Prolog to Scripophily: La Goulue    I suppose it all started with the copy of Toulouse-Lautrec's poster of La Goulue at the Moulin Rouge hanging on my wall opposite the map of Europe. I was a teenager, living at home in Hollis, Queens, and commuting first to Brooklyn Tech, and then to Queens College. Now, in 2014, that I just a few months ago decorated some walls in an area of my Manhattan apartment with a contemporary manifestation of my interest in travel and language, I reflect back to see that that's just what I was doing in those late-teen years as well.

There was a large vestibule outside my room with a lot of wall space. Over on the right wall, I'd acquired an inexpensive map of Europe that I'd put up with backing tape. It was large, easily two meters/yards wide, and I'd see it as a reminder of having traveled to Europe for the first time in 1957 at age 17, and as an indicator of all the travel territory that still lay ahead.

I'd also acquired somewhere an inexpensive copy of what probably is Toulouse-Lautrec's most famous poster for the Moulin Rouge, and also the very first one he did for them, the one featuring La Goulue and Valentin dancing, with Valentin as an almost-silhouette (note T-Lautrec signature at lower left). Although I'd started German at Brooklyn Tech and Spanish at Queens College, it was in this period that I started teaching myself French, to form the triad of my principal second languages, and this poster, I suppose in reflection now, was a visual manifestation to myself and to any passer-by of my interest in language and languages.

That would seem to end the topic of the "then" of wall art, so we can get on to the "now" wall art, but, as we've seen with actual travel, it's the "post-trip" research that really gets to the soul of the matter, so let's hold off for a while on 2014 and find out more about the poster.

The Moulin Rouge ("Red Mill"—it has a red windmill on its roof) was founded in 1889, the same year as the opening of the Eiffel Tower and of the Exposition Universelle, the Paris World's Fair of that year, the latter two having been meant to commemorate the French Revolution of 1789. The Moulin Rouge is located in the Pigalle neighborhood at the foot of the hill that Montmartre is on. Also in the Quartier Pigalle was the studio of Toulouse-Lautrec and a residence of Van Gogh, and later, one of Picasso. Today's Moulin Rouge (Photo by Steve) is a tourist trap, er, tourist attraction, but it's a lot more fun to think back to late 19C-early 20C Paris, when the Belle Époque Moulin Rouge, here in 1900, was instead a brassy, racy, neighborhood dance hall, bistro and cabaret, and was the spiritual birthplace of the can-can.

The Moulin Rouge employed a number of entertainers, which attracted people from everywhere, including Toulouse-Lautrec, who made a number of both posters and paintings of its entertainers, including La Goulue and Valentin. This one from 1895, today in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, shows the two of them in another pose (TL at lower right), and this more conventional 1892 painting shows La Goulue arriving at the Moulin Rouge with two women, and is in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. But we want to get to our famous poster in question, so, for the sake of convenience and ready reference, copy and paste this link in another window to study it further:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Toulouse-Lautrec_-_Moulin_Rouge_-_La_Goulue.jpg

This famous poster was made as a lithograph in four colors, and is in a private collection today (but see postscript below). It's large, very roughly two meters/yards high and one meter/yard wide, as was my copy. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was from a family that came from two noble families descended from the Count of Toulouse and from the Count of Lautrec. There was extensive inbreeding in this family—his parents were first cousins and two grandmothers were sisters. It's considered likely that that was a factor that caused him, as a young teenager, to fracture both thigh bones due to a genetic disorder, probably involving osteoporosis. They didn't heal properly, and his legs stopped growing, so that he essentially had boy's legs on a man's body. His disability led to alcoholism and an early death. He had been commissioned by the Moulin Rouge in 1891 to create the advertisement in poster form that launched his postermaking career and that made him famous overnight. He did the poster for the two-year-old Moulin Rouge at age 27 and died in 1901 at age 37. In the poster La Goulue was 25 and her dancing partner, Valentin, was 48, twice her age.

Look at the masterful use of three 2-D layers to give a 3-D feeling. The crowd in the background, in which Toulouse-Lautrec often included himself, is in true silhouette. In the foreground, we see Valentin doing his highly stylized dance in what can best be described as a semi-silhouette, in which some features are still discernable. But La Goulue is the center of attention in the mid-ground in color, doing the can-can, which in early days, was done individually, rather than as part of a chorus line. (It had also been done by men.)

Valentin's real name was Jules Renaudin, and it's believed he inhabited two worlds, working as a respected wine merchant by day, but at night exercising his passion to dance, which he did in cabarets, especially the Moulin Rouge. He reportedly loved dancing so much that he refused pay. He did his stylized dancing under the full stage name of Valentin le Désossé, or Valentin the Boneless. He was both a dancer and a contortionist, and, typical of contortionists, had a congenital medical syndrome that gave him increased hypermobility of the joints and hyperextensibility. He was tall and slender and could perform difficult contortions and dance moves with grace and beauty, as though bones did not impede him as he changed positions. His appearance was also unusual and amusing, wearing a black frock coat and dented top hat and affecting the appearance of a starving artist. Since he wore black when he danced, you can see why he was immortalized by Toulouse-Lautrec in black, in that semi-silhouette. He was partners with La Goulue at the Moulin Rouge from 1890 to 1895, when she left for other pursuits, and at which point he retired. He died 12 years later.

But the star of the show was La Goulue (gu.LÜ), whose real name was Louise Weber (vé.BÉR, é as in "café"), here circa 1890, at about age 24. She had been a laundress, but in 1880, at age 14, she'd started dancing in small clubs around Paris and became a popular personality. People liked her as a dancer, but also liked her audacious behavior. For instance, as she danced among the crowd, she'd do a high kick and knock off a customer's hat. She'd also often pick up a customer's glass and drink it down while passing his table, which earned her the affectionate nickname of La Goulue, or, The Glutton. As her (short-lived) fame was on the rise, she posed for photographers and painters, including Auguste Renoir.

As a further example of her audacious behavior, once, when she was working at the Jardin de Paris, the Prince of Wales was present, who was the future Edward VII and son of Queen Victoria. Using the familiar tu form, she shouted out to him (with my translation):

She was then hired by the Moulin Rouge and taken under the wing of Jules Renaudin (Valentin) and they formed a dance team, which was well liked and became well known. They were instant stars, but she stole the show with her outrageous conduct. She became a permanent headliner as a can-can dancer and became the highest-paid entertainer of her day.

As for the time line, after dancing in small clubs for ten years from age 14, she was teamed with Valentin at the Moulin Rouge from 1890 to 1895, when she would have been 24-29, so this period would have been her glory years, or—her fifteen minutes of fame. As so often happens in life, and most visibly in the entertainment industry, she was now rich and famous, and decided she could do better by striking out on her own. She called it quits with Valentin and the Moulin Rouge in 1895 and invested quite a bit of money into fêtes foraines / traveling road shows. She then decided to become a dompteuse de lions / lion tamer, and later married a prestidigitateur / magician, who also became a lion tamer, and they worked in animal shows and circuses. But at one point, they both were attacked by lions and abandoned that endeavor. She then became an actress and appeared at small, local theaters. All in all, she invested quite a bit of money in these ventures, but she'd made the mistake of thinking that her fans, who lined up for tickets at the Moulin Rouge, would follow her. But they didn't take to these new venues, and her business ventures were dismal failures. Then her husband was killed in 1914 in WWI, and her son died in 1923 at age 27. She disappeared from the public eye, suffered from depression, sank into alcoholism, and dissipated the small fortune she'd made as a dancer. She went back to Paris in 1928 and moved into a roulotte / trailer.

She wandered the streets and sold peanuts, cigarettes, and matches on a street corner near the Moulin Rouge. She'd become haggard and obese, and few recognized her. She died after a year back in Paris, in 1929, and was buried in the Paris suburb of Pantin, in the Cimetière de Pantin, but later her remains were transferred to the Cimetière de Montmartre.

Living in Paris, she was now known as Madame Louise. She was surrounded by society rejects, and gathered together sick and aged circus animals, as well as a bevy of dogs and cats. She did stop into bistros where some people did recognize her, and she did autograph photos. Both Jean Gabin and Maurice Chevalier had her come up on stage at the Moulin Rouge several times each to present her to a younger public.

But her multiple illnesses caught up with her, and on 29 January 1929, in Lariboisière Hospital, La Goulue died. The article says: "LA GOULUE" IS DEAD -- Louise Weber is dead . . . She who was "La Goulue" and who had her hour of celebrity [read: 15 minutes of fame] in Montmartre passed away miserably yesterday at Lariboisière Hospital.

I also have this amazing YouTube video of Madame Louise remembering the past. It's only thirty seconds long, so you'll want to see it more than once. It's from the late 1920's, so it's silent, and the single intertitle says, with my translation:

"Parfois un reporter s'aventure chez une ancienne 'gloire'. . ."
"Sometimes a reporter stumbles across an ancient 'glory'. . ."

Voilà La Goulue. French Wikipedia also had more on the burial information. When she was buried in Pantin in 1929, almost no one was there to bear witness except for a single representative of the Moulin Rouge. But then it was thanks to her arrière-petit-fils / great grandson Michel Souvais, whose name you saw below the video, that her ashes were exhumed from Pantin in 1992, and, on the order of the then mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac, they were transferred to Montmartre (Photo by Morillond). Click to read the inscription:

(As the original can-can, danced by an individual, either female or male, developed instead into a dance for a full female chorus line, the name was extended to "French Can-Can", even in French, though not hyphenated.)

Her great-grandson Michel Souvais read the eulogy. The ceremony had full media coverage, and was attended by two thousand people, including La Toya Jackson and other celebrities. "C'est la Goulue qui inspira Lautrec!" said the elderly actress Arletty, "It was La Goulue who inspired Lautrec!"

Before we leave this Prolog in order to get back to 2014, you must watch this 3:11 YouTube video that summarizes the story of La Goulue. Look for Valentin and for the later circus venue. And all this was from a poster on my wall years ago, meant to show my interest in French and other languages.

Postscript    The very day of this posting, by chance I came across this news item dated 22 May 2014 on a website called Paul Fraser Collectibles:

"Housecleaning"    Now move ahead with a similar situation for 2014, a desire for an at-home display of one's interests, which turned out to involve a "housecleaning" of two apartments. The situation arose gradually. After China, I'd made the decision to sell my Florida apartment after two decades, but prices are low at the moment, so it's being rented out for the time being. To arrange for this, I spent the month of January this year in Tampa, taking a roomette on Amtrak's Silver Star round trip (inland route on map). It's a one-night trip each way and was quite enjoyable, particularly on the return trip when I had some nice, informative conversations with the gentleman across the hall, followed by meals in the dining car. Taking the Silver Star reflected back on the time in 1990 when we went to Tampa for the first time, in the same way, and first purchased a previous, smaller apartment. Enterprise in downtown Tampa picked me up at the station for my month's car rental, during which time I met with friends and visited a number of my favorite restaurants. But mainly, since the condo was to be rented, then sold, furnished, I collected items from the condo I wanted to keep and shipped them to New York in three large boxes (!!!)

Back in New York I was then obliged to do a thorough end-to-end housecleaning there, both because one was long overdue, and also to make room for the new items. Quite a number of trinkets I no longer needed were contributed to the gift shop at the Merchant's House Museum, following their open request, and I still ended up with three oversized bags, plus boxes, that a charity came to pick up. Good riddance!

However, this left, by design, some open wall space in my entry hall plus the half-bath adjacent on its left on entering the apartment, and blank walls need filling. Around the apartment, most walls have prints connected with travel, many involving France and Italy that I had framed by a local gallery, the World Trade Gallery, plus some pictures of Germany, and the picture of the embroidered scene given to us in China, in Suzhou. There are also objets d'art reflecting travel, not the least of which are the two Chinese Guardian Lions on either side of the cloisonné egg. But what was there that reflected an interest in languages? Virtually nothing.

Seeking Solutions    Many people like to put up posters in other languages advertising travel or commercial products or venues such as the Moulin Rouge, but that was not my inclination, nor was there enough room. Even just a couple of posters would have overwhelmed the two small adjacent spaces. So what to do?

By chance I happened to be walking past the World Trade Gallery near Trinity Church that had done my framing a decade and a half earlier to see what was new there. Perhaps they had some frameable maps of travel or even of the local Wall Street area? I struck up a conversation with Doug, the next generation of the previous owners, as to the possibilities, but good maps are awfully expensive and hard to come by, anyway.

But he had one item for sale, a very large, framed stock certificate in German. While I didn't care for that particular one, I asked Doug, and he said such items were very popular. As a matter of fact, some time earlier, a local collector had given Doug a very large number of certificates to frame and then sell on consignment. I'd discovered my solution.

However, it was NOT a totally new idea, because it had brought back a thought from perhaps a dozen years or more earlier. I had enjoyed going to a Russian restaurant on Restaurant Row near Times Square called the Firebird. Its particular conceit was quite unique. It was in the style of a pre-revolutionary Russian gentleman's townhouse dated 1912. The façade outside, the bar, the library, the townhouse dining room upstairs for private parties, all followed this beautiful style, which added to the good quality of the food. There was also a large stained-glass interior window of a firebird, since Stravinsky had written his Firebird in 1910, right in this time period. But the most memorable feature for me was located in the rest rooms, of all places. All around the rest rooms were framed, prerevolutionary Russian stock and bond certificates, including prerevolutionary Russian spellings in Cyrillic. It was not only attractive, it added greatly to the period atmosphere. This was the actual inspiration for the project I instituted, and I'd be using a half-bath for part of my own mini-collection as well!

Earlier this year, on two occasions, I went back with friends to the Firebird after an absence of ten years—sometimes one just forgets about good restaurants. The experience was just as nice, but I was surprised to see that the collection of certificates was diminished. There were almost none in the rest room, just generic pictures, although now the bar had a few framed certificates. My waiter was new, and couldn't explain this, but the headwaiter had been there over ten years, and he knew what had happened. They'd been stolen! Over time, one after another had disappeared, so that they ended putting them in the bar area where someone could keep an eye on them. This at least tells me that the concept of framed stock certificates, particularly ones in other languages, appeals to people—and I hope, not only thieves.

Then, just now as I write this, I looked online, and the Firebird Russian restaurant, after all those many years, is no more. Sic Transit. Since I hadn't been there for ten years, I'm certainly glad I went twice this year. It's now ironic that there are no more antique framed Russian stock certificates on Restaurant Row, but I have two in my mini-collection, although they're among those in the entry hall, with others there and in the half-bath.

I looked online for antique stock and bond certificates, but I had to set parameters, first as to language. The purpose of this mini-collection was beyond just collecting antique certificates, it was to present samples of languages other than English that I know, at least to some reasonable degree. That does NOT include languages such as Chinese or Japanese, which we've had great fun playing around with extensively recently, but which are languages I do not "know". So the languages that ARE involved are also quite specific. Beyond the triad of my principal second languages, German, Spanish, and French, I've worked with five other second languages, either in international coursework or on my own, or both: Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, Dutch, and Russian, and I'd want at least one sample of each of these eight languages.

Searching online, I found I needed to further clarify that parameter. Many European certificates were issued either bilingually, or even trilingually, looking for investors in other countries. I remember at least one at the Firebird that was both in Russian and French. Interesting, but I wanted just the native language of the country involved, such as a Russian certificate just in Russian. In addition, it had to be from the country itself, not from a colony. I think I recall seeing a certificate in Portuguese that involved building a railroad in Africa. Any Portuguese certificate would have to be for Portugal itself, and in Portuguese exclusively.

While that settled the language paramater, it became obvious that I need a second parameter beyond language, since I came across beautiful certificates online on many subjects. It then struck me that, blending in my favorite travel modes, I would only look into certificates on the topic of rail 'n' sail. However, I found that there are far fewer ship items of interest than rail items. I also found that the largest number of rail certificates available are in English and deal with present or former US railroads. Nice, but not for me, as failing the second-language parameter.

So with the two parameters in mind, I was ready to look into the collecting field, although on a very limited basis. I entered the field, got what I wanted, and left the field, all within a few months earlier this year. While many can make this a long-term hobby, I just wanted to fill some wall space with a manifestation of language, plus rail 'n' sail.

So what do I come up with when reading about the field of collecting documents but a new word, scripophily. It's branch of numismatics, but deals with collecting stock-and-bond certificates. A person interested in it is a scripophilist. It's a field of interest that came into its own about 1970, when the name was coined. The second part is related to the same Greek root as in bibliophile, or Anglophile, but the first part is English. Scrip (not script, which is writing), dates from about 1762 and is probably the second syllable of "(sub)scrip(tion) receipt". It originally meant "certificate of a right to receive something", such as a share of stock. By 1790, it also meant "certificate issued as currency", such as during wartime, or issued by a company to workers living in a company town. In either case, scripophily is the collecting of certificates representing value, such as stock and bond certificates.

As I looked into the topic, I could see the backstories that made it of particular interest. It can be the study of financial history, including successes, acquisitions, and failures. For me, it was just the study of history in general. But the field will have to be satisfied with antique certificates, since today, more and more stocks and bonds are issued electronically, and are recorded via book entry, meaning fewer paper certificates are issued as a percentage of actual stock issued.

But then an epiphany struck me as to replacing the legacy of La Goulue with stock certificates. My language teaching career lasted 28 years, starting in 1964, at the John Jay School in Westchester. Before that, I'd had two short-lived "in between" jobs . For both of them I was drawn from Queens to Lower Manhattan, which in reflection, was when I first began to love the historic neighborhood, and is why I live here. For the first half of 1961, between Queens College and Middlebury's German Summer School followed by the year in Mainz, I got a temporary job with the odd-lot brokerage firm of DeCoppet & Doremus at 72 Wall Street, a company now long since gone. It was just a clerking job, I suppose you could glorify what I did by saying I was a Receiver of Stock Certificates, but that just meant I was a clerk who tallied certificates as they came in and passed them on to the bookkeepers. Still, until the epiphany, I never associated this history with my current venture. Then, after the year in Mainz and after we got married, for the equivalent of the academic year 1962-1963, I worked in the neighborhood again, just steps away from Wall Street and Trinity Church, at American Express on 65 Broadway as a translator of French (mostly) and German. American Express has now also moved from that address, but curiously, they're in the World Financial Center even closer to me in Battery Park City. For those two times I worked in this neighborhood, I'd wander it during lunch hours and became fully enamored of its history going back to its Dutch days as Nieuw Amsterdam. Everything does seem to be connected.

Metaphors for Train Route Lines    I carefully avoided using either R-word in that title because that's just what we want to summarize. We did this once before, but this is a slightly different treatment, adjusted for the needs of this posting.

When trains were first developed in the early-to-mid-19C, all languages needed words to explain the phenomenon. We analyzed the word "train" recently, but what about the system that the train is a part of? Various metaphors were developed, and language interest compels us to look into them. Here are the words in our eight languages, plus English:

The basic part of the metaphors describes what's on the ground. Before trains there were only dirt roads or (road)ways used by stagecoaches (and horsemen) between towns, so that was used as the basis for all metaphors. But how?

English is unusual here, having gone down two roads/ways (very weak pun intended), since it has two words. In Britain and elsewhere, "railway" is used. In North America, "railroad" is the most common, but many railroads have used "railway" in their name, such as the Santa Fe Railway.

The equivalent of "road", that is, "lengthy piece of land", is also used in FR chemin, PO caminho, RU doroga, but the equivalent of "way", that is, the directionality of that land (as in, "this is the way"), is used in IT via, DU weg, SW väg. Using a different root (as in Autobahn), German Bahn also implies directionality. I've always understood SP carril as meaning "lane", both in the sense of a small road and in the sense of a highway lane, so that would seem to fall into the first group of "road".

But the secondary part of each metaphor becomes more colorful. What characterizes this road or way? The answer goes in two clear directions, that which guides trains down this road, or way, or the material from which these guides are made.

The second is the easier. Most names use the word "iron" (and not "steel", showing the metaphor is a sign of its times): GE Eisen, FR fer, PO ferro, SP ferro-, IT ferro (think "ferrous"), SW járn. Russian does, too, but needs a little explaining. The word for "iron" is железо / zhelyeza (note for future reference that, in the Cyrillic spelling железо, both E's are alike). Then железо changes into an adjective form, specifically in the feminine, железная / zhelyeznaya--but it's still "iron".

The remaining words refer to the guides made out of iron, the track. That's what DU spoor means, and I now learn that the alternate meaning of SP carril is also track. Which brings us down to English "rail". It first referred to a wooden stick between posts, such as a guard rail or rail(ing), which it still does, although today they are usually made of metal. Secondly, this wooden rail was used to make complete fences (Lincoln split rails), and we still have rail fences, and they're still made of wood. Thirdly, these wooden rails were laid down for transport, to guide carts along a trackway, such as in a mine, and these, then, also were replaced by metal. So we have another technological update, wooden rails becoming metal tracks, but maintaining the same name.

We'll see these names on the certificates to follow, but what's the upshot of these metaphors? Both of the English words and the Dutch word mean literally trackway, and all the others mean literally ironway or iron road. However, the alternate meaning of SP ferrocarril mentioned above would then be iron track, which is a fusion of the two images that doesn't mention the road the track is on. Which imagery do you prefer? I prefer the English and Dutch imagery as being more accurate, but the other images are certainly very vivid.

European Rail 'n' Sail Certificates Online    So there we have it. It was at this point that I began do delve online for antique certificates that fit my parameters, but at this point, only to become informed as to just what it was I was working with. I found a number I want to display now. These just happened to fit the bill, and happened to be linkable online. These are not the ones I purchased, which will come in the next posting.

I discovered immediately that finding an interesting certificate online immediately led to searching about its history. Where was the company? What was the country in question like in that time period? The more I looked, the more interesting everything became.

Let's make it clear that we're all on the same page. Stocks (or shares), owned by stockholders (or shareholders) are units of ownership in a company, making a shareholder a kind of minor partner. Bonds, held by bondholders, are loans to the company, making a bondholder a kind of lender, or banker. That's close enough for our purposes.

We'll start with bond certificates whose pictures just happen to be available online. This is a certificate in Spanish for an 1887 Spanish bond. Click to see it a little larger, but the immediate impression is the spectacular vignette (picture), not only artistically, but because of all the rail imagery. It's a great example of the engraver's art.

Sometimes certificates are in an almost untouched state, either because they were never successfully issued or were handled with care and never cashed in. Other certificates are cancelled, either with a stamping them, as above here, or with holes punched through the signatures, as you also see here. This is not a major problem in enjoying the artwork, language, or history.

As you can see, this is a bilingual certificate, in both Spanish and French, so would not be one I'd have been interested for my purposes, even if it had been for sale. But then let's get to the crux of the matter, the company:

Compañía de los Ferrocarriles de Tarragona a Barcelona y Francia
Compagnie des Chemins de Fer de Tarragone à Barcelone et France
Companyia dels Ferrocarrils de Tarragona a Barcelona i França

It was known by the initials TBF, for obvious reasons. You can easily find the several words for "railroad" and also note that "bond" is SP obligación, FR obligation; in Catalán it's obligació. In normal English the name of the company would be phrased differently, as the "Tarragona, Barcelona, and France Rail Company". The first two versions are listed on the certificate if you can read them, first Spanish, then French. But this entire region is in Catalonia, the area of Spain where the language is Catalán, and the online listing had the certificate under the Catalán name, third in the above list.

As with La Golue, you search places like Wikipedia in the language of the subject, so here, the English posting is non-existent, and even the French posting has only one line. But the Spanish listing is extensive, and the Catalán one moreso. You can see Catalán self-pride in the following: the Spanish entry describes it as una compañía ferroviaria española, but the Catalán listing says it was una companyia ferroviària catalana. Both listings say it was founded in 1875 by the merger of two other rail companies, one that had connected Tarragona with Barcelona, and the other Barcelona with France, to the NE. But then in 1889, it itself merged with the Madrid-Zaragoza-Alicante Rail Company under the latter's name, so then Madrid, to the west, was connected to France and the rail network was growing. Thus one can observe history. This is a map of the routes (Map by Terrissaire) of the new company nine years later, in 1898. It is, not surprisingly, in Catalán. I had to look up xarxa (SHAR.sha), which is "network", but I think we can all figure out the rest. With Catalonia due to hold a referendum on independence from Spain on 9 November 2014 (Scotland's is 18 September 2014), you can see the ethnic fervor here.

We have one more bond to show, a certificate in German for an 1891 Austro-Hungarian bond (click) of the Dux-Bodenbacher Eisenbahn, or DBE, which, if you want to use its complete florid name, is the k. k. privilegierte Dux-Bodenbacher Eisenbahn. The certificate is not as florid as the name, and is particularly attractive for the several types of fonts used masterfully across the face, some surrounded by internal vignettes. Curiously, around the edge is a vignette in the older sense, actually consisting of vines.

We know "Eisenbahn". "Prioritáts-Anleihe" is "Priority Loan". Look how beautifully "Schuldverschreibung" is presented (Schuld=debt; Verschreibung=[in this case] certificate; together they mean "bond"). Dreihundert Gulden Ö.W. (Österreichischer Währung) is Three Hundred Guilders of Austrian Currency, so we're dealing in antique money. One thing that often occurs in these older certificates is antique spellings. Look at line 5 for "getheilt" and "Theil". Today, these are spelled as they've always been pronounced, "geteilt" and "Teil".

We need to explain that florid top line, which also appears in the full title. It all involves royalty, because with this certificate we're entering old Austria-Hungary, not only with its currency, but also with its royal customs. The designation "privilegiert" is "privileged", signifying royal approval. The first K is "kaiserlich", literally "kaiserly"; the second K is "königlich", literally "kingly". That's because the Emperor (Kaiser) of Austria was also the King of Bohemia (the Czech Republic today). But you can't say in English "kaiserly-kingly", it would have to be "imperial-royal", which has less oomph, for no small reason that it's not alliterated. So the full length of the company name would literally be the (Imperially-Royally Privileged) Dux-Bodenbach Railway. Quite a mouthful, but an indicator of its time. This particular custom is somewhat related to British merchants advertising "by appointment to Her Majesty the Queen" (the Austrians had that, too, as k.u.k. Hoflieferant, where the U was "und" and Hoflieferant is Purveyor to the Court).

The final step is to search where in old Austria-Hungary these two obscure towns are. Online searching provided this map (Original 1905 mapmaker unknown, cropped map by Rolf-Dresden). We are brought to the far corner of Austria Hungary, in northern Bohemia, today's Czech Republic (in brown), very close to Germany (in gray—Chemnitz is visible). The black line is the Elbe River. The Dux-Bodenbacher Eisenbahn linked the Elbe River harbor of Bodenbach with the coal mines of Dux, Brüx, and Komotau. But to see how the world has changed, Bodenbach is today, in Czech, Podmokly, Dux is Duchcov, Brüx is Most, Komotau is Chomutov. Just think how this one document moves one through different worlds.

We can now move to some generic stock certificates, and the first one keeps us in the same country, language, and currency. It's an 1886 Austro-Hungarian share of stock in the k.k.priv. Eisenbahn Wien-Aspang, or EWA—short translation, the Vienna-Aspang Railway. There's another beautiful vignette around the edge showing local scenes and three spectacularly decorated fonts in the center, including the one for 200 guilders. The prettiest is the word "Actie", which is, again, an old spelling for what is today Aktie, pronounced AK.tsi.e, meaning "share").

But the backstory is one of broken dreams, again not available in English Wikipedia, but fully described in German Wikipedia. During the period of great railroad expansion, the Hapsburg government wanted to expand its interests into the Balkans—copy and paste this link in another window:

http://www.caingram.info/Balkans/Pix/Map.jpg

This is a modern map, so you have to picture much of the NW Balkans part of Austria-Hungary and much of the SE Balkans part of the Ottoman Empire (Turkey). The Hapsburgs knew that a railroad was being built out of what is at least today Greece's second largest city, Thessaloniki (stress the NI; internationally, it's also Thessalonika/Saloniki/Salonika) to the NW to Kosovo, which was still Turkish. They knew that a rail connection from Vienna to Thessaloniki would be a major cross-European rail venture leading from Central Europe to a seaport, and that a continuation of that route out of Kosovo through their own Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia, entering Austria proper in the area between Graz and Hungary, would successfully bypass both Serbia and Hungary, to Austria's advantage. This venture was to be called the Wien-Saloniki-Bahn (WSB)—and was never achieved. It was done in by the economic Panic of 1873, followed by a depression, and no financing was available. Even the section within Austria proper up to the border wasn't completed, and the project was limited to the 85 km (53 mi) fragment from Wien (Vienna) via Wiener Neustadt to the tiny village of Aspang, as seen in this 1882 map. Based on this development, the EWA was founded in 1879, with the nickname Aspergbahn, and we've now seen an 1886 stock certificate for it. But still, wistfully, there are reportedly kilometerstones along the route bearing the proud initials WSB for Wien-Saloniki-Bahn, an indication of what might have been.

We'll have one more German certificate, but this time from Germany itself, issued in Düsseldorf. We'll also move from "rail" to "sail", which, I've found, is more difficult to find certificates for. All background info was, again, only available in German. It's an 1836 German share of stock for, as you can see written in that attractive arc, the Dampfschiffahrts-Gesellschaft für den Nieder- und Mittel-Rhein (DGNM), or the Steamship Navigation Company for the Lower and Middle Rhine. Check out the vignette for the type of period steamship we're talking about here, where the steam-powered paddlewheels appears to have back-up masts. We noted in 2013/13 in Newfoundland that Brunel's cable-laying SS Great Eastern, of 1838, in this same time period, had exactly the same dual-motive systems.

At the time, the company, listed on the stock exchange, served just the Rhein/Rhine and only between Rotterdam and Mannheim. If you've ever taken a Rhine cruise—I've done so only as a day trip--it's very possible you may have ridden with this company, since by 1853 it became today's Köln-Düsseldorfer Deutsche Rheinschiffahrt AG, named after Cologne and Düsseldorf, and often shortened to Köln-Düsseldorfer or just KD, and serves the Rhine, Main, and Mosel/Moselle. With its 12 ships, it's the market leader. It's also one of the oldest continuously exchange-listed corporations in the world, and here we have an early certificate.

Note how the certificate is cancelled via rubber stamps. Look at the history involved here when you note that the company's founding is confirmed, in large, decorative type, by "Seiner Majestät dem Könige von Preussen", or His Majesty the King of Prussia, with a Berlin document mentioned next. If that fact dealing with the Rhine confuses you, remember that Prussia (Map by 52 Pickup) in its heyday was not located only in the east, but extended across Northern Germany to the Lower Rhine and Dutch Border. Multiple old spellings abound: Capital for Kapital, Thaler for Taler, Courant for Kurant, Actie for Aktie.

The Taler, from which the word "dollar" is derived, was a large silver coin used in northern Europe, dating from Hanseatic times. That I knew, but I had to go digging into financial history for Courant/Kurant, which derives from the French word for "current". Apparently coins using this designation at the time had to consist of metal covering the full nominal value of the coin. That would mean that a Courant-Thaler / Kurant-Taler with this designation had to have enough silver in it to be of real value, and not just token value, or represent value actually held elsewhere.

We'll now tip-toe to and across the border between Germany and the Netherlands, and end up on the Dutch side. This is a certificate in Dutch for an 1875 Dutch share of stock (Photo by Hans Schlieper) in the Noord-Brabantsch-Duitsche Spoorweg-Maatschappij (NBDS), founded in 1869 in Rotterdam as a private rail company with Dutch and German shareholders. We now recognize "Spoorweg" in the name, so it's the North Brabant-German Railway Company. North Brabant (Map by TUBS; say BRA.bant) is a province in the southern Netherlands. The small line started in the Dutch town of Boxtel and reached the German city of Wesel (VÉ.zel), on the far bank of the Rhine, a short distance of 92.9 km (57.7 mi). It was called in Dutch the spoorlijn Boxtel-Wesel (no attribution), or Boxtel-Wesel Rail Line, but also affectionately, because of its short length, the Duits Lijntje, or Little German Line. Its German nickname was the Boxteler Bahn. Its founding was confirmed by both the Netherlands and Prussia, as above.

I think we forget how, early on, so much developed out of simple little rail lines going from nowhere to nowhere that grew in importance, perhaps became vital, then flared out into eventual nothingness. Our Lijntje worked together as of 1881 with the Dutch and Prussian State Railways—connecting them, obviously—as well as a major ferry service between the Netherlands and Britain to form the International Rail Post Line from overseas and Britain to Hamburg and Berlin, with connections to Scandinavia and Russia. The line was double-tracked, and a lucrative passenger service developed using through dining and sleeping cars of the Wagon-Lits company (more later on that). But then the collapse of international traffic in and after WWI caused our lijntje to be split in two and taken over by the Dutch and German national rail systems as secondary lines.

Great damage to bridges and other infrastructure was caused during the German attack on the Netherlands in WWII. Passenger traffic declined, as did freight, and parts of the line started closing, the most recent in 2004. But there might be a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel for our lijntje. Close to the Boxtel end, a light rail system is being looked into, just in case a stretch of the line is reopened. If that should happen, it would be the third rail line in the Netherlands that showed at least some reactivation for passenger traffic since WWII. Quite a history for our lijntje.

Let's take one more look at the certificate. Aandeel aan Tonder is literally Share to Bearer, so it's a bearer share—you own it if it's in your possession. It's rather easy to see that it's for Two Hundred Fifty Guilders. And once again, we have an antique spelling. On Dutch words, the suffix –SCH was always pronounced just as S, and today, that's how they're written. Thus the adjective form Brabantsch is written today Brabants, and the word for "German", Duitsch, is now written Duits. [Should you be interested, the Dutch diphthong UI is pronounced like an Ö (or French EU) followed by an Ü (or French U), so Duits sounds like DÖ-ÜTS, or, to show it using French spellings, DEU-UTS.]

We'll do one final one for now, in Russian, since that's where this all started for me, in the former Firebird Russian Restaurant. We have here a 1905-1910 Russian share of stock. [When I blew up the certificate (elsewhere) for extremely close inspection, I saw the year 1895 above the number 100, but couldn't read any more in that line, and the date span 1905-1910 was listed online with the certificate.] We now find ourselves right in the prerevolutionary time period I'd been looking for.

There are shorter and longer variations of the company's name. Let's start simple. It's the Приморская железная дорога / Primorskaya Zhelyeznaya Doroga. We already know that the last two words men Iron Road, so a simple translation would be the Primorskaya Railway, which is how it's usually listed. But why should we leave a stone unturned? The prefix "pri" means "by"; "mor(e)" means "sea" join them into an adjective as "primorskiy" as the masculine form, "primorskaya" as the feminine form to agree with "doroga", and the fully transparent translation is that it's really the Seaside Railway. Or, as one is more likely to say it in English, the Shore Line.

There was no map of the route in English Wikipedia, so, as usual, I had to go straight to the horse's mouth by turning to Russian Wikipedia, reluctantly, since I can't read great amounts of text in Russian, but can usually manage simple things, like captions. Still, I found a 1903 Russian map of the Primorskaya Railway. Saint Petersburg is on the lower right, on the Neva River, leading into Neva Bay, the innermost part of the Gulf of Finland. Running along the north shore in the direction of Finland, you see the main Primorskaya Line, along with a couple of side branches, one of which led to a steamship pier connecting with Kotlin Island and the historic city of Kronshtadt (stress second syllable), Saint Petersburg's main seaport. The main line then continued to its terminus in Сестрорецк / Sestroretsk (ses.tro.RETSK), a distance of only 35 km (22 mi).

In addition to the short form of its name, its western destination can also be included (in adjective form) as Приморская-Сестрорецкая железная дорога / Primorskaya-Sestroretskaya Zhelyeznaya Doroga. Or, both of its termini can be included as Приморская Санкт-Петербург-Сестрорецкая железная дорога / Primorskaya Sankt-Peterburg-Sestroretskaya Zhelyeznaya Doroga. Quite a mouthful. That's the form it takes on the certificate (go back and take a look), with Sankt being shortened to C. (S.), and the endings changing to the genitive case, since it says Company of the . . . On top of that, it also adds с ветвями / s vetvyami, which means "with branches". Also, admire the vignette. My guess is that that's the branch to the railway's steamship pier we talked about.

Now go back and look at the map again. On the upper left, at the northern border of Sestroretsk, it says Граница Финляндии, which is Border of Finland. I knew the Finnish border used to be closer to Saint Petersburg, but I didn't realize it was this close, so I looked that up, too. This is a map of the Karelian Isthmus (no attribution). The red line at the left shows the Finnish-Russian border since WWII, with the other red line being the traditional border up until then. Sestroretsk is at that lake just before the old border, so it becomes clear why the railway was so short and wasn't built any further, since it would be a change of jurisdictions (it's been lengthened since). But if Finland didn't declare its independence from Russia until December 1917 as a result of the Russian Revolution, why was it a different jurisdiction? As it turns out, the predecessor state of modern Finland was called the Grand Duchy of Finland, which existed between 1809 and 1917 as an autonomous part of Russia, with the Tsar of Russia being simultaneously the Grand Duke of Finland, so that border did indicate a legal distinction.

The railway opened in 1894, and this is a train on the line near Sestroretsk taken in the 1904-1917 period. After the Revolution, the railway was made part of the Октябрьская железная дорога / Oktyabr'skaya Zhelyeznaya Doroga (October Railway) in 1925, which, because of the predecessor railways that made it up, is the oldest railway in Russia, stretching from Moscow to the Arctic Circle.

One of the most fun things about antique certificates is the antique spellings we've found on most of them, and one of the things that I most enjoyed about the prerevolutionary Russian certificates at the Firebird were the antique Russian spellings shown on them that were changed after the Revolution in the Spelling Reform of 1918. There were several interesting changes, but three show up that we can discuss, both on the certificate and on the map we just used. To easily flip between them here are:

another link to the certificate and

another link to the map.

WRITING "I" One bothersome prerevolutionary spelling problem was duplication of letters. The vowel "I" in Russian was written "И" in some words and "I" in others. Unfortunately it was the latter one, the one that looks like a Latin "I", that was the one eliminated, possibly because it was less frequent, so "И" was written in its place in those words as well. Look at the front of the certificate. You remember that the German word for "stock share" was Aktie. In Russian, the equivalent word is pronounced AK.tsi.ya, and in the middle of the certificate you see the old Russian spelling of the word as АКЦIЯ, but today, it's spelled АКЦИЯ. When you know this, it makes the old spelling stand out. Similarly, although it doesn't show up here, the name of the country, Россия / Rossiya, used to be written Россiя.

WRITING "E" A very similar situation came up with a funny-looking letter called "yat", written "Ѣ" as a capital and "ѣ" in lower case. It looks like a small Latin "b" with an arrow shot through its head. In a number of words, it duplicated Cyrillic "E", so it was eliminated. At least in this case, the letter remaining, E, looks more familiar to outsiders. We said earlier that the Russian word for "iron" was железо / zhelyeza, and I said to note that both E's were alike. The old spelling was желѣзо, pronounced just the same, but with the two E's spelled differently. This of course affects железная дорога, which used to be spelled желѣзная дорога, with a yat. I've also spotted on the map that that city of Сестрорецк / Sestroretsk used to be spelled Сестрорѣцк, with a familiar E up front, but a yat toward the end. Yat is now a thing of the past, but that's what makes it fun to find it on certificates.

On the map, find Sestroretsk, and see if you can spot the yat. On the certificate, it's absolutely open season on yats—the third and fourth lines have no fewer than three of them. On line three, it's in the adjective form of Sestroretsk. On line four it's in the genitive form of zhelyesnaya, and also at the end, in the phrase that means "with branches".

FINAL HARD SIGNS How do you demonstrate a negative—and why should you? If you're asking a group of people a question, is it more logical to ask them to (1) raise their hand if they know the answer or to (2) raise their right hand if they DO know the answer and their left hand if they DON"T know the answer? Isn't the second choice idiotic? It would result in a sea of hands, with difficulty in seeing which is which, just because you want to present a negative along with a positive.

A situation like that existed in Russian spelling up until the reform at the time of the Revolution, and it involves palatalization. That simply means that a consonant can be palatalized, which means having a Y-sound blend with it. You have a plain K, and you have a palatalized K, which is like KY. For example, we have the K in "coo" (KU), but the KY in "cue" (KYU). It's similar in Russian with T and TY, M and MY, and so on with most Russian consonants.

The somewhat simplified point is, how would you spell the distinction at the end of a word? Well, there are two letters of the Russian alphabet that can be used to do that. One is called a "soft sign" and it shows that the consonant is palatalized. The soft sign looks like a tiny "b": "Ь", capital, "ь", lower case. It's not pronounced, but is written after a consonant that should be palatalized: KЬ. If a consonant is plain, that is, not palatalized, today (thank goodness) nothing is written. Thus we have this contrast: KЬ is palatalized, K is plain; similarly TЬ and T, MЬ and M, plus lots of letters that are less familiar to the Western eye. Simple, right?

Before the Revolution, a more idiotic system was used. If a consonant at the end of a word was plain, that is, nothing happened to it, the "hard sign" was used, essentially to illustrate a negative—that nothing happens. The hard sign looks like a soft sign wearing a hat: "Ъ", capital, "ъ", lower case. In that old pre-revolutionary system showing both the positive and the negative (like raising either hand), KЬ is palatalized, KЪ is plain; similarly TЬ and TЪ, MЬ and MЪ. The reform eliminated the hard sign at the end of a word, making NOT being palatalized the default mode, and therefore unmarked. It's so much better.

Oldъ Russianъ certificatesъ (aren't those unnecessary hard signs after final consonants annoying?) will stand out precisely because of those hard signs, along with other antique spellings. Let's look first, though, at the old map. Right at the top you see the word for map.

It's pronounced PLAN and today it's spelled ПЛАН, but then it was ПЛАНЪ, with a hard sign at the end. Continue counterclockwise.

The German word for "resort" is Kurort, borrowed into Russian. Today's КУРОРТ on the map is КУРОРТЪ.

Sestroretsk wins the door prize, with both a yat and final hard sign: СЕСТРОРЕТСК was then СЕСТРОРѢТСКЪ

Kronshtadt is today КРОНШТАДТ, but was КРОНШТАДТЪ.

The Bay of Finland also has two antique spellings, including "I". Today, Finskiy Zaliv is ФИНСКИЙ ЗАЛИВ, but it used to be ФИНСКIЙ ЗАЛИВЪ.

Even (Saint) Petersburg is affected. ПЕТЕРБУРГ was ПЕТЕРБУРГЪ.

Back on our certificate, two hard signs show up. As it turns out, Russian has prepositions that can appear just as a single consonant. "With" is just an S, spelled "С", but on the fourth line, you'll find a "СЪ". "In" is just a V, spelled "В", but a few lines further down you'll find "ВЪ".

This completes our introductory investigation into scripophily, as limited to certain languages and to the topics of rail 'n' sail, and as demonstrated by the always interesting backstories of available certificates found online. The next posting will complete this adventure of mine with seeking online quality certificates for sale, followed by a display of the fruits of those labors.