This collection includes letters from Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman Americans Virginia and Lee Hersch in Paris, dated June 1930 to March 1934. All but one of the Goldman letters were written from "Bon Esprit" in St. Tropez (the last letter was written after Goldman moved to London).
Goldman first writes Hersch on June 10, 1930 with a request to send autographed bookplates to Arthur Leonard Ross. In that letter, Goldman writes how glad she is to have met the Hersches, and to "count you among my friends." Subsequent letters are increasingly warm and intimate, as Goldman shares news of mutual friends, makes arrangements for her to visit the Hersches in Paris, and reports on her travels, writing, and concerns about Alexander Berkman.
The Berkman letters were written from Nice, France. Like Goldman, Berkman discuss his political and philosophical ideas, as well as his efforts not to be expelled by the French government, mutual friends, and concerns about personal finances and health. In particular, his letter of July 6, 1933, mentions his "psychic disgust with the world at large, [and] my situation…." before going on to comment on the futility of both Russian state capitalism and U.S. private capitalism: "The result is the same: man is turned into a slave of the State or of the private owner."
In addition, the collection holds an undated memo reviewing Goldman's Living My Life, a limited edition of Voltairine de Cleyre inscribed by Emma Goldman for Virginia Hersch, and a 20-page booklet of letters of appreciation for Berkman's sixtieth birthday celebration in 1930.
Not much is known about Virginia Hersch. She was born Helen Virginia Davis in 1896. She completed a J.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1920 titled "A Review of Certain Cases in Constitutional Law and the Law of Torts." Eventually, she married Lee F. Hersch, a painter. They spent some portion of the inter-war years in Paris, France, where they met and became friends with Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman.
Virginia Hersch published at least five novels: Bird of God, the Romance of El Greco (Harper & Brothers, 1929); Woman Under Glass, Saint Teresa of Avíla (Harper & Brothers, 1930); Storm Beach (Houghton Mifflin, 1933); The Seven Cities of Gold (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946); and To Seize a Dream (Crown, 1948).
Lee F. Hersch (b.1896 Cleveland, d. 1953 Madrid) studied at the Cleveland School of Art (with Henry Keller) and at the National Academy of Design (New York). His artistic career is documented in the publication Lee Hersch, by Michel Seuphor (Paris, Dépositaire: Librairie-Galerie Arnaud, 1954). He had many one-man and group shows in the United States and France, including a 1933 exhibit of his paintings at the Painters and Sculptors Gallery in New York City. Later exhibits of note include group shows and the Whitney and Guggenheim museums in New York, and retrospectives at the Studio Fachetti and the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles in Paris.