Hugo Schuchardt Archiv

220 S. Broad St
Phila Pa. Dec 26 1882

My dear Prof. Schuchardt

In your last letter you made inquiry concerning the library of Mr. P. B. Hunt¹. Mr. Hunt was a schoolmaster of mine and a very dear friend. After I went to college we used to correspond. He died some years ago and left his very large collection of books relative to Haiti to the Boston Library where it now is. When I read your note his widow was on her death bed. She is connected with my brother in law’s family. If you wish to have any researches made in the Boston collection, write to Ms. Abby Alger². No 6 Brimmer Street Boston, and tell her that I asked you to do so. She is very capable and clever and knows many languages well, even to Romany. She was with me last summer and aided me in collecting legends |2| and myths of the Indians. We made the largest vocabulary ever collected of the Passamaquadi language³

I send you with this a brochure by me on Industrial Art in Schools⁴. I wish that you would kindly read it and then send it to anybody who is interested in introducing hand-work to the education of children. You will see that the Government through the Bureau of Education has taken up my system. I have a school of 150 pupils here and we expect to gradually teach arts to all the 105.000 public school children in the city. I have said my system for while I know that Hand Arbeit is not a novelty in education I do not think that any one in any country has |3| taken the pain as I have done to determine what kind of hand work is exactly suited to children. And even if anyone had found that decorative arts or the minor arts were what alone suits children especially girls, I doubt if anybody else has developed the peculiar system of teaching design and drawing together by combining free-hand with the most mechanical aids and instruments. It all rests on this. In addition to being Director of the Public Industrial Art School⁵, I am also President of the Ladies’ Decorative Art Club of nearly 200 members consisting of the “first people” here which I mention not as such but to show that |4| as the élite have taken art up practically, the many must come after. It is a brilliant success and now scores of ladies who recently did nothing but gossip and attend afternoon teas are now absorbed in design, modelling and colouring vases, carving wood, painting in oil, hammering sheet-brass, &c, &c.

I am really doing a great deal of good work here in this Hauptstadt der Philister- There was in the Nov. No of the London Nineteenth century⁶ an article on work for children in which I am termed the apostle of the new reform – which is very gratifying. I started the movement in England before I came hither 3 years ago, and it is bearing fruit. I should |5| like to correspond with someone in Germany who cares for such matters. The idea is being taken up very earnestly by certain people of Ireland. What Ireland wants is industrial arts, here people do nothing and they are still very clever.

I am certain that there is a great distinction between the common Gumbo French of New Orleans and the dialect spoken by the Voodoo sorcerers⁷. We have the latter in this city and one lives not far from here.

I have not as yet heard from my Celtic philologist⁸ who has determined the status of the Shelta dialect first pointed out in my Gypsies⁹. And I am a little astonished that Germany which just told the world that Gypsies were Indian has not taken any notice of my absolutely identifying them with one particular tribe, called Rom and talking Rom. The Hindoo¹⁰|6| who told me this was himself of them. He spoke six Indian languages, but was positive that the Rom language was like Gypsy and unlike all other tongues. He proved this by citing manno bread which is used all over Europe and only in India by the Rom or Trablūs¹¹. By the way Prof. E. H. Palmer¹² who examined this has since been killed by the Arabs.

I shall make a very pleasant book of the tales which I collected from the Indians. Moreover I have 15 pictures illustrating them, scraped on birch bark by an Indian – as grotesque as anything I ever saw. The artist charges 20 cents apiece for his illustrations.

Yours with Christmas Greetings & prost Neujahr
Charles G. Leland

PS. I had nearly omitted Hamlet from the play and I reopened my letter to express my thanks for your kind and genial appreciation of my Gypsy book. I am really touched by so much sympathy. Do you know any young literary man who wants something to work on. Would it not be worth while for him to translate the Gypsies?

I once wrote for Temple Bar¹³, some five years ago a romance or novelette, very short in only 4 or 5 chapters called Ebenezer¹⁴. Nearly all of the characters in it were blacks or mulattos, there was a great deal of dialect and those most experienced in Negro English called the songs in it, very good. Of course as I was brought up among such servants, freed slaves &c. in one family, negro English is as familiar to |8| me as any other English. Indeed we have a house full of them here of every tint from maize to jet black. I am sorry that I have not a copy of the Ebenezer in Temple Bar to send you.

Long time ago is, I am sure, originally “nigger”. I can remember it as a mere child:

When I was # down

# # alley

Long time ago

To buy a bonnet for

Aunt Sally. &c.

The first of our negro songs was

“Broder let us leave Buckra¹⁵ lan’ for Haiti”

Perhaps however there is much older in

“In a little log hut in ole Virginny”

Which refers to the end of the Revolutionary war.

[Beiliegendes Notizblatt, Handschrift Schuchardt]

Pidgin English

Herbert A. Giles¹⁶

# R. Curt¹⁷