Great_Nanny_1978_Side_B_mono.mp3

KLM: OK we've got a new side now, I guess we could continue. You were talking about birthdays, and Christmas, and I think Sadie and somebody threw the tree out?

CDL: Sadie and Frank got in an argument over the tree, and it went on fire and Mama threw it out the window. We never had a tree after that.

KLM: Now how the trees decorated?

CDL: Candles.

KLM: Did they put many on? Large ones? Little ones?

CDL: Well, they were the [kind?] that used to be lighted, and Christmas trees were very flammable.

KLM: Yes, yes.

CDL: And then we had ah, later years of course when we had electricity, we never had a tree.

KLM: You didn't have a tree?

CDL: Never.

KLM: Ever since the fire.

CDL: No. Since the fire. And that's many many years.

KLM: Well now when you got up Christmas Day would there be gifts under the tree, when you had the tree? How did you celebrate Christmas?

CDL: Just gave one another's gifts, and Julia was the one that really started that, we really didn't make any fuss over Christmas at all. And Daddy's [Walter Lane's] family was just the opposite.

KLM: Well you as a youngster, did your friends' family make fusses over Christmas? Was it only your family that did not?

CDL: Yeah they used to give us, friends of Sadie's and friends of Mama's, I told you about the doll [that] was given to me, and Eleanor cried, and I had to give it to her. And Charlie poured water in my doll's mouth and the stomach fell in, and I cried.

KLM: [laughing] Oh dear.

CDL: But we mostly got clothes, Kathryn.

KLM: Something that you needed.

CDL: Shoes and underwear and a coat.

KLM: But there would be a gift at Christmas time, some kind of a gift.

CDL: Yes, that you'd have to [indistinct].

KLM: Yes, yes.

CDL: But Julia I started buying gifts... well we did get together years ago and buy one big gift, like... Sadie, Georgina, Mamie and I would give to one. And then in return we would get a big gift like maybe... draperies or curtains.

KLM: That would have been when you were adults though.

CDL: Yes - married.

KLM: I was more interested in, how was Christmas celebrated -

CDL: No, no fuss.

KLM: - when you were little.

CDL: It was just another day.

KLM: Oh. School holiday? Did they make any fuss in the schools?

CDL: No, no.

KLM: Did the nuns?

CDL: Oh yes. And the church.

KLM: Church was decorated?

CDL: Yeah, church was decorated. 'Course then they - I don't know whether, I don't think there was any lights, I can't remember that. But I know, the Brooklyn church had the electric lights [indistinct]

KLM: But would you have a school vacation at Christmas time?

CDL: Yes. You'd have a week or so.

KLM: You did have a week then. How would your weather be at Christmas?

CDL: Cold. Snowy many times.

KLM: Did you have a lot of snow?

CDL: And icy.

KLM: How about your other holidays, did you ever celebrate the Fourth of July in any special way?

CDL: No, no, just another day.

KLM: No, no big holidays.

CDL: Thanksgiving.

KLM: What was Thanksgiving?

KLM: A great big meal. Christmas ah, what do you call it, Christmas pudding and Papa would make more fuss than Mama did over that. He used to put rum on the Christmas pudding, on the Thanksgiving pudding and light it.

KLM: Oh, oh.

CDL: And come through the room with it to show us what it looked like when it was lighted.

KLM: Yes, yes.

CDL: He really made more fuss over holidays than Mom. I think Mom was really lonesome for the old country lots of times. And maybe by doing things like that, might have made her more lonesome.

KLM: That's true.

CDL: But I said to her one time, what do you miss about Ireland Mom? She said, I miss the spring.

KLM: Oh.

CDL: And there was one song I used to play, "Believe Me And All Your Endearing Young Charms," [Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms] she didn't like that. She liked it, but it made her sick.

KLM: It reminded her of home.

CDL: Yeah.

KLM: Yes. Yes.

CDL: See she came over here very young.

KLM: Yes, well that was rough, to come and leave her country -

CDL: Yes, 'cause she used to say... they were very well watched, they came over steerage, but they were very well watched, that no harm could come to them. And it took her 18 days to come over from Ireland to America, and the ship sunk on the way back. Never heard of it after that.

KLM: Isn't that something.

CDL: As I say she talked more to me.

KLM: Well she spent a lot of time with you.

CDL: A lot of time with me.

KLM: After you were married -

CDL: And she enjoyed the children.

KLM: - you know. But, I was just wondering if she didn't ever say how she celebrated her holidays in Ireland.

CDL: No, she never talked about it, no.

KLM: She didn't say much.

CDL: I would say there was a lot of sentiment that was lost because when I went to visit other girls I knew that their way of celebrating the holidays was quite different than mine.

KLM: And your father's, English, always celebrated Christmas...

CDL: He would do a lot, even when, my first sister, or one of the family [was] getting married, he made a wedding for her. Mama wanted none. But he made a wedding, and he had a violinist and an accordion player...

KLM: Oh at the house?

CDL: At the house.

KLM: Oh.

CDL: And he cooked turkey and he cooked ham, I remember he did all the cooking, salads and everything. I don't know whether, I couldn't say Mama was antisocial, but, ah... it was so close to it, it wasn't far. She didn't seem to like any of the fuss, for some reason or other.

KLM: It's interesting because it... my opinion, and listening to, you know over the years, Grandma, she was a delightful grandma to me, that she was a very cold, uncaring woman in some ways. But your story of you having diphtheria, she's not uncaring.

CDL: No.

KLM: She wanted her children, very possessive of her children. And...

CDL: She was, and she was very proud of us. And the only compliment she ever made, to me, was I would have been a much better piano player but I read too many novels.

KLM: Oh. Now when did you first get the piano in the house?

CDL: Nineteen hundred.

KLM: Nineteen hundred.

CDL: That was in New York, we got that.

KLM: Oh and you brought that with you?

CDL: And we moved from New York to Brooklyn... it was a rainy day and it was a German holiday, and the moving men was loaded. Had a little bit too much wine. And they took the piano out in the rain and Mama cried. She wasn't crazy about music but she knew that was a possession.

KLM: Why did she get a piano?

CDL: I don't know why she did.

KLM: Of all things, that to me would have been too frivolous for her to have.

CDL: Yeah, well, as soon as we had the piano... because Mamie took the first piano lessons and she was getting nowheres. And Angelina said to her [Mama], "Catherine should be getting the piano lessons." And mom said "well two at a time would be quite an expense" and she told my mother, "I'll teach her for nothing, just for the glory." And she said "well no, I can pay," and she charged 35 cents.

KLM: What, for a lesson?

CDL: For a lesson.

KLM: She came to the house?

CDL: Well she lived in the same apartment [building] with us.

KLM: And what would that be, once a week?

CDL: Once a week. And when, then of course she got married, and we moved to Brooklyn. And I came back from New York, from Brooklyn to New York for the music lessons, and then she had a lot of babies and she stopped teaching me. Then I had a girl by the name of Montgomery that taught me. And she lived on Congress Street, that's South Brooklyn.

KLM: And you would have to travel to her home?

CDL: I could go by trolley. 'Cause I was bigger then, you know, Kathryn. You know, I was, what would you call it, a teenager.

KLM: Well, now you wouldn't have been a teenager unless you were working, because you worked at fourteen.

CDL: Mm hm.

KLM: So you weren't very old, or were you working at the time?

CDL: No, I didn't work, then. And not when I [indistinct]

KLM: So you weren't very old.

CDL: Because I used to, one holiday I remember I hid, so Mama couldn't find me so I wouldn't have to take the piano lessons.

KLM: Oh, same old trick, yes, yes, I remember taking the piano lessons myself. How long did you take the lessons, Mom, do you remember?

CDL: Ah, combining the two teachers about three years, but not steadily, Kathryn. I only went when I felt like it. But after a year or so with Grace I did go to business [school]. Then I used to go to her on Saturday.

KLM: Oh you did, OK. So that would have made your fourteen -

CDL: But she taught me a great deal. She said I really had a fantastic music mind, but I had no foundation. And it was two different types of music teaching. Angelina was Italian. The do re mi fa sol la ti do. But Grace was C D E F G A B C which was quite a turn-over for me to grasp it.

KLM: Right.

CDL: Because my foundation, the little bit I had, was on the Italian method and Grace taught me, I think they called it Leschetizky, it was Russian. But that made a difference in all your counting and all that. But it was still five lines and four spaces, you know what I mean?

KLM: Yes. Yes. The clef signs and so on would be the same, your sharps and your flats. But do you remember ever just sitting down and playing when you first started?

CDL: I'd follow Mamie, when she would play her exercises I could go to the piano and play mine.

KLM: Without reading the things.

CDL: No I didn't know how to do, I'd just follow.

KLM: Just what you heard her do.

CDL: That's why Angelina said to Mama, "she's the one should get the piano lessons."

KLM: Did you enjoy it basically?

CDL: I did at the beginning, but when it interfered, like a kid wanted to play baseball, and you have 'em practicing. I didn't like it.

KLM: Did you ever have any recitals?

CDL: No never. She didn't do for - go in for that. Angelina didn't, and neither did Grace. Grace was an organist. And that's what I really would've loved to learn. I knew the stops, or I didn't know the stops I knew the keys, 'cause they're very similar to the piano, but I didn't know the feet. And that's what she was starting to teach me when I started to go out, and working, and then I got away from it altogether.

KLM: Did you ever play in the church, as a youngster at that time? Did they have any recitals?

CDL: Not for the church, I used to play for the kids. We used to have what they used to call a 40 hours' devotion, and that, we used to go down the basement of the church to get into our veils and gowns and I used to play, it was a foot organ, you had to pump it. It wasn't electric.

KLM: You could pump it and play it?

CDL: Play it.

KLM: Oh they'd have a kid behind it, pumping it?

CDL: No no, you pumped it with your feet.

KLM: Oh.

CDL: I liked it, I liked the organ, I would have liked to go a little further with it, but I never did. I started to, you know, go out with the boys, and started to keep company, later on and that.

KLM: Too many other things interfering.

CDL: But I still love the piano.

KLM: And then when... when. OK you finished your lessons then what, at about 15, or 16?

CDL: About sixteen.

KLM: Sixteen. So you took for several years then.

CDL: About three. Combining with Angelina. And uh, he [Angelina's husband?] was the editor of the El Progresso, an Italian newspaper. And she was very cultured and educated. So was Grace Montgomery. Grace Montgomery used to play in the church that was on South Street, the Sea and Land they called it. They were mostly, all her family were in seafaring endeavors. And that's where she went down to play for the different captains and that.

KLM: Were they stern teachers, if you didn't know your lesson? Could, would they hit your fingers?

CDL: Well I always knew my lessons.

KLM: Oh. [chuckles]

CDL: And she said that, Mama said to Angelina one time, "Why don't you call me and tell me if she don't know her lessons?" She [Angelina] said, "Mrs. Dawkins I can't, because she knows it." And Mama said, "Well she never touches the piano. How did she know it?"

KLM: It was an inborn gift, I always swore that it was something that was in there. Luckily it was brought out.

CDL: Came from Pop I think. 'Cause Papa loved music.

KLM: Ah, but he didn't play at all, did he?

CDL: He had a beautiful voice though.

KLM: Yes, but he didn't play?

CDL: No no no.

KLM: I still can't understand why your mother bought that piano.

CDL: I don't know either.

KLM: It's not in character.

CDL: See that's too far back for me to - It's eighty years ago.

KLM: Yes. Yes. You always had a piano. But you and Mamie were the only ones who ever -

CDL: Took lessons.

KLM: Took lessons on it.

CDL: They did want to train Georgina to sing in the church and she said well I'll go on the stage and Mama said that finishes it.

KLM: Oh.

CDL: She used to sing what they call cantatas and things like that, her voice was gorgeous.

KLM: But the boys never attempted to go near the piano.

CDL: Frank played, but by ear, never took lessons.

KLM: And did fairly well?

CDL: Very well, I would say so, had a nice voice too. It was entertaining. And Charlie used to play the harmonica with us. It was like a little band.

KLM: Yes. Now would you do that at night, after dinner, at home?

CDL: Yes. We'd go upstairs, when we had the, the big house you know, we'd go upstairs and Frank would sing and play the piano and I would play the piano. I always got the job, if company came, friends of Mama's, although she never gave me any encouragement, but she seemed to know that I had some kind of a talent. When her old time friends would come to visit she'd say would you go up and play the piano.

KLM: Play the piano. So she was proud of you.

CDL: Yeah.

KLM: But didn't want to, didn't want to or didn't know how to tell you that it was pleasant, you know, pleasing to her.

CDL: Yeah.

KLM: Oh that's good. OK.