Women Scientists Start Esperanto Group

Margaret Henderson
Bacteriologist.
Esperantist.

The April 5, 1906 San Francisco Call article on an Esperanto group at the University of California, Berkeley, says more the role of women in science in the early twentieth century than it intends to, and less about the Esperanto group than I’d prefer. The article tells us that the group included “a number of faculty people and others connected with the university,” but doesn’t give any hint as to how large that number is, or who the other people might be. It also gives short shrift to the accomplishments of one of the women involved.

The article also makes a whopper of an error, which I am leaving in place. Once, I’d call it a typographical error, and just quietly replace it, but as it occurs twice, it’s clear that it was the author’s intention, and so I’ll side with the writer for the Call, even though he or she is completely wrong. You’ll see.

The article is dwarfed by the picture of Margaret Henderson, which fills in between the headline and the text of the article. I wish they had had an image of Alice Robertson, since I was not able to find any images of her. She is somewhat overshadowed by a woman with nearly the same name, Alice Mary Robertson, who was born somewhat before our Esperantist and managed to outlive her. Alice Mary Robertson was the second woman to hold a seat in Congress (there are plenty of pictures of her). I’ll get to our Esperantist soon.

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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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