An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963 by Robert Dallek Page A

superior job of investigating, and his final report was a masterpiece.” Of course, Jack had some advantages. As Holcombe noted, “When Christmas vacation came, he goes down to Washington, meets some of his father’s friends, gets a further line on his congressman and on Congress.”
    When he finished the fall term, Jack made plans to sail for Europe at the end of February. First, however, he flew to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, where he was met at the airport by a girl he was dating and a Princeton friend, who was impressed that Jack had come by plane: “Not many people flew in those days,” the friend recalled. But Jack did, and then flew back to New York before boarding a luxury liner for Europe.
    Although his father’s public image had taken a downturn in the fall of 1938, when he publicly expressed favor for Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Nazi Germany at Munich, Jack felt no discomfort with his father’s political pronouncements or his family identity. Although his father’s pro-Chamberlain speech “seemed to be unpopular with the Jews, etc.,” he wrote his parents, “[it] was considered to be very good by everyone who wasn’t bitterly anti-Fascist.” A new play, which he saw in New York and included several references to the Kennedys, greatly amused Jack. “It’s pretty funny,” he reported in the same letter, “and jokes about us get the biggest laughs whatever that signifies.”
    As soon as he arrived in London, Jack resumed “having a great time,” he wrote Billings. He was working every day and “feeling very important as I go to work in my new cutaway.” He met the king “at a Court Levee. It takes place in the morning and you wear tails. The King stands & you go up and bow. Met Queen Mary and was at tea with the Princess Elizabeth with whom I made a great deal of time. Thursday night—am going to Court in my new silk breeches, which are cut to my crotch tightly and in which I look mighty attractive. Friday I leave for Rome as J.P. has been appointed to represent Roosevelt at the Pope’s coronation.”
    When he returned from Rome in late March, Jack reported to Billings that they had had “a great time.” His youngest brother, Teddy, had received Communion from the new pope, Pius XII, “the first time that a Pope has ever done this in the last couple of hundred years.” The pope then gave the Sacrament to Joe, Jack, and his sister Eunice “at a private mass and all in all it was very impressive.” For all the sense of importance Jack gained from his father’s prominence and influence, he kept an irreverent sense of perspective that allowed him to see the comical side of his family’s social climbing. He wrote Billings: “They want to give Dad the title of Duke which will be hereditary and go to all of his family which will make me Duke John of Bronxville and perhaps if you suck around sufficiently I might knight you.” (In fact, Joe had a sense of limits about what an American public official could do and had no intention of asking the required permission of Congress to accept a title of nobility.)
    Jack’s letters to Billings over the next several months describe a young man enjoying his privileged life. On the way back from Rome, he had stopped at the Paris embassy, where he had lunch with Carmel Offie, Ambassador William Bullitt’s principal aide, and was invited by them to stay at Bullitt’s residence. He “graciously declined,” as he wanted to get back to London for the Grand National steeplechase before returning to Paris for a month and then traveling to “Poland, Russia, etc.” As of this writing in March, he was not doing “much work but have been sporting around in my morning coat, my ‘Anthony Eden’ black Homburg and white gardenia.”
    Two weeks later, he told Billings that he was “living like a king” at the Paris embassy, where Offie and he had become “the greatest of pals” and Bullitt had been very nice to him. He had lunch at