The Road to Gloary

‘Here might be seen the covetous, calculating that the Chinese would cut up well in the shape of prize-money,’ wrote Lieutenant Bingham, watching his fellow servicemen on the frigate Modeste between Singapore and Macao in June 1840. He continued:

– and who likes prize-money better than Jack [Tar]? There the ambitious might be heard, enumerating the honours and professional steps he would get; while the young and ardent were revelling in the anticipated fight. What to them was a greater ideal pleasure than the whistle of a shot in anger? ¹

While Charles Elliot negotiated with the Chinese in December that year, this pent up expectation grew on the ships round about him. But it was not only the forces on the scene who were eager for action; Emily Eden’s feelings were hardly more restrained. ‘No more news from China,’ she wrote in frustration. And she went on:

Charles Elliot still goes on negotiating – or as the people there call it, no-gotiating. The navy, army, and merchants are all equally dissatisfied. By the last letter, he declared Sir Gordon Bremer was to attack the Bogue forts the next day if the Chinese did not sign the treaty, but he has said so so often that nobody will believe it till they see it, and even when they do it is impossible not to regret that it was not done a year ago. Mrs Elliot has rather a hard time of it, I fancy, as the society here is chiefly mercantile, and they all consider themselves ruined by all this weakness and procrastination, and the papers, too, are full of abuse. She bears it better than most people would, but fidgets about his vacillation, I suspect. She talks of sailing in about ten days… . ²

Those words, ‘I suspect’, are important; there is no reason to assume that Clara had been disloyal to Charles, no matter what pressure Emily put on her to let slip his weaknesses.