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Oral history interview with Edith Gregor Halpert, 1962-1963

This transcript is in the public domain and may be used without permission. Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Edith Gregor Halpert, 1962-1963, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Oral History Interview with
Edith Halpert
April 19, 1962
Interviewer: Harlan Phillips

HP:= Harlan Phillips
EH:= Edith Halpert

HP: 32 East 51st Street, New York City, Thursday, April 19, 1962

EH: My idea about this is to do it only in realtion to my art life, my life in the art world. What happened before is prologue. Who said that?

HP:"The past is prologue."

EH: It was just quoted recently. Our president said it, and then I came across it in something I wrote quoting the person who said it. The President quoted from the same guy, but I gave the guy credit. The Odessa business -- there's nothing there, really, and I don't see why the Archives would be interested in it.

HP: The point is that coming to these shores was largely an accident, and I believe that is important, for without that accident, everything else would have been different.

EH: We weren't driven out. My mother was a member of the Duma.

HP: I remember you saying the last time I was here, when we talked about Odessa, that it was a rather vague memory at best.

EH: It wasn't a vague memory. When I saw the movie "Potemkin," I saw those steps, and I suddenly went to pieces. I remembered those steps so vividly. I hadn't until I saw them in the movie. Then I saw my mother and sister -- I had them out to Connecticut at the same time. I was very excited about what I had seen in the picture, and I said to them, "They didn't have 'Duke.'" Mother said, "What is that?" I said, "You know, that big sculpture of 'Duke.'" I didn't know who the hell 'Duke' was. My sister, Sonia, was five years older than I, and she had a much more vivid memory. I left Odessa when I was five and she was ten, so that she knew a good deal more. They both told me that I was utterly nuts, that there was no statue. I said. "As you walk up those steps from the waterfront" -- just marvelous steps -- "right at the head is 'Duke.' It was about a hundred feet high.

They said that no such thing existed, and I replied that Mona, who was my nurse, used to walk me down there. I was naughty practically all the time -- I was the worst little brat in the world -- and she would tell me that 'Duke' would eat me up, and by God, when I landed in Odessa in 1958, I dropped my bag at the hotel, said that I would be right back. I didn't bother with my passport. The Hotel Odessa was right on the waterfront, and I ran like hell. I didn't even wait for my car, or anything, but I ran like hell to the steps, and there was 'Duke,' Duc de Richelieu. He was right there! It didn't appear in the movie, and my mother and sister both insisted there was no such thing. I remembered him vividly, and I thumbed my nose at him. A few people stared at me, but I wasn't afraid of him any more! I had been. He'd scared me to death.

But, I remember a lot of things about Odessa, and it isn't because it's old age. You begin to recall, or senility brings that on, but there are a great many things I remembered. My mother was very astonished. We never talked Russian when we came to the United States. She wanted me to be an American, but I remembered the Odessa address, and nobody told me. That I didn't even mention to the family, but when I got to Odessa I kept looking, and I found it. It was right there. I was determined to find it. The thing that hurt was that as I stood there, I waited for something to happen. You know, there was no nostalgia, no tugging, just rubble. It was there in back of the Museum of War, and they hadn't cleaned up any of the rubble except the waterfront, but the rest of the city is just rubble. I wasn't sure that I had found my home until I recognized the balcony where I had stuck my head through the iron grill. The grills were all different shapes. All the grills there were different designs, and I recognized mine. I recognized the apartment facade, and I went to see it. I wasn't invited in, but I saw it.

I remembered many things. I remember seeing the Tsar and crying my head off. I never believed anybody after that. There was a professor who lived in the same building. It was very much like 277 Park Avenue -- you know, turn of the century stone building with a huge courtyard (with no car in it) with two pools, one for kids and one for adults. I still have the book inscribed to me by this professor. He took a great shine to me and taught me to read at the age of four. He also taught me numbers, and I could add four columns at the age of four. I was a little less than four.

HP: You said your mother was a member of the Duma.

EH: Well, my father died when I was three and a half or so. He really loved me more than my mother. He didn't live too long, but I don't suggest that there is anything more in this than that it made me ever so much more self-reliant. I'm very grateful for all the hard knocks I had in my youth because it made a woman out of me. I've never been bitter about poverty, or anything, so that when I began to have things, I didn't act like Billy Rose who never got over the fact that he was a pauper. When I began getting things, I appreciated them so much more.

HP: But you didn't come here initially as a pauper.

EH: No, we came here in style.

HP: This was the grand tour type trip, wasn't it?

EH: My father died, and when was the revolution?

HP: 1905

EH: In 1905, we did not live in the Jewish section. My father was a grain broker, or was in the grain business. I don't know what he was. I've heard so many stories about what he was from my mother and from my family that I don't know, but we lived in very good style. I had a nurse. My sister had a governess, and she was taken to school every day. We had a fourteen room apartment just for the three of us. My father left us well off, so my mother took my father's place as a member of the Duma. What she did there I don't know, except that that she was always awfully dressed up, and I'd pick the right handkerchief to give her so that she would look pretty. We lived very comfortably.

I remember the bombardment because we lived very close to the waterfront. The reason I remembered how to find our house was that there was a street named after Richelieu. It was an avenue, and we lived between that avenue and something. This avenue was the road on which the royal procession (and this must have been before the revolution) passed. This was earlier in 1905, and this I remember very well because it's when I still trusted everyone. My professor used to read me fairy tales until I could read them myself. The prince was always on a white charger, and the princess had long golden hair, right?

HP: Right.

EH: The Tsar wore a crown, and the procession -- well, I heard the music, and everybody left. My nurse finally left, too. She said, "You be a good little girl and stay here and play." Everybody left, and I was all alone. I could hear the music, and everybody had gone. I said to hell with it, and being a brat, I snuck out, and some strange man picked me up and put me on his shoulders. I straddled his shoulders so I could see, and this was the time when the Tsar and his queen were in an open carriage. They did not wear crowns! The prince was in the next carriage with men who wore those long, feathered hats, and he was not on a white horse! And the princesses were wearing big hats in another carriage, and I began to cry, "Put me down!" The stranger on whose shoulders I had been perched asked me why, and I replied, "That is not the Tsar!" He replied. "But that is the Tsar!" I was really heartbroken, and in the midst of all this pomp and circumstance, he let me down, and I went back home and cried because the man had lied to me.

That evening, you know, it became a big issue. First, I was bawled the hell out of for leaving the house. There was a lot of kidnapping going on, and all that. Everybody bawled me out. I kept crying, but not becasue of that. They finally got my professor friend because I was really in a terrible state. The man in the street had lied to me, my mother had lied to me, everybody said that it was the Tsar. My professor finally came, and he was so devoted to me -- he showed me off to his confreres all the time. He sat me down in the corner to have a chat, and he told me about the books, that these were fairy tales, and that what I had seen was reality. He explained it. He tried and tried, but I kept saying, "I will never believe anybody again!" He almost cried. I said, "That man lied to me!" He said, "But it was the Tsar!" I said, "Then the book is a lie!" Really, that was one of the most traumatic experiences that I've ever had.

Well, I found 'Duke.' They did not change the name of his street either. It's still there. I also remembered where I had my first banana (which cost three rubles) wrapped in foil with a ribbon, but that experience about the Tsar, I think, caused me more anguish than anything that had ever happened to me.

HP: How did you come to get your head stuck in the iron gate?

EH: I was just playing, to see whether I could make it. I got it in, but I couldn't get it out. There wasn't anything tragic about it. I picked flowers and dropped them down a girl's back. I really was a nasty little kid!

HP: I guess you were.

EH: There were certain things that happened in those days that had a permanent effect for which I am grateful rather than angry. For instance, mother was very unbright about brining up children, and that too, I think, conditioned me so that I could live alone in New York at the age of fifteen, sixteen, seventeen without getting into any complications. If anybody told me I was pretty, I would get sore as hell! It was a saving grace. Really, it was a very valuable experience for me because anything could have happened to me. The minute somebody said something to me that was pleasant, I was through with him, and this traces back to being in a pram or whatever, or walking, different ages. People always stop a nurse with a kid, and chuckle the kid under the chin, and everybody always remarked about my eyes. I had very bolnd hair and drak eyebrows. I didn't paint them. I still have proof of that from Odessa, a picture of my sister and me which I never showed because my sister didn't want anybody to know that she was five years older, that I was the younger of the two. I always told my own age which used to burn her up, and I never did show that photograph. As a matter of fact, I had the picture re-photographed, just one of me because I though it was cute, but now I can show the entire photograph which I have.

I remember that we had a mirror with _____ and probably cupids, or something probably in ghastly taste, and one day -- all these years, people would stop and always say to the nurse, "What beautiful blue eyes she has!" I began to think I was pretty hot stuff. This was still in Odessa, so I must have been four or five. I stood in front of this mirror, and I made the most fabulous discovery; that I could move my head this way and that and have my eyes remain still, and this to me was the most incredible idea you could imagine -- you know, everything else moved, my nose, my hair, but my eyes didn't. I could still keep my eyes fixed. I was so fascinated that I must have been standing in front of this mirror for an hour when my mother said, "What are you doing?" I didn't want to tell her about this discovery -- it was private -- so I said, "I was looking at my eyes. Aren't my eyes pretty? She looked at me and said, "No!" I said, "Everybody says they are." She replied, "They lied to you." This was very bad, you know, that a mother should ever do that to a child. No modern mother would think of it, and it really stymied me in a very fortunate way, so that if I went out with a boy, and he said, "Edith, you have such beautiful eyes," I never saw him again. He was lying to me.

HP: That's a terrific lesson to have had, you know, to have accumulated armor plate at the age of five.

EH: Instead of being bitter about it. I was saying that to somebody one time, saying, "I'm so tired of reading the newspapers where the kid murdered his mother because it was a broken marriage, or he lived in a slum." You know, all that, the excuses, the alibies that have been built up to a degree where it encourages a lot of people to function that way. It can work in reverse as it worked with me. I was a little bit unhappy about it because I really wanted to have pretty eyes, but after my mother said that they had lied to me, I never believed I had pretty eyes until much, much later when I read Freud, or something, when I decided that maybe I did.

HP: You put that experience in its proper perspective.

EH: It saved me from unfortunate situations into which I might have gotten because, really, I didn't know from nothing. I was the most naive and dopiest kid in the world. I wouldn't have known anything, but this experience protected me. All anybody had to do was tell me that I had pretty eyes, and that was the end of the guy.

HP: How were you on the boat over as a sailor?

EH: I don't remember the boat trip over at all except this fabulous experience I had. As I said previously, I was reading at the age of five, and again I will show anybody my passport with the right age because we did have birth certificates in Odessa. It was the Paris of Russia, only I learned German instead of French. My governess was German, so I could speak German. I was in the upper bunk, Sonia and I. I think all of us were in one cabin. I don't remember mother -- where she was -- but I was in the upper bunk, and I was reading Robinson Crusoe, and what do you call those little round windows?

HP: Portholes.

EH: The porthole -- something hit it, and it broke, and I was flooded with water, the bunk was flooded with water, and I was hysterical with joy because that was just where Robinson Crusoe got dunked. I came down out of that bunk with such joy!

I was a pet on the boat because I learned a lot of revolutionary songs. We went second class. We did not go first class from Rotterdam. I didn't know the difference, so I just went anywhere. I was taken over by everybody who was traveling first class, and I would come down with the most wonderful load of stuff. If they offered me anything like chocolate, I would always tell them that I needed two more because I had a sister and a mother. That got to be funny. Sonia told me that. They also taught me a lot of revolutionary songs because there were a lot of Russians on the boat who were tarveling somewhere from Rotterdam. I became the great pet of the boat, and I would sing these revolutionary songs.

HP: You really had a ball then during the crossing.

EH: I had the most wonderful time, and when we got off, my mother had a half brother living here in the United States who fixed her good. That was why we became so poor. He meant well. He invested the money for her, including Sonia's money and my money. My father left it to us. My mother's half brother took us out for a walk, and I don't know where it was. We moved right to 112th Street between Madison and park, one of those brownstones. Somehow on this walk we went to one of the ELs. I don't know which one it was -- Sixth Avenue or Third Avenue, or whatever. We saw a negro sweeping the stairs, and in the other hand he held a banana. A banana to me was the symbol of the greatest wealth becasue on my birthday my rich uncle from Baku who had a home in Odessa -- he had the biggest caviar fisheries in the country -- was taking me out on my birthday, or a holiday, and he bought me a banana which was wrapped in green foil, or something, which a huge ribbon. It cost three rubles. I still remember that I ate it a little piece at a time. Well, to see a workman -- it wasn't because he was a negro, but a workman -- holding a broom and eating a banana! That to me was, you know, the symbol of America, the wealth of America. I was terribly impressed with that.

These associations kept coming back to me, and it certainly isn't uncommon for kids to have these associations, but all of them turned out well for me.

HP: How did you make your wants and wishes known? You hadn't had English of any kind, or at least you haven't indicated that you did.

EH: Not a word. We weren't prepared, and of course, all the kids chased us and called us "greenhorns!" At the age of six, you could go to school, and I went to school right away, and the teachers were cruel. The kids were vile.

HP: Really?

EH: I couldn't speak their language, and I still remember this one teacher who put a dunce cap on me and put me in the corner. She had said to me, "Give me that pointer." I didn't know what the hell she was saying. "Give me that pointer!" You know, they used a pointer for the blackboard. This was before your day.

HP: I remember its use in connection with geography.

EH: Geography at the age of six? I didn't know what she was saying. She knew I didn't understand the language, so she put a dunce cap on me. The indignity of it! I stopped crying at the age of six. I never cried thereafter, but that was injustice!

Then I got another teacher, later in the next grade, who was wonderful, and by this time I could understand. But then that first teacher had me sitting in the corner with a dunce cap on my head! With this new teacher I very quickly became the white haired kid. I started to draw evidently when I was a baby. Evidently, I always drew. The teacher told the class the story of Santa Claus, and she asked whether somebody wouldn't like to make a drawing on the blackboard. I did, do from there on, I had the most beautiful sailing. Everybody was just wonderful to me. I got into Wadleigh at the age of twelve -- Dr. Lee at that time was superintendent of schools, and oh boy! I was the pride of his life!

Somewhere, I have a letter from a teacher, a Miss ________ who really developed the most tremendous interest in me. She had a much younger sister who was a retarded child, and she sort of adopted me as a symbol of the sister she wanted to have, or whatever, and she took me to every play. I saw practically every Shakespear play, and I saw Maeterlinck's "Bluebird." Saturday she would take me to the theater, and she would make me write. That's all I had to do. I loved going, and I would write a review of the play for her. She was the science teacher, and she really was extraordinary. I tried to locate her about twenty years ago, and I couldn't. This happened when I was at P.S. 159, and then when we moved to 105th Street -- we had a stationary store -- it was way out of the old school district, and Miss __________ came and pleaded with my mother, said that she would pay the carfare for me to go to P.S. 159. Then Dr. Lee finally -- well, Miss ___________ got in touch with him, and I remained at that school. I was graduated from P.S. 159 instead of coming to my own district because they wouldn't let me go, but that woman was quite extraordinary. Every once in a while, Ralph Bunche, or somebody else, talks about a teacher -- well, this woman was incredible in her sensitivity. I got over that "greenhorn" thing pretty quickly. You know, at that age you learn the language.

I've mentioned the black eyebrows. That was the only unhappy experience I had. I had very blond hair, and I always had dark eye brows and dark eyelashes. My hair got dark after a while, so that by the time I was fifteen, I had brownish hair, and then it got darker and darker. Some of the kids didn't like me because I was called on in assembly to recite, to do all sorts of things. Some of those kids who didn't like me started a rumor that they saw my mother -- in those days, evidently they used a special kind of black polish for the stoves, the old stoves -- painting my eyebrows. It was a little queer having blond hair, blue eyes and dark eyebrows and lashes, but she said that she saw my mother painting my eyebrows every morning, and gee, I felt -- well, there was always a sense of injustice that hurt in all those instances, but I really had a very good time at school basically. I'll show you my science book. I'm so proud of my eighth grade science book I'll show it to you.

HP: I'd like you to tell me about the mathematics. Why where you so sharp in mathematics?

EH: Because my old professor taught me how to add, and then I could do four columns at a time. He would bring his professor friends up, and he'd come and get me and even then -- you know, my mother never kissed me until I got married; then she pecked me on the cheek -- the idea of being kissed and also that no man should come near you were known to me, so, you know, if he touched me, it was naughty. He would introduce me to these people, and they would put up columns of figures on paper. I would add four columns, and then I would recite. He taught me Goethe, and this was all at the age before five. He found me a very apt pupil, and I was crazy about him! I liked his sister very much, but his devotion was something I didn't get from anybody after my father died because I was a brat.

HP: But this gave you a head start on other kids in mathematics.

EH: Oh yes. That's right, and that started me off in school.
[END OF INTERVIEW]

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