80
Hart's arrangements for separation
How the relationship between Hart and Ayaou was terminated has long been a cause of speculation. L. K. Little, successor of Maze as I. G., writes in the introduction to "The I.G. in Peking" - "In a private letter to me the late Stanley Wright, author of Hart and the Chinese Customs, wrote, 'Hart was married to a Chinese lady in his early days, but she was dead before his marriage to Miss Bredon,' (1975; Introduction). B. Wang, the author of the book "Biography of Sir Robert Hart" also suggested that Hart's happy personal life in China ceased in 1865 when Ayaou suddenly died, and this is the main reason for Hart's decision to return home on leave and find a girl to marry (2000: 97). However, the scholars, who edited Hart's early journals, noticed that Hart received letters from Ayaou in 1870 and 1872, and they noted that she "later married a Chinese" (Smith, Fairbank, and Bruner, 1991: 363).
15
In Declaration 1, referring to his separation from Ayaou, Hart declares, “she was then presented with $3000 when she surrendered her children to my Agent and herself married a Chinaman." In Declaration 2, a similar statement is made: "I paid her the sum of three thousand dollars1 and she married a Chinaman.”15 This confirms that Ayaou certainly did not die in 1865 but married a Chinaman after receipt of a large sum of money from Hart, a condition of their separation. Ayaou probably did not want to sever the connection with Hart even though she must now have realised it was inevitable. Hart, who by this time was no longer a young and inexperienced assistant for the British Consulate at Canton, but a powerful man in both the CIMC and the Qing government, had to resolve the problem by making an arrangement acceptable to Ayaou. Money must have been given serious consideration, as it would have been a precondition of the relationship for both sides in the first instance. As Bruner, Fairbank, and Smith suggest: (1986:153)
The girl Ayaou was not a solitary adventuress but came undoubtedly from a proper though lower-class background under the sponsorship of a compradore or other reliable party. Hart's upkeep of her must have included a regular monetary payment, a portion of which reimbursed her family.
In Hart's diaries requests for money from Ayaou appear frequently.