FIXING THE MEMORY

HAVING FIXED THE memory of Charles Hillier's last days in her lament, Eliza now had to fix the memory of his life as a loving husband and father and significant British official, and perhaps, this was when she retrieved the letters that Martha had so carefully preserved. Even if the three Hillier brothers only had a faint recollection of their father, the letters could be used to conjure up memories of Hong Kong and to hold him out as an example to be emulated in both their private and public lives. And if Eliza was the principal narrator of that story, there were many other members of the family living nearby, who could add to it: their grandmother, Betty, their aunt, Martha, and her four children, and their aunt, Augusta, who was just approaching her seventeenth birthday and, further afield, there was their uncle, Walter Medhurst a prominent figure in treaty port China, who would return to England from time to time and be an inspirational figure for them.

In examining the three brothers’ upbringing and the extent to which family helped shape their early careers, this chapter argues that it did so, not only by enabling them to enter those careers, but also by instilling the necessary attributes for successfully pursuing them, including the ability to forge the collaborative relationships that were key to sustaining the British presence. Whilst its focus is on their careers, we must also have in mind the impact of these early experiences on their intimate life and how this prepared them for the treaty port world, where they might find themselves living for long periods on the fringes of a teeming but alien metropolis. With no family and few colleagues, they would have to confront not only what has been termed ‘imperial boredom’ but also the pangs of loneliness. We will have to consider how much, having internalised the traumatic events of their childhood – the lengthy separations from both parents, the death of their father and the grief of their mother – they were able to build inner reserves, which enabled them to cope with such conditions but which may also have made more difficult their own intimate lives.