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“Mrs. Ferris Next Door,” from The Kindness of Strangers, by Salka Viertel (1969)

Cover of first US edition of 'The Kindness of Strangers'If you loved Clive James’ Cultural Amnesia, you’re going to find Salka Viertel’s memoir, The Kindness of Strangers as addictive as a bag of potato chips.

Born in Galicia–meaning Poland–er, now Ukraine, coming of age in Vienna, working as an actress on stage and screen, marrying screenwriter and director Berthold Viertel, living in Berlin in the days of Brecht and Weimar, moving to Hollywood just ahead of the first Nazi persecutions of Jews, becoming something of a center of the German intellectual exile community, then surviving the McCarthy Red Scare, Salka Viertel came to know, clink glasses, break bread, and shed tears with about half of the entries in James’ encyclopedia. Kafka and Max Brod dropped by her Prague apartment for supper; she and her husband worked at the legendary Berlin film studio, UFA; Eisenstein wrote to her in desperation when he ran out of money filming “Que Viva Mexico!”; she wistfully knocked back vodka shots with Garbo on New Years Eve after Berthold left her for a younger woman; her son, Peter, worked on “The African Queen” with John Huston (and later turned the story into the novel White Hunter, Black Heart). Hers was a fruit cake of a life story.

Sergei Eisenstein and Salka Viertel on the beach in Santa Monica, 1930
Sergei Eisenstein and Salka Viertel on the beach in Santa Monica, 1930

I was going to write up a longer post about The Kindness of Strangers, but then I discovered that NYRB Classics is about to reissue it in a few months. So, in commemoration of Independence Day, I will just quote the following story from her time in America.

Having room to spare in her house in Santa Monica in the 1950s, Salka offered the use of a studio over the garage to the black documentary filmmaker, Carlton Moss, and his wife, Lynn. Because Lynn was white, the couple hadn’t been able to find anyone willing to rent to them. A while after the Mosses moved in, Salka had an encounter with her neighbor:

In all the years I had lived on Mabery Road, I had exchanged merely friendly nods and brief greetings with my next-door neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Ferris, an old retired couple. Aloof and gentle, they did not even reproach me when my dogs dug a hole under the fence and killed their pet duck, Matilda. Lynn and Carlton had lived for some time in the “Schloss,” as Carlton called the house (pronouncing it “slush”), when early one morning, as I was watering my roses, I saw Mrs. Ferris cutting flowers in her garden. I wished her a pleasant day; she called back: “Oh, I am so glad to see you,” and came to the fence with a huge bunch of sweetpeas.

“I’d like you to give this to your mother.” I thanked her and said that my mother would be enchanted with the lovely bouquet.

Then Mrs. Ferris asked: “That nice couple over your garage, are they staying with you for any length of time?”

“As long as they wish it,” I answered defensively.

But Mrs. Ferris had more on her mind and slowly and hesitantly it came out. “You know that Mrs. A., the lady who owns that large Spanish house down the road, has been canvassing for signatures to protest your renting to Negroes?”

“No one can tell me who should or should not live in my house …” I burst out angrily.

Mrs. Ferris reached over the fence and put her hand on my shoulder. “Don’t get excited! I want you to know that no one signed. We, the property owners on this side of the Canyon, had a meeting”–apparently I was not considered a “property owner” as I had been excluded–“and my husband told them: These are friends of Mrs. Viertel. We are pleased she is our neighbor.”

Moved by the unexpected support, I thanked Mrs. Ferris profusely. But she had not finished. Taking a deep breath, she shook her head and looking reproachfully at me, added: “Yes, that’s what my husband told them, regardless of the fact that we’ve seen you driving around with that ‘Roosevelt for President’ sticker on your car.”

Dear Mrs. Ferris! This was the only time in my life I regretted not being a Republican.

The Kindness of Strangers is due out from NYRB Classics on 22 January 2019. You can also find it on the Open Library: Link.


The Kindness of Strangers, by Salka Viertel
New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1969

3 thoughts on ““Mrs. Ferris Next Door,” <em>from</em> The Kindness of Strangers, by Salka Viertel (1969)”

  1. Perhaps it was having a “Roosevelt for President” sticker on a car in the 1950s that annoyed Mrs. Ferris!

  2. Thanks for this review. I read this book a couple of years ago and found it wonderful and moving. Unfortunately as I recall the author had a very tough time during the McCarthy period. Even if you don’t always agree with her politics, her memoir teaches an important lesson about tolerance- as your excerpt shows. Great blog!!!!

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