Read Online Kennedy Wives: Triumph and Tragedy in America's Most Public Family by David Batcher Amber Hunt, David Batcher - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: David Batcher Amber Hunt, David Batcher
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loose neckline on Jackie’s half-finished velvet dress. I looked out the window to the front lawn and saw someone swinging Caroline, of which I disapproved, as I thought she would be too tired for the photographers. Then I took a quick look at John F. Jr., wrapped in blankets and awaiting his turn to be photographed. And I caught a glimpse of the Secret Service men on the beach outside on the oceanfront.
The security left Rose baffled about where to enter and exit her own home. Sneaking through the servants’ quarters the previous night, she’d surprised a hungry hairdresser apparently helping herself to a salad left onthe maids’ dining table. “She just threw up her hands and I gave a laugh and she gave a laugh and out I went.”
In the days before the inauguration, Washington, DC, disappeared beneath eight inches of snow. Early on the morning of the inauguration, Rose bundled up and walked from the Georgetown home she was renting with Joe, Ann Gargan, Ted, and Joan, to attend mass at Holy Trinity Church. She was delighted to see that Jack, independent of her plans, was attending the service as well. Jack, she thought, “wanted to start his four years in the presidency by offering his mind and heart, with all his hopes and fears, to Almighty God.” She didn’t approach Jack, staying anonymous and out of sight in the pews. Ever image conscious, she didn’t want to risk being photographed in her informal winter bundling.
She and Joe attended the inauguration ceremony, where they were seated in the front row, but at the far end; as a result, “we were left out of everything except the panoramic pictures. . . . Some friends asked me later where I had been during the ceremonies.” Still, she was moved by his inaugural address, the weight of the occasion, this culmination of her and Joe’s hard work.
That night, for the inaugural balls, she appeared in the same Molyneux gown she’d worn for her presentation at the Court of St. James in 1938. More than twenty years later, she was proud she could easily fit into it, proud her taste was so timeless.
“I was overwhelmed with the joy, the wonder, the glory of it all,” she’d say that fall in a speech to the Guild of the Infant Saviour, a Catholic social services organization. “The climax of my life as I approached my 71st birthday.”
Rose enjoyed her position as America’s Queen Mother, even sleeping in the Queens’ Bedroom when visiting the White House. Still, Jack generally found her presence stressful. She joined Jack and Jackie when they visited France at the end of May en route to JFK’s disappointing summit with a belligerent, chest-beating Khrushchev in Vienna, but only after she invited herself. “He really didn’t want her around much,” remembered Lem Billings. “In particular, he didn’t want her around on the trip he andJackie took to Paris and Vienna, but she asked to go and he let her.”
Whether Jack wanted her there or not, she was treated as royalty when they arrived in Paris. She chatted with Mme. de Gaulle about their children, though neither mentioned that both had developmentally disabled daughters. The state dinner welcoming the Kennedys was held at Versailles; the pageantry and protocol must have reminded Rose of the salad days of 1938, when she and Joe were fresh to London and spending weekends with royalty. And Vienna, so rattling an experience for her son, nevertheless also reminded her of her 1911 visit. “I wonder to myself,” she wrote in her diary, “if the young man with whom I danced has ever come back and if he too remembered the night in 1911 when, young and gay and carefree, we danced the hours away.” *
* The young man to whom she is referring was Hugh Nawn, another Irish Catholic Bostonian. Honey Fitz had hoped that Rose would marry Nawn rather than Joe.
The president and first lady departed Vienna, and Rose went on to Florence before visiting Pope John Paul XXIII—successor to her friend Pope Pius
The security left Rose baffled about where to enter and exit her own home. Sneaking through the servants’ quarters the previous night, she’d surprised a hungry hairdresser apparently helping herself to a salad left onthe maids’ dining table. “She just threw up her hands and I gave a laugh and she gave a laugh and out I went.”
In the days before the inauguration, Washington, DC, disappeared beneath eight inches of snow. Early on the morning of the inauguration, Rose bundled up and walked from the Georgetown home she was renting with Joe, Ann Gargan, Ted, and Joan, to attend mass at Holy Trinity Church. She was delighted to see that Jack, independent of her plans, was attending the service as well. Jack, she thought, “wanted to start his four years in the presidency by offering his mind and heart, with all his hopes and fears, to Almighty God.” She didn’t approach Jack, staying anonymous and out of sight in the pews. Ever image conscious, she didn’t want to risk being photographed in her informal winter bundling.
She and Joe attended the inauguration ceremony, where they were seated in the front row, but at the far end; as a result, “we were left out of everything except the panoramic pictures. . . . Some friends asked me later where I had been during the ceremonies.” Still, she was moved by his inaugural address, the weight of the occasion, this culmination of her and Joe’s hard work.
That night, for the inaugural balls, she appeared in the same Molyneux gown she’d worn for her presentation at the Court of St. James in 1938. More than twenty years later, she was proud she could easily fit into it, proud her taste was so timeless.
“I was overwhelmed with the joy, the wonder, the glory of it all,” she’d say that fall in a speech to the Guild of the Infant Saviour, a Catholic social services organization. “The climax of my life as I approached my 71st birthday.”
Rose enjoyed her position as America’s Queen Mother, even sleeping in the Queens’ Bedroom when visiting the White House. Still, Jack generally found her presence stressful. She joined Jack and Jackie when they visited France at the end of May en route to JFK’s disappointing summit with a belligerent, chest-beating Khrushchev in Vienna, but only after she invited herself. “He really didn’t want her around much,” remembered Lem Billings. “In particular, he didn’t want her around on the trip he andJackie took to Paris and Vienna, but she asked to go and he let her.”
Whether Jack wanted her there or not, she was treated as royalty when they arrived in Paris. She chatted with Mme. de Gaulle about their children, though neither mentioned that both had developmentally disabled daughters. The state dinner welcoming the Kennedys was held at Versailles; the pageantry and protocol must have reminded Rose of the salad days of 1938, when she and Joe were fresh to London and spending weekends with royalty. And Vienna, so rattling an experience for her son, nevertheless also reminded her of her 1911 visit. “I wonder to myself,” she wrote in her diary, “if the young man with whom I danced has ever come back and if he too remembered the night in 1911 when, young and gay and carefree, we danced the hours away.” *
* The young man to whom she is referring was Hugh Nawn, another Irish Catholic Bostonian. Honey Fitz had hoped that Rose would marry Nawn rather than Joe.
The president and first lady departed Vienna, and Rose went on to Florence before visiting Pope John Paul XXIII—successor to her friend Pope Pius
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