Esperanto’s One Advantage

Harsh words from a small paper

At least, according to the County Record of Kingstree, South Carolina. There were certainly more advantages to Esperanto than as determined by the Record, but they found only one. We can probably attribute the short editorial statement to Louis J. Bristow, the Editor and Proprietor of the County Record. According to a contemporary American newspaper directory, the circulation of the Record was estimated at fewer than a thousand subscribers.

At the time that Mr. Bristow was writing about Esperanto, it was still fairly new. This was printed not long before the tenth anniversary of the publication of the Unua Libro. Unlike Volapük, the first decade of Esperanto was fairly quiet. In the course of a decade, Volapük had managed to go from publication to the total splintering of the movement. Esperanto took things slowly.

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An Army of Esperantists

An army for peace

That’s at least the claim made by one J. O. McShane in a letter to the New York Sun. Mr. (I assume) McShane was seeking to rebut the views that were expressed by Professor Leo Wiener in the the editorial that appeared in the March 24, 1907 issue. It’s not clear who McShane was. The only J. O. McShane that I’ve found in public records for New York of the time would have been a nine-year-old when the letter was published, and it just doesn’t seem to be the work of a small child.

The only McShane mentioned in Amerika Esperantisto is a V. A. McShane, of Allegheny, Pennsylvania. The actual identity of this valiant defender of Esperanto will have to remain obscured to history for now. The thought occurs however, that whatever Professor Wiener’s objections to Esperanto were, would there be any particular reason to view a professor of Slavic languages as an expert whether Esperanto were a credible candidate for an auxiliary language. It would be nice to know what expertise McShane brought to this.

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A Rival to Esperanto — Commercial Latin

Commercial Latin
spoken here?

So was the apparent claim of a Frenchman, Dr. Charles Colombo. I can find little about him, other than that he was the author of (at least) three books, two of which, De la nécessité d’une assistance sanitaire spéciale pour les blesses du travail and Pour la dosimétrie des rayons de Roentgen, clearly had nothing to do with language and indicate that our Dr. Colombo was was likely a physician.

But that’s not what landed him in the pages of the press. Judging from the article in the New York Sun of February 6, 1904 (I have, by this point, well established that the Sun loved writing about international auxiliary languages), he was probably picked up the the newspapers of his native France, and then in the United States in the Courrier des États-Unis, a French language newspaper which was published in New York from 1828–1938.[1]

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Esperanto — A New Language in Germany

Esperanto's first magazine

One of the great early moments in the history of Esperanto was the defection of the Nuremberg Volapük Society, which abandoned Volapük for Esperanto as a group. At the time, the Volapük movement was already on the skids, but instead of just dissolving with the rest of the Volapük movement, the Nuremberg group stayed with the idea of an international language.

It was not, apparently, without problems with for the Esperanto movement. On the Wikipedia page for Leopold Einstein, Zamenhof is quoted as saying that the Nuremberg group brought the spirit of reform from Volapük to Esperanto. On the other hand, it also brought with it a magazine. The publication, La Esperantisto, mentioned in the article was the first periodical published in Esperanto. Leopold Einstein encountered the Unua Libro in 1888[1] and September 1889, the club was publishing La Esperantisto.[2]

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Esperanto and Dr. Talmey's Other Languages

Flaws. Dangerous flaws!
A doctor says so.

The New York front of the Ido schism in the Esperanto movement showed some of the bitterest conflicts. I’ve been somewhat remiss as I haven’t had time to write up some of the articles, but there will be future posts.[1] I’ve seen it estimated that most of the people who left the Esperanto movement for Ido were in the leadership. The rank and file members didn’t feel like learning a new set of rules and new words. The leadership seemed to filled with those who liked the idea of an international language more than they liked the actuality of any specific one, and when the prospect came of offering reforms, they saw their chance.

It’s not a coincidence that many who joined the Esperanto movement, then sought to reform Esperanto, went on to propose their own languages, which they proclaimed were even better than their prior allegiances. Not just Esperanto, but the same story can be found among the Volapük reformers; adherence, reformist zeal, independent project. It should come as no surprise that that’s exactly the story found with Dr. Max Talmey, who was until autumn 1907, the president of the New York Esperanto Society. In happier days, he wrote Practical and Theoretical Esperanto. Dr. Talmey resigned with great publicity, abandoning Esperanto for Ido, which was then being called “ILO.” Dr. Talmey even wrote a book, The Defects of Esperanto, its decline and the growth of ILO (which, alas, does not seem to be available online).[2]

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The Bookseller, the Library, and Volapük

The late news from Paris

Among the many volumes in the Bancroft Library, the special collections library of the University of California, Berkeley, are two books on Volapük, the Hand-Book of Volapük, by Charles E. Sprague, and the Abridged Grammar of Volapük; Adapted to the Use of English Speaking People, by Auguste Kerckhoffs, and the only question I have is: “did they end up in the library because of Bancroft’s younger brother?” The Bancroft Library is named Hubert Howe Bancroft, a California bookseller and amateur historian who amassed a substantial library which he later sold to the State of California.[1]

Why not the older Bancroft? Well, they might have been his, but he doesn’t seem to have thought much of Volapük. In an essay on “Early California Literature,” he noted that while “a universal tongue must in time prevail,” he felt that English “need fear no competition from such artificial substitutes as Volapuk, of uncouth aspect.” No Volapükian he. But his brother is another matter altogether.

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The Volapükian Daughter of the Father of Prohibition

I wanted a picture of her. I got this.

It’s a tiny item in a collection of short pieces on women in the November 3, 1891 Wichita Daily Eagle, under the heading “Feminine Fancies.” The second fancy is about Volapükian, one Louise Dow Benton. A quick search on the Internet assured me that my Volapükian readers[1] would likely know who she was. Out of the first ten Google results for “Louise Dow Benton,” three deal with Volapük as well.

Not only did Ms. Benton’s name not ring a bell for me, neither did that of her father, General Neal Dow. Here, at least, Wikipedia came to the rescue. General Dow had enlisted in the Union Army, starting with the rank of colonel, but rose to brigadier general. Given as he was both an abolitionist and prohibitionist, we can assume that he didn’t get one of those barrels of “what Grant was drinking” that Lincoln joked about sending to his other generals.[2] The entry notes that some called Dow “the father of prohibition,” since due to his efforts, Maine became a dry state. But while Wikipedia talks about all that and more (not about the barrels though), there’s scant reference to his family life. Wikipedia does not that Neal Dow was married to Maria Cornelia Durant Maynard Dow, but gives no other details. You wouldn’t know from the Wikipedia page if they had any children. Clearly, at least one.

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The First Death of Father Schleyer

Father Schleyer, at the
time of his not death

In October 1888, the word went out that Father Johann Martin Schleyer, the inventor of Volapük had died. It made the newspapers across the country over a number of days, though some simply ran a brief item reading “The death is announced of Father Schleyer, the inventor of Volapuk,” or some close variant. The source of this information isn’t quite clear. The Los Angeles Daily Herald included it in a column of “Cable Sparks” on October 10, 1888. On the same day, Der Deutsche Correspondent ran an article with about the same information, datelined Paris.

This was repeated in several newspapers over the next few days. Some even condensed it down to “Schleyer, the inventor of Volapuk, is dead.”
But the Evening Bulletin of Maysville, Kentucky expanded it to “in Paris,” in their October 11 edition, probably mistaking the dateline for the place of the incident.

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Poetess’s Legacy to Universal Language

Eliza Pittsinger. California poet.
Could have benefited
universal language

It is safe to say that Eliza A. Pittsinger, a poet who died in San Francisco in 1908, is among the forgotten poets of California, but at the beginning of the twentieth century, she seems to have been something of a celebrated poet. She was born in about 1820 in West Hampton, Massachusetts,[1] to John and Mary Pittsinger. In 1842, she married one Professor Mayo[2] in Hartford, Connecticut. They separated and later divorced, with Eliza went back to using the name Pittsinger (if she ever used Mayo).

As early as 1862, Pittsinger had moved to San Francisco, where she described her profession as “poetess.” She had certainly established herself as a poet by this time, contributing a poem to the ceremonies for laying the corner stone of the New Pioneer Hall of the Society of California Pioneers, in July 1862. According to the Society of California Pioneers, this building was destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Miss Pittsinger, was not a California Pioneer, as the term is reserved for those who settled in California before 1850, at which time she was still in Northampton, although the San Francisco Call described her as such in an death notice of her sister, in May 1907. At the time of Pittsinger’s death, the Call stated that she arrived in California in 1852.

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Early Obituary for Volapük

It's all just memorization,
and by now you've probably
memorized this article anyway.

It was probably premature to declare Volapük dead in 1888. Volapük never had annual congresses, but there would be another (the last one) in 1889. Nor is it clear (to me) who it is declaring that “the Volapuk craze seems to have run its course and died,” as I can find no other references to its author, C. H. De Ligne. The piece originally appear ed in the Chicago News, and was reprinted in the Daily Yellowstone Journal on October 5, 1888.

The “Volapük craze,” as De Ligne put it, seems to have been at its height in 1888, although schisms were forming. The Phillipsburg Herald (Phillipsburg, Kansas) reported on the same day that “Spelin in the rival universal language to Volapuk.” With rivals forming, maybe De Ligne felt that the downfall of Volapük was already in the cards.

He (my assumption) seems to be wrong about several things, but I’ll let De Ligne have his say first:

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An Egalitarian Volpük

Charles Ezra Sprague

Charles Sprague, the chief Volapükist in the United States[1] was clearly delighted with one decision of the 1887 Volapük congress in Munich: they dropped a pronoun, specifically, the second person formal. From Sprague’s report, most people were content with the second person in singular and plural forms.

I've glanced at other Volpük materials by Sprague from the same time period. While an advocate for Volapük, he was certainly unsparing in his criticism. By 1889, he was questioning Schleyer's use of umlauts (pointing out, for example, that even Germans didn't make a distinction between i and ü). Thus, without the umlaut, the name of the language would be pronounced the same if it were named "Volapik." Sprague would later offer the postmortem for Volapük in the American press.

The article ran in something called the Home Journal, and then reprinted in the Fort Worth Daily Gazette on October 5, 1887. They liked it so much that they used it two days later in the Fort Worth Weekly Gazette of October 7, 1888.

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Let Volapük Have Its Moment

So enthusiastic about the new one.

A week after announcing the creation of Esperanto, Baltimore, Maryland's Deutsche Correspondent was again reporting on Weltsprachen, world languages. The beginning of the article deals with some Volapük news in Barveria. They don’t go long before repeating, almost word-for-word, the September 14 article on Esperanto.

Can we keep our news reports to one topic please? The article is on Volapük in Bavaria; don’t rain on their parade with news about Esperanto in Warsaw. Also, on September 21, 1887, it's too early to start recycling your earlier article on Esperanto.

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Esperanto First Appears in the US Press

The first!

I’m always reluctant to cite an article from Der Deutsche Correspondent, the German-langauge newspaper published in Baltimore, Maryland from 1848 until 1918. My German is weak and and I find fraktur[1] difficult to read. But how could I resist the first article to appear in the United States about Esperanto?

It took quite a while for knowledge of Esperanto to filter out of Poland. Dr. Zamenhof could have found a more neglected place than Warsaw from which to publish his pamphlet, but it would have required some work. The slow growth was helpful for Esperanto, compared to the rapid rise and fall of Volapük, which by the time anyone had heard of Esperanto, was already going through its period of reformist schisms. Unlike Esperanto during the Ido conflict, Volapük didn’t fare all that well after the schisms.

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Esperanto Blamed for Death of Volapük

Didn't the Volapük speakers
have a hand in all this?

There’s general belief is that the failure of Volapük was caused by the rise of Esperanto, even though the dates don’t really match up. Yes, Esperanto was created seven years after Volapük, but when the last Volapük congress occurred in 1889, the movement was already full of strife. Admittedly, the defection of the Nuremberg Volapük Society (which became the Nuremberg Esperanto Society) probably hurt. Still, with the first Esperanto congress sixteen years away, the Nurembergers were taking a chance.[1]

When the corpse of Volapük[2] is examined, everyone always wants to know what Esperanto had to do with it. We were nowhere near it! Yet a piece that appeared in the Marshalltown, Iowa Evening Times-Republican, on September 7, 1911, asserted that Esperanto was responsible for the failure of Volapük.[3]

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Why Volapük Failed

It hasn't failed until everyone gives up!

The post-mortem for Volapük was delivered in the pages of the Evening Times[1] of Washington, D.C. on September 6, 1902, by none other than a man described as the “Chief Volpukian in the United States.“ By that time, there wen’t all that many Volapük speakers to be chief of, but that was the lot of Charles E. Sprague, the author of the Hand-Book of Volapuk.

Wikipedia has a interesting fact on Mr. Sprague that puts me literally one handshake away. At the 1986 World Science Fiction Convention in Atlanta, George, I got to meet the great science fiction writer, L. Sprague de Camp. I just happened to be at hand for the question, “excuse me, young man, do you know where the elevators are?”[2] Mr. Sprague was Mr. de Camp’s maternal grandfather.

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Volapük Conferences in the US — Their Short History

Let the Volapük speakers come!

Many of the places that there the sites of early successes of Esperanto in the first decade of the twentieth century were sites of successes of Volpük in the late nineteenth. Just as the first Esperanto conference in the United States was held at Chautauqua, New York, under the auspices of the Chautauqua Institution,[1] Volapük conference was held there as well.

Disclosure: I am not at all versed in Volapük. I have looked at it (as I have several other planned languages) and it was not to my taste. Nor have I (until recently) looked much into its history, so all I know about it is what I’ve read in the papers (the papers being those of a century ago that have been scanned and indexed on the web). However, I do find Volapük of historical interest, since it had a much more rapid rise than Esperanto (or any other planned language). It also flamed out just as fast.

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The Esperanto News in German

It's lovely, though I find it tough to read

In the early twentieth century, there were several newspapers in a variety of languages other than English. The Chronicling America site at the Library of Congress has nearly as many German-language newspapers as ones in Spanish. The Baltimore newspaper Der Deutsche Correspondent published many articles on planned languages, and seem to be the first newspaper in the United States to mention Esperanto (in 1887, mere weeks after Esperanto was introduced).

Like many other newspapers, they reported on the various Esperanto congresses, often at length. I’ve skipped over those articles for two reasons:

• My German is very weak. I studied it for a year, and really don’t use it.
• Der Deutsche Correspondent was typeset in Fraktur, and it’s difficult for me to read.

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Chinese, the Language of the Future

The future is now

I’ve seen recent claims that parents who want their children to succeed in the future should be encouraging them to learn Mandarin, and some schools have offered Mandarin to fairly young children. I am skeptical of this, however, I was not surprised to find that the idea is not new.

China was quite a different place in 1911, when the San Francisco Call published a short article in which the cited a professor[1] who said that Chinese[2] would be “the language of the future.” More than a century has passed, and there are some who still think that Chinese is the language of the future.

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No Profit in Volapük

Quite the knee-slapper!

This is just a short item. I'll try to provide some context.

Depreciated in Value

Old Lady (in bird store)—Can that beautiful parrot talk?
Bird Fancier—Yes, indeed.
Old Lady—How much?
Bird Fancier—One dollar, madam.
Old Lady—So cheap!
Bird Fancier—Yes, madam. He was a good bird, but he's gone off in value. His last mistress taught him volapuk. —Tid Bits.

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That's Not Actually Volapük

What are you implying that he said?

A short item on the sports page of the August 3, 1914 Washington Herald claims that it includes a line of Volapük, but what’s actually there looks more like mangled Esperanto. By 1914, the Volapük movement was long since dead, with only a small number of Volapük speakers remaining. Yet it was still mentioned in newspapers from time to time, though without much frequency. Over the years, reporters had moved from portraying it as the archetypal incomprehensible tongue to the archetypal failed international language scheme.

It’s a filler item, wedged in between the last of the sports reports (the scores of the game between the Washington Cricket Club and the Baltimore Sons of St. George) and the advertisements (Dr. Reed’s specialties include “Private Diseases”). It reads:

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