Pamela Beryl Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman 1920-1997

Pamela Beryl Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman 1920-1997

In a 1956 edi­tion of his 1899 nov­el Savro­la, Churchill quot­ed Emer­son: “Nev­er read a book that is not at least a year old.” I can give reas­sur­ance on this point, since Christo­pher Ogden’s Life of the Par­ty: The Biog­ra­phy of Pamela Har­ri­man, was pub­lished in 2006I was remind­ed of Ogden (and update my review) by a new Pamela book I won’t be read­ing. The first one from that author was enough

• First pub­lished as “Great Con­tem­po­raries, Pamela Har­ri­man,” Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. To sub­scribe to week­ly arti­cles from Hillsdale/Churchill, click here, scroll to bot­tom, and enter your email in the box “Stay in touch with us.” We nev­er spam you and your iden­ti­ty remains a rid­dle wrapped in a mys­tery inside an enigma.

Pamela: she got there on her own

In 1941 at the U.S. Con­gress, Win­ston Churchill dis­armed what­ev­er remain­ing crit­ics he still had by declar­ing:  “Had my father been Amer­i­can and my moth­er Eng­lish, instead of the oth­er way round, I might have got here on my own.” Pamela Har­ri­man (1920-1997) was all-Eng­lish, yet rose to high Amer­i­can office on her own. She served as U.S. ambas­sador to Paris from 1993 until her death. Small-mind­ed peo­ple, and there are plen­ty, belit­tle her lack of edu­ca­tion, her glit­tery friend­ships with the great. All that is easy to mock, but beside the point.

Pamela
Pamela Har­ri­man in “The Tatler,” June 1938. (Wiki­me­dia Commons)

Her col­league Richard Hol­brooke rat­ed her quite dif­fer­ent­ly: “She spoke the lan­guage, she knew the coun­try, she knew its lead­er­ship. She was one of the best.” Pres­i­dent Jacques Chirac com­pared her to the two most notable Amer­i­can ambas­sadors, Ben­jamin Franklin and Thomas Jef­fer­son. He award­ed her a Com­man­der of the Legion d’Honneur‘s Order of Arts and Let­ters, France’s high­est cul­tur­al award. Pret­ty good for a girl from the sticks who left home ear­ly, deter­mined to succeed.

Pamela Beryl Dig­by was born in Farn­bor­ough, Hamp­shire, daugh­ter of the 11th Baron Dig­by. Her moth­er Con­stance was the daugh­ter of 2nd Baron Aber­dare. Her child­hood home was her first Churchill con­nec­tion. Minterne Magna in 1642 was the res­i­dence of John Churchill, father of the first Sir Winston.

A skilled horse­woman, Pamela com­pet­ed at show-jump­ing includ­ing Olympia, where every fence was above her pony’s shoul­ders. In 1937 she was at a board­ing school in Munich when she met Adolf Hitler—a dubi­ous achieve­ment her future father-in-law missed. Intro­duced by his admir­er Uni­ty Mit­ford, Pam nev­er fell for what­ev­er spell the Führer cast over Mitford.

“You are not still a Catholic?”

Pamela Digby’s first mar­riage, at age nine­teen in 1939, was to Ran­dolph Churchill, a deci­sion tak­en on the fly. Ran­dolph was off to war and, think­ing he might be killed, anx­ious to pro­duce an heir. Report­ed­ly he had pro­posed to eight oth­er women before Pamela.

Friends and fam­i­ly, she recalled, warned her that the mer­cu­r­ial Ran­dolph was not a good long-term risk: Con­ser­v­a­tive Chief Whip David Marges­son, “took me for a long walk in the coun­try and tried to dis­suade me.” She replied: “If he is not killed and we do not get on togeth­er, I shall obtain a divorce.” In 1946, she was as good as her word.

Thomas Maier, author of The Churchills and the Kennedys, says the only Churchill con­cerned about the match was Win­ston. “Your fam­i­ly, the Dig­by fam­i­ly, were Catholic, but I imag­ine you are not still a Catholic?” he asked her. WSC had no reli­gious prej­u­dice, but as a politi­cian always had to con­tem­plate poten­tial criticism.

Pamela assured him the Dig­bys had long been Church of Eng­land, and faith­ful Con­ser­v­a­tives. “Yes, you had your heads chopped off in the Gun­pow­der Plot,” Churchill smiled. “That is right,” she answered—Sir Ever­ard Dig­by.” (Mr. Maier notes that Sir Ever­ard, a Catholic con­vert, was actu­al­ly hung, drawn and quartered.)

“How great a man…”

Win­ston Churchill wel­comed Pamela into the fam­i­ly. Becom­ing Prime Min­is­ter, he invit­ed her to Down­ing Street. Preg­nant with her son Win­ston, she recalled sleep­ing in a bunk bed in the bomb shel­ter, “one Churchill above me, anoth­er inside.” Pamela loved and admired the PM, and lat­er did amus­ing imi­ta­tions of him in her own deep voice.

Once dur­ing din­ner amidst the Blitz, Churchill gazed around the table. “If the Ger­mans come,” he told them, “you can always take one with you.” Pamela, all of twen­ty, was shocked at this. “But Papa,” she protest­ed, “what would I fight with?”

WSC peered at her with a benig­nant smile: “You, my dear, may use a carv­ing knife.” Her son Win­ston said she recit­ed that vignette often, cap­ti­vat­ed by her father-in-law’s indomitable spir­it. He added: “It was through her that it first dawned on me how great a man my grand­fa­ther was.”

Randolph to Averell

Pamela
The wed­ding of Pamela Dig­by and Ran­dolph Churchill, St. John’s Church, Lon­don, 4 Octo­ber 1939. (British Pathé & Win­ston S. Churchill MP)

As friends had warned her, mar­riage with Ran­dolph was not des­tined to be smooth. Nei­ther were celi­bate in each other’s absence, and her affair with Roosevelt’s envoy, Averell Har­ri­man, was an open secret. Win­ston nor Clemen­tine nev­er spoke of it.

Con­trary to what you may hear from oth­er sources, she fell for Averell the moment she laid eyes on him, one Blitz night at the Dorch­ester. There was no plot by Win­ston to use her. Inevitably, when he learned of it, Ran­dolph Churchill explod­ed. Years lat­er it still strained rela­tions between father and son. But Ran­dolph was hard­ly guilt­less of indiscretions.

After her divorce, with lit­tle in her pock­et except deter­mi­na­tion, Pamela and her young son Win­ston moved to Paris. She enjoyed a lav­ish life and romances. In 1960 she mar­ried Broad­way pro­duc­er Leland Hay­ward (renowned for South Pacif­ic and The Sound of Music.) The mar­riage last­ed until Hayward’s death in 1971. Six months lat­er she mar­ried Har­ri­man, then almost 80, car­ing for him devot­ed­ly. The old flame had nev­er died, her son told this writer. “She often called Averell ‘the most beau­ti­ful man I’ve ever seen.’”

“Never give in”

Through Har­ri­man and with Churchillian deter­mi­na­tion, Pamela became immersed in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. In 1980 and 1984, the Democ­rats were in dis­ar­ray fol­low­ing twin sweeps by Ronald Rea­gan. Pamela quot­ed Sir Win­ston: “In war you can only be killed once, but in pol­i­tics, many times.” How often he’d been count­ed out in pol­i­tics and recovered?

At her home on N Street in Wash­ing­ton she host­ed glam­orous par­ties and fundrais­ers. “She had an abil­i­ty to attract peo­ple around her, and a will­ing­ness to try to be a cat­a­lyst for the par­ty,” said Nor­man Orn­stein of the Amer­i­can Enter­prise Insti­tute. “Almost any­body who was asked was going to come to one of the gath­er­ings at her spec­tac­u­lar house.” Her son Win­ston told me that pol­i­tics aside, she was “one of the most con­ser­v­a­tive peo­ple I know. She would have brought the same zest had she mar­ried Ronald Reagan.”

As those two com­ments sug­gest, Pamela Har­ri­man was admired from both sides of the aisle. She sup­port­ed Clin­ton in 1992, and was reward­ed with the Paris Ambas­sador­ship. Yet at her con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings she was praised to the skies by the most con­ser­v­a­tive mem­ber of the For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee, Sen­a­tor Jesse Helms.

“Darling, this is Pamela…”

She rep­re­sent­ed it seems the pol­i­tics of a bygone age, a more Churchillian age. Like her first father-in-law, she saw it as a noble pro­fes­sion, where mutu­al respect was de rigueur. Years ago I pub­lished a piece on Churchill’s 1946 “Iron Cur­tain” speech by then-Sec­re­tary of Defense Cas­par Wein­berg­er. As one might expect, it stressed the Ful­ton theme of peace through strength. Pamela Har­ri­man wrote a rebut­tal empha­siz­ing Churchill’s Ful­ton title, “the Sinews of Peace.”

Paul Robin­son, for­mer­ly Ronald Reagan’s ambas­sador to Cana­da, read it, dis­agreed, and con­fessed that he remained among her great­est admir­ers. Ear­li­er he had named Har­ri­man and Wein­berg­er co-vice-pres­i­dents dur­ing his chair­man­ship of the Eng­lish-Speak­ing Union. “They were both superb,” he said. “And very good together—despite everything!”

Short­ly before Pres­i­dent Clin­ton arrived in office he pro­claimed an admi­ra­tion for Win­ston Churchill. I remem­ber send­ing him, through Pamela Har­ri­man, a blue sweat­shirt embla­zoned with the Churchill five-cent U.S. com­mem­o­ra­tive stamp. Delight­ed, she deliv­ered it her­self, and so we made her a pink version.

She tele­phoned to express her thanks, with the husky open­ing line that must have thrilled a thou­sand Wash­ing­ton insid­ers: “Dar­ling, this is Pamela.” It would have been, and always was, super­flu­ous to ask, “Pamela who?”

Pamela

“Elegance itself”

Pamela lived life her way—a noble spir­it devot­ed to friends, fam­i­ly and both her coun­tries. Not many peo­ple could have jour­neyed so suc­cess­ful­ly and far with a for­mal edu­ca­tion that end­ed at age sixteen.

How did she man­age it? She was grace per­son­i­fied, at home equal­ly in Churchill’s air raid shel­ter or the Élysée Palace. Dur­ing her term as ambas­sador, Paris and Wash­ing­ton col­lid­ed over alleged U.S. espi­onage, the “Euro­peaniza­tion” of NATO, lead­er­ship of the Unit­ed Nations, peace ini­tia­tives in the Mid­dle East, pow­er rival­ries in Africa. She han­dled it all with con­sum­mate skill, retain­ing the respect of her hosts despite those tests.

Pres­i­dent Chirac lament­ed her loss: “To say that she was an excep­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Unit­ed States in France does not do jus­tice to her achieve­ment. She lent to our long­stand­ing alliance the radi­ant strength of her per­son­al­i­ty. She was ele­gance itself…a peer­less diplomat.”

That old Fran­cophile, her father-in-law, would have smiled.

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