Helen’s First Memories

In going through two large boxes of Helen’s writing, among many interesting notebooks, clippings, finished and half finished stories that my mother wrote over her life­ time I came across some fifty or sixty single spaced, mar­ ginless typed pages. These pages were clipped together in the hope, I’m sure, of one day completing them. Incom­ plete though it is, what she has written will make a sig nificant contribution to this family history. The manu­ script has been retyped and edited by- me, but is essent­ ially as Mother wrote it. I have interjected other mate­ rial I had from Mother regarding the years 1897-1915.

Introduction To My Yesterdays

may experience a near actual contact with a past era. “The little girl I deserted so many years ago (or did I just lose her?) was growing up between 1897 and 1915, the era of which Rudolph Flesch comments in The M,

1 Clear Thinking, ‘It is a truism that my generation and

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the one preceding it grew up in a world dominated by immmature adults.’ Among these immature adults were my mother and father and my childrens’ mother and father. “I’ve thought of these memoirs as ‘My Yesterdays,’ but they could also be ‘Footprints on the Sands of Time,’ for that is all we leave behind us on our trip through life, for others to see where we came from, where we faltered, and where we finally stopped. “Did the traveler choose the direction his foot- prints have left or was it the events he met with that forced the choice, caused the deviations? Is it the con­

·1 flict within the human being—the struggle in the life of each individual cell to express itself that prevents some of us, many in fact, from ever reaching our full potent­ ials? “I feel a deep compassion for this little girl about wh,m I’m going to write, as though she’d been someone ot .er than myself, someone I had grown to know, only long af er I’d left her. She was hypersensitive to environ­ ment, always possessed of an uncanny ability to feel the very exhalations of human temperment in the atmosphere. The nerves of her small body were acutely exposed. They felt upon them the brief little winds of emotion that stirred around her, personalities in conflict, or vague

son, the line of a hairdo, the sound of a voice. Even things possessed an animate soul which could overwhelm her with dispair or permeate her with a feeling of kin­ ship. “Who can say what happens to a child or when it hap­ pens, that develops changes in the vastly complicated structure of the small striving mind? It seems to me in looking back, that adults’ expectations often present a dilemma and a disappointment t.o the chil.d, which creates conflict in his mind, with which the child cannot cope. He’s lost his faith by that time in the parents who have­ n’t understood his needs. He satisfies his longing for underestanding, by seeking approval wherever he can find it, or he becomes interested in the opposite sex at much too early an age. • “A child can be compared to a sensitive photo film, handled inexpertly during development. It turns out dis­ figured with blemishes, marred by imprints of foreign

“How can I think other than I have said above when I remember the lines written in the baby record book by my mother: ‘Age 3, Helen is a ray of sunshine around the house. Always laughing and full of little pranks.’” Clara also writes in that Baby Book: “At one year old Helen is the sweetest kind of a baby. She does so many cute things and is extremely good natured. “When we went to Pacific Grove Helen had a glorious time and was the pet of the Hotel.

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“At two and a half Helen is a perfect delight and treasure to us all. She is quick to learn and can understand everything her nurse says to her in German. At five Clara declares, “Helen can speak like a little German. I enjoy her every minute. There is not one mean way about her. She is out with everything, always tells the truth and minds beautifully. She is affectionate and comes to me and says, “I love you, Mama, you are glorious. Mama hug me. She always calls her papa, ‘Dearie,” and it does sound so sweet.” “Then later why the somberness?” Helen asks, “Why the retreat from human contact, the withdrawal of desire from any close association with others or the strong compulsion to escape from people? I remember the shell I kept around me in their presence and the antagonism I felt if they tried to penetrate my outer shell. “Perhaps along the way you may find the scattered rea­ sons, remembering too the last verse of the “Who Are We?” poem. And sometimes I must ask As life so strangely runs How much of this myself is How much those other ones.”

1 In 1900, when Helen was three and a half, Clara and Jerome took the train trip that he had promised as a.hon­ 1 eymoon–never mind that it was five years late. It was apparently a never-to-be forgotten experience, for it was the first time Clara had traveled east of Sacramento. Jerome, according to family myth at least, rented a pri­ vate car for the two of them to go to New York. I imagine it was a drawing room, for they were popular among the wealthy in those days, and it just grew with the years· into a “private car.” At any rate it was a memorable trip, for we often heard it referred to as we grew up with the stories of Mother’s childhood. While she was on the train Clara wrote the following letter to her little three year old daughter, Helen. This is a letter, or perhaps the first draught of a letter that has been kept all these years and is now in the Ancestor Book.

Note: This letter is written just three days after Maud was married in th Jackson Street home of Jerome and Clara.

Friday, Sept. 23, 1900 Mama’s Darling Daughter, darling daughter.” Well, Mama thought she would 1 Now I can hear you say, “I not Mama’s write you a letter, so when you go to the top of the stairs to get the letters in the morning you would really have a letter for yourself. You 1 always say, ‘A letter for Baby.’ so this time you will really have one. • I can’t write very much to you, Honey, ·1 because y·ou won’t understand it, but be a good don’t scream. 1 When Mama comes home she will bring you something pretty. Mama misses you very much, 1 darling. I have no little baby to kiss. I showed your picture to a lady this morning and she thought you were lovely. Grandma will read this letter to you and everything. 1 Goodbye sweetheart. Learn lots of German. Now I will write a few lines to Grandma. 1 Dear Mama, We are crossing, or just about to cross the Rocky Mountains. We are at Green River Station. We have been out taking a walk. There is nothing particular to write about, only that we are having a lovely trip, and I am feeling fine. My old feet do not ••.• The letter ends there. It is two sides of a paper torn from a scratch pad. Clara was pregnant with Leland 1 at the time, which probably explains what she was going to say about her feet, for he was born only two months later. Helen continues with memories which begin when she was three years old. “I’m going to take you back now to as early as I can ·- remember and I’ll call these years “My Yesterdays.” I’ve noti ed when I talk to little children that haven’t been to school yet, they always say yesterday they went some­ place when maybe it was a month ago. Or yesterday when their mother was a little girl, or something about Christ­ mas was yesterday, when it may have been nearly a year ago. If all little children do that I guess I did too. “An event I can remember when I was three years old was that one morning right after breakfast Papa took me upstairs to see my new baby brother. Mama was in the big bed in the alcove at one end of the bedroom. I only recall that everybody was talking real quietly and since Mama was in bed she must be sick, because it was day time. I don’t remember what I thought about the tiny baby Mama was hold­ ing near her. But I do remember I wanted to see his feet more than anything else. They let me touch his toes and I saw him kick his feet. “Up in our attic right over Mama’s and Papa’s bedroom was the room called the nursery, which I now shared with my baby brother. Our cribs were there and all our toys. Gabriel was our nurse then and she slept in a little room

1 close to the nursery because Leland cried in the night and

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had to have a bottle. Sometimes two bottles. “When he was a year old and I was four, we both still slept in the nursery and Gabriel always rocked Leland to sleep, while she held him on her lap in the big rocking chair. “On Gabriel’s night off Mama rocked Leland to sleep and she always sang songs as she rocked. She used to tell Papa that the baby stayed awake so he could hear the songs. That was when Papa would say he didn’t see why she had to stay up there so .long. Later in the night when it was Gabriel’s night off, sometimes Leland would.cry when it wasn’t time for a bottle. Then I sang mama’s songs to him. He would always stop and listen, but as soon as I stopped singing, (because I must have been sleepy) he’d cry again. I guess I’ll never forget the words to those songs. One is ‘Mighty Like a Rose,’ another is ‘Go to Sleep mv Little Pickininy’·and another is, ‘Hang up the Shovel.,” My mother. never did forget those songs, for I remember well how she sang them to my brothers and me when we were little. “I remember I didn’t iike the dark, lonely room,” Helen continues, “and the sound of Leland’s crying in the dark made it more lonely. I could hear Mama’s voice from her room below and it sounded like it was coming through a paper bag (but I didn’t think about that then). I just remember now that far away sound. She would call to me to sing some more to the baby. 1 “This house where Leland and I were born, the family referred to as ‘The Jackson Street House.’ We had a room in that house that I was not allowed to go into without .1 Mama or Papa. And they didn’t go there very often them­ selves unless they had company. If I was allowed in when there was company, it was to recite verses of German pieces that Emma the German cook had taught me. This very special room was called the “Turkish Room” and it was up in the attic at the other end from the nursery. .1 “I didn’t know then as I do now, how wonderful and unusual this room was. Papa had it decorated by a Turkish importer with Turkish tapestries and Mama called what the curtains and draped alcoves were made of, brocade. We have pictures of the Turkish room with its taborets that are Turkish tables. From the ceiling little jeweled lanterns hung on long gold colored chains. There were two water pipes, one on each taboret. The pipe was a big bowl with a long neck and four short hoses extending from the bowl with mouth pieces at their ends. Papa put tobacco and water in the pipe in separate sections and Mama and Papa and their guests sat around the taborets on pillows and smoked together. They also drank coffee from little l gold cups without handles.” During these early years of Helen’s childhood Clara hired German-speaking help when she could 4nd always had a German nurse for Helen. For a long time they had Emma who did the cooking and spoke to Helen in German and taught her verses to recite for the pleasure of Clara and her \1 friends. There was Gabriel when Leland was tiny, and she too, taught German to Helen. After that there was Selma who continued the teaching of German. Another of Helen’s earliest memories, about which she . had often told me, was when she was about three. She was going out with her mother and had been dressed up for the occasion. Clara looked proudly at her little daughter, in her white, lace trimmed bonnet and white silk coat, still un­ buttoned so it showed the pink dress beneath. Long white stockings and high, button white shoes completed the : ensemble. “Go out to the garden and show Papa how p:::-::tty you look, dear,” Clara suggested. Happily, Helen ran down the stairs, out the back door and around the path toward Papa who stood, hose in hand, watering the flowers. Feeling proud of herself, she called to him, “See,

J Oearie, see my pretty dress.” He looked up. Then he directed the hose at his daugh­ ter, drooping the bonnet, straightening the carefully curled hair underneath, and making the dress and coat suddenly soggy and heavy with cold water. The smiling, expectant little face whithered in dismay. rJ “I remember,” Helen writes, “when we lived in that 1 house, being dressed up in stiffly starched petticoats and

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a white dress with white shoes and a starched white sun­ bonnet. Every day after a nap, Selma our German nurse, put Leland in the baby carriage and took us for a walk to a park about a mile away or else we walked through the Precidio. I was always told to keep my dress clean, so I couldn1t play very much like other children did on the swings and see-saw in the park. I wasn’t supposed to play with or speak to children who I didn1t know, anyway. “From the windows of The Jackson Street House you could look across the bay and see Mt. Tamalpais. No other houses were behind ours, just sand lots and the Presidio. If you put your face real close to the window you could look far enough to see where the land on the other side curved in closer to the point of land in the Presidio. That’s where the ocean meets the bay and it’s called the Golden Gate. “I liked walking through the Precidio, but I especi­ ally liked walking there with Papa and Mama on Sundays. When my parents took·us there we passed by the big bar­ racks for the soldiers and the officers’ houses. They lived in big double houses for two families with separate entrances. They all looked alike except for the gardens that were a little different. “When our family walked there we often walked on the winding roads, up and down hills and along the edge of the bay where it was like being out in the country with the big pines and tall eucalyptus trees. There were small acorns, dropped from the··1::-.l!ees to be gathered and I stuf­ fed them into my coat pockets and maybe threw some away later to make room for a specially nice rock. “Once in a while on a Saturday-morning Selma would be allowed to take me to the parade ground to watch the drills. As we walked down the paths or along the road sometimes a soldier on horseback passed by. I stood still to look at him and felt very important if he smiled at me. Soldiers, Papa had told me, were the protectors of our country. They were brave men and went to war to fight the enemy. Hadn’t they, not too long ago, won the ·l Spanish-American war? “Eventually we reached the parade ground. I felt very small and the other side of it looked a long way off. I sat down with my nurse on a bench and there were other people sitting on some of the benches. Sometimes lines ·1 and lines of blue uniformed soldiers were marching around the parade ground following the marching players of the brass band. I loved watching the soldiers march to the beating of the drums in all sorts of formations. I didn’t :l want any of it to ever stop. I knew of nothing that made me feel like that band music did and the marching men in blue uniforms. From our house we could hear the early 1 morning and evening bugle calls they blew on this parade ground. Papa said that was when the flag was raised at sun_up and at SUI_..down when the flag was taken down from the very tall flag pole. “Could it be that the inexplicable admiration, even sensuous delight, I feel at the sight of men in uniform, has some connection with early childhood experiences? man, and he was a policeman. Papa had told me he protect­ 1 “On our walks we often came across another uniformed ed people from bad men. No doubt that would elevate the policeman to heroic heights in the impressionable mind of a child. Way up there above you, he looked big and strong and I never doubted his ability to do his job of protect­ ing. I remembered the times he’d stopped at the play­ ground and I wasn’t afraid the naughty boys would push me 1 down or not let me have my turn on the swing. I especial­ ly liked the policemen who rode horses. “On a day when Selma was willing to concede I’d been a ,, pretty good girl, a very special treat was my reward. On our walk to the playground we would stop-at the fire sta­ tion on Washington Street. The huge sliding door would be open and we’d stand there on the sidewalk looking in. The big white horses (there were five) would turn their heads to look at us over their stalls. These horses were much larger than the brown and black horses that the policemen rode. “There was always a fireman perched up on the equip­ ment working hard with a polishing cloth. He would say ‘Hello,’ to us and another fireman would come out from

HELEN’S FIRST MEMORIES ,

“I’m still like that. When I feel just like talking ., about it then I will. Cnce Papa asked me what did I do out at Golden Gate Park when Bessie and Mabel took me there. It was all still a picture I liked to think about and I didn’t have any words for it yet. I guess Papa felt I was being naughty. He took me down the hall to an unused room and sat me on the bed that had no covers for it. It was evening so the room was dark when Papa closed the door and walked away. I remember Mama came to get me later. “When I was about three years old I had two little imaginary boys. While I recall it dimly, Mama often told me about it. One day she saw me walking down the hall holding my arms away from my sides just like I was holding someone’s.hand on each side of me. When she asked where I was going, I told her I had to take my boys for a walk. After that I most always had my two boys with me. I placed them on chairs when I came into a room. Mama said I never forgot to take them down off the chairs when I left the· .room again. They had to be up to the table if I had been invited to have dinner or lunch with Mama and Papa. That wasn’t very often though.

“I remember breakfast time in the big kitchen. Selma

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and I came down the steep back stairs. It was built be­ tween two walls like in a closet and part way down was a big window. I could see Emma the cook and we waved to each other. The door at the bottom of the stairs opened into the kitchen. Emma could always tell when I didn’t ,, have my boys with me and she would ask me if they were still sleeping. Selma would take a bottle of warm milk up to baby Leland and Emma gave me a bowl of mush and a cup of chocolate. “Some of the things about Jackson Street that I will never forget are watching Papa light the gas lights in the was in bed, the rags, bottles, sacks man and the organ grinder and his monkey.

J “The chandeliers in the middle of the ceiling were so

high Papa used a lighter called a taper. It was like a long piece of stiff string and it fitted into a long handle like a cane. At the end where Papa lighted the taper with a match, the long han dle was shaped to turn

J halls and in the parlor and it took quite a while to light

on the gas of each burner. There were chandeliers in the

them all. If I didn’t behave, Selma would say, ‘Now you

rJ good.”

“The moaning fog horn at night made me pull the covers

-J over my head. It was some kind of an animal corning to get

me. I wanted to call Mama. In the big house, I couldn’t

hear any voices. I needed Mama, then I would know that

J mournful noise couldn’t hurt me. I guess I called her,

because I remember the sound of her rustling silk or taf­ feta skirts coming up the stairs and a ong the hall. She

would sit by the bed and hold my hand. I didn’t sleep any

J more up in the nursery, but in the big bedroom at the end

of the hall from Papa and Mama’s room. I tried not to go to sleep, because I knew Mama would quietly slip away and I’d be alone again. When I felt her fingers very gently

I pulling away I’d squeeze down tight with mine. Mama’d day, ‘Not asleep yet?’ J “The rags, bottles, sacks man looked like he was dressed in some of his rags and he didn’t like to bathe on ·1 wagon was empty if you saw him in the morning, but by Saturday night. He drove a tired looking horse and his afternoon it was filled with junk. I used to be afraid when I’d hear him calling, ‘Any rags, any bottles, any sacks today?’ The way he said it, it was like a song. “Sometimes Mama would go tll• the front door and beckon to him. Then he’d pull the reins back on the old horse and he’d climb down from the wagon carrying an empty sack and go around to the back door where Emma would show him what to take. He’d stuff it all in his big sack, old bottles, the !I empty coal sacks, old newspapers,and magazines. I’d run and hide where I could peek out at him as he filled his sack. ·1 “I’ve heard Mama tell that once when I was being naughty, she said she would throw me to the rag man. I said, ‘Please don’t throw me, just put me on the seat.’ , That was when I was three. :I “‘Quick Mama, some pennies, please. Hurry, hurry! the hurdy-gurdy man is out frontl” .Marna·would come with a few pennies for me and I’d run out the front door to watch the organ grinder and I’d watch his little monkey turn sommer­ saults then give him one penny after the other to give to J his master. “During the summer of 1901 I had my first taste of the country. What a wonderful adventure a trip is to a child. A trunk was packed with many folded pieces of clothing. Why did everybody make a fuss because I liked climbing in and out of the trunk? It was big enough for two more four year olds to get inside and play house.· “When we finally climbed onto the streetcar up at the top of the Jackson Street hill, Papa looked as if he’d surely be left behind with the bulging straw suit cases. But he turned up along with us and sat beside Mama. I waso the other side of Gabriel who was holding the baby, Leland. When the cable car tipped down the steep hills.-Papa.sit­ ting where he was, kept us from sliding along the seat to the end of the car. I wondered if I should laugh, but when I looked at Papa and Marna, they didn’t look as though they thought there was anything funny. “Next was the ferry boat to take us across the bay. When the boats passed each other the captains blew a stentorian whistle. Who could help wanting to hide his head or be close to Mama? When the boat reached Sausilito we got on a train that Papa said would take us to Ross Valley. _I “For a part of the summer we stayed in the great big house with the biggest porch across the front that I had ever seen. The porch is the only part of the house I remember. Everybody that was staying there that summer was always on the porch, even for dinner and for lunch. It was a family affair, each one sharing in the expense. Papa, Charlie,and B ssie’s husband, Norbert1commuted to the City everyday to their busines.s offices. The big event of the day was waiting at the end of the long drive­ way for the men when it was time for them to return home. “In the day time, Mabel, Bessie and Mama would sit on the porch embroidering edges on towels or initials on table napkins. I had never had so much ground to be free on. I wore overalls so I didn’t have to remember to keep clean. Best of all, however, I had someone to play with. One day a little boy crawled in through a hedge to where I was playing. He said his name was Earl Hammer and he was six years old. “Since he lived right next door we piayed together every day while we were there. When I had to return to the City and say goodbye to Earl, it was my first exper­ ience at parting from someone I liked. A vague disap­ ,. pointment hung over me, a disturbed realization that Earl Hammer could remain there all the time, but something in my life would be different. “Bessie and Norbert had been living with us since the summer in Ross. Their baby Norbert was a year younger than Leland and was just learning to walk, Mhen Bessie’s chronic cough became serious. The doctor said she had consumption and needed care in a warm dry climate. She

• .was taken to a sanitarium in Los Gatos. Gabriel took all the care of us three children. Bessie died before her child was two years old. Her mother had died of the same disease when Bessie was only a month old. There had been no particular communication between Bessie and me so that her death meant very little to me, exept for the exper­ ience that later came of it. “It wasn’t to be expected that Mama would entirely

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escape her Catholic upbringing, or at least it’s religious

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influence. Possibly too, she thought my pleading demands for her presence after being tucked in for the night might

be less frequent. Whatever her motives, she chose to

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present me with a Guardian Angel. That would be the new role of my dead half-sister, Bessie, whose present abode was Heaven. I was to remember that Sister Bessie would be near me at all times. She would let nothing harm me. What worried me most was that not only God, but now my Guardian Angel,too, would see me when I misbehaved. “The Guardian Angel didn’t take Mama’s place,though, when the moaning fog horn from Land’s End or Fort Point filled the darkness with unspeakable fears. My Guar ian Angel proved to be more of an unwelcome intruder than anything else, and I still craved the comforting assurance in the swish, swish sound of Mama’s taffeta petticoats coming along the hall to me. “I knew better than to tell Mama I had dismissed my quardian Angel, for she might not understand. Although Mama had given up any affiliation with the Catholic church, she had not given up many of her early learned

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beliefs. 1 “This was the era of fire and brimstone. God frowned upon sin and the list of sins was long. But God never ran .1 out of punishments. Maybe He would make you fall down and skin your knees. Or you might wake up one morning with a sore throat, on the very day that you had been invited to standing there above me, didn’t tell me that she wanted more than nything else to feel the baby arms around her neck and thrill to the words, ‘I is your darding daughter.’ “Mama’s pride was her outstanding quality. It was the bulwark of strength that brought us all through the many adversities that would have seemed insurmountable to most people. The dictionary says that arrogance is the unworthy side of pride. Mama’s dignified self-respect, however, didn’t really need bolstering by arrogance, but that was the era when arrogance was a symbol of prestige, and it becaJtre a.J:most a custom. It was also her arrogance that caused many’misunderstandings and heart aches with the family and in cont.acts outside tpe family.11