Captain Elliot and the Founding of Hong Kong

by Captain Elliot

  Compared with Trinidad, the day-to-day business of the Governor was small scale. The population of the island had been dramatically increased from time to time for particular reasons, such as the substantial number of extra troops deemed necessary to guard Napoleon, and in its capacity as a destination for liberated African slaves, but the settled population in the nineteenth century typically numbered between 4,000 and 7,000. The 1861 St Helena census recorded a total population of 6,444, of whom the garrison accounted for 948.11 The apparatus of government was appropriately also small. In Elliot’s time the colony’s Executive (and Legislative) Council comprised, according to its minutes, only the Governor, the Chief Justice, and the Garrison Commander, with the Colonial Secretary. Legislation approved by the Council was required to be posted for public scrutiny for one month, before being placed again before the Council for final endorsement. There were otherwise no consultative arrangements, enabling the Governor and Council to take and implement decisions quickly (subject to subsequent report to London). Publication of draft legislation did nevertheless have some effect; the procedure was tested in August 1863 when an Ordinance proposing various measures to improve public health was successfully challenged. Alterations were made when the Council next met and the Ordinance was duly passed into law.12

  The relatively small size of the Government of St Helena and of the population it served meant that the Governor could quickly get to know many of the key individuals in the island’s life. Elliot’s normal briskness was therefore soon in evidence in changes of personnel where he thought there was good cause.

  The Headmastership of the Government High School had become an issue before Elliot’s arrival. In such a small community as St Helena some doubling up of roles was inevitable if all necessary functions were to be covered, but Governor Drummond Hay had determined that the incumbent, the Rev. George Bennett, could not properly fulfil the roles of both Rector of Jamestown and headmaster. Bennett was informed while he was on leave of absence of the termination of his appointment as headmaster, and he then resigned from the rectorship. The testimonial to him in the local press in March 1863 was full of praise for him as rector, but his decision had been made.13 Bennett’s successor as Headmaster was the Rev. Robert W. Gray. Perhaps partly because of a plurality of roles, as in the Bennett case – Gray was also the Bishop’s Private Secretary and Canon of the Cathedral– Elliot gave Gray notice that his services would not be required beyond the end of 1866.14 Gray’s response was immediate and forthright. He told the Governor that he intended to write direct to the Secretary of State, Edward Cardwell, about Elliot’s notification, which he considered unjust and illegal. In forwarding to Cardwell Gray’s letter of intent, Elliot said his decision had been

  influenced solely by what I consider to be the advantages to the community in the important respect of the steady instruction and guidance of the better classes at the Government High School…. I should wish to observe that the number of pupils at the Government High School when the late Head Master the Reverend Mr Bennett left in 1862 was forty-five, the number at present has declined to sixteen, neither am I able to attribute this considerable fall off in the number of pupils to any remarkable diminution in the number of the youth who would normally seek instruction at such an institution.15

  The establishment by Elliot of a special Board of Investigation did not prevent the matter from escalating into a bitter and protracted dispute in which Gray also made allegations against others, including the Colonial Secretary, whom he accused of auditing false accounts. Things came to a head in November 1866 when Gray resigned. He wrote that

  the injury done to me by His Excellency’s illegal suspension of me from my appointment as Head Master of the Head School in this island … has made it necessary for me to take such steps in an action at Law against His Excellency as will render it impossible for me to continue in any service of which His Excellency is the head…

  I beg therefore to tender to His Excellency my resignation of my appointment as Head Master.16

  Efforts to find a successor as headmaster failed because, it was said, the salary was too low and the cost of living too high. The role of acting headmaster had been assumed by W.M. Griffith, Assistant Master, who also thought he had grounds for complaint; firstly that he had not been appointed headmaster, and secondly that he had received what he considered a paltry addition (£10) to his salary for his acting role over five months. In June 1867 Elliot proposed that the salary of the headmaster’s post be increased, but that future appointments be made for two years in the first instance. An appointment was eventually made. Having failed in his first attempt at redress Gray tried again in September 1869 by seeking a new investigation of his case, a request which the Secretary of State, Earl Granville, refused.

  Elliot also had concerns about the reliability of J.H. Hartley, Medical Officer of the Liberated Africans Department at Rupert’s Bay. He recommended, apparently successfully, to the Duke of Newcastle that Hartley be replaced, and that his duties

  should in future be confined to an officer directly connected with Her Majesty’s service. It is a post of considerable trust, demanding habits of unfailing steadiness, and I see much reason for earnestly submitting this change to Your Grace’s support – at the close, therefore, of Mr Hartley’s leave of absence.17

  The replacement would be on the establishment of the garrison, ‘with directions that his services should be placed at the disposal of the Colonial Government for employment in the Liberated Africans Department at Rupert’s [Bay].’18 Nor was the judiciary exempt from scrutiny. Elliot proposed that the work of the Summary Judge, who dealt with cases of petty debt, should be taken over by the Stipendiary Magistrate and the office of Summary Judge abolished. In this instance, however, Newcastle demurred.

  Not all personnel matters were problematic. In January 1867 the Custodian of Napoleon’s tomb and former residence at Longwood, M. de Rougemont, came to the end of his appointment. As Elliot observed, the tomb and the house were visited each year by large numbers of people, and during de Rougemont’s tenure there had never been any disturbance or need for police intervention. That was perhaps just as well; the island’s police force was economically staffed – one officer in charge and nine other policemen. It was the subject of an allegation of inefficiency which obliged Elliot to write to the Secretary of State, the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos (to whom the complaint had been made) in an attempt to rebut the charge. In a population of around 6,500 (including the garrison), he said, there had over the five years since his arrival been forty convictions at General Quarter Sessions, of which the majority were for larceny.

  1864 and 1865 were difficult and ultimately traumatic years for Charles and Clara Elliot in their personal lives. A few months after the family’s arrival in St Helena the 22-year-old Emma Clara became engaged to the Rev. George Pennell, Vicar of St Paul’s, who was 26 and whom she had met en voyage. The development was a cause of great concern to her father, who had made his disapproval clear before the engagement was announced. The situation was fully and feelingly described by Emma Clara in a letter to her aunt in April:

  I have known Mr Pennell intimately for the past 6 months and I am as certain as one can well be of anything that he is well calculated to make me happy and I hope that by God’s help I shall be able to do my duty to him and to make him happy. We came out together from England and he proposed to me at the end of August 63. Papa did not wish to acknowledge any engagement then because Mr. Pennell’s means were small.19

  Charles was against the engagement, but he had not forbidden it. George Pennell was seeking a Chaplain’s appointment at Rio de Janeiro; if successful, Charles had said, he would not oppose the couple’s plans. Pennell’s Rio application did not succeed. Charles was insistent that the engagement be broken off, but Emma Clara was adamant and in the end persuaded her father, with great reluctance, to give his approval. She told her aunt, ‘I consider myself a very lucky girl’, adding ‘Maman is quite well
and always busy around the house. Papa I am afraid finds this place dull.’20

  At about the same time Clara Elliot confided her own reservations to her sister-in-law, giving also an approving indication of her daughter’s good works and some reasonably contented observations about Charles’ present life:

  Emma is very useful in visiting the poor (if poor there be in a worldly sense) persuading them to send their children to the Sunday School, and so on. Of her own private affairs, I leave you to judge from Charles and her own account. It will be a pang to me if she leaves us, but I shall feel sure that all is arranged for us better than we could do ourselves. There is not much society here for Charles, but this want leaves him more time for duty … about once a month we have a Man of War and have been very fortunate, for the greater number of the Captains and Officers we have been able to receive have been gentlemanlike and fit companions for Charles. I feel a great ease that it is in his power to entertain his brother naval officers. They will now know him as he deserves to be known.21

  While Elliot’s concerns about his daughter’s wedding intentions were mainly financial, especially in the light of his own perennial money worries, there were other factors. Emma Clara was, of all Charles’s and Clara’s children, the one they knew best. Her siblings had all spent long periods away from their parents, staying with their Aunt Emma, at school, or travelling. Emma Clara had been with Charles and Clara all her life, sharing their unsettled existence with all its excitements, discoveries, frustrations and disappointments. They were desperately keen to see her make a happy, stable and enduring marriage. A brief shipboard romance with an impecunious clergyman did not seem likely to deliver that. A further dimension was that George’s father, Richard Croker Pennell, was a close, probably the closest, colleague of Charles Elliot. He had been appointed Colonial Secretary and Registrar in 1844, and had served under four previous Governors. There is no indication that Elliot’s working relationship with him was other than generally cordial, though there will inevitably have been occasions on which Pennell’s long experience and Elliot’s desire for reform came into conflict. It is not clear what view Richard Pennell took of his son’s engagement, but he was probably more kindly disposed to it than was Elliot.

  At the wedding the bride’s father and the groom’s sister Jacquelina were witnesses. A few weeks later Charles wrote sadly and anxiously to his sister:

  My child was married on 3rd June, God’s will be done. All that remains to be hoped is that she may have acted best for her own happiness. So far as I can judge the young man is a really delight[ful] clergyman and in every respect well-conducted. But, looking at the thing from my point of view I think he has acted selfishly & that she has been out of all measure irrational. However what is past is past, & I can only grieve that I cannot do more for her. They will of course be miserably poor, and as children come, I foresee nothing but a life of care, & pinching & unavailing regrets…

  I am very sorrowful dearest Emma and do not affect to conceal from you that this marriage has been a terribly staggering blow to me. So far as I can see, it is an extremely rash thing indeed.

  [ps] Clara is well & has been much wise throughout this distressful business of poor Emma’s. I pity that child from the bottom of my heart. My thoughts are with her more and more.22

  Emma Clara became pregnant in July. There is a hint in a letter to her aunt shortly before her expected confinement that she had not always been in the best of health during the pregnancy. She was apprehensive, but as was her nature sought to be positive. From St Paul’s Vicarage she wrote in April 1865,

  I expect a certainly most interesting event to us to take place before the end of this month praise God or quite early in May. I am thankful to say that I am perfectly strong and well now and have had so little to suffer and so much to be grateful for up to this present moment that I feel it would be worse than folly to look forward with anything but hope and trust.23

  George and Emma Pennell’s son, Clement Hope, was born before the end of April. On 21 May, two days before his christening, Emma Clara died of septicaemia.24 The devastation caused to her parents was inevitably overwhelming. Her new husband, who lived for a further forty-seven years, never remarried. Charles’s grief was compounded by extreme anxiety about Clara, who though maintaining some kind of mental equilibrium, lost an alarming amount of physical capability. As always in such circumstances, he wrote repeatedly to his elder sister. This a month after Emma’s death:

  Knowing how deeply anxious you will be for the latest tidings of us, I send this line to say that my dearest Clara, continues in the same perfectly satisfactory condition mentally considered but still distressingly low in other respects. May God grant to her some measure of bodily energy & the continuance of her present mental calmness & usualness of manner & appearance…

  My own darling Child’s voice is still in both our ears, & her form is never long out of our poor memories. God’s will be done.25

  A further letter followed in July and another in August:

  You will see that I have but slight hope that my dearest will ever recover her strength of mind or body…. You will remember how active she was, & till my …[?] left us she could walk as far as I could (& much more reliably). Now she does not walk at all, & the only exercise she takes is a drive with me in the afternoon if the weather permits. She sleeps pretty well, but does not get up for breakfast. In short, her forces are diminishing, both bodily and mental.26

  The tablet placed in the nave of St Paul’s by Charles and Clara speaks of Emma Clara’s spirit, diligence, friendship to the poor and her sweetness as a companion. It is a memorial both to her and to Hughie – a grim reminder that Charles and Clara had lost not only their younger daughter but also their eldest son, who had become a captain in the Bombay cavalry, married in 1860 and died at sea on June 8 1861, aged 29.

  Although still grieving and very anxious about Clara’s health, Elliot seems to have applied himself to his work again with minimum delay. He proposed the reform of the jury system, urged on the Colonial Office action to improve the defensive capability of the island, and resumed his initiatives on the environment, seeking to build in particular on his longstanding interest in trees. He had imported to St Helena Bermuda cedars and Mexican and Norfolk Island pine, and sent some Norfolk Island pine seeds to his cousin, the third Earl Minto, whimsically hoping that ‘they will … serve to remind the generations to come that [?we] thought of them in the days of Queen Victoria who will be President of the Confederation of British States when these trees are 180 feet high.’27,28 Elliot’s most lasting botanical contribution to St Helena, however, was the cultivation of cinchona plants, from whose bark anti-malarial quinine was extracted. The Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, Dr Joseph Dalton Hooker, who had visited St Helena many years earlier, had commented that cinchona might profitably be grown on the island’s mountains. With Elliot’s agreement he dispatched Joseph Chalmers, an experienced gardener, to take charge of a project to that end. Work began July 1868. In April 1869 Elliot wrote to Hooker at length, discussing progress, and by the time planting was completed in December 1869 there were estimated to be 10,000 cinchona plants at various stages of growth.29 The full potential of the scheme was never realised. Elliot’s successor took no interest in the project, which was neglected and then abandoned. Uncultivated, invasive cinchona now grows on St Helena, but with harmful effects on other species of plant.

  While the island was on his mind, Dr Hooker also wrote to the Colonial Office about a familiar, long-standing and intractable problem, ‘hazarding conjecture that the introduction of insectivorous birds might check the propagation of the white ants in St Helena.’30 The suggestion was passed to J.C. Melliss, Colonial Surveyor, who had a keen interest in flora and fauna. Several species of birds from England, mostly sparrows, were subsequently imported, though with what effect on the ants is not clear.31

  Elliot moved in September 1865 to full admiral on the retired list. In the midst of be
reavement and anxiety about Clara the promotion will have done little to lift his spirits, and had no effect on his remuneration. So far as his debts were concerned, however, he expected his Governor’s salary of £2,000 per annum to serve the purpose he had intended when he applied to be posted to St Helena.32 He could now envisage a life free of such burdens, though this had been only a small grain of comfort in his extreme despondency after the marriage of Emma Clara. He wrote near the end of June 1864: ‘As soon as I have paid off the remaining encumbrances on my insurances, I shall get the ship [?] to Timbactu [?] and spend the last of my days there or thereabouts. Another year and a half (if I live so long) will see me out of this island. But that is a long time to look forward to at my age.’33

  There was a gradual improvement in Clara’s health and demeanour during the three years following Emma Clara’s death. It was aided by her religious faith, her interests in gardening and music, and the regular company of her grandson, who was always known by his second name, Hope.34 George Pennell and Hope stayed at Plantation House for three weeks in November 1867; ‘they were very happy weeks to us’ Clara wrote, continuing, ‘I love all children, particularly my grandson. Hope’s visit was music in this house though sometimes he used to shout very loudly not in anger but to be heard [as] the house is very large’.35 Charles continued to apply himself conscientiously to his work, in a position now to reminisce occasionally, and not just about China. Receipt of his niece Nina’s A Memoir of Hugh Elliot prompted a generally favourable reaction from Charles, and some appreciative comments about his father: