Mary Tiffen, a researcher into the social and economic issues arising from agricultural change in Africa and the Middle East, here explores, in print, her family history. In the process of researching this volume, she delved deep into the life of Sir Robert Hart (1835–1911), who served China as the Inspector General of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service (CMCS) for almost 50 years. However, bringing an intriguing perspective on Hart's life, Tiffen sets out a larger ambition than telling a straightforward family story. Rather, she seeks to examine the nature of the Victorian family and its associated social expectations and conventions.
In the English-speaking world, Hart is little known – a name in a long list of distinguished Victorian expatriates who made an impact across the world but who are largely forgotten. There are only a few books published about Hart, in the main written by individuals who had direct contact with the man himself. A volume written by Juliet Bredon, Hart's niece, attempted as much as possible to present a positive family perspective. By contrast, Paul King, a former Commissioner of the CMCS, was less favourable in his assessment. Stanley Wright, also a CMCS Commissioner as well as an expert on the Chinese economy, who while in office maintained a strong interest in the CMCS archives and is regarded by posterity as an important figure in preserving and recording the CMCS's history, held Hart in very high regard. Besides these volumes, we also have access to many of Hart's own words: Harvard University has published three volumes of diaries from Hart's early career as well as the surviving correspondence between Hart and James Duncan Campbell, the Secretary of the CMCS's London Office.
Tiffen's book is drawn mainly from family correspondence between Hart and the women of the Carrall family, along with archival materials relating to the Hart family held at Queen's University, Belfast. The story is arranged chronologically through the lives and experiences of Emma Spry Sampson, Emma Carrall and Kathleen F Newton. By exploring these women's exchanges amongst themselves and with others in their circle, the book offers us fresh perspectives on aspects of the CMCS and the life of expatriates in China. Like Suzanna Hoe's book, Women at the Siege, Peking 1900 (Holo Books, 2000), which uses the diaries and correspondence of diplomats’ wives as sources, here the Carrall women, living in Tianjin and Yantai in the same period, provide us with eye witness accounts of a number of major historic events including the Sino-French War in 1884 and the Boxer Uprising in 1900.
In order to explore how Hart attempted to find balance between his career, his personal feelings towards the opposite sex and the principles he wanted to keep as a private man, this book reproduces some passages from private letters between Hart and his female friends. Indeed, for some readers, Hart's relationships with women will be just as interesting and mysterious as the oft-discussed question of his loyalties to Britain and to China, thanks to his position as both Qing government official and knight of the realm. Though he had a reputation as a ladies’ man, Tiffen maintains (based on the sources at her disposal) that while those women Hart met and befriended in China might have adored him greatly, the admiration was expressed “in an utterly chaste way.” If readers’ minds remain somewhat unsettled on this question, there are perhaps some pointers about Hart's character – how he saw himself, and how he wanted to be seen – from the story she recounts of his responses, later in life, to difficult situations with his former Chinese mistress and their three (by then adult) children.
Building on her childhood memory of visiting the former family house and the grave of her grandfather in Yantai with her mother, Tiffen eventually succeeded her aunt Katherine as historian of her family. But while she seems eager to peel off the layers of mystery surrounding Hart's relationship with her female ancestors, less effort is devoted to analysing the motivations of the Carrall women themselves. Here, although the book is broadly successful, Tiffen's reticence puts a limit on the extent to which she can realize her broader ambitions of shedding light on the nature of the Victorian family. Nevertheless this book raises interesting questions about the practice of writing genealogical history; in particular regarding the relationship between an author and what he or she might find in family records.
Friends of Sir Robert Hart is a good read, and it contributes to the literature of modern Chinese history, British Empire history and family history as well as gender history. However, in this context, an index would be extremely useful, and it would be of significant benefit if one could be added in the future.
