The invocation was given by Monsignor Patrick O’Boyle, the Archbishop of Washington, as an obvious sign of Republican gratitude for the Catholic vote last November. A black soprano, Dorothy Maynor, sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Nixon was then sworn in as Vice President. At 12:30 P.M., Eisenhower stepped forward to take the oath. Before beginning his Inaugural Address, he acknowledged cheers with the wide grin and upstretched arms that had become so familiar in the campaign.
His speech was notable for its spiritual fervor and frequent references to foreign affairs.4
My fellow citizens, the world and we have passed the midway point of a century of continuing challenge. We sense with all our faculties that forces of good and evil are massed and armed and opposed as rarely before in history.…
Are we nearing the light—a day of freedom and of peace for all mankind? Or are the shadows of another night closing in upon us?
Eisenhower was referring to the totalitarian threat of Communism, which he did not mention by name. But he clearly saw the ideology as more than the domestic ogre that obsessed Senator McCarthy. It was a worldwide phenomenon that all lovers of democracy must combat together.
To produce this unity, to meet the challenge of our time, destiny has laid upon our country the responsibility of the free world’s leadership.
So it is proper that we assure our friends once again that, in the discharge of this responsibility, we Americans know and we observe the difference between world leadership and imperialism; between firmness and truculence; between a thoughtfully calculated goal and spasmodic reaction to the stimulus of emergencies.
Clare was already aware of a problem facing her in Italy that had the potential of becoming just the sort of emergency the President had in mind. It was a territorial dispute with Yugoslavia over the Free Territory of Trieste. Eisenhower seemed to be saying to her and his other foreign service appointees, on the basis of his experiences as Supreme Allied Commander, that diplomatic solutions were preferable to military ones. The United States should use force only when diplomacy failed to prevent the subjugation of a free people, as in Korea. That was its moral imperative. “A soldier’s pack is never as heavy as the chains of a slave.”
After enumerating nine rules of conduct for future American domestic, foreign, and trade policy, Eisenhower closed with a rousing peroration.
The peace we seek … is nothing less than the practice and fulfillment of our whole faith among ourselves and in our dealings with others. This signifies more than the stilling of guns, easing the sorrow of war. More than escape from death, it is a way of life. More than a haven for the weary, it is a hope for the brave.
For the five-hour parade that followed on Pennsylvania Avenue, Clare was prominently placed in the viewing pavilion immediately behind Eisenhower. She sat between Speaker Martin and General Marshall, and narrowly escaped being lassoed by a cowboy corralling the President. That night, at the Inaugural Ball, she wore a gold-sequined Hattie Carnegie gown with a long emerald stole that drew special press attention, as did her chat with the Eisenhowers.5
Any satisfaction Clare enjoyed from her prominent participation in the inaugural was clouded by Italian reactions to the announcement of her ambassadorial appointment on February 7. Though Prime Minister De Gasperi’s government expressed approval, many popular newspapers did not. They treated the prospect of a female envoy with sarcasm, ribaldry, or outright scorn. A cartoon in the weekly Monarchist publication Candido (edited by Giovanni Guareschi, author of the popular Don Camillo books) showed the United States Embassy flag in Rome fringed with negligée lace.6 Clare became the butt of such street vulgarisms as, “The Ambassador doesn’t tote a fountain pen”—the last noun in Italian being a double entendre for “penis.”7
General Marshall, Clare, and Speaker Martin (behind Ike) witness the “corralling” of the President. Mamie Eisenhower and Vice President Nixon, far right. (illustration credit 32.1)
Il Mattino, a conservative Naples newspaper, questioned why President Eisenhower had not picked “an American who knows how to talk and listen to us,” while left-wing commentators disparaged her as “a friend of the Pope.”8 One magazine, Il Giorno, mistakenly—or mischievously—published a photograph of the actress Claire Luce onstage in a Shakespeare play, swooning in the arms of a swarthy Mark Antony. She was identified as “Cleopatra Ambasciatrice.”9
This especially annoyed Clare, who for some twenty years had been confused with her near namesake. Both had been born in 1903, shared careers in the theater and movies, converted to Catholicism, received each other’s mail. Clare’s own name was constantly misspelled, as in “Claire Booth Lewis” and even “Mrs. Boots Loose.” One humorous Christmas card caricatured her wearing antlers as “Clare Boothe Moose.”10
In the United States, reactions to Clare as Ambassador were mostly tolerant, although some members of Congress received outraged mail from constituents. Senator Herbert Lehman of New York got a telegram from the advertising executive William Esty saying, “Please vote against confirming that well-heeled Torquemada Claire [sic] Luce.” Another objected to her having lampooned Truman as “a stuffed pig,” calling it “hardly the language of a diplomat.”11 A letter to the chairman of the United States Commission on Foreign Relations suggested that since Mrs. Luce was such an excellent propagandist for the Vatican, she should be sent instead to Korea, where her “glamor and histrionic ability” would be appreciated by soldiers starved for entertainment. “But keep her out of Rome!”12
Friends were more positive. Evelyn Waugh wrote that he could not conceive “of a more attractive post or of a more suitable incumbent.… You will find me often on your doorstep.”13
Harry flaunted his pleasure and pride, strutting around the office with a white carnation in his buttonhole. He gave Clare a lavish Valentine’s Day party at the Carlton Hotel in Washington, D.C. Speaker Martin and half of the new cabinet were among the 150 guests, and the new hit singer Rosemary Clooney, about to appear on the cover of the next issue of Time, performed.14
On Tuesday, February 17, Clare braced for her confirmation hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Inevitably, she was asked about her ideological ties to the Luce magazines. She assured her interrogators that only her husband was responsible for the content of Time, Life, and Fortune. Denying rumors that she might try to exert influence with the Papacy, she said that as a supporter of “the American tradition of the separation of church and state,” she would have no relation with the Vatican in her new role, “formal or informal, open or secret.”15
After a few innocuous questions from committee members as to whether her arrival in Rome would be seen as an attempt to influence Italy’s imminent general election, the Senate confirmed Clare’s appointment without objection on March 2. The following day, wearing a black suit with a large red rose in her left lapel, she appeared at the office of the Secretary of State to be sworn in.
The tall, stoop-shouldered, sixty-five-year-old Dulles struck her as being “a great Bull of Bashan,” powerful in physique and forthright in his opinions. These were influenced by the staunch Presbyterian faith he shared with Henry Luce. Both men believed that “any serious moral issue is at bottom a religious issue.” Critics of Dulles disagreed. Jawaharlal Nehru thought him a religious bigot, while Harold Macmillan derided his intellect. “His speech was slow, but it easily kept pace with his thought.”16
The Secretary’s main support came from church groups, Wall Street lawyers, and the China Lobby. Eisenhower had come to depend on his passionate anti-Communism in formulating a foreign policy based on Soviet containment. For this reason if no other, Dulles and Clare were ideological soul mates.
Before Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson administered the oath to her, Dulles addressed a few remarks to the reporters, photographers, and television and newsreel cameramen in attendance. He said that never before had a woman taken on a post of such responsibility in the diplomatic corps. Turning to Clare, he went on, “The President and all
who know you realize that you will not only discharge your new responsibilities well, but will go even beyond that.” Her appointment would “open up a great vista for women in some countries who are subject to prejudice.”
After being sworn in, Clare said it was an honor to serve at a time when Italy’s decisions “count so heavily in the world’s scales.” She hoped to strengthen the economic, political, and spiritual bonds between America and the still-new Republic across the ocean, “which have knit us so closely together since the time of Christopher Columbus.”
A large crowd vied to congratulate her. Alberto Tarchiani, Italy’s envoy to the United States, informed her that his countrymen would address her simply as Ambasciatrice, the feminine version of “Ambassador.” She replied, “I hope it’s the worst I’ll be called.”17
Two days later, Josef Stalin died. Already, before Clare had planted a foot in Europe, the world had changed dramatically, and no one could be sure if it was for good or ill.
Over the next six weeks, Clare underwent a cram course at the State Department on the history, politics, and possibly troubled future of the California-sized country to which she was accredited. Its population of some forty-seven million was almost exclusively Catholic. Unified by an ancient culture, but torn apart by two world wars, the nation remained divided in fundamental ways. Geographically and economically the arid, hardscrabble south contrasted with the fertile north, the location of most of Italy’s heavy industry. Tillable land amounted to only one-fifth that of France. Farm and factory workers in Lombardy and the Piedmont earned about double the wages of those south of Rome. Two-thirds of industry ran at a loss, and oil, coal, iron, copper, lead, zinc, and bauxite had to be imported.
Politically, modern Italy was not quite seven years old, the still-uncertain product of a referendum in 1946 that had rejected both Mussolini’s Fascism and the Royal House of Savoy by a margin of less than 8 percent. Monarchists, predominant in the south, still formed a large and influential minority. Their reactionary views were challenged by a leftist bloc of Socialists and Communists, mainly representative of the northern working classes. The centrist mechanism by which these extremes were kept in balance was that of the Christian Democratic Party, led by the formidable Alcide De Gasperi.
Clare already knew and liked the Prime Minister. She had met him during his visit to the United States in 1947, and recognized him as a fervent anti-Communist, strong enough to turn back the alarming rise of his country’s Marxist-Socialist parties. Largely as a result of her efforts, De Gasperi had gone home with a $100 million loan from Washington, plus many private contributions from like-minded Americans—including both Luces—toward his reelection campaign the following year. The result had been a historic triumph for the Christian Democrats, with 48 percent of the vote, and a 50 percent drop in support for the Communists.18
De Gasperi was now hoping to form yet another government in early June, about six weeks after Clare’s expected arrival in Rome. But even if he won the election handily, she might be confronted in the long term with a major diplomatic challenge: how to reshape United States policy toward Italy, should the Republic’s immature economy—hampered by having to pay war reparations to the Soviet Union—fail to keep fourteen million rural and industrial workers permanently employed. She was encouraged to hear that the discovery of oil and gas in the Po Valley and Sicily was firing industrial production, and fueling trucks and machinery to rebuild Italy’s war-devastated infrastructure. Even so, she believed that further American military and economic assistance was essential, to keep the country safe and solvent, especially if Soviet funds continued to flow into union coffers and those of other Communist-infiltrated organizations around the country.19
Awkwardly for Clare, the Eisenhower administration was not as generously disposed toward struggling Western European states as Truman’s had been in the days of the Marshall Plan. Since the end of the war, the United States had given $4 billion to Italy alone. Ike and Dulles believed that once native economies and democratic political systems improved, after the paralysis of the immediate postwar period, they ought to become less reliant on foreign taxpayers. Yet the State Department expected Ambassador Luce to warn Washington at once, if she saw Communists taking advantage of any anti-American feelings that reduction of aid might engender.
Much of Clare’s tuition concerned protocol. Perhaps most sensitive, given her Catholicism and personal acquaintance with the Pope, was the fact that the United States maintained separate relations with the Vatican. She was not accredited to that sovereign state, which had lacked an American “representative” since 1951. Fortunately, a vestigial diplomatic corps remained that was independent of her own embassy staff, and was not allowed to mix with her or them socially.
Clare underwent further briefings at the Departments of the Treasury, Economics, Agriculture, and Immigration. A five-hour strategy session at the Pentagon was more to her liking, and amplified the expertise she had acquired on the House Military Affairs Committee. Between appointments, she prepared for administrative and domestic duties. This involved perusing floor plans of two splendid buildings in which she would spend most of her time.
One was the U.S. Embassy in the Palazzo Margherita, located on the fashionable Via Veneto. The United States had bought it in 1946 for the enormous sum of $1,252,000, thriftily using money from the sale of surplus war matériel to the Italians. The other was the Villa Taverna, the Ambassador’s residence on Viale Rossini, abutting Rome’s exclusive Parioli district. It had been built by a Cardinal in the sixteenth century, but took its name from Count Ludovic Taverna, who owned it during the Mussolini era. In World War II, the mansion had served as a government hospital, before being taken over by General Mark Clark’s Fifth Army, and then in 1948 acquired by the State Department for $752,757.20
Clare learned that twelve servants were employed at the villa. A residence allotment of $13,000 a year paid for a chef, butler, housekeeper, footman, and two kitchen boys, as well as utilities, repairs, and upkeep of the grounds. A gateman and chauffeur were on the embassy payroll. For some inexplicable reason, she would have to fund an assistant chef, extra footman, and two wardrobe maids out of her annual salary of $25,000. In addition, she would need a social secretary to organize the marathon entertaining expected of her, from formal receptions and banquets to more intimate lunches and dinners with Italian ministers and American visitors. That salary too must be paid by the Luces, as would that of Dorothy Farmer, whom Clare had persuaded to take an apartment in Rome, away from her husband and beloved priests, to work on personal correspondence and finances. In addition, Dorothy was to keep in touch by phone, cable, and mail with secretaries and domestics in New York and Ridgefield.
Italian law limited structural alterations to ancient buildings, so Clare could do little to reconfigure some of the cramped formal rooms at the Villa Taverna. But there would be other hefty expenditures—mainly out of Harry’s pocket—including new carpets, furniture, and upholstery, as well as replacement of art and objets d’art that did not meet their taste. Time Inc. accountants estimated that the boss would have to pay a supplement of $5,000 a month for Clare to live as graciously in Rome as in the States. On the plus side, she would receive two months’ paid vacation a year, and a single allowance of $7,000 to cover both entertaining in Italy and trips to America for conferring with Dulles and Eisenhower.21
Her first such meeting was held in the White House. A few minutes of newsreel footage showed her looking relaxed as she chatted with Ike and Dulles, and when she emerged alone from the East Wing to face more cameras. She appeared to be radiantly happy at this climax of a life that had begun in humbler circumstances than the reporters crowding around could imagine.
The days before her departure for Italy were spent in New York packing outfits, selecting artworks and ornaments to ship to the Villa Taverna, and continuing Italian lessons. Clare’s fairly good French made the latter task less difficult, and soon she was fluent enough for conversati
onal purposes.
On March 26, she attended an Overseas Press Club luncheon in her honor. Addressing the three hundred attendees, she spoke of the “tremendous significance” of Italy’s forthcoming election, and predicted that the course its voters took, either toward or away from state socialism, would be “followed by all Europe in the years to come.” She added reassuringly that after weeks of cramming at the State Department, she knew a good deal about her destination—its trade, defenses, political parties, personalities. “They laughingly refer to it as a ‘briefing session,’ ” she said, “but I can assure you there is nothing brief about it.”22
Sounding somewhat undiplomatic as the date of her sailing neared, Clare told the America Italy Society on April 8 that while she was lucky to be appointed to an embassy as glamorous as the one in Rome, hundreds of her fellow envoys were less fortunate. Some had to work in missions as remote as Tinwa, China, a town that had only one bathtub, or Jiddah with its Red Sea sandstorms, or Accra with its sewage flowing in open ditches along the streets. A typical U.S. consul in South America must face the prevalence of malaria, syphilis, and tetanus. She sardonically noted that the song “Home, Sweet Home” had been written by a Foreign Service officer stationed in Tunis. “It is not pleasant,” she said, “to serve one’s country by accepting exile from it.”23
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