Death-Bed Edition
Unfortunately, in 1881, health problems that the author summed up as “age, weakness, and decay” signaled that he was running out of time. For the first time, he confronted the “disturbing” possibility that he would probably die before completing the revision. The Middle Kingdom, he wrote, “looms up larger than ever, a mountain too high for me to climb.” As his motor skills began to deteriorate, Williams found that he could not hold his hand steady enough to write legibly. That wonderful stamina and energy that had sustained him for four decades in China now seemed utterly “used up.” In his diary, he called upon God to lend him additional strength: “May God graciously preserve me to finish this revision, if it will be helpful to his cause in China.” Yet quietly, he began to prepare himself for what he called “the final disappointment.” On January 26, 1881, fate dealt him a devastating yet expected blow: Sarah Walworth Williams, his wife of more than three decades, died. In his diary, a shaken Williams bid her farewell: “Dear wife of my life, mine for one third of a century, adieu till we meet on the Sea of Glass.” Then in January of 1882, his already slow progress on his book came to a crashing halt when a fall on a slippery sidewalk resulted in a broken arm. Williams’s dream was now in jeopardy.
Fortunately, in 1881 Williams’s son Frederick looked over the work his father had completed thus far and discovered the extent to which the latter was struggling. The added chapters were, in Frederick’s words, “a confused and prolix narrative.” Fortunately, Frederick agreed to assist his father with the editing, and with his much-needed help, the retired missionary was able to see the massive project through to completion.
And it was massive. When the publisher released the revised edition of The Middle Kingdom in 1883, it had grown by a full third since its previous incarnation, now totaling over 1600 pages. Though blindness prevented Williams from reading his own completed work, he enjoyed holding the two volumes in his hands and feeling their substantial heft. And as with the first edition, Williams still cared deeply about the verdict rendered by readers and critics. “He made no pretence of concealing his interest in the press notices of his work,” Frederick observed, “which were read to him as they appeared.” One review in particular that Frederick clipped out of The Critic must have cheered his father’s spirits:
Those whose conception of China is that of a land of rat-eaters need…conversion. No one can now inform himself about the Chinese without seeing in them a civilized nation. Not to know China as civilized argues ourselves barbarians. It would also be well if the average American, and especially the average Congressman, could learn one thing – viz: that we are not in any danger of a Mongolian deluge…In spite of advanced years and feeble health, our author may yet live to see the absurd and un-American bill repealed.Conversion” was the key word. Americans were the ones who needed to change their thinking. With the revised edition, Williams had become a missionary in reverse.
With the publication of the revised Middle Kingdom, Williams’s final act of loyal service to God was complete. Having nothing left to accomplish, the aged missionary promptly entered into rapid decline. That he had survived this long convinced Frederick that the hand of Providence had intervened: “It seemed as though his life had been spared to see the consummation of this important endeavor, after which he faded gradually away.” On February 16, 1884, Williams died in his bed without suffering. After the funeral was held on the Yale campus, his body was removed to Utica, where he was buried next to his wife.
