Schlesinger was aware of the contested nature of this vital life, the more so as the older figure bearing the scars of battles in the public arena replaced the brash young “daddy’s boy” of the 1930s and 1940s. “We are prisoners of our own times and own experiences,” he acknowledged at his eightieth birthday dinner at the Century Association in 1997. “New times bring new contexts and new perspectives—and new histories.” But Schlesinger’s life had fulfilled the words of Oscar Wilde that he quoted that night. “The one duty we owe to history,” he said, “is to rewrite it.”13
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For help in a variety of ways, I wish to thank the following: Daniel Akst, Maurice Bric, Ian Buruma, Sir David Cannadine, Eliot Cohen, Deirdre d’Albertis, Mark Danner, Omar Encarnación, Lucy Flamm, Rory Kennedy, Cynthia Koch, Walter LaFeber, Michael Mandelbaum, Sean McMeekin, Brian Murphy, Mike Riley, Declan Ryan, Michael Staunton, Karen Sullivan, David Swanson, Rachel Thompson, Noel Whelan, Harry White, and David Woolner; the president, faculty, staff, and students of Bard College, particularly the members of my first-year seminar classes; Walter Russell Mead, Damir Marusic, Jamie Horgan, and everyone at The American Interest; the archivists of the JFK Library and the New York Public Library, with particular thanks to Tal Nadan and Brandon Westerheim; Peter Nelson, head of archives at Phillips Exeter Academy; David Reynolds, Fredrik Logevall, Mark Lytle, and Simon Ball for their immense generosity in taking time away from their own research to read all or part of my first draft; my superb editor Tom Mayer, his assistant Sarah Bolling, and the entire team at W. W. Norton; the indefatigable Georgina Capel of Georgina Capel Associates; Stephen Graham and Andrew Wylie for facilitating the connection with the Schlesinger family, and the Schlesingers themselves for their kindness in welcoming this project, with special thanks to Alexandra Schlesinger, Robert Schlesinger, and Peter Allan, Marian Cannon Schlesinger, Stephen Schlesinger, Christina Schlesinger, and Andrew Schlesinger; my wife, Kathryn Aldous, for once again reading an entire manuscript; my mother, Patricia Aldous, and my late father, John Aldous, who first introduced me to A Thousand Days. Finally this book is dedicated to my daughter Elizabeth. She’s nobody’s “Junior,” but I am every bit as proud of her as Arthur Sr. was of Young Arthur.
Richard Aldous
Annandale-on-Hudson, New York
March 2017
NOTES
Prologue: Where He Was
1 Accounts of Schlesinger on Nov. 22/23, 1963: Richard N. Goodwin, Remembering America: A Voice from the Sixties (Boston: Little, Brown, 1988), 226–231; diary entry, Nov. 23, 1963, Arthur Schlesinger, Journals: 1952–2000, ed. Andrew Schlesinger and Stephen Schlesinger (New York: Penguin Press, 2008), 203–206; William Manchester, The Death of a President: November 1963 (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 420, 437, 442–443; Katharine Graham, Personal History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), 353; “The Combative Chronicler,” Time, Dec. 17, 1965; AMS, “The Historian and History,” Foreign Affairs (April 1963), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/1963-04-01/historian-and-history.
Chapter One: Becoming Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
1 Key: NYPL—Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Papers. Manuscripts and Archives Division. The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations. AMS Memoirs—Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., A Life in the 20th Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917–1950 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000). AMS Letters—Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Letters of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., ed. Andrew Schlesinger and Stephen Schlesinger (New York: Random House, 2013). JFKL—Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Personal Papers. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Three generations of Schlesingers have told the story of Arthur’s early life, and I draw on each of them in this chapter. There are Arthur’s own memoirs, his father’s memoirs, and an account by his sons, Andrew and Stephen, in the prologue to the published letters. Andrew has also written a study of Arthur’s alma mater, Harvard University. Arthur’s first wife, Marian Cannon, who, like him, grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, wrote her own memoir of a Harvard childhood. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., A Life in the 20th Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917–1950 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 59; Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr., In Retrospect: The History of a Historian (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1963); Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Letters of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., ed. Andrew Schlesinger and Stephen Schlesinger (New York: Random House, 2013); Andrew Schlesinger, Veritas: Harvard College and the American Experience (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005); Marian Cannon Schlesinger, Snatched From Oblivion: A Cambridge Memoir (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979); Niall Ferguson, Kissinger, 1923–1968: The Idealist (New York: Penguin Press, 2015), 447; Walter LaFeber, interview by author, June 4, 2014.
2 Marian Cannon Schlesinger, interview by author, Mar. 9, 2014.
3 AMS Memoirs, 13.
4 “Ohio, Marriages, 1800–1958: Bernhard Schlesinger and Katie Feurle, 20 Feb 1873,” FamilySearch, citing Greene, Ohio, reference, FHL microfilm 0535126 V. 5–7, https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XDNW-JYD; Helen Hooven Santmyer, Ohio Town: A Portrait of Xenia (New York: Harper, 1961).
5 Schlesinger, In Retrospect, 195.
6 Ibid., 51.
7 “Ohio, Deaths, 1908–1953,” Arthur Schlesinger in entry for Katherine Bancroft Schlesinger, 18 July 1916, FamilySearch, citing Columbus, Franklin Co., Ohio, reference fn 42891; FHL microfilm 1,983,750, https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:X8N2-DBN; Schlesinger, In Retrospect, 52; Note by AMS on his sister’s death, Feb. 23, 1994, NYPL 506/1.
8 “United States World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917–1918,” Arthur Meier Schlesinger, 1917–1918, FamilySearch, citing Columbus City no 4, Ohio, United States, NARA microfilm publication M1509 (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm 1,832,032, https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:K6FN-D4N.
9 “The Great Pandemic: The United States in 1918–19,” Center for Disease Control, http://www.flu.gov/pandemic/history/1918/your_state/midwest/ohio/index.html.
10 Children’s Bureau reports, 1918 and 1921; State University of Iowa Welfare Research Station reports, Dec. 18, 1923 and May 24, 1924, NYPL 506/1.
11 Schlesinger, In Retrospect, 6; Gerald Mansheim, Iowa City: An Illustrated History (Norfolk, VA: Donning, 1989), 72–73.
12 AMS Memoirs, 23.
13 Reviews of Before Head Start: The Iowa Station and America’s Children, by Hamilton Cravens; Joseph M. Hawes, History of Education Quarterly 34, no. 4 (Winter 1994): 507–508, http://www.jstor.org/stable/369294, DOI: 10.2307/369294; Peter C. Holloran, The American Historical Review 99, no. 5 (1994): 1763–1764, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2168549; Roberta Wollons, Isis 85, no. 4 (1994): 729–730, http://www.jstor.org/stable/235351; AMS Memoirs, 24; Bird Baldwin, ed., University of Iowa Studies In Child Welfare (Iowa City: University of Iowa, 1921), https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015039710721;view=1up;seq=9; “Iowa Child Welfare Research Station, 1917–1974,” University of Iowa, http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/ictcs/icwrs.html.
14 On the work of Arthur Schlesinger (Sr.): Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., “Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr.: New Viewpoints in American History Revisited,” in The New England Quarterly 61, no. 4 (Dec. 1988): 483–501; review by R. W. Kelsey, “New Viewpoints in American History by Arthur Meier Schlesinger,” The American Historical Review 28, no. 1 (Oct. 1922): 131–132; review by Clement Eaton, “In Retrospect: The History of a Historian, by Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr.,” The Journal of Negro History 49, no. 3 (July 1964): 210–211; James Chace, “The Age of Schlesinger,” New York Review of Books, December 21, 2000, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2000/dec/21/the-age-of-schlesinger; David Milne, Worldmaking: The Art and Science of American Diplomacy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), 126–131.
15 Wilcomb E. Washburn, “Samuel Eliot Morison, Historian,” The William and Mary Quarterly 36, no. 3 (July 1979): 325–352; P. A. M. Taylor, “Samuel Eliot Morison: Historian,” Journal of American Studies 11, no. 1 (Apr. 1977): 13–26; William Bentinck-Smith, “Samuel Eliot M
orison,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 88 (1976): 121–131; review by R. W. Kelsey, “New Viewpoints in American History by Arthur Meier Schlesinger,” The American Historical Review 28, no. 1 (Oct. 1922): 131–132; Jill Lepore, “Plymouth Rocked: Of Pilgrims, Puritans, and Professors,” The New Yorker, Apr. 24, 2006, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/04/24/plymouth-rocked.
16 Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., “Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr.: New Viewpoints in American History Revisited,” 483–501.
17 Schlesinger, In Retrospect, 55–56; Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1893), republished in Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner: ‘The Significance of the Frontier in American History’ and Other Essays (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 31–60, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt32bv5g.5.
18 AMS Memoirs, 24.
19 “Thomas Bancroft Schlesinger, 1922–1983,” Sept. 14, 1983, NYPL 515/3.
20 Schlesinger, In Retrospect, 79.
21 Andrew Schlesinger, Veritas, 163–165; Ferguson, Kissinger: The Idealist, 1923–1968, 211–214.
22 Morton Keller and Phyllis Keller, Making Harvard Modern: The Rise of America’s Universities (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 81.
23 Schlesinger, In Retrospect, 131.
24 AMS to S. Regensberg, undated, NYPL 532/5; Schlesinger, In Retrospect, 7; Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998, revised and enlarged edition), 60–63; Antonio Monda, Do You Believe? Conversations on God and Religion (New York: Vintage, 2007), 146.
25 Wonderful Town (1953) with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Leonard Bernstein; Schlesinger, In Retrospect, 80–82; Joseph P. Lash, ed., From the Diaries of Felix Frankfurter (New York: Norton, 1975), 4–5.
26 Edward C. Kirkland, review of In Retrospect: The History of a Historian, by Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr., The New England Quarterly 37, no. 2 (June 1964): 263–265.
27 Keller and Keller, Making Harvard Modern, 85; Jacques Barzun, “Reminiscences of the Columbia History Department 1923–1975,” Living Legacies, Winter 2000, http://www.columbia.edu/cu/alumni/Magazine/Winter2000/Barzun.html.
28 Milne, Worldmaking, 127; Schlesinger (Sr.), In Retrospect, 77–79; Edward C. Kirkland, review of In Retrospect, by Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr., 263–265.
29 Schlesinger, In Retrospect, 79.
30 Christina Schlesinger, interview by author, Apr. 16, 2014; AMS Memoirs, 36.
31 Undated “when I am a man” note [c. 1925], NYPL 508/1.
32 AMS letters to his mother and grandmother, May 7, June 4, June 5, 1926, Arthur Schlesinger (Sr.) to Elizabeth Schlesinger, June 9, 1926, NYPL 506/1–2.
33 Camp Wonalancet, NH, director to Elizabeth Schlesinger, July 7, 1927, AMS to Elizabeth Schlesinger, with postscript by Arthur Schlesinger (Sr.), June 4, 1926, NYPL 296.1–5, 506/1–2.
34 Schlesinger, In Retrospect, 80–81.
35 AMS diary, April 24, 25, 30, May 7, 1929; Elizabeth Schlesinger to Arthur Schlesinger, May 2, 1929, NYPL 296/1–2; “Woolworth Building,” Cass Gilbert Society, http://www.cassgilbertsociety.org/works/nyc-woolworth-bldg.
36 Schlesinger, Snatched from Oblivion, 208–209.
37 Cleveland to Arthur Schlesinger (Sr.), May 6, 1929, Dec. 17, 1929, NYPL 506/1–2.
39 AMS Memoirs, 41, 60; Camp report, 1930; Arthur Schlesinger (Sr.) to AMS, July 2, 1930, NYPL 296/1–2.
39 Schlesinger, Snatched from Oblivion, 208–209; Schlesinger (Sr.), In Retrospect, 81.
40 AMS Memoirs, 81; AMS to Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger, undated letters from Exeter, NYPL 508/4.
41 AMS to Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger, undated letters from Exeter, NYPL 508/4.
42 AMS to Elizabeth Schlesinger, undated letter from Exeter, NYPL 508/4.
43 “How to be a student,” undated, NYPL 506/2; John Brewer, “Educational Guidance,” as reprinted in Los Angeles Educational Research Bulletin: Los Angeles City Schools, January 7, 1924.
44 AMS to Elizabeth Schlesinger, undated letter from Exeter [1933], NYPL 508/4.
45 Lewis Perry, Exeter reference for Harvard, June 8, 1933; Harvard Entrance Board to Arthur Schlesinger (Sr.), July 17, 1933, NYPL 508/4–5.
46 Harvard Application Form, date stamped, Apr. 21, 1933; College entrance exam scores, June 24, 1933, NYPL 508/4–5.
47 Marian Cannon Schlesinger, interview by author, Mar. 9, 2014; Schlesinger, In Retrospect, 157.
48 AMS Memoirs, 93.
49 Around the World Trip, diary entries, Sept. 5, Oct. 15, Dec. 31, 1933, July 31, 1934, NYPL 309.
50 Around the World Trip, diary entries, Jan. 1–5, June 25–30, 1934, NYPL 309.
51 Around the World Trip, diary entry, Oct. 14, 1933, NYPL 309.
52 Around the World Trip, diary entry, Dec. 8, 1933, NYPL 309.
53 Around the World Trip, diary entries, Sept. 25–30, Oct. 19, 1933, July 15, July 21, 1934, NYPL 309.
54 Around the World Trip, diary entries, Jan. 31, April 19, 1934, NYPL 309; AMS Memoirs, 102.
55 Around the World Trip, diary entries, Dec. 20, 1933, June 16, 1934, NYPL 309.
56 Around the World Trip, diary entries, Dec. 31, 1933, Jan. 31, 1934, NYPL 309; Douglas Martin, “Arthur Schlesinger, Historian of Power, Dies at 89,” New York Times, Feb. 28, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/washington/28cnd-schlesinger.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0.
57 Around the World Trip, diary entry, Aug. 29, 1934; Itinerary of trip, 1933–34, NYPL 309.
Chapter Two: A Pilgrim’s Progress
1 Ian Hamilton, Robert Lowell (New York: Vintage, 1983), 45–47; Ian S. MacNiven, “Literchoor Is My Beat”: A Life of James Laughlin, Publisher of New Directions (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014), 36–37; Isaiah Berlin, Letters, 1928–1946, ed. Henry Hardy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 367–368; Niall Ferguson, Kissinger: The Idealist, 1923–1968 (New York: Penguin, 2015), 206–207.
2 Nicholas Lemann, The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000 paperback edition), 21; AMS Memoirs, 114; Theodore H. White, In Search of History (New York: Harper and Row, 1978), 41–43.
3 James P. Baxter to Harvard Admissions, May 4, 1933, NYPL 508/5.
4 AMS to Clara Bancroft, Sept. 23, 1934, NYPL 299/9; White, In Search of History, 40.
5 AMS Memoirs, 115.
6 Timothy Jack Ward, “Changes to Union Divide Harvard,” New York Times, Feb. 15, 1996, http://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/15/garden/changes-to-union-divide-harvard.html; AMS to Clara Bancroft, Oct. 9, 1934, NYPL 299/9.
7 Samuel Eliot Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1986), 476–478; AMS Memoirs, 112–113.
8 AMS to Clara Bancroft, March 16, 1935, NYPL 299/9; Movie viewing log, NYPL 508/6; AMS Memoirs, 126–127; Leo P. Ribuffo, Right Center Left: Essays in American History (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 134–135.
9 J. Michael Lennon, Norman Mailer: A Double Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013), 37; MacNiven, Literchoor Is My Beat, 91–92; AMS Memoirs, 119; Madeline Schwartz, “Sesquicentennial Soirée: Harvard Advocate alumni take stock,” The Harvard Magazine, Sept./Oct., 2016, http://harvardmagazine.com/2016/09/sesquicentennial-soiree.
10 AMS Memoirs, 121; AMS to Clara Bancroft, Nov. 21, 1934, NYPL 299/9.
11 AMS to Clara Bancroft, Oct. 9, Dec. 28, 1934, NYPL 299/9; Harvard transcript, NYPL 506/5.
12 White, In Search of History, 44–45; “Schlesinger Given Briggs Prize for History 1 Essay,” Harvard Crimson, Mar. 7, 1935, http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1935/
3/7/schlesinger-given-briggs-prize-for-history.
13 Harvard Freshman Adviser’s Report, Mar. 4, 1935, NYPL 506/5; AMS Memoirs, 172.
14 AMS to Clara Bancroft, Mar. 11, 1935, NYPL 299/9; Morison to Winthrop Aldrich, April 20, 1954; AMS to Ray Helsel, May 24, 1993, Argosy, http://www.argosybooks.com/shop/argosy/218104.html; Harvard transcript, NYPL 506/
5.
15 Marcus Cunliffe and Robin Winks, eds., “Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.,” in Pastmasters: Some Essays on American Historians (New York, Harper and Row, 1969), 183; AMS Memoirs, 162; Schlesinger and Morgan later worked together on John M. Blum, William S. McFeely, Edmund S. Morgan, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., and Kenneth M. Stampp, The National Experience: A History of the United States (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1963).
16 Cunliffe and Winks, eds., Pastmasters, 183; Bernard DeVoto, The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto (New York and Portland: Tin House Books, 2010); Wallace Stegner, The Uneasy Chair: A Biography of Bernard DeVoto (New York: Doubleday, 1974), 105.
17 Stegner, The Uneasy Chair, 170–171; AMS Memoirs, 168–169.
18 AMS Memoirs, 176.
19 Marian Cannon Schlesinger, Snatched from Oblivion: A Cambridge Memoir (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), 237; Marian Cannon Schlesinger, I Remember: A Life of Politics, Painting and People (Cambridge, MA: TidePool Press, 2012), 79.
20 AMS diaries, May 25, 1937, NYPL 309 (volume 5).
21 “Riverside Statue Stumps Historians,” New York Times, July 1, 1937, http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9807E0DA1F3AE23ABC4953DFB166838C629EDE; Handwritten diaries, May 25, 1937, NYPL 309 (volume 5); AMS Memoirs, 176.
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