61 PAGES
children, about having good food, about having beautiful furniture, the house well done up.” Jack, impatient at first, adjusted, even came to share her sensibility, at least to a degree. Ormsby-Gore again: “I remember him saying when Jackie had gone off and bought some French eighteenth-century chairs or something, ‘I don’t know why, what’s the point of spending all this money—I mean, a chair is a chair and it’s a perfectly good chair I’m sitting in—what’s the point of all this fancy stuff.’ Well that was his first reaction but gradually he came to appreciate good taste in these other matters and really cared about it by the end.”87 Jackie broadened his taste in art and improved his manners. With her gentle guidance, Jack even turned himself into a minor fashion plate, with a preference for the single-breasted, two-button suit, often pinstriped and always perfectly pressed. For the first time, he learned which tie should go with which shirt and how the wrong shoes could kill a stylish ensemble.

He became so clothes conscious that he once told Chuck Spalding, “Your suit doesn’t make a statement.” When he realized what he’d said, they both broke out in laughter.88

In more substantive ways, too, Jackie soon proved her importance, even as she wondered if she’d ever be able to keep up with her husband intellectually. (“He has this curious, inquiring mind that is always at work; if I were drawing him, I would draw a tiny body and an enormous head.”89) She continued to translate for him from the French, including reports on the Indochina War and the writings of Talleyrand, Voltaire, and de Gaulle, bon mots from which Jack would then sprinkle into his speeches. And she helped transform him into a better public speaker, coaxing him to abandon his high, nasal twang in favor of deeper, more sonorous tones. (A vocal coach had given Jack the same advice, and for a time he spent some minutes each morning barking like a dog to deepen his voice.) With Ted Sorensen’s help, Jackie also got him to slow his delivery—his colleagues sometimes found his rapid-fire utterances hard to follow—and to modulate his pitch and use his hands to punctuate key points, to be less fidgety onstage. The changes were not evident overnight, but gradually, as Kennedy worked on his technique and as he and Sorensen fine-tuned their collaborative speechwriting efforts, he became notably more effective at the lectern—a self-composed, authentic communicator who employed the rhythms and language of powerful rhetoric.90

In January 1954, as he and his young wife settled into their Georgetown home, John F. Kennedy had reason to feel good about things. He had found his footing in the Senate, earning the respect of more senior colleagues, who appreciated his quiet manner, his studiousness, and his composed, good-humored, reasoned approach to policy issues. He had happened upon a once-in-a-generation political aide in Ted Sorensen, and enjoyed broad support in his home state. He had landed a bride in the beautiful, witty, sophisticated Jacqueline Bouvier, whose European sensibility he admired and shared. Their wedding had won wide coverage from coast to coast. If the patterns and demands of married life were proving a challenge in these early months, for him and for her, he felt lucky to have her, felt certain that she represented for him a political asset. Yet, as the year turned, all was not well. Jack Kennedy didn’t know it, but his annus mirabilis of 1953 would be succeeded by something very different.

 

 

*1 A visitor to Hyannis Port spoke of participating in fourteen athletic events in one day, including sailing, waterskiing (twice), touch football (twice), tennis (twice), trampoline jumping, swimming, jogging on the beach, and baseball. He also mentioned eating a sandwich with sand in it. His efforts, he added, put him “something like only three events behind Ethel.” (Martin, Hero for Our Time, 76.)
*2 Her application essay showed her talent for writing and her self-deprecating sense of humor—and her mother’s stifling influence: “I am tall, 5’ 7” with brown hair, a square face, and eyes so unfortunately far apart that it takes three weeks to have a pair of glasses made with a bridge wide enough to fit over my nose. I do not have a sensational figure but can look slim if I pick the right clothes. I flatter myself on being able at times to walk out of the house looking like the poor man’s Paris copy, but often my mother will run up and inform me that my left stocking seam is crooked or the right-hand top coat button is about to fall off. This, I realize, is the Unforgivable Sin.” In a supplemental essay discussing three people she wished she had known, she chose Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, and Ballets Russes founder Serge Diaghilev. (Prix de Paris application materials, box 1, JKO personal papers.)
*3 The Hyannis Port party was the more rambunctious of the two. Among the activities was a scavenger hunt in which first prize went to whoever brought back the largest object. Patricia Kennedy went into Hyannis, hot-wired a bus, and drove it home. (Perret, Jack, 192.)
']