An Esperanto Marriage, But Not the First

S-ino kaj S-ro Parrish

Despite the belief expressed by the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, the September 12, 1912 marriage of Donald Evans Parrish of Los Angeles, California to Paula Louise Elisabeth Alexandra Christiana Grawe (or Paula Graves, as the articles had it) was not the first marriage of two Esperanto speakers. Even earlier accounts make it clear that other congress participants realized that—through Esperanto—they had found their soul mates. In 1908, the Esperantists Herman Sexauer and Frida Niedermuller married (in San Francisco). He was a German, she was an American.

Still, it is certainly an early such marriage, and marriages between Esperantists whose only common language is Esperanto are fairly rare, given the general rarity of Esperanto speakers in the world population (there are certainly Esperantist couples in which both individuals share a native tongue and speak Esperanto).

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Esperanto at USC

As opposed to teaching
the old Esperanto?

In the early twentieth century, several American universities—formally or informally— started Esperanto classes. At Harvard, these were promoted by visiting celebrity professor Wilhelm Ostwald, but in many places, language professors became interested in the new language and after learning it started teaching it. Sadly (from the point of view of the Esperanto movement) the rising tide of Esperanto classes soon receded, and if I had to make a guess at the number of colleges and universities in the United States where you could study Esperanto in a classroom, I’d put the number at one.[1]

There is a good reason for schools to teach Esperanto: it’s a good starter language. One of the justifications for studying a foreign language is that it will help you understand language better. It will even help you in your native language. Esperanto, since it’s stripped of all the irregularities of natural language, helps you get to the concepts faster, since you’re not dealing with the intricacies of seven strong verb forms, or multiple ways to make a plural, or things like that. If you want to learn French, you might actually be better off with a year of Esperanto (assuming you know no other language but your own), and then jumping into French after that.

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Unhappy Professor Simkins

Wow. Totally lurid headline.

As always, I have to note that not all of the people in the early twentieth century who used the honorific “professor” actually held academic positions. In the case of Myron Charles Simkins, the title seems to have been more aspirational than actual. It does seem that Myron Simkims never actually managed to hold any sort of teaching position. Instead, he had moved to Los Angeles with the hope of being hired to teach Esperanto.

On April 23, 1907, the Los Angeles Herald reported that his attempts had come to an end, and Simkins was in a bit of a bind with the rent. But the bulk of the article is a long letter in which he takes the heads of several institutions of learning to task for their shortsightedness in not employing him. The letter is too long to quote in full, but it can be found at the Chronicling America web site.

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Los Angeles’s Esperanto Press Agent

Iu reklamas la urbon.

Venu al Los Anĝeleso, la sunplena urbo proksima al la bela Pacifiko. Urbo de bluaj ĉieloj kaj agrabla vetero. Venu kaj trovu la bonan vivon en Los Anĝeleso.

That’s what we could imagine someone saying if they were doing civic boosterism for Los Angeles in Esperanto in 1911. According to the Omaha Daily Bee of April 22, 1911, someone did just that. Unfortunately, the Bee does not identify this intrepid Esperantist, nor his motivation for taking up the task. It clearly wasn’t cash, since the Bee notes that the individual in question “pays his own expenses,” but that seems okay, since he’s also described as “a man of means.” Who was this wealthy, well-traveled man who talked up Los Angeles in Esperanto?

The other question would be what the benefit was to Los Angeles? Were they making deals with companies in other lands? It’s not clear what the justification was. On the other hand, it didn’t seem to cost the city anything. The Bee gives us an early (and almost undoubtably inaccurate) estimate of the number of Esperanto speakers.

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Pasadena Professor Eminent in Esperanto

Can Throop spell "instructor"?

The January 3, 1908 Los Angeles Herald made note of an appointment at the Throop Institute, an educational institution founded seventeen years before and far better known by the name that it would adopt twelve years later. The article made a particular note that the new professor of modern languages was an expert on Esperanto, an association that would be repeated over the years, despite that Professor Du Poncet seems to have made little mark, in or out of the Esperanto movement.

Du Poncet wouldn’t be at the Throop Institute for long. According to news reports he left there for the University of Redlands after one year, and then was off to teaching high school students in Utah a year after that. The Herald gets his name slightly wrong, spelling it “Du Ponset,” which made searching tricky.

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Young Professor Leads the Esperanto Meeting

And how many were
at the meeting?

When the Los Angeles Herald published a letter from Val Stone in July, 1906, they had no way of telling that he was only about thirteen years old. But, when a few months later, they reported on a meeting, you might think that they’d get the idea. Except, of course, there is another possible explanation, one that I think is certainly true.

On October 2, 1906, Val Stone makes his second appearance in the pages of the Los Angeles Herald, and this time gets referred to as “Professor Val Stone.” The article gives no hint that the professor in question isn’t a real professor at all, but instead someone who is probably still in school. Once again, there's an assumption I'm making about how this article got into the Herald.

The main focus is on a set of Esperanto post cards, which actually are somewhat interesting. If they still exist, they’d be a prize for an archive.

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An Early Esperantist in California

The first of many letters to the editor

Clearly the letters column of the Los Angeles Herald in the early years of the twentieth century was the Internet comment thread of its day. The Herald’s pages contained many letters by or responding to a Los Angeles resident named Val Stone. Alas, despite his prominence in the pages of the Herald (and not just in the letters column), he seemed difficult to find anywhere else. I did find a Valentine Stone living in Los Angeles in 1910, but he didn’t seem to be the right person, as he was only 16.

A 1906 article in the Herald describes him as “a prominent educator.” But after looking through many of the 133 references to Val Stone in the Herald (including one letter by a “Mrs. Val Stone,”), I have no clear picture of who Mr. Stone was. In his many letters to the Herald, he held forth on a number of subjects: appropriate punishment of criminals, dog registration, women’s rights (he was for them), Teddy Roosevelt (didn’t like him), and in what seems to be his first letter, Esperanto.

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