Au Japon. Amedee Baillot de Guerville
on World’s Fair business. The most that can be said is that de Guerville’s visit kept the momentum going, which in the case of Korea and its vacillating King Kojong may have proved one crucial factor in that country’s participation.
One of de Guerville’s greatest successes in Japan had little in fact to do with the fair. Following his laudatory presentation at the imperial residence, the Japanese Red Cross Society requested that de Guerville repeat his magic lantern show for a public, paying audience, to raise funds for that organization. It seems that like his other performances on behalf of Japanese charities, this one met with great success. It was also a service that would not be forgotten by Japanese officials when de Guerville returned two years later as a war correspondent.
As for China, which de Guerville visited soon after his brief sojourn in Korea, the Honorary Commissioner’s presentation before Li Hongzhang (Li Hung-chang) and his colorful guests in Tianjin (Tientsin) entertained but did not convince. In Au Japon de Guerville briefly discusses his presentation at Tianjin, though he seems concerned in his recollection more with comic effect than concrete results. But de Guerville would describe in more serious tones elsewhere his experience in China before Li Hongzhang. The fact was that in 1892 China was still smarting from the American passage of the Geary Act, which extended curbs on Chinese immigration, as well as by stories of escalating anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States.16
As a final note, regarding de Guerville’s mission as Honorary Commissioner, not everyone commended the young American’s visit. The Japan Gazette—one of the three English papers serving the foreign enclave at Yokohama—was disparaging of de Guerville’s efforts. It was this same paper that would attack de Guerville even more vituperatively during his tenure in Japan covering the Sino-Japanese War, and was no doubt related to the fact that not all foreign papers in Japan, indeed the majority, looked kindly on those that emphasized Japan’s capabilities and potential. Regarding his efforts on behalf of the fair, the Japan Gazette openly rejected the notion de Guerville ever called upon the imperial household while belittling his role in general:
We distinctly remember Mr. de Guerville being on one of the Yokohama Hotel lists, but to our knowledge he never did anything more than other “World’s Fair” Commissioners have done, who have drifted this way under the influences of an all round trip, paid for by someone else. He did not even preach a sermon, as some have done as a sort of conscience vent, and we need hardly say that no one has given any illustrated lectures before their Imperial Majesties.17
It was not the last time de Guerville’s prominent praise of Japan would bring him into conflict with the English press of Japan. In the Japan Weekly Mail, however—whose owner Frank Brinkley was also a fervent admirer of Japan—de Guerville found a welcome ally. That paper defended de Guerville’s reputation in 1892, as it would again in 1895 when de Guerville’s denial of a massacre by Japanese troops at Port Arthur stirred up controversy over matters more serious than palace soirees.
War Correspondent
There is no direct evidence one way or the other concerning assertions by the American legation in Japan as well as the Japan Weekly Mail that de Guerville represented a “consortium of Chicago newspapers” during his visit to the Far East on behalf of the World’s Fair. However, one thing is clear: de Guerville’s journeys in Northeast Asia during the spring and summer of 1892 launched his all too brief career as a foreign correspondent and travel writer.
Besides his more provincial writing for his Courrier Français in Milwaukee, de Guerville’s first known publication is a story concerning his experiences as Honorary Commissioner. “Japan at the World’s Fair” appeared in Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly in September 1892 and was followed soon thereafter, and in the same publication, by “Humor in Japanese Politics” in October 1892. From this time de Guerville would continue to write for Leslie’s—either the Weekly or the more lavishly illustrated Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly—through 1897, when he became managing editor of The Illustrated American.After his brief stint as an Honorary Commissioner, de Guerville also found a niche for himself as a lecturer, perhaps a calling he had developed a taste for as a university instructor and during his evenings treading the boards for le Cercle Français, but certainly strengthened by his experiences lecturing to audiences—royal and otherwise—in Asia.
Using the same magic lantern he had employed with such effectiveness during his presentations in the Far East, de Guerville began to give public lectures in New York City on a variety of topics, from “Interesting and Amusing Experiences of an American World’s Fair Commissioner” to “Noted Women of France” and “Josephine, Wife of Napoleon.” He was by all accounts a gifted, captivating, and humorous speaker. One newspaper compared him to George Grossmith, a period actor and impersonator famed for his satirical monologues done to piano accompaniment.18 Leslie’s Weekly gloated like a proud parent over its random reporter:
Mr. de Guerville is able to speak of people and things never before made public in a lecture—but they are also extremely amusing and full of wit and sparkle. Ready in delivery, Mr. de Guerville is easily seen to be possessed of the enthusiasm of his subjects; and his clear and penetrating voice, which is both magnetic and pleasing, and the slight foreign accent which pervades his speech, serve to lend piquancy to his witty descriptions.19
From this time as well, travel writing became a staple of de Guerville’s pen, with his numerous publications appearing in Leslie’s Weekly as well as Munsey’s and Pearson’s Popular Weekly. Even when he was later deskbound by duties at The Illustrated American, he continued to travel in his mind, reminiscing of far-off destinations visited months or even years before as if he had been there only yesterday.
One of his favorite destinations was Spain, where on a May afternoon in 1894 he witnessed the great matador Manuel Garcia “Espartero” gored to death by a bull. Besides his travels in the Far East, de Guerville wrote of his voyages in Italy, Morocco, Turkey, Colombo (Sri Lanka), and Cuba, usually mixing descriptions of scenery and customs with a discussion of current affairs—government reforms in Turkey, the rising tide of rebellion in Cuba, or an independence struggle in Morocco.
The spring of 1894 found de Guerville wandering the courts and capitals of Europe contributing stories to Leslie’s Weekly on an irregular basis and on eclectic topics. He wrote a nostalgic piece concerning his 1892 visit with Li Hongzhang in Tianjin, along with a series dealing with “Socialism and Anarchism in Europe” (this during the heyday of anarchist tentatives in a year that witnessed the assassination of French president Sadi Carnot).
De Guerville seems to have had a remarkable ability for gaining access to political leaders, including a call on Pope Leo XIII (even giving his Holiness a private magic lantern show) and high political figures in Spain (such as the former president of the failed republic) and Italy in the spring of 1894.20 His linguistic aptitudes and journalism contacts allowed him to publish in both France (le Figaro) and Italy (La Tribuna Illustrata and Le Moniteur de Rome).
In late summer 1894, with the outbreak of hostilities between China and Japan over Korea—the Sino-Japanese War as it is now known, but at the time generally referred to as the China-Japan War—de Guerville was picked up as a “special correspondent” for Leslie’s Weekly, which dispatched him immediately to the Far East—via New York and San Francisco—with instructions to “proceed as rapidly as possible to the theatre of action and supply us with correspondence and sketches of passing events.”21
The editor of Leslie’s Weekly took care in one issue to explain the qualifications of his man in the Far East:
Mr. de Guerville has already represented us on important missions: he had visited China, where he interviewed Li Hung Chang; had represented the World’s Fair Commission as a special envoy in enlisting the interest of the Empress of Japan in the great Chicago exhibition [ . . . ] and had been, moreover, a close student of Oriental affairs. His standing with the two governments was such that, as it seemed to us, he would be accorded the largest privileges allowed by either to correspondents from abroad.22
The editor’s confidence was not misplaced.
But it was not only Leslie’s Weekly that de Guerville represented in the Far East. He set out for Japan as special correspondent for the New York