Roosevelt did, in fact, ask Dr. Walter Judd, a congressman from Minnesota who had spent ten years working in China, to come to the Oval Office to speak with him about Madame Chiang, who had been treating the out-spoken American press, to which she was not accustomed, rather badly. “Well,” the president said to Judd, “the Chinese certainly have lots of problems, and not the least of them is their prima donna.”
“Do you mean Madame Chiang Kai-shek?” Judd asked.
The president said “yes,” noting that May-ling’s “prima donnaishness” was making it harder to help her country. It might be a good idea, he told Judd, if she were to return to China soon. Judd replied that, as a physician, he could understand the lady’s condition, given the extended physical and emotional strain of the war years in China followed by the “greatest acclaim ever accorded to a woman in this generation.” Roosevelt said he understood this as well, but it would still be better if she could be convinced to leave the United States before she did any further damage.
As Judd left the White House, he was waylaid by newsmen, who wanted to know about his conversation with the president. Although he denied that they had discussed Madame Chiang, one reporter asked about the resentment caused by her high-handedness with the press, while another queried him on the ongoing criticism of the Chinese reception at the Shoreham, where “more champagne flowed” than he had seen “in 10 years in Washington.” Judd said that in China, when things were bad, people kept face by celebrating, even when it was beyond their means, and in that sense, although overdone, the grandeur was a symbol of how the Chinese were trying to uphold their self-respect among the nations of the world. A clever explanation, it did not stop journalists from pointing out the enormous gulf between May-ling’s pleas for help for her starving countrymen and the costly receptions that she had attended and would continue to attend on the rest of her tour of the United States.
It was also during her stay at the White House that the well-known story was circulated about her insistence on having her silk bedsheets changed every time she used them. What the story did not include was the fact that the Soongs had a familial skin problem related to the wheals that had dogged May-ling as a child and the outbreaks that followed. Whatever the source of the ailment—some say nerves, others urticaria (hives), still others an allergy to cotton—it afflicted several members of the Soong family* and was probably the reason for Madame Chiang’s constant changing of linen.
Before leaving Washington, May-ling joined Eleanor Roosevelt at the first lady’s weekly press conference with women reporters. According to one journalist, it was the first time that Mrs. Roosevelt had ever remained silent from the beginning to the end of the Washington ritual. Dressed in black silk embossed in satin with high-heeled black sandals piped in gold, Madame Chiang stressed China’s need for armaments and gave her views on the position of women in the world. Asked by one of the reporters if she believed in equal rights for women, she said that since men expected women to bear half the burdens of the world, they ought to give them equal privileges. “I have never known brains to have any sex,” she said.
In spite of the adverse reactions of those in and around the White House, the comments on May-ling’s appearances in Washington were close to reverential. “Madame Chiang Kai-shek has made a deeper impression upon the American consciousness than any public figure since the appearance of Franklin Roosevelt,” said Eliot Janeway, the economist dubbed “Calamity Janeway” for his gloomy forecasts on the stock market. Writing in Fortune magazine, Janeway seems to have been blinded by Madame’s charisma or overly influenced by Luce. According to him, Madame Chiang had “appeared before the country with no ulterior motives, either ideological or political. She came to offer us a way—a way that would benefit us as much as the Chinese—a deal in which Chinese manpower would use American equipment.” She was, he said, “the most effective ambassador ever to represent a foreign power in the U.S.”
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David Selznick showed Hollywood what can be done when we put our minds, hearts and backs into a job. The pageant, music, Army, Navy and Marine review which preceded Mme. Kai-shek’s [sic] inspired address at the Hollywood Bowl were the best we’ve ever seen.
—HEDDA HOPPER, HOLLYWOOD GOSSIP COLUMNIST
FROM WASHINGTON, Madame Chiang took the train to New York, arriving at Pennsylvania Station, where she was greeted by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, the Chinese consul general, and her brother T.L. The crowd, which had gathered outside the station long before her train was due, broke out in cheers as she left for the Waldorf-Astoria, where she had reserved the entire forty-second floor of the Waldorf Towers for herself and her suite. In spite of the fact that her doctors had wired the consul and written members of her family emphasizing “the need for continued rest and the avoidance of all unnecessary overactivity in the form of social engagements and functions of state,” May-ling’s program in New York was just as demanding as the one in Washington. After a short rest, she was taken to the first of several events planned for the day—an official reception at City Hall, where she met a few hundred important people. At one point she seemed not to feel well and appeared on the verge of fainting but, after being checked by a nurse, continued with the program. The first to speak was the mayor, who apologized for the history of the West’s incursions into China: “Few of the great nations are entirely guiltless,” La Guardia said, “but let us make up for the past by assuring the independence of China fully and completely for the future.”
Madame Chiang responded with a two-thousand-year-old story taken from Chinese history at the time of the building of the Great Wall. It seems that in the province of Kwangsi, there were two rivers that were continually overflowing, drowning local farmers and destroying their crops. The emperor sent a high official to build dikes to prevent further floods, but he failed and paid for the failure with his life. The emperor then sent another man, who suffered the same fate as the first. The third man the emperor sent succeeded and was given many honors. Madame said that when she and the generalissimo visited the site, they found three graves. When she asked why, she was told that the third official had declined his honors and killed himself because he said he could not profit from the failure of others. “In other words, he disdained to benefit himself by the price others had paid with their lives. I feel,” she said, “that the American people have the same high-mindedness.”
Madame’s most important appearance in New York came on the evening of the second day, when she addressed 17,000 people at Madison Square Garden. A prizefight had originally been scheduled that evening, but the fight was preempted by the generalissimo’s wife. According to radio’s most influential commentator, Walter Winchell, “she was more important than any boxing match.… More important? She’s the best scrapper the Garden ever had.” Among the dignitaries present were Willkie, Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, and the governors of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont, plus the consular representatives of twenty-five countries. T.V. was there with his wife, as were John D. Rockefeller, sponsor of the event, the chairmen of the boards of J. P. Morgan and the Chase National Bank, and the president of Columbia University. For this evening, Madame wore another black dress, this one with gold trim, along with black gloves and what one reporter inadequately described as “green” (obviously jade) earrings. According to Time magazine, she looked “more like next month’s Vogue than the avenging angel of 422,000,000 people.”
Led on stage by an honor guard of Flying Tigers, she and the other guests were treated to the sight of Chinese girls marching down the aisles with lighted Chinese lanterns, color guards from the army, navy, marine corps, and coast guard, and a rendering of a Chinese marching song, sung by opera star Lawrence Tibbett. Governor Dewey spoke first: “In these days of swift conquest, we have just seen one on our shores. Nothing could be swifter or more complete or more gratifying to all of us than the conquest of America by Mme. Chiang.” Dewey’s introduction
was followed by tributes from the other governors present and an overview of the problems in the CBI [China-Burma-India] theater presented by H. H. “Hap” Arnold, chief of the U.S. Army Air Force. Willkie then introduced the honoree. As might have been expected, it was a gallant tribute. “I am delighted to reciprocate an introduction to an American audience for Madame Chiang, for she introduced me to several Chinese audiences in Chungking several months ago,” he said, smiling broadly at her. “I have met a good many war leaders and it is not inappropriate for me to say that she is the most fascinating of them all, and also the most beloved of her people. We speak of her wit and charm, and her beauty, but you miss the point of her if you think of her only as an angel—although she is one, an avenging angel. It was China which first understood the true nature of this war. And Madame Chiang is one of the two driving forces behind that great nation. She is a leader of 450,000,000 people.… I hope no American thinks of our friendship for China in terms of patronage, for the time will come when China’s friendship for America will be as important as America’s friendship for China.”
Willkie escorted May-ling from her seat to the speaker’s rostrum. Her speech was a long one, including a homily on Christian charity—“no matter what we have undergone and suffered, we must try to forgive those who injured us and remember only the lessons gained thereby”—and her thanks for all the “contributions large and small [that] have poured in.”* She ended with a sentence that must have pleased Willkie: “The goal of our common struggle at the conclusion of this war should be to shape the future so that this whole world must be thought of as one great State common to gods and men.” May-ling’s effect on her audience was remarkable. It was reported that a large stained-glass window bearing her likeness was installed the following year in St. John’s Church in Massena, New York; pictured among the flowers of China, Madame Chiang is holding a scroll bearing the message from her speech, “We must try to forgive.” Even her doctor, Robert F. Loeb, sent a note to tell her that her speech was “incomparable. I would never have believed an audience of seventeen thousand capable of such intense interest and sincere appreciation,” he wrote, adding, however, that his patient’s “task in Washington is now completed, and the remainder of your activities in this country is of less importance to the future than is the restoration of your health.”
During her third day in New York, May-ling addressed a gathering of more than three thousand Chinese Americans at Carnegie Hall. Her speech, in good Chinese tradition, lasted over an hour. On the evening of the fourth day, the Chinese consul gave a huge reception for her at the Waldorf. May-ling did not make her appearance until shortly after 6:30, and three ladies who had arrived at the stated time of 5:00 P.M. fainted and had to be revived. Gowned in black velvet trimmed with scarlet sequins, she was, according to the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Passaic, New Jersey, “the most effective woman speaker” he had ever heard. “The two greatest diplomats in the world today,” he declared, “are Winston Churchill and Mme. Chiang Kai-shek.” But, according to notes made by Chiang’s former adviser Lauchlin Currie, the reception itself “turned very sour,” since the honoree stayed for only a few minutes and many of the guests did not even see her, let alone have a chance to meet her.
May-ling’s early departure may have had to do with her health. In early March, Dr. Loeb sent David Kung
a schedule which in our judgment represents the maximum load compatible with Madame’s continued improvement. Since Madame’s departure from the hospital her activities have been far in excess of the recommended schedule.… Madame is growing progressively more tense and nervous, and is having again to increase the sedatives necessary to obtain her much-needed sleep… the health of Madame… must not be jeopardized at any cost, and I can only appeal to you… to see that Madame’s activity is sharply, radically, and consistently curtailed for the remainder of her stay in this country. If the present pace is continued, serious collapse is, in my own opinion, certain.
Nevertheless, Madame held a press conference the next day in her suite at the Waldorf. As in Washington, she kept the reporters at bay, dealing with them with far more formality than they were accustomed to and maintaining an invisible wall beyond which they dared not venture. “In her queenly way,” said a journalist from Buffalo, “Mme. Chiang masters the press without offending them.” Certainly, she managed to dazzle some of the most sophisticated among them. According to one reporter from Shanghai, “It seemed that the goggle-eyed scriveners were much more interested in watching her than in getting the news. At one point when she was talking about her ‘warphans,’ this correspondent glanced over the shoulder of one of New York’s roughest, toughest police reporters, Jimmy Bishop of the New York News. With a stubby pencil… Bishop was tracing the words, ‘Her hands speak as eloquently as her dulcet voice. Her skin is blush-olive. Her eyes are onyx laughter. Her hair is a sweep of jet black. Hers is an ageless beauty.’ ” As if this weren’t enough, the Chinese reporter sneaked a look at a colleague from The New York Times, who was writing “Her eyes are limpid pools of midnight inkiness. Her teeth are visual symphonies of oral architecture. Her hands are lotus fronds swaying in a summer breeze.” Fortunately, these meanderings were edited out of the printed stories.
By now there was no question that May-ling had a near-hypnotic effect on men. According to one of Willkie’s biographers,* Wendell spent a lot of time with her when she was at the the Waldorf. In that regard, Mike Cowles wrote about an interesting scene that took place in her suite: “One morning I received a call at my OWI* office in Washington from the Chinese Ambassador. The Madame wanted me to come to a black-tie dinner that evening in her Waldorf Towers apartment. I was expected at eight-thirty. It was most inconvenient for me to dash up to New York and, besides, I had to get an appropriate permit during the war to fly on a commercial airline. But I did make it to New York, decked myself out in black tie, and showed up at the Waldorf on time.” Cowles was met in the lobby by May-ling’s majordomo and taken up to her floor. The door to her suite, he noticed, was opened by the same butler who had served Willkie and him in Chungking. “Madame begs your pardon, Mr. Cowles,” he said. “She’s going to be a few minutes late. I recall that you prefer Scotch and water.” A Chinese waiter appeared with Cowles’s, drink on a silver tray. Eventually, so did Madame. When she suggested they go right into dinner, he realized that this was not a party but a tête-à-tête. There were four servants standing in the dining room, one at each corner of the room. May-ling smiled at her guest. “Don’t be nervous about the servants, Mike,” she said. “None of them understands English. We can speak freely.” In spite of this, she did not come to the point of the dinner until they had both finished eating.
Her marriage to Chiang, she told Cowles, had been a marriage of convenience arranged by her mother. They scarcely knew each other when they married. On their wedding night, he told her that he did not believe in sexual relations unless it was to produce children, and since he already had one son and did not want any more, they would not sleep together. “I wasn’t sure that I believed all this,” Cowles wrote, “but I kept listening.” The above tale was apparently “only a warmup” for what followed. “It was time now,” he said, “for serious business.”
“She was convinced,” according to Cowles, “that Willkie could be nominated again for the presidency in 1944. It was my duty, she told me, to give up whatever I was doing and devote myself exclusively to getting him the 1944 Republican nomination. I was to spend whatever amount of money I thought was necessary. She would reimburse me for all expenditures.… ‘You know, Mike,’ ” she told him, “ ‘if Wendell could be elected, then he and I would rule the world. I would rule the Orient and Wendell would rule the Western world.’ And,” Cowles added, “she stressed the word rule.”
It is fascinating to speculate on how May-ling planned to manipulate Willkie and the United States once he got the presidency she thought she could buy for him. The story of her marriage being arranged by her
mother is a clear falsification, not only of the stories related by others but of the one she herself told. It also stretches the imagination to think that Chiang, a man with an enormous sexual appetite, would have denied himself the pleasure of sex with his highly attractive wife. The rest of the story was too far-fetched, even for Cowles. “It was a totally mad proposal, of course,” he later wrote. “But I was so mesmerized by clearly one of the most formidable women of the time that this evening I would not have dismissed anything she said.”
Another story was told by Eleanor Lambert, the woman who raised recognition of American fashion to the level of the French. Lambert often saw the G-mo’s wife when she came to New York. “She had a perfect figure when I first met her… she had a white cheongsam. Every button, every frog was fastened with a diamond the size of my little finger… but it wasn’t showy. It was just there. You could see that they were diamonds if you were up close. That was it.”
In 1959, Lambert’s husband, publisher Seymour Berkson, died suddenly of a heart attack. Lambert said that May-ling, who was visiting in New York at the time, called on her, attended the funeral, and invited her to dinner at her apartment about two weeks later.
The Last Empress Page 56
