An Unexpected Message

You never know where a treasure map might be found. I found one recently in an email.

Regular readers will recall a post from a few years back about Yi Ying, the young woman who was Starrett’s guide through the bookshops of Peking during his 1935-37 visit there. Not long ago I had an email from a gentleman looking for information about Yi Ying, adding “There is a full length frontal picture of Yi Ying from the Starrett archive at Peabody Essex, attached below for your reference.”

Wait. The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., has an archive of Vincent Starrett photos? I didn’t know about this.

The hunt for treasure had begun. 

Treasure Found

And without so much as a pickax or shovel, the hunt succeeded! Turns out the Peabody Essex Museum is “one of the oldest continuously operating museums in the United States and holds one of the major collections of Asian art in the United States. Its total holdings include about 1.3 million pieces, as well as twenty-two historic buildings.”

(I’m going to intersperse the text with a few image galleries. Click on the images to see more.)

Those holdings include the Phillips Library. A few more clicks in at the library site and I was startled to learn that the PEM (as it is known), has a collection of more than 250 photos and postcards by Starrett from the round-the-world trip with Rachel (Ray) Latimer in the middle 1930s. 

(Readers who need a refresher on this trip can get caught up by reading this and this blog post.)

(Below are three images from Hawaii: the front and back of a postcard Starrett dated as 12, September 1935, and a view of Diamond Head. Click on the image for more.)

Where did this treasure trove come from?

The Phillips Library purchased the lot of photos from Carmen D. Valentino on March 7, 2011.  Mr. Valentino is an antiquarian book dealer in Philadelphia and (with the aid of Steven Rothman), kindly responded to an email inquiry. Sadly, Mr. Valentino could not recall where the collection came from. But the fact that it exists is enough.

What is even better is that the library scanned all the images in 2022, and they’re now available for anyone to view here. I’ve gone through the collection and picked out a few examples to give you a sense of Ray and Vincent’s experiences in Asia and beyond.

Let’s take a look, starting with their brief stop in Japan. As Starrett recounts in his memoirs, Born in a BookshopI:

On the whole, I liked Tokyo enormously. Indeed, I liked Japan enormously. . . I found the people excessively friendly and eager to please.

Japanese agents, however, were suspicious of the American author.

My room was searched daily, I could see, but so delicately that I could not have sworn it was not just as I left it. And until I had somehow proved myself a man of good will, queer characters seemed to blunder into my quarters more often that was plausible, disguised as employees of the hostelry. I really didn’t care. It was rather fun. . . .

(Below are three images from Japan. Vincent and Ray visited Japan before going to Peking. Click on the images for more.)

Vincent and Ray’s Life

After Japan, Vincent and Ray entered China, still an open country that welcomed visitors. The plan was to stay a few weeks, but they wound up being there for more than a year.

Their closest friends were members of the American/British expatriate community, with Helen Burton in the center of things. Owner of the then-famous Camel’s Bell gift shop in Peking’s grandest hotel, Burton was a memorable presence. Starrett wrote:

Her parties, whether at her exotic Chinese temple or in her exotic Chinese town house, were famous. She was, to put it simply, one of the most generous and charming women in the world.

She was a woman of great character. Burton adopted four Chinese girls while she lived in the country, was held in a prisoner of war camp after the Japanese invasion and eventually wound up in Hawaii. Her story is much deeper and deserves to be written, if it has not already.

(Below are some photos of Burton, her daughters, and her temple “inn.” Click on the images for more.)

Tourists in Peking

The archive holds some photographs (like those above) that have never been reproduced before, so far as I know. And then there are a few well-known images. The first one, on the far left in this series, was published in Peter Ruber’s The Last Bookman.

I think this is the first time the other three have been published. About the last one, I can only speculate how and why Starrett had an image from a house of prostitution.

(Click on the images for more.)

Famous, infamous and unknown

Roaming through the Phillips Museum’s photo collection is both exhilarating and frustrating. There are a few folks photographed here who have backgrounds and histories we can find today. And then there are mysteries to be solved.

Ida Pruitt, for example, opened the world of the eunuch to Starrett, giving him background on their lives. WIkipedia tells us she was “a China-born American social worker, author, speaker, interpreter and activist in Sino-American understanding.”

L.C. Arlington’s life is a bit harder to pin down. He traveled the world as a young man, settled in China in the 1880s and served in the Chinese navy during the Sino-French war. He authored a few books about Chinese theater and culture. Vincent recalls in his memoirs discussing Chinese folklore with him.

But who are those handsome folks in the third photo? And am I correct in believing that the last photo in this set is Yi Ying?

(Click on the images for more.)

Street Scenes

There are many images showing everyday life in the city of the 1930s. It’s unclear from the entries at the Phillips Library if there are descriptions on the back of the images. Some, like the horse-drawn wagon below, have descriptions like “Peking springless cart,” which surely come from Vincent or Ray.

Which raises an assocaited question: Who took these pictures. Vincent? Ray? Both? Since there are photos of them apart and together, it’s possible they were both been behind the lens at times. It’s also likely some photos were taken by others. The fact is, we don’t know.

Goodnight, Peking

The Phillips Museum archive has a few photographs that feel professional in quality and are highly evocative of the time and place. Each tell a story of its own.

Take, for example, the middle one in the accompanying set, showing a carriage outside what seems to be a restaurant. It’s among my favorites. I can’t help but think it has a distinctive Edward Hopper sensibility to it.

That’s enough for now. The archive has images from other parts of the trip, but they will require additional research before posting.

So as the sun sets on 1930s Peking, we say a fond farewell to this unearthed chapter of Vincent and Ray’s life.