The Cape Doctor by E. J. Levy

I read this novel in one day.

It was a windy, gloomy day. But that is not why I read it in one day. I read it in one day because I did not want to stop reading. 

I loved the narrative voice, the feeling of being transported back several centuries, the knowing wink to the style of the early 19th c in lines like "No one who had ever seen Margaret Brackley in her infancy would have supposed her born to be a heroine (or so Jane Austen might have written of her..."

I was interested in the questions the narrator struggled with, about choice and chance, gender identity, the gap between male and female autonomy and self-determination.

Which of us is undisguised, after all? Which of us reveals himself truly to the world. ~from The Cape Doctor by E. J. Levy

 

The Cape Doctor is based on the true story of a woman who posed as a man to gain an education and become the first female doctor. She performed the first recorded, successful Cesarean operation.

portrait of Dr. James Barry, inspiration for The Cape Doctor's protagonist

Levy's character is inspired by the historical Barry, but Levy gives her own spin to the story, concentrating on the feminist issues. Her Dr. Perry lives as a man, but identifies as female. (Another character is hermaphrodite, which some believe Barry was, while others believe Barry was transsexual. Those controversies do not affect my reading of this novel, as this is historical fiction inspired by true events, and not a biography.) 

Under Levy's hands, the imagined character Margaret Brackley becomes Dr. Jonathan Mirandus Perry. She tells her story of transformation from a subservient and invisible female to an authoritative and competent professional man of society.

In dire poverty, Margaret's mother sends her to beg aid from her uncle. There, she meets General Mirandus, who takes an interest in her brilliant mind. After her uncle's death, the general sends her to be educated in Edinburgh's esteemed medical school with plans for her to become his personal physician in Caracas.

Margaret cuts her hair and binds her breasts and dons a boy's clothing. She learns to lower her voice, to change her actions and her attitude, to mimic. She learns how to masquerade, how to pass.

As Dr. Perry, she becomes a successful army doctor in Cape Town, with at least one young lady falling in love with her.

When her true sex is discovered, she has a love affair and must chose between love and her career, and more importantly, "the right to think and speak and move as I chose, not as others bade me. To experience life on my own terms."

I thought of Mary Wollstonecraft, another brilliant woman who was also against marriage, whose love affairs were scandalous.

As a first-person narrative in the style of the early 19th c, Margaret/Perry speaks to issues of identity and freedom, often in pithy epigrams. And most are quite timeless. Including, "You can judge a culture by its medicine, by how it teats is most vulnerable--the ill." 

It is interesting to learn that the Cape Doctor is the name for a strong wind that today blows away the pollution over Cape Town and provides waves for perfect surfing, but which was believed to also blow away bad spirits, healing the town. And that fair weather comes after the blow. 

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Cape Doctor

by E. J. Levy

Little, Brown and Company

Pub Date  June 15, 2021

ISBN: 9780316536585

hardcover $28.00 (USD)

from the publisher

A "gorgeous, thoughtful, heartbreaking" historical novel, The Cape Doctor is the story of one man’s journey from penniless Irish girl to one of most celebrated and accomplished figures of his time (Lauren Fox, New York Times bestselling author of Send for Me).

 

Beginning in Cork, Ireland, the novel recounts Perry’s journey from daughter to son in order to enter medical school and provide for family, but Perry soon embraced the new-found freedom of living life as a man. From brilliant medical student in Edinburgh and London to eligible bachelor and quick-tempered physician in Cape Town, Dr. Perry thrived. When he befriended the aristocratic Cape Governor, the doctor rose to the pinnacle of society, before the two were publicly accused of a homosexual affair that scandalized the colonies and nearly cost them their lives.

 

E. J. Levy’s enthralling novel, inspired by the life of Dr. James Miranda Barry, brings this captivating character vividly alive.

Republic of Detours: How the New Deal Paid Broke Writers to Rediscover America by Scott Borchert

It was a roiling and seething experiment, and even its participants could not agree on what it all meant. ~from Republic of Detours by Scott Borchert

During the Depression, President Roosevelt's New Deal relief programs paid millions of people to work. White collar workers were also starving, including writers, editors, newspapermen, and college professors. The Federal Writers Project (FWP) was created to employ tens of thousands of writers across America; it is credited for preventing suicide rates among writers. The program not only printed over a thousand publications, it boosted the careers of the 20th c most iconic writers.

The FWP conceived of a series of American Guides, filled with a broad range of information, including geography, politics, history, folklore, and ethnographic and cultural studies. They were the ultimate travel guides, providing tours and destinations that were often known only to local people. 

Author Scott Borchert's uncle had hundreds of the guides and he became curious to know who created them and why. "They carry a whiff of New Deal optimism," he writes, but they also managed to sidestep "those signature American habits of boosterism and aggressive national mythologizing." The Guides offer insight into how Americans saw themselves and their history.

Borchert uncovered how the massive program was rife with conflict and struggles. The state programs submitted articles to the D. C. editors. Conflicts arose. For instance, there was a backlash against the term Civil War by Southern states who wanted War Between the States. 

Readers learn about the life, careers, and politics of the administrators and writers. In the 1930s, socialism was embraced by progressives, and many of the Guide writers were progressives who wrote about labor and attacked racial and economic inequity. Eventually, the program came under attack as a communist vehicle.

Tour One introduces Henry Alsberg, friend of Emma Goldman, selected to run the WPA in Washington DC. His first mission was to "take 3.5 million people off relief and put them to work." The quality of the work was unimportant. And yet, the largest publishing houses later testified to the quality of the guides.

Tour Two considers how the program worked in Idaho under Vardis Fisher who completed and published the first Guide. Tour Three takes us to Chicago where writers Nelson Algren, Studs Terkel, Frank Yerby, and Richard Wright were hired.

Tour Four goes to Florida where anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston joined a Negro Unit to write The Florida Negro. Tour Five goes to New York City, the most dysfunctional unit. Richard Wright left the FWP in Chicago, where he became friends with Margaret Walker, for New York City where he meet Ralph Ellison.

Tour Six returns to DC, the WPA attacked by Rep. Martin Dies, Jr., who contended that the organization was a stronghold of communists intending to create a propaganda outlet.

This is a broad ranging history of an era, the program, and the people who ran and worked in it, and its legacy. The Guides legacy includes inspiring authors John Steinbeck and William Least Heat-Moon.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through Net Galley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Read an excerpt from Republic of Detours at 

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374298456

Read some of the guides at

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/mb?a=listis;c=683403011

Read some of the manuscripts

https://www.loc.gov/collections/federal-writers-project/about-this-collection/

Republic of Detours: How the New Deal Paid Broke Writers to Rediscover America

by Scott Borchert

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Pub Date June 15, 2021   

ISBN: 9780374298456

hardcover $30.00 (USD)

from the publisher

An immersive account of the New Deal project that created state-by-state guidebooks to America, in the midst of the Great Depression—and employed some of the biggest names in American letters

The plan was as idealistic as it was audacious—and utterly unprecedented. Take thousands of broke writers and put them to work charting a country on the brink of social and economic collapse, with the aim of producing a rich and beguiling series of guidebooks to the forty-eight states. There would be hundreds of other publications dedicated to cities, regions, and towns, plus voluminous collections of folklore, ex-slave narratives, and even recipes, all of varying quality, each revealing distinct sensibilities.

All this fell within the singular purview of the Federal Writers’ Project—a division of the Works Progress Administration founded to employ jobless writers, from bestselling novelists and acclaimed poets to the more dubiously qualified. 

It was a predictably eclectic organization, directed by an equally eccentric man, Henry Alsberg—a disheveled Manhattanite and “philosophical anarchist” who was prone to fits of melancholy as well as bursts of inspiration. Under Alsberg’s direction, the FWP took up the lofty goal of rediscovering America, and soon found itself embroiled in the day’s most heated arguments regarding literary representation, radical politics, and racial inclusion—forcing it to reckon with the promises and failures of both the New Deal and the American experiment itself.

Scott Borchert’s Republic of Detours tells the story of this raucous and remarkable undertaking by delving into the stories of several key figures and tracing the FWP from its optimistic early days to its dismemberment by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Along with Alsberg and a cast of New Dealers, we meet Vardis Fisher, the cantankerous Western novelist whose presence on the project proved to be a blessing and a curse; Nelson Algren, broke and smarting from the failure of his first novel, whose job saved him from a potentially grim fate; Zora Neale Hurston, the most published Black woman in the country, whose talents were sought by the FWP’s formally segregated Florida office; and Richard Wright, who arrived in the chaotic New York City office on an upward career trajectory, courtesy of the WPA. Meanwhile, Ralph Ellison, Margaret Walker, John Cheever, and many other future literary stars found sustenance when they needed it.

By way of these and a multitude of other stories, Borchert illuminates an essentially noble enterprise that sought to create a broad, inclusive, and collective self-portrait of America at a time when the nation’s very identity and future were thrown into question. As the United States enters a new era of economic distress, political strife, and culture-industry turmoil, this book’s lessons are urgent and strong.

Early Morning Riser, The Chanel Sisters, and News of the World

 

Last week I read two library books from my local library. 

Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny had glowing reviews about its humor. The novel is set in the Up North city of Boyne City, Michigan. Our library book club read the author's novel Standard Deviation a few years ago. I thought it would be a welcome bedtime read.

And it was that! I laughed out loud. Heiny knows the Up North culture, and through her character Jane, a young teacher new to the area, provides some very pointed humor. She mentions the iconic Kilwin's ice cream and places Michiganders will know.

It seemed to Jane that people who lived downstate had cabins in Northern Michigan, and people who lived in Northern Michigan had cabins in the Upper Peninsula, but where did people who lived in the Upper Peninsula have cabins? Canada? And where did Canadian people have cabins? At what point did there cease to be an appeal in going north and people gave up and bought time shares in Florida?

I loved the wacky, likable characters that surround Jane. Her love interest Duncan seems to have slept with every woman she meets. Duncan was burned by his first marriage to a beautiful, but controlling, woman. He still mows his exe's yard and fixes things at her house, although she has remarried; her husband is eccentric with endless special needs.

Duncan has taken under his wing Jimmy, a mentally challenged man. A tragic accident changes Jane's life and she assumes care for Jimmy along with Duncan. 

This charming novel has great heart and warmth. 

Available now

from the publisher

A wise, bighearted, boundlessly joyful novel of love, disaster, and unconventional family

Jane falls in love with Duncan easily. He is charming, good-natured, and handsome but unfortunately, he has also slept with nearly every woman in Boyne City, Michigan. Jane sees Duncan’s old girlfriends everywhere–at restaurants, at the grocery store, even three towns away.

While Jane may be able to come to terms with dating the world’s most prolific seducer of women, she wishes she did not have to share him quite so widely. His ex-wife, Aggie, a woman with shiny hair and pale milkmaid skin, still has Duncan mow her lawn. His coworker, Jimmy, comes and goes from Duncan’s apartment at the most inopportune times. Sometimes Jane wonders if a relationship can even work with three people in it–never mind four. Five if you count Aggie’s eccentric husband, Gary. Not to mention all the other residents of Boyne City, who freely share with Jane their opinions of her choices.

But any notion Jane had of love and marriage changes with one terrible car crash. Soon Jane’s life is permanently intertwined with Duncan’s, Aggie’s, and Jimmy’s, and Jane knows she will never have Duncan to herself. But could it be possible that a deeper kind of happiness is right in front of Jane’s eyes? A novel that is alternately bittersweet and laugh-out-loud funny, Katherine Heiny’s Early Morning Riser is her most astonishingly wonderful work to date.

*****

I read and enjoyed Judithe Little's historical novel Wickwhythe Hall, and a number of years back read Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History by Rhonda K. Garelick. I was interested in Little's new novel The Chanel Sisters, the story of Coco's youngest sister, Antoinette. 

The Chanel sisters Julia-Berthe, Adrienne, Gabrielle, and Antoinette lost their mother and were abandoned by their father, growing up at a convent orphanage. 

The Chanel sisters seek a path out of poverty through work or romance. Antoinette is essential to Coco's design career but she dreams of marriage. Little imagines a love interest that predates her historical marriage, and which explains her death in Argentina.

Readers will love these characters determined to rise above the circumstances of their birth, not only challenging social norms but changing them with fashions that freed women from constricting, ornamental clothing. 

Available now

from the publisher

A novel of survival, love, loss, triumph—and the sisters who changed fashion forever

Antoinette and Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel know they’re destined for something better. Abandoned by their family years before, they’ve grown up under the guidance of pious nuns preparing them for simple lives as the wives of tradesmen or shopkeepers. At night, their secret stash of romantic novels and magazine cutouts beneath the floorboards are all they have to keep their dreams of the future alive.

The walls of the convent can’t shield them forever, and when they’re finally of age, the Chanel sisters set out together with a fierce determination to prove themselves worthy to a society that has never accepted them. Their journey propels them out of poverty and to the stylish cafés of Moulins, the dazzling performance halls of Vichy—and to a small hat shop on the rue Cambon in Paris, where a business takes hold and expands to the glamorous French resort towns. But when World War I breaks out, their lives are irrevocably changed, and the sisters must gather the courage to fashion their own places in the world, even if apart from each other.

***** 

News of the World by Paulette Jiles is my library book club choice for May. I had a copy on Kindle, but when my husband tried to read it, he was frustrated by the lack of quotation marks. So, he purchased the audiobook.

We listened to the audiobook over three nights, two hours at a time. We were mesmerized by the characters and gorgeous writing. The narrator, Grover Garland, was terrific.

We both exclaimed at passages of great beauty; one became my #SundaySentence on Twitter.

With the release of the movie based on the book, starring the wonderful Tom Hanks, I expect most people have heard of this story of a Civil War veteran and the girl captured by natives and their fraught travels across Texas.  Capt. Kidd is to return to her extended family members, but becomes attached to her, and he has a deep understanding of the challenges she faces in reassimilation.

My fifth great-uncle Michael Rhodes, whose family were some of the first settlers in the Shenandoah Valley, was captured by Native Americans and taken to Ohio for three years before being returned in an exchange. I thought about him and wondered what his life was like. He saw his parents scalped, his siblings murdered. Characters in News talk about how quickly white settlers became acclimated to native life and have trouble reentering their old life.

I previous read Jiles's Simon the Fiddler, and was happy to meet him again in this novel. And early in my Kindle days, I read Jiles's novel The Color of Lightning. I have her Stormy Weather on Kindle waiting to be read.

from the publisher

In the aftermath of the Civil War, an aging itinerant news reader agrees to transport a young captive of the Kiowa back to her people in this exquisitely rendered, morally complex, multilayered novel of historical fiction from the author of Enemy Women that explores the boundaries of family, responsibility, honor, and trust.

In the wake of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels through northern Texas, giving live readings from newspapers to paying audiences hungry for news of the world. An elderly widower who has lived through three wars and fought in two of them, the captain enjoys his rootless, solitary existence.

In Wichita Falls, he is offered a $50 gold piece to deliver a young orphan to her relatives in San Antonio. Four years earlier, a band of Kiowa raiders killed Johanna’s parents and sister; sparing the little girl, they raised her as one of their own. Recently rescued by the U.S. army, the ten-year-old has once again been torn away from the only home she knows.

Their 400-mile journey south through unsettled territory and unforgiving terrain proves difficult and at times dangerous. Johanna has forgotten the English language, tries to escape at every opportunity, throws away her shoes, and refuses to act “civilized.” Yet as the miles pass, the two lonely survivors tentatively begin to trust each other, forming a bond that marks the difference between life and death in this treacherous land.

Arriving in San Antonio, the reunion is neither happy nor welcome. The captain must hand Johanna over to an aunt and uncle she does not remember—strangers who regard her as an unwanted burden. A respectable man, Captain Kidd is faced with a terrible choice: abandon the girl to her fate or become—in the eyes of the law—a kidnapper himself.

Eleanor by David Michaelis

"All her life, Eleanor believed that she had to earn love--by pleasing others, by undertaking ever more numberless duties, by one more tour of useful Rooseveltian doing.~ from Eleanor by David Michaelis

Compared to her beautiful parents, she was plain. Her mother was a social butterfly and her father was charming. Her mother nicknamed her Granny. Her alcoholic father could make her feel like a princess, but he was unreliable and could not save her. She struggled with confidence all her life.

She found happiness with her grandparents and while away at school where she was mentored by a progressive, free thinking lesbian. She would have liked to become a nurse, but was fated to 'come out' into the marriage market.

She married her cousin when he was still a priggish outsider. She saw him become a handsome ladies man determined to follow their uncle Teddy's career path to the White House. 

She bore nine children. She lost family to alcoholism and disease. When she learned of her husband's infidelity, her mother-in-law forbade divorce. She found love outside of her marriage and family with women and younger men.

"Martha Gellhorn thought of her as 'the loneliest human being I ever knew in my life'."~from Eleanor by David Michaelis

Remarkably, this unfortunate woman turned tragedy into strength, depression into action. She had been ignorant of politics and world affairs and had accepted the status quo understanding of status, race, religion, world affairs. She threw herself into the work of understanding human need. As she traveled the world and the country, she learned, expanded, and became a powerful voice.

She pushed her presidential husband toward positions of equity and inclusiveness and empathy and morality. She expanded the role of the First Lady, a tireless campaigner. 

She was a leader in the United Nations as they forged the first statement of human rights. On the President's Commission on the Status of Women she "identified the issues that soon became the agenda of the women's movement."

David Michaelis has given us a marvelous, empathetic biography of this complex woman. He does not spare Franklin Roosevelt or shroud Eleanor's deep love for Lorena Hickok in doubt. 

Eleanor is a timeless role model who should inspire each generation. Life did not break her, the times did not discourage her, public opinion did not stop her. Eleanor rose above it all to follow her innate moral compass and lead us all to compassion and a just society.

I was given a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Eleanor
by David Michaelis
Simon & Schuster
Pub Date: November 1,  2020   
ISBN 9781439192016
hardcover $35.00 (USD)

from the publisher

Prizewinning bestselling author David Michaelis presents a breakthrough portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt, America’s longest-serving First Lady, an avatar of democracy whose ever-expanding agency as diplomat, activist, and humanitarian made her one of the world’s most widely admired and influential women.

In the first single-volume cradle-to-grave portrait in six decades, acclaimed biographer David Michaelis delivers a stunning account of Eleanor Roosevelt’s remarkable life of transformation. An orphaned niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, she converted her Gilded Age childhood of denial and secrecy into an irreconcilable marriage with her ambitious fifth cousin Franklin. Despite their inability to make each other happy, Franklin Roosevelt transformed Eleanor from a settlement house volunteer on New York’s Lower East Side into a matching partner in New York’s most important power couple in a generation.

When Eleanor discovered Franklin’s betrayal with her younger, prettier social secretary, Lucy Mercer, she offered a divorce and vowed to face herself honestly. Here is an Eleanor both more vulnerable and more aggressive, more psychologically aware and sexually adaptable than we knew. She came to accept FDR’s bond with his executive assistant, Missy LeHand; she allowed her children to live their own lives, as she never could; and she explored her sexual attraction to women, among them a star female reporter on FDR’s first presidential campaign, and younger men.

Eleanor needed emotional connection. She pursued deeper relationships wherever she could find them. Throughout her life and travels, there was always another person or place she wanted to heal. As FDR struggled to recover from polio, Eleanor became a voice for the voiceless, her husband’s proxy in presidential ambition, and then the people’s proxy in the White House. Later, she would be the architect of international human rights and world citizen of the Atomic Age, urging Americans to cope with the anxiety of global annihilation by cultivating a “world mind.” She insisted that we cannot live for ourselves alone but must learn to live together or we will die together.

Drawing on new research, Michaelis’s riveting portrait is not just a comprehensive biography of a major American figure, but the story of an American ideal: how our freedom is always a choice. Eleanor rediscovers a model of what is noble and evergreen in the American character, a model we need today more than ever.

Patty Duke, Pollyanna, and Me

For no apparent reason, I thought about The Patty Duke Show. The show debuted in 1963 and was about an American and her British cousin who looked identical but had different interests and personalities.

If you are old as dirt (as one friend called herself) like me, you might recall the lyrics to The Patty Duke Show theme song:

Meet Cathy, who's lived most everywhere, 
From Zanzibar to Berkeley Square 
But Patty's only seen the sights 
A girl can see from Brooklyn Heights -
What a crazy pair! 

But they're cousins, 
Identical cousins all the way. 
One pair of matching bookends, 
Different as night and day. 

Where Cathy adores a minuet, 
The Ballets Russes, and crepe Suzette, 
Our Patty loves to rock and roll, 
A hot dog makes her lose control - 
What a wild duet! 

Still, they're cousins, 
Identical cousins and you'll find, 
They laugh alike, they walk alike, 
At times they even talk alike - 

You can lose your mind, 
When cousins are two of a kind. 

source: https://www.lyricsondemand.com/tvthemes/thepattydukeshowlyrics.html

Cathy 'adores a minuet' and Patty 'loves to rock and roll'.

The show premiered the summer of 1963 when I turned eleven years old and my family had just moved to Metro Detroit. I was still against rock n' roll music, a prejudice incurred when a friend's older sister played the car radio driving her sister and me to day camp. She sang along to Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Polka Dot Bikini, which I deemed  one of the dumbest songs I had ever heard.

This was, of course, a few years before Louie Louie (which was rumored to be obscene) and Wild Thing,  both of which I also abhorred as trite and silly but were big hits among the other teeny boppers.

I preferred songs that had a melody, sung by vocally accomplished people. Like John Gary, whose 1966 summer The John Gary Show I watched. I even spent my allowance on his LP Catch a Falling Star.

How influenced was I by the television versions of teenagers in The Patty Duke Show? 

I was such a prig in junior high, clinging to my (perceived) high values of only liking classical music and the symphony (which I had seen once in my life), valuing friendship over crushes, and preferring Napoleon Solo over the teenage heartbreaker Illya Kuryakin in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Did Cathy justify my bias?

This got me thinking about other role models I grew up with. Like Hayley Mills. I adored her films, especially the 1960 film Pollyanna.

I was thrilled when Santa brought me a Pollyanna doll for Christmas. She was almost as tall as my eighteen-month-old brother! I loved the movie and later in life read the book several times. The story about a missionary's daughter used to living with cast-offs and finding the cup half-full side of life taught me about the power of finding the good in even cranky people. I was determined to never dislike or hate anyone, an ideal I clung to for a very long time.

Later I enjoyed Mills in other Disney movies, The Moon-Spinners and This Darn Cat.

What role other models did girls have in the 1950s and early 1960s?

I watched The Mickey Mouse Club. I remember Spin and Marty. I couldn't recall any series about girls. I asked my husband, who a few years older than I has a more vivid recall of the show, and he couldn't remember any either. It turns out that there was one in 1958, Annette. I was six years old, so no wonder I don't recall it. It was about a country girl who moves in with citified relatives and has to learn the ropes at her new high school.

Like everyone else my generation, I saw the Disney Princess movies.

Ad for Sleeping Beauty 

Sleeping Beauty came out in 1959 when I was seven. I had a movie tie-in coloring book. And I was given a Sleeping Beauty doll made by Madame Alexander. I took her to show my friend and set the doll down as we played. My dog Pepper had followed me and she chewed up the doll! I was heartbroken. 

As an adult I replaced the dog-mauled Sleeping Beauty doll

As a girl I loved the Gene Autry and Roy Rogers movies that were shown on television in the 1950s. I got my own gun and holster set for Christmas when I was three years old! 

In our make-believe play, we neighborhood girls fought over who got to be the cowboy and who had to be Dale Evans. The cowgirls always needed rescuing,--such wimps! Everyone wanted to be a cowboy. Later, I also liked Bat Masterson and had a Bat Masterson cane.

When I wanted to grow up and be a cowboy.

There was The Lone Ranger and Daniel Boone and Zorro and Superman. No shows about female superheroes yet. I did have Wonder Woman comics, thankfully. She was the only superhero comic book character I followed. I liked Brenda Starr comic books, too, especially because she was a reporter. 

There were shows about men or boys and their dogs, like Rin Tin Tin and Lassie and the movie Old Yeller. At least there were two shows with females: My Friend Flicka about a girl and her horse ran for one year, 1956-1957, and Sky King about a pilot rancher and his niece who also flew.

I loved Sea Hunt with Lloyd Bridges in underwater scenes. I am sure watching it led to my later love for Jacques Cousteau. An adventure series but I don't recall any women divers.

I adored the Dick Van Dyke Show. I wanted to BE Laura Petrie, married to a writer. I wanted to be a writer, but a show about being married to a writer was all they gave me. And yet, as much as I loved Laura, who did dance now and then, she was a stay-at-home mom content to be a wife.

There were family relationship shows and shows about growing up. I watched The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. It's about boys and their relationship to their fathers. And of course, about Dobie's deep love for girls, all girls, any girl. I loved Bonanza....about a father and his three sons...Which reminds me of My Three Sons, about a father and his three sons... Petticoat Junction came much later, about a woman and her three daughters; it came out when I was eleven.

I watched fantasy shows like Mr Ed the talking horse (a man and his horse) and My Favorite Martian (a man and his Martian). And Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie both about a girl and her adored man...one who squashes her innate powers to suit her husband's ego needs and the other who wants to serve her lord and master.

I was too young to identify with California teenager Gidget, although I liked Sally Fields as The Flying Nun.

Where were the girls--girls who were spunky and smart and who could save the world if need be? I got girls who were daughters and women who were wives, lots of angst about boys and men, or comedians like Lucy.

I found the same issue with books. I loved reading The Black Stallion and other books by Walter Farley, all about boys and their horses. Old Yeller, the book and the movie, was about a boy and his dog. Wendy in Peter Pan wants to be a mother and clean house.

But books did give me some role models.

Charlotte's Web had two lead female characters, Fern who saves Wilbur the pig, and the spider Charlotte who also saves his life. I think it the most important childhood book in my life. It taught so many values. And the superhero was a female spider, also a mother.

I also loved Caddie Woodlawn about a tom-boy pioneer girl.

I wanted to grow up and be Mrs. Piggle Wiggle.

I loved Heidi and The Secret Garden, stories about girls who bring healing.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks by Mary Norton had girls and boys adventuring.

Dorothy had heart and courage in the Wizard of Oz.

As I grew older I discovered Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Jane was a heroine in her conviction and self-esteem that allowed her to stand up to power.

Since my childhood, great progress has been made and girls have had far more role models than I did.

What role models did you find as a child?

Helen Korngold Diary: December 22-31,1919

Here is the final installment of Helen's diary and the story of what happened to Helen after 1919. 

If Helen had not signed off with her name I would never have known who wrote the diary or learned so much about her life and times and family.

December

Monday 22

Stayed home to rest all day. I certainly needed it. Ruth had some people over in the evening. We had a good time together. Herbert – Ruth – Frances – Arthur & I. We went to bed about 1 a.m.

Tuesday 23

Went out with Mrs. Sessel – to dinner at Garibaldi’s – then we went to matinees at the Rialto – a beautiful house – lighted done 8 – a wonderful symphony orchestra. Evening – Youngs & Rossbach.

Wednesday 24

Out again with Mrs. Sessel to Equarium– Wall Street – Woolworth Bldg to Trinity Cemetery. Home to her shop. A Xmas party & lots of fun. To Moulin Rouge with R.H.A. Edith Cohen & myself. It was wonderful. Broadway is too fascinating for words. This was the day that grandpa died, but I didn’t know of it until I returned. We all felt terrible to lose him. May his soul rest in peace.

Thursday 25

Xmas day. Fooled around with the boys at home. Ruth did some general household tasks. We had lunch and went out for a long walk. Saw the city college. Grant’s tomb, Columbia and a variety of other things. Walked home along Riverside. Kings came over.

Friday 26

Spent the day with Minnie Young – went over to Newark – home to dinner with Mr. Butbaum & Arthur as guests. Pawlingers came over in evening. We had a nice time, but I didn’t feel very well. Slept overnight with Youngs.

Saturday 27

Visited Lord & Taylors – Altmans – Macy’s – etc. Went to the Capitol matinee in the afternoon. They have a beautiful promenade. Went to Tiffins for lunch. Home & to Rusenweber’s with Rossback, Ruth & co. It was wild.

Sunday 28

Fooled around. Out with Jul in afternoon – then to Brooklyn with Lenore Rosenson. Dinner & reception for Junior Aux. of Council of Jewish Women to which I was a delegate. Alvin & Lenore are dears. [illegible] & mother & daddy too. Very fine & wealthy people.

Monday 29

Convention meeting. There was a lovely crowd there. Luncheon at Unity Club – meeting. Found dance at Elks Club in the evening. I was with Lenore’s uncle. Alvin & he & Lenore were darling to me, I had such a wonderful time. Pop, Herb & Arthur came over to see me.

Tuesday 30

Convention has been very interesting. Luncheon & last meeting. Home to N.Y. Saw “Monsieur Beaucaire” with Herb & Ruth & Pop. It was very good lyric opera. Lunch at Gertners. Very nice place – Saw Times newspaper being printed.

Wednesday 31

Climbed statue of Liberty with cousin Minnie. Heard ‘Forza del Destino’ with Caruso & Ponselle as leads in evening. It was wonderful. Spent remainder of week seeing & visiting museums, bought a hat – pop gave me a seal coatie – went to Sorbers & Roof Garden, visited all hotels – had lunch in some exclusive places – in short, had a glorious old time. This certainly has been a most exciting and pleasant year for me. If grandpa had only lived it would have been perfect. Wishing myself & all those I love happiness –

Helen Korngold

*****

Notes:

Dec 22

Herbert, Ruth, Frances, Arthur Pawliger of 1915 Broadway. Herbert Lincoln Pawligerwas a commercial salesman who had visited with the Korngold family when in St. Louis. 

December 23

Mrs. Sessel may be Nathalia Sessel, married to Samuel Sessel who had a millinery shop and was born in St. Louis. The 1920 census shows Sam and Nathalia (1886-1951) had a daughter, Fern.

the Rialto

The Rialto was the 'Temple of the Motion Picture, in 1916 on Broadway near 42nd St. in Manhatten. It seated almost 2,000 and had a fine orchestra. The photo-play was Red Hot Dollars starring Charles Ray. “As a laborer, and later as the adopted son of a wealthy man, as a rough youngster being polished down for society, and as the suitor for the hand of a workingman’s daughter, Ray has the part varied enough to please all his admirers.” From The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Dec 28, 1919. 

Ray was one of the biggest box-office stars of his time. For a biography of Ray: http://www.goldensilents.com/stars/charlesray.html or http://torontofilmsociety.com/film-notes/the-coward-1915/

Charles Ray

A Fox movies Sunshine Comedy called Chicken A La Cabaret was ‘the chaser.’ The Sun of December 28, 1919, reported, "Also showing was ‘a kindergarten’ of wild Alaskan bear cubs, Bizet’s Pearl Fisher sung by tenor Sudwarth Frazier and baritone Edward Albano, and ‘ecstasies by the orchestra over List’s First Rhapsody ‘will fill the chinks in the program." 

December 24

The Moulin Rouge Cafe at Broadway and 48th St. offered dance reviews of all sorts, and the Moulin Rouge Orchestra under the direction of Ben Selvin offered ‘dance music and impromptu entertainment’ according to The New York Herald of December 7, 1919.

The New York City Aquarium

Equarium or New York Aquarium opened in December 1896 at Castle Garden at the Battery in Manhattan. In 1919 it attracted 5,000 attendees daily.

http://placesnomore.wordpress.com/tag/new-york-aquarium/

The Woolworth Building in 1919

The Woolworth Building at 233 Broadway in Manhattan was completed in 1913 and is one of the oldest skyscrapers in the world. http://www.nyc-architecture.com/SCC/SCC019.htm

Trinity Church

Trinity Church Cemetery in Manhattan goes back to 1697 and is the resting place of personages such as John Jacob Astor, inventor Robert Fulton, General Horatio Gates of the Revolutionary War, and Alexander Hamilton. Its steeple was once where people went for the best overview of the city. Munsey's Magazine.  November 1899. http://www.digitalhistoryproject.com/2012/06/hotels-of-new-york-waldorf-astoria-park.html

Helen's maternal grandfather David Joshua Frey died on Dec. 24, 1919, in a tragic accident. 

David was born Oct. 18, 1840, in Rzeszów Galacia, Austria to Benjamin and Yittel Kressel Frey, and immigrated at age 24 to the United States. He married Sophia Herz, born in 1847 in Lörzweiler, Hessen, daughter of Abraham Mendle and Sarah Herz, and immigrated to the United States at age 20.

Dec 25

City College of New York in Manhattan was established in 1847.

Riverside Drive follows the Hudson River. Columbia University and Grant’s Tomb are on Riverside Drive.

Helen was touring all the must-see places of New York City.

Justus George Frederick wrote in his 1919 guide Adventuring in New York:

In our hurrying American way we do not often give time to the aesthetic outlook but who has not paused as he came upon Madison Square of a winter's evening at 5 or 6 o clock when a thousand points of light glimmer through the trees from a thousand towered windows in particular from the wafer-like Flatiron Building or the giant toy the Metropolitan Tower?

Who has not of a summer's balmy evening in Riverside Drive Park gazed out upon the broad bosom of the stately Hudson illumined with the binnacle lamps of battleships and yachts the stateroom lamps and searchlights of steamers the dim home beacons on the other shore of dwellings upon the Pallisades?

 Who has not stood at the Battery and swung his eyes upon the ever-changing spectacle of the fairy port of the new World? 

Who has not sniffed the October air from the top of a Fifth Avenue bus through the endless pomp and panoply of the most famous street in the world?

 Who has been atop a great skyscraper by day or night and failed to fall into a gargantuan reverie?

It is a challenge to feeling and thought to gaze out from the windows of the Bankers Club in the Equitable Building from the Whitehall Club roof garden or from the topmost windows of any large building but especially from the stately vantage point of the Woolworth or Metropolitan Tower?

What human ant though he be cannot add a cubit to his stature from his feelings at such an adventure? 

Dec 26

Later in the diary, Helen refers to "cousin Minnie." Helen's father's mother was Joacha Young and Minnie may be related to that family. I do find a Minnie Young married to Max Young who was a tailor born in Russia and by 1915 had his own clothing /dry goods store. The census shows they had children Louis, Nathan, and Helen.

I find several marriage licenses in New York City for Butbaums and also a WWI Draft Card for David Butbaum, born Sept. 15, 1894, in Austria. He was an operator for Greenfield and was of medium height and weight with brown eyes and hair.

December 27

Helen visited the premier New York department stores, including Lord & Taylors, Altmans, and Macy’s. 

John Rusenweber appears on the 1880 New York City Census as a liquor dealer from Bavaria. He and his wife Fredericka were 28, and their children included Emma, age 7, Barbara, age 5, and Lizzie aged 2. They lived on 8th Avenue.

 

The Capitol Matinee was on Broadway at 51st St. and was advertised as ‘The World’s Largest Theater.’ Matinee seats cost 30 cents to a dollar. 

According to The New York Sun of December 27, Marie Doron in 12.10 was playing, with ‘Eminent Baritone David Bispham’ also performing. Bispham was a Philadelphia Quaker who studied opera and had sung at the Royal Opera and the Met. You can hear him sing on Youtube.

David Bispham

The newly formed Capitol Symphony Orchestra was to play Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italien and an ‘elaborate score’ to go with the featured motion picture. An article on Bispham (1857 – 1921),  America’s first internationally known opera singer, is found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bispham 

December 28

Jul was first mentioned in the diary on January 2! He was one of the soldiers at the barracks who Helen met and corresponded with; he sent her a pillow top from Asheville, NC. Jules Koloditsky was a salesman living in the Brox.

Lenore and Alvin Rosenson appear with parents Hyman B. and Mame on the January 1915 New York State Census. Lenore was aged 19 and Alvin was 16 years old. They lived on Rodney in Brooklyn. Hyman was from Prussia and worked as a liquor wholesaler. The 1910 census shows Hyman immigrated in 1883. Also on that census appear his son Theodore, age 19, his brother Isaac and sister Belle, and a servant.

The Junior Council of Jewish Women article in The Brooklyn Daily, Dec. 29, 1919.

December 29

Unity Club is the name of an organization out of the Unitarian church. 

Leonore’s uncle Isaac Rosenson

December 30

Gertner’s was at 1446 Broadway and advertised “a la carte all hours.”

Andre Messager’s lyric opera “Monsieur Beaucaire” is based on a book by Booth Tarkington. The opera was first performed on April 7, 1919, in London and later opened on Broadway. An advertisement in The Sun of December 31 shows it was playing at the New Amsterdam Matinee at $2.00 for the ‘best seats.’ 

December 31

Seal Coatie- a short coat of seal fur. Perhaps her father bought it at the August fur sales

‘La Forza del Destino’ by Verdi was performed by Enrico Caruso and Rosa Ponselle. A synopsis can be found at http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/history/stories/synopsis.aspx?customid=126

The Waldorf Astoria would have been the original Waldorf hotel on 5th Avenue and 33rd, built in 1893 by William Waldorf Astor. In 1897 it was joined to the adjacent Astor hotel, built by John Jacob Astor. The Waldorf=Astoria was rebuilt on Park Avenue in the 1920s, and the Empire State Building was built on the site.  http://www.newyork.com/articles/hotels/secrets-of-the-waldorf-astoria-hotel-63985/

Roof Gardens were hugely popular and most of the premier hotels offered them. Justus George Frederick in Adventuring in New York offered a list:

One of the special delights of New York because of its high buildings is the increasing vogue of the Roof Garden, so cool and remote from the fetid pavement in Summer. Most of the large hotels open their roof gardens early in June a few by the end of May and here one can dine and dance comfortably in the open as far from the bustle and heat of the city as if a hundred miles lay between. Here are a few of the popular or newest hotels also some specialized hotels and apartment hotels. 

Astor 44th St & Broadway also Roof Garden

 Biltmore 43rd St & Madison Ave also Roof Garden

 Majestic 72nd St and Central Park West also Roof Garden McAlpin 33rd St & Broadway also Roof Garden

 Pennsylvania 33rd & 7th Ave also Roof Garden

 Ritz Carlton 46th St & Madison Ave also Roof Garden

 Waldorf 33rd St & Fifth Ave also Roof Garden

 Plaza 59th St & Fifth Ave also Roof Garden

 Commodore 42nd St & Lexington Ave also Roof Garden 

*****

Helen's Later Life:

Helen had a career as a teacher at Normandy High School in St. Louis, her

photo appearing in the 1924, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, and 1937 yearbooks. 

1932 newspaper notice

1936 Normandy HS yearbook

1937 Normandy HS yearbook

Her degrees included A.B. Washington University, M.A. Columbia University, and the University of Southern California. She worked in Commercial Subjects in the Guidance Department. 

1936 newspaper article

Teacher’s College at Columbia University added a Ph.D. in Education in 1934. The school was established in 1897 and was the premier institution for teachers. http://library.tc.columbia.edu/edd.php (My grandfather received a teaching degree from Columbia a few years previous, along with his college friend Roger Blough who became the head of U. S. Steel).

In 1936 Helen appears on the census as a teacher at Normandy High School in St. Louis. 

She wrote an article, Guidance in Action: A High School Program in St. Louis, which appeared in “The Vocational Guidance Journal."

1922 newspaper notice that Helen and her sister Otilia vacationed in Michigan

Helen made at least one trip abroad. A September 3, 1926, Passenger List shows that Helen and her younger sister Otilia, age 22, arrived in New York City on the SS Rotterdam out of Southampton, England. Their address was 5253 Waterman, St Louis, MO. The St Louis City Directory of 1932 shows Helen and Otila were both teachers, living with Jacob and Eva at 5253 Waterman St.

Fritz Herzog

Helen married Fritz Herzog. The wedding announcement read,

Mr. and Mrs. J. B. Korngold, 5253 Waterman Boulevard, have announced the marriage of their daughter. Miss Helen, and Fritz Herzog. which took place Tuesday, Sept. 21. The bride received her M. A. degree from Washington University, University, and now is employed as head of the commercial department and director of vocational guidance at the Normandy High School. Mr. Herzog received his Ph. D. degree from Columbia University, New York, and at present is a member of the staff of Cornell University.

Fritz Herzog was born December 6, 1902, in Poland and died November 21, 2001, in East Lansing, Michigan. 

Fritz was an American mathematician known for his work in complex analysis and power series. He studied at the University of Berlin from 1928 to 1933. Anti-Semitism under Hitler forced him to emigrate. On July 27, 1933, he arrived at New York City on the S.S. Washington out of Berlin. The Passenger List states that he was 30, a student from Poznan, Poland and was Hebrew. 

Fritz received his Ph.D. degree at Columbia University with a thesis entitled Systems of Algebraic Mixed Difference Equations advised by Joseph Ritt (1934). 

He worked for the Smelting & Refining Company for two years as a statistician.

From 1938 to 1943 Herzog was an electrical engineering research associate at Cornell University working with Michel G. Malti on dynamo research. Together they solved an important electric power problem on balancing dynamos, which had remained open since the days of Michael Faraday a century before. 

The 1939 Ithaca, NY City Directory shows Helen as Mrs. Fritz Herzog, working at Cornell University as a “research elec. Assn.”  

The April 1940 Ithaca, NY City Directory shows Helen married to Fritz Herzog. Helen was 42 years old. The 1940 U.S. Census for Ithaca, NY shows Friz was a college professor with a four-year college degree, living in rented housing, and married to Helen Sarah Herzog. Fritz earned $1650 a year and had worked 11 hours the previous week. Helen worked as a clerk at the university earning a salary of $0 a year and had worked 63 hours the previous week.

In 1941 and 1942 Helen appears in the Ithaca, New York city directory as a clerk. 

The mystery of how Helen's diary showed up in a Lansing, Michigan resale shop was made clean when I learned that Fritz spent the remainder of his career teaching at Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI. He was a visiting professor in 1943 and an associate professor in 1946. Along with Michel G. Malti, he solved an important problem in dynamo research. 

A footnote in the May 1971 Vol. 78, No. 5 The American Mathematical Monthly states, “Fritz Herzog received his Columbia University PhD. under J.F. Ritt. His first position was at Cornell, and he has been at Michigan State since 1943, except for visits to Washington University and the University of Michigan. He is a recipient of a Michigan State Distinguished Faculty award. His principal research interests are complex function theory and power series.”

This gave me a clue as to how Helen and Fritz met! It had to be while Fritz was teaching at Washington University in St. Louis--Helen's Alma Mater.

Fritz was also known for his involvement in undergraduate education.  The Michigan State University’s Fritz Herzog Prize Endowment Fund competition honors Fritz, who “devoted significant efforts at undergraduate education and helped successfully prepare students of the Putnam exam” according to a June, 2010 MSU press release. 

Fritz and Helen appear in the 1945 East Lansing, MI City Directory. The 1984 Directory show they lived at 1532 Cahill Dr, East Lansing.

In 1956 and 1959 Helen appears in the East Lansing city directory working as a clerk at Michigan State University and Fritz as a professor at MSU.

Fritz was a member of the American Mathematical Society and published Some Properties of the Fejer Polynomials, by Fritz Herzog and George Piranian, in 1955.

In 1969 Fritz was awarded the Past Distinguished Faculty award in Natural Science. A footnote in the May 1971 Vol. 78, No. 5 The American Mathematical Monthly states, “Fritz Herzog received his Columbia University PhD. under J.F. Ritt. His first position was at Cornell, and he has been at Michigan State since 1943, except for visits to Washington University and the University of Michigan. He is a recipient of a Michigan State Distinguished Faculty award. His principal research interests are complex function theory and power series.”

In his autobiography, Enigmas of Chance, Mark Kac wrote, "At Cornell, only a fellow instructor, Fritz Herzog, was not a native American. He was a refugee from Germany who tried to speed up his process of Americanization by reading the comics. He gave up the struggle when he first came across Popeye the Sailor's "I yam what I yam" and discovered that a yam was a sweet potato."

Rings And Things And A Fine Array Of Twentieth Century Associative Algebra by Carl Clifton Faith quotes Fritz Herzog saying, "Teaching is a calculus thing--you have to minimize." 

Helen passed on July 25, 1988. Fritz died of prostate cancer on November 21, 2001. Helen’s diary from 1919 ended up in a South Lansing, MI flea market shop where I discovered it.

In 2018 I received a surprise phone call from a woman who began, "I believe you have my aunt's diary." Chills ran up my spine! I finally had contact with someone from Helen's family!

Helen's sister Lorine Esther Korngold married Harry Mendleson. His son David Frey Mendleson married Mary Ann and their daughter was Lorine, my contact.

Fritz Herzog's brother Paul Herzog wrote a book about their family history, Three Generations: The Dispersion of a German Jewish Family. Lorine told shared the genealogy pages with Stars of David marking those family members lost in the Holocaust.

Lorine sent me copies of the Herzog genealogy, marked with stars for the people who perished in the Holocaust.

Helen and Fritz were disappointed when they had no children but loved Helen's nieces and nephews. I was told that they were well-beloved visitors.

Helen bathing Lorine at Helen's home in Michigan, 1957

Helen, Fritz and baby Lorine, 1957

Lorine and her Aunt Florence, Helen's youngest sister

Lorine Korngold Mendleson, Helen's sister, is on the left

Later I also heard from Anne Nathan, whose grandfather was Karol Korngold, Helen's brother, and from John Reichman, Florence Korngold's son. 

I had sent Helen's diary to Lorine who shared it with her mother and cousins.

I had made a quilt that included scans of Helen's diary pages. It appeared in a quilt show at the Women's Historical Center in East Lansing, Michigan. I sent Lorine the quilt as well.

I hope you enjoyed meeting Helen Korngold and a glimpse into St. Louis in 1919.