Her personal relationship with the Slossons deepened as their working relationship matured. She now spent most Sunday afternoons and evenings with them, frequently staying overnight. In the summer of 1944, against her mother’s advice, she moved in with them.
By September of that year, she had wrapped up her classwork. She was excited about her family’s arrival for graduation, although her brother John couldn’t attend because of a serious illness. After majoring in philosophy at Princeton, John had gone on to medical school at the College of Physicians & Surgeons at Columbia University, where he proved to be a brilliant student. He then joined the Navy, during which time he contracted tuberculosis and was sent to Trudeau Sanatorium near Lake Placid in upper New York State. Because of his illness, he was subsequently discharged from the Navy.
Shortly before graduating, Elizabeth decided to carry on with her studies and immediately begin work on an advanced degree. As a graduate student, she had classes that were much smaller than before or were in an individual-study format. She thrived in this environment.
The tides of war seemed to have changed and she felt a sense of relief. She was beginning to think seriously about her future now, as various ideas presented themselves. One was to enter the service as an officer in training, providing a chance to go overseas and be attached to the Allied military government. Another option was to go into State Department work, but when she inquired with the State Department she was told that, although they were impressed with her qualifications, returning veterans would fill any openings.
Then an offer arrived for a teaching position at the Oklahoma College for Women. The president of the college told her that their goal was the “development of capable young women with beauty of character, personal charm, gracious manners, and social insight, willing and able to perform successfully the duties of life in their generation.” She considered the offer, although it didn’t excite her, in part because of concerns about the overall intellectual atmosphere of the college. But, being practical, she knew it would provide the experience needed to compete successfully against the returning servicemen for good jobs in good universities in the future. Another obvious plus was that the job was permanent, with possibilities for promotion. But the drawbacks were serious: it was a small college in the middle of nowhere, and her mother was dead set against it, skeptical about the quality of life that Oklahoma could provide her daughter. Florelle’s opinion prevailed. After college Elizabeth went, not to Oklahoma, but to New York.
As often happens when a long period of intensity nears its end, she had had enough of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan and was ready to leave, vowing that if she did continue with doctoral studies, it would definitely not be in Ann Arbor. Above all, she was tired and needed a break. A time of rest and relaxation at the country home in Dorset was the solution. The only problem was the lack of a job; Elizabeth was a doer and she liked to have a plan of action. Not having one was a worry.
CHAPTER 4
The Fortune Years
The Sherlock Holmes of the mountaineering world.
Before I met Elizabeth, many people told me about her attention to detail and dogged insistence on getting things right. It’s her signature style. Heather Macdonald, Elizabeth’s assistant for a couple of years in the 1990s, asserts that Elizabeth insists on knowing the source for every bit of information, grilling climbers to ascertain whether it was 7550 metres or 7555 metres. The climbers might be exhausted and their “brains half-melted” after being at altitude for weeks, Heather remembers, but Elizabeth wouldn’t let up. In time, she came to be affectionately known as the Sherlock Holmes of the mountaineering world. Where did this diligence and attention to detail come from? I wondered. Who taught her these techniques and how did she gain the confidence to cross-examine world-class climbers in such an authoritative manner?
Independence is another of her strong traits. Living alone most of her adult life, Elizabeth carved out a place for herself in a new and strange environment. Lady Hillary describes her as “one of the original feminists,” adding that she doubts Elizabeth will thank her for saying it. Heather Macdonald is convinced her early self-confidence grew from her insatiable curiosity. If so, it allowed her to evolve into a woman who is comfortable with high-profile climbers, royalty, government officials and writers. She has an innate sense of protocol. I was curious how this young American woman became so worldly. As she recounted the next decade of her life to me, parts of the mystery were revealed.
Back in New York in 1946, she went job hunting, honours degrees in hand, at a number of organizations and foundations, finally arriving at Fortune magazine, part of the publishing family that included Time, Life and Sports Illustrated. It was her lucky day. They hired her to start immediately as an editorial research trainee, earning $39.40 a week. Researchers were first assigned six months of training in “the morgue,” where thousands of files on people and issues were kept. Each file had original material – tear sheets, letters, photographs – supporting and informing that particular topic. It was her job to learn what was in those files, to regularly update them from newspaper clippings and other materials, and to access that information whenever the magazine needed it. It’s easy to recognize the similarity between the morgue system and Elizabeth’s future mountaineering archive.
Unfortunately, there was a not-so-subtle hierarchy at Fortune at that time. Without exception, researchers were women and writers were men. Elizabeth saw no way to break that mould. In retrospect, she’s not sure she had the makings of a writer, and others agree with her. Former colleagues described her as “brilliant and literal,” but not terribly imaginative. Even as a lowly researcher, however, she found opportunities. Sometimes she travelled with a writer and took notes, and sometimes she travelled alone, doing research in the States as well as in Canada and Brazil. After the writer finished the piece, it would come back to her to be checked – every word required a dot above it to indicate it had been checked, rechecked and cross-checked. It was an arduous system that took considerable time and effort, but it appealed to her sense of order.
She lived in an apartment at 220 Madison Avenue and her first office was in the Empire State Building, later moving to the Time & Life Building in Rockefeller Center. She started her day at about 10:00 or 11:00 a.m., worked until 2:00 a.m. and then walked home. The first thing she did each morning was read the New York Times.
From her recent university studies in world politics, she had developed a curiosity about far-off places. That led to an interest in travel and, now that she was working and had a salary, she began to use her annual vacation and unpaid leave to do just that. Her salary was small and she lived frugally, eating a tomato sandwich with mayonnaise for lunch most days. But by living simply she saved enough to travel widely and in good style – usually alone.
Elizabeth’s first trip abroad was to England in 1948 when, in October, she boarded the RMS Queen Mary for Southampton. Her first stop was London and all that it had to offer. She loved it: Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, London cabs, the architecture and the fog. Then it was north to Scotland and into the countryside of Wales and rural England. After all that she had studied and read and observed in movies, it astonished her how different and rich the experience was when seeing it for herself. “Britain is a fascinating place and I’m having the time of my life,” she wrote to her mother.
After cramming in as much of Britain as possible, Elizabeth moved on to immerse herself in the great cities of Europe, including Paris, Rome and Florence. She walked and walked, mentally cataloguing the sounds and smells of the streets, inspecting museums, historical monuments, palaces, gardens and churches.
But it had to end, and it was with reluctance that she sailed home. It had been an unforgettable experience, one she hoped to have again. Her appetite for travel had been whetted in a serious way – back in New York, where it was work and more work, she immediately began scrimping and saving for the next big trip.
But a family traged
y awaited her. Having recovered from tuberculosis and completed his medical degree, John had begun practising as a physician and married Ann, whom he met while doing medical research. They had a child and named him Michael. But John’s health took another downturn when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease. After a five-year battle with the disease, Elizabeth’s brilliant brother and only sibling died in 1955 at age thirty-five.
Family members and friends recall that Elizabeth appeared to be cool and stoical about this loss. They described her as a model of the stiff upper lip – even though she was inwardly devastated by the premature death of her brother. John’s wife remarried and had more children, but young Michael didn’t adjust easily to this new arrangement and his adolescence was troubled. Elizabeth kept tabs on him through her correspondence with her mother and worried about his future.
Years later, Michael was touched and surprised to learn she had been an advocate for him in his adolescence, that she had understood what he was going through, even from a distance. She had never told her nephew about her early and ongoing concerns about his troubled childhood and youth. Nor did she tell him how pleased she was when he later appeared to be settling down to a good education. Her pride, like her earlier concerns, went unspoken.
Back at Fortune, Elizabeth’s routine continued with research for the magazine’s writers. She worked hard, but made time for a few friends, too. Eleanor Schwartz, who sat next to her at work, was one of them. She remembers Elizabeth as somewhat shy and “terribly smart,” not very feminine and lacking a “sizzling social life.” Years later, Eleanor moved into Elizabeth’s apartment when she left for Kathmandu. Elizabeth also admired and befriended her boss, Mary Johnston, who was an avid traveller like herself. Fred still came around to pursue her – still with no results.
In 1951 her cousin, Lee Kneerim, an aspiring actress, moved in with her. Elizabeth knew Lee had a dream to meet the great actress Judith Anderson, so she decided to do something about it. First, she bought a copy of Robinson Jeffers’s translation of Medea, a play in which Judith Anderson was starring. Then she tracked down the elusive Anderson, asked her to sign the play, and gave it to Lee for her birthday, along with a ticket for a very good seat for the next performance. This act of kindness meant a great deal to Lee, and the signed play remains one of her most prized possessions years later. She describes Elizabeth as a “typical Vermonter” – somewhat taciturn – but remembers that when Elizabeth gave her that thoughtful gift, “her face revealed warmth and love.”
One day a rather famous friend of her grandmother came to visit. Irma Rombauer, author of The Joy of Cooking, was affectionately called “Cousin Irma” by Elizabeth’s cousin Lee. Elizabeth had never shown any interest in cooking, so was unaware of Cousin Irma’s connection to the well-known cookbook. Elizabeth could boil an egg and make toast, but there wasn’t much else in her repertoire. While Irma was in New York, however, she called Elizabeth, resulting in an invitation to dinner. Her mother was aghast – “Elizabeth is going to cook for Irma!” During dinner, Elizabeth asked Irma what brought her to New York, and found out, to her discomfort, that she was in town to do book signings for the famous cookbook. Her mother called the next day to ask, “What did you serve?” Elizabeth replied, “Oh, just a regular dinner.” Her mother pressed, “Yes, but what was it?” “I had lamb patties with bacon around them, fresh peas and peaches and cream cheese salad.” Her mother was horrified, but Cousin Irma later sent Elizabeth a signed copy of The Joy of Cooking, inscribed with a note thanking her for the simple meal. Of course, she didn’t know it was the only meal Elizabeth knew how to cook.
Over the next eight years, Elizabeth travelled extensively, keeping a tight budget at home in order to go ever farther afield as her interests widened and her confidence grew. She almost always travelled alone. Travelling through Germany and Austria in the summer of 1949, she began to understand just what the ravages of war look like. Her curiosity led her to visit the Eagle’s Nest, Hitler’s retreat on top of a mountain in Obersalzberg, as well as the crematory at Dachau.
She gambled in Monte Carlo and lost 1000 francs – representing a sum of three dollars at the time. Next, she caught the Simplon-Orient Express to Trieste, Italy, before venturing into more challenging terrain – Yugoslavia – with journalist accreditation letters in hand. She was delighted to discover that her train compartment companion was a Time researcher friend from New York who was on assignment in Yugoslavia. Her name was Judy Friedberg.
The meeting with Judy was fortuitous, as they continued to travel together throughout Yugoslavia and beyond. The Ministry of Information had arranged a number of interviews for Elizabeth; between interviews, she and her friend met up with interesting foreign correspondents stationed in Belgrade. Gathering information for a Fortune story was more difficult than Elizabeth imagined. Things moved slowly in Belgrade. It was common to have appointments cancelled or postponed with little or no notice, and it was hard to find the right person to answer a particular question. She did manage interviews with the deputy minister on law, a member of the Central Committee of Trade Unions and an executive of the Women’s Anti-Fascist Front.
Travelling through Macedonia, Bosnia, Herzegovina and along the Dalmatian coast, she witnessed, for the first time, isolated and primitive villages. She saw scenery that was wild, barren and dramatic. She had her first exposure to the Islamic religion and interviewed people who had never before been interviewed by a foreigner. Upon returning to Belgrade, she was thrilled by an invitation to a gala reception celebrating Yugoslavia’s national holiday, where she was introduced to Marshal Tito. She delighted in writing her mother that he was “courtly” and had chatted with her on a number of topics. She knew Fortune would be pleased with the results. She was proud to have learned how to navigate the challenges of Yugoslavia, from the high society of government officialdom to the rough conditions of the countryside.
In 1951 Elizabeth travelled to Berlin, where she had arranged letters of introduction to various intriguing and influential residents. They entertained her at cocktail parties and showed her around the city in fine style. But there wasn’t much to see. Berlin was so badly destroyed during the war that she concluded the most interesting places were where important buildings had once stood.
She went on to Helsinki, Finland, where she connected with the foreign ministry’s press section and arranged to tour factories and conduct interviews with people involved in Finland’s reparations payment program. She discovered a dramatic story of a country that was surmounting its postwar problems and launching a revival. At the moment, consumer goods were still scarce and expensive, but when war reparations payments to Russia ended the following year, it was generally thought that Finland would move into the world market with confidence. Perhaps her best interview yet was with a part-time correspondent for the Associated Press, who was the woman commonly known to be the prime minister’s mistress. Elizabeth noted: “She must have good inside sources.”
She went to Rovaniemi, the principal town of Finnish Lapland, near the Arctic Circle, where it was –24°C at night and dark by 3:00 every afternoon. She was there to see the Sámi (then called Lapps) and reindeer and, more important, to see the reconstruction efforts after the Germans torched Lapland in 1944. When she asked to see some of the country north of Rovaniemi, the local police chief responded by sending her to the Swedish border in a police car accompanied by two Finnish policemen – officially, they were on a smuggling patrol. She enjoyed three entertaining days travelling through rolling terrain blanketed in pine, birch and snow. The colours were magnificent – mauves and purples with a sky of blue and pink – which was due, she thought, to the low angle of the sun. They didn’t find any smugglers, but she doubts they were seriously looking.
She also experienced her first sauna and wasn’t overly impressed with this Saturday-night tradition. But she was amused to learn that when the Finns began rebuilding their towns after the war, the saunas went up first. In answer to her mother�
��s persistent questions about Finland, Elizabeth’s responses were peculiar: “The Lapps are some kind of mysterious people with an unknown ancestry, but they don’t have much resemblance to an Eskimo, and I believe their cultural level is supposed to be a bit higher – at least they all belong to the Lutheran Church.”
In 1953 Elizabeth headed to Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, her first time on African soil. As usual, she contacted the local public-affairs officer at the U.S. Consulate, who went out of his way to ensure she saw everything of note. In addition to touring the city of Tunis and nearby Carthage, she travelled for a couple of days with some visiting Americans to Kairouan, a Muslim holy city 150 kilometres from Tunis. After spending so much time in Europe, where the land had been inhabited and worked for centuries, she found it fascinating to travel through a landscape that was majestic in its emptiness. Wandering through the labyrinthine Casbah in Constantine, Algeria, she found it dark, dirty and mysterious – alluring, but also a primitive and difficult place to live.
In the middle of one all-night journey, she was obliged to change trains at a remote station in Algeria. As there were very few people around, she struck up a conversation with a man who then pummelled her with questions in French about the famous Rosenberg spy case – a laborious discussion to have at 1:00 a.m. On another train journey, from Marrakesh to Casablanca, a French expatriate sat down next to her and proposed marriage. She declined, but he persisted. “Why not? Do you not find me handsome?”
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