Marie Mattingly Meloney
Encyclopedia
Marie Mattingly Meloney (1878–1943), who used Mrs. William B. Meloney as her professional and social name, was "one of the leading woman journalists of the United States," a magazine editor and a socialite
who in the 1920s
organized a fund drive to buy radium for Marie Curie
and began a movement for better housing. In the 1930s
she was a friend and confidante of Eleanor Roosevelt
. She was nicknamed Missy.
, the daughter of Cyprian Peter Mahoney, a physician, and Sarah Irwin, who was founder and editor of The Kentucky Magazine, "one of the first publications of literature and science to be edited by a woman." Sarah Mattingly was also the president of the Washington College for Women or Washington College for Girls in the District of Columbia from 1896 to 1899 and did research into the history of religious orders. Marie had a brother, Judge Carroll Mattingly, who died "several years" before 1934 "from injuries received in a football game during his student days at Georgetown University
."
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Marie was educated privately at home and was trained as a concert pianist, but a horseback accident put an end to that endeavor and she turned to journalism. She once declared: "I have been lame since 15, and had a bad lung since 17 and have done the work of three men ever since." In 1920, at the age of 37, she was described as "small, very frail, almost an invalid; a childhood accident had made her slightly lame. She had grey hair and immense, poetic black eyes set in a lovely pale face."
In 1904
, she was married to William Brown Meloney IV
, an editor on the New York Sun
and later executive secretary to Mayor William J. Gaynor of New York City
. They had one child, also named William Brown Meloney
, who became a writer and Broadway producer. The elder Meloney, who had been gassed in World War I
and had the rank of major
, died at the age of forty-seven on December 7, 1925, at the family country home in Pawling, New York
.
After a month-long bout of influenza
, Marie Meloney died June 23, 1943, in the same house on South Quaker Hill
in Pawling. The month of her death Time magazine described her as "fine lace made of cable wire." After a procession from the residence of her son at 7 Washington Square North
, New York City, a requiem mass was recited for her on June 25 in St. Patrick's Cathedral
, by Monsignor John J. Casey. Ex-President Herbert Hoover
was an honorary pallbearer
, as were Owen D. Young, former head of the General Electric Company; James A. Farley, chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee
, and David Sarnoff
, president of the Radio Corporation of America. Among the five hundred mourners were Bishop
John F. O'Hara, military delegate of the Armed Forces of the United States; Mrs. Hoover
, playwright Channing Pollock
and novelist Fannie Hurst
. Burial followed in Woodlawn Cemetery, New York.
." She was eighteen years old when she became a correspondent
for the Denver Post in Washington, D.C. She was "one of the first women accredited to a seat in the Senate press gallery
. She then joined the staff of the New York Sun
, where she wrote the "Men About Town" column. She also worked for the New York World
. She edited Woman's Magazine and was associate editor of Everybody's Magazine
.
By the early 1920s, Meloney, by then married, was editor of The Delineator
magazine, a women's publication owned by George W. Wilder. In 1926
the magazine merged with another Butterick Publishing Company
publication, The Designer, with Meloney continuing at the helm.
In 1927
, Meloney was editor of the Sunday magazine
of the New York Herald Tribune
. Beginning in 1930 she was the organizer of the Herald Tribune's annual Forum on Current Problems, which highlighted noted people as speakers. In 1935 she contributed a chapter to an antiwar book, Why Wars Must Cease, published by the Macmillan Company
In 1935 also she continued with the Herald Tribune as editor of the new This Week magazine, which took the place of the former Sunday supplement and was eventually syndicated
across the United States to a total of six million readers. Time magazine noted seven years later that "Meloney, 59, tiny, fragile, grey-haired . . . edits the magazine from her suite in the Waldorf-Astoria."
As a journalist, Meloney
Upon her death, the New York Times commented editorially:
Summary of her magazine career
pioneer Marie Curie
in her laboratory in Paris. Meloney later wrote about her visit:
Dr. Ann M. Lewicki, who called Meloney a "trailblazing woman in a man's world of journalism," wrote in Radiology magazine:
The price for one gram of radium in 1920 was $100,000, and Meloney conducted a nationwide campaign that succeeded in raising the money, "primarily by means of small donations and the help of many women throughout the country." Meloney also persuaded the shy Marie Curie "to travel to the United States to receive the gift." But before she would agree, it is said that Meloney "wrested from editors across the country a promise to suppress" any coverage of a reputed affair that Curie had, after the death of her husband, with noted French physicist Paul Langevin
. Curie made the trip in spring 1921, and she and her two daughters were met at the New York dock
by a retinue of journalists, including twenty-six photographers.
After a whirlwind of public appearances, Meloney and Curie traveled together to Washington, D.C., to receive the radium from President Warren G. Harding
. The evening before the presentation, however, Curie balked when she discovered that the gift deed had been made personally to her: She insisted that it be redrawn so the gift from the people of the United States must instead "belong to science . . . I want to make it a gift to my laboratory." She asked Meloney: "Can we call in a lawyer?" And a "man of law, discovered with some difficulty at this late hour, drew up the additional paper with Marie. She signed it at once." The radium was presented to her in a lead-lined mahogany box on Friday, May 20, 1921, by Harding, with Meloney in attendance.
In October 1929, Curie returned to the United States for another tour and, accompanied by Meloney, for a few days in the White House
with President Herbert Hoover
, She stayed with Meloney when she was in New York and was ill part of this time. Curie spent her sixty-second birthday with Meloney and motored with her in Central Park
, and then they visited the J.P. Morgan Library.
Meloney also "arranged for Curie to write an autobiographical work for an American publisher. The book would provide royalty income over the years." Researcher Lewicki opined that the retiring Curie and the outgoing Meloney "were rather different in temperament. Yet, they were able to connect even at their first meeting and forge a friendship for the remainder of their lives. . . . [Meloney's] boundless energy and selfless desire to help personified to the Curies [Marie and her daughters] the best of the American spirit."
, Meloney was responsible for beginning a Better Homes in America movement, one that would "encourage the more general use of labor-saving equipment, the use of more artistic home furnishings, and the development of home-life with reference to hig standards of wholesomeness and achievement." In that and the following year, she directed the campaign, which was financed by The Delineator. In 1923
and 1924
the campaign became national, with Vice-President Herbert Hoover
as president and Meloney as vice-president or secretary.
In 1930
, she financed the awarding of three gold medals yearly through the American Institute of Architects
"to architects deemed to have designed the best small houses erected anywhere in the United States during the preceding year."
Meloney, as chairman of the New York City Better Homes committee in 1934
, was instrumental in having a "Georgian-style" model home built on a vacant lot at Park Avenue
and 39th Street in Manhattan "to serve as a demonstration for the average American family of beautiful and convenient housing which can be duplicated out of town at from $6,000 to $8,000." Eleanor Roosevelt
and Meloney spoke over a national radio hookup at the dedication of what was called "America's Little House" on September 25, 1934.
."
Meloney was a member of the planning committee for a White House conference on child health and protection held in November 1930, and in 1931, as editor of the New York Herald Tribune Sunday Magazine, she established an Institute for Women, with an Institute Kitchen, about which she wrote:
For many years she was a member and board member of the Carroll Club, "an organization of 1,400 young Catholic business women of New York and vicinity."
Meloney was also a member of the American Centre of P.E.N. Clubs, and in May 1933 she joined a radio symposium
on "Literary Freedom and Nationalism," with Dr. Henry Goddard Leach, editor of Forum magazine; Will Irwin, president of the American Centre; and Alfred Dashiell, managing editor of Scribner's Magazine
, attacking the recent actions by the governing Nazi party in Germany in "banning of some German authors and the burning of their books
and the books of other writers." "Asserting that bigotry had no place in a nation of intelligent people, she said the only weapon with which to fight . . . was 'the courage to establish before the civilized world a standard of right thinking and right living and then persistently to support that standard.' "
In April 1934, Meloney gave a studio party for Donna Margherita Sarfatti
, Italian writer and art critic, in the studio of Leonebel Jacobs, One W. 67th Street. Guests included the Fiorello H. LaGuardia
s, Condé Nast
, the Sinclair Lewis
es, the Norman Bel Geddes
es, the Roy Howards, Dr. John H. Finley, the Ogden Reids, Dr. John Erskine
, the Bartlett Arkells, Nicholas Roosevelt
, Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Parsons (journalist)
, the Gutzon Borglum
s, Dr. and Mrs. Harry Woodburn Chase
, the John O'Hara
s, the Brock Pemberton
s, the Joseph Auslander
s, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Moses
, Mrs. Helen Leavitt, Roy Chapman Andrews
, Fannie Hurst
and Louis Seibold.
Meloney was elected first vice president of the New York Newspaper Women's Club in May 1935, and in June of that year she presided over a festive gathering on the East Side
when Mayor
LaGuardia officially renamed Exterior Street as Marie Curie Avenue.
Her addresses while in Manhattan, New York City:
, wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt
. In her "My Day" column of November 18, 1938, Mrs. Roosevelt wrote:
After Meloney's death, Mrs. Roosevelt's June 29, 1943, column read, in part:
France
Poland
United States
, Irving Bacheller
, James M. Barrie, Max Beerbohm
, Arnold Bennett
, Gutzon Borglum
, Willa Cather
, Jo Davidson
, Walter De la Mare
, Alfred Douglas, Lord Dunsany, Robert Frost
, John Galsworthy
, Rudyard Kipling
, D.H. Lawrence, Sinclair Lewis
, Wyndham Lewis
, Walter Lippmann
, Somerset Maugham, A.A. Milne, Charles
and Kathleen Norris
, Alfred Noyes
, Frances Perkins
, Edwin Arlington Robinson
, Bertrand Russell
, Eleanor Roosevelt
, Carlo Sforza
, Booth Tarkington
, Ernst Toller
, H.M. Tomlinson and H.G. Wells. "In addition to Mrs. Meloney's manuscripts of her own writings, the collection contains manuscripts of Louis Bromfield
, G.K. Chesterton, Walter De la Mare
, John Drinkwater
, Havelock Ellis
, Richard Le Gallienne
, Mrs. Belloc Lowndes and Leo Tolstoy
."
Socialite
A socialite is a person who participates in social activities and spends a significant amount of time entertaining and being entertained at fashionable upper-class events....
who in the 1920s
1920s
File:1920s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: Third Tipperary Brigade Flying Column No. 2 under Sean Hogan during the Irish Civil War; Prohibition agents destroying barrels of alcohol in accordance to the 18th amendment, which made alcoholic beverages illegal throughout the entire decade; In...
organized a fund drive to buy radium for Marie Curie
Marie Curie
Marie Skłodowska-Curie was a physicist and chemist famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first person honored with two Nobel Prizes—in physics and chemistry...
and began a movement for better housing. In the 1930s
1930s
File:1930s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: Dorothea Lange's photo of the homeless Florence Thompson show the effects of the Great Depression; Due to the economic collapse, the farms become dry and the Dust Bowl spreads through America; The Battle of Wuhan during the Second Sino-Japanese...
she was a friend and confidante of Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...
. She was nicknamed Missy.
Personal
Marie Mattingly was born in December 8, 1878, in Bardstown, KentuckyBardstown, Kentucky
As of the census of 2010, there were 11,700 people, 4,712 households, and 2,949 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 5,113 housing units at an average density of...
, the daughter of Cyprian Peter Mahoney, a physician, and Sarah Irwin, who was founder and editor of The Kentucky Magazine, "one of the first publications of literature and science to be edited by a woman." Sarah Mattingly was also the president of the Washington College for Women or Washington College for Girls in the District of Columbia from 1896 to 1899 and did research into the history of religious orders. Marie had a brother, Judge Carroll Mattingly, who died "several years" before 1934 "from injuries received in a football game during his student days at Georgetown University
Georgetown University
Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...
."
Marie was educated privately at home and was trained as a concert pianist, but a horseback accident put an end to that endeavor and she turned to journalism. She once declared: "I have been lame since 15, and had a bad lung since 17 and have done the work of three men ever since." In 1920, at the age of 37, she was described as "small, very frail, almost an invalid; a childhood accident had made her slightly lame. She had grey hair and immense, poetic black eyes set in a lovely pale face."
In 1904
1904 in the United States
-Incumbents:* President: Theodore Roosevelt * Vice President: vacant* Chief Justice: Melville Fuller* Speaker of the House of Representatives: Joseph Gurney Cannon * Congress: 58th-January–March:...
, she was married to William Brown Meloney IV
William Brown Meloney (1878–1925)
William Brown Meloney was a journalist, writer, executive secretary to Mayor William Jay Gaynor of New York City and a historian of shipping....
, an editor on the New York Sun
New York Sun
The New York Sun was a weekday daily newspaper published in New York City from 2002 to 2008. When it debuted on April 16, 2002, adopting the name, motto, and masthead of an otherwise unrelated earlier New York paper, The Sun , it became the first general-interest broadsheet newspaper to be started...
and later executive secretary to Mayor William J. Gaynor of New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. They had one child, also named William Brown Meloney
William Brown Meloney (1905–1971)
William Brown Meloney was a journalist, novelist, short-story writer and theatrical producer.-Biography:The son of William Brown Meloney and Marie Mattingley Meloney , Meloney became a journalist, like his parents. In 1929 he had an affair with Priscilla Fansler Hobson, who became pregnant with...
, who became a writer and Broadway producer. The elder Meloney, who had been gassed in World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
and had the rank of major
Major
Major is a rank of commissioned officer, with corresponding ranks existing in almost every military in the world.When used unhyphenated, in conjunction with no other indicator of rank, the term refers to the rank just senior to that of an Army captain and just below the rank of lieutenant colonel. ...
, died at the age of forty-seven on December 7, 1925, at the family country home in Pawling, New York
Pawling (town), New York
Pawling is a town in Dutchess County, New York, United States. The population was 7,521 at the 2000 census. The town is named after Catherine Pauling, the daughter of Henry Beekman, who held the second largest land patent in the county. A misprint caused the U to change to a W and the name...
.
After a month-long bout of influenza
Influenza
Influenza, commonly referred to as the flu, is an infectious disease caused by RNA viruses of the family Orthomyxoviridae , that affects birds and mammals...
, Marie Meloney died June 23, 1943, in the same house on South Quaker Hill
Quaker Hill, New York
Quaker Hill is a hamlet in the town of Pawling in Dutchess County, New York, United States. It is located in the southern portion of the area known as the "Oblong" that was designated by the Treaty of Dover in 1731, and "known from pre-Revolutionary times as Quaker Hill".It is the location of the...
in Pawling. The month of her death Time magazine described her as "fine lace made of cable wire." After a procession from the residence of her son at 7 Washington Square North
Washington Square North
Washington Square North, also historically called "The Row", is a American street in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York....
, New York City, a requiem mass was recited for her on June 25 in St. Patrick's Cathedral
St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York
The Cathedral of St. Patrick is a decorated Neo-Gothic-style Roman Catholic cathedral church in the United States...
, by Monsignor John J. Casey. Ex-President Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was originally a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business...
was an honorary pallbearer
Pallbearer
A pall-bearer is one of several funeral participants who helps carry the casket of a deceased person from a religious or memorial service or viewing either directly to a cemetery or mausoleum, or to and from the hearse which carries the coffin....
, as were Owen D. Young, former head of the General Electric Company; James A. Farley, chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee
New York State Democratic Committee
The New York State Democratic Committee runs the local branch of the United States Democratic Party in the state of New York. Its headquarters are in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, and it has an office in Albany.-List of chairpersons:...
, and David Sarnoff
David Sarnoff
David Sarnoff was an American businessman and pioneer of American commercial radio and television. He founded the National Broadcasting Company and throughout most of his career he led the Radio Corporation of America in various capacities from shortly after its founding in 1919 until his...
, president of the Radio Corporation of America. Among the five hundred mourners were Bishop
Bishop
A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...
John F. O'Hara, military delegate of the Armed Forces of the United States; Mrs. Hoover
Lou Henry Hoover
Lou Henry Hoover was the wife of President of the United States Herbert Hoover and First Lady of the United States, 1929-1933. Mrs. Hoover was president of the Girl Scouts of the USA for two terms, 1922-1925 and 1935-1937....
, playwright Channing Pollock
Channing Pollock
Channing Pollock may refer to:* Channing Pollock * Channing Pollock...
and novelist Fannie Hurst
Fannie Hurst
Fannie Hurst was an American novelist. Although her books are not well remembered today, during her lifetime some of her more famous novels were Stardust , Lummox , A President is Born , Back Street , and Imitation of Life...
. Burial followed in Woodlawn Cemetery, New York.
Journalism
Mattingly was just fifteen years old when she worked on the Washington Post and at age sixteen "helped cover a Republican National Convention for the New York WorldNew York World
The New York World was a newspaper published in New York City from 1860 until 1931. The paper played a major role in the history of American newspapers...
." She was eighteen years old when she became a correspondent
Correspondent
A correspondent or on-the-scene reporter is a journalist or commentator, or more general speaking, an agent who contributes reports to a newspaper, or radio or television news, or another type of company, from a remote, often distant, location. A foreign correspondent is stationed in a foreign...
for the Denver Post in Washington, D.C. She was "one of the first women accredited to a seat in the Senate press gallery
Press gallery
The press gallery is the part of a parliament, or other legislative body, where political journalists are allowed to sit or gather to observe and then report speeches and events...
. She then joined the staff of the New York Sun
New York Sun
The New York Sun was a weekday daily newspaper published in New York City from 2002 to 2008. When it debuted on April 16, 2002, adopting the name, motto, and masthead of an otherwise unrelated earlier New York paper, The Sun , it became the first general-interest broadsheet newspaper to be started...
, where she wrote the "Men About Town" column. She also worked for the New York World
New York World
The New York World was a newspaper published in New York City from 1860 until 1931. The paper played a major role in the history of American newspapers...
. She edited Woman's Magazine and was associate editor of Everybody's Magazine
Everybody's Magazine
Everybody's Magazine was an American magazine from 1899 to 1929.The magazine was founded by Philadelphia merchant John Wanamaker in 1899, though he had little role in its actual operations....
.
By the early 1920s, Meloney, by then married, was editor of The Delineator
The Delineator
The Delineator was an American women's magazine of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, founded by the Butterick Publishing Company in 1869 under the name The Metropolitan Monthly. Its name was changed in 1875. In November 1926, under the editorship of Mrs...
magazine, a women's publication owned by George W. Wilder. In 1926
1926 in the United States
-January–March:* February 1 – Land on Broadway and Wall Street in New York City is sold at a record $7 per sq inch.* March 16 – Robert Goddard launches the first liquid-fuel rocket, at Auburn, Massachusetts.-April–June:...
the magazine merged with another Butterick Publishing Company
Butterick Publishing Company
The Butterick Publishing Company was founded by Ebenezer Butterick to distribute the first graded sewing patterns. By 1867, it had released its first magazine, Ladies Quarterly of Broadway Fashions, followed by The Metropolitan in 1868. These magazines contained patterns and fashion news.In 1873,...
publication, The Designer, with Meloney continuing at the helm.
In 1927
1927 in the United States
-January–March:* January 7 – The first transatlantic telephone call is made from New York City to London.* February 23 – The U.S. Federal Radio Commission begins to regulate the use of radio frequencies.* March 11 – In New York City, the Roxy Theater is opened by Samuel Roxy Rothafel.*...
, Meloney was editor of the Sunday magazine
Sunday magazine
A Sunday magazine is a publication inserted into a Sunday newspaper. It also has been known as a Sunday supplement, Sunday newspaper magazine or Sunday magazine section...
of the New York Herald Tribune
New York Herald Tribune
The New York Herald Tribune was a daily newspaper created in 1924 when the New York Tribune acquired the New York Herald.Other predecessors, which had earlier merged into the New York Tribune, included the original The New Yorker newsweekly , and the Whig Party's Log Cabin.The paper was home to...
. Beginning in 1930 she was the organizer of the Herald Tribune's annual Forum on Current Problems, which highlighted noted people as speakers. In 1935 she contributed a chapter to an antiwar book, Why Wars Must Cease, published by the Macmillan Company
In 1935 also she continued with the Herald Tribune as editor of the new This Week magazine, which took the place of the former Sunday supplement and was eventually syndicated
Print syndication
Print syndication distributes news articles, columns, comic strips and other features to newspapers, magazines and websites. They offer reprint rights and grant permissions to other parties for republishing content of which they own/represent copyrights....
across the United States to a total of six million readers. Time magazine noted seven years later that "Meloney, 59, tiny, fragile, grey-haired . . . edits the magazine from her suite in the Waldorf-Astoria."
As a journalist, Meloney
traveled widely in search of news and . . . interviewed Benito MussoliniBenito MussoliniBenito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
four times and once turned down an interview with Adolf HitlerAdolf HitlerAdolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
. The German dictator had broken an interview appointment with Mrs. Meloney. When an emissary attempted to arrange another, she sent word to the Fuehrer that she was no longer interested.
Upon her death, the New York Times commented editorially:
Mrs. William Brown Meloney, whose deeply regretted death was announced yesterday, was one of the pioneers of the triumph of women in the newspaper field. Toward the end of the last century she was a reporter in Washington at 16. It is even now a charming, in those days it must have been a strange, sight, this young girl surveying the unkempt proceedings of Congress and the delirium of national conventionsUnited States presidential nominating conventionA United States presidential nominating convention is a political convention held every four years in the United States by most of the political parties who will be fielding nominees in the upcoming U.S. presidential election...
. She was a leader as well as a precursor. . . . To common sense and judgment she added imagination. Some instinct in her reached out and told her what people wanted.
Summary of her magazine career
- Reporter, Washington Post, 1895
- Washington bureau, Denver Post, 1897-99
- Reporter, New York World, 1900
- Reporter, New York Sun, 1901-04
- Editor, Woman's Magazine, 1914-20
- Associate editor, Everybody's magazine, 1917-20
- Editor, The Delineator, 1920–26 or 1921-26
- Editor, Sunday Magazine of the New York Herald Tribune, 1926–1934
- Editor, This Week magazine, 1934–1943
Radium campaign
In 1920, as editor of The Delineator, Meloney was granted a rare interview with radiumRadium
Radium is a chemical element with atomic number 88, represented by the symbol Ra. Radium is an almost pure-white alkaline earth metal, but it readily oxidizes on exposure to air, becoming black in color. All isotopes of radium are highly radioactive, with the most stable isotope being radium-226,...
pioneer Marie Curie
Marie Curie
Marie Skłodowska-Curie was a physicist and chemist famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first person honored with two Nobel Prizes—in physics and chemistry...
in her laboratory in Paris. Meloney later wrote about her visit:
The door opened and I saw a pale, timid little woman [Curie] in a black cotton dress, with the saddest face I had ever looked upon. Her kind, patient, beautiful face had the detached expression of a scholar. Suddenly I felt like an intruder. My timidity exceeded her own. I had been a trained interrogator for twenty years, but I could not ask a single question of this gentle woman in a black cotton dress. I tried to explain that American women were interested in her great work, and found myself apologising for intruding upon her precious time.
Dr. Ann M. Lewicki, who called Meloney a "trailblazing woman in a man's world of journalism," wrote in Radiology magazine:
During this first meeting, Mrs. Meloney learned that what Marie wanted most at this point in her life was some additional radium so that she could continue her laboratory research. She who had discovered radium, who had freely shared all information about the extraction process, and who had given radium away so that cancer patients could be treated, found herself without the financial means to acquire the expensive substance. Mrs. Meloney made a promise to Marie . . . to correct this injustice and to obtain for her the 1 g of radium that Marie requested.
The price for one gram of radium in 1920 was $100,000, and Meloney conducted a nationwide campaign that succeeded in raising the money, "primarily by means of small donations and the help of many women throughout the country." Meloney also persuaded the shy Marie Curie "to travel to the United States to receive the gift." But before she would agree, it is said that Meloney "wrested from editors across the country a promise to suppress" any coverage of a reputed affair that Curie had, after the death of her husband, with noted French physicist Paul Langevin
Paul Langevin
Paul Langevin was a prominent French physicist who developed Langevin dynamics and the Langevin equation. He was one of the founders of the Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes, an antifascist organization created in the wake of the 6 February 1934 far right riots...
. Curie made the trip in spring 1921, and she and her two daughters were met at the New York dock
New York Harbor
New York Harbor refers to the waterways of the estuary near the mouth of the Hudson River that empty into New York Bay. It is one of the largest natural harbors in the world. Although the U.S. Board of Geographic Names does not use the term, New York Harbor has important historical, governmental,...
by a retinue of journalists, including twenty-six photographers.
After a whirlwind of public appearances, Meloney and Curie traveled together to Washington, D.C., to receive the radium from President Warren G. Harding
Warren G. Harding
Warren Gamaliel Harding was the 29th President of the United States . A Republican from Ohio, Harding was an influential self-made newspaper publisher. He served in the Ohio Senate , as the 28th Lieutenant Governor of Ohio and as a U.S. Senator...
. The evening before the presentation, however, Curie balked when she discovered that the gift deed had been made personally to her: She insisted that it be redrawn so the gift from the people of the United States must instead "belong to science . . . I want to make it a gift to my laboratory." She asked Meloney: "Can we call in a lawyer?" And a "man of law, discovered with some difficulty at this late hour, drew up the additional paper with Marie. She signed it at once." The radium was presented to her in a lead-lined mahogany box on Friday, May 20, 1921, by Harding, with Meloney in attendance.
In October 1929, Curie returned to the United States for another tour and, accompanied by Meloney, for a few days in the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
with President Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was originally a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business...
, She stayed with Meloney when she was in New York and was ill part of this time. Curie spent her sixty-second birthday with Meloney and motored with her in Central Park
Central Park
Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...
, and then they visited the J.P. Morgan Library.
Meloney also "arranged for Curie to write an autobiographical work for an American publisher. The book would provide royalty income over the years." Researcher Lewicki opined that the retiring Curie and the outgoing Meloney "were rather different in temperament. Yet, they were able to connect even at their first meeting and forge a friendship for the remainder of their lives. . . . [Meloney's] boundless energy and selfless desire to help personified to the Curies [Marie and her daughters] the best of the American spirit."
Better Homes campaign
In 19221922 in the United States
-January–March:* February 1 – American actor William Desmond Taylor is murdered.* February 6 – Five Power Naval Disarmament Treaty signed between United States, Britain, Japan, France, and Italy* February 8 – President of the United States Warren G...
, Meloney was responsible for beginning a Better Homes in America movement, one that would "encourage the more general use of labor-saving equipment, the use of more artistic home furnishings, and the development of home-life with reference to hig standards of wholesomeness and achievement." In that and the following year, she directed the campaign, which was financed by The Delineator. In 1923
1923 in the United States
-Incumbents:* President: Warren G. Harding until August 2, Calvin Coolidge * Vice President: Calvin Coolidge until August 2, vacant * Chief Justice: William Howard Taft * 68th United States Congress -Events:...
and 1924
1924 in the United States
-January–March:* February 7 – Death penalty: The first state execution using gas in the United States takes place in Nevada.* February 12 – Rhapsody in Blue, by George Gershwin, is first performed in New York City at Aeolian Hall....
the campaign became national, with Vice-President Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was originally a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business...
as president and Meloney as vice-president or secretary.
In 1930
1930 in the United States
-January–March:* January 6 – The first diesel engine automobile trip is completed .* January 6 – The first literary character licensing agreement is signed by A. A. Milne, granting Stephen Slesinger U.S...
, she financed the awarding of three gold medals yearly through the American Institute of Architects
American Institute of Architects
The American Institute of Architects is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to support the architecture profession and improve its public image...
"to architects deemed to have designed the best small houses erected anywhere in the United States during the preceding year."
Meloney, as chairman of the New York City Better Homes committee in 1934
1934 in the United States
-January:* January 24 – Albert Einstein visits the White House.* January 26 – The Apollo Theater opens in Harlem, New York City.-February:* February 22 – Frank Capra's It Happened One Night , starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, is released. It becomes a smash hit and the first...
, was instrumental in having a "Georgian-style" model home built on a vacant lot at Park Avenue
Park Avenue (Manhattan)
Park Avenue is a wide boulevard that carries north and southbound traffic in New York City borough of Manhattan. Through most of its length, it runs parallel to Madison Avenue to the west and Lexington Avenue to the east....
and 39th Street in Manhattan "to serve as a demonstration for the average American family of beautiful and convenient housing which can be duplicated out of town at from $6,000 to $8,000." Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...
and Meloney spoke over a national radio hookup at the dedication of what was called "America's Little House" on September 25, 1934.
Health and nutrition
Meloney was the instigator of a conference on food habits sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and held in April 1926 in Washington, D.C., and attended by twenty-five "nutrition and dietary experts." She asked for the conference after her magazine, The Delineator, discovered that there were no official standards to assess the weight of adults in the United States, "except some United States Army charts, formulated after the Civil War and corrected after the Spanish-American WarSpanish-American War
The Spanish–American War was a conflict in 1898 between Spain and the United States, effectively the result of American intervention in the ongoing Cuban War of Independence...
."
More than 20,000 women wrote to The Delineator, . . . asking for advice on questions of weight, many of the resulting inquiries resulting from unfortunate attempts to conform to the fashionably slim outline. They showed that women were doing almost anything to get thin, regardless of the effect their efforts might have on their health. . . . Dr. [Wendell C.] Phillips and Dr. Samuel Brown, President of the New York Academy of MedicineNew York Academy of MedicineThe New York Academy of Medicine was founded in 1847 by a group of leading New York City metropolitan area physicians as a voice for the medical profession in medical practice and public health reform...
, agreed to call the conference so as to make up a table similar to that for children, based on weight, height and age, and to discuss the danger of unscientific weight reduction and determine, if possible, safe ways to increase and reduce weight.
Meloney was a member of the planning committee for a White House conference on child health and protection held in November 1930, and in 1931, as editor of the New York Herald Tribune Sunday Magazine, she established an Institute for Women, with an Institute Kitchen, about which she wrote:
Whatever else happens in the family, it must be fed. In no home is it a simple project. America spends millions daily on food. It is one of the costly items of life, and with unwise handling one of the biggest leaks in the family pocket-book — not only in money but in health and family peace. For this reason we have not only set up a model kitchen to simplify the labor of feeding the family, but we have also made it a joy to labor therein.
Society and community
In February 1925, Meloney was a member of the building fund committee of the Knickerbocker Hospital, which was to be erected at 130th Street and Convent Avenue. In 1929, she spoke at the dedication of a bust of the late Dr. Virgil Pendleton Gibney at the Hospital for Ruptured and Crippled at 321 East 42nd Street, giving tribute as a former patient of his.Meloney was also a member of the American Centre of P.E.N. Clubs, and in May 1933 she joined a radio symposium
Symposium
In ancient Greece, the symposium was a drinking party. Literary works that describe or take place at a symposium include two Socratic dialogues, Plato's Symposium and Xenophon's Symposium, as well as a number of Greek poems such as the elegies of Theognis of Megara...
on "Literary Freedom and Nationalism," with Dr. Henry Goddard Leach, editor of Forum magazine; Will Irwin, president of the American Centre; and Alfred Dashiell, managing editor of Scribner's Magazine
Scribner's Magazine
Scribner's Magazine was an American periodical published by the publishing house of Charles Scribner's Sons from January 1887 to May 1939. Scribner's Magazine was the second magazine out of the "Scribner's" firm, after the publication of Scribner's Monthly...
, attacking the recent actions by the governing Nazi party in Germany in "banning of some German authors and the burning of their books
Book burning
Book burning, biblioclasm or libricide is the practice of destroying, often ceremoniously, books or other written material and media. In modern times, other forms of media, such as phonograph records, video tapes, and CDs have also been ceremoniously burned, torched, or shredded...
and the books of other writers." "Asserting that bigotry had no place in a nation of intelligent people, she said the only weapon with which to fight . . . was 'the courage to establish before the civilized world a standard of right thinking and right living and then persistently to support that standard.' "
In April 1934, Meloney gave a studio party for Donna Margherita Sarfatti
Margherita Sarfatti
Margherita Sarfatti was a Jewish Italian journalist, art critic, patron, collector, socialite, and one of Benito Mussolini's mistresses.-Biography:...
, Italian writer and art critic, in the studio of Leonebel Jacobs, One W. 67th Street. Guests included the Fiorello H. LaGuardia
Fiorello H. LaGuardia
Fiorello Henry LaGuardia was Mayor of New York for three terms from 1934 to 1945 as a liberal Republican. Previously he was elected to Congress in 1916 and 1918, and again from 1922 through 1930. Irascible, energetic and charismatic, he craved publicity and is acclaimed as one of the three or...
s, Condé Nast
Condé Montrose Nast
Condé Montrose Nast was the founder of Condé Nast Publications, a leading American magazine publisher known for publications such as Vanity Fair, Vogue and The New Yorker.-Background:...
, the Sinclair Lewis
Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...
es, the Norman Bel Geddes
Norman Bel Geddes
Norman Melancton Bel Geddes was an American theatrical and industrial designer who focused on aerodynamics....
es, the Roy Howards, Dr. John H. Finley, the Ogden Reids, Dr. John Erskine
John Erskine (educator)
John Erskine was a U.S. educator and author, born in New York City and raised in Weehawken, New Jersey. He graduated from Columbia University ....
, the Bartlett Arkells, Nicholas Roosevelt
Nicholas Roosevelt (diplomat)
Nicholas Roosevelt was an American diplomat and journalist. A member of the Roosevelt family and first-cousin once removed of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, he was born in New York City to James West Roosevelt, a brother of Hilborne Roosevelt, and Laura Henrietta d'Oremieulx...
, Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Parsons (journalist)
Geoffrey Parsons
Geoffrey Parsons may refer to:* Geoffrey Parsons , British lyricist* Geoffrey Parsons , Australian classical pianist* Geoff Parsons , Scottish high jumper...
, the Gutzon Borglum
Gutzon Borglum
Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum was an American artist and sculptor famous for creating the monumental presidents' heads at Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, the famous carving on Stone Mountain near Atlanta, as well as other public works of art.- Background :The son of Mormon Danish immigrants, Gutzon...
s, Dr. and Mrs. Harry Woodburn Chase
Harry Woodburn Chase
Harry Woodburn Chase was the 12th President of the University of North Carolina , President of the University of Illinois , and 8th President of New York University .- References :...
, the John O'Hara
John O'Hara
John Henry O'Hara was an American writer. He initially became known for his short stories and later became a best-selling novelist whose works include Appointment in Samarra and BUtterfield 8. He was particularly known for an uncannily accurate ear for dialogue...
s, the Brock Pemberton
Brock Pemberton
Brock Pemberton was an American theatrical producer, director and founder of the Tony Awards.Pemberton was born in Leavenworth, Kansas and attended the University of Kansas. Before becoming a producer he was a press agent in New York...
s, the Joseph Auslander
Joseph Auslander
Joseph Auslander was an American poet, anthologist, translator of poems, and novelist...
s, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Moses
Robert Moses
Robert Moses was the "master builder" of mid-20th century New York City, Long Island, Rockland County, and Westchester County, New York. As the shaper of a modern city, he is sometimes compared to Baron Haussmann of Second Empire Paris, and is one of the most polarizing figures in the history of...
, Mrs. Helen Leavitt, Roy Chapman Andrews
Roy Chapman Andrews
Roy Chapman Andrews was an American explorer, adventurer and naturalist who became the director of the American Museum of Natural History. He is primarily known for leading a series of expeditions through the fragmented China of the early 20th century into the Gobi Desert and Mongolia...
, Fannie Hurst
Fannie Hurst
Fannie Hurst was an American novelist. Although her books are not well remembered today, during her lifetime some of her more famous novels were Stardust , Lummox , A President is Born , Back Street , and Imitation of Life...
and Louis Seibold.
Meloney was elected first vice president of the New York Newspaper Women's Club in May 1935, and in June of that year she presided over a festive gathering on the East Side
East Side (Manhattan)
The East Side of Manhattan refers to the side of Manhattan Island which abuts the East River and faces Brooklyn and Queens. Fifth Avenue, Central Park, and lower Broadway separate it from the West Side....
when Mayor
LaGuardia officially renamed Exterior Street as Marie Curie Avenue.
Her addresses while in Manhattan, New York City:
- February 1921: Thirty-one or thirty-three West 12th Street, between Fifth Avenue and Sixth AvenueSixth Avenue (Manhattan)Sixth Avenue – officially Avenue of the Americas, although this name is seldom used by New Yorkers – is a major thoroughfare in New York City's borough of Manhattan, on which traffic runs northbound, or "uptown"...
on the lower West SideWest Side (Manhattan)The West Side of Manhattan refers to the side of Manhattan Island which abuts the Hudson River and faces New Jersey. Fifth Avenue, Central Park, and lower Broadway separate it from the East Side. The major neighborhoods on the West Side are West Harlem, Morningside Heights, Manhattan Valley, Upper... - December 1925: Twenty-six West 9th Street, between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue on the lower West Side
- October 1929: One Fifth Avenue, between East Eighth Street and Washington Mews, north of Washington Square ParkWashington Square ParkWashington Square Park is one of the best-known of New York City's 1,900 public parks. At 9.75 acres , it is a landmark in the Manhattan neighborhood of Greenwich Village, as well as a meeting place and center for cultural activity...
- January 1942: The Waldorf Astoria Hotel, 301 Park Avenue
Eleanor Roosevelt
Meloney was a friend and confidante of Eleanor RooseveltEleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...
, wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
. In her "My Day" column of November 18, 1938, Mrs. Roosevelt wrote:
We arrived in New York City yesterday afternoon and I went at once to see Mrs. William Brown Meloney. Here is a woman who, in spite of months of illness, has managed to keep her guiding hand on the production of a weekly magazine, has given her thought to the arrangements of one of the best known forums in the country, has worked on a book and talked to innumerable people. Her spirit has remained an outgoing spirit in spite of all the limitations of pain and weakness. There is something very stimulating in talking with this gallant woman.
After Meloney's death, Mrs. Roosevelt's June 29, 1943, column read, in part:
One never came away depressed from seeing "Missy" Meloney. . . . if I am sometimes weary and think that perhaps there is no use in fighting for things in which I believe against overwhelming opposition, the thought of what she would say, will keep me from being a slacker. She believed that women had an important part to play in the future. She not only helped such women as Marie Curie, who were great women , but she helped many little people like myself to feel that we had a contribution and an obligation to try to grow.
Awards and honors
Belgium:- Medaille de Charleroi for service on behalf of children
- Ordre de la Reine Elisabeth for distinguished service to the Belgian cause in America
- Order of the Crown of Belgium
France
- Officer of the Legion of Honor (requested of the French government by Marie Curie)
- Médaille d'honneur des Assurances sociales
- Gold Medal for State Service, presented by Premier Edouard HerriotÉdouard HerriotÉdouard Marie Herriot was a French Radical politician of the Third Republic who served three times as Prime Minister and for many years as President of the Chamber of Deputies....
in 1924 "in recognition of her pioneer work in behalf of better homes in the United States and the impetus it has given to similar activities abroad"
Poland
- Order of Polonia Restituta, "in recognition of her services to science and to Poland, through gifts of radium to Mme. Curie"
United States
- Honorary L.H.D. (doctor of humane letters) degree, Russell Sage CollegeRussell Sage CollegeRussell Sage College is a women's college located in Troy, New York, approximately north of New York City in the Capital District. It is one of the three colleges that make up The Sage Colleges...
, Troy, New YorkTroy, New YorkTroy is a city in the US State of New York and the seat of Rensselaer County. Troy is located on the western edge of Rensselaer County and on the eastern bank of the Hudson River. Troy has close ties to the nearby cities of Albany and Schenectady, forming a region popularly called the Capital...
, June 1936 - Launching of a Liberty ShipLiberty shipLiberty ships were cargo ships built in the United States during World War II. Though British in conception, they were adapted by the U.S. as they were cheap and quick to build, and came to symbolize U.S. wartime industrial output. Based on vessels ordered by Britain to replace ships torpedoed by...
named after her from the Bethlehem-Fairfield shipyardBethlehem Shipbuilding CorporationBethlehem Steel Corporation Shipbuilding Division was created in 1905 when Bethlehem Steel Corporation acquired the San Francisco shipyard Union Iron Works in 1905...
in Baltimore, Maryland, August 1943
Correspondence
The Marie Mattingly Meloney correspondence file in the archival collections of the Columbia University Library includes letters from Sherwood AndersonSherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson was an American novelist and short story writer. His most enduring work is the short story sequence Winesburg, Ohio. Writers he has influenced include Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, J. D. Salinger, and Amos Oz.-Early life:Anderson was born in Clyde, Ohio,...
, Irving Bacheller
Irving Bacheller
Addison Irving Bacheller was an American journalist and writer who founded the first modern newspaper syndicate in the United States.- Birth and education :...
, James M. Barrie, Max Beerbohm
Max Beerbohm
Sir Henry Maximilian "Max" Beerbohm was an English essayist, parodist and caricaturist best known today for his 1911 novel Zuleika Dobson.-Early life:...
, Arnold Bennett
Arnold Bennett
- Early life :Bennett was born in a modest house in Hanley in the Potteries district of Staffordshire. Hanley is one of a conurbation of six towns which joined together at the beginning of the twentieth century as Stoke-on-Trent. Enoch Bennett, his father, qualified as a solicitor in 1876, and the...
, Gutzon Borglum
Gutzon Borglum
Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum was an American artist and sculptor famous for creating the monumental presidents' heads at Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, the famous carving on Stone Mountain near Atlanta, as well as other public works of art.- Background :The son of Mormon Danish immigrants, Gutzon...
, Willa Cather
Willa Cather
Willa Seibert Cather was an American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, in works such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and The Song of the Lark. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours , a novel set during World War I...
, Jo Davidson
Jo Davidson
Jo Davidson was an American sculptor of Russian-Jewish descent. Although he specialized in realistic, intense portrait busts, Davidson did not require his subjects to formally pose for him; rather, he observed and spoke with them...
, Walter De la Mare
Walter de la Mare
Walter John de la Mare , OM CH was an English poet, short story writer and novelist, probably best remembered for his works for children and the poem "The Listeners"....
, Alfred Douglas, Lord Dunsany, Robert Frost
Robert Frost
Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and...
, John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy OM was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include The Forsyte Saga and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter...
, Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
, D.H. Lawrence, Sinclair Lewis
Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...
, Wyndham Lewis
Wyndham Lewis
Percy Wyndham Lewis was an English painter and author . He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST...
, Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann was an American intellectual, writer, reporter, and political commentator famous for being among the first to introduce the concept of Cold War...
, Somerset Maugham, A.A. Milne, Charles
Charles Norris
Charles Norris was an English topographical etcher and writer who is best known for his landscape work of the Welsh countryside, especially the area around Tenby....
and Kathleen Norris
Kathleen Norris
Kathleen Thompson Norris was an American novelist and wife of fellow writer Charles Norris, whom she wed in 1909...
, Alfred Noyes
Alfred Noyes
Alfred Noyes was an English poet, best known for his ballads, "The Highwayman" and "The Barrel-Organ".-Early years:...
, Frances Perkins
Frances Perkins
Frances Perkins , born Fannie Coralie Perkins, was the U.S. Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945, and the first woman appointed to the U.S. Cabinet. As a loyal supporter of her friend, Franklin D. Roosevelt, she helped pull the labor movement into the New Deal coalition...
, Edwin Arlington Robinson
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Edwin Arlington Robinson was an American poet who won three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.- Biography :Robinson was born in Head Tide, Lincoln County, Maine, but his family moved to Gardiner, Maine, in 1870...
, Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
, Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...
, Carlo Sforza
Carlo Sforza
Conte Carlo Sforza was an Italian diplomat and anti-Fascist politician.-Biography:Sforza was born at Montignoso ....
, Booth Tarkington
Booth Tarkington
Booth Tarkington was an American novelist and dramatist best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novels The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams...
, Ernst Toller
Ernst Toller
Ernst Toller was a left-wing German playwright, best known for his Expressionist plays and serving as President of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, for six days.- Biography :...
, H.M. Tomlinson and H.G. Wells. "In addition to Mrs. Meloney's manuscripts of her own writings, the collection contains manuscripts of Louis Bromfield
Louis Bromfield
Louis Bromfield was an American author and conservationist who gained international recognition winning the Pulitzer Prize and pioneering innovative scientific farming concepts.-Biography:...
, G.K. Chesterton, Walter De la Mare
Walter de la Mare
Walter John de la Mare , OM CH was an English poet, short story writer and novelist, probably best remembered for his works for children and the poem "The Listeners"....
, John Drinkwater
John Drinkwater
John Drinkwater was an English poet and dramatist.He was born in Leytonstone, London, and worked as an insurance clerk...
, Havelock Ellis
Havelock Ellis
Henry Havelock Ellis, known as Havelock Ellis , was a British physician and psychologist, writer, and social reformer who studied human sexuality. He was co-author of the first medical textbook in English on homosexuality in 1897, and also published works on a variety of sexual practices and...
, Richard Le Gallienne
Richard Le Gallienne
Richard Le Gallienne was an English author and poet. The American actress Eva Le Gallienne was his daughter, by his second marriage.-Life and career:...
, Mrs. Belloc Lowndes and Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
."