She spoke with more pride of her current term. It was already impressively documented in the Congressional Record—almost two hundred fine-print pages of speeches and legislative proposals. Careful not to sound boastful over the variety of her initiatives, she merely recited them in chronological order, and refrained from expressing disappointment at the failure of many of them, just using the simple phrase No hearing was given this measure.
For a rich Republican, still assumed by many to be an elitist, Clare had demonstrably promoted the rights of minorities. At home these were oppressed workers, women, unemployed veterans, and blacks. Abroad they were the starving and stateless victims of war. She noted, too, that her proposal to amend the immigration law to authorize the admission and naturalization of Indians had become law, albeit under the sponsorship of a majority member.
Sounding the first contentious note of her address, Clare recalled that in February 1945, she had futilely asked the House to “assume national responsibility” for the acquiescence of the United States in the partition of Poland at Yalta. Her idea had been to admit as immigrants Polish soldiers who had served with the Allies and who were forced “to choose between persecution at home or becoming men without a country.” At the end of that year, she had further proposed that United Nations passports be issued to hundreds of thousands of displaced persons in Allied occupation zones. The State Department had unofficially approved this scheme, but no congressional committee had followed through.
She had also called in vain for a cabinet-level Department of Children’s Welfare, to combat an alarming postwar rise in juvenile delinquency and malnutrition. Democrats had included the essence of her idea in their call for a general welfare agency. But the Ways and Means Committee had declined to consider another measure of hers, allowing tax deductions to doctors and dentists volunteering their services to clinics for the poor. Clare’s most nearly successful proposal had been to establish a Housing Bureau that would help veterans procure homes, farms, and bank credit. It had gone nowhere in committee, but its major features were now incorporated in Public Law 388.46
Rounding off, she noted that she had called, again without success, for the formation of a Department of Science and Research; for the popular election, rather than presidential appointment, of American representatives to the United Nations; and for a Congressional Medal of Honor to be awarded General Jonathan M. Wainwright, the defender of Bataan and Corregidor. Her only hint of reproof came when she noted that Congress failed to act on this last request, but that President Truman had bestowed the medal anyway.
Altogether, Representative Luce could take credit for eighteen major initiatives espousing the causes of human rights: equal pay for equal work, racial and sexual fairness, profit sharing, and rehabilitation of veterans. She closed her account on a partisan note.
During the 79th Congress, now presumably passing into history, 4,748 bills were introduced for consideration by committees of the House. Of this number, 675 reached actual debate on the floor. Senate and House together were presented with a total of 6,647 bills, and only 293 of this total became laws of the United States—a vast and overwhelming majority of which bore Democratic names, for the simple reason that the Democratic Party controlled the House, the Senate, and, therefore, the committees.47
The day after her marathon presentation, Clare appeared in the House dining room as the guest of her staff for a farewell steak lunch. Joe Martin also attended, as did the chairman of the Republican National Committee. Congress disbanded the next afternoon, and the soon-to-be former member for Fairfield County headed north.
Representative J. William Fulbright remarked years later that Clare Boothe Luce had used her sex appeal “twenty-four hours a day” on the Hill. “But she was the smartest colleague I ever served with.”48
19
IN LIMBO
Everyone can be measured by his adaptability to change.
—ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG
For the first time in almost four years, Clare had the luxury of untrammeled days to write and reflect. But Harry seemed to want her to continue in politics. On August 15, 1946, he escorted her to a conference in Connecticut with Governor Raymond Baldwin, Republican State Chairman J. Kenneth Bradley, William H. Brennan, and George Waldo. The purpose of the meeting was to decide once and for all whether Clare should run for the Senate in November. She was adamant she would not.1
Apart from the frustration of the legislative life, the malice of the press, and the tedium of evenings alone at the Wardman Park, there was the narrowness of focus.2 In Congress, she remarked, one had to be a piccolo player, “stick to one note and hit it all the time.”3 Her one note had been the war. She had run for office because of it, vowed to leave when it ended, and kept her word. Now theological and literary interests preoccupied her. Six more years on Capitol Hill would starve her intellectually, she felt. “Politics is the refuge of second-class minds.”4
Unable to persuade Clare to run, the GOP strategists turned to Baldwin, who was stepping down after four terms as Governor.5 He agreed to be a candidate, much to the disappointment of at least one Washington stalwart, Alice Longworth, the politically savvy, sixty-year-old daughter of former President Theodore Roosevelt. “She is a lady of quality, highly intelligent. I regret deeply that she has decided not to seek reelection.”6
Harry, reconciled to his wife’s desire for private life, wrote a footnote to Time’s summary of her congressional career for the August 26 issue.
The story of Clare Luce, though told in nearly every other publication in the land, has been told hardly at all in the pages of Time or its sister publications. Time editors, beginning with Editor-in-Chief Henry R. Luce (husband) fumbled the story, because they were too fearful of being damned if they told it or damned if they didn’t.
In spite of this gesture, it was evident to his staff that there was disharmony in the Luce marriage. Charles Douglas Jackson, a vice president, known around the office as “C.D.,” had been Harry’s personal assistant since the early 1930s and now became, in Billings’s words, “a repository for his troubles with Clare.”7 Al Grover, visiting the Luces at Far Away Meadows, reported that they “had nothing in common.”8 They were barely civil to each other, competing to be the focus of his attention.
At work, Harry was increasingly dour and ill-tempered, ordering Communist sympathizers in his employ to be fired. One Monday, he came into the office disheveled and cross. His adoring secretary, Corinne Thrasher, blamed “the weekend with his wife.”9
Captain David Boothe seemed settled in his desk job in Tokyo, reading copious military, political, economic, social, and psychological reports about Korea. He edited them for entry in an intelligence summary and liaised with other sections of the MacArthur administration.10 His association with General Willoughby brought him perks, such as a chauffeured pickup when they dined together.
But now he said he must leave his job to have a “nervous ailment” treated in the States. Willoughby urged him to return, offering a “brilliant spot” in counterespionage, with activity on “risky frontiers.” But David turned it down, on the grounds that he detested dreary Tokyo.11
The truth was more complicated. He wrote Clare that he found himself “bereft of emotional ties.”12 Although he claimed to be reading Kant, Voltaire, Spinoza, and Plato to get a philosophical aspect on life, his true taste was for the semicriminal night owls in Damon Runyon stories. Having actually known characters just like Harry the Horse and Little Isadore as a young man carousing on Broadway, he had come to identify with them, and when binge drinking, he sometimes shared their murderous impulses.13 He found it difficult to erase from his mind enemy barbarism in the jungles of New Guinea and feared, with his short temper, that he might take violent revenge. One night, when stopped by a Japanese official and asked for his name, rank, and serial number, David had to restrain himself from choking him.14 He admitted to Willoughby that his heart was filled with hate for “the hypocrisy and thieving, and lying and indol
ence” of Far Easterners, and he told Clare that “as sure as the sun rose I’d destroy myself in that environment.”15
She dreaded his return. Earlier that year, when applying for his captain’s commission, David had given as his address 398 Beacon Street, Boston. This was a house that Clare had bought clandestinely in case she ever walked out on Harry. Was he imagining that it might one day be his? If he left the military, what would he do? At various times he had tried to be a stockbroker (losing in the process a large amount of her money), run a chain of movie theaters without success, and worked briefly for a Canadian airline. His latest notion was that she should get her friend Sam Pryor to appoint him manager of Pan American Airways in Melbourne, Australia, where he had a girl he was keen on. She advised him to “sweat it out” in the army and stop fantasizing about becoming rich overnight.16
Another reason for David to remain abroad was that he faced some twelve years of federal and state income tax troubles. Harry’s lawyers and accountants, working with the Internal Revenue Service, calculated that he owed somewhere between $10,000 and $20,000. Since he had few assets, the Luces would probably have to help him yet again.17
David, however, insisted that he needed medical treatment in America. Clare resignedly told him that in that case, he could hitch a flight home on the plane of a congressional delegation that was about to visit Japan on an inspection tour. She planned to be among the group. But then, inexplicably, she dropped out.
Her decision was all the more mysterious given that General Willoughby had personally arranged for her to meet Japanese dignitaries not readily accessible to Western visitors. These included the Empress and ladies of her court, as well as female members of the Diet, the democratic parliament MacArthur had installed.18
Possibly Clare was annoyed by news David had relayed that Charles, “in lieu of your presence,” had been seeing a thirty-two-year-old Spanish woman.19 Whatever the case, she preferred to remain in Connecticut throughout the fall, while David made his way across the Pacific by boat. It turned out that his “nervous ailment” was venereal disease that required treatment at a medical facility in San Francisco. He sailed on September 5, and Clare braced for his eventual appearance in New York.
In spite of her protestations, the politician in Clare could not help being caught up in the midterm election campaigns. For the first time in sixteen years, the GOP had a chance of regaining control of Congress and many statehouses. Much of the electorate was tired of the Democratic Party’s obsession with foreign aid, and President Truman’s approval rating had dropped to the low thirties. Her own seat seemed safe for a Republican candidate. Al Morano aspired to it, but she suggested he wait four years, saying that Fairfield County voters would disparage him as her stand-in. In any case, she had decided to support John Davis Lodge (grandson of the famous Senator Henry Cabot Lodge), even though he had lived in Connecticut less than a year. She told Morano that Lodge would probably run for Governor in 1950, and he could then try to replace him in the House of Representatives.20
On November 5, Republicans gained fifty-five seats in the House and twelve in the Senate, taking Congress for the first time since the 1920s. Clare’s old friend Joe Martin became Speaker.
“The twenty-four hours after the elections were bad,” she admitted to an acquaintance, “because it would have been fun to have been in on the big victory.… But now I am completely content with my retirement. I have already set to work, on what may become a book and two producable plays!”21
On arriving in San Francisco, David Boothe entered Letterman General Hospital. He was loath to tell his sister he had VD again, particularly since she had paid for a previous treatment of gonorrhea. So he confided in the sympathetic George Waldo, whom he knew from years back. “Many a man,” he wrote, “has been placed beyond misery, when the doctor finally diagnoses that strange and lingering sore as syphilis.” He attributed his bad luck to having had sex while drunk, promising that henceforth he would stay sober.22
After being released by his doctors, David had fifty-two days of leave before reporting for a medical examination in Florida. His new hope was to qualify for a pilot’s commission in the U.S. Army Reserve.23 Before that, he planned to drive around the South and Southwest and work for a while on the fruit farm of a pilot friend in Arizona, getting extra fit for his physical.
Clare realized that her brother was again embarking on a nomadic existence of dependency and let him know she had less income now, and higher liabilities. “I’ve read your letter several times,” David wrote on November 11. “All I can say is this sister dear, currency circulation in ’29 was about 5 billion; now stands at 30 billion.”24
On December 22, he showed up at his sister’s apartment in New York. She affected “great joy” in seeing him, but he immediately felt under scrutiny. He told her she looked well, her gray wisps “not unbecoming.” Prematurely grizzled himself, he dyed his hair jet black and claimed to have “the health of an ox.”
In spite of Clare’s apparent warmth, David intuited that he was still marked “caution” in the Luce household. This annoyed and saddened him, for he believed that his war service and medals should exonerate his delinquencies.25 But he was frank enough to admit he had a personality disorder. “It just ain’t right to be so inconsistently put together & disturbs me no end.”26
Within twenty-four hours, eschewing a family Christmas, he was back on the road, heading south.
A week after his brief glimpse of Clare, David wrote to say that he saw the United States as “a big fat rich nation, utterly without integrity … ploughing along, dog eat dog.” That was why he hoped to stay in the army and “not get chewed up myself.” But he felt somewhat less disillusioned after receiving a surprise check from Clare and a $1,000 Brooks Brothers credit from Harry.27
In early January 1947, David sent alarming news. He wrote that he had met a Phoenix woman he wanted to wed. Fearing a repetition of his disastrous earlier marriage, Clare replied, “This is an immoral thing for a man like you to do.” He had surely taken advantage of “some little girl who doesn’t know the truth about you.” She told him that she and Harry would not subsidize the relationship. What he needed, she said, was “spiritual guidance.”28
He responded defiantly. “Immoral—why? Because I’m guilty of the crime of having no money—apart from a few hundred?… Because a man such as I has no right to love someone? I’m not too obscene to embrace a Faith am I?… Don’t you think I know truth when I encounter it? Me a guy that has skirted the fringes of pimpdom, thievery, gangsterdom, connivers, schemers, bums, touts, et al.”29 As for Mary Jane Haskin, his potential bride, she was not a “girl,” but a college-educated, thirty-six-year-old former naval lieutenant who now worked as a clerk in a department store.
Suspecting that Clare wanted to convert him to Roman Catholicism, David said he was willing to listen to “whatever wisdom or knowledge” she could impart that did not insult his intelligence. He reminded her that at age ten, in an Episcopal ceremony of confirmation at Racine College’s military school, “some huge pontifical hulk crossed my forehead with his fingers and established eligibility for Holy Communion. As my voice was not adaptable for choir work the Church had no need of me nor I of them. Since then my incursions into sanctuaries have been infrequent.”
He posed a few questions that he would like her to answer before he even considered religious instruction.
How did you first conceive of the infinite in terms of the finite?
What do they the Atom boys say to your creeds?
How does a man like Einstein view the Church as the true faith?
What about life or intelligence elsewhere in the universe?
And the justice of Infinite Wisdom that so eagerly took your Ann? And passed me up?
What crime or series of crimes could a person commit that renders him throughout Eternity beyond recall or redemption?
He ended ingratiatingly, telling Clare that he was reading G. K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting
Man and eschewing hard liquor. “Thinking and alcohol conflict, so of necessity I go for beer. No sister, your brother isn’t getting ready to sprout wings, he’s just getting accustomed to the fact that his tail has sort of shriveled and almost disappeared.”30
Later that month, David reported to army authorities in Washington, D.C., who told him that at almost forty-five he was not eligible for a reserve commission. He wrote Clare that he was soon to be separated from military service, “the only endeavor in which I’ve ever been successful.”31
Before leaving the capital, he was startled to receive a call from a man with a purring, syrupy voice. He quickly identified it as that of his sister’s favorite priest.
“I can help you,” said Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen.
“Lord love a duck, one of us is nuts,” David thought to himself. “Here I have 39 months overseas and a gink I’ve never seen is going to help me. Help me to do what? Join his outfit? I should send him a bill for keeping the Japs off his back.”32
After successfully evading Sheen’s overture, David proceeded to Morrison Field in Florida to register for demobilization, effective June 1. Clare invited him in the meantime to visit her at Mepkin, where she aimed to stay through April. He asked if he could bring Mary Jane. She wrote back to say that he could hardly expect her and Harry to welcome them as a couple. “You … we shall admit, but you only.” David hastened to explain that he was only thinking of remarriage. “Enactment and contemplation, in this instance, are poles apart, for the hurdles are obvious even to me.”33
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