The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

      

NEW YORK, Friday—It seems to me that perhaps I ought to catch up a little on my usual diary! Last Saturday, I had the great pleasure of having Miss Gabriela Mistral, the well-known Chilean poetess, and Mr. and Mrs. Andrei Gromyko drive up to Hyde Park to lunch with me.

I had met all of them before but I had had merely a casual introduction to Miss Mistral. As I have great admiration for this winner of the 1945 Nobel Prize for Literature, I was delighted to have a chance to really talk to her.

She is one of Chile's permanent consuls in San Diego, but her interests are far from being political. As she is a humanitarian, she wishes to see changed anything which is unjust either for men or women. But her real interest is in literature and the arts, and not in whether a vote will be needed in order to obtain some of the things people are entitled to. She had a most interesting face, and I hope the day will come when I will have the opportunity to talk with her in leisurely fashion about the many things in which we both are interested.

After Miss Mistral had gone back to New York City to fill a radio engagement, I drove Mr. and Mrs. Gromyko around to see my husband's hilltop cottage, his trees, and finally the library and the big house. Mr. Gromyko was long-suffering and endured having Fala practically sit in his lap during most of the time we were driving!

* * *

On Sunday, the members of the United Nations Human Rights Commission and the members of the Subcommission on the Status of Women all came up for a picnic lunch before visiting the big house and library. They got started from New York City rather late and, I think, had the usual difficulty finding exactly where they were supposed to arrive, so lunch was a bit late. But I enjoyed having them and hoped they did not find my hospitality too informal.

Monday saw us all back at work in New York but, that afternoon, a case of shingles which I had been fighting for over a week got a little the better of me. I left Prof. Rene Cassin to preside at the afternoon session of the Human Rights Commission. And all day Tuesday, I deserted the Subcommission on the Status of Women. But by Wednesday, I was able to start out again at 9:30, stay at Hunter College all day, and even keep my speaking engagement for the evening.

The subcommission is having a rather hard time finishing its report on schedule, but they are due to hand it to the Human Rights Commission on Monday so that we may go over it on Tuesday. Our own work is progressing fairly well. Today we will take up the consideration of what our recommendations should be on freedom of information. Certainly freedom of information, whether it means freedom of the press or of any other avenue of information, is one of the very important factors in the future peace of the world.

Last night, I spoke for a few minutes for the Jewish Welfare Fund, and today I shall speak for a very brief time at the opening of the new Medical Rehabilitation Clinic which the Veterans Administration has established here in New York City.

E. R.

(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1946, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC.; REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR PART PROHIBITED.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, May 11, 1946

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
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Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

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MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
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