of their straitened circumstances. Whilst May and Dolly seem to have thrived in the China Coast world, Ada did not take to it, not least because Peking, with its small Legation quarter, was definitely unsuitable for a young family.102 If Guy had been expecting to be posted somewhere more acceptable, it was Ada’s misfortune, that, almost immediately after they were married, the Sino-Japanese broke out and his career took off. From then on, there was no question of his leaving Peking. His increasing loss of sight may also have placed a strain on the marriage. But, putting this aside, Ada does not seem to have enjoyed being a wife or mother. According to the youngest of the children,Tristram Hillier, it was their amah, ‘the ever-faithful’TukSan, who had lived with the family since the birth of the first two children, Winifred and Maurice, who would look after them and run the household when they came to England.103 When Guy went to Europe in 1900 in search of treatment for his eyes, Ada, together with Winifred and Maurice, stayed with the Drummonds in Shanghai. Following his return, she gave birth to two more children – Madeleine and Tristram – and, in the autumn

100

101 102 103

from the family’s narrative and it was only in the course of making the programme that his descendants rediscovered these ancestors. Letter, May Little to Dr Little, 9 July 1891, p. 572 (private collection); see also letter, R.W. Little to Dr Little, 27 November 1891, p. 579 (private collection). Bickers, Scramble for China, p. 366. For Peking at this time, see Moser, Foreigners within the Gates, pp. 31–33. Tristram Hillier, Leda and the Goose: An Autobiography (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1954), pp. 1–2.

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of 1905, Guy despatched her and the four children, together with Tuk-San and two Chinese servants, to England. He joined them the following year and, having settled them into a permanent home in the Sussex countryside, returned to China. By then, he was earning handsomely and money was not an issue. It would be five years before he saw the children again and, although they would meet from time to time and keep regularly in touch by post, he and Ada would not live together again, save for one brief spell. Such consensual separations were not unusual: after ten years of marriage, Hart sent his wife and children home to England but maintained contact through correspondence and the occasional meeting, always ensuring they were well maintained.104 Guy and Ada retained an affection for each other and seem to have preferred this arrangement. Although Guy had wholly lost his sight, he was content for his everyday needs to be met by a confidential secretary employed by the Bank, by his mafoo, with whom he took his daily walk on Peking’s walls and with whom he continued to ride until his early sixties, and by his Chinese servants. Absorbed in his work, he was, to adapt Andrew Thompson’s phrase, the epitome of the ‘celibate man pursuing the cause of duty’, and, as such, by no means an unusual figure in empire.105 How much the arrangement really suited Ada must be questionable. According to Tristram Hillier’s memoir, she was constantly ill and, although ultimately diagnosed as suffering from cancer, there may also have been symptoms of loneliness. CONCLUSION

For a young middle-class woman growing up in England, the wider world represented the chance to escape the risk of a claustrophobic marriage or life as a spinster. But, it also presented considerable challenges. Not only might she find herself in an alien and often inhospitable environment, but she also had to comply with a set of norms, which she may not have found acceptable. If the Hillier wives came from a variety of backgrounds, had a variety of reasons for marrying and went on to lead very different lives both in China and England, their marriages share a number of common features. First, whilst early pregnancy, with 104 105

Tiffen, Friends of Sir Robert Hart, pp. 88–111. Andrew S. Thompson, The Empire Strikes Back? The impact of imperialism on Britain from the mid-nineteenth century (Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2005), p. 97.

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all its attendant worries, was standard, whether at home or abroad (all five of these women became pregnant in their first year of marriage), in empire, it carried significant additional risks, given the lack of any proper medical or midwifery assistance. For women in empire, there was the ever-present worry that, dying in childbirth far from their families, they would not have ‘a good death’. Yet, as we have seen in the case of Lydie and Annie, such deaths, together with the ensuing correspondence, rituals and memorialisation, could also reinforce the western presence and connections across the British world. Secondly, empire provided an opportunity for a married woman to assume a different status and role. Clare was able to shine in Peking’s legation world in a way that she could not have done in England, even if, ultimately, the marriage ended in divorce, and Maggie could play the part of the society hostess in Shanghai and Hong Kong in a way that was not open to her when she came to England. By contrast, as we saw with Guy and Ada, empire could also provide a mechanism for avoiding the intimate demands of marriage, whilst still maintaining its conventional framework. Thirdly, empire reinforced the patriarchal nature of a Victorian marriage. Unlike Clare, having been brought up in that setting, Maggie found it easier to accept those demands, whilst still being able to express her own personality, and we shall see this again in the case of Walter’s third and Guy’s second marriage. These women were, therefore, shaped by their empire experiences and they, in turn, shaped that world, providing exemplars of western practices and networks and connections through travel and correspondence. As treaty port life became more settled, so families provided ‘a source of psychological relaxation, and a statement of identity and purpose’.106 These marriages also shaped the children’s upbringing in ways that would have a profound impact on their later lives. But, whilst they gave substance to Britain’s presence in China, these families remained insulated from the world around them.They had little or no engagement with China or the Chinese, save in the most superficial way. Pidgin English was the lingua franca for day to day communication with servants, shopkeepers and rickshaw drivers and there was little incentive to learn Chinese. Unlike their husbands, these Hillier wives had little interest in the country or its culture.This was not unusual. Save for missionaries, and those engaging in philanthropic projects, there 106

Bickers, Britain in China, pp. 88–89, quote at p. 89.

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was little scope for western women to become involved outside their own ex-patriate world. This sense of detachment was passed onto their children. Growing up in a world, where they saw the Chinese only in servile roles, they inevitably developed their own notions of racial superiority, whilst presenting an image of imperial authority. Family thus reinforced the distinction between the two communities and the perception of the Chinese as ‘the other’. Whilst some of the children had returned to England by the mid-1900s, they continued to be informed by this approach, as did those who remained in the treaty port world. In the wake of the Boxer Uprising, memory morphed into mythology and a more arrogant approach towards the Chinese took hold in day to day relations. Against this, however, many British officials and semi-officials maintained their confidence in the country. It was the tension between these two approaches that would shape the next phase of Britain’s presence in China and mark the final years of the three Hillier brothers, both in China and in England.

8

Reform and Revolution, War and Withdrawal Œ

TENSIONS

SOON AFTER HIS appointment as Britain’s Minister in Peking in 1906, Sir John Jordan wrote to the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, Sir Francis Campbel: China is making great material and educational progress ... there is a great reserve of sense and stability ... fuelled by a wellinformed and highly articulate press, there is an enthusiasm for reform [which] is infectious and touches virtually every aspect of life.1

Embodied in the Rights Recovery Movement, this enthusiasm would gather pace over the next five years but, whilst it may have indicated that China was recovering from the Uprising and that its international relations were back on an even keel, there were tensions beneath the surface. Still harbouring memories of those days, many foreigners remained sceptical, with ‘Sino-phobic feeling’ breaking out across the English-speaking world.2 And this sentiment was strongly reciprocated by the Chinese – as Hart observed to his London manager: […] the new era has not ushered in either a forgetting of the past or a new love for the foreigner, whose brains they are proceeding 1

2

Letter, Jordan to Campbell, 16 September 1906, TNA FO 350/4, no. 3 and, generally, Edwards, British Diplomacy and Finance, pp. 90–91. Jordan would hold the position of Minister until 1920. Bickers, Scramble for China, p. 363. 220

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to pick and whose arts and sciences they now wish to make their own.3

Whilst officials like Jordan endorsed the movement for reform, it should take place, so they believed, within the framework of British control and influence. But, as the spirit of nationalism gained momentum, so there was a growing resentment at the subservience of the Qing to the western powers. The ability and willingness to summon a gun-boat at a moment’s notice was all too evident in the brooding presence of the British fleet, comprising up to thirty-three warships at any one time in Chinese waters.4 And, although the successful completion of the Huguang loan, described in an earlier chapter, appeared ‘to herald a brighter future both for the Bank and for China’s economy’, it also served to fuel that resentment, leading to the outbreak of the Revolution in October 1911 and the rapid downfall of the Qing.5 But, with the first republican government requiring urgent financial support, the Re-organisation Loan, concluded in 1913, would tighten Western control over the economy.6 Against that background, this chapter examines how these tensions informed, and were reflected in, the approach of the three Hillier brothers in the years leading up to the the First World War. Whilst Walter Hillier’s efforts to foster better Anglo-Chinese relations would culminate in his appointment as the country’s first foreign Political Adviser, he would only accept the role on the basis that it was consistent with Britain’s continuing presence in the country and, in the event, he would achieve little. Whilst Guy was intent on re-building China’s economy, as one of the key architects of the loans needed to support that recovery, he had to ensure that the terms were commercially acceptable and that the punishing repayments properly secured. And whilst Harry Hillier would continue to balance the competing interests of Britain and China in his work as a Customs Commissioner, he would become increasingly disillusioned with the role of the CMC and his part in it.7 3 4

5

6

7

Letter, Hart to Campbell, 5 November 1905, no. 1388, Fairbank, IG in Peking. Albert Feuewerker, Foreign Presence, The Cambridge History of China, vol. 12(1), Late Ch’ing, 1800–1911, Part 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 152. Edwards, British Diplomacy and Finance and, p. 149; King, The Hongkong Bank, II, pp. 462–463. Osterhammel, Britain and China, pp. 167–168, King, The Hongkong Bank II, pp. xxiii and pp. 509–51. Cf. Osterhammel, Britain and China, p. 164.

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These tensions were exacerbated following the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 and the chaos of the warlord era. With the ending of the war, as China began to throw off the yoke of Western domination, so Britain sought to resist but eventually accepted the inevitability of withdrawal. The chapter concludes by examining the impact of these events on the Hillier brothers – on how, in their public lives, despite the country’s problems, Guy and Walter Hillier would continue to have faith in China, whilst Harry, who had spent almost forty years serving the CMC, would lose all interest in the country. We will also see, threading through the chapter, the problems that Walter and Guy encountered in their relations with their children but how they both found happiness in their late marriages, whilst Harry’s and Maggie’s final years would be beset by personal misfortune. Although there were tensions below the surface, viewed in 1908, Britain’s continuing presence in China appeared assured and, as Walter arrived to take up his new appointment, the Hillier brothers were, for the first and only time, all together in Peking and, so it seemed, at the height of their careers. REFORM

The idea of having a foreign Political Adviser came from Yuan Shikai and he was happy to accept Guy Hillier’s suggestion that Walter Hillier was the most appropriate choice for the role, essentially, for two reasons: first, because of the continued efforts Walter had made to improve Anglo-Chinese relations since leaving China in 1901 and secondly, because of the close working relationship that Yuan had built up with both Walter and Guy since that time. Central to Walter’s approach was his belief that mutual understanding between the two countries depended on acquiring a working knowledge of Chinese. In 1904, he had been appointed to the post of Professor of Chinese at King’s College, London and, three years later, he published a substantial teaching manual.8 Both were designed to assist all those intending to have some contact with China, whether in an administrative, commercial, military or missionary capacity. Thus, in addition to supplying the needs of the Consular Service and the CMC, the King’s College Yearbook described the Honours Course as being ‘suitable for military 8

W.C. Hillier, The Chinese Language and How to Learn it: A Manual for Beginners (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co Ltd, 1907).

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interpreters, Indian Civil Service candidates and mercantile purposes’. Many of the students attending the college had day jobs, staff of the Hongkong Bank, for example, being enrolled in a two year course that involved four hours attendance per week.9 Similarly, the preface to the teaching manual stated, perhaps somewhat optimistically, that it was ‘especially intended for the use of army officers, missionaries and young business men connected with trade interests in China’. Although learning Chinese could be seen as an exercise in ‘information-gathering’ in order to further Britain’s presence in China, it was also a way of achieving a better understanding of Chinese culture and values.10 Walter also maintained his contacts with Chinese officials and, in particular, with Yuan, whom he had known well in Seoul, and who, as the Viceroy of Zhili, was now the most influential official in Peking below the throne. Sometime in 1904, Yuan had first sought his assistance in relation to a long-running dispute concerning the ownership and management of the highly-productive Kaiping coal mines near Tianjin. Initially, the property of a Chinese consortium, at the time of the Boxer Uprising, the mines had been acquired by a British-based syndicate in a dubious transaction which Yuan was determined to challenge. The dispute reached London’s High Court in 1905 and, unusually,Walter acted as Court interpreter, in addition to giving general assistance to the Plaintiff, Chang Yen-mao (Zhang Yanmao), who was acting on behalf of the Chinese government.11 After a lengthy trial, the presiding judge, Mr Justice Joyce, rejected much of the evidence given on behalf of the Defendants by, amongst others, Herbert Hoover, C. Algernon Moreing, a prospective Member of Parliament, and Gustav Detring, all of whom were seriously compromised by the events. However, he upheld the validity of the transfer but ruled that the Plaintiffs were entitled to manage the mines and to substantial compensation. The 9

10 11

See ‘Chinese Study at Home’, Chinese Recorder & Missionary Journal, 1 August 1906, p. 461; for details of the Bank’s scheme, see King, Hongkong Bank II, p. 195. Cf. Hevia, English Lessons, pp. 124–142. See generally Ellsworth C. Carlson, The Kaiping Mines, 1877–1912 (East Asian Research Center, Harvard University, 1971), Ian Phimister, ‘Foreign Devils, Finance and Informal Empire: Britain and China, c. 1900–1912’, Modern Asian Studies, 40 (2006), pp. 737–759, Hans Van de Ven, ‘Robert Hart and Gustav Detring’, pp. 657–661. The Foreign Office account is set out in Memorandum on the Correspondence respecting the Claim of the Chinese Engineering and Mining Company (Limited) to the Kaiping Coalfield and to the Ownership of Certain Land at Chingwangtao (February 1911), TNA FO 881/9783.

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trial was reported in detail by the press, including comments on the exotic clothing and vivacity of the Chinese witnesses and on Walter’s skilful and speedy translation. With unwitting irony, The Times concluded that, whilst ‘the litigation reflected little credit on British commercial honour’, the outcome was ‘a shining example of British civilisation’ and that it would promote the realisation ‘by foreign and especially Oriental countries of the absolute impartiality and probity of our tribunals [and] it is likely to do great good in China’.12 However, Yuan took a very different view and maintained that the case had done no ‘good in China’ since he had failed on the key issue, namely, ownership of the mines. Moreover, the fact that proceedings relating to Chinese property had to be brought in England, together with the effusive endorsement of the English legal system, served only to confirm Chinese subservience and the apparent legitimacy of Britain’s presence. Determined to take the dispute further, Yuan invited Hillier to China to discuss the next step. It is a measure of how much long-distance travel had improved but also of Hillier’s energy that he agreed to make the journey. It is also a measure of Yuan’s confidence in Hillier, since, according to Jordan, he had lost all faith in British integrity and regarded the whole transaction as ‘a gigantic swindle’.13 Accompanied by his two daughters, Florrie and Cissie, Walter arrived in June 1905, and made straight for Tianjin. The British syndicate was appealing the High Court judgment and he tried to persuade Yuan to settle the dispute, but after lengthy discussions, in which Yuan ‘talked amicably and politely’, his suggestions were rejected and he left empty-handed.14 On the family side, however, the visit was more successful. He was able to see his brothers – Harry, in Jiujiang, and Guy in Peking. And, if one of the purposes was to find suitors for his daughters, it also bore fruit, as Florrie met and, almost immediately, became engaged to a medical practitioner in Tianjin, Dr John O’Malley Irwin. However, just as all seemed to be going well, news arrived 12

13

14

The Times, 2 March 1905, p. 9 and TNA FO 17/760, nos. 238–241. See also letter, Hart to Campbell, 12 and 19 March, 16 April 1905, nos. 1367, 1368 and 1371, Fairbank, IG in Peking and The Times, 19 and 20 January 1905, Walter Hillier Cuttings Book (Hillier Collection). Letter, Jordan to Campbell, 24 June 1908, TNA FO 350/4, no. 50; see also Carlson, Kaiping Mines, p. 120. Letter, Hart to Campbell, 25 June and 9 July 1905, nos. 3371 and 1382, Fairbank, IG in Peking.

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concerning Walter’s son, Gerald, resulting in a sudden change of plan. Leaving Florrie to prepare for her wedding,Walter and Cissie immediately set off for home.15 Gerald had been devoted to his mother and had suffered badly from the divorce. Given the option to choose, when he reached the age of twelve, which of his parents he wished to live with, he had been instructed to inform Clare that he wished to remain with his father and that he did not wish to have any further contact with her. Subjected to an excessively disciplined upbringing – he was required to stand at attention when greeting Walter at breakfast in the morning – at the age of thirteen, he was enrolled as a cadet in the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth.16 After four years at the College, he was convinced that he was not cut out for the Navy and, shortly after his father had left for China, he decided it was time to call it a day. Following a short period of leave, he and a fellow cadet failed to return to the College, and, instead, took the train to Liverpool, where they each purchased a e steerage passage to Montreal. An entry in Harry Hillier’s Letters Book refers to Gerald having ‘bolted’ and the news must have quickly reached Walter in China, probably by wire. He was appalled, and, as soon as he arrived back in England, he applied to withdraw Gerald from the Service, hoping to avert the social stigma that would otherwise result. However, this was declined and the Naval List duly recorded the deletion of Gerald’s name ‘after 6 months’ desertion’, a curious parallel with his grandfather’s departure from the merchant navy.17 Devastated, Walter suffered a nervous collapse and, according to the Hart-Campbell correspondence, was consequently not appointed to succeed Sir Halliday Macartney as English Secretary to the Chinese Legation in London.18 How much contact he and Gerald then had is unclear. Many years later, Gerald would 15

16

17

18

For Walter’s departure, see letter, Hart to Campbell, 8 October 1905, no. 3392, Chen, Archives of China’s Imperial Maritime Customs. Florrie’s wedding took place on 17 March 1906. Hart sent her a generous present, comprising a ‘Louis Quatorze’ silver tea and coffee service, see letter, Hart to Campbell, 17 December 1905, no. 1392, Fairbank, The IG in Peking. Letter, Cissie Thornton to Harold D. Hillier, 4 December 1959 (Hillier Collection). TNA ADM 196/50, no. 100. For Gerald’s service record, see TNA ADM 196/143, no. 660. For Walter’s collapse, see letter, Hart to Campbell, 22 June 1906, no. 3462, Chen, Archives of China’s Imperial Maritime Customs; see also letters, Hart to Campbell, 12 November 1905 and 6 May 1906, nos. 1389 and 1404, Fairbank, IG in Peking.

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describe these events in an engaging series of articles in Wide World, for which, just as his father had done, he chose a pseudonym – G. O’Hara – based on his initials.19 Having arrived in Montreal, he turned his hand to any work he could find and, slowly heading south, eventually reached San Francisco, where he set up in business, married and had two children. A small cache of somewhat formal letters written by Gerald in 1908 in relation to a small legacy that he had been left by an aunt shows that some connection was maintained with his father but he seems to have visited England on only two occasions, once in 1914, and once in 1927, shortly before Walter’s death, both times, without his wife and two children, whom Walter can never have met. Distressing though these events were, Walter’s personal life had taken a turn for the better and, early the following year, he married for the third time. Marion Umpherston Aitchison would be every inch the incorporated wife, bringing the necessary respect and domestic comfort for which he had yearned, whilst being herself an accomplished water-colourist. Happy to submit to the patriarchal demands of an empire marriage, she began compiling a cuttings book into which she pasted records of Walter’s career. As well as encouraging the English to study Chinese, Walter was keen to promote a better understanding of British culture amongst Chinese people. As a leading member of the China Association, which had been set up to lobby the government for improved trading relations and, by the 1900s, had become a powerful conglomerate of interests to which the Foreign Office paid close attention, he promoted a number of projects designed to encourage Chinese students to come to Britain, both to study and gain relevant experience.20 With his friend Byron Brenan, he then set up the China Society, whose objects were defined as being to promote ‘the spirit of national friendliness and goodwill towards a state which is at once the oldest and largest amongst the existing political aggregates of mankind’.21 Two years later, as one of the principal guests at the Hongkong Bank’s first annual dinner– a sumptuous affair held at the Empire Rooms, Trocadero –, 19

20 21

G. O’Hara, ‘The Adventures of a Rolling Stone’, The Wide World Magazine: The Magazine for Men, six instalments, 1920–1921, Vols. 46 and 47. It is a further irony that the articles were specially bound, most probably by Walter’s wife, Marion, and retained in the Hillier papers (Hillier Collection). NCH, 15 November 1907, p. 390. Austin Seckersen, The History of the China Society (London: The China Society, 1984).

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he was singled out by its President, Sir Thomas Jackson, as someone whose work ‘had changed the public’s attitude towards the distant orient’.22 Meanwhile, Yuan was becoming increasingly concerned at the growing influence of Japan and Russia in the north of the country and considered that the best way to combat this and ensure Great Power support for his own position was by way of ‘a tacit alliance with the British’, and that, to achieve this, China needed to appoint an outside Political Adviser as a mediator between the two countries.23 Having persuaded Yuan that Walter was the obvious candidate for the post, Guy Hillier immediately cabled Walter: Have been requested ask [sic] if you would be prepared to accept post as adviser Chinese Government, Peking. Reply by wire stating your own terms. Chinese Government are prepared to pay liberally.24

Whilst the appointment did not turn out as expected and achieved relatively little, it demonstrates the importance that Yuan attached to this sort of personal relationship and also the powerful network which the Hilliers had created, albeit one that also generated hostility, partly because of Guy’s own political manoeuvrings. If Yuan’s objective was to strengthen China’s international standing, Guy’s hidden agenda was for Walter to succeed Hart as the next IG. But the question of the succession had become a highly-charged issue that reflected a growing dissatisfaction with Hart’s leadership and also ill-feeling and distrust between the main players, including Harry Hillier as one of the senior Customs Commissioners. Of these, Alfred E. Hippisley, who had joined in 1867, had been led to believe by both the Foreign Office and Hart that he was the front-runner. Hart, however, had secretly enlisted China’s support for his son-in-law, Robert Bredon, despite personally disliking him and despite his unpopularity amongst his fellow Commissioners. Hippisley had had a number of spats with Bredon, which culminated in an extraordinary diary entry in July 1905, headed ‘Bredon’s disloyalty’, and concluded with the following: 22

23 24

The London and China Telegraph, 24 February 1908, Walter Hillier Cuttings Book (Hillier Collection). Cf. MacKinnon, Power and Politics in Late Imperial China, p. 185. Letter, E.G. Hillier to W.C. Hillier, 26 March 1908, TNA FO 371/420, no. 577.

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Bredon is a traitor in the camp …a man so utterly devoid of scruples is a danger to the Service – he will sacrifice justice, honour, everything to his private ambition. What an outlook from the members of the Service if he ever becomes their chief.25

Although Hippisley and Harry Hillier had had their differences, this also reflected Harry’s view of Bredon, one which would only get worse in the events which followed. Jordan had no inkling of Walter Hillier’s proposed appointment and was taken by surprise when it was announced. Whilst doubting whether he ‘had sufficient go to reform China’, he was happy to support it, as he told Campbell at the Foreign Office, because Hillier is ‘really a persona grata with the Chinese and starts with that and other advantages in his favour.’26 Assured by the Foreign Office that there was no conflict of interest, Hillier accepted it. With a salary of £5000 p.a. and a three-year term ahead of him, he returned to Peking, accompanied by his wife, Marion.27 It was another extraordinary step in his extremely varied career. Summoned to meet Prince Ching and Yuan Shikai, Hillier was given no details but told that the appointment was ‘an earnest of China’s sincere desire to get into close relations with Britain’.28 The intention was to have a two-way process, by which he would keep China informed of British thinking but at the same time convey to Jordan, and other British officials, whatever he gleaned about China’s intentions. Yuan’s all-powerful position was made clear when, soon after Hillier’s arrival, he held the most extravagant fiftieth birthday party, ‘one of the most impressive testimonies 25

26

27

28

Papers of Alfred E. Hippisley, Department of Western Manuscripts, Bodleian Library, Ms.Eng.c.7285, pp. 148–149. Letter, Jordan to Campbell, 28 May 1908, TNA FO 350/5, no. 47. For Jordan’s relationship with Walter Hillier, see Lau, Anglo-Chinese Diplomacy, p. 4. He had been with Walter in the Peking Legation in the 1880s and succeeded him as Consul-General in Seoul. For further correspondence relating to the appointment, see TNA FO 371/420, nos. 578–596. The salary was equivalent to the British Minister’s. Letter, Jordan to Campbell, 11 June 1908, TNA FO 350/5, no. 48; letter, W.C. Hillier to Jordan, 9 June 1908, TNA FO 371/420, no. 597 and a personal letter of the same date at 602–603; see also, letter, Jordan to Grey, 9 June 1908, also at 597. For the public reaction, see The Daily Graphic, 8 June 1908 and The China Times, 9 June 1908, which saw the appointment as designed to fill the gap left by Hart’s departure as China’s trusted Western adviser; Walter Hillier Cuttings Book (Hillier Collection).

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that … could be furnished to [his] power, with over 1000 guests attending his house for a celebration lasting several days’, as Hillier told Morrison.29 However, Yuan seemed uncertain what he wanted from the appointment. On at least two occasions, Hillier was called on to act as a go-between when the Huguang railway negotiations seemed to be stalling.30 He also continued to try to resolve the Kaiping Mines dispute, tenaciously asserting China’s position with a statement which ‘pulverized’ the Company’s case, as he told Jordan, who was willing to accept any terms that had a modicum of reasonableness.31 With this in mind, he then drew up a plan which was approved by the Chinese officials and the British syndicate in February 1909, only to see it repudiated by the Chinese government. Negotiations continued to the end of the year but without success.32 Save for these relatively minor interventions, Hillier’s services were not called upon and he became increasingly frustrated. As Jordan told Campbell, ‘the Chinese keep telling him he will be wanted later on and Hillier interprets this to mean that he is destined for the IG ship’.33 Guy Hillier’s ultimate plan was that, when Hart finally retired, Walter should be appointed ‘as the titular head’ of the CMC ‘with other men to do the work for [him]’.34 However, this came to nothing for two reasons. First, Bredon appointed Harry Hillier as Chief Secretary to the Customs in Peking, a step which seemed to strengthen the Hillier network still further with all three brothers working in Peking in their official capacity. However, according to Jordan, it was ‘another cunning move’ by Bredon because it ‘disarm[ed] the Hillier opposition’, by making it impossible for Walter to take over as IG, since it would mean his brother would be his deputy: an indication of the power base which the three 29

30

31

32 33 34

Letter, W.C. Hillier to Morrison, 14 September, 1908, Hui-min Lo, The Correspondence of G.E. Morrison, pp. 462–463. The first occasion was a meeting between Jordan, Walter Hillier and Tong Shao Yi at which Walter was asked to impress on Yuan the importance of adhering to the draft agreement: letter, Jordan to Foreign Office, 12 September 1908, TNA FO 370/422, no. 291: the second was an interview between Walter Hillier and H.E. Liang, in relation to the railways: see Memorandum by E.G. Hillier, 19 April 1909, HSBC Archive, SHG, 277b. Letter, Jordan to Campbell, 24 June 1908, TNA FO 350/4, no. 50; see also Carlson, Kaiping Mines, p. 120. Carlson, Kaiping Mines, 116–119; Memorandum, pp. 4–7. Letter, Jordan to Campbell, 12 November 1908, TNA 350/5, nos. 78–81 at 80. See letter, E.G. Hillier to W.C. Hillier, 8 April 1908 (Hillier Collection).

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brothers had built up in Peking, but also the antagonism that it was generating in some quarters.35 Guy’s plans also came to nothing because of a major change in the balance of power at Court. Shortly after Walter’s arrival, the Emperor and the Empress Dowager died within a day of each other, and Yuan Shikai was effectively dismissed by the Prince Regent, who had not forgotten his earlier disloyalty.36 With Yuan gone, Walter had lost his main supporter. He spent the following months completing the second volume of the Manual and writing a small dictionary – Peking Colloquial – and otherwise enjoying Peking’s legation world and seeing plenty of the family – his daughters, Florrie and Cissie, and Harry and Maggie, all of whom were living in Tianjin. Marion sketched a host of local scenes and painted Morrison’s portrait (whilst, apparently providing him with a decidedly poor lunch). But, as he told Chirol, the editor of The Times, Willing and anxious to work, Sir Walter is never given a chance… The Chinese conception of a foreign adviser is one who should never be asked for advice and who should be kept in complete ignorance upon every subject upon which he might venture to proffer advice.37

Tiring of the lack of activity, Walter resigned in July 1910 and bid China farewell for the last time. In the event, the appointment achieved little and also came in for considerable criticism in the press, albeit anonymously.38 The problem was that, whilst Qing officials wanted to seal the alliance in this way, they had little idea of how to put it into effect. Both of Hillier’s successors, Bredon and Morrison, would become equally frustrated.39 In short, however much it favoured the concept of a mediator, the Qing did not know how best to confront the growing power of Japan and Russia. What was clear was that the country was becoming increasingly subservient to foreign domination. 35 36

37

38

39

Letter, Jordan to Campbell, 20 August 1908, TNA FO 350/4, nos. 63–64. Letter, Jordan to Campbell, 7 January 1909, TNA FO 350/4, no. 90; Hsu, Rise of Modern China, pp. 416–417. Letter, Morrison to Chirol, 12 September, 1909,Hui-min Lo, The Correspondence of G.E. Morrison I, p. 523. A highly critical anonymous article on Walter’s time as Political Adviser appeared in The China Times, 6 September 1910. Pearl, Morrison of Peking, pp. 278–287.

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The outcome was also unsatisfactory for Harry Hillier. He was initially delighted with his Peking posting and, assuming he was unaware of Guy’s long-term plan for Walter, it may have reinforced his belief that he was in line to succeed Hart as the IG However, there is no evidence that he was in fact in running for the post.40 Moreover, given the personal animosity between the two men, serving under Bredon, as acting IG, was quite impossible and, instead, he was appointed Commissioner at Tianjin in March 1909, a prestigious post in comfortable surroundings, accompanied by a busy social life.41 He and Maggie were joined by their daughter, Eddie, who within months of her arrival, became engaged to Jack Irwin’s partner, Dr David Brown, the wedding taking place in December that year.42 Dorothy followed shortly afterwards and almost immediately found a husband, Charles Cobb, a captain in the 29th Punjabis, the wedding taking place in full military style in Shanghai’s Anglican Cathedral. Not only enjoyable on a personal level, these events also show how women were able to find eligible partners in the treaty port world and how Westernised and, seemingly permanent, that world had become. With both his daughters married and having recently received China’s Order of the Double Dragon, Harry had every reason to be content.43 However, the succession issue was festering. When Hart finally announced the date of his retirement, neither Hippisley nor Bredon obtained the appointment and, instead, Sir Francis Aglen was selected. Hippisley retired in disgust and Harry also decided it was time to go and applied for early retirement on grounds of illhealth. Having formally retired on 31 March 1911, he and Maggie left Tianjin in the summer and returned to England.44 Only Guy remained. With unrest against the Qing spreading, he was convinced that the government’s days were numbered, writing to Morrison, 40

41 42 43

44

See generally in relation to the succession, letter, Hart to Campbell, 11 December 1904, no. 1354, Fairbank, IG in Peking, Horowitz, ‘The Ambiguities of an Imperial Institution’ and Van de Ven, Breaking with the Past, pp. 158–162. Hart left China on 20 April 1908 Coates, China Consuls, p. 374. The wedding took place on 16 December 1908 at All Saints Church, Tianjin. Harry was permitted to accept the award by licence dated 22 August 1908 (Hillier Collection). Walter and Guy had also received various degrees of the award. There are a number of references in the Hillier family papers to Harry Hillier’s bitterness at the end of his career. According to Harold, he ‘felt he had been robbed of the reward the work and success of his career deserved’.

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[...] I feel sure that the country, driven by financial stress and the popular impatience for reform is approaching a very important crisis...the demand for the immediate establishment of a national parliament is gathering strength before which the government is beginning to perceptibly weaken. I believe the people will get their way, it will be a bloodless revolution; and whatever mistakes they may make to begin with ...I believe it is the only salvation of the country ... I am in complete sympathy now with the movement for hastening on the establishment of a constitutional government...45

Whilst it would not be a ‘bloodless revolution’, this was prophetic and, with events unfolding even quicker than he had predicted, once again Guy Hillier would find himself at their centre. REVOLUTION

Although its causes are complex, essentially the Revolution was triggered by two very different movements, both of which came to a head in 1911. One, led by the provincial authorities, although not designed to overthrow the Qing, was directed at reducing the concentration of power in Peking, whilst the other, much more radical movement, which was led by Sun Yat-sen and had been gaining support for some time amongst dissident Chinese abroad, was dedicated to the regime’s overthrow. Both were fuelled by the increasing subservience of the Qing regime to Western domination and the perceived outflow of revenue to support international loans.46 The crisis began in May 1911, when, in order to implement the terms of the Huguang loan, the Canton-Hankow and Szechwan-Hankow railway lines were effectively nationalised, leading to vociferous protests from the Provincial Assembly in Szechwan. Six months later, on 10 October, the army revolted in Wuchang. At the time, Sun was making his way back to China from America and was in Paris. By chance, Guy Hillier happened also to be in Europe and, not surprisingly, seized the opportunity to meet Sun, as we shall see below.47 Guy had come to Europe for both personal and business reasons and it was family matters that occupied him first, following his 45

46

47

Letter, E.G. Hillier to Morrison, 22 October 1910, Hui-min Lo, The Correspondence of G.E. Morrison 1, pp. 560–561. For a summary of the financial position in 1911, see Feuewerker, ‘Economic Trends in the Late Ch’ing Empire’, at pp. 65–68. Hsu, Rise of Modern China, pp. 468, King, The Hongkong Bank, II, pp. 462–463.

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arrival in August. Although Ada had visited him in Peking the year before, this was the first time he had met the children for five years and the encounter shows just how much intimacy could be undermined by such lengthy separations. Tristram, who was just six years old, vividly recalled his father’s arrival at their Sussex home, albeit with perhaps a little embellishment: […] he arrived ….accompanied by his secretary and his two Chinese ‘Boys’ and I was brought down to see him for a moment before being put to bed. He stood by the open French window of his study very straight and slim, with a brown face smiling over a clipped grey beard, my mother in a chair beside him, and he turned upon me a pair of eyes so bright and intelligent that it seemed to me, as it had to many another, impossible that he should be quite blind. My mother called me to his side and he put his arm around my shoulders … I saw little of him during his visit … Then, one day, I was called for again, kissed and presented with a five-shilling piece. My mysterious father, amid tin trunks, folding furniture, Chinese servants and various other appendages, left us to resume our normal existence.48

To Tristram, he may have been mysterious, but to his elder brother, the thirteen year-old Maurice, his father was more like an ogre. Unimpressed by this gauche teenager, Guy decided that ‘the boy was distinctly backward’ and promptly removed him from his preparatory school – Stonyhurst in Lancashire – and applied to the Benedictine monks at Downside Abbey in Somerset to accept him. Writing to the Abbot, he explained that ‘although by no means deficient in ordinary intelligence, the general slovenliness of [Maurice’s] habits gives evidence of a want of training and discipline’.49 Required to sit an entrance exam, Maurice’s performance was well below par but, on the basis of a personal recommendation, the Abbott agreed to make him an exception. Writing to thank him, Guy stated that ‘Maurice should not be allowed leave of absence to return home during term time except in case of illness and under a doctor’s certificate’.50 It is clear from 48

49

50

Hillier, Leda and the Goose, pp. 8–9. Entertaining though this memoir is, some of its chronology seems distinctly unreliable. Letter, E.G. Hillier to the Abbott of Downside, 6 September 1911 (Downside School Archive). Letter, E.G. Hillier to the Abbott of Downside, 27 October 1911 (Downside School Archive).

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later letters that Ada did what she could to mitigate this hardship but had no say in the matter. Instead, Guy asked Walter to act as his son’s de facto guardian. Harry does not seem to have been involved in these events and it is unclear how much the two brothers saw of each other during Guy’s visit. The one occasion when they were together, and possibly the last time that all three met, was at the funeral of Sir Robert Hart, who had died on 20 September, 1911.51 Following his return to England three years earlier, he had only officially retired from the CMC in May 1911 but had played little part in its affairs since leaving China. Suffering from ill-health, he had lived quietly and in typically modest style, unrecognised as ‘the most famous Englishman in China’. Held at the Church of All Saints, Bisham, Berkshire, the ceremony was attended by officials from China’s London Legation and the Foreign office but was a relatively low-key affair. As one of the most senior Commissioners, Harry was a pallbearer, but he will have had mixed emotions. Whilst he had enormous respect for the IG, as the writer of the Times obituary observed, Hart’s ‘character was as complex as his personality was sympathetic’ and he ‘seemed to be a bewildering blend of paradoxes’, which meant that, for Harry and many of his colleagues, service under him had never been easy. Nonetheless he was, as the obituary continued, ‘one of the most picturesque figures of the nineteenth century’ and his passing marked the closing of an era.52 Few anticipated, however, quite how prophetic that observation was to be, with news arriving of events in China that would make the reasons for Guy’s visit to Europe superfluous. He had come over to finalise terms for reforming China’s currency which were to be signed off in Berlin in October, but as the unrest spread, this was put on hold. Despite pleas to do so, Yuan refused to come out of retirement unless a national assembly was inaugurated and major concessions made to the revolutionaries. Concerned that the Bank’s agency in the neighbouring city of Hankou was about to be attacked, its Chief Manager, Newton Stabb cabled the London Office, stating that the disturbances were ‘paralysing foreign trade’ with consequences that could be ‘disastrous 51

52

‘Funeral of the late Sir Robert Hart’, South Bucks Free Press, Wycombe, Maidenhead and Marlow Journal, 29 September, 1911. ‘The Death of Sir Robert Hart’, The Times, 21 September 1911, p. 3; for a detailed appraisal of his character, see Wright, Hart and the Chinese Customs, pp. 852–865, quote at p. 856.

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to all mercantile interests’ and urging the major Powers to ‘approach the Central Government with suggestions of mediation’. Armed with the telegram, Guy Hillier called at the Foreign Office on 26 October and, later that afternoon, Sir Francis Campbell reported their discussion to the Foreign Secretary, Earl Grey: Mr Hillier, who knows China well, stated that the Chinese consider mediation a proper step towards the solution of every difficulty … I do not think there is anything to go to the Powers on at present but it might be as well to hear what Jordan has to say … Nothing may come of this but if H. is right in his belief that mediation is peculiarly suited to the Chinese character it seems a pity to throw away a possible chance of ending the rebellion.

To this, Grey replied, ‘it seems to me that if mediation takes place at all it had better be after Yuan accepts office or on condition that he does so’.53 In response, Jordan’s advice was for Britain to remain neutral and await developments, but already it was clear that official policy was to back Yuan’s reinstatement. Whilst the Bank was happy with that approach, it also needed to establish relations with Sun Yat-sen. To that end, Guy and Addis met Sun in Paris in early November and discussed his request for financial support for the proposed republic but made no commitment on behalf of the Bank.54 Impatiently reading the news coming out of China, Guy had no time to see his family again and he left for Berlin where he caught the Trans-Siberian Express. By the time he arrived in Peking, the crisis had escalated. Sporadic fighting was taking place and, fearful for the safety of the British community in Hankou, Jordan was more sympathetic to the idea of mediation and readily assented, when Yuan requested him to broker a truce. The aim at this point was to end hostilities, enabling Yuan to take over, whilst also saving the Qing dynasty. Appointed imperial commissioner in charge of the army and navy, Yuan assumed the premiership and began negotiations with both the revolutionaries and the Qing. However, the momentum was now unstoppable and it was only a matter of time before the Qing fell, 53

54

Annotated memorandum, Campbell to Gray, 26 October 1911 and typescript of telegram to Hongkong Bank, 26 October 1911, TNA FO 371/1093, nos. 456–458; King, The Hongkong Bank, II, pp. 462–463. For the visit to Sun Yat-sen, see Addis Diary, November 1911, SOAS Archive, PPMS 14/3/29; for Addis’ further meeting with Sun, see King, The Hongkong Bank, II, p. 477.

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although few predicted that events would move so fast and with relatively little bloodshed. On 1 January 1912, eighty-three days after the revolution began in Wuchang, the first Republic of China was established in Nanjing, with Sun being inaugurated as its first provisional president. On 12 February, the Emperor formally abdicated and, three days later, after considerable pressure, Sun announced that he would give way to Yuan as provisional president. From now on, the British government’s policy was to provide Yuan with whatever support was needed to maintain him in power.55 The Bank also agreed that this was the most effective way of safeguarding the interests of its investors. However, the Powers had also extracted a key concession from Yuan. From now on, the Chinese Maritime Customs (as they would now be known) would directly control the collection of Customs revenue to ensure it was available for the repayment of interest and capital in respect of the indemnity loans. As a result, from being part of China’s administration, the Service turned into ‘a debt-collection agency for foreign bond-holders’, reinforcing the hold of the Western Powers over China and turning it from ‘an independent republic [into] a client state’.56 For the Bank, the immediate issue was ensuring that the terms of the Huguang loan were implemented and that construction work on the proposed railway could begin. In the event, this took most of the year to resolve and, only after detailed correspondence between Guy Hillier, the Ministry of Communications and the Director-General of the Hankow-Canton Railway, was it confirmed in November 1912 that the work was about to start.57 By this time, with the provincial authorities cutting off revenue, Yuan was in need of further funds. Through Guy Hillier, the Hongkong Bank had provided an emergency loan but negotiations were now under way for one that would both meet China’s immediate needs and enable it to re-organise its finances in the long-term. Although Guy was the principal negotiator on behalf of the Six Power Consortium (Japan and Russia having 55

56 57

The death toll was estimated to be in the region of 10,000. For a summary account of the events, see Jonathan Fenby, The Penguin History of Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power, 1850–2008 (London: Allen Lane, 2008), pp. 119–135. Van de Ven, Breaking with the Past, pp. 134–135. See in particular, the detailed correspondence, April to November, 1912, HSBC SHG 0277a

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joined the original four Powers, Britain, France, Germany and America), it was agreed that control should vest in their governments’ hands and not in those of the Peking agents, albeit the Bank would earn substantial fees in organising and administering the loan.58 Whilst the Powers appeared to be in a strong negotiating position, they then discovered that the Chinese government was in parallel discussions with a rival Anglo-Belgian consortium, known as the Crisp Syndicate, which was willing to provide the loan on more favourable terms.This led to the sort of brinkmanship which Hillier relished but this time badly misjudged. The salt gabelle was to provide the security and one of the sticking-points related to the right to appoint ‘acceptable foreigners’ to the administration that would be responsible for ensuring the revenue was duly collected. When the Chinese government put its final nominees to Hillier as the Group’s representative, he believed he could call their bluff and, without consulting Addis in London or Jordan at the Legation, he rejected the proposed terms. But the Chinese were not bluffing and immediately concluded an agreement with the rival Syndicate on more favourable terms.When he learned of the outcome, Addis was shattered, writing in his diary,‘all the work of those weary months dashed at a stroke to the ground. Papers full of the Crisp loan and defeat of the 6 Power consortium’.59 However, the British government did not approve of the rival syndicate and, following an approach by Addis, made it clear that it would not support the loan if it was floated on the London market. Without such confirmation, the Crisp Syndicate had no option but to withdraw. However, the agreement still had to be finalised and the negotiations continued to be extremely tense, with the Chinese Minister of Finance, Chou Hsüeh-hsi (Zhou Xuexi), writing to Hillier stating that China was ‘in desperate straits’ and, again, threatening to obtain funds from other sources.60 At the last moment, America withdrew from the Consortium, jeopardising the entire arrangement, and then, urged on by Sun, the Chinese Parliament sought to reject the proposed terms on the grounds 58 59

60

Edwards, British Diplomacy and Finance, p. 168. Addis papers, Diary, 23 and 24 September 1912, King, The Hongkong Bank II, pp. 490–498. Letters, Minister of Finance to E.G. Hillier, 19 January 1913, Enclosure 2 in No.1; see also 4 February and 5 February 1913 and file note, 6 February 1913, TNA FO 371/1591.

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that they were too onerous. Eventually, on 26 April 1913, the agreement was signed in intense secrecy, one newspaper comparing the events to ‘a Conan Doyle novel, with details reminiscent of Poe’. Sun’s fears were well-founded since, in return for the bankrolling of China’s economy, the country surrendered control over most of its remaining revenue.61 The negotiations demanded Guy’s usual repertoire of competence, tact and patience, particularly in these closing stages, when he had to hold the Consortium together and prevent China from further exploiting the divisions between the Powers. However, he was still regarded with some suspicion by the Foreign Office. One incensed memorandum complained, ‘Hillier runs amok every now and again and has to be called to order in the Legation’ and even he was realistic enough to accept that at times he was at fault, particularly over the Crisp Syndicate debacle. These disputes have to be seen in the context of four highly experienced and competent officials, Campbell and Addis in London, Jordan and Hillier in Peking, conducting a complex set of negotiations, managing the competing interests of the Consortium, whilst presenting a united front to their Chinese counterparts and, most important of all, ensuring that the Bank’s commercial interests coincided with Britain’s wider policy. It was a process that required cool heads and high-quality mediating skills of the ‘menon-the spot’, since only they could properly gauge the mood of their Chinese counterparts.62 For his efforts, Hillier received a handsome bonus of £1250.63 However, whereas Addis received a knighthood, a similar recommendation for Hillier would only come ten years later, and he would die before the honour could be conferred.64 Nonetheless, the loan was regarded as the crowning point of his career. Aged fifty-seven, well-off but completely blind, there seemed no reason for Guy to remain in Peking rather than return to a comfortable retirement with his family in England. However, he chose not to do so, even though he was keen to maintain contact with them. Instead, when the negotiations were at their height, he had arranged for Ada and the children and the amah, 61 62

63

64

King, The Hongkong Bank II, pp. 500–503. Koji, ‘Britain’s Men on the Spot in China’, pp. 895–934; King, Hongkong Bank II, pp. 517–519. Approximately, £60,000 – small by the standards of today’s bankers but at that time this was a considerable sum. King, ‘Hillier, Edward Guy’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

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Tuk-san (but minus the hapless Maurice), to come out to China - a major undertaking for Ada, already in failing health, involving as it did a fifteen-day journey from Paris to Harbin via the trans-Siberian railway.65 According to Tristram, they sold their house, which suggests that Ada was seeing whether she could resume life with Guy in Peking. If so, it must have soon become clear that both her health and the unstable conditions made any such idea impractical and the following spring, braving the Trans-Siberian Express once more, she and the children returned to England. Some months later, Ada underwent a major operation from which she made a reasonable recovery, Guy writing to thank Walter for sending him ‘an excellent account of Ada’ and saying he had received from her ‘the happiest and most cheerful letter for a long time ... she is grateful for all that you & Marion & Maud have done for her – her recovery has been marvellous.’66 And so, they maintained this distant relationship, one that was affectionate but always subordinate to Guy’s work and engagement in China’s affairs. Significantly, perhaps, Guy does not mention Harry and Maggie who seem to have become more distant. By contrast, his sister, Maud, and her husband, who had left Cheshire and bought a house in Roehampton on the outskirts of London, had become an important hub for the family, including Guy’s children, with his two daughters, Winifred and Madeleine, attending the nearby Sacred Heart Convent School. Walter was still living in London, enjoying a predictably active retirement and busily seeking to further Sino-British relations. He assisted the World Missionary Conference in training missionaries about to leave for China and used the inaugural meeting of the Engineers’ Association in 1912 to promote British engineering in China and the funding of Chinese students to visit Britain.67 The following March, he was the principal guest and speaker at a dinner held by the British Engineers’ Association to inaugurate their new Far Eastern Section, at which he emphasised the importance of employing agents on the spot who were able to speak the language. As the London and China Telegraph reported, the meeting ‘testified to 65 66 67

Hillier, Leda and the Goose, pp. 11–15. Letter, Guy to Walter Hillier, 30 June 1913 (Hillier Collection). Sir Walter Hillier, Mission Work in the Farther East (S.P.G. Laymen’s Missionary Association), Occasional Paper, October 1908, ‘Speeches at the Inaugural Dinner, the British Engineers’ Association, 3 December 1912’ (Hillier Collection).

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the awakened interest which [London] is taking in its commercial relations with China’.68 The following year, as its President, Walter Hillier hosted the annual dinner of the China Association, which was attended by some 230 guests, almost all in some way connected with the Far East, including Sir Claude MacDonald and Sir John Jordan. Proposing the toast, he spoke of the importance of strong government in China and how this could only be achieved if Yuan remained in control.69 It is unclear whether the two men were still in touch but, given their earlier relationship, Walter could speak with some authority. Harry and Maggie had retired to the Sussex countryside, having found the house and garden, Burnt Oak, for which they had always longed. Their sons had both started China careers-through Guy’s introduction, Harold had joined the Far Eastern section of the Hongkong Bank (he had also attended the China Association dinner) and Geoff was working for Butterfield and Swire, also following a family introduction. Living in London, both would travel down to Sussex at week-ends and were making the most of England’s ‘long Edwardian garden party’, before setting off for China, or so they believed (cf. Plate 33).70 With the Re-organisation Loan providing China with economic stability and Yuan exercising strong leadership within a framework of western control, Sino-foreign relations seemed to be back on an even keel, albeit with China even more dependent on foreign goodwill and foreign money. However, within less than a year, Europe was at war and, as Yuan’s regime became increasingly unstable, Britain’s role began to change. WAR

Even before the outbreak of war in August 1914, cooperation between the Western Powers in China was diminishing, with governments promoting their own country’s interests and the acquisition of ‘spheres of economic preponderance’ against the 68

69 70

London & China Telegraph, 3 March 1913. However, Jordan and the Foreign Office were sceptical, believing that, without properly co-ordinated syndicates, individual companies would not be able to compete in China: see Edwards, British Diplomacy and Finance, pp. 191–192. London & China Telegraph, 3 November 1913. Cf. Samuel Hynes, The Edwardian Turn of Mind, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), pp. 3–14 and Harold D. Hillier, ‘Vita Mea’, pp. 18–19.

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consensual approach favoured by the banks.71 Since major loans depended upon international accord, the war effectively prevented the Bank from entering into any new commercial arrangements with German concerns, most obviously the DAB. However, for the administration of the current loans, not only did there have to be continued political and economic stability but also a substantial measure of cooperation between the two banks. On both fronts, difficulties would quickly surface. The high-handed way in which Yuan had handled the final negotiations for the Re-organisation Loan had provoked major unrest and, within months, a number of provinces had declared independence. Whilst Yuan had little trouble crushing this ‘Second Revolution’, this only served to inflate his personal ambition. ‘No longer satisfied with the title of provisional president he yearned for ... a lifelong tenure, preparatory to his ultimate goal of emperorship’ and, by August 1915, he was preparing to install himself as a constitutional monarch. This time the rebellion could not be quashed. ‘Deserted by his henchmen and overcome with shame, anxiety and grief ’, he would die from a short illness on 6 June 1916.72 This growing instability made all the more difficult the Bank’s task of enforcing the loan repayments and monitoring railway construction as the work slowly got under way. Guy Hillier continued to be heavily involved, travelling from Peking to Hankou and Shanghai to ensure control and maintaining a detailed correspondence with the British engineers.73 However, as the war in Europe showed no signs of ending, the relationship between the Bank and the DAB became increasingly fraught. For Hillier the problem was particularly acute, given his close relationship with the DAB representative, Heinrich Cordes, with whom he would take his daily walk along the city’s walls. The Bank had made many enemies and there were plenty of influential figures in the City of London and elsewhere, only too keen to seize the opportunity to accuse it, and, in particular, Addis and Hillier, of collaborating with the enemy. These included the French, still smarting from their exclusion from many of the major loan agreements, the Peking Agent of the Russo-Asiatic Bank 71

72 73

Edwards, British Diplomacy and Finance in China, pp. 176–195, and, for Jordan’s criticism of the Bank for preferring its own commercial interest over Britain’s, pp. 182–184. Hsu, Rise of Modern China, pp. 478–482, quotes at pp. 478 and 482. King, The Hongkong Bank, II, p. 519

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and, most of all, J.O.P Bland who returned to his old arguments in a libellous letter to the Foreign Secretary. Eventually, although he gave no credence to the allegations, Jordan instructed Hillier that Cordes could no longer attend the Bank’s premises, save by specific invitation, and contact could only take place when business reasons made it essential. However, the abuse continued and, when Hillier travelled to England in 1916 to visit his wife who, by then, was dying, the Peking Daily News suggested that the true reason was so that he could be questioned over his improper relationship with the DAB, an allegation that incensed Hillier and was unequivocally rejected in a letter from A.G. Stephen, the Bank’s Manager.74 Leaving China, together with his daughter, Winifred, who had joined him in Peking the previous year, Hillier saw his wife and children and his wider family – Walter, Marion and Maud and possibly also Harry and Maggie.75 Unfortunately, Maurice had done no better at Downside than at his previous school. It is unclear how much contact Walter had had with him, but he had weighed in with a letter asking him to ‘show some sympathy for [his] father’s great infirmity’ (that is, his blindness) and ‘to give up being a slacker and play the game’.76 Maurice had responded, so Walter told the Headmaster, with ‘a frank and manly reply’ in which he ‘promised to make amends for past idleness’ but without success.77 Unable to impress either Walter or his father, against the Headmaster’s advice, the seventeen-year-old Maurice enrolled at the Staff College, Sandhurst and, for once finding success, was duly commissioned in the King’s Own Scottish Borderers.78 During Guy’s visit, father and son were able to meet briefly before Maurice left to join the British Expeditionary Force in Flanders 74

75

76

77

78

King, The Hongkong Bank II, pp. 606–619; for Anglo-German relations in Shanghai during the war, see Sara Shipway, ‘The Limits of Informal Empire: Britain’s Economic War in Shanghai, 1914–1919’, unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Bristol, 2018, passim and, for the position of the Hongkong Bank, pp. 77–82. For Winifred’s visit to China, see letter, Ada Hillier to the Headmaster of Downside School, 22 February 1915 (Downside School Archive). Letter, W.C. Hillier to Maurice Hillier, 1 November 1913 (Downside School Archive). Because Ada adopted a more forgiving approach, Guy decided that Walter’s decisions should prevail over hers; see letter, W. C. Hillier to Abbott of Downside, 13 May 1915 (Downside School Archive). Letter, W.C. Hillier to Father Ramsay, Downside School, 10 June 1915, and to Maurice 17 June 1915 (Downside School Archive).

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in June 1916. Over the next seven months, he wrote to his father, describing life in the trenches in standard formulaic language, with his ‘men, all very keen and longing to have a really good fight with brother Bosch’.79 Given his presence at the Front, the continuing allegations of pro-German bias must have been all the more wounding for Guy. In the event, Ada made a partial recovery and, with conditions in China deteriorating, Guy decided he had to return. Arriving back in Peking in August 1916, he was dismayed by what he found in the wake of Yuan’s death, as he set out in a lengthy letter to Stabb: […] the situation is as bad as it can be…there is practically no government. The President is a weak, vacillating creature, anxious to propitiate everybody …His premier, Tuan Ch’i-jui, on whom he has chiefly to depend for guidance, is a soldier with little political or administrative experience … in the present chaotic condition of affairs, our policy is clearly to remain quiet and set our face firmly against advances of any sort to the Chinese government.80

But, for all this gloom, he was enjoying his personal life in ways that he had probably never done before. Shortly after his return, he had been joined by a new confidential secretary. Eleanor (Ella) Richard was the eldest daughter of the well-known missionary, Timothy Richard. Apart from her schooling in England, she had lived all her life in China and, after her mother’s death in 1903, had been required to keep house for her father, a dedicated but dogmatic Sinophile – an invidious task for a twenty-four-year-old woman, keen, no doubt to find a husband.81 Fortunately, when she was in her mid-thirties, her father re-married and she was able to leave home and begin a more interesting life. She had met Guy many years before, when she was working as a governess for the Drummonds, looking after their youngest daughter, Morna, at Dennartt and he was staying with the family during the Protocol negotiations. She later recalled her fascination as she watched him, already blind but walking un-aided across the room and sitting 79

80 81

Letter, Maurice Hillier to E.G. Hillier, 22 June 1916. There are six surviving letters, the final one dated 26 January 1917 (Hillier Collection). Letter, E.G. Hillier to Stabb, 24 August 1916, HSBC Archive, 001/004. Timothy Richard, Forty-five years in China: reminiscences (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1916), William E. Soothill, with foreword by John N. Jordan, Timothy Richard of China: seer, statesman, missionary and the most disinterested adviser the Chinese ever had (London: Seeley, Service & Co., 1924).

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down to play the piano. They had not met again but, when Allen suggested she become his personal secretary, she needed no second asking. An enthusiastic if somewhat scatty assistant – fortunately Guy was unable to see her eccentric typing –, she kept a detailed journal of her early days at the Bank and wrote a number of accounts of their later life in Peking. It is clear from the journal’s opening pages that the austere banker was quickly captivated by his new assistant and that, whilst, perhaps, seeing him primarily as a father figure, she also became devoted to him. By late September 1916, she was writing: Mr Hillier is a dear! Our evenings are so cosy & jolly & he is ever so interesting & invites exchange of opinion, not like father who monopolised the conversation always & disliked any difference of opinion. Father’s idea of a conversation was a monologue with a discreet chorus, dear old darling!82

Whatever the nature of the relationship (and, of course, both were highly conventional and devout Christians), it was undoubtedly close from an early stage, if somewhat formal. It provided Guy with humour but also with emotional support when it was needed, no more so than at this time. With his son, Maurice, and three nephews serving in the War, Guy was appalled as he read the daily reports of the slaughter taking place on the Western Front. Then, on 17 April 1917, the dreaded news arrived that Maurice had been killed in action. Ella recorded in her journal: I found him standing in front of the fire. ‘Miss Richard. Have you heard – my boy?’ – I went up & took his hand, ‘yes, Mr Hillier, I have just heard’ & I pressed it in silence. He sat down. ‘There is, I am afraid, no doubt about it’, he said in a forced calm. Then after a moment or two he excused himself, ‘I can’t realise what it means’, & left the room.83

Walter also felt Maurice’s loss keenly, all the more so, given the fact that his own son, Gerald, was in America and well away from 82 83

Eleanor Richard, Journal, September 1916, p. 7 (Private Collection). Eleanor Richard, Journal, 17 April, 1917, p. 50. Maurice was killed on 9 April 1917 during an attack at Vimy Ridge. He is buried at Bailleul Road West Cemetery, St Laurent-Blangy.

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the conflict. In his letter to Downside’s headmaster, Maurice was, he said: […] a fine manly lad and I watched the development of his character from the time he entered Sandhurst with growing interest and appreciation. I feel his loss as much as if he were my own son … He was, doubtless no genius, but he was full of manliness and high ideals.84

Maurice had strived but failed to build a relationship with his father but, whatever his failings, he had at the end fulfilled ‘the ideal of sacrifice and military manliness’ which both Guy and Walter so cherished.85 As Guy anticipated, Ada was shattered by the news, and it can only have hastened her death later that year. Tragic though these events were, Ella’s journal suggests that life with Guy was becoming all-important for both of them. Reasonably settled for most of the time, it also had moments of drama, a prime example being when the Northern warlords sought to restore the Manchu dynasty in the summer of 1917. On the weekend of 1 July, Guy was at his retreat, Balizhuang, in the western hills, when he heard that the eleven-year-old former emperor, Aisin-Gioro Puyi, had been brought out of retirement and placed on the throne. Hurrying back to Peking, he cabled A.G. Stephen, the manager at Shanghai: Restoration of Emperor proclaimed yesterday. President [Li Yuanhong] so far refuses to resign and remains in his residence with 2000 men under republican flag ...Peking remains quiet with troops of the new regime posted throughout the city. No opposition or disturbance expected in Peking at present, but provincial and Southern opposition probable.86

In fact, the calm was short-lived and, amidst much confusion, sporadic fighting broke out in the city between Chang Hsun (Zhang 84

85

86

Letter, W.C. Hillier to Father Ramsay, 15 April 1917 (Downside School Archive). Sonja Levsen, ‘Constructing Elite Identities: University Students, Military Masculinity and the Consequence of the Great War in Britain and Germany’, Past and Present 198 (2008) pp. 147–83, at p. 159. Based on Hillier’s telegrams, the story is told by Collis in Wayfoong, pp. 145– 50, but Ella wrote her own somewhat different account, ‘Pu Yi’s Twelve Day Reign or the Battle of Peking’ (Private Collection); see also, HPC, http:// visualisingchina.net/blog/2019/01/25/the-bankers-bullet-ridden-buick/.

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Xun), who had instigated the coup and troops of the former premier, Tuan Chijui (Duan Qirui). As the events unfolded, Guy kept Stephen up-dated with a stream of somewhat breathless telegrams. By 11 July, with Puyi still on the throne, the city seemed quieter, the weather was stiflingly hot and, telling Ella that he was having difficulty in sleeping, Guy and his mafoo rode back to spend the night at Balizuang. However, early the following morning, he heard the sound of gunfire coming from the city and, having previously arranged that Allen would meet him at the West Gate, he and his mafoo returned to Peking. According to Ella’s account: Allen had been going at a fine pace through one of the broad streets near the Palace when an officer commanding some Chinese troops shouted an order to them holding up his hand. The chauffeur wished to stop but A. who could not understand Chinese, called to him to rush through. The chauffeur jammed his foot on the accelerator, and they tore past the officer. He was so enraged that he gave an order to fire. The car was riddled with bullets. The mafoo sitting by the chauffeur was hit in his arm and a bullet passed through the peak of the driver’s cap ...They swept safely into the great broad street on the West where, to their astonishment they found G. and his mafoo riding their ponies.

The car’s petrol tank had been holed and to get to the safety of the Anglican Mission Guy ‘had to run like a lamplighter through some of the hottest firing’. As he told Ella, it had been […] an extraordinary experience for a blind man. He could hear the shots and the rattle of machine guns and the ping of bullets but he could also sense that the streets were empty and a strange silence reigned but for the terrific noise.

Quite apart from his exceptional courage, nothing could better reflect Guy’s-character – devotion to his work coupled with a sense of adventure, a stubborn determination to succeed and a certain foolhardiness. In the event, with the help of a modest payment to Zhang’s troops, the coup ended late that evening. The emperor’s twelveday reign was over. Puyi returned to his comfortable retirement and Zhang was generously granted a pardon. The restored premier, Duan, precariously clung to power, but the Bank firmly

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resisted his requests for financial support in return for assisting the allies in the war. The policy paid off. Without those funds but with the promise of Shandong being returned at the end of hostilities, in August 1917, China declared war on Germany and agreed to contribute 100,000 labourers to the Western Front. Soon afterwards, Tuan’s government fell and the country was again divided between the north, dominated by warlords, and the south, where Sun Yat-sen was trying to establish a semblance of democracy. Guy could not conceal his frustration at the increasing instability: Generally speaking the political outlook is gloomy and hopeless in the extreme. There is no government, no co-ordination, no public spirit… It is impossible to predict what will be the outcome of it all.We can only cling to our belief in the indestructibility of China and of those national qualities which we must hope will bring the country through in the end.87

In Europe, the war continued to take its toll on the family. Harold and Geoff had enlisted immediately on the outbreak of war, and served on the Western Front. Although Geoff had been wounded, both had survived but, on 11 April 1918, Harry and Maggie received the fateful telegram informing them that following an attack on 30 March, Geoff had been posted as ‘missing no details known’.88 He was aged twenty-four. His body was never recovered and neither his parents nor Harold could ever quite accept that he had been killed. Four months later, Maudie’s son, Geoffrey Hillier Swindells, who had also survived the entire war, serving mainly in North Africa, was killed in France on 1 August 1918. He was aged forty-four.89 Maudie had provided a second home for Guy’s children, Winifred, Madeleine and Tristram. Now, she had lost her son and they had lost their elder brother and, then, their mother. However, Guy remained in Peking, leaving them to fend for themselves, supported mainly by aunt Maudie and their maiden aunt Millie, one of Martha Saul’s daughters, who had come to live with the family during Ada’s last illness. According to Tristram Hillier,Winifred and 87 88 89

Letter, E.G. Hillier to Addis, 22 November 1917, HSBC Archive 001/005. Telegram from War Office to Hillier, Burnt Oak, Hillier Collection For Geoffrey Swindells’ obituary, see The Macclesfield Courier and Herald, 17 August 1918.

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Madeleine were both extremely beautiful and did not lack for suitors. In September 1918, Winifred married Hubert Booker, an American citizen who was ten years older than her and whom she had met when he was stationed near their home in Sussex. As soon as the war was over, the couple left for South America, where Booker would establish himself as one of Peru’s outstanding railway engineers.90 Soon after their departure, Guy instructed the family solicitor to sell the family home and pay off Tuk-san, who returned to Japan. Madeleine came out to join him in Peking, whilst the fourteen-year-old Tristram was left to look after himself. Without his mother, his siblings and his beloved amah, it was, he wrote, ‘the final disintegration of the family … a strange existence in which the normal curriculum of school-life [at Downside] was interspersed with periods of absolute freedom’. An exceptional example of empire separation, his memoir makes little secret of the traumatic effect that this had on him.91 With the war in Europe now over, there was the possibility of greater global stability but also a developing movement against imperialism. As nationalism began to gather pace, so demands grew for the foreign Powers to withdraw from the treaty ports. However, the British government’s inability to accept this position became all too clear by its treatment of China at the Versailles Peace Conference. WITHDRAWAL

Confident that the commitment to return Shandong to China would be honoured, there was outrage when the principal Powers reneged and agreed, instead, that Japan would succeed to Germany’s former rights in the province. On 4 May 1919, some 3000 students gathered in Peking to protest, both against the foreign powers and the weakness of the Chinese government. In the event, little happened that day, save for the destruction of some property and the arrest of a handful of students. However, it set in motion what became known as ‘the May Fourth Movement’ and, 90

91

Correspondence, various, Archives of Peruvian Railway Corporation, TNA, University College London, B4/1-B4/5B. Winifred would bear him one son, before dying from tuberculosis, a condition that had been latent and that she had almost definitely contracted as a child in Peking. Hillier, Leda and the Goose, pp. 31–33.

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with it, ‘a nationwide assault on imperialism and China’s prevailing culture’.92 Guy Hillier

For the Bank, the main issue was the impact of these events on China’s ability to meet its repayment obligations.This was precarious to say the least and, shortly before departing for his winter break, Guy Hillier received a visit from the Minister of Finance who was, as he informed Stephen: […] at his wits’ end for funds. The Peking troops and police are unpaid, native banks and others clamour for repayment of their advances, and unless $2m can be produced within the next few days serious trouble is feared.93

Passing the request onto Allen, who had assumed responsibility for day-to-day matters, he put these problems behind him and left for Hong Kong, away from Peking’s challenging winter and accompanied by his secretary, Ella Richard. It was now more than two years since his wife’s death, and on 20 December 1919, he and Ella were married in the Roman Catholic Cathedral. Returning the following March, they would spend much of their new life at Balizuang. Although the accommodation was extremely Spartan, with only very basic sanitary facilities, it was somewhere they both loved and where they could find peace and quiet away from the bustle of Peking life, particularly during the summer months (cf. Plate 30). Although Ella seems to have been keeping her journal only intermittently by this time, one entry conjures up the scene: Two days ago we sat for coolness in the pavilion of the God of War, a cool dark place looking out on to the main courtyard of the bell and drum towers and the beautiful white pine trees. Kuran-Ti [Guan Yu] sits robed in green & gold on a red throne; his eyes are very oblique, a characteristic of military ardour …94 92

93 94

Robert Bickers, Out of China: How the Chinese Ended the Era of Western Domination (London: Allen Lane, 2017), p. 31. Letter, E.G. Hillier to Stephen, 12 November 1919, HSBC K001/004. Eleanor Hillier Journal, 4 July, 1922, p. 111.

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Attending Catholic mass in a nearby chapel, Guy enjoyed the silence and meditative atmosphere of these Buddhist surroundings. As one commentator said later: […] a stranger might easily consider him distant but it was only necessary to see him breakfasting on Sundays after Holy Communion, with a Chinese village priest, to know how unfounded that impression was.95

This willingness to converse with ‘ordinary’ Chinese led to close, if formal, relationships with a whole range of local people – the village priest, the Buddhist monks, his Chinese assistant, who would read him the local papers, and his mafoo, ‘the stout and doughty’ Hooray, who would accompany him on his afternoon walks along Peking’s spacious walls.96 But, whilst, as Addis would later say, China had become Guy’s ‘adopted country’, he did not ‘go Chinese’, and remained firmly and conventionally English in his dress, his habits and his approach to Britain’s role in China and its future.97 It was an approach that was not conducive to intimacy with his children and it would lead to great difficulties in their personal lives. Having joined him and Ella, Madeleine had become engaged after a whirlwind romance not untypical of Peking’s small social world. Her fiancé, Charles Todd, was a dynamic and colourful personality, who had fought in the First World War and was now working for the Eastern Trading Company. The wedding, which took place on 25 February 1922 at St Michael’s Roman Catholic Church, Peking, was a large family occasion, attended by Walter Hillier’s two daughters, Florrie and Cissie (now also married), and, Harry Hillier’s daughter, Eddie, all of whom were leading settled lives in Tianjin. Madeleine, however, would be less fortunate. After producing two children, she would find Shanghai’s racy cosmopolitan world too much for her. Drink, drugs and ill-health – like her sister, she suffered from a latent TB that manifested itself in later life – would lead to a bitter divorce and, as with Clare Hillier, the loss of her children. She died in 1939.98 95 96 97

98

‘The Rock’, the Hongkong Roman Catholic Magazine, May 1924. Eleanor Hillier ‘Early Weeks’, p. 1 (Hillier Collection). After-dinner speech of Sir Charles Addis at a dinner of the Hongkong Bank, China Express and Telegraph, 17 July 1924; cf. Bickers, Britain in China, pp. 102–104. Charles Todd recorded their first meeting and courtship in a passionate letter (undated), which he sent to Madeleine in late June 1922. See generally, Sue Osman,

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Guy’s son, Tristram, who had arrived in time for Madeleine’s wedding, spent the best part of a year living with his father and Ella, who proved to be a kind and enthusiastic step-mother.99 After lengthy talks with his father, he was persuaded that he was unsuited to a China career and, instead, after returning to England, he enrolled at Cambridge University, albeit with some reluctance. Like his father, he would come down without taking a degree but then embark on a very different life and become a celebrated artist. Some commentators have said that his austere and often bleak landscapes reflect the trauma of his early years.100 Emotionally remote, Guy Hillier nevertheless had a keen sense of philanthropy and, having lost his own sight, wanted to do something to assist the large number of people in Peking suffering from defective sight, caused in part by its harsh winds. Sharing this interest with his brother, Walter, the two had developed a new form of Chinese Braille, which was highly praised by Chinese educationalists and put into practice in 1914. Three year later, he and a group of colleagues – Western and Chinese – had set up the first public school for the blind in Peking, at which the students were both educated, using the new Braille system, and taught craftwork.101 Whilst enjoying a more leisurely life in these last years, Guy still maintained a close involvement in the Bank’s affairs and, when moves began in 1923 to put together another large consortium loan he was immediately engaged, sending a spate of detailed memoranda to London, about both the economic and political situation. However, he was not to witness their outcome. Aged sixty-seven, he had kept physically fit through his riding and swimming but the strain of these years had taken its toll. After a short illness, he died peacefully on 12 April 1924, in the presence of Ella and Madeleine and a Jesuit priest, Father Mullins. 99 100

101

‘Charles Todd and his family, 1893–2008 (unpublished, Private Collection). Hillier, Leda and the Goose, pp. 42–61. Jenny Pery, Painter Pilgrim: The Art and Life of Tristram Hillier (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2008) and https://swheritage.org.uk/events/landscapes-of-themind-exhibition/ accessed November 2019. The braille system is described in ‘Memorandum by Sir Walter Hillier upon an alphabetical system for writing Chinese, the application of this system to the typewriter and to the linotype or other typecasting and composing machines, and its adaptation to the braille system for the blind’ (London: William Clowes and Sons, Limited, undated), pp. 9–14 and see below. According to the Peking Gazette, it was ‘incomparably the best in existence’, 10 October 1914. For the school, see Sidney D. Gamble, assisted by John Stuart Burgess, Peking: A social survey (London: Humphrey Milford, 1921), pp. 32 and 146.

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Tributes poured in from all sides.The funeral was an extremely lavish affair, attended by officials and representatives from the ministries, banks and commercial houses and by his ‘many personal Chinese friends’. With an additional carriage to convey the flowers, he was buried in the French cemetery at Beitang.102 Here, the ceremony was not only to honour Guy’s memory but also to celebrate Britain’s presence in China, in which he had for so long been a key figure. As The Times reported, ‘with the death of “Hillier of the Bank”, China loses one of her best friends, and the British banking community one of its bravest and most engaging personalities’.103 Harry Hillier

Neither Walter nor Harry were, of course, able to attend the funeral and, by this time, Harry was in any event not at all well. Reading the tributes will have been moving but also problematic for him. Unable to accept Guy’s Catholicism, he and Maggie had not found the relationship easy and it does not seem to have continued to any significant degree after Ada had come to England. A degree of sibling rivalry cannot be discounted with Harry being well aware of their differing fortunes. Whilst he had been a competent Commissioner, he had lacked the affability of Walter and the edgy flair of Guy and, this may well have been apparent, when the three were living and working in Peking. At just the time that Guy was trying to engineer Walter’s appointment as IG it seems that Harry believed he was in the running for the post, which would have carried considerable status and a knighthood. He was the only one of the three brothers not to have received a British award for his services, something that will also have rankled with his wife, Maggie, who, given her own family background, certainly harboured ambitions for her husband. All this generated a considerable degree of resentment and disillusionment. Whilst much of this may have been due to Harry’s personal circumstances, it also tells us something about how 102

103

China Illustrated Review, 19 April 1924. For Guy’s last days and Allen’s moving description of the funeral, see King, The Hongkong Bank, III, pp. 146–147. In 1953, his remains were removed to Waiqiao Cemetery, Beijing, where the gravestone can still be found. The Times, 15 April 1924. Guy left a substantial estate, enabling Ella to lead a comfortable life in England and abroad. She died in 1963.

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Customs men viewed their China careers and the uncertain position they found themselves in when they retired to England. This was partly because of the ambivalent role they occupied in China but also because those of Harry’s vintage found Hart so difficult to read, given the unpredictable way in which he treated his staff, a point that is strongly brought out by Paul King in his memoir.104 As a result, they tended to become ‘deracinated’ to use Catherine Ladds’s term. Whilst she suggests that this could lead to them combining ‘a global identity, with national and local ties’, it is unlikely that this happened in Harry’s case, albeit he did develop a certain cosmopolitanism.105 He had fashioned a local ‘imagined’ identity, one dependent on the status the Commissioner held in the China Coast world but it was one which, with the loss of its outer trappings, could not be sustained in retirement.106 For Customs men, there was little scope for recreating the ‘China Raj’ in England and few mechanisms for maintaining connection with colleagues, even if Harry had wanted to do so.107 Few understood quite what Customs men had been doing in China and had difficulty identifying them with the imperial cause. In short, Customs men returning home had little to show after years of hard work, sacrifice and largely unrecognised service.108 Harry’s problems were compounded by financial difficulties. Having acted on the advice of his nephew, Herbert Drummond, he lost much of his savings in an ill-advised investment, promoted by a financier called Clarence Hatry, who would later be unmasked as a serial fraudster.109 Moreover, there were no pension 104 105

106 107

108

109

King, In the Chinese Customs Service, pp. 61–66. Ladds, Empire Careers, p. 195 and generally for the identity of Customs men, see pp. 166–168. For ‘imagined’ identity in China, see Bickers, Britain in China, p. 14 and pp. 104–106. For the Chinese Raj, see Bickers, Britain in China, pp. 76–77; cf. Buettner, Empire Families, pp. 196–238; Elizabeth Buettner, ‘“We Don’t Grow Coffee and Bananas in Clapham Junction You Know!”: Imperial Britons Back Home’ in Robert Bickers (ed.), Settlers and Expatriates: Britons over the Seas, The Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 302–328, at pp. 309–314; Nupur Chaudhuri, ‘Shawls, Jewellery, Curry, and Rice in Victorian Britain’, in Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel (eds), Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), pp. 231–246. Ladds, Empire Careers, pp. 184–186 and 194–195. A more positive picture is presented by Brewitt-Taylor’s life in retirement but he had his scholarly interest in Chinese literature to occupy him; see Cannon, Public Success, Private Sorrow, pp. 182–183. See letter, Mrs M.E. Hillier to Mrs Middleton, 10 December 1917 (Hillier Collection). Hatry would be sentenced to fourteen years imprisonment, The Times, 25 January 1930, p. 5.

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arrangements for Customs men of his era, who had pressed Hart to set one up but been told that there were insufficient funds. Although a superannuation scheme was established in January 1920, it did not extend to staff who had already left the service. Feeling deeply aggrieved, in November 1921, ten former senior commissioners, including H.E. Hobson, A.E. Hippisley and Harry Hillier wrote to the IG, F.A. Aglen, referring to these earlier attempts and asking that some pension provision be made for former staff. Whilst they made out a powerful case, it was rejected. It will have been of little consolation to Harry to know that in the same Customs’ records, where this correspondence can be found, he is acknowledged to have been ‘a man of outstanding ability’.110 These problems and the loss of his son contributed to the breakdown of Harry’s health and, spending his last months in a London nursing home, he died on 25 August 1924, impecunious and without ceremony. Buried at St Mary’s Church, Wimbledon, apart from family, the only mourner at his funeral was his old Customs’ colleague, Paul King.111 As well as his own name, his gravestone bears that of his son, Geoffrey, together with the words, ‘missing in action’. Maggie’s last years were also not easy. By the time her father, William Drummond, died in 1915, he had lost most of his fortune, through a mixture of extravagance and the collapse of the Malaysian sugar market.112 Dennartt had been sold and her mother, Christian, was now living in a modest house in the estate grounds. Maggie seems to have had little or no interest in either of her surviving children, Dorothy and Harold, even though both were living in England with young families. She was also in poor health and, shortly after Harry’s death, she returned to China to be with her mother. It was there that she felt most at home and, where these two Shanghailanders spent their final years, surviving on their meagre incomes and, it seems, eschewing contact with the family in Tianjin. Maggie died in 1928 and her mother a few months later.113 110

111 112 113

Letters between Hobson and others and Aglen, respectively dated 6 November 1921 and 6 January 1922, and summary of H.M. Hillier’s career, Documents Illustrative, vol. 3, pp. 639–641. Unattributed press cutting obituary (Hillier Collection). Jackson, Planters and Speculators, p. 173. NCH, 24 November 1928; probate records, respectively: TNA FO 917/2837 and FO 917/2995.

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Sir Walter Hillier

Walter Hillier’s last years provide a striking contrast. Having stayed in London during the war, when, for a short time, he also carried out voluntary desk-work for the Red Cross, he and Marion then purchased The Oaks, a large Victorian house just outside Bracknell in Berkshire. Crammed with furniture, artefacts and memorabilia brought back from China, this was a space where he could entertain friends and former colleagues and continue to work on his various projects. These included devising the Braille system with Guy and inventing a Chinese typewriter, using a Chinese form of ‘alphabet’, a concept explored by a number of inventors at the time but which, according to Thomas Mullaney, ‘was bound to fail’, as indeed it did. Despite generating considerable interest and the building of at least one prototype, the project never found a commercial backer and the only surviving model was given to two missionary women, who may or may not have found it of use in their work in China.114 Throughout his final years, Walter maintained his China connections and his interest in all things Chinese, observing the twists and turns of Britain’s foreign policy. Under pressure from U.S. President, Woodrow Wilson at the Washington Conference, in November 1921, it agreed in principle to return Weihei, whilst Japan agreed to hand back Shandong. However, it had no intention of withdrawing from the treaty ports and, beset by internal struggles between the nationalists (the Guomindang) and the communists, China was unable to press its case.115 Indeed, Britain’s global influence at this time was greater than ever before, and, with no other power willing or able to threaten its authority, it treated this and other nationalist movements as localised problems ‘to be managed …or repressed as its interests dictated’.116 114

115

116

For the typewriter, see ‘Memorandum by Sir Walter Hillier upon an alphabetical system for writing Chinese’. It was reported with enthusiasm in the NCH, 17 March, 1917, p. 599. For its subsequent history, see draft letter from Agatha Maitland-Addison to the Editor, The Evening News, 30 August 1948 (Hillier Collection); see also Thomas S. Mullaney, The Chinese Typewriter: A History (Cambridge MA. MIT Press, 2017), pp. 182–187, quote at p. 185, and a footnote which gives Hillier’s invention a generous mention. Ian Nish, ‘Early Retirement: Britain’s Retreat from Asia, 1905–23’, in Antony Best (ed.), Britain’s Retreat from Empire in East Asia, 1905–80 (London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 8–20, at pp. 15–18. For China’s aspirations at the Conference, see Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anti-colonial Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 99–117 and for Shandong, pp. 177–196. Darwin, Unfinished Empire, p. 334.

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However, meeting growing resistance, this approach was becoming unsustainable and this became clear on 30 May 1925, when the Shanghai Police opened fire on a peaceful protest, killing eleven demonstrators.This was, as Bickers says, ‘the single greatest wound suffered by the British in China before 1941’ and, what is more, it was ‘entirely self-inflicted’.117 Orchestrated by Chiang Kai-shek, now leader of the Guomindang, mass protests broke out across the country but Britain still refused to accept that withdrawal was inevitable. Attending a lunch hosted by the China Association, the Foreign Secretary, Austen Chamberlain, whilst affirming his support for Chinese self-determination, insisted that Britain still had a role to play: The salvation of China can come only from the Chinese and the measure of her progress and the extent of her progress will be the measure and the extent of the capacity and goodwill which the Chinese government can bring to the solution of these great questions… I trust that our country will not play a halting part, but that we shall continue to lead, as we have always led, in China.118

Walter was no doubt present and, whilst condemning the violence, he would have agreed with this sentiment, as it so aptly reflected the approach the Medhurst and Hillier families had adopted towards China since the opening of the treaty ports. However, Chiang was having none of it. After eliminating the communist elements with a brutal efficiency, he established the National Government at Nanjing in 1927. Having surrendered the first of the treaty ports, Hankou and Jiujiang, the British government despatched 20,000 troops to defend Shanghai and the International Settlement would enjoy one final decade of Western extravagance and high living before falling to the Japanese.119 Whilst Walter had always preferred mediation to confrontation, he had a firm belief in the benefits of Britain’s presence in China and, indeed, throughout the Empire. We can see this clearly in his relationship with his half-brother, Hugh (now Colonel) Marshall Hole, C.M.G. who, no doubt influenced by Walter, 117 118

119

Bickers, Out of China, pp. 52–59, quote at p. 59. SOAS China Association Papers CHAS/A/8 Annual Report, 1925–1926, 24 September, 1925, quoted in Chow, Britain’s Imperial Retreat p. 166. Bickers, Out of China, pp. 35–70, 101–139 and 145–151, quote at p. 106, Chow, Britain’s Imperial Retreat, pp. 186–195.

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had thrown up his career at the Bar and gone out to South Africa in 1888 in pursuit of imperial glory. Having led an adventurous life, working first for Cecil Rhodes and Leander Starr Jameson and then serving as Civil Commissioner of Bulawayo and Administrator of North-Western Rhodesia, he had returned to England in 1913. Walter had invited him to the annual China Association Dinner and the two brothers kept in touch. In 1926, Hole published his account of his experiences to much acclaim. The Making of Rhodesia was, according to one review (carefully pasted into Hillier’s cuttings book): […] the stirring story of gold and great adventures, of imagination in the Imperial vein, of a curious mixture of altruism and material ambition …Hole makes one feel that Empire expansion, development of the lands beyond the seas, the redemption of the savage spaces …are the only things really worth doing.120

Nothing could better reflect the approach that Walter Hillier admired, that he would have liked his son, Gerald, to have emulated and that he himself had sought to adopt in his early life. Whether scouting for a river-borne attack on Peking, ‘capturing’ a Chinese garrison by pluck and guile or peace-making in the aftermath of the Boxer Uprising, he had combined his fascination for China with a ‘curious mixture of altruism and material ambition’. However, his was not an intellectual approach and, despite his life-long interest in the country, he never sought to analyse or justify Britain’s presence. In this respect, he was little different to other consular figures whom we have come across in this study, men like Alcock, Wade, Parkes and Jordan, who devoted their lives to China but who, save for Jordan, left no account of their experiences. Hillier did distil his fascination for China and Korea into a volume of Kiplingesque stories, some factual and some re-telling traditional fables. With pen-and-ink sketches by Marion, it was called Tales of a Modern Grandfather. Whilst this was, no doubt, 120

Hugh Marshall Hole, The Making of Rhodesia (London: Macmillan, 1926), anon. ‘The Making of Rhodesia’, South Africa, 18 June 1926, p. 483; for Hugh’s first meeting with Rhodes and an account of his first ten years in South Africa and Matabeleland, see Hugh Marshall Hole, Old Rhodesia Days (London: Macmillan, 1928), p. 2 and passim. Whilst much of the tone grates, it is an interesting account, not least of Rhodes, who described Hole as ‘one of best and most loyal servants the Charter has had the good fortune to employ’; see letter simply dated 1900, p. 135.

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an allusion to Scott’s Tales of a Grandfather121 and its witty Dedication, it was a poignant title, given his unsatisfactory relations with his own children, from whom he continued to be separated, both emotionally and by the distance of empire, and the fact that he can seldom have met any of his grand-children. Settled in China, his two daughters, Florrie and Cissie, would later return with their families to Europe, but not to England until the 1930s and, whilst Gerald did visit his father shortly before his death, he came alone, as can be seen in a faded photograph taken by Walter’s nephew, Harold Hillier, at The Oaks in the summer of 1927. The only one of the four cousins to have survived the war, Harold would retain fond memories of Walter and Marion but have no interest in resuming his China career (see Plate 34).122 Sprightly to the last,Walter died peacefully at home on 9 November 1927, his career being duly celebrated in the obituaries and tributes from commentators and colleagues. For W.R. Carles, whom he had known since their days as student interpreters in Peking almost sixty years earlier, there had been ‘no more staunch friend’.123 CONCLUSION

Many of the themes that have threaded through this study were reflected in these final years. On the public stage, the ambiguities of British policy towards China both shaped, and were shaped by, officials like the Hillier brothers, who combined a cultural sensitivity with a belief that China’s interests were best served by collaborative relationships, set within Britain’s imperial framework. In their private lives, Walter’s and Guy’s late marriages brought them happiness, but did little to repair their relations with their children, leaving a bitter legacy for the next generation. Harry, on the other hand, although still enjoying a settled family life, spent his last days de-racinated and discontented and, although there were multiple reasons, it was in part because of his disillusionment with his career in the CMC. For their part, all three wives – Marion, Ella and Maggie – thrived in the empire setting and played an important, if under-stated, role as part of the British presence. 121

122

123

Sir Walter Scott, Tales of a Grandfather: History of Scotland (Edinburgh: Cadell, 1828–1830). Yeh-Yeh, ‘Tales of a Modern Grandfather’: drawings by Meh-Meh (Christmas 1926) (Hillier Collection). The Times, 17 November 1927, p. 16.

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If the failure of Walter Hillier’s appointment as Foreign Political Adviser exposed the limits of Britain’s collaborative approach, few anticipated that, within less than two years of his retirement, the Qing regime would have collapsed. Whilst the conclusion of the Huguang Railways Loan appeared to herald a brighter future, it instead accelerated those events and the establishment of the First Republic. Although foreign domination contributed to the downfall of the Qing, the Western powers were quick to adjust to the new landscape and to provide substantial financial support to Yuan Shikai in order to stabilise the country and safeguard their interests. With the Re-organisation Loan in place, the prospects at the close of 1913 looked good. However, a combination of the war in Europe, internal disruption in China and the onset of post-war nationalism fundamentally changed that landscape and, hastened by the May Fourth Movement, it was only a matter of time before Britain and the other Western powers began the process of withdrawal. If that process was drawn out, it was partly because, despite considerable opposition within Britain, the official mind was slow to question the unequal nature of the relationships under-pinning its presence.124 And that was reflected in the approach of Guy and Walter Hillier, who still believed in Britain playing a leading role in China’s affairs. However, it would be wrong to see their belief as motivated only by self-interest. Guy’s continued engagement with the country, living and working in Peking in arduous conditions long after he could have retired to England on a handsome pension, and Walter’s continuing fascination for its culture and language show that their interest went far deeper than that. And, however Harry viewed his career towards the end of his life, for much of his time in China, he also had shown a devotion to his work and sympathy for the country. Three brothers with three very different personalities and, yet, all with an interest in China’s language and culture, that was key to their success. Whilst that initial interest owed much to their family background, that would not have been sufficient for them to survive and prosper in this alien world. Something more was required. In addition to having the requisite skills and competence, they needed to have the right temperament, one that enabled them to endure the hours of tedious Chinese study with an unforgiving 124

For an analysis of the various movements within Britain that were opposed to its empire, see, Claeys, Imperial Sceptics.

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teacher, before they gained even a smattering of the language, and to withstand the loneliness of life sometimes in a remote out-port far from home. They also needed to learn and subscribe to the elaborate protocols and formalities that underpinned dealings with Chinese officials, whatever their rank, a point that is well-illustrated by two incidents in Walter Hillier’s career. The first is described in one of his ‘tales’ and occurred when the boat in which he was travelling with the British Minister, Wade, ran aground and he had to row ashore and seek help. He only succeeded, he said, because he knew how to introduce himself and address the head man on what he termed ‘his own ground of etiquette’. Meeting a villager, he made a solemn bow and began, ‘May I ask your honourable name?’ to which the response was, ‘My humble name is Chang. I have not received your commands as to your name’. After further exchanges and inquiry as to where the headman might be found, Chang replied, ‘I am the unworthy occupant of that post’ and, after Walter had explained the problem, help was promptly summoned from the villagers.125 The second incident is related in the memoirs of Lucy Soothill, the wife of the celebrated missionary, and occurred when she introduced two young female missionaries to a wise and deeply courteous scholar-official, called Mr Kwo. They had been taught Chinese by Walter Hillier in London, and, coming away from their meeting, they told Lucy Soothill that ‘they now realised whence Sir Walter Hillier had learnt some of his great courtliness. It was partly from intercourse with such as the venerable Mr Kwo.’126 This reflected an approach that all three brothers had perfected: it enabled Walter to deal with the mercurial Yuan Shikai, Guy to maintain infinite patience when negotiating with Zhang, and Harry to establish good relations with the local Daotai. Whilst these formalities enabled them to abstain from any emotional engagement in their public relations, such an approach could generate ambiguities in their personal lives.Whilst there may be many reasons why Walter and Guy had earlier unsatisfactory 125

126

‘He forgot to carry one’ in Hillier, ‘Tales of a Modern Grandfather’, pp. 38–62. It was the lack of a sextan that caused the ship to run aground; for the aftermath of the incident, see letter, Hillier to Foreign Office, 1 July 1879 and his subsequent report, TNA FO 17/809, nos. 273 and 364. Lucy Soothill, A Passport to China: Being the Tale of Her long and Friendly Sojourning amongst a Strangely Interesting People (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1931), p. 96 and see pp. 98–101 for the elaborate protocol that attended a banquet, given in honour of Kwo.

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marital relations, one factor that was common to the three marriages that were seemingly successful , was that, in each case, the wives – Marion, Ella and Maggie – had been brought up in an empire setting. They were thus familiar with, and willing to subscribe to, the patriarchal nature of such a relationship. However, they were, at the same time, able to maintain a degree of independence and, carving out a life of their own, make a significant contribution to Britain’s presence in that setting. Filial relationships, however, were different. Whilst a lack of intimacy between father and son was not unusual at this time, the empire background and the emotional remoteness of their early lives seem to have been partly responsible for the difficulties Walter and Guy experienced with their children, and for the unnecessary emphasis they placed on hierarchy and emotional restraint. By no means exceptional in this type of setting, the literature is full of examples of colonial fathers, who although outwardly amiable and affectionate towards their sons, could in private be remote and censorious.127 We see, therefore, the ways in which empire could shape family and how those influences could in turn feed into empire careers and shape Britain in China. By the time of Walter Hillier’s death, it was a world that was nearing its end, and, apart from Shanghai’s iconic Bund, a scattering of other Western buildings and the occasional cemetery memorial, almost all that remained of the British presence has now been swept away.128 Having drawn together the threads of this story, it may be asked, why, in this post-colonial age, we need to revive memories of that world and to dwell on the dubious nature of the imperial presence and the role that family played in creating and sustaining it. A number of reasons can be put forward, as we shall now see.

127

128

See, for example, the difficult relationship that General Colin Gubbins had with his father, J.H. Gubbins, an official in the Japan Consular Service, P. Wilkinson and Joan B. Astley, Gubbins and SOE (London: Leo Cooper, 1993), pp. 6, and 23. I am indebted to Dr Jim Hoare for this reference; cf., also, Buettner, Empire Families, pp. 142–145. Bickers, Britain in China, pp. 234–247.

9

Conclusion Œ

WATCHING, AS INTERNAL disruption threatened to tear the coun-

try apart in 1917, Guy Hillier confided in Addis his sense of exasperation, but concluded, ‘we can only cling to our belief in the indestructibility of China and of those national qualities which we must hope will bring the country through in the end’.1 Encapsulating not only his own feelings but also those of his family since his grandparents, Walter and Betty Medhurst, first arrived in Malacca one hundred years before, his comment explains why we need to explore this sort of family story and to examine the impulses that stimulated that belief. Over three generations, members of the family lived and worked in East and Southeast Asia, their public lives intersecting with many of the major events which shaped Sino-British relations, whilst their private lives helped establish and sustain the British presence. To understand the nature of that presence, we need to understand the processes that underpinned it. This study has argued that family played a major role in that process. Operating as a social unit or mechanism, it generated a collective mind that enabled and informed empire careers and developed networks and practices that consolidated Britain’s presence and gave an identity to this part of the British World. By focussing on family, we have also been able to see how that presence was shaped by, and dependent upon, collaborative relationships with Chinese officials and how, by mediating between the Western and Chinese communities, officials like the Medhursts and Hilliers facilitated those relationships. Whilst family was a key mechanism for shaping empire, at the same time, familial relations were themselves being constantly re-shaped. The relationship between family and empire was, thus, mutually constitutive. 1

Letter, E.G. Hillier to Addis, 22 November 1917, HSBC Archive 001/005. 262

CONCLUSION

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Although the British presence has long since ended, these events remain relevant today for at least three reasons. First, both in Britain, where little is known of this history, and in China, where it is remembered as the ‘century of national humiliation’, there is a need to sweep away the myths and understand how this presence was effected over such a lengthy period in order to evaluate its impact on both cultures, then and now.2 Secondly, by understanding how family operated as a component of imperial power, we can apply that analysis elsewhere, both in the British World and in relation to other imperial powers, not least to China and its vast diaspora, in which notions of family were and continue to be of immense importance.3 Thirdly, the legacy of this presence is still with us, in our current understanding, imperfect though it is, of how individual Britons – men, women and children – created a Britain in China, in the artefacts and archival papers (public and private) that bear witness to that presence and in the way our current familial relations have been shaped by the empire project, of which that presence formed a part. In short, however unaware of it we are today, that presence and the collective mind that was shaped by it remain part of our heritage and culture. The process by which a family generates a collective mind is inevitably gradual and, clearly, no particular moment can be identified when, as in the case of this family, that process crystallised into a distinct imperial mind-set. However, we can say that, with the marriage of Eliza Medhurst to Charles Hillier in 1846, together with the friendship that already existed between her brother, Walter, and Charles, a two generation network came into being, spanning treaty port China, Hong Kong, Singapore and the metropole, and, with it, the beginnings of a trans-imperial family identity. Over the next seventy years and beyond, this identity was consolidated, revised and extended. By the mid-1880s, the three Hillier brothers had become established in their careers and a snap-shot taken ten years later would have shown Walter as HBM Consul, Korea, Harry as Customs Commissioner, Kowloon, and Guy as Peking Agent of the Hongkong Bank, together with a family network, embracing wives, children and more distant relations, spread across multiple locales. A further snap-shot, taken in 1908, would have shown a similar pattern, but with the three brothers all serving in official capacities 2 3

Cf. Bickers, Out of China, pp. xxxi–xli Susan Glosser, Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915–1953(University of California Press, 2003), pp. 3–4.

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in Peking and at the heart of Britain’s imperial presence in China. Throughout that time, the family operated collectively, absorbing the experiences of its individual members and evolving a set of values that spread across and down through the generations, informing a distinctive approach to Britain’s empire project, whilst at the same time forging networks that threaded through a range of imperial locations. Varying in character from the impetuosity of the Medhursts, inherited most certainly by Guy Hillier, to the more prosaic qualities of Charles Hillier, inherited by his son, Harry, there were a number of common attributes that informed their careers. Stemming from a background of evangelicalism and imperial self-confidence, these included diligence and self-belief which were then coupled with, what I have called, a ‘cultural sensitivity’. Although the term may seem inappropriate in the context of the Unequal Treaties and, acknowledging that it was always self-serving, it nevertheless reflects the way in which they understood the nuances of dealing with Chinese officialdom. It also enabled these agents of empire to build the collaborative relationships with their counter-parts which were key to Britain maintaining its presence and influence in China well into the twentieth century. Whilst this analysis is necessarily Anglo-centric, and a more Sino-centric perspective might well present a different picture, it at least advances the debate as to how consensual these relationships were. On an intimate level, family consolidated the British World, by domesticating and normalising its presence and transmitting information by way of travel and correspondence. In the absence of the political structures that underpinned Britain’s formal empire, whether in the Dominions, India or the Crown colonies, the wider British World was dependent upon these less tangible mechanisms for forging and maintaining its identity. Whilst the Medhurst-Hillier family may have been unusual in terms of the length and breadth of its presence in China and Southeast Asia, the contours of its experience were little different from those of numerous other British families who lived and worked in this region. Through its collective mind, members of the family were enabled to mediate the British presence, whether as missionaries, administrators or quasi-officials. Although this study suggests that the cultural sensitivity it deployed operated in a reasonably positive way, family could also be a negative force, for example, helping to generate and sustain a more aggressive form of imperialism and

CONCLUSION

265

racial intolerance. Either way, this study shows the importance of studying family as a significant mechanism of the empire project. It was, of course, only one of many institutions and agencies that underpinned empire and that were constantly shaping and being re-shaped by its culture: the British Legation, the China Consular Service, the CMC, western banks and commercial enterprises, the armed forces and local agencies, such as the Shanghai Municipal Council and the police, all of which were part of the fabric of informal empire. So also were bodies as diverse as missionary societies, chambers of commerce, clubs, masonic lodges, literary societies, philanthropic projects, the race-course and miscellaneous sporting organisations. Many of these were dynastic in their makeup, family members were given preferential treatment and some, such as Jardines, Dents and Swires, were distinct family concerns. There was, therefore, a process of mutual interaction between these institutions and the families that made up their membership. At the same time, familial relations were reconfigured in ways that would have long-term social and cultural consequences. Paradoxically, for missionaries, whose lives were so often led in the harshest of conditions, the family life of Walter and Betty Medhurst was remarkably settled, if, that is, we ignore the despatch of Betty’s eight-year-old son, George Braune, to England. Although Medhurst was often away, the family had a comfortable home life both in Batavia and Shanghai, with the children all enjoying good relations with their parents, with each other and in their own marital relations, albeit, young Walter Medhurst’s were beset by tragedy. It is in the next generation that the imperial background and the pangs of separation began to take effect, with the family spread out across a range of locales in East and Southeast Asia as well as England. Charles and Eliza were separated from their own families, and spent two years living apart from each other and lengthy periods away from their children. This continued into the next generation with each of the three families experiencing lengthy separations, between spouses and between parents and children. This fashioned new types of familial relationship, conducted across the distance of empire and maintained principally by correspondence, interspersed only with the occasional meeting. If family was one of the two articles of Victorian faith, that was based on a narrative of a family whose members were able to meet frequently and whose lives were closely intertwined. It thus failed to take account of the impact of empire and the way in which conjugal relations were re-shaped and family given a very

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different character. However, by allowing it to retain its identity whilst avoiding its intimate demands, the distance of empire enabled this aspect of the Victorian faith to be sustained and mythologised.4 In reconfiguring familial relations, empire could, and in this case did, provide a greater freedom to women, even as early as the first half of the century. Betty Medhurst was given considerable scope in her running of the mission station and some of this independence may have rubbed off on her daughter, Eliza, who, although initially ‘inexperienced’, flourished when on her own with the children in England and, later, in Siam in exercising her role as the consul’s wife. What is striking about the first two generations is the warmth of their personal relationships. Letters from Walter Medhurst to his father are respectful but informal and affectionate, so also Medhurst’s to his daughter, Sarah, whilst Eliza’s provide a picture of Charles as an intimate and fond parent. And so, for all the distance of empire, in these first two generations, a sense of intimacy was generated and incorporated as part of the collective memory. A different picture emerges when we come to the next generation. From some time in the early 1870s, familial relations were subject to a number of new influences. There was an emphasis on masculinity, emotional restraint and the male striving out on his own, and this was reinforced in the empire setting. Set against that, the first wave of feminism saw greater opportunities for women to express their personality and establish a degree of independence but a resulting hesitancy in the way men approached marriage and intimacy. These features were reflected in the lives of the Hillier brothers and their wives and families and they had serious consequences for Walter’s and Guy’s children. Just as empire shaped the children, so those children contributed to the British presence, projecting images of authority from their earliest years and reinforcing notions of racial superiority, which they in turn handed on to the next generation. Whilst knowledge of that world began to fade as Britain withdrew from China, memories, actual and imagined, remained in the minds of those who had experienced that life, even if only in their earliest years, and, passed to the next generation, those memories continued to shape the family identity. Treasuring such memories, Lady Marion Hillier lived on at The Oaks, safeguarding Walter’s writings and photographs and surrounded by the possessions and 4

Cf. Buettner, Empire Families, p. 113.

CONCLUSION

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pictures that conjured up that China world that had meant so much to him. Following her death in 1958 at the age of ninetythree, the house and its remaining contents were sold. Over two days, more than three hundred items were auctioned. Many recalling Walter’s life in China and Korea, they ranged from porcelain, lamps and lacquered tables to a ‘Chinese ceremonial umbrella with silk embroidered draperies’ (item 306). This was, almost certainly, the umbrella presented by the Chinese merchants to Walter on his retirement, when he left Seoul in October 1896, and an item, whose significance seems sadly to have been over-looked.5 Although such collections have now become dispersed, intimate memories of that world still surround us, embodied in furniture and ornaments and in memoirs, journals, letters and photographs. For a long time gathering dust, many are being re-discovered and, with their importance once again recognised, they can help revive and stimulate interest in the role of the British family in the China Coast world.6 ----------------

5

6

‘By Order of the Trustees, “The Oaks”, London Road, Bracknell, Berks, catalogue of the remaining contents of the residence’, W.E. Scotchbrook, 25 November 1959 (Hillier Collection); Walter had donated his extensive collection of Chinese books to the School of Oriental and African Studies. Cf., for example, Bickers, Empire Made Me, pp. 6–8, Historical Photographs of China, https://www.hpcbristol.net/ and also, Andrew Hillier, ‘Dear mother, Dear father: Legation Letters Home’, https://blogs.qub.ac.uk/specialcollections/ accessed 15 November 2019.

Time-Line 1817–1927 Date 1817

Public Event1

Family2 Walter Medhurst meets and marries Betty Braune and they begin their missionary life in Malacca

1821– Reign of Daguang 1850 Emperor 1821

1836

Walter Medhurst transfers to Batavia, Java, to run the mission station

End of E. India Co. monopoly in China trade

1836– 1838 1838

Medhurst and family in England China: Its State & Prospects Medhurst and family return to Batavia

1838– 1843 1839 Start of First Opium War 1836– Charles Hillier serving in 1841 Minerva 1841 Annexation of Hong Kong Charles Hillier leaves Minerva & begins life in Hong Kong 1842 Treaty of Nanjing. End of First Opium war

1

2

The only public events specified are those directly impacting on the family apart from reigns of the emperors. For further details of births, deaths and marriages, see family tree.

269

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Time-Line 1817–1927 Date 1843

Public Event1 Opening of 5 treaty ports

1846 1847

Family2 Charles Hillier appointed Assistant Magistrate, Hong Kong Medhurst and family to Shanghai. Medhurst, junior, consular interpreter, Shanghai Charles Hillier marries Eliza Medhurst Charles Hillier appointed Chief Magistrate Hong Kong

1850

Outbreak of Taiping Rebellion 1851– Reign of Xianfeng 1861 Emperor 1852

1855

1856

1857 1858

Opening of Consulate in Bangkok & trade relations with Siam Start of Second Opium War Treaty of Tianjin

Charles and Eliza Hillier to England, Charles returns and Eliza remains with children Eliza returns to Hong Kong with Maudie, leaving three boys in England. Walter Medhurst, junior, appointed Consul, Fuzhou. Charles Hillier appointed HBM Consul to Siam Death of Charles Hillier; Eliza returns to England Death of Medhurst, Senior

TIME-LINE – 1817–1927

271

Time-Line 1817–1927 Date 1860

1861

Family2 Public Event1 End of Second Opium War Convention of Peking followed by opening of more treaty ports & western legations in Peking Death of emperor

1864 End of Taiping Rebellion 1862– Reign of Tongzhi 1874 emperor (born 1856) Yehonala, Empress Dowager (Cixi) (1835–1908), begins de facto reign 1858– 1862

1862

1864 1865– 1867 1868 1872

1875– Reign of Guanxu 1908 Emperor 1875 Murder of Augustus Margary.Walter Hillier takes part in negotiations with Wade

Eliza moves to Bedford. The three eldest Hillier boys go to Bedford School. Eliza moves to Tiverton, Devon. Hillier boys are sent to Blundells Eliza marries Charles Marshall Hole Willie, Walter and Harry leave school and begin jobs in London Walter joins China Consular Service Harry Hillier joins Imperial Maritime Customs

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MEDIATING EMPIRE

Time-Line 1817–1927 Date 1876

Public Event1 Treaty of Chefoo

1877

First Chinese Embassy to Britain: Walter Hillier accompanies envoys to England and in their journeys round Britain

1878 1879 Oct 1881

1882

1883 1884– Sino-French War 1885 1886

1888

Family2 Guy Hillier to Cambridge University, comes down without a degree Walter Hillier marries Lydie Marshall Hole

Walter Medhurst retires from Consular Service Death of Lydie Hillier Guy Hillier joins Jardines, Hong Kong Walter & Harry Hillier to Texas in search of their elder brother, Willie Hillier Harry Hillier marries Annie Hudson Walter Hillier marries Clare Ord Guy Hillier joins North Borneo Company Guy Hillier joins the Hongkong Bank

Death of Eliza Marshall Hole Death of Annie Hillier Harry Hillier marries Maggie Drummond

TIME-LINE – 1817–1927

273

Time-Line 1817–1927 Date 1889

Public Event1

1891

Guy Hillier appointed Peking Agent of Hongkong Bank

1894– Sino-Japanese War 1895 1894 1895

Treaty of Shimonoseki Sino-Japanese indemnity Hongkong Bank commences loans to Qing

1896 1895– 1899 1898

1899

1900

Family2 Walter Hillier appointed acting Consul to Korea

Britain acquires 99 year lease over the New Territories Britain occupies New Territories Hundred Days’ reform Boxer Uprising

1901– Boxer Protocol Commis1902 sion appointed to implement Boxer Indemnity 1904– 1908

Walter Hillier divorces Clare Guy Hillier negotiates Indemnity loans on behalf of Hongkong Bank Walter Hillier retires from the Consular Service Harry Hillier, Commissioner for Kowloon

Walter Hillier appointed Political Adviser to General Gaselee Guy Hillier chairs Commission Walter Hillier, Professor of Chinese, King’s College, London

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MEDIATING EMPIRE

Time-Line 1817–1927 Date Public Event1 1902– Railway Loans 1911

Family2 Guy Hillier plays leading role on behalf of Hongkong Bank 1905 Kaiping Mines litigation in Walter Hillier advises High Court, London Yuan Shikai in relation to Kaiping mines dispute 1906 Walter Hillier marries Marion Aitchison 1908– Walter Hillier, Foreign 1910 Political Adviser to Qing 1908 Death of Emperor and Empress Dowager 1909– Reign of Puyi emperor 1911 (1906-1967) 1911 Harry Hillier retires 1911 Hukuang Railways Loan End of Qing Empire 1913 Re-Organisation Loan 1914 Outbreak of First World War 1916 Death of Yuan Shikai Ella Richard starts work Beginning of Warlord Era as Guy’s secretary 1917 Maurice Hillier killed in action Death of Ada Hillier 1918 End of First World War Geoff Hillier missing in action 1919 Versailles Peace Conference Guy Hillier marries Ella May Fourth Movement Richard 1924 Death of Guy Hillier Death of Harry Hillier

TIME-LINE – 1817–1927

Time-Line 1817–1927 Date 1925 1927

Family2 Public Event1 May Thirtieth Incident triggers anti-British protests Death of Walter Hillier Chiang Kai-shek establishes National Government in Nanjing

275

BIBLIOGRAPHY Principal Archival Sources and Web-sites

Œ

Belfast Queens University, Belfast, Library Special Collections (QUB) MS15

Sir Robert Hart Collection. London HSBC Group Archives

HQ SHG I 0277, HQ SHG I 0302/1 HQ SHG II 0552 HQ SHG II 671 G.2 3/7/1 and 2

Correspondence relating to the Hukuang railway loan. Correspondence relating to the ReOrganisation loan. Letters Book, principally E.G. Hillier. E.G. Hillier, private papers. David J.S. King, ‘China’s Early Loans, 1874–95 and the role of The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation’ (University of Hong Kong Centre of Asian Studies Working Paper. Unpublished) and other working papers.

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277

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MEDIATING EMPIRE

FO 405 PRO 30/33 T1

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Private Papers Blundell’s School Archive. Clennell papers: Walter J. Clennell, ‘Destination Peking: A Young Man’s Journey into China, 1888–1889’, unpublished manuscript, 2008. Downside School Archive. Hillier Collection. This includes: Correspondence, 1846–1927, including Harry M. Hillier’s Letters Book. Family Tree

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INDEX Œ

Addis, Sir Charles, 145, 146, 179, 180, 205, 206, 235, 237, 238, 241, 247 (n.87), 250, 262, 278 Aglen, Sir Francis, 231, 254 Alabaster, Chaloner, xxv, 135 (n.99), 136 Alabaster, Harry, xxv Alcock, Henrietta, xxiii, 97 Alcock, Sir Rutherford, xxiii, 33, 35, 38, 39, 46, 47, 49, 50, 97, 120, 121, 122, 127, 142, 257 Alexander, William, 20 Allen, R.C., 244, 246, 249 All the Year Round, 52 Amah, xxxiii, xxxiv, 95, 97, 175, 198, 200, 202, 211, 216, 238, 248 America, Americans, 15, 16, 17, 41, 42, 74, 88, 92100, 103, 115, 128, 137, 163, 194, 196, 197, 200, 203 (n.68), 207 (n.75), 232, 237, 244, 248 Amherst, Lord, embassy to China, 3, 6, 17 Amoy (see Xiamen) Anglo-Belgian consortium, 237 Anglo-Chinese College, 4 (n.5), 8, 27 Annam, 117, 155, 210 Anstey, Thomas Chisholm, 75 Arrow War (see Second Opium War) Asia, East, ix, xxi, xxxii, 149 Southeast, xxi, xxxii, xxxiv, xxxvi, xxxvii, 3, 6, 264, 265 Baber, E.C., 131 Balfour, Captain George, 29, 30, 31, 33, 35, 36, 37, 64, 65

305

Bali, 13, 14 Balizhuang, 246, 249 Bangkok, xxi, 76, 103, 105, 151 (n.10) Batavia, 4, 9–14, 23, 26, 28 Medhurst family in, 83–91 Martha Saul in, 93, 98, 100 Bax-Ironside, Henry, 161 Baxter, George, 20, 21, see also Plates 2 and 3 Bedford, xxxv, 58, 110, 111, 112 Bedford Grammar School, 111, 112, 113, 150 (n.8), 163, 204 Beihai (Pakhoi) 139, 210 Bible, 6, 12, 15, 44, 58, 73 Morrison-Milne version, including revised edition, 16, 17 (n.50) 18, 20, 21, 40 Delegates’Version, 27, 28, 40–43, 96 Bickers, Robert, xi, 148, 256 Bird, Isabella, xxiv (n.12), 141 Blake, Sir Henry, 159 Bland, J. O. P., 178, 179, 180, 188, 242 Blundell’s School, Devon, 112, 113, 114, 131, 140 Boley Hill, Rochester, 57 Bollington, Cheshire, 114 Bonham, George Sir, 39, 54, 70, 71, 74 Booker, Hubert, 248 Boone, Dr W.J., 41 Bowring, Sir John, 51, 63, 70, 74, 75, 101

306

MEDIATING EMPIRE

Boxer Indemnity, 149, 168, 170 Boxer Uprising and aftermath, ix, xxv, 149, 157, 161, 163–71, 181, 219 Brady, Gina, 191 (see also Marshall Hole) Brady, Herbert, 173, 202, 203 Brailey, Dr W.A., 130 Braune, Betty (see Medhurst) Braune, Emily Braune, George Henry (first husband of Betty Medhurst), 80 Braune, Revd George, 80, 81, 82, 87, 89, 99 Braune, George (son of above), 99, 265 Brazier, James Russell, 174 Brazil, 131 Bredon, Robert, 138, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231 Brenan Byron, 226 Bridges, W.T., 73 Bridgman, Elijah Coleman, 15, 16 Britain in China, ix, xxvi, 3, 262–5 early China trade, 3 British views and understanding of China and ‘Chinese mind’, 5, 10, 12, 19, 22, 40, 41 entry into China, 3–6, 14–16, 23–8 presence in, policy towards, China, following: opening of treaty ports (1842), ix, x, xxvi–xxxvi, 29–30, 50–1 Treaty of Tientsin (1858), 117– 27, 133, 146–7 Treaty of Shimonoseki (1896), 147–9, 157–8 Boxer Uprising (1900), 168, 181–3, 184, 211, 218–22, 227–30, 235–6 Revolution (1911), 236, 240, 258–9 withdrawal, 222, 240, 248, 255–6, 259, 261

British and Chinese Corporation (B&CC), 157, 176 British and Foreign Bible Society, 21, 43 British Empire, British World, xxi– ii, xxvi–xxvii, 19, 58, 78–9, 91, 93, 104, 115, 151, 255 (See also family and China) British Legation, Peking, 51, 118–9, 129, 130, 131, 143, 149, 154, 176, 200–3, 204, 206, 218, 265 student interpreters, 117, 119– 20, 122, 130–1, 202, Plate 11 (see also China Consular Service, Walter Medhurst, junior, Walter Hillier) British North Borneo Company, 142–3, 272 Brown, Dr David, 231 Brown, Frederick Revd, 164 (n.53) Brown, Revd Samuel, 92 Bruce, Sir F.W.A., 52 Brunel, Isambard, 58 Buckingham Palace, 125 Buettner, Elizabeth, 101, 212, 214 Bulawayo, 257 Burdon, Revd, 81 Bury St Edmunds, 98, 212 Butterfield and Swire, 215 (n.98), 240, 265 Caine, Mary Ann, 99 Caine, Sir William, 55, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 71, 72, 74, 75 Caldwell, Daniel, 76 California, 137, 138, 196, 198 Cameron, Ewen, 141, 145, 163 (n.49) Campbell, C.W., 205 Campbell, Sir Francis, 179, 228, 235, 238 Campbell, Duncan (CMC’s London manager), 125, 126 (n.63), 196, 197, 225

INDEX

Canadian Pacific Railway, xxv, 202, 210 Canton, (see Guangzhou) Cardington, Bedfordshire, 58, 110, 113 careering, xxix, xxxi, xxxii Carles, W.R., 258 Caswall, Dr, 86 cemeteries and graveyards, 45, 261 Abney Park, London, 105, Plate 7 Bangkok, 104 Happy Valley, Hong Kong, 102 Macao, 102 Pahsienjao (Baxianqiao) Shanghai, 193, Plate 14 Peking, French Cemetery, Beitang, 252 Waiqiao Cemetery, 252 (n.102) St Mary’s Wimbledon, London, 254 Singapore, 101 Tanah Abang, Batavia, 102 Yantai, 198 Chamberlain, Austen, 256 Chamberlain, Joseph, 160 (n.60) Chang Chih-tung (see Zhang Zhidong) Chang, Elizabeth, 37 Chefoo Convention, 122 Chefoo (see Yantai) Chiang Kai-shek, 256, 275 Chiang Tun-ju (Jiang Dunju), 44 Chief Magistrate, Hong Kong, 53, 61 (see also Charles Hillier) Chief Superintendent of Trade, 14, 19 (see also Governor of Hong Kong) China, Hundred Days’ Reform, 148, 161, 273 reform generally, 149, 168, 172, 220, 222–232 Rights Recovery Movement, 175, 220

307

Self-Strengthening Movement, 117, 139, 148 Revolution, 220, 221, 232–236, 241 (see also Qing, Britain in China) China Association, 226, 240, 256, 257, 278 China, banks, 143, 145 China Consular Service, xxii, xxxii entry and examinations, 116, 119–20, 129–30, 146 (see also British Legation, Walter Hillier) China Inland Mission, 120, 128 China, migration, diaspora, nanyang, xxix, 3, 5, 8 (n.15), 10, 26, 97 (n.63), 263 China Raj, xxxv (n.50), 214, 253 China Society, 166 (n.63), 226 Chinese Braille, 251, 255 Chinese Central Railways (CCR), 176, 178 Chinese Christian Union, 13, 45, 67 Chinese education, promotion of, by Medhurst, snr, and LMS, 9, 15, 20, 26, 86, 208, 251 by Charles Hillier in Hong Kong, 9, 65, 73 by Walter Hillier in England, 226, 239 Chinese Embassy to the West, Chinese Legation, London, 125–126, 225, 272 Chinese Engineering and Mining Company Limited, 223 (n.11) Chinese language, learning and Britons’ ability to speak, ix, xxix, 6–9, 14 (n.36), 19, 34, 42 (n.35), 44, 53, 57, 60, 64, 69, 76, 81, 85, 88, 117–20, 119, 123, 125, 129–30, 133–4, 141, 142, 143, 144, 146, 222–3, 226, 239 Hokkien, 9, 14, 83, 85 Chinese Maritime Customs Service (Imperial Maritime Customs)

308

MEDIATING EMPIRE

(CMC), xxi, xxiii, xxiv, xxv, xxviii, xxx (n.30), xxxi (n.32), xxxii, xxxiii (n.41), 117, 147, 149, 154, 171–2, 174, 182, 188, 214, 221, 236, 253–4, 259–60, 265, 278 entry, training and examination, 132 (n.84), 133–134 (See also Hart, Harry Hillier) Chinese officialdom, relations with, xxx, 15, 32, 38–9, 49, 50–1, 73 (n.62), 118–21, 129, 139, 145, 146–7, 148, 170–4, 176–83, 200, 206, 223, 260, 262, cf. Plates 16, 17 Chinese postal system, 172–3, cf. Plate 21 Chinese Repository, 8 (n.16), 15, 41, 42 (n.34), 279 Chinese type-writer, 255 Chinkiang (see Zhenjiang) Chirol,Valentine, 118, 230 Chooh-Tih-Lang (see Chu Takleung) Chou-fu (see Zhoufou) Christianity, 8, 11, 20, 28, 36, 45, 46, 58, 90 (see also evangelicalism) Chu Tak-leung (Chooh-Tih-Lang), 18, 21–22, 88 Chusan (see Zhousan) Clennell, Walter James, 130, 131, 202, 203, 278 Coates, P.D., xxii, xxv Cobb, Charles, 231 Collaboration, xxvii, xxviii, xxix, xxxvii, xxxviii, 32, 55, 109, 128, 149, 258, 259, 262, 264 Collective memory, collective mind, xxx, xxxii, xxxviii, 97, 206, 262, 263, 264, 266 Compton Case, 65 Confucius, Confucianism, xxx, 11, 28, 36, 37, 42, 44, 53, 120, 123, 169

Conger, Edwin, 163 Cordes, Heinrich, 156, 241 Cornwallis, HMS, 26 cosmopolitanism, xxxi, xxxii, 7, 135, 184, 200, 212, 250, 253 Crisp Syndicate and Loan, 237, 238 cultural sensitivity, ix, xxx, 168, 258, 264 Curzon, Lord George, 166 Daily Mail, 166 Daiwongun, 152 Dalianwan, 157 Daoguang, Emperor, 23, 25 Darwin, Charles, 192 Darwin, John, xxvii, xxxvii Davis, John Sir, 19, 37, 39, 51, 62, 64, 65, 66, 70 death, as an experience in empire, rituals surrounding, xxii–xxiii, 101–2, 104, 191–3, Plate 14, (see also letter-writing) Dennartt, Shanghai, 172, 208, 213, 243, 254, Plates 19, 20 Derby, Earl of, 123 Detring, Gustav, 223 Deutsch-Asiatische Bank (DAB), 156, 157, 179, 182, 241, 242 Dickens, Charles, 52 (n.69), 103 Don Quixote, 103 Downside Abbey and School, 233, 242, 245, 248, 278 Drummond, Christian Forbes (nee Macpherson), 208, 210, 213, 254, Plate 22 Drummond family, 210, 213, 216, 243, Plate 22 Drummond, Herbert, 253 Drummond, Margaret Edith Mary, 139, 206, 208, 272, Plates 22, 24, 33 Drummond, Morna, 213, 243 Drummond, William Venn, 139, 206, 207, 209, 211, 254, Plate 22

INDEX

Duan Qirui, 246 Duncan incident, 63 Duckworth, Revd, 112 Dyce, Charles, 190 East India Company, 7, 14, 19, 64, 80 Edkins, Jane, xxiv Edkins, Joseph, 40 education, in England, for boys, 111–4, 115, 116, 132–3, 146, 210, 212 for girls, 114, 208, 214 Elliott, Charles, 24, 56 Emperor Aisin-Gioro Puyi, 245, 246 Emperor Kuang-hsu, 148, 161, 167 Empress Dowager (Xiaojian, Yehonala or Cixi), 161, 171, 230, 271 Endacott, G.B., 58 Engineers’ Association, promotion of British engineering in China, 181, 239 Evangelical, evangelicalism, xxix, xxxviii, 4, 6, 9, 18, 20, 25, 58, 77, 82, 115, 264 Everett, Ada (see Hillier) Everett, Frederick, 215 Everett, Marian (Dolly), 216 Everett, May, 215 Everett, Rupert, 215 (n.99) extra-territoriality, xxvi family (British),Victorian notions of, 79, 265 and empire, xxi–vi, xxxii–vi, xxxviii, 79, 86, 94, 97, 183, 184–5, 218, 261, 262–7 networks, xxii, xxvii, xxxiv, 79, 87, 91, 100, 218, 262, 264 rituals, xxxiii, 102, 105, 191, 218 (see also death) famine, 13, 193

309

Anglo-American Chinese Famine Relief Fund, 128 Mansion House Famine Relief Fund, 209, Plate 21 Fanshawe, Revd Frederick, 112 Favier, Monsignor, 215 Ferguson Leighton & Co, 56 First Opium War, xxvi, xxix, 12, 23–7, 50, 55, 90 First World War, xxv, xxxvii, 221, 222, 244, 247, 250 flogging, 59, 63, 72, 94 Foochow (see Fuzhou) Fortune, Robert, 36, 37 France, 21, 115, 117, 151, 155, 179, 190, 237, 247 Fraser, E.A., 169, 205 Freemasonry, 64 Fuzhou (Foochow), xxi, 49–52, 75, 100, 101, 104, 140 Gaselee, General, 163, 165, 167 Gender and related themes: feminism and women in empire, xxii–v, xxxii, xxxvi, 78–9, 94–5, 105–6, 187, 189–91, 199–206, 217–9, 226, 231, 250, 258, 261, 266 masculinity, 122, 187–9, 215, 245, 260–1, 266 (see also family in China) General Graham, 7 Germany, 151, 156, 157, 237, 247, 248 Grey, Earl, 62 (n.24), 70, 179 (n.93 and n.97), 228 (n.28), 235 Grosvenor, the Hon. Thomas, 138 Guo Songtao (see Kuo Sung-tao) Guangdong, 18, 39, 159 Guangzhou (Canton), before Treaty of Nanjing (1842), 4, 8, 14, 15, 19, 23 following opening of treaty ports, 50, 51, 55, 59, 65, 74, 77 railway, 177, 178

310

MEDIATING EMPIRE

Guomindang, 255 Gutzlaff, Karl Dr, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 21, 40, 45, 60, 67, 90 Gutzlaff, Mary, 90 Hackney, London, 18, 88 Hankou, 134–6, 169, 177, 178, 188, 192, 234, 235, 241, 256 Hart, Sir Robert (IG., CMC), 75, 121, 124, 126, 163–4, 234, 277 private life, xxiv, xxv, 217 character, 135, 234, 253 cultural sensitivity and approach towards China, xxx, 133, 139 as IG of CMC, xxviii, xxxii, 117, 133–5, 148, 157, 171, 174, 220 relationship with Walter Hillier, 137, 154 relationship with Harry Hillier, 132–134, 136, 137, 138, 147, 159–61, 162, 182, 196, 197, 198, 212, 231, 234, 254 relationship with Guy Hillier, xxxii, 144, 145, 156, 162, 170, 182 relationship with Clare Hillier, 200–1 succession and death, 227–8, 229, 231, 234, 252 Hatry, Clarence, 253 health and ill-health, generally, xxii, xxxv, 68, 83, 85, 96–7, 100, 185–7, 189, 213 pregnancy, child-birth, xxiii, 99, 186, 191, 217–8 Henderson, Dr James, 115, 186 Hewlett, W. Meyrick, xxiii Hicks Beach, Sir Michael, 155, 169 High Court of Justice, London, 223–4 Hillier, Ada (née Everett) background and family, 215 marriage and children, 215–7

years in England, 216–7, 238–9, 242–3 death, 245, Plate 26 Hillier, Anne, 94, 102 Hillier, Annie Lowe (née Hudson), background and family, 195–6 marriage, child-birth, England, 196–8 life in China and death, 198–9, Plate 15 Hillier, Charles Batten, xxi, xxx, xxxvi, 5 background, character and early career, 54–8 learns Chinese and appointment to Hong Kong magistracy, 58–65 Chief Magistrate, 67–72 reputation, 72–4 marriage to Eliza and relationship with children, 40, 92–102 consul to Siam, 74–6 final months and death, 103–5 interest in China and its culture, 44, 53, 76–77, Plate 4 Hillier, Charles (Willie), birth, childhood and education, 94, 95–9, 100–1, 104, 109–15 early career, 131 later years and death, 193–5 Hillier, Clare St George (née Ord), background and family, 199–200 marriage to Walter, xxxii, 200 children, 200 as part of Legation life, 200–3, Korea, relationship with Saunderson and divorce, 203–6 last years and death, 206, Plate 15 Hillier, Clare (Cissie) (married Pascoe Thornton), 163, 200 (n.54), 203, 204, 205, 224, 225, 230, 250, 258, Plate 35

INDEX

Hillier, Dorothy, 210, 211, 214, 231, 254, Plates 24 and 33 Hillier, Edna (Eddie) (married David Brown), 196, 197, 198, 199, 209, 210, 214, 231, 250, Plates 24 and 35 Hillier, Edward Revd, 101, 110, 111 (n.5), 113, 116 Hillier, Ella (Eleanor) (née Richard), 141, 243–246 marriage, 249, 251, 252, 258, 261, 265, Plates 30 and 35 Hillier, Eliza (neé Medhurst, from 1864 Eliza Marshall Hole), xxi childhood and teen-age years, Batavia, London, Hong Kong and Shanghai, 85, 88–92 marriage and life with Charles Hillier, xxxii, 40, 92–102, 214 Siam and death of Charles 1855–1856, 103–105, 263, 265, 266 relationship and correspondence with her sister, Martha, xxi, 92–94 her life as part of British World, 105–106 return to England and upbringing of children, 1856–1864, xxvi, 109–115 marriage to Charles Marshall Hole, 114 later life, 116, 120, 129, 132 (n.83), 192, 196, 197, 201, 270, 281, 282, Plate 6 Hillier family, collectively, ix, xi, xxiv, xxx, xxxviii, 256, 262, 264 Hillier, Florrie (married Dr John O’Malley Irwin), 163, 200, 201, 204, 206, 224, 225, 230, 250, 258, Plate 35 Hillier, Gerald, 163, 200, 204, 225– 226, 244, 257, 258, Plate 34

311

Hillier, Geoffrey, 197, 211, 213, 214, 247, 254, Plates 24 and 33 Hillier, Guy, xxi, xxx, xxxii birth, childhood and education, 110–5 early career, 140–3 learns Chinese, and first years with Hongkong Bank, 143–7 appointed Peking Agent, 146, 154 negotiates Sino-Japanese Indemnity Loans, 154–7 during Boxer Uprising, 162 blindness, 162, 175, 216, 242, 243–4, 251 work in aftermath of Boxer Uprising, 168–70 administers Boxer Indemnity loan, 170–1 railway loans, 1902–1911, 175–83 Walter’s appointment as Foreign Political Adviser to China, 227–30, 232 Revolution and Reorganisation Loan, 232, 234–40 career 1914–1924, 240–2, 245–7, 249–51 marriage to Ada, 215–7, 232–4, 238–9 relationship with children, 232– 4, 242–8, 250–1 relationship with and marriage to Ella, 243–246, 249–51 death, 251–2, approach to China, 259–60, 264, Plates 22, 25, 28, 29, 30 Hillier, Harold, xi, 205, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 231 (n.44), 240, 247, 254, 258, Plates 24, 33 Hillier, Harry, xxi, xxx, 47 birth and childhood and education, 95–9, 100–1, 104 early career in England, 131–2

312

MEDIATING EMPIRE

joins CMC and learns Chinese, 132–4 career, 1874–1895, 134–9, 146–7 Commissioner, Kowloon, 158–61 Boxer Uprising, 162 career, 1901–1908, 171–5 Peking, Tianjin and retirement, 1908–1910, 229, 231 marriage to Annie Hudson, 137, 195–9 marriage to Maggie Drummond, 139, 206–215 relationship with children last years, and approach to China, 174, 182–3, 240, 252–4, Plates 15, 16, 17, 22, 24, 33 Hillier, Hugh, 102 Hillier, Laetitia, 96 (n.62), 98 Hillier, Lydie Alston (née Hole), 189–193, Plate 13, Plate 14 Hillier, Madeleine (married Charles Todd), 216, 239, 247, 248, 250, 251, Plate 27 Hillier, Margaret Edith Mary (née Drummond), xxxii background and family, 206–9 marriage to Harry, 209–13 children and separation from Harry, 213–5 Peking and Tianjin, last years and death, 252–4, Plates 22, 24, 33 Hillier, Marion (née Umpherston Aitchison), 194 (n.39), 226, 228, 230, 239, 242, 255, 257–8, 261, 266, 274, Plates 32, 34 Hillier, Mary, 99, 110, 111 Hillier, Maudie (see also Swindells), 57, 76, 98, 99, 100, 102, 104, 110, 114, 197, Plate 35 Hillier, Maurice, 216, 233–4, 239, 242–3, 244–5, 274, Plate 27 Hillier. Michael, xi

Hillier, Muriel, 201 Hillier, Sarah (see Pieritz) Hillier, Tristram, 175, 216, 217, 233, 239, 247, 248, 251, Plate 27 Hillier, Walter, xi, xxi, xxx, 221 birth, childhood and education, 95–9, 100–1, 104 early career in Merchant Navy, 115–6 joins China Consular Service and career to 1875, 116–22 Margary Affair and accompanies embassy to England, 44, 122–7 career, 1878–1889, 127–31, 146–7 HBM Consul to Korea, 149–54 failing eye-sight, 130, 150, 153–4, 203 Political Adviser to General Gaselee, 162–8 Professor of Chinese, King’s College, London, publications, promotion of Chinese language and of contacts with China, 222–3, 226–7, 239–40 involvement in Kaiping Mines litigation, 223–4 Foreign Political Adviser to Qing, 222–3, 227–30 marriage to Lydie, 189–93 search for Willie, 193–5 marriage to Clare and divorce, 199–206 relationship with children, 205, 224–6, 257–8 marriage to Marion, 194 (n.39), 226, 228, 230, 239, 242, 255, 257–8, 261, 274 death, 258 approach to China, 260, Plates 11, 12, 15, 31, 34

INDEX

Hillier, Winifred (married Hubert Booker), 216, 239, 242, 247, 248, Plate 27 Hillier Street, Hong Kong, 66 Hilton, Boyd, 58 Hippisley, Alfred E., 174, 227, 228, 231 Historian, SS, 96 Hobson, Dr, 40 Holdforth, Charles, 69 Hole, Lydie (see Hillier) Holliday, John, 79 ‘Home’, importance as a mechanism of empire, xxxiii (n.41), xxxv, 95–6, 105–6, 254 Hong Kong, xxxvi during First Opium War, 24–6, 55–6 colonisation, 57–77 Harry Hillier, Kowloon Commissioner, 158–61, 211–3, Cf. Plate 23. (see also Charles Hillier) Hongkong Shanghai Bank (Hongkong Bank), 226 foundation and early years in China, 143–5 relationship with British government, xxviii, 149, 154–8 Boxer Indemnity and railway loans, 165, 168–71, 175–83 Re-organisation Loan, 1913, 232–8, 1913–1924, 240–2, 249 policy towards marriage, 187–8 (see also Guy Hillier) Hong Rengan, 46 Hong Xiuquan, 42 Hood Treacher, Sir William, 142 Household Words, 103 Hornby, Sir Edmund, 207

313

Hudson, W.K., 196, 272 Huguang Railway Line and loan, 274, 277, see also map, p.xx Hulme, John Walter, Chief Justice, 62, 65, 66, 71, 72, 75 Huron, 16 Huttmann, George, 8 Illustrated London News, 27, 126 Imperial Maritime Customs (see Chinese Maritime Customs) India, xxxv, 3, 7, 14, 24, 25, 48, 59, 64, 68, 69, 80, 81, 93, 101, 129, 130, 134, 141, 163, 207, 208, 212, 214, 223, 264 (see also East India Company). Indonesia, 10, 91, 105 Informal empire, x, xxvi, 265 International Fisheries Exhibition, London, 138 Irwin, Dr John O’Malley, 224 Irwin, Florrie (see Hillier) Jackson, Thomas, 143, 161, 179, 209, 227 Jameson, Leander Starr, 257 Japan, 11, 99, 129, 148, 151, 152, 153, 155, 227, 230, 236, 248, 255, 261 (n.127) (see also SinoJapanese War) Jardine, Robert, 49, 140, 141 Jardine Matheson, 14, 141, 144, 145, 265 Java, 9, 10, 13, 83 (see also Walter Medhurst and Batavia) Jerusalem, 58 Jiaozhou (Kiaochow), 157 Jiujiang, (Kiukiang), 172–3, 214, 216, 224, 256 John, Griffith, 48 Jordan, SirJohn, 119, 123, 153, 154, 179, 180, 220, 221, 224, 228, 229, 230 (n.35), 235, 237, 240, 241 (n.71), 242, 257

314

MEDIATING EMPIRE

Kaiping Mines Dispute, 223–4, 229, 274 Kiaochow (see Jiaozhou) Kinder, Claude, 162 (n.46), 176 King’s College, London, 60, 165, 222, 273 King’s Own Scottish Borderers, 242 King, Frank, 155 King, Paul, 144, 160, 174, 201 (n.61), 253, 254 Kiukiang (see Jiujiang) Knill, Richard, 80 Konjong, King, 151 Korea, 129, 131, 148, 149, 150–154, 203, 204, 257, 263, 267, 273 Kowloon, xxvi, 63, 71, 177, 263, 273 customs station, 158–161 Ladds, Catherine, xxiii Lady Mary Wood, 93 Lausanne, 162, 212 Lay, George Tradescant, xxv Lay, Horatio Nelson, xxv Lay, William, xxv Legations, Siege of, 149, 161, 162, 173 (see also Boxer Uprising) Legge, Walter, xxv, 40, 44, 73 Legrand, Marcellin, 21 Letter-writing, correspondence, importance in empire, xxxiv, 93–4, 97, 101, 104, 109, 187, 192, 193, 213–214 (see also Mail) Li Hongzhang (Li Hungchang), 123, 167 Li Shan-lan, 44 Li Yuanhong, 245 Lin Zexu, 23–5 Little, Dr Robert, 100, 101, 216 (n.100) Little, Robert (Bob), 215 Little, Sophia (née Whittle), 86, 91, 99, 100, 101, 104, 141 Liu Hsi-hung (Liu Xihong), 124, 125, 126

Liu Lichuan, 46 Liu, Lydia, 50 Liusan, 130 Lockhart, Isabella (married Revd McClatchie), 90, 92, 97 Lockhart, Kate (née Parkes), xxiv, 22, 32, 90, 92, 97 Lockhart, Dr William, xxiv, 22, 24, 25, 27, 32, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 44, 46, 48, 49, 90, 91, 92 Lockwood, Henry, 17, 18, 88 London and Brazilian Bank, 131, 193 London Missionary Society (LMS), 4–6, 8, 20, 26–7, 84 (see also Dr Walter Medhurst, Shanghai) Loveless, William, 7, 79, 80, 81 Lovell, Julia, 15 Lüshunkou (Port Arthur), 157 Macartney, Sir Halliday, 124, 125 (n.58), 225 Macaulay, Thomas Babington, xxii Macaulay, Zachary, xxii Macao, 15, 16, 17, 22, 24, 25, 62, 63, 74, 83, 90, 91, 100, 102 MacDonald, Sir Claude, 159, 240 Macrae, Dr., 197 Madeira, 7 Madras, 7, 55, 78, 79, 80, 82, 116, 208 Madras Artillery, 30 Madras 37th Native Infantry, 55, 56, 57 Mail, development of service to China, 91, 93 Major, Ernest, 127 Malacca, 4, 6, 7–9, 27, 83, 91, 105, 262, 269 Malaysia, Malay coast, and people, 4, 5, 7, 8 (n.15), 10, 13, 68, 69, 84, 85, 86, 87, 90, 91, 105, 141, 208, 254 Malay, language, 9, 11, 83, 85, 90, 91

INDEX

Malta SS, 97 Manchuria, 155, 157, 163, 165 Manktelow, Emily, 84 Margary, Augustus, 122, 126, 127, 136, 147, 271 Margary affair, 122–125 Marshall Hole, Charles, 114, 189 Marshall Hole, Eliza (see Hillier) Marshall Hole, Gina (see also Brady), 201, 202 Marshall Hole, Hugh (later, Colonel), 114, 197, 201, 256–7 Martin, George, 79 Martin, Sophia (married Thomas Whittle), xxxii, 79, 80, 81, 82, 85, 86, 87, 91, 100 ‘May Fourth Movement’, 248, 259 May, Charles, 61 Mayers, W.S. F., 122, 126, 192 McClatchie, Revd, 97 McPherson, Surgeon-General Duncan, 31 (n.7), 55 (n.4), 208 McSwyney, Percy Caulincourt, 69 Medhurst, Augusta (married Revd Jonathan Bates), 6, 32, 78, 79, 80, 81, 90, 109, 112 Medhurst, Betty (née Martin, first married to George Braune), xxxii, xxxvi Tamil origins, childhood, early life in Madras, marriage to Medhurst, 7, 78–81 life and work in Malacca and Batavia, 11, 82–88, 265, 266 England, 88–90, 1838–1857, 90–2, 96, 102 (n.85), 104, 105–106 life in England after Medhurst’s death, 109, 112, 201, 262, Plate 8 Medhurst, Ebenezer, 87, 89 Medhurst, Ellen (née Cooper), first

315

wife of Medhurst, junior, 96, 102 Medhurst, Eliza (see Hillier) Medhurst family, collectively, ix, xxix, xxx, xxxvi, 12, 86, 9256, 262, 264 Medhurst, Isabel (née Rawle), second wife of Medhurst, junior, 100, 101, 102, 105 Medhurst, Juliana (née Burningham), third wife of Medhurst, junior, 51–52, 141 Medhurst, Martha (see Saul) Medhurst, Sarah (married Revd Lockwood), xxxii, 17, 83, 86, 87, 88, 89, 266 Medhurst, Walter Dr, xii, xxi, xxix, xxxvi, xxxviii, 105, 142, 265 early life, joins LMS, marriage to Betty, learns Chinese and life and work in Malacca and Penang, 5–9 work in Batavia, 9–16 unlawfully enters China (1836), 16–8 visits England and writes China: Its State and Prospects, 18–23 prepares to enter China, 23–8 sets up mission station, and work, in Shanghai, 34–49 Chinese converts, 11, 21–2, 44–6, 48, 53 life and relationship with Betty and children, 79–92 death, 104–5, Plates 1, 2 Medhurst, Walter Sir, xii, xxi, xxx, xxxvi, 265, 266 birth, 85 early life, 5, 18, 21, 24, 87, 89, 90 life and consular work, 1843– 1860, 29–33, 49–53, 70, 73, 92, 93, 96, 97, 98, 100, 101, 102, 104, 105, 1860–1877, 109, 110, 115, 120–1, 125, 132, 134, 136, 139, 140,

316

MEDIATING EMPIRE

141–144, 146, 189, 190, 207, 208, 209 last years, 141–143, 191, 198, Plate 9 Medhurst, Wattie (son of Medhurst, jr, and Ellen), 96, 97, 98, 100, 102, 110 Mediation as a component of empire, xxii, xxv, xxviii, xxx, 53, 78, 79, 133, 167, 170, 171, 207, 235, 256, 264 Medical Missionary Society, 15 Mercer, W.T., 74 merchant navy, 55, 116 Mexico, 194, 195 Mill Hill Congregational School, 87 Milne, Rachel, 83, 84 Milne, William, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 21, 22, 27, 40, 83 Minerva, 55, 56, 57 Morrison, G.E., 121 (n.44), 158, 162 (n.45 and 46), 170 (n.73), 180, 229, 230, 231 Morrison, John, 16, 17, 18, 24, 40, 60 Morrison, Robert, 4, 5, 9, 14, 16, 84 Morrison Education Society, 15 ‘Muddy Flat’, battle of, 46 Muirhead, William, 38, 40, 41 Mullins, Fr, 251 Munn, Christopher, 54, 61

Nineteenth Century Ningbo, 60, 75, 127, 190, 192, 193 (n.35) Niuzhuang (Newchang), 136, 137, 175 Norton-Kyshe, James William, 61 North China Herald, 43, 47, 49, 136, 200, 202 Novion, A., 135

Nanjing, Treaty of, xxvi, xxxvi, 26, 50, 59, 60 Nanjing, (Nanking), 42, 43, 124, 172, 236, 256 Napoleon, Napoleonic Wars, 3, 7, 10, 57, 58 National Government (China), 256 ‘National Humiliation’, century of, xxviii, xxxvii, 263 Newchang (see Niuzhuang) New Territories, Hong Kong, xxvi, 158, 160, 161, 182, 212

Pacheco and de Mello affair, 62 Pakhoi (see Beihai) Palen, Lewis Stanten, 136 Palmerston, Lord, 24, 25, 39, 65 Paris, 21, 23, 35, 99, 239 Parkes, Catherine (see Lockhart) Parkes, Harry, 33, 38, 39, 40, 49, 50, 51, 60, 75, 90, 129, 139, 150, 257 Pearce, Sir Edward, 216 Peking, Convention of (see Treaty of Tientsin) Penang, 9, 83, 85, 91

Oakham School, 89 (n.35) Oakland, California, 196, 198 Oaks (The), Bracknell, 255, 258, 266–7 O’Conor, Sir Nicholas, 145, 151 (n.10), 152, 153, 154 Olyphant, David, 16 Open Door Policy, 157 Opium, 22 trade before First Opium War, 3–4, 8, 14, 23–24, 27 Medhurst attitude towards, 4, 16, 19, 23, 24, 28 Hong Kong trade, 62, 66, 67, 76 Ord, Almeria Ord, 199 Ord, Augustus William, 199 Ord, Harry St George, 199 Otte, T.G., 148, 157 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 140

INDEX

Peninsular & Orient Steam Navigation Co (P & O), 93 Perak Sugar Cultivation Company, 208 Peruvian Railway Corporation, 248 Philippines, 132 Pieritz, Revd George, 101 Pieritz, Sarah (née Hillier), 98, 99, 101, 110, 11 Pomfret, David, xxxiv Pottinger, Sir Henry, 25, 30, 31, 59, 60, 62, 68, 91 Prince Ching, 228 printing and printing equipment, 4, 8, 11, 20, 21, 26, 28, 29, 34, 35, 41, 43, 45, 48, 53, 86 Queen Victoria, 122 Qing Empire and administration, xxviii, xxxvii, 3, 23, 26, 42, 43, 46, 64, 122, 127, 128, 133, 181 Qing officials, 15, 148, 171, 230 (see also Chinese officialdom) Qishan, 25, 56 Ramussen, A.H., 173 (n.77) Rankin, Mary, 128 Rawle, Samuel Burge, 100 Reorganisation Loan, 1913, 221, 36–238, 240, 241, 259 Revolution, 1911, and immediate aftermath, 221, 230, 231–232, 234–6, 240–1 Rhodes, Cecil, 257 Rhodesia, 257 Richard, Eleanor (Ella) (see Hillier) Richard, Timothy, 128 (n.68), 243 Rochester, Kent, 5 Rockhill, William, 150, 200 Roehampton, 239 Roman Catholicism, 7, 35, 36, 114, 216, 249, 250 Rosebery, Lord, 155

317

Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, 65, 66 (n.37) Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, 150 Royal Navy, xxvi, 3, 25–6, 30, 51, 55, 57, 103, 115, 116, 192 China Station, gun-boats, 31, 115, 123, 136, 211, 221, 277 Royal Naval College, Dartmouth (Britannia), 163, 225 Russia, 130, 135, 151, 152, 153, 155, 156, 157, 164, 165, 166, 200, 227, 230, 236 Russo-Asiatic Bank, 241 Ryder, Admiral, 123 Sabah, 142 St Paul’s School, London, 214 Salisbury, Lord, 152, 155, 156, 160, 165 (n.57), 166, 175, 176 (n.84) Salt gabelle, 237 Saracen, HMS, 103 Satow, Sir Ernest, 116, 117, 120 (n.39), 165, 167, 168, 170, 177, 205, 278 Saul, Elizabeth (Lizzie), 96, 197 Saul, Emily (Millie), 197, 247 Saul, George, 131–132 Saul, Martha (née Medhurst), xxi (n.1), xxxvi, 32, 33 (n.15), 78, 79, 87, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 96, 98, 99, 100, 101, 104, 105, 106, 109, 112, 113 (n.13), 131, 197, 247 Plate 10 Saul, Powell, 78, 93, 94, 96, 98, 100, 101, 102, 105 Saunderson, Harry, 204, 206 Second Opium War, 50–51, 104, 117, 123, 171 Seoul, 131, 149, 151, 167 (n.64), 181, 203, 204, 205 (n.71), 206, 223, 228 (n.26), 267 Seymour, Rear-Admiral, 165 Shandong, 157, 209, 247, 248, 255 Shanghai, 127, 141, 143, 186, 188

318

MEDIATING EMPIRE

opening and development of British settlement and mission station, 27, 29–35, 41, 42, 46–48, 67, 96–97, 105–106, 265 Chinese city, before 1842, 16– 18, 30–31 interaction between British and Chinese communities, 45, 48 Shanghailanders and ‘the Shanghai mind’, xxxi (n.33), 47–48, 209 Drummond family, prominent, 206–210, 218 30 May 1925 Incident, 256 (see also individual members of family) Shanhaiguan157, 165–166, 167, 175 Shearman, Harry, 47 Shenbao, 127, 207 Shimonoseki, Treaty of, 151, 154 Siam, xxi, 13, 14, 75, 103–105, 116, 266 Singapore, 9, 13, 79, 85, 86, 91, 91, 100, 101, 102, 104, 141, 263 Sinn, Elizabeth, 97 Sino-Japanese War, xxxvii, 131, 147, 148, 161, 171, 181, 216 Slater, John, 10, 11, 84 Small Swords Rebellion, 46, 133 Smiles, Samuel, 115, 132 Smith, Revd George, 38, 43 (n.37), 61–62, 67, 68, 73, 117 Social Shanghai, 208 Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China, 15 South Africa, 6, 114, 257 Southwell, Benjamin, 41 Specht, E., 135 Stabb, Newton, 34, 243 Staff College, Sandhurst, 242, 245 Stephen, A.G., 245 Stephen Lushington, 80 Stevens, Revd Edwin, 16, 20 Stonyhurst College, 233

Strutt, W.R., 82, Plate 1 Suez, xxxv Sulphur, HMS, 56 Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan), 51 Sun Yat-sen, 232, 235, 238, 247 Swindells, George Cawley, 114 Swindells, Geoffrey Hillier, 247 Swindells, Maudie (see also Hillier), 114, 197, 214, 247, 270, Plate 35 Szechwan, 232 Taiping Rebellion, 30, 42, 43, 96, 104, 120, 133 Medhurst attitude towards, 42–3 Talienwan (see Dalienwan) Taunton Commission, 111 tea trade, 49, 134, 135 Teignmouth, 198, 200 Texas, 194 Thom, Robert, 60 Thomson, John, 122 Thorne, Susan, 20 Thornton, Cissie (see Hillier) Tianjin (Tientsin), 138, 141, 144, 145, 164, 171, 198, 213, 223, 224, 230, 231, 250, 254 Tientsin, Treaty of, 51, 117 Tiverton, Devon, 112, 114, 197 Torquay, Devon, 143, 198 The Times, 43, 118, 138, 158, 163, 180, 224, 252 Todd, Charles, 250 Tomlin, Jacob, 13 Tours, Berthold George, 173–4 Townsend, A.M., 178, 179 Trans-Siberian Express, 35, 235, 239 Travancore, SS, 125 Travel as a component of empire, xxxiv-xxxv, 5, 13, 97, 210, 224 Treaty Ports, nature of, xxvi, xxviii first five treaty ports, xxix, 5, 26, 29, 33, 40, 50, 60, 66, 68, 93, 96

INDEX

further treaty ports, xxxi, 51, 59, 124, 117, 159, 171, 175, 183 life in, 159, 184 (see also under individual ports) Trinity College, Cambridge, 58, 193 ‘Tsingpu Outrage’, 38 Tuan Ch’i-jui (see Duan Qirui) Tuk-San, 216–217, 239, 248

319

Winchester, Dr Charles, 111, 116, 120 Winchester, Charles (junior), 111, 112, 113 (n.13) Woodrow Wilson, President, 255 Woosung, (Wusong), 29, 30, 125 World Missionary Conference, 239 Wuchang, 232, 236 Wylie, Alexander, 41

Unequal treaties, 264 Versailles Peace Conference, 248 Wade, Sir Thomas, 257 early career, 46, 47, 49, 60 Chinese Secretary, 119 (n.37), 120 British Minister, 122, 140, 260 Professor of Chinese, Cambridge University, 140, Plate 12 Wagner, Rudolph, 127 Waldersee, General, 166 Walsham, Sir John, 202 Wang C’hang-kueai (Wang Zhanggui), 44 Wang Sho-yeh, 36, 37 Wang Tao, 44, 45 Warlord era, 222, 245, 247 Washington Conference, 255 Weiheiwai (Weihei), xxvi, 158, 255 Western Front, 1st World War, 242– 3, 244, 247 Whittle, Sophia (née Martin) (see Martin) Whittle, Thomas Waterman, 86 Wilkinson, F.E., 153 Wide World magazine, 226 Wiesbaden, 210 Winchester, Arthur, 111, 112, 113 (n.13)

Xia’ er Guan Zhen (Chinese Serial), 44, 73 Xiamen (Amoy), 32, 40, 49 Xianling, 39 Yangzhou Incident, 120 Yangzi river, 134, 135, 192 Yantai (Chefoo), 198, 203, 204 Ye Mingchen, 51 yi (‘barbarian’), 50 Young, G.M., 79 Young, William, 16 Younghusband, Francis, 130 Yuan Shikai, 153, 222, 228, 230, 259, 260 Yunnan, 122, 155 Zhenjiang (Chinkiang), 173 Zhang Xun (Chang Hsun), 245– 246, 260 Zhang Zhidong (Chang Chihtung), 139, 168, 169, 178, 179, 180 Zhili, 167, 223 Zhoufou (Chou-fu), 167 Zhousan (Chusan), 25, 29, 31, 32, 51 Zhou Xuexi (Chou Hsüeh-hsi), 237 Zongli Yamen, 118, 119, 127, 129, 143, 144