The Prime Minister Accepts

body_image_group

I am lucky to have had slightly more than a pass­ing acquain­tance with the late Pierre Trudeau, because I wrote a pro­file about him for The New Yorker shortly after he became prime min­is­ter of Canada. To gather mate­r­ial for this daunt­ing excur­sion, I was allowed to accom­pany him, his chief aide, Marc Lalonde, his only brother, Charles, and three pooled press mem­bers — a pho­tog­ra­pher, a Canadian Press rep­re­sen­ta­tive and the cbc—on a tour across the Canadian Arctic, the first such jour­ney for a Canadian prime min­is­ter in office. 

I was aston­ished when the prime min­is­ter agreed to include me. I had sug­gested that on the trip I would just observe but not try to inter­view him if he would give me a one-on-one ses­sion in Ottawa when the tour was over. The trade-off appealed to him. For the eight days we were trav­el­ling, we had a pleas­antly infor­mal, jok­ing relationship. 

The pro­file was pub­lished in the July 5, 1969, issue of The New Yorker, and in the Vancouver Sun in four parts a month later. That fall, Gordon ­Gibson, Trudeau’s young appoint­ment sec­re­tary, called me at home. “The prime min­is­ter is com­ing to New York in November, and he wants to go to the the­atre,” he said. “Any suggestions?”

I was flat­tered to be asked, and I men­tioned sev­eral musi­cals and plays that were big hits. As an after­thought I passed along a sug­ges­tion from my younger son, Richie Hamburger, a stu­dent in drama at Yale University, about a play by a world-famous Polish drama­tist, Jerzy Grotowski, that was run­ning for two weeks in a base­ment the­atre in Lower Manhattan. 

“It’s the hottest ticket in town,” Richie had said. 

“How come?” I said. 

“Grotowski is a free thinker, an orig­i­nal,” Richie said. “He’s the founder of a dra­matic form called ‘The Poor Theatre,’ in which every­thing — cos­tumes, sound effects, sets, light­ing and makeup — is eliminated.” 

“My good­ness,” I said. “What’s left?” 

“The play, the actors and the audi­ence,” Richie said. “It’s great the­atre, Mom.”

Gordon Gibson called back to tell me that the Canadian Embassy had man­aged with dif­fi­culty to get two tick­ets for the Jerzy Grotowski play. I had a slight appre­hen­sive chill. A base­ment in the Village? No scenery, no cos­tumes? Was this really Trudeau’s style? I hoped so! 

“Do you think the prime min­is­ter might like to come here for din­ner first?” I heard myself say.

“Oh. That’s so kind of you,” Gordon said. “I’ll ask him.” 

Gordon rang back the next morn­ing. “The prime min­is­ter is delighted to accept your invi­ta­tion. He asked if he could bring a friend.”

“Of course,” I said. 

“That’s so kind of you. Would six o’clock be too early? They’ll be going to the Grotowski right after dinner.”

“Yes, yes. That’s fine,” I said. I hung up, and panicked.

I called William Shawn, my edi­tor at The New Yorker. “I don’t know how this hap­pened,” I said. “Prime Minister Trudeau is com­ing to my apart­ment for din­ner. Could you and Cecille come too? It won’t take long. He’s going to the Grotowski play. Please!” 

“I would like to meet him,” Bill Shawn said reas­sur­ingly. “I’d like to know what he thinks of the salt talks.”

I called my friend Emmy Maxwell to invite her and her hus­band, Bill, the magazine’s fic­tion edi­tor. “Of course we’ll come,” she said. “What fun! He sounds fascinating.” 

I invited Jack Pemberton, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the American Civil Liberties Union, who had been squir­ing me around since my divorce. Gordon was com­ing too.

I thought, this is going to be a his­toric occa­sion! The prime min­is­ter of Canada com­ing to my house for din­ner! Wow! My sons shouldn’t miss this. I called Jay first because he’s the old­est. He was in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, attend­ing drama school at Carnegie Mellon University. “Great!” he shouted into the phone. “Emerson and I will be there!” 

“Wait a minute, Jay,” I said. “Not Emerson. Not that dog. He’s too big and he’s not house­bro­ken when he gets excited. I do love Emerson,” I added hastily, “but I can’t have him with the prime min­is­ter. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police go every­where with him, and I don’t think they’ll want Emerson around. We’d have to put him in a ken­nel or some­thing dur­ing dinner.”

“If I can’t bring Emerson, I can’t come,” Jay said. 

I called Richie. Yale was only an hour and a half away by train. “I’ll be there,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to miss that!”

“Wear some­thing decent,” I said. “Please!”

I have always done my own cook­ing, but this was dif­fer­ent. I called my friend Nancy Sampson, a cook who helped some­times with big par­ties. “I promise to make it sim­ple,” I said. “Please!” 

We planned a menu that Nancy was sure she could man­age: roast leg of lamb and roasted pota­toes, a veg­etable plat­ter, and a tomato aspic ring salad that I would make the day before and that we would dec­o­rate with avo­cado slices. ­Dessert would be fresh rasp­ber­ries and whipped cream, a choco­late Sacher cake, cof­fee, choco­late thin mints and brandy. What luck — I had two jars of Beluga caviar my mother had given me. They would make the ideal hors d’oeuvre. How ele­gant! Caviar on toast. 

We would have to dine in the liv­ing room on two small tables and our laps, because a pre­vi­ous ten­ant had divided the din­ing room with a par­ti­tion. Richie’s bed­room occu­pied the half with the two win­dows. We ate our meals in the win­dow­less half, on a drop-leaf oak table. 

Some nerve, I thought, ask­ing the prime min­is­ter here!

But the liv­ing room was large enough, and we could light a fire in the fire­place to make it cozy. Maybe he wouldn’t notice the bat­ter­ing my grandmother’s fur­ni­ture had taken in there from two grow­ing boys addicted to for­bid­den indoor ball games. Well, so what! 

My apart­ment was on the eighth floor. When I went out on the morn­ing of the din­ner, the ­ele­va­tor sud­denly closed on me when I was halfway in — one foot in and one foot out. I held the door back with my hand and pressed the Emergency but­ton. “Let go,” a voice shouted up the shaft. I backed in, hold­ing the door, and let go. The ele­va­tor slowly pro­ceeded to the lobby, where the super­in­ten­dent held the door open to let me out. Then he put a sign on the ele­va­tor door: Out of order. Please use the freight ele­va­tor.

“I’m hav­ing the prime min­is­ter of Canada for din­ner tonight,” I said. “The edi­tor of The New Yorker mag­a­zine is also com­ing, and he’s so ter­ri­fied of self-service ele­va­tors that one of my other guests is com­ing early to run the ele­va­tor for him. I can’t even imag­ine what he would do if the ele­va­tor door closed on him!”

“Not to worry,” the super said. “The repair­man is on his way. We’ll take your edi­tor up in the freight ele­va­tor, and the prime min­is­ter too, if the front one isn’t fixed by then. Don’t worry.”

When Nancy arrived, mut­ter­ing about the ele­va­tor, we cov­ered the din­ing room table with the lovely white linen table­cloth with green cross-stitching that my mother had made me. Then we arranged buf­fet style the daz­zling wed­ding gift from my father’s employer: an entire set of Steuben glass gob­lets, wine glasses, salad and fin­ger bowls, in which we would serve dessert. Next came my Royal Copenhagen Blue Flower wed­ding china, and I added the hand­some sil­ver can­dle­sticks from my sis­ter, and my mixed bag of sil­ver­ware accu­mu­lated from what nobody else in my fam­ily wanted. My cleaner, Mae Reynolds, arrived to serve the din­ner. The three of us stood back and admired the table set­ting. “Doesn’t it look great?” I said. 

“It sure does,” Nancy said. “I just hope the ele­va­tor is work­ing by the time they come.” 

“I wasn’t going to men­tion it,” Mae said, “but it wasn’t run­ning when I came. The men are still work­ing on it.”

I called the super peri­od­i­cally to inquire about the ele­va­tor. He was opti­mistic, but said it was dif­fi­cult to work with so many police around, check­ing every inch of the build­ing, inside and out.

Two rcmp offi­cers in civil­ian clothes arrived at my door. They made a thor­ough search of the apart­ment, even the clos­ets, and apol­o­gized for the incon­ve­nience; and then one of them went away. 

The other offi­cer took up a posi­tion by the stove in my small kitchen to watch Nancy pre­pare the din­ner. Neither Nancy nor I had been warned about this ahead of time and that nor­mally sturdy woman became extremely ner­vous. “I’ve never had any­body stand­ing over me like that, while I’m cook­ing,” she told me, twist­ing her apron in dis­tress. “What do they think I’m going to do, poi­son him?”

“Yes,” I said. “They want to be sure you don’t.”

“Oh lordy,” she said. “I can’t leave you alone, but I’d sure like to go home.”

“Please!” I said. “Please don’t!” 

Nancy told me later that the rcmp gen­tle­man sta­tioned at the stove laughed when he saw what she was cook­ing for din­ner. He said, “The prime min­is­ter had lunch today at the home of David Rockefeller, and they had the same menu: leg of lamb, roast pota­toes, string beans, rasp­ber­ries and choco­late cake!”

At 5:30, at my request, the Shawns, the Maxwells, Jack and Richie — every­one except the guest of hon­our, his mys­te­ri­ous com­pan­ion and Gordon Gibson — had assem­bled in my liv­ing room. Jack had arrived an hour ear­lier to give me a morale boost and carve the lamb, which he did expertly. He reported a lot of plain-clothes offi­cers out­side the build­ing and in the lobby and one in the ele­va­tor, all of which seemed appro­pri­ate. I heard later that the prime min­is­ter arrived in a big black Cadillac, accom­pa­nied by a sec­ond Cadillac for his body­guards, and that the two cars sat out­side the front of the build­ing through­out his visit.

We waited in the liv­ing room in a sort of fune­real silence. Ten min­utes later the door­bell rang and every­one sat up very straight. I was con­scious of the click­ing noise my heels made as I ran to the front door in our small hall­way. I don’t know what I expected, but there Pierre Trudeau was, there he really was, stand­ing out­side, with a big smile. As always when I saw him, I was star­tled by the bril­liant blue of his eyes, accen­tu­ated by a cool blue shirt. The cus­tom­ary red rose­bud in the lapel of his immac­u­late blue busi­ness suit matched his red tie. Gordon Gibson, who always reminded me of the hand­some young men I had known at Harvard, where he him­self had attended busi­ness school, and a plain­clothes police offi­cer were stand­ing behind him. 

Trudeau kissed me warmly on both cheeks as he entered, and mur­mured in a low voice, “Could I use the tele­phone? I asked Barbra Streisand to have din­ner with us, but she was out all day and didn’t get the mes­sage.” He quickly returned and said that he was send­ing his car for her and she would arrive for dessert. 

I had observed on our Arctic adven­ture that Trudeau was quite shy socially, with no small talk, so I took his hand and led him right into the liv­ing room. There was no time to warn my wait­ing guests about the iden­tity of the other guest. Trudeau acknowl­edged intro­duc­tions with his usual grace and sat down next to Bill Shawn on the couch. They imme­di­ately entered into a lively dis­cus­sion about the salt agree­ments, the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty talks between the United States and the Soviet Union, in which Trudeau was involved. The talks were meant to limit inter­con­ti­nen­tal bal­lis­tic mis­siles and mis­sile launch­ers, and Trudeau was opti­mistic about the out­come. A few years later, an accord was reached between the two coun­tries that proved to be a big advance for that time in nuclear disarmament. 

Neither Trudeau nor Bill Shawn wanted a cock­tail, and I was afraid if I had one I’d fall flat on my face. We set­tled on gin­ger ale while Mae passed the caviar, which she had spread, all two jars of it, on rounds and tri­an­gles of thin toast with lit­tle slices of lemon and sprigs of pars­ley for dec­o­ra­tion. As I wrote my mother the next day, “Your con­tri­bu­tion of caviar was a huge suc­cess. The prime min­is­ter likes most food, but he admit­ted to being wild about Beluga caviar and I am sure would eat it with a spoon like you would, if either of you had the nerve. Every time it was passed, he gob­bled it down, until it was all gone.” 

Trudeau was a lawyer, and had served as min­is­ter of jus­tice and attor­ney gen­eral in the pre­vi­ous Liberal gov­ern­ment, so we lis­tened avidly while he and Jack Pemberton dis­cussed the fine points in land­mark draft cases the American Civil Liberties Union cur­rently was argu­ing before the United States Supreme Court. One case in which the aclu had received a favourable deci­sion in a lower court in Boston involved the defence of a con­sci­en­tious objec­tor to the Vietnam War, who refused to fight because he dis­ap­proved of a par­tic­u­lar war, rather than all wars. 

I was espe­cially pleased by Trudeau’s inter­est in my Richie, who showed up in a neat brown turtle­neck sweater, with what I used to call his Beethoven-style hair under con­trol. Many times on our trip north, I had observed how Trudeau, who at age fifty was only two years younger than I, shared the val­ues of Richie and Jay’s 1960s gen­er­a­tion. Richie, who was eigh­teen, reported later that the prime min­is­ter not only inquired about the play he would be see­ing that evening, but asked Richie about his opin­ions and expe­ri­ences in the­atre, and in the the­atre pro­gram at Yale. Trudeau never seemed any older than the young peo­ple whose com­pany he so enjoyed, which was part of his magic. 

After thirty min­utes we went into the din­ing room, where Nancy and Mae were stand­ing by the table with proud smiles. Trudeau vol­un­teered as we walked in that he had had lunch at David Rockefeller’s home. “It was very pleas­ant,” he said. “They were such nice people.” 

The din­ner looked beau­ti­ful. Nancy’s veg­etable dish was spec­tac­u­lar: she had carved roses out of beets and turnips for dec­o­ra­tion among the potato balls, string beans, car­rots and zuc­chini laid out on my grandmother’s sil­ver veg­etable plat­ter. The finely sliced lamb, tomato aspic and avo­cado salad and my favourite clover­leaf dish filled with olives, mint jelly, radishes and car­rot sticks had cer­tainly given me an oppor­tu­nity to show off the fam­ily silver. 

My din­ner was appar­ently a suc­cess. We for­got to serve the red wine until halfway through the main course but I was beyond car­ing. At least I thought I was, until the dessert of fresh rasp­ber­ries, still a great del­i­cacy in the fall sea­son, arrived washed but not drained, and floated in our bowls in a soggy pud­dle of whipped cream. Thirty-five years later I still grieve about that dessert! Nancy and Mae were serv­ing it when the door­bell finally rang again. I rushed out to the hall and when I opened the door, I felt slightly dizzy at the sight of Barbra Streisand stand­ing qui­etly in front of my apart­ment. She was an awe­some pres­ence; it was a shock to see her in per­son. Although she was not a pretty woman, she had a beau­ti­ful slim fig­ure, well dis­played in a stun­ning suit made from an exotic flow­ered green plush mate­r­ial, with fur col­lar and cuffs. What struck me even in my excite­ment was that the blouse under­neath was cut down the front in a dar­ing V, straight to her tummy. 

Barbra Streisand was com­posed and gra­cious as she entered the liv­ing room and was intro­duced. She said she had already eaten when Mae offered her some din­ner, and she nib­bled at the soggy rasp­ber­ries and choco­late cake. My guests appeared to be as stunned as I was when Streisand walked in and, like me, scarcely had time to recover them­selves before it was time for her and the prime min­is­ter to depart for the the­atre. Looking back, all I can remem­ber about Streisand’s star­tling appear­ance in my liv­ing room was her extra­or­di­nary per­sonal pres­ence. She was then at the height of her fame as an actress and entertainer. 

Just as Trudeau was leav­ing, he turned to Bill Shawn and said, “I am very grate­ful for the kind treat­ment you gave me.”

Bill blushed, as usual, and thanked him. I couldn’t resist ask­ing, “Did you find any mistakes?”

“I am told there were none,” the prime min­is­ter replied, smiling.

“What I want to know is, did you find any?” I persisted.

“No, it was very exact,” he replied, look­ing amused, and every­one laughed. My close friends knew I had been obsessed with get­ting my facts straight.

The prime min­is­ter gave me another dou­ble kiss on his way out. When the door had closed behind them and the rcmp offi­cer, who had stayed dis­creetly at the entrance to the liv­ing room through sup­per, we sat silent for a few min­utes, as if stu­pe­fied. We agreed that see­ing Barbra Streisand in our midst was almost unreal. It was as if a female Superman had descended upon us.

Everyone remarked that because of my piece they had felt they knew Pierre Trudeau even before he walked into the room. Bill Shawn, whose opin­ion was the one I cared about the most, said, “You really caught him completely.” 

I was deeply moved. Since Trudeau had just become the prime min­is­ter of Canada when I started my report­ing about him the year before, I hoped to write about the kind of per­son he was for peo­ple to remem­ber later. If I had done a bad job, it would have been appar­ent the minute he appeared in per­son. As I wrote my mother, “He wasn’t just the prime min­is­ter of a coun­try I love so much. My abil­ity as a writer, to cre­ate his image, was being tested. I was really exposed.”

The next week I received a let­ter from Ottawa, from the office of the “Prime Minister/Premier Ministre,” marked per­sonal, that said:

Dear Edith:

Your din­ner last week-end will cer­tainly remain one of my delight­ful mem­o­ries of New York. It was a real plea­sure to meet the guests you had assem­bled, and I would be grate­ful if you could pass on to them when con­ve­nient, my com­pli­ments and best wishes, for they were very pleas­ant com­pany indeed.

Thank you as well for your hos­pi­tal­ity at short notice to Miss Streisand, and most par­tic­u­larly the oppor­tu­nity of see­ing you again, and to meet your son, Richard, who, although I gather under the injunc­tion of rel­a­tive silence, impressed me as a very fine young man. 

With thanks, yours sin­cerely, Pierre E.T.

He was too polite to men­tion what hap­pened later on that night he came for din­ner, but Gordon told me. Apparently the prime min­is­ter and Barbra Streisand were seated behind a big post in that tiny Greenwich Village base­ment the­atre where Grotowski was hold­ing forth. Whatever their rea­sons, they lost patience with the view, and/or Mr. Grotowski’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary the­atre pre­sen­ta­tion. They got up and left dur­ing the intermission.