Jacqueline Kennedy - Caroline Kennedy [73]
Macmillan came in April, remember?72 You'd known him before, had you, or the President had?
The—yes—Jack had met him, what, right after in Key West and then in—he met him in London after Vienna. It was just before Vienna that he came?
He came in April, before Vienna.
Well, I forget if that was the time.
He must have known him before through the Devonshires though.
I don't know.
Maybe not.
But I know they'd corresponded ever since Jack was first in the White House. But, yes, then we had lunch, just Sissy and David73 and Macmillan and Jack and I, which was so nice, and they—but it was such a happy atmosphere and they would stay in and talk. That was a very rare and touching relationship between those two men. They really loved each other. And, oh, well, if you could see their letters, and—I'll show them to you someday because I can't do them all on the tape. But the one he wrote Jack by hand the summer after Patrick, when he just was through the Profumo thing.74 And how Jack went out of his way to send him some telegram when he resigned and tell David that it could be in all the papers—of all that he'd done for the West. He loved Macmillan. You know, Macmillan had a way of looking like sort of a joke. Just his face had that sort of suppressed mirth and his funny clothes and things, but, oh no, he was a—
He was a sharp old customer—
Yeah.
And I think—I had the impression the President was particularly impressed by his strong feeling about nuclear—about getting the nuclear thing under control.
Yeah, I know, I know.
I know he used to write eloquent letters about the horror of nuclear war.
Yes, and what did Jack say? That was one of the things he said—what Macmillan had done for the—Jack said, he really cared about the Western Alliance.
What did—did the President like Gaitskell?
Yes, he did. Didn't he?
Yes, he did. Do you remember his reaction to Harold Wilson?75
Oh, he couldn't stand him.
There was a special relationship. But why—the President and Macmillan, what would they talk about besides politics, because obviously they had a great fund of other things? Macmillan is a publisher and loved history.
Well, they would be so irreverent and funny. Jack would tell me some of the things they said with the men at dinner—you know, after lunch, that I don't think I should say on a tape, even. What is it? One thing was, oh, people say that the younger generation have lost all hope living with this nuclear something. Look at them, they're perfectly fine, they're twisting and—but, I don't know, just funny things. They'd amuse each other so. So then, we may—the one time I was ever together with them was that time at lunch in the White House. And when they came out, somebody said something about Nehru, and I said how Nehru put his—had given Lee a miniature of two Indians on a couch together and given me one of just a lady sniffing a rose and how he'd had his hand on Lee's thigh at the airport, or—something rather irreverent.76 He just looked shocked, but you know, it was so funny. That isn't—that doesn't describe what I mean. Jack had this high sense of mischief and so did Macmillan, so I've never seen two people enjoy each other so. Obviously all of the important things they were talking about alone, but when it ended up with Sissy and David and us and him—you know, or going down to Adele Astaire Douglass's—who'd been married to a Cavendish. Talk about a lot of family things, I guess, but always this wonderful humor underneath it all.
The President's year—when he went to London in '38–'39—he wasn't