Jackie, Janet & Lee

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  The Farias

  In the spring of 1968, Winfred Burgess, the caretaker who had worked at Hammersmith for many years, retired. To replace him, Janet and Hugh Auchincloss hired a man who would become a close friend of theirs for years to come, Manuel—Mannie—Faria. He and his wife, Louise, and their one-year-old daughter, Linda, moved into what was called the Caretaker’s House. This was a two-story, three-bedroom structure on the top of a hill to the right of the Green House and the Carriage House and abutting the Potato House and the massive vegetable and flower gardens. In a year, the Farias would welcome another child, Joyce.

  From the beginning, Janet felt a close kinship with the Farias. Of Portuguese descent, both Mannie and Louise were born in the United States, in Middletown and Newport respectively. While Mannie was invaluable as the property’s caretaker, Louise was an integral part of the household staff, too. She was responsible for making sure accommodations were always in order for guests.

  “The Caretaker’s House was a wonderful place to grow up,” Joyce Faria Brennan recalled. The Faria daughters would live at Hammersmith until they were in their twenties, “our entire childhoods and early adult lives,” she says. “It was my home. I still feel as if it’s my home.”

  A normal day for Janet often included spending time at the boathouse and dock, where she would feed the pigeons before then walking five minutes down to the new Windmill. There, she would usually have lunch. Then she would continue to walk up a steep hill and through the barnyard (where a half dozen horses were maintained in pens on either side) along a gravelly road before reaching the Caretaker’s House. Once there, she would sit and chat with Mannie, Louise, and their girls. “We were always treated as if we were a part of the Auchincloss family,” recalls Joyce Faria Brennan. “There was a genuine respect for what my father did. My dad was on call for Mr. and Mrs. A. twenty-four/seven. He could do anything—handyman, farmer … whatever Mrs. A. needed. He would walk around with this enormous wad of keys, for every door in every room of every house of Hammersmith, so you can imagine how many keys that was! You could hear him coming from a mile away with all of the jangling noises.” (Verification of Janet’s affection for Mannie Faria is found in an inscription she wrote on a birthday card for him: “I send you every wish for every happiness. We could never live without you and Louise—and we love you very much. Janet Lee Auchincloss.”)

  It’s worth noting that Jackie was also not conscious of class when it came to her employees. For instance, Providencia Paredes remained close to Jackie after their time together in the White House. Her son Gustavo practically grew up with Jackie’s and Lee’s sons, John Jr. and Anthony, and would remain one of their best friends for the rest of their lives. “My mother and I considered ourselves family,” Gustavo recalled. “I can’t think of anyone closer to us than the Kennedys—and John and Anthony and I spent decades getting into trouble together. The Auchinclosses, the Kennedys, the Radziwills, they always found value in people of all walks of life.”

  “Why do you spend so much time with the Farias?” Oatsie Charles once asked Janet. “Don’t get me wrong. I think they’re lovely, too. I just have to wonder. They are the help, after all.”

  Janet smiled. “Because they are real hardworking people who have taught their children respect,” she said. “That’s why.”

  Janet remained somewhat chagrined that Jackie and Lee didn’t show her the reverence she felt she deserved. She felt she gave up a lot for them when they were young and that they never appreciated it. When she was with the Faria girls, she basked in the reverence they had for one another as a family and the respect they had for her. “If you couldn’t find my mother around Hammersmith, you’d know that she and her Jack Russells were probably up at the Caretaker’s House,” recalled Jamie Auchincloss.

  One Dollar for Each Year

  In March of 1968, Jamie visited Jackie at her home in Manhattan and then spent a few nights there with her. Janet stayed two floors below with her friend Mary Whitehouse.

  March 4 was Jamie’s twenty-first birthday. To celebrate, Jackie hosted dinner at her home and presented him with a birthday cake. Then she took him to see Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite at the Plymouth Theatre on Broadway, along with Caroline and John Jr. “We got to the theater late,” Jamie recalled. “New York audiences are notoriously annoyed when people show up late for a Broadway show. So, the lights are out and the show is on, and we’re trying to find our seats, stumbling over people in the dark, when someone recognized Jackie. Then, the whispers started, and they grew and grew, going from one row to the next until, finally, there was so much excitement that the management really should have just stopped the show, turned up the house lights, and had Jackie take a bow.

  “During intermission, Jackie asked me to stand outside the restroom and try to prevent women from going in while she was in there,” Jamie recalled. “Earlier, I had told her that maybe we should have the Secret Service with us, but she said she didn’t want them that night. As traumatized as she was, she was also stubborn. She needed protection, but she also abhorred it. So, of course, I tried my best for her, but forget it. Try telling a mob of pushy New Yorkers they can’t go into the bathroom because Jackie Kennedy is in there! Finally, by the time Jackie came out, she was really frazzled and looked like a deer in the headlights. She seemed stricken by the whole ordeal. I felt terrible for her. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I told her, ‘I really tried.’”

  Every birthday, Jackie would give Jamie a check, a dollar for each year and an extra dollar on top of that. (This year, of course, it would be for $22, which is actually about $150 in today’s money.) Jamie always took the check to the National Camera store on 17th and Pennsylvania in Washington and used it to buy film. The store would never cash the check, though. Instead, the owner would frame it on a wall with all of the other checks Jackie had written Jamie over the years. “Each check was worth more to them as a historical memento than it was for its amount,” Jamie would recall, laughing. “No one wanted to let go of a signed ‘Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy’ check, certainly not in the 1960s. She told me once that she could never properly balance her bank account because the checks she wrote to people were never cashed!”

  Imagine it. Your half sister is one of the most famous women in the world, America’s former First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, and she has given you a check for your birthday—$22. It certainly doesn’t seem like much, but as they say, maybe it really is the thought that counts. Perhaps Jackie felt this gesture was the best she could do at the time? If so, things were about to change for her in a big way.

  PART NINE

  ONASSIS

  Moving Forward with Ari

  In May of 1968, Jackie Kennedy joined Aristotle Onassis on a cruise of the Virgin Islands on the Christina. Joan Thring, who was Rudolf Nureyev’s assistant and a friend of Ari’s, was on board prior to Jackie’s arrival. The ship left the dock on May 21 with Cary Grant, billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian and his wife, dancer Jean Maree Hardy, and Onassis’s friend and attorney Johnny Meyer, among others. On the 25th, most of the guests were getting ready to depart at St. John, except for Joan Thring and a few other trusted Onassis allies. Suddenly, she recalled, Onassis’s staff began preparing the yacht by positioning photographs of JFK and Jackie all about the premises, “and we all laughed with each other,” she said, “because Ari never told you anything, it was very secretive. He never said, ‘Well, Jackie’s arriving tonight,’ or anything like that. So I said to them, ‘Guess who’s coming to dinner—it must be Jackie.’ They were all getting off that day, so I went to see them off. Then I came back about an hour later. I looked out my window and there was Jackie, arriving.”

  Apparently, it was on this excursion that Jackie and Ari began serious discussions about a possible future together. However, Joan Thring reports that the two still slept in separate rooms. “There were no endearments or touching or anything like that,” she recalled. “I was absolutely convinced that nothing had gone on while we were there. I t
hink in the afternoons they spent an hour or two together and they were sort of working out some sort of agreement.”

  Apparently, it was on this cruise that Ari asked Jackie to marry him, assuring her that if she agreed she would still have her freedom. Perhaps more important, though, she would also have protection by his army of security men, seventy-five strong, some with machine guns. For a woman still suffering from PTSD from the murder of her husband, this was vital information. He loved her, he said, at least in his own way—which meant that he, too, would have his freedom, ostensibly to see other women, like Maria Callas. What Jackie didn’t know was that just six months earlier, he and Maria had set a wedding date of November 4. After a ferocious argument that had to do with Maria’s decision to have someone other than Ari manage her two-thirds interest in a merchant ship, the wedding was called off on the eve of the ceremony. It’s possible that if Jackie had really understood just how mercurial Ari could be in matters of the heart, she might have had second thoughts about becoming involved with him. However, as it was, she felt she finally deserved some happiness and security in her life, and she was going to get it one way or the other; if it was with Ari, so be it. She left that cruise on May 28 when the yacht returned to St. Thomas.

  Some may have argued that, as a matter of loyalty to Lee, Jackie should have stayed clear of any man with whom her sister had ever been involved. In Jackie’s defense, though, never once did Lee confirm to her that she was even involved with Onassis! He didn’t, either. Jackie had to have suspected it, though. Everyone suspected it. After all, it had been going on for about six years! Apparently, Jackie was also unaware that Lee had defied Onassis and married Stas in the Catholic Church rather than risk tainting her sister’s reputation as First Lady. True to form in a family where transparency was almost never the case, Janet never told Jackie about it. Making things even more complex, Jackie decided not to discuss Onassis’s proposal with either Janet or Lee. In other words, the secrets and lies of omission just kept stacking up among the three Bouvier women.

  Jackie did talk to Bobby Kennedy about Onassis, though. He wasn’t happy, no surprise there. He hadn’t been pleased about Jack Warnecke, either, but, in his mind, Onassis was far worse. He had thought Lee’s assignation with him was bad, but this was catastrophic.

  Bobby asked Jackie to put things off until after the November election; he’d decided back in March that he was going to run for the presidency. She said yes, she would do that for him. She didn’t want to hurt his chances. “There was a lot going on in the country, what with Martin Luther King’s terrible murder and unrest in the streets over the war in Vietnam,” recalled Jamie Auchincloss. “We all felt that maybe Bobby was the answer for the country. Jackie decided to wait.”

  “The New Horror”

  It was the night of June 5, 1968. Bobby Kennedy had just won the California primary for the Democratic nomination for president. Jackie was in bed in her New York apartment when the telephone rang. It was Stas calling from London. “Isn’t it wonderful?” Jackie asked her brother-in-law. “Bobby has won! He’s got California.”

  “But how is he, Jackie?” Stas asked, sounding concerned.

  “He’s fine,” Jackie exclaimed. “I just told you, Stas! He won California!”

  “No, I mean, is he okay? What have you heard?”

  “What in the world are you talking about?” Jackie asked. “He’s doing great! I just spoke to Ethel.”

  “Jackie,” Stas told her. “He’s been shot. Lee and I just heard it on the news. You didn’t know? Bobby has been shot!”

  It was true. Bobby had taken a bullet to the head in Los Angeles and was now in critical condition. For Jackie, the nightmare of Dallas seemed to be repeating itself. Stunned, she immediately made plans to go to Los Angeles to be at Bobby’s side.

  “The next morning at about 1:30 A.M., Jackie came into the hospital very shaken but, as always, trying to be strong,” said Richard Goodwin, who was an adviser and speechwriter for RFK. “She took in the situation—Ethel crying, Ted despondent … people coming and going in a panic, Secret Service agents … doctors and nurses. She saw Bobby, just lying there, obviously not going to make it. She asked the doctor if there was hope. He said no. She conferred with Ethel and Teddy. Both said they couldn’t give the doctor word to turn off the equipment. They didn’t have it in them. Ethel asked Jackie to do it. She went and talked to the doctor, and he then came into the room and turned off the life support. Jackie and Ethel were in there with him as Bobby took his last breath.”

  Bobby Kennedy was only forty-two. He had ten children and Ethel was pregnant with another.

  Meanwhile, in London, Lee was so distraught about Bobby that she couldn’t stop crying long enough to even drive safely; she had a car accident. Though no one was hurt, she was later charged with reckless driving. However, she had to admit that she didn’t even remember what happened, she’d been so upset. She would plead guilty and later be fined.

  It would seem that Lee was not only sad about Bobby but also distraught about what his death would likely mean for her where Jackie was concerned. Obviously, Jackie was still not over what had happened to Jack Kennedy. Lee feared for everyone’s future now that Bobby had been taken from them the same way.

  Lee was drained, practically immobile. Therefore, Stas went ahead to Los Angeles to see to Jackie while Lee stayed behind an extra day to fortify herself. That night, she had dinner with the award-winning designer Cecil Beaton, Charles Wrightman—the oil millionaire—and his wife, Jayne Larkin. After the couple departed, Lee couldn’t contain her frustration about her sister.

  “You don’t know what it’s like being with Jackie,” Lee said to Cecil, who was a close friend of hers, someone she greatly admired and trusted. “She’s really more than half round the bend! She can’t sleep at night, she can’t stop thinking about herself and never feeling anything but sorry for herself. ‘I’m so unprotected,’ she says. But she is surrounded by friends, helpers, the FBI. She certainly has no financial problems, but she is bored. She takes no interest in anything for more than two minutes. She rushes around paying visits but won’t settle down anywhere or do anything. She can’t love anyone!”

  Lee added that she feared Bobby’s death would probably trigger a whole new series of catastrophic events for Jackie. “The new horror will bring the old one alive again,” she promised—all of this according to Beaton—“and I’m going to have to go through hell trying to calm her. She gets so that she hits me across the face, and apropos of nothing!

  “She’s so jealous of me,” Lee went on, “but I don’t know if it’s because I have Stas and two children and I have gone my own way and become independent. But she goads me to the extent that I yell back at her and say, thank heavens, at last I’ve broken away from my parents and you and everything of that former life.”

  Once Lee got started on Jackie, it was difficult for her to stop, her crippling grief, her abject anger and despair all spilling out, unfiltered. “But how can we help her?” she asked Cecil Beaton. “Could you find a strong man to bully her, to make her listen to him? Could we find someone to influence her into taking her painting more seriously? No,” Lee said, answering her own questions, “she is not really interested. The cultural center bores her. Everything bores her and as the years pass, the situation only becomes more difficult.”

  Onassis at Hammersmith

  Lee was right. The “new horror” most assuredly did “bring the old one alive again.” Bobby’s Kennedy’s murder triggered more nightmares for Jackie, along with more bouts of depression and prolonged crying jags. Her dependency on prescription medication also increased, these medications driving every mood, every decision, just as much as the PTSD they were being used to treat. Again, she was talking about suicide. She was so tortured, Jackie told intimates, that she didn’t even want to wake up in the morning. Making matters all the more troubling, she was receiving death and kidnapping threats against her children. These had started after Jack’s de
ath, had subsided in recent years, but now, according to the FBI, had become more frequent. In fact, the situation all around was worse than it had been in the past, so bad that Jackie seemed, more than ever, to be gravitating toward Onassis. She’d known she needed him for financial security ever since her grandfather died, but now she was sure she also needed him for the protection of her children. “If they’re killing Kennedys,” she famously said, “then my children are targets.” She was truly desperate. In years to come, some would feel her great concern for her children would cloud her judgment relating to Onassis, but if that was the case, so be it. Nothing mattered to her more than protecting Caroline and John. Therefore, it was time to see if she could work Onassis into her life, starting with an introduction of him to her mother.

  Of course, Janet had met Ari once before—twice actually, the first time in Lee’s suite at Claridge’s in London when it appeared that he’d just gotten out of the shower and then, a few months later, at the Pierre in Manhattan. Apparently, Onassis kept his end of the bargain he’d made with Janet about that second meeting; he kept it mum. Surely, if he had told either Jackie or Lee about it, it would have caused friction between them all, and no such friction existed at this time, at least not that anyone recalled.

  On June 22, Jackie and the kids stayed at Hammersmith for a few days so that Jackie could get her bearings after what had happened to Bobby. During her visit, she announced to Janet that she was thinking of bringing Onassis to Hammersmith at the end of the summer, “just for a day or two,” she said. She also confided in her mother that she was considering a relationship with him. This was the worst-case scenario Janet had feared ever since she’d heard that Onassis had visited Jackie in the White House after Jack’s murder. Caught off guard, she needed time to process it. “She said, ‘Oh no, Jackie, you can’t mean it,’” recalled Jamie. “‘You must be joking.’” He elaborated, “Mummy asked, ‘For what reason? I’m not sure I approve. None of this bodes well for our family!’ Jackie made it clear she didn’t want anyone’s approval,” Jamie added. “‘Then why bring him to our home?’ Mummy wanted to know. ‘Why put us through it?’”