After the Miracle, page 30
This time, instead of issuing the explicit repudiation of Communism that those around her demanded, Helen was handed a list of six potential responses and ended up approving a relatively mild rebuke: “I do not believe in despotism in any form. I never have. I resent any attempt by organizations or individuals of dictatorial views to draw me into their schemes. My heart is with the freedom-loving peoples in every part of the world.” Meanwhile, among the potential statements that she rejected was one that read, “I do not believe in dictatorial Communism. I never have.”14
Helen’s refusal to issue the requested blanket denunciation of Communism suggests that she may have had second thoughts during the two years since she condemned Communist tyranny in the Times. It underscores the evident truth that she had not changed her long-held belief that socialism was the best prescription for ridding the world of poverty, racial discrimination, and other social ills, even if she had reservations about individual state regimes such as the USSR that may have corrupted those ideals by imposing socialism through tyrannical methods.
It is difficult to assess, however, whether she could still accurately be described as a Communist sympathizer or whether her feelings had changed since her days as a Fellow Traveler in the ’30s and ’40s. With the exception of her public declaration that she was a “socialist and a Bolshevik” in 1924, Helen never formally declared an allegiance to Communism, despite her evident embrace of the Communist Party line for many years. And yet it was clear from her oft-stated admiration of Vladimir Lenin and the “great Russian experiment” that she had long considered Communism an international manifestation of the socialist ideology she still believed in. Lenin himself, after all, had announced his intention to construct a new “socialist order,” so it’s certainly possible that she still made little distinction between Communism and socialism even as she drew the line at specific regimes.
Her defense of Yugoslavia as her excuse for refusing to denounce Communism outright is particularly noteworthy. She had visited the country with Annie and Polly in 1931 when it was still known as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.15 But in the years since, the monarchy had been deposed—replaced after the Second World War by a Communist government led by Josip Tito. In contrast to Stalinist Russia, Tito’s regime was considered more liberal and had made a favorable impression on Jo Davidson when he visited the country in 1949. During that trip, he wrote Helen that Tito was a “remarkable man.”16 For Helen, it was hardly disingenuous to denounce despotism, especially since she had been uneasy about Stalin for years. Although the Tito regime was considerably less harsh than Stalin’s ruthless dictatorship, his own repressive tactics and suppression of dissidents nonetheless made him very much a despot, although it’s unclear how much Helen knew of conditions inside the country beyond the glowing reports that Jo had dispatched before he died and the laudatory reports she read about the nation’s blind community in the Esperanto-language journal.
Although she was better read and usually better informed about world affairs than most of her friends and critics—especially since she regularly digested newspapers and periodicals in multiple languages—news from behind the Iron Curtain was heavily censored. Most Westerners would not fully comprehend the conditions of Eastern Bloc countries or the true extent of Stalin’s brutality until years later. If Helen didn’t fully understand the political situation of these countries, then, she wasn’t alone on the Left, although she often came off as more politically savvy than many of her comrades. In fact, she had deplored the kangaroo court–style Moscow Show Trials as an example of Stalin’s brutality in her journal in January 1937—in marked contrast to the majority of American Communists and Fellow Travelers who remained mostly uncritical until Nikita Khrushchev exposed Stalin’s crimes at the 20th Party Congress in February 1956.
Helen’s Vienna Congress endorsement and her renewed entanglement with left-wing politics once again ruffled feathers at the Foundation. In the short time since Robert Barnett had taken over as director in 1949, she had caused multiple headaches—first denouncing Joe McCarthy and then publicly endorsing a Stalinist gathering. Unlike his predecessor Bob Irwin, who enjoyed a collegial relationship with Helen and regarded her as a legacy of the AFB, Barnett appeared to perceive her repeated political agitation as an existential threat to the Foundation.
“The waters have been troubled,” Nella wrote in her journal about the new controversy, noting that Barnett, on a visit to Arcan Ridge, had “intimated to Polly without actually saying so that he wanted Helen to resign.” Later, talking to Nella herself, he repeated his request for her resignation more explicitly.17 Although she had no formal job description with the Foundation, she had long been designated by the AFB as a “counsellor and trustee.” Just as Helen appeared on the brink of acceding to his demand—under the pretense that she needed to finish her long-delayed biography of Annie—they discovered that Barnett had gone on an extended “vacation” without telling them. Nella used his absence to suggest that the director may have been having a nervous breakdown, and the matter of Helen’s resignation was apparently never raised again.18
Her rift with Barnett, however, would eventually find her in the middle of a power struggle between the AFB and the American Foundation for the Overseas Blind (AFOB), which had originally been a separate organization before it merged with the AFB following the Second World War. “I feel strongly that the time has come for it to regain its independence,” she wrote the trustees in 1953, arguing that splitting up the two organizations was the only way to “dissipate the doubt and suspicion” that had emerged. In the same letter, she confides her increasing disillusionment with Barnett, who for months had been “indifferent” to her and “ignored” her as a counsellor on international relations. “I wonder what has caused this change,” she lamented, though she couldn’t have been unaware of the director’s misgivings about her political history.19 Her plea to sever the organizations ultimately proved unsuccessful, although the AFOB would eventually split off and change its name to Helen Keller International in 1977. It would become known as a dynamic progressive force overseas, prominently crediting Helen’s influence and her belief that blindness and other health conditions could be eradicated only by overcoming “long-standing cycles of poverty.”20
Although she continued to travel widely abroad for the AFOB throughout the 1950s—embarking on ambitious tours of India, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Greece, among other countries—her domestic involvement with the AFB had slowed significantly and her relationship with Barnett remained cool. For a number of years, the two had enjoyed playing checkers—Helen’s favorite game—but their once spirited matches were now increasingly rare. By mutual understanding, she went from taking an active role in Foundation affairs—which had long included fundraising, public appearances, and speeches—to becoming something of a figurehead. For much of the remainder of the decade, her life would center around her Connecticut home instead of the AFB.
Helen’s social circles during the 1950s revolved around an intimate circle of friends who would often congregate at Arcan Ridge—the sprawling colonial home in Easton, Connecticut, not far from where Mark Twain lived out his last years. “We have never loved a place more than Arcan Ridge,” she told Lenore Smith, describing the spacious study as her favorite room with its book-filled shelves and windows “hospitable to the sun.”21 She could also often be found at the home of her friends and neighbors, Stuart and Sandra Grummon. Stuart was a retired diplomat who had served as ambassador to Haiti and later as first secretary at the American embassy in Moscow before the war. His wife, Sandra, had mastered the manual alphabet so she could communicate with Helen without the need for Polly’s constant presence. The couple frequently hosted intimate dinner parties with a wide range of fascinating guests who shared their progressive politics and with whom they knew that Helen would be comfortable. The Grummons could always be counted on to serve Helen her favorite cocktail, an old-fashioned, while she sent Stuart a bottle of scotch every Christmas, which she always referred to as “liquid sunshine” in the accompanying note. Whenever she was invited, Nella’s journal entries provide a valuable fly-on-the-wall glimpse at the nature of the conversations during these gatherings.
At a typically lively dinner hosted by the Grummons in November 1951, one of the invited guests was Helen’s friend Clilan Powell—editor of Harlem’s Amsterdam News. Although Nella had long ago established herself as a reputedly worldly New York literary figure, hints of her Southern upbringing often surfaced when it came to racial matters. On this occasion, she notes in her journal that the dinner with Powell was the first time that she had ever dined in an “intimate” setting with a Black person. “I had no feeling about it one way or the other,” she wrote, “except when Powell began his third martini before dinner and I was afraid we were in for a bit of noise and rowdiness, but this soon passed.”22 Nella reveals that the group engaged in a spirited discussion over dinner about whether Dwight Eisenhower would throw his hat in the ring and run for president in 1952. Somebody mentioned that the “scandal” would be his greatest obstacle—the open secret that Eisenhower had engaged in an affair with his chauffeur and personal secretary, Kay Summersby, during the war. To this, another guest noted that the same thing had been rumored of nearly every president and that it was well known that Grover Cleveland had an illegitimate daughter before his election to office in the 1880s. At this point in the conversation, Polly remarked that she had read Summersby’s memoir and there was nothing damaging in it. “Ah, but we know what was left out,” Powell piped in, alluding to Ike’s affair.23
Among Helen’s other close friends, a regular guest at Arcan Ridge during these years was the well-known actress, lyricist, and producer Nancy Hamilton, composer of the Broadway standard “How High the Moon.” Hamilton’s longtime lover, Katharine “Kit” Cornell—one of the greatest Broadway actresses of the era, known as the “First Lady of the American Stage”—was married to the prominent theater director Guthrie McClintic. However, theirs was a “lavender marriage”—a marriage of convenience designed to keep up appearances for the general public—and her relationship with Hamilton was an open secret, as was McClintic’s own homosexuality.24
Cornell had long expressed interest in appearing in a movie about Annie based on Anne Sullivan Macy, Nella’s 1933 biography, but nothing had ever come of it.25 Instead, the two women arranged, with Helen’s blessing, to produce a documentary directed by Hamilton and narrated by Kit. The resulting film, The Unconquered, was released to great acclaim in 1954. It showed Helen and Polly at work and at home, along with archival footage of Annie, capped by a visit to the White House where Helen is shown feeling the face of President Eisenhower after she asks whether she might “have the privilege of seeing” him. When the film won the Oscar for Best Documentary in 1955, Hamilton became the first female director to ever win the award.26
Helen was also a frequent visitor to Kit Cornell’s vacation compound in Martha’s Vineyard—nicknamed Chip Chop—where Kit and Nancy spent their summers. Hamilton later recalled that on one of those visits, she informed Helen that she always swam in the nude and invited her to do the same. Since she could not have the pleasure of seeing, Helen retorted, she would wear a bathing suit.27 Helen delighted in escaping the “villainous heat and humidity” of Arcan Ridge and reveling in the sea breezes of Cape Cod, which she claimed helped renew her “vitality.” On more than one occasion, Helen’s friend Eleanor Roosevelt—who contributed a glowing foreword to a newly released edition of The Story of My Life in the 1950s—joined the three women at Chip Chop. It was here, in fact, that Helen would first encounter her future biographer Joseph Lash, who also had a home on Martha’s Vineyard, at an afternoon gathering he attended with Eleanor in 1954.28
Despite her fondness for Helen, Kit was known to have severe misgivings about her friend’s political beliefs. “Helen’s Redness troubles her,” Nella recorded in her journal at the height of Helen’s friendship with Jo. “She fears the Jo Davidson influence, but I told her not to worry—that [Helen’s] radicalism was much older than [her] acquaintance with him, that it was deep and fundamental.”29 Nella’s cavalier attitude here about Helen’s politics is a little surprising, given how frequently she attempted to suppress those beliefs from becoming public.
Other than Kit and Nancy, Helen’s circle of friends at Arcan Ridge included an increasingly diverse group reminiscent of her bohemian circle during the Wrentham days when Helen, Annie, and John Macy frequently hosted an array of radicals and nonconformists. Robert Barnett implied that Kit and Nancy were not Helen’s only LGBTQ friends when he later described the “obviously gay guys running in and out” of Helen’s house during this period. This almost certainly referred to a local couple who lived together nearby, John Skilton and Ernest Hillman Jr.—frequent visitors to Arcan Ridge whom Helen always referred to as “the boys.”30 In an unpublished interview with Joseph Lash, Barnett referred to her circle as “long hairs and gay friends—people high in state affairs and the art world.”31
Among those art world figures, in fact, she had struck up an enduring friendship with the celebrated actor/playwright Ruth Gordon through their mutual friend Alexander Woollcott, the prominent drama critic and radio personality. Helen and Polly could frequently be spotted out and about in Manhattan dining with Gordon or accompanying her to the theater. After Helen’s death, Gordon—who would later go on to win an Oscar in 1969 for her role in Rosemary’s Baby—wrote a piece for the New York Times about Helen’s sense of humor that had endeared her to many of her friends, including Woollcott, an original denizen of the Algonquin Round Table.
“Helen always laughed loudest when the joke was on her,” Gordon wrote, recalling one memorable get-together over drinks with Helen and Woollcott at New York’s Gotham Hotel. “To remember Alec’s face, she patted it over and over. Then she patted his moustache. ‘Helen says she thinks your moustache has gotten smaller,’” Gordon remarked. At that, Woollcott leaned over and patted Helen’s face. “Tell her that hers hasn’t,” he responded, at which Helen laughed “louder than anybody.”32
Despite Helen’s unusually diverse circle, there was one thing conspicuously missing from her eclectic group of close friends—other people with disabilities. Kim Nielsen has gone as far as to claim that “none of her close friends were disabled” with the possible exception of the blind Japanese professor Takeo Iwahashi.33 This is complex territory and ignores the fact that her constant companion for almost half a century, Annie Sullivan, was legally blind for a period of the time that Helen knew her and suffered from a variety of debilitating physical and mental health issues during the last decades of her life. Beyond her relationship with Annie, however, it is not quite accurate to claim that Helen had no close friends with disabilities, though it’s certainly true that people with disabilities were never among her intimate circle. By the 1950s, she had, in fact, established key friendships with at least two figures with disabilities who would come to play an important role in her life.
Like Annie Sullivan, Peter Salmon had been admitted to the Perkins School for the Blind as a “partially sighted” student, graduating in 1914. Three years later, he was hired by the Industrial Home for the Blind in Brooklyn, which had been established during the late nineteenth century to “teach a trade to the blind so that they may earn their own living and become self-supporting.”34 Salmon subsequently served in a number of posts before assuming the position of executive director in 1945, where he worked closely with Helen establishing vocational placement services for deafblind Americans. According to Robert Barnett, Salmon—who was legally blind by the time Helen met him—was one of her few friends who could get by her ever-vigilant companion. “Polly Thomson would get furious if anybody talked directly to Helen,” he recalled. “Peter had learned manual language. He would wait for a party and get on a couch with Helen to circumvent Polly. He would tell her dirty jokes and Helen would laugh.”35
Salmon was also responsible for initiating what may have been Helen’s only known personal friendship with another deafblind person. In 1953, Robert Smithdas had become the first deafblind student to earn a graduate degree when he received his master’s from New York University. “Proud of your courage and perseverance,” Helen cabled upon his graduation from NYU. “The obstacles you have overcome are precious laurels.”36 In the following years, however, there was little contact between them, and friends of Smithdas—who was often described as “the male Helen Keller”—would later suggest that he resented her to some degree, perhaps for hogging the limelight as the only deafblind figure that most people had ever heard of.37 Thanks to Salmon, whom he considered his mentor, Smithdas would finally get a chance to establish a real relationship with Helen during the last years of her life, but only after a considerable obstacle was removed. Polly Thomson had always been notorious for strictly controlling access. Smithdas would even later claim that Polly, for unknown reasons, had a habit of keeping people with disabilities away from Helen, which is why he only joined her circle of friends after Polly suffered a stroke in 1957 and could no longer exert the tight control she once did over every aspect of Helen’s day-to-day life.38 Although Robert Barnett never addressed this question, he did observe that she “hated Catholics and wouldn’t have a Catholic in the house.” He also claimed that Polly was determined to be the “only channel of communication between Helen and the outside world.”39
