I could not help remarking on the immense collection of books and papers which encumbered the room, and added that doubtless Sir Robert felt quite in his element amongst this accumulation of statistical matter.
“Well, curiously enough,” replied the inspector-general laughingly, “although I have been mixed up with it for so many years, there is no work I have disliked more all my life than statistics; but, forming as it does part of my daily routine, I have become so accustomed to it that, though I can never like it, it has ceased to be irksome to me.”
Leading out of the “den” was a room which Sir Robert told me he uses as his audience chamber, and where he receives all Chinese officials. The place was furnished in a sort of semi-Chinese fashion, with the indispensable raised platform for sitting on, and the usual small table in the centre. There was nothing particularly striking about it except a huge Chinese inscription stuck over the door, which, in reply to my inquiry, Sir Robert informed me was a proverb, and meant, “Like a bird on a twig,” which simile, he further added, is, according to the Chinese, supposed to convey the idea of how insecure one’s footing is in this weary world of ours. I did not like to ask whether this motto had been given to Sir Robert by his Chinese friends to stick up over the door, or whether it was a pet proverb of his, for I was not very certain as to what it really meant.
We then strolled out into the verandah, and as I was lighting another cheroot preparatory to taking my ease in one of the two long chairs which lay so invitingly handy, with a small table between with the materials on it for whiskey and seltzer, I turned to my host and remarked that I had often heard how difficult foreigners usually found it to get on with the Chinese officials owing to the contempt in which the latter hold any rank but their own, and asked him how he managed, having to deal with such a high class of mandarin.
“Well,” replied Sir Robert, “owing to the favour of the emperor, there are but few with whom I am brought into contact who hold a higher rank than mine; for I am the happy possessor of almost all the distinctions—a Red Button of the First Class, a Peacock’s Feather, and the First Class of the Second Division of the Double Dragon. But the honour recently bestowed upon me is the highest that it is possible to confer on even a most distinguished Chinese subject: my family was ennobled by imperial decree, to three generations back; that is to say, ‘Ancestral rank of the first class of the first order for three generations, with letters patent.’ The value of this decree may be estimated from the fact that at the same time the emperor ennobled his own grandmother in like fashion, she having been an inferior wife of the Emperor Taou Kwang, in whose reign took place the first opium war.”
Although Sir Robert was too modest to refer to them, most people are aware that he holds also many of the most coveted of European decorations also, such as the Knight Grand Cross of St. Michael and St. George, and Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour, etc.
I was on the point of asking further questions, when I noticed my host glancing surreptitiously at his watch. Mechanically I followed suit, and found that, absorbed in such an interesting conversation, the hours had flown by, and it was already past midnight, an unprecedented hour for Peking; so without delay and with hearty thanks to my kind entertainer I took my leave.
While returning to my hotel I could not help pondering on the wonderful career of the man, and his devotion to the nation which has done so much for him, as is shown by his refusal in 1885 of the post of British minister to China, which was offered him. Nevertheless, he still keeps a warm corner in his heart for the country of his birth, as is shown by the fact, according to what one generally hears in China, that an Irishman in his service has better chance of quick advancement than any other nationality.