another wonderful letter

March 8th 1940
Darling Daddy
I've quite a lot of news for you, this evening, though I'm afraid I haven't acquired the information you asked me for. I'm so sorry.
Yesterday evening we had a very good WEA meeting. Mr. Humphries spoke on America as per usual, but last night he was in fine form, speaking on the rise of Roosevelt. It was made very interesting by him telling us of the run on the banks, and of the prohibition and racketeering. He told us some juicy stories too! Talking of the banks started a discussion which was very interesting because in the discussion there was an actual bank manager, a communist, an extreme conservative, a farm labourer, a teacher and myself. Perhaps you can imagine the sparks flying about.
Amongst other things we discussed how far Roosevelt's action of reopening the banks after the slump was to help the people or the capitalists.
Mr. Humphries himself has been to America and when telling us of the start of mass production and Ford's cars, he told us of his actual visit to Ford's works in Detroit. He gave us a glowing description of the making of the motor car. I was able to score there, for I had read "Flivver King" by Upton Sinclair. He also told us that round the works there are 7 acres in which the cars of the employees are garaged. Of course, all Ford cars! I wonder if they would be sacked if they didn't buy Ford cars.
He also told us of the start of the Hire Purchase System and how they even sold graves on the hire Purchase rate, and then, the racketeers, confident that the dead can tell no tales, resold several times the same grave, and just dumped the bodies.
I could go on forever, telling you of Mr. Humphries talk but I've other things to tell you, so I'll leave that subject.
In history lessons we've been learning about the Irish problems all through the ages. Its a most interesting and exciting subject, isn't it? We've just finished it, with a discussion on the IRA and their methods and we're reading Liam O'Flaherty's "The Informer" as a recommended book We're on modern history now, well, by modern, I mean the politics of 1914-1924, not the foreign policy or war. It seems funny to learn about Lloyd George!
Mr. Barnard has each month the New Statesman and the nation. He gave it to me to read yesterday, the February edition, and it's very interesting. There's a preview of a novel called Prelude to Love, which seems very good. It's supposed to get right into the mind of a young girl of 17 years. There's also an article by Joad, which I seem to have read before, starting with "What is the State?".
He's also given me a "Penguin Parade". That's a Penguin book of previously unpublished modern short stories. It's rather good! Not only short stories but it also has some modern drawings. They're most peculiar, especially one called Adam and Eve. It's represented by a gigantic hand holding an apple, the core of which is presumably Eve, for its a woman sitting down.
By the way, we've been reading some good poems lately. But Miss Bartlett doesn't think they are good for us because they are written in such a disillusioned way on life. We like them, well, rather I like them, because I don't think the others can understand them. I'm going to try and bring that book of poems to London with me, I'm sure you'd like them.
Well, I've tons of homework to do, so I'll end now, goodbye
Your adoring daughter
Zelda

letters home 2

Next in a selection of letters written by Zelda to her parents from Somerset, where she was evacuated at the beginning of the second world war.

Dearest, darling mummy,
How's the weather in london? Down here it's as bad as in finland! We are absolutely frozen up in the house. No cold water, no hot water, no water in the lavatory. The other day we had a slight thaw, and all the water came through the ceiling. Now it's frozen again, and we are expecting a burst. For water to wash ourselves in we have to collect snow and melt it. But still we keep smiling. Though Mrs.Lapham threatened to leave Mr. Lapham this morning and go home to her mother.
Still, I don't mind. I'm having some fun. Up at school, in game lessons, we go out and have snow fights and last Wednesday the whole senior school went down to Orchardleigh pond which is completely frozen. The mistress in charge had skates but we hadn't so we just had to slide. It was glorious fun, so we went out there again today.
On Wednesday Mrs. Lapham wanted to go to the pictures with someone but Mr. Lapham didn't want to go, so she took me. We saw Dark Victory. Isn't Bette Davies a marvellous actress? Do you know, in the evening now, it gets dark at about 6 o' clock and then at about 9 o'clock it becomes light as day. Mrs. Lapham was astonished, but she said that was why we were having the frost, or some such rot.
Thursday was a very exciting day for me. When I got to school, Mr. Barnard asked me to go and speak to him at dinner time. I went and what do you think he said? You see I often talk about Psychology and health etc. So Mr. Barnard thinks I am terribly brainy and told Mr. Humphrey tthat I was. Mr. Humphrey said he agreed with Mr. Barnard and they decided to ask me to join the "Workers' Education Association", to which they belong. They have a different speaker each week, who speaks on education, politics, religion etc. and they have debates on them. I wanted to join ever so much, but I told them I wasn't allowed to go out during the week, and nor could I afford the 6d a week. Mr. Barnard said he would let me off the 6d and said that he would meet me at the bottom of Nunney Road to take me, and would take me homw too, if I would come. So I said I'd go that day but didn't know whether I'd go again.
went that night and he met me at 6.45pm at the bottom of Nunney Road. We had a lecture on Intelligence, and what makes some people imbeciles and others geniuses. Everyone there made a fuss of me, and every tiime I argued a point they all listened respectfully, as though I was a prime minister or suchlike. They were ever so nice, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. They asked me to go next week, for it's a lecture on psychology and they seem to think I'm an expert on that subject. Why, I don't know. Mr. Barnard took me home at 9.30pm and told me I was let off my homework for that night if I wished. But I did it all the same. I asked Mrs. Lapham if I could go again next week, and she said she didn't mind in the least. What do you say?
That was not all that happened on Thursday. When I got home from school, I found a letter waiting for me. I'd like you to see it. It's very mysterious!
[Zelda received an anonymous postcard signed "an admirer"]
It's so funny! All the girls and boys up at school are teasing me like anything. They say that I've charmed the whole of Frome, and they tease me terribly about Mr. Barnard. They keep teasing him too, saying that I've captured his heart, and such daft things as that. But he doesn't mind because he is used to their teasing ways.
Mrs. Lapham laughed like anything when she read that postcard I have enclosed. She says she is going to hire a detective to see who it is that sent it. I asked nearly everyone I know, and still can't find out who sent it. I thought at first that it was a joke, but some of the boys say that they know who sent it, but they won't tell me. Anyway, it's been rather useful, because every time I asked anybody if they know who sent it, they'd say "Ooh, ask so and so, he likes you". So, I've found out everybody that likes me. Isn't it just too silly for words.
Darling mummy, I'm so sorry for you in that dreadful shop. But perhaps if you close this shop, it will all turn out for the best. You may be luckier somewhere else, or perhaps not in millinery at all. Still, don't worry.
I miss you too mummy. However happy I may be, I still wish you were with me, which would make me perfectly happy.
I am going to write to Daddy on Sunday, so don't let him think I'm neglecting him, will you?
Give my love to all the family and with love from everyone here, I end
Your adoring daughter for ever
Zelda

letters from somerset 1939/40

Zelda and her friends in Frome, Somerset, where she was evacuated at the beginning of the second world war

Zelda wrote scores of letters home to her parents during 1939/40 and I am posting some of the most interesting here, which certainly give a pointer towards Zelda's later political development.

Beloved Papa,

I'm so ecstatically happy at school, and I'm working so very hard, but it's all great fun. We don't have much games, nor such recreational lessons as singing or art in our form, because we have to work hard. In this school we don't have physics, but we have chemistry instead, which I like much better than physics, or perhaps it's the master that makes me like it better. We have the headmaster for chemistry and we all call him "Chips" for he is so much like James Hilton's Mr. Chips. He makes us roar with his silly little jokes, which are silly but they are chemical jokes. The other day we were working with acid, and he was trying to impress upon us that we must use the very minimum of acid, so to stress the point he told us to be like the Maypole Dairy, which is noted for giving underweight of butter.

For maths we have a master who is a conscientious objector, and gives us five minutes at the end of one geometry lesson a week, to read his newspaper "Peace News". He likes his lessons to be lighthearted, and funnily enough, we don't take advantage of that and play him up. Instead we have a very interesting lesson. Whenever he mentions that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points there is one boy who argues this, for he says that a straight line is a curve, because we are on a globe. He loves us to argue with him and we do.

We have a mistress who loves to argue too. She is the English mistress and we have marvellous debates in her lessons, as to whether we should learn grammar or not, because the modern writers seem to dispense with grammar and punctuation completely. She is very fond of Shaw and till this year they have always acted a Shaw play if possible. Last year they acted "Devil's Disciple" and they wanted to do "Geneva" this year, but the local vicar, who is a governor of the school objected to it, because he felt that Shaw made fun of religion in "Geneva". We have had to fall back on Shakespeare and are doing "As you like it", and even though I am a new girl, she is giving me a part. Aren't I lucky?

Our prose book for English lesson is "A Modern Prose" consisting of extracts from books by modern authors, like H.G Wells, Sackville-West, Hardy, Shaw, Lytton Strachey and several others.

Our history master is frightfully keen on Lytton Strachey, and keeps on recommending us to read several books of his. I'm afraid he is not like Miss Sharmann for history, because he doesn't make it half so interesting. He teaches us all about the Parliamentary Affairs in a completely manly way.

Our geography master, for five minutes at the end of every lesson, reads us from a certain magazine, the autobiography of "Weston Martyr", which shows us life in the raw. I should say so too! Ugh! You should see how Weston Martyr describes the pains of that awful disease miners get, and all his adventures on a boat.

Anyway, it's a lovely school, and I've tons of friends, but I have so much homework that it is dark before I have finished, and I can't go out to see them then. Mummy is still nervous of the dark! Though I suppose even if she let me go out in the dark, I wouldn't, because it gets so cold at night here. Just the same we have fun with Mr and Mrs. Lapham in the evening, in front of the roaring log fire, with the wireless.

Owing to the war, the school is short of paper and books and I am not fully equipped with suchlike, so I was wondering if you would be so very kind as to post on to me all those portfolios with paper, atlas and various books I have in the top drawer of the bureau and in the desk. They would be so useful. Especially all those notes in portfolios, because they are such a help for the exam. I hope you will send them soon. I'd be awfully grateful.

Well, there is not much news for all I do is go to school in the morning, come home in the evening, do my homework and go to bed, so I'll say goodbye now.

Votre fille aimante

Zelda

A Grammar School girl

Zelda, second from right, in a school theatrical production at Hornsey High School

The netball team, Zelda at the front on right

Despite the hard time I had at junior school, I passed the scholarship exam. I looked forward to going to Hornsey High School for Girls, and having the opportunity to make a new start and find new friends. Even the school building seemed welcoming to me: the highly polished wooden block floors and stairways; the panelled entrances either side of the big hall, one for the staff and one for the pupils; the laboratories on the first floor with all their wondrous insturments and glass bottles; and best of all, the library. Behind the school wee the playgrounds, the tennis courts, a vegetable garden tended by the biology classes, some rabbit hutches and the hockey fields. At the back of the fields only a wooden fence stood between us and the Sttioners' School for Boys.

My first day there was not the most auspicious. Unfortunately my mother had not got her act together well enough to fit me out properly in the school uniform. I felt very embarrassed walking ino the hall for assembly, but from the first moment there I felt I had to do well. They allocated each of us to one of four Houses and set us on a competitive course. I seemed to thrive on it but there was one goal I could never achieve. I could never come top in exams. That place was reserved for Shizuko Eguchi, a Japanese girl whose parents made her work hard. She was never allowed any let up. No play for Shizuko. My best friend Alice was my only other competitor for a place at the top. She and I battled it out each school year and one year she would be second and I would come third, then the next the order would be reversed, but neither of us could topple Shizuko.

The battle spilled over into the games area, and all three of us got into the school netball team, the hockey team and the rounders team, but ony I got into the tennis championship games. One other field of endeavour was left to conquer - the drama society. I think the teachers knew what was going on between Alice and I, because they seemed to join in the game. In one play I would be given a biggish part and in another Alice would. In only one did I gain any advantage. I played "star" part, Volumnia in "Coriolanus". Alice took it very well. We were good friends.

We went cycling together and once a week e would go to a film. Both beig crazy about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers we rushed to see all their films and we would sing the songs all the way home. Alice had two brothers and I must admit she had the better of me there. I thought they were both the strongest, handsomest, the cleverest, most heroic boys, but they paid me no heed.

I would meet Alice each morning at 7.30 on the corner of her street to go to school together. We both had a crush on Miss Knight, our gym mistress, and we made certai we caught the same bus as she did so that we could talk to her. That crush was so strong that i can remember to this day the feeling I had when I saw her walking towards me. In the Third Form we were lucky enough to get Miss Knight as our English Literature teacher. Could there ever be anything more wonderful? My favourite subject being taught to me by my favourite teacher. We were studying Mrs. Gaskell's "Cranford" and Shakespeare's "Twelfth night" that year. Every tie I hear "if music be the food of love, play on" I think of her and get butterflies in my stomach. She was tall and had a good figure, even though she was big-boned and had muscly arms and legs. Her blonde hair was cut short and her cornflower blue eyes shone out of her un-made-up face. Her clothes were good but plain, unlike the other teacher I admired, Miss Coe, who taught us French. She always dressed elegantly and was impeccably made up. Miss Keating, the headteacher, was a slight little woman, neatly dressed, and always ready to give you a cheery word as she passed.

The war started when i was fifteen and my education at hornsey High was ended. I was evacuated to Frome in Someset while Hornsey High went to Cambridge. But after the war, already married and with a baby, I was invited to a reunion of the old school. Miss Keating commented that i was still as bubbly as ever and she asked me what I felt the school had done for me. Without hesitation I answered "It made me a communist, it gave me such a good conservativ education i had no alternative but to rebel".

First holiday abroad

the family decamp to Blankenberghe, Belgium in 1935 Blankenberghe was the place to go in the 1930s. Instead of promenading at Southend or Margate, the Jewish small busiess people had moved on to Belgium.

It was August 1935 and I was eleven and a half. I had passed my scholarship and was to start at Hornsey High School for Girls in the September, so it was time for my horizons to be broadened. The "Ginsberg Girls" were going to shut their shos on the Saturday evening and catch the overnight ferry to Ostende. Dad had other ideas. He decided to take me with him during the day, find a small, cheap "pension" in Ostend for the night and then meet mum off the ferry boat in the morning it was to be our special adventure.

In those days you could catch a ferry from the end of the pier at Southend, which then called at Margate's ppier to pick up more holidaymakers before crossing the channel to Ostend. The passport check was done on board. That was dad's downfall. I as all right as I had a full British passport but dad was classed as stateless and had a special passbook. He was supposed to inform the police of his whereabouts at all times and he needed to get the passbook stamped with their permission to travel. He had no such permission. How he thought he could get away with it I do not know but he certainly tried. Perhaps he thought that in the crush of an August sailing they might not be as careful as usual. No such luck. They picked him out and told him he would be put ashore at margate.

Dad decided I should continue the journey alone as my ticket was paid for. His instructions were to wait at Ostende for him to follow by the next boat that afternoon. He was sure he could get permission quickly, but he gave me a fall-back strategy in case he did not make it by then. I was to make my way to Blankenberghe by train, find the hotal that mum had booked us into for the week, and wait there for her to arrive early the next morning. He wrote down the name of the hotel for me, gave me a little money and then stepped off the boat at Margate.

What happened his end I don't know, but I waited nervously i Ostende. My worst fears were confirmed when the afternoon boat came in and there was no dad on board. My adventure began. I managed to find the station and took the train to Blankenberghe, congratulating myself on being very grown up. But when I arrived at the huge hotel which seemed very grand, with a commissionaire guarding its doors, I could not muster up the courage to go in. instead I went down to the sands and sat there rather forlornly and very hungry. I was expecting to have to sleep there for the night.

There were still a few familis sitting on the beach even though it was evening. And as i sat there fingering the sand a young boy approached and started to talk to me in French. I managed to communicate to him that I was alone in the world and tears began to flood into my eyes. Apparently he thought I meant my parents had died and he rushed off to his mum agitatedly telling her my story. Thank goodness she had a good command of English and lived locally. When she realised my situation she took charge. She took me to her home, gave me a huge mug of chocolate and some bread and cheese before putting me to bed. in the morning early she took me to the hotel where she handed me over to my worried mother who had arrived a little earlier. It was Monday night before dad managed to join us.

Once that adventure was put behind me we managed to have an enjoyable week and I met the yong Belgian boy a couple of times down on the beach. Uncle Joe insisted we visit the First World War battlefields where he had served his country. He had been a dispatch rider taking messages up to the front from headquarters and he more than anyone else, was surprised that he had survived. Every journey he made he had thought would be his last. He had one photo of himslef with his company at HQ. Sadly all the others had been killed of had died of trench fever.

Come the time to go home, dad would not go with them bcause he had been cheated out of those couple of days. He kept me with him and we stayed an extra night in Brussels. That night was a emeorable one for me. I had my first period. Mum had told me nothing about menstruation so it was a bit of a shock. Dad coped well with the minor crisis, going hiimself to the chemist to buy me some sanitary towels and a belt. But imagine my embarrassment.

Our trials were not yet over. We were stopped and searched by the customs when we got back to England and dad was found to be trying to smuggle in an expensive gold and pearl ring without paying the duty. Dad had been in trouble before and had actually served a short prison sentence, so things did not go well for him on this occasion. Mum really let him have the rough edge of her tongue when we did finally get home.

The only other time I went abroad with the Ginsberg girls was to Paris, Christmas 1936, when I became 13 and was bought my first full length evening dress. We stayed at the George V Hotel for three nights and i was taken to the Folies Bergeres to see Josephine Baker. It was all so exciting. But that was the last time I ever went on holiday with mum and dad.

A brother and sisters

Ada with Nurse Carter, the live-in nanny and Gloria, Zelda's sister who died of diabetes at the age of eleven

Neither mum nor dad spoke to me about my brother Dennis. it was many years before I found out I had ever had a brother and even then I only learned the story of his brief life through snippets of conversation overheard when the aunts were talking.

Born a year after me, Dennis was dad's pride and joy. To have a son was every Jewish man's deepest desire. Mum was also very pleased, but, she could spare no time from the shop to bring him up. He was given to a wet nurse, which was still a common practice in those days. I do not know the whole truth of it, but it was siad that her milk did not agree with the small babe. Others said he had been poorly from birth. Either way, his death hit dad hard. The one thing mum did tell me was that nobody knew where dad went the day Dennis died. He just drove around and around, weeping the hurt away. It was a long time before he could speak to mum again.

Nearly seven years went by after Dennis's death before my sister Gloria was born, and then a year after that norma arrived. By that time mum had enough money to employ a good live-in nurse, Nurse Carter. She would not allow me into her doain without an invitation, but when i came home from school she did let me into the conservatory for hal and hour to play with my sisters. Gloria was plump and smiley, Norma was thin and wiry, and as Gloria was nurse Carter's favourite, Norma became mine. I was ever on the side of the underdog. I became her champion, taking toys and dolls away from Gloria to give to her.

At first, summer holidays were spent together at Tankerton, near Whitstable, on the Kentish coast. It was there that Nurse Carter taught me to swim - well, she did not actually teach me, she just threw me into the sea from a raft moored off the beach. I dog-paddled automatically, spluttering and coughing from my immersion and managed to get back on the raft. The only other thing I remember about Nurse Carter was that she was forever knitting. Nothing seemed to worry or disturb her. She knitted peacefully, with hardly a glance in our direction as we played on the sand or clambeed up the fern-covered cliff.

Those halcyon days were soon over. Nurse Carter left us, and though mum tried one or two other solutions, eventually she sent Norma and Gloria to a boardig school in Broadstairs. They stayed there all through the holidays as well, and I was sent to join them for the summer. I was housed in the senior school while my sisters remained in the juniors' building, but I spent part of each day with them. Most of our days were spent on the beach but al three of us were marched off to church each Sunday morning.

On Sunday evenings after a snack of bread and dripping, which was supposed to be a treat, I was chosen to read out loud to the Head, Mr. Green, in his study. That was how I came to read "Forever Amber"! As a very special treat, Mr. Green would take us to Dreamland in Margate and once a week we were taken to Rossi's Milk Bar dow on the front for an ice cream. Rossi's was a real thirties bar, all black and green shiny tiles and tubular steel furniture with a small fountain inside as the centrepiece. The ice cream was delicious too.

At the start of the war, Mr. Green decided to evacuate the school and then I saw very little of my sisters. Soon after, Gloria was diagnosed as having diabetes. I shall never forget that first tie I visited her in the sick room at the school. The smell of pear drops was overpowering. I learned later that the smell was a symptom of the diabetes. She and norma were then brought home to Finchley to live, and we had to teach Gloria how to use the hypodermic syringe to inject the insulin. i could not bear watching her and she hated doing it.

Then mum sent her to a special school in Essex, designed to care for diabetic children, and we would go by Green Line bus to visit her. Not for too long however, because the school did not take quite enough care of Gloria. She went out one day and collapsed. She was dead before mum and i could get there. It was a terrible blow for Norma.

The Browns

Zelda outside the Muswell Hill house they moved to from Islington

Zelda with her hero, cousin Bernie













Zelda's Aunt Fay at her marriage to Max. Zelda thought they were the most beautiful couple in the world.

Unlike my other grandfather, Grandpa Brown did not come to England directly from his homeland. From Poland he went to South America to make his fortune. He quickly learned that fortunes are not easily made and by resorting to methods not quite within the law, he was soon in trouble with the authorities. Recognising that discretion is the better part of valour, he fled to England to avoid the consequences.
He was a jolly man, always well dressed and sporting a gold watch and chain draped across his stomach from his waistcoat pockets. On his little finger he wore a gold signet ring. Both the watch and the ring were the spoils of his South American trip.
Upon arriving in England he rented a small sweetshop with living accommodation above in Buxton Street, off Brick Lane, and there my father grew up. When I visited, Grandpa would let me put my chubby little hands into one of the big glass jars to take some sweets - but only when dad wasn't looking.



He had four sons: my dad, Henry, Alex and Alf, and one daughter Fay, married to Max. Alf and Max decided to go into business together and they opened a gramophone and record shop in Upper Street. Being a large shop with lots of rooms above, the Browns all decided to live there. I was ever so pleased, as that meant I could play with my cousin Bernie, son of Alex, who was my hero. He was the spitting image of William of the Richmal Crompton novels that I so enjoyed. We were always together, playing in the alleys, or hanging around the shop listening to records. We would sit on the counter beside Uncle Max by the till, kicking our legs out and clicking our heels against the wood in time to the jazz music we liked so much.

The only memory I have of Grandma Brown was a very fat woman dressed in black, always sitting with a bowl in her lap peeling potatoes. She made chips for Bernie and me whenever we visited her, and a pot of lokshen soup was always on the boil, ready for all comers at any time. I remember once Bernie and I were laughing o much as we drank our soup that he choked and the lokshen came down his nose. Grandma died when we were still very young. We knew little about
her. She had never learned to speak English and had therefore never really communicated with us.
Alex had been a boxer and had a cauliflower ear; Alf had a banjo and played George Formby songs; Fay I thought was the most beautiful woman in the world; and her husband Max, an Austrian Jew, was the most handsome of men. My life revolved around Bernie, but mum was planning a move, unbeknown to me.
Nobody told me why mum moved us to Muswell Hill, but soon after that the Browns all left the gramophone shop, except for Fay and Max. Grandpa married again and went back to running a sweet shop in Jubilee Street in Stepney. The local kids loved being in his shop. He was always playing little jokes on them and would often give them a free sweetie.

Alex and his wife, Ann, moved to Finchley with Bernie and he acquired a gang of boys as friends which put my nose out of joint. But he allowed me in the magic circle occasionally, so long as I played strip poker with them. I always lost.

Then things changed yet again. Alex and Ann took Bernie and his younger brother to live in Australia. I was very sad. The loss of Bernie was like bereavement for me. Then Henry upset the family by marrying a red-haired non-Jewish woman, Evelyn. What a beautiful woman she was, but what a scandal she caused. When Uncle Henry became a “Bevin Boy” during the war and worked down the mines, Evelyn fell in love with Alf, the youngest brother and left Henry. Alf and Evelyn lived happily ever after. Neither dad nor I ever saw Henry again.

Finally it was the war that split us all up. I did not see dad’s family again till peacetime. I took my daughters Sue and Joan to the sweet shop in Jubilee Street when they were very small, which made Grandpa Brown very happy and both the girls were delighted by the visit. Alf and Evelyn moved to Finchley, only a few streets away from my home, so we made contact and kept in touch from then on.

None of the Browns made it in business like the Ginsberg girls; Dad thought up lots of “get rich quick” plans and for each plan another brother became his partner in crime. None of his plans worked out, and sometimes he sailed close to the edge of the law. Dad tried to beat Woolworths at their own game by opening a 6d store with Uncle Alex – Woolworths won; then he started a Loan Club but there were too few borrowers and those that did would not repay. Next he bought a house in Stamford Hill and let off flats but his tenants would not pay the rent. He even embroiled me into one of his schemes; making me Director of a St. James’ Trust when I was about ten years old, and that was one project that went just over the edge of the law….I had to appear in Court.

zelda curtis - a life: Annie: The Cossacks

zelda curtis - a life: Annie: The Cossacks: Aunty Ann with husband Joe Casey - Jewish Immigrants often ended up with Irish sounding names when immigration officers couldn't pronounce t...

Annie: The Cossacks

Aunty Ann with husband Joe Casey - Jewish Immigrants often ended up with Irish sounding names when immigration officers couldn't pronounce their real ones.

Zelda with her Aunty Ann, who made sure she was fed and told her old folk tales fro Russia

Annie was the eldest of my mother's sisters, plain of face and roly-poly plump. Having no children of her own she devoted herself to my good. She and her husband, Joe, ran the millinery shop at islington Green, but as it had no upper part, they lived with us above 27 Upper Street. Mum lacked the culinerary skills and to be honest she preferred working in the shop to anything domestic. Annie cooked for us all and made sure i was fed properly. She would spoon the chicken soup into my mouth, overcoming my reluctance to eat by keeping me amused with her folk tales of animals in the woods leading little girls either into trouble or out of it, according to my good or bad behaviour. After the last spoonful of soup was swallowed I was rewarded by the sight of a pretty picture of Red Riding Hood on the bottom of the plate and by a big hug from Aunty.

In the evenings, before bedtime, she would settle me comfortably into her capacious lap and recount stories of the homeland. Russia was still vivid in her mind despite the years she had lived and worked in England. She told me of the little village in which they lived, just outside a small town called Sowalki. Being a master carpenter, grandpa Ginsberg was much admired by the other villagers and they wanted him to teach their sons his craft.

Those were the times of the pogroms, with savage attacks on the Jews. History records that within a period of four years massacres were perpetrated in no less than two hundred and eighty four Russian towns and the total number of victims was estimated at 50,000. Those were the cold facts but Annie told me stories of her own experience in her own way. She told me of coassacks galloping into the village. "They would crack their whips in the air above their heads and whoop loudly" she said, and my eyes would open wide with fear. "They would ride in on a Friday night, the Sabbath, when all the Jewish men were in the synagogue praying,i could have no conceptio of the enormity of what she went on to describe, but i could sense from her voice the dread she must have felt.

She described the looting of their home and how they beat her and the other children with their horse whips for trying to rotect their mother from attack. it was many years later before I understood that she meant rape. "All the little ones would hide behind the stove, huddling together, crying, shutting their eyes, trying not to see what was happening," she said sadly, "Nobody came to helpp them."

The word "Cossack" was always uttered in a tone of such loathing and fear that I grew up thinking of them as the devil incarnate. Mind you, she also used the same tone when she spoke of the Bolsheviks. It was very confusing.

I think it was annie's stories that fostered my interest in Russia novels. In my teens I read all I could get my hands on; War and Peace, Crime and punishment, and the stories of Chekhov. Auntie had never read them. Yiddish was her first language but even that she could not read as had so little schooling.

Annie also told me how in 1905, when Grandpa was to be press-ganged into the army to fight in the Russo-Japanese war he decided to escape to England. The story goes that recruitment sergeants wre stationed in the village and there was no free access or exit. Everyone was stopped and searched and passes had to be shown. Grandpa escaped by hiding in the hay piled high on a farmer's cart. Naturally money had to change hands to compensate the farmer for his risk but aunty always emphasised the great risk Grandpa took. "it was so hot and stifling in the hay that he nearly died."

How he got to England after that i never knew and how grandma survived aloong in Russia of those difficult times of revolutions and pogroms has always been an even greater mystery to me. She had four young children and another one on the way when he left. All that my mother told me was of the misery of their journey on the "Cattle boat" across the North Sea from Hamburg. Annie was sent over first to help Grandpa establish a home, and then the others arrived in England in 1911. I still find it difficult to understand how they managed the journey. On her own Grandma had to carry the luggage, made heavy with her silver sabbath candlesticks and other treasures. Then there was her bedding to contend with - can you imagine grappling with a huge king-size feather-filled, bulky duvet (called "paranah" in Yiddish) and her continental-size feather-filled pillows, all tied up with string? The mind boggles. On top of that she had to keep control of the four lively young children with her.

some photos from zelda's early life, as described in the last two posts

ada ginsberg, zelda's mother, working in an insurance office, of which she was very proud

Zelda as a little girls in the 1920s in typical posed photo of the times

ginsberg sisters lily, ada and bessie - they were ambitious and worked and played hard, saving enough to open millinery businesses across islington

zelda at her infants school, colebrook row in islington

Ada and Zelda in Brighton a favourite haunt of the ginsberg sisters

Manny "Bolshie" Brown, Zelda's father, often sacked because of his arguments with the bosses in the fur trade

Ada Ginsberg/Brown, Zelda's mother, who did shorthand and typing at night school in order to get an office job in an insurance company, quite an achievement for a jewish immigrant girl

Grandpa and Grandma Ginsberg - grandpa was a cabinet maker and a tyrant who beat his daughters for being even a few minutes after curfew

Mary Ginsberg's wedding with guests brought over from the Soviet Union, with money made in the Ginsberg sisters' millinery business in the early 1920s

the five sisters

Life was not easy for the five Ginsberg girls when they first arrived in England. Anti0Semitism was rife and they also suffered from the anti-German mania of the time, because the Yiddish they soke was mistaken for German. Stones were thrown at them and the window of their home was broken, too.
But that was the least of their worries - their real problem was Grandpa. He was a master Cabinet-maker, specialising in bureau bookcases, and he worked in the basement of their home. Grandpa always treated the girls as if they were sons. He put them to work, shifting heavy loads of wood, sweeping up the wood shavings, and keeping the gluepot filled and on the boil.
My mother used to tell of her journeys with a push cart to the timber yard to fetch the wood; of how heavy it was to push, and how ashamed she was when her schoolfriends saw her. She also told me of grandpa's strict discipline. Even when the sisters were grown up yong women, already at work at the age of 14, he used to stand behind the front door with his buckled leather belt at the ready to beat them if they entered the house even just a few minues later than the 9 o'clock curfew he imposed.
Mum wanted desperately to leave home. She was ambitious but frustrated, knowing she could not leave home until she was married. That was the tradition of those times and it meant that she would have to wait until her older sisters, Annie, Bessie and Mary, were married. She did not wait. She forced their hand by deliberately becoming pregnant with me. She was married hastily, borrowing a dress from her cousin Nancy and with no dowry to set her off in life.
From the start the marriage was stormy. My father was a furrier. It was seasonal work at the best of times. But dad, true to his nickname of "Bolshie" was always arguing with the bosses and getting himself slung out of the workshop. Mum would lash him with her tongue when he got the sack, and the story goes that one time he retaliated by hitting her across the stomach with a fur pelt. Being pregnant with me at the time, she was absolutely certain that I would be born hairy like the fur, and terrified that i would have a "hair" lip. Such were the old wives tales of the day.
Mum had been out at work from the age of 14, yet even after a heavy day she would attend evening classes to learn shorthand and typing. A job in an insurance office was her reward. Very proud of herself she was, and rightly so. Few immigrant women managed to acquire sufficient education to find work in an office in those days. Her sisters, like most immigrant Jewish women, worked as seamstresses in the sweatshops. But despite the pride and the status that the office job offered, it was still only a means to an end for my mum. The sisters also had plans for their future. Gradually, through working overtime at their jobs, and then working weekends in the market, they saved enough to pool resources and start a millinery business together.
The first shop they rented was in Islington Green. Being Jills of all trades they got stuck in and did whatever was necessary, learning on the job. Gradually they made enough rofit to spread their wings. Annie retained the Islington Green shop; my mother started up in a shop near Chapel Street Market; and lily and Bessie shared a shop in the Holloway Road, near the Nag's Head. Mary never left home. She had poor health and was destined to look after her mother for the rest of her life, even after her marriage to Ben. Despite her health problems she outlived them all.
Mum and dad lived above the shop and my life revolved around it. I would sit at the workbench with the young milliners who never seemed to sto talking and laughing. There was always a kettle steaming away to soften the felt hoods that they pulled into shapes and stretched over wooden blocks. With pins flashing from mouth to felt hood and scissors snipping away at the brims, they transformed the plain felt of velour into wondrous shapes, on which they then sewed or glued feathers, flowers, bunches of cherries and ribbons, topping the whole creation with a beautiful hatpin. I spent a lot of time sitting under the bench picking up the pins they dropped and annoying them by tickling their legs.
The workshop smells were overpowering: the adhesive they used really stung your nostrils; the damp felts smelt slightly of rotting vegetables; the perfumed make-up of the milliners themselves was quite heady. Then there were the customers, the market women in al-enfolding pinafores with large money pockets in front. They smelt of the fish or fruit and vegetables they sold. Though I tried hard i could never escape the bear-hugs they wanted to give me.
Once a week Grandma Ginsberg would pay a visit to each of her daughters' shops to collect her share of thier good fortune. Every now and again she would plead with them for more money to send back to Russia where her brother Rudaev still lived with his two daughters Rosa and Miriam. When Aunty Mary got married Grandma made her daughters send the fare to Rudaev to enable his family to come and celebrate with us. They kept up a correspondence with Grandma when they returned to the Soviet Union, but it stopped without any explanation in the early 1940s

And yet aother girl is born

I am committing to this blog selections from the memoir written by my mother Zelda Curtis who died 31st January 2012. Zelda attended an open university women's studies course back in the 1980s and she read "ordinary people do not consider their lives of sufficient importance to spend time in writing them down". Zelda decided she would write it down, if only to let her grandchildren know that she tried to change the world. So what follows charts a woderful life and is a tribute to Zelda.

And yet another girl is born.....

I loved my grandparents' house. It nestled in a terrace of decaying Edwardian houses, all with bright shining brass knockers. It was a to u two down with an outside lavatory. There was a wash-house with copper and mangle, and a stone-flagged yard where I could play ball. A typical Hackney house, but with two unusual features. One was the shed at the far end of the yard where grandpa Ginsberg stored his wood and where Grandma kept half a dozen chickens. The other was the basement workshop where my grandfather made his bookcases.
I would stand for hours down there, up to my ankles in sawdust, breathing in the smells of glue and wood-stain. With boundless admiration of his strength, I watched the handsomely whiskered man lift the large planks of wood effortlessly. To me he seemed ancient, but I realise now that he could only have been in his fifties. And Grandma? She sat in the parlour upstairs, in a black dress and shawl, smelling of wintergreen ointment lavishly rubbed in to relieve her rheumatic pains. She liked reading and I remember her sitting at a table covered in a deep red chenille cloth fringed with little bobbles, reading her Yiddish books by the light of the gas mantles. The light they gave out was yellowish and they made a hissing noise all the time.
When dad took me to visit, Grandma Ginsberg would have a potato pudding with prunes ready for me to eat whilst dad and Grandpa discussed the news in the Yiddish papers. How I wished I could understnad what they were saying. But they spoke only Yiddish. On Sundays the five Ginsberg girls (as my mother and her sisters were called) gathered there as well. They laughed a lot as they talked. The conversation flowed around me - too grown up for me to comprehend but the sound of their voices reassured me that all was well with the world.
Upstairs the two bedrooms were cheerless, cold and damp and sparsely furnished. Grandpa slept alone in the small bedroom while in grandma's bigger room there were two beds, one a single for Aunty Mary and one double for Grandma. I was frightened in that room. I have often thought it had something to do with the trauma of my birth - a difficult one I was told.
I was born i Grandma's bed on December 26th 1923 - an occasion I was ever to be reminded of by my mother. It was the worst moment of her life, she complained. How she had suffered, how she had screamed with the pain! She had banged her head against the wall shouting "Let me die!" The doctor who was calle out that Christmas night was a little drunk and furious at the interruption to his festivities. All mum's sisters were there, sharing her agony, and I was never to be allowed to forget the anguish I had caused them all.
A large wardrobe drawer had been lined with clean linen for me to lie on when finally dragged into this cold, unfriendly world. Grandpa, as you can imagine, was none too pleased to have yet another girl in the family - another Ginsberg girl.

The next section tells of the lives of the five Ginsberg sisters, their early days in England, having arrived from Russia, and their struggles with anti-semitism and a violent father.

I am happy for people to contribute to this blog their own memories and anecdotes and photos. Sorry not to have put any photos on yet, but when I get my scanner working I have a good range of photos to share.