Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life With John F. Kennedy (50 page)

67
. In his memoirs, Khrushchev recalled, "Obviously she was quick of tongue or, as the Ukrainians say, she had a sharp tongue in her head. . . . Don't mix it up with her; she'll cut you down to size."

68
. As Khrushchev loved to boast, the Soviet Union's space program in 1961 was ahead of America's.

69
. A
NDREI
G
ROMYKO
(1909–1989), the severe Soviet foreign minister, fouled his relationship with JFK in October 1962 by denying to his face in the Oval Office that the Soviets had placed missiles in Cuba.

70
. This was in October 1961, during a conversation in the White House family quarters, in which JFK deflected Gromyko's bargaining attempts on West Berlin by saying, "You're offering to trade us an apple for an orchard. We don't do that in this country."

71
. R
ACHEL
"
BUNNY
" M
ELLON
(1910–), a pharmaceuticals heiress and second wife of the philanthropist and arts patron Paul Mellon (1907–1999), was Jacqueline's close friend. Mellon served on her Fine Arts Committee and advised her on the restoration, the remaking of the White House gardens—she and JFK collaborated on the transformation of the Rose Garden into a tree-edged setting for outdoor ceremonies—and, ultimately, President Kennedy's Arlington gravesite.

72
. The British prime minister made his first White House visit to Kennedy in April 1961.

73
. D
AVID
O
RMSBY-GORE
(1918–1985) was British ambassador to Washington during the Kennedy years. A descendant of the Tory hero and British prime minister Lord Salisbury (1830–1903), he had known JFK since before World War II, when Joseph Kennedy served in prewar London. Ormsby-Gore was related by marriage to both Kennedy and Macmillan. As a Conservative member of Parliament, Ormsby-Gore had sporadically discussed disarmament with JFK throughout the 1950s. Both he and Macmillan pushed the President to fight hard for a comprehensive test ban treaty that would reduce the harshness of the Cold War arms race. (After his father's death in 1964, Ormsby-Gore became Lord Harlech.)

74
. In October 1963, suffering from a prostate ailment, Macmillan resigned. His defense minister, John Profumo, had recently been embroiled in a sex and espionage scandal that tarnished the Macmillan government's reputation. Friends speculated that the ordeal might have led to Macmillan's malady, or that he was grateful to use the excuse of ill health to resign a job that had abruptly became unpleasant for him.

75
. H
UGH
G
AITSKELL
(1906–1963) and Harold Wilson (1916–1995) were leaders of the Labour party opposition to Macmillan.

76
. During Mrs. Kennedy's official visit to India, accompanied by her sister, in March 1962.

77
. W
ARREN
H
ASTINGS
(1732–1818) was Britain's first governor-general of India. Charles James Fox (1749–1806) was a Whig political leader and the scourge of King George III, whom he considered a tyrant, which led Fox to support the American Revolution against him.

78
. H
UGH
F
RASER
(1918–1984) and Anthony St. Clair-Erskine, 6th Earl of Rosslyn (1917–1977), both served as postwar members of Parliament.

79
. W
ILLIAM
D
OUGLAS-HOME
(1912–1992) was a playwright who ran unsuccessfully for Parliament during World War II, stating his opposition to Winston Churchill's insistence that the struggle be fought until Germany surrendered unconditionally. His brother Alec (1903–1995), who was Macmillan's foreign secretary, succeeded him as prime minister in October 1963.

80
. Douglas-Home had written the plays
The Reluctant Debutante
and
The Reluctant Peer
.

81
. Nine days before his death, the President and his family witnessed a performance on the White House South Grounds by pipers of the Scottish Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment). The Scotsmen were later asked by Mrs. Kennedy to perform in her husband's funeral ceremonies.

82
. G
IOVANNI
A
GNELLI
(1921–2003) was chief of his family's automobile firm, Fiat.

83
. A
RISTOTLE
O
NASSIS
(1906–1975) based his family, business, and yacht
Christina
in Monaco in the late 1950s and was frequently host to the aged Churchill and his wife Clementine. The Kennedys actually met Churchill aboard Onassis's yacht during both the summers of 1955 and 1959.

84
. K
ONRAD
A
DENAUER
(1876–1967) was the first chancellor of postwar West Germany, retiring in 1963. JFK's admiration for Adenauer's role in building German democracy was tempered by his annoyance at Adenauer's ceaseless demands that the United States demonstrate its commitment to defend West Berlin from Communist threat.

85
. W
ILHELM
G
REWE
(1911–2000) was Adenauer's Washington envoy. The Pakistani diplomat was Aziz Ahmed (1906–1982).

86
. J
OHN
D
IEFENBAKER
(1895–1979) was the Conservative prime minister of Canada when the Kennedys made their first official foreign visit there in May 1961. During their talks, the prime minister could not disguise his low opinion of the informal, young new President. Allegedly one of the Americans accidentally left behind a document, written by Kennedy's aide Walt Rostow, on which the President had casually scribbled his view that the fusty Diefenbaker was an "S.O.B.," and which urged an effort to "push" the Canadians on various subjects. (During the trip, Kennedy also badly reinjured his back while planting a ceremonial tree.) The following year, JFK further antagonized Diefenbaker by inviting the leader of his opposition, the Liberal party's Lester Pearson, whom Kennedy had known during his tenure as ambassador in Washington, to a White House dinner and seeing Pearson privately for a half hour. While campaigning for reelection, Diefenbaker tried to shake the Americans' obvious preference for Pearson's party by threatening to release the offending memorandum of 1961, warning that "all Canadians" would resent the evidence of American lordliness. JFK ordered his envoy in Ottawa to stand up to Diefenbaker. He later denied to Ben Bradlee that he had written "S.O.B." on any paper and wondered aloud why Diefenbaker hadn't done "what any normal, friendly government would do . . . make a photostatic copy, and return the original." (To the President's delight, Diefenbaker's party lost.)

87
. C
HARLES
A
UBREY SMITH
(1863–1948) was a British actor and stereotypical Englishman, who looked like Georges Vanier.

88
. This was in May 1960, when de Gaulle came to Washington as Eisenhower's guest.

89
. Referring to the Kennedys' triumphal reception in France when they were received by de Gaulle for a state visit in May 1961, before the Vienna summit with Khrushchev.

90
. De Gaulle's efforts to distance France from NATO and the United States in order to demonstrate French singularity and grandeur.

91
. A
NDRé
M
ALRAUX
(1901–1976), art historian, novelist, and brave hero of the French Resistance during World War II, was de Gaulle's minister of culture. His 1938 novel
L'Espoir (Man's Hope)
was based on his experience fighting alongside anti-fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War. "For the most part," Malraux once wrote, "man is what he hides." Jacqueline had read Malraux's books closely and was drawn to his life story, humanist sympathies, mastery of cultural history, and his belief that the arts and architecture could elevate a society ("the sum," he had written, "of all the forms of art, of love, and of thought, which, in the course of centuries, have enabled man to be less enslaved"). She asked to meet Malraux during the state visit to Paris and hear him speak about some of the paintings she most admired.

92
. Jacqueline had sent word that in his grief, Malraux need not bother with her, but he insisted on keeping his commitment to be her host, which touched her deeply. At the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, the great French museum, Malraux stood before canvases by Manet, Renoir, and Cézanne and reacted to them. He had also had Bouguereau's
The Birth of Venus
moved beside Manet's
Olympia
so that Mrs. Kennedy could view the two nudes in juxtaposition. During their visit to the Château de Malmaison, which had been restored by Napoleon's Empress Josephine and served as the seat of French government from 1800 to 1802, he lectured her about the turbulent Bonaparte marriage. "What a destiny!" said Jacqueline. After touring the house and its famous rose garden, she felt newly inspired in her efforts to improve the White House and its grounds, which benefited from her knowledge of French literature, history, and art. Her instant intellectual communion with Malraux led to a correspondence by diplomatic pouch. In April 1962, she happily showed him through the National Gallery in Washington and, along with the President, honored him at a dinner for the Western Hemisphere's Nobel laureates, which JFK, in his toast, pronounced the most extraordinary White House gathering of talent since Jefferson had dined there alone. During the gallery tour, Jacqueline suggested an American visit by the
Mona Lisa
, which rarely left the Louvre. With the assent of de Gaulle, who was willing to make a friendly gesture toward Kennedy if it required no relinquishment of French political power, Malraux defied the Paris arts bureaucracy and arranged "a personal loan" of the
Mona Lisa
(which he considered "the subtlest homage genius has paid to a living face") to the President and Jacqueline. In January 1963, the Kennedys welcomed Malraux and his wife to the National Gallery for the unveiling. A million and a half people viewed the painting in Washington and the Metropolitan Museum in New York. That November, on hearing of the President's assassination, Malraux cabled the First Lady, "Nous pensons a vous et nous sommes si tristes" ("We think of you and we are so sad"). When Malraux published his autobiography,
Anti-Memoirs
, in 1968, he dedicated it to Jacqueline.

93
. Referring to Glen Ora, where the Kennedys gave Malraux and his wife a Sunday champagne brunch.

94
. I
RWIN
S
HAW
(1913–1984) was an American novelist, whose first book was
The Young Lions
. The Maquis were guerrillas of the French Resistance, mainly in the countryside.

95
. H
ERVé
A
LPHAND
(1907–1994) was French ambassador to Washington, much aided by his wife Nicole (1917–1979).

96
. R
ICHARD
G
OODWIN
(1931– ), a former law clerk under Justice Felix Frankfurter, had worked for JFK since 1959 as campaign speechwriter, assistant special counsel, and diplomat, and was slated in November 1963 to replace August Heckscher (1913–1997) as the President's chief adviser on the arts. While in Paris, Jacqueline had consulted Malraux about the possibility of creating an American counterpart to Malraux's culture ministry and "what was realistic" to expect.

1
. Since 1958, Khrushchev had been issuing deadlines and using other tactics in an effort to force the United States and other Western powers out of West Berlin.

2
. Adenauer stepped down as chancellor in October 1963.

3
. JFK's television speech from the Oval Office on the Berlin crisis of July 25, 1961, in which he announced a defense budget increase and call-ups of American reservists.

4
. The President's exact words were these: "I hear it said that West Berlin is militarily untenable. And so was Bastogne. And so, in fact, was Stalingrad. Any dangerous spot is tenable if men—brave men—will make it so."

5
. Referring to Eisenhower's often intractable secretary of state, John Foster Dulles (1888–1959).

6
. "Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate"—an admonition contributed to the speech by Galbraith.

7
. Notably after the missile crisis, when Kennedy ordered his aides not to crow about the apparent American victory, explaining that if Khrushchev felt embarrassed, the Russian might feel compelled to launch some other gambit that might take the world to the edge of destruction. The President also knew that his private settlement with Khrushchev was less clear-cut than the public impression that he had managed to win the Soviet leader's unconditional surrender. In fact, Khrushchev had made a tacit deal with Kennedy to remove the missiles if the President would force the withdrawal of (outmoded) NATO missiles from Turkey and (on condition that Castro would permit on-site inspections of his military installations, which he never did) pledge never to authorize a U.S. invasion of Cuba.