Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life With John F. Kennedy (10 page)

I think that's right. I think he really sought—it was Churchill as a writer, more than—I mean, he admired Churchill as a statesman, but it was Churchill as a writer which really excited him and piqued his curiosity.

And I can remember him reading me out loud two things from that—the part where he describes the court of Charles II, which is wonderful sort of seraglio prose and everything—and then how he describes the civil war.
¹⁸
You know, he'd be reading, and he'd read aloud a lot.

Anyone in the American past whom he was particularly interested in? Hamilton, Jefferson, Jackson?

Well, Jefferson, I guess, and the one letter he wanted to buy so badly, but it was too expensive, and I was going to try and find and give it to him last Christmas was a letter that came up of Jefferson's, where he'd asked for four more gardeners for Monticello, but he wanted to be sure they knew how to play the violin, so that he could have chamber music concerts in the evening. That letter had come up at Parke-Bernet, and it would have been $
6
,
000
or something, so he hadn't bid on it. You know, Webster.
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He read all their things. I suppose Jefferson, really.
²⁰

What about—did he ever—Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson, FDR—?

Oh, then he was reading a book about Theodore Roosevelt this summer or winter.

Noel Busch—Alice Longworth
²¹
gave it to him.

Yeah, and he was saying to me, "Listen to how fatuous Teddy Roosevelt was," and he'd, "Look how—" and then he'd describe several—read me several things where Roosevelt describes what he does. Always in a sort of throwaway way—"And then I marched up San Juan Hill and killed five natives" —and rather apologetic about it. I think he saw through a lot of Theodore Roosevelt. Though he admired him too. But he read everything that came out by everyone.

What did he think of FDR? Did he ever know him at all?

Well, they all met him, because I remember Mrs. Kennedy telling me that I should think of all the children in the cabinet, because how nice President Roosevelt and Mrs. Roosevelt had been—all the Kennedy children met the Roosevelts.
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But I don't think he thought he was any—he often thought he was rather a—charlatan is an unfair word—you know what I mean—a bit of a poseur, rather cleverly.
²³
You know, that he did an awful lot for effect, and then he used to get furious—not furious, but irritated when people would tell him he should have fireside chats and things, and he found out how many Roosevelt had, which was something like—you know, very—

Thirteen or fourteen the whole time. I got the figures up for him.
²⁴

Yeah. Of course, he was interested in Roosevelt. He didn't have any—he wasn't patterning himself on him, or anything.

He didn't pattern himself on—

On anyone. I remember him telling me the time where Wilson had been wrong, or what their mistakes were, or how—but you know, all with hindsight. He was never arrogant. He just seemed to devour all of them and then, I suppose, it sifted around and came out—he used them all. That's what he did.

Now it always seemed to me quite extraordinary. Here are three men who lived about the same time—Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joseph P. Kennedy, of whom the first two were in one sense or another great men and the third was a very successful man, a very talented man, but not a great man. And yet the children of Churchill and the children of Roosevelt have all been—in many cases, bright and talented, but somehow it all missed fire. And the Kennedy children have this extraordinary discipline.

I really think you have to give a lot of that credit to Mr. Kennedy, because Jack used to talk about that a lot. You know, he bent over backwards. When his children were doing something, he wrote them letters endlessly. Whenever they were doing anything important at school, he'd be there for it. The way he'd talk at the table. If you just go on being a great man, and your children are sort of shunted aside, you know—he watched—I always thought he was the tiger mother. And Mrs. Kennedy,
²⁵
poor little thing, was running around, trying to keep up with this demon of energy, seeing if she had enough placemats in Palm Beach, or should she send the ones from Bronxville, or had she put the London ones in storage. You know, that's what—her little mind went to pieces, and it's Mr. Kennedy who—and she loves to say now how she sat around the table and talked to them about Plymouth Rock and molded their minds, but she was really saying, "Children, don't disturb your father!" He did all—he made this conscious effort about the family, and I don't think those other two men did. Oh, one other thing Jack told me about Roosevelt was how his foreign policy had been wrong and how he hadn't been good there—the mistakes he'd made there. I remember asking him once—

AMBASSADOR KENNEDY WITH JOE, BOBBY, AND JACK, 1938
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston

In relation to the Soviet Union, I suppose.

I guess so, yeah. And how he underestimated or misestimated—whatever the word is—you know, the men he was dealing with. But perfectly, you know, just looking at it.

He had a great detachment about things because he had a great capacity to put himself in other people's positions and see what the problems were.

I always thought that of him, you know. Maybe that's what makes some people—like Jim Burns, who never knew him, but said he was detached and wondered if he had a heart.
²⁶
Well, of course, he had the greatest heart when he cared. But he had this detachment. I always thought he would have been the greatest judge. Because he could take any case—it could involve himself, or me or something, where you—with anyone else, your emotions would be so involved—and look at it from all sides. I remember him speaking that way about General de Gaulle one time, when everyone was so mad at General de Gaulle last year.
²⁷
I was so steamed up, and he was saying, "No, no, you must see his side." You know, he was nonetheless irritated.

PRESIDENT KENNEDY AND PRESIDENT CHARLES DE GAULLE, PARIS, 1961
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston

Well, that was the extraordinary thing. There are those who always see other people's sides to such an extent that it severs the nerve of action for themselves. It never did, in his case. He could see the point. He understood the political urgencies that drove other people doing mischievous things, but that—it never prevented him from reacting to it.

Yeah, I wish I'd given him a wristwatch with a tape recorder in it or something, because if you could hear him explaining de Gaulle to me—what de Gaulle's objectives were, and why he was so bitter. I mean, his analysis of that man—de Gaulle was my hero when I married Jack, and he really sunk down. Because I think he was so full of spite. And that's what Jack never was, and he always would say—I suppose women are terribly emotional, and you want to never speak to anyone again who said something mean against your husband—but Jack would always say, "You must always leave the way open for conciliation." You know, "Everything changes so in politics—your friends are your enemies next week, and vice versa."

Why was de Gaulle your hero?

He wasn't really my hero, but I sort of loved all that prose of some of his memoirs and thought this man who stayed away in the gloomy forest and came marching back, you know, being rather Francophile, just a vague sort of—

I agree. I thought, you know, at the funeral, that he was—in spite of all the mischief he has made—will make—an immensely touching and charming figure.

Yeah, of course he has two sides to him. That's what Jack would always say. You know, nobody's all black or all white. And he did, you know, realize what Jack was. I think he just felt guilty—I don't know— You know, he realized who Jack was, and that's why he came to the funeral. And I think that was an effort. He didn't need to do that.

He had a certain—the thing about de Gaulle and Churchill and the President and a few other people is that they had a sense of history, which produces sort of magnanimity of judgment. Although de Gaulle can be spiteful, he can also be very magnanimous and he recognized that the President— He saw him in the great stream of history, and that—of course, his memoirs are so marvelous in that respect because of the sense of the flow, the necessities which people have to respond to, and the wonderful prose.

Oh, yeah, when Jack made his announcement that he was going to run at the Senate—no, run for president—I'd been reading him the beginning things of de Gaulle's memoirs of how "I've always had a certain image of France" and he used part of that, paraphrased it for his own. Yes, you should look at that speech—"I have a certain vision of America" or something.
²⁸
Another person he used to tell me a lot about was Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill's father. "And I forgot about Goschen—" I remember he'd say that a lot of times, when someone resigned, and they found someone else to replace them. Do you know that story?

No, I don't know that story.

There was some minister who resigned when Randolph Churchill was in the government, because he thought he was—it was on some point. Yeah, who was the one who resigned—of the Exchequer, a couple of years ago? On some little point of whether—some little thing with the budget?

He'd given information—

Not Thorneycroft—anyway, some man resigned and was immediately replaced, and this man thought that he couldn't be replaced, and they'd have to come around to do what he wanted, and right away, they appointed someone named Goschen. And the man—maybe it was even Randolph Churchill—said, "Oh, my God, I forgot about Goschen."
[Schlesinger laughs]
Which, you know, is a thing to show that anyone can be replaced.
²⁹

What did the President think, in 1959, about his contenders? Well, I guess he had Hubert, and he had Lyndon and Stevenson in the wings.

I don't know, exactly. You know, he liked Hubert before, but he always said when you get into a fight, it gets so bitter that you're just bound to sort of hate them at the end. It got very bitter, and he liked Hubert again afterwards. Lyndon sort of amused him. Well, Lyndon was so tricky and he'd come home and tell me things—when Lyndon made an announcement up at the Senate that he was fit to run—to all these reporters—that he could—I don't know—play squash and have sexual intercourse once a week.
[both laugh]
Lyndon—well, he'd just come over and—you know, he knew what he was dealing with there. I mean, he didn't ever admi—