policy, then in the way in which policy
was implemented.

At the crux of the difference is undoubtedly the fact that Thorpe and Cal laway are active musicians, and Spalding is not. Whereas the former were in direct contact with every aspect of their productions, the latter could only rely on his artistic director, with whom he was often in conflict. If the disagreement was insoluble, as it seems to have been in the Pearlman situation, there was never any question of who was expend able. By virtue of his on-going and generous financial support, Spalding ran the show.

Yet the Opera Society did in fact become less responsive to local needs. Just look at a decade's change. In 1957 the company was inaugurated with its modest production of Mozart's Abduc tion from the Seraglio, produced by local talent for local consumption at a cost of $16,000. In 1967, the Opera So ciety celebrated its tenth anniversary by importing the first-string production team from the New York City Opera to stage the world premiere of Alberto Ginastera's Bomarzo. The venture cost a reliably reported $275,000, which, given the character of the company, is outrageous. But worse still, it diminished the Opera Society and reduced the role of Washington to a try-out town for City Opera productions, since after the local premiere, the New York company claimed Bomarzo and successfully added the work to its repertory.

As the Opera Society grew ever more
grand, however, it was either unable or
unwilling to widen its base of popular
support. During the earliest years there
were steady, undramatic gains in box-
office revenue. The inaugural season
netted approximately $21,500, in ticket
sales, the following $36,500, and the one
after that $55,000.

In 1966, net ticket sales for the season equaled $57,000, close to the amount of seven years earlier. Over the same period, there was also no overwhelming increase in the number of subscribers. Approximately 2,000 season tickets were sold in 1959, the first year for which records are available, and eight years later the figure was essentially unchanged. Since then, though, the rise has been rapid. A thousand new subscribers were added in 1969, and after the successful 1970 production of Frederick Delius' Koanga, an African-slanted work with gobs of radical chic, an additional 1,600 people signed on.

In comparison with other local arts
organizations however, the record is not
particularly impressive. The National
Symphony, for instance, which was for
years a generally moribund institution
under the unimaginative leadership of
Howard Mitchell, sold 3,319 subscrip-
tions in 1961, which is the first season,
according to an orchestra press repre-
sentative, for which figures are available.
A decade later, the subscribers had al-

most doubled in number, and the open-
ing of the Kennedy Center sent the total
of season ticket-holders to 7,026.

Better still is the stunning success scored by the National Ballet. When the company was founded in 1962, there were 343 subscribers. In successive giant steps, this number jumped to 1,522 for the 1966 season, and to 4,850 in 1970. Currently, the ballet plays to almost 6,000 subscribers. Questions of quality aside, the company must be credited for courting and winning such broad-based support.

As for foundation support, the Opera Society under Spalding's reign has had a success that at best is equivocal. Its firmest friend has been the Ford Foun dation, which twice offered crucial assistance. The first occasion was in 1963, when the Opera Society was one of thirteen opera companies through out the country that received sizable funding. The Opera Society's share of Ford's benevolence was $177,625, which was doled out in five consecutive annual allotments.

Exactly eight years after making this
grant, Ford again came to the rescue. In
October 1971, the foundation announced
a $10 million program to aid theater,
dance, and opera companies in distress.
Under this plan, the Opera Society is to
receive $269,365 if it meets the stipulated
terms attached to the grant. Ford has
agreed to pay half of the company's
accumulated deficit, if the Opera So-
ciety itself can erase the other half. If
this condition can be met, Ford also
agrees to give the ensemble a modest
percentage of its projected operating
budget for the following year, so that

Richard Pearlman, one of the more colorful artistic directors of the Opera Society.

planning for the subsequent season can
go on. If the company can survive these
next four years, the span of the Ford
grant, it will not only have a balanced
budget, but will have learned, perhaps,
to live on more modest means. As of the
end of April, the Opera Society had
approximately $200,000 additional to
raise before the first of June were it to
qualify for Ford's continuing support.

Other than this largesse, the Opera Society has received no major assistance save a grant given in 1968 by the Na tional Endowment for the Arts. There have been, as well, several contributions from family funds such as the Meyer, the Cafritz, and the Stern, but these were either earmarked for a specific production (the Cafritz, for instance, went toward the costs of presenting Ginastera's expensive Beatrix Cenci at the opening of the Kennedy Center), or were too small to raise the Opera Society to a plane of fiscal stability.

The question remains: Whither the Opera Society? Late in April, the society voted to terminate its relation ship with its recently acquired artistic director, Jean Pierre Marty. Thorpe was wrong. Marty did indeed "get his first show on the boards," which was this past season's production of Verdi's Falstaff. Critical comment was generally unfavorable, and as of June, Marty is at liberty.

On February 29, Spalding submitted his resignation to his trustees, and it was accepted as of June 30. Few organiza tions get so perfect an opportunity to reset their track in midcourse. There are, of course, people who are deeply dedicated to the Opera Society, dis turbed about its past and concerned about its future. They surely see that their organization along with a variety of other cultural institutions, from sym phony orchestras to museums to uni versities, are all confronted by similar problems. And the solutions, I expect, will be much the same.

We might, for instance, look for a diversification of the Opera Society's board, more than half of which is cur- rently drawn from the Green Book; for a more intimate relationship with the world outside Georgetown; for a more realistic assessment of its financial and artistic capabilities and its long-range goals, so that a fiasco such as the Gina- stera mega-opera, on which the entire wad was blown, is henceforth avoided.

Writing in the *Star* shortly after the
Opera Society was formed, Day Thorpe
described his ideal ensemble—"a civic
group, fired with enthusiasm" that can
convey the belief that "opera is a form
of art or entertainment which is capable
of receiving the impact of all one's
heart and mind, all one's perception and
sensibility...."

Whatever new track the society takes,
this is still the goal toward which it
must move. ☐

59

Maxine Cheshire, the Most Feared Society Columnist of Them All—How She Got That Way, Her Cat Fights with Other Columnists, How She Works, Her Problems at the Post, Her Home Life, and More

the bar and talking to his wife and another couple. Maxine is off like a shot.

"Hello, Arthur. Did you get home from that party okay the other night?"

Burns in person is a virile and rugged man, not at all the staid and musty intellectual he contrives to appear on television. And those crazy glasses! That great shock of snowy hair parted in the middle! He seems even taller when he peers down over those glasses to speak with some caution to this carrier of potential disaster.

"Yeeesss. Weee got hooommme alll righhhhht. Did youuuu?"

Surely one of Washington's great acents. The vowels are somewhat broad, but the interesting thing is that each word soars upward through the scale like a bird rowing into the sky. Almost Gaelic, this accent. There's more talk about the party—a diplomatic function held the previous week—some talk about this and that. But all the chitchat is to the gossip column as Adolph's tenderizer is to meat. Burns seems to be softening. He's not looking over his glasses anymore.

"Tell me, Arthur, what do you think is going to happen to gold?"

"Golld? I don't know what's going to happen to golld."

"But isn't devaluation of the dollar going to force up the price of gold?"

"It would seeem soooo. But I'm not going to talk about golld."

"But wouldn't you say it's a good time to invest in a gold-mining operation?"

"That's a complicated bizznesss. I don't knoooow what people should doooo with their moneyyy."

If you're looking for a word to describe Maxine Cheshire, persistent would spring to mind. Burns, nothing if not gracious, is still leaning against the bar.

"But would you invest in gold mining stock if it weren't for your position?"

"Welll, if someone showed me a place in the grouuunnd where I could digg doowwn six inches and pull up solid goolld, I suppose I'd be interested. But I'd havvve to leave the governmennt, of course."

Now the clincher. Maybe get something quotable for the column.

"Well what do you think about"—Maxine names a very high Treasury Department official—"owning more than 20,000 shares of stock in a gold mining operation?"

"Realllllyy," says Burns, to whom such an idea must be anathema, as he looks quizzically at petite Maxine Cheshire, who knows such things. She has been working on this story for months. The facts are sitting in type at the *Post*,

awaiting final editorial clearance. If and when it appears, it will be a bombshell. "I thought he was suppossedddd to be a smart mannnn," says Burns.

Well, that vein of conversation is played out, and Maxine really wasn't hoping for much more than that. Who's going to tell you much about gold-mining stocks in the middle of a crowded cocktail party for Sammy Davis Jr.? Such little conversations can be followed up the next day, often with results.

But now Betty Beale has spotted Burns and is on the way over. She passes behind Maxine with a sort of glazed-eyed glide that says, "I'm seeing everybody in the room but you, honey." Maxine glazes over with a similar affection. There are, shall we say, differences between the two ladies. Three years ago when a *Life* magazine photographer wanted a picture of the two of them sitting on the same round settee in the White House, they practically had to be blackjacked into position.

Maxine glides away. In the back of the room D.C. Mayor Walter Washington is presenting a key to the city to Sammy Davis Jr. Sammy makes a short acceptance speech, and shortly thereafter Maxine has him cornered between the smoked salmon and the band. She has a hunch nobody has asked him where he got those five friendship rings, and Sammy says the sixty-five-carat black sapphire was a gift from his buddy Elvis Presley and the five-carat diamond and the seven-carat diamond were gifts from Howard Hughes, for doing so well entertaining in his Las Vegas hotels. Thank you, Sammy. The bit about the rings showed up in her column two weeks later. She was right—nobody else asked it.

The party has peaked and people are drifting out now, but the night is far from over for Maxine Cheshire. From here she'll go to the Potomac Boat Club, where the Conrad Cafritzes have organized a fund-raising party for a Congressional candidate from Massachusetts. His district includes Martha's Vineyard, where so many of Washington's social set are wont to disport. Senator Edward

61

Kennedy will speak. And this should be interesting. That very morning Maxine Cheshire's column was headlined "Chappaquiddick: A National Park?" and drew attention to a previously unpublicized bill sponsored by Kennedy that would create a Nantucket Sound Islands Trust to "preserve and conserve the unique characteristics of a unique area." In the light of recent history, the column implied, isn't this a bit strange? "Bitchy," people at that party will call the story. "Uncalled for," they'll add. It's a wonder anybody talks to her anymore. It's a wonder anybody invites her anywhere anymore. Such comments don't faze Maxine Cheshire. She seems to thrive on such criticism, being beyond the pale that way. Maxine thinks she's different from most society reporters. She doesn't cover VIP's in order to be chummy with them. She doesn't care about her social standing.

"My job is wasted on me," Maxine laments. "You have to have this great hunger for power and social status, and I just don't have it. I know people sit back and gnash their teeth, but it's really wasted." Oh, it must be delicious, having all that power and social cachet that comes with having one of the most widely read columns in the world and then to be able to tell the underlings that you don't care about it at all. Oh, fine seethings it stirs in many a competitor's breast. To prove her point, Maxine stands in front of the party's hostess, right there in the Jockey Club, and the hostess doesn't recognize her. Jeanne Viner has to go ask somebody who is that woman, before coming back and giving her a warm goodbye. Maxine is amused. Later she'll recall the incident while the Jockey Club's uniformed doorman has her car brought around from the parking lot. It's a cream Dodge van camper outfitted with all kinds of doodyads and bulges on the roof. A regular old middle-class, take-the-family-fishing camper truck!

"Well," I say as Maxine is hauling herself up the three feet to the driver's seat, "I don't guess anybody who was a social climber would drive up to the Jockey Club in a Dodge camper."

Maxine does a slow burn. Never tangle with sweet southern girls.

"I'll have you know this camper cost more than those Mercedes and Jaguar you see around here," Maxine flashes. "And it's only snobby people like you who think about it."

Hmmmmm.

Snobby people and Maxine Cheshire. The combination was made in heaven and Harlan, Kentucky. Any investigative reporter worth his salt has to know, has to know in his bones, that the rich and powerful, the snobby people, are up to something fishy. And Maxine seems to have sucked up that knowledge with mother's milk. It's a conviction, coupled with extraordinary

journalistic skills, that has made her what she is today. It's made her famous, it's made her a lot of money, and it's also made her a lot of enemies. Recently, since her column has not been running thrice weekly as usual, it's made her the subject of speculation that she's washed up, that she can't cover Republicans, that she's in disfavor at the *Post*.

It all began on April 5, 1930, when Maxine was born the only daughter among the seven sons of Millard and Sylvia Hall in Harlan, Kentucky. Few are the daughters of the South who escape a sheltered upbringing, particularly if they are the only daughter in a masculine household. Maxine Hall shared that sheltered life—"You never did anything. You walked around wearing lacy things"—but in a different way. Sheltered more by steel-slotted venetian blinds on the windows than by magnolia trees.

"I went to see *The Godfather* just last week, and it really brought back my childhood," Maxine says. "You know, I hadn't seen anybody put on a bulletproof vest since my father died. I hadn't seen anybody blown up since I was nine, nobody shotgunned since I was twenty-one."

She has a flair for dramatizing her early life, and these *mots* are delivered in her softest southern drawl. Such experiences undoubtedly loom large in the way she wants you to picture her. You see, father was a Harlan labor union lawyer in the 1930's, an occupation in that time and place associated with serious health problems. Maxine tells of the times her mother saved her father's life, often suggesting that ESP played a role. The last time was in the late 1940's when two men came to the house and convinced her father that they had been sent to take him downtown to look into some political problem or other. As they were getting ready to leave, Maxine's mother had a "hunch" that the men were going to kill him. She went into another room, pulled out the family .38 revolver, and forced the men to leave—alone. Maxine said she found out years later that the men actually had been sent to kill her father, and it was only her mother's premonition that saved him. Maxine still has the revolver. And she likes to suggest that some of her reporting scoops have other-worldly sources, an ability inherited from her mother.

Maxine's father, after his labor union days, went into private law practice, dabbled in politics, and became a judge. He was elected to Congress in the 1930's, Maxine says, but the election was contested and he never made it to Washington. Maxine would get to the nation's capital, though, her father always maintained, predicting that she one day would be the wife of a justice of the Supreme Court—an instance of the family's ESP being only partly correct. It was her father's role as champion of the underdog that seems to have had the strongest

impression on her early life.

"I grew up seeing things much more black and white than other people. It made me think the world was divided into good people and bad people. If you were a good guy you didn't sell out." Snobby people are sell-outs by definition.

In spite of his liberal views, Maxine's father had traditional ideas about the proper place in life for a southern girl, and he refused to allow her to accept a six-year law scholarship she had won to the University of Louisville. Instead she enrolled at the University of Kentucky and stayed there two years until her father died and she was obliged to leave to help put two brothers through school. She never finished college, a fact that hasn't bothered her. She does say that if she had to try today she "couldn't get a job on the *Washington Post* manning the switchboard."

At the age of twenty-one, she returned to Harlan, where she went unerringly to the newspaper and got a job. This first work experience, Maxine points out, confirmed a prediction she is said to have made at the age of five. The story goes that young Maxine had walked into the newspaper office and promised to tell them everything that went on in the town if they would give her a job. Sixteen years later they did, and she did.

After her father died, things were no more pleasant in Harlan, and Maxine and her mother soon moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, leaving Kentucky for good. She was hired by the Knoxville *News-Sentinel* for a job that both her admirers and critics see as the foundation for her approach to covering Washington's political society. Maxine became a police reporter. Police reporters are usually one of two breeds: Either they are old warhorses, grown slightly rheumy of eye and bulbous of nose, who have been put out to pasture, or they are unseparated young men sent out to chase ambulances and look at fires until they've got enough experience to move on to better things. The job can be dull, and it also can be dangerous, so female police reporters are rarities even today. In 1951 they were almost unheard of. Maxine was to have "a marvelous time for three years" and she established a reputation for toughness and persistence. Her police reporting days ended when an Atlantan named Herb Cheshire came to Knoxville as chief of the United Press bureau with offices in the *News-Sentinel* located near the ladies' room. Maxine and Herb were married April 25, 1954, Herb was transferred to Washington in November, and Maxine followed a month later. The Cheshire Cat—ESP, melodramatic past, and police reporter training in tow—had come to town. She entered on the second stage of her journalistic education by signing on with the *Post* in 1955, though it was something of a comedown from the heady days in Knoxville.

"The only job they had was on the

62

women's section, and you can imagine
how that appealed to me. I thought it
was beneath my dignity. But it turned
out to be just marvelous and I stayed."

She was to spend the next nine years
on the women's section of the paper-
learning the party circuit, learning just
what kind of town Washington is. One
of the biggest lessons, though, wasn't
learned on the *Post* but through a clan-
destine moonlighting job as a stringer
for a strange little publication called
*Newsette*. A weekly newsletter for wom-
en published by Whaley-Eaton News-
letter in pre-women's lib days, *Newsette*
served up tasty but usually innocuous
little tidbits about life among the movers
and shakers of Washington. Harry Van-
dernoot, now an editor with *Congres-
sional Quarterly*, edited *Newsette* in the
late 1950's when Maxine, like the news-
letter's other stringers, worked for "all
the peanuts you could eat in a three-
minute period."

"Harry made me what I am today,"
Maxine says. "He taught me to use trivia.
You have to separate hard news from
the flotsam and jetsam. I used to write
for Harry every week the little things
that nobody else wanted. When I got the
*Post* column I ended up doing the same
kind of thing I'd been doing for Harry."

Preliminary, all this. A lifelong ap-
prenticeship during which every-
thing had fallen into place by 1962: the
inherent suspicion of high muckety-
mucks, the dedication to journalism
since the age of five, the police beat
toughening, the lengthy exposure to
Washington's social scene, the weekly
exercises in the care and feeding of
trivia. Maxine Cheshire was loaded for
bear, and it wasn't long before she made
her first kill. In September 1962 she
wrote an exhaustive eight-part series de-
tailing the new First Lady's secret plans
to renovate the White House. It seems
another interest Maxine had picked up
over the years was antiques. For nine
months, Maxine had been talking to
everyone in the antiques world, slowly
piecing the story together as a crime re-
porter might piece together the facts of
a murder case. Jacqueline Kennedy cried
and cried. John F. Kennedy called the
*Post* and asked, "Can't you hear my wife
crying?" It was a little drama destined
to be much repeated. Largely on the
basis of that scoop, Maxine was given her
column and turned loose on Washington.

Maxine was one of the first reporters
to fully grasp the extent of the public's
fascination with the Kennedys. What bet-
ter luck for a bright, young, ambitious
reporter than to get in on the ground
floor of writing about the family more
people all over the world would rather
read about than any other? So over the
years it has often seemed that anyone
who gets within ten feet of a Kennedy
must be working for Maxine Cheshire.
Her column hits the streets with news of

a new Kennedy pregnancy almost before
the rabbit is back from the lab.

All this attention to all things Ken-
edy continues to the present day: Of
the six columns she published in April,
three were devoted in whole or in part
to various members of the clan. But a
relationship that seemed symbiotic early
on has soured over the years. The Ken-
edys, like all political figures, want pub-
licity when they want it about what they
want. They have grown heavy, heavy
weary of this . . . this *snoop* who keeps
digging into their privacy, this Ron Gal-
ella of the typewriter. It's not hard to
find people in official Washington who
side with the Kennedys in the belief that
Maxine Cheshire is a leech on the Ken-
edy body, drawing out only what will
spice her column and not adverse to
slanting things a little bit.

Maxine denies it. "Listen," she says,
"if there's one thing that demonstrates
my objectivity, it's the Kennedys. I bend
over backwards to be fair to them, bend
over backwards. The Kennedys are legi-
timate news stories, and if there's a legi-
timate story there I'm going after it.
That's my job. Everybody certainly
knows my column is not for sale to
anybody."

Still there are naysayers. Take the
story of Jackie's volunteer work in Har-
lem that Maxine published last Decem-
ber 12. The story said that Jackie had
been working secretly during the spring
and summer of 1971 as a teacher's aide
at a center for ghetto children in Har-
lem. She hoped to return to the center,
but her work there was only possible as
long as her identity and that of the cen-
ter remained hidden. In spite of Mrs.
Onassis' request to the contrary, Maxine
published the name and address, and was
roundly booed for doing so.

"I think you could legitimately ask
what she accomplished by running the
name and address of the place," one emi-
nent Washington journalist said. "In ef-
fect she made it impossible for that wom-
an to go back there. Yet she'll be sniping
later that Jackie is a featherhead who
does nothing constructive."

Maxine's side of the story is revealing.

"I was offered $25,000 for that story by the *Ladies Home Journal*, but I didn't do it because I didn't write it for the money. My loyalty is to my profession and my newspaper. I only got onto the story because Mrs. Auchincloss called me and said, 'You're so mean to Jackie. You're so mean to Jackie. If only people knew what Jackie did to help people.' Well, that worried me. Maybe I had been mean to Jackie, so I got on the phone to some friends in New York to find out what Jackie was doing. I finally found out that Jackie was working in Harlem. Then I said to myself, 'Who do I know in New York who's young and rich and Catholic? Aha! Amanda Burden (the young socialite wife of New York councilman Carter Burden). I called Amanda but I couldn't find out much

63

from her, only that she herself worked
in a Harlem child center. I called that
center and they said they didn't know
anything about Jackie's volunteer work.
So I called Carter Burden's office and
asked an aide which center Amanda
worked in.

'She works in two of them,' he said.
'Which one do you want to know
about?'

'The Catholic one,' I said, and then I
had it. Now would people have believed
me if I hadn't named the school? Would
they? But that was a *Post* decision any-
way, not strictly mine. I think any news-
paper would have run it if they knew it.
How else would people believe a story
like that?'

It's not just the Kennedys who have
felt the sting of Maxine's pen. Lyndon
Johnson *et famille* have been on the
point too. Take Chuck Robb.

In October 1967 Maxine was circu-
ling at a party. At one point in the eve-
ning she was standing next to Chuck
Robb, the recently married husband of
you-know-who. Can she believe her ears?
Robb has just told Angus Ogilvy, a Brit-
ish businessman, that his assignment to
Vietnam has been postponed for seven
or eight months because he had married
you-know-who. Maxine's column pro-
duced acute distress in the White House
the next morning.

God-DAMN. We just got out of all
that George Hamilton flapdiddle and
now THIS?? Right in the middle of the
hottest part of the goddam WAR??? Do
something, the word went out. And the
scurryscurry began—the White House is-
sued a statement denying any shift in
Robb's orders and the *Post* printed it but
stuck by Maxine's story. Liz Carpenter,
Lady Bird Johnson's secretary, demanded
an apology, the *Post* said no, Lynda Bird
Robb said Maxine Cheshire reads lips
and reads them wrong, and Maxine
Cheshire said she can't see that far.
About seven months later Robb went to
Vietnam and served his country well.

"After that episode Liz Carpenter sent
a cactus phallic symbol to Ben Bradley
(the *Post's* executive editor) suggesting
what he could do because he refused to
apologize," Maxine recalls. "Oh, Liz Car-
penter hated me, just hated me. Always
saying I loved the Kennedys and all that
so much. She was always doing every-
thing she dared to make life miserable
for me. But you know, when *Harper's*
*Bazaar* came out with an article on the
people you most admire, who did I say I
admired the most? Lady Bird. I thought
she was doing everything she could as a
woman and First Lady." Judging herself
completely vindicated, it galls Maxine
when the Robb story is still quoted, as
it was in *Cosmopolitan* recently, as an
example of her "inaccuracy."

But these are just fond memories. Af-
ter all, the Republicans have been
here for some time, and how does Max-
ine Cheshire cope with an Administra-

tion that she says has made Washington
an "occupied city"? Well, some of the
zip is gone. "There aren't any parties
anymore so how are you going to cover
Washington society? What you have are
Mrs. Kleindienst or Mrs. Peterson throw-
ing a party for a few friends instead of
Perle Mesta throwing one for a hoteful.
You'd have to sell your soul to cover
something like that. But we've always
thought they were going to go away and
nobody wanted to get too close to them.
They didn't play the game everybody
expected them to. They are wallflowers."

Still, she scuffs at the current gossip
that her "VIP" column isn't what it used
to be and that her sources among the Re-
publicans don't compare with her Dem-
ocratic ones. "I have better pipelines in-
to this Administration than I've ever had
before. They dry up one source and then
I get very lucky and develop someone
else. Where do they think the stories are
coming from, the Democrats?"

The subject of Maxine's sources, of
course, is a perennial favorite among
Washington insiders. Much of the spec-
ulation centers on Katharine Graham,
owner of the *Post*, who naturally travels
in the best circles and meets the people
her columnist would like to know about.
So much speculation focuses on Mrs.
Graham that it's unlikely she'd hear
much information people don't want
Maxine to know. Beyond that, it's a
rather futile exercise to seek out Maxine's
informants. "I'll never, never, never re-
veal a source," she says. Her phone num-
ber is listed and she'll talk to anyone
from the scullery maid to the potentate.
Many of her sources adopt pseudonyms.
One woman uses the name of her post-
man. There are many who can give her
just enough information to start her dig-
ging. Like the person who tipped her off
in October 1970 with a vague reference
to some kind of party thrown by a Kiss-
singer staff member where all the men
had to appear without pants. That in-
triguing tidbit wasn't enough to go on
until another caller told her the approxi-
mate neighborhood where the party had
been held. With those two pieces of in-
formation, she was able to crosscheck the
city directory to pinpoint the few mem-
bers of Kissinger's staff who lived in the
neighborhood. Without knowing any
more than that, the Cheshire Cat called
Kissinger's office. Can you think of a
stronger incentive to tell the truth than
the idea that Maxine Cheshire is going
to print some garbled story that you, a
highly placed member of Richard Nix-
on's government, threw a bacchanal for
a houseful of hairy-legged and probably
debauched men? One feels faint. John
Lehman, Kissinger's staffman, was only
too happy to tell all and set the story
straight. Turns out such a "black tie, sans
pantalons" party was a hallowed tradi-
tion of Lehman's Cambridge University
dining society, the Ancient Order of
Gonville Loungers. Everything was on
the up and up, and Maxine's story was

marvelously amusing. Classic Cheshire,
exquisitely detailed and outrageously im-
probable. Uncharacteristically, there was
no reaction from the government until
*Post* columnist Nicholas von Hoffman,
to Republicans the Typhoid Mary of
journalism, picked up the BVD story
and used it himself a few days later.
Then the familiar apology set in.

"They really are paranoid," Maxine
says. "They think we all sit down at the
*Post* and collaborate on a campaign
against them. I hardly ever see Nick, and
I certainly don't know what he's going
to write in his column."

Like the saga of the Gonville Loung-
ers, a good percentage of Maxine's stories
these past few years have in some way
involved the name of Henry Kissinger.
"VIP" follows the comings and goings
of Kissinger's girlfriends with almost as
much devotion as it has shown to the
meanderings of the Kennedy clan. Max-
ine tells of the warning she once gave
Henry about a certain Hollywood star-
let. "Henry," Maxine said, "that girl is
a no-no. She belongs to the mob." Henry
pooh-poohed the warning. When he and
the starlet were later seen together at a
fashionable resort, Henry was lounging
by the pool, reading a copy of *The God-
father*, no doubt with mounting concern.
Months later when Kissinger turned up
at the premiere of the movie based on
the gangster book, he was quick to ask
that he not be judged guilty by associa-
tion. Maxine thinks Henry's request was
meant for her particularly.

Well, the list of scoops and scandals,
needles and nuggets, could go on and on
—the Agnew-Sinatra association, the
Lucy Winchester flap, Martha Mitchell
and charity balls, the appointment of
Arthur K. Watson as ambassador to
France, Agnew floundering among the
children of the National Cathedral
School—but you get the picture. Maxine
herself likes to quote what's often said
about her: "Maxine Cheshire is nonparti-
san. She hates everybody."

While we're speaking of hate is
probably the best time to amplify
on Maxine's relationship with some of
her colleagues and rivals. The infighting
that goes on among some ladies of the
press corps seems to be endemic. Maxine
and friends have raised it to the level of
a minor art form. It's the longest run-
ning, tear down, drag out catfight in the
country. In addition to what seems in-
nate cattiness, some of the bitterness be-
tween the highly competitive and ambi-
tious ladies stems from radically different
attitudes about Washington and the
function of the social columnist therein.
Maxine prides herself on the purity of
her journalistic motive, on the selfless-
ness with which she investigates the
Washington scene. Whenever the Chesh-
ire Cat tangles with a rival, her invari-
able justification is that her opponent has
used her journalistic position for an ulte-


*(continued on page 87)*

64

Maxine Cheshire

from page 64

rior motive, and therefore deserves what-
ever she gets. Maxine versus Betty Beale!
Maxine versus Nancy Dickerson! Max-
ine versus Kandy Stroud! While you
settle down for the first round, let's go
over some of the ground rules by which
the Cheshire Cat fights.

Washington, as Maxine sees it, is
above all a city on the make. The prizes
are power, the trappings of power, and
money. Its social life seems chaotic until
you realize one rule: Everybody in gov-
ernment, and that includes nearly every-
one who counts, is a social climber in a
society based on power rather than
bloodlines. Washington's true blue-
bloods, the "cliff dwellers," are inciden-
tal. The society pages can exert consid-
erable leverage in propelling the social
climber to the top. In Washington, any-
one who becomes known for associating
with the powerful becomes powerful
himself.

"In Washington," Maxine says, "you have to realize what you can get for publicity. If you can get your picture on the society page with someone important, you can get your home free, your clothes free, your car free—it just goes on and on. There will be plenty of people eager to become your friend if they see that you're the friend of someone with political clout."

For these reasons, any Washington society columnist is a powerful person, constantly being tempted. The columnist —to fulfill his or her journalistic responsibility—must refuse any offer to promote the social ambitions of other. And the columnist also must be immune to the more subtle temptation to use his or her position as a tool for self-promotion up through the strata of Washington society. The columnist must not be a snobby person!

As for Maxine, she's sure of where she
stands. "I worked to be one thing and
I've wanted that since I was five years
old. I wanted to be a good newspaper-
woman. I want the respect of my peers.
I don't want to be Perle Mesta, Nancy
Dickerson, Betty Beale—I want to be a
good newspaperwoman. In a sense we're
the prostitutes of this profession when
you get into it to further your social
career or your husband's career. They
wouldn't let the national editor do that
and they ought to be just as tough on
the society writers." Maxine Cheshire,
you have to admit, has a knack for carv-
ing out territory for herself in any cat-
fight. She's got that moral advantage
right away. Whether she deserves it or
not depends on who you talk to, but it
may be significant that she's very seldom
been accused of using her column to fur-
ther her own social ends.

Now, even if Maxine Cheshire and
Betty Beale weren't the top society col-
umnists of Washington's two biggest
newspapers, they'd probably still dislike

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each other. They have for years. It doesn't quiet the feud when Betty often says, "I don't care what her friends say about her. I don't think Maxine is a bad reporter." It didn't draw them closer together when Maxine wrote a column that appeared at first to congratulate Betty on her engagement to Union Carbide lobbyist George Graeber, even though a closer reading revealed the column sympathized that poor Mr. Graeber now would have to learn to read a menu printed in French. The two antagonists could not be more dissimilar. Maxine raised in the low end of labor union turmoil, breaking in as a police reporter. Betty raised in a socially acceptable Washington family, breaking in as the Junior League writer of "Tophats and Tiaras."

"As I understand it," Betty says with a hint of frost, "she doesn't go to a party to cover it. She calls herself an investigative reporter. Actually, I go to a party to give a picture of VIP's when they get together after six and not in the sense of using the invitation to find out something that might be adverse to them. I don't see her very often anymore, and she says she gets her information by phone. I go to parties to cover them as you would a fire or press conference. It's what takes place there that I'm interested in."

If you ask Maxine what she has against Betty Beale, the claws come out so innocently.

"Why I don't want to be mean to Betty Beale, even if she does use her column to promote her husband's career," Maxine says, wide-eyed. "Every other column she gushes on about him or about his boss. ... Then she uses the rest of her column to apologize to her friends for what I've said in my column."

Questioned about this latest charge, Betty Beale was almost at a loss for words. "It's so appalling. Considering I've only been married for three years and I've been a columnist for twenty-nine years, it doesn't require an answer. People know me better than to think that. . . . Obviously if you're a company representative it's nice to meet the VIP's. I know them all, but I always have known them. It's the kind of low blow . . . so appalling. . . ." A few minutes later she called me back to add: "Rather than my helping George, he's been an asset to me. He's extremely handsome, very charming, very well-liked, and a very good dancer. We're invited places because people like to be with that kind of person, and often they'd rather invite a couple than a single girl."

They go on and on.

On to round two . . . Maxine Cheshire versus Nancy Dickerson. Now this is a real grudge match. Talked about for years. There never was much love lost between the two. Nancy, the NBC newswoman, had been climbing for years. She was close to any number of influential individuals in the White House, includ-

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ing both Presidents Johnson and Nixon. Following her marriage to C. Wyatt Dickerson, her lifestyle became even more grand. The Dickersons bought Merrywood, the childhood home of Jackie Kennedy. Intimate dinner parties for Washington's important personages. Rolls-Royces. Chartered Lear jets for trips to New York. In short, Nancy's enemies would say she was a snobby person. Then on August 17, 1969, Maxine Cheshire published a long, long story detailing the steps by which C. Wyatt Dickerson had turned a relatively small investment into a large paper fortune, thereby making possible such an extravagant lifestyle. The story was pegged to a short financial page item noting the apparent collapse of the empire. It's doubtful that Nancy Dickerson has spoken a word to Maxine Cheshire since that August morning, and Nancy has many sympathizers who view the story as an uncalled for attack based on personal spite and envy. Maxine defends the story as a legitimate news item.

"I agonized over that story, I really did," Maxine says. "I worked on it for two years and it seemed to me to be a truly Washington success story. It said something important about the way this town is."

All right. But Maxine said something else about Nancy that might also be relevant.

"I never had anything but the nicest relationship with Nancy Dickerson. Other people didn't like her, but I never felt that way. Even if she was hard to get close to because she comes on so strong, so phony with her Diors, her nine servants, her fancy cars. . . nobody cares about anybody having that, but the people who have it don't cram it down your throat. I'd find that hard to take after awhile."

It's possible that part of the reason for the story was that Nancy was really just too much of a snobby person.

Ask Nancy what she thinks of Maxine and things get absolutely Arctic. "She's not very important," Nancy says. "It's kind of a joke for you to even write about her. She's discredited. I really have nothing to say about her at all."

For the third and final round . . . Maxine versus Kandy Stroud. Kandy is the young, attractive, ambitious Washington reporter for Women's Wear Daily. She has long blond hair and looks a lot like the beautiful people she writes about. The feud between Kandy and Maxine is nowhere near as acerbic as the other two. It dates from a story that Kandy wrote about Maxine for WWD several years ago. While the story is well balanced, someone so disposed could say it dwells lovingly on how allegedly hated Maxine is by her Post colleagues, how inaccurate she's said to be, how malicious the Cheshire Cat can be. Maxine didn't like it. So if you ask Maxine about Kandy, she'll say earnestly, "She wants something I don't want. I'm

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not putting Kandy and her husband down, but they're socially ambitious, and I'm just not. When she saw my house for the first time she thought it was beautiful. 'You don't realize what you've got here,' she told me. 'Why it's like the Beverly Hillbillies sitting on an oil well and not knowing it. If this were my house I'd fill it full of Chuck Percy and his wife!' Yes, I thought to myself, I bet you would. You see the difference."

But enough of these feline fights. Surely the embattled Maxine Cheshire has a home, some respite from all this? Yes indeed. But as we leave the field where she gives and takes her lumps with the best of them, let everyone note a message she delivers with ominous gentleness, melodramatically, almost breathlessly: "I play games with people ... and I always win. I always do. If there's one thing you should never do, it's play games with me."

Incongruously, this champion thrower of stones lives in a glass house. It's a handsome, multileveled structure nestled just above a wooded, hilly area off the George Washington Parkway below Alexandria. There's no name on the mailbox. The house looks light and airy, open to the outdoors. Herb and Maxine built the house over a number of years, finished the interior with the help of one carpenter, and moved in about eight years ago. The upstairs of the ten-room house is paneled with walnut the Cheshires salvaged from the demolition of Andrew Mellon's old office at Lafayette Square. Antiques abound, an eclectic collection with leanings toward the Oriental.

More and more these days, it's a place where Maxine spends most of her time.

"Everybody who hates me says I got the column going in to Al Friendly and giving him an ultimatum. Now that's very funny. I'm just not that ambitious, and writing a column three times a week is no job for a woman with four kids. It's more a lifestyle than a job. I had $25,000 worth of stories contracted to the *Saturday Evening Post* when I started writing 'VIP,' I had a good antique business on the side, and I never had to dirty my hands. I was a very happy woman living a normal life. I'd still be perfectly happy to live on a farm in Pennsylvania growing roses and delphiniums and baking my own bread."

Having a column, though, is the dream of nearly every journalist. The first few years were hectic.

"Herb and I attended black-tie dinners nearly every night for years. We had no time for the kids, no time for our own lives. I began to get very resentful of working all day and then having to go out all night. My enemies say I cut down on going to parties because I was so mean I didn't get any more invitations. Now if I'm as mean as people say can you imagine what the hosts would do if I called up and said I'm coming to your party anyway?"

The resentment at that frantic pace happened to coincide with several family crises that together were responsible for the Cheshires' rethinking their lifestyle. Maxine describes it as an "identity crisis" that now seems to be past. In November 1970 they discovered that Herb had melanoma, a fast spreading variety of cancer, in the form of an innocent looking mole. Minor surgery luckily caught the disease before it had a chance to spread, but the scare itself was enough to bring into question the future of Herb's career and the problem of how Maxine could raise their children alone while trying to write a column that often required fourteen-hour workdays. Within two months of Herb's sickness and recovery, Maxine herself fell ill. Plagued by several tumors and occasional hemorrhages that eventually required surgery, Maxine worked only intermittently from January to September of 1971. She spent part of that time on a complete leave of absence from the *Post*.

It is some indication of the impact of her column, among both friendly and enemy camps, that her absence from the social scene and the infrequent appearance of "VIP" last year gave rise to any number of theories. She was in disfavor with the *Post* and would soon be sacked. She was bored with the Republicans and couldn't make the effort to cover them. She had finally stepped on so many toes that every door in Washington was closed to her. She was dying of cancer.

Maxine says she did a lot of soul-searching during her illness, and seriously considered retiring. But perish the thought.

"If I were to retire, would anyone believe I did it voluntarily? They'd all say well, that bitch finally got what was coming to her. The White House would rope off the Ellipse and have a block party."

Instead, once healthy again, she tried cutting down on the time devoted to the column, but that didn't work out. She seems now to have settled on cutting down on those black-tie nights out and working by telephone from home as much as possible. She says she has no "typical" day, but most mornings are spent in bed on the telephone. Afternoons might find her running here and there about town or settled in her office at the *Post* making more phone calls, checking facts, writing the column. The telephone is so central to her life that Maxine claims to have cauliflower ears. She runs up an annual bill of $25,000. Apart from normal intramural frictions, her *Post* colleagues say, Maxine is not disliked by her fellow-workers. "VIP" still fails to appear as scheduled every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday, but Tom Kendrick, an editor of the *Style* section, says the reasons are mainly technical. Firstly, *Style* is moving to more of a magazine "in-depth" format, with less emphasis on breaking news. Secondly, production at the *Post* has been

hampered for months by extensive building renovation, and much of "VIP"—"Potpourri" tidbits—goes stale before it can be printed. And, finally, Maxine is still not back in full swing because of her illness.

Both she and Herb, a handsome, easy-going man who covers the Defense Department for McGraw-Hill publications, say they relish the extra time they now have with their family. Their four children are Marc, sixteen; Hall, twelve; Paden, eight; and Leigh, five, their only daughter. All except Leigh go to public schools, and Maxine says they are "drop-outs from the Green Book ghetto and the private school syndrome." Marc, whom his mother describes as a "square hippie," is president of his class at Groveton High School. Maxine's mother, Sylvia, has lived with them for years and provides a stabilizing influence in an often hectic household.

Weekends are usually taken up with "the chores other people do during the week," but when they can the family goes camping, traveling, or to an antique auction. The Cheshires also rent movies to show the kids with their own 16mm sound projector on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights.

As for their own entertaining, Maxine says, "We still do so much socializing during the week that we almost never have anybody to dinner. The people we see are people who don't want anything from me." That includes a doctor and his wife who are neighbors, a few fellow journalists, and any number of friends whose identities the Cheshires are somewhat cautious about revealing. It's not always to one's advantage to be known as a friend of Maxine Cheshire.

The strongest impression during a visit to their home is that both the Cheshires are more comfortable as plain folks than as celebrities. Relaxed and friendly, they are good hosts and better conversationalists, drawing as they can on a rather unusual fund of information. And whatever might be said about Maxine Cheshire on the gossip circuit, her close friends are unanimous in praising her generosity and thoughtfulness. Mrs. Helen Dudman, public relations director of WTOP-TV and formerly one of Maxine's editors at the *Post*, mentioned Maxine's kindness during the forty days her husband, Richard Dudman of the *St. Louis Post-Dispatch*, was a captive of the Viet Cong in Cambodia. When her husband returned, the Dudmans found a porch full of new wicker furniture that Maxine had left there as a welcome home gift. "Even the telephone operators at the *Post* love her because she sends them flowers and never neglects to stop and chat."

"Maxine is beholden to no one, no thing, no cause. As well as I know her I would be hard put to tell you whether she is a liberal or a conservative," Mrs. Dudman says. "I think Maxine cannot be bought, and I don't mean bought with

90

money, but nothing stands in the way of her getting a story. She's one of my best friends, but I have no doubt that if it came to a story or our friendship, she would choose the story."

Maxine won't say how much the *Post* pays her for all the long hours and loyalty. Her fellow newswoman Sarah Booth Conroy estimated in a *Ladies Home Journal* article two years ago that Maxine's salary was about $500 a week. That figure may be conservative, but perhaps not greatly so. The minimum salary for a reporter with her experience at the *Post* is $400 a week. Top reporters, among whom Maxine must be numbered, customarily are paid slightly above scale. It would not be difficult for someone of her reputation to double that salary through the money she can command for magazine articles. Her literary agent is Sterling Lord of New York, one of the best in the business. Still, if the estimated $500 a week salary is anywhere near accurate, it's very small for a columnist with such reach and influence. The reason is that Maxine, like all salaried employees of the *Post*, receives none of the money made through the distribution of her column to newspapers by the Washington Post-Los Angeles Times wire service. Inquiries among *Post* employees turned up none who knew of reporters profiting by that wire service distribution, but one reporter did allow that "anybody who does get a piece of the action has carved it out of Ben Bradlee's hide." And hide was not the word the reporter used. Reliable sources say that Maxine is starting to chafe under the yoke of the wire service. They say she'll soon have a new syndicate contract and, for the first time, an assistant. A columnist who appears in as many newspapers as Maxine does could reasonably expect to make $75,000 a year under syndicate contract and distribution. Maxine herself is reluctant to discuss this aspect of her newspaper career. She does admit to some small investments. With her brothers she is part-owner of the M & M liquor store in Frederick, Maryland. She also owns some real estate in Frederick that will be the site for a future office building. She formerly was a part-owner of the Why Not? boutique in Alexandria. What she will discuss is ...

"You know, I got that Kennedy story about Chappaquiddick becoming a national park in just a couple of hours last night after a call," Maxine says as we start up the steep, pine-smelling stairs of the Potomac Boat Club to complete the evening that had begun at the Jockey Club. "All those reporters up there on Capitol Hill and just think, not one of them had noticed it."

"Bitchy and completely unnecessary," sniffs a dowager to her companion as sweet Maxine, a shot of wry in a perfume bottle, steps out on the boat club balcony and the connection is made be-

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tween story and the writer now amongst
us. "Really uncalled for. . ."

The Potomac Boat Club is a delight of
high drafty rooms, narrow stairs, and
yellowing photographs of forgotten
crews trapped forever behind walrus
moustaches. Every bit of the whole
creaking structure is made of wood,
which today gives it a slightly alien but
kindly air. It must have been an even
nicer place before the invention of those
jet airliners that come by to rattle your
teeth every few minutes. It's been a
gathering place for the better class of
Washingtonians since long before you
or I were born. And, more or less, it
still is. Maxine Cheshire in a mother nest
of snobby people!

Long before the large room that opens
onto the balcony has even begun to fill
up, some misguided soul decides to intro-
duce the candidate to Maxine Cheshire.
Gerry Studds, toward whose political
future each guest here tonight will pay
$25, is a boyish-looking Massachusetts
man in his early thirties, of slightly more
than medium height, with thin blond hair
that he combs across a high forehead. He
has a sometimes nervous smile. He is
wearing a tie and sport coat and com-
plaining of the heat way down here in
the South when suddenly the misguided
soul disappears and leaves him alone with
this woman he's never seen before.

"What's Kennedy going to do about
the Democratic Presidential nomina-
tion?" asks Maxine Cheshire, and takes
a sip of wine.

*Strange first question for someone to ask you.* "Well, I don't want my candidacy to founder on that rock," retorts candidate Studds.

"Will Kennedy accept the vice presi-
dential spot," Maxine shoots back.

!!!!!! Who . . . ??? "I wouldn't . . . I don't know about that," the candidate smiles nervously. He can see there's nobody out here on the balcony to rescue him from this conversation. Slowly, pretending he really isn't backing up at all, he starts toward the light of the doorway.

"Will Kennedy accept a draft nomi-
nation?" Maxine asks sweetly.

*Who IS this woman????* "I think anybody who would make a prediction on that would be insane," Studds manages, and flipping out nervous smiles like a card dealer he disappears around the doorjamb into the big lighted room.

A young rock band has been hired and
they are busy setting up their instru-
ments and plugging in their electric hair.
Maxine Cheshire is strolling among the
new arrivals, not talking much to any-
body. As the room fills, she spots Dick
Drayne, Senator Edward Kennedy's
press aide, on the balcony. They whisper
together for at least thirty minutes.
Drayne seems irritated about things in
general and me in particular when I
butt in. Maxine won't discuss the sub-
ject of the conversation. Back in the
main room Maxine bumps into Charles

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Blitzer, an assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and an opponent during the days of the Cheshire assault on the Smithsonian's financial policies two years before. "Charles and I started out as plain enemies but now we're respectful enemies," Maxine says later. "He's the most maahhhvelous liar I know, but he's a gentleman. . . . He's very bright and he's terribly smooth . . . but I don't think he's as afraid of me anymore as he ought to be. . . . I'm fond of him."

The big moment approaches. Senator Kennedy has arrived accompanied by D.C. Delegate Walter Fauntroy. The crowd of perhaps a hundred or so gathers and Delegate Fauntroy makes a speech to introduce Senator Kennedy. Tanned, smiling, wearing a navy blue polo shirt and light slacks, Kennedy makes a short speech to introduce candidate Studds. Studds in turn makes a short speech about the importance of victory in Martha's Vineyard and environs, and the purpose of the meeting has been met.

But my real purpose in being here is to see how Senator Kennedy reacts to Maxine Cheshire, the dealer of low blows over breakfast. Wait! He's moving right toward where she's standing! Four feet away, he gracefully turns his back and slides past her while talking to someone else. It's the glazed-eyed glide all over again! And Maxine is into it too. With her back to Kennedy she's talking to someone leaning against the wall, and she wants to show you that she's not even aware he's there. You know she knows he's there though because she's holding her chin slightly higher and at a different angle than usual. Oh rare, these maneuverings.

But how can you let this opportunity go by without finding out what Kennedy really thinks of Maxine Cheshire? I followed him around the floor for some minutes, discreet, smiling like those who wanted to meet Sammy Davis Jr. a few hours earlier. We wind up out on the balcony where Kennedy has struck up a conversation with four or five youngsters. I see my chance when he breaks away to go back into the hall.

"Senator Kennedy?"

He leans his head closer to hear over the surrounding noise, and I ask him what he thought about Maxine Cheshire's column that morning. He straightens up as if pulled by slow rubber bands and gives me a rueful look one might give someone who has just transgressed a boundary and is too stupid to even know it. He's already moving away when he says, "Nothing. I don't think about it."

Maxine is in the foyer waiting to leave. I mention the brief encounter with Kennedy. "Is Kennedy still here? Quick, let me go find Sally Quinn. She needs to see him for a *Post* story and she thought he'd already left. If I hurry up we can still get a story out of it," says Maxine Cheshire, newspaperwoman. ☐

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93

79

# REFLECTIONS

## THE STATESMAN AND THE CONQUEROR

THE grief and din of Vietnam have obscured something new in American policy—a design that undoubtedly must be credited to Henry Kissinger. It plainly bears the marks of his intelligence, which on the evidence of his books is that of a diplomatic conservative and political amoralist. Dr. Kissinger's first book, “A World Restored,” was an account of the Congress of Vienna. It was a study of political legitimacy—something that was at the source of the peace that Metternich succeeded in establishing in Europe after 1814. The legitimacy of an international order, Dr. Kissinger wrote, has fairly little to do with justice. It consists of an agreement among the major powers on a workable international system and on the permissible aims of foreign policy. It presumes satisfaction: No state possesses an ambition it is ready to pursue at the cost of overturning the system. Thus it assumes that none of the states feel radical insecurity, since radical insecurity implies a threat that must be eliminated or neutralized at any cost. It implies equilibrium—a balance of power.

Today, the American government clearly has concluded that an equilibrium exists between the United States and the Soviet Union. The arms-limitation talks at Vienna and Helsinki, the President's Moscow trip, and the European-security conference that may take place later this year merely ratify that equilibrium. President Nixon's trip to China, then, was designed to bring China out of its revolutionary isolation from—and hostility toward—the established system of international relations. By acknowledging the legitimacy of the Communist government in China, which the United States had before refused to do, the Administration expected China, in turn, to acknowledge the legitimacy of the diplomatic order. They expected China to recognize, no doubt tacitly, certain limits of political conduct. And so in the Bangladesh affair the Chinese did act—with rather more discretion and restraint than the United States did.

The China initiative seemed a daring stroke in terms of the conventional wisdom of American politics, but it capitalized upon a suppressed popular impulse for change in this country, which means that it was a brilliant capitalization upon the inevitable. It reversed an American China policy that

under a succession of previous Administrations had delivered blows, bluster, and grand denunciations in the name of democracy and liberty. That way of conducting ourselves before the world—an American tradition—had become so corrupt in recent years, so sterile and thick with hypocrisy, that the country was ready for some Metternichian realism, as translated by Dr. Kissinger. But at this point the contradiction in the new American policy makes itself felt. And again the nineteenth-century analogy is instructive. Napoleon had to be driven from his European conquests before the settlement of 1815 became possible. Until that was done, the struggle of the Continental states to free themselves from Napoleon made any legitimate settlement inconceivable. The only peace possible would have been one imposed and enforced by French military power in defiance of that resistance. Peace by conquest is perfectly imaginable: popular resistance can eventually be crushed, or in time and for lack of outside support it may eventually wane. But that is no peace of legitimacy and balance.

Mr. Nixon may be willing today to concede to Russia its East European sphere of influence; the Democratic Administrations had already done as much. He is apparently willing to concede Taiwan to China. But he insists that Vietnam be conceded to an American sphere of influence. This clearly would seem the expected *quid pro quo*, deliverable by those great powers with

whom the larger bargain is struck. Thus, since the start of North Vietnam's Easter offensive, Mr. Nixon's remonstrances have been addressed to Moscow, in tones that combine reproach with menace. Dr. Kissinger travelled first to Moscow, not to Paris. The two Americans had certainly never expected the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese to be delivered on a platter. They had expected the Saigon government, and Vietnamization, to be allowed to continue unmolested. But ours is the Napoleonic problem, and not even the Russians can really help with that—even if they were disposed, cynically, to do so. The Vietnamese Communists themselves are resourceful and intransigent enemies of any international arrangement that defies their revolutionary and nationalist goals. They are determined to conquer or be conquered: they are an unsatisfied power. And within the frontiers of those forests of death in Vietnam they are the great power—not Russia or China or the United States of America.

The American sphere of influence on the Asian mainland has been preserved this long only through merciless warfare. There is no legitimacy in power that has to be maintained in that way. We are the intruding force, attempting to impose a solution that defies the native balance, supporting elements in Vietnam's society that, genuine as they may be, have never been able to sustain themselves without foreign help. As Dr. Kissinger wrote of Napoleon's subject states, when a power is felt to be foreign that “is the surest indication of the absence of legitimacy.” North Vietnam is the

80

HOW
OMAR'S
TENT
COMPANY
NEARLY
FOLDED.

(a fable for our times)

The tentmaker, Omar, we're thinking of, had a few crotchets. He just couldn't bring himself to make cheap tents.

With the result that he had a veritable bazaar full of luxury tents suitable only for maharajas, Dayton businessmen on $100,-000 safaris, or Long Island garden weddings.

Tents lovely to behold. And tough to sell.

Until he met in the marketplace, one day, a large jinni—from, of all places, Reader's Digest.

"Omar," quoth he, "what you need is a little upscale magic. Like Reader's Digest/Demo-1."

"Who can afford?"

"Listen. I can give you one million households whose median income is in the nabe of $21,000 per. More than double the national average for a trifling, $11,590 per full-color bleed page."

"But that's only a penny apiece, or thereabouts! You jest!"

"As Allah is my judge." MORAL: If you've got fancy cars to sell, or Hope diamonds, or baby grands, call (212) 972-6090. Even tentative excursions into the land of the big spenders must include Demo-1.

Demo-1

The Top Top-Income Edition
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"revisionist" and unsatisfied power within the confines of Vietnam's struggle. The North Vietnamese and their allies in South Vietnam will admit no settlement that thwarts them, and they have the ability—and the time—to enforce their will. We, in turn, are the revisionist factor within the terms of that classical and conservative great-power balance that Dr. Kissinger conceives, for we are the ones who insist that the actual power situation in Vietnam be revised to our advantage. We demand that a conquest be delivered which we have been unable to accomplish. That, the amoralist should understand, is the difference between Vietnam and the Soviet Union's position in Eastern Europe. The Soviets' conquests are completed; pacification has succeeded there.

The alliance between Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon has always seemed a little odd—an expedient and conservative alliance but one that also concealed exactly the contradiction that now has emerged. Mr. Nixon's conservatism is the American conservatism, powerfully nationalist in tradition and given to an inveterate identification of national purpose with moral purpose. The view of the Vietnam war that the President consistently has stated is no idiosyncrasy; it expresses something very powerful in the American national ego. In his book, Dr. Kissinger contrasted the statesman with the conqueror. The statesman's vocation is to reconcile nations to the claims of order and a mutual security, to "stability, not perfection." The conqueror identifies order with his own will, attempting "to equate his will with the structure of obligations." The argument made by the United States is that our predominance in South Vietnam must be granted because the United States must not be defeated, must not seem "a pitiful, helpless giant." This Administration is ready to practice a Metternichian realism, provided that the United States is exempted from the amoralist's verdict. The new American policy presents the statesman and the conqueror unreconciled.

—WILLIAM PFAFF

James Oliver Buswell, one of the greatest violinists of the modern musical world, held time to a standstill, as he delivered Johannes Brahms' Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D Major, Op. 77. The young virtuoso's strings grabbed his audience's soul and lifted it to the highest bounds of sensuality.—Erie (Pa.) Times.

Then what happened?

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