The Foreign Service Journal, September 2008

S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 81 Two Views of Lydia Distinguished Service: Lydia Chapin Kirk, Partner in Diplomacy Roger Kirk, editor; Syracuse University Press, 2007, $22.95, hardcover, 273 pages. R EVIEWED BY T ED W ILKINSON When Lydia Chapin Kirk pub- lished a selection of her letters in 1952 as Postmarked Moscow — the first of her four books — Americans were enthralled with her vivid depiction of the challenges of life as an ambas- sador’s wife and the chatelaine of Spaso House. Her experience seemed as adventurous and exotic to Americans as a trip to the moon, and the book was a bestseller. In fact, the Moscow tour was only one phase in an extraordinarily rich and accomplished life. As her son Roger documents in this collection of her memories, service came naturally to her. Born into a Navy family, she relished the challenges of accompany- ing her husband, Admiral Alan Kirk, to his three post-retirement embas- sies. Yet far from stifling other inter- ests, Lydia Kirk also excelled as an artist, a activist for the Red Cross and Junior League, a lecturer and a novel- ist — all the while she was a devoted mother to three children. Beyond mere duties, service abroad brought Lydia Kirk challenge, glamour, adventure and the chance to witness history. While her father was naval attaché in Paris just before World War I, she was delighted to hear visiting ex-president Theodore Roosevelt hail him as one of the finest naval officers he had known. Later, when her husband was naval attaché to Ambassador Joseph Kennedy in London, the couple heard Neville Chamberlain proclaim that he had achieved “peace in our time” at Munich. Having commanded U.S. naval forces for the Normandy landing, Adm. Kirk was a hero in postwar Europe, and he and his wife received an unusually warm reception upon his appointment as ambassador in Bel- gium in 1946. Ideally prepared as a diplomatic partner, Lydia Kirk stepped into her new role with gusto. Her descriptions of life in Brussels sparkle with color and wit, covering such figures as Princess Elizabeth Ruspoli, a “minia- ture Marlene Dietrich,” who was said to have “held court to German offi- cers in her bathtub … [while] she gave refuge to English aviators in a back room.” Asked to serve as hostess for the bachelor Belgian ambassador in Washington as he received President and Mrs. Truman during the Belgian prince’s state visit, she did such a good job that the Prince sent her a silver cigarette box inscribed “Pour la Grande Maitresse del la Cour.” Her husband’s Moscow appoint- ment in 1949 came as a complete sur- prise, and the change from Brussels was brusque. Stalinist paranoia was at its peak. Lydia Kirk was determined to “make it work,” but the challenges were enormous. Once, when Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and his wife Ludmila came to lunch, Mrs. Kirk asked if their son Anatoli had been able to keep up his English since their time in the U.S. Mrs. Gromyko replied that he practiced in his room, since “he has no one to talk to here.” Mrs. Kirk refrained from suggesting that he get together with her son Roger, who was taking a year off from college to work with Russian staff in the embassy, lest the sugges- tion be seen as “a crude American attempt” at subversion. The Korean War only increased the frostiness of the Cold War, but Lydia Kirk, determined not to let the embassy’s spirits sag, kept Spaso House humming with social activities. Still, the contrast was stark. At a New Year’s ball, “we managed to forget how far away from home we were until we opened the windows at mid- night to let the New Year in, and no sound came through — no bells, no singing, no whistles, only a draft of B OOKS Kirk’s descriptions of diplomatic life sparkle with color and wit. u