Pip’s Patch

There was nothing like a long trip into the azalea-carpeted hills that encircled Ningbo for a touch of romance. The only problem was that the young man was so out of breath trying to keep up with his beloved’s palanquin that he never managed to say “Will you marry me?”

By the early 1850s the foreigners could visit the hills and Miss Aldersey was quick to use a day-trip to bring two young people together. She took her matchmaking duties very seriously as she was responsible for two of the three single young foreign women in Ningbo at that time: Burella and Maria Dyer.

She had initially invited  Burella to help run her school Burella, however,  insisted that her sister, Maria, should accompany her. Miss Aldersey felt that as their work would be wholly among girls and they were sober minded and earnest their youthfulness would not be a bar to their both going. She said they were very missionary hearted and didn’t need to be supported. When they arrived in Ningbo on January 12, 1853, Burella was 18-years-old and Maria was just four days short of her 16th birthday.  They quickly settled in and soon became fluent in the local dialect as they had spent their childhood surrounded by Chinese. They were very much at home, whereas for another teenager Ningbo provided a hard and lonely start to an illustrious career in China.

Robert Hart was 19-years-old when he was taken on a tour of Ningbo by the British consul, John Meadows. A year earlier he was doing post graduate studies in modern languages and modern history at Queen’s College in Belfast when the British government was looking for young men who could be sent to China to learn the language and become interpreters, especially as those already there had a knack of dying young. When he arrived in Ningbo in September  1854 there were about 22 foreigners there.  Most were missionaries  (mainly American Presbyterians and Baptists plus a few from the British Church Missionary Society) along with some Roman Catholic priests, merchants, opium smugglers , consular officials and the occasional sea captain.

Having come from a family steeped in Wesleyan Methodism he attended church services and initially sought companionship among the missionary community. When he met Miss Aldersey he thought she was a very nice old lady but rather “old maidish in dress.” He was far more interested in the Dyer sisters and wrote about Maria: “I admire her so much that I can say no more about her.” He spent many pleasant evenings with the various missionary families and noted that the wives made superb cakes and jams.  He became especially close to the Rev William and Mary Russell who told him he was always welcome to stay overnight. It was likely that it was at a Christmas dinner with a missionary family  that Miss Aldersey noticed his longing to become acquainted with Maria. It was quite a feast: soup, leg of boiled mutton, two roast pheasants, a roast goose and a nice piece of bacon, followed by plum pudding, mince pies, tarts and blancmange. And afterwards he was able to sit beside Maria. “She is such a sweet nice girl,” he wrote in his diary.

So in April 1855 he was invited to join the Russells, Miss Aldersey, the Dyer sisters and some others on a visit to the hills.  He wrote in his diary: “When going up the hill .. I walked by the side of Miss Maria D’s chair for about an hour, during which time I said very little & was near fainting half a dozen times, as I was about ‘declaring love’ & c. I once got so far as clearing my throat, but I lost my breath and could not go on. I let the opportunity slip – unfortunately or fortunately. I don’t know which! What a youth I am!” He never did get that special kiss he longed for.

After that visit to the hills he seemed to have given up hope of winning Maria and also slowly moved away from the missionary community.  He was to prove  far more flexible in his approach to the Chinese culture – a trait that would help him build bridges between the foreigners and the Chinese and so later be in a position to help China adjust to western modernisation. He quickly realised that his salary would not enable him to support an English wife who would expect to have many servants and was likely to be frequently ill. It was far cheaper and much less complicated to take a Chinese mistress and Meadows was only to happy to help him find one. In July 1855 he gave up writing a diary for a while and so provided no record of his view of the great unholy rumpus that tore apart the missionary community in Ningbo in 1857. Miss Aldersey, Maria Dyer, Jemima Bausum and James Hudson Taylor were at the centre of that row.

(From 1863 to 1908 Sir Robert Hart  was the Inspector General of  China’s Imperial Maritime Custom Service.)

Sources:

Katherine F Bruner, John K Fairbank and Richard J Smith (Eds and narratives) Entering China’s Service – Robert Hart’s Journals 1854-1863, Harvard University Press 1986.

CIM records in the SOAS special collection.

Female Missionary Intelligencer of the Society for Promoting Female Education in the East.