Pasigraphie

Debosnys claimed that his cipher was in common use in Europe, but so far I haven't found any evidence to support that. Many books were printed in 19th-century France on secret writing, but serious ciphers of that era tended to eschew mysterious symbols in favor of using letters, numbers and early cryptologic methods.

If Debosnys' account of his life before 1871 is true (and there is not yet any reason to believe that) then one possibility is that his cipher was in common use among criminal fraternities, secret societies or as an unofficial means of secret communication among the lower ranks of the military.

All of that is speculation until we find evidence.

But in the search for evidence of such a system is I have read or skimmed quite a number of 19th-century French books on various specialized systems of writing: Stenography, Okygraphy, Tachygraphy, "French Hieroglyphs", etc. Among these I have found a few books on Pasigraphie.

I'm not quite sure how to characterize Pasigraphie. It is probably most like a universal language, but one that was never intended to be spoken. The graphemes of Pasigraphie do not have any phonetic value, but can be treated as digits in a base-12 number system.

These symbols are used to build words, which really are addresses pointing to entries in a nomenclator:

The graphemes can then be joined together, so complex symbols can be built from the simpler elements:

[Edit] Apparently Pasilalie was the spoken form of Pasigraphie.

Debosnys Real Name Part IV: Jacob Pomries and his wife Elise

I found a much clearer image of the passenger manifest from the arrival of the Cimbria at New York on July 3, 1871, courtesy of FamilySearch.org, together with transcribed names. Meet Jacob and Elise Pomries:

I puzzled for a long time over the occupation listed here, and finally decided that it may read "Slate Maker". From Stone: An Illustrated Magazine, vol. 6 (Dec 1892 - May 1893):

Debosnys' Real Name, Part III: A much better lead

In his autobiography, Debosnys claimed that, after the Franco-Prussian war and the events of the Paris commune, he "returned to Paris and went to Havre de Grace where he embarked on board the Cimbria for New York in June. His wife, Mrs. Judith Debosnys, died in July...."

The Cimbria route went from Hamburg to Havre to New York, so this part of the story is plausible. It arrived in New York on July 3rd, 1871. At that time, a liner could take around 9 days to cross the Atlantic, which would make his arrival consistent with a June departure date from Havre.

Thanks to the wonder of the internet, I have the passenger manifest from the Cimbria. It records the arrival of people belonging to

• Germany (387)
• United States (56)
• Russia (6)
• Switzerland (28)
• Denmark (2)
• Holland (2)

Debosnys claimed to have come to America in 1863 to fight in the Civil War, so presumably (if he is on the manifest at all) he is listed as an American. He claimed to have been born May 16, 1836, so presumably we are looking for a man aged 35 years (or so). He came with his wife, so presumably we are looking for a man and woman who share the same name.

Here are all of the Americans on the manifest, with my notes on each:

German surname (Friedr Schultz); traveling alone

German surname (Georg Kessler); traveling alone

39-year-old woman (Caroline Fasel) traveling with a 15-year-old boy and a 3-year-old girl

German surname (Franz and Maria Dorn), age 45

Fritz Austen, age 31

Jacob Pomries, age 35 traveling with a Elise, age 22.

William Burmeister, aged 49 traveling with Louise, age 30.

German family (Richd Schmitz, Anna, Albert) and teenager Richard Muth

50-year-old Maria Schwartz with 17-year-old Antonia

28-year-old Adolf Schwalle with Anne

Sam Kahn age 21

Joh Schling age 47

John Hansen, age 23

Catherine Haupt, age 42

Friedr Kesschl, age 49

Jacob Raible, age 44

C W Stock, age 31

Fried Baden, age 33

Gust Engler, age 27

Ferd V Knessebeck, age 42

Carl Spierling, age 26

Rich Raufft, age 46

A woman surnamed Bliss, age 27, with children Willy (4) and Elsa (2)

Ellen Quinn, age 24

Marg Hathaway, age 27

C. A. Guarriges, age 27

Simon Morris, age 38, with wife Minna (24) and children David (2) and Wanda (11 mo)

Leon Grun, age 36, with Adeline (24)

Leroy Sauer, age 43

Helena Rohmeyer, age 40

Heir Clauss, age 40

Georg Schmolzy, age 37

C Pless, age 28

Carl Roll, age 42

Herm Calvi, age 14

Lucy Young, age 22

Ph Preund, age 46, with Augusta (34)

Walthae Gutmaw, age 28

Out of all of these, one couple actually fits the profile well. The couple apparently named Jacob and Elisa, whose surname is frustratingly difficult to make out:

I'm going to see if I can get a clearer image of this page.

Debosnys Real Name, Part II

Here is another name to research: Delpech.

Apparently a citizen named Louis Delpech, prefect of Bouches-du-Rhône, formed one of several companies of francs-tireurs called Francs-Tireurs de la Mort. Here is a notice regarding the creation of that company from the Actes du Gouvernement de la Défense Nationale, v II, p 173:

Delpech was made colonel and served under Bourbaki, just as Debosnys claimed to have done (La Campagne de l'Est et l'Armée de Bourbaki, p 101)

But Delpech was not Debosnys, since Delpech returned to civilian life after the war (working in the realm of rail transportation between France and Portugal) and died in 1896. The two men would have been only two years apart in age, though.

Debosnys' Real Name

Debosnys claimed to be living under a pseudonym. Resolving the question of his true name could help solve the cipher, because one of the passages ends with what looks like a signature line:

If this encodes his real name, and if we can determine what that name is, then this could provide us with a crib.

I've been reading and re-reading Debosnys' account of his life as presented in Farnsworth's Adirondack Enigma, looking for circumstances in which his real name would have become a matter of record. One puzzling item was a note that Debosnys wrote in the margin of his autobiography:

"Change of name in October [1870] and sent to the army of the Rhone, franc terror of the death under Bourbaky and associated with the franck terror"

My initial thought was that there had been a horrible incident ("the franc terror") that led him to change his name in order to dissociate himself from it.

But now I understand that he was claiming to be a franc-tireur, a volunteer in the French guerrilla forces that resisted the Prussian invasion during the Franco-Prussian war. I've skimmed the autobiographies of a couple of francs-tireurs, and I am fairly confident he sequence of events in his autobiography related to clashes with the Prussians is either drawn from or written in imitation of the rapport journalier of a captain of the francs-tireurs.

The francs-tireurs were generally named after their place of origin or their commander. Debosnys uses the expression "franc terror of the death", but I haven't found any reference to a formation of francs-tireurs by that name. Perhaps it was a nickname.

Debosnys claims to have "volunteered for the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 with 600 men from America", and the narrative suggests that he was their leader. This doesn't seem to have been an uncommon sequence of events, and reflects somewhat the experience of Le Comte de Foudras, the commandant of the francs-tireurs de la Sarthe, who came from Belgium, gathered 338 volunteers, and organized them into four companies under his own command.

A formation of 600 Americans ought to be mentioned somewhere. Luckily, there is someone named Antan who has written a blog post about the names of formations of francs-tireurs. Apparently there were 599 formations, so a review of the full list may be necessary (if I can find the publication where they are listed), but the following from the blog post are interesting:

ST 428 Francs-tireurs Franco – Américains, capitaine Rampon
ST 453 Enfants Perdus d’Amérique (Français), capitaine Laugran
ST 519 Enfants Perdus de l’Amérique du Nord, lieutenant Laugran
ST 553 Volontaires Franco – Américains (ou Légion Américaine), lieutenant Soula

This list gives us three names to research: Rampon, Laugran and Soula.

What is Debosnys' "Portuguese"?

I just bought Farnsworth's Adirondack Enigma, so I've had a chance to read a bit more about Debosnys.

One page in Adirondack Enigma shows samples of Debosnys' writing in Latin, Portuguese, French, English and Spanish. The Latin, French and English are good (though the Latin is just a quote from the Vulgate bible). I can't see enough of the Spanish to tell if it is good. The Portuguese is puzzling.

Here is that piece of text:

Comoderondas inacia bêco olondo inoto para
Imbiabo kotaronc molonk niarotan pérana

I've never studied Portuguese, but if I look at a page of Portuguese text I can usually make it out based on what I know of French and Spanish. Of this, however, I can make neither heads nor tails. Likewise, I have trouble with this text, which is not specifically identified as "Portuguese", but is not anything else that I would recognize:

inno calledaz

Ontro de palade mosa kaen faleï tonüe dhala pico indor kouniss plaira colrose, inbello monozy impiodo cara. ûntez noüméa, tintems oda formandore, artosa passat Otiva ...(remaining text not clear or cut off)

Some of the words can be found in a Portuguese dictionary, if it is big enough, but I can't find most of them, and many are phonologically and orthographically problematic. For example, the word-initial k- in kotaronc, kaen and kouniss would be unexpected in any Romance language, since that sound is normally represented by c before a and o. The cluster dh in dhala is odd as well. Likewise, not a single word is repeated, and there is only one monosyllabic word in the bunch.

It seems there are three possible interpretations here:

1. This is Portuguese, but Debosnys learned it only as a spoken language and writes it phonetically in a way that is difficult to decipher
2. This is another knowable language, such as a secret argot, a creole, or an obscure language
3. This is not a knowable language--either it is nonsense, or a twin language, or an invented language

Time may tell. Or not.

A possible theme for the Cipher Poem

The Greek text on the opposite side of the page from the cipher poem (as I mentioned) is largely the first part of an ode written by Thomas Moore as a preface to his translations from Anacreon. This part of the poem sets the stage for Wisdom to ask the poet why he spends his life the way he does.

Debosnys has altered the wording of the original, so the goddess asks the following question:

"τι, γερων, τεον βιον μεν / ω δε βια του γαληνην"

Classical Greek isn't a language I know well, so I have to kind of wing it here. The German translation on Klaus Schmeh's blog is problematic because they misread the word "τεον" as "νεον". But I believe the question the goddess asks in Debosnys' version is:

"Why, old one, do you employ your life in the violence of tranquility?"

The word βια apparently has a range of meanings including: force; act of violence; rape. The word γαληνη means stillness.

In Thomas Moore's original, the subsequent lines are the poet's response to the goddess. I have a feeling the cipher poem is Debosnys' answer to this question.