NATURALIST, AUTHOR, ARTIST, EXPLORER AND EDITOR
AND AN ALMOST FORGOTTEN PRESIDENT
Arthur de Carle Sowerby 1885-1954
President of the North China Branch
of
The Royal Asiatic Society 1935 - 1940
KEITH STEVENS
121
Although the lives of many Western expatriates who lived in China and experienced the excitements and horrors of travel and the exoticism of the old civilisation cry out to be recorded, most expatriates lived mundane, cliché-ridden existences, apart from the occasional excitement caused by the troubles and emergencies of the times, brigandage, rioting, and war. They never, or only very rarely, ventured far from their Treaty Port and certainly not into the dark hinterland of China. Should they have ventured anywhere at all, it would have been to hunt or shoot in the immediate area of the Port or go to a nearby beach or classical tourist site, such as Nanking or Soochow. And of all, only a mere handful of those who did venture far afield have left sufficient records to enable a portrait of their life to be disentangled and recorded. Arthur de C. Sowerby was one such venturer.
Before the centenary of his and his family's fortunate furlough in 1900 passes, I wanted to pay a debt of pleasure to the author and publisher, Arthur Sowerby, on behalf of all those who gained some insight into a China now long departed.
I have unorthodox reasons for taking a special interest in Arthur Sowerby. Beginning some years ago, a train of circumstances led me to him when I bought several unbound second-hand copies of the China Journal published by him and his wife in Shanghai in the 1920s and 30s. I was then drawn by a series of coincidental incidents to the fascinating and exciting period of his life, his early years. Each of these incidents has had some significance to me, ranging from the city of