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——–

June 28, 1927

Tuesday

Bright Eyes:¹

There is so much to write but
I don’t know where to begin.

Well the opposition has lost out,
it was only natural, could it have been otherwise
since I was in it? (It is the opposition I told
you about.)

We put up a gallant fight, but
I cannot say that we lost everything, we have a number
of our men on our new administration but the
leadership.²

Believe me my dear, I am going
through a spiritual revival here.

Witnessing a session of Junior Hadassah
Convention at the Ritz was the most pleasant experience
here, charming young American bund girls assembling
to do their bit for a great cause, everyone embued with
the great national spirit, everyone the personification
of Godliness attending to their convention business in
a manner befitting a much older (in years) aggregation of
people.³

They are here from every part of the country,
and the short time that I’ve spent with them will
long be remembered by me.

I have grown to like Atlantic City, and I will
return here often whenever the occasion will present
itself. The boardwalk is very much like the one
in Coney Island, but the people here are so refined
and make friends quickly.⁴

./.

Of course it is mostly rich people that
come here, but they’re very nice, and I’ve made
friends with a number who did not come for the
purpose of attending the Zionist Convention.

It also gives me here the opportunity to
observe styles and really beautiful rich modes.

I could not help mentioning here styles,
you know that I am interested in it, the trend
of the present season is white, about 75% of those
I have seen wear white outfits from hat, dress,
coat, gloves to shoes and stockings.⁵

In general I’m enjoying my short stay here
and happiness would be complete if you were here
to share it, knowing you as you are I know that
you would enjoy it here tremendously.

Now dear please don’t forget me, now
that you have other boy friends, so much more
attentive than I am, but I have proven to you I
believe my sincere friendship and admiration, but
when you write to me I want you to write joyfully
willfully and not as a matter of duty.

I now have to go to attend another session
of the convention, and two more afterward, and
I expect to leave for home tonight.

The next letter will be from little old N.Y.

Hoping this find you in good
health and spirit.

I am as ever your

Harry Scheuermann

—————–

1 – My wife, Stephanie and I call each other “Bright Eyes” from time to time, but only because it’s what Zira calls Charlton Heston in “Planet of the Apes.” I’m sorry, but I simply can’t read the words “Bright Eyes” without thinking about it. I wonder if it was one of Papa’s major nicknames for my grandmother, or if it was just something he toyed with in 1927. Did he ever catch “Planet of the Apes” when it came out, and if so did it amuse him to see “Bright Eyes” so employed?

2 – Louis Lipsky had been head of the Zionist Organization of America since 1921, but long-simmering complaints about his financial and general mismanagement finally came to a boil at the 1927 Z.O.A. convention. Here’s what the New York Times had to say about the scene on the convention floor on June 26th, two days before Papa wrote the above letter:

What were until now merely rumblings of dissatisfaction with Zionist leadership came out into the open this afternoon when the Zionist Organization of America opened its annual convention in the Chelsea Auditorium…

Bitter parliamentary wrangles marked the opening session — so bitter, in fact, that President Louis Lipsky had difficultly at times keeping order in the meeting…There was no clear-cut test of strength between Mr. Lipsky and those who are seeking to oust him from leadership; but emphatic objections were made to his rulings…

The dissatisfaction has been intensified by depressing reports from Palestine, the gravity of which was freely admitted by both sides in the dispute. President Lipsky was frank to recognize it in his address to the delegates, in which he outlined specific proposals to meet the situation.

Time Magazine, though displaying the casual anti-Semetism evident in the period’s journalism, provided a good summary of the situation:

The Zionist Organization of America closed another of its annual bickerings at Atlantic City last week. It was the 30th anniversary of this group which has sought to organize Palestine as a national homeland for Jews. In that purpose they have practically succeeded. Palestine has been set up as a League of Nations mandate entrusted to England’s overseeing. It is governed by a High Commissioner who deals with regional problems as they affect Jewish settlers through what is known as the Zionist Executive. The High Commissioner also guards the interests of Arabs and other indigents of the region.

Millions of dollars have been dumped into Palestine, chiefly from U. S. purses; 150,000 Jewish immigrants have been carried there chiefly from countries of eastern
Europe. Many more have gone from the U. S., driven by a traditional idealism. Colonies have been established; trading cities created; harbors, roads and railroads constructed; industries set going. Most of this has been accomplished since 1921.

But all has not been economically well in Palestine, especially during the last year. At present 8,000 men and women are out of work. They are traders, too many of whom had been permitted to migrate into the country. There have been insufficient goods manufactured or grown locally to supply them with trade; there have not been enough customers to take the goods they handled. To furnish work for these 8,000, Great Britain has authorized a loan of $25,000,000 to build harbors and railroads, a concession has been granted to develop the hydro-electric power of the Jordan River, and the potash deposits of the Dead Sea will be worked.

At the Atlantic City convention of the Zionist Organization of America last week, Louis Lipsky, chairman since 1922, was charged with all the woes of Palestine. His ideal has been paternal. He would have Jewish immigrants to Palestine fit into a social, cultural and economic frame which the World Zionist Organization would build for them. (Chaim Weizmann, British explosive inventor, is head of the World Zionist Organization.) Other Jews, non-Zionists, like Louis Marshall, constitutional lawyer of Manhattan, would let immigrants build up their own enterprises and order by private initiative. Other Jews, Zionists and non-Zionists, have still further schemes for making Palestine a self supporting, spiritual Utopia. At last week’s convention Zionists argued at one another.

The Times’ June 27th coverage of the convention gave a bit more detail about the leaders of the opposition group with which Papa was affiliated and their unsuccessful bid to unseat Lipsky:

When the convention assembled in the Chelsea Auditorium this afternoon the attack on the administration was launched by Morris Zeldin, New York Director of the United Palestine appeal and thus indirectly a Zionist employe (sic).

His charges concerned financial matters, largely with subsidiary organizations of the Zionist organization. He charged Mr. Lipsky and his associates with responsibility for the financial plight of the American Zion commonwealth, the land-buying agency in Palestine controlled by the American Zionists. He accused them of bad management in the sale of the Palestine securities.

He mentioned unnecessary sums spent for publicity, excessive salaries paid to an executive secretary, and in general charged the administration with dissipating funds which had been raised for the building of the Jewish homeland.

Papa’s fraternal order, B’nai Zion (a.k.a. Order Sons of Zion) was an offshoot of the Z.O.A., and was, perhaps, one of the “subsidiary organizations” mentioned above. This may have accounted for Papa’s sympathy for the opposition, the true leader of which seems to have been one Israel Goldberg. The Times had this to say about Goldberg’s performance at the convention:

More sweeping charges were expressed by Israel Goldberg, the publicity agent who has organized the opposition forces at this convention….

He charged that Mr. Lipsky had concealed facts in his administration report; he held the American Zionist organization responsible for the signing of the Weizman-Marshall agreement [the Z.O.A. was politically aligned with Weizmann, so his attempts to work with a rival like Marshall, who was less supportive of Zionist efforts in Palestine, didn’t go over so well with the Z.O.A.];he insisted that the blunders of the past were serious enough to demand Mr. Lipsky’s removal.

So, what about the opposition’s defeat would make Papa describe it to my grandmother in such a self-effacing way (“Well the opposition has lost out, it was only natural, could it have been otherwise since I was in it?”)? I think it must have been because Israel Goldberg’s representation of their position was flat-out laughable and thus embarrassing to those associated with him. From the Times:

He received little encouragement, however, from the delegates, who seemed to be amused at Mr. Goldberg as he spoke…

“Shall we or shall we not hold Lipsky responsible?” A chorus of “no” flustered him for a moment, but he went on. Soon afterward, he exclaimed: “If I had been in the administration things would be different.”

A wave of laughter swept the hall. It was apparent that the opposition movement had shot its bolt.

All in all, not a great moment for Papa and his comrades, though I think Papa’s long familiarity with unforgiving intra-Zionist debate and disagreement kept it from affecting him too adversely. As the next footnote will point out…

3 …Papa’s participation in an unsuccessful opposition movement obviously didn’t make him feel any less committed to Zionism or keep him from having a plain old great time at the convention. I don’t doubt the authenticity of the “spiritual revival” he experienced, though I’d wager it arose in part because the chance to enjoy Atlantic City in its prime, hobnob with different classes of people, and collaborate with “charming young American” girls of the Junior Hadassah simply made him feel refreshed and vital and important.

4 – This clip, allegedly a 1926 home movie taken in Atlantic City, shows what the scene was like:

5 – Papa wrote very little about his life as a garment worker in his 1924 diary, which may be why I’ve always thought he was far more emotionally engaged in sowing the seeds of union activism than in sewing the seams of ladies’ garments. Because his personal writing is so articulate and romantic, I think I’ve allowed myself to see his factory work as some sort of dutiful compromise, a demonstration of his willingness to suppress his inner life for the sake of future generations, a profound testament to his capacity for pragmatic self-sacrifice.

In short, I think I’ve been unwittingly condescending and probably flat-out wrong about Papa’s relationship to his profession. My mother tells me he always enjoyed going to work (he kept at it until he took ill at seventy-two) and though he stayed at a sewing machine until the end, he was an able cutter and a talented designer (he designed and made my grandmother’s wedding gown, pictured below).

As the above letter indicates, Papa had developed a genuine interest in fashion and clothing during his time in the garment trade, and by 1927 was (I think) even more engaged because he was working the sales floor of The Lion Costume Company at the behest of its owner, Mr. Surdut, who had taken a liking to him. Surdut had also accompanied Papa to the Zionist convention in Atlantic City, and I’m sure they spent some time between sessions checking out the “rich modes” of costuming and coming up with new sales pitches.

Papa was intrigued by the predominance of white on display, a trend related, no doubt, to the 1927 summer season’s emphasis on sportswear. “This year sports clothes have attracted the greatest attention,” wrote an anonymous fashion reporter for the New York Times, “and at the moment the utmost in style is the equipment for mid-Summer sports. The design originally intended for dresses for athletic activities has come to be adapted for any and every occasion, and now the sports or semi-sports model is taken as a guide in the cut of far the greater number of gowns shown in the Summer collections.”

Thanks to my friend Ingrid, a costume designer who has a great collection of vintage fashion magazines, we’ve got a few examples of the white summer sportswear fashions that Papa observed. (The images below are from a Vogue summer pattern book from 1929, but they probably give us a good idea of what was out there in 1927).

And here’s a photo of an actual person sporting a white tennis outfit in 1927. It seems like clothing looked better on models than on real people back then, too.

—————

References:

• Jews Convene – Time Magazine, July 11, 1927.
• WRANGLING MARKS ZIONIST MEETING; President Lipsky’s Opponents Fight His Rulings at First Convention Session. – The New York Times, July 27, 1927.
• VOGUE OF JERSEY GROWS; Colors in Novel Combinations Are Conspicuous in the New Summer Frocks – The New York Times, July 3, 1927.
• ZIONISTS SUPPORT LIPSKY BY BIG VOTE; Stormy Three-Hour Debate Ends in Expression of Confidence in Officers. – The New York Times, July 28, 1927.
• Arthur A. Goren “The view from Scopus: Judah L. Magnes and the early years of the Hebrew University“. Judaism. Spring 1996. FindArticles.com. 26 May. 2008.

——–

New York July 7, 1927.

My dear Jeanie: –

I have received your
letter, and you win (as usual) which
means that you are absolutely one
hundred percent right [when] you are too
lazy to write, with so many beautiful
natural surrounding and other attractions
I am inclined to believe that there
isn’t much time for writing,¹ especially
in your case you have to write to
a number of people, and I suppose
I’m getting my share, and besides you
are writing so much all year (on the
typewriter) that this vacation may
keep you busy with anything but
writing.²

As you see I’m trying to find

./.

2

some excuses to justify your action,
and I’m not just jesting either, but
I am sincere.

I’ve been hoping against hope to
be able to talk to you on the phone,
I have tried all week, but it is
utterly impossible to get a connection
with Hurleyville exchange on account of
heavy traffic.³

All the central operator could
promise me was to try to connect us
around 1. a.m. and at that time
my dear I would not want to wake
you from your sweet slumbers,
To call you by day, I don’t think
you are at home then, so it seems

./.

3.

that I’ll have to wait to hear
your sweet voice until Sunday.

I called at your home Tuesday
night at Sallie’s invitation to be
present when you would call up
we waited up to about 12 o’clock
but the call did not come, I
suppose that you experienced the
same trouble trying to get a
connection with N.Y.

By the way Jeanie, Mother
asked me to write to you to come
home by train only, I think she is
right, but pardon me I’m not
trying to advice you for I know that
you can always use your own
judgement.
4.

There is no news at home,
excepting that at this time Rose
ought to be in the country, Sally is
expecting to leave Sunday after your
arrival.

So dearest nothing else to
write now, I hope that you are
enjoying fair weather (it is raining
hard here now).

Please excuse my blots and funny
script, this is the first time I’m using
a new fountain pen, but it don’t work
well.

Looking forward for the pleasure
of meeting you [on] Sunday. I’m
as ever

Your Harry.

—————–

1 – Having privately decided to marry my grandmother, and having spent the previous two-and-a-half years courting and catering to her, Papa was clearly insulted and dismayed by the indifference evident in her infrequent and spare correspondence. In his last letter, he tactfully but unmistakably reprimanded my grandmother for saying she was “too lazy to write” in response to his frequent requests for more and longer letters. I suppose her response was none too contrite and made him even more nervous than her lack of communication; in the opening paragraph of this letter, Papa appears to be trying to calm her down with a “yes, dear, I don’t know what I was thinking, of course you don’t have to write if you don’t want to.”

2 – My grandmother worked for many years as a secretary to a lawyer named Louis Richman. Perhaps this reference to her “writing so much all year (on the typewriter)” means she had started her secretarial career by 1927.

3 – Hurleyville was (and still is) a hamlet in the town of Fallsburgh, New York, where my grandmother vacationed in 1927 at a Jewish resort called the Roseland Hotel. It wasn’t far from such legendary Sullivan County spots as the Concorde Hotel and Kutsher’s Country Club. Alas, while it’s easier to place a phone call to the area nowadays, it’s almost impossible to find a trace of the old “Borscht Belt.”

——–

N.Y. July 31, 1928

My Dear Jeanie. —

It is now Tuesday afternoon and no news from you
as yet, I have looked in vain for the mailman to deliver
your precious letter.

This morning I called up home and nothing new
everybody is well and happy, dad was at business
and Sadie was preparing to go to Rose and then to C.I.
Sadie says that she was going to write you a nice long
letter (I hope she does).

Oh Jeanie dear I wish I knew when I could get you
on the phone I am not interested to talk to strangers
but to you only you know what I mean.

It is hard to get used to the fact that your are away¹
it is lonesome and dreary, but what does it matter since
you’re having your vacation and soon we will be together again
but that soon seems to be like a year off.²

Sunday night after having called Lake Huntington I went
to a Stadium concert³ but the sweet music could hardly make
me forget the dissappointment of not being able to hear your sweet
voice on the phone, Yesterday I saw a ball game at the Polo
grounds⁴ and this afternoon I’m attending to my accumulated
correspondence, tomorrow again to business.

Three days is a little to much without words from you
and should I not receive something by tomorrow morning

./.

2.

I’m afraid I won’t be able to do my work.

It seems that the writing muse has left me, it is due
perhaps to the heat which is annoying me, you see Sunday
and Monday were cool and balmy days but today it is
hot again.

In spite of my great love for you I don’t seem to be
able to get going in writing what I call a real nice
sentimental letter, I hope to have more luck in my
next try.⁵

In conclusion I again wish to greet your
companions the very charming Wise girls.

And remain as ever

Your devoted

Harry

P.S.

Here is a poem by Robert Browning

Summen Bonum

All the breath and the bloom if the year in the bag of one bee:
All the wonder and wealth of the miner in the heart of one gem:
In the cove of one pearl all the shade and the shine of the sea:
Breath and Bloom, shade and shine, — wonder, wealth, and — how — how far
above them —

Truth, that’s brighter than gem,
Trust, that’s purer than pearl, —

Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe — all were for me
in the kiss of one girl.

—————

The above poem fits in so well
with your farewell kiss, dear.⁶

————————

Matt’s Notes

1 – As she had in previous summers, my grandmother was vacationing for a few weeks at a Jewish resort in New York’s Catskill Mountain region (a.k.a. the “Borscht Belt”). She stayed this year at the Viola House (perhaps it was more commonly called the “Viola Hotel,” as Papa wrote on the above envelope) in Lake Huntington. Thanks to the Internets and Google Books, we can see a photo of the Viola here as it appears in Irwin Richman’s Catskill Hotels.

2 – Doesn’t it seem like this letter, with phrases like “soon we will be together again”, “only you know what I mean”, “three days is a little too much without words from you” is written by a man who knows the recipient longs to see him as much as he longs to see her? Had Papa and my grandmother, at some point between the summers of 1927 and 1928, developed a stronger commitment to each other that’s now evident in this letter? Or do I just imagine I see signs of such a development because I know how the story ends?

Perhaps I want to hurry things along because I just can’t stand to see Papa extend his self-imposed limbo for another year, pretending, against all evidence, that he and my grandmother were already companions, living, because he preferred to, in an imaginary relationship with a woman who would remedy the displaced and lonely feelings of his youth. The fact is, it would be another two years before my grandmother agreed to marry Papa.

3 – As discussed in our last post, Papa attended a performance of the New York Philharmonic, guest conducted by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Frederick Stock, at City College Stadium at 138th and Amsterdam. He had planned to go out of town with some friends, but decided not to in order to keep a phone appointment with my grandmother. Alas, my grandmother did not keep the appointment herself and Papa wound up going to the concert because it was “the only place to go alone.”

4 – The Giants-Cubs game at the Polo Grounds provided only an hour and a forty minutes of escape for Papa, but ended happily with a 4-1 Giants win. (I continue to marvel at how much longer baseball games are today than they were in the 1920’s. The he Mets-Yankees game I attended on Friday lasted three hours and eleven minutes, though I uncharacteristically left in disgust before that Yankees finished their 9-0 win.) We haven’t looked at the New York Times‘ baseball coverage since Papa last mentioned a game in his 1924 diary, but it looks like the Giants beat writer still had his sense of humor in’28:

[Giants Pitcher] Lefty Faulkner wasted no time in
proving himself master of the situa-
tion and he didn’t allow the Cubs
any excuse for not hurrying. In
fact, they must have realized that
the sooner they got it over with, the
better it would be for them.
…

Pat Malone proved no mystery to
the Giant hitters as they belted him
and flayed him for ten hits in the
six sessions he toiled.

As a result of all this bombarding
the Giants climbed back into third
place in the National League scram-
ble for the first time since they
reached home, except for a few
short minutes on Sunday when they won
the first game of a doubleheader.
Still, they are not so far in front
of the Cubs that they can afford to
sit down with their feet on the fur-
niture.

5 – Papa would not have consciously acknowledged such a thing, but I’d wager he felt like “the writing muse left” him and prevented him from composing “a real nice sentimental letter” because he really didn’t think my grandmother deserved a nice letter. Even if he did, as speculated above, feel like he was getting closer to winning her hand, he still had to contend with her tendency to ignore his letters, blow off phone calls, and allow her family to treat him poorly. Perhaps Papa suffered a little writer’s block because his angry thoughts were too close to the surface and he risked letting them loose if he put pen to paper. It makes sense, then…

6 – …for Papa to have sought relief by transcribing the above Browning poem (Papa wrote the title as “Summen Bonum,” though the actual title is “Summum Bonum”, a Latin term for “the greatest good”) though I wonder if it accurately describes a romantic goodbye kiss between Papa and my grandmother or if it is Papa’s attempt to romanticize a more ordinary peck on the cheek. It’s particularly hard to tell from this letter what’s true and what Papa just wants to be true.

—————-

References:

• GIANTS TRIP CUBS, 4-1; TAKE 3D PLACE; Faulkner Limits Bruins to 4 Hits, Including Circuit Drive by Cuyler. – The New York Times, July 31, 1928.
• Wikipedia has some more on the theological significance of the term “Summum Bonum“.

I treasure her but my muse is mute, the beautiful words hide themselves, they fear she will see in them what she wants only and not what they mean to say. I quote poetry instead, only for now only until the muse returns must the great poets say what I cannot.

——–

(September 22, 1929)

Sunday Night

Jeanie Dear: –

It is heart filled with grief that I’m writing these
lines, believe me the greatest physical pain would
not have caused me one millionth part of the agony I
am undergoing now after I’ve seen the other fellow again
with you.

Oh my Beloved maybe I am naive but I cannot
understand you, how in the world could you concienciously
play me the way you did?

But I will forget it all never to mention it, just
come back to my arms, to the one how has proven [to] you
by word and deed that he he loves you above everything
else in this or any other world, Do you know that
only genuine love can make a fellow humble himself like
I’m doing in pleading with you my cause, Just ask your
brother or any other fine fellow you know if they’d ever
care to see a girl who’d do to them what you did to me.

But my case is different, During the course of five years
my love has turned from mere friendship into the most
ardent affection, I have already been making plans
for you, only recently we’ve been conversing about an
engagement ring, Haven’t you encouraged me beloved
to dare hope? I have already begun planning for our
future, mapping out a life plan which would be ./.

2.

ideal for both of us, The sun was beginning to
cast its rays for me too, Although possessing not
riches I pictured our future life an idealistic one
with a cultured background, I even told you a few days
ago that I was ambitious to see [you] become a leader in the
Junior Hadassah, Do you think that If I am not rich
now I’ll have to remain this way for the rest of my life?
Why, the right thing to do is to stand by me inspire and
encourage me, and believe me you can never tell what the
results will be.

I don’t know wheather the other fellow is rich or not, but
one thing I’m sure no one can love you as I do, you know
that in the five years I’ve gone through thick and thin for and
with you, have gladly shared your troubles and burdens, please
don’t say that you did not encourage me, you did in many ways.

It was my great love for you that caused me to leave many
chances — I shall mention at least two, Miss Schneiderman
a daughter of my lodge member a fine type of girl loved
me dearly, I gave her no occasion to do so but she declared
her affections to me both verbally and in script, she is
married now.

The other one you remember very well when
I have returned a picture and letter of a fine girl (I did
it as Roses house) Why did I reject both these
proposals and others you don’t know of, just because

3.

I loved you and always will love you to the point
of madness,

Was there ever anything that I have hidden from
you? Haven’t I always been square with you and
everybody?

Haven’t you been introduced to all of my family as
my girlfriend and if there were in Bridgeport
some that didn’t know of our friendship, our visit
there acquainted them with the fact.

Don’t all my friends know you as my “girl friend”?
You went with me everywhere, everywhere, when
I pleaded with you two weeks ago please don’t go
up to my place of employment unless you can be
introduced officially as my sweetheart? You did
not object to being introduced as such.

What do you call encouragement? May my soul
be accursed if I am trying to bring up the subject of
money, in the first year of our “keeping company”
you remarked time and again when I offered a gift
a little gift that you cannot accept anything from a friend
that it was proper to accept from a sweetheart only
so I abstained from offering things.

But from the second year on you have been accepting
little gifts regularly from me, I hurts me [to mention it] beloved but
I had to mention these facts to prove my contention

4.

that I was encouraged to consider myself your
sweetheart, At many occasions you have suggested
what I should bring you, Even yesterday after I told
you how miserably I felt seeing the other fellow with you
you accepted a gift, and [you were] mentioning other things you would
like to have.

Perhap I should not have written this long letter [at all]
but I am suffering so, and feel that I must write to you.

Am I really so bad in your eyes that after 5 years
you have to experiment with other young men? Please
think it over don’t act hasty, If you drop me
now know that you will have wrecked a life for my
life will have no meaning [for me] and be a burden.

In this moment however I’m still hopeful that the
little spark of love you have for me (I am more than certain
that you love me [at least] a little) will develop into a flame that
will never be extinguished.

I shall call at your home this week Jeanie Dear
I will forget what happened, just be mine only before the
Eyes of God and Man.

Please forgive if I wrote wrote anything offensive
I wrote these lines I may say in a state of excitement

Please write me a word encouragement in the
enclosed stamped envelope by return mail.

Your lovesick

Harry

—————-

Matt’s Notes

I think I have some idea of why Papa foreswore pursuit of all other women immediately upon meeting my grandmother in 1925.  I’ve discussed it before, but I don’t mind revisiting it because I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten it quite right. So, let’s try again:

Papa’s did not arrive in America as a young child with no memory of the old country.  He was eighteen, already built for life in an Eastern European hamlet where he enjoyed some prominence as the local Torah scholar’s son. Though he knew why he had to leave an increasingly anti-Semitic and inhospitable Europe,  and thoough he did his best to establish himself in New York, he found it hard to finish growing up without his beloved father’s guidance, found himself longing instead for the simple comforts of his boyhood and the familiar old world.

Instinctively caring and naturally generous, he hoped to marry and have a family of his own, but the disorienting whirl of life as an alien in America, the crass and clanging existence that took him daily from the tenements of the Lower East Side to the factories of the garment district, pushed him to escape, pushed him into daydreams of the world he’d left behind.  He began to idealize his childhood companions, the woods surrounding his little hamlet, the way his neighbors embraced Judaism.  His father, who raised a family despite his “crippled” arm, took on heroic proportions.  The more Papa experienced New York’s cacophony, the more perfect, quiet and safe his past seemed, the more vital an emotional refuge it became. He taught himself to believe his old life was still there, waiting for him to return, and this dream became precious to him, essential to his survival.

To lay down roots in America would mean he’d have to give up his dream and sever his connection to the old country; to fall in love would be the first step.  This unacknowledged thought drove him, I think, to avoid settling down, to feel unenthusiastic about perfectly acceptable women and to chase only those who would disappoint him. (The Miss Schneidermann mentioned above appears several times in Papa’s 1924 diary, one of a long line of women for whom, to his own dismay, he couldn’t drum up much enthusiasm.) He was frustrated and he was lonely, but, unknowingly, he was unable, even uninterested, in the alternative.  The months and years went by, and Papa found himself in limbo.  By the time he started his 1924 diary, he was, I think, somewhat aware of what had happened to him, but limbo is hard place to escape; perhaps he was reluctant to leave it because he didn’t want to look back on how much time he’d wasted there.

His father’s death in 1924 was a terrible shock to him, but it also helped break the old country’s spell (Papa observed that he experienced “something like lost paradise” as he mourned, a biblical and literary reference to the end of dreamy innocence and the beginning of adult reality). Catapulted from limbo at last, he developed an urgent need to make up for lost time, to become a caring and committed family man, to belong somewhere again. He was twenty-nine.

Papa met my grandmother shortly after this urgency struck, and she was perfectly suited to his newfound purpose. At eighteen, she was mature enough to be an object of desire but young enough to require a paternal sort of care — that is, she could be both wife and child to someone who wanted both immediately. She was faithful, from a successful family, and as an “American” (as Papa called Jews who were born in America) she was someone who could help him feel more rooted to his adopted country. She was also a difficult person who could be glum, dissatisfied and confrontational, but this was attractive to him, too, for living with such a person would offer him a fine chance to express his capacity for self-sacrifice and empathy.  In combination with my grandmother’s physical beauty, all these things made her seem perfect to him. He was smitten, he was committed, and he vowed to marry her.

There were, of course, a few of problems with his plan: At eighteen, my grandmother had no intention of marrying anyone soon; ter family saw her as their treasure, and did not want her to be with a man of such modest means (as we have mentioned before, her family actually tried to set Papa up with my grandmother’s far less desirable sister, Sally, figuring she couldn’t do much better); the difficult qualities that Papa found so alluring in her also made her exactly the sort of person who would not succumb to a whirlwind courtship; as flattering as Papa’s sudden and passionate attention surely was, my grandmother may have found it a little creepy; she undoubtedly had her share of desirable and successful suitors, and she enjoyed their attentions.  Finally, she had a mean streak, and would have taken some pleasure in making him wonder and making him wait, so make him wonder and wait she did.

So much of what I’ve mentioned above was going on under the surface, of course. Though Papa was quite insightful and introspective, neither he nor my grandmother lived in a post-Freudian world in which people regularly questioned the “real motivations” behind their decisions and choices. Their day-to-day relationship unfolded much as we’ve seen it unfold in their letters, with Papa a bit on edge as he waited for my grandmother to return his affections, and my grandmother taking him for granted while she played the field. This seemed reasonable to Papa for a while, I suppose.

Which brings us to the state of things as of September 22, 1929: For five years, Papa has courted my grandmother to the exclusion of all other women, maintaining his loyalty to her as if their eventual marriage were a foregone conclusion.  For five years he has been distressed by her lack of interest in communicating with him, though he has tried to show good humor in the face of her seeming indifference, as if each excuse for not writing, each missed phone appointment, was some sort of lapse, out of character.  For five years he has parried her family’s attempts to steer him toward her less desirable sister, ignored their low-key insults and disrespect for his modest station.  For five years he has portrayed her contact with other suitors as a private, if uncomfortable, joke, nothing more than a little game designed to keep things interesting, a way for her to make a show of due diligence for formality’s sake.

Five years is a long time to live like this, though, especially since Papa had so pointedly committed himself to my grandmother in order to yank himself out of the very sort of limbo in which she now held him. At thirty-four, he must have thought none of his accomplishments at work or in the labor movement or in Zionist circles mattered because his impatience, frustration, and unacknowledged anger toward my grandmother made him weary, depressed, benumbed. Papa’s letter also implies that my grandmother had even hinted at her intention to marry him, had rejected her other suitors.  Finally, we should remember that, when Papa wrote the above letter, the fifth anniversary of his father’s death had just passed, and the late September season, laden with Jewish high holy days, made him miss his lost loved ones, and the old world, more keenly than usual. It’s no wonder, then, that the dam finally bursts when he sees my grandmother another man.

I won’t comment much on the contents of Papa’s letter, since it speaks for itself, though I will say I’m intrigued by the way he’s saw hints and signals in her actions over the years when she probably had no intention of delivering any. For example, because she said she wouldn’t accept gifts from a platonic friend, he was sure she’d wordlessly declared her affection for him by accepting gifts two years into their relationship. Did Papa really think this was true, or was it something he only put together in retrospect, perhaps to comfort himself when puzzling over her continued indifference? And how many other little facts and quotes and actions had he catalogued to convince himself that his commitment to my grandmother wasn’t a waste of time? How often did he turn these things over in his mind? How much time did he spend obsessing over them, and over her?

Papa, this letter is difficult to read. It is hurried, impassioned, ill-advised (in your concluding words, you even seem to regret writing it, though obviously you still sent it). It’s hard to watch you — who were so steady, wise, and inherently optimistic — panic so completely, convinced your life is on the verge of ruin. It is almost impossible to think that you, who had been through so much, who knew your world was your own to make, who understood so well the hearts of others, would presume a sheltered twenty-three-year-old could destroy you when she had, in reality, done nothing but unknowingly become the person you privately considered your savior.

I can do no more than remind you again that, Papa, this is you:

——–

Jeanie Dear: –

If I was excited last night I am fully aware
of what I am saying now, I am really ashamed of
myself. If I said things insulting and of having your
mother [excited] so much, I am sober now, sober but suffering
immensely pangs worse than death, Never before did
I realize how close I am at losing you as I am now.
How I messed up things.

But can’t you see that it was a fit of jealousy that
almost maddened me, and [upon] my word of honor this was
the first time that it ever occurred to me to get into
the situation I am in,

Picture yourself how completely I was taken by
surprise to find you alongside your other boy friend
with his arms around you, my heart almost flew out.
Every person possesses enough knowledge of human
psychology to sympathize with a person in my state of mind
I was in last night, You therefore should not condemn me

In order not to burst in tears in front of your father I went
home soon after you left, but I remember telling your mother
that I cannot give you up as a parting word. ¹

No about your letter, It is true that I told you long
ago that I would step aside should you fall in love with
someone else, of course. I would have to, whether I like
it or not, but when one cherishes something I realize now ./.

2

that one has to fight for it,

I fully realize that you are entitled, more than entitled
to be happy with the one of your own choice, but I
misunderstood your attitude toward me it seems or
would not have dreamed and planned for our future.

Oh please I plead with you don’t think me so rude or
bad, during the past 5 years you’ve had enough
time to observe that I am not as bad as I seemed to
be last night, There is no person in this whole wide
world that can say that I have harmed or wronged
anybody.

I humbly beg forgiveness for my childish sort of
action last night.

Inasmuch as I hate to refute you, I must try to
bring back to you recollections of a conversation when
you still lived at 183 a short time before you moved. ²

You said to me then that I was just talking but don’t
mean what I’m saying I then stated that I was ready
to buy you a ring, You asked how much I would spend
I said $500. You said that it was too cheap, that Sadie
had a better ring and that you would like to get one
like Yetta Hammers you also said what you’re saying
in this letter that I haven’t got at extra $25 for an
engagement ring, I said that at that time was was
ready to spend $500 -. Being cooly received with

3

My ring proposal I abstained from pressing the
subject any further, It is possible that you did not
take me seriously or you were not in earnest and so
it slipped off your mind. ³

And now please please consider of what I am
about to write.

I don’t think that I need further illustrate my
great undying love for you We know very well each
others faults and weaknesses, to me it seems that we
have known each other for ages we cannot get separated,
the only way you can separate from me is when you
tear my heart out to remain with you.

Without you my dear I am doomed to stoop
into the lowest depths of destitude, with you the world
is mine to conquer, I am not writing this to influence
you in my favor.

I want to you to love me, I would try hard very
hard to be deserving of same, to slave away for
you would be a pleasure, I know what your feared most
if you had been with me it is misery, but you were
wrong, I am fully capable now to provide for
a family I would be more than capable to provide for
a household, and with one kind word of encouragement
nothing would stop me from going out to make money
working nights, etc. ⁴ At this moment I am thinking that

./.

4

now would be the opportune time to open a dress
store with you without giving up my daily job
temporarily, with this project a success I can
see a number of chain stores ahead, of course all
this requires hard very hard work but most of all
insipiration, and you know what I mean, ⁵

And I have never given up my ambition to write,
more than ever I am thinking of it now, With God
Almighty’s help I shall take advantage of every moment
the muse is with me and put down on paper any idea
I may get at any time or any moment. ⁶

No Jeanie dear concentrate, consult with your
innermost soul, you know you have your caprices which
I honestly believe that I alone can understand, and
here I am pledging to you a life of service, I do not
ask hasty action, can’t you see that a turning point
has arrived abruptly when we have to show our cards
on the table, I am not so impatient as you may be
inclined to believe, All I am asking is please, please
do not reject me now consult your mother, father etc.
please don’t be swayed by prejudice against me,
I welcome an opportunity for you to study other boy
friends, don’t think (if you are) that because I
am not dancer I am passe. You my dear know very
well my worldly leanings.

./.

5.

My world is the one of literature and [the] arts, I
solemnly pledge myself to make you socially prominent
not only in my immediate circle of friends but into
foremost Jewish society, this is part of my great ambition
Again, with you at my side as my own nothing
could stop me I honestly believe to climb the narrow
ladder of success.

My diagnosis is that disappointments, setbacks
and fear of losing you have tended to keep me back,
I’ll treatment on your past one dissolutions after
another have certainly contributed to my discouragement
the reject [text illegible] I am further way from success than
I was 5 years ago. ⁷

I feel that I could not have opened my heart
to anyone not even to my mother the way I did to
you in this letter,

Contrary to last night my eyes are dry now
I am [not] just writing impulsively, my mind and heart
are cooperating, I could write a lot more,

Please read it through carefully, over again if
necessary but no hasty action please pro or con
I shall call upon you Thursday as you desire
but please forget and forgive for what happened
last night should you desire me to stay away
for awhile please say it kindly without hurting

me, I pray that Allmighty shows you the vision
whereby you can see the right path on which
your future life depends.

Please do me this one favor tell your mother
that I feel that my action that got her so excited
will ever be a stain upon my character, She has
always been to me the impersonation of everything that
is noble and beautiful.

About your father you need not worry he has
plenty of his own troubles he won’t know of mine.

Memories oh without you they will haunt
me and torture me a great deal is written down
in diaries until I discontinued them about 2 years
ago but they can never be eradicated from my mind. ⁸

I am again enclosing a stamped envelope
after baring my heart to you I expect a different sort
of reply.

I am awaiting your reply with trembling heart
I shall never act again like I did last night, Please
state the exact time you’ll be home Thursday night.

As a parting word PLEASE let bygones be bygones.

Your tried lover

Harry

————

Matt’s Notes

1 – In his last letter, written a few hours before this one, Papa expressed the raw dismay he felt immediately after seeing my grandmother with another boyfriend. This would have been bad enough had he merely seen them on the street or cuddling on a park bench, but, according to this letter, Papa encountered “the other fellow” in my grandmother’s house while paying a casual call.

Then, it seems, Papa gamely stuck around until my grandmother and her interloping companion went off together, after which he made some kind of testy declaration to my great-grandmother, went home, and started writing. He sees this, his second letter, as more “sober” and reasonable than the first, but I think it’s even more disjointed and anxious.

For those of you just joining us, a little context: Papa foreswore all other women the moment he met my grandmother and had, at the time he wrote this letter, already courted her for five long years despite her serious efforts to dissuade him. We could chalk up this dogged commitment to the magic of Cupid’s arrow (he was a romantic with a proven capacity for feeling passionately smitten) but I think it was also the solution to a complicated emotional puzzle that Papa had been trying to solve for most of his adult life. I’m not sure I possess, in Papas words, “enough knowledge of human psychology” to be sure of this, but I wrote about it at length in my last post, so please give it a look and check my work.

2 – Papa refers here to 183 Hart Street, where my grandmother’s family lived for many years until they graduated to fancier digs. Papa sent this letter to my grandmother’s work address (the law office of Louis Richman, where she worked as a legal secretary) because he was in a desperate way and wanted her to receive them quickly. (The mail came twice a day back then and she would have only seen his letters in the evening if he sent them to her home.)

3 – My grandmother had undeniable nasty streak and appears to have displayed it in full during the episode described here. First, she accused Papa of not seriously wanting to marry her; when he told her he had, in fact, put aside $500 for a ring (a hefty tab for a factory worker, equivalent to $6000 in today’s dollars) she told him it wasn’t good enough. I suppose, since her family had encouraged her to dismiss Papa and had even plotted with her to keep him at bay (as I’ve mentioned before, they used to dress her in glasses and ugly wigs when he’d visit so she’d look less attractive) she felt her nastiness was well-supported and sanctioned, but it’s still pretty shitty behavior.

Which leads us to point out, once again…

4 – …that Papa could not have tolerated and persevered through so much rejection if he did not, in some way, want or need to see himself as someone who could remain generous, faithful and tolerant in the face of it. I think he truly loved my grandmother and saw her clearly, but because self-sacrifice was so important to him, he also found some abstract satisfaction in his ability to love her despite the costs to his pride and comfort.

5 – Papa may have been a romantic, but he wasn’t impractical. Even as he pens a letter full of impassioned rhetoric and describes his heady dreams of a retail empire, he lays out the baby steps necessary to get there and knows he’d have to work nights and keep his day job to make it happen. He doesn’t promise anything, he just promises to try, keeping in mind how important it will be not to risk what he’s already achieved.

I also think he’s trying to convince my grandmother, who came from a wealthy family and had wealthy suitors, that he’s not without financial ambition.  Interestingly, though, his plan to build a business includes my grandmother as an active partner; having her in his life was, I think, are more important dream to him than making money.

6 – He didn’t learn English until he was eighteen, but Papa filled his diary and letters with impressive and occasionally beautiful English prose. I suppose his talent for writing must have been genuine if it was strong enough to be visible through such a language barrier, but as far as I know he didn’t get to “take advantage of every moment the muse” was with him as much as he would have wanted. It wouldn’t have been like him to wish he had more time, but I like to think that, with this project, I’ve given him some.

7 – This passage is not an example of Papa’s best writing, though the strange phrasing and misused words show how distressed he is to discuss his fear of losing my grandmother, how held back he’s felt by “disappointments” and “setbacks,” and how desperately he wants to move on with his life.  His battle with emotional stasis, his inability to let himself build a full life in America was, as I’ve discussed on this site (and, again, most recently in my last post) the central struggle of his young adulthood.

It’s clearly evident in his 1924 diary and had developed long before he met my grandmother, but he felt his passionate commitment to her would cure his inertia. She only had to marry him. As we know, and as the last five years of Papa’s letters show, it didn’t work out that way. It was unusual for Papa to blame someone else for his troubles, but in this case I can see why his “diagnosis” of his situation includes, among other things, my grandmother’s ongoing indifference. He saw her as his ticket out of limbo and couldn’t understand why she didn’t want to be.

8 – I realize I’ve convinced myself that Papa’s 1924 diary was the last he wrote, perhaps because he seemed so weary by the end of it, perhaps because I can’t read more of what he wrote.  Still, if he really discontinued his diaries two years prior to this 1929 letter, it would mean he kept them through 1927.

I’m not sure why he brought up his diaries here or why he thought the memories they contained would “torture” him. Perhaps he filled them with pages of agonized speculation about my grandmother’s behavior, detailed in them the romantic opportunities he turned down with her in mind. Perhaps, as he wrote this letter, he pictured himself spending the rest of his days poring over his diaries and reliving his failed relationship with my grandmother, wondering what little moments he might have changed or words he might have said or gestures he might have made to change the story’s ending.

But, as we know, Papa, this is you:

——–

[this is a pre-printed card]

To Jeanie Dear:

From the dawn of this day
until the sun’s sinking,
Each moment, Sweetheart of you
I’ll be thinking;

Just as I always do, day after day,
Loving you always, dear,
just the same way;

Wishing you all that you’re
wishing-and more
And hoping the future
has blessing in store.

Harry A Scheuermann

———–

Matt’s Notes

Let’s get the cosmetic details out of the way first: This 1929 Rosh Hashana (a.k.a. Jewish New Year) card is made of pink cardboard, has a matching pink envelope, and is addressed to 226 Hart Street in Brooklyn. (As Papa alluded to his last letter, my grandmother’s family had once lived at 183 Hart Street. I’m not sure when they moved, though I do know that Papa was sending letters to 183 as late as 1926.) Its flower illustration and the words “TO MY SWEETHEART” are stitched into a light sheet of gauze and glued into a cutout in the front cover, the bottom of which displays the words “A Happy New Year” in both English and Hebrew.  The pre-printed poem, and Papa’s handwritten salutation and signature, appear on pink paper glued inside the cover, while the back cover informs us the card was, oddly, made in France.

Coincidentally, it’s the morning before Rosh Hashana, 2008, as I write about this card, which is the next and final piece of 1929 correspondence I’ve got from Papa.* An off-the-shelf card, however French and beribboned, seems a rather impersonal and anticlimactic way to conclude his correspondence for the year, especially because his last two letters, written just after he found my grandmother with another boyfriend, fairly tremble with all the anger and frustration he felt over her indifference towards his five years of courtship.

What had happened in the intervening three weeks? Had Papa finally given up? Had he stopped putting energy into his letters? Had he foresworn his lengthy romantic declarations and transcriptions of canonical love poems? Stay tuned for 1930.

———–

*If you’re wondering why Rosh Hashana could fall on October 11th in 1929 and on September 29th in 2008, remember that Jewish religious holidays follow the ancient Hebrew calendar and are therefore out of synch with the modern-day Gregorian calendar.  Here ends my scholarship on this subject, though I do know one other thing: my grandmother, whose clockwork tendency to point out whether the holidays were “early this year” or “late this year” remains a joke in my family, surely thought Rosh Hashana was “late” in 1929.