She sounded more positive speaking to the New York Newspaper Women’s Club at the Biltmore Hotel on April 10, her fiftieth birthday. Flattered by the presence of Eleanor Roosevelt among the special guests, she paid tribute to the former First Lady’s “prodigious capacity for work in many fields,” and for giving hope, inspiration, and desire to her sex “to be useful in activities outside the home.” Clare seemed to have in mind how far she and other women had advanced professionally from the days when among the few paying positions open to them were those of domestic servant, nursery school teacher, seamstress, governess, or prostitute.24
For all that, she gave the impression to one perceptive reporter, Eleanor’s friend Lorena Hickok, that “here was a woman almost at bay.… There was a trace of defiance in her manner as she replied in her light, pleasing voice to the speeches they made about her, something that suggested she was not at all sure they had meant what they said or that she could command the backing of newspaper women in general.”25
Mrs. Roosevelt was characteristically more circumspect in her column, “My Day.”
They say the Italians were uncertain about accepting a woman as ambassador, for it was a somewhat new departure in their part of the world. But in Mrs. Luce they will find not only a beautiful woman, but an able ambassador, with brains which any man might be proud of. I feel Mrs. Luce will represent us well. Her powers of observation and analysis, sharpened by her training both as a writer and as a member of Congress, should make her very valuable.26
Mutual admirers: Clare and Eleanor Roosevelt (illustration credit 32.2)
Clare celebrated that night at the Ritz ballroom in Bridgeport. Senators Bush and Purtell were among the thousand guests wishing her bon voyage. Governor and Mrs. Lodge presented her with a silver stand bearing American and Italian flags.27
Perhaps the most personal of the countless au revoirs Clare had to exchange was with Father Thibodeau. Their intense spiritual relationship was drawing to an end, because in the excitement of her new worldly responsibilities, Clare’s religious fervor had waned. She could hardly admit this to herself, let alone to him. “You must never never never doubt my deep devotion,” she wrote. “Not time, not circumstances, not distance, can separate me from you.”28
He felt even more strongly about parting from her. For the rest of his life, he would revere the memory of Clare Boothe Luce.
She possessed a combination of qualities seldom found in man or woman. A keen intelligence and great simplicity … a great sense of humor; deep spirituality and a simple childlike devotion to Christ and his blessed mother; a holy terror when dealing with evil and evil doers; hated and vilified by many, yet seldom if ever did she retaliate. She is one of the most wonderful and noble-minded women it has been my privilege to know.29
A lighter tribute to the new Ambassador was published as an eight-verse popular song.
In gown of puce Mrs. Henry Luce
Will have her say on the Appian Way
Machiavelli in a Schiaparelli
Clare’s the gal for the job.
33
LA LUCE
A perfect Woman, nobly plann’d,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright
With something of angelic light.
—WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
On Tuesday, April 14, 1953, Ambassador Luce set off for Pier 84 on the Hudson River in time for a noon sailing of the new liner Andrea Doria. The State Department had suggested that it would be diplomatic for Clare to travel to Naples on this sleek symbol of Italian prestige. Harry and his sister Elisabeth Moore were with her, having agreed to spend six weeks in Rome organizing the household at the Villa Taverna.
Warmly dressed in a camel coat over a gray check suit, Clare encountered a bevy of reporters at the dock. One asked her if Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who had just been sentenced to death for leaking atomic secrets to the Kremlin, were in fact guilty. She said evasively that officials had not briefed her on the case, prompting a fusillade of follow-up questions. Their aggressiveness startled her. Was it a harbinger of what she might encounter in Rome?1
Near collapse from fatigue, Clare told Harry she wanted to be alone for much of the crossing. To that end, she had coaxed the purser into giving up his own capacious stateroom, low down in the ship. She found it already suffused with the scent of seven dozen bunches of roses from well-wishers. Annoyingly that first night out, an unlatched door kept banging somewhere, so she slept fitfully, even after taking Dramamine.2
For the next week, while Harry and Elisabeth amused themselves on the promenade deck, where they had luxury cabins, Clare continued studying Italian with the help of a Linguaphone course. She also perused reams of papers concerning the seventeen major diplomatic tasks she had been assigned. The three most important of these were, first, to help Italy become a major partner of the Western Alliance by committing fully to NATO, and endorsing the European Defense Community, a French-inspired plan to permit West Germany to rearm under supranational authority. Second, she was to make clear that American “offshore procurement” contracts would no longer be given to factories dominated by Communist unions. Third, she must encourage the Italian government to settle what was known as the Trieste problem.3
This vexed matter, concerning Italy’s claim to sovereignty of the most important port in the eastern Adriatic, had come up during her farewell meeting with Eisenhower. She had told him then that resolving the argument between Rome and Belgrade might be the most urgent issue during her tenure. It was more than a quarrel over a few square miles of waterfront, still administered by the wartime alliance of the United States, Great Britain, and France. Potentially, it could trigger an epic conflict between democracy and Communism.
The President understood Clare’s concern only too well. In May 1945, a few days before the end of the war, he and General Alexander had faced the unbearable prospect of having to take up arms again—this time to prevent Yugoslavia’s new Prime Minister, Marshal Josip Broz Tito, from gaining Trieste as his strategic outlet to the Gulf of Venice. Tito was, ironically, their former comrade-in-arms against the Nazis. But he was also a committed Marxist, pursuing only a semi-independent line from Moscow. If he accomplished his goal in Trieste, the Soviet Union might gain access through the Balkans to the western Mediterranean.
A temporary solution had been found by the tripartite occupying powers: to divide the land north of the port into “Zone A,” a mainly Italian enclave controlled by Allied troops, and to cede the southern and inland region, mainly Serbo-Croatian, to Yugoslavia as “Zone B.” This had not satisfied either side as a long-term fix, and Clare sensed that the simmering ethnic tensions would boil over on her watch.
On the third day out she wrote Father Thibodeau, wondering how best she might help a country unsure of its future. “I must, somehow, go to the people, and be with them, if I am to do any good at all. Italy is a political and moral invalid, choking on … three centuries of man-centered errors.” She cited in particular “the negative Christianity of the Reformation” and “the positive atheism” of Communism. Despite her campaigns in Connecticut, she still felt awkward about talking with field and factory workers. “How my nature shrinks from it!” But she must overcome this, “if our world is to be saved from the Commies.”4
When ascending to first class for sea air and deck-chair chats with Harry, she found that she was already a celebrity among Italians on board. Stewards addressed her as “Eccellenza,” and fellow passengers, watching her precise skeet shooting on the rear deck, admiringly called out, “Brava Donna Clara!”5
One day she found time to write an overdue letter to Carlos Chávez. It was in answer to an appeal for financial help. As a woman of private means, invested now with ambassadorial power, she would have to deal with such mail tactfully but firmly. Carlos had been asked by organizers of the Venice Biennale to conduct a new work of his own there in September. He naturally thought of presenting his Symphony No. 3 in memo
ry of Ann Brokaw. The only problem, he wrote, was that the festival declined to pay expenses. “Now this is just an idea: would you be able to provide the fifteen hundred dollars for the trip? (This would be aside from the fifteen hundred dollars that I am to receive as balance of the commission when I finish the work.)”
He discreetly intimated that it would enhance her public status to be patron of the first performance of music she had commissioned. “I would regret not premiering the work in Italy while you are there.”6
Clare replied, “I think you know that I am not personally a rich woman, though I’ve always before had enough for not only what I need, but all the luxuries. However, since I’ve taken on this job in a major post it has become increasingly clear that I simply could not carry it alone.” She told him that her husband must bear much of the expense. If Harry discovered that she was subsidizing Carlos, he might “attach an importance to it which would be quite wrong.”7
The weather was fair on the morning of Wednesday, April 22, as the Andrea Doria steamed past the island of Capri toward Ischia, where a welcoming party in a launch approached. Six men came aboard, all senior members of Clare’s embassy team. Elbridge Durbrow, whose title was “Minister Counselor,” greeted her first. He was a stocky, fifty-year-old career officer wearing an old-fashioned, dark, diplomatic suit. The others were Admiral Robert B. Carney, Commander in Chief of NATO forces in Southern Europe, General James Christiansen, her army attaché, John McKnight, her press relations officer, Joseph E. Jacobs, her economic adviser, and Gerald Miller, a Yale graduate in his late forties, listed as “Personal Assistant to the Ambassador” but actually chief of the CIA Rome station.
Durbrow gave Clare an initial briefing on the perils of Italian politics. He said that the city of Naples had readied a welcoming ceremony for her ashore, with the Mayor, Achille Lauro, on hand. But Lauro was a member of the conservative Monarchist Party. If she posed for photographs with him, before presenting her credentials to the President of the Republic in Rome, he would gain kudos for the next general election in June. Furthermore, some leftist newspapers were bound to say that she was signaling approval of the restoration of the Royal House of Savoy.
No sooner had the liner docked and thrown down its gangplank than at least a hundred reporters and photographers rushed aboard and surrounded Clare. She made a statement in front of newsreel cameras on deck, speaking slowly in Italian, but with amazing confidence. “I am proud to come here as the Ambassador of a President and country that wants what Italy wants most—to help build for all of us the house of security on the rock of justice and liberty.” Toward the end, she dispensed with the notes in her white-gloved hand, took off her spectacles, and said with an enchanting smile, “Buon giorno, salute, e arrivederci.” Cries of “Brava, Brava!” rang out.8
Carrying a bouquet, she disembarked on the arm of Admiral Carney, with Harry a few deferential steps behind. The biggest crowd ever to greet an American Ambassador awaited her on the pier, as a band played “Anchors Aweigh.” She was again besieged by journalists shouting questions. Harry was ignored in the melée. After speaking a few words, Clare moved on to meet Signor Lauro, who had assembled an honor guard of carabinieri, resplendent in blue suits with cocked hats, white belts, and sabers. She kept pleasantries to a minimum, avoided the cameras, then quit the dock through a side door, leaving behind the crestfallen Mayor.9
Outside, two limousines awaited her and her party, with a pair of police motorcyclists to escort them all the way to Rome. As the mini-motorcade got under way, about a thousand mostly female Neapolitans clapped and cheered. Clare regally waved a handkerchief.10
She sat beside Durbrow in the back of the embassy’s Chrysler Windsor, while Harry rode with the chauffeur. Scrupulously, whenever the Minister Counselor began discussing classified information, she closed the glass partition. Her husband understood that they must avoid creating any impression that Time Inc. was privy to significant or secret data.
The 150-mile journey to the capital was a nostalgic one for Clare, passing the palace at Caserta, which she had inspected during the war at the invitation of General Alexander. Her entourage soon left the coastal road to cross the ridges astride the peninsula, enabling her to revisit the devastated terrain she had last seen in April 1945. Farm laborers paused to acknowledge the speeding convoy. She was surprised how few scars of war remained in a countryside that had endured so much heavy artillery fire.
Stopping for lunch in Cassino, Clare was astonished to find that the ruined place she remembered had become a reconstituted modern town. Even Monte Cassino, its hilltop monastery bombed to a skeleton nine years before, had been partially rebuilt with American funds that she and Mark Clark had helped raise. The slopes below were stippled with a thousand white crosses, marking the graves of Allied soldiers she may have met in hospitals or at the front.11
In the early evening, the cars arrived at the seven hills of the Roman Campagna. A golden glow suffused the Eternal City’s honey-colored buildings, and church bells pealed. In the distance soared the dome of St. Peter’s. Then the Parioli district opened out about three miles from the Capitol, and Clare’s motorcycle escort led the way along the Viale Rossini, past the Borghese Gardens. As they approached the Villa Taverna, a crowd of Italian well-wishers slowed their progress.12 Gates opened ahead onto a driveway lined with olive and elm trees. Clare found herself cruising through a stone-walled, seven-acre park, with stands of cypress, intertwining ilex, and orange trees in blossom. She noticed a group of a dozen pines, which to the estate gardeners represented Christ’s Apostles. The last one, out of alignment, symbolized Judas Iscariot. Elsewhere, marble statues, a fountain, and a campanile circled by swallows graced the grounds.13
The Villa Taverna, Rome (illustration credit 33.1)
As the three-story villa came into view, fading sunlight bounced off its mellow, cinnamon-tinted stones, and picked out the Stars and Stripes hanging from the facade, along with an ecclesiastical escutcheon inscribed: IN CONSTANTIA ET FIDE FELICITAS.
Clare had enough school Latin to translate it as “Happiness lies in perseverance and faithfulness.” Something told her she would need both these qualities in the days ahead. “It’s not going to be easy,” she said to herself.14
The limousine deposited the travelers beneath a portico ornamented with Corinthian capitals and two ancient sarcophagi. A butler ushered them into the villa’s vaulted lobby, where they were greeted by other servants in starched white gold-buttoned jackets.
The Ambassador’s ensuing tour of the eighteen-thousand-square-foot house was necessary but wearying after her long drive. It disclosed three reception rooms to the right of the entrance. First came the Piccolo Salon, decorated with frescoes and furnished with large antiques. Adjoining was the Galleria, its stucco ceiling vaulted and its walls mostly bare, crying out for pictures or tapestries. Beyond was the Grande Salon, dominated by a monumental red marble fireplace, a grand piano, huge Venetian mirrors, and two Canaletto paintings. The dining room, on the opposite side of the main floor, had a Murano glass chandelier over the table, and Pope Gregory XIII’s coat of arms over the mantelpiece, but was otherwise empty.15 All floors had multicolored Vietri tiles. Clare could see that her Democratic predecessor, Ellsworth Bunker, had cared little for art or luxury; room after room was sparsely and indifferently equipped. It was a boon to have Beth’s help with refurbishing.
The villa’s second floor, reached by a winding staircase, had five bedrooms, the largest of which went to Harry. Clare chose a boudoir with four high windows, green-and-white tiles, and a terra-cotta-beamed ceiling painted with white roses. One disadvantage was nocturnal noises from a zoo in the Borghese Gardens behind the house, and she was kept awake much of the night by trumpeting elephants and roaring lions.16
Preparing to leave for her first day at the office, Clare kept in mind a farewell letter from Bernard Baruch.
Please be most conservative in your dress. Always bien soigné but play down jewels and ornament
except on grand occasions and not then. Get around among the people. See how they live—keep away from the rich big spending Americans. Visit our graves the places our boys died in. Study Italy’s needs—material and spiritual. Talk of the grandeur that was hers and must be there still in her people. You have brains, beauty, personality character and a heart—use and show the last. Go on in there little game chicken. Bernie.17
Shortly before nine, she stepped into her chauffeur-driven car wearing a simple black suit with her signature red rose in a vial pinned to one lapel. Traveling along the Via Veneto, she passed the Excelsior Hotel, where she had stayed during the war, and arrived at the U.S. Embassy a block farther on.
The four-story, terra-cotta-pink Palazzo Margherita, once the residence of King Victor Emanuel’s mother, was the largest diplomatic headquarters in Rome. But it was far from constituting the entire complex that Clare would administer. It stood in a lavishly restored park—originally the gardens of a Renaissance grandee—with an elegant central pond and white marble Triton blowing spray through a conch shell. The lawns were dotted with classical statuary. In the northern part of the compound, twin villas housed the consulate and United States Information Service. East and south of them were two administrative buildings, the Piombino Wing, and an American-constructed New Wing, matching the nineteenth-century architecture of the rest.
Clare entered through the Palazzo’s west-facing archway, flanked by palm trees. A soaring, semicircular marble stairway took her to the second floor, or piano nobile, its corridor decorated with Roman statues and lined with grand salons. Grandest of these was her enormous, northwest corner office, once the royal drawing room. This square, cream-and-gold chamber had a Venetian glass chandelier hanging from its lofty, gilded ceiling. An Oriental rug covered the floor, and world maps in pale blue enhanced a series of wall panels. A rococo writing table, set in front of tall windows overlooking the main street, stood ready to serve as her desk. Only after she presented her credentials to President Luigi Einaudi could it be flanked by her flags of office: the Stars and Stripes on the right, and to the left her blue-and-gold ambassadorial banner. Directly opposite was a long table with a gleaming patina, used for weekly senior staff meetings.
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