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ARTISAN REVIEW
drift
into a universe of fantasy that had probably been beckoning him
for
some time. A first manifestation of the paranoia that would persist and
in–
crease throughout the twelve years of life remaining to him was his belief
that he was in debt to a porter who had once worked for him in his
fur
business. Furtively, he appealed to Lionel for money with which to pla–
cate this unseen adversary. In the spring of 1931 Lionel took on the sup–
port of his family; it was an inevitable next step in his life, like the succes–
sion to the throne of a crown prince on the death of his father, the
king.
Lionel's mother had always looked to a future in which Lionel would
re–
place his father as head of the household; that future had now arrived.
Actually, there was no practical alternative to Lionel's assumption of
the
support of his parents and sister. There were no jobs to be had, and even
had there been, his father was not employable. Though his mother
was
only fifty-five, fifty-five was then thought to be a great age, virtually
terminal. Too, she had never worked for a living and with her upbringing
could not have imagined herself in even the most genteel employment,
such as baby-sitting or being the receptionist in a doctor's office. Lionel
undertook to give his family one hundred dollars a month. In his hourly
teaching at Hunter, this must have been close to the whole of his earn–
ings. In the next academic year, 1931-32, he had a fellowship
at
Columbia with a stipend 0[$1,800. Although usually one was not permit–
ted to work while holding a fellowship, he was allowed to continue
with
his evening teaching at Hunter because of his family responsibilities. In
the fall of 1932 he was made an instructor in the Columbia English
Department, with a salary of $2,400. His monthly contribution to
his
family was now half his salary.
It
was not enough for his family to live on,
and it left us without enough money to live on. There was a short period
when my sister squeezed $85 a month out of her household money
to
help us. Without collateral or cosigners, we were unable to borrow
from
a bank, but we borrowed from everyone we knew, small frequent sums,
usually not more than fifty dollars; occasionally it might have been as
much as one hundred dollars. It was a great deal for our friends to lend
us.
No one charged us interest; our friends had not yet come to think of
money as something with which to make more money. Of the people
we
asked for loans, only Herbert Solow refused us; sounding grandly moral,
he said that he would not cooperate in Lionel's self-destruction. What he
meant, of course, was Lionel's sacrifice for his parents. Though Solow was
alone in refusing us money, he was not alone in thinking that Lionel
conspired in creating his financial difficulties. Even our more generous
friends felt, and made Lionel feel, that in supporting his parents he was
masochistically contriving his own ruin. It seems always to have been
Lionel's fate to have his virtues regarded as shortcomings. At the
Menorah
