Anarchist, Free-Love Supporting Lawyer Defends Esperanto

An a proponent of
civil rights, too!

On July 4, 1913, The New-York Tribune ran a piece on languages spoken in New York by one R.L.H. On July 6, the paper ran a rebutal of sorts by James F. Morton, Jr., the Councillor for New York for the Esperanto Association of North America. Before you think of some mousy language enthusiast, James F. Morton was an opponent of censorship and a proponent of free love and safe birth control. He was close friends with H. P. Lovecraft, even though Lovecraft was horrifically racist and Morton was a member of the NAACP. He was also an anarchist.

In a review of Letters to James F. Morton, a collection of letters by H. P. Lovecraft, Randy Stafford quotes the Morton essay that brought Morton to Lovecraft’s attention:

Lovecraft needs to serve a long and humble apprenticeship before he will become qualified to sit in the master’s seat and to thunder forth ex cathedra judgements.

And they were friends after that. Morton clearly had no qualms about pointing out when ex cathedra judgements were off the mark, so he had a reply to R.L.H.

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