Monday Aug 18

by


Received from [?] S. a letter
I would say rather [almost] affectionate
letter.

I shall gladly answer her.
She is the type of a girl I may
associate with.

I’ve just been informed that Miss R.
an intelligent American girl, was about
to propose to me but was stopped by her
parents who want their daughter to marry
wealth.

She a beautiful girl having gone through
all phases of life having all sorts of
admirers, game to the core, age 26.
seeks to propose to me the quiet, as
a climax to a gay and merry girlhood
life. — She saw me but twice, but
asked me to take her to a concert at
the Stadium. I may do it yet.
Yes. She was once an actress too.

—————–

Matt’s Notes

I can’t make out the name of the woman who surprised Papa with her interest in him, but it looks something like “Sarah”:

I also can’t figure out from Papa’s tone whether he’s disappointed or simply surprised by news of “Miss R’s” thwarted proposal, but his discussion of it does reveal a few interesting details about Papa’s world. He refers to Miss R. as an “American girl,” which is the first time he’s used this phrase in his diary and no doubt means she was born in America and was more assimilated than he. I’m not sure if he therefore thought of her as part of a higher, more genteel social class, but her parents certainly did.

I also find it odd that a woman we’ver never heard of before planned to propose to Papa but I suppose my understanding of the word “propose” is quite different than Papa and Miss R.’s. Papa must have met her through a marriage broker and forgotten about her with the faceless prospects he described, or rather found too uninspiring to describe, back in early August. By “proposing” to him, she probably would have indicated, through the marriage broker, her willingness to marry him if he were amenable. I imagine the marriage broker delivered the news of her sentiments and of her family’s disapproval to see if Papa was willing to check her out again and, perhaps, try to win her family over.

Despite his description of her qualifications, I don’t think Papa was very excited about her. He could be very hard on himself about his lack of money and social standing when he was really interested in a woman who he felt was too good for him, but it doesn’t seem to bother him here. Also, news of Miss R.’s near-proposal doesn’t disappoint him nearly as much as his dramatic encounter back in January with “Tillie,” who sent him into a days-long tailspin when she confessed her love for him even though she was engaged to someone else.

In any event, the “concert at the Stadium” Papa planned to take Miss R. to was the August 20th performance of the New York Philharmonic at City College Stadium (a.k.a. Lewisohn Stadium, formerly located at 138th Street and Amsterdam Avenue). This was 1924’s final installment of the popular “Stadium concerts” summer music series, which was introduced in 1918 (when soldiers and sailors got in free) and continued until the mid-1960’s when Lewisohn Stadium was razed to accommodate City College’s expansion plans.

————

New York Times References:

Tuesday Aug 19

by


Got a card from Clara from
Spring Valley. I am indifferent to her.

————–

Matt’s Notes

As we know, the Clara mentioned above is not Papa’s sister Clara, but probably one of the cousins he stayed with when he first came to America in 1913. Clara II, as I shall hereafter refer to her for clarity’s sake, became an object of affection for Papa at some point in the intervening years, but their relationship has gotten stuck, engines revving and wheels spinning fruitlessly, at the relationship of friendship and intimacy.

Papa knows Clara II well and therefore hasn’t formally introduced her to us, but it looks like their orbital behavior is well-established: Clara II leads Papa on in order to get attention or favors from him, and Papa, frustrated, vows to wash his hands of her and resist her “trickery” only to answer when she again comes calling. We can almost see it unfold in his reaction to her postcard, which he writes about in his diary but only in order to deny his excitement over hearing from her. I suppose anyone who has ever been unable to exit a relationship that was clearly going nowhere knows the feeling.

————

Additional Notes

Spring Valley was likely the site of a Jewish summer colony where Clara II went to get away from the city (women generally went to such colonies for extended stays, while the men in their families stayed in the city to work and joined them on weekends). As reader Marisa notes on this site’s “Cry for Help” page:

spring valley, new york is part of suburban rockland county which is 30 minutes northwest of new york city. currently spring valley and its neighboring town monsey are home to one of the country’s largest concentration of orthodox jews. (the rest of rockland county is also densely populated with jews of all denominations)probably in the 1920’s it was more rural and used as a summertime retreat for urban dwellers such as papa and other LES jews. since people began to move out of the city and populate suburbs such as rockland and westchester counties in the 1940’s and 1950’s, people began moving further north for such summertime family retreats. for example the catskill mountain region.

Wednesday Aug 20

by


Just a little ride to C.I.
with Blanche.

————–

Matt’s Notes

I’m pretty sure Papa’s Coney Island companion on this day was a new character named Blanche, though I might be reading the name wrong (the “a” after the “l” doesn’t look exactly like his usual “a,” but I can’t think of what else it might be):

Whatever her name might be, I wonder who she is and how Papa met her. Could she be “Miss R.,” the “American girl” who expressed her affection for him a couple of days ago? He said he planned to take her out, and he often did his romancing on public transportation trips like train or ferry rides to Coney Island. He certainly would have been happy to be among the couples strolling the boardwalk rather than wistfully observing them from afar, as he has done in the past.

On the other hand, Papa said he planned to take Miss R. to a concert, and this entry seems a bit brief and offhand for a description of such a potentially important date. The phrase “just a little ride to C.I.” could indicate the jaunty cheerfulness of someone who’s had a great time with a new gal and can’t be bothered to describe it right now, or it could literally mean that his trip to Coney with Blanche was nothing remarkable. We’ve never met Blanche before, but since Papa’s diary isn’t a novel it often introduces his well-known acquaintances without ceremony, as it recently did with Clara II. Is Blanche just an old friend?

Thursday Aug 21

by


Nothing from Papa today. Perhaps he’s exhausted from all the attention he’s been getting from women over the past couple of days. If he had enough energy to look at the papers, here’s what might have caught his eye in the New York Times:

POLITICS NEVER POLITE. — Remember, there was a Presidential campaign underway in 1924. Even though the Democratic nominee, John W. Davis, had no real chance after his party’s contentious convention back in July, he was still out there campaigning. This editorial takes the Republicans to task for complaining about Davis’ tough language on the stump.

ARGUE FOR HANGING OF FRANKS SLAYERS; State Prosecutors Call Leopold and Loeb Fiends, While the Youths Listen Unmoved. — I admit this might be more interesting to me than to Papa since I just finished Compulsion, Meyer Levin’s excellent, thinly fictionalized account of the Leopold and Loeb saga. Still, the trial was a national sensation, so perhaps Papa was following along.

MOVIE OPERATORS VOTE TO STRIKE; Union to Collect Defense Fund of $200,000 for Strife to Begin Sept. — As a labor activist and movie lover, Papa must have been intrigued by the prospect of a movie operators’ strike (I think projectionists called themselves movie operators in those days). Negotiations broke off a week later, but theater owners apparently had no problem finding operators from outside The Motion Picture Operators’ Union, Local 306.

Today’s Radio Program – The Times radio listings (they appear to be a new innovation in August 1924, but I need to figure out when they first started appearing) show that Papa might have heard some of the following if he spent the evening at home with his headphones:

  • WEAF: Vladimir Karapepoff, Piano; “Modern Children’s Crusade,” by Jackie Coogan
  • WNYC: Jascha Gurewich, saxophone; Sam Perry and Herbert Clair, piano duets; “Physical Examination of Food Handlers by the Occupational Clinic,” by Dr. Rudolph Rapp; Police alarms, stolen automobiles, missing persons, weather forecasts.
  • WJZ: Gotham Hotel Orchestra; French lesson; Waldorf-Astoria Orchestra

Friday Aug 22

by


An entire evening talking
to friends on the phone.

And an appointment
with an unknown [to me] girl
for Monday Tues.

————–

Matt’s Notes

Papa installed a private telephone in his apartment back in June in order to, as he put it, “in my loneliness talk to my friends direct from my house.” I wonder if he had the same feelings for this technology as he did for his radio, a combination of fascination with its capabilities and a sense, especially on nights when it was his sole diversion, that it was a cold substitute for real companionship.

Saturday Aug 23

by


Attended a rather stormy
meeting of the 3 down town
districts at St. Marks Pl.
I took part in the discussion.

—————

The “down town districts” Papa mentions here are probably chapters of the Zionist Organization of America. The Z.O.A. was, at the time, a 40,000 member group closely affiliated with the womens’ group Hadassah, the fundraising organization Keren Hayesod, and Order Sons of Zion (B’nai Zion) the Zionist fraternal order to which Papa belonged.

Back in January, Papa had put quite a bit of pressure on himself to help revive the 1st district of the Z.O.A., organizing and publicizing a meeting with A-list guest speakers including the prominent Zionist figures Abe Goldberg and Maurice Samuel. He hasn’t mentioned the district since then, but I assume he represented it at the meeting mentioned above.

Where would this meeting have taken place? In a private home? A coffee house? Over dinner in a Jewish restaurant on the Lower East Side? Perhaps, since it was a Saturday, Papa and his comrades met in a synagogue after Shabbat services, or maybe, in the cool of this August evening, they strolled up to the the Z.O.A. offices on 5th Avenue and 12th Street. [Not sure what I was thinking when I wrote these last couple of sentences — he mentions that the meeting was on St. Marks place.]

I wonder, too, what kind of “stormy” debate Papa participated in during this meeting. The possibilities are limitless: They may have had a heated political discussion over the advantages of the movement’s left-wing socialist or right-wing militant philosophies; perhaps they needed to decide which of their less successful downtown districts to shut down; maybe they disagreed over how to best spread the word in lower Manhattan or about where the next fundraising event should take place.

Stridency was the order of the day in Papa’s Zionist circles, so I imagine whatever room he and his friends smoked up must have been really alive with argument if Papa noted the meeting’s contentiousness. (Even Papa, who we all remember as remarkably gentle and fair, could take the gloves off when he aired Zionist opinions — witness his strident language in an article he wrote for the Z.O.A. publication Dos Yiddishe Folk criticizing a rival Zionist group.) When he says he “took part in the discussion,” does he mean he jumped into the fray and shouted to be heard? Or, when faced with a room full of red-faced colleagues, did he try to restore civility and cool everyone down with quiet logic?

Sunday Aug 24

by


Took Blanche to a Ball
game at Yankee Stadium
and later one hour rowing
at Central Park and then
the Concert at the Mall, and
home.

—————–

Matt’s Notes

I’m still not sure who Blanche is, but in this, her second appearance in Papa’s diary, she enjoys veritable 1920’s New York montage of a day with Papa.
<!– –>
Things started off on a fine note with a Yankee victory over Detroit at the Stadium. New York sluggers Babe Ruth and Bob Meusel had quiet days, but the Yankees still scored eight runs while giving up only one. Was Blanche a baseball fan, or did Papa explain the game to her, show her how to keep score, lean in close to whisper during suspenseful moments? Did he wonder, on this pleasant August day, if this would be the first of many games he’d see with her?

I questioned a couple of days ago whether Blanche was an old friend of Papa’s or someone he’d just started dating, but today’s post-baseball row in Central Park leads me to think that romance was in the offing. Happily, Papa had practiced rowing in the Park earlier in the year, and perhaps he felt it paid off for him now. Was Blanch impressed by his comfort with his surroundings, his easy way with a rowboat, his rakishly-tilted straw boater?

And after rowing, a stroll over to the Mall, where they joined 60,000 others to see a concert featuring, among other selections, a couple of pieces by Wager and, luckily for Papa, his beloved Tchaikovsky. (I’m taking some liberties with the photo below since it’s from 1894, but it’s the best I could do.)

This concert was not, we should note, the August 24th performance at City College Stadium that Papa had thought about attending with the lively “Miss R.,” a woman who had expressed a matrimonial interest in him last week. Still, it was an outdoor show and it did take place on the same day, so perhaps this is further proof that Blanche and Miss R. were, as I speculated the other day, the same person.

Since I’ve said what the concert wasn’t, I should probably now say what it was: the summer’s final outdoor show conducted by the popular Edwin Franko Goldman, who received an award at intermission in honor of his triumphant season. Goldman likely wrapped up the show with a performance of “On the Mall,” a catchy march he’d just written that would go on to become his most famous composition. I wonder if, in later years, Papa felt proud to have been among the first to hear Goldman’s signature work. I wonder, too, if the strains of “On The Mall” always made him think of Blanche and the perfect day, full of potential, they shared together in 1924.

———————

References:

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Image Sources:

“Babe Ruth crossing the plate after making his first home run of the season today,” April 21, 1924. Library of Congress # LC-USZ62-97945. No known restrictions on publication.

“New York City views from Central Park. Across lake at 77th St. VI,” 1931. Library of Congress # LC-G623-T-15618

“The Mall, Central Park, N.Y. (looking south), 1894. Library of Congress #LC-USZ62-69575

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