Mr. Archibald John Little’s long journey to the East had changed not only his but also Mrs. Little’s life. During his stay in China, Archibald John Little was
55 Croll, 11
56 Ibid.
57 ‘LITTLE, Mrs. Archibald’, Who’s who in the Far East, 1906-1907. (Hong Kong: China Mail,1906), 202
58 Ibid.
known for his adventurous travels and business in China especially his
success in passing the rapids of the Yang Tzu River by steamboat.59 Mr. Little ran the mail service through the Yang Tzu River and owned a coal mine near Chungking. Archibald Little was not only a prosperous merchant in China but also a politically active figure. He assisted the late Qing Chinese Empire to repulse the Tai Ping rebellion (太平天國) and later served on Shanghai
Municipal Council(上海公共租界工部局). 60 Archibald Little was familiar to the political elites of the South-Eastern part of China such as Cheng Chih-tung(張 之洞) and Li Hung-Chang(李鴻章).
Archibald Little was also a fellow of R.G.S (The Royal Geographical Society) and R.C.I. (Royal Colonial Institute). He was learned and fluent in Chinese. As a result, Mr. Little was generally regarded as an expert on China affairs and often was asked to deliver speeches and lectures on it. Mr. Little was also the editor of the North China Herald(北華捷報), and published many articles relating to China, for example: Western China, Ex Oriente Lux, Two
Cities, The Value of Tibet, The Partition of China, The Dangers of the Upper Yangtze, The Chinese Drama in the Quarterly, North American Reviews, Fortnightly, Spectator, Asian Quarterly, Geographical Journal and Nineteenth Century, etc
61; and five books
62.Archibald Little was born in London on April 19, 1838. His father was
59 Obituary, "Archibald Little.”, The Geographical Journal. Vol. ⅹⅹⅻ- July to December.
London: Royal Geographical Society, 1908, 629.
60 Anomalous. Who’s who in the Far East, 1906-07 June. (Hong Kong: China Mail, 1906), 201
61 Editorial Note in Gleanings from Fifty Years in China,ⅺ.
62 See Index 3.
William John Little, a notable physician and surgeon. Instead of continuing his education in England, Archibald Little completed his education at Berlin and was employed as a tea-tester in Hong Kong by a German company in 1859.
Three years later, Mr. Little started his own business and partnered with another Shanghai based company, Latimer & Little Co. Though the company was not the best investment and only lasted for a short period of time,
Archibald Little was not daunted by it and continued his merchant career with his brother R.W. Little in Shanghai. Meanwhile, Archibald joined the Volunteers to assist repelling the attack of Tai Ping rebels (太平天國)63. He traveled
extensively to the Tai Ping rebellion occupied regions and returned to Shanghai in 1861 to join the Volunteer Artillery (洋槍隊)64.
With the opening of more treaty ports, Archibald Little shifted his focus from Shanghai to the south-western part of China, Chungking(重慶). By combining his hobby, yachting, and his business interesting in Chunking, Archibald in 1884 initiated the Yang Tzu river winter steamboat transporting business from Hankow (漢口) to Ichang (宜昌), according to R.S. Gundry65. There had not been a steamboat that could navigate Yang Tzu during winter, Archibald Little was the first person to succeed. With this successful
experience, Archibald Little designed, commissioned and piloted his own steamboat and made his first ascent of the Upper Yangtze rapids in 189866. After his success in navigating the Yang Tzu river, Archibald Little saw Szechwan as an untouched and promising land, which had great natural resources and not yet been excavated. Mr. Little soon established the Chungking Trading Company which initially operated as a logistic company
63 Ibid.
64 Ibid.
65 C.S.Gundry, Foreword to Gleanings from Fifty Years in China,( London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co., 1910), ⅵ.
66 Historical Dictionary of the British Empire, 675.
and later moved on to the bristle business in 189867. The same year, Archibald Little partnered with some Chinese and started exploiting the coal and iron mine at Lung Wang Tang, thirty miles from Chunking68. The coal mine was mentioned as “the best coal-mine in the world after Cardiff”69. At 1906,
Archibald Little’s health started to deteriorate, therefore the Littles moved back to England and he passed away two year later.70
Mrs. Archibald Little’s publications:
Susan Morgan in The Sphere of Interest indicated,
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century among the most well-known British accounts of China were the books of Archibald Little, and Alicia (Mrs. Archibald) Little, Lady Constance Gordon- Cumming, Gorge Morrison (who was Australian), Archibald Colquhoun, John Thompson (verbal and pictorial), and Isabella Bird Bishop. 71
This was an indicator of Mrs. Little’s popularity and authority for her works on China. Mrs. Little continued her career as a writer and started publishing her works under the name Mrs. Archibald Little and Alicia Helen Neva Little in the mid 1890’s. From her arrival in China, Little began to write more than just fictional novels. She started to write non-fiction. Little was very good at describing what she had seen, sensed and experienced and was known for her ability to clearly present what she saw, smelled, and heard72. Even though Little changed her writing subject, what remained the same was her keen
67 G. C. Allen, et al, Western Enterprise in Far Eastern Economic Development, China And Japan. (London: Routledge, 1954), 83.
68 Ibid., 291
69 Editorial Note in Gleanings from Fifty Years in China,ⅻⅰ.
70 Historical Dictionary of the British Empire, 675
71 Susan Morgan , “The Sphere of Interest :Framing Late Nineteenth-Century China in Words and Pictures with Isabella Bird.” in A Century of Travels in China: Critical Essays on Travel Writing from the 1840s to 1940s. Kerr, Douglas and Kuehn Julia (ed.),(Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2007), 106
72 Emily Lucy Daly, An Irishwoman in China. (London : T. W. Laurie, 1915), 102.
observation of social interactions. As in her earlier novels, Little used her works as a mean to voice the injustice she witnessed. Little’s works on China was designed to serve as the bridge for expatriates or people back in England to understand China and its people.
Little carefully presented the local Chinese and the expatriate community regarding of their way of living and value systems,73 and tried to show how much they were alike74. However, she differed from the British male
counterpart writers. Little used many anecdotes and descriptions to allow her readers to help her readers to be more familiar with the Chinese life style.
During her twenty years in China, Little published four novels with the background set in China and six non-fiction works on China and its culture75.
Among all Mrs. Little’s books, Intimate China: The Chinese as I have seen
them and The Land of the Blue Gown were by far the most mentioned.
Intimate China was in print twice (1899, 1901) and was translated into Chinese
(親密地接觸中國) in 2008; The Land of the Blue Gown was in print for four times (1901, 1902, 1904 1909) and was translated into Chinese (穿著藍袍的國 度) in 2006. Round about my Peking Garden (我的北京花園) was alsotranslated into Chinese in 2006. Elibron Classic publishing house had reprinted Intimate China, and Out in China in 2001, and Li Hung-chang: His
Life and Times in 2002.
73 For further information about how the expatriate view Chinese and the difference between the East and the West, see John McCarthy, "China and the West" (The Quarterly Review, 163 [1886]: 65-85) and "Western China-Its Products and Trade" (The Quarterly Review, 171 [1890]: 205-34).
74 Mrs. Archibald Little, My diary in a Chinese farm, 62.
75 See Index 2, 1894-1906.
Under Little’s sharp and witty pen, she criticized some western travelers as twenty-years-in-China-and-don’t-speak-a-word-of-the-language men who did not bother to learn about the local customs and who stereotypically group the locals76. She also criticized the expatriates who considered that they were superior than Chinese, like Mrs. Jenkins in A Marriage to China. When they traveled up the Yantze river, the group had to watch while Chinese trackers (縴 夫) towed the boat against the strong current. Mrs. Jenkins comments:
I never know what you [Dr. Maxwell] mean by talking about Chinese courage and all that.... These men don't really pull.
They are afraid to. Have you watched them rowing? I have not the patience, it is so ridiculous. And have you ever seen one catch a rope yet? Why, they turn away, and hide their faces, just as a woman would. Then the way they throw too!
Oh, they are all a set of women rather than men.77
Race issues had long been one of Little’s main concerns, exposing especially hypocrisy displayed by expatriates towards the offspring of
expatriate men and Chinese mothers. Little also advised the need for mutual recognition and respect between people from different cultures.
Little’s choice of pen name might reflect the Victorian social expectations for women. Among her eleven publications which were about China, only the first four were published under the name Mrs. Archibald Little. The Land of the
Blue Gown was published with both Mrs. Archibald Little and Alicia Helen Neva
Little. The last five were all published under Alicia Helen Neva Little. Note and76 Mrs. Archibald Little, Intimate China, 5
77 Mrs. Archibald Little, A Marriage to China, (London: F V White, 1896),132.
Inquiry once mentioned that Alicia Little preferred others to address her as Mrs.
Archibald Little rather than Alicia Little.
Since the Victorian social convention at the time conceived women as tame, submissive and domestic, traveling to a foreign land without the company of family or chaperon would be considered as eccentric and
outlandish. On one hand, using Mrs. Archibald Little as pen name indicated the companionship of Mr. Archibald Little and also increased the creditability, reliability, and truthfulness of the book. On the other, Mrs. Little’s choice of pen name underscored the unstable nature and the duality of Victorian women travelers’ identities. As a women’s rights activist, Little proclaimed women’s rights to property and to voting, etc but when faced with the issue of an appellation, her name disappeared and was unseen.