Mona Lisa in Camelot

On the day prior to the unveiling of the Mona Lisa, Madame Hours entered Vault X to conduct her own inspection of the painting. At 11:00 A.M., she noted that the curvature in the back of the poplar panel was “very slightly more accentuated” than it was during her examination of the painting in October. She sent off a telegram to officials at the Louvre.

Hours expressed concern over the temperature to the Gallery’s chief curator, Perry Cott, who immediately informed John Walker that Mona Lisa’s caretaker was unhappy. The Gallery’s administrator was asked to adjust immediately the interior temperature to Madame Hours’ exact specifications. The Gallery engineers obliged and also increased the humidity inside Vault X and the West Hall to approximately 52 percent.

The engineers nervously watched the atmospheric readings as Walker and Carter Brown were mired in the massive details required to coordinate the safe arrival of nearly 2,000 distinguished figures. A handful of special guests, including President and Mrs. Kennedy, Minister Malraux and his wife, and Secretary of State Dean Rusk, would arrive at the museum’s Seventh Street entrance. John Walker and Lady Margaret, along with Huntington Cairns, secretary-treasurer and general counsel of the Gallery, would meet the group at the door.

The plan was for VIP guests to assemble in the Seventh Street Lobby and go immediately into the West Stair Hall. From there, President and Mrs. Kennedy would be escorted to the elevator; once at the main floor level, a protocol officer would guide the President and First Lady across the West Garden Court into Gallery 46, then into Gallery 48, and then to the speaker’s platform. (Mr. Cairns and Mrs. Walker were to remain in Gallery 48.) The President would enter the West Sculpture Hall to the sounds of the Marine Band Orchestra’s rendition of “Hail to the Chief.” On a second platform on the opposite side of the Mona Lisa, Walker had positioned chairs for Vice President and Mrs. Johnson, Secretary of State and Mrs. Dean Rusk, and Ambassador and Madame Alphand.

Following an introduction by Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Minister Malraux would deliver his speech in French and, after he completed his remarks, the speech would be read in translation. The Secretary would then return to the lectern and introduce President Kennedy. Following the President’s speech, the U.S. Marine Band was to play “La Marseillaise ” and “The Star Spangled Banner.” After the music ended, those in the President’s party were to look at the Mona Lisa and then leave the same way they entered.

Walker and Carter were nervous about the crush of dignitaries to be packed inside the West Sculpture Hall. The men walked the scene with a tape measure, and Walker determined that in the rotunda, the space outside the columns could accommodate 768 people; inside the columns the room could hold 528 people; and the space between the hall’s west side door and Gallery 48 could handle 576, for a total of 1,872 standing guests. Walker tabulated the numbers repeatedly to make sure there was enough square footage.

He was also concerned that the huge throng might not be able to hear adequately the speeches delivered by the dignitaries inside the museum’s cavernous interior, so Walker instructed Ernest Feidler to find and install “the most perfect sound system that could be devised” for the occasion. Feidler, in turn, hired Frank H. McIntosh, the president of the same firm who had provided the museum’s vanguard audio system known as “Lectour.” McIntosh’s previous work for the Gallery had been flawless, and Feidler had full confidence in him. Early sound tests showed that the specially installed speakers were difficult to hear in the first half of the West Sculpture Hall due to the highly reflective sound created against the limestone walls and marble floors. So McIntosh installed a total of five amplifiers and sixteen speakers to solve the problem.

Less than a handful of VIPs sent their regrets, so Walker expected a full house. One celebrity, singer Nat King Cole, known for his famous song “Mona Lisa,” sent a telegram to Gallery trustees with news that sadly he could not make it to Washington. “My wife and I sincerely regret our inability to join you at a showing of that famous lady Mona Lisa. As you know she has been the heart of my career therefore it is with a great deal of sentiment that I shall continue paying her tribute in song.”

Mindful of the rarity of the occasion, Walker also wanted his staff to experience an encounter with the illustrious Mona Lisa. He set aside one hour between 8:30 and 9:30 A.M. on Wednesday morning so that museum workers and staff could view the picture. No one on duty failed to take advantage of the once-in-a-lifetime occasion. In a memo to employees, Walker announced the special exhibition, but reminded the staff that all photographs were strictly prohibited. “In Vault X of the National Gallery of Art, a celebrated lady rests,” noted the Associated Press, “waiting for somebody to let her out of the box so she can turn her inscrutable smile on the Americans.”

On the afternoon of January 8, Jackie returned to Washington from Palm Beach in time to have her hair done and to get dressed before her arrival at the National Gallery. She had asked Oleg Cassini to design her gown for the unveiling, and they had worked closely together on it. “We had discussed what Jackie should wear for the reception,” Cassini wrote in his memoirs, “which was viewed as the cultural high point of the administration.”

Cassini said he recalled Jackie’s visit to Empress Josephine’s home, Malmaison, in 1961, and suggested something in the empire style. It suited his client well because it showed off her shoulders and strong neckline. “The gown I created was a pink chiffon column encrusted with pearls and brilliants. It was strapless—quite a dramatic departure from our first few months in the White House, when Jackie had been so worried about wearing a one-shouldered gown!”

Very early in her pregnancy, the size 10 dress fit perfectly. Cassini remembered that Jackie looked spectacular in the full-length gown of mauve and silk chiffon that featured a “wrapped bandeau bodice with gathers of silk chiffon falling to a jeweled hem.” The pink-toned strapless evening dress was patterned with hand-sewn crystal beads. “Some dresses are conspicuously successful,” he said, “and this was one of our favorite gowns.”

For her part, Madame Malraux had selected a floor-length black velvet and taffeta dress with a tailored bodice and full skirt, presumably designed by Chanel. She wore black satin gloves to the elbow and three long ropes of pearls. Paris may have been the paragon of fashion, but the typically stylish Madame Malraux looked positively matronly dressed all in black standing next to the lilac-hued youthful First Lady. The first couple looked tanned and rested following their holiday in sun-swept Florida, whereas the Malrauxs by contrast looked pale and exhausted.

Finally the great moment arrived. On the day of the unveiling, January 8, 1963, Mona Lisa was removed from Vault X and gently carried into the long marble corridor of the Gallery’s West Hall. With Walker supervising, Perry Cott and a handful of curators mounted the painting on the specially constructed temporary wall. Once the painting was in place, workers installed the velvet backdrop. John Walker and Madame Hours lingered in front of the masterpiece scrutinizing their display. “There is the satisfaction of a beautiful installation,” Walker recalled in his memoirs. “When an arrangement seemed inevitable and perfect I felt as though I were the successful director of an orchestra.”

The celebration to honor the unveiling of the Mona Lisa began in the candlelit dining room at the French Embassy where Ambassador and Madame Hervé Alphand “were hosts at a dinner and a tableau that was worthy of da Vinci himself.” At the main table sat President and Mrs. Kennedy, all of the President’s brothers and sisters, Cultural Minister André Malraux and his wife, Vice President Lyndon Johnson and Lady Bird. Seventy-two years old and in poor health, French President Charles de Gaulle had decided not to travel to Washington for the historic occasion. “De Gaulle stayed in France,” noted author Donald Sassoon, “there was room for only one star.”

“Renowned in Washington not only for her looks and her style, but for her abilities as a hostess, Madame Alphand turned out a dinner that had Francophiles kissing their finger tips in joy,” gushed Time magazine. The menu began with a delicate foie gras followed by filet de boeuf Charolais sous la cendre garni renaissance. This was accompanied by a “profound Chateau Gruaud-Larose en magnum 1952; an unassuming little hearts-of-lettuce salad with mimosa dressing. And for a windup, Poires Mona Lisa—poached pears, swaddled in hot chocolate sauce, bundled into a pastry shell—trailed by a superb Dom Perignon 1955.”

A trio of effusive toasts was made by the Ambassador to President Kennedy, who in turn toasted the absent French president. Walker gave the final toast, bringing loud cheers to the room when he gallantly raised his glass in honor of the Mona Lisa.

Tucked among the specially invited guests were three couples known for their notable art collections, which later would join the galleries of the world’s great museums: oilman Charles B. Wrightsman, banking heir Paul Mellon, investor and diplomat W. Averell Harriman, and their wives. Walker made sure that he paused to visit each of these extraordinary collectors who someday might make permanent gifts of their private collections to the National Gallery.

Nicole Alphand had gone full bore in preparation for the party. Parisian decorator Stéphane Boudin had hung painted wood panels from the Petit Trianon at Versailles in the dining room and added gilded ballroom chairs (identical, the Post noted, to those used by Mrs. Kennedy for her tables of ten). Throughout the room, modern French art objects, displayed among the “flickering shadows” of yellow and pink tapers, decorated the tables.

Dressed in a rented tuxedo, news photographer I. C. Rapoport had been dispatched by Paris Match to cover the embassy dinner. Rapoport recalled that Madame Alphand grabbed his arm and asked him to photograph her with the president. At the same time she also warned him that journalists were “interdits” (forbidden) to be present at the reception.

As Rapoport was “ushered through the crowd of celebrants,” President Kennedy spotted the photographer. Nicole apologized to the President, knowing that the White House had instructed that no members of the press be admitted. “This fellow flew all the way from Paris, today, just to be here, and I could not say ‘No’ to him,” Nicole whispered.

Rapoport snapped a photo of the wife of the French ambassador with the palm of her hand embracing the President’s elbow. “Kennedy was grinning his famous grin,” Rapoport recalled. President Kennedy immediately recognized the photojournalist despite the rented tuxedo, and said with a smile, “You’re out of uniform, Private Rapoport!”

After Madame Hours felt she had addressed all of the pressing security problems at the National Gallery, she too joined the dinner at the French Embassy. Her hair in a semi-bouffant, she wore a light-colored, full-length gown with a tasteful plunging neckline. Over her shoulders was a stunning pink satin stole, and see-through black lace gloves covered her hands.

“It was a wonderful dinner,” she recalled. “There were ten or so round tables with eight guests seated at each one. President Kennedy presided at table one, [and] I was at table number two, [next to] the Italian Ambassador in homage to the nationality of the Mona Lisa, and to its creator.”

On her right side, Hours recalled, was “a stranger.” In front of her was seated the President’s mother, Mrs. Joseph Kennedy, who spoke perfect French. Also at her table were Robert McNamara and two others. “Madame Rose Kennedy asked a lot of questions about the Mona Lisa and I tried to answer and include the person on my left, the Italian Ambassador, in our conversation, which began to sound like a dialogue.

“It was only then I realized who the man on my right was: the Vice-President of the United States! I smiled at him and tried to interest him in our conversation, which he more or less grasped.”

Madame Hours remembered that Rose Kennedy introduced her to her sons in an authoritarian manner, and she summoned Attorney General Robert Kennedy by saying, “Bobby, come here.” He arrived, bowed, and his mother said simply: “He runs the Justice department.”

At one point during the dinner party, President Kennedy acknowledged Madame Hours with a smile and thoughtfully called her “Mona’s Lisa’s younger sister.” Later, Lyndon Johnson referred to the museum official as the “mother of the Mona Lisa,” and Hours cringed at the thought that she was perceived as old enough to be the mother of the famed Lady in the painting. “John Kennedy was much more gallant,” she recalled.

Of all the participants, possibly no one was more overcome with emotion than Mona Lisa’s suitor, “Edouard” Folliard. The reporter who had been at the front lines of the Battle of the Bulge to cross the Rhine with the Ninth Army and then witnessed VE-Day in Paris was now seated with the luminaries of American and French society gathered in anticipation of the unveiling of the great painting.

Folliard had traveled with King George and Queen Elizabeth, but such encounters could not compare to the evening about to unfold, in which a lifetime ambition would be realized. At the end of the lavish dinner party at the French Embassy, as he left the dining room, President Kennedy spotted Folliard and his wife Helen seated at a table near his mother. Folliard seemed out of place dressed in a tuxedo and black tie, and Kennedy hardly recognized him.

As photographers caught the moment on film, the President and First Lady exited the embassy and stepped into the back of the Lincoln Continental presidential limousine. By the time they arrived at the National Gallery of Art, where they were greeted by John Walker, nearly 2,000 guests—“black-tied and begowned,” as one newspaper described them—had jammed into the West Sculpture Hall.

As the presidential party arrived, John Walker escorted the entourage and their Secret Service guards to the elevator, which was to take them to the main floor. But the Gallery’s longtime elevator operator became so nervous at the sight of the First Lady that he hit the “stop” button by mistake. When he next pushed the button to go up, nothing happened. He pushed it again. Nothing. Walker glanced at Jackie, who simply smiled.

After several anguished moments as the operator clumsily tried to get the elevator moving, the President decided that the entourage should take the stairs. Mrs. Kennedy lifted her gown and gingerly climbed the stairs holding the President’s arm. Vice President Johnson, who had recently suffered a heart attack, followed closely behind. Johnson, who had been misinformed about the dress code, was wearing white tails instead of black tie.

The red-coated Marine Corps band was playing “The Star Spangled Banner” in anticipation of the President’s entrance, but as the regal group unexpectedly entered the viewing area, the band abruptly shifted to “Hail to the Chief.”

Elegantly coifed in her strapless pink chiffon gown embroidered with brilliants and pearls, Mrs. Kennedy instantly stole the spotlight. Diamond drop earrings designed by Harry Winston sparkled against her face as a flood of flashbulbs popped inside the great marbled hall.

“The Mona Lisa, first lady of the world among paintings and Jacqueline Kennedy, first lady of the nation, came face to face,” reported the Washington Post. “It was a long awaited reunion,” exclaimed Life magazine, and “both ladies were at their glowing best.”

André Malraux stood to address the packed audience of politicians and diplomats, none of whom could see the Mona Lisa because of the bright television lights. The glare of the spotlights ricocheted off the shatterproof, bulletproof glass protecting the Mona Lisa, making the painting a whitewashed blur.

Standing at the podium, Malraux turned toward President Kennedy and eloquently fused the identity of Western Civilization with the nation of France through the Mona Lisa, paying homage to America’s role in delivering twice the victory of civilization over upheaval: “There has been talk of the risks this painting took in leaving the Louvre. They are real, though exaggerated. But the risks taken by the boys who landed one day in Normandy—to say nothing of those who had preceded them twenty-five years before—were much more certain. To the humblest among them . . . I want to say ... that the masterpiece to which you are paying historic homage this evening, Mr. President, is a painting which he has saved.”

But few, if any, heard him. The microphone system had failed and the cocktail-drinking crowd was growing noisy. The Marines guarding the painting soon worried that the mob would surge forward, and Secret Service agents whisked the President’s mother into another wing of the Gallery for protection.

Secretary Rusk, his voice barely audible above the tumult, attempted to soothe the crowd by proclaiming that since the early days of the frontier, “irreverence has been one of the signs of our affection.” But to no avail.

Even the President himself failed to silence the chatter, and he barely disguised his irritation. While thanking the nation of France for lending the priceless “Moner Liser,” as he pronounced it, he wryly recalled that once when it was displayed in Florence, an unruly crowd had broken the gallery windows. “Our own reception is more orderly,” Kennedy shouted, “though perhaps as noisy.”

As the president continued on, no one could hear a word; to John Walker’s dismay, the loudspeaker system stopped working entirely. Walker scrambled to find the Gallery’s sound engineer, but the director, unable to squeeze through the mob, was pinned into a corner. The long-awaited debut of the world’s most famous face was suddenly in shambles.

Without hesitation, the President dropped the dead microphone and moved closer to the throng. With a voice trained by many political campaigns, he shouted defiantly in an attempt to get the audience to quiet down. Kennedy extemporized, told a few jokes, and struggled to save the evening. Summoning all his vocal strength, he repeated key portions of Minister Malraux’s evocative speech.

Once the audience was more or less quiet, Kennedy read from his prepared address, a finely crafted tribute to the painting, its artist, and the two countries’ shared aspirations and beliefs, written with great care by August Heckscher and Arthur Schlesinger:

The life of this painting here before us tonight spans the entire life of the New World. We citizens of nations unborn at the time of its creation are among the inheritors and protectors of the ideal which gave it birth. For this painting is not only one of the towering achievements of the skill and vision of art, but its creator embodied the central purpose of our civilization.

Leonardo da Vinci was not only an artist and a sculptor, an architect and a scientist, and a military engineer, an occupation which he pursued, he tells us, in order to preserve the chief gift of nature, which is liberty. In this belief he expresses the most profound premises of our own two nations.

We here tonight, among them many of the men entrusted with the destiny of this Republic, also come to pay homage to this great creation of the civilization which we share, the beliefs which we protect, and the aspirations toward which we together strive.

The unveiling coincided with the opening of the Eighty-eighth Congress, and because nearly everyone in both chambers was present, the speech was infused with poignant political underpinnings. The President astutely utilized the Mona Lisa to rise above issues of difference and to stress the profound historical and political ties between France and the United States. His speech highlighted the ways in which both nations had fought side by side in four wars and how their respective revolutions had come to define the very notions of modern democracy and liberty.

It was an oration that shrewdly transformed the Mona Lisa into a symbol of the Cold War, representing Western progress in contrast to the repressive regime of the communist block. His closing would become the single most quoted line by the world press: “Politics and art, the life of action and the life of thought, the world of events and the world of imagination are one.” The Mona Lisa had instantly become America’s claim to the “guardianship of Western Civilization.”

In the days to follow, the president’s speech appeared on the front pages of newspapers around the world. Dramatic images from the evening had been successfully broadcast on television as planned, via Bell Lab’s satellite Relay, delivering the first live, color, U.S.-to-Europe satellite transmission. “Television straddled the Atlantic via’s America’s new space communications station,” noted the Chicago Daily Tribune, thereby flashing Mona Lisa’s smile on two continents simultaneously.

In London and Paris, early-morning television viewers were able to watch Mona Lisa’s unveiling live, and the broadcast was repeatedly replayed the following day. Thankfully, none of the chaos of the opening ceremony was caught on film, and a worldwide audience saw only the serene images of the President and First Lady standing majestically alongside the Mona Lisa. The audio transmission from the President’s stirring speech came across perfectly, skillfully conveying his message: the French and American revolutions created the ideals of freedom and democracy, and these same ideals were ones that both France and America felt bound to uphold.

One scholar noted that Kennedy’s speech had turned a political ceremony into a nearly religious service with the adoration of sacred images. “Our two revolutions helped define the meaning of democracy and freedom which are so much contested in the world today,” Kennedy said. “Today, here in the Gallery, in front of this great painting, we are renewing our commitment to those ideals which have proved such a strong link through so many hazards.” It didn’t take much to recognize the President’s references to war and the threat to freedom as a “cultural declaration of war” on communism. Indeed, the Mona Lisa had been elevated into a powerful tool of propaganda in the Cold War.

“I was exhausted and my face showed my anxiety,” Madame Hours recalled of the moments following the unveiling. “The minute he had finished his speech, President Kennedy came towards me. ‘You look worried, Madame Hours? Is it about the Mona Lisa?’ he asked.

“If anything happens, I too will have problems,” the President said, smiling. Then he asked several questions in English to which Madame Hours answered clumsily and begged his pardon.

“I do not,” Kennedy told her. Then in French he added: “The President of the United States only speaks English.” At that instant, a photographer immortalized the encounter between the President and Mona Lisa’s devoted guardian. A cherished souvenir of the historic evening, the photograph with President Kennedy was later proudly displayed in Madame Hours’ laboratory office at the Louvre.

Once the evening ended, Walker escorted the President and First Lady to their car and waved goodbye as the limousine sped away to return to the White House. Walker later recalled the night as the worst moment of his professional life. As Lady Bird Johnson was leaving, she took Walker’s arm and drew him aside to comfort him. She told him she knew how he felt.

“I feel worse!” she added. “I did not look at the invitation which read ‘black tie,’ and I told Lyndon to wear white tie.” Vice President Johnson was the only person at the entire affair in full evening dress.

Lady Bird’s words of consolation helped soothe Walker’s jangled nerves. “Mrs. Johnson’s few words that night, however, restored my will to live,” Walker said, “and I have been grateful to her ever since.”

The last to leave the Gallery that night, Madame Hours returned to the French Embassy to rest. “I was exhausted but the first contact between America and the Mona Lisa had gone off extremely well,” she said—in spite of the breakdown of the audio system and the unruly crowd.

When she arrived, Minister Malraux and Ambassador Alphand were seated in the embassy’s Grand Salon drinking and talking. As she entered the room, the men stood to greet her. “Well then, how is she doing?” Malraux asked.

“Splendidly,” she replied. “The conditions are stable.” Malraux asked if Hours would return to the Gallery the following day and judge the public reaction so that he could describe the atmosphere for President de Gaulle.

The next day, Madame Hours awoke with satisfaction, confident that the worst was over. An important lunch honoring French poet Saint-John Perse, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, was planned at the Embassy, so Hours quickly dressed and raced to the National Gallery so that she could return in time for the luncheon. Hours arrived before the museum doors opened and verified the climatic conditions inside the West Hall as acceptable. She then waited for the throngs of visitors that had been queuing since dawn to “spend a few seconds face to face with our star.”

“Women were carrying babies,” Hours recalled. “One of them burst into tears on seeing the Mona Lisa to my amazement. I thought that our campaign had been well done since the visitors were clearly emotional and thrilled. For them, it was like meeting the effigy of European civilization.”

Hours stood in the back of the West Hall for over an hour watching the thousands of museum visitors pass the painting one by one. Near 11:00 A.M., she suddenly felt the temperature in the room shoot dramatically upward.

At first she thought she was just tired and had become overheated, but her face became flushed from the heat caused by so many bodies in the room. Slipping between the visitors, she rushed toward the potted plants below the painting to examine the readings of the hygrothermographs.

She stepped over the red velvet rope, momentarily forgetting the security rule that she herself had established. At that moment the white-capped Marine guarding the Mona Lisa lashed out with his bayonet and hit her on the shoulder. The bayonet broke the strap of her brassiere and stopped her cold. The Secret Service agents, recognizing her immediately, shouted to the Marine not to harm her.

Yet one agent instinctively executed a “Japanese technique”—a blow given to the throat by the flat of the hand that takes the victim’s breath away, and Hours fainted and collapsed to the ground.

“The shock had been so violent that I remained unconscious for an hour,” she remembered. “The moment I came somewhat to my senses, I thought about the time and how long I had been unconscious.” After she regained her composure, she expressed her apologies to the museum’s staff (in her haste she had forgotten to warn anybody that she was about to step over the rope and examine the hygrothermographs). When Walker learned of the incident, he was aghast.

Later that morning, a Gallery car took her to the Embassy where she changed her clothes and refreshed her hair and makeup. The luncheon guests were already seated in the Embassy’s Grand Salon. When she walked into the room, Ambassador Alphand said dryly, “We’ve been waiting for you for the last quarter of an hour!”

Shaken from her ordeal, Hours was seated across from André Malraux and poet Saint-John Perse. The two literary giants talked amiably about the Mona Lisa and why she was so popular. “By transfiguring a profane face, Leonardo da Vinci gave to the soul of woman the idealization that Ancient Greece had previously given to her features,” Malraux told the group. Saint-John Perse nodded in response.

Malraux then turned toward the tardy luncheon guest and asked Madame Hours for her opinion. “A portrait is always a projection of its creator, just as much as a reproduction of the model,” she explained. “For me, she is the very image of the initiated, she is the one who knows, which is why she both intrigues and subjugates.”

Everyone at the table laughed. Some time later, following lunch, Hours asked permission to leave and lie down in her room. That night, the Ambassador’s wife organized a luxurious tray loaded with lobster and champagne to be brought to her in bed, and she slept until morning.

Interestingly, there was an alternate version of the bayonet story that spread like wildfire among the museum staff. In this account, Madame Hours rushed up to Malraux and proceeded to tell him about the Marine who nearly stabbed her. Malraux looked her in the eye and reportedly told her, “Madame, had you been killed, I would have seen to it that you had a hero’s burial.”

John Walker read the morning newspapers with trepidation. Headlines declared that the affair planned with such high hopes had resulted in a chaotic disaster. One newspaper described the historic evening, “attended by the entire listing of the Green book,” as a debacle. “But seldom, if ever, had the ruling class of the nation assembled in such full force.” The press noted with amusement that no visiting head of state had ever been treated with as much care.

“Everything went wrong that night. And the papers picked up everything,” recalled one longtime museum employee. It was no secret that Walker was in a state of despair at the newspaper reports filled with bad publicity concerning the National Gallery.

Minister Malraux may have quietly fumed over the disrespectful reception, but he never said so publicly. He seemed to go out of his way to add a patina of sophistication to the evening, and in one speech after the opening, Malraux again dismissed his French critics. Partially repeating his thoughts from the unveiling, he said that “the world’s most powerful nation [paid] the most brilliant homage a work of art has ever received.” Malraux also praised Mrs. Kennedy as one who is “always present when art, the United States and my country are linked.”

Despite the political sensitivities, Walker was grateful that the French cultural minister seemed unaffected by the rude reception he had received. He was so bowled over by Malraux’s character and good manners that Walker felt moved to write Malraux with his appreciation:

I want to thank you for all you have done to make possible the loan of the most famous painting in the world. Your speech last night was, in my experience, the most moving ever delivered about a work of art. I was deeply touched; as I know my compatriots will be when they read it in the newspapers and hear it on radio and television. With my warm appreciation of a gesture of friendship for the U.S. which will long be remembered.

On the evening of January 10, White House advisor Arthur Schlesinger and his wife joined President and Mrs. Kennedy for dinner. The other guests included columnist Joseph Alsop and his socialite wife Susan Mary Alsop, and Jackie’s sister, Lee Radziwill. In his diary, published by his sons in 2007, Schlesinger recalled that the President and Jackie were both in great form that night. The assembled guests—except possibly for her sister, Lee—were unaware of Jackie’s pregnancy.

The conversation, Schlesinger recalled, ranged widely. “JFK discussed his conversation the night before with [André] Malraux. He said that he had tried to say to Malraux that all the talk about European nuclear deterrents, multilateral forces, etc., was unimportant and irrelevant, since it was all based on the expectation of a Soviet attack on Europe,” which was highly unlikely.

The President dismissed the notion that nuclear weapons were necessary for prestige in the global community. What matters, he said, was the strength of the currency. “It is this, and not its nuclear weapons, which makes France a factor.” The real danger for the future, he argued, was the potential for Chinese nuclear capability.

When Schlesinger asked how Malraux had responded, the President said that Malraux had not displayed any clear reaction. President Kennedy then mused to Schlesinger on the subject of the candor of political wives. “Whenever a wife says something, everyone in this town assumes that she is saying what her husband really thinks,” he said. “Last night I suddenly heard Jackie telling Malraux that she thought [Konrad] Adenauer (the embattled West German Chancellor) was ‘un peu gaga’ [a little gaga]. I am sure that this has already been reported to Paris as my opinion.”

Three days after the reception, Walker summoned the nerve to write Jackie a note of gratitude and regret. The note was laced with humor, but it could not conceal his deep embarrassment. It was the rare occasion in which Walker, known for his dry official correspondence, penned a note with any exclamation marks. Undoubtedly, the note made Jackie smile:

Dear Jackie,

I want to write you to ask you to thank the President for all he did Tuesday to save our opening from complete and absolute disaster! His humor, the heroic way he managed to make his voice a Public Address System in itself, his kindness to me in my darkest hour, all this I shall never forget. I simply cannot express my gratitude to him and to you. (I am sending you the other six Cézannes under separate cover !!!)

With affectionate best wishes from Margaret (who kept all sharp instruments away from me when we got home Tuesday night!) and from your devoted friend,

As ever,
John Walker

Later that evening, feeling the pressures of the past two weeks, Mrs. Kennedy wrote a memo to her new social secretary, Mary Gallagher, announcing that she planned to withdraw from many of her official duties and focus fully on her children. “I am taking the veil,” she wrote. “I’ve had it with being First Lady all the time and now I’m going to give more attention to my children. I want you to cut off all outside activity—whether it’s a glass of sherry with a poet or coffee with a king.”

The botched evening at the Gallery may have had more of an impact than she let others know. By any measure, it was a disappointment. “No more art gallery dedications,” she added, “no nothing unless absolutely necessary.”

On January 13, André Malraux said his goodbyes and left Washington as thousands of museum goers waited in line to see the Mona Lisa. Walker expected large crowds, but even he was shocked by the steady stream of visitors who came to see the picture. Never in the history of the National Gallery had a single painting drawn so many in so few days. Museum visitors stood ten abreast in long, snaking lines that stretched for nearly a third of a mile. The amount of foot traffic was so voluminous that Gallery guards who normally recorded the number of visitors on a handheld device were unable to keep up. The last occasion when the Gallery had seen such crowds was in 1948 at the exhibition of art treasures from the German salt mines that had been brought to the National Gallery for safekeeping. Attendance during the forty-day exhibit was considered a world record for any museum in a comparable period.

Now a new phenomenon known as “Mona Mania” swept through the nation’s capital, and no one could ignore it. Walker and his staff expected more than 1,000,000 Americans would come to the Gallery over the course of the next few weeks. For the first time in its history, Walker expanded the museum’s visiting hours to accommodate the crowds. On weekdays, the Gallery would open at 10:00 A.M. and close its doors at 9:00 P.M., on Saturdays the Gallery would stay open an extra hour and close to the public at 10:00 P.M.

Despite the enthusiasm the exhibition unleashed, Walker could not shake his disappointment over the chaotic unveiling. “Crushed by the fiasco of what had been planned as a scintillating yet dignified evening,” wrote Mary Van Rensselaer Thayer, Walker wrote “a sad letter of apology” to President Kennedy.

It was up to Jackie, however, to answer for the President, and she did so on the morning of January 15. The letter from the White House was hand delivered to the Gallery’s executive offices, and Mrs. Foy rushed inside the director’s office. She excused herself and shut Walker’s door. Inside was a neatly typed note from the First Lady written on White House stationery:

Dear John,

What a sweet note you wrote. The president feels you have given him too much credit, and that it was a wonderful occasion. Please do not feel badly. That is the only thing that would really upset me.

You have been so wonderful and made so many undreamed of things possible. I could never tell you how much we both appreciate all that. You mustn’t brood and make it worse in your mind. It was a fantastic evening. It is, as Malraux said, part of the magic of the Mona Lisa, almost an evil spell. She made it worthwhile and continues to do so every day—and Malraux adores you.

If you think a microphone going off was bad—wait until you see what happens when they see the Blue Room white!

So please don’t ever have a backward thought again, and just think how beautifully you have hung the picture, and how happy it makes everyone to have it there with you watching over it.

Affectionately,
Jackie

The painting’s American debut coincided with President Kennedy’s escalating international and domestic prestige. Superbly utilized by the administration on the heels of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the exhibition helped solidify the President’s image. The succeeding weeks were an exhilarating time, described by Arthur Schlesinger as a golden interlude in which Washington engaged in a collective effort to make itself brighter, gayer, and more intellectual. The First Lady was at the center of this new feeling.

“The most powerful nation in the world was represented by the most stunning couple imaginable,” observed Jackie’s friend, designer Oleg Cassini. “There was nobody who could touch Jackie in using style as a political tool.”

“The things people had once held against her—the unconventional beauty, the un-American elegance, her taste for French clothes and French food—were suddenly no longer liabilities but assets,” observed Arthur Schlesinger. He went on to state that “She represented all at once not a negation of her country but a possible fulfillment of it, a suggestion that America was not to be trapped forever in the bourgeois ideal, [but instead achieve] a dream of civilization and beauty.

“She had dreaded coming to the White House, fearing the end of family and privacy. But life for herself and her husband and children was never more intense and more complete. It turned out to be the time of the greatest happiness.”