MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS
Leona THE GREAT Depression hit the NYU commencement class of 1930. Perhaps we marched through the Hall of Fame with some hope and aspiration, but then we tried to find work. I had even lost my $2.50 a week job at Sabbath School. Despite my knowledge of the past, I was unprepared for the present. I had taken no courses in education and therefore could not even apply for a teaching post, the traditional position for women. When I was a child I had been asked the inevitable question: “What are you going to be, little Leona, when you grow up?” My reply had been unhesitating: “Me—a reporter!” Now, if I could report on the divorce proceedings of Henry VIII or the frivolity of Marie Antoinette, maybe I could also report on more timely occurrences—the ineptitude of Herbert Hoover, the stagnation of the country, particularly the predicament of my generation. I would try.
A friend of my brother had a friend whose cousin had a job on the Sunday Daily News. I had to avail myself of such a connection. When I sought his advice, I was bluntly informed that there was absolutely nothing available on any newspaper in New York City. However, maybe in Westchester … And so I found myself in Dobbs Ferry. Just how I got there remains a mystery. The would-be Nellie Bly finally confronted the editor of the local newspaper. And he confronted me—all of my four feet ten, my rumpled hair, my horn-rimmed glasses, my eager eyes.
“A job, kid? Why, we’re lettin’ people go. Why don’t you try Tarrytown?”
“Is that very far from here?” My budget was getting very low.
“Just over the hill, kid. You can walk it.”
“Just over the hill” took me three hours. My shoes were as worn as my spirit. Nonetheless, youth is resilient and by the time I reached the Tarrytown Tatler I managed to exude some hope and optimism. Neither was returned. A large, genial, middle-aged gentleman repeated familiar words: “A job, sis? Why, we’re lettin’ people go.” He added with some compassion: “You’re from New York. Why don’t you open one of those apple stands? You can sell apples for five cents apiece!”
My Westchester mission had failed. I would try a different direction, toward the east. I boarded the IRT for the Battery, transferred to the ferry, and sailed across the bay to Staten Island. A bus took me to the office of the Staten Island Advance. The editor eyed me critically. “Where are you from, miss?” Afraid to tell him that I lived in the remote Bronx, I boldly answered, “Manhattan.” He paused a while before commenting: “You can’t commute here every day from Manhattan, kid. Besides, even if you lived across the street, I couldn’t offer you a job. No jobs—no money—no nothin’!”
On the way back to the mainland we passed the Statue of Liberty, but her torch had dimmed.
A few weeks later, an old Berlin friend of my father visited us for dinner. Dr. Nicolai Cahen had been born in Russia and emigrated to the German capital, where he became a successful physician on the Kurfürstendamm. Drafted into the German army during World War I, he was shortly suspected of being a Russian spy. Accordingly, he was exchanged for a German prisoner of war and sent to his native Russia. There, he was almost immediately suspected of being a German spy. Without further ado, the Russians sent him to a typhus camp in Siberia. Obviously now—a decade later—Dr. Cahen had a great story to tell, which he did at length at the dining room table.
It appeared that he had also turned his great story into a manuscript. The manuscript, however, was in German, and Dr. Cahen was looking for a translator. I pricked up my ears. Here, finally, was something I could do. Thanks not only to my father but to my dear Babette, I daily aired the German I had studied at Evander, and as a result I was fairly fluent. Besides, had I not taken a course in Russian history under Alexander Baltzly at NYU? Dr. Cahen’s story titillated me. I immediately asked, “How about me?”
Dr. Cahen was delighted, the family applauded, and terms were discussed. I was to receive $100 upon publication of the opus, entitled From the Spree to the Amur. Dr. Cahen had a contact—though not yet a contract—with the publisher Boni, Liveright. He planned to return to Germany but would leave the manuscript with me, and I would present the publisher with my translation.
Dr. Cahen’s travelogue was truly astounding. It included of course his deportation to Siberia and his stay in the typhus camp near Stretensk, a Cossack village in Asiatic Russia. There were colorful descriptions of Amur in East Siberia near the Manchurian border. The work had an exotic quality that I sought to convey in my translation. There was much excitement in the doctor’s account of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, when the Red Army fought the White Army in the east. More and more, From the Spree to the Amur began to resemble a wild movie script, and I plodded on, spending four or five months with the deportee from Germany and the escapee from Siberia.
When the task was completed I reported to Dr. Cahen’s contact at Boni, Liveright, and was told to bring the manuscript down. I did so, and spent the weeks that followed ranging in mood from high anticipation to miserable despair. All doubt was resolved with a peremptory phone call from the Boni office: “Miss Rostenberg, we suggest you come down and pick up the manuscript. We are so inundated with manuscripts about the Red Russians and the White Russians that we simply cannot add the Cahen book to our list.”
At the time, my crestfallen spirit was lifted by my friendship with another German émigré, Carl Flanter. Carl was good-looking and charming, and for me in my early twenties it was a gratifying experience to be seen walking down the street or down a movie aisle or into a restaurant like Lindy’s next to this handsome specimen of masculinity. I tried to convince myself that I was in love with him. But beyond the externals, there was little substance. His academic background was almost nonexistent, and his main ambition was to make a success in the glove business. Try as I did to find his conversation fascinating, I had to admit to myself that it was boring. Even my family, who would have liked to see me married, remained unenthusiastic about Carl and his future. Our relationship petered out—as had my reportorial career and my translation of From the Spree to the Amur.
The only affirmative thing I did, it seemed to me, was cast my first vote for the President of the United States. In November 1932 I voted for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He would not take office till the following March. Then perhaps we would see some change for the better. Meanwhile, what was there for me to do? Incapable of finding work, many of my contemporaries, male and female, were going to graduate school. I decided to join their ranks and work for a Ph.D. in history at Columbia. In the fall of 1932 I registered at Morningside Heights, selecting courses for a major in medieval history and a minor in modern European history. My courses were rounded out with lectures on American colonial history, Alan Nevins on historiography, and the brilliant Carleton Joseph Huntley Hayes on nationalism. I have never forgotten that red-letter day, January 30, 1933, when Professor Hayes, speaking before his large hushed student audience, solemnly said: “Ladies and gentlemen, today President Hindenburg has named Adolf Hitler Chancellor of Germany. The world will never be the same again.”
Carleton Hayes discussed the future. Alan Nevins discussed the past. In his course on historiography he instructed his students in the use and value of source material. I was assigned a study of the origins of the Great Fire of London in September 1666. To reconstruct that devastating event, I consulted the diaries of John Evelyn and Samuel Pepys, both eyewitnesses. The two accounts conflicted. While Pepys declared that the fire began in loose timber adjoining the house of John Martyn, printer to the Royal Society, Evelyn stated that it began in St. Paul’s Cathedral. I had to weigh the veracity of both accounts. For this I needed a third eyewitness, and even then the accuracy of his account could not be taken for granted. At all events, there was no third eyewitness who had left a diary account of the Great London Fire, so I was left hanging in the end. The precise locale of the kindling of that fire was never determined. But I had been led to the mighty question “What is truth?” I had learned the value of skepticism. And I was on my way to the glories as well as the h
azards of scholarly detection.
Although I found the wan smile of Austin P. Evans somewhat specious, he succeeded in transporting me into the medieval world of feudalism: its great manorial landowners, its serfs, the tillage of the soil, the knights in armor, the ladies, the courts of love, chivalry, the jousts, the prelates, the threat of the Turk, the crusades, the position of the Jew. Professor Evans conveyed it all.
I was to realize that the lowly position of the medieval Jew persisted on Morningside Heights one day in early 1933, when Professor Evans summoned me to his office. In the course of a consultation about my projects, he looked out of his tall window in Fayer-weather Hall and said to me: “Miss Rostenberg, do not set your sights too high. You have two grave disadvantages. You are a woman and a Jew.” Was this another roadblock in my future? Was I wasting more time at Columbia? I rallied sufficiently to reply, “There is nothing I can do about either, Professor Evans.” And I left the office.
Professor Lynn Thorndike preferred to be called “Mr.” He sidled into the lecture room wearing his customary dark green suit and discoursed upon the wonders of twelfth-century astrology, witchcraft, the occult, and mysticism. Like Professor Evans, he gazed out the window rather than at his audience, and mumbled his observations. During his seminar on medieval intellectual history he assigned to me a topic that I thoroughly detested: the influence of the medieval Arabic astrologers on Western culture. I was to translate the Latin prefaces of writings by Albumasar, Alkindi, .Albohazen Hali, and their associates. Since I did not know the difference between the Big Bear and the Little Dipper, I found the subject of astrology superfluous. The distaste that accompanied my translations was alleviated slightly by the advice of two brilliant seminar students with whom I formed a warm friendship, Ben Nelson and Blaise Hospodar. The former was Thorndike’s darling; the latter a Hungarian and fine Latin scholar. Both tried to share with me their belief that somehow connections existed between Arabic astrology and modern civilization, and, thanks to them, I completed my work for the seminar. “Mr.” T. was delighted with the results.
Sometime in 1933 I had spied a familiar face on campus. The Barnard freshman who had been my old Sabbath School colleague was now doing graduate work at Columbia. Madeleine Stern had reentered my life. We immediately arranged to have lunch to bring each other up to date. It was then the floodgates were opened. Where before we had looked down upon each other with some disdain, we felt more like equals in the academic world that surrounded us. We met regularly from that time on, shared our pleasures at soda fountains and in double features, and especially in the theater. A lifelong friendship had begun in earnest.
Madeleine’s friends soon became mine, and as Shirley was married to Alvin, and Helen was deeply in love with Raymond, we both felt that we were being left alone. Mady would pursue this theme in the novel she worked on from time to time. The result of all this was of course that we were thrown together more and more. It was with Madeleine now that I discussed my problems, from the infrequency of a Saturday night date to my mother’s habitual and annoying query after I did have a Saturday night date: “Did you ask him to call again?,” from the difficulties of Arabic astrology to the peculiarities of Lynn Thorndike. And by 1936, when I was facing the prospect of my oral examination for my Ph.D. degree, it was Mady with whom I shared my concerns.
I had been immersed in reading for my orals for more than a year. Even during the WPA concerts I attended with Mady—Haydn and Mozart for fifty cents—I was reviewing in my mind the annals of Charlemagne, Henry III of England, the House of Medici, and all the way on to the Industrial Revolution. By the time a date had been set, my head felt completely compartmentalized—so much so that I would allow no one to touch it lest I lose track of a fact.
Indeed, I was expected to spout innumerable facts on April 20, 1936, the day of my orals. I was seated next to the chairman of the board, the astral Mr. Thorndike. Around the table sat the “greats” of the Columbia history faculty: David S. Muzzey; Charles D. Hazen, authority on the French Revolution; the internationally known Carleton J. H. Hayes; Eugene Byrne, medievalist sitting in for the absent Austin Evans. The questioning was brisk and included one or two queries about Thorndike’s Arabic astrologers. With Hayes I discussed the Congress of Vienna and with Hazen the Thermidorean Reaction of the French Revolution. The orals even included an extraneous question based upon Dante’s Divine Comedy leveled at me by David Muzzey. After I had replied, my head suddenly felt lighter. By noon the interrogation was over and I joined two friends for lunch. As we walked through the campus, we encountered Professor Muzzey, who stopped short, took my hand, and said, “Young lady, you covered yourself with honor.” Now my heart felt as light as my head. I saw no barriers ahead of me.
For some time I had been thinking about the subject of my doctoral dissertation. Having handled many incunabula—fifteenth-century books—in connection with the Arabic astrologers, I had become deeply interested in early printing. The influence of the press in spreading knowledge and shaping opinion during the Renaissance and later Reformation seemed to me an innovative subject for a doctoral dissertation. What had been the role of the printer-publisher? How large a readership had there been? Had the printer’s prefaces given any indication of his point of view and purpose?
In a state of high excitement I bounded up the six flights of Fayerweather to Mr. Thorndike’s office. He rose and congratulated me on my orals.
“I am very pleased, and now I wish you to continue with research on the Arabic astrologers for your dissertation.” I was momentarily stunned. How could I dare to remind Mr. Thorndike that I had but little interest in his Arabic astrologers but was consumed with interest in my printing-publishing project? In 1936 no one dared oppose Lynn Thorndike. Nonetheless, I bubbled on with my alternate plan, discussing the possibility of researching early printer-publishers as molders of reform and scholarship. Thorndike remained silent while I persisted. I had even given thought to the locale for my research. I would go to Strasbourg for two reasons. That city had been a center of humanism and the Reformation; its libraries were world famous. Second, although Strasbourg was officially a French city, its culture was German. Now, with the threat of Nazism, I would be safe and secure in a French city. In addition, my expertise was in the German language, and Strasbourg—ever a political football—was German in background.
At this point Mr. Thorndike interrupted my enthusiastic flow: “Your printers were mere hacks—utterly uneducated. They had little if any influence. I see no validity in such a subject.”
“I think I can establish my point of view, Professor Thorndike,” I said quietly. “I’d like to give it a chance.”
Young and brash, I determined to go ahead with my Strasbourg printers. I tried to forget about Thorndike’s lack of enthusiasm for my subject. Preliminary research confirmed my point of view that printer-publishers did indeed influence their readers. Reading a preface to an inflammatory sermon by Martin Luther, I found statements by the publisher pointing to his personal involvement in the Reform movement. I realized that the publisher not only agreed with the Reformer’s tenets but wished to disseminate them. In a humanistic text by Erasmus I found a preface endorsing the author’s ideology by the university-trained publisher Schürer, who boldly added a Latin injunction: “Buy! Read! Enjoy.” I knew I would find more such prefaces. I was sure I could convince Mr. Thorndike once I prepared my dissertation. For all this I had to go abroad and settle for several months in Strasbourg. Over the years I had accumulated the vast sum of $700—about $7000 today—sufficient for the voyage abroad and maintenance in a Strasbourg pension. As I laid my plans, I began to weaken. I would be separated from my parents and from Mady. I would be living alone in a distant city. But I had to go ahead. I had to complete what I had begun. On August 5, 1936, I sailed aboard the Aquitania—first stop, Le Havre.
Madeleine WHILE LEONA PURSUED HER doctorate, I settled on a master’s. Like so many 1932 college graduates who had no jobs but did have some
savings, I enrolled in graduate school. At Columbia I continued the kind of program I had begun at Barnard, taking courses in English literature from medieval to Victorian times. The Cambridge History of English Literature was my constant companion, and it became infused with my cigarette smoke as I plodded through the pages. Almost all my women friends were smokers, some using cigarettes to affect a social ease and grace; others, more dependent upon them, becoming chain smokers. I myself was convinced that without a cigarette in my mouth I could neither study nor exercise any creativity. All unconscious of future revelations about nicotine, my mother would say to me, “Why not—as long as it’s not dangerous.” And so I smoked my way through the Cambridge History of English Literature.
My specialty at the time was the literature of the Middle Ages, and I selected as the subject of my master’s essay the life and career of Mary Magdalene as interpreted in medieval poetry and prose. My great-grandmother had been named Magdalena and I had been named Madeleine after her. Perhaps that was one reason for my interest. Another was that I was intrigued by this disciple of Jesus in whom I had detected a split personality, so I pursued her literary appearances. I pursued her in Columbia’s Low Library and in the New York Public Library, and I pursued her so intensively that I found myself following her portrayals by later writers well into the nineteenth century. My master’s thesis was turning into a hefty tome. At seminars with my old friend Professor Baldwin, when a small group of students chanted medieval hymns and discussed Dante’s Divine Comedy, I discussed the conflict between sinner and saint in the Magdalene of English literature. In the fullness of time, by the early spring of 1933, my thesis—my tome—was finished.
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