The Patriarch by David Nasaw

Author:David Nasaw [Nasaw, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: cookie429, Kat, Extratorrents
ISBN: 9781101595916
Publisher: Penguin Press
Published: 2012-11-13T08:00:00+00:00

Twenty-four

THE WORST OF TIMES

Kennedy tried to keep his spirits up, tried to control his rage, tried to look on the positive side. His family and fortune were intact, if an ocean away. The news from home was good. Joe Jr. was doing okay in law school and had made a name for himself by holding tight at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and voting for James Farley, to whom he had been committed, rather than giving in to formidable pressure to switch to Roosevelt. Jack had graduated from Harvard with honors and was about to publish his first book. Rosemary had been able to spend part of the summer as a junior camp counselor before withdrawing because the responsibility was too much. Kick was at Hyannis Port, surrounded, as always, by admiring boys. Eunice was winning prizes sailing. Pat had lost ten pounds and had decided to go to college in the fall. Bobby was not taking much interest in sailing or his stamps but was avidly following the war news. Jean was making bandages twice a week for the Red Cross and sailing. Teddy had become “completely self-sufficient.” And Rose, exhausted by a month with the children and not looking forward to August, which would be even more hectic, was at “Elizabeth Arden’s Camp in Maine . . . a quiet place where they have exercises, swimming, golf and massage.”1

Kennedy had moved back to 14 Prince’s Gate but opened up only his own bedroom and study “so the house,” as he wrote his daughter Jean, “looks pretty lonesome.” He spent his weekends at St. Leonard’s in Windsor. After a nasty fall in the spring, he had temporaily given up horseback riding, but he played golf when he could. His stomach was better, but he worried about it and ate lightly. He drank not at all.2

The government was Churchill’s now, and he had his own set of advisers and confidants, none of whom, with the possible exception of Lord Beaverbrook, minister of aircraft production, had much time to spare the American ambassador. Kennedy spent long days at the embassy, but there was precious little of importance for him to do. As honorary chairman of the American Red Cross war relief fund, he made speeches and thanked donors for their generosity. As chief negotiator for a ludicrously ill-conceived and underthought scheme to save the lives of British children by sending them to the United States, he wasted days on a rescue plan that was destined to fail because British citizens didn’t want to part with their children, and even if they had, there were not enough ships—or military convoys—to get them across the Atlantic.

Like everyone else, he waited for the German invasion. Since late May and with renewed urgency after the fall of France, the question voiced in the newspapers, in war cabinet meetings, and in the streets was not if but when the Germans would attempt to cross the English Channel. When July 1, the supposed “zero hour for

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