Sickness and Trouble
Poor Lena almost despaired at Albert’s sickness. His face was a mass of raw flesh. She carried him to many skin and blood specialists, but there seemed no help for his suffering. Lena’s motherly love and her devotion to that child taxed the limits of her endurance. During the summer nights David had to wheel him around out of doors almost to 2 a.m. in order to quiet and to soothe his pain. David felt like Satan rebellious against God.
To add to Lena’s grief, one morning, as has been related, she stepped on a rusty nail with her bare foot. It was through the skill and efforts of a kindly doctor that lockjaw was prevented. After two months Lena was able to walk on her foot again. Upon the advice of the doctor that a change of climate would benefit the child, David decided to go back to Minnesota.
In 1894, after the Chicago World’s Fair had closed, there were thousands of stranded people from many parts of the world without means of subsistence. The Pullman Car Company strike, as well as many other strikes throughout the steel industry, caused great disturbance in American financial circles. Work of any kind was hard to get at a premium. This was another reason why David decided to move back to Minneapolis.
David had not saved any money for traveling expenses. No wonder, considering the amount of sickness. He sold his house furniture and left Chicago barehanded. Coming to Minneapolis, he rented one of the Carr houses on Seventh and Washington Avenue North.
Not sure I understand the Satan image here.
I realize at this point that I have totally assimilated how David the son and author has amalgamated (to my ear/eye) two voices: Ben Zion’s critique of Leah, and David’s critiques of Lena. Did anyone else notice that?
Perhaps I misunderstand your meaning, Deborah, or have missed something altogether in the Diary, but I don’t detect any criticism of Leah from Ben Zion at all. If anything, Leah seems to have been the one experiencing frustration and disappointment.
So is he anti-union? Is that because the Jews are not traditional workers?
Lena had a hard time with baby Helen [who had been born in 1896]. She was always crying day and night. The neighbors were constantly complaining about her. She called for old Dr. Shlegel, a child specialist, who examined her. She was coughing as if she had croup and was crying everlastingly. The doctor said there was nothing that plenty of milk and good food would not cure. But that was the worst of being poor. Regarding her health, he said, she was simply born with a mean disposition and bad temper. She would cause them much trouble as she grew older, Dr. Shlegel said.
“I have a long record of hundreds of children,” he explained, “which I brought into this world. As infants they had rebellious dispositions. As the years passed on, in their schools they gave the teachers and parents much trouble and heartache.”
The next-door neighbors were a nice Scotch family by the name of Stuart. Mother Stuart was an especially kind and noble lady.
Who does he hate more — Al or Helen? Does he project backwards from 1920? Or was he such a hateful father from the beginning? Notice that he places the comment in the voice of a medical expert.....
Rebellion fits where into all his other antinomies?This is straight out of Michel Foucault. The disciplining elites, whose power comes from their knowledge, label misfits and provide the parents with so-called technical ideology which allows them to be mean and unsympathetic.
So my grandmother is brought into the world disposed to bad temper from the cradle. A nasty-natured baby. I have to wonder if David’s version of events is accurate here. What kind of a doctor would declare that some infants are “simply born with a mean disposition”? It is also very hard for me to understand how any mentally healthy, financially stable parent could express what amounts to hatred for his or her baby. Deborah’s comment about David’s possibly projecting backwards seems to make the most sense. Yet — we’re still left with Schlegel, indicating that Helen was demonized from the start.
They moved to Second Avenue south, corner of 9th Street, where David opened a dressmaking parlor, but he was handicapped financially in pushing his new enterprise. Little Belle found a nice playmate in Dr. Hunter’s girl across the street.
One day little Helen got very sick. Lena called for old Dr. Shlegel, the child specialist. In the course of the conversation Lena complained that she could not get any medicine down Helen’s throat. The doctor said, “I’ll show you how to do it.” He pried open Helen’s mouth with a teaspoon and was about to pour the medicine into her when Helen bit his finger. “Ouch!” the doctor explained. “She will never die a natural death. She is too mean to die. She is simply a natural born mean kid!”
There was some excitement in the summer of 1898 when the newly organized Zionist society persuaded the young Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, the noted Zionist propagandist, to stop over in Minneapolis while on his way to Portland, Oregon, to take charge of his first Temple.
What’s the difference in terms of social mobility to go from tailoring to dressmaking ?
As for Schlegel, frankly I wish Helen had bitten clean through his hand!
WOW!!!!!!!!!! Just the worst kind of parental determinism.
Mr. Joseph Shulet, then president of the first Zionist society, began planning a dinner to entertain the speaker. Lena, with her older sister Yette, worked hard preparing a grand dinner for the occasion, which was served in their home, for they had a very long room able to accommodate 30 persons. In the event Dr. Stephen S. Wise gave a talk in Century Hall in the Tribune building. He spoke to a capacity audience and his address was highly praised by the press of the day.
The older sister does the work. The politics is conducted in a dinner gathering, akin to the banquets which the lefties used to hold.
Lena got down very sick. Dr. Byron gave her a prescription but she grew worse and suffered intense pain. A few days later Dr. Byron advised David to have a specialist in for consultation. So Dr. Byron brought Professor Bell, the nerve specialist. After a tortuous examination, he said in a low drawling voice, “Dr. Byron has done all medical science can recommend. The only thing to do is to take her to the hospital and to cut the sciatic nerve and stretch it out. That may relieve her pain.”
“No,” said David. “Nothing doing, Professor. No knife will I permit to touch her.”
... A few days later Mrs. Winchell, wife of Professor Winchell , came into the shop for some work and found Lena suffering in agony. She said, “No doubt you tried many doctors and lots of medicine. I’d try Mrs. Audberg, the magnetic healer [i.e., hypnotist]. Without any medicine she did wonders for my professor who had paid out hundreds of dollars to doctors. He was so crippled with rheumatism that he could not attend to his classes. Mrs. Audberg cured him and he worships her. I’ll send for her to come to see you.”
Mrs. Audberg was a prepossessing matronly lady. When she came in she sat down in a chair alongside the bed, taking Lena’s hand in hers and mumbling to herself. Later she said, “Don’t use any medicine any more. You’ll soon be better.” Her treatment lasted about fifteen minutes. Then she said, “You’ll suffer pain yet tonight. But after that you’ll get better.”
“Came into the shop for some work”: she wants to sew women’s clothes. Why is Lena in the shop? Because she works there. A sign of the family’s working-class status. Women’s activities were a very clear class marker.
Isn’t it probable that Mrs. Winchell came to pick up some work that had been done, rather than to find work herself?
That night Lena suffered terribly. David got scared and called for her sister Yette to come. At last Lena fell asleep as if in a coma. She slept the whole night without moving a muscle. When she woke up about 9 a.m. she asked, “Where is David?”
This was the first night she had rested painlessly in four months. She began now to feel better day by day, gradually improving. In about two weeks she was able to leave her sick bed on crutches.
David could not get over it, wondering at the remarkable power Mrs. Audberg possessed. It reminded him of the old Biblical story of the Israelite plague in the wilderness when Moses ordered a snake, hammered from copper, hoisted on a pole, and let the children of Israel look upon it and they were healed of their poisonous wounds.
Lena’s constant tormented agitation and mortal terror David tried to read as the expression of a taciturn self-centered neurotic who demanded as a natural right everything in exchange for nothing. David excused her because he was one who would chew whatever he bit off. It was the quantity of strong medicine that poisoned her system, David thought.
Dr. Byron, while attending to Lena during her illness, had often talked to David, for he took a liking for him. He invited him to come to the Physicians Institute where he was lecturing, saying he had faith that David would make a good doctor. He even offered his assistance in the medical studies in every possible way. But owing to Lena’s constant sickness and his economic struggle, David was forced to give up such thoughts for the present at least, with the hope that he might consider them later.
David goes from writing sympathetically about Lena’s suffering to basically calling her a self-centered hypochondriac. In Lena’s defense, it seems as though she really has undergone a significant amount of physical pain and illness, not to mention four childbirths (so far). She has also spent quite a bit of energy nursing Albert and even David. In addition, she is living with a man who doesn’t truly love or respect her. While the attention and care she receives when she is ill may to some extent lie beneath her “neurotic demands,” she has without a doubt had to contend with a virtual smorgasbord of health problem.
Lena is sickly — did David hate her for that? Wow, devastating critique of his wife. Same basic theme as Ben Zion to David’s mother Leah? What’s the strong medicine? Is that literal or metaphorical?
This is so sad. Thwarted upward mobility for a 30-year-old-plus tailor in the sticks. Blame it on the wife. Cruel?
Old Dr. Phillip consoled Lena when he came to see Albert who was very sick. “My experience tells me,” he said, “that he’ll outgrow that disease, as it usually leaves them when they reach about the age of sixteen or seventeen.” But that was a poor consolation for the mother.
One day Albert got very sick and grew worse so fast that Lena prayed to God to take the boy away from her as she could not stand his suffering, which she thought was beyond human endurance. Next day she called in Mother Stuart to come and measure a shroud for him.
“No, no,” said Mother Stuart. “Don’t be discouraged. He’ll get well and be a strong lad. I’ll make for him two nice nightgowns for his graduation.”
More blame on Al. If David really had wanted to become a doctor in Minneapolis around 1900, how hard would that have been? When did the first Jewish male get a medical degree from the U of Minnesota? Where else gave out those degrees?
David felt despondent at his hard fate and muttered, “It is astonishing how all of us are generally encumbered with thousands of hindrances and duties that are really unnecessary but which nevertheless wind us about with their threads and fetter our movements.”
But troubles and want had completely conquered David. They had washed him out and left him colorless for the time being. Nevertheless he stubbornly refused to deliver up his lively spirit, though he could not develop any philosophical humor himself and the hard times seemed to leave little humor in anything.
Boy is he bitter about being a father and a husband. His bad fate or his pervasive blame of others?
Bringing up a family when the children are small is no easy matter and cannot be left to chance. Underclothes and overclothes are objects of importance. Materials have to be chosen carefully. Lena gave much study and craftsmanship to the style and fashioned the clothes to look attractive to the wearer.
A man is forced to be all day away from home. He must devote his time to earning sustenance for the family. Love is just an evening entertainment for his leisure hours. Sometimes he may come home late and at times depressed, it is true. But the woman gives up her body and soul. It is much more tremendous, far more for a woman than for a man.
OK, we finally hear something positive about Lena!
So, like her husband and sons, Lena too is a tailor. Helen inherited this talent as well and made all my mother’s clothes into her college years.
These characters are so poor and they are thinking of love as an evening entertainment? Is this feminism? Then why not more sympathetic to Leah and Lena? What does he mean by love, does he mean sex? Does he mean companionship with the mate is only for the evening hours? Is he praising Lena for being more devoted to parenting than he was?
David shortly after moved to St. Paul, where he found a job. He rented rooms on Chestnut Street . Work in those days was at a premium and only low wages were paid, hardly enough to hold the family’s soul and body together. And the expensive medicines for the sick boy added a strain to their meager income.
The confusion in David’s mind was sometimes intense. Even when he sat quietly at the table he floundered within himself helplessly, with all the impotent strength of a harpooned whale. “You are a caution, David,” said his friend Abe Calmenson to him one day. “You have the pluck of a lion and the strength of a bull and the pride of the devil to fight misery that is more than I could ever withstand. Oh, you are not beaten yet.”
When he says “David” here, does he mean the entire family? Who is paying the “wages”? David has been represented as an independent contractor so far, a garment artisan. Has he actually been a sweatshop worker? Did the Twin Cities have sweatshops?
I haven’t seen evidence of his being anything other than an individual tailor.
As poor as they were, the few neighbors who occasionally dropped into their humble house did not know of their poverty. When they happened to come in at mealtime they saw the table set with spotless white linens and sparkling dishes, although there was only the simplest food. And the children were always cleanly dressed.
The neighboring children at play had much fun observing four-year-old Helen watching over her bigger sick brother Albert, who was twice as tall as she. If any of the other children tried to come near him she would stretch out her little arms with her little fists clenched and yell, “Don’t touch him. I’ll punch you!”
How did you hide poverty? Women’s habits help push the family into one class or another. Illness pushes the family into poverty. I wonder what their yearly income might have been at this point, and where that put them in the social hierarchy... especially the Jewish social hierarchy?
This is a strangely slanted scene. Four-year-old Helen is putting up her dukes to defend Albert, an image which seems meant to reinforce the reader’s conception of Helen as wild child. Yet what her actions really show is protectiveness towards her sickly brother, the other exasperating child, with whom she probably felt real camaraderie.
The Copper Country Experience
Soon thereafter a traveling salesman told David that the Copper Country was a real paradise for tailoring trade to a willing worker. So David decided to venture, and they all moved to Calumet, Michigan.
Calumet is situated in the Upper Michigan Peninsula, where the Calumet, Hecla, and Tomrak copper mines are situated. The workers are all clustered around the locations such as Red Jacket, Lorain, and several others, and Lake Linden down the river where a large smelter is located.
David came in hopes of finding work and expected to settle permanently. He rented an upstairs apartment and moved in. But he found a hard uphill to row to make ends meet, as the inhabitants were mostly Italians and Finnish people and very clannish. He found the country overrun with solicitors from the larger cities in every kind of work, soliciting from house to house for the little that was there. Food was very costly, for nothing grew there. Everything had to be shipped in from the Twin Cities.
This is where we see the essence of David’s theory of success at its most precise. The world floods us with troubles, leaving us temporarily “washed out” and hopeless. But if one has a “lively spirit” one can overcome these challenges and move forward. But again, what does David do? In yet another move, one that seems entirely unrealistic to me, he heads to rural Michigan, ends up scrambling for work, even selling maps door to door at one point and his wife Lena heads back to the civilized world of Minneapolis, where David soon rejoins her.
An interesting mixed metaphor here... a hard row to hoe? An uphill struggle?
David became disillusioned. The house-to-house begging and delivering work, the heavy cold, deep snowdrifts—all these had put a crimp in his ambition.
One morning there was a rap at the door. When Lena answered it she was confronted by a very tall young man asking if she had a room to spare for several weeks. He was very dark with long jet-black hair. He said he was a Hindu from Bombay, India, that he was a medical student at the University of Chicago, and that he was selling maps to make money to pay his way. He asked if he could get morning and evening meals.
Lena said, “We are Jewish and our food is plain, but not so greasy as in the regular restaurants.”
“That is just what I like,” he replied.
He stayed for several weeks. One evening he brought up the subject of David taking up the map selling business and induced him to set aside his tailoring ways. The Hindu then taught David “the game” for a few days, showed him how it worked, and departed.
“House-to-house begging”: does he mean peddling? Why has he equated them here?
I find this detail fascinating. I love it that my great-grandparents took in a boarder whose ethnic background was so different from their own. Keeping in mind the profound racial biases of the time, it seems to me that David and Lena showed an uncommon degree of open-mindedness as well as generosity of spirit. Or was it mainly an economic arrangement? Perhaps it was a combination of both.
To “get morning and evening meals” means to be a partial boarder. This was a long tradition in the Jewish eastern European community... also among the poor in the U.S.?
Recently I learned from my mother that Helen would prepare and serve food to hobos (men passing through town) during the Depression years, men who would turn up on their back porch asking for a meal. Their house became known as one where a hungry man would not be denied.
The first three months things were fairly good. In the meantime Lena moved back to Minneapolis. But after four months David came up against stiff competition as newspapers began to give away maps as subscription premiums. The driving and jumping about among the farmers in the rural section, the irregular meals, loss of sleep and the like soon began to tell on David’s health and he came home sick physically and despondent mentally over the entire Copper Country venture. He said it seemed that luck had deserted him, that if he tried to sell coffins people would stop dying!
Why does Lena return without him?
Possibly to be closer to her sister and mother? Sounds like David wasn’t around a lot to help with the kids... if he ever was.
David always has a negative word to say about Al. How did it get so universalized?