Furlough
Mandarins with yellow buttons, handing you conserves of snails;The demeaning verses, Williams believed, epitomized this disturbing new attitude towards China. Americans now laughed at the Chinese out of crass xenophobia, viewing them as comically foppish and effeminate in appearance, and as adhering to a diet that was bizarre and “grotesque.” At this point, Williams’s mission in life achieved sudden clarity: he must disabuse Americans of their misconceptions and teach them the truth about Chinese civilization, even if the Chinese, like children, had not yet seen the light of God. At last, God had tapped the white pawn and shifted him back to the center of the cosmic chess match.
Smart young men about Canton in Nankeen tights and peacocks’ tails.
With many rare and dreadful dainties, kitten cutlets, puppy pies;
Birds nest soup which (so convenient!) every bush around supplies."[26]
At first, Williams’s chosen vehicle for accomplishing his objective was the traveling lecture. In an extensive tour that covered the Northeast and much of the Midwest, Williams delivered his two-and-a-half hour lecture to thousands.[27] “I…hope that the information the people have received regarding China will not end in mere curiosity,” he wrote, “but produce more sympathy in behalf of the moral life of the nation.”[28] It was during his lecture tour that Williams made a flattering discovery about himself: he knew more about China than anyone in the United States, and perhaps as much as anyone in the entire Western world. Though he lacked institutional credentials, his experiential credentials were unmatched. Who else had lived in China for a decade; had learned the language (written and spoken); had read Chinese classics in literature, religion, statecraft, and philosophy; and had studied China’s natural history?
[INLINE IMAGE: Newspaper ad for lectures, such as New Hampshire’s Farmer’s Cabinet of 3/4/47]
During his furlough, Williams also began to receive recognition inside intellectual circles. In addition to earning accolades for his lectures, he became an elected member of the American Ethnological Society. After reading a paper on China at a meeting held in the home of the president, Albert Gallatin, the latter acknowledged Williams’s mastery of the subject. In addition, John Russell Bartlett, the Secretary of the Society, noted that Williams’s reputation had reached Europe. The “eminent Sinologists of Europe,” Bartlett wrote, now ranked Williams as “among the profoundest adepts” in Chinese “literature and philology.”[29] The man who did not attend Yale was starting to receive recognition as a giant in his field. It was time to write a book.
_______________________
[26] Samuel Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1848), xiii-xvi.
[27] Frederick Wells Williams, 147-148. Though preferring western New York and Ohio, Williams did not avoid the East Coast altogether. He offered lectures in New York, New Haven, and probably other cities as well. Letter to Samuel Wells Williams from James Dana. October 10, 1846. Box 1. Series 1. SWWFP.
[28] Frederick Wells Williams, 147.
[29] Frederick Wells Williams, 151. Samuel Wells Williams, “The Present Position of the Chinese Empire,” John Russell Bartlett, “The Progress of Ethnology,” and Albert Gallatin, “Introduction to ‘Hale’s Indians of North-west America and Vocabularies of North America,’” Transactions of the American Ethnological Society (New York: Bartlett & Welford, 1848), clxi, 148, 279.
