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[Note: This is the fifth letter Papa wrote to my grandmother while she was vacationing at her cousin’s farm in Connecticut. To see full-sized scans of the letter, click the thumbnail images on the right of this page.]

——–

April 28, 1925

My dear Jeanie:

Another fine letter arrived
this morning, and the thing that delighted
me most was the intimacy in your writing.

Last night on the phone
your sweet voice sounded so clear
the short talk between us made a new
man out of me.¹

Of course I went immediately
to your home where I met besides your
dear parents, Rose, Ben, Honey and
certain guests by the name of Mr.& Mrs. Swartz.²
Everybody is fine, and they all send you
their love and greetings.

I just want to tell you not
to worry because your people write little.
Sally is kind of lazy or she don’t care,³ I
don’t know which, and Bob is busy playing⁴
every-day and hardly has a chance to write
and here I am more than glad of the
privilege to write you all the news of your
folks.

By the time this reaches you will
undoubtedly have the black tafeta dress
with you, it will need a good pressing

(over)

As I explained to you on the phone, the
post office would not [accept] as registered and
insured a shaky package. ⁵

After Rose and Ben left, your mother
and myself took a walk around the
neighborhood and I enjoyed it immensely.

You want to know whether I went out
as you told me before you left. No dearest
how could I do such things when my heart
is away, and that’s that.⁶

If I had wings I’d fly to you every day,
but I expect to fly to you by Express-train
this Friday about which I will call you
up Friday Thursday at 8:35 P.M. daylight
savings time.

Don’t worry Jeanie, get fat, I shall
like you and love you always, no matter
how you are, you are second to none
in my heart, God bless you.

You must write every day Jeanie, I am
spending a few extra minutes every morning
waiting for the mailman.

Here someone is coming in and I
must stop writing.⁷

With love and kisses
I am as ever

Your faithful

Harry

Another letter tomorrow

—————

1 – My grandmother could be a bit on the shrill side and she and her immediate family liked to scream at each other a lot, so whenever Papa mentions her “sweet” voice I can practically hear the laughter of my relatives ringing from coast to coast. Of course, real cross-country communication isn’t a big deal nowadays, so it’s interesting to note how Papa marvels at the clarity of his call to my grandmother in addition to the sweetness of her voice. The telephone was a well-established means of communication by 1925, but perhaps a good, static-free phone call was still treat.

Let’s also remember that when Papa installed a private phone in his apartment back in June of 1924, it was an extravagance he indulged in because he felt terribly lonely (“I’ve installed a telephone in my house that I may in my loneliness talk to my friends direct from my house”, he wrote at the time). To pick up the receiver, lean back, and listen to the voice of a woman he was falling in love was something new, something he’d been longing for, and something he’d savor no matter how clear the connection.

2 – Rose is one of my grandmother’s sisters, Ben was her husband, and “Honey” was the nickname of their son, Harold. I don’t know who Mr. and Mrs. Swartz are, but it should be easy to find out — how many people named Swartz could have lived in Brooklyn?^2A
— 2A – About twelve billion

3 – Papa could find something good to say about almost anyone, so my grandmother’s sister Sally must have really behaved badly for him to write such unforgiving words about her. We’ve gotten a taste of Sally’s attitude ourselves through the note she included in one of Papa’s previous letters in which she told my grandmother how nice it was not to have her around. Papa tried to ignore it at the time, but he obviously no longer found it practical or necessary to mask Sally and my grandmother’s mutual antipathy.

I’m intrigued by Papa’s grammatical mistake in this paragraph (“Sally is kind of lazy or she don’t care”) because he usually wrote in careful, formal English. The only other example of a similar mistake is in his August 26, 1924 diary entry, in which he swore off his affection for a woman who had disappointed him (“Well, she don’t interest me anyway”). Did Papa’s written grammar suffer when he was angry about something? Did some rule of translation from his native Yiddish make him conjugate the verb “to do” differently when describing a lack of care or interest? Or did he just swap “don’t” for “doesn’t” for effect?

4 – When I first read this I thought Papa was calling my grandmother’s brother Bob a bon vivant by saying he was too “busy playing” to write, but as it turns out Bob was a professional violinist and was busy playing gigs. That’s not to say Bob wasn’t a player of a different sort; apparently he had quite a way with the ladies. All I really remember about Uncle Bob is that he used to entertain me by pretending to pull off his thumb. Perhaps the chicks dug that trick, too.

5 – This refers to the taffeta dress Papa mailed my grandmother and mentioned in his last letter.

6 – My grandmother must have asked Papa in her “intimate” letter whether he was dating other women while she was away. This would have been out of the question. But did Papa ever wonder why my grandmother needed a taffeta dress up in the wilds of rural Connecticut?

7 – Papa must have written this letter at work and stopped writing when someone walked into the room, which leads me to wonder what his job was in 1925. He referred, in his 1924 diary, to his work in the machine room of a garment factory (he mentioned it because the noise in the room made in difficult for him to flirt with a “dreamy girl”) but he also wrote about selling ladies’ gowns on the side for “Mr. Surdut,” who was the owner of a garment manufacturing business on 27th Street called the Lion Costume Company.

So, here’s my theory: The Lion Costume Company must have been the factory Papa worked in, and it must have had a storefront showroom for its wholesale customers in addition to a machine room. Perhaps Papa, by moonlighting for Mr. Surdut and proving to be a good company representative, had earned a promotion from the machine room to the showroom by April of 1925. The “someone who is coming in” to interrupt Papa’s letter writing must be a buyer walking into the showroom. This seems like a reasonable conclusion, but I’ll see if I can confirm it.

[Note: This is the eighth letter Papa wrote to my grandmother while she was vacationing at her cousin’s farm in Connecticut. To see full-sized scans of the letter, click the thumbnail images on the right of this page.]

——–

May 6th 1925

My dear Jeanie:

I am writing this at the post office on my way
home, as I a lot to attend to tonight and it will be
impossible to get home before late, so I am using the
firms stationery. ¹

I saw your folks Monday night Ben, Rose and
Herold were there, and everybody was glad to hear from
you, As I took a walk with mother she gave me
$10.00 to send you, which I am enclosing herein
She would like to have you stay there another week,

My dearest, my thoughts are always with you,
I will get the pictures out tonight² and call at your
home to show your folks in graphic how you are
spending in the country.

Please let me know what train you are
taking home and from what Station, and I will
know when you will arrive, and remember I will
wait for you at the entrance to track 20. You will have
to tell the porter who will carry your valise to take
you to track 20.

Will write you more tomorrow.

Regards to all

Lovingly

Harry

—————-

Matt’s Notes

1 – Indeed, as you’ll notice from the thumbnail sketch at right or from the full sized scan of this letter, Papa wrote it on stationery from his workplace, The Lion Costume Company. The text of the stationery header reads:

————

Tel Madison Square 6968 6969

Lion Costume Company
Manufacturers of
Costumes and Dresses
13-15 West 27th Street

David Surdut, Prop.

————

Here’s a closer look at the letterhead:

And here’s an even closer look at the lion illustration at the top of the page, which deserves closer inspection:

Mr. Surdut, the proprietor of the Lion Costume Company, should be well known to my legions of readers, since he and and his wife appear several times in Papa’s diary. On November 3, 1924, Papa wrote about his arrangement to sell ladies’ gowns on the side for Mr. Surdut (as I mentioned in an earlier post, this may have led to a job in the Lion Costume Company’s showroom) but the Surduts clearly thought of Papa as more than just an employee. He socialized with them on a major Jewish holiday, Rosh Hashana (a.k.a. the Jewish New Year) on September 30, 1924, and on October 22, 1924 Papa wrote about Mrs. Surdut’s efforts to marry him off: “Mrs. Surdut introduced me to a girl with $10.000, and her family…But the girl does not appeal to me,” Papa wrote. “The day I’d promise to marry her, I’d be on easy street because of her wealth, but my heart says no.”

2 – Papa may well have taken the pictures he mentions here with his No. 3A Autographic Kodak Camera (Model C), a high-end consumer camera that was quite popular and enjoyed a production run from 1917 to 1934. I still have the camera and the tripod Papa used with it, pictured below:

According to the Internets, it’s not hard to find cameras from this line in good condition (they sell for $50 or less wherever you look) but I’m impressed with how well this one’s held up because it was one of my favorite childhood playthings. I remember being particularly fascinated with the various speed settings of the “ball bearing shutter” (which still works perfectly) and the mechanics of the adjustable aperture, which seemed to me like the airlock of a spaceship (no doubt because so many of the science-fiction movies I’d watch on Saturday mornings featured spaceship airlocks modeled on camera apertures).

The camera did suffer a bit for the treatment it received at my hands — the “red celluloid window” (as the camera’s instruction manual called it) through which users could see the film’s exposure number fell off at some point, as did one of the levers used to extend the bellows, along with the pin that keeps the bellows in position. I seem to remember the moments when I broke off these parts or lost them, which leads me to wonder if this camera made such a strong impression on me because I knew it belonged to Papa. I think I played with it the most when I was between five and ten, when Papa’s death (he died when I was four) was still relatively recent and baffling to me. I don’t think I ever consciously thought “this is important to me because it reminds me of Papa,” but considering how much I thought about him (as I’ve mentioned before, I used to believe his ghost was watching over me) I’m sure its relationship to Papa kept me from playing with it quite as roughly as I might have.

(I just realized something as I wrote the above paragraph: whenever I look at the camera’s case, I always briefly mistake the engraved letters on its latch for Papa’s initials, even though I know by know that it’s the Eastman Kodak Company’s “EKC” logo. I’ve been making this mistake for years and did it again yesterday when I was setting up the camera to photograph it.)

Anyway, this camera would have been quite a splurge for Papa when he bought it, but, as his enthusiasm for early radio and radio equipment indicates, he liked to treat himself to good equipment. (I need to look into it more, but it seems like this particular camera, with the ball-bearing shutter and “rapid rectilinear” lens, would have cost around $30, or more than $300 in today’s terms, if purchased new.) Though ingeniously designed with a swiveling viewfinder and multiple tripod mounts to facilitate both landscape and portrait photos, it’s most innovative feature was its “Autographic” capability, which allowed users to open a metal door in the back of the camera body and, if they were using special A-122 film, scratch notes directly onto the reel.

I’m not sure if I have any examples of photos taken with this camera, though I do have a few early pictures of my mother from the 1930’s that are the correct 3 1/2 X 5 1/2 print size for A-122 film and also have notes scratched onto them. That said, the precise placement of these notes in the dark areas of the photos leads me to believe that Papa wrote them on the negatives after they were developed rather than through the camera’s “autographic” feature. For example, here’s a shot of my grandmother and my mother dated June 15, 1935:

Now that I’ve said all this about Papa’s camera, I’m beginning to wonder if it actually was what he used to document his visit to my grandmother in Connecticut, because any photos I have of their early days together are tiny, 2 1/8 X 1 3/8 photos printed on 3 1/2 X 2 1/2 paper that are too small to be the product of a No. 3A Autographic Kodak Camera using A-122 film. For example:

Perhaps Papa did take these photos with the 3A and had smaller prints made so he could carry them around, but he probably took them with whatever camera he owned before the 3A. (Perhaps he got rid of his original camera and in the late 1920’s or early 1930’s and bought the 3A when it was no longer the hottest camera on the market, which would have made it more affordable.)

————

References:

• Here’s a historical listing of Kodak cameras from the Kodak site.
• Several enthusiasts have posted versions of the the Kodak Autographic 3-A instruction manual to the Web. Large-sized scans of each page are here, while a more readable version with transcribed text is here.
• One of About.com’s writers discusses the Kodak 3-A here.
• Here’s an Autographic film entry at Wikipedia.

[Note: This postcard is the ninth note Papa wrote to my grandmother while she was vacationing at her cousin’s farm in Connecticut. It’s also the last surviving bit of Papa’s correspondence from the year 1925. To see a full-sized scan of the card, click the thumbnail image on the right of this page.]

——–

N.Y. Thursday May 7th, 1925
12 noon

My dear Jeanie:

I showed them the pictures, and they were all
glad to see them.¹

There was a portly girl I just don’t remember
her name but she seems to be very much in love
with Bob.² She played the piano and Bob the violin
but father refused to sing his famous song
A Yingele fon Poilen.³ Yes you ought to see Honey
with his new boyish haircut, He recognized on the
pictures, Symie, the dog Barney and almost everybody.⁴

Please write me exactly the time when you’re leaving
With kindest regards to all I am yours faithfully

Harry

————-

Matt’s Notes

1 – In his last letter, Papa mentioned his intention to visit my grandmother’s family and show them pictures he’d taken while visiting her for the weekend at her cousin’s farm in Connecticut. Even though they didn’t seem especially anxious to have her back — her sister Sally certainly wasn’t sorry to see her go and her mother had suggested that she stay in the country an extra week — Papa obviously thought her family shared his inability to live without a glimpse of her a moment longer.

2 – As we’ve mentioned before, my grandmother’s brother, Bob, was a bit of a rake and his family was probably quite familiar with him bringing home women who seemed “very much in love” with him.

3 – The Yiddish song “A Yingele fon Poilen (A Little One from Poland)”, also known as “Di Mame iz Gegangen in Mark Arayn” (Mother Went to Market)”, tells the story of a young man whose mother introduces him to several lovely young women, one of whom he eventually falls in love with. Dozens of artists from Itzak Perlman to the Klezmatics have made recordings of this song, including this one by the Kharkof Klezmer Band (via Last.fm):

There are a couple of translations of this song floating around the Internets, but the most authoritative seems to be this one from the 2000 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival Web site:

“Di Mame iz Gegangen in Mark Arayn”

Oy di Mameh iz gegangen in mark arayn noch kayln.
Oy hot zi mir tzurichgebracht a maydeleh fun Payln.
Ay ay iz dos a maydeleh, a shayns un a feins,
Oy mit di shvartzeh aygelech, oy ketzeleh du meins.

Oy di Mameh iz gegangen in mark arayn noch krayt.
Oy hot zi mir tzurichgebracht a maydeleh fun bayd.
Ay ay iz dos a maydeleh, a shayns un a feins,
Oy mit di shvartzeh aygelech, oy ketzeleh du meins

Oy di mameh is gegangen in mark noch a katchkeh.
Oy hot zi mir tzurichgebracht a maydeleh, a tzatzkeh.
Ay ay iz dos a maydeleh, a shayns un a feins,
Oy mit di viseh tzayndelech, oy ketzeleh du meins.

Ich hob gegessen mandlen; Ich hob getrunken vein;
Ich hob geleibt a maydeleh; Ich ken ohn ir nit zein.
Ay ay iz dos a maydeleh, a shayns un a feins,
Oy mit di rayteh bekelech, oy ketzeleh du meins.

Translation

“Mother Went to Market”

Oh, Mother went to market to buy coal.
She brought me back a girl from Poland.
Oh, what a girl, beautiful and fine,
With those black eyes, little kitten you’re mine

Oh, Mother went to market to buy cabbage.
She brought me back a girl, just off the carriage.
Oh, what a girl, beautiful and fine,
With those black eyes, little kitten you’re mine.

Oh, Mother went to market to get a duck.
She brought me back a girl, a treasure.
Oh, what a girl, beautiful and fine,
With those white teeth, little kitten you’re mine.

I’ve eaten almonds; I’ve drunk wine;
I’ve loved a girl; I can’t live without her.
Oh, what a girl, beautiful and fine;
With those rosy cheeks, little kitten you’re mine.

“A Yingele fon Poilen” was well-known in the Yiddish-speaking community at large, and my grandmother’s father must have sung it a lot if Papa called it “his famous song.” So why was my great-grandfather reluctant to sing it on this occasion, especially since his violin-playing son, Bob, and Bob’s piano-playing girlfriend could have accompanied him? We can’t know, of course, but I tend to think he didn’t approve of Bob’s new girlfriend and didn’t want to give her a tacit endorsement by joining her in a song about a Jewish boy in love.

This may seem like a lot to infer from a short line in a postcard, but it wouldn’t be out of character for my grandmother’s parents to disapprove of a potential child-in-law so overtly. As you may recall, they originally wanted Papa to marry my grandmother’s relatively undesirable sister, Sally; Papa may have been a poor factory worker, but they figured he was better than nothing. When he fell in love with my young, beautiful grandmother instead, they tried for years to cool his ardor. My great-grandfather directly asked Papa to forget about her and pay attention to Sally, and when that didn’t work the family tried to turn Papa off to my grandmother by messing up her hair and dressing her in unflattering clothes and glasses when he would come around. Eventually they became plain unfriendly to Papa, according to my mother. Did my great-grandfather stop singing “A Yingele fon Poilen” in front of him, too?

4 – As mentioned previously, “Honey” was the nickname of my great-aunt Rose’s son, Harold. We don’t know who “Symie” was, but he certainly had a good nickname.

————–

References:

Other recordings of “A Yingele fon Poilen”, a.k.a. “Di Mame iz Gegangen in Mark Arayn”, available on the Web include:

• The Amsterdam Klezmer Band’s excellent version with complete lyrics, which I would have used above if they hadn’t turned embedding off (why do people do this?) on YouTube.
• The Budapest Klezmer Band’s version, without lyrics, via YouTube

[Note: To see full-sized scans of this letter, click the thumbnail images on the right of this page.]

——–

Please pardon
my abrupt script
and corrections

June 27, 1926.
1:55 a.m.

My dear Jeanie:

This is the third time that I am writing
to you today¹, and believe me this certainly
was an adventurous day for me.

I shall try to describe to you in my way of
today’s events.

The day was very fair when a group of
us started out in a big car from the hotel
for the falls, which are twenty-five miles
from here.

After an hour ride we reached the
stormy Niagara river, and soon afterward
the beginning of the American rapids and
a few minutes later we’ve reached our destination.
We came to a spot where the most bewitching
most enchanting (believe me I haven’t got
enough words to describe it) spectacle presented
itself before my eyes.

If I were a poet perhaps I’d be able to give

./.

2

you a fair description of the view, however
I will make an attempt to do it in my
meagre way.

The American part of the falls were before
my eyes, a picture of unsurpassing beauty
and splendor, On a stretch of about 5 city
blocks streams from the Niagara river falling
into a depth of about 200 feet and the suns
reflection makes it look like an endless
stream of pearls, the reaction on the bottom
of the falls makes it look like a huge
white cloud.

After recording things on my camera²
we boarded the car again headed for the
international bridge, after paying a toll
to the American officers of for leaving the country
we reached the Canadian side where
I had to produce my citizen papers
(I took it along as I’ve been told that I’d
need them)³ in order to be let through,
Well in Canada the falls presented themselves
in their full beauty and the Canadian
horseshoe falls are yet more beautiful
than the American.⁴

./.

3

There I stood as in a haze I could
hardly believe my eyes, I saw Gods
wonder which no artist can paint, I
would travel to the end of the world to see
another such sight, I shall relate to you
in person about this sight.

Now while I Canada I thought it was the
proper time to quench my thirst (Canada
is not a dry country) and revenge myself
on old Volstead,

Yes I drank three glasses of honest to
goodness beer, enough to last me until
the prohibition act is repelled.⁵

I also brought a little bit of Canadian
candy for you,

Of course by the time you receive this
you will have received the card that
I mailed in Canada.

Well after speeding through some Canadian
Villages we returned late in the afternoon
to the dear old U.S.A.

Here at the hotel we are busy all evening
with receptions tendered in our honor.

./.

I hope that the pictures of the falls that
I’ve snapped come out O.K. especially
the one of myself with the falls as a
background.

I believe that I have faithfully
described to you my experiences, and
now I will call it a day.

You may read this letter to your folks
to whom I’m sending my kindest regards
I expect to be very busy the next 3 days⁶
however if I should have time I shall
write you more.

Hoping that this finds you in best
of health I am as ever

Your

Harry

—————-

Matt’s Notes

1 – Papa had already sent two postcards to my grandmother after his arrival in Buffalo for the Zionist Organization of America’s annual convention, one immediately before he left his hotel for a tour of Niagara Falls and one a few hours later from the Canadian side of the Falls.

Papa wrote this letter at 1:55 AM on Hotel Statler stationery, presumably in his room. (Little amenities like stationery and pens usually associated with higher-priced hotels helped cement the Statler hotel chain’s reputation among travelers of modest means.) His excitement and exhaustion are evident in the “abrupt script and corrections” for which he apologizes at the top of the letter:

2 – As mentioned previously, I have had Papa’s No. 3A Autographic Kodak (Model C) camera in my possession since I was a kid, and it may be the camera he refers to in this letter. However, the few amateur photo prints I have from this period of Papa’s life are too small to have come from a 3A Autographic, so he may have had a different camera at the time. Alas, I’ll probably never know for sure unless photos from his Buffalo trip turn up somehow.

3 – In July of 1924, Papa wrote in his diary of his frustration with the glacial pace of the naturalization process, so he couldn’t have been a citizen for that long when he visited Canada in June of 1926. Did he feel a little rush of pride when asked to prove his citizenship, or was the commotion at the border (surely all the Zionist companions with whom he rode to the Falls were immigrants and had to produce their papers as well) too distracting?

4 – I’ve seen the Horseshoe falls from the Canadian side and, though the cynic in me wants to say the whole thing is a cheesy tourist trap, I cannot help but agree with Papa. They Falls really are spectacular and I remember them fondly. Alas, not everybody has the same experience:

5 – I love this passage because it comes so unexpectedly and places Papa so squarely in the 1920’s. Alcoholic beverages would have been a real attraction for American tourists who visited the Canadian side of Niagara Falls during Prohibition, and here we have Papa, who wasn’t a big drinker, hitting a bar and downing three beers out of pure excitement. (In later years, according to my mother, he liked to stroll on hot days from his Brighton Beach apartment to a Boardwalk bar and enjoy a glass of bock. I wonder if, having experienced Prohibition firsthand, he had a little more fun than other people did when he ordered a beer legally.)

I had a similar, though less satisfying, experience at the Canadian Falls a few years ago when I bought and smoked a dry, disgusting Cuban cigar just because it was legally available. I suppose, if American-Cuban relations ever normalize, the only harmful vice worth traveling to Canada for will be poutine.

6 – The Zionist Organization of America’s conference in Buffalo had 1000 attendees that year, and Papa was one of 200 from New York. The agenda set forth by Chairman Lewis Lipsky in his opening remarks (delivered, most likely, at one of the “ceremonies” Papa refers to in this letter) included the need to address Britain’s recent lackluster support of the Zionist cause in Palestine and the condemnation of a Joint Distribution Committee effort to designate a region of the Ukraine for Jewish settlement, which the Z.O.A. saw as an attempt to distract Jews from the Zionist cause.

Most absorbing for Papa would have been the the Z.O.A.’s rejeection of a resolution adopted by his own fraternal organization, Order Sons of Zion (a.k.a. B’nai Zion) to push the Zionist movement toward the aggressive, nationalistic, “revisionist” Zionism advocated by Vladimir Jabotinsky. Interestingly, though B’nai Zion had adopted this stance at a conference attended by Papa a few weeks earlier, several prominent B’nai Zion leaders, including the writer Maurice Samuel, objected to it and said so at the Z.O.A. convention. I’m not sure where Papa would have stood, but we know he admired Samuel and may even have been friendly with him (he mentions Samuel several times in his 1924 diary and refers to him as “Maurie” at one point) so I would imagine he joined Samuel among the dissenters.

A final note: In this letter, Papa starts using this symbol at the bottom of every page except the last:

I assume it means “turn the page” or “more to come”. From now on I’ll include it in my transcriptions and write it out as “./.”

———

References:

• ZIONIST CONVENTION OPENS IN BUFFALO; Lipsky Criticizes the British Mandate in Palestine and Russian Project There. The New York Times, June 27, 1926.
• ZIONISTS OPPOSE STRIFE IN PALESTINE; Repudiate Endorsement of Anti-Arab, Anti-British Plan by Order Sons of Zion. The New York Times, June 29, 1926.
• ZIONISTS PROPOSE COOPERATION OF ALL; Buffalo Convention Votes to Push Negotiation for Accord on Palestine. The New York Times, June 30, 1926.
• The poutine photo comes from Wikipedia

The vast and efficient machine that is the Papa’s Diary Project public relations department has scored another coup: A piece in the May issue of the leading genealogy publication Family Tree Magazine, part of a larger spread about the preservation of family diaries.

The editors have been kind enough to let me post the section about Papa’s Diary Project as a PDF, so you can click here or on the image below to grab it.

[Note: To see large scans of Papa’s letter, click the thumbnail images on the right of this page.]

——–

August 3, 1926

7:00 P.M.

My dear Jeanie:

Nothing has changed since
yesterday but the heat, The thermometer
now registers 96. and the weather
forecast promises 48 hours more
of torrid heat.

Oh how I wish I was near
you now in the mountain country,
No vacation would be sweeter than
to be away in the quiet mountains
in these hot days, away from the noisy
city, and to be in your company now
would be heaven on Earth.

I wish I could write you a real
sentimental love letter, but what’s the
use, I don’t think I should do it
now, not because of lack of courage

./.

but because of countless personal
utterances to you, I know your view
on the matter (of my devotion.)

However I think that I am right in
stating that due to our long aquaintance
I have gained your intimacy and confidence
which I cherish so much.

We are almost inseparable friends now
aren’t we?

I have often prayed for divine intercession
that the little spark of love that you have
for me may should turn into a flame. —

I am still hopeful, and I am playing
on the last string of my harp like that
famous picture you saw. —

I am still waiting for your precious letter
your dress is not yet in, If I get it before
the end of this week I will mail it by
special delivery.

Nothing else now

Please remember me to Ma.

Your loving Harry

Pardon my abrupt
script as I am writing this
as the Post office.

H.

———

Perhaps the torrid heat made Papa feel listless and resigned, or perhaps my grandmother’s physical absence made him feel a bit lost, but whatever the reason, he had not, until he wrote this letter, admitted to the apparent failure of his efforts to win my grandmother’s heart. Though his formal, gentlemanly prose creates a tone of nearly British understatement (“Dearest: A Zulu chieftain with whom I was not yet acquainted removed my right eye with his spear and I daresay interrupted a perfectly lovely tea”) and, perhaps, aims to coax a contrary response from my grandmother, he cannot conceal how disappointed he is over the limits of her affection.

For those of us who knew my grandmother, the question inevitably comes up: Why, exactly, was Papa so smitten with her? She was beautiful and young, certainly, but she was also as hard-bitten, sharp-tongued, and intolerant as he was optimistic, gentle and forgiving. I remember how she would impatiently snap at him “Oh Harry, what’s the difference?” as he puzzled aloud over some question (this is my only memory of them together). My mother remains baffled by Papa’s magnanimity in the face of my grandmother’s testiness, and even my grandmother admitted more than once that she really didn’t understand what Papa saw in her. So why, when he was young and eligible, did he devote himself to her so completely, and with such persistence, even to the exclusion of other romantic prospects?

Or, to put it more bluntly, what was wrong with him?

Part of the answer lies, I think, in Papa’s idealistic nature. This was the source of his sincere, admirable ability to see the good in people and in the world. It inspired him to pursue impossibly challenging causes against the odds, as it did with his Zionist activism. It also led to great disappointment, as it did when he put the Twentieth Century Girl on a pedestal only to learn she was merely a flawed mortal. Idealism is not always practical or productive, but it makes for a rich emotional life and keeps the world romantic.

As I’ve speculated before, though, Papa’s overt idealism and romanticism may have masked something troubling with which he struggled as a young man. To long for a romantic ideal is also to hope for something unachievable, to seek what is unattainable, to reject the possible. It’s also a handy way to avoid facing difficult truths and choices. The search for a perfect woman is, in reality, a search for someone who does not exist, and is therefore not a search at all. It’s not that Papa didn’t really want to get married and start a family — his caring and self-sacrificing nature would not be satisfied if he didn’t — but I think, for all his professed loneliness and sincere desire to take care of a wife and child, he was unknowingly held back by something stronger.

Leaving the old country at eighteen was terribly difficult for him and, as we’ve discussed, he may have handled it in part by looking backwards and idealizing his former life instead of planting both feet decisively in his new world. His impossible pursuit of a perfect wife, however packed with disappointments, kept a new life at bay, kept him from entering adulthood fully. Moreover, it kept him from admitting that he had said goodbye for good to the simplicity of his youth, the security of his family, and to his beloved and influential father. For the first eleven years he lived in America, Papa taught himself to pursue stasis rather than progress in his emotional life.

I think the death of his father in mid-1924 shocked Papa and forced him, painfully, to accept at last that he could not go home again (he even described a feeling of “paradise lost” in one diary entry, a clear reference to the sudden intrusion of reality). It cannot be a pure coincidence that he met my grandmother soon after and, as we can see from his letters, credited her with a degree of perfection and desirability he had not yet encountered in anyone else. (For example, in his 1924 diary he writes of his disapproval for modern women and their crass behavior; in his letters to my grandmother he complements her on possessing certain rare qualities no longer in fashion.) It is as if he suddenly realized the urgent need to replace his lost family with a new one, and, accordingly, declared his search for a wife over when he met my grandmother.

I’m not saying he didn’t really love my grandmother, because I know he did. Yet he must have seen her as a bit of an abstraction, too: a lovely, old-fashioned Jewish girl from a good family who came into his life just as he was ready to start anew. (Could she, so much younger than he, have triggered some paternal feelings in him, too, and appealed to his desire to care for a family all the more?) I think it must have been a great relief to him, as well as romantically appealing, to leave the world of dating and matchmakers and marital pressure behind and give himself over to an all-encompassing passion for one woman.

His calculations did not, unfortunately, take into account her feelings or personality or circumstances, but he adjusted his approach to maintain his single-minded devotion. When she showed disinterest, he saw it as a sign of a dormant love awaiting awakening; when she admitted her own flaws (she called herself too lazy to write him letters, for example) he recast them as virtues (she was not lazy, only distracted by more important matters); when her family tried to send him packing, he saw it as a challenge, a reason to redouble his efforts.

Having lived for so long in a state of limbo, it was not difficult (and perhaps it was somehow satisfying) for him to wait indefinitely for my grandmother to return his love. He may have written of resignation in the above letter, but he did not feel resigned. He would wait for her for four more years until she at last became his wife, and so, seventeen years after his arrival in this new world, he could finally stand with her and say “I am home.”

——–

New York Aug. 8. 1926.

My dear Jeanie:

Something funny
happened to me yesterday, after
eating a good steak Thursday night
I was stricken with terrible pains
at 2 o’clock after midnight, It was
very strange as it never happened
to me before however since I was
alone I decided to go to a doctor
and I did manage to find one
at that hour of the night,¹ after giving
me the once over he decided that
I was suffering from appendicitis,
and advised me to run home at once
and start putting ice bags to my side

./.

2.

for 24 hours.

By the time I got home I
felt better but I decided to follow
the doctors instructions, I notified
my sisters and they kept busy
arranging ice bags which I kept on
putting on my side, oh it was so
uncomfortable.²

In the afternoon I first came to
my senses, Not feeling any pain
whatsoever all day long, I decided
to call an old reliable doctor to
look me over as it seemed very
funny to inconvenience myself any longer.

Well he came and the laugh
was on me he said that the
first doctor knows as much about
the medical proffession as I know
about cobblery.³ I had not the

3.

slightest trouble with my
appendix.

Now imagine I lost a
days work and confined
myself to bed for almost 24 hours
and then the ice.

Well automatically I got well
released myself from my self
imposed prison and celebrated
later my quick recovery. — ⁴

Everything is all right
in your family, Rose told me
that she wrote you a letter yesterday
and will write another tomorrow,

Please write me about
yourself I am more than anxious
to hear from you and dear Mother

I am closing with

Love and Kisses

Harry

———

Matt’s Notes

1 – If you’re going to be struck with fearsome pains at 2 in the morning, a Lower East Side tenement, circa 1926, is probably not where you want it to happen. Papa obviously didn’t think it appropriate or prudent to visit an emergency room while in distress, though I’ll have to do more research on New York’s hospital system in the 1920’s to find out why (as always, dear reader, please share whatever you might know).

2 – So, how did Papa find a doctor at that hour? Did he call an operator and ask for doctors in his neighborhood, or did he just open the phone book and start dialing? Did he walk around and knock on doors? And who was the doctor who misdiagnosed him? Was he some kind of stubble-cheeked miscreant who had only just returned from an opium den? Or did he, perhaps, own a share in his brother-in-law’s ice delivery business and therefore prescribe excessive icing for every ailment?

3 – I really enjoy how Papa uses”cobblery” as an example of something he knows nothing about, not only because I rarely read the word “cobblery” in any context, but also because it demonstrates how important the garment trades were to Papa’s frame of reference.

4 – I often wonder what certain episodes in Papa’s life would mean if they had appeared in a novel rather than in personal writings, and in this vein I think the onset of Papa’s gastrointestinal non-emergency is worth an extra look. Remember, three days earlier he had exchanged letters with my grandmother about her own stomach ailment, acquired while she was on vacation in the Catskills. Is it a total coincidence, I ask the writer of this story, that Papa had a bout of stomach pain so soon afterwards? And if not, why did it happen? Was Papa, like The Empath in the worst-ever Star Trek episode, relieving my grandmother’s pain by assuming it for himself? Did he report on his illness to arouse her sympathy or to make her feel like he was somehow keeping her company?

Update: My mother writes:

I think you hit the nail on the head with paragraph #4. It occurred to me as soon as I started reading Papa’s letter. I can just imagine the competition between Aunt Clara and Aunt Nettie as to who could take care of Papa better.