ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 20, 1997 TAG: 9704220120
SECTION: BOOKS PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: BOOK REVIEWS
Harriman lived many lives in 1 lifetime
Reviewed by HARRIET LITTLE
REFLECTED GLORY: The Life of Pamela Churchill Harriman. By Sally Bedell Smith. Simon & Schuster. $30.
Sally Bedell Smith writes in this well-documented and engaging biography, ``Pamela Harriman's life is really the story of six lives: English debutante, wartime hostess, international femme fatale, show business wife, diplomat's escort turned Washington power broker, and American ambassador.''
Harriman's success was, in every area, spectacular, and to the six lives can be added a seventh: highly decorated mediator. Smith could not have known when she wrote that Harriman, after her death in February, would receive France's highest award, the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, or that French President Jacques Chirac would praise her skills in mediation.
Daughter of the 11th Baron Digby and a mother with social ambitions, Pamela Beryl Digby was born in 1920. After a rather unremarkable youth and education, she made her social debut in 1938. The author writes that ``Pamela set about reinventing herself as a femme fatale,'' and in this endeavor she was aided by the outbreak of World War II, which offered new freedoms to young women of her social class.
After several affairs, Pamela met Randolph Churchill, son of Winston Churchill, who was, according to Smith, ``unfit for marriage in every way.'' Nonetheless, they married in 1939. A year later, Pamela gave birth to a son, but the marriage was doomed. With genuine love, the author writes, ``their marriage might have succeeded. But their decision to marry was as cold ... as a business deal: He wanted an heir, and she wanted a name and position.'' Leaving her baby with Lord Beaverbrook, Pamela took a job at the Ministry of Supply in war-ravaged London.
In 1941 she met a man who would figure largely in her life - Averell Harriman. ``As fascinated by political power as she,'' enormously rich, 29 years her senior and married, Harriman was in Britain as a negotiator between the governments in Washington and London for the American Lend-Lease bill. Pamela's affair with Harriman and with numerous other prominent men led some to refer to her as ``the greatest courtesan of the century.''
After her divorce in 1945, she ``resumed her search for a man of means who would be free to marry her.'' She married Leland Hayward, the producer of ``Mr. Roberts,'' ``South Pacific'' and ``The "Sound of Music,'' in 1960, just ``hours after his divorce was final.'' Pamela threw herself enthusiastically into her new life, surrounding her new husband with comfort and people active in both theater and politics. In spite of this care, she antagonized his children, Bill and Brooke Hayward. Brooke's then-husband, actor Dennis Hopper, said of Pamela, ``She was one of the most despicable people I haver ever met. effort to curb her extravagance.'' Hayward suffered several strokes and died in 1971.
The same year, Pamela again came into contact with Averell Harriman, now 79, widowed and lonely, at a luncheon in Washington. During the Kennedy years, Harriman had found government positions. When Pamela married Harriman, she distanced herself and her husband from his former wife's family and showed little inclination to become friends with his children.
Knowing that her past was of great interest to the Washington establishment, Pamela threw herself into such good works as supporting her husband's fund for charitable contributions. Her primary role was as a hostess, and there she shone. She studied American politics and became an American citizen.
In 1981 the Harrimans formed a political action committee to raise money for the Democratic Party. One of the first members of the board was a former governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton. As Smith notes, ``Pamela would later take credit for discovering Clinton.''
Harriman developed bone cancer and died in July 1986.
Pamela became increasingly interested in global politics, traveling with delegations to China and the Soviet Union, while still involved in fund-raising for the Democrats. Of her role in Bill Clinton's successful 1992 bid for the presidency Smith writes, ``More than just a fund-raiser, she was portrayed as a major player.'' Her appointment as ambassador to France in 1993 came, then, as no real surprise.
The effectiveness with which she conducted her duties pleased American officials. Her life was not smooth, however, as the Harriman family heirs sued her for being ``a `faithless fiduciary' who had squandered the family's inheritance.''
Pamela Harriman died in Paris on Feb. 6 after suffering a stroke following a swim in the pool of the Ritz Hotel.
At a memorial ceremony for Harriman, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said, ``She was always the source of light, not the reflection of it. So with the passing of an American star this week, the City of Light is a little dimmer and America is diminished.'' How Pamela Harriman would have loved those words.
HARRIET LITTLE teaches at James River High School.
Memoir humanizes Mamie
Reviewed by SUSAN TRENT
MRS. IKE. By Susan Eisenhower. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. $26.
``Mrs. Ike,'' Susan Eisenhower's recent biography of her famous grandmother, is a loving, thoughtful examination of her grandmother's character and of her life as an Army wife and first lady.
Eisenhower describes her grandmother as a deeply sentimental woman who wore a copy of her husband's college ring throughout their long marriage and slept next to her husband's photo long after he had passed away. She pays great attention to Mamie's considerable spirit and how it contrasted with that of her more restrained husband, yet she emphasizes that the two were united in their commitment to each other as well as to duty to their country.
Under Eisenhower's eye, Mamie becomes a person and not just a photo of a meek Iowa woman dressed for an outing with her husband. ``Mrs. Ike'' thus succeeds as a memoir because it humanizes a public figure from a familial perspective.
SUSAN TRENT lives in Roanoke.
Vive la difference
Reviewed by LYNN ECKMAN
LE DIVORCE. By Diane Johnson. Dutton. $23.95.
An experienced and admired writer of novels and nonfiction, Diane Johnson creates characters and situations from ordinary life with artistry and flair. Set in Paris, ``Le Divorce'' highlights the cultural differences between the French and Americans living there, making us laugh even as we sometimes squirm.
Isabel Walker, speaking no French, arrives in Paris to avoid deciding what to do with herself as much as to help her older sister Roxy. Married to a native, Roxy has a 3-year-old and is pregnant, but her husband, Charles-Henri, has deserted her for ``the love of his life.'' Because a divorce seems inevitable, financial arrangements must be made, including the disposition of a painting she brought from California as part of her dowry. When it becomes known that the painting may be an original la Tour, both families draw their battle lines.
Meanwhile, Isabel, who works at odd jobs, meets a prestigious Frenchman almost 40 years her senior, and - well, you know those French. The affair must be kept secret because he is Charles-Henri's uncle and married, of course.
As the pregnancy and the two affairs advance, surprising complications develop. At the end of the book, Isabel, whose original plan had been to stay abroad for six months, wonders if Americans are still Americans when they are transplanted; she stays to enjoy pate of smoked eels and other pleasures.
Johnson, who divides her time between San Francisco and Paris, knows the temptations and writes wittingly about them and us.
LYNN ECKMAN teaches English as a second language.
BOOKMARKS
Chinese tradition meets Western culture in art book
Reviewed by BARBARA M. DICKINSON
I-HSIUNG JU'S LANDSCAPE PAINTINGS BOOK II. By I-Hsiung Ju. Introduction by Dr. Joan H. O'Mara. Golden Production Co. No price listed.
Washington & Lee University's popular, and now retired, professor of art, Dr. I-Hsiung Ju, has prepared and published his second book of landscape paintings. His eager public will not be disappointed with this sophisticated how-to book. It successfully showcases Chinese scroll paintings, watercolors and oils of Rockbridge County and other areas in the Blue Ridge, the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Canada and the Art Farm, Ju's studio-gallery-home near Lexington where this book may be purchased.
Between postage-stamp chiaroscuro versions of the larger full-color reproductions are generous helpings of the Ju philosophy. He tucks this neatly among paragraphs on perspective and attitudes on atmosphere. Ju is as expansive and thorough a teacher by means of the written word as he was in his famous lecture-demonstrations in his university classroom. His art is rooted in Chinese training and tradition, yet hints of being seduced by many years in Western culture. At one point he questions the wisdom of putting ``old wine'' in a ``new flagon''; that is, is it possible to capture the new in the ancient manner?
This compact and beautifully illustrated folio answers for him affirmatively.
BARBARA DICKINSON felt as if she were transported back to China while reading this book.
Female dragon leads emperor's parade
Reviewed by MARY SUTTON SKUTT
SILK PEONY, PARADE DRAGON. By Elizabeth Steckman. Illustrated by Carol Inouye. Boyds Mills Press. $14.95. (Ages 3-6).
Traditional bright reds and golds help set the mood of this story based on the Chinese New Year. Chinese legend and lore are responsible for the types of characters, though the author changes tradition and gives them new personalities. Mrs. Ming should be "Ms." because she is so independent; the mandarin is fierce and the dragons are funny and weird.
The mandarin must rent a dragon to lead the emperor's New Year's parade. Mrs. Ming has a dragon farm and seven dragons, but something is wrong with the first six - too old, too young, too scared of fireworks, etc. The seventh, Silk Peony, is perfect, but no emperor's parade has ever been led by a female dragon.
After much bargaining, an agreement is reached. Finally, Silk Peony leads the parade in grand style. The emperor is so impressed he makes her the Official Parade Dragon of all China. Perhaps she still is.
MARY SUTTON SKUTT is a retired teacher in Lexington.
LENGTH: Long : 189 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. FILE 1981. Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harrimanby CNBmet Averell Harriman when she was only 21, but she made him her
third husband in 1971. 2. Mamie and Ike
on their whistle-stop tour. 3. Book cover for Le Divorce.