Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life With John F. Kennedy (26 page)

Macmillan came in April, remember?
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You'd known him before, had you, or the President had?

The—yes—Jack had met him, what, right after in Key West and then in—he met him in London after Vienna. It was just before Vienna that he came?

He came in April, before Vienna.

Well, I forget if that was the time.

He must have known him before through the Devonshires though.

I don't know.

Maybe not.

But I know they'd corresponded ever since Jack was first in the White House. But, yes, then we had lunch, just Sissy and David
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and Macmillan and Jack and I, which was so nice, and they—but it was such a happy atmosphere and they would stay in and talk. That was a very rare and touching relationship between those two men. They really loved each other. And, oh, well, if you could see their letters, and—I'll show them to you someday because I can't do them all on the tape. But the one he wrote Jack by hand the summer after Patrick, when he just was through the Profumo thing.
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And how Jack went out of his way to send him some telegram when he resigned and tell David that it could be in all the papers—of all that he'd done for the West. He loved Macmillan. You know, Macmillan had a way of looking like sort of a joke. Just his face had that sort of suppressed mirth and his funny clothes and things, but, oh no, he was a—

He was a sharp old customer—

Yeah.

And I think—I had the impression the President was particularly impressed by his strong feeling about nuclear—about getting the nuclear thing under control.

Yeah, I know, I know.

I know he used to write eloquent letters about the horror of nuclear war.

Yes, and what did Jack say? That was one of the things he said—what Macmillan had done for the—Jack said, he really cared about the Western Alliance.

What did—did the President like Gaitskell?

Yes, he did. Didn't he?

Yes, he did. Do you remember his reaction to Harold Wilson?
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Oh, he couldn't stand him.

There was a special relationship. But why—the President and Macmillan, what would they talk about besides politics, because obviously they had a great fund of other things? Macmillan is a publisher and loved history.

Well, they would be so irreverent and funny. Jack would tell me some of the things they said with the men at dinner—you know, after lunch, that I don't think I should say on a tape, even. What is it? One thing was, oh, people say that the younger generation have lost all hope living with this nuclear something. Look at them, they're perfectly fine, they're twisting and—but, I don't know, just funny things. They'd amuse each other so. So then, we may—the one time I was ever together with them was that time at lunch in the White House. And when they came out, somebody said something about Nehru, and I said how Nehru put his—had given Lee a miniature of two Indians on a couch together and given me one of just a lady sniffing a rose and how he'd had his hand on Lee's thigh at the airport, or—something rather irreverent.
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He just looked shocked, but you know, it was so funny. That isn't—that doesn't describe what I mean. Jack had this high sense of mischief and so did Macmillan, so I've never seen two people enjoy each other so. Obviously all of the important things they were talking about alone, but when it ended up with Sissy and David and us and him—you know, or going down to Adele Astaire Douglass's—who'd been married to a Cavendish. Talk about a lot of family things, I guess, but always this wonderful humor underneath it all.

The President's year—when he went to London in '38–'39—he wasn't there very much, but it obviously struck a responsive chord, didn't it?

I always thought it was really British history that he patterned himself on more than ours. I mean, that he read, he was always—well, I told you all the speeches—Burke's "To the Electors of Bristol" and Warren Hastings and you know, Charles James Fox.
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He really gave himself a classical education through his own reading. I don't think you get that in this country anymore. Mostly through being sick and having read the classics and then the English people—and then that made him pick out what he thought was best in American thought and oratory. So he had such an admiration for all—the last time we were in London together, I guess was '
58
, maybe—and had a dinner of all his old friends. Well, when you look at them all, it was rather discouraging. David Gore was the only one who ever amounted to anything and he was—Jack always used to say he was one of the brightest men he'd ever met in his life—he and Bundy, he used to say. But you know, the others were, well, kind of defeatist or turned into nothing or—he wasn't like Joe Alsop, who dearly loves the lord and just gets so excited at the mention of anyone English. Seeing them now really depressed Jack. Of all those young men who'd been his friends in '
38
and '
39
—Hugh Fraser, Tony Rosslyn—
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Well, he was in the government, but it's a disappointed life.

Yeah.

Did he ever know Churchill?

William Home, that was a great friend of his.
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Alec's brother.

Yes. He'd liked Kick and he'd written—you know, he'd gone to prison because he wouldn't fire on civilians in a town and that's where he wrote
Now Barabbas.
Then he wrote
The Chiltern Hundreds
about Kathleen. Kathleen—she was the model for the American girl. She used to go see him in prison. And well, William was wicked and outrageous and fun. Jack always enjoyed him. But his plays got worse and worse and worse.

JOE, KATHLEEN, AND JACK, LONDON, 1939
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston

You played the reluctant prime minister—
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Prime minister. Oh, dear. Well, Poor William he has about four children to support and he has to write too quickly.

WATCHING THE BLACK WATCH REGIMENT PERFORM ON THE SOUTH LAWN OF THE WHITE HOUSE, NOVEMBER 13, 1963
Cecil Stoughton, White House/John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston

Did he know Alec in that—Home—in that period?

I don't think so.

He's quite different from William, I gather.

Yeah, well, William's sort of mad. Jack said something at the Black Watch,
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you know, this little speech before, about all of us I suppose are drawn to lost causes and Scotland's history captured him at an early age—it really was a long series of lost causes but it triumphed in some ways more than ever now. And as we were walking off the lawn up to the balcony, where we'd watched the whole show, Jack said, "I wonder if David Gore knew what I meant." Well, he'd meant that Alec Douglas-Home, a Scotsman, was now prime minister.

Did he like Alec Douglas-Home?

Well, had he met him?

Yes.

Had Alec Home come over?

Yes, he—not as prime minister, but he'd been over as foreign secretary—they met—

I think he did like him—I mean, I know he didn't dislike him. But, the first time I ever saw Alec Home was at Jack's funeral, and I liked him.

He's a nice man. Had he ever known Churchill?

The time we met Churchill was in Monte Carlo and some people—we were staying in—we had a house in Cannes with William Douglas-Home and his wife and—

This was when?

It was either—
1958
, I guess. And the Agnellis
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had asked—we were going over to have dinner with them and then they took us before dinner to Onassis's yacht to meet Churchill.
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Jack had always wanted to meet Churchill. Well, the poor man was really quite ga-ga then and a lot—you know, we all came on the boat together and he didn't quite know which one Jack was. He started to talk to one of the other men there, thinking he was Jack, and saying, "I knew your father so well," and this and that, and that was cleared up. Then Jack sat down with him and talked. But it was hard going. I don't think he'd met him before. But of course, you know, he'd read everything he—

He really had read practically everything of Churchill's.

I felt so sorry for Jack that evening because he was meeting his hero, only he met him too late. All—think of all he could have—he was so hungry to talk to Churchill at last, or meet him and he just met Churchill when Churchill couldn't really say anything.

Adenauer also came over that first spring.
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Yes. Jack used to say sort of what a bitter old man Adenauer was, or how he had to be pried— He used to say, "Eighty-nine? Wouldn't you think he'd give up then, but they had to haul him off screaming." He got awfully fed up with Adenauer and all that Berlin. He'd take one private home because his mother's had an appendix or something and they'd start another weeping round. And he hated that ambassador here. The only two ambassadors he really disliked were that one, Grewe, and the Pakistan ambassador—Ahmed. Well, the new one's named Ahmed, so, this was the Ahmed before this one.
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Well, the Germans wanted reassurance all the time and it got to be a pain in the neck.

And you know, how much more of it can you do than reassure them? Well, he really did it, obviously, when he went to Berlin.

Do you remember much about the trip to Canada?
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Oh, yes, that was our first—

It was your first trip.

I remember everything about it, you know, getting off—and Vanier, the Governor General, is the most marvelous looking old man—and Madame—you know, white mustache, sort of like C. Aubrey Smith.
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And Madame Vanier, very mother—everyone curtsies to them. And I rode in from the airport with her—that must be about fifty miles from the airport to Ottawa. And she would be telling me how to wave and always calling me "dear." She was very protective. I was still very tired then and so I had to leave the receiving line that night and halfway through, and Jack was so sweet, rather protective, getting me out of there. I just had so little strength then. So before we went to Europe, I took a whole week off in the country so that I'd sleep and build up my strength and it was all right. But everyone was saying that Ottawa was so cold and never gave receptions to—nice ones to anyone, and I guess, especially to America, or something. And they really were—well, they seemed like terribly enthusiastic crowds and everyone was flabbergasted. You know, you could tell they meant it. Here you often say to state visitors—you're riding in from the airport—"Washington is blasé and I've never seen them go so mad for any visitors as they do for you." Because they are hopeless here, they just stand. But he didn't like Diefenbaker.