Los Angeles, California
Wednesday, May 1, 1985  
 
My dearest Vanessa
 
Here I am, sitting alone in my little apartment, thinking about your telephone call to me while you, Nicholas and your Mum were having dinner.
 
I can picture the three of you at your dining room table while Dad was out, having his French lesson – and I wonder what really was happening to cause you to call me while in the middle of dinner.  When I asked you what news you had to tell me, you giggled and said that Mum had a new hairdo, and described it as shaved to one side, frizzed on top" – which aroused my suspicions.  I said, "You must be kidding," but you said, "No, seriously, it is true."  What a kidder you are, Vanessa, what a strange girl.
 
I often try to imagine you as a young lady, and wonder what thoughts and feelings go on in your head; what dreams you dream; how I can relate to you; what I can talk to you about; and what can I say in a letter that you asked me to write.  What do you want to hear?  Do you just want to receive a letter in the mail addressed to you?  Maybe it's just that.  It makes me think back to the time when I was thirteen, just like you, in a very different place in the world which, for different reasons from yours (yet maybe not so different), I wanted to escape from.
 
The year was 1924 and the Great War had been over for six years.  It was a terrible year, which would lead up to the Great Depression which occurred in 1929.  Thanks to my mother, may she rest in peace, there was always food for the seven children in my family.  When she married my father in 1899, and after my oldest sister, Betty, was born, she realized it was up to her to find a way to keep a roof over our heads and food in our mouths, so she decided to ask her brother – my Uncle Morris Collins – to help her start a restaurant.
 
In the eleven years that followed, she slaved from early morning to late at night to care for the seven of us.  She would rise at the crack of dawn, and at 5 a.m. would line up at the open-air markets in order to purchase the rationed food which she would use to cook endless meals in the restaurant kitchen.  The first meal, breakfast, would be for the customers who had stores in our street, then lunches for the immigrants and local business people, and then afternoon tea and late suppers for the younger people who wanted to congregate at the restaurant after a movie or evening class.
 
I remember my earlier years vividly, especially of being in the hospital when I was about eighteen months old and then again at age two.  The first visit was for scarlet fever and the second occasion was due to an abscess under my arm which had to be cut away as the infection was nearing my heart.  I was so bewildered at being in an isolation ward where no-one could visit me, and I cried and cried for my mother.  This all happened around 1913, the year before the outbreak of the Great World War – or World War I as we call it today.  I was brought home by my cousin, Annie Moss, in what must have been one of the first taxicabs in London.
 
I was only two years old and had forgotten my home and family – but there to greet me was a brand new baby brother, Jack.
 
The restaurant, known as "Snelwar's Kosher Restaurant," in my young eyes appeared to be a long, gloomy, narrow room.  The front section had a counter and shelves displaying cigarettes and cigars, and on the wall, in a large glass frame, was a great stuffed fish.  There was a huge tea urn that brewed tea from morning to night, which had to be lighted by gas first thing in the morning.  Then there were rush benches along the wall, with long iron tables abutting them.  Another counter was situated at the end of the dining room which displayed mouth-watering heaps of gefulte fish, chopped liver and herrings, salted and pickled herrings – all home-made – fried fish, halibut, plaice and cod.  Yet another counter in the front of the shop, next to the tea urn, housed the cheese, pastries, yeast cakes and other confections, all baked in the coke oven by my mother.  Passersby could view these tempting delights from the large front window leading onto the street.  
 
Through a side door was a separate entrance which lead to our living quarters.  My parents hardly ever used this area, except to sleep.  The first floor above the restaurant had two rooms and a landing which lead to the second and third floors.  There could be found my two older sisters' sitting room and the 'parlor'.  The sitting room had initially been used for all the children to do their homework in, but had later been converted into a sewing room for my sisters, Betty and Corrie.  Oh, Vanessa, you should have seen the beautiful clothes they made!  They used materials of post-war fashion – silk, crepe de chine, charmeuse (a satin with crepe de chine backing, gorgeous to the touch), ring velvets, fur trimming on evening coats of mock satin and chinchilla, short evening dresses trimmed with rows of graduated fringes for the Charleston dancing, and heavily beaded, low-waisted dresses, many with beautiful hand embroidery.  I can vividly remember my sisters dressing up to go to balls and dances, trying on their gowns, practicing for dance competitions, and then waiting for their dance partners to pick them up.  It was as if I were Cinderella, eleven years their junior, sitting quietly in the corner of the room, watching all the excitement. 
 
To return to the 'sitting room' – it had a fireplace (actually a little grate for a tiny coal fire), which was a great luxury.  The coal had to be hauled up in an iron bucket from the yard outside the kitchen, where the lavatories were located.  No, we had no indoor plumbing – no toilets or wash basins inside the house - can you imagine that?  As a concession, we had a bath installed in the outhouse which adjoined the sitting room, but there was no toilet in it.
 
Inside the sitting room was a bookcase which contained Cassell's History of England, a large dictionary, and a set of Dickens' and Shakespeare plays, plus Nathanial Hawthorne's 'Golden Treasury.'  This was my hideaway, where I could live in another world, and where I used to bring my cats to play with.  We had a huge family of cats who had litters of kittens, which I had to endlessly feed with saucers of milk.
 
My sisters were always clamoring for a toilet to be installed in the house, but the landlord refused, and said we would have to pay for it ourselves, which my parents could not afford.  My sisters were ashamed to bring boyfriends home.  They loved to make parties, but were embarrassed because they had to go downstairs, through the restaurant, kitchen and back yard where the public toilet was located.  It was awful! I hated using it as it was never clean, and there was no toilet paper – only pieces of newspaper hanging from a string (ugh).
 
There was a square rosewood dining table in the sitting room.  Your mum will probably remember I inherited it from my parents when they came to live with me when I married.  It had a great iron burn which your Uncle Alan caused when he switched on the electric iron while I was out shopping.  He would have been only three years old then.  But that's by the way – poor little fellow, he was always in trouble.  Mischief found idle hands!
 
Our "parlor" was used for special occasions.  Oh, how I remember the flowered carpet, a round table and petit point chairs.  The footstools were also beaded in petit point and a black, glass-fronted ebony display cabinet held china and crystal, exquisite Venetian goblets of red, purple and gold, and Crown Derby plates.
 
On the sideboard were displayed jade and ivory carvings and figurines, Dresden porcelain fruit bowls, and a Bavarian head of a peasant smoking a pipe – so many priceless and beautiful objects d'art.  And, of course, the piano, with its upright rosewood frame where I had my short career of lessons, after learning the scales.  I wanted instant mastery but, alas, my teacher despaired and gave up on me.  I remember my mother's words so plainly, "You'll be sorry when you're older."
 
Then, up the crooked, narrow staircase to the second floor bedrooms.  My parents were on the left and my two sisters and I occupied the front room, which overlooked the street, with a small landing between the two rooms.  My sisters had a massive double-sided wardrobe with a full-length mirror in the center.  Built-in closets would not be invented for many more years.  On each side of the wardrobe were doors which opened to racks of clothes and in the mirrored center were rows of shelves for linens, and deep drawers for underwear and lingerie.  This piece of walnut furniture took up the whole wall.
 
When my sisters were at work in their respective offices, I remember my cousin, Sadie Collins, and I dressing up in my sisters' clothes.  The two of us draped ourselves in the satin, brocade and velvet evening gowns and cloaks, trimmed with imitation chinchilla.  We tottered around in their high-heeled gold and silver dance slippers, and tried on their jewelry and makeup.
 
I remember my cousin looking at me in awe as I said to her, "Now I'm a fairy princess, and the prince is going to make me vanish under his golden cloak."
 
She said to me with a lisp, "Sarah, what's vanish?"  
 
I was full of fairy tales, stories of King Arthur, his knights in shining armor, the search for the Holy Grail and, of course, I was always the princess under a spell.  I was convinced I was stolen from a king and queen and left on the doorstep, for although I was petted, being the youngest little girl, I did not feel this was my real station in life.  I would always think of Joseph and his  many brothers – how they jeered at him – as my brothers and sisters did every morning when I came down to breakfast and said, "Let me tell you about the dream I had."  They would say, just as in the Bible, "You and your dreams!"
Up to the top floor of the building where my four brothers slept, a place I never ventured.  It was the parlor I would retreat to as I grew up, to look at all the beautiful ornaments.  You may wonder where all these expensive items came from – well, they were acquired by my father, an easy-going blond man with no business sense, except for the love of beautiful things.  At that time (1915), after the Russian Revolution and the assassination of Czar Nicholas and his family, there was a rush to emigrate from the Bolshevik reign of terror, and the Jewish émigrés would settle in the ghetto of London – and the orthodox Jews would come into our restaurant to keep warm and buy cheap and good kosher food.  Many wanted to start businesses, but needed a sponsor to guarantee them, so my father stood guarantee for many who got into debt, and he had to pay their debts – so they often gave him their treasurers, brought from Russia, in part payment.  Many of these treasures went to my two sisters when they married.
 
But I digress.  To go back to our house and restaurant in Osborn Street, located in Whitechapel, London – since we had no indoor plumbing, two large buckets were placed on the small landing between my parents' room and my sisters and me.  I can vividly remember the disgust I felt when my brother would come down in the night to pee in the buckets, which got full to overflowing with use by seven children and my parents.  Early in the morning, the buckets were carried down the narrow, dark stairs to the restaurant, through the kitchen, and emptied in the lavatories in the yard.  I'm sure that the cause of my constipation in early life was caused by refusing to use those awful buckets.
 
When I was three years old (in 1914), I could barely wait to go to school.  It was lonely being confined to a perambulator in a corner of the dining room, having to wait for my sisters and brothers to come home.  As soon as my third birthday arrived, off I trotted with my mother to Chicksand Street School, Infants Department.  I can see myself as if it were yesterday – so excited to look at the window, just before the school gates, and see the teacher painting and staining the glass with a bright robin redbreast, tweeting on a leafy bough.  Then, through the gates into the first infants' classroom, with tiny rows of desks facing a raised platform where the teacher and blackboard were.  Wonder of wonders – a rocking horse which, if we were very good, we got to ride on Fridays.  My eyes constantly rested on the stained glass window pane.  Pinned to the walls were squares of brown paper with drawings of oranges, apples and bananas, which each child brought on different days.  How proud I was to see my first effort pinned on the wall – a bright red orange, which I had confused with the sun.  The infant school stated at three years of age and then, at five, we went to regular school.
 
I remember the pages of the first reader, the pictures so smooth, the letters so round and beautiful.  We learned to read at four years, and by the time we went to regular school we were able to read quite easily.  
 
Just before my fifth birthday, my three year old brother and I were running along the rush benches in the restaurant, when they gave way, and my leg was ripped open from knee to thigh on a rusty nail.  In a trail of blood, I was rushed to the local doctor a few doors away, and had the gash stitched.  There were no antibiotics or tetanus shots in those days.  What terror I felt having the dressings changed, the blood dried and the bandage stuck fast on the wound.  I still have the scar on my leg, but so much smaller and fainter than it was then – taking up the whole of my upper leg for many years.
 
The Great World War was in its second year before I was ready for regular school.  All the children would give their pocket money to the War Fund for the soldiers.  We had a big chart in the schoolroom, which showed which class had contributed the most money.  
 
The war seemed never-ending and during this period our house was wired for electricity from the gas jets and mantles.  I would follow the electrician from floor to floor, watching him wire the house and restaurant, and I was the first to be allowed to switch on the electric lights.  What a wonder and thrill!
 
Then there were the first crystal sets, "cat's whisker" radio broadcasting from the BBC.  Later, we could hear news of the war front being broadcast from the local Town Hall building, as well as the general elections and by-elections.  People gathered around the Town Hall to hear the news then – after four weary years of war, air raids, and zeppelin raids, the Armistice was announced on November 11, 1918, when I was seven years old.  How I remember the almost hysterical cheering and laughter of the people, and the tears, when they heard that announcement.
 
When I was ten years old in 1921, my school was closed.  With the men being at war for so long, the birth rate had gone down and there were not enough children to fill the school.  There were plenty of poor people, so they converted it into a Salvation Army hostel.  There was an official opening by King George V and Queen Mary.  A great procession went through our streets, and I saw the royal carriages being drawn by prancing horses, with the King and Queen and royal family ensconced inside.  There were mounted horse guards proudly wearing their scarlet uniforms, with bearskin helmets, and the cavalry rode magnificent stallions, which nodded their noble heads, with the royal three-plumed feathers swaying in front of them.  All were escorted by soldiers wearing armored uniforms, with steel helmets and plumes coming down over their eyes.  What a stirring sight it was.  I saw Randolph Churchill, brother of Winston, on a marvelous horse.  He was so handsome that I asked someone who he was.  I will never forget the picture of him, sitting erect on his horse.  That was an historic event, which compensated for the dreary war years.
 
The next year, 1922, my eldest sister, Betty, married Ernest Maisner.  I was eleven years old and she was twenty-two.    She had several bridesmaids, including myself, and we all wore peach crepe de chine with rows of pico-edged frills from waist to hem, a wide velvet fuschia colored band for a belt, and trimming from shoulder to hem.  I loved that dress, the first absolutely new "fancy" dress I had ever owned.  For many years I had a picture of the wedding group; now it is lost, but someone in the family must have some pictures.
 
Your mother will remember that in England, when we reached eleven years of age, we had to pass the "11-plus" examination to get into high school.  How frightened I was at the prospect since, for most of the school year, I had been ill and away from school with the 'flu, colds, or whatever epidemic was raging.  My fears were realized – I could not take my scholarship exams – so I had to continue in elementary school.  However, when I was thirteen years old, my headmistress, Miss Staff, recommended me for a supplementary scholarship because I was her star pupil in literature and composition.  All my essays were copied into a special book, in my best handwriting, because Miss Staff said to the school assembly that she was sure, one day, I would bring fame to the school with my writing.  So sorry, Miss Staff, I never did.
 
At thirteen years of age, I was already working in the restaurant.  This was the time that Lloyd George's liberal government fell to the socialists.  There were political meetings at the street corner, which proved to be very exciting, with hecklers booing the candidates and singing ditties, such as, "Vote, Vote, Vote for Mr. Riley – punch old "so and so" in the eye," and such-like rude songs.  The candidates often ended their election campaigns in our restaurant, and I was fascinated to hear their arguments.
 
I left school when I was fourteen and went to a continuation school in the City of London to learn secretarial work.  I had to leave because of the General Strike, which paralyzed all businesses.  The buses and trains stopped running, supplies stopped and the streets were dead.  At that time, business was so bad, people could not afford to eat in restaurants, so my brother, Stanley, took to illegal horserace betting and the police raided our restaurant.  They closed us down, leaving us with no way to pay the rent or buy food.  I remember that raid with a beating heart.  There was a newspaper seller named Hobo, who was a runner for Stanley.  He would collect bets and give them to Stanley at his newsstand.  I remember how I used to beg and plead with my father not to allow Stanley to do this in the shop.  I would see policemen looking in, and see Hobo give Stanley the betting slips, but to no avail.  Then, my worst fears came true when I saw plain clothes detectives come bursting through the door, place a guard at the entrance, and declare, "This is a police raid."  My brother, Stanley, who had been collecting bets from the customers, ran into the back kitchen and tried to thrust the bets into the coal fire range, but the police rushed after him and arrested him.  Meanwhile, in the restaurant, the other customers were being searched, and Hobo said to me, very calmly, "Bring me a glass of lemon tea," and proceeded to put the betting slips in his mouth to swallow them, but he was nabbed by the police and arrested, too.  As a result, the restaurant was closed and my father was in danger of being deported to Russia (he never became a naturalized British citizen, alas).
 
My poor mother.  She took herself to the Home Office in Whitehall, confronted the Home Secretary in his office, despite the staff trying to keep her out, and poured her heart out to him. She had depositions for her good character from the Chief of Police locally, and the Home Secretary had compassion for her and allowed her to carry on the restaurant in her name, revoking the order for deportation of my father.  Stanley was let off with a warning, which he never heeded, and he continued with his betting long into the future.
 
My mother was such a good, brave lady, a selfless and devoted mother.  All of her children loved and respected her. Her whole life was one of drudgery, selflessness and devotion to her family. 
 
Well, my darling Vanessa, at the beginning of this letter I thought, what can I say to my beloved granddaughter, who has asked me to write her a letter.  The old brain started thinking, and there are so many more things I could elaborate on over the many years I have lived.  It would be a great achievement, Vanessa, if you would write in the diary I gave you.  Put down your thoughts and feelings, and record your memories of the trips overseas you have made with your parents.
 
Many children haven't had such opportunities as you have.  It will help you remember so much clearly when your children ask you about your family and your childhood.  You are so much luckier than your cousins in England.  They only have a few fleeting memories of a few short visits with me, whereas you have had your two grandmothers for quite some time.  
 
Will you and Nicholas remember your grandmother Dorothy in a few years time?  Will I grow to know you and Nicholas as young adults?  I try to write and tell you about how things were in my young life. You and Nicholas gave both your grandmothers so much love and joy, but will your memories of us be clear when you have your own children, I wonder.  
 
I can remember my teen years and how difficult it was for my parents to reach me; how stubborn I was in rejecting them when they tried to get my confidence.  I can still see the anxiety in my mother's eyes when she could not communicate with me.  I am sorry I never had more time to learn about her feelings and regret how much I lost by not letting her be my friend and confidante, to share my hopes and dreams.  She never had the time or the strength to overcome the wall I put up between us.  But I did have the chance to make up for it at the end of her life when I took care of her until her death in 1952.  I learned so much about her, and came to admire and respect her for her patient devotion to her children, despite her life of drudgery, about which she never complained.  I am so grateful to have had that chance to know her at the end
 
Well, my Vanessa, I had so little thought that this would be such a long letter.  Remember, your grandmother loves you dearly, just as your mother and father do.  If only you could appreciate it – but that is for history to prove to you.  Don't let it be too late to enjoy the friendship that is yours for the asking.
 
I love you very much, and will always be your devoted, 
 
Nanny Sarah xox