Ernest Hemingway was a big fan of Jacqueline Kennedy, and might have attended JFK‘s inauguration if he hadn’t been in the loony bin.
Hemingway’s biographer A.E. Hotchner writes in “What Jackie Taught Us” — Tina Flaherty’s expanded best seller, being reissued to mark the 20th anniversary of the former first lady’s death — about visiting Hemingway in January 1961, “in his secured room in the psychiatric section of St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester, Minnesota.”
While Hotchner was there, Hemingway “received a telegram from President-elect Kennedy inviting Ernest and his wife, Mary, to be his personal guests at the impending inaugural.”
Hemingway told Hotchner he felt a strong connection to Jackie, and that “he admired the young couple and thought that they would be a good tonic for the country and freshen up the bad taste of current politics.”
But Papa asked Hotchner to help him compose a reply declining the invitation, which Hotchner telegraphed to the White House.
Hemingway, who compared Jackie to his first wife Hadley, told Hotchner “he hoped Kennedy would not follow his own bad example, that he would keep Jackie and her demonstrated virtues solidly at his side.”
Six months later, Hemingway blew his brains out with a shotgun.
Four of the 14 contributors to Flaherty’s book will hold a panel May 7 at Hunter College: Declan Kiely of the Morgan Library; Municipal Art Society president emeritus Kent Barwick; actor Malachy McCourt; and Liz Smith, who compares Jackie to Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana.