Knowing and Showing Chinese Social Life: Justus Doolittle
China has been exceptional, even among interesting mission fields, in the character and the course of those who have been at work there, and in the service which while there they have rendered to those in China and to the rest of the world. Among the marked men who were there from America, and whose service to the outside world is recognized, are Dr. S. Wells Williams, Dr. Peter Parker, Dr. S. R. Brown, Dr. William Speer, and Dr. John L. Nevius. And one that should be added to this list in view of what he has added to the world’s knowledge about and interest in China, is Dr. Justus Doolittle, whom I was glad to know and of whom I am glad to speak.
Justus Doolittle was born in Northern New York, not far from the native place of S. Wells Williams and W. Frederic Williams, the eminent missionaries to China and Mesopotamia. He graduated from Hamilton College and from Auburn Theological Seminary, and at once set out from Boston as a missionary to China, arriving in Foochow in May, 1850.
Of course a missionary entering a new field among a strange people with whose language and customs he is unacquainted, will find it necessary to give his first and best endeavors to become enough familiar with the language and the people to enable him to work there to best advantage. This preliminary work, or making preparation to work, will prove a hindrance or a help to a new missionary according to his capacity and fitness for the service to which he has been summoned. There will never be another time when he will be so alive to the peculiarities of the people among whom he is as while all he sees is utterly novel. Now is the time to avail himself of the fresh observations and impressions of the hour. If he fails to note them now he can never thus see them again. His ability to do this marks the man and the missionary.
Justus Doolittle had the capacity and the purpose to make his first impressions of native Chinese life of real and permanent value to himself and to others. While his first thought was of spiritual food to those about him, and his first necessary endeavors were for the mastery of a new language, he noted every peculiarity and exceptional characteristic of those whom he saw and heard so that he could consider and make use of them in the future. As he noted these observations in a paper published in Hong Kong, writing anonymously of “Jottings about the Chinese,” it was evident to the readers that he understood what was worth noting and knew how to tell of it. His experience and training as editor of the Chinese Recorder was an advantage to him in his writing. English and American readers began to urge their being put into shape for permanent preservation; and as he found time as the years passed on to do this, there were published the two volumes by which the world best knows him, “Social Life of the Chinese.”
Like Thomson’s “The Land and the Book,” Doolittle’s “Social Life of the Chinese” is the pioneer in its sphere of knowledge. Indeed, there was for years after nothing of the sort of any special value except a similar work, written ten years later by Archdeacon Gray, an English missionary in China, when the popularity of Doolittle’ s work called for other things in the same line. Yet this, like many another valued publication by missionaries, was merely incidental to the main work of the writer, not diverting him from that work, but aiding him in it. It grew out of Dr. Doolittle’ s desire and effort to be an efficient worker for Christ and for souls among the people whom he studied, and of whom he told.
In the same field with Justus Doolittle in China was a son of William Richards, the hero missionary in the Sandwich Islands, who with his noble wife defied death from the brutal Americans and English in defense of the natives for whom they stood. A brother and a sister of this young Richards were my schoolmates, together with Asa G. Thurston, of the Sandwich Islands, in Williston Seminary. Young Richards gave the last strength of his failing life to his Chinese charge. When the physicians insisted that he should cease work, he took ship, but died on board the vessel, and his body was committed to the deep near St. Helena.
This gave added work to Dr. Doolittle and the other missionaries, but they accepted the extra service and persevered gladly. A lot was secured and a
Church building was erected on it. Here Dr. Doolittle preached regularly, and the preaching service prepared the way for his face-to-face talks with individuals on which the missionary so much depends. There were interruptions, of course. Warfare on the opium question, and other evils in the line of money getting, and the crimes in connection with commerce at any cost; but in all and through all the missionaries pursued their course, and progress was made. Besides his important volumes on “Social Life of the Chinese,” Dr. Doolittle prepared a “Vocabulary and Hand Book of the Chinese Language Romanized in the Mandarin Dialect.” Like so many other missionaries, he was doing work for the permanent help of Christian peoples while actively and continually at work for the non-Christian people among whom he lived, and for whom he labored.
In the same mission field in China were missionaries of the American Episcopal Church, including the Missionary Bishop Boone, who went out as a medical missionary, and the Rev. Mr. Syle. The latter had a deaf-mute son who came to this country to be educated under my brother-in-law. Dr. Gallaudet, and became rector of All Souls Church for Deaf Mutes in Philadelphia. I was glad to meet and know the father, when he returned to this country after years of missionary service in China. The relations in the field of the different denominations were always most cordial and sympathetic and hearty.
Dr. Doolittle returned to the United States, and was compelled, on account of ill-health, to resign his missionary charge in 1869. It was about this time that I had the pleasure of meeting him on more than one occasion at Watertown, New York, where he was staying. As I was famiUar with and greatly valued his “Social Life of the Chinese,” I was glad to talk with him of various phases of Oriental life. But above all he was a missionary hero, as he had been a missionary abroad, and I looked up to him accordingly. There was living at the same time in Watertown “Fighting Joe Hooker,” whose “fighting above the clouds” at Lookout Mountain was historic. But as I went from one veteran hero to the other, and had words with each about his battling, I felt that the one who was really fighting above the clouds, and for the prize that was to be won there, was the one who led the lines in the Foochow Chinese field, and not the one who struggled up Lookout Mountain. And I honored him the more when, having regained his health. Dr. Doolittle, in 1872, joined the Presbyterian Mission at Shanghai and returned to the Chinese field. But again his health gave out, and soon he was wholly “above the clouds,” with the victory fully won.