uproar also made conversation almost impossible. Finally, Jackie strolled to an open window and waved to the crowd, then persuaded Mrs. Khrushchev to join her. Soon the crowd was chanting “Jac-kie! Ni-na!” and the crisis had passed.
Jackie Kennedy’s children often took precedence over her duties as First Lady. Here she introduces Caroline and John to horseback riding at their Virginia retreat, Glen Ora.
(Kennedy Library)
Behind the facade of public success were glimpses of personal unhappiness. Jackie was essentially estranged from the rest of the Kennedy family, except for JFK’s father, Joe. Most of the others regarded her as a political liability and fiercely resented the publicity she got. JFK’s mother, Rose, especially disapproved of Jackie’s free-spending ways and wrote numerous letters to the President’s aides and even to White House staffers, such as Head Usher J. B. West, criticizing Jackie for everything from misuse of Air Force One to sloppy housekeeping.
There were also signs of estrangement from her husband—or deep discontent with life in the White House, or both. We will probably never learn how much Jackie knew about the other women Jack Kennedy enjoyed in the White House and outside it. Some of them included her close friends, such as the painter Mary Pinchot Meyer. But it would be hard to believe she did not pick up the ugly rumors that swirled through Washington. There were flashes of cynicism, even bitterness in some of her remarks. Once she was said to have introduced her press secretary, Pamela Turnure, to a visitor as “the woman my husband is supposedly sleeping with.”
Unquestionably significant is how often Jackie escaped the White House, in small and large ways. One friend was invited to tea and arrived to find Jackie’s mother, Janet Auchincloss, serving. Jackie had gone for a walk. Then there were the three-and four-day weekends she spent at Glen Ora, the getaway house in Virginia, and more weekends in New York and Palm Beach and Hyannis Port. More publicly noticeable were the long vacations she took without her husband—a 1962 trip to Italy, which included jet set-style partying aboard Italian billionaire Gianni Agnelli’s yacht, and her summer of 1963 cruise with Greek billionaire Aristotle Onassis aboard his ultimate yacht,
Christina
. JFK strongly disapproved of both these expeditions, which had lurid over-and undertones of scandal. But he was hardly in a position to do more than feebly protest and insist on Jackie taking her sister, Lee Radziwill, and her husband and some family friends along as window dressing.
There was, I strongly suspect, a hidden drama being played out here, one that future biographers will explore at greater depth. Jackiewas challenging Jack’s attempts to control her—perhaps warning him that two could play the extramarital sex game. Yet she simultaneously wrote him ten-page letters from the
Christina
, opening with “Dearest dearest Jack.” This might not have meant quite as much as it would from an ordinary woman. As we shall soon see in another upper-class presidential marriage, endearing expressions in the mail can go hand in hand with profound alienation.
Betty Beale, one of Washington’s more astute journalists, has flatly called the Kennedy union a marriage of convenience. I think it was more complex than that, although there were times when it veered perilously close to such a loveless arrangement. I think Jackie was capable of accepting—or attempting to accept—Jack’s unfaithfulness without abandoning her love for him. Her father had not been a paragon of marital fidelity. It was one of the chief reasons why her mother divorced him. Jackie was hardly naive about the male tendency to wander.
What Jackie wanted in the White House—and to a surprising degree she began to get it—was her husband’s respect for her intelligence and judgment. This, as much as love of art and beauty, was the motive behind the ferocious energy
Jackie Kennedy’s children often took precedence over her duties as First Lady. Here she introduces Caroline and John to horseback riding at their Virginia retreat, Glen Ora.
(Kennedy Library)
Behind the facade of public success were glimpses of personal unhappiness. Jackie was essentially estranged from the rest of the Kennedy family, except for JFK’s father, Joe. Most of the others regarded her as a political liability and fiercely resented the publicity she got. JFK’s mother, Rose, especially disapproved of Jackie’s free-spending ways and wrote numerous letters to the President’s aides and even to White House staffers, such as Head Usher J. B. West, criticizing Jackie for everything from misuse of Air Force One to sloppy housekeeping.
There were also signs of estrangement from her husband—or deep discontent with life in the White House, or both. We will probably never learn how much Jackie knew about the other women Jack Kennedy enjoyed in the White House and outside it. Some of them included her close friends, such as the painter Mary Pinchot Meyer. But it would be hard to believe she did not pick up the ugly rumors that swirled through Washington. There were flashes of cynicism, even bitterness in some of her remarks. Once she was said to have introduced her press secretary, Pamela Turnure, to a visitor as “the woman my husband is supposedly sleeping with.”
Unquestionably significant is how often Jackie escaped the White House, in small and large ways. One friend was invited to tea and arrived to find Jackie’s mother, Janet Auchincloss, serving. Jackie had gone for a walk. Then there were the three-and four-day weekends she spent at Glen Ora, the getaway house in Virginia, and more weekends in New York and Palm Beach and Hyannis Port. More publicly noticeable were the long vacations she took without her husband—a 1962 trip to Italy, which included jet set-style partying aboard Italian billionaire Gianni Agnelli’s yacht, and her summer of 1963 cruise with Greek billionaire Aristotle Onassis aboard his ultimate yacht,
Christina
. JFK strongly disapproved of both these expeditions, which had lurid over-and undertones of scandal. But he was hardly in a position to do more than feebly protest and insist on Jackie taking her sister, Lee Radziwill, and her husband and some family friends along as window dressing.
There was, I strongly suspect, a hidden drama being played out here, one that future biographers will explore at greater depth. Jackiewas challenging Jack’s attempts to control her—perhaps warning him that two could play the extramarital sex game. Yet she simultaneously wrote him ten-page letters from the
Christina
, opening with “Dearest dearest Jack.” This might not have meant quite as much as it would from an ordinary woman. As we shall soon see in another upper-class presidential marriage, endearing expressions in the mail can go hand in hand with profound alienation.
Betty Beale, one of Washington’s more astute journalists, has flatly called the Kennedy union a marriage of convenience. I think it was more complex than that, although there were times when it veered perilously close to such a loveless arrangement. I think Jackie was capable of accepting—or attempting to accept—Jack’s unfaithfulness without abandoning her love for him. Her father had not been a paragon of marital fidelity. It was one of the chief reasons why her mother divorced him. Jackie was hardly naive about the male tendency to wander.
What Jackie wanted in the White House—and to a surprising degree she began to get it—was her husband’s respect for her intelligence and judgment. This, as much as love of art and beauty, was the motive behind the ferocious energy
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