Jacqueline Kennedy - Caroline Kennedy [143]
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. IRWIN SHAW (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. HERVé ALPHAND (1907–1994) was French ambassador to Washington, much aided by his wife Nicole (1917–1979).
96. RICHARD GOODWIN (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.
THE SIXTH CONVERSATION
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.