• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1040 0

the White House." It was the first one—it was meant to have been at the Gilpatrics. And it was so strange because I remember when the question period started, everyone was very quiet and rather nervous in the White House and the President there, and Jack asked Donald, "Do you think"—it's the one thing that was on his mind—"Would Lincoln have been as great a President if he'd lived?" I mean, would he be judged as great—because he would have had this almost insoluble problem of the Reconstruction, which, you know, either way you did it would have dissatisfied so many people. That was his question. And Donald, really by going round and round, had agreed with him that Lincoln, you know, it was better—was better for Lincoln that he died when he did. And then I remember Jack saying after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when it all turned so fantastically, he said, "Well, if anyone's ever going to shoot me, this would be the day they should do it."38

Oh, really?

I mean, it's so strange, these things that come back, because he saw then that he would be—you know, he said, it will never top this. Strange those things come back now.

Had that Lincoln question that he asked Donald—one that he discussed before? Been on his mind?

Oh, yes, because all the time we discussed it. The first year I was married, I took a course in American history at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service from Professor Jules Davids, who was this brilliant man. And I'd never taken American history and I used to come home full of these things and I was so excited—Thaddeus Stevens and the radical Republicans, I can remember. And these awful poems they were writing about Lincoln. And Jack was excited that I was so interested. And then when he was doing Profiles in Courage, I told him how great Davids was, and he had him do some research on it. So at that time, we would talk a lot about Lincoln and the Reconstruction, and, you know, if he lived and that—and that was back when we were married was '53, '54, and then his book was '54–'55—so we talked about it years before.

There was another Hickory Hill meeting at the White House—Isaiah Berlin.

Where they talked about Russia.

Yes.

Yeah, well, Jack loved that and he loved to just listen to Isaiah Berlin.39 I mean, that was the side—you should read this article in Show magazine now, which I think is quite unfair in its judgment of Jack but it starts from the premise that Melbourne was his favorite book and says what he really was most like were these great Whig houses and Whig liberal families who, you know, had everything and lived a stimulating life, yet cared. Well, he loved all those brilliant English people. He used to tell me about going to Emerald Cunard's40 when he was a boy in London with his father to listen. When we were in London together, we'd go to the old Duchess of Devonshire's for lunch and she'd have a couple of people around. I mean, he loved so to hear those people talk. Or hear David. You know, they knew so much, their educations were so incredible. That's when he was happiest. So he loved Isaiah Berlin.

Do you want to say something about the relationship of David? Because I think that was a very fundamental thing in all this. I have the impression he talked with greater—more intimately with David than with any member of the—

Yeah.

—of his own cabinet.

Well, I suppose—

Outside of Bobby.

Exactly. And if I could think of anyone now who could save the Western world, it would be David Gore. But—well, they started as friends obviously in London, and Kathleen, who was Jack's favorite sister, was Sissy's best friend. And, I guess, David was the closest of all those friends then. I mean, so many of them ended up with rather sad lives, or this or that.

This is back in '38–'39.

Yeah. Hugh Fraser was sort of a friend, but not very bright, and you'd always wonder if Hugh would get a job in some government and he never did, or it was a pathetic one. But whenever David was here, we'd see him and Jack used to say that David Gore was the brightest man he'd ever met. He