• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1159 0

was no longer ambassador. He'd had to resign for money reasons. The Alphands95 came to dinner one night, we were discussing who they would have at the French Embassy and the Mona Lisa dinner. She could only have a hundred and two and I think she was up to ninety-nine or something—Jack put Dick Goodwin on the list because he wanted to show how much he thought of him.96 But also he said, "But you don't have the Gavins here." And Nicole said, "No, no, why should we have the Gavins?" And Jack said, "Well, I think you better ask them." And when they'd gone home, Jack said, "Can you believe it?" He said, "But there was Gavin, who was the most pro–de Gaulle ambassador they ever had. And they're probably one of our ambassadors that they liked the best. And then he's out and they weren't even going to ask him to the dinner." He was disgusted.

As you say, ruthless.

[whisper] I'm sort of running out.

How did he like Hervé?

Oh, old Hervé? You know, he'd get amused by him sometimes. And then—amused and sort of irritated the way, you know, Hervé has that phobia about protocol. But then, as he always said, de Gaulle never spoke to Hervé. You know, it was very hard for Hervé. And every time we'd see David Gore or Caroline would go to play with Alice Ormsby-Gore, or something, you'd hear Hervé moaning all around Washington. But he enjoyed—Hervé could be funny sometimes.

Very good mimic.

Yeah, do you remember the toast he made at that party for Ken Galbraith about a Gemini? That he was a Gemini and Jack—it was just after Jack's birthday—and Jack was a Gemini. And he wished a toast—all Gemini men were virile, brilliant, kind—it was terribly funny—and he wished to congratulate his government on having chosen him, as a Gemini, to be ambassador to a Gemini President, and then he ended, "Vive Lafayette!" You know, just the whole parody. I always used to tease him so about Lafayette. So he can—he was all right.

We left off last time at the—after the meeting at Vienna, when Khrushchev brought up the whole Berlin thing in a very tough way.1 You remember the President said to him, "It looks as if it's going to be a long, cold winter." The whole Berlin business, of course, involved constant relations with the Germans. What was the President's feeling about these dealings with West Germany?

As I said before, he tried so hard not to bring problems that irritated him all day home. For himself really more than me, but that was one thing that he—that just irritated him so and he'd say, "What do you have to do to show the Germans that you care?"—that we would defend Berlin. And then it would always—it just seemed the least tiny thing could happen—some colonel drop his hat on the Autobahn and it would give—Adenauer would start flaming up all over again, and saying that we were going to pull out, and the ambassador here, Grewe, would come running in. And Jack really got irritated with the Germans. And, I remember after the missile crisis, which is much later, he got so irritated with de Gaulle because—what did de Gaulle say? That because we jumped in to take care of Cuba, it showed we only were interested in the things nearer our shores and not over there. Well, when you think of it, it wasn't until after his visit to Berlin in June '63 that he finally did convince them. And then he was really happy after that. And then all these leaks to the—to the press. The Germans were always doing that, leaking to the press both in Germany and in Washington, little things of lack of confidence. Adenauer, something he'd say about him—I guess he sort of admired Adenauer, but he said, "Look at that man, eighty-nine, just hanging on so hard." I forget when Adenauer left.2 But he said, "Can you imagine it, and trying desperately to get back in again?" And, you know, Adenauer really gave him a pain. But I can remember the Berlin crisis, just sort of coming all through that—I guess was it the—

It was constant really from the middle of—summer of 1962 until the Cuban crisis.

So, it was then a year after Vienna that it finally came and he made a