Talk:William Richard Carles
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Identity of the collector and the donor
The herbarium label name W. R. Carles and Kew's donor Carles WR are taken to be this man on four grounds. The title page of Life in Corea (1888) reads "W. R. Carles, F.R.G.S. / H.M. Vice-Consul at Shanghai / and formerly H.M. Vice-Consul in Corea". Its p. 249 has him sending cones from the northern journey of 1884 to Kew. Forbes and Hemsley's enumeration of the plants of China and Korea cites Korean specimens from him at Kew, for example "a Corean specimen lately received at Kew from Mr. Carles" (vol. 23, p. 49, 1886) and "Corea: Chemulpo (Carles !)" under Viburnum carlesii (p. 350, 1888). The Harvard index of botanists (botanist 8568) gives the full name William Richard Carles, 1848–1929, with the label name W. R. Carles and collecting in China and Korea. The London Gazette of 8 January 1901 (p. 158) names "William Richard Carles, Esq., Her Majesty's Consul at Tientsin" among new Companions of the Order of St Michael and St George, which matches the slip on the Edinburgh sheet, Herbarium of W. R. Carles, Esq., C.M.G.
A different Carles, G. J. Carles of Lagos, wrote to Kew in 1892. The surname alone does not identify the Kew donor; the initials, Korea and the date do.
Sources read
- Life in Corea (Macmillan, 1888), read through the Wikimedia Commons copy of the Internet Archive scan lifeincorea00carl_0. Printed page numbers were read from the running heads of the scan. The hemp passages cited are on pp. 38, 145, 168, 184, 212, 243, 257, 268–269 and 277. The itinerary appendix (pp. 315–317) dates the northern journey from 27 September to 8 November 1884.
- The three parliamentary reports (Corea No. 1, 1884; No. 2 and No. 3, 1885): title pages read from the scans Brother Anthony publishes. Only the title pages were read; the body of the reports was not searched for hemp.
- London Gazette notices, each read on the page image: 25 March 1884, p. 1404 (provisional vice-consul for Corea, under Foreign Office, March 17, 1884); 13 July 1886, p. 3396 (vice-consul at Shanghai, under July 1, 1886); 19 July 1889, p. 3895 (consul at Chinkiang, July 1, 1889); 15 November 1897, p. 6077 (consul at Swatow, September 27, 1897); 20 June 1899, p. 3866 (consul at Tientsin, May 13, 1899); 14 August 1900, p. 5032 (consul-general at Tientsin, June 9, 1900); 8 January 1901, p. 158 (C.M.G.). The 1899 page's printed folio reads "8866" in the scan's text layer; the Gazette's own page number is 3866.
- Brother Anthony (An Sonjae), "William Richard Carles and Korea", Sogang University: the source for his birth date and place, his parents, Marlborough College, the 1867 start as a student interpreter, the 1911 census household and his death at Bradfield in June 1929. These details were not checked against civil registration or census records.
- Harvard University Herbaria, Index of Botanists, botanist 8568; International Plant Names Index, Viburnum carlesii Hemsl. (149599-1); Crossref records for the three journal papers. The page ranges of the 1886 and 1898 papers are taken from the first page of the paper and the first page of the next article in the same issue; the 1922 paper's page range was not established and is left out.
Source discrepancies
- The 1883 journey. The title of the first parliamentary report places the journey "in October 1883". Life in Corea has the party leave Shanghai on 8 November 1883 and set out from Seoul on 16 November (pp. 12, 47). The article gives the book's dates and the report's title as printed.
- Consul or consul-general. The Gazette appointed him consul-general at Tientsin under Foreign Office, June 9, 1900. The C.M.G. list of 8 January 1901 still calls him "Consul at Tientsin". The article gives both appointments and does not choose a title for January 1901.
- Collecting dates. Harvard dates his China collecting to 1867–1883. The Edinburgh sheet Carles 195 (1885) was gathered in China in June 1885. Harvard's holdings list for him includes specimens dated 1885, 1897 and 1916. The article attributes the date ranges to Harvard.
What the sources do not say
- Life in Corea does not connect any of its hemp observations with the fibre and cloth Kew holds from him. Kew's catalogue does not say where in Korea they were made or how he obtained them. The article keeps the two apart.
- None of the sources read mentions the June 1885 gathering on the Peiho. Life in Corea does not say when he left Korea in 1885.
- Brother Anthony also cites P. D. Coates, The China Consuls (1988), on Carles's health and retirement after 1900. That book was not read. The article does not use those passages.
Portrait
Brother Anthony's page reproduces a photograph of Carles dated 1889. Its source and licence were not found, so it is not used. The lead image is the digitised Carles 195 sheet.