two women sitting sidesaddle, they were perched rather precariously on the camel’s back. He looked at me again, and I nodded.
“Go ahead,” I said.
As the camel slowly got up—first its back legs, and then its front legs—I called out to Mrs. Kennedy, “Hold on!”
So there they were high atop the camel, Lee in front and Mrs. Kennedy at the back, laughing and just having the best time as the photographers were snapping away like crazy. Bashir led the camel around at a slow pace, and then Mrs. Kennedy said to Lee, “Hand me the reins, Lee.”
Fortunately Bashir did not let go of the lead, and despite Mrs. Kennedy’s best efforts to get the camel to take off in a gallop, Bashir retained control. I stood there and watched with amusement, not saying a word, as Mrs. Kennedy laughed and laughed.
THE TRIP TO India and Pakistan had been tremendously successful for Mrs. Kennedy personally as well as politically. Ambassador McConaughy would write a note to President Kennedy expressing the enormous impact she had: “She has won the confidence and even the affection of a large cross section of the Pakistani populace who feel that they know her and know that they like her. I believe benefits to our relations with Pakistan will be reflected for a long time in ways intangible as well as tangible.”
12
The trip to India and Pakistan had truly been an adventure and Mrs. Kennedy couldn’t stop talking about it. For three days, she stayed in London, at Lee and Stash Radziwill’s posh townhouse at No. 4 Buckingham Place, not far from Buckingham Palace, and while there was one official visit with Queen Elizabeth, mostly it was meant to be a few days of relaxation before returning to the United States.
Mrs. Kennedy and Lee regaled Stash with stories of their adventures, and when Stash would be disbelieving about something, Mrs. Kennedy would turn to me and say, “Tell him, Mr. Hill. Didn’t it happen just as we said?”
She seemed to recall every detail of every fort and palace she had visited, and was still in awe over the magnificent Islamic architecture, the splendor of the Taj Mahal, the opulence of the Indian president’s residence. During one of these conversations, I must not have responded in the way she expected to something she had said, because she suddenly turned to me and asked teasingly, “Doesn’t anything ever impress you, Mr. Hill?”
I remember looking at her lounging on the sofa in casual slacks, a cigarette in her hand, laughing, so relaxed with her sister and Stash. I wanted to say, “You know what impresses me, Mrs. Kennedy? You. Everything you do impresses me. The way you handle yourself with such grace and dignity without compromising your desire to enjoy life and have fun. You don’t even realize the impact you have, how much you are admired, how you just single- handedly created bonds between the United States and two strategic countries far better than any diplomats could have done. And you did it just by being curious and interested and sincere and gracious. Just by being yourself. No politics. No phoniness. Just you being you.”
But I was there to do my job, and my job did not entail saying things like that to her. So all I said was “I guess it takes a lot to impress me, Mrs. Kennedy.”
WHEN WE RETURNED to Washington on Thursday, March 29, the president was waiting at Washington National Airport to greet Mrs. Kennedy. There were lots of press and it was a heartwarming homecoming. As it turned out, Sardar had not yet arrived, but arrangements had been made for the horse to be delivered on a Military Air Transport Services (MATS) plane a couple of weeks later. Somehow President Ayub Khan had convinced someone to allow Sardar’s trainer to accompany the horse on the long journey, with specific instructions not to leave Sardar until he was delivered to Mrs. Kennedy. So when Sardar showed up at Andrews Air Force Base in the middle of the night, poor General Godfrey McHugh, President Kennedy’s military aide who had been charged with handling the rather delicate arrangements, was in for quite a shock when the trainer, all decked out in his military attire—the red jacket with brass buttons, white jodhpurs, boots, and turban—got off the plane with the damn horse.
When we returned from the India and Pakistan trip, it was back to our normal routine of Middleburg on the weekends, with Mrs. Kennedy returning to the White House for special functions.
After ten days in Palm Beach for Easter, we returned to the White House the day before another historic dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners from the Western Hemisphere. Impressive as it was to host forty-nine Nobel laureates in her home, Mrs. Kennedy was far more concerned with and excited about a dinner two weeks later honoring Andre Malraux, the French minister of culture.
While many Americans might not have been familiar with Malraux, he was one of Mrs. Kennedy’s idols, and she had become enamored with him during her trip to Paris the year before. Malraux had led an extraordinary life: he was an adventurer/explorer, a Spanish Civil War veteran, a World War II resistance leader who had escaped from a Nazi prison, and had served in the de Gaulle administration since its inception. But Mrs. Kennedy, with her degree and interest in French literature, knew him best for his prizewinning writings.
Malraux had escorted Mrs. Kennedy through several Paris art museums during the 1961 trip, and even though I was merely on the sidelines at the time, there seemed to be a strong connection between the two of them as they chatted comfortably together in French. Tish called their relationship a mutual “intellectual crush” and that, I think, summed it up perfectly. During one of our many discussions about the Paris trip Mrs. Kennedy said, “Mr. Malraux is so interesting. He has been everywhere, knows everyone, and has done so many things. He is a real hero of France.” Mrs. Kennedy wanted this dinner to be the most special one yet, and the guest list was the top priority.
Mrs. Kennedy had a yellow legal pad devoted to the Malraux dinner on which she kept all her notes and ideas, and as the date drew nearer, she would be so excited to tell me which guests had replied and would be attending.
“Oh, Mr. Hill, you won’t believe it. Listen to who we have now.” She would rattle off names of the writers, poets, artists, and actors who had responded: “Arthur Miller, Thornton Wilder, and Tennessee Williams; Lee Strasberg, Julie Harris, and Geraldine Page; Andrew Wyeth and Mark Rothko; George Balanchine and Leonard Bernstein!”
President Kennedy had made one specific request for the guest list: Charles Lindbergh—who would soon celebrate the thirty-fifth anniversary of his solo, nonstop flight to Paris from New York City—and his wife, an aviator and author herself, Anne Morrow Lindbergh. When Mrs. Kennedy found out that the Lindberghs had accepted the invitation, she was over the moon.
The dinner was a huge success. Mrs. Kennedy appeared in a strapless shocking pink ball gown with white gloves up to her elbows, and from the moment she walked into the East Room, it seemed no one could take their eyes off her. I had never seen her look more lovely. She was the belle of the ball, and once again she had orchestrated an event the likes of which had never before been seen at the White House.
Despite the amazing collection of people representing the arts, however, Charles Lindbergh was the big hit of the party, and he and his wife ended up staying overnight at the White House. For Mrs. Kennedy, the highlight of the evening was when Malraux promised to bring a collection of French masterpieces to the United States for a special exhibition at the National Gallery of Art.
“He even promised
The
