Most of the time he discussed the Look serialization and the political problems it might create for him, since the whole country knew that the work bore the Kennedy imprimatur. I told him I thought that aspect of the manuscript of it had been grossly exaggerated—that Johnson did not come off nearly as badly as he had been told—and I reminded him that in my foreword I would say that the author alone was answerable for the text. Beyond that I could not go. The issue of expediency had nothing to do with me; if I permitted myself to be drawn into an analysis of it, I would be lost. Lacking a pool in which to immerse myself, I took refuge in protracted silences. (“Bill,” Bob said at one point with a grin, “you have the vagueness of genius.”)
Since he hadn’t read the book, he said, it was hard for him to assess the impact of individual passages—I thought that the understatement of the afternoon—but on the advice of his readers he was dividing proposed changes into two categories. The first were frankly political. At Twenty-One the unanimous verdict of his advisers had been that Look’s third installment “will injure both Johnson and me,” he said, “but apparently it’s factually correct and a contribution to history. I’d like you to change it, but I guess you won’t.” I said I couldn’t. He nodded, accepting it. The second category was personal changes, matters which might be considered an intrusion on Jackie’s privacy. He had to insist that I make these. I replied that I would weigh each carefully, but he had to remember that some Look parts had already closed, and that the entire manuscript had already been screened by his designated readers, by four subordinate editors at Harper’s, by Schlesinger, and by Goodwin himself—all on the outlook for breaches of good taste. He nodded again and said softly, “I know. We haven’t handled this very well.”
Before leaving the pool we agreed that Goodwin would mark suggestions for political changes on the galleys with squares or rectangles; personal changes would be circled. I also told Bob that during the previous month I had checked Harper’s production schedule and had established a timetable for final review of the book’s page proofs. Evan would send two sets to Middletown on October 25. They would be due back in New York on November 10, which would give both of us two weeks to go through the entire text for the last time. Then we walked up to the house for dinner. I remember that meal, my last at Hickory Hill, very well. The topic of the evening was evolution. Although the children attended parochial school, their mother now learned, they were not taught to take everything in the Old Testament literally. Ethel was scandalized. Adam, Eve, Noah, the Ark—they were all real to her, and she couldn’t imagine what the Church was coming to, allowing Sisters to teach such heresy. All the way home to Hartford on Eastern flight 522, Dick and I marveled at Ethel’s inner certitude. In the morning I dictated sixteen “personal” changes to Look; the editors said they would make them if they could, and as it turned out, they could and did.
All this sounds more amiable than it really was. On the surface we were outgoing and pleasant, but the disagreements of that summer had left deep scars underneath. Newspapers and newsmagazines did not help. Several times a week “informed sources” purported to divulge information from the book, often in a way calculated to offend men and women in public life. Absurd canards were floated: that Jackie had offered me $3,000,000 to suppress the book, that Dell was paying $1,000,000 for paperback rights, that a Bobby-for-President campaign would be launched on publication day. My phone rang at all hours; total strangers appeared at my door to discuss their theories of the assassination.
In such an atmosphere I found it impossible to write. This was a real problem, far graver than most laymen would suppose. “Writing does for H. L. Mencken what giving milk does for a cow,” said Mencken, and all natural writers know what he meant. I needed to resume work on my Krupp manuscript, so I decided that after The Death of a President galleys had been locked up in mid-November, I would spend a month in London. I had friends in England, there was Krupp research material there; the plan seemed sensible. I reserved a cabin-class stateroom on the Queen Mary for Wednesday, November 16. The night before I sailed my wife and I would stay in the Look suite at the Berkshire Hotel. Only a handful of friends and associates knew of my plans. One of them was Evan Thomas.
It says much about the fog of suspicion which had enveloped all of us in the controversy that I said nothing of this to Goodwin, and it says more that Dick didn’t tell me that he himself would spend late October and early November—when he was supposed to be reviewing the book’s page proofs—at a cultural conference in Europe. Certainly there was no mention of it on the evening of October 18, when he phoned me from New York and put Bobby on the line. Bob was troubled. He wanted me to come to his Manhattan apartment and discuss drastic new revisions in the Look proofs. Look, he had heard, was sensationalizing everything. As he understood it, there was a detailed account of President and Mrs. Kennedy going to bed together. I said this was utter nonsense, that there had been no such account in any of my drafts, and that Goodwin knew it. Would I come to his apartment anyway? Bobby asked. I declined. There would, I said, be no point in it. Doors were starting to close; I had just closed one myself.
The following week I delivered a complete set of proofs for The Death of a President to Dick’s office. Clipped to them was this note:
October 25, 1966
Dear Dick:
As promised in September, I’m enclosing a set of uncorrected galleys of the book. This is the text which was approved by Bob after four months of editing (from March 26 to July 29). I must put my final corrections in the mail to Evan on the morning of November 10, two weeks from this coming Thursday. I’ll be grateful if you’ll let me have your comments before then.
Faithfully,
BILL
Dick never acknowledged receipt of the galleys, but two days later I telephoned his office, and a secretary assured me that he had stopped in and picked them up. On November 10, the day before the corrected proofs were due on Evan’s desk, I learned that Dick was in Italy; he was expected back later in the week. I promptly mailed my own set of corrected proofs to New York, reminding Evan of our most recent agreement—“If the author had heard nothing from Goodwin in two weeks he will write publisher and advise him to proceed with the book”—and added:
I think we must move ahead. You and I have been at this now for seven and a half months. We have benefited from the wisdom and judgment of John Seigenthaler, Ed Guthman, Arthur Schlesinger, and others. We certainly haven’t spared ourselves. Indeed, though neither of us could be called quick-tempered or irrational, we have at times tried one another’s patience. Yet it has all been in a good cause: the book. No one can charge us with having been mean, or petty, or ungenerous. We have listened to all advocates, and I needn’t remind you that we have put up with certain abuse which we—who never sought this task—did not deserve. But that is past. The future begins when you put down this letter. Then we can move ahead to give this country the most moving historical document of our time. Knowing that, and we do know it, the welts and bruises not only become endurable; they become insignificant.
Four days later I wrote Dick: “It’s been nearly three weeks since I left the galleys for you with Barbara Satton; Harper’s production schedule has come and gone, and not having heard from you I’ve assumed that you had no further comments or suggested changes.” I added a postscript: “I tried to reach you by phone, but Tania Senff said you were in Washington.”
It seemed to me that I had fulfilled all my obligations to the Kennedys and then some. I was run-down, had caught a miserable cold which I couldn’t seem to shake, and felt more than ready for a restorative sea voyage. The day after leaving that last letter to Goodwin at his office, my wife and I drove to New York, left my baggage at the Queen Mary’s pier, and registered at the Berkshire, using an assumed name to thwart snoops. Before we could ride up to suite 1704, however, a surprise Awalted me in the lobby. It was Evan Thomas, bearing another set of page proofs and thirty demands for new changes from Pam and Seigentha
ler.
Evan proposed that I spend the evening studying them. But that wasn’t possible; my wife and I were to be guests of honor at a cocktail party, followed by dinner with the Congdons and an English friend and then a jazz concert. Moreover, fresh suggestions at this point required a review of the entire text. Evan was insistent that I review the Turnure-Seigenthaler memoranda before boarding ship, so I reluctantly agreed to sacrifice a night’s sleep. After the concert I would sit up till daybreak examining the new material. I suggested we breakfast in the hotel dining room at 7:30 A.M. He said he would be there then.
It was an exhilarating evening, only slightly diminished by the prospect of the long night ahead of me. Ella Fitzgerald was the star of the concert, and her haunting voice was still running through my mind when, a few minutes after midnight, I sat down at the desk in suite 1704s living room and uncapped my fountain pen. Both of the suite’s bedrooms were occupied; my wife was in one and Bob Jones, the gentle editor of Family Circle, a Cowles publication, was in the other. Anxious not to waken them, I worked quietly, almost stealthily, with the tools of my trade: pen, pencils, erasers, galleys, memos. I finished going over the entire book for the last time at seven o’clock exactly, showered, dressed for my voyage, and rode down to the dining room, where I handed the fruits of the night’s work to Evan. Patting a dispatch case, he said he had brought me endpaper sketches and a memo from Harriet Pilpel—“Suggestions for more legal changes,” he said; “You can go over them on the boat and cable me your decisions.”
At that hour we were the only two breakfasters. But presently we had company. Two men entered and sat down at our table. Looking up from my menu, I saw that they were Dick Goodwin and Burke Marshall.
“Well,” said Dick, with monstrous geniality, “it looks as if we’ll all be sailing on the Queen Mary.”
Stunned and outraged, I hissed: “What are you doing here?”
Burke said, “Jackie must have your assurance that you will make all the changes she wants.”
I didn’t know what to say. I was too weary for negotiations, and I felt that this was an intolerable intrusion, but I didn’t want to be rude to Burke. I liked and admired him. As a hero of the civil rights struggle, he had a special place in the Kennedy pantheon. I also knew that only a Kennedy could have persuaded him to come here under these circumstances.
“If Mike Cowles agrees to new changes, will you approve?” Burke asked. I assented, and he said, “Will you associate yourself with requests for other changes?” I looked away. It was an old story with the Kennedy team: you made one concession and instantly you were pressed to make others. When it became clear that I wasn’t going to respond, Burke said, “Do you want me to go back and tell her you won’t do this for her?”
I turned to Goodwin. “You’ve had those proofs for nearly three weeks,” I said. “Have you read them?”
He shook his head. Abruptly I stood up. I said, “I’ve been working all night. I’m very tired, I can’t cope with this now, and I think you’re trespassing beyond the borders of decency.” To Evan I said, “Bring your sketches up to the suite.” I walked out rapidly. He hurried behind.
In the elevator he said shakily, “I didn’t betray you!”
Until then it hadn’t occurred to me that I had been betrayed by anyone. Now I turned and said, “You, me, and my wife were the only people who knew you and I were going to have breakfast together—where we were going to have it, when we were going to have it.”
“I didn’t betray you!” he said again, very agitated.
He was still trembling when we sat on the suite’s living room sofa and began going over the endpapers. We were just finishing when the doorbell rang. We stared at each other. The bell rang again, then again, and then a voice called, “Bill, are you in there?”
It was Bobby.
“Bill, I know you’re in there!”
In a hoarse whisper Evan repeated once more, “I didn’t betray you!”
Now Bobby was pounding on the door with his fist and shouting, “Bill, Bill, I know you’re in there!”
Evan said, “You have to see him.”
“The hell I do,” I said. “I didn’t invite him, and I have nothing to say to him. Do you really think a former Attorney General of the United States is going to break down a door?”
For awhile it seemed a possibility. The noise of the hammering was appalling. My wife was cowering under her bedclothes. And Bob Jones, in the other bedroom, had a problem: he had to go to work. After greeting Evan and me—we both sat rigid and unspeaking—Jones answered the door. He said to Jones: “Ask him if he wants to see us. Just ask him that.” Jones, who must have thought he was surrounded by lunatics, returned and asked me. I said I didn’t, that I wanted to talk to a lawyer. Jones relayed the message and went off to his office. Presently the footsteps of the others died away and Evan left. I phoned my agent, who called a lawyer, whose advice was: “Get Manchester on that ship as soon as possible.” After saying good-bye to my wife—and explaining as best I could what had been happening—I walked to Don’s office.
By now a nervous reaction had begun to set in, and at the urging of one of Don’s secretaries I did something I have never done before or since: I drank a tumbler of neat whiskey. I didn’t feel a thing, but Don felt that he should accompany me to the Queen Mary. He left me at the bottom of the gangplank. We both thought I was safe there, and we were both wrong; when I reached the deck I found myself face-to-face with a CBS camera crew and Bob Trout, who wanted to ask me a few questions about the book. Sleepless and full of alcohol, it is a wonder I didn’t disgrace myself. A month later, when there was a greater demand for footage of me and I was refusing to cooperate, CBS ran that sequence several times. I saw it twice, marveling that I had actually sounded coherent, even fit.
It was an illusion. In my stateroom I was seized by a paroxysm of sneezing; overnight my cold had become aggravated. Unpacking my Krupp documents, I set up my typewriter and went to the porthole for a farewell look at the Statue of Liberty. At last, at last, I would have a few weeks of peace.
***
That, too, was illusion. Trout had been aboard because he was a fellow passenger, and he had other questions for me. Then there was the ship telephone. It had been nearly fourteen years since my last voyage on the Queen Mary, and I didn’t realize how much ship-to-shore communications had improved. Calls kept coming in from New York newspapermen and, after we reached mid-Atlantic, from British journalists. By then I was taking evasive action. I refused to come to the phone, and when the Cunard purser warned me that a delegation from the English press planned to meet me in Southampton, I persuaded him to smuggle me ashore and arrange a private car for the drive to London. I also cabled the management of my Mayfair hotel, the Connaught, instructing it to respond to all questions about me by denying that I would be a guest there. London hoteliers are skillful at protecting the privacy of their lodgers, and only two inquiries penetrated the Connaught’s screen. They were, curiously, from total strangers, George Raft and the manager of London’s Playboy Club, both of whom wanted to entertain me.
Writing was impracticable—I was overwrought, my cold grew steadily worse, and there were daily conferences with my British publisher’s solicitor, who had special problems with The Death of a President because of English law—but I was able to organize four chapters on Krupp’s use of slave labor during the Third Reich. My room looked out on Carlos Place, about halfway between Berkeley Square and Grosvenor Square. Each afternoon at 3:30 I would glance out and watch the street lamps come on, marveling at the density of the fog and wondering how the weather can get so cold in London yet not snow.
Twice I had visitors from New York. Abandoning hope of persuading me to force changes in the proofs, bowdlerizers of the text were reversing their tactics and approaching the publishers directly. On November 22, precisely three years after the assassination, Mike Land of Look arrived with a list of eight changes requested by Goodwin and endorsed by Mike Cowles. All wer
e acceptable, but I was apprehensive; I remembered Bobby’s plan to turn revision into a hemorrhaging of the text (to “shred and emasculate it”), and I made my agreement to the modifications provisional upon Look’s signing an agreement promising that the magazine would not ask me to make any further alterations. After phoning New York for authorization, Mike secured Look’s consent. Our memorandum of understanding specified: “William Manchester has examined all the suggested changes in the Look serialization presented to him by Mike Land today. Manchester has accepted all the suggestions and initialed all the changes, with the understanding that Look will present no further suggestions and that the present text, as approved by Manchester and Land, is final and subject to no further change.” With that, the magazine serialization seemed to be locked up.
Eight days later, on November 30, Evan Thomas and Cass Canfield met me in the office of my British author’s representative, seventy-four-year-old A. D. Peters, the Pickwickian doyen of London literary agents and a figure of massive integrity. “Peter,” as the world of letters knew him, had been professionally acquainted with Cass for over forty years. Peter’s Buckingham Street building, which always seemed to me to be symbolic of him, had been the home in which Samuel Pepys had kept his diary three centuries earlier. Peter had known virtually every major British writer since Galsworthy—his early clients had included Hilaire Belloc, Rebecca West, J. B. Priestly, and Evelyn Waugh, whose lifelong friend he had become—and there was little in publishing which could surprise him. He merely inclined his great head once, in a nod of acknowledgment, when Cass said they had brought a fresh set of galleys, marked up by Evan on instructions in a Goodwin memo, and a personal letter to me from Jackie, dated November 28. Peter and I read the letter together. Although she still had not read the book (here Peter arched a white eyebrow), Dick had again gone over it for her, she said, indicating changes which “all touch upon things of a personal nature that I cannot bear to be made public. There are many others, I know, but these are all of that sort and they are absolutely necessary to me and my children.” She concluded: “I cannot believe that you will not do this much.”
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