Virginia Woolf (4 page)

“But that’s all the money I have.” The lady hunched her body protectively.

“You’re a stinking liar. Get out now before I tear you apart.”

I helped the old woman out, and gave a handful of coins to the attendant, who was stamping on a rumpled newspaper. As she moved away, something drew me to look down. I saw my face printed in the newspaper. This foul-mouthed ogre had been wiping her feet on my picture!

The caption read,

20 JAHRE ALT—UND SCHON “FRL. DR.” IN EINEM JAHR GESCHAFT

[20 years old and already Fräulein Doktor. Achieved in one year]

The article told the story:

At 20, she is the youngest Ph.D. in the University of Cologne and the youngest Ph.D. in Germany. An exchange student, she came for one year to study in Germanistik and Anglistik and Art History. When her great talents were recognized, it was suggested to her that she try to work on her doctorate. After one year, she had the Doctor Diploma in her pocket. Our young doctor, despite all her knowledge, has still remained very young, and is overjoyed to be in Germany.

I took the train back to Cologne, where Mama Herz greeted me excitedly:
“Kindchen
(Child), the office of the
Oberburgermeister
[the Lord Mayor] Doctor Konrad Adenauer telephoned you to come to the
Rathaus
(city hall) tomorrow morning at nine o’clock.”

Why would Dr. Adenauer want to see me? He was the beloved mayor who had been returned to office in every election since 1917.
³

Long before nine, I was in front of the
Rathaus.
It was a massive stone building, with Romanesque arches, built in 1150 in the Jewish quarter of Cologne. The street sign said:
Judengasse
, the Street of the Jews.

Nazi hecklers in the university, strutting in their brown uniforms, black boots, and swastikas on their arms, often shouted at me, “We should drive the Jews out. They don’t belong here,” as if Jews were newcomers. The Rathaus and the street sign were evidence that Jews had been living in Germany for more than eight hundred years.

Dr. Adenauer’s office, on the Street of the Jews, was a huge chamber with heavy drapes and thick carpets, flooded with sunlight. Dr. Adenauer, tall and stately, with high cheekbones, a prominent nose, and skin the color of ivory, towered over me as he shook my hand.

“I congratulate you. You have done what no German student has done.”

I murmured, “Thank you.”

“I have a present for you from the people of Cologne.”

He presented me with two beautifully illustrated art books of his city.

He opened one to show me photos and paintings that told the story of Cologne.

“We hope you will come back to Cologne, Fräulein Doktor,” Mayor Adenauer said. “Until you do, I trust these books will help you remember your year among us.”

“I promise you, I will never forget this year, nor will I forget you.”

He placed his hand on my head as in a benediction. “Bless you, my child. May God go with you.”

A few days after my meeting with Mayor Adenauer, I took the train to Hamburg, and there climbed aboard the
St. Louis
, the flagship of the Hamburg-Amerika Line.
⁴

Sailing home in 1932, I spent most of my time on deck, rereading passages from some of my favorite Virginia Woolf novels. Coming down the gangway in New York, I saw a crowd of reporters and photographers on the pier. The men had press cards standing up in the ribbons of their felt hats. I looked back up the gangway to see if some movie star was coming down; a rumor had spread during the crossing that Mary Pickford was traveling in first class.

Suddenly, the army of reporters surrounded me. One of them shouted, “How does it feel to be the youngest Ph.D. in the world?” Another called out, “Read yesterday’s
New York Times.
They say you’re the youngest in the whole world. How do you feel about that?”

How could I answer these reporters? I had never been interviewed before. After Germany, the crush of men around me seemed like an invasion. I had to escape. I pushed through the crowd and found Mama and Papa and my brother Irving.

“Get me out of here,” I panted.

We drove swiftly. In the car, Mama told me how the phone hadn’t stopped ringing. “Reporters were asking, ‘When is your daughter coming back?’ Our neighbors, especially the German ones, are
sending so many flowers, the house looks like the Botanical Garden.”

Papa, driving the car, turned for a moment to look at me. “I guess we were wrong trying to stop you from going.”

At home I ran up to my bedroom and threw myself onto the bed, weeping. I didn’t know why I was crying. I think I cried because the girl I had been was no more, and now I was safe in America, while a dark cloud hung over the Herzes and all the Jews of Germany.

The phone rang for three days, and Mama bravely lied to the reporters: “She’s out of town.”

But one day, she came up to my room and said, “There’s a reporter sitting on our doorsteps. He’s from the
New York Herald Tribune.
He says he’ll sit there all night if you don’t talk to him. He says he’ll lose his job if he doesn’t get the story.”

“I can’t do it, Mom.”

“It’s not right,” Mama said. “You can’t let the poor man sit on our stoop all night. Go outside. He won’t chop your head off.”

I washed my face and went out to the stoop, walked down the stairs, and sat next to a middle-aged man with a battered face and a battered hat.

“I appreciate your seeing me,” he said gently. “I guess you’re overwhelmed. I would be too.”

His article appeared on Sunday, September 4,1932, headlined:

GIRL PH.D., 20, BEWILDERED BY FUSS OVER FEAT

RUTH GRUBER FEELS HUNTED, SHE SAYS: FEELS ACHIEVEMENT

WAS NOT UNUSUAL

HAD FUN WHILE STUDYING

JUST WANTS SOLITUDE A WHILE TO GET HER BEARINGS

More reporters demanded interviews; more articles appeared. The most amusing one was in the
New York Evening Post
, titled: “Sex and Intellect,” pointing out that a young woman had done what no young man had done, gotten a Ph.D. at 20.

Despite the publicity, I could not get a job. The Depression was on, and if there were jobs, they went to young men, not young women. I tried freelancing and, after a stack of rejections, sold an article to the Sunday
New York Times.
It was on Brooklyn, which I called a microcosm of Europe. The
Herald Tribune
then bought several more articles, which I enjoyed writing. I had never taken a course in journalism, but I learned on the job and began to feel that maybe I was making my way in the world.

At the same time, I found another part-time job. At Romany Marie’s restaurant in Greenwich Village, I met the American explorer of the Arctic, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who hired me to translate into English the German documents he needed for a massive study of the Arctic countries of the world that he was writing for the War Department.

My dream was to leave Brooklyn and live in Greenwich Village, but none of my jobs paid enough to let me leave home. I applied to the Guggenheim Foundation and, with their recommendation, won a grant to go abroad given by the New Jersey Federation of Women’s Clubs. It was 1935, and it was my third fellowship. My project was to write a book on women under fascism, communism, and democracy. It occurred to me that while in London, I might be able to interview Virginia Woolf for my study of women.

When I told George Cornish, the editor at the
Herald Tribune
, that I was going abroad, he said, “You can be our special foreign correspondent and send us articles that you think will interest us.”

I was still home when a letter came from Professor Schöffler telling me that the Tauchnitz Press, of which he was literary editor, had decided to publish my doctoral thesis on Virginia Woolf in a trade paperback edition. It was three years since I had written the dissertation, but now it was coming out in Germany from the same publisher that had published all of Virginia Woolf’s books. “You’re in good company,” Professor Schöffler wrote.
⁵

Excitedly, I worked on the galleys of the book, corrected some minor printer’s errors, and finally held it in my hands. It was my first published book, bound in the same light green cover in which the Tauchnitz Press had published Virginia’s works. It would be sent, the publishers told me, to universities in America, Germany, and England. I found it on sale in Barnes and Noble, which was then housed in one small bookshop in lower Manhattan. It sold for $1.50, a good price in 1935. Hardcovers sold for $2.95 or $3.95.

With apprehension and the chutzpah of youth, I sent the book to Virginia Woolf, with this letter:

14 Harmon Street Brooklyn,

New York

May 8,1935

Mrs. Virginia Woolf

The Hogarth Press

52, Tavistock Square London, W.C.1

Dear Mrs. Woolf,

I am sending you a copy of a book I have written about your work. Although dated 1934, the publication was unfortunately delayed and the book has just appeared.

I wrote the book while living in Germany, where, as you no doubt know, you are regarded, and I feel it is with justice, as England’s foremost novelist.

I shall be deeply interested in your opinion of the book.

Sincerely yours,

Ruth Gruber

On May 17,1935, the manager of the Hogarth Press, Margaret West, answered my letter.

The Hogarth Press

52 Tavistock Square,

London, W.C.1

May 17th, 1935.

Miss Ruth Gruber,

14 Harmon Street,

Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A.

Dear Madam,

Your letter of May 8th and the book to which you refer, addressed to Mrs. Virginia Woolf have been received during her absence in Italy. They will be placed before her on her return.

Yours faithfully,

THE HOGARTH PRESS.

Margaret West

MANAGER.

As soon as I received Miss West’s letter, I replied,

May 28,1935

Dear Miss West,

Thank you for your letter of May 17th. I am planning to sail for Europe on the 22nd of June to gather more material for a book I am now working on. I shall probably arrive in England on the 27th of June and should like very much to arrange an interview with Mrs. Woolf if she plans to be in or near London at that time. May I expect to hear from you soon?

Sincerely yours,

Ruth Gruber

I had real doubts that Virginia Woolf would agree to invite me. But I figured she would either allow me to interview her, or instruct her secretary to tell me she was too busy.

She did, of course, invite me, but I knew nothing about her physical or mental health when I met her. Nor did I know that she kept a diary, the entries of which she usually wrote in the afternoon between tea and dinner. Half a century later, in 1989, I discovered that those diaries—and boxes of her letters—were in the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue at 42nd Street.

To read them, I climbed a flight of stairs, walked down a long hall, and entered a room marked “Berg Collection.” It was an elegant oak-paneled reading room that had the air of a cloistered sanctuary. Formal oil paintings of Dr. Henry W. Berg and Dr. Albert A. Berg, separated by a wooden arch with corinthian columns, filled the east wall. A terra cotta figure of Moses, holding the Ten Commandments, stood above the front door.

The Berg brothers were lovers of books and learning. They spent their days working as surgeons at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York. Then, with a fortune amassed in real estate, they distributed money generously to hospitals and universities and purchased rare manuscripts, which they donated to the room named after them in the library. It was their funds that were used to purchase Virginia Woolf’s diaries and letters.

When I convinced the curator, a large, scholarly, and formidable woman, Lola L. Szladits, that I was a serious student of Virginia Woolf’s writings, she allowed me to hold some of Woolf’s letters in my hands. I was holding the thin blue paper on which she wrote, and I actually felt her presence around me. Her writing was small and crowded, and seemed to have been written in haste.

I was astonished to find myself mentioned in both the diary and the letters in the Berg Collection. Now, with the additional help of the three letters she sent me, I am able to put together a chronology of our correspondence and the relationship between a mature and supremely skillful writer and a young woman struggling to define herself.

Four months before we met, she confided to her diary:

31 May, 1935

… the usual tremor & restlessness after coming back, and nothing to settle to, & some good German woman sends me a pamphlet on me into which I couldn’t resist looking, though nothing so upsets and
demoralizes as this looking at one’s face in the glass. And a German glass produces an extreme diffuseness and complexity so that I can’t get either praise or blame but must begin twisting among long words.

I was amused to find that she called me “some good German woman.” I have not an ounce of German blood, and I was born in Brooklyn, New York. I knew, though, what she meant about German writing and how complex German words could be. True, the book was published by the Tauchnitz Press, but I had written my thesis in English, not German, and I had sent the published English book to her from Brooklyn. Just as she could not “get either praise or blame,” now I could not tell how she felt about my book. It seemed to me that if she had really read it, instead of saying she “couldn’t resist looking,” she would have known that I was an ardent admirer of her work.

Three weeks after she wrote this entry in her diary, she sent the first of her three letters to me. These letters—placed chronologically next to her diary and her massive correspondence—helped me to see her in the context of her era in Britain, and to understand the violent swings of her illness and her all-too-real fear that she was going insane.