Sir Robert Hart (Paperback)

Excerpt: ...stamps on it. As he had neither acquaintance nor official correspondence with Sweden or Norway, he was completely puzzled as to what it might contain. Greatly to his surprise, on opening it he found an order, the "Wasa" of Sweden and Norway, the very first foreign recognition of his international work in China. Coming as it did just at that moment, it was singularly opportune and acceptable, and ever afterwards I know it held a peculiar place in his affections, even when he received a shower of Grand Crosses from every civilized country in the world. CHAPTER VI BIRTH OF A SON-THE MARGARY AFFAIR AND THE CHEFOO CONVENTION-A SECOND VISIT TO EUROPE-THE PARIS EXHIBITION OF 1878 Three important things occurred in Robert Hart's life between the years 1870 and 1879. In 1873 his only son was born; 1875 was marked by the beginning of the famous Margary affair, and in 1878 he went as President of the Chinese Commission to the Paris Exhibition. A propos of the birth of his son, there was a very strange-almost what a Highlander would call an "uncanny"-sequence of dates in the I.G.'s own life. The year that he himself was born, the 20th of February-his birthday-fell on the 23rd day of the Chinese First Moon. Once more it fell on the 23rd of the First Moon in 1854, the year he came to China, and not again until 1873, when his son first opened his eyes on this best of all possible worlds. A coincidence if you like, but still a very remarkable one all the same. In 1875 the famous Margary affair, destined to become so complicated later on, first appeared upon the stage of politics in the simplest possible form. There was one hero and one villain, with a crowd of shadowy accomplices looking over his shoulder. To this day it is not certain how many there actually were. We can distinctly follow the unfortunate hero-his name was Margary, his occupation Interpreter at a Consulate-on his journey across Yunnan to Burmah as far as Tengyueh. We know he was...