Personal History (15 page)

M
Y FATHER
and I were growing closer during my college years, while my mother and I were growing apart. He was so shy and inarticulate in expressing emotion that I was always surprised to find him making the attempt. In the fall of 1935, when I was leaving for my second year at Vassar, he wrote me: “I hate to think that soon you’ll be off to college and I to Washington and then only to meet at holidays for another year.” And again, when I went to Europe the following summer, he wrote me that he was leaving for the “lonely farm, with Kate no longer there to cheer me up.” My father and, later, Phil Graham were among the very few people who ever called me Kate.

I was eighteen that second year of college. The conflict that had begun the year before between the social life and the intellectual and political life continued to grow. “Coming-out” parties were very much in vogue, the accepted thing in Washington, and a few people still spent the whole year going to parties in different cities where they had family or ties. My own debut was limited to a tea dance at Thanksgiving and a dance on December 26, done quite splendidly, with the house decorated in a Greek theme and my dress Greek in effect, and gold, not the traditional white.

I had learned enough to help with the invitation list and arrangements. My mother had suggested asking young Joseph Alsop, the brilliant, young reporter for the
Herald-Tribune
, whom she had recently met. When we were seating the dinner, I put him next to me, intrigued by her description. She had omitted one salient fact, however—Joe, who was fairly short, then weighed about 250 pounds. In addition, he was extremely sophisticated. I was appalled by his appearance and unable to cope with his mature mind and presence, though I got through dinner as best I could. Later, we became lifelong, devoted friends, but this was an odd and inauspicious beginning.

Accentuating my ambivalence about the two worlds in which I felt myself to be moving, on the day after my big party Connie and I left by train for Columbus, Ohio, to attend the meeting that established the American Student Union. We had been asked to cover it for the Vassar
Miscellany News
, on which we both now worked. The union was a combination of communist and socialist student groups, the liberals and the radicals willing to get along with each other and to combine with unaffiliated students for antifascist purposes. It was a kind of mirror image of what was happening in the older political world, where the same groups had formed the Popular Front to try to fight the rise of Hitler.

We found friends from Dartmouth of more or less similar views and had a good time with Budd Schulberg, later author and movie producer; Eddie Ryan, later on the
Post;
and Bill Leonard, later head of news for CBS. After going out together for a drink one evening, we returned to the meeting to find that I, who had come as an observer and a reporter, had been put on the National Executive Committee. This was part of a transparent ploy of the left-wing factions to be sure they had enough visible unattached liberals to be convincing. My first instinct was to remove my name quickly, but a second, which I followed, was to go along with the idea. I was entirely realistic about the reasons for my selection and knew that I was being used. At the same time, I found that this was an interesting and unfamiliar scene and thought I’d take a look and learn what it was all about.

When I told my father about being on the committee, he wrote me at length, arguing against journalists joining organizations and suggesting that “the fewer labels you wear the better.” In responding to his counsel, I quietly but firmly told him I appreciated the thought he had obviously given to all sides of the question and agreed with most of his points, particularly that there are certain dangers inherent in so-called mass thinking. I also agreed that labels were undesirable, but I explained that it would be difficult for all concerned if I were to resign at that time. My father wrote back at once, thanking me for my letter and concluding with what is one of the simplest and best precepts for parents to live by that I have ever read. It meant a lot to me then, as it does even today: “What parents may sometimes do in a helpful way is to point out certain principles of action. I do not think I would be helpful in advising you too strongly. I do not even feel the need of doing that because I have so much confidence in your having really good judgment. I believe that what I can do for you once in a while is to point out certain principles that have developed in my mind as sound and practical, leaving it for you yourself to apply them if your own mind grasps and approves the principles.”

This issue, which might have become a separating bone of contention between us, is a good example of how my relationship with my father worked, and the caring and concern that were evident on both our parts. He was probably gently trying to persuade me not to join a group that included communists. But he didn’t persist.

My mother, on the other hand, did take stands and, indeed, political jobs. In the spring of 1936, she was running Alf Landon’s radio campaign, although Dad had apparently tried to talk her out of it. As usual, she sprang into action with total enthusiasm. She wrote me that spring with her characteristic excitement about her current project: “Landon is a home run. Much more important than the writer chaps have pictured him. I have to do a job.” Later, still besotted with her own contribution to his image, she wrote: “I am doing a red-hot talk on Landon the man on a
national hook-up. Such fun. Landon’s acceptance speech was good but I can always put him over better than he can (!) because he hasn’t the habit of putting himself into speeches. I can’t help wondering sometimes what he thinks of himself when I get through with him.” She had blinders on to such an extent that, when election eve came around, she was still thinking Landon might defeat FDR.

At about the same time that she was becoming deeply involved with the Republican campaign, she spoke at a Town Hall program, a very prominent radio discussion group, with Mrs. Roosevelt presiding. As always, she wrote me in advance to make sure I would tune in and added as an incentive that she would “defend your students’ union and jibe at teacher and pupil oaths.” I was pleased that she might mention the ASU in her speech, but not a little worried about what she might go on to say. In fact, she got in a row about the New Deal with Mrs. Roosevelt. Her next letter to me expressed hurt feelings at my silence: “I judge from your silence that you did not care for my speech very much, but as far as the world is concerned I am a hero. Before I left the hall I began getting telegrams and when we got back to the hotel there were numerous long distance telephone calls, one from Bis very enthusiastic. The fan mail is coming in hot and heavy, and all of it approving and even enthusiastic. The animosity which the letters breathe for the Roosevelts is unbelievable. I enclose a typical one for your amusement.” This was yet another of my one-way conversations with my mother that consisted entirely of her telling me of the overwhelming reception of her latest speeches—mass ovations, and demands for thousands of copies. This kind of self-delusion and overwhelming need for adulation made any exchange with her increasingly difficult for me and, I think, for all of us.

In the spring of 1936, I got involved in organizing a nationwide peace strike. As if on cue, something else happened that underlined the schisms in my thinking. Connie and I were invited by the seniors at Vassar to be among the few girls picked for the Daisy Chain—allegedly for pulchritude and other sterling qualities, but in reality because they liked you. We were somewhat embarrassed, since the Daisy Chain was an old-fashioned ritual, but secretly we were pleased and soothed our self-conscious selves by composing a poem of acceptance that was titled “To the Upper Class from Two in Chains.” Only the second verse of this epic survives, and reads:

My mother, on receiving a copy of this poem, responded enthusiastically about the verse—not the tapping—and philosophized, “In this democratic country nothing makes so much impression as being elected to something; popularity counts, alas, for a darn sight more than merit. Look at Franklyn [meaning, of course, FDR]. The best we can hope is that popularity without merit eventually becomes cloying.”

Connie and I had discussed making a trip to the Soviet Union that summer following our sophomore year, the summer of 1936. Although my mother’s first reaction had been positive, my father vetoed the idea with vehemence. I pleaded for Russia, arguing politely that we could book an exciting and cheap tour conducted by Intourist, which I called the reliable and official Russian travel bureau. I added fuel to my argument, I thought, by saying that we would shorten our planned stay in the Soviet Union to two weeks. We would go in the early part of the summer, when Connie’s family would still be in Western Europe and therefore close enough to help us if there were a problem, and I would be back to spend September on the
Post
with my father.

Dad did not agree with my logic. He telegraphed his okay to Western Europe only and followed up with a letter explaining his reasons:

When Connie and I left for Europe at the end of June, we made quite a traveling troupe, given Connie’s parents, her four sisters, and a nurse or maid. Her father was constantly calling to the French porters,
“Neuf personnes et vingt-neuf pièces de baggages”
(nine people and twenty-nine pieces of luggage).

We went first to London, and although I recognized the seriousness of the political situation, I found it quite a gay place, with everyone excited about the king’s garden parties. In Paris, Léon Blum, the socialist, was the head of a Popular Front government, and politics made themselves felt everywhere, exacerbated for us, no doubt, by our having arrived in the city on the day before Bastille Day. In addition to the usual military parade, there was a Popular Front demonstration, which gave me the most impressive feeling of communal strength I had ever had. There were two separate marching lines that eventually met and came together, singing,
into the Place de la Bastille. The spirit with which the crowds poured in, about 750,000 strong, made it easy to visualize previous scenes at the same location.

Connie and I joined the march, attaching ourselves to the
boulangers—
a group of bakers—and walking with them for a couple of hours. As if to make an even greater point of our being pulled in opposite directions at once, we broke off from the Popular Front parade to have lunch with my aunt Elise, who had left San Francisco after her husband died and taken up residence in a beautifully decorated house in Paris, where she became a successful and prominent social figure. After some time, Elise married the Brazilian ambassador to France, Luiz de Souza-Dantas, who by length of service had become dean of the diplomatic corps, a position of some eminence. Our morning’s march was in marked contrast to Elise’s usual activities, and it amused her greatly that Connie and I had joined her lunch straight from the parade. She kept telling us throughout the meal to “tell Princess So-and-So and Sir So-and-So what you did this morning!”

So we led a highly varied life on our trip. In Paris I took Connie to have dinner with Brancusi one night. I was so eager to see him that I rang the bell madly and burst into the studio when the door opened, only to be confronted by a strange face. Full of the exuberance of youth, I exclaimed, “My goodness, where’s Brancusi and who are you?” He turned out to be Pierre Matisse, Henri’s son, and he stayed to dinner. The four of us ate in Brancusi’s totally white studio, sitting on blocks of marble around another huge chunk of marble, which served as the table. When it was time to eat, Brancusi produced large sheets of a kind of shiny white paper, and put them around like placemats. My memory is that everything we ate was white, too, although I’m sure that wasn’t the case.

We returned to England for a student meeting at Oxford and lunch with Harold Laski, and then were off to Salzburg, where Mother had treated us to the Hotel Bristol and tickets to the music festival there. Because I had heeded my father’s instructions to stay well on the Western side of Europe, Connie and I now parted company as she headed for the Soviet Union. But though I was sad to see her leave without me for the great adventure, I don’t remember any feeling of resentment at having been forbidden to go with her. I had accepted my father’s verdict.

O
N A TRAIN TRIP
to Mount Kisco with my father later that summer, I broached the idea of my studying at the London School of Economics (as my brother, Bill, had) the following year. It was met with an immediate “no.” He believed that Bill had been too young intellectually, too immature, to put European social problems in context, and he thought I was, too. But he said that he understood
why
I wanted to leave Vassar and that it was all right with him if I went anywhere else in this country. I was so taken aback that I could hardly think of an alternative to London. But I thought I had to respond instantly rather than do the natural thing, which was to think it over, so I made an instantaneous decision. I hit on the University of Chicago not out of a sudden impulse toward serious study but simply because there flashed into my mind a picture I had seen while flipping through the pages of
Redbook
magazine of Robert Maynard Hutchins, the university’s young, handsome, dynamic president. The cutlines under his picture said that he was revolutionizing the learning process and shaking things up with new and interesting ideas about college education, and that the university was in an intellectual ferment—or something of the sort. I hadn’t focused on it as I flipped the page, but now I added things up quickly: it was in the Midwest (I had never lived off the Eastern seaboard); it was coeducational; and it was in a city. “Okay,” I said, “I’ll go to Chicago.”