Letter from Frederick H. Boland to Michael MacWhite (Rome)

Your letter of the 10th April about the new American Minister is certainly disquieting.¹

I think he is certainly the man of whom you are speaking, but I don't think that his present wife is Mrs. James Curtis's daughter. He is married to a Mrs. Darlington - who was a widow at the time she married him and had three daughters. We have no information that Mrs. Darlington was ever divorced. Garrett himself was - in 1933, I think.

What we have heard about Garrett himself is by no means unmixed. The appointment is, apparently, not very popular in Washington, principally among Democrats. Garrett seems to have a GOP background. His wife is said to be extremely wealthy and to be a woman of insatiable social ambition - not a very good qualification for this democratic milieu. On the other hand, the new American Ambassador in London spoke to Dulanty about Garrett in the most enthusiastic terms. He described him as 'an excellent choice'.

We can only wait and see. On the whole, we are relieved that the appointee is not an Irish-American. He would be discounted in advance by his own people and the temptation to tell us our own business would be great. There would be other dangers, too. In a way, it is a pity that the new man is not a career official. That is what we would have liked most, I think. Nowadays the influence of the official in Washington is greater than it was in the past, and we need someone who can cut ice with the State Department because, according to Bob Brennan, the boys in the State Department are still feeling pretty sore about some of the things which happened during the war.