J.G.D. Paul

John Gilman D’Arcy Paul [or J.G. D’Arcy Paul or J.Gilman D’Arcy Paul or J.G.D. Paul or John Paul] (31 Jan. 1887, Baltimore, Maryland — 12 Jan. 1972, Gilford, MD, USA) was an American diplomat, patron of the arts, globetrotter and landowner in Maryland, USA, who authored the first English translation (from Paul Pelliot​’s French translation) of Zhou Daguan’s Customs of Cambodia, published in Bangkok in 1967 (2^nd ed. 1987, 3^d ed. 1992).

A son of D’Arcy Paul (1854 – 1890) and Charlotte Abbott Gilman (1861 – 1954) — hence the uncommon piling-up of surnames -, J.G.D. Paul majored in Russian at Harvard University in 1908 — he had already started his diplomatic career as private secretary to John W. Garrett, US ambassador to Argentina — and served as special attaché to the US Embassy in Paris at the start of WWI, then joining the US Legation at The Hague in 1917 and the US delegation to the Peace Conference in Paris. He was then fluent in German also, as he translated for the first publication in which he was credited, a two-volume sum on secret Austrian treatises (in 1920 – 1).

He was assistant editor of The Atlantic Monthly under Ellery Sedgwick in Boston in 1916 – 17, wrote for the Baltimore Evening Sun, and was passionate about historic preservation, leading efforts to restore ​“Hampton,” the Ridgely family’s Towson estate in Maryland. He also initiated the creation of the Susquehanna State Park on a land he owned near Havre de Grace (Harford County) called Land of Promise. With famous American architect Charles A. Platt (1861−1933), he planned the renovation and extension of the family’s estate house in north Baltimore, ​“The Woodlands”. He also served for many years as president of the Baltimore Museum of Art, vice president of the Maryland Historical Society, and a trustee of Johns Hopkins University, the Peabody Institute and Peale Museum in Baltimore.

From then, his life is quite an enigma. He was certainly a special service officer during WWII, as he reported on the fate of French prisoners in Nazi-occupied Algeria in 1942, and he was active in several countries after his official retirement in 1957. He lived (or was based?) in Cambodia in the 1950s-1960s, and developed an interest in Zhou Daguan’s 13^th century account of Angkor. His English translation was published by Bangkok Siam Society in 1967, yet we couldn’t find his name in the Membership Roll issued by JSS in 1966, nor in 1967 and 1968. 

According to then President of the Social Science Association of Thailand Prince Wan Waithayakorn’s foreword to the 1967, edition, ​“the translator [d’Arcy Paul] is a friend of Mr. A.B. Griswold, a well-known student of Thai art and Thai culture, who has sent us a sum of money on behalf of the Breezewood Foundation for the publication of the document in question.” ADB Input: Alexander Brown Griswold (19 April 1907, Monkton, Maryland, USA — 4 Oct. 1991), an investmenrt banker with the firm Alex, Brown & Sons since 1930 and thenafter, had served in the US Office of Strategic Services [OSS] in Thailand during WWII, and founded in 1955 the Breezewood Foundation, with a collection containing some 300 pieces of Thai, Burmese, Cambodian, Cham, Indian and Indonesian art, donated to the Walters Art Museum (Baltimore) in 1987 and 1992. Some 3,500 photographs representing those artworks have been duplicated and are kept at the University of Michigan Library. As a Southeast Asian art expert, he was mostly self-taught, learning from EFEO researcher George Cœdès, Bangkok National Museum curator Luang Boribal Buribhand, Pierre Dupont and Jean Boisselier, whom he hosted in his Thailand house in 1964.

On purpose or serendipity, J.G.D. Paul had his translation published a few weeks before Jacqueline Kennedy’s historic visit to Cambodia, and he offered a copy to the former US First Lady who kindly replied with a thank-you note on 16 Dec. 1967, a few days after her visit: 

The H. Furlong Baldwin Library [through the Maryland Center for History and Culture] keeps his papers, mainly his correspondence with his mother Charlotte Abbott Gilman Paul. The collection ​“covers the periods when he was away from Baltimore for school, work, and travel. In his letters, he vividly described the people he met and places he visited and was seldom shy in sharing his opinion. The letters from his time in the employ of the United States government discussed the major issues of the time, as well the major players. Locations represented in these letters include Massachusetts, Maine, Guatemala, France, Holland, Cambodia, and more.”

Known Publications

• [contributor as translator from German, with Denys P. Myers (Denys Peter), Archibald Cary Coolidge] Alfred Francis Pribram, The Secret Treaties of Austria-Hungary, 1879 – 1914, Harvard University Press, 2 vols, 1920 – 1921. 
• Some gardens and mansions of Maryland; a descriptive guide book for use on the pilgrimage arranged under the auspices of the Federated garden clubs of Maryland, for the benefit of the restoration of the gardens at Stratford, birthplace of General Robert E. Lee, The Barton-Gillet company, May 1930; Federated Garden Clubs of Maryland, nd.
• Notes on the customs of Cambodia, Bangkok, Social Science Association of Thailand Press, 1967; The Siam Society, 1987 and1992.