And All the Arts of Peace: Phonography, Simplified Speling, and the Spelling Reform Movement, Toronto 1883 to 1886

Abstract

And All the Arts of Peace:Phonography, Simplified Speling, and the Spelling Reform Movement, Toronto 1883 to 1886 Heather Murray (bio) On entering the large front room, which is on the second flat, we were almost overwhelmed with the witchery of the scene. The brilliant electric light, shining through the glass front, and casting its silvery sheen over the statuary, house-plants, and pottery with which the room was decorated, with the parlor furniture strewed among these decorations, and the gay throng of ladies and gentlemen moving about at ease; it needed no lively imagination to make one feel that he was enjoying a moonlight ramble in some horticultural paradise. Three fine transparencies on the large panes, symbolizing respectively music, literature and shorthand, added to the beauty of the scene. On a pleasant summer evening in 1883, Toronto was treated to a gala conversazione and a celebration of modernity, as Thomas Bengough moved his offices across the street to larger premises at 29 King Street West and launched the Shorthand Atheneum. Electric floodlights blazed in the street (a standard feature of any grand opening today, but a novelty in Toronto then), illuminating the entire city block and shining, symbolically, through the images of the three sister arts on to the gathering within. The crowd was treated first to refreshments—cake and strawberries, since it was June, [End Page 171] as well as temperance drinks—and then to a "feast of reason" opened by John Taylor, a former city alderman who was a leading proponent of the free library movement. Taylor—himself one of the "old-time phonographers" (Bengough's Cosmopolitan Shorthand Writer 3.6 [October 1882]: 61)—praised the "winged art" of shorthand and stressed the increasing importance of its practice but also indulged in a moment of levity, ribbing the proprietor for his inconsistency: "He only wondered that the leader of Phonetics did not spell his name phonetically, so that we might know whether it was Bengo, Bengow, Bengof, Benguf, or Bengup" ("Opening" 6). The phonetically-minded audience greeted the joke with laughter, for the family name could well be one of the examples of spelling irrationality that reformers like Bengough were fond of employing. Richard Lewis, the well-known elocutionist and reading promoter, also was a platform speaker, along with "Professor" Samuel Clare, a teacher of penmanship. They were speaking in their respective roles as the president and the secretary-treasurer of the Canadian Spelling Reform Association, an organization founded only weeks before, which now would meet at Bengough's new premises. Thomas Bengough himself closed the proceedings, mentioning the approaching International Congress of Shorthand Reporters to be held in Toronto in August and expressing hope for the effect that meeting would have "upon our shorthand and phonetic organizations" ("Opening" 7). It appears to have been a most satisfactory evening, at least according to this account, which was drawn from the journal launched almost simultaneously with the Shorthand Atheneum and the Canadian Spelling Reform Association: The Atheneum: An Advocate and Exponent of Educational, Literary, and Social Progress; or, as it was called in its expanded and even more utopian title, The Atheneum: A Nineteenth-Century Journal of Progress; Devoted to Literature, Journalism, Science, Shorthand, TypeWriting, Simplified Speling, Penmanship, Music, and all the Arts of Peace. "Speling," it should be noted, is not an error in the title; rather, it flags a new direction that many spelling reformers were about to take. While the opening of the Shorthand Atheneum may seem to twenty-first century eyes like the launch of a business school, the account makes it apparent that the goals were further-reaching. The elevated title of "atheneum" signals this as well, as does the grouping together of music, literature, and shorthand in an illuminated tableau. In 1883, "shorthand" and "atheneum" did not create an oxymoron; neither did penmanship and peace, spelling and music, sit uneasily together for the progressive viewer, who would have discerned the relationship of these seemingly disparate elements. Indeed, then, to see their relationship was a particularly modern [End Page 172] thing to do; modernity was signaled, too, by the technological élan of the electrically-lit opening and by the "nineteenth-century" of...