SIR ROBERT KENNAWAY DOUGLAS AND HIS

CONTEMPORARIES

YU-YING BROWN

S I R Robert Kennaway Douglas (1838-1913) was the first Keeper of the BritishMuseum's new Department of Oriental Printed Books and Manuscripts when it wascreated in 1892. Despite his fame as the compiler of the first published catalogues of theMuseum's Chinese as well as Japanese collections, memories of the man himself soonfaded in the Department he had served so well. When in the 1980s, Barry Bloomfield,then Director of Collection Development in overall charge of the renamed Departmentof Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books, requested a copy of Douglas's photographfor the 'portrait gallery' of Keepers he was assembling in his office, none could be found.On my mentioning this to a former colleague, Kenji Makita, who was researching a bookabout distinguished members of the Museum staff, he pointed out that Douglas waspresent, sitting on the extreme right of the front row, in a group photograph of seniorstaff taken circa 1885 (fig. i)." This photograph has been reproduced in P. R. Harris'sA History of the British Museum Library, 1753-1973.'^ This monumental new book alsosheds fresh light on Douglas's career in the British Museum. Some of the anecdotes itrecounts on the inner workings and organization of the old British Museum have afamiliar resonance to the ears of us, the curators of the new British Library. It is surely^timely, therefore, to reassess Douglas's career and achievement.

Douglas belonged to an age when Chinese and Japanese studies were still in theirinfancy. Yet it seems to have taken him and his contemporaries an astonishingly shorttime to master the languages and make practical as well as scholarly use of them. ForDouglas, formal study of Chinese did not last more than a year, while his Japanese wasentirely self-taught, though possibly he was only able to read and write the language.

According to F. Legge, who wrote the fullest account of Douglas's life in hisobituary for the Journal of the Royal Astatic Society,^ he was born in Talaton, Devon,on 23 August 1838. He was the fourth son of the Rev. Philip William Douglas who hadbeen appointed to the Chapel of Ease at Escot, near Ottery St Mary, by Sir JohnKennaway, Baronet. Kennaway was obviously a respected patron of Philip Douglas, somuch so that he adopted his name as young Robert's middle name. Robert's grandfather,Dr Philip Douglas, had been Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

Robert received the rudiments of an education from a village tutor along with his threebrothers and Sir John Kennaway, junior. When he was ten, his father moved to Bath,

1 2 2

Fig. I. R. K. Douglas, seated far right, circa 1885

and he was sent to Blandford Grammar School. At the age of seventeen, he went withan elder brother to New Zealand intending to be a sheep-farmer. Having been delicatefrom childhood, he found the environment unsuitable and returned to England after twoyears. At the age of nineteen, he matriculated at King's College, London, where hestudied under James Summers (1828-91).

The following year, 1858, he entered the diplomatic service and was posted as astudent interpreter to Hong Kong. Barely another year had passed when he was movedto Canton which had been under the control of allied forces since its capture inDecember 1857. It was here that he acquired the greater part of his knowledge ofChinese life and of the southern dialects. In March 1861, he was transferred to Pekingas Third Assistant in the Consular Service. In June 1862, Douglas became FirstAssistant in the Consulate at Tientsin and worked under General Staveley, whocommanded the British Occupation Force there. In October of the same year, he wasappointed Vice-Consul at Taku. Here he remained until 1864 when he returned homeon leave, never, in fact, to go back to China.

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During his six-year stay, he had witnessed some of the most turbulent scenes inmodern Chinese history: anti-Christian riots, local wars with western powers, theTaiping rebellion, and the sacking and looting by the allied forces of the Summer Palaceat Peking. These experiences may have instilled in him his distaste for the corruptManchu regime and his subsequent sympathy for the republican cause. All the same, hehad no particular liking for a life of such high adventure. He had, after all, always beena bookish boy, preferring to spend his childhood in reading or in the solitary sport offishing. Moreover, the climate of China had affected his health. So he began to look abouthim for some more congenial occupation which would keep him in England. Hisknowledge of China and the Chinese language stood him in good stead. No doubt theinfluence of his lifelong friend Sir John Kennaway the younger helped too. He wasappointed an Assistant of the First Class for the Chinese language material in the BritishMuseum on 23 February 1865.

At the Museum, Douglas found a niche which he was to occupy for more than fortyyears. The study of Chinese language and literature had till then been confined almostentirely to missionaries. At the British Museum the Chinese books and manuscripts weredispersed throughout the King's and Grenville Libraries without any attempt atsystematic management. Douglas, who had married the year after his appointment, atonce set himself to work organizing the existing collection and making additions to it. Asregards the latter task, the knowledge of native dealers which he had acquired during hisstay in China gave him unique opportunities. By the time he produced the Catalogue ofChinese Printed Books., Manuscripts and Drawings tn the British Museum in 1877, he hadbeen made Senior Assistant. The same year saw the publication by him of two popularworks. The Chinese Life of Jenghiz Khan (a translation from the Chinese) andConfucianism and Taoism. Not that Douglas was some meek work horse. In 1875 hecomplained to the Civil Service Inquiry Commission that most of the Assistants were notallowed to take part in the work of selecting material for purchase, which was done bythe Keeper, one of the Assistant Keepers and one of the Assistants familiar with thecollections.^ The then Keeper, William Rye, was not in favour of Douglas's plea thatAssistants should be given the responsibility since this would divert them from theirproper tasks of transcribing and revising catalogue entries.

Nevertheless, Douglas's achievements as a productive assistant were recognized. In1880 he was promoted to be Assistant Keeper in charge of the sub-department of(printed) Maps, which had been downgraded from an independent department on theretirement of its Keeper Richard Henry Major (1818-91). However, this was not a veryjudicious promotion for Douglas. For one thing, he was not a map specialist and couldnot do the collection justice. Even so, he was commended for speedily producing in 1885two volumes of printed catalogues of maps which had hitherto existed in 323 hand-written volumes. During his twelve years in the Map Room, he continued to work onthe Chinese and Japanese collections if only because no other specialists had beenappointed in those languages.

Douglas's time really came when Charles Rieu, a Persian and Arabic scholar, retired

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in 1892, bringing about the merging of Rieu's sub-department of Oriental Manuscriptswith oriental printed books to create a Department of Oriental Printed Books andManuscripts. As the first Keeper of the new department, he was given a budget of £2,000and £370 respectively for acquisitions and binding (the total contributed on a roughlyfifty-fifty basis from the Departments of Manuscripts and Printed Books). He had a firstand a second class Assistant plus two 'boy assistants' to help him. Douglas was wellplaced as Keeper to take charge of the great inflow of material then in prospect from theFar East.

The Chinese and Japanese collections, hitherto of moderate importance, were now tobecome (like their Ethiopian, Coptic, Persian and Indian counterparts) among thegreatest in the world. As stated above, in 1877 Douglas had produced a catalogue of theChinese collection (already over 20,000 volumes). It was followed by a Catalogue ofJapanese Printed Books and Manuscripts in 1898. Both catalogues were to have asupplementary volume, also compiled by Douglas and published in 1903 and 1904respectively.

He was directly involved in some of the most important acquisitions of Chinese booksand manuscripts, such as the 10,000-volume encyclopaedia Gu jin tu shu ji cheng-^^mmMf^ ; over 200 reference works brought over from China by Wang Tao i ^ ' ,Professor James Legge's assistant at Cambridge; the papers of'Chinese' Gordon and ofthe 'Ever Victorious Army' which suppressed the Taiping rebels; and the collectionassembled after the Boxer Rising of 1900. As for the Japanese collection, Douglas wasresponsible in 1868 for recommending the acquisition of Japanese antiquarian books andmanuscripts (1,088 works in 3,441 volumes) then on offer for sale to the British Museumby Alexander, son of the German physician Philipp Franz von Siebold. They had beencollected by Siebold senior during his two stays in Japan, 1823-29 and 1859-61, on theformer occasion as the official doctor for the Dutch East India Company at Deshima,Nagasaki. The collection includes 123 manuscripts, 469 profusely illustrated books, andover 100 maps and charts. It may be in part because of his familiarity with thiscartographical material that he was later put in charge of the Map sub-departmentreferred to above.

During Douglas's keepership, quite the finest part of today's Japanese collection wasalso acquired (in 1884 and 1885) from Sir Ernest Satow (1843-1929), a British diplomatand doyen of Japanese historical bibliographers. Here the rarest examples of earlyprinting in Japan (and in Korea also) are to be found. This influx was to be furtheraugmented by a fine collection of Japanese illustrated books acquired from Dr WilliamAnderson (1842-1900) in the years 1882, 1894 and 1900. It was Douglas as well whooversaw the arrival in 1901 of the first Stein collection, an event which ushered in thetransformation of the Department's collection of early Chinese and Central Asianmaterial.

Until the publication in 1993 of Kenneth Gardner's Descriptive Catalogue of JapaneseBooks in the British Lthrary Printed before 1700, Douglas's catalogue was the only guideto the British Library's antiquarian Japanese collection. Its Chinese counterpart,

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however, has not yet been superseded in print to this day. Douglas thus becamesomething of a household name among Orientalists, especially scholars of Japaneseliterature and of sinology. The two catalogues were reprinted in facsimile by the Tokyopublishers, Kagaku Shoin: the Japanese in 1986 and the Chinese in 1987. This wasdespite their being notoriously difficult to use not least on account of archaictransliteration systems and numerous mistaken descriptions. In fact, the Chinesevolumes were to be dismissed by Herbert Giles, a younger member of the ConsularService in China and later Professor of Chinese at Cambridge and, incidentally, fatherof Lionel Giles, one of Douglas's successors as Keeper, as 'a monument of immaturescholarship'.^ It has always been easy to criticize our forebears in relation to theacademic sophistication of later times.

It would appear likely that Douglas was inspired to teach himself Japanese by JamesSummers, his tutor in Chinese at King's. Summers, too, was something of an eccentricpioneer who left a considerable mark in the fields of both Chinese and Japanese studies.''At the age of twenty-five in 1852, despite having no formal qualification in the subject,he was elected to a Chair in Chinese at King's College, London, where Satow as well asDouglas were to be among his students. Prior to that, he had spent several years inChina, learning dialects in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tientsin and Peking. In 1849, hevisited Macao where he caused a diplomatic incident. He was arrested for not taking hishat off when the procession of Corpus Christi was passing. The Portuguese GovernorAmaral refused to respond to an ultimatum from Captain Keppel, R.N., to release him.Keppel landed some marines who extricated Summers by force, one Portuguese beingkilled and three wounded. Summers returned to England in 1851.

Summers's fame on the scholarly front rested on his editorship of two early andinfluential literary magazines about the Far East, The Chinese and Japanese Repository(1863-5) ^^^ ^ ' Phoemx {1870-3). It is interesting to note that in the latter's inauguralissue he introduced to the world the British Museum's unique copy of the Jesuit MissionPress edition of the Heike Monogatari ^^'J-v^^-• ^^)iS¥^^l§ , almost twenty yearsbefore the publication of Ernest Satow's seminal study. The Jesuit Mission Press in Japan(1888). Summers studied Japanese under a samurai called Minami Teisuke ^0.^ whohailed from southern Japan. It was with Minami in 1873 that he published the TaisetShimbun k&i^m , the first Japanese-language magazine outside Japan. Unfortunately itdid not continue beyond the first issue; and only one copy has survived, this being in aprivate collection in Japan.

In the previous year. Summers had pubhshed a Descriptive Catalogue of the Chinese^Japanese and Manchii Books m the Library of the India Office (1872). It was the first suchcatalogue to exhibit at least a rudimentary classification scheme. After the death in April1858 of L. A. Prevost, who had been in charge of the Chinese printed material in theBritish Museum, Summers was employed as Assistant from August 1858 to March 1859,and again briefly after December i860. His scholarship evidently caught the attention ofViscount Iwakura Tomomi ^P^^ , the leader of the 1872 Japanese mission dispatchedby the new-fledged Meiji Government on a fact-finding tour of the advanced nations of

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the West. The next year Summers was invited by Iwakura personally to teach Englishliterature at Kaisei School, the forerunner of the present-day University of Tokyo. Hethus had the honour of being the first foreign teacher to be employed by a Japanesenational university. He is also credited with having introduced Shakespeare into Japanfor the first time.

After his three-year contract at Kaisei expired. Summers and his family were to stayin Japan teaching in various cities including Tokyo, where he and his wife founded whatwould be one of the earliest English language schools in Japan. Among the famousstudents who graduated from it were distinguished scholars such as Naito Konan P^BMW ,an eminent sinologist, and Okakura Yusaburo *#t±jE@[s , a pioneer in the field ofEnglish-language education. Unfortunately, in 1890, Summers caused another diplo-matic incident similar to the one in Macao. This time, alas, he was beaten over the headfor the crime of crossing the road in front of the Empress Dowager's cortege. Hereturned to England briefly but was to die of a stroke soon after his return to Tokyo inOctober 1891. He is buried in Yokohama Foreign Cemetery.

Just as it was Douglas who filled the vacancy left by Summers seven years earlier tocatalogue Chinese books at the British Museum, it was he who stepped into his oldteacher's shoes as Professor of Chinese at King's College in 1873 when Summers left forJapan. It would seem to have been not too strenuous an assignment. A college timetableshows that he was only obliged to teach twice a week, Tuesday and Friday at 6 p.m. Thismay explain why his application for the post, which was supported by, amongst others.Sir Anthony Panizzi and Major-General Sir Charles Staveley,® was readily approved bythe Trustees who saw no conflict of interest in the two commitments. Indeed, Douglasheld the two posts in tandem until his retirement as Keeper from the British Museumin 1907. He was knighted in 1903.

It is certain that Douglas, perhaps together with Summers, acted as guide when theIwakura Mission visited the British Museum in August 1872. The author of the officialrecord Bei-0 kairan jikki ^m\B]^^m , Kume Kunitake i \^H^ , listed the titles ofJapanese books they were shown in a 'special room'. They seem all to have been fromthe recently acquired Siebold collection. Unfortunately he did not mention Douglas byname. This was in stark contrast with several Chinese visitors who came to the BritishMuseum shortly before or after the Iwakura Mission. The Museum was a magnet forChinese intellectuals such as Wang Tao, Li Gui ^ ^ , Zhang Deyi m^^ , Guo Songtaon^T^ , and Liu Xihong mmm , all of whom singled out Douglas in their memoirs astheir learned guide.

Li Gui, who visited England in the autumn of 1876 with an official delegation on theway back from the Philadelphia International Exhibition, commented in his Huan youdi qiu xin lu ^Mitn^B- (1876) that 'there were some 10,000 Chinese books in the BM.The member of staff we met was called "professor" (a very honourable title given onlyto great scholars), he used to work in the British consulate in China.' Other authorsrecalled that 'Degele' (i.e. Douglas) spoke excellent Mandarin Chinese, and showedthem many Chinese books.^

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In Japan today, Douglas's name has been serendipitously made famous by hisconnection with a pioneer ecologist, Minagata Kumagusu ^ h-mm (1867-1941). Minagatastayed in London from 1892 to 1900. For three and a half years or so (1895-9), he visitedthe Round Reading Room almost daily, studying anything from astronomy andanthropology to mucus fungi. He copied profusely from over 600 books (including themany Hindu books he consulted), building up some fifty-three large volumes of notes.He kept a massive diary as well. He was the first non-European to contribute tothe prestigious scientific magazine Nature. However, he was in frequent clashes withother Museum readers whom he either suspected of being racially prejudiced against himor else accused of making too much noise. One incident culminated in his being expelledfrom the Reading Room by the British Museum Trustees. Douglas tried in vain to havehim readmitted. As a special concession from the Trustees, he was allowed to read booksbut only in Douglas's own office.

It was there, on 16 March 1897, that he was introduced to Sun Wen ^^c, the Chineserepublican revolutionary leader best known in the West as Dr. Sun Yat-sen WMiih, thefounding father of the Republic of China. Sun visited the British Museum for the firsttime on 5 December 1896, ^ soon after the famous incident of his being kidnapped andheld captive in the Chinese Legation. It would seem that Douglas and Sun hit it off wellin their mutual disdain for the officialdom then ruling China. Douglas must also haverecognized Sun's potential importance to have been prepared to spend time with himwhen, according to Minagata, he turned down a request from 'Prince' Tokugawa to renta room in his house.-^^ Meanwhile, the two Asians became good friends, correspondinglong after Minagata had returned to Japan. In fact. Sun visited him in his hometown ofWakayama in 1906 during his exile in Japan.

Douglas himself was impressed by Minagata's wide-ranging scholarship and tried torecruit him onto the staff of the British Museum. But Minagata, being an eccentric freespirit who happened to have a rich merchant as father, declined the offer, saying, ineffect, that it would be the death of his freedom. He did not actually make much use ofDouglas's office after his exclusion from the Reading Room. Instead, he moved to theNatural History Museum in South Kensington and continued his research there.Nevertheless he did render considerable help with Douglas's Japanese catalogue. At theend of the Preface, he was duly acknowledged (along with Ernest Satow and anotherJapanese expatriate) as having assisted in the compilation. He also made several gifts tothe British Museum, including some books now in the British Library which bear hisdistinctive ex libris seals. They are among the earliest volumes presented by our Japanesereaders, a precedent followed to this day.

Douglas's scholarship was formidable, Herbert Giles's slighting remark about hisChinese catalogue notwithtanding. As a self-taught 'Japanologist', his achievement wasremarkable. He was also a distinguished popularizer of things Chinese. As well as severalarticles on Japan, he wrote a dozen books on the history and hfe of China directed at thegeneral reading public. His letters to The Times on current affairs in the Far East helpedto raise awareness of developments there. Clearly a good administrator, he organized the

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first and second International Congresses of Orientalists held in Paris in 1873 and inLondon in 1880. Apart from his professorship at King's College, London, he was Vice-President and Trustee of the Royal Asiatic Society. During his years at the Museum helived at Dulwich and was a governor of Dulwich College. He retired in 1907 to the westof England. Failing to find suitable accommodation near his birthplace at Ottery StMary, to which by coincidence Sir Ernest Satow had retired, he finally settled in ActonTurville where he was to remain until his death in 1913. He left a wife, six sons and twodaughters. Despite his somewhat glum-looking countenance in the 1885 groupphotograph, he was credited by F. Legge with 'a genius for friendship'. There wasobviously much more to Douglas than appears in the only known photograph of him.

1 Matsui, Ryugofe#HE^, Koyama, Noboru i-UiS.and Makita, Kenji %fflM!£, Dam haktt-butsukan no tatsujintachi ^^^lit^iit '^iiA/t^(Tokyo: KodansbalH^fi, 1996).

2 A copy of tbis group photograph, though withoutany reference to Douglas's name, had been ondisplay in the small exhibition on the history ofthe Museum Library formerly housed in thebasement of the Iron Library. A version of thephotograph was reproduced in A. H. Chaplin'sGA: 1^0 Years of the General Catalogue ofPrinted Books in the British Museum (London:Scolar Press, 1987), in which Douglas wasidentified.

3 P. R. Harris, A History of the British MuseumLibrary, 1753-^973 (London: The BritishLibrary, 1998), pi. 68.

4 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of GreatBritain and Ireland (1913), pp. 1095-9.

5 P. R. Harris, op. cit.., pp. 263-4.6 T. H. Barrett, 'Singular lassitude: some his-

torical and comparative perspectives on Chinese

studies' in Frances Wood (ed.), Chinese Studies,papers presented at a colloquium at the School ofOriental and African Studies^ University ofLondon (London, 1988), p. 29.

7 Shigehisa, Tokutaro WA'^ti% , 0-yatoi gaiko-kujm. 5; kyoiku shukyo ioBi ^^EA (5)licW • ^iic (Tokyo: Kashima Shuppan^gj {±!I1S,1968), pp. 154-70.

8 London, King's College: MSS, KA/IC/D60.9 Takeda, Masaya Stfflfiaft , 'Daiei haku-

hakubutsukan no mita futatsu no toyo''}^<D^fz^fz'^>Tj'^^ ^ in Tanaka, Akiraand Takada, Seiji f^KM:! (eds.),katran Jikki' no gakujutsuteki kenkyo

itt] to- i fi CT b (Sapporo: Hok-kaido Daigaku Tosho Kankokai^tM^^k.^M^Vlfi'^.t i993)> pp- 97^111.

10 See British Museum Reader's Register for thatdate.

11 J. Y. Wong, The Origins of an Heroic Image: SunYatsen in London, i8g6-i8g7 (Hong Kong,1986), pp. 276-9.

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