John Derbyshire, an occasional contributor to these pages, writes to alert THE SCRAPBOOK to the death of John Coolidge, son of the twentieth century's most conservative president.
Derbyshire reports that while writing his acclaimed novel, Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream, he sought out the younger Coolidge for assistance: "John was unfailingly patient and helpful, though he plainly found some of my questions perplexing. (Which pocket did your father keep his handkerchief in? How did your father cut his cigars?)
"Though quite accustomed to biographers, I suppose he had little experience of novelists. John Coolidge was a New England gentleman of the old school (he used to summer in Vermont and winter in Connecticut). His Vermont home was by the tiny hamlet of Plymouth Notch where his father was born -- the most beautiful and evocative of all presidential birthplaces. John had a rich fund of anecdotes about his White House years. His own favorite concerned the visit of the Prince of Wales -- the one who later abdicated the British throne. Before the prince arrived, Ike Hoover, the old White House usher, took John aside and said: 'Don't be nervous about meeting the Prince of Wales. Just remember: You are the Prince of Plymouth.'" John Coolidge died May 31, aged 93 years.