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By Root 1152 0

And oftentimes he—and then the guidebook was selling a lot—he'd always be teasing McNally about it. So he was just so proud. I was so happy that I had—could do something that made him proud of me. Because I'll tell you one wonderful thing about him. I was really—I was never any different once I was in the White House than I was before, but the press made you different. Suddenly, everything that'd been a liability before—your hair, that you spoke French, that you didn't just adore to campaign, and you didn't bake bread with flour up to your arms—you know, everyone thought I was a snob and hated politics. Well, Jack never made me feel that I was a liability to him, but I was. And then I was having a baby and couldn't campaign. And when we got in the White House all the things that I'd always done suddenly became wonderful because anything the First Lady does that's different, everyone seizes on—and I was so happy for Jack, especially now that it was only three years together that he could be proud of me then.40 Because it made him so happy—it made me so happy. So those were our happiest years.

PRESIDENT AND MRS. KENNEDY IN THE WHITE HOUSE

Cecil Stoughton, White House/John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston

HEAD OF A YOUNG BOY AND A FIGURE OF HERAKLES—ROMAN SCULPTURES PURCHASED BY JOHN F. KENNEDY DURING HIS VISIT TO ROME IN 1963 AS GIFTS FOR HIS WIFE

John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston

He was terribly proud. And, he was proud of the knowledge that he got from you. He liked to sort of talk about furniture and paintings, which are things that he didn't—had not known a great deal about at one point in his life.

I know, and he really started to know about them. He got interested in sculpture. I forget how. Oh, Stas had given Lee a Roman head one Christmas. And then it was the first thing he saw that he really started to care about himself. And he used to go into Klejman, opposite Parke-Bernet in New York—opposite the Carlyle,41 whenever he was there—and look, and he started to buy all the Greek sculpture that you see in this room—all the Egyptian sculpture. And then he really knew his field. Of course, he loved it because anything that old he'd say, "Think, this is 500 b.c." But he had such an eye. A thing about his taste—when Boudin, the French—much more than decorator—he's really a scholar, from Jansen would be around, so many things that he'd say how to arrange a room or hang pictures,42 I'd be in doubt about. Then I'd ask Jack what he thought without telling him what Boudin thought. And Jack, about five or six different times, which I have written down, would say the same as Boudin. He had—I was so disappointed in the Blue Room when I first saw it. I thought it was too much.43 You know, Jack liked it. He really had this eye and he'd pick out the best things. He just had taste in every facet of his character—for people, for books, for sculpture, for furniture, for rooms, for houses. He bought our house in Georgetown because the doorknob was old, which he liked, and he liked the sort of old look of it. For our tenth anniversary, he was so sweet. You know, after dinner was the time for present giving. And suddenly into the room comes Provi, our little maid, with about thirty different boxes. They were all from Klejman, except for one—he knew I used to collect drawings so he had gotten a couple of drawings from Wildenstein.44 And when I think that when we were first married, he always used to give me things he liked, like a letter of Byron or a letter of John Quincy Adams or something, which was fine. And I could see the present that he wanted me to choose the most was this Alexandrian bracelet. It's terribly simple, gold, sort of a snake. And it was the simplest thing of all and I could just see how he loved it. He'd just hold it in his hand. So, you know, that was a special present and he wouldn't say which one he wanted to give me, but I could tell so I chose it.

EGYPTIAN SNAKE BRACELET JOHN F. KENNEDY GAVE TO JACQUELINE ON THEIR TENTH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY

John F. Kennedy Library and Museum,