The date: December 10, 1948.
The place: Paris.
The time: 3:15 A.M.
The occasion: A meeting of the United Nations General Assembly.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT SPEAKS ON, WITH the Universal Declaration of the United Nations having been passed:
“. . . We stand today at the threshold of a great event both in the life of the United Nations and in the life of mankind. This Universal Declaration of Human Rights may well become the international Magna Carta of all men everywhere. We hope its proclamation by the General Assembly will be an event comparable to the proclamation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man by the French people in 1789, the adoption of the Bill of Rights by the people of the United States, and the adoption of comparable declarations in other countries.”
Of course, it did not happen that way. In 1988, on the fortieth anniversary of the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Richard Gardner wrote in the New York Times that the document “stands to this day as the most widely recognized statement of the rights to which every person on our planet is entitled.” But a widely recognized statement is not the same thing as a mandate for widely recognized actions. The Universal Declaration has not been universally recognized; what are rights in one nation can still be proscribed behavior in another.
And, one suspects, Eleanor knew this was the declaration’s failing from the start. “She knew its words were not self-enforcing,” Gardner said. “The real challenge, she liked to tell United Nations delegates in later years, was one of ‘actually living and working in our countries for freedom and justice for each human being.’ That is a challenge she readily accepted, and her example is one that inspires us today.”
But, on that night in Paris, three years after the end of World War II, Eleanor would be as optimistic as she could. After all, she had worked so long and hard for the cause.
“In conclusion,” she said, “I feel that I cannot do better than to repeat the call to action by Secretary [of State George] Marshall in his opening statement to this assembly. Let this third regular session of the General Assembly approve by an overwhelming majority the Declaration of Human Rights as a standard of conduct for all; and let us, as Members of the United Nations, conscious of our own shortcomings and imperfections, join our effort in good faith to live up to this high standard.”
A FEW MINUTES LATER, ELEANOR started back to her hotel room within walking distance of the Arc de Triomphe, exhausted by her efforts, hoping to get a few hours sleep before her flight back to the United States. Whether she actually walked or allowed herself the luxury of a government vehicle is not known.
Back in America, she would make more speeches on behalf of the declaration, a new round of pleas for human beings to behave more sensibly, and peacefully, toward one another. So many speeches had she made already. So intransigent did human nature remain.
But before she went to bed in the blackness of that Paris morning, she opened a container of some sort: an overnight bag or carryall, perhaps a sack of some sort. In it were letters, dozens of letters, perhaps more than a hundred, their tone “tender, chivalrous, playful, and, above all, full of protestations of love.” They had been sent to her by her father during his exile from the family in Abingdon, Virginia, between 1892 and 1894. From the day he died, when his daughter was but ten, until the day her own life ended, sixty-eight years later, Eleanor carried them with her everywhere she went. Near to her heart at all times, they were also near to her person.
She withdrew some of the messages from the container at that strange hour in Paris, after so much talk of human rights, and placed them next to her on the nightstand. If she had the energy, she would have picked one out of the stack at random and read it. Yet again. She had reread all of her father’s letters, read them and handled them so many times that by now they were worn and torn, fragile and faded. A few were scraps around the edges, with holes beginning to form in the text and the addresses faded beyond recognition on many of the envelopes. She was proud of their appearance. It was proof that her father’s sentiments had been of constant use to her. Proof of her daily reliance on them. Proof of a lifetime’s love and support.
If she was too tired to have read a missive on this occasion, she would have smiled down on it and put it in the stack. Then she either returned the correspondence to its container or left it on the nightstand, to be replaced in the morning. Regardless, as she drifted into sleep, it was next to her bed, where it would be safe. And comforting.
She is said to have kissed her father’s letters, the top one on the stack, every night of her life.
