Apr 13, 2023 - Sale 2633

Sale 2633 - Lot 162

Price Realized: $ 938
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(TRAVEL.) Papers of early 20th-century diplomat John Viney in China. Several hundred items in one box (0.9 linear feet); condition ranging from poor to good, with some water damage. Various places, 1906-1911
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Additional Details

John Irwin Viney (1882-1942) was raised in Newport News, VA and received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Virginia, and a L.S. from Harvard in 1905. He then spent from 1906 to 1911 in China, first as a student interpreter in Peking, and then as deputy consul at Shanghai and Chefoo, during the last years of imperial China before the 1912 proclamation of the Republic of China. Viney went on to a career as a lawyer and circuit court judge in St. Petersburg, FL.

The bulk of this collection relates to Viney's time in China. It includes: more than a hundred letters received; a 13-page typescript carbon "Memorandum on the Political Situation" by businessman Edward Selby Little; ephemera on several social and fraternal clubs based in China, including a proposed manuscript floor plan of the new Yentai Club in Chefoo, 1910; papers on a diplomatic embezzler who Viney escorted from China to American prison in 1910; printed State Department circulars and reports including "Memorandum Concerning Chefoo Foreign Settlement" (none in OCLC); 8 photographs; checkbooks and receipts for his expenses while in China (including payments to his Chinese language instructor); and a large group of printed Chinese character slips, about 2 inches each, which he apparently used in his efforts to learn the language.