Robert Treuhaft [Obituary of Hillary's Communist Friend]

ROBERT TREUHAFT, who has died aged 89, was best known as the Communist husband of Jessica Mitford; by marrying into the Mitford clan, he became one of a disparate group of brothers-in-law that included Sir Oswald Mosley, Lord Moyne, Derek Jackson, and the Duke of Devonshire.

On paper, Bob Treuhaft sounded unpleasant, and was once described as one of the most dangerously subversive lawyers operating in America. In reality, he possessed considerable charm and intelligence, and was an altogether lovable figure.

Robert E Treuhaft was born in New York on August 8 1912, the son of Jewish working class immigrants from Hungary, with some Mongolian ancestry.

His mother began work in a New York clothing factory when she was 18, eventually running her own Park Avenue hat shop many years later. His father, Albin Treuhaft, was a waiter turned boot-legger, who rose to be part-owner of a restaurant in Wall Street.

Bob was raised in a tenement in the Bronx, but his family made enough money to move to Brooklyn and he attended New Utrecht High School. In 1930 he and one other pupil sat the exam for Harvard. He was the first pupil from New Utrecht ever to gain entrance. He went on to Harvard Law School.

He was then apprenticed to Elias Lieberman, general counsel for the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union in New York, and found himself representing this militant group in many legal actions, invariably caused by class hatred. When the union proposed to stage a benefit performance for Finland, Treuhaft objected to Finland's fascist government and caused a vote to be taken. He was accused of being a Communist, and was so astonished that he began to read Marx.

In the Second World War, he was rejected by the US Army on medical grounds, which distressed him, and instead he joined the Office of Price Administration (OPA) in Washington. Jonathan Guinness, Jessica's nephew, said of him: "He is what he is, the bright Jewish boy with his ready-made 'red diaper' principles."

Treuhaft met Jessica - or "Decca" - Mitford in 1941, when they were both on surveillance operations in Washington. Together they apprehended the Norwegian ambassador for using petrol to drive to a nightclub, which was against regulations. He followed this with a poem, which began: "Drink a drink to dauntless Decca, OPA's black market wrecker."

Treuhaft besieged her with invitations, and presently she agreed to go out with him, inviting him in return to some smart Washington parties. Not long after this, he confessed to his mother, his "wild, uncontrollable and completely futile infatuation for the most terrific female the world has ever seen".

This was not an easy time for Jessica Mitford. Though but 25, she had had recently lost her husband, Esmond Romilly, with whom she had eloped in a blaze of publicity some years before. Of him she wrote: "He was my whole world, my rescuer, the translator of all my dreams into reality, the fascinating companion of my whole adult life - and the centre of all happiness." Treuhaft, meanwhile, had an understanding with a girl called "Mimi". Jessica moved to San Francisco to resolve her feelings, but Treuhaft followed her, proposed and was accepted before he had finished phrasing the question. They were married in 1943 and enjoyed a supremely happy marriage, based, like so many Mitford unions, on politics and jokes.

They both joined the Communist Party, remaining members until the Hungarian uprising, when they became disillusioned. In 1947, Treuhaft joined the legal firm of Gladstein, Grossman, Sawyer and Edises as a junior advocate, specialising in civil rights cases and unprofitable suits against the police. (Jessica dubbed the firm: "Gallstones, Gruesome, Sewer and Odious.")

On several occasions, they had to retreat into hiding for being Communists. Treuhaft was questioned about his politics and defended himself with sharp oratory. He once became so angry with the Attorney-General that he kicked down the door of the District Attorney's Office. Jessica Mitford pleaded the Fifth Amendment when the California State Committee subpoenaed her for un-American activities in connection with the East Bay Civil Rights Congress.

The more public side of their life concerned the two books for which Jessica was famous, Hons and Rebels (1960), a delightful and ruthlessly witty account of her early life, and The American Way of Death (1963), an investigation into the American funeral industry which laid bare the gruesome and exploitative antics of the self-designated "grief therapists".

Treuhaft encouraged both, and the latter book was inspired by his rage on finding that hard-fought-for death benefits, destined for the widow and children, were invariably eaten up by funerary expenses. Treuhaft had more than a passing involvement in the funeral book, which was a collaboration. As Evelyn Waugh summed it up: "It is easy to guess the nature of their collaboration; here is little Decca teasing on the telephone, there is solid Bob at his desk doing his sums."

Both books brought Jessica Mitford to a pinnacle of fame almost equivalent to that of her sister, Nancy.

In the summer of 1971, a young lawyer from Yale, Hillary Roddam (later Mrs, and now Senator, Clinton), was interned at Treuhaft's Berkeley law office, having met him when she assisted the Left-wing lawyer Charles Garry in the trial of Bobby Seale, accused of murdering a fellow Panther.

For many years the Treuhafts were denied passports. When these were granted, they paid frequent visits to Britain and Europe. Though Jessica refused to make friends with her sister, Diana Mosley (having worshipped her as a child), she and her husband were visitors to Chatsworth on several occasions.

Treuhaft observed the scene, with what Jonathan Guinness described as "the healthy irony of the social historian". On his first visit, he followed the suit of other guests in the visitors' book, who had signed "Salisbury" or "Antrim", by appending his own name simply as "Treuhaft".

Then, as he related in a television profile of his wife, there was an evening when he was at the table at Chatsworth, and was horrified when, at the end of dinner, not only did the ladies head to the door, but the men followed. Remaining rooted in his chair, Treuhaft addressed his host: "Dook, you must not disappoint me. The one thing I know about English country houses is that the gentlemen stay in the dining room to drink port and tell jokes." Devonshire replied: "We were just escorting the ladies to the door."

In 1996 Jessica Mitford's health collapsed and she died of cancer in July that year. Bob Treuhaft lived on in the family home in Oakland, California, manning the Jessica Mitford website and completing the revisions to the new edition of The American Way of Death.

The Treuhafts had two sons. The elder son was killed by a bus while riding his bicycle at the age of 10; the younger, a piano tuner who exports the instruments to Cuba, survives him.

A similar obituary appeared in the New York Times several days later: Treuhaft Obituary. Full text below:

December 2, 2001
Robert Treuhaft, Lawyer Who Inspired Funeral Exposé, Dies at 89
By PAUL LEWIS
Robert Treuhaft, a crusading radical lawyer who inspired his wife, Jessica Mitford, to write her best seller "The American Way of Death," died in New York on Nov. 11. He was 89.
As a union lawyer representing longshoremen in the San Francisco area in the 1950's, Mr. Treuhaft was enraged by the exorbitant fees undertakers charged, frequently consuming a widow's death benefits.
After organizing the Bay Area Funeral Society to reduce the cost of funerals for union members, Mr. Treuhaft encouraged his wife to write an exposé of the funeral industry, taking a year off from his Oakland law practice to help with research.
The result was "The American Way of Death," first published in 1963. Miss Mitford, who was known as Decca and who died in 1996, dedicated the work to her husband with gratitude for "his untiring collaboration."
In a 1993 interview, Miss Mitford said that initially she had not been interested in the subject. "Then Bob started bringing home the trade publications like Casket and Sunnyside, Mortuary Management -- all those wonderful names -- so I began to study them," she said.
When the British novelist Evelyn Waugh remarked that the book seemed to have been written by two people, Jessica Mitford's sister Nancy wrote back saying: "Clever of you to see the two voices. I am quite certain much of it was written by Treuhaft who is a sharp little lawyer, and who certainly made her write it in the first place."
In 1976 Gov. Jerry Brown of California appointed Mr. Treuhaft to the state Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers.
Robert Edward Treuhaft was born in New York on Aug. 8, 1912, the son of working-class immigrants from Hungary. His mother eventually came to run her own hat shop on Park Avenue; his father, a waiter turned bootlegger, became part owner of a Wall Street restaurant.
Raised in the Bronx and then Brooklyn, Mr. Treuhaft won a scholarship to Harvard, where he studied law.
After working for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union in New York, Mr. Treuhaft was rejected by the Army on medical grounds at the start of World War II and went to work for the Office of Price Administration in Washington; there he met and fell in love with Miss Mitford.
The couple could scarcely have been more different in upbringing. She was one of the blue-blooded Mitford sisters, a daughter of Lord Redesdale and sister to Nancy, the novelist; to Diana, who married Sir Oswald Mosley, the British fascist leader; to Unity, one of Hitler's cronies; and to Deborah, who became Duchess of Devonshire.
Miss Mitford was recovering from the loss of her first husband, Esmond Romilly, Winston Churchill's nephew, who had been killed on a Canadian Air Force raid over Germany and with whom she had eloped to fight with the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. Mr. Treuhaft and Miss Mitford were married in 1943; Miss Mitford accepted his proposal before he had finished making it. They moved to San Francisco, where Mr. Treuhaft started a radical law firm that specialized in fighting every kind of discrimination and social injustice.
Both joined the United States Communist Party and were frequently investigated and harassed by government officials; for many years they were denied passports, for example. But by 1958 they had grown disillusioned with Communism and left the party.
In 1964 Mr. Treuhaft was one of four foreign lawyers expelled from Portugal by the fascist government of Premier Antonio de Oliveira Salazar after they had tried to investigate penal conditions in the country.
In 1971 he accepted a young Yale lawyer named Hillary Rodham (now Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton) as an intern.
After his wife's death, Mr. Treuhaft completed her last book, "The American Way of Death Revisited." He was working on a collection of her letters at the time of his death.
Mr. Treuhaft is survived by a stepdaughter, Constancia Romilly, and his son, Benjamin, a New York piano tuner who runs the Send a Piano to Havana Project, shipping old pianos to Cuba.

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