The Jews in America Trilogy (129 page)

This, then, was the dazzling young man who had asked the hand of a Polish immigrant ex–cigar roller in marriage.

The young bridgegroom-to-be had already attracted a certain amount of attention in New York because of his choice of lifestyle. After graduating from Yale, he had earned a medical degree from Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons. But, rather than practice medicine, and while maintaining his banking and railroad interests along with his
Social
Register
listing and uptown club memberships, he had chosen to move out of the family mansion and become a resident worker at the settlement house on Rivington Street. Other well-heeled uptowners, such as Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont and Miss Anne Morgan, had visited the Lower East Side to dispense largess. But young Stokes had chosen to work and
live
there. This was taken as an indication of his unusual dedication and sincerity—that his interest in the betterment of the poor was not that of a dilettante, even though he continued to keep a well-shod toe in the doorway of New York's uptown society.

In the weeks that followed the
Times
's astonished front-page announcement of the engagement, Rose Pastor and Graham Stokes were trailed by reporters and photographers from scores of American newspapers and magazines. The vast social, economic, and religious gulf that yawned between the pair was the subject of much interest and comment. Their every move was chronicled, and every detail of their lives, past and present, that could be uncovered was reported on. The Cinderella aspect of the story was dwelt on at length, and soon the Stokes-Pastor romance was being treated as though it were the greatest love story of the new century. Avid readers were told what the couple wore, where they dined, what they ate. They were besieged with requests for interviews. One of the few granted by the heroine of the tale was to a reporter from
Harper's Bazaar
(or
Bazar
, as it was spelled then), which was then, as now, one of the bellwethers of fashion for the American upper crust.

“She might have been the model for Rosetti's Beatrice,” wrote the
Bazar
, “or for the quiet and dreamy maidens in a Burne-Jones drawing.” Upon seeing her, the
Bazar
reporter wrote, “there grew into my consciousness, as one gains clear sight after darkness, the certainty of her essential womanliness; her eye was gentle, her movement graceful, her manner restful; she had poise, that inevitable accompaniment of character.” The
Bazar
, however, was not too awed to forget to remind its readers of the essential incongruity of the situation, and that “the groom [was] a Yale graduate, a clubman, a banker, a member of one of the oldest and most exclusive American families, heir to fortunes multiplied at will … and the bride, an East Side Russian Jewess of humble origin, who has spent years in a cigar-factory. It was hard to imagine Hymen's torch
kindled at the altar of more dissimilar lives.”

The pair were asked all the most obvious questions. Hadn't Mr. Stokes's old and most exclusive parents disapproved of the match? Graham Stokes issued a manly statement to the
Times:
“I wish the Times would correct two serious errors in the published accounts of my engagement. The first is that there is serious opposition on the part of my family. That is entirely false. There is nothing but the utmost cordiality and delight. The second error is that there is a difference in religious belief between Miss Pastor and myself. She is a Jewess, as the Apostles were Jews—a Christian by faith.” As proof of family solidarity behind the union, Graham Stokes announced that his clergyman brother would perform the marriage ceremony in an Episcopal service.

Rose Pastor also adopted the Jews-and-Christians-are-the-same argument, saying that she believed Judaism to be an “inspired religion,” an so did her fiancé. However, she added, both of them believed that, added to the tenets of Judaism, were “many additional truths” of Christianity. She pointed out that both Moses and Paul were Jews, and that Jesus “came not to destroy the law of the prophets but to fulfill.” After all, weren't both the Old and New Testaments bound between the same hard covers? Both she and Mr. Stokes, she said, “accepted the teachings of Jesus unqualifiedly, regarding Him as a divine teacher and guide.”
Harper's Bazar
also tried to sort out this tricky matter, saying, “The only difference between them is a matter of ancestry. Her ancestors were of the Jewish race, his were not. It is a question of race and not religion. [She] is a Christian woman, and has all the impulses, beliefs, strength, and sweetness which characterize the ideal Christian character.”

These theological rationalizations might satisfy
Harper's Bazar
and its largely Christian readership, but they sat not at all well among members of the Old World Orthodox-Jewish community in which Miss Pastor had been raised, who greeted her statements with outrage and dismay. She could not, her Lower East Side countrymen insisted, have it both ways. A Jew was a Jew. A Christian was a Christian. And though the word
conversion
had been carefully avoided in describing Miss Pastor's religious highwire balancing act, it was pointed out that Episcopalian marriages were not performed unless both parties had been baptized. In other words, Rose Pastor was
converting to Christianity, and trying to hide the fact behind a smoke screen of obfuscation and Judeo-Christian double-talk.

Others pointed out that if there had been a good Jewish father in the picture, such goings-on would not have been tolerated. No one, meanwhile, had asked Rose Pastor's mother how she felt about the matter. Perhaps this was because Anna Pastor's limited English would have made her a difficult interviewee. Or perhaps the poor woman was too overwhelmed by what was happening to her family to think coherently about it. In any case, for a readership more titillated by the ways of the rich than those of the poor, the press was much more interested in what the Stokes family thought about the unusual alliance. But if any of them had misgivings, they kept very stiff upper-class upper lips and refused to show it.

Of Rose Pastor's social zeal, the
New York Times
commented, “As she talks on the uplifting of the poor, her face lights up.” At the same time, one of her friends—unidentified—was quoted describing her as “very interesting, very sincere, but somewhat of a dreamer.”

The Jewish press, however, remained cynical and unconvinced of her sincerity. The
Tageblatt
's rival, the
Daily Forward
, was always looking for ways to embarrass the
Tageblatt
or one of its staff, and the
Forward
was quick to pick up one juicy bit. Not many months before the engagement was announced, the
Tageblatt
had run an editorial that had inveighed heavily against intermarriage between Christians and Jews. The editorial had taken to task Israel Zangwill, the British writer, for marrying a Christian woman. And who had been the author of that polemic? Why, none other than Miss Rose Pastor herself! But now, when it suited her, Miss Pastor endorsed interfaith marriages.

Miss Pastor, meanwhile, continued to insist that the couple's common interest in the poor overrode all their differences, and that the Stokes family's money had not been a consideration in her decision. Of her own self-education, she said, “It was a hard struggle. I read much, and I only read books that I thought would be useful to me, and then I began to write. My efforts to obtain an education were all due to a desire to be of service, not because I had any desire to rise above the station I then occupied in life.”

As the early summer progressed, the news and magazine
stories about the romantic pair continued, and both complained that they could not leave their homes or offices without running a gauntlet of photographers and reporters. In response to repeated questions about what she and Mr. Stokes expected to accomplish on the Lower East Side, Rose replied, “If our life and our united deeds do not speak for us, I feel we should be silent.” What deeds, the
Daily Forward
wanted to know? Everyone knew that New York's Christian community wanted to Christianize the newly arrived Jewish immigrants. So, secretly, did the uptown Jewish merchant-banker class—those of Julia Richman's ilk—many of whom had already converted.

These stories of threatened conversions frightened the Lower East Side Jews. Down through the centuries had come horror stories, such as the account of how King Manuel of Portugal, in order to solve the Jewish “problem,” had all the Jewish children in his realm kidnapped on the first day of Passover in 1497, taken to churches, and forcibly baptized. Then, their parents were given the choice of baptism or exile. Conversion-scare stories also sold papers, and the
Tageblatt
countered with a report of a Jewish man who had been accosted on a New York street by a Christian, and forced to eat oysters. The man became violently ill and died. Later, the
Tageblatt
admitted that the story was a fiction.

While all this was going on, a date for the “wedding of the century” was set. It would take place on July 18, 1905, the bride's twenty-sixth birthday, at the Point, another summer home of the bridegroom's parents, in Noroton, Connecticut, overlooking Long Island Sound. (The Stokeses, it seemed, spent July at the shore, and August in the mountains.) To minimize the publicity, only the immediate families and a few close friends were invited. Of course this attempt at privacy only whetted the press's appetite, and on the day of the wedding there was more publicity than ever. Some reports had it that the bride looked radiant, others that she looked sad and worried and drawn. One said that Mrs. Anson Phelps Stokes, Sr., heaved a great, mournful sigh when her son uttered the words “I do.” But the fact was that the Point was so thoroughly cordoned off by police that none of the press was able to see either the bride or the groom, or witness any part of the ceremony. Nor would the family go so far as to reveal what the bride wore.

Two days later, Mr. and Mrs. James Graham Phelps Stokes
boarded the White Star liner
Cedric
for a three months' honeymoon in Europe. Though they had come aboard early, in order to avoid detection, they were recognized by a photographer as they strolled on the deck. The photographer's head and shoulders were covered with a black cloth, and to foil him, Graham Stokes blocked his lens with a corner of his coat. Unable to see what was the matter with his camera, the photographer darted back and forth underneath his drapery. Finally, Stokes tapped the man on the shoulder, and politely asked him not to take any pictures.

The newlyweds did, however, grant a shipboard interview to a
New York Times
reporter in their stateroom. They would visit England, France, Switzerland, Hungary, and southern Italy, they announced. From Budapest, they would also journey northward to the little Polish
shtetl
where Rose Pastor Stokes had been born. Otherwise, said Mr. Stokes, “we have no definite plans. We avoided making any. Both of us are tired, and we are looking for a rest. When we reach London, and we are going there first, we will be met by my mother's automobile and our first run will be through Scotland. All our travel will be by automobile. We have had too much publicity. A great deal has been said about what my wife and I propose to do in uplifting the fallen. The fact that the people of the East Side are as self-respecting as we are seems to have been overlooked. What we want to do now is just to go away quietly and have a restful time.” (In its headline on the Stokes departure story, the
Times
commented somewhat tartly, “Not So Bent on Uplifting,” seemingly missing the point of Mr. Stokes's statement.)

The
Times
reported that Mrs. Stokes wore a white shirtwaist, a gray walking skirt, and a wide-brimmed straw hat with a large black ostrich feather. Mr. Stokes wore a light suit, a “negligee shirt,” white canvas shoes, and a straw hat. It was also noted that the Stokes stateroom on the
Cedric
's promenade deck was “comfortable but not overluxurious,” though certainly it was more luxurious than the steerage quarters in which the bride had first sailed to America.

There were one or two more ominous notes. The only people to arrive at the pier to see the Stokeses off were two young girls with whom Rose Stokes had worked. No members of either of their families had come to wish them bon voyage, and the curious absence of any flowers, candy, fruit baskets,
wine, or other offerings that might have been expected in a honeymoon stateroom drew comment.

The newlyweds were well out to sea when the first blistering attack upon them appeared. On July 20, 1905, an editorial prepared by the
Hebrew Standard
, and headlined “The Climax of Apostacy” (
sic
), which the paper would publish the following day, was distributed in advance to other American newspapers. The article took it for granted that Rose Pastor's Christian marriage implied the bride's denunciation—as well as renunciation—of her inherited faith, and said, among other things:

The christological influence the young millionaire and his newly Christianized bride will exert over the children with whom they will come into contact will be distinctly harmful. They are Jewish children, and any teaching which will create a gulf between them and their parents must certainly be regarded with suspicion.

Notwithstanding the statement that all the work the gentleman in question will do on the east side will be of non-sectarian character, we find that he is a Director of the Federation of Churches, which is doing distinctly Christian work on the east side. Consequently we may safely presume that the work both he and his newly-made wife will be engaged in among Jewish children will be of a non-Jewish character, and to this we strenuously object.

That this Christian gentleman and Jewish girl should have married is their own business, that the lady should have adopted another religion is a matter for her own conscience, but the announcement that they are to work on the east side among the Jewish children is certainly the business of the community. We may say quite frankly and openly that they would have shown far better taste had the young couple quite frankly and openly said that they would leave the east side alone and continue their uplifting work among other sections of the population in greater need of it than the Jewish community.