Cora Hochstein Feld

Transcription:

HAB: This is Friday, June 23, ^[1] and I am in Chatham Port, Massachusetts, with Cora Hochstein Feld who has very graciously agreed to make a tape recording of her reminiscences of her student days at the University. I'm Helen Ancona Bergeson, and this is a tape for the Oral History Project of the Friends of the University Libraries at the University of Rochester.

Cora, let's get on tape some of the things we were talking about. Where were your high school days spent and how was the decision made for you to go on into higher education.

CHF: Well, I went to Monroe High School. We had just moved to Oakdale Drive ^[2] , which was one street outside Rochester, in Brighton. And I couldn't go to Brighton High School because they didn't have enough grades. I think Joe ^[3] went but they kept adding a grade as he went up. So Monroe - I first went to East High School for the first term, simply out of sentiment. My father and mother ^[4] had gone there; my father's brother, David Hochstein ^[5] who was the violinist who was killed in World War I, attended East High School, and there is a beautiful portrait of him in the hall. And for sentimental reasons I did go there. It became rather difficult since it was rather far away from my home, so I transferred to Monroe. And as far as - you want to know whether my - what my motivation was or -

HAB: Well, when you were a high school student, did most of the students go on to college, or did some of them, just a small number of them, go on to college or -

CHF: I think a good many did, of my friends. Now whether the whole class did I'm not sure.

HAB: When was this?

CHF: This was - I was in high school from '27 to '31, so it would have been in the early 30s. And I can't really say how many people from the class -

HAB: Now this would have been in the teeth of the big depression.

CHF: Well, it - the crash was in 1929. And this is what I really would like to point out is that you had asked me earlier was it assumed in my family that I would go to college, or was it my insistence. I think it was always, as far as I remember - always assumed that all of us would have a college education if possible, although, of course, my father hadn't foreseen the crash and he did lose a lot of money in the crash. But I believe that he felt that that was one of the things he would like to do was to give each of us the opportunity that he didn't have, to go to college, since he had to give up a scholarship to Cornell in order to - to help his family. And it probably motivated him to give to his children what he hadn't been able to have. My mother was also a very good student but her mother died right at the end of her senior year in high school and I don't think that they even thought - her father even thought about sending her to college.

HAB: Who was - what family was theirs? What was her maiden name?

CHF: Her name was Dana and the Danas came to Rochester around 1820 from Cambridge, Massachusetts. And I believe my grandfather was a boat builder on the Erie Canal. The house faced - the back of the house faced right on the Canal. ^[6]

HAB: Whereabouts?

CHF: In Rochester.

HAB: Is that right.

CHF: And at least - I'm not - they lived on Meigs Street ^[7] but whether that was where the boat building was I don't know.

HAB: Why sure. Because the old subway went in the Canal bed, and then that became the Expressway 490.

CHF: I can show you a perfectly beautiful little desk that he made. It's downstairs. When he was a prisoner of the Confederates during the Civil War.

HAB: Is that right.

CHF: It's just beautiful - little inlays--there's a little dog and a duck and some flowers and a star. And it's a lovely little desk that my mother inherited.

HAB: How about that.

CHF: And - well, to get back to going to college, my older brother - have I said that? - was -

HAB: No, no.

CHF: an excellent student, but it was easy, easy.

HAB: What was his name?

CHF: David Dana Hochstein. And he went to West High School because at that - when he was going to high school we lived on the West side of Rochester. ^[8] And he - he wanted to go to Harvard if he could, and he was well qualified and did - was accepted. But with the - the crash of 1929, all plans had to be changed. And David went to Harvard from 1927 to 1931, and then went to Harvard Law School from '31 to '34. And I came along in 1931 and my father couldn't swing the expense of having two of us in college, and of course boys came first. So I -

HAB: You say boys came first, what was the rationale for that?

CHF: In my older age, I have been trying to think about the position of a girl in the family. I was the middle child - a brother who came along later, Joseph.

HAB: OK, that gives a good picture.

CHF: And while - and I think my mother and father did center their ­ more attention on the oldest. Although being a girl, I wasn't made to feel that - really that I was secondary except that when the chips were down, I couldn't go away to school which was a very big disappointment to me. And I think that it clouded for what, shall I say, it did something - influenced my attitude toward the University of Rochester, which I now see is - was probably a wrong attitude. I resented having to stay home--I didn't think that I was getting - well, I thought it was second best, shall we say. And as I look back on it, I think I got a very good education at the University. I was good enough to be accepted as a graduate student at Radcliffe afterwards.

HAB: Were you Junior Phi Bete? ^[9]

CHF: Yes.

HAB: In History?

CHF: In History.

HAB: That's what I recall. You were an impressive student when I was a young thing.

CHF: I didn’t know anyone would remember that. I think back and I didn't use opportunities that I might have. I think I was a rather a reserved young lady and woman. I remember Katharine Bowen ^[10] who was a classmate in high school of my mother's called her up one day and she said, "Maisie, is there anything wrong at home?" And my mother said, "Why? Well, no, I can't think of anything." She said, "Well," she said, "Cora's you know in the Freshman Class--she's going around with the most serious expression on her face, and we just wondered if she was troubled about something." And my mother laughed, and she said, "No, but she is rather a worrier." Then, of course, she told me about it and so I tried to look a little more cheerful. But I think I did take things very seriously and I was very worried, and I wanted to do well, and -

HAB: Now you were - you entered as a Freshman in '31. Was Helen Bragdon Dean ^[11] then?

CHF: Yes.

HAB: So you did not know Annette Gardner Munro? ^[12]

CHF: Well, only- she'd come back- I think she was around every once in a while. I saw what she looked like but I don't - I just don't really remember anything much about her.

HAB: One thought goes through my mind, just hurriedly, while we're talking about the rapport you had with your family and the commitment they had to see that their children had a higher education, what economic bracket or professional life did your father have? What was his business?

CHF: Well, as I said before, he was a poor boy from the Ghetto. And he went to East High School, and then he had to help his father who ran a steamship - what they called a steamship ticket agency - on Joseph Avenue. ^[13]

Then he was - his father was instrumental for many, many years in helping the people who came - the immigrants who came to bring their families, giving them advice. He spoke 5 languages.

HAB: What languages did he speak?

CHF: Well, I'm not sure. He spoke Russian and German and French and Polish, and I don't know whether Lithuanian was a language or not.

HAB: Isn't that magnificent.

CHF: But anyway - then I think my mother and father were married in 1908, and this was a big decision on my mother's part. She was a Unitarian, my father was Jewish, although his family, as I gather, weren't very religious. And they were married in the Unitarian Church by William Channing Gannett. ^[14] And - but I'm not sure why, but they lived on a street called Henrietta Street, ^[15] where my brother was born, David Hochstein, named for his uncle, and they had to - or did - move back to Joseph Avenue with my grandparents, which must have been an absolutely - well, when I think of it, it was a, to me, a very courageous thing for my mother to do. But she didn't think it was courageous--she was fascinated by the - at the - to have the opportunity to meet people who were Europeans, who were so different from anything that she had known as a girl, growing up on Meigs Street in Rochester. My grandfather Dana, I think - to get back to what stratum of economic, what shall I say -

HAB: The social strata, well economic…

CHF: The social -. I think they were just middle class, and my father was probably - would be described as lower class, because they were poor, and he - all I remember is - and I don't know how long this went on - was that he worked for the American Express Company first. And around 1920, when I was about seven or eight years old, he was asked to go to Fashion Park which was a clothing works, as the advertising manager, which he did. And whether he was the advertising manager in the beginning I'm not sure, but he worked himself into it, and was very successful at it. And he became a Vice President of Fashion Park and was in charge of advertising and sales. So - he was always, as I remember it as a little girl, he was teaching himself French and reading - we always had a good library in the house, both from my mother's side and my father's, because my grandfather Dana was a collector of first editions. When he didn't have any business to be a collector since he shouldn't have spent the money on the first editions.

HAB: What was his business?

CHF: Well, as I say, he - all I can remember about it is that he was a salesman, but of what, I am not sure.

HAB: He was your maternal grandfather?

CHF: Yes. But he also- the stories my mother told about his traveling all around the western part of New York State in a horse and buggy. And I'm not sure but I think he was selling the - it was Shass (?) Company theatrical makeup.

HAB: Oh, for goodness sakes.

CHF: That's all- it's very dim and I'm not sure that this is true. But that's what I- that's all I remember- it's very vague.

HAB: Your mother must have been a fascinating person.

CHF: Oh, she was, because she was not only - she not only had her career in Rochester music as a singer but -

HAB: Oh, you didn’t say that. Now what -

CHF: After - well this is all so interesting. The fact that she married my father whose brother was David Hochstein, the violinist - David interested my mother in becoming - in taking voice lessons. I guess he must have heard her sing and said, “Why don’t you do it?" And he found her her teacher who was Mrs. Herman Kellner. ^[16] And both - all the Kellner girls went to the University.

HAB: Oh, Liselotte -

CHF: Liselotte and Margaret and Dorothee. ^[17]

HAB: How about that.

CHF: And - anyway she did - you know, in a small way - she sang with the Rochester Symphony Orchestra at Convention Hall before the Eastman Theatre was built and she was active in the Tuesday Musicale which was (inaudible) -

HAB: Elegant.

CHF: Elegant group in those days. She was in charge of the programs and she sang for the French Alliance and this, that and the other thing. I can remember sitting on the bed and watching her get dressed. And she one day asked my father - it must have been in the early 1920s - “Do you think I could put on a little rouge?”

HAB: Oh, how beautiful.

CHF: And - but what was so interesting is that after her - well, when she was about fifty, she gave up singing, and she did teach too. She taught voice. Well, now I come to a sad part of the family story because my father and mother were divorced in 1936. This is a rather rattle brained summary of what happened. And she really was terribly upset for about three or four years, then she picked herself up and trotted down to the Rochester Community Players ^[18] and asked for a hearing, or what do you call it? - an audition. And she got her first part in "Watch on the Rhine." Then for eighteen years she was in the Rochester Community Players. I saw her in "The Solid Gold Cadillac." ^[19] She was a little old lady who disrupted everything. What was so wonderful about my mother was that she'd take small parts--she was a maid in "The Watch on the Rhine,” which was a very little part. She - oh, I can’t remember all of them, "The Bishop Misbehaves" - oh, there were “The Hasty Heart" - I can't remember. But I do remember "The Solid Gold Cadillac." And when she died she was learning a part.

HAB: How old was she?

CHF : At the age of 73.

HAB: Isn't that -

CHF: So, it really was - she did - she was very remarkable, and I -

HAB: One of the fascinating things was that she took this opportunity of living with her in-laws as an adventure, and probably never again in our country will there be an opportunity to observe different cultures.

CHF: Well, I -

HAB: Another culture.

CHF: Now I’m getting on to a very interesting subject - interesting to me because all of my life it was pretty much a secret of which we were ashamed, and I think it was fear on the part of all of us. My father’s half aunt was Emma Goldman.

HAB: Is that right?

CHF: My grandmother and her sister, Helena and Lena, which I think is so funny, don’t you, that they were called that were the daughters of the same mother. And their father died, and the mother married Mr. Goldman. ^[20] And they had - then they had Emma and a son whose name was Morris Goldman, who became a doctor. And the reason I say it was fear was because having just - not - well, recently, several years ago I read the whole of Living My Life by Emma Goldman, and the stories of her coming back to Rochester, and the police harassing the family and trying to find out, you know, what she was up to. When David and I came along - David finally - he went to Harvard Law School - eventually went to work in the Department of Justice - well, when you filled out the form you didn't have to mention all your relatives, but he was sure that the FBI would find - would find this out. And they never - at least, no one ever asked him anything about it. And when I came along in the 40s and worked for the State Department; the same thing - I wondered, you know, whether anything about this would come up, but it didn’t. But we never did talk about the fact that Emma Goldman was a famous relative. In fact, we were rather ashamed of it. And it is a revelation, certainly to my daughter, to see - that “Red Emma” is coming into her own and is considered, you know, quite a mover and shaker, and of course she was. And my mother didn't like her - didn't - she was - my mother was a real Victorian--she disapproved of free love and living with many different men, and so forth. But she always did say she fought for great causes, such as the abolition of the sweat shops, and certainly the position on women and for labor unions, and for birth control and - but she disliked her methods. She said she went to hear her at the Labor Lyceum ^[21] one day and there were four policemen, two in one aisle and two in the other. And she said instead of giving an interesting lecture, which she could do, she spent most of the time making fun of the law. Now just being, you know - making derogatory remarks, Mother thought that this was rather a waste of time and-

HAB: Talent.

CHF: And talent. And although she was kind to her from that point of view. And in the thirties - I think I was a junior - you remember Mrs. Beatrice deLima Meyers? ^[22]

HAB: Yes.

CHF: Well, she had a tea for Emma Goldman, who by that time - I think she had been deported in 1919, had seen Russia and disliked what she saw and was fortunate enough to get out. She married a Canadian ^[23] just for convenience so that she could have a visa to get back as a visitor to the United States. And she came on a visit and a lecture tour, and she came to Rochester, a rather heavy-set, very unattractive woman, in her older age - at the tea. And my mother brought me kicking and screaming to see her. My father wouldn't go - have anything to do with her, but she thought it was history and that I should at least meet her.

HAB: Isn't that great.

CHF: And so Mrs. Hugh MacKenzie ^[24] was there, and Professor - was there a Gilbert?

HAB: Donald Gilbert?

CHF: It wasn't Gilbert. Who was the man who was an economist who was a cripple?

HAB: Oh, McGill.

CHF: McGill. Dr. McGill, in Government. ^[25] And I can't remember who else but I had to - my mother - I can just see myself - she sort of pushed me up to her, and I gave her a peck on the cheek, and she sort of looked at me as if I'd, you know, not - she wasn't terribly interested in this very square young lady. And the only thing I can remember about it- there was chitchat back and forth, and she reminisced a little bit. But McGill it was, who said to her what - "But Miss Goldman, you -wouldn't you say that right now no one could ever think of you again as Red - you're just a little bit pink." And she was furious with him for, you know, saying that she didn't still have fire in her eye and was working for good causes. By that time I think she was living on the - in the south of France, writing her memoirs. ^[26] Well, that was a digression.

HAB: Absolutely fascinating. And this gives a beautiful foundation for the kind of cultural and social and intellectual background that you came from, and this tremendous commitment your parents had for something that they were not able to have.

CHF: As far as I can see, regardless of the fact that my father's family didn't have any money, they had - they were intellectuals who must have had some training in - in actually - I don't - it's terrible I really don't know where my grandfather came from but I think it was St. Petersburg which of course -

HAB: How old was your father when he came to this country?

CHF: Oh, my father was born here.

HAB: Born here, I see.

CHF: But my grandparents came around 18--. I think my grandfather came here around maybe 1880 and my grandmother in 1884, or '83, something like that. My father was born in 1887. So they hadn't been here a long time but they were married in this country, and had their children - all their children were American. But of course they weren't here very long. And on the other hand, my mother's family came in 1640, at least the one ancestor from which all the Danas are - have - evolved. That was Richard Henry Dana and the man who came to this country from England was a Richard Dana.

HAB: Now for a moment let me just snatch one more thought. In high school, in Monroe, was there support and encouragement on the part of your teachers to propel you further into your education or was this just a casual -

CHF: I don't remember that anybody- any of the high school teachers were saying anything about college. I think I was a good student and whether they assumed that I would or not I don't know but -

HAB: None of these hours of counseling?

CHF: No, there wasn't anything like that that I remember.

HAB: Now when you got to the University, in 1931, what was the composition of the class like? Were most of them from Rochester, were there some out-of-town students?

CHF: There were a few out-of-town students but probably from the nearby towns, but mostly, I think, they were from Rochester.

HAB: Where did these out-of-town students live? Were there dormitory facilities?

CHF: Yes, there were - I think there were - there were two dormitories that were houses where they were coops on the campus. Now what houses they were and what they were called I'm not sure. Either they were along Prince Street or anyway close by. And I think there was one dormitory over - where would it be - where the gym is or - no, on the other side of the street, next to Rush Rhees' house, which was on the corner, there was a -

HAB: I think that was Eastman Dormitory. ^[27]

CHF: Dormitory.

HAB: Part of that.

CHF: Yes.

HAB: For art students.

CHF: Yes.

HAB: Okay, so -

CHF: What there were - now let's see - I remember Helen Poffenberger and I think she came from Chicago. ^[28]

HAB: Is that right.

CHF: But there was a contingent at the Men's Campus too from Oak Park, Illinois, and Chicago. ^[29]

HAB: A very select group. Samuel Havens used to (inaudible). ^[30]

CHF: Yes, yes. And - but I don't remember where else people did come from.

HAB: Do you know the size of the class?

CHF: We were the largest class that had ever entered. There were a hun - about a hundred. And I don’t know how many were graduated but - ^[31]

HAB: And you don't have any feel for how many of that hundred would have been from out of town?

CHF: I really don't. I couldn't say.

HAB: When you got there, how did you decide what course of study you would follow?

CHF: Well, I think that I was interested in history, probably influenced by my parents. Having a father whose antecedents were - were - had come from Europe, so, you know, so recently. And my mother was interested in history and had quite a few history books around in the house. She was mostly interested in Greek and Roman history, as I recall. And - but - we had a wider view, I think, of the world than a lot of the people - the girls - that I knew. And I think that - I don't know that I knew I was - would major in history when I was a freshman, but I was certainly thinking about it.

HAB: Now in your course of study, were the first two years general exposure to the humanities?

CHF: Let's see now- what we did was- we took so-called intelligence tests when we were freshmen, either during freshman week, and this you - if you passed, for example, English with a high grade, you didn't have to take English 1, but you could go right into English Literature or - and so forth. I didn't have to take Freshman English, as it was called, and took a course with - oh, a dreadful woman. She - I don't mean she was dreadful, but she was an awful prissy professor - Professor Loveland, remember her? ^[32]

HAB: Oh yes.

CHF: I can remember one thing we were reading-

HAB: Fuss budget, kind of -

CHF: We were reading something -whether it was Chaucer or - because it was - I think it was rather a survey course in English Literature - and she paused and said, "We won't read the next few - we'll skip the next few lines because they are not particularly edifying." And so she called on somebody to pick it up and everybody was reading what she said we wouldn't read, so no one could find the place. But of course Dr. Slater ^[33] - I took his course afterwards and I did enjoy his course. I thought it was very fine. I was interested in what you said--he was very vague and not - and otherworldly, shall we say, but he was good at - he taught Shakespeare. I knew that he had given a course on the Bible and I felt that my education had been neglected at home because we weren't churchgoers. And in fact, my mother and father had a flirtation with the Jewish synagogue. They met Rabbi Horace Wolf ^[34] and became very good friends with him and his wife. And he persuaded them to join the congregation and my mother said, "He drove me up to the front door and left me, and I -" He never would go to church except on one day which was a high holy day, the Day of Atonement. And the three of us were dropped into the Sunday School and I - we were all bored by the whole thing. And so - I don't know how long we stayed - my mother joined the choir and she sang in the choir and taught Sunday School.

(inaudible - both people speak at once)

HAB: What synagogue?

CHF: B'rith Kodesh.

HAB: That would be downtown?

CHF: It was downtown- where the Y is, across from the Central Y. ^[35]

HAB: Where Rabbi Bernstein eventually took over. ^[36]

CHF: He was the rabbi.

HAB: Have you seen the new -

CHF: No, oh yes.

HAB: On Elmwood Avenue? ^[37]

CHF: Yes, yes, I have.

HAB: What an addition to the community.

CHF: A very beautiful modern building.

HAB: Oh, magnificent.

CHF: But - we - none of us stayed very long. And I guess we just were not religious people. But when my parents were divorced my mother went back to the Unitarian church, and with her ladies, she had a marvelous time. She and Mrs. Danforth ^[38] were intimate friends.

HB: Oh, great.

CF: And I have in that file over there the most lovely correspondence. It was a real love affair between old Mrs. Danforth and my mother. My mother would say, "Oh dear, this is my birthday, I'm getting old." They had a women's alliance and they'd go down every Thursday to make bandages for Strong Memorial, then they'd all have lunch and talk, and so forth. And Mrs. Danforth of course was on the Women's Committee for Mt. Vernon--one of the Mt. Vernon ladies of the Ladies Association, ^[39] and she'd go every year and they'd open the whole house and air it and clean it and fix it and get it ready for the summer, and so forth, and see that everything was mended, all the old things were repaired and put in place. So when she did go away, they had a correspondence, and I have - there are just lovely cards and letters to my mother. She was almost like a second mother to her.

HAB: Isn't that beautiful. Could I ask you something?

CHF: Yes.

HAB: Just because I don't like to lose the thought, as you read through your material, if you don't have other plans for this material, won't you seriously consider leaving those letters to the University archives, because Mrs. Danforth played such a key role in admitting women to the University--she was so closely allied with Susan B. Anthony in raising that money, and they would be beside themselves to have that information.

CHF: Well, I'll think about it- think about it.

HAB: You may have other plans.

CHF: Well, I don't know.

HAB: Certainly that material ought to be somewhere where it's preserved and available for scholars.

CHF: Well, I'm doing the same thing. My brother's son John - we went to visit him at Thanksgiving and he gave me - what do you call it - dear, my mind is just so bad - scrapbook -

HAB: Oh, sure

CHF: that I don't know whether my parents kept it or whether my Uncle David gave it - kept it himself - of all the programs that he gave after he came home from his education in Europe. And I - my mother had given one that Mrs. John Adams Warner had given her, which she kept because she had financed his education in Europe to the Hochstein School - and now this one - I haven't parted with it yet but I think it ought to go to the School - to the Hochstein School.

HAB: Yes, their new facilities. It's real exciting because-

CHF: I asked Marjorie ^[40] and she said that when she gets back she'll send me the address of the School because they have moved from the old location.

HAB: Yes, I think they're in Second - First Pres or Central Pres - I guess it is, on Plymouth Avenue. ^[41] It just is serving absolutely the people who should be having that opportunity.

CHF: Good, good.

HAB: Well now -

CHF: I know we're off of the subject of education at the University of Rochester.

HAB: I don't care.

CHF: But now I -

HAB: It’s not important.

CHF: Anyway, to get back to the University. Because it was the Depression and my brother was going to Harvard, Joey and I had to go to school at Rochester. And I - I, you know - Oh, I came to terms with it but I wasn't terribly happy, and as I said, I thought it was second best. But I did get encouragement. You were saying - did the professors seem to prefer the boys and make the girls work harder and that sort of thing. I never was aware of that. And you know it was just around that time that the University - that the River Campus was opened - I forget -

HAB: 1932, I think. ^[42]

CHF: '32, yes. So we were allowed to go up to the River Campus if we couldn't fit in a course which would be given on the Prince Street Campus at some other time. And I think I took two courses--one was - who was the awfully nice Sociology professor? - oh, oh -

HAB: Pigors. ^[43]

CHF: Pigors. I had him and Dr. Perkins ^[44] had a seminar in the Library on American History, and I had that. We could use the Library and so forth up there, but it was pretty much, you know, the men were going to have that beautiful campus and the women were going to stay on the other campus.

HAB: Did you feel that the good faculty had been placed over on the River Campus and the soldiers were left to -

CHF: No, not really because I think for example, Perkins gave classes on the River Campus and classes on our campus. MacKenzie did. ^[45] Coates did. ^[46] May did. ^[47] And of those members of the History Department the ones who were most influential as far as I was concerned were Dr. Perkins, MacKenzie and Coates. I never had a good rapport with May. I guess he just rubbed me the wrong way and I never understood why everybody thinks he was so marvelous. I thought his jokes were poor. They were all the ones that Joe thinks were so marvelous, and so there you are. I thought it was dreadful one day in class - there were men in the class too - if they couldn't take it at the time given on the River, they would come to Prince Street - and he asked a question of someone of the young men. The young man got up and said something about - oh, it never would be this, that and the other, and May drew himself up to his full whatever it was, six feet-something, and he said, "Never, Mr. Smith is a word used only by the very young." And the poor boy's face got red all the way up to his hair. And I just thought it was cruel. But it's a thing that I've never forgotten. It was a - I suppose it was all right to say but it was - it was harsh.

HAB: A real lesson in human dynamics.

CHF: Yes. But I'm trying to think of -

HAB: Who else was in that department?

CHF: VanDeusen, ^[48] May, Coates and MacKenzie, only five. And when I came back to Rochester to write my doctoral thesis - I had done the research but I wanted to finish it as quickly as possible because I wasn't getting any younger. I was out of the University eight years and then went back to Radcliffe and finished and got a Ph. D. But just to go back a bit, when we were graduated from the University, there really wasn't much opportunity to do anything. There were no jobs available, and with just a B. A. and no training say in Education to be a teacher, which I didn't want to be, Coates, and I think actually it was Dexter who encouraged me to get a scholarship to Radcliffe, which I applied and he supported me, and of course the other members of the Department did too, and I did get a fellowship, and had a year at Radcliffe. And then, there again, I was, I think probably, emotionally rather young, although I was perhaps 22. You're not terribly mature at 22. But I did enjoy the year at Radcliffe and it was a good opportunity to be away from home and be on my own. But I took a sort of a - it was really rather irrational, I think - a dislike to these fuddy-duddy graduate students. I thought, "I don't want to be like that - these mousey creatures with no style or anything.” So I wasn’t at that point terribly interested - I don’t know whether I could have gone on but I wasn’t terribly interested in going on if that’s what it was going to be. Then - I’m acting now - this attitude. So what was there for me to do? I came back home and went to Miss McCarthy’s Secretarial School, ^[49] which was just across the street. And after I finished that, I started to look for a job, and there weren’t any. I got a job with Dr. Green, who was a radiologist in the Medical Arts building, ^[50] and Mrs. Meyers - Mrs. Meyers ran the Children’s Shop on Alexander Street - so for $5 I worked every morning from 9 to 12 for Mrs. Meyers, typing things and doing a little correspondence, and straightening out the books and sending out ads, and things like that. I was an atrocious typist but she put up with me. And then I worked - Dr. Green hired me to take shorthand and on each case he read the X-rays and I typed them up and mailed out the bills, and that kind of thing. I did that from 1 to 5 for $10 a week. So here I was an M. A. in History, getting $15 a week. Well, one morning - it was - I began that in September, on my birthday, 1936, the telephone rang and Dr. Perkins was at the other end and he said, “Cora, would you like to come and work with me?” And I said, “Well, I can’t think of anything I’d like better to do, but let me think about it.” He said, “Well, you think about it and you come and talk to me and I’ll tell you what’s involved.” And even that - was to work - the University paid him - paid for 4 hours a day for him to have a secretary, as head of the History Department, and he said he would pay me $20 - well, it was $50 the University paid a month, and Dexter paid me $25 a month for the extra 2 hours. So I got 75 hours - or dollars a month for six hours of work, which ought - I hasten to add, became 8 hours, but I wasn’t paid for 8 hours.

HAB: Big time spenders weren’t they?

CHF: Oh, yes. The only thing you could say was that it was a job and I was very fortunate, I thought at the time, to have it. But it was a diff - much different thing working for Dexter than it was to be a student of Dexter. And the second day I was there - now I’m doing this much against my better judgment - but you’ve said that everybody else is forthright and frank, so I might just as well be. I’m very fond of Dexter in spite of everything, although for many years he never forgave me for quitting.

HAB: He knew a good thing -

CHF: Well, no, he was hurt. But the second day, I think, anyway - the job involved being his secretary and also being an assistant in the History Department where you took a Saturday morning session where you gave the quiz, and then had a discussion with the students. And I think I was going to one of those, maybe my first. Anyway I saw Hugh MacKenzie on the stairs and he said, “Well, Cora, nice to see you back.” He said, “Don’t you let Dexter impose on you.” And I well - I took a double take, you know, I had no idea what he meant. And I thought, “What does he - what is all this about?” And I soon found out that Dexter was a very demanding man, a very selfish boss--would think nothing of - I had a car and he would think nothing of sending me back to his house for a handkerchief if he forgot one in the morning. Or at 4 o’clock when I was supposed to go home, driving up to the River Campus to bring him a book. Or in the afternoon traffic, you know even then they had traffic - and one day I was so mad - he told me on my way home to bring him a couple of books from the office, and I came up the steps at 316 Oxford Street, and he came to the door and he said, “What are you bringing? The books - oh yes, I forgot. We’re playing bridge.” He said, “Would you go up to Monroe Avenue and get me a pound of cashew nut brittle?” These are all silly things that I remember. While I was outraged that he was using me as a little errand girl, to do what a maid, sort of, would do, but the crowning thing was when he - he and Wilma ^[51] decided that I should pick up the boys at the Harley School ^[52] - after school. So every afternoon I’d go and pick them up with the May boys. And one afternoon - they were about 11 and 13 - and boys will be boys and they were. I was driving on Monroe Avenue bringing them back, and they began to fight in the car. And one of them jogged my elbow - I’d been telling them, “Now behave - behave.” And the wheel, you know, turned, and I went out into the other side of the road, and I turned. Fortunately nobody was there. I got back and I drew up - it was sort of up at Monroe and Highland. And I turned the keys to the car off and I did like this and I said, “Boys, if you say one more word, you’re going to get out right now and walk home.” And they did, you know thought “She really means business.” So I took them home and I went home to my mother and had hysterics. I was absolutely frightened to death. It could have been awful. Well, she was a fighter - my mother - and she got Perkins on the phone - I should have done my own fighting, you know, but here I was living home with Mother and she was going to protect her little girl. And she gave him hell. “If you’re using my car, my gasoline, for which you don’t pay, and you’re putting my daughter in this position where it’s dangerous, and I’m not going to have it.” She said - she said, “She has just told me that if it means losing her job, she’ll lose the job, but she’s not going to drive the children back from school any more. It wasn’t in the understanding in the first place, so there it is.” Well, he was upset, you know, and didn’t get his own way, but he took it. But this is being hard on him because he - he was a very generous man in some ways and very mean in others about money. For example, he would loan students money who were poor and wanted to go on. I know one, Reed Harding, ^[53] went to Harvard, but there were others, and some of them never paid him back, and others did. And - but what I mean was, he made me do his income tax when he should have had a well-qualified lawyer do it.

HAB: Complicated.

CHF: Complicated. They owned the rights to The Fanny Farmer Cook Book, and Mrs. Perkins got a big salary out of that, you know, on her own. ^[54] This was the way they divided up the - the funds. And the stocks and bonds, and all this sort of thing. And one year he said, “I want to get this in early.” So you drop everything and do the whole thing, and he went over it. But I wasn’t qualified--I had never done an income tax in my life. Is this silly to be talking like this?

HAB: No, this is very interesting.

CHF: And he came into the office stomping one day and said, “I’ve overpaid the New York State Income Tax $3,000.” He did have it checked. But he wanted to get that in. And I don’t know - I don’t think in those days you could get a tax refund. And he was absolutely furious that he’d paid the money. I had sort of, you know, said “You know, Dr. Perkins, I’m not an expert at taxes. I don’t know- ” Oh, it’s easy, it’s fun to fiddle with your own income tax but he didn’t fiddle with it, I did. Then I’m sure that eventually he was - when Marjorie became his secretary and it became a full time job, and she was paid much more as time went on, that - in other words, it was a much more important job than when I had it.

HAB: What’s the actual fact about Wilma Lord and Dexter Perkins? Now, was he an instructor at the University when she was a student?

CHF: Yes, yes.

HAB: And that was (inaudible) of the war.

CHF: And it was so cute. The last time we had dinner - Marjorie had us all at the Rochester Country Club ^[55] on Dexter’s membership because the Christophers ^[56] don’t belong - but Mrs. Perkins looked perfectly beautiful. She was about 76, I think, and she - her figure was lovely - and she sat there and said to me, “I can’t help it - I have to reminisce.” She said, “Do you know when I was-” I’ve forgotten - we must have been talking about the class - the famous class of 1918, as we call it. “They made such a fuss,” she said, “because we wanted to get married while I was still a student, and they wouldn’t hear of it. They said it wouldn’t be proper for a student at the University to marry.” So I gather she waited until graduation and then married, but I’m not sure.

HAB: No, no, I think they were married.

CHF: They were?

HAB: And then he went off to the War.

CHF: Oh, I see. Maybe that’s right.

HAB: The myth that I recall - they were married, they went to Boston on their honeymoon, and he rowed a boat in the pond where the swans swam - and she did not - was not allowed to graduate. Now maybe she had completed her course work but they would not give her a degree until years later when there was a new Board of Trustees. And I believe she was awarded her degree. ^[57]

CHF: She did say that they were very upset at the idea of an instructor and a - a - married girl -

HAB: Yes, it was almost unclean. (much laughter) Isn’t that rare when you think of it now?

CHF: But you think of that too and I mean, I don’t want to be mean to Dr. Perkins, but he wasn’t easy to work for.

HAB: Well, you know, it’s important to have the total dimension of this man because here was a professor revered by his students - you weren’t really educated unless you had had a course with Dr. Perkins and Dr. Slater, and this dynamic figure -

CHF: Dynamo of energy.

HAB: He could be human, you know, there had to be some frailties there, and -

CHF: Oh, I'll tell you a few more. Even when I was a student, we were ­ Wilma would invite us to dinner occasionally and then we'd have an evening - his history students - and after the - everything was moved- the dining room table -we'd start up the tiddley winks. And we'd have one team on one side, and unfortunately for me, I was on his team. No, I was opposite his team. So it came time for me to spar with him to get the tiddley winks into the little thing - can you imagine any young people now playing that? He would - He was such a big man and I was even smaller - I'm not as small as I was then but he would elbow me - just elbow me out of the way and get his tiddley wink in. He had to win. He was just over - overly competitive.

HAB: Isn't that interesting.

CHF: Let's see, what else have I written about him - aggressively competitive, very self-centered, and a personality that wanted to practically devour you, you know, you couldn't really have any interest or life of your own because you were - you belonged to him. And after two years of it, I couldn't stand it any longer. And also I had been at the University for four years and I didn't think my horizons were being widened very much. In fact, I just felt that I'd been there long enough. And so I did tell a fib - I went down to Kodak and had an interview, and I had to take a test, I guess, and I passed the test, and they offered me a job in the Library. And so I took it, and it - I think I got $5 a week more than I got from Dexter. And one of the - we worked in the house next to the office where the President was on Prince Street ^[58] -

HAB: Yes.

CHF: And upstairs in this house was the Sociology Department, and Dorothy Truesdale was the secretary. ^[59]

HAB: Oh, sure.

CHF: And she said to me one day - I met her on Main Street, and she said - I never would have known this otherwise, she said, "Do you know Dexter Perkins stopped me in the hall and he said to her” - this was pretty soon after I left - "Dorothy, why would Cora want to give up her job with me to go way down to Kodak to work?" And she said, "I thought you'd like to know."

HAB: Isn't that beautiful.

CHF: Well, that - he was just - and he didn't- oh, he would speak to me, but he was very upset for many years afterward. (inaudible - both speak at once)

HAB: Well, you upset his world of comfort and support -

CHF: Marjorie called me up when I had left Dexter and he was interviewing people to get somebody else and she said, "How would you feel if I took your job with Dexter?” And I said, "Marjorie, if you want to take it, of course go ahead." You know, she'd been getting her M. A. I think at the University, and of course she had no idea then that she would stay with him for twenty years. But let's see if I -

HAB: Well, you had too much of your mother's pioneering adventuresome -

CHF: I guess I had. Even my father when - after they were divorced and I - I - that was 1936 - and I went to work for Dexter, then in '38 I went to Kodak, and I worked there for two years. I wasn't terribly happy with that. And so Claire Emery - you remember Claire?

HAB: Yes, she ran a bookstore.

CHF: Claire was a good friend of mine and she went to- to Yale to study printing with Carl Rollins, ^[60] and she wrote to me and she said, "I’m going to - I have a job in New York and why don't you come down and get a job and we'll get an apartment together?" My mother said, “Cora, that's the best thing that - you should do that. Now do it.” It wasn't - instead of being a mother who was very depressed and sad and felt that she'd failed and so forth--instead of being a mother who said, "Oh, you can't do that--I need you. You have to be here with me," she was pushing me out. And it was about time I was pushed out.

HAB: Beautiful.

CHF: And so I did go to New York and I got a job in an advertising agency which was terrible, the J. Walter Thompson Company, but I learned a lot in what was a little over a year and a quarter, but I realized it wasn't for me. And I had an interview, was looking for other jobs. In this particular case they said, "Well, we can't tell you when you will - you may be - called for duty." And they wouldn't tell me what it was, and it was very mysterious, and I sort of forgot about it. And December 7, 1941, I was sitting in my apartment then - not with Claire but with two other girls, and the phone rang and they said, "This is the office - the Department of the Navy - will you report for duty immediately? If you have a job, we will let you go to your office tomorrow morning and explain why,” and - it was on a Sunday afternoon - we were listening to the Philharmonic - and I got on the subway - I was way up at Presbyterian - near the Presbyterian Hospital, 168th Street - and I went way down to 67 Broad Street, which was AT&T, and this was the office of Censorship. And you never saw such chaos in your 1ife. People were milling about and the men didn't know what they were doing and they finally decided, "My God, security-­anybody could come in here." So they sent us all back home and they said, "Report tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock, but you can go to your office first and tell them." And so that - I worked for the Office of Censorship during the War. And even there the work -we'd done all the cen - cable users - it was cable censorship - the Army did the letters - the mail. And we had really done all of the cable users who were using the wires in 19 - by the end of '43. And I was getting itchy feet because I didn't want to sit there and take the salary.

HAB: What kind of institutions used the cables?

CHF: Well, they were - they were mostly business--shipping -

HAB: Multi -

CHF: Multi- that kind of thing. And it was exciting and interesting in the first year and a half, and then - after all, we'd done most of the checking. And even then, they found a nest on Staten Island that was sending signals to submarines right under - we were practically there and nobody knew a thing about it. They did find them eventually but it just shows that - but -

HAB: How about that.

CHF: I was looking for something to do and I thought, "There's no purpose in all this. Look what I've done--I've worked for Dexter, I've worked for Kodak, I've worked for an advertising agency, and for the Office of Censorship. I've done my bit. The War isn't over but what on earth am I doing?" I went to a New Year's Eve party and I had been very ill with the flu. And they were the handwriting experts--she was a German married to a German psychiatrist, and she was reading the handwriting of all the guests just for fun, just to entertain them. And she said, "You've been very ill and you are wondering what you are going to do next." And she said a lot of things that - I said, "Yes, I have been ill and I am trying to look for something else to do." And a whole lot of things about - I won't bore you with-

HAB: I don't want to run out of the tape. This is so interesting.

CHF: No, but she said, ''I want you to talk to my husband, but not at the party." And so I went and talked to him, and he was awfully nice to me and said - what time is it?

HAB: Oh, we've got lots of time. I don't want to interrupt. I'm just trying to (inaudible). Well, I can be late for golfing.

CHF: But he - I did have an interview with him and he said, "What was it that you wanted to do when you were in college?" And I said, "Oh, I was sure I was going to be a college professor." And he looked at me and said, "Well, what made you change your mind?" And I said, “Well, I went to Radcliffe and I saw all those greasy grinds, and they didn't have any style, they weren't well dressed, they were poor, mousey looking, and I didn't want to be like that. So I turned against it.” And he sort of sat back and smiled at me and he said, "That was simply an emotional reaction." He said, "You weren't really thinking it through. You didn't have to be like them." And he said, "If I were you, I'd go back and get my Ph.D." And I thought, "Well, isn't that interesting, but it's impossible. I don't have any money. I can't do that, and so forth." Well, I wrote to Mrs. Cronkhite ^[61] who was then - she had been the Dean when I was there for my M. A. and I said - I didn't say that I wanted to go back to Radcliffe to get a Ph. D. but I said that I was looking around for something to do, and did she have any ideas or suggestions for somebody who had an M. A. in History. And she wrote back a lovely letter and she said, "What better thing could you do than come back to Radcliffe and get your Ph. D.?'' She said, "You've given - you've made a contribution to the War." But she said, "We have got to stop - to start - thinking about rebuilding after the War." And she said, "There's no better time than right now to begin." And I wrote back a very nice letter and thanked her, and said, "It would be very nice to come back but I don't have the money to do it." And so she wrote back again and she said, "It just so happens that there's a good job open. You can run three graduate houses--you get your board, room and tuition and $1000 a year."

HAB: How about that.

CHF: "And the University is on an accelerated schedule and if you're thinking you're too old” - I was 31 - “don't worry about that because you'll be able to use your M.A. - that's the first year's residence, you can accelerate, and get your course work done and then study for your Generals, and then do the thesis." Well, I did. And -

HAB: And this was in '3 -

CHF: This was in 1944.

HAB: '44, all right.

CHF: February, '44. And so I did - I did the course work and then I was searching around for a thesis, a subject, and I was in Modern European History with special reference to Britain and its Empire in the 19th century. But practically every subject under the sun had been done, and done to death--the 19th century had been combed. I think my adviser, David Owen, turned up one thing about - oh dear, what was it? - some religious subject in the 19th century - which didn't interest me at all. So I wrote again. I talked to the President of Radcliffe who was in the 17th century, Wilbur Jordan, and he said, "You know, Miss Hochstein, I've just come back from London where I was on duty during the War for several months," I guess, and said, "A lot of people in the Foreign Office asked me why it was that there were so few people in the academic world in the United States who were interested at all in Africa." And he said, "They advised me to look into this and try to direct students to that continent because it was going to play a very important part in the future. And that the United States ought to know something about it." Well, you know it seemed like an exotic kind of thing to think about. And I - I - I thought, "Maybe this is more exciting than some little tiny subject in the 19th century that nobody else wanted to do." And I wrote to several experts in England and two of them came up with the same thing, which was the development of African local government in Kenya, that is administration, British administration. So I applied for a fellowship from the AAUW and several other places, and the AAUW gave me a fellowship and I went to England and I did research there in the Colonial Office Library and the British Museum, at Oxford Rhodes House Library, and I wanted very much to get to Kenya. But I couldn't get any more money, so my mother said, "You can come home and I'll take care of you. You can use David's room and set a big desk in it, and we'll get this out of the way, because I have seen people who spent years doing their thesis because they had to work." And I felt - I never had terribly much energy and I thought if ever I had to give my energy to a full-time job, I'd never get the thesis done. So I did that, and by that time Marjorie was the secretary in the History Department - the History Department at Rochester had become - well, let's see, there was John Christopher, Dick Wade ^[62] and there was another man whose name I've forgotten, Harold somebody - he was awfully nice but he didn't get tenure. That was the first time I had ever thought about tenure because all of the members of the History Department had tenure when I was there, and there was no problem. But they were my recreation, the Diezes, ^[63] the Coateses, John Christopher, Ruth Adams, ^[64] it was then, and Marjorie was there and Dick Wade occasionally would join in, and we had a wonderful time. I guess Kay was Kay Koller then.

HAB: In those days.

CHF: And so I did get the degree and at the end of my stay in England, before I came home to sit down and write it, I was invited by the Colonial Office to go to the first Colonial Office Conference which was held at Cambridge. And I was the only other - I was the only American woman in addition to a woman, Miss Woodward her name was, who was a secretary in the American Embassy. And a man who became both Nick’s and my friend, Joseph Palmer, who was from the State Department. ^[65] And, oh, I - it was very exciting--it was all about everything that I had been studying. It was like having a seminar in British Colonial Administration and the plans for what they were going to do after the War. And I went back in the train with Joe Palmer and he said, “What are you going to do when you finish?” I said, “Well, I haven’t even written the thesis yet. I haven’t really thought about what I would do.” And he said, “Would you like to work in the State Department?” And I said, “Well, I suppose I would but you know, it’s- ” He said, “Well, keep in touch.” And so I went home and I wrote every morning at 9 o’clock till 5 o’clock in the afternoon, with time off for lunch, I did the writing. And - oh, the University was very helpful--they let me use the Library when I needed to. I (inaudible) you know, dates and references, and there was a marvelous woman in the Department of Education whose name I’ve forgotten, ^[66] who typed the thesis for me, because when I had gotten through with it, you know, you have to type it in perfect form, and so many copies - it was just too much. And some graduate students have had to do that too because they didn’t have the money. And so she had it typed - or did the typing - and then I had - I went and did the terrible Specials, flew to Boston.

HAB: Is this when you defend your dissertation? ^[67]

CHF: Yes. And also the field. You have to do the field too. That wasn’t so hard but it was - it was just ghastly worrying about it.

HAB: Sure. The apprehension over the unknown.

CHF: And - well, anyway - in the meantime, while I was doing this, I got a letter from the State Department, the woman who was in charge of the African public affairs, that is, the information program, and at the same time Makerere College had heard about me through the Colonial Office and offered me a job teaching in Uganda.

HAB: Oh.

CHF: So I was stuck. I had two offers - one to go to Makerere - if I’d gone to Makerere, I doubt if I would ever have met Nick. But then my life, of course, would have been very different. But I thought - well - it was a lot more money - I had no courses prepared and I would have had to teach American History - and altogether I thought this was a better job. And it was an exciting job. It didn’t - if I had stayed, it wouldn’t have been because the McCarthy period came in and they were throwing books out of the Library, and you couldn’t open your mouth, and couldn’t do this and that. I doubt if I could have stayed in the Department under those conditions. But fortunately Mr. Feld ^[68] proposed two days after I met him and -

HAB: That was a whirlwind -

CHF: And I said, “Oh no, this is too sudden.”

HAB: You were in the State Department -

CHF: They sent me to East Africa where I - I'd written my thesis on a part of Kenya's history - and as the first public affairs officer, which ran - we ran a news - a small newspaper, a radio program - we had a small library of American books - there was a film program - and what was the fifth thing? These are all rudimentary things--beginning. But the exciting thing was that I began it. You see, I built up a staff and files and the only thing that they had when I came there was they loaned a certain number of films to schools and little training programs about health and so forth. And they had a 2-page newspaper about American news and items. And I really did have - it was the best job I ever had and the most exciting. Now to get back about - you said that my family - my mother was remarkable because she had - she was adventuresome enough to have married my father and that sort of thing. Well, my father's attitude when he heard that I was going to Africa was, "What does Cora want to go to Africa for?"

HAB: So - ok.

(inaudible - both speak at once) “we’re being invaded.” Other people are entering the room, possibly their spouses.

CHF: They want lunch.

HAB: Well, we have maybe twenty more minutes. They'll join us.

CHF: But what about your date?

HAB: I asked Gene if there were starting times or if there was any crucial time element, and he said No, it was very casual. So if we're a few minutes late it won't make any difference.

CHF: Oh, all right. What I'm thinking-

HAB: The thing that's so exciting and that I wanted to be sure we catch this, is that you were sent there and this was virgin territory as far as creating the position and using your imagination as to how you were going to interpret this - this is what I wanted to be sure, I get.

CHF: Yes. You mean about the job?

HAB: Yes. Your radio program, your newspaper -

CHF: Oh yes. But there were - of course it was to - to - the idea of an information program was just - pretty similar to what the British Council was doing - the c-o-u-n-c-i-1 then in their territories about British culture and life and attitudes and their view of the world and history, and so forth. That's rather high-falutin' but the films were to show - they were mostly documentaries about how, for example, they sent me a film on local government in Westchester County. Well, it was ridiculous - it was the most affluent county -

HAB: Sophisticated.

CHF: Probably in the world. And it had no relevance, even the government of Kenya, which was a colonial government wasn’t anywhere near as sophisticated as Westchester County. So that we just withdrew the film and said it would be inappropriate for this area, and either sent it back or put in the file for maybe some future use.

HAB: Now you were sent over there to develop this program. How many did you finally have on your staff, do you remember?

CHF: Well, I only had five people when I was - Now it has a building of its own in Nairobi, with a big library. The library I had was just in the hall of the (inaudible) and in the reception room of the Consulate General, a room about this size with some book shelves, and then book shelves up and down the hall. And now, you know, it’s got a reading room and a - and a - they have lectures, and, you know, it’s sort of like the cultural center. Much bigger - I don’t know how many people are on the staff. These were all locals.

HAB: Cora, when you went there, was there much of a cultural shock?

CHF: Well, of course, after all the climate, the area to look at - I mean I had to live in the most God-awful hotel, run by Indians, the Queens Hotel in Nairobi - a room without a bath--the bath was down the hall - terrible food in the dining room. This was right after the War, 1948. I mean it was three years after the War but still they had a rule in Nairobi that it was so overcrowded that you couldn’t stay in a hotel room for more than a week, and they gave me special dispensation because I was working in the Consulate--I wasn’t a tourist. And I lived in that hotel for a year and then a clerk in the Consulate General came out from Tangiers, and she and I shared a house for three months. But by that time I knew I was going to be married and so -

HAB: How did you meet Nick?

CHF: Well Nick was - he served in India during the War in Madras. And he was sent on direct transfer in 1945 to South Africa, to Pretoria. Then he was given home - no, then he was given his home leave and he went back to South Africa for - until 1948, when they said would he go up to Dar es Salaam and open a post - they didn’t have a post. And so he was the first American Consul. They sent one other man who couldn’t stand it and left before he did anything. And so Nick found a building to open an office and got all the equipment sent out. He hired people and he set up an American Consulate. Well, then they gave him home leave, his second since the War, and he went home in 1948, just about as I was arriving in Nairobi. And he - well, a little after that, but he came back to East Africa from home leave in April of 1948. And he came - he was flying from Johannesburg to Nairobi, and then he’d fly from Nairobi to Dar es Salaam. And he stayed at the Consul General’s house over night. And I didn’t have - since I lived in a hotel, I couldn’t entertain in my own quarters, so the Consul General let me have his house for a party - a dinner - a dinner party and then I was going to show some films afterwards. Well, Nick was at that party, being a guest of the Consul General. And I had gone over to the house to look after the arrangements for the - the - the motion picture projector, and so, of course, after it all - it was my dinner party and I had to look after the menu and that kind of thing. But the wife of the Consul General was very helpful. And so I met him that night. And then - but it was brief - and I thought he was a very nice looking chap, but I was busy. And he had to come up to Nairobi to go to a - visit a diamond mine with the Minerals Attaché from the Belgian Congo a couple of months later, and Mr. Taylor, the Consul General, asked me to go out to the airport to meet him with the car, because I was right in Nairobi, and most of the other people lived in the suburbs. So I went out and met him and we talked a little bit more but - so we had met. But I went down to Mombassa and Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam on a trip to see what our office could do for these outlying areas. And that was when I really met Nick, and we talked and then he had me for lunch and dinner so - in his apartment because I was staying at a funny little hotel in Dar es Salaam. And as I say, the second night after I was there, he asked me to marry him. I was an old maid by that time.

HAB: Oh no.

CHF: I was 35 when he proposed. And - but my -

HAB: You were so far ahead of your time all the way along. Now, kids today don’t get married as soon as they get out of college - they want to try all kinds of things -

CHF: Oh, but you know, it was the pressure to get married in those days. But one of the sad things I think about it was that it was pressure to get married and a good many of my classmates did get married. But - and they were good friends of mine - as soon as they got married they dropped me, because I was an odd-man-out, and I felt it very keenly. And I was unhappy at home, and then, with my parents’ upset, and my older brother who was the brilliant one, drank too much, and that was very upsetting. And I think my mother thought, you know, when Claire said, “Why don’t you come to New York?” she thought, “This is really what you need.” I’ve often wondered - because at that time I was the - I wanted to get out of Kodak and Lee DuBridge ^[69] was looking for a secretary, and I had an interview with Lee DuBridge, and I’m sure that I probably could have had the job, and I might have worked on the Manhattan Project. But life is strange.

HAB: There are so many forks in the road.

CHF: I didn’t want to stay at the fuddy-duddy old University any more. I - I had a thing about the University of Rochester which has stayed with me all my life, and I know it’s irrational because it’s a good University.

HAB: Even today, do you have that -

CHF: Even today. I think the Board of Trustees and the people who run it are terribly conservative, and I’m very un - not the - and I told Marjorie, I said, “I’m so astonished that they have Eugene Genovese.” ^[70] And - because, you know, it isn’t what I think of at the University.

End of first tape.

HAB: OK, now this is Friday morning, and we’re again at the lovely home of Cora Hochstein Feld, continuing our discussion about her reminiscences of the University of Rochester, and her professional life in the State Department. Cora, you were at a magnificent - Oh, this is Friday morning. That would make it what date, the 23^rd?

CHF: This is the 24th.

HAB: This would continue on, I thought, about your appraisal of the University, your impressions of the University.

CHF: Well, I’ll do that first.

HAB: The scholarship, the way it prepared you -

CHF: I thought we would go on with my - the career - marriage.

HAB: All right, let’s do that.

CHF: Then I’ll give you the appraisal at the end.

HAB: OK, let’s roll.

CHF: We stopped, I believe, at my marriage. And I must correct that I was married at the age of 37, not 35. And I went to Dar es Salaam with my husband and we only remained there for three months, but I was still on duty and had to go back to Nairobi to introduce my successor and then, the two of us in February of 1950, went to the first Consular Conference of all the posts of the State Department in Africa, at Lourenzo Marques in Mozambique. But now it has another name, I can’t remember what it is. ^[71] And we flew to South Africa first. And this was just at the time that the Malan government ^[72] came to power, and my husband who had served there from ’44 to ’48, could sense immediately the change in the atmosphere, and I also, was only in Johannesburg a few days. But we took the train on to Mozambique to this conference. I was one of two women. The other woman was Margaret Tibbitts who was stationed in London and was the officer who looked after the colonial areas of the British from London. And - I guess that’s all I need to say here about that. But Nick was transferred in May - April - to Geneva and - where he was deputy to the Consul General, and Evelyn was born in Geneva, our daughter - in May of 1951. And we were transferred to Washington soon thereafter. Actually, she was only 7 weeks old when we brought her home. And I spent the summer in Rochester with my mother and that little tiny child while Nick went on to the State Department, with just a little leave, where he was to become the Director for, if you please, West Central and East African affairs, from 1951 to 1954. That whole huge area. There were only in the department then the Director, and his deputy, and then there were three officers: one for South Africa, one for West Central and East, which was Nick, and one for North. That was - the whole continent - was in - that’s how unimportant the place was considered then, because, of course, most of it was colonial--I think only Liberia and Egypt were - were independent countries - and South Africa. Well, during that period, from 1951 to ’54, I myself went back to work in the Department was what they called a foreign affairs officer, and I was dealing with North Africa, that is Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and - I think those three - not Egypt. And I only stayed for about a year and a half because when the election came, Dean Acheson went out, Dulles came in, and there was a big reorganization and retrenchment. And of course the first - I mean the people who had been hired last were - were what they called risks - a reduction in force. And I was one of those people. So I had just a brief period, that is, a year and a half when Evy was a baby.

HAB: But your seniority from before didn’t count?

CHF: Not really. And I forgot to say that when I was married, of course, I had to resign in those days, because a wife could no longer work in the Department, which is not the case today, when if two people get married, and one is already an officer in the foreign service, they now try to find a post where both of them can be used at the same time. It is very difficult but they do try to do this, which is all a part of women’s lib and so forth. Well, from – in 1954, Nick was transferred out of the Bureau of African Affairs to Singapore. And there he was deputy to the Consul General. In Singapore the office - a Consulate General is normally not the overseeing office if there is - in a large country, say in - well, an important country like England - you have an Embassy and then you have consulates or a consulate general, which is a step higher than a consulate, and there are several offices in that country. Well, Singapore was the headquarters of the Far East Command for the British, and also for their administration of all the area, Southeast Asia. It was a very important post, and even our office had about 60 people. So you can see that it was not just a little consulate like the one he had been in in Dar es Salaam, where I believe, he had himself, and one officer underneath him, with a secretary – who was an American - and several local employees. But that was a very small post, and just the beginning. This was tremendously interesting to have another experience in a British territory. He had been in South Africa which had long ties with Britain, and then in East Africa which was a trust territory but run by the British, and then - now Singapore - important - very important in Southeast Asia. Then the first stirrings of our connection with Vietnam - we didn’t realize how important it was going to be then but our involvement in Vietnam began - well, in 1950 really, a little with aid to the French, and then when the French moved out, after Dien Bien Phu - the only reason I mention it is you will see later I came back to the Department in the ‘60s and worked on Vietnam. And after Singapore, we were transferred again to Washington where Nick was an officer in the Department of Dependent - Office of Dependent Area Affairs, and he served on the delegation to the United Nations for three years. And I stayed in Washington to see to Evelyn’s education and - although she was just a small child then, and also went back to work from 1958 to ’60, as what they call an Intelligence Research Specialist. And I was asked to do a sociological study of South Africa, which took the almost two years plus that I was there, which was fascinating to me. And I worked really on my own, and since Nick had worked in South Africa, that also was a plus, because I could consult with him.

HAB: It’s a big, wide spectrum - the sociological -

CHF: It was everything. Well, the - well, you see, there was a British element, and the Afrikaaner element, and the clash between the two in the Boer War, and then the development toward independence of the Republic of South Africa, and then finally the apartheid - putting into law what had been custom up to that time but not to such a dreadful degree. I mean, there certainly was separation of the races but this was - became - after 1948 - a very harsh and repressive system. From 19 - I worked there from 1958 to 1960, when we were transferred - then my husband - he worked on the Trusteeship Council from ’57 to ’59 and then was honored by being selected to attend the Senior Seminar in Foreign Policy which was - was set up to expose senior officers to a broad spectrum of study of their own country, so that when they went abroad they would know more thoroughly - the economic, the political, and social strands in our society - and therefore could represent our country better and be better equipped to represent our country abroad. Well, after the year there, and incidentally, Dexter Perkins was one of the people who was invited to lecture at the Senior Seminar.

HAB: Is that right?

CHF: And of course we saw him, he came to see Evelyn. And always when the Perkinses came to Washington, which was several times when we were there, he would ask - they would ask us to dinner, once with Alice McDiarmid - Do you remember Alice Morrissey? She was one of his secretaries. ^[73]

HAB: Is that right?

CHF: And her husband worked at the World Bank. But we - we had some very enjoyable times then. Well, after he finished at the Senior Seminar, he was asked to go to Budapest as the deputy chief of mission. And of course in those days - that was four years after the Revolution of 1956 and our relations with the Communists who were in power in Budapest were at a very low ebb. So it was an interesting but difficult assignment. But I - the Minister - it was a legation then that was raised to an embassy several years later when our relations became better. The Minister was a divorced man so he didn’t have a hostess, and I was his hostess and therefore it was my responsibility to look after, not only the morale of the Americans who were serving in Hungary, but also the staff who worked under very difficult conditions because they had to report on us as much as they could. And also we had the Cardinal ^[74] in the legation and I used to visit him once a week.

HAB: Is that right?

CHF: And learned all about his torture when he was arrested in 1949 when the Communists came in, his imprisonment until the Revolution of 1956 when he was freed, but took refuge in the legation because it was overturned pretty quickly by the Russians who sent troops in. And he was - it was a most interesting experience because very few people were allowed to see him since he had taken refuge in the legation. They had to set up a - a kitchen in the basement of the building so that he’d get his meals, and then they had a little restaurant for the staff as a consequence. And the officers rotated in taking him out into a very small courtyard to walk him around. He could be looked at from other buildings and surveillance - so that he could have been - if they wanted to take a pot shot at him, I’m sure they could, but they didn’t. But that was a most interesting experience - I can’t take any more time.

HAB: But it’s fascinating. How long was he -

CHF: Well, from ’56 until - I’ve forgotten whether it was 1973 that he lived there - and it made it very awkward. Nick - in the summer of 1962 - 1961 - went over to Bucharest to be the chargé while the chargé there - they also didn’t have an ambassador because our relations - weren’t as friendly as they became later - and the chargé went on leave and so they asked Nick to go over and take charge of the office. And the atmosphere in that legation was so much different from the one in Budapest because we didn’t have a Cardinal. There were three doors to the building - it was on a plaza in Budapest, right in the center of the city, and at each entrance there was a policeman and two plainclothes men, so that anybody who came into the legation was taken note of, whether he was a Hungarian or an American. And there were cars at every door with the motor running. I think it was absolute stupidity on their part but they were afraid that he might be smuggled out or try to get out when they weren’t - would have immediately arrested him. So it was not a very pleasant thing to go in and out. The policemen were always polite and said good morning, but the plainclothesmen were very - they looked like thugs - very - it was very uncomfortable. And we knew that our houses were bugged so that we had to be very careful about what we said and the only place that was - we thought we were free to speak was out in the garden and way away from any devices that might pick up our voices.

HAB: But how did you communicate with the Cardinal?

CHF: Well, the Cardinal had spent his time from 1956, when he came into the legation for refuge until we came - we arrived in 1960, trying to learn - to teach himself English. It was the most marvelous way of speaking, terribly difficult, but we got so that we could understand what he said. And of course, as he spoke with Americans every day, he did learn. But he taught himself English. And some of the funny things were - he called the Turks Turkeys-- the Turkeys, he would say. And for a man of the Church, he had a violent hatred of the Turks because of their history - for 150 years Hungary was under the Turks - and on, he just detested them. Well -

HAB: How large were his quarters?

CHF: Well, he was given a - on the third floor - this had been a bank and it was transformed into an embassy. And on the first floor there was the entrance, on the second floor there was a Vice-Consul’s - who interviewed the public, on the third floor there was the ambassador’s office, which the Cardinal had. And then off that was - there was a bedroom for the Cardinal and a small little pantry with a refrigerator – where he could keep - oh, little snacks or a bottle of wine or what not, and, of course, a bathroom. And then they - the chargé, because we didn’t have our Minister - it was a legation so it would have been a Minister - simply because our relations were so poor, we didn’t give them the satisfaction of the gradation of rank. And so the Minister, or chargé, had the next room, with a secretary, and Nick’s office was down the hall. The third floor was very, very closely guarded--the door was locked. The people who brought up the Cardinal’s meals would ring the bell, and the - one of the officers would open the door and take the tray, and then would lock it immediately. And one American officer was on duty in the legation at night and slept there. And - what shall I say, what else - and one - and an officer took him down into the courtyard twice a day for a little fresh air and exercise, if you could call it fresh air in the middle of the city. And - now what else was I going to say about Budapest? There was also the problem of schooling for our daughter.

HAB: This is one question - talk about the schooling. How did -

CHF: Oh, it was - of course – she, as I said, she was born in Geneva. We immediately brought her home so she had - her first three years were in the United States really. Then we went to Singapore and she was three years old, and she - we found a nursery school for her for a little bit and then she went to a very nice British-run school that I think had two or three grades. And she, of course, was in the kindergarten, but she had a lovely time there and enjoyed it - just mornings. And then we came home and she went first to another preparatory school, that is pre-kindergarten, because she wasn’t quite old enough to go do the first grade. But - we lived in Arlington, Virginia, then, and then we moved from Arlington to Chevy Chase and she was in that school so that - she was five years old when we went to Singapore - is that right? - No, in Singapore she was 3 to 5 - let’s see - that was ’54 to ’56, ’56 to ’60 she was home in Arlington, Virginia and in Chevy Chase, then oh, then to Budapest - she was 9 to 11 then. Then the only school available in Budapest was at the British legation, run by them, and it was not very good. So the International School - American International School in Vienna - had been set up for 2 or 3 years and they had not been prepared to take children from other places before this year, 1961, but they decided to take all the children from the Iron Curtain countries, and there were 15 in all. There were Evelyn, and let’s see - 2 other American children, that’s three, and the daughter of the Turkish Consul, went to the American School. She was about 14 years old. I think there were four children from Budapest. And that was very difficult because Evelyn was 10 years old, and to have to go away to school at 10 was -

HAB: It’s quite a wrench.

CHF: It was a wrench - and she did extremely well considering. I went to see her about every two months, much against the wishes of the - well, of the administration of the school - didn’t - they thought it was a disruptive sort of thing. But since she was living - they had no dormitory so they found a school called a German “schulerheim”, ^[75] which had been set up for children who were - that is, Austrian children whose parents either worked and couldn’t look after them during the week, or a broken home. And the food was terrible and they were - they were homesick, poor kids. And they - the problem was that the school was established to take the children, the Austrian children, 5 days a week, and they would go home to their parents for the weekend. So the Americans were left in the school all alone, with the director, for the weekend. And I felt that I had to go and take her out to dinner and give her a little support. And of course we took her little friends too, from Budapest. And other parents went but I did it about every two months. And so I think that while it was a traumatic experience for her, it was a better education than what she would have gotten in Budapest. And all in all, it - I think as she looks back on it, it wasn’t so bad as she thought at the time. But it is young--the British do it but we didn’t (Inaudible- both speak at once)

HAB: But how did you take care of medical problems with small children?

CHF: Well, we had a Hungarian doctor and there was a - let’s see, how did we - a nurse on duty in the legation for aches and pains. But we had a Hungarian doctor. He turned out to be not too good but for everyday things, he was all right. Then we somehow managed. I can’t - I’m not going to go into the medical problems because poor Nick broke his hip in a skiing accident in Switzerland, and that was very - that was very difficult. I had to take Evelyn back to Budapest for Christmas, because Christmas was a very important occasion in the legation for the Hungarian staff. There were 45 people on the staff in the legation – that is Hungarians and we had to go to Germany to buy presents for all of them. And I - since the consul - the chargé - didn’t have any wife, I was the hostess, and I had to go back. I left Nick in - oh dear, isn’t that awful, I can’t remember - it’s a famous place - but it’ll come to me. I left him in Switzerland, San Moritz (inaudible). And then I went back in January and brought him home when he was ready to travel on crutches. It was terrible. We - we tried to make connections back to Budapest but the Hungarian plane didn’t come, so - that day - we never knew why, it always came on Thursdays - to - oh dear, what was it? - Well, my mind - it doesn’t matter - but it didn’t arrive. And so we arranged to - since it was so difficult for him on crutches to get around, we arranged to take a plane to Czechoslovakia and spend - they said that - that we would spend the night at a hotel in the airport. When we got to - what was that place, the capital of Czechoslovakia ^[76] - damn it, I wonder why I can’t - it’ll come but it’s awful. Well, it should be engraved on my memory. But anyway, there wasn’t a hotel at the airport, and we had to get on a bus and go into town.

HAB: Oh, horrors! What a painful experience!

CHF: It was agony trying to get him up the steps of the bus and then - the hotel was - had a huge staircase but fortunately the porters did give him a - help - and they took up our passports at the desk because we were in transit - and I said to them in English, “He can’t move - he’s not going to go and spy and do anything.” I didn’t want to give up my passport but we did, had to. We spend the night anyway, but we did get back to Budapest, but it was a terrible experience.

HAB: I can believe it.

CHF: And, well anyway, he mended, and as you see, he’s walking around with - the way they set his - the bone was absolutely marvelous in Switzerland. Just lucky.

HAB: Beautiful!

CHF: Well, now where was I?

HAB: You were back in Budapest.

CHF: Oh, it was about Evelyn’s education was what we were talking about. From Budapest, then have I gone back to Washington?

HAB: No.

CHF: We - we - the tour of duty in Budapest was two years and we came back to Washington in 1962. And there Evelyn was very fortunate because we stayed in Washington until Nick retired. He could have gone out again to a post in 1965 and opted to stay because he felt that her education was very important at that point--high school, you know - what would happen to her in college. And so we remained in Washington from ’62 to 19 - and he - until 1969 when he retired from the Department. He first was in the office of personnel when he returned and was in charge of the junior officer-training program, which was very - he said, more rigorous than anything that he had had when he entered the service in 1939. And then he - after two years he was in the office of Regional Affairs for Africa in the Department. And then was Director for West African Affairs briefly, and then his final job was Director of the Office of East African Affairs, that is, Tanganyika, Kenya and Uganda. And he made several trips back to Africa during his time there, on which I didn’t accompany him. And that time I - my third job in the Department was what they called a diplomatic historian in the Office of the Historian. When I was there involved after working for two years in their library, I was transferred over to the research area and began the study of our involvement in Vietnam from 1950 to 1965.

HAB: Is that right.

CHF: And that, of course, was the most interesting assignment I had. And I also did on the side those - see those volumes over there - American Foreign Policy: Current Documents. ^[77] And it was begun with basic documents from 1950 to ’55 and then each year thereafter it was called Current Docs, and I - I have a chapter in each of the volumes from ’62 to ’67, when unfortunately it was discontinued. But I did the chapter - Chapter 8 - on Africa which is supposed to be - to summarize the relations of the United States with the African continent - the important documents of American Foreign Policy. And that was an interesting and a good change from writing on the history of Viet - of our relations with Vietnam, which of course was a very dreary chapter, but intensely interesting as an assignment. And in the meantime Nick retired in 1969 and in about two months he was asked to go to West Africa to serve as the American advisor to the so-called Entente Fund, which was a development fund for five countries in West Africa, with headquarters in Abidjan in the Ivory Coast. Well, I hadn’t finished my study on Vietnam, so I stayed home for a year from ’69 to ’70 to finish it. And we had also started to build this house and somebody had to stay home so - to see it through. And I came up here twice, I think, to see to things and Evelyn in that time. She entered college in 1969 - she went to Boston University - it was at a time when it was terribly difficult to get in anywhere. The population explosion, I suppose, accounted for some of it, and she wasn’t a straight A student. So for some reason or other, she decided that she wanted to go to Boston University. She soon changed her mind. She stayed there for two years and then transferred to Sarah Lawrence which was much more suitable to - where she had very small classes, practically tutoring- you know, all the way - it was a - just exactly the kind of college experience that I think she really thrived on. And so we all went to Africa in 1970, after the house was finished, and she went for the summer, and then we came back - and actually it was she, on her own, who transferred to Sarah Lawrence. She didn’t even tell us that she was doing it until after it was (inaudible). Well, of course, she’d said that that’s what she wanted to do, but she - we said, “Of course - all right - go ahead.” And I, as I said, I left the Department after finishing the study on Vietnam. And then Nick could have stayed on with the Entente Fund but he had - he found that he had high, very high, blood pressure. And the climate was not very good for him because it was extremely hot and enervating. So he decided that he would give it up and come home. We came home and put this house in order, and he then was asked to teach at the Cape Cod Community College for three years he did that. And then they fell on evil days--the budget was cut in Massachusetts and since he wasn’t teaching full time, he was one of the first to be eliminated. And so since that time we’ve done our own studying, and I joined the League of Women Voters and worked with the American Association of University Women, the Radcliffe Club - we’re not terribly active in Common Cause but we belong to it and when they call for an alert, we write our Congressmen and so forth. And we also, for the past three years, have been members of Amnesty International, which has a - I guess there are two - what would you call them, entities, here on the Cape, one in Wellfleet and one in Orleans. And that has been a very interesting group to belong to. Now, to - that gives you an idea of what we did in our careers in the State Department, and I think I should go back now and do what you asked me to do in the first place, to summarize what the importance - what was it you asked - the quality of education and the importance of my four years at the University and the impact it had on the rest of my life. Was that the sort of thing -

HAB: Yes. I’m interested to know whether you felt it was a good foundation, a good under girding for what you had to cope with in your professional life.

CHF: Well, what I - I was thinking about it and, as you know, I think I said in the beginning that I felt cheated because I couldn’t go away to school, but - and I do believe - as we said at lunch yesterday - with your husband - that having to stay home and go to school was quite a different experience from having to break your family ties, that is, and live away from home for four years. And from that point of view, I think - I think that was why I was rebelling against staying home because I felt this was more of a thing. But as far as the University was concerned, I think I had an excellent education. I was a good student and I was motivated to excel. As I look back I think I was pretty much a loner. But I also - I think it was a sort of an am - not ambivalent - but I was torn. I was interested in participating to a degree in outside activities, but I wasn’t a big girl on Campus, you know, that sort of thing. I was - I was president, I think, of the International Relations Club one year. I was in Kaleidoscope, in the chorus one year, and I belonged to Theta Eta, which was a sorority. And of course now I could kick myself because I don’t - what happened was I was just one of the herd--I thought that that was an important thing to do, and I would belong to what was then Theta Eta. But I remember a girl who was a Senior when I was a Freshman who was - she was president of the student body - her name was Helen Rogers. ^[78] She elected not to belong to a sorority and I admired her no end for turning it down. But I was weak enough to think that it - that that was what I wanted to do. As I look back on it, I think it was a wrong decision, but I did. Because after I joined the sorority I found that all they did - the whole point of the thing was to rush new members. They really didn’t do anything but have a dance and entertain themselves and gossip at meetings. And I had, I think, sense enough to see that it was rather shallow, but at the same time, I was glad to belong to it. And people have said to me that they thought I was - I was terribly hard on myself in my judgments of myself. But I don’t know - to myself as I look back on it, I was a conformist; I was rather inflexible; I was very serious; and conventional. I was torn between my intellect and my emotions, and a perfectionist. But I don't believe that my professors had to encourage me to excel--I wanted to. But they did - well, they did encourage me, I think, certainly from the time I was a Junior on, to think beyond the end of college. And I think Dexter himself was very influential in that he tried to get me interested in going to graduate school. And - you asked me one question, I think, in the beginning - did I think that the professors gave more - give more of their attention to the boys rather than the girls, and did they demand more of the girls than they did of the boys? Well, I never felt that. And I thought that - certainly that - I may be repeating myself - but I did believe that the members of the History Department, at any rate, encouraged the girls to excel and to go on to graduate school, those whom they thought were qualified to do so. And they did - Dexter did aid me in getting a fellowship to Radcliffe. And I did go, as I say, for that year to get a master's degree. And therefore I believe that the education I got at the University of Rochester was good enough to prepare me for a graduate school as good as Radcliffe is. And they wouldn't have awarded me the fellowship if I hadn't been - or they hadn't thought that it was a good training. I got another fellowship to go on with a Ph.D. later on, and that was the Alice Mary Longfellow Traveling Fellowship, and then an AAUW fellowship to go to England to finish the research. And what - as far as the professors go, I had Professors Fay, Langer, Brinton and Schlesinger ^[79] in my first year at Radcliffe. And then after 8 years work, I went back to Radcliffe and got the Ph.D. And there I had Fay again, Merriman, Owen and Professor Ferguson. ^[80] But the professors who influenced me at the University: Coates, MacKenzie, Perkins in the History Department, Dr. Eiserhardt ^[81] for the History of Art, and Slater of course for English, and I would say Royce in Music. ^[82] And obviously the influence of the University must have been an important one because I checked my friendships with Coates and his wife, particularly those two; and then Marjorie Gilles was my friend from high school, and she followed me as secretary to Dexter in the History Department. And when I came home to write my thesis at home, as I said yesterday, it was my connection really with Marjorie and the Coates that kept up my relationship with the people in the University--through her and the Coates - of course John Christopher, Kay Koller and Bill Diez. Then later I became friends again with Wilma and Dexter--all was forgiven, I could come home. And I think Coates, of all the professors I had, was the best, and the greatest influence. He had the best mind, I think, and was the most thoughtful, but not the most flamboyant. He was a low-key man who I - anyway, in my opinion, I think he exerted the greatest influence. But I do have to say that Dexter, being the head of the history Department, also was an influence. But his field was not my field and therefore I didn't take - I only took, I believe, just the seminar in American History. And the only other thing that I have to say about the University was - you asked me - I said I'd tell you a little story about Dexter's opinion of the wives of the members of his - of course, you must remember that the staff then - there were only five in the History Department, Dexter being one of them, the head. So there were Van Deusen, Coates, May and MacKenzie. Well, of the wives - one day Dexter was sitting at his desk at Oxford - on Prince. Street, looking out the window and curling his little - he had a little tuft of hair in the front and he would sit there when he was thinking and curl this little piece and look out the window - and he was in a sort of talkative mood and I guess he had finished dictating letters and something - and I don't know how we got on the subject but he - I gather - as I remember - they would go to Harvard for - that is, Harvard, Massachusetts, where they had a home - for the summer, and I think during - over the years he invited all the members of the staff for a month or a couple of weeks, just over­ night or a weekend, or so forth - and he got to know all of his staff pretty well. It was a pretty closed corporation until I suppose in the mid-forties, when I came back, of course, to stay home and write the thesis, he - that the Department of History had been enlarged to include John Christopher, Dick Wade, and I can't remember the name of the other man who didn't get tenure and had to go on - but it had become bigger - and of course now, I don't know how many members there are. But this was a pretty closed little circle in those days. Of Janet (?) May ^[83] he said she was a good wife and mother - sort of pensively looking out the window - but terribly boring. And Ruth Van Deusen was very sweet and helpful, and he really enjoyed - I think he had a special relationship with the Van Deusens - I think he was very fond of Glyn. And with the MacKenzies, he thought, I think, I can't remember Mrs. MacKenzie's name -was it Ruth?

HAB: I think so.

CHF: He thought she was very intelligent but rather cold. And I'm not sure - you know, I don't want to say anything - I can't remember anything more than that. But of all the wives - and I was most astonished at this because I think - by then I - when I worked for Dexter I was about 24 and really not dry behind the ears yet - and I didn’t know Hilda as well a I did know her later on when I - after I was married and came home on leave to visit my mother, I would always see these people at the University - but he - he talked - he said of Hilda, "You know," he said, "She is the most charming and the wittiest, the most intelligent of the whole lot."

HAB: Isn't that lovely.

CHF: "And the most attractive." And years later I was sitting on the old porch outside their house in Rochester ^[84] and we were having a drink, Nick and I and Hilda and Willson, and I said to her, "I've known this for so many years," and I said, "It's time, I think, that I told you what Dexter said to me." This was many years later, you see, that I was talking about this - I can't remember how many years but a long, long time after I worked for him- from 1936 to '38 - and I said, "I don't think it would do any harm to - to disclose what he said about the wives of his very small staff in those days." And when I told her what he said, she nearly fell off the chair because she had thought that Dexter didn't like her and - and that he liked all of the other women better than he did her. And it was fun to see the response. ^[85]

HAB: Interesting (inaudible).

CHF: Well, Marjorie told me that - once - that Hilda had this terrible inferiority complex about herself, that she wasn't attractive and that – because of course if you analyze what she looked like, she wasn't - her - I wouldn't say she was very beautiful at all. But it was the personality and the intellect and the wit and the charm that come over. So that - well, this is Dexter. Outwardly he is not a very attractive man to look at but his personality overcame all of his physical defects, and his students apparently admired and really went overboard for him.

HAB: I can remember when Janet Clark ^[86] came to become Dean. Busy as she was with her administrative responsibilities, she went down and audited his classes. She'd always block out that time because she found it such an inspiration to listen to this man talk.

CHF: Well, this - I don’t know that I said this before - yesterday. But working for him for two years, he would tell things about himself to me in the course of talking over his problems and people at the University. I know that he wanted to be a Dean and was terribly disappointed that they never would give him a Deanship. He also wanted to be a professor at Harvard, and that never came to be. But he was later - I don’t know whether I’m repeating this or not but later on he did become a member of the Board of Overseers, ^[87] and Wilma said he had a most interesting time at those meetings, when the wives came too, at Harvard. He was finally President of the American Historical Association, ^[88] and he was involved in the Salzburg Seminar.

HAB: Wasn’t he the head of that?

CHF: Yes. I can’t remember with whom – but there were two people. The other man was a Rochesterian, as I recall, but I’m not just sure who it was. He was involved in organizing it, I think. ^[89] And actually once when Nick and I were in Budapest, we went on a trip to Germany to get all the presents at the PX for the staff. And we stopped in Salzburg to see friends of ours who had served with Nick in South Africa. And he -

(I think a whispering husband came into the room at this point. Both people speak at once and the conversation is inaudible). They did not intend this to be on the tape.

CHF: Well, that’s nice. I’m glad he’s gone. Now we can relax.

HAB: Yes, let’s -

CHF: But - anyway -

HAB: You were telling about he headed the Salzburg Seminar, and professionally - no, personally - he may have had frustrations in the goals and ambitions he set for himself, but in other people’s minds he was -

CHF: Well, exactly. Because all the time I worked for him I don't remember - I think it was Hilda who kept saying, "the Perkins luck." He inherited the rights to the Fannie Farmer Cook Book. His wife was a good cook and took over the editorship of the book and made it a best seller. He - his mother-in-law lived with them - Mrs. Lord ^[90] - and they didn't know what to do with her one time - I've forgotten whether he was going - I guess it was when he was going to be the - he was the second American professor to teach at Cambridge ^[91] - and what to do with mother - because they didn't think that she would thrive - it was just 1947, the end of the War, and the food wouldn't be good, and so forth­ well, what did she do but die? And, I think it was Hilda Coates who said, "the Perkins luck." It was solved for them.

HAB: Priceless.

CHF: What I mean to say was they didn't want her to die, obviously - and I think that they had made some arrangement, but they weren't happy with what was going to happen, and she just suddenly solved the problem for them. And it was- it's that kind of thing­ they always were talking about “the Perkins luck.” And of course he was lucky, but a lot of it was his own doing too.

HAB: (inaudible)

CHF: And of course he was - he always said that he was so lucky in his choice of a wife, because he really - well -

HAB: (inaudible) well suited.

CHF: But- what shall I say now- I guess that's about all that I have to say. I've summarized Nick's career and mine as an adjunct. And I would like to say that my husband is in Who's Who and Who's Who of the English Speaking World. He was - is - and was an expert on Africa but he was ahead of his time because the Department is now - only now - the State Department - doing what he suggested should be done as far as our policy is concerned in Rhodesia and South Africa, the two big problems, and Namibia, that is Southwest Africa, twenty years ago when he was serving at the United Nations. The things that - and he therefore - he is an ambassador manqué because he didn't suit - the advice that he gave - and I'm not bragging - I mean I'm sure that this is true - he could have been a whale of an ambassador, but he - he would not kowtow and he said what he thought, and he was way ahead of his time regarding our policy toward - toward Africa. And even - under Kissinger - one of the excellent men who is now our ambassador in Nigeria ^[92] - and his name escapes me but that doesn't matter - anybody can look it up - he was advocating one policy and Kissinger, who knew nothing about Africa and didn't care, he didn't think of anything but this two-power confrontation was important - oh, maybe - I should take that back - I guess he did try hard on the Middle East but only in relation to, I think, our relations with the Soviet Union. And this man - Nick, of course, was out of the Department by that time, but his friend said that Mr. -that Kissinger would make fun of- Don Easum his name is - who is a Ph.D. incidentally and a man to conjure with. He called him Mr. Gin- a- gee- saw(?) in a nasty- making fun of his­ the advice that he was giving them on how to behave toward certain countries in Africa. But what I did - I did say that Nick retired in1969, and was adviser to the Entente Fund, and so forth. Well now - I just wanted to get that in because I had to give a plug for my husband.

HAB: This leads me to ask you a question. You both have had experience in the State Department over the span of many -

CHF: Well, Nick had 33 years.

HAB: Government officials, and I think of Kissinger, Dulles and Dean Acheson - as you look back and reflect on this, do any unusual motifs come out that you were committed to as professional people and were thwarted by the slow process of democracy and administration of government?

CHF: Well, we - of course, you know you have to live through the McCarthy period, which was a terrible period for the foreign service. We remember standing on - before the big State Department building, as it now is, was built, there was a smaller building which had been built for the War Department, and when actually World War II came, the State Department took it over and they built the Pentagon, which of course was tremendous. And there were back steps to the smaller War Department, which became the State Department, and we remember very well Dean Acheson coming out onto the steps to say farewell, when Eisenhower was elected, and Truman defeated, 1952. And it was a superb farewell speech ^[93] where he quoted the Pilgrim's Progress, and he - I don’t remember exactly what he said but he warned the people who - I don't suppose the whole Department was there - but a good many of the officers - and I was working in the Department at the time - and listened. He was warning them that they were going to enter a very difficult period because of the attitudes of this country, which had, you know, had a fairly decent relationship with the Russians until after the War, when the roof really fell in and we were terrified. I can remember - after my year in England on the fellowship, 1946-47, coming back on the boat, there were German - no, that was '38 but - in '46-’47 coming home the shock of having read the London Times for a year, and living in Britain, which is a lot closer to the Soviet Union than the United States was, and the airplanes weren't quite so formidable as they are now, and we of course didn't have the atom (inaudible)- and thinking of the whole atmosphere in this country as I returned as absolute fear of communism. And in England, reading the papers, you would not, have gotten the same impression at all. They reported what was going on but they weren't - well, what shall we say - I think we were just terrified of it. And it - anyway, to get back to Acheson on the steps - three weeks later, after Acheson, as I said, had made a very inspiring speech, and a speech warning us that things would be difficult. And three weeks later Dulles appeared on the back steps and the contrast was so interesting because, as you may remember, he wasn't a particularly handsome man, not terribly attractive- I'm sure he probably was an excellent lawyer - but he was - the thing that impressed us the most about him was that - if he said it once, he said it about four times, that he was absolutely delighted to be the Secretary of State. And instead of thinking about the problems that he was going to be confronted with, he was so gleeful about having achieved this great job - that’s not the word I want - anyway he

HAB: Power.

CHF: Power. And he was not adequate to the job--he was a very narrow man, with blinkers on and (inaudible) most of it to Dulles, and Dulles caved in to McCarthy where - or maybe he really went along with it for all I know. And the contrast, as Nick and I remember, between the two Secretaries of State - and this is not to say that Dean Acheson didn’t have some weaknesses - he was - but he was a very well educated man and well, it was the difference between night and day as far as their personalities and graces were concerned. But Dean Acheson later in life said, “I was misinterpreted.” This was in connection, you know, with Alger Hiss ^[94] and so forth. He said, “people thought that I was a liberal but I was not a liberal--I was a conservative.” And we were told by our chief in Singapore, for example, that Acheson had asked George Kennan, ^[95] for example, to go down to Latin America and take a tour around and see what he thought of it--was it important; what was going on. Kennan came back and said, “All they are are two-bit dictators--nothing important is going on and you don’t have to pay any attention to it.” And this is absolutely true that people who worked in the State Department on African affairs and Latin American affairs felt like odd men out. Nobody gave a darn about two whole continents filled with people. They thought - they just wrote them off as unimportant. And even up until Kissinger suddenly saw the light about Africa, it was the 59^th minute of the 11^th hour of his time as Secretary of State - about Africa. He suddenly decided that maybe it was important to the United States foreign policy. But this was what was so frustrating to Nick working in the Department. He was - when he left to go to Singapore he was actually glad to get out of the Department of African - the Bureau of African affairs - because the people who were in charge, the assistant secretaries, they weren’t - they just didn’t see that it was important, and that you can’t write off whole continents and two - then Africa was 200,000,000 people--a huge area with - but not terribly populated. And Latin America was the same. I worked - shared an office in the - in the office of the Historian in the State Department - with a girl - a woman who was an expert on Latin American affairs, and she also was always frustrated because it seemed to be not important to the powers that be in the Department or in the Congress.

HAB: How to get their attention in something that was so obvious to someone who knew what they were thinking and talking about.

CHF: Now, the only other thing I would like to say is - about this is - you asked me at the end how important I thought my training at the University of Rochester was - in - well, educating me for life. I had to answer a questionnaire five years after I was out of the University.

HAB: Isabel Wallace ^[96] used to send them out.

CF: Yes. And I was very bitter. I said, “It didn’t prepare me for life, that education.” What I found was, I think, that I was made much of when I was at the University of Rochester because I was a good student and had excelled, and encouraged to go on to get a Master’s degree, and so forth, and that all I got out of it when I left was $15-a-week at two part-time jobs, $75 a month with Perkins, and bored to death at being still at the University although I must admit I did learn a lot, even so. Then on to Kodak, and then to New York - and I was about - yes, it would be 1940, I hadn’t gone to - left Rochester to go to New York then - and I complained bitterly that they hadn’t prepared me for what I was going to meet when I got out in real life, with a capital RL. And - what I’m trying to say now is that I have to take it back. That my experience - my job experience, my marriage - the - well, I should say the job experience and then the fortunate opportunity to go back to graduate school and get a doctorate, and very interesting jobs that led to my marriage, and then my experience as the wife of a foreign service officer, was the opportunity of in the State Department, which I think was unusual in those days. Three times they took me back and let me work in the Department even though they knew that I might have to go when my husband was transferred. And that, of course, is different now--the wives expect a lot more consideration than I got. But I felt that at the time I was fortunate to come back. And what I would say is that the training that I got was the foundation, and that to be the wife of a foreign service officer, and to have the three jobs in the State Department, to be a hostess and to represent the United States abroad - and I think that we both were very good representatives--without bragging, I hope. I would say that the University of Rochester was a very important influence, culturally and intellectually, and also, now, as a preparation for life. It was a good foundation. And from this vantage point, at the age of 65, I would say that a University can do only so much, and that it’s the individual who must take what it has to offer and do the rest.

HAB: This is a fascinating appraisal. And as I sit and listen to you comment on this, I can’t help but think that women in the State Department now are given the attention they deserve, appreciated for their talents and their contributions, not only individually but as they support their husbands, and so we all stack this up to Women’s Lib and Equal Rights, and we sit back and rejoice that at last it has come. But from what you said, you know, if you had the goods and you could deliver, you were respected for who you were. Now they took you back in the Department three times because they knew you had the talents they needed and you were ahead of your time in a way. And it’s a very interesting thing that if a woman has the tickets and can deliver -

CHF: Well -

HAB: This is respected.

CHF: This is why I never felt the way a lot of women do today, that I was deprived. The only thing that I did feel was - and - which I think is being righted now - is that women are given equal pay for equal work. Although, I know that they say statistically right now in the country they are.

HAB: I think I would agree with that.

CHF: But they didn’t pay me what I was worth in those jobs. But I kept saying to myself, selfishly, “I would rather work and have the opportunity to do these interesting things - do this interesting job - than to stay home and be - be just a mother - not just a mother and a housewife.” I think that those are very important things if the woman is satisfied.

HAB: But you had to have an intellectual challenge, more than just –

CHF: And I've asked Evy if she felt deprived because her mother worked, and, as a matter of fact, I think she thinks that I've downed my tools, and that I ought to be out there still.

HAB: It probably was an enrichment that no other youngster of her peer group could enjoy.

CHF: But -

HAB: I can't quite - you know I say this on the one hand, and I think back at the University on the other, where there were women like Janet Howell Clark who was the Dean, and Ruth Merrill ^[97] and Katherine Koller Diez, and Ruth Adams, who I thought was a tremendous woman. I'm sorry to say that the administration has not replaced women of that caliber on the staff, and I think they are shortchanging the students - men and women - because those women contributed tremendously.

CHF: Isn't that interesting. I wonder - now this is - you see, I've been away, obviously, from the University for a long time and when I go back, those are the people that I see, the ones who were connected with the University. But they're the people who have a long-time

connection, not the more recent ones. And I imagine my picture of the University, as having expanded tremendously, with dormitories and buildings, and I really am not in a position to judge whether it's better as a - as a center of learning now than it was then. I think that obviously it's broader and bigger.

HAB: I guess I would have to admit that there are more resources for learning and development. I guess I think a very important resource is human dimension. And what these women brought was a human dimension that - human relations that I don't think has been replaced. Now I'm obviously a spectator at this point but-

CHF: Well I- I'm always hesitant to say if I really don't know but I went back to my reunion ^[98] - and with much hesitation really- I didn't really want to go but two or three of my friends who had been back to their reunions said, "Oh, Cora, why don't you go? You'll have a ball. It'll be wonderful." Well, I'm- I can say that I'm glad that I went. And I tramped around the University and looked at the new buildings, and went to the Library, and of course, it's much larger, and I hope better.

HAB: It’s pretty great.

CHF: It's a good University library. But- why I suppose anybody who has been away from- it's not really fair to judge - or is it? I'm just ambivalent.

HAB: I think at our age we can be a little judgmental.

CHF: I think that Rochester has remained, in spite of the money that it has, and the buildings, parochial. And in one of the Rochester Reviews - I think a recent one - where they had an article describing a new- I guess he’s a new Dean who's coming- and he was spec- from

Reed College, I think, which, of course, is a very good school as far as I know. ^[99] I know this (inaudible)

HAB: We have two outstanding liberal arts colleges -

CHF: I’ve known people in the State Department who came from there who are excellent. But he - this man was speculating. He said he couldn’t quite understand why Rochester, with all its facilities and faculty and amenities, wasn’t sought out more by students, whether - why was it so unknown as a - well, at least it’s not unknown, but it’s not in the forefront - with all that it has to offer. And I think one of the reasons that I wanted to get out of Rochester, the city - I’m not talking about the University - was that I thought that it was an introverted city, which was terribly smug about the Eastman School, and Eastman Kodak. It didn’t have, as my grandfather called it, the wider view about - it was pretty full of itself as a city, and I don’t know, maybe the University has the same ailment. But -

HAB: Of course the community had been wracked with the riots, ^[100] and has, by virtue of that, had to look within itself pretty much to examine its paternalism, and involved people who are the community and making their own decisions. And this is a long, long process of socialization…

CHF: But what - I mean - you came what, three years after?

HAB: I was the Class of ’38.

CHF: And while - I mean now that life is - that many years in the past doesn’t really make much difference. We’re pretty much, I’d say, the same vintage that saw the development of the University from 1930 to ’40, and then the War and then what’s happened afterwards. At least that’s the way I slice my life up. There - I’m always impressed when I get the Rochester Review at the loyalty of so many people to it, which I never felt. And even while I’m sitting here talking to you and saying that it did give me the foundation that - that I mean - also my home environment did too - very important - I still think it’s not first rate, but second perhaps. Although I certainly was qualified to be admitted to Radcliffe. And - what my problem is that even as I look back on Radcliffe, it had weaknesses too. I mean, it’s not that Radcliffe, which is considered the - well, shall we say, the epitome of what a woman’s college should be in the way of offering a great education - there it is very parochial too. We sit here on the Cape -

The tape ends very abruptly.

Note: Tape was originally transcribed by Ruth Van Deusen in 1978 and edited by Nancy Martin in 2013.