Captain Elliot and the Founding of Hong Kong

by Captain Elliot

  By the spring of 1858 the family had found themselves other accommodation in Bordeaux and had settled in, though Charles visited England at this time. For how long and for what purpose is not clear, but his schedule included an interview with Lord Stanley, Secretary of State for the Colonies, on 19 March.11 Emma seems to have been especially organised and content with life, writing in March to her aunt in very positive terms and sending good wishes on what appears to have been their shared birthday:

  How I envy Papa his trip to England. It would be so pleasant to see you, Hatty and her dear children again but if I must tell the truth I confess I should be very sorry to leave my books & my Governess.12 She is a very clever person and I hope we may remain some time in Bordeaux if it is only to profit by her instructions. I have found an excellent Music Master and if practising and perseverance will do the work I am determined to become a tolerable pianiste…

  You would like the situation of our apartments here. They are facing the principal Promenade of the town and we have a fine view of the Theatre which is a beautiful building perhaps one of the finest in Europe…. We are also quite close to a large Promenade called the Quinconces; there is a fair being held there now and being on the banks of this beautiful river it could not be better situated. Poor Mamma has suffered a great deal from a very bad cold but she is better now in fact the whole state of her health has been much better during these last few months…. By the by this is our birthday and I wish you many happy returns of it dear Aunt Emma.13

  Emma Clara’s optimistic report about her mother’s health was to prove misplaced. Clara again became ill, now more persistently. In July Charles was reporting to his sister that Clara was still too unwell to write; she remained so until shortly before the end of August, when the Elliots moved again.14 This time, with health considerations very much in mind, it was to a small spa town in the foothills of the Pyrenees, Bagneres de Bigorre. At first it looked as if the change had worked. Charles wrote that Clara ‘is I think I may safely say getting through her heavy need as steadily as we have any right to expect … considering what her state was when we left Bordeaux fifteen days since … we have deep reason for thankfulness.’15 By February however there had been a substantial deterioration; on 23 February Clara had been without food or drink for nearly three days, and over the following four weeks she became very weak. Charles’s growing anxiety is apparent from his increasingly frequent letters to Emma during this period, though it had occurred to him that causing his sister great concern too might not be the best thing to do. On 1 March he wrote:

  It is only after a very strong effort that I have been able to make up mind to tell you of our deplorable condition. Today is Tuesday, and my beloved has not taken one single crust of bread or one sip of water since last Wednesday at 5 o’clock, that is a space of 144 consecutive hours...’16

  Further bulletins followed. After a few days there were again some signs of improvement. Elliot planned at this point to take Clara to England a week later if she was well enough to travel, but again the recovery proved illusory. In the middle of March the news was that Clara had had another relapse lasting nearly three days, and was even weaker.

  Clara’s health did in the end recover sufficiently for the journey to England. It is not clear exactly when the family travelled, but by mid-1860 they were back in London staying at one of the many temporary addresses they were able to use. Charles Elliot never owned any property. The nature of his work, always on the move and subject to being sent to far-flung places at short notice, meant there was no need for a permanent residence in Britain; nor, because neither he nor his father were first or eldest surviving sons did he inherit any fortune by way of property or in any other form. Correspondence suggests that between 1860 and 1863 the Elliots lodged, as well as with Emma Hislop at 56 Chester Square, at two other London addresses, 20 Clarendon Villas and 53 Inverness Terrace. Additionally, in April 1861 the census records Charles, Clara and Emma Elliot, now aged 19, as residing at 31 Kensington Park Gardens with two servants, Sarah [?Peare] and Mary Vane.17

  As befitted a person of his seniority and experience Charles became again, as he had been on his return from China, a well-known figure on the London social and political scene.18 Though there was no repetition of the more serious illness from which she had suffered in France, it seems that Clara was far from generally well, and did not always accompany Charles at social engagements. An undated letter from Clara, probably written sometime in 1861, indicates some difficulty in her relationship with Harriet (and some impatience on the part of her husband):

  Just a line to tell you how grateful am to my dearest sister [?Clarisse], who seeing my miserable position at Dr. Mee’s with her own eyes has taken the responsibility of having me under her care. Hatty, she has been a good angel to me…. Yr. father tells me that you are under much uneasiness about me. Why my dearest Child did you not believe the evidence of your own eyes…. Kiss my darlings for me … my blessings to you my dear child. Your father hurries me.19

  Had Harriet failed to appreciate her mother’s frailty, or declined a request to look after her?

  Charles too had family matters to deal with. He became embroiled in a curious correspondence involving the Rev. C.E. Birch of Wiston Rectory, Colchester, and his own son Gibby, who was now 27. Gibby had attended Haileybury and was duly pursuing a career in India, but his personal life was turbulent. He was beset by debt problems, and had at this time a 4-year-old son, Charles. Gibby had married Sarah Rebecca Rowell in Bombay in October 1855 and Charles had been born the following July. It is not clear what happened to Sarah, but in July 1860 Gibby had written to Birch asking to place his son with him. ‘I am unable to tell you where he is’, he admitted, ‘but he was to be with his Grand Aunt Lady Hislop.’20 Charles Elliot first heard about all this when he received a letter from Birch in September informing him of the request and then saying that at present the boy was in the charge of his daughter, a Mrs Bushell. Elliot told the Rev. Birch in effect that it was up to Gibby what arrangements he made for his son, but he was clearly irritated, objecting in a letter to Gibby to Birch’s ‘attempting to require me to interfere in a matter in which I have never had any word from you.’21 The correspondence appears to have ended, inconclusively, shortly afterwards.

  Elliot’s wish to continue to be involved in current affairs was much in evidence. His experience and thoughts were sought and generally welcomed, though perhaps predictably, given the sensitivities, China does not seem to have featured in them. In April 1861 he was a witness at the Parliamentary Select Committee on Colonial Military Expenditure, giving his views on troop levels in colonial garrisons, with special reference to the West Indies. He was also in touch with Lord Grey (the third Earl, his friend of longstanding), now out of office but still active. An eleven-page letter to him from Elliot in June consisted of a series of rather rambling observations on current US, Spanish and French activities and policies in the West Indies. He expressed particular concerns about Haiti and Santo Domingo, but the letter is unfortunately most notable for the sharp deterioration in his handwriting; never the easiest to read, it is tolerably legible at the start but by the end hardly any words can be deciphered.22 Without the services of the copywriters on whom he could call as a colonial governor, the problem of written communication remained with him for the rest of his life.

  Involving himself in matters of national policy helped Charles Elliot to feel engaged, but it was not enough to mitigate his personal anxieties. Chief among these was Clara. Though the Elliots’ time in Switzerland and France had helped initially, by the time they left for England Clara’s health had shown no overall improvement. Earlier, when he departed from Trinidad, Charles was focused on the need for a stress-free change of scene and climate. He seems then to have had no intention of seeking another appointment, but neither had he expressed a firm commitment to retire altogether from public life. What concentrated his mind now, towards the end of 1861, was his wife’s fragile condition and, specifi
cally, how he was going to able to continue to fund the special care she needed. He was promoted vice admiral in January 1862, but he was a retired officer on half pay and on the reserve list. The ever-changing complex regulations governing naval pay currently provided that half pay retired personnel on the reserve list who were flag officers (i.e. who had attained the rank of commodore or above) were all to be paid at the same rate, set in 1860 at £456 per annum.23 Greater income, guaranteed accommodation, and a peaceful environment were now needed. Around the turn of the year he submitted a successful application for the Governorship of St Helena. He explained the background a year or so later to his civil servant brother, T.F. Elliot of the Colonial Office:

  My dear Fred,

  Yours of the 27 reached me Saturday but too late for the post. I applied for St Helena about 15 months since when I was almost without hope that my dear one would ever be restored to me. The formidable inroad on my very small income of her separate care in anything like adequate comfort and otherwise reliable circumstances, made it necessary that I should attempt all that depended upon me to increase my means of meeting my expenses. That, in short, was a state of things in which sacrifice of personal feelings or risks of other kinds were not to be weighed for a moment and I asked for St Helena at that time because I supposed that it either was or would very shortly become vacant, and I imagined it could hardly be refused to me. It is a doubtful point whether I should not keep my half pay if I accepted this offer. The Order in Council is not before me and it would depend entirely on the exact wording of the regulation whether I should not do so. I am now a Vice-Admiral and am [?] the highest rate of half pay in that rank exceeds 2000 a year. But, on the other hand, I am only on the reserve list and therefore still on the half pay of a Rear-Admiral .24

  He ended wearily: ‘What are we doing, dear Fred, or proposing to do for the rest of our pilgrimage? and how is dear old Taylor? “Our sills of life are careering down”’25

  Charles, Clara and Emma Clara returned once more to the Hotel du Faucon in Switzerland for a short time. By June 1863 they were at Madeira, en route to the South Atlantic island colony of St Helena.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Last Posting

  It is tempting to think of St Helena first as a place of exile because of its association with Napoleon, who was banished to the island in 1815 until his death there in 1821. Its remoteness, some 1,200 miles from the coast of southern Africa, fitted it for such a purpose, but in the eighteenth and early to mid-nineteenth centuries St Helena was also of strategic importance as a port of call for ships sailing between Europe and south and east Asia. The island is said to have been discovered for Portugal by the navigator Joao da Nova Castella, in May 1502 on the saint’s day of St Helena of Constantinople. The Portuguese, Dutch, and English used St Helena at various times during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries for re-provisioning their ships, often fighting each other in the process. Though the Portuguese had constructed the first buildings there, no attempt was made to settle the island until 1659 when the English East India Company, having been given a charter to govern by Oliver Cromwell, sought to do so. It was not an easy task. St Helena is small, around forty square miles, and at that time suffered from the ravages of wild goats and rats. It could never be self-sufficient, but despite the difficulties of attracting colonists, was retained for strategic reasons. Apart from a six-month occupation by the Dutch in 1672–3, St Helena remained a Company possession until 1834, when it became the responsibility of the British Crown.

  As in Bermuda and to an extent in Trinidad, it fell to Charles Elliot to take over from a successful and popular Governor. In his seven years in office Sir Edward Hay Drummond Hay had been responsible for the construction of several important buildings and public works, notably the main drainage system for the capital, Jamestown. To reassure its readers that Elliot might not necessarily prove less able and well regarded than his predecessor, the local press cited his Bermuda Governorship:

  Sir Charles brings with him a goodly experience of the duties and troubles of governing a Colony. The government of Bermuda was entrusted to him for a period of nearly eight years, and we well remember with what anxiety his friends watched his opening career. Sir Charles, then Captain R.N., assumed that government on the removal of a truly learned, amiable and efficient Governor, whose like the Bermudians feared they might never see again.1

  Describing the ways in which Elliot was ‘perfectly successful’ as Governor of Bermuda, the newspaper added that he was ‘ably assisted by his amiable and very accomplished Lady in carrying out those pleasurably social duties which more particularly become ladies’.2 The comment reflected one widely held contemporary view of the role of women, but it also indicated the important part Clara Elliot played in Charles’s official as well as his personal life.3

  Charles, Clara and Emma Elliot disembarked on St Helena from the mail steamer Briton at the beginning of July 1863, relieved that the voyage had not had to be extended to the Cape – presumably because of adverse weather – as had been feared. The new Governor was sworn in at a meeting of the Colonial Council on 3 July.4 By August the family was installed in the Governor’s residence, Plantation House. Built in 1791–2 for the East India Company, it has had a chequered history. In 1832 the Governor moved out because of damp. Though it was re-occupied four years later, the house continued to have problems. As in Trinidad, the Elliots were confronted on their arrival with accommodation in need of serious attention. Clara conveyed mixed feelings to her sister-in-law: ‘We are at last in our exquisite and beautifully situated home … though the house is imperfectly cleaned from such a condition of filth and squalor as I could not have believed it possible.’5 The house was made habitable, but as well as thorough cleaning it needed structural and external maintenance for which funds were not forthcoming. In 1873, a few years after the Elliots’ departure, the Governor was instructed either to lease the property or to sell it, and reside at another, smaller, house. Despite the external elegance of its construction and its imposing position, on higher ground some three miles inland from Jamestown and fronted by a long sweep of sloping lawn, Plantation House was not a place for gracious living during the 1860s.

  St Helena was not unknown to Elliot, who had visited the island briefly late in 1819 during the return voyage of HMS Minden from the East Indies Station. For the new Governor there were several pressing concerns. Chief among these were the scourge of termites (‘white ants’) which were causing severe and widespread damage to buildings and their contents, and juvenile crime and vagrancy.

  Elliot formulated a programme for the reconstruction of several termite affected public buildings in Jamestown, using iron, stone and teak hardwood.6 His application to the Colonial Office for a loan for this work was successful, approval being accompanied by authorisation to raise the taxes necessary to fund the interest and provide a sinking fund. An official view was that hitherto there were ‘strong grounds for considering the inhabitants of this little island very lightly taxed.’7

  The cornerstone of Elliot’s plan to counter vagrancy and youth violence was the establishment of ‘Reformatories’ in which offenders would be placed in custody and required to undertake useful employment to fund their keep. Once deemed ‘cured’ of their delinquency, they would be trained in craft skills that would enable them to make positive contributions to the communal good. ‘It is’, Elliot wrote, ‘better to spend largely for deterring men and particularly youths from criminal tendencies by instruction and an effective plan of reformatory training, than to spend largely for recruiting the prison strength by old offenders and undisciplined youthful offenders’.8

  The Ordinance which was intended to give effect to Elliot’s reform of the penal system was passed in 1865, towards the end of an initial period of intense activity aimed at achieving significant progress on several fronts, much as had happened in Elliot’s previous governorships. During these early years the Government Savings Bank of St Helena was established
and a public market was introduced, as well as the waterworks being enlarged to provide for better fire control and more plentiful supplies for shipping. The payment to be made to shipping lines for mail ships to call additionally at St Helena en route to the Cape became a matter of contention, resolved after more than a year when the contract was awarded to the Union Steamship Company. In addition to measures to deal with white ants and delinquency, Elliot also proposed to the home government initiatives on such diverse subjects as the establishment of a new naval depot on the island (unsuccessful), the importation of cochineal insects from Tenerife (successful) and measures for improving the efficiency of the garrison (partially successful).

  Postal traffic initiated between St Helena and the Colonial Office was not all one way. A notorious American slave ship captain, Francis Bowen, had been captured by the British and sent to St Helena to be handed over, under the US-British 1862 Treaty for the Suppression of the Slave Trade, to the US authorities for punishment. Austen Layard, Parliamentary Under Secretary at the Foreign Office, had asked the Colonial Office find out from the Governor of St Helena ‘in what manner Bowen was disposed of’.9 Elliot replied that Bowen had been permitted to leave St Helena on a US whaling vessel, prompting Layard to tell Sir Frederic Rogers, Colonial Office Permanent Secretary, to instruct Elliot that he should in future ensure that such people were placed directly in the hands of US officials. The incident sparked a spirited exchange of memoranda between the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office about the interpretation of the Treaty; there appears to be no evidence of any clear outcome.

  A more constructive correspondence took place between the Foreign and Colonial Offices on the problem of termite infestation. Rogers was informed in September 1863 that the Foreign Secretary, Earl Russell, had instructed HM Consuls at a number of locations in Brazil, including Pernambuco and Rio de Janeiro, to report on measures used there ‘for counteracting the mischief caused by the ravages of the white ants’.10 The replies suggested various remedies according to the sites or items to be treated, such as tar and a mix of sugar and arsenic, along with more general advice about vigilance, cleanliness and the avoidance of damp. Whatever measures were tried, none was entirely successful, and though the use of different building materials prevented further structural damage, termites remained on St Helena.