[Rarebooks] mss of LBJ's inaugural address = by John Steinbeck!

[Serendipity Books]

LBJ's Inaugural Address, the "Great Society" Speech


[1965]              Untitled manuscript, 424 
words, 4 pages, commencing: "Some there art who 
think our country is an inheritance, a gift 
proffered like a sandwich on a clean doily on a 
silver tray. This is not so."   Legal size, 
yellow ruled foolscap, black ink.   With typed transcription.

With undated cover letter, to Eric Goldman, [The 
White House].   100 words, in the same format.  A 
typed transcription is present. As are two statements of provenance.


             "This is the best I can do in the 
time given me – You are free to do anything you 
want if you use it anonymously but if it is to be 
ascribed to me and you wish to change it, please 
let me see the changes before use.

Of course, we both know it will probably not be used and that's all right too.

It is somewhat over the first time ["of  3 
minutes" added in pencil to the typed 
transcription] you gave me but I bet it is shorter than any of the prayers.

And now I join the ranks of the loyal – even the loving opposition.

             Yours, John Steinbeck."


Used, well no, not entirely.  But some was 
used.   Used anonymously, yes. This was used, scarcely a word changed:


             "The great Society, as I see it, is 
not the fixed and sterile polity of the bees nor 
the ordered and changeless battalions of the ants."

             "It is the miracle of becoming – 
always becoming, trying, probing, failing, 
resting and trying again but always gaining a 
little – perfectable but not perfect."


John's Steinbeck's manuscript, commissioned, 
un-credited, of the INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF LYNDON 
BAINES JOHNSON / President of the United States / 
Delivered at the Capitol / Washington, D.C. / January 20, 1965.


A copy of the first edition of the printed address is present.



         John F. Kennedy was assassinated on 
Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dallas.  At the 
time John and Elaine Steinbeck were in Warsaw, 
Poland; the two wrote Mrs Kennedy their 
condolences on November 24, and on the same day 
John wrote Johnson a letter of support, 
indicating that he and his wife were in Poland 
moving about behind the Iron Curtain, at 
President Kennedy's request, and that they would 
continue their "non-diplomatic mission." In fact, 
the Steinbecks’ mission was to "spend as much 
time as they could with dissident writers' groups 
in small clandestine meetings, often late at 
night." John told LBJ that Elaine had gone to 
school in Austin with  John Connally, but Elaine 
and Lady Bird had been to school together as 
well.  In the first half of 1964 John Steinbeck 
and Jacqueline Kennedy exchanged several 
meaningful letters. One of his first sentences 
(February 25, 1964) alludes to the fact that she 
asked of him an essay, or even a full book [it is 
not yet clear, which],  about JFK. "I would like 
to do the writing we spoke of but as always, in 
undertaking something which moves me deeply, I am 
terrified of it."  Again, on February 28, 
Steinbeck responds to Mrs. Kennedy, at greater 
length; "this theme is haunting me."

         By April 20, 1964, Mrs. Kennedy had 
written Steinbeck three letters and they had had 
at least one personal conversation. It now 
becomes clear she had asked a book of him. He is 
even having a book bound for her - "the 
Meditations"of Marcus Aurelius.  In the end, they 
must have talked together on several occasions, 
for in contributing  to Elaine Steinbeck's 
edition of  STEINBECK / A Life in Letters, Mrs. 
Kennedy says "I have found the letters...You will 
never know what it meant to me to talk with your 
husband in those days - I read his letters now - 
and I am as moved as I was then - All his wisdom, 
his compassion, his far-seeing view of things - I 
can't remember the sort of book we were 
discussing then - but I'm glad it wasn't written."

         On July 1, 1964 Steinbeck telegrammed 
the White House, % Jack Valenti, in thanks. LBJ 
had conferred upon him the Presidential Medal of 
Freedom, the highest civil honor conferred by the 
President of the United States for service in 
peacetime. Now the epistles cease. But clearly, 
LBJ, and the White House staff, and quite 
probably the widow of John F. Kennedy all asked 
Steinbeck to draft LBJ's inaugural speech.  Into 
which he could pour the distilled essence of 
those thoughts he had of the meaning of the 
United States and its leadership. He did.  The 
letter to Eric Goldman is apparently unpublished, 
as is the manuscript in its entirety. $90,000.00




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