Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life With John F. Kennedy

by Caroline Kennedy

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

  Yes, I know he'd read Marlborough3 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 Fleming6—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 Dynasties8 and—

  Edmond Taylor.

  And Patriotic Gore9 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 Taylor13 came out on the Honey Fitz14 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.

  I think that's right. I think he really sought—it was Churchill as a writer, more than—I mean, he admired Churchill as a statesman, but it was Churchill as a writer which really excited him and piqued his curiosity.

  And I can remember him reading me out loud two things from that—the part where he describes the court of Charles II, which is wonderful sort of seraglio prose and e
verything—and then how he describes the civil war.18 You know, he'd be reading, and he'd read aloud a lot.

  Anyone in the American past whom he was particularly interested in? Hamilton, Jefferson, Jackson?

  Well, Jefferson, I guess, and the one letter he wanted to buy so badly, but it was too expensive, and I was going to try and find and give it to him last Christmas was a letter that came up of Jefferson's, where he'd asked for four more gardeners for Monticello, but he wanted to be sure they knew how to play the violin, so that he could have chamber music concerts in the evening. That letter had come up at Parke-Bernet, and it would have been $6,000 or something, so he hadn't bid on it. You know, Webster.19 He read all their things. I suppose Jefferson, really.20

  What about—did he ever—Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson, FDR—?

  Oh, then he was reading a book about Theodore Roosevelt this summer or winter.

  Noel Busch—Alice Longworth21 gave it to him.

  Yeah, and he was saying to me, "Listen to how fatuous Teddy Roosevelt was," and he'd, "Look how—" and then he'd describe several—read me several things where Roosevelt describes what he does. Always in a sort of throwaway way—"And then I marched up San Juan Hill and killed five natives" —and rather apologetic about it. I think he saw through a lot of Theodore Roosevelt. Though he admired him too. But he read everything that came out by everyone.

  What did he think of FDR? Did he ever know him at all?

  Well, they all met him, because I remember Mrs. Kennedy telling me that I should think of all the children in the cabinet, because how nice President Roosevelt and Mrs. Roosevelt had been—all the Kennedy children met the Roosevelts.22 But I don't think he thought he was any—he often thought he was rather a—charlatan is an unfair word—you know what I mean—a bit of a poseur, rather cleverly.23 You know, that he did an awful lot for effect, and then he used to get furious—not furious, but irritated when people would tell him he should have fireside chats and things, and he found out how many Roosevelt had, which was something like—you know, very—

  Thirteen or fourteen the whole time. I got the figures up for him.24

  Yeah. Of course, he was interested in Roosevelt. He didn't have any—he wasn't patterning himself on him, or anything.

  He didn't pattern himself on—

  On anyone. I remember him telling me the time where Wilson had been wrong, or what their mistakes were, or how—but you know, all with hindsight. He was never arrogant. He just seemed to devour all of them and then, I suppose, it sifted around and came out—he used them all. That's what he did.

  Now it always seemed to me quite extraordinary. Here are three men who lived about the same time—Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joseph P. Kennedy, of whom the first two were in one sense or another great men and the third was a very successful man, a very talented man, but not a great man. And yet the children of Churchill and the children of Roosevelt have all been—in many cases, bright and talented, but somehow it all missed fire. And the Kennedy children have this extraordinary discipline.

  I really think you have to give a lot of that credit to Mr. Kennedy, because Jack used to talk about that a lot. You know, he bent over backwards. When his children were doing something, he wrote them letters endlessly. Whenever they were doing anything important at school, he'd be there for it. The way he'd talk at the table. If you just go on being a great man, and your children are sort of shunted aside, you know—he watched—I always thought he was the tiger mother. And Mrs. Kennedy,25 poor little thing, was running around, trying to keep up with this demon of energy, seeing if she had enough placemats in Palm Beach, or should she send the ones from Bronxville, or had she put the London ones in storage. You know, that's what—her little mind went to pieces, and it's Mr. Kennedy who—and she loves to say now how she sat around the table and talked to them about Plymouth Rock and molded their minds, but she was really saying, "Children, don't disturb your father!" He did all—he made this conscious effort about the family, and I don't think those other two men did. Oh, one other thing Jack told me about Roosevelt was how his foreign policy had been wrong and how he hadn't been good there—the mistakes he'd made there. I remember asking him once—

  AMBASSADOR KENNEDY WITH JOE, BOBBY, AND JACK, 1938

  John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston

  In relation to the Soviet Union, I suppose.

  I guess so, yeah. And how he underestimated or misestimated—whatever the word is—you know, the men he was dealing with. But perfectly, you know, just looking at it.

  He had a great detachment about things because he had a great capacity to put himself in other people's positions and see what the problems were.

  I always thought that of him, you know. Maybe that's what makes some people—like Jim Burns, who never knew him, but said he was detached and wondered if he had a heart.26 Well, of course, he had the greatest heart when he cared. But he had this detachment. I always thought he would have been the greatest judge. Because he could take any case—it could involve himself, or me or something, where you—with anyone else, your emotions would be so involved—and look at it from all sides. I remember him speaking that way about General de Gaulle one time, when everyone was so mad at General de Gaulle last year.27 I was so steamed up, and he was saying, "No, no, you must see his side." You know, he was nonetheless irritated.

  PRESIDENT KENNEDY AND PRESIDENT CHARLES DE GAULLE, PARIS, 1961

  John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston

  Well, that was the extraordinary thing. There are those who always see other people's sides to such an extent that it severs the nerve of action for themselves. It never did, in his case. He could see the point. He understood the political urgencies that drove other people doing mischievous things, but that—it never prevented him from reacting to it.

  Yeah, I wish I'd given him a wristwatch with a tape recorder in it or something, because if you could hear him explaining de Gaulle to me—what de Gaulle's objectives were, and why he was so bitter. I mean, his analysis of that man—de Gaulle was my hero when I married Jack, and he really sunk down. Because I think he was so full of spite. And that's what Jack never was, and he always would say—I suppose women are terribly emotional, and you want to never speak to anyone again who said something mean against your husband—but Jack would always say, "You must always leave the way open for conciliation." You know, "Everything changes so in politics—your friends are your enemies next week, and vice versa."

  Why was de Gaulle your hero?

  He wasn't really my hero, but I sort of loved all that prose of some of his memoirs and thought this man who stayed away in the gloomy forest and came marching back, you know, being rather Francophile, just a vague sort of—

  I agree. I thought, you know, at the funeral, that he was—in spite of all the mischief he has made—will make—an immensely touching and charming figure.

  Yeah, of course he has two sides to him. That's what Jack would always say. You know, nobody's all black or all white. And he did, you know, realize what Jack was. I think he just felt guilty—I don't know— You know, he realized who Jack was, and that's why he came to the funeral. And I think that was an effort. He didn't need to do that.

  He had a certain—the thing about de Gaulle and Churchill and the President and a few other people is that they had a sense of history, which produces sort of magnanimity of judgment. Although de Gaulle can be spiteful, he can also be very magnanimous and he recognized that the President— He saw him in the great stream of history, and that—of course, his memoirs are so marvelous in that respect because of the sense of the flow, the necessities which people have to respond to, and the wonderful prose.

  Oh, yeah, when Jack made his announcement that he was going to run at the Senate—no, run for president—I'd been reading him the beginning things of de Gaulle's memoirs of how "I've always had a certain image of France" and he used part of that, paraphrased it for his own. Yes, you should look at that speech—"I have a certain vision o
f America" or something.28 Another person he used to tell me a lot about was Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill's father. "And I forgot about Goschen—" I remember he'd say that a lot of times, when someone resigned, and they found someone else to replace them. Do you know that story?

  No, I don't know that story.

  There was some minister who resigned when Randolph Churchill was in the government, because he thought he was—it was on some point. Yeah, who was the one who resigned—of the Exchequer, a couple of years ago? On some little point of whether—some little thing with the budget?

  He'd given information—

  Not Thorneycroft—anyway, some man resigned and was immediately replaced, and this man thought that he couldn't be replaced, and they'd have to come around to do what he wanted, and right away, they appointed someone named Goschen. And the man—maybe it was even Randolph Churchill—said, "Oh, my God, I forgot about Goschen." [Schlesinger laughs] Which, you know, is a thing to show that anyone can be replaced.29