The Foreign Service Journal, June 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2020 43 nel Board discussed their expectations that wives would make a “host of friends” abroad and would “entertain with a kindly and likeable disposition.” Setting up hearth and home. Wives were also primarily responsible for family logistics. When Foreign Service officers received transfer orders from the State Department, for instance, they often moved immediately to the new post to live temporar- ily in a hotel, leaving their wives behind in the previous post to make arrangements for the often arduous task, in this pre-flight era, of transporting all possessions, and often children, to reunite the family in the new location. Yvonne Jordan remembered the difficulties she encoun- tered when trying to move, with an infant son, from Haiti to Helsinki in 1922. In addition, she had to pay for her and the baby’s travel out of pocket after being informed by the State Department that “the travel expense fund was exhausted.” The haphazard nature of overseas posting made it difficult, if not impossible, to plan ahead. After arriving in a new place, wives shouldered the primary responsibility for setting up the new household, whether it be the ambassador’s residence or a third secretary’s apartment. The State Department during these years assumed no responsibility for housing its employees, yet still expected that American diplomats and their families be “well housed” to display American power and prestige. Their homes, the daugh- ter of FSO Edwin Kemp and his wife, Anna, remembered, were supposed to embody “American tastes and customs.” A wife who “maintains an attractive home,” she continued, could be “a very real asset to her husband in his task of representing the U.S.” Dressing for success. Wives were also acutely aware of the importance of their outward appearance at all times when in public. Dressing correctly for the occasion demonstrated adherence to diplomatic protocol. Looking good and fashion- able also communicated positive messages about American material prosperity and level of civilization. Dorothy Emmerson, for example, claimed to know nothing Foreign Service wives managed, without pay, the domestic duties and social obligations needed for the operation of American missions abroad.