Au Japon. Amedee Baillot de Guerville

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 Herald as well. This was the same paper from which the journalist James Creelman had resigned in 1893, chaffing under the strict editorial policies of its chief editor, James Gordon Bennett Jr., who prohibited him (as any reporter) from putting his byline to his stories. Bennett’s New York Herald, it should be noted, was in fierce competition with Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World (to which Creelman transferred in 1894, and for which he also served as a special correspondent for the Sino-Japanese War). Apparently de Guerville offered his freelance services to the editors at the New York Herald, who agreed to buy his copy at space rates.23

      Perhaps to whet the appetite of its readers, even as de Guerville was heading from New York to the Far East, the New York Herald published a lengthy exposé by de Guerville detailing his recent experiences in Japan, Korea, and China as Honorary Commissioner. In what must have sincerely vexed Creelman (it certainly did Creelman’s wife), Bennett prominently displayed de Guerville’s name at the foot of the full-page article.24

      De Guerville’s final sojourn in the Far East, now as a war correspondent, was shorter but more eventful than his first. Here is de Guerville at the top of his game: dispatched to the theater of war as a special correspondent for one of the best-known dailies in the world. Indeed, he seemed, much as Leslie’s Weekly had recently surmised—on the cusp of great things.25 A surviving illustration of de Guerville during his coverage of the conflict has him tall and strapping, and dressed in the de rigueur outfit of the heroic adventurer of the day: high boots, pantaloons, cape and hat.

Figure 4. A. B. de Guerville Covering the Sino-Japanese War in China (1894). Munsey’s Magazine (1895).

      De Guerville arrived in Yokohama, Japan, on a rainy September morning in 1894. Soon his social and political connections in Japan, cultivated during his initial trip to that country two years previous, had secured him transport on Japanese troop carriers and access to the frontlines in Korea and later Manchuria. His dispatches and subsequent writings on what he witnessed—and perhaps more importantly, did not witness—played a central role in the debate that raged in America, Europe, and even Japan itself regarding Japanese behavior during that war and attitudes towards Japan in general at a time when that nation was quickly rising to the status of world power.

      De Guerville’s writings on the Sino-Japanese War, perceived by many as excessively pro-Japan, also gave rise to controversy and a public clash of personalities between himself and other correspondents and newspapers, most notably James Creelman of the New York World.

      Magazine Publisher

      Despite the praise his accounts of the war in the Far East received, de Guerville’s employment with the New York Herald did not result in the professional windfall one might have expected and for reasons that will be dealt with later in this introduction. De Guerville spent the next several years following his return to America from the Far East writing, lecturing, and traveling, but he was never to be picked up as a regular correspondent. By late 1895 he was in Europe and North Africa, the year after that stomping from Cuba to Constantinople. His relationship with the New York Herald had ended along with the Sino-Japanese War, but he continued to write for Leslie’s Weekly and other American and European newspapers and periodicals on a sporadic basis. He developed an interest in the “Cuba question,” which was increasingly dominating American papers and public opinion, as the United States under William McKinley (and Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt) moved ever closer to war and empire. Somewhat sympathetic to Spain, de Guerville’s coverage of the Cuban insurrection—including a trip there in the spring of 1896—is characterized by a reflective moderation rather than the belligerence then dominating so much of the period press, especially out of New York City. Had not personal illness intervened, perhaps de Guerville might have gone on to join the host of well-known American reporters covering the war in Cuba in the years ahead.

      As a result of his experiences as Honorary Commissioner for the World’s Columbian Exposition, in early 1896 de Guerville was also appointed United States General Commissioner for the American program at the International Exposition planned for Innsbruck, Austria, from May to October 1896, an exposition dedicated to physical education, hygiene, sport and associated trades and industries.26 Meanwhile he continued to maintain a busy schedule of lecturing and writing.

      Between his frequent travels and social and professional engagements, de Guerville also found time to marry. In December, 1896, he wed Laura Belle Spraker in New York City. De Guerville was twenty-seven, the bride twenty-four. He had married well. Laura Spraker came from a respected, well-to-do New York family, American to the core. Her great-great grandfather had advised George Washington.

      Within a month of his marriage de Guerville and his new bride departed New York for what can only be described as a five month working honeymoon through Europe. In February they were in Spain, where his comments in front of the Madrid Geographical Society stirred up some controversy in both Spain and the United States when he intimated Japan would support America in the case of a Spanish-American conflict, if only in hopes of gaining the Philippines СКАЧАТЬ