Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life With John F. Kennedy (9 page)

W
e ended up, I think, last time talking about the Senate, in which the President was reelected by this great majority and which, for the first time, made him sort of nationally spoken of as a possible contender for 1960. Did that—was it already—was that becoming, a kind of, do you think, a preoccupation in his own life, and yours and so on? Was everything sort of directed more and more to that?

Do you mean to being president?

Yeah.

Well, it was never spoken of out loud, but after election night in Boston
¹
—I think we went somewhere in the sun or sometime, but then he started speaking all the time. Again, all those years before the White House—every weekend he was always traveling. You know, invitations from all over the country—and then they led up to the primaries, which were what, just
1960
?

Nineteen-sixty.

It seems the thing went on forever.

During these times when he was out, like the 1958 campaign and so on, how did—he kept up reading and so on. How and when did he do that?

Well, he read in the strangest way. I mean, I could never read unless I'd have a rainy afternoon or a long evening in bed, or something. He'd read walking, he'd read at the table, at meals, he'd read after dinner, he'd read in the bathtub, he'd read—prop open a book on his desk—on his bureau—while he was doing his tie. You know, he'd just read in little, he'd open some book I'd be reading, you know, just devour it. He really read all the times you don't think you have time to read.

READING IN HYANNIS PORT, 1959
©2000 Mark Shaw/mptvimages.com

He'd read in short takes, and then remember it and come back and pick up a thread?

Anything he wanted to remember, he could always remember. You'd see things he'd use in his speeches. You'd be sitting next to him on some platform, and suddenly out would come a sentence that two weeks ago in Georgetown he would have read out loud to you one night, just because it interested him.

He had the most fantastic and maddening memory for quotes, because—while he remembered the quotes, but he couldn't always remember where they were from.

I remember the winter he was sick. His father had a whole shelf of books—
The World's Great Orations
or something that his father had given him and he'd read every single one of those books, and then I made—I asked his father to give them to him for Christmas, which, of course, he was delighted to do. But he'd been through every one of those. And he used to read me Edmund Burke's "To the"—what is it?

The address to—

"To the People of—"

Bristol.
²

That's it, and well, all things through there, you know, he just—of course, that was a different winter. He'd just have days and days in bed to go through all that.

You gather he'd done this as a child—been a great reader?

Yes, I know he'd read
Marlborough
³
when he was about ten or eleven, because in his room at the Cape, which he's had since he was a boy, those books were in a little bookshelf by his bed—all old, sort of mauve backs. And he was always sick and in bed. He had scarlet fever. Then one year, he had some—either asthma or blood trouble—anemia or something, when he went out to Arizona.

That was when he left Princeton.
⁴

Yeah. Then there was another summer—you know, he'd always been reading—all these things—and he used to give me books when we were going out before we were married. I remember the first one he gave me was Sam Houston by Marquis James—
The Raven
. Then he'd give me John Buchan—
Pilgrim's Way
—lots of John Buchan.
⁵
But he was just always reading, practically while driving a car.

Would he ever read novels besides thrillers?

Listen, the only thrillers he ever read were about three Ian Fleming books. No, I never saw him read a novel.

Did he really like Ian Fleming much, or was that sort of a press—

Oh, well, it was sort of a press thing, because when they asked him his ten favorite books, he sort of made up a list, and he put in one sort of novel. You know, he liked Ian Fleming
⁶
—I mean, if you were in a plane or you're in a hotel room and there's three books on your bedside table—I mean, he'd sometimes grab something that way. There was one book he gave me to read—something about "time"—it was a novel where someone goes back in the eighteenth century and uncovers a mystery.
⁷
It was just a paperback book he'd found in some plane or something—the last two books he told me to read this fall—he was reading
The Fall of the Dynasties
⁸
and—

Edmond Taylor.

And
Patriotic Gore
⁹
he kept telling me to read—neither of which I've gotten around to.

Patriotic Gore,
particularly, is a marvelous book.

I still haven't read it. But you know, he was reading all that in the White House, and I was growing illiterate there.

It is a matter of constant mystery, because he was surrounded by all these academics who supposedly read books all the time. None of us ever had time to read books, and he would say in a slightly accusatory way—ask us about books that had recently come out that none of us had read.

Every Sunday, he'd rip three pages out of the
Times
book section, with an "x" around what I was to get. You know, it'd be rather interesting to look over my bills from the Savile Book Shop, because all these things I'd order that Jack would say to get. And you know, on the weekends all the time, he'd be reading—

It would be fascinating. Are the bills somewhere?

I have all the bills. I suppose they're—and Savile Book Shop has a list. What else would he— For instance, at Camp David sometimes, if it was a rainy day or something, he'd stay in bed in the afternoon. Well, he'd go through two books.

He read very fast.

Yeah.

He did at one time take a fast-reading course. Did that make any difference?
¹⁰

Well, that was so funny, because it was about like this tape recorder. Bobby came down with—Bobby had been over to Baltimore and gotten all this equipment with a little card you put in and the line runs down it. Well, we did it about once. You know, you're meant to speed up and answer questions about three crows—how many crows in the cabbage patch, or something. I think we did it twice one Christmas vacation in Florida, and then stopped. So he never really did that.

It was mostly history and biography.

Yeah.

Why not novels, do you suppose?

I think he was always looking for something in books—he was looking for something about history, or something for a quote, or what. Oh, at Glen Ora, he was reading Mao Tse-tung, and he was quoting that to me.
¹¹

On guerrilla warfare?

Yeah. Then we started to make up all these little parables like "When an Army drinks, not it is thirsty," or something. He got terribly funny about it. But, you know, I think he was looking for something in his reading. He wasn't just reading for diversion. He didn't want to waste a single second.

Poetry the same—therefore wasn't—wouldn't read much. Would he read things you liked a lot?

Yes, he'd—this summer I was reading the Maréchal de Saxe.
¹²
I remember General Taylor
¹³
came out on the
Honey Fitz
¹⁴
and I was asking him all about Saxe's battles. He was in Blenheim and everything, and I told Jack what General Taylor said about him. I was halfway through that book, and Jack took it away from me, and read the whole thing. You know, if I'd ever say anything interesting in a book I was reading, he'd take it away and read it.

How about the theater?

Reading plays or going to them?

Going to them.

Well, we never had much time. When we were in New York, we'd go to a play once in a while, but he always liked light plays. You know, he wanted to sort of relax. He would rather go to a musical comedy or something than something heavy. But we used to play—when you say poetry—he didn't really read poetry—well, he loved to read sometimes Byron, you know, whatever was around he'd pick and read—bits of Shakespeare. But we had a John Gielgud record that we used to play over and over—"The Ages of Man"
¹⁵
or something. And then we had one this fall—what was it? Maybe it was Richard Burton—I don't know. He liked to play them sometimes at night. You know, when you'd be in bed you'd play records sometimes.

Mostly it was rather British history than American history. I have the impression—British and European history, is that right?

Yes, there was a lot of Civil War—was what interested him in American history. But there wasn't so much American history, really. Then I took a course on it one year by a fascinating man, who—I got to do some research for him later, Dr. Jules Davids.
¹⁶
But when I'd come home all excited—what I'd learned about the trustbusters or something, it really didn't seem to interest him too much. He really was—it was British, really. He was sort of a Whig, wasn't he?
¹⁷

He was. And was this the result of the time that he spent there when his father was ambassador? Did that sort of give him a—was it before that? It's an odd thing.

No, because he really spent very little time there, when you think he was finishing at Harvard, and he spent—what, maybe a summer, and his term or so at the London School of Economics. No, it was all his childhood—what he picked to read. You know, I keep saying
Marlborough
, but there were others which—well, I have all his books, that he always had, so when I get them out of crates, I just know—His mother can tell you some things about him—reading when he was six, asking some question—or seven, I guess. You know, some grown-up book that he'd found. It was just—I think his childhood reading.

Reading
Marlborough
at the age of ten for example. So Churchill was always—at the end, a figure of meaning—

I think
Marlborough
was more than Churchill. I think he found his heroes more in the past. I really don't think he admired—well, of course, he admired Churchill and he wanted to meet him. We did meet him one summer in the South of France but the poor man was rather, you know, a little bit gone by then. But he never had a hero worship of any contemporary—it was more in the past. What did he say once about the presidency? "These things have always been done by men, and they can be done now," when his father said, "Why do you want to run for president?" I'm not saying that he thought he was as great as Churchill, but he could see that he was up to coping with things and the failures of so many men who were alive now—and their shortcomings. So, he was really looking for lessons in the past from history, but he did—no, you're right—he did admire Churchill's prose, and he read all those memoirs that came out.