January 26, 1912

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From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

It is still raining. I could hardly wait to come home from school, as Aunt Bertha, she is Grandfather’s sister, would be here and I love her. She is big and fat and comfortable and poor. Of course she isn’t poor like the children in the orphanage or like little Oliver Twist, who had to live in a horrible school where he didn’t get enough to eat and when he held out his dish to ask for more porridge, he was beaten. Alma told me this story and I know there is more to the book but so far, this is the only thing I know about Oliver Twist and this is because I wouldn’t eat my porridge and she wanted to show me how glad I should be to have any at all, but I wasn’t.

When I first read about Aunt Bertha, I thought she might be the same Bertha with whom my mother stayed when she arrived in San Francisco in 1939. As always, Bertha turns out to be a common family name. This Bertha was my grandmother Helene’s aunt — the sister of her father and of Hilda’s grandfather. She married a cousin whose last name was Fulda. My grandmother wrote about their son Erwin and we saw this photo of them together in Vienna.

January 25, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

It’s raining again today. I love the rain, it is always so nice to come out of, and be in a nice, warm cozy home with the fireplace glowing with wood and coal.

Interior of house in Ingleside Terrace in 1912-1915 from SAN FRANCISCO HISTORY CENTER, SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY at http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12352/islandora:160993

January 24, 1912

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From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

I don’t know too much about my mother, so today I asked Grandfather to tell me about her. Grandfather is the only one in the house who knows anything. Alma knows something, only most of the time she tells me that I will have to wait until I am more grown up to know the answers, but that is too long to wait as I am only eight years old. Grandfather told me that my mother was very sweet and gentle, and she never stamped her feet, or ever yelled or threw people’s presents back at them, especially when they had been so thoughtful to give them to her in the first place.

Like Hilda, I know very little about her mother. According to the 1997 family tree created by the husband of a distant relative, Hilda’s mother was born in 1878 in San Francisco. How sad that no one told Hilda anything about her mother. Presumably it was too painful for her grandparents to talk about their daughter, so she was left with nothing but questions and guilt. It must have been difficult and confusing for her to know little other than to be told that she was the cause of her own mother’s death.

January 23, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Last night, Grandmother and Grandfather had an awful fight. About me. When Grandmother came home from the cemetery yesterday, I was busy practicing the piano, and she said that Grandfather should have stopped me from playing, because my mother has died eight years ago, and that it was a day of mourning. Grandfather said, “And if the child doesn’t play, will that bring her back?” But then I stopped and went to my room. I felt sad. I could still hear Grandmother and Grandfather fighting for a long, long time.

January 22, 1912

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From 8-year old Hilda Firestone’s diary:

Eight years ago today my mother died. Grandmother put on a big hat with a long black veil and went to the cemetery. She wanted to take me with her. She said I should see my mother’s grave as often as possible so I wouldn’t forget it, but Aunt Tillie said that a cemetery is no place for children so I didn’t have to go. Aunt Tillie is very good to me. She sews so perfectly and embroiders the most beautiful collars and cuffs on all my dresses.

Perhaps today was the anniversary of Hilda’s mother’s burial in San Francisco – the January 19, 1904 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle has a death notice for Hilda’s mother (for whom her daughter was named), which says she died in New York on January 17th:

January 21, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda Firestone’s diary:

Sunday school again. Our teacher talked about how wonderful God is. Maybe He is, I don’t know yet. Now it is afternoon and I am in my grandfather’s little study room, and writing this on my desk right next to his. It’s just like his too. It has a top that rolls down, and has places for paper and holders for pens and pencils. Alma calls them pigeon holes. Pigeons build nests just like that, only they don’t keep pencils and pens in them. The desk has a chair just the right size for me and I love to sit here, and write in my book, or when I write a letter to my father who lives in New York. I like it best when Grandfather sits right next to me and we work together. Sometimes he says, “Now Hilda, let us see who can write the neatest and prettiest letters.” So far, his are always the best.

I love the image of little Hilda sitting next to her grandfather at a smaller but identical version of his desk as they “worked” side by side.

January 20, 1912

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From 8-year old Hilda Firestone’s diary:

This morning was terrible. Uncle Harold, he is my youngest uncle and he still lives here, all the others are married and have their own homes. Well, Uncle Harold came into my room and pointed a dagger at me. I screamed so loud that everyone in the room came running, and even after Uncle Harold showed me that it wasn’t a real dagger but a rubber one. I couldn’t stop screaming. After that, I threw up all over the bed and then everyone began screaming at Uncle Harold. I hate him. He is always doing things like that. I always try and remember not to be alone with him. Once he came into my room wearing his pajamas. He opened the pants of his pajamas and showed me something on his body. It looked like a piece of rope, only it was pink like his skin. Then he made me put my hand on it, and then he made me promise not to tell anyone. I wanted to tell Alma, because I wanted to ask her if all the boys had them, but I was afraid to tell her. When I think of it, it frightens me, and my heart beats so fast, I don’t know why. I didn’t have to go to school today because I was sick from the dagger, so I had breakfast in bed, only I couldn’t eat, and Aunt Tillie brought me my crayons and a new fashion book to color.

Uncle Harold would have been in his early 20s years old in 1912. At the least, he delighted in torturing his sensitive niece, at worst, he was a sexual predator. I imagine that Alma was the only person Hilda felt safe enough to talk to, and even that was impossible. Alma was probably closest to Hilda in age in that household, and someone she could identify with and trust. I found a help wanted ad in the July 10, 1911 edition of the San Francisco Examiner:

“GIRL for general housework and cooking. Apply with reference. Mrs. J. Levy, 1328 Pierce st.”  

I imagine that this is the job Alma applied for. Earlier want ads when Hilda was a baby included childcare, but by 1912 Hilda was a schoolgirl and presumably it was felt that she needed little looking after. Looking through other listings, a “girl” could have been as young as 12.

Sadly, Hilda’s experience would not have been unusual. Girls weren’t told or taught anything about human sexuality or anatomy, or of predatory behavior. She would have had no idea how to respond to her Uncle Harold.

In a memoir about her childhood, my grandmother Helene wrote about being 15 years old in Bohemia in 1902 and being flashed on the street by a strange man: “where I before thought that the difference in sexes consisted mainly in the garments and that men have beards and mustaches and women busts”. She came home quite upset and feeling awful. Overnight, she found she had been bleeding. She came to the conclusion that somehow the man had made her pregnant. She was sure she had had a miscarriage (although she didn’t have a word for it), like the one that caused her eldest sister Ida’s death a few months earlier, and believed she would die soon too. Helene’s mother had too been preoccupied with Ida’s death and caring for the Zerzawy children to pay attention to her youngest child: “‘You could read everything at four years old and do not know anything about the facts of life.’” Like Hilda, Helene couldn’t tell her mother the story of the flasher, just of the other events of the day: “My mother explained to me how senseless my fear was, but I didn’t tell her that horrible encounter with that devil and that I still was afraid that my shock had something to do with my menstruation on the same day.”

How sad to carry such fears and self-blame for years. And that this was (and is) true for innocent girls everywhere.

January 18, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Today Aunt Tillie called for me at school with a horse and carriage and two of her friends with her and we drove to the park. I don’t like one of the ladies. She always looks as if she sees all the way to my underwear. Her name is Pauline and I have to call her Aunt Pauline. I have to call all ladies “Aunt” and gentlemen “Uncle.” Well, we went to a very pretty restaurant full of mirrors, and pink velvet chairs and waiters instead of waitresses, not the same restaurant that Grandmother takes me to. The ladies didn’t have coffee and toast as Grandmother always does; they had something yellow to drink served in little glasses and it made them so much nicer than they usually are, although Aunt Pauline did jump on me about biting my nails. She made a big fuss saying, “Hilda, a big girl like you biting your nails! Ladies don’t bite their nails.” I told her ladies don’t smoke. Aunt Pauline is the only lady I know who does and everyone laughed. Aunt Tillie ordered a lemonade for me and it matched their yellow drinks. I was glad that the color matched and I did not have to drink milk and it looked grown-up and everyone would think that I was. When I got home, I started to tell Grandmother about the restaurant and the pink chairs and mirrors but as I started to, Aunt Tillie pinched my arm hard and she started talking about something else and I didn’t have a chance to say more.

By 1912, automobiles and horse and carriages were sharing the road. I found a photo online taken in Golden Gate Park in 1908. We can pretend that the carriage’s occupants are Hilda, Tillie and her friends. It seems fitting given my family’s love of literature (and particularly Goethe) that they are posing in front of a stature of Goethe and Schiller!

Note to blog subscribers: Hilda did not write in her diary on January 19, so there will be no message tomorrow.

January 17, 1912

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From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

I forgot to say that I sang for Uncle Julius and Aunt Josie. I have a beautiful new song book that my Grandparents in Germany sent to me. It is full of pictures. The pictures are on top of the songs and up and down the sides of the pages. They are of little boys and girls playing in the meadows and woods, and of tiny churches in the snow with lights shining in the windows. The picture I love most of all is the one of God. He is sitting on top of a cloud and on top of a song called “Weißt Du wie viel Sternlein stehen.” He has a long, red robe, and a long, white beard, and sweet blue eyes, and He looks kind, as if He loves everybody. The song says that he does too. The last line says “Kennt auch dich und hat dich lieb.” That means: “He knows you too and loves you.” Anyhow, I sang that song, but I guess not too well, because when I finished it, Aunt Josie asked me to play something on the piano and I played “Fur Elise.” Then Grandmother said that I might go to bed and Alma took me upstairs. I think the family was upset with me and at times that is a great comfort, because I can escape my room and play or write my thoughts in my diary.

Hilda says the book was sent from her grandparents in Germany, which I couldn’t understand — all of her grandparents were in the United States. However, Helene’s father in Bohemia was Hilda’s grandfather’s brother. When I looked up the lullaby Hilda mentions, it sounded familiar. It turns out that my grandmother Helene sent the book, which Hilda mentions in a letter she wrote to Helene in 1946 who was in Istanbul waiting to come to America. By the time Hilda was born, Helene’s father had died, but we see that she and her mother kept up the connection with his American relatives, sending letters and gifts. What an unexpected treat to find connections to my grandmother in Hilda’s diary!

January 16, 1912

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Uncle Julius and Aunt Josie are coming to dinner tonight, and I am going to be allowed to sit at the table in the dining room. Only this time if Uncle Julius brings me candy in a bag, I mustn’t ask him why he doesn’t bring it to me in a box like other people. Uncle Julius isn’t bad, and he looks like a walrus with his huge mustache. Aunt Josie brings me wonderful books, like “Little Lord Fauntleroy.” Tonight, I don’t think she will bring me any, because two days ago she brought me “The Castle of Grumpy Grouch.”

Uncle Julius didn’t bring me any candy and Aunt Josie didn’t bring me a book, but they did bring Grandmother a bouquet of flowers. Grandmother doesn’t like Aunt Josie, and says she is a snob, but I would rather have a snob who brings me books than someone who isn’t a snob who brings stockings. I guess I behaved all right. No one told me I didn’t.

Looking at family history can be very confusing because names are repeated so often in generations. I could not figure out who “Uncle” Julius was since I could see no one on the family tree with that name. Hilda’s Aunt Tillie would eventually marry a man named Julius Zentner in 1930, when she was almost 50 years old. His first wife died in 1929 and was named Josie. The Levy and Zentner families were business partners in a produce firm and their social and business lives were probably quite intertwined. According to Julius’s obituary, the families had rival businesses until after the 1906 earthquake when they decided to join forces to survive. I included an excerpt from his obituary in an earlier post.

January 15, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Books are the nicest present of all! One of my Birthday books is called, “The Castle of Grumpy Grouch.” It is about a little girl who is always losing her temper, and sometimes she can’t find it, and then has to go out into the woods to look for it. The woods are very scary, especially at night.

“The Castle of Grumpy Grouch” was written by Mary Dickerson Donahey (aka Mary Augusta Dickerson) and was first published in 1907. The fairy tale was reissued in 1948 and reviewed by Ellen Lewis Buell in the New York Times on June 20: “…this tale combines make-believe and moral in the true Victorian manner. The peppery Princess Floria believed that if she lost her temper altogether she would be a much nicer person….So she started out to reclaim her disposition from the Castle of Sulks where the Giant Grumpy Grouch kept lost tempers in durance vile.”

January 14, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

This is Sunday. This morning I went to Sunday School, and this afternoon Grandmother, Grandfather, and I called on Tante Esther. It was very hard, and it made me hate her more, and I just couldn’t say the things that Grandmother told me to say. I couldn’t say I was wrong. Besides, they didn’t know that I listened behind the door this morning and heard Grandfather say, “The child is not really wrong, stockings are not really a present for a child to receive.” So, I just said that I was sorry that I yelled and threw the stockings back at her, and she kissed me and said that she loved me so, so then, I said, “Please don’t bring me any more stockings for a present.” I think that Grandmother was beginning to be mad at me, all over again, but then the tea things came, and she forgot to be.

January 13, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

I didn’t have a real birthday party yesterday, just relations. Tante Esther came, and she brought me two pair of stockings and I threw them at her. I said that stockings were no present, that my grandmother buys me stockings. I yelled and stamped my feet. I am forbidden to stamp my feet. Alma says that only horses do that. I am forbidden to yell too, except when I am alone in my room. Alma said it is bad manners to yell in public. It is also bad manners to cry in public. It is bad manners to do anything in public. Alma says that I must learn that, and to learn to accept a gift even if you don’t like it. Even if you don’t like it, you have to say that you do. I asked if that wasn’t lying, but Alma said no, it was politeness. I don’t see the difference.

January 12, 1912

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

From Hilda’s diary on her 8th birthday:

I hate my birthday. I wish I were never born. Grandmother wishes it too. She says that I killed my mother. How could I kill my mother? I didn’t even know my mother. Grandmother is always telling me I should be grateful to her for bringing me to her house and forgiving me for killing my mother, and for not putting me into an orphan asylum. I know the Orphan Asylum; we go past it sometimes on the streetcar. It is a big gray house. Sometimes the children are playing in the yard, and they are gray too. Their dresses are grey and they are all the same, and the little girls have no hair ribbons. I love hair ribbons. Grandmother says that if it wasn’t for her, that is where I would be. Or else, my father would get married again and I would have a very cruel stepmother who would beat me, and starve me, and make me do all the hard work, and only buy pretty clothes for just her own children, like the one in Cinderella. She says that as long as she lives, that I must remember how good she was to me, and be grateful to her.

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Growing up, the names Tillie and Hilda meant little to me. I knew they were important to my mother’s and uncle’s escape from Austria. Tillie’s name was always mentioned with an aura of awe and fear – she was a force to be reckoned with. Hilda’s diary sheds a light on some of these family dynamics – or helps me imagine them.

Poor little Hilda was raised by her strict grandparents and aunt, never knew her mother and was made to feel responsible for her death. No wonder she felt such kindness and kinship for her second cousins Robert and Paul Zerzawy, who lost both their mother and step-mother while young boys.

When Eva and Harry left their parents behind in Vienna and came to the U.S., Harry lived with Hilda and Nathan Firestone. Later in life, Harry expressed regret that he hadn’t properly appreciated their hospitality – he felt that he was being “given” to the Firestones to be the child they never had. He resented the idea of these surrogate parents, knowing that his own parents were alive in Vienna and hopefully coming soon to San Francisco. As I imagine the hospitality through Hilda’s eyes, she was trying to provide a warm and welcoming home for a boy who was missing his mother, because she knew how hard it was to be in that situation.

January 11, 1912

Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships.

From 8-year old Hilda Firestone’s diary:

Today is Aunt Tillie’s birthday, and tomorrow is mine. I don’t know exactly how old Aunt Tillie is. When I ask her, she says that it isn’t polite to ask people how old they are, so then I said that all her friends must be very impolite because everyone who comes to see us always asks me how old I am. She said it is quite polite to ask children, and I asked what is the difference. She just said, “Because it is.” That’s just the same answer that Grandmother gives to me.

I made Aunt Tillie a beautiful pen wiper for her birthday, and it is shaped like a pig. Alma taught me how to embroider beautiful blue eyes on him. This afternoon, Aunt Tillie is going to have her birthday party. Lots of ladies are coming to play bridge. I love Aunt Tillie’s parties because I don’t have to go to them. I can stay upstairs, and try on all the ladies’ clothes that are piled up on my bed, and when they have finished their tea, I can go downstairs and finish all the little sandwiches and cakes that are left over.

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Hilda’s aunt Tillie was born in 1882 and would have been 30 years old in 1912. As I read about Hilda’s family in San Francisco, I find myself thinking about my grandmother Helene and her family in Europe at the same period. Helene was 25 years old, single, and living in Vienna. She often visited her orphaned Zerzawy nephews and nieces in Bohemia who were schoolchildren with no thought of the war to come. Helene wrote regularly to her cousins in San Francisco, sometimes sending gifts to their children.

At a time when people wrote with fountain pens, pen wipers were useful tools, and came in a variety of materials. Helene may already have been working at the stationery shop in Vienna in 1912 — the shop window advertised that they repaired fountain pens, so undoubtedly she sold pen wipers too.

Photo of Helene (and perhaps Harry) in front of her stationery shop in Vienna from the early 1930s. Awning sign shows picture of a fountain pen and the words “Repairs Immediately”

In my family papers, several letters mentioned Tillie’s and Hilda’s birthdays, including a letter from Harry asking his sister to purchase flowers in 1944.

January 10, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda Firestone’s diary:

Later yesterday, Suzanne wrote the name down for me, and then she told me a story too. The name of the ballet is “S c h e h e r a z a d e.” Scheherazade was an oriental princess who told fairy tales to the Sultan every night for a thousand and one nights. I guess she did it so he wouldn’t be afraid of the men on the wall, like me. I mean, that is why Alma tells me fairy tales at night. The Sultan loved Scheherazade for doing it, and when all the fairy tales were finished, he didn’t chop off her head as he was going to do. Only Suzanne forgot to tell me why he should want to do that, and I forgot to ask her. Anyhow, she said that Scheherazade had shiny, black hair, so we should call the kitten Scheherazade. I said that I thought that was an awfully long name for such a short cat, and Suzanne said that I was right and so we would call her Sherry for short. So that’s what she is.

January 9, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda Firestone’s diary:

Today, I asked Grandfather what the kitten was. He just picked it up in his hands and said, “Why, a girl of course. Most cats are girls.” I asked if a beautiful fairy had whispered that in his ear, and he told me not to talk rubbish. So, at the lunch table, I said that I knew that the cat is a girl, and what shall we call it. The nicest friend of Aunt Tillie was having lunch with us. Her name is Suzanne and she is a dancer. I love her because she always smells of violets. Most people who come here smell of moth balls. She is small, and thin, and wears fluffy clothes with lots of lace and feathers. She said that she is studying a ballet that I don’t know how to spell, so now I can’t write any more until she tells me how to spell it because I did name the kitten after the ballet.

January 8, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda Firestone’s diary:

I said my prayers on my knees last night. Alma said that God doesn’t care how you say them, so long as you love Him, and ask Him to do kind things for other people, not only for yourself, but of course, I always ask for my own things first. I really wanted to ask Him to find a pretty name for my new kitten, but I was afraid that Alma wouldn’t want me to bother Him with it. I don’t know yet whether the kitten is a boy or a girl. I suppose God does. I asked Aunt Tillie how you can tell the difference, and she said that one night a beautiful fairy will whisper it in my ear, but I don’t believe it.

January 7, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda Firestone’s diary:

Sunday, I wish I liked Sunday School as much as I like Dancing School, but I don’t. The songs they sing there are ugly sounding, not in English, and I can’t understand what they are about, and the stories seem so silly to me. When I tell the teacher I can’t understand, she just says that I will when I am older. I don’t really want to wait that long, but I can’t help but wonder why there is so much confusion and mystery. If God loves everyone just the same, why does he call the Jews his chosen people, and what are we chosen for? Why did he choose them? At lunch today, I did not want to eat my soup, and Alma said it was all right, if I ate all the rest of the lunch. She was so kind, and while eating dessert of bread pudding with lots of raisins and cream, she read me a poem. It was so much more beautiful than anything I had learned in Sunday School. After lunch, I asked her to read it to me again, and I tried to remember it all, but I couldn’t, and Alma said to just try to remember two lines for a little while and then try to learn the rest.

These are the lines…

“He prayeth best who loveth best all things great and small,
For the dear God who loveth us, he made and loveth all.”

That doesn’t say anything about choosing anybody. When I go to bed tonight, I want to say my prayers on my knees like the little girl in the picture over my bed. She has long, golden curls, and a blue nightgown and a red rose in her hair, and she is so beautiful that God must love her very much.

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The quotation is from one of the last stanzas of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Wikipedia explains the stanza: “As penance for shooting the albatross, the mariner, driven by the agony of his guilt, is now forced to wander the earth, telling his story over and over, and teaching a lesson to those he meets.”

January 6, 1912

From 8-year old Hilda Firestone’s diary:

Today Aunt Tillie punished me for biting my nails. I wasn’t allowed to wear my new lace dancing dress to dancing school. I wore my old pink one, and I was very, very, very, very unhappy. Mrs. Hinman brought Victor over to me, and she instructed us to dance the polka step we had learned, but after four or five turns, he ran away, and I ran into the cloak room, and I cried on top of all the piled coats, but I was careful not to muss up my own. Mrs. Hinman came after me and said not to be sad, that there would be another occasion, and that Victor would dance with me again, and she gave me a nickel to buy myself an ice cream cone, but when Alma came to fetch me, and I told her about the nickel, she made me give it back. She said that little ladies do not take money from people and besides I can’t have an ice cream, as it gives me hives sometimes when I eat a cone. Why should something so specially good as ice cream give you something itchy as hives? Does everything so super good give you something that is super bad?