[ { "id": 216355, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 114, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "63\n\nA NEW DISCOVERY AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE: THE STATUTORY DECLARATIONS MADE BY SIR ROBERT HART CONCERNING HIS SECRET DOMESTIC LIFE IN 19TH CENTURY CHINA\n\nLAN LI AND DEIRDRE WILDY\n\n[Hon Editor: See also NOTES ON THE ROBERT HART PAPERS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG LIBRARY, JHKBRAS, Vol. 29, pp. 367-382]\n\nIntroduction\n\nSir Robert Hart (1835-1911) was one of the extraordinary Westerners who made a substantial contribution to both early China's modernisation and its foreign relations with the West. He was the only Westerner in the latter half of the nineteenth century to occupy an official post in the metropolitan bureaucracy—a position that allowed him daily access to China's highest officials in the Grand Council and Zongli Yamen. He built the first modern institution in China, the Chinese Imperial Maritime Custom (CIMC), and he also played a crucial role in China's imperial politics, significantly influencing its internal reform and diplomatic policy.\n\nDuring the early period of his life in China (1857-1865) Hart was involved in a sexual relationship with a Chinese girl called Ayaou. The relationship had a significant influence on Hart in that it immersed him deeper in Chinese society. Hart's success in China has been attributed to his good understanding of Chinese tradition. He acquired this capacity in a number of ways, one of which included a long-term intimate relationship with the Chinese girl Ayaou. Hence, Hart's secret domestic life is not simply the personal life of a Western man, who, according to the prevailing custom in the colonial Asia of the 1850s, kept a Chinese girl; it is more significant and, as Bruner, Fairbank, and Smith point out, \"does him credit as a human being\" and \"also shows his capacity for immersion in Chinese society and culture.\" (1986: 232)\n\nThe paper will examine and analyse the recently discovered statutory declarations made by Hart in 1905 and 1911. These documents provide us with new primary and significant material about Hart's relationship with Ayaou and his three children by her. This will address", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216361, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 120, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "69\n\n6\n\npossible conflagration” (ibid: 1478). Although both Hart and Lady Hart were deeply concerned about the issue, they may each have had a different focus. For Hart, his main priority was his considerable reputation as Inspector General (I.G.) of the CIMC - a position of importance spanning almost forty years at this stage (1905) and inheritance of his title - the Baronetcy, while Lady Hart's main concerns were domestic matters and family interest. She married Hart in 1866 when she was 18 and Hart was 31 years of age (Bell, 1985: 24). After marriage, she spent ten years living with Hart in Beijing and then prepared herself to see the wider world. She left China in 1882 and did not return again until 1906. She “enjoyed living alone” (Bell, 1903), “a house in a good part of London, together with a handsome allowance and costly presents, all provided by Hart” (Bruner, Fairbank and Smith 1986: 323). Although Hart did not tell her anything about Ayaou and his three children by her in the first few months of their falling in love, he did later confess to the \"mistakes\" he made. She took Hart's advice and married him for the future and established a firm marital relationship with him. However, she certainly did not want to see the previous relationship between Hart and Ayaou causing any trouble during her married life. The incident orchestrated by Herbert must have worried her and made her feel the need for a legal document to prevent her family from being troubled by the wards or their descendants after Hart's death, perhaps particularly, with regard to the inheritance of his title and property.\n\nHart's confession to the relationship with Ayaou\n\nIn Declaration 1 and 2, Hart gives a full statement of his relationship with Ayaou. This provides us with a version of his confession that might well indicate the way in which he confessed to the relationship before. Although Hart completely severed his relationship with Ayaou before returning home on leave in 1866, it seemed it was not possible for him to look to the future without some shadow of the past. Hart felt all the awkwardness of his position when confessing to his fiancée Miss Hester Jane Bredon. In his diary, 13 June 1866, Hart writes:\n\n“Let the dead past bury its dead:”- that is easy enough: what is not so easy is to keep the future free from intrusiveness on the part of the products of the past. Does complete confidence mean “to have no secrets for the future”, or “to reveal all that has been done in the past”? (Smith, Fairbank, Burner 1991: 384)\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216363, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 122, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "71\n\nHart referred to his conduct as \"a common practice\" at that time and confessed that he just \"fell into the habit myself\" and \"did as others did\", which is, unfortunately, no excuse at all. Bruner, Fairbank and Smith suggest, \"one of the many perquisites of the Westerner's higher living standard in China was his being supplied with Chinese women. Thus, \"Robert Hart's solution to his problem of solitude was nothing unusual and followed established norm\". (1986: 153) Bickers also suggests that \"In the earlier stage of the British presence concubinage with Chinese women was common, and not considered abnormal; indeed, it appears to have been encouraged, as a sort of release\". (1999: 98) Paul King, an Englishman who joined CIMC in 1874, writes in his book In the Chinese Custom Service (1980: 25):\n\nIn those days the only \"social\" intercourse between Chinese and foreigners was conducted by women of the \"Mui-tsai\" class. In justice it must be recalled that the Chinese housekeeper often did a good deal to keep her temporary lord and master straight, especially in matters of drink, or tendency to stray off to less supervised and possibly dangerous-to-health pastures.\n\nPerhaps Hart knew that the most convincing point he could make, to avoid too much embarrassment when he confessed to his relationship with Ayaou, would be the explanation that his conduct was not simply a personal sin or weakness, but a mistake anyone, in the given circumstances at that time, would possibly, or even inevitably, have made. Following this point, Hart confessed:\n\nAyaou lived with me at Ningpo during 1857 and went with me when I was transferred to Canton in February 1858. Later in the same year I left her at Macao and from that time ceased to live with her and saw her but seldom though I continued to pay her monthly sum of thirty dollars for her support down to the time of our connection being finally terminated as after mentioned. (Declaration 2)\n\nIf it was true that Hart \"ceased to live with her and saw her but seldom\" from 1858, it is difficult to understand how Ayaou gave birth to his three children after 1858 and why Hart left the second gap in his diaries between 6 December 1858 and 6 June 1863 - a period during which he must have had an intimate relationship with Ayaou. Indeed,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216369, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 128, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "77\n\n1863. However, $30 was still a lot of money at that time. If Hart had completely ceased his sexual relationship with Ayaou and never resumed it after 1863, it would not seem to be necessary for him to continue to pay Ayaou a monthly sum of $30 until 1866. Some may argue that Hart paid Ayaou the money not just to keep her, but also to contribute to the upbringing of their children; however, the words Hart uses in his statement do not give us any indication of this. He states that \"she continued to be kept i.e. paid ($30 a month) by me till I went home on leave in 1866 (Declaration 1)\"; it appears to refer to female companionship.\n\nIt may also be argued that in his diary entries between 1864 and 1866, there is no mention of his having resumed his sexual relationship with Ayaou, and if he had, he would have recorded it as he did in the missing volumes of his earlier diaries. Hart did tidy up his diaries after he was asked by reporter Hosea B. Morse for permission to see them in connection with a proposed biography in 1902, and he also left two substantial gaps in the earlier diaries. However, this fact does not necessarily mean that Hart \"was forced to destroy\" some of his earlier diaries, as has been suggested (Bruner, Fairbank, Smith 1986: 150-1). Hart actually left half of Volume 2 with empty pages and almost the same again with Volume 3; these form the two gaps in his diaries. This allows for the possibility that Hart simply did not write anything between 29 July 1855 and 20 March 1858, nor between 6 December 1858 and 9 May 1863. Hart himself states on the flyleaf of Volume 4 “Journals from 6 Dec. 1858 @ [to] May 1863 lost, probably in the Boxer siege 1900\", and this may be deliberately misleading on his part when one considers the empty pages. It is more likely that during his intimate involvement with Chinese women, more particularly with Ayaou, he simply stopped writing in his diary. This gives us an indication that Hart avoided mention of his intimate relationship in any depth in his diaries.\n\nHart's abstinence from womanising and his political ambition\n\nIt should be noted that Hart decided to cease his sexual relationship with Ayaou around early summer 1863—the exact time, if it is not simply a coincidence, when he knew almost for certain that he would be appointed as L.G. Hart was formally appointed as L.G. of the CIMC", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216372, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 131, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "80\n\nHart's arrangements for separation\n\nHow 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).\n\n15\n\nIn 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)\n\nThe 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.\n\nIn Hart's diaries requests for money from Ayaou appear frequently.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]