Mr. Privat Goes to Washington

Li iris al Vaŝingtono

One of the early great celebrities of the Esperanto movement was a young man from Switzerland. You cannot fault Edmond Privat for a lack of fervor: he walked to the first Esperanto Congress, from Geneva to Boulogne-sur-Mer.[1] at the age of fifteen (the conference ended shortly before his sixteenth birthday). By 1907, he was actively promoting the Esperanto movement and had become a prominent Esperantist, and had been sent to the United States to promote the language. In late 1907 (check the link), the New York Sun dubbed Mr. Privat “the principal commercial traveller for the original manufacturer of Esperanto.”

Privat began his visit to the United States in New York, but in February 1908, he came to Washington, D.C. At the time that he was there, the national organization was the American Esperanto Association, headquartered in Boston. It was later that year that they would be supplanted by the Esperanto Association of North America.[2] In February 1908, D.C. wasn’t the center of the Esperanto movement in the United States,[3] but it had been national capital for a good long time. And who knew? Maybe Mr. Privat could get President Roosevelt interested in Esperanto.

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An Esperantist at the White House

Roosevelt giving a speech.
Probably not in Esperanto.

Sadly, it doesn’t seem to have been the President. However, the newspapers of March 3, 1908 make it clear that, however briefly, and to what little effect, there was an Esperanto speaker in the White House on March 2, 1908.[1] In my earlier post, I noted some doubt, given the news reports, as to whether the meeting took place or not, but the later articles make it clear that the meeting did take place.

This much is also clear: Roosevelt did not promote Esperanto at any time. When Edmond Privat showed up, Roosevelt’s universally ignored presidential order that federal agencies use simplified spelling had resulted in just ridicule for the President. Even a bull moose was unlikely to tangle with that again. Plus, was in the last year of his presidency. He had probably already decided that he wasn’t going to run again, so why take on the advocacy of a cause like Esperanto?

Many newspapers covered Edmond Privat’s brief meeting with Roosevelt, and some of them even got the Esperantist’s name right. The New York Times, (“Edmond Privato”), the New York Sun, and the Stark County Democrat (“Edmond Privot”) were not among these. Privat was trying to encourage the study of Esperanto in public schools, an issue that just kept coming up.

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Esperanto and the Bull Moose

Theodore Roosevelt
(from a 1902 stereo card)

There is a page in Wikibooks, under the category US History that describes Theodore Roosevelt as an Esperanto speaker, but I have not been able to discover any sort of confirmation for that assertion. In 1907, the press made the claim that Roosevelt’s vice president, Charles W. Fairbanks had taken up Esperanto, but again, this seems difficult to confirm.

There was a strong Esperanto movement in Washington, D.C. during the Roosevelt administration, and although he left office in 1909, more than a year before the Washington Universala Kongreso, if Roosevelt read the Washington newspapers, he would have seen plenty of references to Esperanto. Indeed, if the President read the Evening Star, he would have seen his name linked to that of Dr. Zamenhof.

During this same time, Edmond Privat was spending time in the United States promoting Esperanto, and on February 23, 1908, the Washington Herald ran a long piece on Privat and his plans to meet with President Roosevelt as part of Privat’s activities promoting Esperanto in the United States. The article is too long to quote in full, but it can be found here.

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An Early Birthday for Esperanto

Of course it does, but when?

Ask an Esperantist when the birthday of Esperanto is and they’ll tell you: December 15th, the same as Zamenhof, who made the first public demonstration of Esperanto on his 19th birthday in 1878. Edmond Privat in his Vivo de Zamenhof[1] In a way, the language of 1878 wasn’t really Esperanto. Zamenhof called it the lingwe uniwersala; the letter w is absent from Esperanto. The language that was celebrated on Zamenhof’s birthday in 1878 wasn’t the same same language that was published nine years later in 1887.[2]

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A Professional Esperantist

He wasn't actually looking at
Esperanto, but was getting others to.

The early Esperanto movement had its share of celebrities, people who tended to get mentioned whenever the subject of Esperanto was brought up, or whose connection to Esperanto was mentioned whenever attention was being turned to them specifically. Chief among these was Dr. Zamenhof himself, but in the United States, the same was true of the Stoner family, and every time Mrs. Stoner’s educational theories were discussed in print, readers would be reminded of her connection to the Esperanto movement.

But Zamenhof didn’t make money from the Esperanto movement (it actually was a drain on his resources) and Mrs. Stoner’s interest in Esperanto seemed to be largely based on self promotion.[1] One celebrity’s fame came from his promotion of Esperanto, and in traveling around promoting Esperanto, Edmond Privat was one of the early professional Esperantists, and preeminent among them.

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Lessons from Professor Privat

Looks awfully young
for a professor

As I noted yesterday, in the early twentieth century newspapers were more liberal about applying the title professor than they ought to have been. This was probably in part due to the practice of the day, in which the term was used more broadly than it is today. So it shouldn’t be too surprising that just about anyone offering Esperanto lessons was termed a “professor.” I've got another example of it today.

On July 30, 1908, Edmond Privat was a student and just shy of his nineteenth birthday. He did eventually get a degree, though it doesn't seem that Privat ever held a professorship anywhere. That didn't that didn’t stop the Omaha Daily Bee from describing him as “Prof. Edmonde Prevat of Geneva, Switzerland.” Well, they got the Geneva part right.

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