Jacqueline Kennedy - Caroline Kennedy [136]
70. Jacqueline had taken a room in the family quarters that recent presidential families had called the "Monroe Room" and renamed it the "Treaty Room." Used by presidents from Andrew Johnson to Theodore Roosevelt as a Cabinet Room, it was restyled by Mrs. Kennedy as a dark green Victorian chamber featuring Ulysses Grant's ornate cabinet table, other late-nineteenth-century furniture and fixtures, and framed facsimiles of agreements signed in the room, such as William McKinley's peace treaty ending the Spanish-American War.
71. NANCY TUCKERMAN (1928– ), Jacqueline's close friend (whom the First Lady called "Tucky") and White House social secretary from June until November 1963, had known her since the age of nine, when they both attended the Chapin School in New York, and later roomed with her at Farmington, where, as Tuckerman recalled, Jackie had her walk under her horse's belly "twenty times a day to get over my fear of horses." Expecting a baby, Mrs. Kennedy planned to be "taking the veil" and winding down her public commitments from the brisk regimen pressed on her by Tish Baldrige.
72. PAMELA TURNURE (1937– ) was Mrs. Kennedy's press secretary. Jacqueline asked her to give reporters "minimum information with maximum politeness."
73. ELIZABETH VIRGINIA BEALE (1911–2006) was an extroverted and widely read Washington social columnist.
74. ELIZABETH GUEST CONDON (1937– ) was later married to the film director George Stevens, Jr.
75. NINA GORE AUCHINCLOSS STEERS (1937– ) was Jacqueline's stepsister.
76. LORRAINE WAXMAN PEARCE (1934– ), the first White House curator, was an alumna of the Winterthur graduate program and a specialist in the French impact on decorative arts in America. Although she found Pearce "as excited as a hunting dog," Mrs. Kennedy was displeased by what she saw as Pearce's desire for the limelight. For her part, with no political experience, the young Pearce felt baffled by the complex interplay among the First Lady, her Fine Arts Committee, the White House Historical Association, du Pont, and Boudin. After a year, Jacqueline had her reassigned to oversee the new White House guidebook. In September 1962, the First Lady wrote du Pont, "Why are some people so avid for publicity—when it poisons everything. I hate & mistrust it & no one who has ever worked for me who liked it has been trustworthy."
77. WILLIAM VOSS ELDER III (1933– ) succeeded Mrs. Pearce as curator.
78. ANDRé MEYER (1898–1979) was a French Jewish refugee who headed American operations for the Paris investment bank Lazard Frères. He first met the First Lady when he contributed the Aubusson rug for the French Empire–inspired Red Room. After President Kennedy's death, Meyer became one of Jacqueline's closest friends.
79. PIERRE MENDèS FRANCE (1907–1982) was French president from 1954 to 1955.
THE FIFTH CONVERSATION
1. FIDEL CASTRO RUZ (1926– ) and his guerrilla army entered Havana in triumph in January 1959, having overthrown the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. That April, he visited Washington, D.C., at the invitation of the National Press Club and was refused an audience by President Eisenhower. The following year, Castro began importing Soviet oil and expropriating American firms.
2. EARL E. T. SMITH (1903–1991), a Newport-born sportsman and financier, of New York and Palm Beach, was ambassador to Havana from 1957 to 1959. His wife, Florence Pritchett Smith (1920–1965), had been a friend of President Kennedy's since school days.
3. HERBERT MATTHEWS (1900–1977) was a New York Times correspondent in Cuba whose reports were criticized for being too pro-Castro.
4. NORMAN MAILER (1923–2007) was a novelist and essayist best known for The Naked and the Dead (1948). Mailer wrote the laudatory "Superman Comes to the Supermarket" in Esquire about JFK's victory at the 1960 convention, but the following spring, after the Bay of Pigs, he denounced the President for sponsoring the invasion and declared Castro one of his "heroes."