Hannah Pakula: Biographer Of Uncommon Women
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.
- Dorothy Parker
Although Hannah Pakula came to her calling relatively late in life, this author of two major historical biographies stumbled upon her first subject at the Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles, where she grew up.
"Rebelling against a boring French assignment, I asked the teacher to let me translate some of Dorothy Parker's light verse instead," she said. "That set me wondering about Marie of Rumania."
In writing "The Last Romantic," a life of the legendary Queen Marie, and "An Uncommon Woman," the story of the Empress Frederick of Germany, Ms. Pakula chose as her subjects two British princesses who were married off to German royals, perhaps for the civilizing effect it was hoped they might have on Teutonic bellicosity.
The King And The Kaiser
Both failed to calm the troubled waters in the Balkans, however. Marie produced King Carol II, a Machiavellian politician who betrayed his country and tried to destroy her, while Vicky, as the Empress, Queen Victoria's eldest daughter, was called, gave birth to Willy, "the son from hell."
As Kaiser Wilhelm II he would lead Germany into battle against his own mother and grandmother during World War I in a failed expansionist offensive that sowed the seeds of Hitler's rise to power 20 years later.
"There's no doubt that the eldest sons of these two inexperienced young queens were bitter disappointments," said Ms. Pakula, who was interviewed at the East Hampton house she shares with her husband, the filmmaker Alan Pakula.
Growing Up
Vicky's letters to her mother fret about the hazards of raising a child in a palace. Indeed, in both cases the boys were brought up by grandparents who frowned upon their mothers' attempts to educate the people and who still believed in the divine right of kings.
"No wonder the British monarchy is the only one left today," Ms. Pakula laughed.
Born Hannah Cohn in Omaha, Neb., the future biographer grew up as "the ingenue of the expatriate music community" in Southern California. Her parents hosted Sunday evening chamber concerts where such luminaries as Jascha Heifetz might play.
No Bluestockings
While most of her schoolmates' parents were in the film business, her father, a "mathematical genius" and classic-car buff, was a manufacturer's sales representative for automotive and aviation parts.
He died in England a happy man, his daughter said, as he lay on the ground repairing the oldest car in the world, an 1893 Mercedes-Benz, during an annual London-to-Brighton race.
The young Hannah wanted to go to Radcliffe, but her mother, believing that Harvard's sister school turned out bluestockings and traumatized by her older daughter's conversion to Communism at Sarah Lawrence, packed the protesting Hannah off to Wellesley.
Two Marriages
During her junior year abroad at the Sorbonne she married Robert L. Boorstin, an investment banker, and moved to Dallas. A daughter, Anna, and twin boys, Robert and Louis, were born.
Mr. Boorstin died unexpectedly seven years later of a heart attack while the couple were riding donkeys during a vacation on the Greek island of Rhodes. "I had to grow up fast," recalled Ms. Pakula. "My children are fabulous," she added proudly.
Marriage four years later to Mr. Pakula and a subsequent move to New York and East Hampton delighted her.
"This is a wonderful community for a writer, especially in winter," she said. "When we first drove out and dined with the group at the old Bobby Van's - my dogs were allowed in under the table - I looked at Alan and said, 'This is what I hoped being grown up was going to be like.' "
Encouragement
The life of a filmmaker's wife does have certain givens, she said. "One is that my bags are always half-packed - I never know where I'll be tomorrow. Another is that while Alan is shooting, we have no social life at all."
"I'm a depressive and tend to isolate when I'm writing, so I see friends for lunch or tea to keep myself 'up.' At night, I have dinner waiting."
The marriage is no one-man show, however. Mr. Pakula always thought his wife was a closet writer, andencouraged her to begin. At first she limited her efforts to book reviews and occasional pieces, until, one night, he asked, "Why don't you do something serious?"
"It's not unusual for him to put himself on the line, and he gave me permission to do the same. 'It doesn't matter if you fail,' he said. That was very liberating."
Years Of Research
"In the nearly 25 years we've been married our careers have never conflicted," she went on. "The one who's under pressure gets the support. It's worked out very well. Alan enjoys my world, and I enjoy being called in to watch his rough cuts, which is when he wants a fresh viewpoint."
Her plunge into historical biography was triggered by a book called something like "Love Nests of the Rich and Famous," she said, where, serendipitously, Marie of Rumania was prominently featured. A quick trip to the Beverly Hills Public Library revealed that nobody had yet written her life.
Two years of research into 19th-century royalty and the history of the Balkans, about which she knew nothing, were followed by more years of writing than she cares to admit: "I don't lie about my age anymore, only about how long it takes me to finish a book."
In 1989 her 500-page life of the legendary Marie appeared, subtitled "The Most Famous Beauty, Heroine and Royal Celebrity of Her Time" - a sort of 1930s Princess Di.
Hailed by Graham Greene as one of the three best books of 1989 and the best biography of that year, it also established Ms. Pakula as an authority on Rumania, and was cited as "required reading" for Rumanians.
"That was because in the bad old days of Communism under the Ceaucescu dictatorship no one, for better or for worse, was taught the history of their country's royal family."
"It was as though nothing between Peter the Great and Lenin had happened," Ms. Pakula explained, implying that those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it.
Mother-Daughter Letters
While working on "The Last Romantic," she came across the mother/daughter letters between Queen Victoria, Marie's grandmother, and Vicky, her niece, "some of them cluck-clucking gossip about Marie's alleged frivolity and many affairs. Not true. She only had one grand affair, with a remarkable man who became her Prime Minister."
Fascinated by Vicky, Ms. Pakula plunged into research for "An Uncommon Woman," a 700-page biography subtitled "The Empress Frederick, Daughter of Queen Victoria, Wife of the Crown Prince of Prussia, Mother of Kaiser Wilhelm."
She found the Queen's letters to her daughter preserved in a German schloss. The Empress's letters and papers reposed in the archives at Windsor Castle, however. Fortunately, Vicky had had them shipped to England just before her death, thus saving them from certain destruction by her son the Kaiser.
Seeds Of Hitler
Ms. Pakula worked her way through Vicky's more than 8,000 letters to her mother, written almost daily over 43 years - 60 volumes of them - and then tackled those to her father, Prince Albert. Happily for the burdened researcher, he died after amassing only three years of correspondence.
When Vicky's story was published in 1995, nearly 100 years after her death, it came as something of a surprise, especially in her adopted country, where Wilhelm had assiduously tried to suppress any memory of his mother's enlightened attempts at educating and democratizing Imperial Germany.
"German publishers were seen fleeing," said Ms. Pakula of the book many consider essential to understanding the climate in which Hitler's military despotism, anti-Semitism, and national paranoia originated.
Human Rights
She is gratified that the paperback version, to be issued imminently, will coincide with the first translation into German to be published in Germany. Her own ancestors left the country after the revolution of 1848.
A member of PEN, Ms. Pakula serves on its Members Council and is active in the Freedom-to-Write Committee. In 1992 she established Film Watch (under Human Rights Watch) to help monitor the human rights of film directors around the world.
"I'm a big human rights person," she said, "and passionate about the dignity of others. I monitor individual cases, and if I can get someone out of prison, fine. I have to watch out for hubris, however. Recently a Sri Lankan girl was killed whom I'd thought I could help."
She is currently working on a piece about Jeri Laber and the origins of Human Rights Watch for The New Yorker.
In The Works
Her next book? "I'm not ready to talk about another book yet. I have two or three projects in mind, but I haven't decided. Once I commit, it's for a long time. I have to know my subject very well before I begin writing."
"I can be one of the great bores of all time," Ms. Pakula concluded with a laugh. "When someone at a dinner party asks me what I do and I tell them I'm writing about the Schleswig-Holstein War, it can really put a damper on things."
"I try not to do that to people," she said.