Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life With John F. Kennedy (30 page)

Do you have any memory of the President's impression of people like Arthur Dean, or McCloy or Foster, in connection with the test ban?
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Not really.

This again was one of those prolonged things that kept dragging on for a long time.

PRIME MINISTER HAROLD MACMILLAN AND JACQUELINE KENNEDY IN FRONT OF NUMBER TEN DOWNING STREET, LONDON, 1961
U. S. Dept. of State/John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston

Yeah. And oh, the discouragement, and then you just think of Arthur Dean. I remember I used to feel sorry for him—just sitting in Geneva all his life—because I'd been in that depressing city. And now that's the kind of thing you wouldn't talk about at night. But I don't remember hearing him say he was disappointed with anyone or—I remember him saying wonderful things about Harriman—

Yes. When Harriman came in at the end it was a—I think the Russians feel that when Harriman is sent to negotiate that the United States means business, and that that was absolutely necessary to—
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And it was very touching, Jack's relationship with Harriman, because, of course there were all these young men around, and here was this man who went back so many administrations. But he just kept going up and up, didn't he?—and getting to do more and more important things, and then Jack was so happy, saying for Averell—well, he was so happy for Averell Harriman really after the test ban treaty, he thought—you know, that "That's really quite a crown." And there'd been something in Teddy White's book, a little footnote, about Averell Harriman, saying that he had done all these extraordinary things in foreign policy, but that domestically everything he'd done was disastrous.
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And I remember Jack feeling sort of sorry for him when he read that part of the book and feeling so happy that this crowning thing came at the end for Averell Harriman.
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In—

I gave him a copy of the test ban treaty which the Archives
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did especially for me—you can't tell it from the original—when we left his house after he lent it to us after November.

That's wonderful. It was in that winter that—in that fall and winter—that Hickory Hill began and in the winter of '62, there was a meeting at the White House which David Donald, who is a professor at Princeton, spoke about the Civil War.
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I wasn't there, but the President mentioned it to me later. He apparently found it stimulating.

Yes, those seminars that Bobby did—well, Jack always wanted to go to them but he just wanted to go to hear you. I mean he'd heard that you'd finished Jackson and everything and it was an effort to go out, so finally when he heard there was going to be an interesting one, which was this Civil War-Reconstruction thing, he said, "Let's have it at the White House." It was the first one—it was meant to have been at the Gilpatrics. And it was so strange because I remember when the question period started, everyone was very quiet and rather nervous in the White House and the President there, and Jack asked Donald, "Do you think"—it's the one thing that was on his mind—"Would Lincoln have been as great a President if he'd lived?" I mean, would he be judged as great—because he would have had this almost insoluble problem of the Reconstruction, which, you know, either way you did it would have dissatisfied so many people. That was his question. And Donald, really by going round and round, had agreed with him that Lincoln, you know, it was better—was better for Lincoln that he died when he did. And then I remember Jack saying after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when it all turned so fantastically, he said, "Well, if anyone's ever going to shoot me, this would be the day they should do it."
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Oh, really?

I mean, it's so strange, these things that come back, because he saw then that he would be—you know, he said, it will never top this. Strange those things come back now.

Had that Lincoln question that he asked Donald—one that he discussed before? Been on his mind?

Oh, yes, because all the time we discussed it. The first year I was married, I took a course in American history at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service from Professor Jules Davids, who was this brilliant man. And I'd never taken American history and I used to come home full of these things and I was so excited—Thaddeus Stevens and the radical Republicans, I can remember. And these awful poems they were writing about Lincoln. And Jack was excited that I was so interested. And then when he was doing
Profiles in Courage,
I told him how great Davids was, and he had him do some research on it. So at that time, we would talk a lot about Lincoln and the Reconstruction, and, you know, if he lived and that—and that was back when we were married was '
53
, '
54
, and then his book was '
54
–'
55
—so we talked about it years before.

There was another Hickory Hill meeting at the White House—Isaiah Berlin.

Where they talked about Russia.

Yes.

Yeah, well, Jack loved that and he loved to just listen to Isaiah Berlin.
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I mean, that was the side—you should read this article in
Show
magazine now, which I think is quite unfair in its judgment of Jack but it starts from the premise that
Melbourne
was his favorite book and says what he really was most like were these great Whig houses and Whig liberal families who, you know, had everything and lived a stimulating life, yet cared. Well, he loved all those brilliant English people. He used to tell me about going to Emerald Cunard's
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when he was a boy in London with his father to listen. When we were in London together, we'd go to the old Duchess of Devonshire's for lunch and she'd have a couple of people around. I mean, he loved so to hear those people talk. Or hear David. You know, they knew so much, their educations were so incredible. That's when he was happiest. So he loved Isaiah Berlin.

Do you want to say something about the relationship of David? Because I think that was a very fundamental thing in all this. I have the impression he talked with greater—more intimately with David than with any member of the—

Yeah.

—of his own cabinet.

Well, I suppose—

Outside of Bobby.

Exactly. And if I could think of anyone now who could save the Western world, it would be David Gore. But—well, they started as friends obviously in London, and Kathleen, who was Jack's favorite sister, was Sissy's best friend. And, I guess, David was the closest of all those friends then. I mean, so many of them ended up with rather sad lives, or this or that.

This is back in '38–'39.

Yeah. Hugh Fraser was sort of a friend, but not very bright, and you'd always wonder if Hugh would get a job in some government and he never did, or it was a pathetic one. But whenever David was here, we'd see him and Jack used to say that David Gore was the brightest man he'd ever met. He used to say that he and Bundy were. But he'd say that David more so than Bundy because Bundy's intelligence is almost so—it's so highly tuned that he couldn't often see the larger thing around him. I mean, David was more rooted, more compassionate. I can't describe it.

David has more wisdom, I think, than—Mac is a brilliantly intelligent man but David's judgment is more—

And David has also the conciliatory sort of side that Jack did. You know, Bundy can get mad and then sort of arrogant and then make conciliation impossible. And Bundy in the missile crisis, when you think of that great mind, in the beginning he wanted to go in and bomb Cuba. And at the end, he wanted to do nothing. So, if you'd been relying on that great intelligence, look where we'd be? But—

How often would he see David?

Well, we'd see them a lot. We'd always see them. They would stay with us, usually on vacations, or they'd come for a weekend to Camp David, or the country, or the Cape. Or they'd come for dinner maybe once a month or so. You stopped asking them too much. We used to do it rather spontaneously, and of course they'd be involved in something official and then they'd get out of it, so I thought I just can't do that to them. So we didn't see them as much as we would have. We would have seen them every week if they hadn't been ambassador.

It killed the Alphands, as it was.
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And they'd always be talking on the phone. So many times, "Get me the British ambassador." And David would tell you sometimes of the extraordinary places he'd been when he was ferreted out to talk to Jack. And as I said, with David—well, there was this one thing about British Guiana which one night David really was worried about and Jack said, "Well, what shall I do?" and it was against rather our position, but David said, "You should call U Thant"
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and tell him whatever it was. So anyway, Jack did that and everything, you know, worked out well. And then this Skybolt thing—after Nassau,
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David came back to Florida with us and, of course, the next day the whole thing blew up. Godfrey McHugh came tearing in, saying, "Have you heard the wonderful news, Mr. President? They've just shot off Skybolt and it worked," or something. And Jack said, "What? Goddamn you, Godfrey, get out of here!" And he—so, anyway, he and David sat there and everything was so awful. And they called Gilpatric, and McNamara was away and then David went into another room and called Harold Macmillan. But you know, that closeness kept—well, I mean, everything could have blown apart between England and America then. And of all Jack's friends now, David Gore's the one, I'd say next to Bobby and me, he's the one who's been the most wounded.
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Perhaps that's not fair, but he's the friend that I'll always see for the rest of my life. So many of the others I can't bear to see because I miss—Jack's lacking. I mean, the Bartletts, the Bradlees, the people you saw like that. Anyway—

Well, David is one of the—sort of intellectually and emotionally he's a rich person, and a generous one, and—

And he's not—ambitious. I always kept hoping he'd give up his title and be prime minister one day, but I think he'll be foreign secretary. He's not—he doesn't have this drive that Jack did, but he still cares. I suppose he can do as much that way.

Well, I've been after him too to try to get him to give up his title, but it's clear that he's probably not—not going to do it.

It isn't because he cares that much about his title. It's just that he's never been pushy.

That's right. He thinks if he does this it will signal the fact that he wants to be prime minister, which he thinks is an absurd thing for him to want to be. Well, of course, it isn't. In the winter of or in early spring of '63, one big thing, of course, was the steel crisis and—were you—you were around then?
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And I remember how really outraged Jack was. You know, it's one of the few times—he really controlled his temper. I mean, you never saw him lose it, but just sometimes that flash. I mean, he was really—what Roger Blough did to him—

He felt that Roger Blough had double-crossed him.

Yes. I just remember the expression. His mouth was really tight. And you just didn't do that, you just didn't behave that way. Bobby said to me later that if we'd known the people like André Meyer or something, or had more friends in that community, perhaps it could have all been arranged with less bitterness. But then I can remember that it was back and forth between his office and the White House and calling everyone and getting—Clark Clifford was the one person they found who they thought the others would trust—and sending him up to negotiate and which person would back out. It was the man—I met him the other day.

From Chicago.

Was it Laughlin?
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Or whichever company first broke, and he was at the Library dinner for Jack. Oh, and then I remember Bobby saying to me later, November, that—Remember how it said in the press that the FBI got sent into everybody's home at night or something—the reporters—