Presented Sister Clara
to the occasion of her moving
into her own apartment a
candelabre (for 5 candles)
Clara
Friday Mar 28
Sister Clara gave birth to a
baby boy at 10:05 P.M.
This was a complete surprise
as I did not expect her to
give birth now.
I cabled immediately
the news to my parents.
————
Matt’s Notes
When I first transcribed this entry and the words “this was a complete surprise…” I thought Papa meant he was surprised that Clara gave birth in the first place, not that he was surprised by how early she gave birth. I wondered, with a jolt, how Clara could have been pregnant for so long without Papa knowing about it, whether the baby was unusually tiny, or if Clara was somehow ashamed and hiding her pregnancy like the high school girls you sometimes hear about who give birth at the prom. This misunderstanding cleared up milliseconds later as I transcribed the words “I did not expect her to give birth now,” but for some reason the first words of this entry still have a trace of the same effect on me when I reread them.
Maybe I secretly want Papa to have not realized Clara was pregnant until her baby suddenly appeared because it would be a funnier story, or maybe his own surprise and excitement made its way to the page in the form of a surprisingly-worded sentence (then again, I may be the only one who’s thrown by this passage; if any of my legions of readers experienced the same thing, please let me know). Perhaps Papa penned this entry, still breathless, after dashing home from the Western Union office (an overseas telegraph message must have been quite a splurge) though his handwriting doesn’t seem hurried or shaky. Anyhow, the baby in question is my cousin Julius (a.k.a. Julie) with whom I recently been in touch. Stay tuned for anecdotes.
Tuesday Apr 1
This day will long be remembered
because of the terrific snowstorm.
Visited Clara at Hospital
with David.
Again the radio brought me
old familiar tunes, tunes that
I’ve heard when I was a little
boy, on the old little square
of my European hometown when
I with my playmates [used to follow] the old man
[with the] playing box, who played the
same identical melodies whose
music I always remembered.
Listening to the music I close my
eyes and in my illusions I found
myself on the little marketplace
or outside my fathers house surrounded
by my little friends merrily dancing
around the man with the playing box
who so gladly repeated those enchanting
melodies at our request.
——————
Matt’s Notes
In light of his stylish, expressive prose, it’s hard to remember that Papa was not a native English speaker. Once in a while, though, a missing word or strange turn of phrase serves to remind us: A few weeks ago he repeatedly referred to the headmaster of his brother-in-law’s school as “the school man,” and it looks like he didn’t have the word “organ grinder” at his disposal while composing today’s entry. Still, I don’t think it detracts from the sweetness of his recollection.
In case you’re wondering what early 20th Century Eastern European organ grinders looked like, here are a few photos courtesy of the Yivo Institute’s “People of a Thousand Towns” project:
We also know what Papa’s brothers and sisters looked like when they were children, so perhaps we can get a little closer to imagining the “illusions” Papa saw when he closed his eyes:
The children in this 1898 photograph are, clockwise from top left: Issac (he gave Papa some grief earlier in the year) Nettie, Ettel, Clara, Papa (his face is distorted in this photo, but that’s him at 3) and Gitel.
Clara, as Papa mentions in this entry, was now all grown up and in the hospital with her new baby. The weather Papa and her husband David braved to visit her was indeed “terrific”: New York got over 8.5 inches of snow accompanied by gale-force winds, resulting in, among other disruptions, an elevated train crash in Long Island City that injured over 50 people, one fatally.
Friday Apr 4
Visited Clara at hospital
and Max Breindel,
Max is really besides
a relative a good friend
He is not like some
others of the family
—————–
Matt’s Notes
As noted in a previous post, Max Breindel is the man who met Papa and his sitter Nettie at Ellis Island when they first arrived from the old country. Max also invited them to stay in his apartment, where they shared a bed with his children, sleeping head-by-toe, until they could find a place of their own. Papa always recalled this as a great, adventurous time in his life, and I think his kind words about Max reveal his ongoing gratitude. (Check out the Lower East Side Tenement Museum’s tenement tour to get a better idea of what their living quarters must have been like.)
I don’t know whom Papa refers to when he says “some others of the family” are not as good as Max, but it’s about as harsh a statement as he ever makes. Perhaps he means his brother Isaac, the previous recipient of a disapproving nod for pressuring Papa from the old country for money. I also know his sisters Nettie and Clara didn’t get along, so I wonder if Nettie earned a demerit for some kind of misbehavior or lack of interest while Clara was in hospital with her newborn son.
I’m also trying to figure out if it was unusual back then for an immigrant woman to stay in the hospital for so long after giving birth (it’s been eight days now). Papa had expressed surprise at how early his nephew was born, so maybe there was some sort of medical complication. Then again, a week or more might have been a normal post-childbirth stay in 1924; as always, if anyone reading this knows a little more, please post a comment or send an e-mail.
Saturday Apr 5
Attended circumcision of Clara’s
baby at Hospital where he was
named Julius (Yiddish)
Afternoon I went rowing
with Jack Breitbart in Prospect
Park, the warmest day this
spring, it certainly was
refreshing.
I met and took home Miss
Schneiderman from South Bklyn
She is a nice girl and I made
a date with her for an outing
next Sunday at Palisades Park
She is refined but a quiet girl
well bred, and I expect to enjoy
a lot of her company next Sunday.
I have even been invited by
her parents to call often.
——-
Matt’s Notes
Papa wrote his new nephew Julius’ name in Yiddish in the third line of this entry. My wife, who knows about such things, thinks it says “Yussel,” but in any event it looks like this:
Yesterday I wondered whether Clara’s ten-day hospital stay after giving birth to Julius was unusual, but my mother thinks it was typical: “I believe women stayed in the hospital for ten days in those times. I have a distant memory of Nana telling me that her ‘confinement’ was ten days…” I’ll keep trying to confirm this.
Meanwhile, the malaise to which Papa has been confined for the last couple of weeks appears to be lifting, aided by the 65-degree weather and his pal Jack Breitbart. I’m starting to like Jack because he always shows up when wholesome fun is in the offing; the other week he unexpectedly materialized with opera tickets in hand, and now he joins Papa for an invigorating row in Prospect Park (he’s kind of like the Tony Roberts character in a Woody Allen movie). We can only assume Papa wore his straw boater for the occasion, to wit:
And here’s a shot of the lake in Prospect Park between 1910 and 1920:
Image source: The Lower lake, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, N.Y. Library of Congress call # LC-D4-72148
Prospect Park is, of course, in Brooklyn, so Papa must have gone out there in preparation to meet “Miss Schneiderman from South Bklyn.” I assume he was set up with her by Jack Breitbart, who introduced them, perhaps, by the Park’s “Rustic Boathouse” before sauntering off:
Image source: Prospect Park Archives
Papa’s description of Miss Schneiderman as “refined but quiet” may imply a slightly unfavorable comparison to the opinionated, vivacious Henriette (a.k.a. the “20th Century Girl“) with whom he’s been recently preoccupied, but at least he’s lightening up a bit. Looks like he dropped her off at her parents’ home in “South Brooklyn” (he must mean the Brighton Beach area, where he would later raise his family) and made a favorable impression on them, so stay tuned.
—————
Additional References
For more historical images of Prospect Park, check out their well-organized archives at http://www.prospectpark.org/hist/archives.html.
Tuesday Apr 8
I met on my way to work [I met] C.
How different she looks now
She lost weight and looks bad,
Saw Clara home from hospital
———————
Matt’s Notes
Poor “C.” Perhaps Papa hid her name because she was an old flame or had inspired a bout of infatuation in her younger, plumper days. He certainly didn’t suffer any shortage of might-have-beens after 11 years in New York — he runs into them here and there, goes on blind dates, and can even make a day of wistfully pasting their pictures in a photo album — so the smart money has “C.” among their ranks.
I don’t mean to minimize Papa’s loneliness or imply that he left New York littered with the prostrate forms of Harry Scheurman groupies who did nothing all day but drink absinthe and fondle his old neckties. I’m just starting to think he was tormented more by his pursuit of a perfect, and perfectly unattainable, romance than by any difficulty in meeting women. As I’ve mentioned before, his idealism was a mixed blessing at this stage of his life; it drove him to help change the world, but it also kept him personally disappointed. How he finally developed the right mix of idealism and realism, how he discovered the difference between what he wanted and what he needed, and how he learned to feel satisfied with what he had without sacrificing his ability to seek more is not yet clear to me.
Wednesday Apr 9
Home
Presented sister Clara
with a beautiful cradle
for baby.
————
Matt’s Notes
Clara, as we know, was one of Papa’s sisters who lived in his neighborhood. She got home from the hospital with her new son, Julius, the previous day. I’m trying to figure out what the cradle Papa bought might have looked like, but no luck so far. (If anyone knows where I might find an image of an early 1920’s cradle, please write to the address below.)
—————-
A couple of months ago I wrote a post about the efforts people like my grandfather made to challenge the image of Jews as bookish and physically inept. In this post I mentioned the documentary film Watermarks, which tells the story of an all-Jewish Viennese swim team called Hakoah (“The Strength”) Vienna that enjoyed tremendous success until its members were forced to flee Austria in 1938. My wife and I saw the movie over the weekend and enjoyed it immensely. It consists mostly of interviews with the surviving members of Hahoah Vienna, all of whom are articulate and full of interesting stories.
In one scene, a woman named Hanni and her sister Judith (a national champion who was stripped of her records for refusing to participate in the 1936 Olympics) get together for their daily poetry reading, and the poem they choose to recite is Heinrich Heine’s “Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen (A Young Man Loves a Maiden).” This is an interesting coincidence, since Papa quoted the same poem back on February 4th while he was in the midst of a particularly difficult romantic episode. I knew the poem was well-known (Schumann set it to music in his Dichterliebe song cycle, and the song appears on the Watermarks soundtrack) but seeing other Austrians recite it from memory reinforces how popular it must have been.
The film’s subtitles don’t make an effort to translate the poem to rhyming verse, but I’ve transcribed it below, along with the version I quoted on February 4th, just for laughs:
————————–
A Boy (Watermarks version)
A boy loves a girl
She has chosen another
That other loves another
and it is this one he has wed.
The girl in anger takes
the next best fellow
who comes her way
The boy takes it badly
It is an old tale
But it always stays fresh
and to whom it actually happens,
it breaks his heart asunder.
————-
A Young Man Loves a Maiden (Papa’s Diary Project version, adapted from Henrich-Heine.net)
A young man loves a maiden
But another she prefers,
The other one loves another,
And ties the knot with her.
From spite, the maiden marries
The first who comes along,
And happens `cross her path;
The youth must rue it long.
It is an old, old story,
Yet still forever new;
And every time it happens,
It breaks the heart in two.
————
Update 4/11
Reader Carol sent this link to a picture of a cradle from the late 1800’s. It might give us some idea of what Papa’s gift to Clara looked like: