70
In his letter to Hester on 15 August 1866 he confessed to an impetuous engagement in 1856 to an English young lady at Ningpo. This was quickly broken up by her father's refusal to accept a young consular employee so lacking in material goods and worldly prospects. However, Hart did not mention his long relationship with Ayaou and fathering three children (ibid: 364). In the letter Hart's dilemma is apparent - he wanted to be truthful to Hester on one hand, but, on the other hand, he felt too embarrassed to tell her the full truth. He repeated what he said to her before: "Remember, Hessie, you are marrying me for the future" (Smith, Fairbank, and Bruner 1991: 428), and also convinced her to accept the reality that "men generally don't attain my age without having gone through both fire and water; I have gone through both, but I flatter myself the result has been of a kind which burns out sores, and washes out stains." (ibid: 428-9)
Later in the same year, however, Hart did confess to his relationship with Ayaou. In his letter to Campbell on 11 August 1905, Hart writes: "I proffered the information in 1866, but was told the past was the past and the future the future: so I said no more." (Fairbank, Bruner and Matheson 1975: 1479) The fact that Lady Hart visited the Morning Post when she learnt that Herbert was mentioned in the newspaper also indicates that she knew of Hart's relationship with Ayaou and his three children by her.
However, it is not known to what Hart confessed or how he did so. In Declaration 1 and 2 we find, for the first time, a version of Hart's confession to his relationship with Ayaou and three children by her. Firstly he said:
When I arrived China in 1854 I found that any acquaintance I made kept his Chinese girl and in 1857 I fell into the habit myself. The girl kept by me was a Cantonese named Ayaou. (Declaration 1)
In Declaration 2, he makes a similar statement:
In the year 1857 when in China I formed a connection with a Chinese girl named Ayaou. At that time it was a common practice for unmarried Englishmen resident in China to keep a Chinese girl and I did as others did.