Maxmilian Taubles: a footnote in history

The final resting place of Maximilian Taubles at the Incheon Cemetery in 2018.

• Published Mar 17, 2019 9:50 AM KST
• Updated Mar 17, 2019 9:50 AM KST

By Robert Neff

In February 1886, a mysterious American suddenly appeared in Seoul. He was Maxmilian Taubles. Taubles, 40, was a good-looking man with blue eyes, light blond hair and a full beard streaked with gray. In San Francisco, where he was from, he was outgoing and “very popular with the ladies as well as the boys,” but in Korea he was completely the opposite.

There were no hotels in Seoul so the acting Charge d'affaires of the American legation, Ensign George C. Foulk, made arrangements to provide him temporary housing at the legation. In correspondence home, Foulk wrote:

“Although I am very poorly fitted up, and do not care to have to entertain strangers, yet life for foreigners here is so hard that ordinary humanity compels us to wish to help strangers, and so, without notice from Mr. Taubles, I prepared a place for him to live here at least for a few days.”

Taubles, however, declined to stay with Foulk and, in fact, avoided the American legation except to present his letters of introduction. He did, however, ingratiate himself with the Chinese legation, which helped him obtain lodging at a small Korean house nearly a mile from the neighborhood where most westerners lived.

Taubles apparently wanted little to do with his fellow Westerners, keeping most of his personal life a secret ― even on his deathbed.

He was born in Prague in 1845. His father was “a 37-year old Czech-German Jewish soldier and chandler” who did his best for his family. Like many sons, Taubles did not wish to follow his father's career and, in 1866, fled his homeland, possibly to avoid serving in the Austro-Hungarian army, and eventually made his way to the United States.

In the 19th century, many Americans thought of California as a place of adventure where a hardworking man could make his fortune, and apparently Taubles was no different. After traveling across the country on the transcontinental railroad, he arrived in Sacramento, California on March 31, 1875.

It seems he was not able to readily find employment so he drifted north to the mining areas of Idaho Territory.

Once there, Taubles suffered “bad luck and the mining interest was dull” so he took part in a scheme with another Bohemian miner to scam their fellow miners out of some of their hard-earned money.

They rented a building and began charging people $1 for the opportunity “to see the great and only ferocious kyhega.”

The sounds of 'fearful growling and clanking chains” soon drew a large crowd and one by one they paid their admission fee and went in only to discover there was no fantastic creature but only a man dressed in a bearskin and dragging a chain.

According to Taubles, “the only way they saved themselves from being killed by some indignant miner was by [Taubles's] partner standing at the door as each man came out, thrusting a revolver in his face and saying in a loud and piercing tone of voice: 'A fine show, isn't it?' The answer was always: 'You bet.'”

He returned to California, became naturalized, got married and worked as an agent and bookkeeper. Art, however, intrigued him and later supported and defined him.

In 1884 he was the “manager of the Ichi Ban, San Francisco's chief store for the sale of Japanese goods” and was described as an “authority on Japanese industrial art” and was “one of the best respected critics of painting in San Francisco.” Apparently he was “also a writer of recognized ability.”

Perhaps journalism was not the only reason he was in Korea. Foulk speculated that Taubles was acting as an agent for the former American Minister to Korea, Lucius Foote ― a man who dabbled more than once in business ventures in Korea. Perhaps, assuming that this was true, it may explain the large number of Korean curios that Taubles acquired and the lack of articles (he published none while in Korea).

For Taubles, acquiring these Korean goods must have been a daunting effort. Not only did he not speak Korean but a smallpox epidemic was ravishing the city when he arrived.

The streets were a quagmire of mud and filth, crowded with men during the day and women in the evening. Seoul maintained a strict curfew prohibiting men from being on the streets in the evening (but this did not apply to westerners) allowing women a brief respite from the confines of their homes. Many of these women carried their sick babies upon their backs, whispering softly, in honorific Korean, to their small wards in an attempt to quiet their cries of discomfort and misery.

Taubles had obviously been warned of the disease in Japan, but since he had been inoculated in the United States he felt invulnerable. Even when Dr. Horace Allen, an American physician living in Seoul, informed him of the risks and offered to vaccinate him, Taubles refused and then, somewhat pompously, lectured Allen on the “barbarous custom” of vaccinating people.

But it wasn't the streets Taubles had to fear ― it was his own home. The Western community tried to convince him that it was unsafe to live among the general Korean population, especially during a smallpox outbreak, but he fatally ignored them. Unknown to him, the Korean family had a child sick with smallpox and only a thin paper partition separated his bedroom from the child's room.

Within a week Taubles had contracted the disease and grew steadily weaker and weaker until he could no longer get out of bed unassisted. Allen and his colleague, Dr. J. W. Heron, were sent for and began treating him around the clock.

According to Foulk's report to the State Department: despite the fear of the disease, many of the Western residents came to aid him with bedding and food ― putting their own lives at risk to save this newcomer to their small community.

But in letters to his parents, Foulk painted a more pessimistic and perhaps more truthful picture of the community's actions.

“Of course, we are now taking care of him, for no Chinese son-of-a-sea-cook will go near him. Foote is a mischievous scoundrel and to him must be laid the fate of his agent Taubles.” And in a later letter: “Because of his frightful diseases, no one wanted to go near him. I was in duty bound to care for him and I can never tell you what hard work I had to coax and bribe people to attend him.”

Days passed, and instead of getting better, Taubles grew worse. On the morning of March 15, Taubles gave his last will and testimony to Allen and then, a few hours later, passed away. Allen contemptuously declared that Taubles “died a martyr to his theories” of smallpox and vaccinations.

Within hours of Taubles' death, Foulk and Allen began the decidedly unpleasant task of taking an inventory the deceased's goods. Some items, as stipulated by Taubles' will, were left unopened, but most of his things were either sold in a public auction or destroyed.

After a trying afternoon, Foulk wrote: “The night was coming on, the place almost deserted, and the dead body more than half rotten. I placed soldiers to guard the house, sealed up the place and went home, sick at heart indeed.”

The next morning Taubles' body was sent to Jemulpo, escorted by some Korean soldiers and two American missionaries. Taubles was buried the following day in the small foreigners' cemetery ―- his funeral attended by the few Westerners residing in that port.

Taubles was possibly the first American journalist and, most likely, the first person born in Prague to live in Korea. He also has the dubious honor of being the first Westerner, since the opening of Korea to the West, to die in Seoul.

(This is an adaption of an earlier article I wrote in 2014. My appreciation to Diane Nars for her assistance and to So Yu Taek for providing me with a tour of the Incheon Cemetery last year.)