With thanks to Yelena Shmulenson for her translations from Yiddish (indicated in red below).
The
Bea Blog – Excerpts from My Grandmother’s Diaries
The Bea Blog consists of excerpts from the diaries my grandmother Bea Cohen (1899-1985) kept for 38 years, starting in 1913. For more background, see Part I -- Intro and 1913 (under Blog Archive).
Part
XI
More about Bea’s Parents -- from letters and photos
Sollis and Pauline’s engagement photo, Philadelphia, 1895
Bea’s parents, Sollis and Pauline, were first cousins, born into large Russian Jewish families in 1873. They shared the same last name – commonly transliterated as Kagan or Kahan or Cohen. Sollis, born Solomon, adopts the name “Solis Cohen” when he arrives in the US and later becomes “Sollis Cohen.” Pauline calls herself “Paulina Kahan” when she first emigrates, but becomes “Pauline Cohen” when she marries.
Marriage of first cousins was not uncommon among Jews at this time.
See e.g., Kaplan, The Making of the Jewish Middle Class:
Women, Family and Identity in Imperial Germany, Oxford University
Press, 1991, pp. 114-115.
Sollis and Pauline’s engagement card, April 1895 (Pauline’s last
name here is spelled “Kohen”)
Letters
from Sollis
Following are excerpts from letters
Sollis wrote to Pauline between 1895 and 1897. These letters show Sollis’s concern for
Pauline, his humor, his ambition to succeed, and his self-consciousness as a
Russian Jew. Sollis writes to Pauline in English, but he almost always includes a word or phrase or passage in Yiddish or Russian as well. Sometimes he uses Yiddish or Russian to define an English word for Pauline. More often he writes in Yiddish for the benefit of his (and Pauline's) Russian relatives with whom Pauline stays when she is in Russia. Sollis refers to Pauline as "Paulinochka" when he writes in Yiddish.
“Do not jump and halloo”
Sollis’s letter to Pauline, May 1895
In
May 1895, Sollis writes to Pauline in New York:
My dear Paulina!
Your welcome letter came duly
to hand. I am delighted to hear that you are all well, and nothing wrong
happened to you.
[...] But what is the matter with
your appetite? How is it that the latter does not bother you at all? It makes me think that you are
worried about something; what is it? If a person is jolly and happy there must
be a natural necessity of eating and drinking; why is it that it is different
with you?
[…] Pray, say the truth; do
not hide anything from me. Your suffering, Paulina, is mine […] Try to walk as
much as you can; whenever you have a little time take a book and go out to the
park […] The best way to get acquainted with your neighbor is to act polite;
do not jump and halloo (I mean Mary) so much, don’t give them a chance to
consider you as a “Russian Jew” in the meaning the Germans take it.
[…] Concerning myself I have
very little to say. I am just going on in my old style, little occurring to
vary the monotony of my present life. I often wish you were here to rouse me up,
and dispel the ennui which sometimes oppresses me. I
am working, perfectly healthy, and feel very good.
Yours for ever,
Solis
Pauline (on left) and friends in New York, 1895
“Couldn’t you try to enjoy a little?”
In 1896, Sollis arranges for Pauline to
return to Europe for a year-long stay– to
visit family, improve her health and buy a new wardrobe -- while Sollis strives
to move up the ladder from being a “working man” (cutting men’s suits) to being
a business owner, ready to support a wife and a family. Sollis (who funds the
trip) directs Pauline to visit Pinsk, Kletsk, Brest-Litovsk and David-Horodok, as well as Warsaw and Hamburg.
Pauline (on right) with Sollis’s siblings (and her cousins) Maria and Lazar, 1896
In March 1897, Sollis writes to “My dearest,
best Pauline” in Pinsk:
As far as I understand you do
not enjoy Pinsk much […] Couldn’t you make a trip to Pinsk for a few months and
try to enjoy a little? […] You ought to get of Papa 700 rubles and prepare some
clothes. You hardly have any and need them so bad. Underwear you would make in
Pinsk, some dresses in Warsaw, but mostly I would advise to get them in Hamburg
[…] You must act with Papa very gently and polite so he may be good to you.
After all I expect you to have some very good time in Russia yet. Your visit to
Kletsk will certainly afford great pleasure, then comes Warsaw for at least 3
months and David-Horodok is not bad neither for summer […] I must make a change
and not remain a working man. If I do
make a change I must do so before I marry […] Are you drinking milk every day?
Don’t fool me! Try to get as much of
the good times as possible. Be good to yourself and also don’t forget me […]
Your very loving one,
Solis
In this same letter, Sollis includes a note in Yiddish to his relatives in Pinsk:
[. . .] Now I wish you a kosher Passover with many joys, and you should remember me at the seder. Thank God that you are freed from those American seders and can have a seder at your own house with your worthy wife [. . .]
[. . .] Now I wish you a kosher Passover with many joys, and you should remember me at the seder. Thank God that you are freed from those American seders and can have a seder at your own house with your worthy wife [. . .]
“I love America fully”
Later that year, Sollis writes again to Pauline and includes this poignant note in Yiddish to relatives in Kletsk:
Last week I
met someone recently come from Kletsk [. . .] According to what he told me, there is no
reason to miss Kletsk. The poverty is so awful that I don’t know how can one
live there. If you can’t make a living running a bar or making wine, then how
can one live in Kletsk when the trade is so bad. If not for you and our entire family in
Russia, I’ll tell you the whole truth, I
would never miss Russia. One earns very little there, and the repression is worse than ever. I hardly
think I’d be able to live there. I’ve always wanted to go to America where I
have the same rights as the President.
I’ll tell you the truth: I love America fully, and there are many
opportunities here to move up in the world.
“Red is all the go this season”
By November 1897, Sollis has his own
business in Philadelphia and writes on his business letterhead to Pauline who
is on her way back to the US:
Sollis’s letter to Pauline, November 1897
Am in best of humor lately
and on the road to prosperity […] Was very busy the whole week and worked til
10 o’clock every evening with 4 cutters. I didn’t see anybody the whole week
and have done nothing but hustling […] About styles I told you all I knew. Red
is all the go this season. Try to buy a nice coat, they wear nothing but Russian
styles this year […] Don’t take any strange packages and don’t carry any too
many bundles […]
Solis
Sollis and Pauline are married January
21, 1898, in Philadelphia by a Reform rabbi.
Sollis and Pauline’s Rosh Hashanah greeting card ca. 1898 (in Hebrew and German) (Sollis likely used German here in an attempt to appeal to a “better” class of Jewish customers and colleagues – a cut above those like himself who grew up knowing only Yiddish and Russian )
Letters
from Pauline
Pauline with granddaughters Ande and Jean on a family trip to Europe in 1931
I have no letters from Pauline during the years before her marriage, but letters she wrote to her family in the 1930s -- when she was a widow and made annual trips to Europe -- reveal that she was witty and perceptive.
Bea and Milton are “their own enemies”
In one letter, written in
1937 to Marion from Karlsbad, Czechoslovakia, Pauline comments on Bea and Milton’s
marital problems and describes my mother (age 11) as a “problem child.” Pauline
writes:
Bea’s and Milton’s attitude
towards one another is quite discouraging and all I can say is that they are
their own enemies, bringing curses on themselves. Ande is surely a problem
child so all in all there are plenty of worries.
“Just a sprinkle of Jews”
In 1938, sailing to England on board the
Aquitania, Pauline (by now 65) writes an especially witty letter to the family,
remarking on the ship’s amenities, the number of Jews on board, and a celebrity
passenger:
RMS Aquitania was a Cunard ocean liner in service from 1914-1950
God bless the Aquitania -- it
is a great pleasure and privilege to be on it and enjoy all the comforts the
English people bestow upon their passengers […] The service is De Luxe
absolutely […]
This time the Aquitania is
only carrying one thousand passengers instead of four thousand so at present we
are only 160 some people in the first cabin instead of 1000. They blame it all
on the bad stock exchange. The crowd is mostly English and I do not know one
single soul except George M. Cohan. He walks a great deal and keeps very quiet.
I do have two friends on the Aquitania – one is a kippered herring and the
other is an English bloater [another type of herring] and between the two I am
very much at home in my cabin […]
Just a sprinkle of Jews [on
board] and perhaps this accounts for too much peacefulness […] O boy! What will
become of me! Such laziness! My lunch today I surely enjoyed. I have discovered
real thin slices of pumpernickel with wonderful smoked Scotch salmon and the
struggle of pleasure is mine […]
All I can report today is that
last evening the ship gave a charitable concert for the seamen and George M.
Cohan was the last artist on the program. God bless him, he was wonderful and
got some applause […] [I] will probably become [the Aquitania’s] strong press
agent upon my return to the States […]
George M. Cohan, “the Yankee Doodle Dandy of the
American stage who gave his country its greatest song of the first World War,”
died four years after this Aquitania voyage – in 1942 at 64 (New York Times obituary, Nov. 6, 1942).
George M. Cohan on the cover of Time magazine, October 9, 1933
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