Narratives of Free Trade and the Commercial Cultures of Early American Chinese Relations

6 - Representing Macao in 1837: The Unpublished Peripatetic Diary of Caroline Hyde Butler (Laing)

Figure 7.1 George Chinnery, Portrait of Howqua, Courtesy of The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited (HSBC Asia Pacific Archives) 2010. Figure 7.2 Anon. Portrait of Qiying, 1844. Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Gift of the heirs of Caleb Cushing. Figure 7.3 Anon. Broadside Advertisement announcing “The Great Chinese Museum, Largest Collection of the Kind in the Nation,” Courtesy of Boston Athenæum. Figure 7.4 Jules Itier, Daguerreotype of Pan Shicheng (whereabouts unknown). Figure 7.5 Luo Ping, Ghost Amusement Scroll (detail). Handscroll, ink and color on paper, Private Collection. Figure 9.1 Tianhou (also called Mazu) at Thian Hock Keng, Singapore. Photo by Khun Eng Kuah-Pearce. 6 Representing Macao in 1837 The Unpublished Peripatetic Diary of Caroline Hyde Butler (Laing) Rogério Miguel Puga Can you judge of our delight, three Salem ladies meeting in Macao. Only think of it. […] It must be a dream that we are so far from home and together. Harriett Low, Journal to her sister, 18291 Since its Portuguese establishment around 1557, the enclave of Macao was the only western gateway into China until the foundation of Hong Kong in 1841. In the nineteenth century before the Opium War, the female relatives and children of China traders from North America and Britain resided in Macao while their husbands and fathers were up in the Canton factories during the trading seasons. This essay deals with the unpublished diary of one of these ladies, Caroline Hyde Butler (1804–92) who, like Harriett Low (1809–77) and Rebecca Kinsman (1810–82), described the many dimensions and spheres of Macao’s everyday life. As we shall see, these China diaries and Canton female narratives form a network of Old China Trade texts that demonstrates an interesting process of intertextuality or intertextual travel. Caroline Hyde Butler, daughter of Thomas Butler (1769–1822) and Sarah Denison Butler (1774–1839), is mostly known for her several novels, including Child’s History of Rome (1872–75), and children’s stories published in periodicals such as Sartain’s, New Mirror Magazine of Literature and Instruction (1843–44), Graham’s (1844–51), Magazine of Literature and Art (1848–51), and Godey’s Lady’s Book.2 Like many early American women writers, aspects of her life remain a mystery.3 Her unpublished “China Diary,” held at the New York Historical Society, is a fundamental historical source for the study of 118 Rogério Miguel Puga everyday life in nineteenth-century Macao, where most Anglophone traders resided between the Canton trading seasons and where their female relatives and children, forbidden to enter mainland China, lived all year long.4 Born in Oxford (New York), in 1822, Caroline Hyde married her distant cousin, Edward Butler (1797–1849), who was involved in the China Trade. The couple married in Plainfield, Connecticut, settled in Northampton, Massachusetts, and had five children between 1824 and 1834. In 1836, Caroline was advised to travel to China with her husband due to her poor health, and she stayed in Macao. The writer’s stay in the City of the Holy Name of God of Macao lasted around two months, and during that time she kept a personal diary, in which she recorded the daily life of the Englishspeaking residents in the south of China, as well as the (lack of) interaction between the enclave’s different communities. On October 11, 1836, the couple left New York on the Roman, a ship belonging to the firm Oliphant and Co., and reached Macao in early February of the following year. During the voyage Caroline mentions reading of the “Cruise of the Potomac,” a reference to the narrative Voyage of the United States Frigate Potomac, by Jeromiah N. Reynolds (1799–1858), published two years before she left the United States of America. This shows that travelling authors read previous works about the countries they were to visit, thus creating an intricate web of intertexts that quoted and echoed each other. After mentioning the adventures of the Potomac’s crew, the diarist characterises herself as a (female) pioneer: Now that I am a voyager myself I think I take more interest in such Works than I did when all my navigation was on Long Island […], to and from New York. Perhaps this...