Price of Fame

by Sylvia Jukes Morris

  By late August, she was back in New York, still feeling unwell, and having an extensive medical examination. It revealed that she was suffering from “symptoms of serious anemia and of extreme nervous fatigue.”13 Postponing treatment, she hurried to the capital with her new idea on Trieste.

  There she was successful in obtaining an administration commitment to pay Italy at least half, if not more, of the $30 million. But first Tito must be persuaded to yield a little extra territory, if only to give Brosio a feeling of effectiveness as a negotiator. The question was, what would persuade the Marshal?

  Providentially, it turned out to be who. At a dinner in Washington on September 2, Clare found herself seated next to Robert D. Murphy, Eisenhower’s Under Secretary for Political Affairs. She knew him to be a consummate diplomat, experienced in both intelligence and military matters. He asked her about Trieste. The key to a settlement, she said, was held by Tito. “If only there were someone who knew him well enough to twist his arm.”14

  Yugoslavia, she added, was hoping for a free, four-hundred-thousandton wheat shipment from the United States, so all the intermediary needed to say was, “Okay, you sign or no wheat.”

  “I could say that to him,” Murphy said. “I knew Tito in the war.”15

  The following day, Clare asked the President to let his aide go to Belgrade and “handle it” for them. Eisenhower and Dulles authorized the covert mission. As Murphy said afterward, “Ambassador Luce usually got what she wanted.”16

  Twelve days later, he reached Belgrade, only to be informed that Tito was at his new palace on the island of Brioni, off the Dalmatian coast. Before going there, he learned from Vice President Svetozar Vukmanovic-Tempo the true extent of Yugoslavia’s wheat deficit. At 1.3 million tons, it was the worst the country had ever known, due to the failure of Marxist collective farming. Murphy postponed any mention of Clare’s proposed wheat deal, and on September 16 proceeded to Brioni, where Tito welcomed him as an old wartime friend.

  The Marshal was in a jovial mood, and over lunch enjoyed Murphy’s joke about a hole at the Chevy Chase golf course called “Trieste,” because it was about as big as the territory under discussion in London.17 Murphy then handed over a personal letter from Eisenhower. Tito absented himself for twenty minutes to read it in his study. Ike had discreetly said nothing about money or wheat, asking only that Yugoslavia slightly extend the southern tip of Zone A. “I want you to understand that in urging this further small concession I am not blind to the great contribution you’ve already made.”18

  When Tito returned, he made clear that he was weary of the protracted Trieste affair, and said he would offer Italy a choice of two settlements. One was to move the interzonal boundary south of Punta Sottile, with Italy retaining a triangle of Zone B hinterland. The alternative was to move the boundary even further south, but with no Italian occupancy of Zone B.19

  Murphy astutely sensed that it would be indelicate to say anything about Clare’s wheat deal now. Instead, he returned to Belgrade and proposed it to Aleš Bebler, the Yugoslav Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.20 Leaving Bebler to discuss the matter with colleagues, he flew on to Rome on September 18, and met with Clare, now back at her post. She told him that Italy had a new Foreign Minister, Gaetano Martino, who was more flexible than his predecessor, Piccioni. This boded well for the final stage of Murphy’s mission.21

  A couple of days later, he delivered Tito’s two offers to the Chigi Palace, and made it clear that Italy had to choose one or the other. He then, in company with Clare, said the same to Scelba. The Prime Minister grumbled that Italy was being required to make yet another sacrifice so that Tito might be seduced further from Moscow into the Western sphere. But he agreed to choose one of the Yugoslav alternatives, saying momentously, “We are at the end of the drama.”22

  On September 22, Italy formally accepted Tito’s second proposal, thereby gaining all of Zone A, as well as the free port of Trieste. The government also undertook to pay Yugoslavia $30 million in real estate reparations, of which $18 million—the “substantial cash contribution” Clare had hinted at, on the advice of Bob Low—would come from the United States. The agreement remained classified, pending an exchange of documents.23

  At 5:00 P.M. on October 5, the final accordo in forma semplice was signed in London by Italy, Yugoslavia, and the three Allies, including France. Clare called an immediate press conference. No one in the audience had an inkling of what she was about to say. Adapting a phrase from Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, she announced in triumph, “We settled the Trieste problem by open covenants secretly arrived at.”24

  After a moment of stunned silence, one skeptical reporter asked, “Mrs. Ambassador, do you mean to say you didn’t tell your husband about these negotiations?”

  “I could not,” she replied. “Under his rules, he would have to give some publicity to the matter.”25

  That evening, as church bells tolled in Trieste and an enormous Italian flag was raised in the Piazza dell’Unità, Clare went to the diplomatic gallery of the Senate and watched as cheers broke out on the floor below.26

  The following day, Maggie Case sent a note congratulating “a diplomat come of age.” She continued ecstatically, “Everybody has been dancing in the New York streets, drinking your health at parties, delighted to know you. ‘Clare has done it!’ ” One of those toasting the Ambassador was her erstwhile critic Cy Sulzberger.27

  In its report of the settlement, the New York Daily News noted that European commentators were giving Ambassador Luce credit “for her tireless eighteen-month effort to reach a compromise in the Italo-Yugoslav dispute. Her diplomacy and tenacity paid off.”

  The Italian flag rises over Trieste, October 26, 1954 (illustration credit 37.1)

  The New York Journal said she deserved praise for “having overcome a great many obstacles since she went to Italy, among them the Latin hostility to women in high position.”

  Clare celebrated with a champagne-and-caviar party for embassy staff involved in the Trieste settlement, particularly clerks and assistants who had worked many twenty-hour shifts in the code room.28 She also attended an official lunch in her honor at the Villa Madama. Count Vittorio Zoppi, head of the Italian Foreign Office, presented her with a gold cigarette case, encrusted with the fleur-de-lys emblem of Trieste in rubies and brilliants.29 It took a moment for her to recognize the object as an old gift from Harry. Tish Baldrige had smuggled it out of the Villa Taverna for embellishment.

  Clare burst into tears, and even Zoppi brushed his eyes.30

  In bleak, windy weather on October 26, Allied troops withdrew from Trieste. After nine years of occupation, they were in such a hurry to leave that they did not wait for Italian troops to replace them. Gianni Bartoli, the mayor of the city, joyously wired President Eisenhower:

  TRIESTES POPULATION GRATEFUL … HAIL YOU AND YOUR COLLABORATION [SIC] MRS CLAIRE BOOTH LUCE AS CHIEF ORIGINANTS OF THIS RESULT … THREATS TO PEACE RECEDING … IN EVERY WORLDS COUNTRY.31

  Whatever pleasure Clare felt at the resolution of her biggest diplomatic challenge was overshadowed by public speculation that she was about to quit her job and—more seriously—by private confirmation from a U.S. Navy doctor that her recent ailments were caused by arsenic poisoning.

  The resignation rumors were denied by Harry on arrival at Idlewild Airport in New York. “Oh no, not again,” he said to reporters. “We have about sixty ambassadors and I can’t see her resigning in the forseeable future any more than the other fifty-nine.”32 Time followed up with a firm rebuttal.33

  Harry was, however, alarmed enough to show the navy document to Dr. Rosenbluth, who immediately wrote Clare, saying he did not know the basis for the diagnosis. “But arsenic is one of the poisons which can affect the peripheral nerves and cause a neuropathy.… I think it is important that a test be made of your urine to determine whether or not arsenic is present.”34

  Clare had this done in Rome and the analysis showed nothing abnormal. But Ros
enbluth said she could still have ingested enough arsenic to bring on other symptoms.35 She was not entirely surprised. Over the past eighteen months she had suffered from anemia, nervous fatigue, nausea, cramps, irritability, a dragging numbness in her right foot, and most recently brittle nails, loosening teeth, and fragile hair that came out in clumps.36

  Without delay, she scheduled an appointment with the United States Navy Hospital in Naples for “sinus” treatment.

  On November 2, in a double blow to the Eisenhower administration, the Republican Party lost control of both Houses of Congress. Clare’s friend Joe Martin had to hand over his Speakership gavel to Samuel T. Rayburn of Texas. In the Senate, Rayburn’s fellow Texan Lyndon B. Johnson became majority leader with a thin margin buttressed by the support of an Independent, Wayne L. Morse of Oregon.

  Commiserating with Martin, Clare wrote that the Italian press saw the vote as a win for Achesonian diplomacy. “I wasn’t called home to help in the elections,” she complained. If she had been, she would have urged Ike to make more of his foreign policy successes, including Trieste. It occurred to her that in nineteen months of service, she had spent a total of only one hour with Eisenhower, and about an hour and a half with Dulles.37

  On the plus side, she had made good on her threats of aid withheld from Italian manufacturers with Communist-dominated unions. She had recently canceled a $7.528 million warship construction project in Palermo, and an $18 million munitions contract in Milan. Fearful they might be the Ambassador’s next target, 1,920 workers in the Fiat Avio plant in Turin voted against Red leadership, with only 77 in favor. As a result, she had come under renewed left-wing attack in Italy and America.

  “If you’ve ever written a play,” she told Durbrow, “you’re used to criticism.”38

  Fiat shows Clare a fleet of F-86s built with U.S. aid (illustration credit 37.2)

  At least it was better than being ignored, which was how Carlos Chávez felt at her hands. She received a stiff notification from him, saying that he was attending the First Festival of Latin American Music in Venezuela. “My Symphony No. 3, commissioned by you, and dedicated to Ann Clare, will be premiered here … under my direction on December 9.”39

  He added that he had sent the full score to her in August, with a follow-up letter in September, and received no acknowledgment of either. Nor had he been paid the $1,500 she owed on delivery. Actually, Clare had not been inactive on his behalf. She had sent the manuscript to Robert Irving, music director of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, for his opinion.40

  Irving replied that he had tried the symphony out on the piano, and found it “extremely strong stuff,” if “almost too self-consciously ‘clever.’ ” He went on to say, “The whole work is certainly uncompromisingly modern (grim in parts), & extremely difficult to play: but as a conductor, I can honestly say that, given a good orchestra and adequate rehearsals, I should certainly welcome the opportunity of performing the work.”41

  Clare still did not respond to Carlos, perhaps because she had always imagined herself attending its first performance in a great auditorium on her own turf. So the premiere, played by the Venezuela Symphony Orchestra, took place in Caracas without her presence or blessing. Chávez had to settle for the praise of his fellow composer and friend Aaron Copland, who, after reading the score, wrote, “It deserves a prize!”

  Judges at the event concurred, and gave Chávez the prestigious Caro de Boesi Award.42

  In the opinion of the president and faculty of the University of Trieste, Ambassador Luce deserved a year-end tribute. They invited her to visit their campus and accept an honorary degree for having helped to secure the city for Italy. During the Allied occupation, the school had been a hotbed of Italian nationalism, and the only local institution that had defiantly flown the state flag. So on December 17, Clare and Harry made their first visit to the ancient port.43

  Though founded by the Romans, and only a hundred miles east of Venice, Trieste looked more Austrian than Italian—the result of having been for centuries part of the Hapsburg Empire. Turkish elements in its architecture also betrayed its proximity to the Balkans. Curving dramatically around a broad swath of bay, it was walled off from the Slovene hinterland by the Carso, a ridge of high, bare limestone hills. They belonged to Yugoslavia, an oppressive reminder to Clare that the city was connected to Italy only by the narrowest riviera—formerly Zone A. It was on those heights that Stalin and Tito had stood together after World War II and plotted Trieste’s future as the westernmost warm-water port of the Soviet bloc.44 This had prompted Churchill’s historic warning, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”

  Clare presented with a Bersaglieri cap at Trieste University, December 17, 1954 (illustration credit 37.3)

  In spite of wind and rain, Clare found the city larger, more beautiful, and more prosperous-looking than she had imagined. She could see why Italians were so passionate about possessing it. As her car, flying the American flag, pulled into the vast Piazza dell’Unità, an enthusiastic crowd of Triestini rushed forward, waving, smiling, and doffing their hats. She was welcomed by a delegation of civic dignitaries including Mayor Bartoli, who told her how extraordinarily popular the American resident troops had been, and how much the citizenry regretted seeing them sail away, taking many local girls as wives.45

  Before receiving her degree at a ceremony in Piazzale Europa, Clare donned the traditional scholar’s Bersaglieri black-feathered cap, with a long, projecting brim and dangling silk tassels on the right side. She concluded her acceptance address with a few paragraphs of carefully rehearsed Italian.46

  Grazie, Chiarissimo Rettore, per avermi invitato a visitare questa grande e giovane Università, il cui nome è già celebre nella storia della cultura italiana.… E per l’onore che avete voluto tributarmi e per quanto esso significa per me e per il Paese che rappresento, permettetemi di porgervi il mio commosso ringraziamento.

  Ora che Trieste è entrata in una nuova fase della sua storia, questo Ateneo avrà ancora maggiori possibilità di arrichire la vita di tutta la comunità e della Nazione Italiana.…

  Vorrei esprimerle i più sentiti e sinceri auguri del popolo americano per il glorioso futuro di questo eminente centro di pensiero e di cultura.47

  38

  NO BED OF ROSES

  There are three species of creatures who when they seem coming, are going: diplomats, women and crabs.

  —JOHN HAY

  Clare arrived at Idlewild on January 3, 1955, on an Italian Airlines flight. She had deliberately avoided taking an American plane to show support for Italy’s chief carrier, which had suffered a fatal accident only two weeks before. Approaching the same airport, one of its craft had crashed, burned, and sunk in icy Jamaica Bay. Twenty-six people had died, with only six survivors.1

  This gesture added further luster to the Ambassador’s prestige, coming as it did not long after her recent show of sympathy for thousands of homeless flood victims in Salerno. For two days, she had tramped in mud and rain, distributing food and other supplies.2

  Between routine appointments at the State Department, Clare was interviewed again on Longines Chronoscope. “Never underestimate the power of a woman,” said its host, Larry LeSueur, regarding the Trieste settlement. She spoke, as usual, authoritatively and with phenomenal self-possession, smiling often in spite of a newly prominent incisor.3 On Thursday, the sixth, wearing a gray tweed suit and dark red lapel rose, she returned to her old forum and sat in the center of the House of Representatives for President Eisenhower’s State of the Union message. At the Women’s National Press Club a week later, she gave a major policy speech, “Italy in 1955,” which was published in the United States Department of State Bulletin.4 Next came a mostly laudatory Newsweek cover story entitled “Madam Ambassador Clare Boothe Luce: Her Versatile and Crowded Years.”

  Mrs. Luce has now been 21 months at her post. Seldom has anyone done such a face-lifting job on a hostile public
opinion.… She has been a puissant influence for bettering Italo-American relations.

  The explanation for her peculiar success is largely personal. She is, preeminently, the kind of ambassador who succeeds in making her own personality, for a time, do double duty as the image of her country. It is a strong personality—almost too strong for its owner’s good.5

  Clare’s satisfaction might have been greater had she graced the cover of Time—the ultimate accolade for any contemporary public figure. As it happened, the magazine’s portraitist, Boris Chaliapin, did paint her for that purpose. But Harry, always leery of nepotism charges, pulled it after seeing the mock-up.6

  Encomiums proliferated. In Philadelphia on January 17, the anniversary of Benjamin Franklin’s birth, Clare became the first woman ever to win the Poor Richard Club’s Gold Medal of Achievement. Earlier honorees had included Dwight Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur. Simultaneously, a half-page article on the foreign news page of Moscow’s Literaturnaya Gazeta accused “Kler But Lus” of “giving commands and orders to the Italian government.” The accompanying illustration caricatured her as a blonde policewoman wearing a swastika and wielding a club.7

  That same day in Rome, Elbridge Durbrow wrote Clare a highly confidential letter, forwarded in the State Department pouch. He said that U.S. Navy doctors in Naples had submitted their findings of her recent urinalysis to the more sophisticated laboratories of Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. For security reasons, they had given her a mariner’s pseudonym. The diagnosis sent back to Italy read: “Seaman Jones is a victim of arsenic poisoning.”8