IT WOULD BE wonderful to know what Parkes’ thoughts were on 13 June 1841, when he set sail from Portsmouth on the Foam. It must have been uncomfortable; being a small vessel – there were only twenty crew – it would have moved around quite a bit. He quickly discovered that he was not a good sailor, although he never let that stop him going anywhere. There may have been some trepidation but he probably also felt that he had nothing to lose – he had experienced such devastating losses in his short life, China could surely be no worse. We have no idea how happy he had been with his aunt and cousins, but he must have felt something of an outsider in their house. Worse, they seem to have completely lacked the Parkes drive – it is hard to imagine anybody on his side of the family settling for the limited, ‘straitened’ life they were leading.

The Foam is logged as arriving in Hong Kong on 4 October 1841, after a voyage of 113 days, and reached Macao on the 8th, where Parkes was reunited with his sisters. Catharine was now Mrs Lockhart, having married the missionary and doctor, William Lockhart, on 13 May 1841, at the age of seventeen. They had met on the voyage out from England in 1838.

William thought she was ‘of a most level and amiable temper … is good looking and pleasant and cheerful … she has acquired a very good knowledge of the language and surpasses me in this respect’. He added in a way that may make us wince, ‘I am tremendously satisfied with having obtained her for myself’. He had good reason to be glad, because few women would have contemplated marriage to someone so intense and driven. In a letter to his father and sister written a few days before the wedding, he made no bones about Catharine coming a distant second in his priorities. He assured them that she would