Currently, I’m enjoying a novel about Martha Gellhorn, who, having been an acclaimed journalist and courageous war correspondent within her own right, was Earnest Hemingway’s third wife.
The title of this novel, authored by Paula McLain, is Love and Ruin.
One passage of this novel describes Martha as having been invited by Eleanor Roosevelt to stay in a sparsely furnished room in The White House after she’d been fired from an assignment for suggesting miners in Idaho rise up against FERA, and while spending time with Eleanor, Martha developed such a reverential admiration for our nation’s First Lady as to have been quoted as stating,“She (ER) had a kind of light, fueled by decency and wisdom and utterly inextinguishable. She made me want to be a better person.”
At one point during her stay, Martha ran this idea past Eleanor: “I’ve been thinking of turning some of my reports (concerning starving families during The Great Depression) into character studies,”. She then went on to say, “If I wrote stories or a novel, they might become real breathing people instead of figures and numbers on some graph no one will see. I want to help them. I want to try, anyway, and perhaps this is how.”
“You want to help them,” she (Eleanor) repeated, looking at me (Martha) with those deep clear blue eyes that could be shy or filled with unchecked loneliness or steely and terrifying. I knew she never agreed with anyone unless she meant to.
“Yes, I do.”
“Then you will.”
Amongst the host of inner strengths demonstrated by Martha and Eleanor was a deeply compassionate sense of grit. And as both had the means by which to enlighten the general public concerning the plight of others, this pair of kindred spirits proved instrumental in creating change for the better on a grand scale.
No comments:
Post a Comment