Li certainly had reason to feel pleased with himself and his work. The Convention was excellent—though it might have been still better had Robert Hart had more of his own way. He wished, and the Chinese agreed, to include in it clauses relative to the establishment of a national Chinese Post Office and the opening of mints for uniform coinage throughout the Empire. But it did not suit all parties to allow one man to make too many suggestions, and so his schemes were frustrated.
Still, over and above all petty international jealousies he had scored another diplomatic triumph, and the Chinese were duly grateful to him for his share in the work. That was, after all is said, the secret of his unique position—that confidence of his Chinese employers which he never lost. Probably the real reason he kept it so well was because of his calm and reticent character, because he could never be moved to anger and impatient words. Sir Thomas Wade, on the contrary, was a man of exactly the opposite type, and his ch'i, better translated as excitability than anger, often increased his difficulties at a difficult time.
The I.G.'s association with the great Li Hung Chang by no means ceased after the Margary affair. Business in the succeeding months frequently took him to Tientsin—the nearest port, eighty miles from Peking, and the post of the Chihli Viceroy—and whenever he was there, he had a standing invitation to lunch with Li—an invitation which he very often accepted.
What greatly appealed to him about Li's household was its absolute simplicity. Instead of a wearisome array of courses, never more than two plates were served—fish, and perhaps a dish of chicken, cooked, of course, in the Chinese manner and eaten with big portions of rice. The first was seldom touched. Li would say to his guest, "If you do not want any fish, we will send it in to the Taitai" (his wife, who, according to Chinese etiquette, was dining in the next room); and Robert Hart, always the smallest of eaters, would invariably answer "No," leaving the fish to go whole and untouched to Madame Li, much to her husband's delight.
One day afterwards in Peking the I.G. happened to speak with his Chinese writer about Li Hung Chang's household—praising a simplicity so rarely to be found in the yamêns of the rich and powerful. There happened to be a long interval before he lunched with the Viceroy again, and when he did, he noticed to his horror that the servants were bringing in an array of dishes suitable for a feast. Shark's fins preceded expensive pickled eggs and followed choice bird's-nest soup. What could the change mean? Simply that his complimentary remark, maimed and contorted beyond recognition by ill-informed or mischievous persons, had travelled to Li's ears, and that he had therefore determined to treat his guest with the greatest possible formality.
"You shall not have the chance to go away again and say that you have been fed like a coolie in my house," said the Viceroy proudly at the end of the banquet.
"Nevertheless, the very simplicity of your hospitality was what I most appreciated," the I.G. replied. "But if you believe that I could have made any such remark, and if you persist in altering the style of my reception, I shall not come to lunch with you again."
As if the cares of treaty making and Customs supervision, coupled with the responsibility of being unofficial adviser to the Wai-Wu-Pu, were not enough for one man, the I.G., at the request of the Chinese, undertook to supervise China's part in the international exhibitions of Europe. First came the Viennese Exhibition in 1873. He set his various commissioners of ports collecting the products of their provinces—silks, porcelains, lacquers and teas. It sounds so simple, but often what may be told in a dozen words may scarcely be done in as many months, and little less than a year of writing and planning and directing can have elapsed before all details were in order, and his four Commissioners of Customs were driving, like the Marquis of Carabbas, in a glass coach through the streets of Vienna. The Chinese spared neither pains nor expense to make a good showing, and gave a gala performance at the Opera in return for Austrian hospitality.
In 1878 came the Paris Exhibition, and to this he went himself as President of the Chinese Government's Commission. He arrived in Paris just before the Exhibition opened—just in time to be present at the great opening ceremony in fact. This was a very grand affair, but with—for him—a ludicrous climax. Coming away, he and his secretary lost their carriage in the crowd, and had to walk the whole way home, not a cab being obtainable—and this, too, in elaborate and heavy uniforms, and at the risk of being hooted by gamins. But by good luck, in those days gold lace and medals were so plentiful that they attracted no embarrassing attention.
[Illustration: SIR ROBERT HART IN 1878.]