Augusto Bassetti and the First English Grammar for Italian Speakers Written and Published in the United States - James J. Periconi*
Around the time of the great wave of European migration, Italian-language books had long been available in the United States, imported by the Italian-language newspaper L’Eco d’Italia since at least January 1862, and probably earlier.1 It was not until 1876, however, that English grammar books in Italian and Italian–English dictionaries were first advertised in L’Eco in New York City and imported from Italy, and just a few years later by L’Eco’s upstart rival, Il Progresso Italo-Americano, which was established in 1880.2
Then in 1885 Augusto Bassetti, an Italian American living in New York City, self-published and widely distributed his Manuale per imparare gli elementi e la retta pronunzia della Lingua Inglese senza maestro per uso principalmente degli emigranti Italiani (Manual for Learning the Elements and Correct Pronunciation of the English Language without a Teacher, for Use Principally by Italian Immigrants). This book, designed in the United States by an Italian specifically for Italian immigrants, was a new kind of primer, different from previous imported English grammar books for Italian speakers. It would be the first of several such publications over the next couple of decades. This essay sets out to suggest that some combination of social, linguistic, pedagogic, and historical needs justified this book’s creation.3
How does this work—the first American-produced grammar by an Italian American developed specifically to teach English to Italian immigrants who knew little standard Italian—reflect those specific needs?4 What inroads did its publication make, if any, into the business that appears to have started in 1876 of importing as many as a half-dozen different competing grammars from Italy? But above all, why might Italian immigrants to the United States by the 1880s need a new kind of grammar book to learn English when so many were already available in New York City?5
I propose to answer these questions principally by looking at works from the mid-1880s: two English grammars prepared by Bassetti for native Italian speakers; his bilingual Italian–English dictionary; and the first novel (of two) by Bassetti, who was the first of a half-dozen U.S.-based writers of English grammar books for Italian speakers and Italian–English dictionaries. How exactly were these books structured differently from previous offerings, if indeed they were, toward attracting a new class of readers, namely, marginally literate Italian immigrants?
Besides the evidence in the texts themselves, I look at the paratextual evidence in Bassetti’s advertisements for those works in local Italian newspapers, appearing virtually daily for about five years from August 1885 through June 1890. During this period we see Bassetti’s explanation of what was new in these volumes, including their special utility for Italian immigrants. I further explore how the print advertisements reveal Italian immigrants’ special needs and the response of the marketplace, in particular how they attracted the kind of new book-buyers Bassetti sought.
A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF AUGUSTO BASSETTI
Little biographical information about Augusto Bassetti has come to light. Searching through New York City directories6 from the late 1850s (when he first makes an impression in New York) until 1890 (when Bassetti’s ads in L’Eco d’Italia and Il Progresso cease), including the 1890 New York City Police census, the substitute for the fire-damaged (1921) and then destroyed (in 1934) U.S. Census, as well as consulting shipping logs, turns up nothing for any “Bassetti” except one passage by ship from Italy in 1882, which might have been the first one for Bassetti. My deduction from all this is that he was American born.
Two other pieces of evidence: A bundle of letters in the Siena provincial Archives attests to Bassetti’s intense backstage correspondence in 1858 with a Torinese soprano, one Marietta Piccolomini, while she was on tour in New York, October-November 1858, just before her marriage in 1860.7
In New York City, on April 6, 1867, we also know, a Professor Augusto Bassetti “gave a concert and lecture [that ‘dwelt upon the history of music’]” at Irving Hall, as reported in a local paper (New York Sun 1867, 4).8 The review also notes, mentioning Piccolomini by name, that there was a “prima donna whom [Bassetti] once knew” whom he mentioned in his lecture (New York Sun 1867, 4). So, the New York Bassetti who lectured on opera seems to be the same Bassetti whose letters to an opera singer he knew can be found in Siena’s archives. He is referred to in these newspaper articles as “Professor” Bassetti, and he uses that title in his first grammar book, but it may simply have been an honorific designed to give some credibility to the author and his or her opinions. The quality of the Italian used in his books is suggestive of someone with more than a few years of schooling, but it lacks the sophistication of, say, the language in prefatory remarks made in grammars produced in Italy in the middle and late nineteenth century. His mistakes in Italian - for example, the use of "più" for "può" in the quotation below beginning "Ogni studente" - are more typical of the average immigrant than of a university-trained native.
Finally, we note that although the advertisements in ll Progresso Italo-Americano and L’Eco d’Italia for his books cease in 1890, one appearance by Bassetti in an Italian American directory (Guida italiana 1893) suggests that he was still active three years later: Bassetti is listed in the New York City section under the heading “Editori Librai” Publishers/Booksellers), at Post Office Box 3813, along with Carlo Barsotti, the publisher of Il Progresso Italo-Americano from its inception in 1880; Francesco Zanolini, whose bookstore ads were frequent in the late 1890s; and Giovanni Cereghino, whose bookstore ads first appear in 1889 and continue through the late 1890s; these were all listed at Manhattan street addresses.
MARKETING THE MANUALE
In the August 26, 1885, issue of New York City’s L’Eco d’Italia there appeared an advertisement in Italian for a book written by Bassetti in Italian that, based on my bibliographical review, was the first in Italian published in the United States during the Great Emigration:
ATTENTI ITALIANI
LIBRO per imparare gli elementi e la retta pronunzia della lingua inglese SENZA MAESTRO.
Ogni parola inglese porta scritto sotto come si pronunzia con ortografia italiana; dimodochè, ognuno, che sa leggere e scrivere un poco l’italiano, può imparare da se stesso, a scrivere l’inglese come si scrive, e parlarlo come si parla; oltrecciò può perfezionarsi nella retta scrittura dell’italiano. Libro di genere affatto uuovo [sic] e di somma utilità per tutti gli Italiani, ma particolarmente per quei poveri emigranti, che approdano a questi lidi senza sapere una parola di quella lingua che deve dare loro il pane e la fortuna. (L’Eco d’Italia 1885, 4)
(ATTENTION ITALIANS
A BOOK for learning the elements of the correct pronunciation of the English language WITHOUT A TEACHER. Each English word has printed under it how it is pronounced, with Italian orthography; by this means, everyone who can read and write a little Italian can learn by himself how to write English as it is written, and speak it as it is spoken; beyond this, he can improve himself in properly writing Italian. This book is of a completely new type and of the greatest utility for all Italians, but particularly for those poor immigrants who reach these shores without knowing a word of that language that should provide them with their bread and their fortune. [Emphases added and all translations mine.]
The advertisement also listed the book’s price at 50 cents per copy and indicated it could be bought in bulk (minimum one dozen) for a 25 percent discount for $4.50. It further stated that one could obtain copies from the author at certain hours and locations on MacDougal and Spring Streets and at the café or pastry shop near the Bowery at all hours of the day. The ad lists several other locations where the book was sold, such as “respectable Italian stores.” Bassetti suggests that Italian stores could buy the books wholesale and then resell them for a profit in addition to “il tirare nuovi avventori, e dar voga e rispetto ai loro negozi” (drawing new customers, and bestowing a fashionableness and respectability on their stores). Customers could also write or come directly to Bassetti at his home address on “Vendom” (in later ads corrected to “Vandam”) Street at certain hours.
Bassetti’s distribution was new because it allowed Italian immigrants who were too busy to go to the offices of either of the two newspapers where imported books had been sold or unable to mail payment to those offices an easy way to buy them. Moreover, it was evident from the advertisement that Bassetti grasped that making books available in places where people would meet as part of normal social intercourse (along with the accompanying cordiality) was conducive to selling and profits. In addition, he emphasized the “respectable” character of participating Italian stores that carried “fashionable” books and with his book available drew “new customers.”9
His book was “of a completely new type” and was designed to be of the “greatest utility” for all Italians “but particularly for those poor immigrants” who arrived in the United States not knowing a word of English. Above all, these poor immigrants, needing to know only “un poco l’italiano” (a little Italian) in order to find Bassetti’s grammar to be useful, could learn English “without a teacher.” The phrase “senza maestro” would also be a major selling point in the advertising copy and on the covers and title pages of each of the U.S.-composed English-grammar books for Italians that were published in the twenty years following Bassetti’s (1885) publication: that of Francesco Zanolini, Francesco Frugone, and Angelo de Gaudenzi in the 1890s; and one produced by Alfonso Arbib-Costa and Alberto Pecorini in the first decade of the twentieth century. Bassetti’s methodology of writing as a teacher speaking directly to the reader of the book, however, was unique to him.
Bassetti’s creation of a new kind of grammar is on par in significance, in language-learning circles, with Noah Webster’s 1828 creation of an American dictionary. Webster gave the United States its own dictionary distinct from Samuel Johnson’s original 1755 publication;10 Bassetti’s grammar did the same for Italian students of English.
Most significant was the fact that the immigrant Italian who knew only “un poco l’italiano” could “improve himself in the correct writing of Italian” at the same time he was learning how to write English “come si scrive” (as it is written) and speak English “come si parla” (as it is spoken).
For Italians who arrived in the United States mostly speaking their local dialect and who may have only briefly studied standard Italian language in Italy,11 Bassetti’s grammar must have been a godsend, truly a way for them to improve their Italian - and thus become Italian - as much as to learn the new language that would help “to give them their bread and their fortune” (Bassetti 1885). Bassetti’s potentially doubly empowering pedagogical act makes the publication all the more remarkable.
Why would this have been important? At least in early twentieth-century New York City, teachers and others have long seen original-language retention as a hindrance to assimilation. Speaking—and, worse, reading and writing in—the language of one’s origins was believed to retard the acquisition of the language of the adopted country and thus impede assimilation.
On a practical level, learning Italian may actually have been as important for the process of becoming American as learning English—maybe even more so. Robert Viscusi (2006) addresses the matter of language and identity for early Italian immigrants in this way:
This was the age of nations, and before Calabrian and Sicilian immigrants could become Americans, they needed to understand their place in that age. They needed to find a way of becoming Italians. The task was more demanding than one might at first suppose. The immigrants recognized that other Americans thought of them as Italians, and they sought ways to make sense of that in their lives. The paradox of their situation was that they could not safely become Americans until they had found a way of knowing what it meant to be Italians. (19, emphases added)
My thesis is that Bassetti’s 1885 grammar helped immigrant Calabrian, Sicilian, and Neapolitan immigrants become Italian on the way to becoming Americans. The grammar is deceptively simple. It is a brief work, only thirty-one pages of text, each one followed by a blank page. Bassetti gives detailed “OSSERVAZIONI SULLA PRONUNZIA” (observations on pronunciation) followed by some examples, and then, on page 5, “DIREZIONI PER L’USO DEL LIBRETTO” (directions for the use of this little book), he indicates what the blank pages are intended for:
Ogni studente più [sic] usarlo a suo modo, ma il meglio sarebbe di copiare attentamente nel foglio bianco a lato alla pagina stampata; prima, la frase Italiana, poi ancor più attentamente l’Inglese come si scrive. Non più. La pronunzia segnata non si deve mai copiare ma solo leggere e ripetere finchè si abbia acquistato il vero suono. Copiandola si confouderebbe coll’Inglese come deve essere scritto e farebbe più male che bene. Lo studente non deve lasciarsi trasportare dalla voglia di imparare tutte in un momento. Le parole e frasi di questo libretto sono tutte di prima necessità. Epperciò non si può dire, come il caso di tante grammatiche, che le parole e frasi che avete avanti gli occhi, non vi fanno per l’uso presente, e così saltarle per andar avanti. Qui tutto vi fa e vi è necessario per ogni momento; epperciò impossessatevi bene di quello che avete per le mani prima di passare ad altro. Il dire che questo manuale può insegnarvi tutto e far miracoli, sarebbe certo grave follia. Ma un libro più utile e più necessario ad ogni Italiano che approdi a questi lidi non è ancor mai venuto alla luce del mondo. Istruitevi e farete fortuna. (Bassetti 1885, 5)
(Each student can use it [the book] in his own way, but the best would be to copy attentively on the blank page alongside the printed page; first, the Italian sentence, then still more attentively, the English as it is written. Nothing more. The signed pronunciation ought never be copied but only read and repeated until it has acquired its true sound. Copying it would confuse one with English as it ought to be written and would cause more harm than good. The student ought not to be carried away by the wish to learn everything at once. The words and sentences of this book are all of primary necessity. Thus, one can’t say, as is the case with so many grammars, that the words and sentences that you have before your eyes won’t be sufficient for you for the present moment, and so you’ll jump ahead. Here everything will be sufficient for you and is necessary for you for each moment. Thus, hold tightly to what you have in your hands before moving on to another page. It would be grave folly to tell you that this manual can teach you everything and work great miracles. But a book more useful and more necessary for each Italian who approaches these shores has never seen the light of day. Find out about it yourself and you’ll make your fortune.)
Thus, the book that claims to be designed to help readers learn English “senza maestro” actually provides a teacher within the book itself. After an initial tip of the hat to each reader’s ability to make one’s own decision on the subject, Bassetti provides precise instructions on what to do and what not to do in using the book. The reader is encouraged to make his/her reading become his/her writing on those blank pages in this, in effect, workbook. He cautions not to turn the oral signs provided in the pronunciation guide into written ones: Oral and written serve two distinct functions. The oral transcriptions are to help one be understood by Americans and to develop a better ear for understanding native English speakers. Bassetti warns students not to jump ahead out of impatience. In effect, he’s saying: I’m with you each step of the way; so, stay with me if you know what’s good for you!
The blank pages served another, equally important, function besides repeating the phrases or sentences from the grammar as a teaching aid: They were there to provide space for the intersection of the largely oral culture from which the immigrants came with a written culture that they would encounter.
SALES AND REPRINTS
On December 22, 1885, Bassetti announced with great excitement that “the utility of this [first] book, confirmed by experience, has caused such a rapid sale as to require a SECOND EDITION of it, now ready, much better executed and with important additions, which make the work complete of its type” (L’Eco d’Italia 1885).
The success of Bassetti’s Manuale can be deduced from the fact that it was advertised almost without interruption for a five-year span from August 1885 to June 1890.12 During this period it had been joined in advertisements by Secondo libro… (Bassetti 1986a), which contained some short stories and sample letters, a Nuovo dizionario… (Bassetti (1886b), a pronunciation dictionary, and two novels (Bassetti 1887, 1889).
The ads for Bassetti’s Manuale of 1885 are similar over time, but there is an advance of the attention-grabbing sort: “ATTENTI ITALIANI” soon becomes a strident “ATTENTI ITALIANI!” or “ATTENTI ITALIANI!!!” which seems appropriate especially when the ad appeared, as it sometimes did, right next to a far larger, longer multicolumn ad for the offering of 100 or more imported books. And when his ad appears right next to these longer ads, the imported grammars and Italian–English dictionaries are not advertised. Soon, “ATTENTI ITALIANI” is followed or replaced by the name of a bookstore, Libro D’Oro or Tre Libri D’Oro; this happens by the time Bassetti (1886a) has published a second volume of grammar with stories (Secondo libro…) and a dictionary (1886b). Bassetti is thereby transformed from a voice crying in the wilderness with his one “libretto” into a real libraio (bookseller). Finally, he adds a novel and then, in 1889, as noted, a second novel.
The “second edition” of the Manuale, published in 1886, is titled Secondo libro del manuale per imparare la lingua inglese senza maestro, contenente storiette amene ed il segretario spedito (Second volume of the instruction book for learning English without a teacher, including pleasant short stories and a guide to letter writing). Bassetti calls the instructions of the Secondo libro “osservazioni sulla pronuncia ed uso di questo libro” (observations on pronunciation and the use of this book). No longer a mere “libretto,” it is a distinctly different book, a more advanced one, with a few short and easy stories followed by model letters. His instructions or “observations” are as follows:
La pronunzia sotto le parole inglesi si deve leggere come se fosse in Italiano... Le pagine bianche debbono servire per note ed esercizii; scritti sempre colla mattita; perchè così si possono corregere, alterare o togliere del tutto, e preservare il foglio netto da cancellature. Queste pagine sono più utile di quello che si crede, per tutti.
(Bassetti 1886a, 9)
(The pronunciation under the English words ought to be read as if they were Italian. … The blank pages ought to serve for notes and exercises; write always with a pencil; so that you can correct, alter or draw from everything; keep the page clean and clear of strikeouts. These pages are more useful than you might think, for everyone.)
There follow two stories, Il Re e il contadino and Il lupo e la volpe, each about four pages long, and every line appears in Italian, English as it is written, and the English pronunciation guide, with ample space between each set of three lines, resulting in very little text on each page, and the stories—already pared-down versions of Aesop’s fables—are even more simplified.
The book’s second part, il segretario spedito, offers about twenty “model” letters, on each of the last twenty pages of this thirty- four-page book. “Segretari” had a long history in Italy and were published on their own in addition to becoming a staple of each of the U.S.-issued Italian grammars (Trasciati 2009).
LIBRO TERZO
Bassetti also published his dictionary (1886b), a slim work containing perhaps 20 percent of the words found in contemporary dictionaries; it is more like a slightly larger pocket dictionary for the business tourist to use. The translations are simple bordering on simplistic: All or nearly all are one-word translations, and few words are given the multiple translations that so many words in any language possess. The preface to the “libro terzo,” which is his Nuovo dizionario italiano ed inglese, includes Bassetti’s claim to having created an entirely “new” kind of dictionary:
I dizionari al giorno d’oggi sono tanti che sembrerebbe cosa la più facile al mondo, di farne uno nuovo, copiando dagli altri. Per fare un dizionario inutile questo sarebbe il caso; ma per farne uno utile, e da servir meglio degli altri, la cosa è differente! – Senza perder tempo in chiacchiere inutili, diremo solo che questo piccolo dizionario è stato compilato in un modo tutto nuovo, o perfettamente adatto, per aiutare gli italiani in America, ad imparare la lingua del loro paese adottivo. Altri simili dizionari, sebben buoni e più copiosi, hanno la pronunzia segnata a nu- meri, che a gente di poca istruzione sono misteri incomprensibili. Di più; trovata che si è la parola italiana ed il corrispondente in inglese come si scrive; bisogna cercar la pronunzia nella parte inglese del dizionario, e colà oltre di essere numerata, spesso si trova anche dimezzata – altro mistero per le persone semplici; In questo dizionarietto al contrario si trova la pronunzia tutta in disteso, all’italiana, come volgarmente si dice; – immediatamente sotto la parola inglese – cosa del tutto nuova. Ci fermiano quì! – Lodar le cose proprie è un debole di natura. Epperciò lasciamo la cosa intieramente al giudizio del pubblico! (Bassetti 1886b, 35)
(Dictionaries nowadays are so many that it would seem to be the easiest thing in the world to make a new one of them, copying from the others. To make an unhelpful [useless] one, that would be the case. But to make a useful one of them, and to better serve others, is a different matter! Without losing time in chattering uselessly, we’ll say only that this little dictionary has been compiled in an entirely new way, or perfectly adapted to help Italians in America learn the language of their adopted country. Other similar dictionaries, even if good and more copious, have pronunciation signed in numbers, that for people of little [prior] school instruction are incomprehensible mysteries. What’s more, having found how the Italian word and its corresponding English word are written, you have to look for the pronunciation in the English part of the dictionary; and there, beyond being numbered, often is found cut in half—another mystery for simple people; in this little dictionary, on the other hand, the pronunciation is to be found all laid out, in the Italian manner, as commonly spoken—immediately under the English word—rather a new thing. Let’s stop here! To praise one’s own things is a natural weakness. So let’s leave the thing entirely to the judgment of the public.)
As we will see, this boast is repeated in Bassetti’s first novel (1887), Amor focoso, discussed below. There Bassetti as character answers the question of whether his own dictionary contains enough words:
Il Calabrese capì dal nome che voleva dire il Cuculo, e chiamò all’autore se anche quel nome si trovava nel suo Dizionario! Avutane risposta affermativa disse:
―Dunque c’è tutto là dentro!
―C’è tutto quello che fa bisogno per gli emigranti Italiani in America. Non una parola di più, nè di meno―rispose l’autore! (Bassetti 1887, 35)
(The Calabrese understood from the name [“cuckoo”] that he meant the “Cuculo,” and he asked the author whether that name was found in his Dictionary!
He responded affirmatively, saying:
―So, that’s all there inside [the dictionary]!
―It’s all that is needed for immigrant Italians in America. Not a word more nor a word less―answers the author!)
FIRST NOVEL (1887)
Bassetti’s first novel, self-published, in which he advertises his own dictionary, is titled Amor focoso, romanzotto storico contemporaneo: ossia avventure di un ex-brigante Calabrese in America (Fiery love, small-but-big historical contemporary novel, or the adventures of an ex-bandit Calabrese).13 It helps us understand why Bassetti’s deceptively basic approach to learning English was maybe just what the doctor—or at least the gatekeepers to entry to American life—had ordered. The novel embodies these two principles: that this is how to learn English so as to enable you to “make your bread and your fortune” in America, while at the same time improving your Italian (though no reason is given immediately as to why improving one’s Italian while trying to learn English is desirable; the novel explains why English speakers, like the Calabrese's sons, need to improve their Italian).
Bassetti wrote of Amor focoso in early, pre-publication advertising that it was a “History of a bandit leader” (Il Progresso Italo-Americano 1886, 4). It could be labeled a didactic novel, but it is mostly a fantastic tale full of improbable events. The best student of early Italian American writing in Italian, the late Francesco Durante, characterized the author of Amor focoso, based on his initial review of the novel, as “something mysterious … the book seems like the work of a crazy person” (Durante 2018). That colloquial description seems apt, as the book features characters whose existence at first appears designed mostly to spur book sales. But upon further examination, the novel is much more significant.
In fact, Amor focoso is a parable of the mechanism of language acquisition by which gaining access to the English language and its culture gives one entrée to life in the United States; and, ironically, it accomplishes this also for the children of immigrants by giving them access back to the Italian language (and thus culture) of their antecedents.
The novel’s hero is an unnamed Calabrese, a former bandit who emigrates to the United States, deciding to turn over a new leaf and leave behind the world of brigandage. He dreams just after disembarking in New York City that he can be a success by finding a good wife, raising strong children, and supporting them all. He finds the good wife, an Irish American woman, within days, and twelve years on, he is selling fruit on the street to support a growing family, including four strong sons.
In the story’s current day narrative, the former bandit has just been persuaded to buy Bassetti’s dictionary. It is interesting to note how several matters that were either explicitly stated in the ads for the grammars and especially the dictionary - for instance, how the dictionary could be used, that it followed two earlier works using “the same method already published before,” and the way Bassetti organized it, with Italian phrases, equivalent English phrases, and phonetic English pronunciation - are reflected in the “romanzetto storico contemporaneo [small but big contemporary historical novel]” that Amor focoso claims to be:
Lo stesso giorno che si mise in vendita il nuovo Dizionario italiano ed inglese, colla pronunzia segnata chiara ed in pieno, all’italiana, sotto ogni parola, pubblicato per uso speciale degli italiani in America di AUGUSTO BASSETTI:―un ragazzo di parenti italiani, ma nato in New York, che era andato attorno a vendere questo, cogli altri due libri sullo stesso metodo gia prima pubblicati;― verso la sera, avendoli venduti, tutti meno un dizionario;― passando vicino ad un banchino di frutta, si mise a dire al vendi- tore, gridando come quando da piccolino vendeva giornali per la strada:
―Ecco un libro che t’insegna in un momento, tutte le parole inglesi che tu non sai ancora!―Settantacinque soldi!―Vattene, vattene, disse il venditore, non mi seccare; son dodici anni che io son in America, e so l’inglese tutto quanto!―V’ingannate, disse il rag- azzo,―secondo le istruzioni che aveva ricevuto dall’autore;―Non sapete ancor tutto!―Ecco, come si dice in inglese, il pipistrello, la lodola, l’usignuolo? ―Vattene, non vendo uccelli io; vendo frutta, disse il Calabrese: ― poichè tale era il venditore.― Bene, soggiunse il ragazzo; come si chiama la melagrana, la nespola, l’uva spina? ― Non ho mai venduto di queste frutta, rispose il Calabrese, raddolcito e pensieroso!― Se non si dovessero sapere che le parole delle cose che si vendono, disse il ragazzo, come si potrebbe parlar di amore, di politica, ed altre cose del mondo? ― Hai ragione, hai ragione, mio buon ragazzotto, disse il Calabrese:―comprerò quel libro; ma bisogna che tu m’insegni come si fa a trovare le parole che uno vuole. (Bassetti 1887, 9–10)
(The same day that the new Italian English dictionary is put on sale, with the pronunciation clear and fully laid out in Italian under each word, published for the especial use of Italians in America by AUGUSTO BASSETTI, a boy from an Italian family but born in New York, who had gone around selling this dictionary, along with the two other books on the same method already published before, toward evening, having sold all the books save one dictionary, passing near a fruit stand, he began to tell the seller, calling out like he used to when at a young age he sold newspapers on the street, “Here’s a book that teaches you in a moment all the English words that you don’t yet know! Seventy-five soldi! “Get lost, get lost,” said the vendor, “don’t annoy me; it’s twelve years I am in America, and I know as much English as I need to know!”
“You're kidding yourself,” said the boy, according to the instructions that he had received from the author. “You do not yet know all the words! Look, how it’s said in English, il pipistrello [bat], the lodola [skylark], the usignuolo [nightingale]? “Get lost, I don’t sell birds, me; I sell fruit,” said the Calabrese, since that’s who it was. “Well, added the boy,” what do you call in English the melangrana [pomegranate], the nespola [medlar], the spina uva [gooseberry]? “I’ve never sold these fruits,” responded the Calabrese, softening and getting thoughtful! “Even if you didn’t have to know the words of things that are sold,” said the boy, “how could you speak of love, of politics and of other things of the world?” “You’re right, you’re right, my good little boy,” said the Calabrese. “I will buy this book, but I need you to teach me how it’s done, to find words that one wishes to know.”)
The boy proceeds to teach the Calabrese how to look up a word— if one is searching for usignolo, for example, they begin by finding “U” and then find the column for USI and proceed down the page with a finger until the word is found. “Usignolo—You see how I do it—Here it is.” After this lesson, the Calabrese speaks, praising the Bassetti method over those of the dictionaries and grammars one could buy in Italy, the books that were Bassetti’s competition:
Bravo, bravo; esclamò il Calabrese; ora capisco, perchè quando leggeva un libro inglese che mi fecero comprare a Napo- li prima di partire, e che lo pagai cinque lire, nessuno mi capi- va!―Appunto, disse il ragazzo; quel libro là v’insegnava l’inglese come si scrive, ma non ti diceva come si deve pronunziare.―Eccoti settantacinque soldi, disse il Calabrese; e prendi frutta dal mio banco quanta ne vuoi; tu mi hai fatto bene il Maestro!―Ci sono due altri libri di questo metodo, soggiunse il ragazzo; oggi li ho venduti tutti, ma domani ne avrò degli altri. ―Portameli qui domani, disse il Calabrese: io, stasera mostrerò questo libro qui alla mia moglie, che s’intende bene dei libri inglesi, e vedrò quel che mi dice! ―Come può la vostra Moglie, aver imparato l’inglese meglio di voi? domandò il ragazzo.―Ma lei non è italiana, rispose il Calabrese; io l’ho sposata in New York tre giorni dopo il mio arrivo. Ora abbiamo quattro bei figliuolini, e forse questi libri possono anche servire a far loro imparare bene l’italiano, che nessuno ce lo mostra quì in America; ed io non voglio che i miei figli non sappiano la lingua del bel paese dove è nato e cresciuto il loro padre. (Bassetti 1887, 10–11)
(“Bravo, bravo, now I understand why when you read an English grammar book that they made me buy in Naples before leaving, and I paid 5 lire for it, no one could understand me!” “Exactly,” says the boy, “that book will teach you English as it is written but not as it’s pronounced.” "Here you go, here’s your 75 soldi,” says the Calabrese. “And take as much fruit from my stand as you like, you have made me the teacher!” There are two other books of this method,” added the boy, “today I sold them all; but tomorrow I will have some more of them.” Bring me them here tomorrow,” said the Calabrese. “I will this evening show this book to my wife, who understands well English-language books, and I will see what she has to say to me! and perhaps these books can also serve to make my four sons learn Italian well; that’s something that no one has shown them here in America and I don’t want my sons not to know the language of the beautiful village where their father was born and raised.” [Emphasis added.])
He is happy to have a book with which in a moment he can find English words that he previously had not known and that includes pronunciation that empowers him to read by himself, without the help of anyone. Note how Bassetti also fuels consumer fears of scarcity, of missing out if people don’t buy his books now―the boy has sold out his stock of the grammars for the day.
Most of all, the Calabrese feels confident now that he can communicate orally with others, a feeling the imported Italian grammars evidently did not allow him (“now I understand why when you read an English grammar book that they made me buy in Naples before leaving . . . no one could understand me!”) (Bassetti 1887, 10).
The Calabrese teaches himself some words in English that are not exactly casual English: “My dear, my dear, how do you do this evening?” The hero’s wife is so “surprised and pleased” when her heretofore non-English-speaking husband of twelve years speaks English; she asks to be shown the grammar book:
La moglie in estasi per la sorpresa ed il piacere, si fece mostrare quel libro che aveva comprato; e da donna istruita come era vide subito che era un dizionario, grandemente utile per gli italiani, per lo più poco istruiti, per imparare da loro stessi le parole inglesi come si scrivono, e come si devono pro- nunziare, e chiamò al marito chi ne era l’autore.―Non lo so ― disse il Calabrese ― ma credo che sia un mio paesano. (Bassetti 1887, 12)
(The wife, in ecstasy for the surprise and the pleasure, makes him show her the book that he had bought; and the woman, cultured as she was, sees suddenly that it was a dictionary, greatly useful for Italians, for the least schooled, to learn the English words by themselves as they are written, and as they ought to be pronounced, and asked her husband who was its author: “I don’t know,” responds the Calabrese, “but I believe it is one of my countrymen.”)
His wife looks at the book that has given her husband his new- found articulation and wonders, “Are there Italians in New York who know how to write books like this one?” (12). “I think so,” says the Calabrian, “Italians are hardly all so ignorant as am I and all those whom you knew at the Five Points.” She replies:
Hai ragione! ... ―Dopo che sposai te, non vidi mai altri italiani, che quelli che hanno dimorato intorno a noi. Onesti, buoni sì; ma semplici e poco istruiti. Ma durante i primi anni dopo che arrivai in America, ne ho veduti degli altri tutto differenti. (Bassetti 1887, 12)
(You’re right … after I married you, I never saw other Italians other than those who lived around us. Honest, good, yes; but simple and little schooled. But during the first years after I arrived in America, I saw some others of them completely different.)
She looks at the name of the author - remember, Bassetti the novelist uses his own name in the novel as the author of the books the young boy who sells to the Calabrese buys - and is amazed, saying, “This is one of the Italians I first knew in New York when I was fourteen years old, that is, two years after I had arrived, impoverished, from Ireland.” As a young servant girl in the house of wealthy New Yorkers, she met Bassetti, who was giving language lessons to an aspiring opera singer.14 The young lady of the house was studying music hoping to become the prima donna in New York, so “she was taking [in addition to music lessons] lessons in Italian language from another Italian,” a friend (evidently Bassetti) of the music teacher. Because the boy who sold Bassetti’s dictionary gets copies of them from the author to sell, the boy knows how to find him, and so Bassetti himself appears in the following chapter of the book, coming to dinner at their home on the following Saturday.
The author speaks in Italian to the eldest of the Calabrese’s sons, eleven years old, asking him if and where he went to school. Our hero’s son understands everything Bassetti says “but responds promptly in English perfectly correct in grammar and in pronunciation. …[T]he Calabrese for his part immediately responds, in mock severity”:
―Il Signore ti parla in Italiano, e tu gli rispondi in inglese! Ti farò io studiare la lingua del tuo papá, e ti farò io stesso il maestro. Copierai ogni giorno una pagina dell’italiano, che c’è in quei due libretti scritti da questo signore e lo studierai a memoria. Dell’inglese e della pronunzia che c’è sotto tu non ne hai bisogno; ma fan per me, che non so ancora bene l’inglese. Quando tu avrai copiato e studiato a memoria l’italiano che c’è in quei due libretti, tu saprai parlare e scrivere l’italiano tanto bene quanto l’inglese. Perchè tu sai già molto dell’italiano, ma non lo sai bene, e resti impicciato a parlarlo!
(Bassetti 1887, 16)
(The gentleman [i.e., Bassetti] speaks to you in Italian, and you respond to him in English! I will make you study the language of your papa, and I will make you yourself be the teacher. Copy, every day, a page of Italian that is in these two little books, written by this man, and you will commit it to memory. You needn’t write the English and the pronunciation that is under [each Italian sentence] for yourself; but do it for me who does not know English very well yet. When you will have copied and committed to memory what is in these two little books, you will know how to speak and write Italian as well as you do English. Because you already know much Italian, but you don’t know it well, you remain hampered in speaking it.)
What preceded this discussion of the impact of Bassetti’s books was the revelation by the Calabrese’s wife of her bitterly hard life in Ireland and as a servant girl before her marriage. What follows it is an extended tale about the Calabrese as a bandit and how his life of adventure ended. With Bassetti’s dictionary in hand, our hero is miraculously enabled to speak in English to his wife so that she understands him, apparently for the first time in twelve years. The nameless ex-bandit tells this story to those assembled in his house. We are given to understand that the couple’s love and their marriage are deepened and enriched by his ability to speak English.
Bassetti is assuring the reader that those who gain access to language because of his books will have an almost incalculable gain for their efforts; this applies both to the poor Italian immigrant who has thought for twelve years he could get away without learning more than a few words of English and to his Irish wife, whose husband’s first English words produce a tremendous outpouring of her own history.
What is clearly one of Bassetti’s major selling points for his grammars and dictionary is proposed in his first novel: that access to language—both one’s own language and that of their adopted country—enables one to open up the past as never before. Husband and wife declare that they never heard these stories of each other’s past lives. Access to language equals access to the past as well as the practical benefits of an improved work life—the Calabrese can now sell less-common fruits like the pomegranate and the gooseberry, and he also has the ability to learn the language he can use for love and politics, as the persuasive boy salesman explains to him.
Nor do the benefits of such access accrue only to the married couple: their sons, steeped in English, but with only a hearing (not speaking or writing) knowledge of Italian, will now get to know Italian far better if they follow Bassetti’s instructions and copy his sentences in longhand on the blank pages that his grammars so conveniently provide.
Finally, implicitly if not explicitly, access to language makes possible not only access to one’s history but also a release from the burdens of the past. There is no obvious connection between the Calabrese’s utterance, “My dear—how do you do this evening?” and his telling the story of his bandit life in an all-night long recital. Yet the first thing leads to the next. Access to language provides perspective about life: we cannot know why this former bandit decides to lead a quiet life selling fruit after such an exciting early career until we hear how his bandit’s existence began to lose its glow when the political climate in Calabria changed as the Risorgimento took hold. Similarly, there’s nothing in our hero’s awkward English sentence that should obviously lead to the wife telling the story of her life in Ireland and as a poor servant girl in New York City. The coincidence is brought to light, rather, by her husband’s recently acquired facility with his adopted language.
CONCLUSION
Bassetti’s new works did not dominate the market for long. He is listed as a bookseller in the Guida italiana e calendario universale del Progresso Italo-Americano (Guida italiana 1893), with a Post Office box in place of an address (indeed, in the 1890 New York Police Census, he is no longer among those living at 20 Vandam Street in Manhattan); and the Catalogo generale della biblioteca gratuita (General catalog of the free library) (Catalogo 1896) reveals no trace of his grammars or dictionary (or novels), though it does show the grammar of one of his successors, Francesco Frugone, the Nuovo libro per imparare l’Inglese; but the listings are mostly made up of some old standard imports, like the Ollendorff Gramatica Inglese.
It is also clear from advertisements that Bassetti’s new kind of grammar and dictionary did not totally supplant the more traditional ones: Even after nearly five years of his seemingly productive advertisements for his own works, the same imported grammars and bilingual dictionaries for Italian speakers wanting to learn English were still being advertised. Indeed, perhaps to draw readers’ attention as was not previously necessary, such works have their own sections in an ad in L’Eco d’Italia on April 6, 1889, a day when Bassetti’s ad does not appear. And as if to suggest that by the middle of 1890 Bassetti had learned that if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, his own ad announced, in addition to his two grammars, the dictionary and his two novels, the availability of “[a]nche gran varietà di libri Italiani—Catalogo Gratis,” (also a great variety of Italian books—free catalog). Or perhaps enough Italian immigrants by this point had advanced in their reading of standard Italian that they could now make use of more literary works in Italian, whether popular or classical.
Much work needs to be done to further analyze the evidence from advertisements and otherwise of both imported and U.S.- produced grammars and dictionaries and their social impetus and impact. So, too, more bibliographical analysis of these works is necessary. But it is clear that Bassetti’s grammars, dictionary, and novels, though they seemed to be at their height for only five years, provide new insights into how Italians learned Italian to connect to their country of origin while learning English to connect to their adopted country. Bassetti’s work spawned imitators in the half-dozen or so such grammars and dictionaries that appeared over the next couple of decades, all works that enabled Italian immigrants to create their own culture as they learned both English and Italian.
* From This Hope Sustains the Scholar: Essays in Tribute to the Work of Robert Viscusi, ed. Siân Gibby, Joseph Sciorra, Anthony Julian Tamburri (New York: Bordighera, 2021), pp. 89-113.
NOTES
1. Paolo Bossange of 49 Walker Street in New York City was selling them by April 19, 1862.
2. Though L’Eco commenced publication in 1850, microfilm copies of it at the New York Public Library (NYPL) begin at 1862 and contain only seven years of issues of L’Eco before 1876. Note that as early as the 1820s in New York City, an Italian émigré (and former librettist for Mozart) named Lorenzo da Ponte had imported Italian books, but the bookstore established by him and his brother did not survive the 1830s. And here I must thank the NYPL for its generous appointment of me as a Wertheim Research Scholar from September 1, 2018, through the present, because it gave me the space, time, and privileges of perusing its extraordinary collection of U.S. Italian newspapers and books in a private reading room and without restriction.
3. This essay is offered in loving homage to my two best teachers about Italian American literature and history in all their manifestations: first, Robert Viscusi, my earliest and, until his death on January 19, 2020, still the best teacher; and, second, the late Francesco Durante, whose premature death (August 3, 2019, at age sixty-six) leaves me more personally bereft than I can say, as well as being a very great blow for Italian American studies. Even while the Italian American Writers Association (IAWA), which Bob co-founded, rightly promoted new Italian American writing, Bob also doggedly reminded us about Italian literature’s beginnings that we must study our Italian-language history if we are to adequately understand how Italian American literature defined and shaped the culture of Italian Americans and Americans generally. That work with Bob led to my meeting and developing a deep friendship with Francesco, starting with the latter’s gracious permission for me to mine his spectacular draft bibliography in 1999 to include many of his bibliographic entries of U.S. Italian-language imprints he would first publish in 2001, the year after publication of the IAWA Bibliography of the Italian American Book (Gardaphé and Periconi 2000). If there is anything useful in what I have to say here, it is due to the guidance of Bob and Francesco.
4. Readers may know of other attempts to address this and other questions raised here, but I have found none. Neither Bassetti himself nor any of his works referenced in this essay are to be found in either the text or bibliography of the “bible” of early Italian American literature in Italian, namely, Durante’s 2005 Storia e letteratura degli italiani negli Stati Uniti d’America.
5. L’Eco d’Italia, August 30, 1876 (J. P. Roberts’s Dizionario), was the first I found, to which was added on September 16 of that year John Millhouse’s Nuovo dizionario italiano ed inglese. I found neither these nor any other such dictionary in any advertisement with lists of books available for sale before this time, between 1862 and 1876, even when the printed list in newspaper ads approached 200 works.
6. Trow’s New York City Directory for various years (New York: Trow City Directory Company). Also, in some years, there is a Wilson’s Street & Avenue Directory, which Trow’s seems to have replaced.
7. This correspondence between Bassetti and the opera singer can be found in the Archivio di Stato di Siena (busta 106), as referenced at the SIUSA (Sistema Informativo Unificato per le Sopraintendenze Archivistiche);https://siusa.archivi.be-iculturali.it/cgibin/pagina.pl?TipoPag=comparc&Chiave=325194&RicProgetto=personalita (accessed December 2019). Thanks go to Professor Sergio Luzzatto for locating this information and sending it to me. Piccolomini’s U.S. tour is recounted in Richard Grant White’s Opera in New York (1882, 203); this chronology, pointed out to me by my friend and fellow Grolier Club member Mark Tomasko, as well as the address box of the letters from the Siena archives noting only her name (i.e., without address), makes it clear the letters were not sent to Piccolomini in Italy, but given to her backstage in New York. That she retained these lettters and carried them from New York back to Italy, rather than discard them, especially when she was apparently planning to and got married the following year, suggests there was some returned affection.
8. See New York Sun for these quotations; see, also, New York Herald and New-York Daily Tribune. All three of these reviews of the opera and Bassetti’s lecture are presented at some length in https://www.musicingotham.org/event/98681 (accessed December 2019). Grazie ancora to Professor Sergio Luzzatto for his sleuthing in finding these quotations.
9. See Adam Smith (1813) for an explanation of how modern capitalism reflected such behavior. The availability of Italian books in New York before that primarily at the offices of the newspapers (Il Progresso and L’Eco d’Italia) represented an older way of selling that would soon be completely displaced by Italian books being hawked on the streets and sold by outdoor vendors. See also Periconi (2018).
10. See Peter Martin (2019), for a discussion of why Webster and others felt in the 1820s America that Americans needed to have their own home-grown dictionary to replace later editions of Samuel Johnson’s, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755).
11. For the gradual rise in literacy in Southern Italy in this era, see Carlo M. Cipolla (1969).
12. At first Bassetti’s ads appear in both rival newspapers. By September 1, 1885, the book becomes available for purchase at the offices of Il Progresso itself, at 2-4 Centre Street, Figure 2. Naturally, this outlet does not appear in ads in the L’Eco.
13. This first novel of Bassetti’s (1887) is a work purporting to be one of a series or library of books titled “Romanzo Storico Contemporaneo,” similar to the series titles that Italian publishers who exported books to the United States conventionally used, such as the “Biblioteca Amena” of Treves or the “Biblioteca Romantica Illustrata” of Sonzogno. Bassetti’s two novels were reprinted in 2018 by Facsimile Publisher in Delhi, India, www.facsimilepublisher.com (Gyan Books).
14. Though this seems to come out of left field, in fact it does not, given Bassetti’s background, discussed in the biographical section.
WORKS CITED
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Bassetti, Augusto. 1886a. Secondo libro del manuale per imperare la lingua inglese senza maestro, contenente storiette amene ed il segretario spedito di Augusto Bassetti. New York: n.p. Hathi Trust. http://hdl.handle.net/ 2027/uiuc.6772818 (accessed October 30, 2019).
Bassetti, Augusto. 1886b. Nuovo dizionario Italiano ed inglese, colla pronuzia segnata chiara ed in pieno, con ortografia italiana sotto ogni parola, per uso speciale degli italiani in America, di Augusto Bassetti. New York: n.p. NUC Pre-1956 Imprints, Vol. 38, 480, item 0175427.
Bassetti, Augusto. 1887. Romanzetto storico contemporaneo intitolato Amor focoso: ossia avventure di un ex-brigante Calabrese in America. New York: n.p.; tipi di J.H. Carbone & Company, Reprint 2018. Facsimile Publisher/Gyan Books, Delhi, India. NUC Pre-1956 Imprints, Vol. 38, 480, item 0175428.
Bassetti, Augusto. 1889. Il mago delle Alpi: ossia l’anello incantato. New York: n.p. Reprint 2018. Facsimile Publisher, Delhi, India. Library of Congress control number 16014220.
Cipolla, Carlo M. 1969. Literacy and Development in the West. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 19, 94–97, 127.
Durante, Francesco. 2005. Italoamericana: Storia e letteratura degli italiani negli Stati Uniti d’America. Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori.
Durante, Francesco. 2018. Letter to the author, October 30.
Gardaphé, Fred, and James J. Periconi. 2000. The Italian American Writers Association (IAWA) Bibliography of the Italian American Book. New York: Shea and Haarman Publishing and the Italian American Writers Association.
Guida italiana e calendario universale del Progresso Italo-American per gli Stati Uniti, il Canada, il Mexico, etc. [sic] Dono ai suoi abbonati per l’anno 1893. 1893. New York: Tipografia del Progresso Italo-Americano, HathiTrust Digital Library. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id= mdp.39015027783607&view=1up&seq=5 (accessed December 15, 2019).Il Progresso Italo-Americano. 1886. February 20, 4.
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Martin, Peter. 2019. The Dictionary Wars. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Millhouse, John. 1853. Nuovo dizionario inglese-italiano e italiano-inglese con la pronuncia segnata a norma della grammatica analitica. Milan: F. Bracciforti.
New York Sun. 1867. “Amusements: Interesting Concerts,” April 8, 4. Periconi, James J. 2018. “Italian American Book Publishing and Bookselling.” In The Routledge History of Italian Americans, edited by William J. Connell and Stanislao G. Pugliese. New York and London: Routledge.
Roberts, J. P. 1867. Dizionario italiano-inglese e inglese–italiano ad uso di ambedue le nazioni. Florence: G. Barbera Ed.
Smith, Adam. 1813. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Edinburgh: J. Hay.
Trasciati, Mary Ann. 2009. “Letter Writing in an Italian Immigrant Community: A Transatlantic Tradition.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 39.1(January): 73–94.
Viscusi, Robert. 2006. Buried Caesars and other Secrets of Italian American Writing. Albany: State University of New York Press, 19.
White, Richard Grant. 1882. Opera in New York. New York: The Century Company.