LETTERS: Three typed letters signed to Ella Pomilia.
Emma Goldman To Ella Pomilia
Goldman, Emma. Typed letter, to “Dearest Ella,” Paris, [February] 20, 1930, one leaf; 4to.; recto and verso, with the place and date of composition written in autograph. In a specially made quarter-morocco slipcase.
Together with:
Goldman, Emma. Typed letter signed, “E.C.,” to “Dearest Ella,” Paris, January 8, 1933, one leaf; 4to.; recto only, with two minor autograph emendations; first paragraph and several lines of second paragraph typed in a faint ink.
Together with:
Goldman, Emma. Typed letter signed, “Emma,” to “Dearest Ella,” St. Tropez, September 11, 1933, one leaf; 4to.; recto only, with two autograph emendations.
Goldman met Ella Pomilia while serving one of her numerous prison terms for her activities in the United States. In the earliest letter here, written in Paris on February 20, 1930, Goldman used the occasion of Pomilia’s second pregnancy to discourse on the plight of women who use birth control with greater or lesser degrees of success; she explores the differences between fascism in Italy and on the West Coast; she discusses their mutual friend, Virgilia; finally, she elaborates on the progress she is making on her memoirs; in part:
…You will be interested to know that I am now in 1918, describing Jefferson Penitentiary. I have not yet reached the time when you and Kate O’Hare came there. That comes in 1919. Naturally I will describe our life there and our beautiful friendship which helped do much to brighten the gloom of the prison and the hard labor of the shop. I will speak of you as Ella merely, and not mention your other name. Though it is not likely that my description may have any ill consequences for you, I nevertheless do not wish to take a chance. It is different with Kate O’Hare. Nothing I wold say about her would injure her, being an American citizen and having her background. By the way, is your husband naturalized? …I will say absolutely nothing that will in the least make the watchful department at Washington apprehensive. After all it is known that you have been in prison and I am writing only about our life there…
In the second letter, written on January 8, 1933, also from Paris, Goldman responds to a personal attack made by the Italian anarchist journal Adunato; in part:
Nothing was further away from my though than to accuse you of lack of friendship because you had not protested against that infamous attack on me in Adunato…it was not you I had in mind but the other Italian comrades…
You will forgive me my dear if I refuse to believe that the editor of that rotten sheet is sincere, or even intelligent. If he were he would not have accepted Graham’s cheap and vulgar outburst in the first place. And in the second he would not have written himself as he did. You say he was Galleani’s pupil. Well, [Luigi] Galleani would never have committed such treachery to a comrade who had worked all her life for the same ideal. Besides, Galleani can not be blamed if some of his pupils have not grasped his ideas…I don’t doubt that he is an “Anarchist” or that the paper is “Anarchistic” in name anyhow. But I can tell you I would rather live under the worst tyrant than such Anarchists. They are narrow, bigoted and downright mean in their estimation of comrades who do not live up to their kind and brand of Anarchism…
Please my dear don’t think my affection for you, or my faith in your friendship have undergone any change…
The final letter, dated September 11, 1933, from St. Tropez, is written in a noticeably different style. The sentences are shorter, the paragraphs—one of which is devoted to their friend Virgilia—are less well organized, and there are many typographical errors, reproduced below as typed. This style reflects much of the content of the letter, which conveys a sense of hopelessness and lack of direction. It reads, in part:
Forgive my long silence. The summer had been so uninteresting except for the visit of o
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