Jacqueline Kennedy - Caroline Kennedy [74]
I always thought it was really British history that he patterned himself on more than ours. I mean, that he read, he was always—well, I told you all the speeches—Burke's "To the Electors of Bristol" and Warren Hastings and you know, Charles James Fox.77 He really gave himself a classical education through his own reading. I don't think you get that in this country anymore. Mostly through being sick and having read the classics and then the English people—and then that made him pick out what he thought was best in American thought and oratory. So he had such an admiration for all—the last time we were in London together, I guess was '58, maybe—and had a dinner of all his old friends. Well, when you look at them all, it was rather discouraging. David Gore was the only one who ever amounted to anything and he was—Jack always used to say he was one of the brightest men he'd ever met in his life—he and Bundy, he used to say. But you know, the others were, well, kind of defeatist or turned into nothing or—he wasn't like Joe Alsop, who dearly loves the lord and just gets so excited at the mention of anyone English. Seeing them now really depressed Jack. Of all those young men who'd been his friends in '38 and '39—Hugh Fraser, Tony Rosslyn—78
Well, he was in the government, but it's a disappointed life.
Yeah.
Did he ever know Churchill?
William Home, that was a great friend of his.79
Alec's brother.
Yes. He'd liked Kick and he'd written—you know, he'd gone to prison because he wouldn't fire on civilians in a town and that's where he wrote Now Barabbas. Then he wrote The Chiltern Hundreds about Kathleen. Kathleen—she was the model for the American girl. She used to go see him in prison. And well, William was wicked and outrageous and fun. Jack always enjoyed him. But his plays got worse and worse and worse.
JOE, KATHLEEN, AND JACK, LONDON, 1939
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston
You played the reluctant prime minister—80
Prime minister. Oh, dear. Well, Poor William he has about four children to support and he has to write too quickly.
WATCHING THE BLACK WATCH REGIMENT PERFORM ON THE SOUTH LAWN OF THE WHITE HOUSE, NOVEMBER 13, 1963
Cecil Stoughton, White House/John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston
Did he know Alec in that—Home—in that period?
I don't think so.
He's quite different from William, I gather.
Yeah, well, William's sort of mad. Jack said something at the Black Watch,81 you know, this little speech before, about all of us I suppose are drawn to lost causes and Scotland's history captured him at an early age—it really was a long series of lost causes but it triumphed in some ways more than ever now. And as we were walking off the lawn up to the balcony, where we'd watched the whole show, Jack said, "I wonder if David Gore knew what I meant." Well, he'd meant that Alec Douglas-Home, a Scotsman, was now prime minister.
Did he like Alec Douglas-Home?
Well, had he met him?
Yes.
Had Alec Home come over?
Yes, he—not as prime minister, but he'd been over as foreign secretary—they met—
I think he did like him—I mean, I know he didn't dislike him. But, the first time I ever saw Alec Home was at Jack's funeral, and I liked him.
He's a nice man. Had he ever known Churchill?
The time we met Churchill was in Monte Carlo and some people—we were staying in—we had a house in Cannes with William Douglas-Home and his wife and—
This was when?
It was either—1958, I guess. And the Agnellis82 had asked—we were going over to have dinner with them and then they took us before dinner to Onassis's yacht to meet Churchill.83 Jack had always wanted to meet Churchill. Well, the poor man was really quite ga-ga then and a lot—you know, we all came on the boat together and he didn't quite know which one Jack was. He started to talk to one of the other men there, thinking he was Jack, and saying, "I knew your father so well," and this and that, and that was cleared up. Then Jack sat down with