“A Stupendous Thing!”—The World’s Columbian Exposition
President Grover Cleveland’s exclamatory opening of the World’s Columbian Exposition, held at Chicago in the spring and summer of 1893, still qualifies as understatement. The fair, held to commemorate the four-hundredth anniversary of Columbus’ landing in the New World (it was held a year later than originally planned), was perhaps the most successful and talked about of all the world’s fairs and expositions—which by de Guerville’s time were enjoying their golden age. It put Chicago on the map and to many Americans it marked a great turning point in American destinies, the end of the frontier period, and the beginning of a more organized, industrial, mechanized and bureaucratized future that would soon make of the United States a global imperial power. To a young Henry Adams the world shifted on its axis at Chicago.
It was certainly a turning point in the fortunes of de Guerville as well. It launched him from the obscurity of a small town lecturer and newspaper editor to a “globe-trotter,” even if he was never to lose his love of the audience. It provided access to persons of fame and influence, both in the United States and abroad, and paved the way for the direction his life would take once the fair’s turnstiles had stopped. If one may point to a single hinge of fate in a person’s life, then for Amédée Baillot de Guerville it was beyond doubt his designation in 1892 as Honorary Commissioner for the World’s Columbian Exposition.
It is not clear today just how de Guerville managed to secure this position, or even with any great precision when. By all evidence, de Guerville had absolutely no background in or familiarity with the Far East. Though Au Japon treats in part of de Guerville’s activities there as Honorary Commissioner, the author gives us no indication of how he procured that nomination. However, an editor’s notation to de Guerville’s first article in Leslie’s Weekly (a publication for which he would come to write widely) claims he was “selected by Mrs. Potter Palmer [chief of the Board of Lady Managers for the Chicago World’s Fair] to visit Japan with a view of enlisting the women of that country in the World’s Fair Exposition.”7 A small notice later appearing in the Japan Weekly Mail seems to confirm this, remarking that de Guerville arrived in Japan carrying “an invitation from Mrs. Potter Palmer and the Ladies Committee to the Empress.”8 The pages of Au Japon also clearly indicate that de Guerville’s World’s Fair business in Japan concerned primarily the women’s exhibit.
Yet de Guerville’s name goes unmentioned in the otherwise exhaustive official directory to the fair, which details with meticulous precision every officer and official representative of the Chicago World’s Fair, whose organization rivaled in size and scope the governments of many small states.9 One possibility is that Mrs. Palmer, a strong advocate of women’s education, paid a visit to Milwaukee Women’s College, and perhaps was a spectator at one of the fêtes thrown by le Cercle Français. Charmed by de Guerville’s manner, perhaps she made him an impromptu offer he could not refuse. Another possibility is that de Guerville, as editor of a small French language publication in Milwaukee, had become acquainted with the press leaders of nearby Chicago and was commissioned privately by city leaders to head to the Far East, as both roving correspondent and quasi-official promoter of the World’s Fair, perhaps promoting the women’s exhibit in particular.
De Guerville never mentioned that his mission to the Far East concerned primarily, if not solely, the women’s exhibit, either in his own writings or, in light of diplomatic correspondence, to political authorities in the Far East. In fact, in Japan there was some confusion concerning just who or what he represented. But in the end that hardly mattered. In the final analysis, the fact that in 1892 the twenty-three year old de Guerville appeared bearing official credentials in the courts and homes of influence (one as important as the other) of the Far East must say something about the young commissioner’s charm and facility, personal qualities that would be emphasized again and again in the press in the few years to come.
It is largely the events intimate and peripheral to A. B. de Guerville’s mission as Honorary Commissioner that comprise the first half of Au Japon, and so there is little point in reviewing them in any detail here. It is worth emphasizing that as the title of the work implies, it was Japan—rather than Korea or China—that left the deepest and most positive impression on the young and impressionable commissioner. One might even say that it was Japan that inspired him to dedicate his life to writing.
New credentials in hand, de Guerville first reached Japan from the direction Rudyard Kipling recommended, from America and the Pacific—from “the barbarians and the deep sea.”10 In fact de Guerville arrived in Yokohama from San Francisco on April 13, 1892, only a week before Kipling made his more celebrated, or at least more remembered, voyage there.
A. B. de Guerville also arrived with the latest technology in hand—a McIntosh Magic Lantern, a device later to play such a prominent role in his public and private lectures from the Vatican to New York City. It seems that during his journey to the Far East de Guerville made the acquaintance of Count Harry Kessler (1868–1938)—Count Harry K- in Au Japon—then returning by circuitous route to Germany from New York. Of Kessler, one of the preeminent social critics and cultural figures of his epoch, it has been written, “He attracted magnetically the best and brightest, and, wherever he went, they formed his company.”11 Again, this tells us something about de Guerville’s personal qualities. Kessler, who himself became highly intrigued with Japanese aesthetics, would show up at de Guerville’s lectures a few years later in New York (and in fact would financially sponsor some).
De Guerville and Kessler had only a few weeks to enjoy one another’s company. At the end of April the young Count proceeded via Indochina and India to Germany, while de Guerville lingered in the Far East until the stultifying heat of the Japanese July sent him and his fragile lungs off to summer in Vancouver. He returned to Japan, again on World’s Fair business, in October, this time visiting Korea and China to elicit support there.
As is so often the case with new visitors to the Far East, de Guerville’s experiences in 1892 comprised an almost overwhelming flood of original sensations that proved personally transforming. Though his initial sojourn in Japan, Korea, and China was rather brief, the events that filled it provided sufficient grist for de Guerville’s writings and other activities for years to come. What’s more, it made of him an ardent admirer and friend of Japan, willing to support and defend it in word and print.
Nevertheless, it is fair to ask just how successful de Guerville’s mission was on behalf of the Chicago Fair. The answer depends greatly on the exact nature of the Honorary Commissioner’s charge, specifically in the case of de Guerville. At first it would seem his role was in the same vein as that of previous fair commissioners mentioned in the semi-official Book of the Fair, who “visited all the northern countries of Europe . . .and making it a point everywhere to approach the highest authorities, the Prime Ministers or Ministers of Foreign Affairs . . .” in order to obtain assurances of participation.12 Yet Horace Allen, the chargé of the American legation in Seoul at the time of de Guerville’s visit, remarked that despite the appeal of his magic lantern display, he seemed remarkably ignorant on the particulars of the fair itself.13 The American delegation in Japan was actually under the impression that de Guerville, rather than a representative of the Chicago World’s Fair, represented a consortium of Chicago newspapers, while the Japan Weekly Mail, the primary English newspaper in Japan, described de Guerville’s mission as being “uniquely to spread information.”14
The Japan Weekly Mail’s assessment seems most accurate. From the standpoint of securing foreign participation, de Guerville’s success was minimal, as it would have to be. Though the Japanese emperor pronounced the presentation at the palace, “one of the most enjoyable evenings he had ever passed,” and de Guerville’s magic lantern show with a view of the planned Women’s Building briefly inspired Korea’s Queen Min to put together a Korean women’s contribution for that display (which in the end did not materialize), the fact is both Japan and Korea were already committed, light and picture show or not.15 Elements of what would be the Japanese delegation to the World’s Fair had arrived in Chicago months before de Guerville first arrived in Japan. Indeed, as is revealed in the opening chapter of Au Japon, de Guerville’s first voyage to Japan was shared with Teshima