F. B. Zdrůbek, for over thirty years editor of the Chicago Svornost, and one of the leaders of the Bohemian rationalists in the United States, was born in 1842 and died in Chicago in 1911. He took a course first in a Catholic, then in a Protestant theological seminary. Convinced that “as a minister of the gospel he could not make an honorable living unless he chose to make of his vocation a vulgar traffic and practiced from the pulpit pious extortion,” as he wrote in his autobiography, he gave up the ministry and devoted himself to journalism. Most prolific of all the American Bohemian men of letters, Zdrůbek was in fact not a creative writer but a translator. As a journalist he was distinctly commonplace.
Jaroslav J. Zmrhal, teacher in a Chicago school, has given the public in his Anglicky snadno ve třiceti úlohách, one of the best hand-books for the learning of the English language thus far compiled. Zmrhal’s method of pronunciation is clearly an improvement over all previous books; certainly it is superior to Zdrůbek’s, who after all, possessed but a book knowledge of English.
Last, but not least, is a comprehensive Učebnice by F. Francl of New York. Altogether it may be stated that grammars and interpreters by American Bohemians who know alike the vocabulary and the spirit of the English tongue, are more serviceable, if not wholly superior to most of the “English Easy and Quick” hand-books which have been published in Prague.
The most versatile linguist in Bohemia was Francis Vymazal (1841-1917), who compiled a lengthy row of manuals of the “English at a glance” type. Vymazal’s series includes the study of English, Bulgarian, Russian, French, Hebrew, Dutch, Latin, Magyar, German, Gypsy, Modern Greek, Polish, Portuguese, Rumanian, Slovak, Slovene, Serbo-Croatian, Old Greek, Spanish, Turkish and Italian. Owing to his manner of life and dress—he was not afraid to lead the life of a lowly proletarian—the people of Brno, in which city he lived and died, nicknamed him “Bohemian Diogenes.”
Drama. That the Poles and the Bohemians, two submerged nations, have each given to the American stage a tragic actress—the Poles Helena Modjeska, the Bohemians Frances Janauschek—may and may not be accidental. Many people have supposed Janauschek to be a German tragedienne, because in the early years of her career, before she mastered the English language, she played in German, on the German stage. But she was of pure Bohemian stock, born in Prague in 1830. By virtue of her long residence in America and her devotion to and life-long association with the American stage, she was really an American actress.
Fiction. Translations from fiction are disappointingly few. Of course, this is no evidence that Bohemia has no fiction writers; the truth is that she has not found Isabella Hapgoods and Jeremiah Curtins to translate what she has. With one notable exception, Božena Němcová’s Babička, nothing worth note has been rendered into English from the prose. The story Maria Felicia by Karolina Světlá, which an American Bohemian woman has translated into English, is no more typical of Bohemia than it is of Finland, Spain or any other country. One should not only know how to translate, but, what is just as essential, what to translate. A. V. Šmilovský, whose story, Nebesa, the Moureks translated, is a meritorious writer, but by no means of the high type of Alois Jirásek or Julius Zeyer.
Several foreign writers of fiction have made use of a Bohemian theme more or less successfully, the earliest of them being George Sand. Unfortunately Sand’s Bohemians in Consuelo and in its sequel The Countess of Rudolstadt, are about as real as Robinson Crusoe’s Man Friday.
Folk and Fairy Tales. Karel Jaromír Erben (1811-1870), whose folk tales Rev. Wratislaw translated into English, is recognized as an authority on folk lore. “If Erben had left nothing else but his Nosegay of National Folk Tales, his name would always rank among Bohemian writers of the first magnitude,” says a critic. Most of the writers of folk tales here listed have borrowed from Erben.
The Guide to the Kingdom of Bohemia, published in Prague in 1906, is primarily intended to attract travelers to the ancient capital of the country; however, the information it contains is of interest alike to travelers and to non-travelers.