Jackie, Janet & Lee

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Sometime back in ’66, Janet had made contact with Stratford Hall Plantation, the house museum in Westmoreland County, Virginia, that had been the plantation home of four generations of the Lee family of Virginia. After donating a significant amount of money to the museum while using the name “Janet Lee,” she received news that she’d been approved as a committee board member. Because she’d worked so well with the museum by sponsoring benefits for it at Hammersmith, everyone on the board took it for granted that she was related to the Lees. After all, she was Jackie Kennedy’s mother! Why would she lie? In fact, it didn’t really matter. One didn’t have to actually be related to the Lees to be on the board. Janet was an asset to Stratford just by virtue of her connections and her ability to raise money. Plus, she was a capable researcher and she cared a great deal about the Lees’ place in history; she really didn’t need to fib her way into the ranks of Stratford. By 1968, though, she wanted to take things one step farther: she wanted to become Rhode Island director for Stratford Hall.

  “After Jack and Bobby were killed and we were out of politics, there was such a void to be filled,” Jamie Auchincloss recalled. “Suddenly, there was nothing but our own little petty lives and fights and disturbances. There was nothing to look at in terms of a bigger picture. When you are a part of history and, suddenly, you are on the other side of it, that’s a big adjustment for a family to make. Mummy was such a patriot, she loved—loved—the Kennedy years. Now that they were gone, she needed something else in her life that mattered—and Stratford Hall mattered.”

  In doing its investigation, the directorship of the Robert E. Lee Memorial Association board didn’t have much paperwork to prove Janet’s claims one way or the other. They even called Jamie to see if he could help. Jamie was, and still is today, a dedicated history buff. He often visits presidential libraries across the country to learn more about his famous family’s relationship with other administrations. While he was in the midst of working with the directorship to try to authenticate his mother’s claims, Jackie happened to call Hammersmith to talk to Yusha. Jamie answered. “Jackie, I have to ask you something,” he told his half sister. “This business about our family being descended from Robert E. Lee. That’s true, right?”

  Jackie’s answer was quick: “Oh, no, Jamie, that’s not true,” she said. “Please!”

  Jamie was stunned. “Well, what about the story that Mummy is English Catholic, is that true?”

  Jackie laughed. “No, of course not,” she said. “She’s Irish Catholic. You mean you didn’t know that?”

  Jamie said he had just believed what their mother had told him over the years. “No one ever told me this information wasn’t accurate,” he said. Jackie didn’t know what to tell him; all she knew was that he shouldn’t continue to operate under false pretenses. Publicly, people weren’t always entitled to the truth and certainly Jackie had often suggested, especially at the beginning of her time in the White House, that she was more French than Irish. Privately, though, she saw no use in family members fooling themselves. After that call with his half sister, Jamie decided to keep what she had told him to himself rather than take a chance on jeopardizing his mother’s goals at Stratford Hall.

  Rushing into Marriage?

  On Monday, October 14, 1968, Janet took the two-hour drive along the Potomac River to Chesapeake Bay. Once she got to Stratford Hall, she found her assigned, nicely appointed bungalow. She made herself comfortable and spent the rest of the day and into the early evening chatting with the other women about what had been planned for the seminar. That night, she spent hours studying her two favorite books, Tidewater Dynasty: A Biographical Novel of the Lees of Stratford Hall and Stratford Hall: The Great House of the Lees. She knew she would be formally elected to the board on Tuesday and couldn’t help but be a little nervous about it.

  Of course, Janet had nothing to worry about. When she presented herself at her first board meeting on Tuesday—wearing a smart, businesswoman’s ensemble, a long-sleeved silk blouse and burgundy scarf with a chocolate-brown skirt and sensible, soft leather pumps—she walked in as a noted public figure. She was a true celebrity in the midst of the other society women who comprised the board, most of whom were Republicans, her image of strength and resolve all the more burnished by the recent tragedy of Bobby’s death. After all, she’d been photographed at the funeral, seen with Jackie and the rest of the Kennedys while in mourning, and also quoted in the press about the ordeal. Still, she wanted to impress. Therefore, she came prepared.

  A couple of weeks earlier, Janet had gone to Fort Adams in Newport to do some research after hearing that Robert E. Lee had once been stationed there. She wanted to not only confirm it but see what else she might uncover. Janet soon learned that Lee really hadn’t been stationed at Fort Adams at all. However, to her delight, she uncovered a number of interesting letters from him to the Fort Adams commanding officer, Lt. Joseph Gilbert Totten. Since she couldn’t take possession of the documents, Janet took copious notes, which she intended to bring with her to the retreat. When she finally had the opportunity to show everyone at the board meeting what she had uncovered, they couldn’t have been more impressed with her work. After a quick recount of votes to make certain there were no objectors, Janet Auchincloss was officially named to the board.

  The next morning, Wednesday, Janet enjoyed a celebrative breakfast in the dining hall with her colleagues. Midway through, she was told that she had an important telephone call. She raced to the front desk, understandably alarmed. When she heard Jackie’s voice, she steeled herself for the worst. What now? In a sense, it actually was bad news—though, thankfully, not of a life-threatening nature. Jackie, who was calling from her Manhattan apartment, told Janet that she had decided to marry Aristotle Onassis, immediately. Janet was stunned.

  By this time, rumors of a possible wedding between America’s former First Lady and the Greek shipping mogul to whom she seemed so ill suited had spread like wildfire. Official denials from Jackie’s spokespeople, as well as those of the Kennedys, did little to stop the media frenzy. In fact, Jackie explained to Janet that she’d just been informed that the Boston Herald Traveler was going to confirm the story. She said that, as a result, she now feared her life would become completely unmanageable, with the media hounding her and her children everywhere they went.

  Janet didn’t want to hear it. She suggested that Jackie take the kids and go into hiding, saying it wouldn’t be the first time she took such measures. No, Jackie insisted that she had to marry Ari as soon as possible, on Sunday, in fact. She told Janet to get her travel documents in order because the wedding was going to take place in Greece. She explained that Kennedy acolyte Pierre Salinger had suggested that it would be better if she married Onassis there rather than in the States, so that not all of the Kennedys would be expected to show up, just the ones who could bear it. Janet wondered if Jackie had talked to Lee about her decision. Jackie said she hadn’t had time to do so. “You need to stop and think about this,” Janet told her daughter, according to her later recollection to family members. “You’re not thinking straight. It’s Jack! It’s Bobby. It’s the children. It’s all of it!”

  Though extremely upset, Janet tried her best to go back to the business at hand at Stratford. However, less than two hours later, while Janet and the other board members were studying a documentary about Robert E. Lee in the Council House, Jackie called again. Mother and daughter then had another upsetting conversation.

  Janet decided to telephone Hugh in Washington to ask for his assistance. Hugh’s colleague at Auchincloss, Parker & Redpath, Garrett Johnston, recalled, “Mr. Auchincloss later told me that his wife suggested that he call Jackie and offer some sort of allowance to her so that finances might not figure so heavily into any decision she would make about marriage. Mrs. A. said she suspected Jackie had struck a deal, and that maybe Hugh could offer something as a replacement.”

  Now Hugh was torn. He wasn’t sure he agreed with Janet that a marriage
between Jackie and Ari was such a bad idea. Business wasn’t what it used to be; he’d been stretched to the financial limits for some time, ever since selling off Merrywood. “He said that Lee was taken care of, as were his biological children from his other marriages—Nini, Tommy, and Yusha,” recalled Garrett Johnston. “However, Jackie was still at her wit’s end when it came to managing her extravagant lifestyle.” Hugh also had to view Jackie’s decision in the context of what was going on in her life at the time, though. She was deeply troubled and hadn’t been herself for years. Was she even capable of making such an important decision?”

  When Hugh called Jackie on Wednesday night, he asked her a number of questions, all of a practical nature. What about the age difference? What about the children’s schooling? Where would they all live? By the time they finished their ninety-minute conversation, though, Hugh was reasonably certain Jackie knew what she was doing. She had convinced him. Importantly, though, he did not offer her any sort of financial incentive to dissuade her from marrying Onassis. When he reported back to Janet that he believed Jackie was being rational, she asked him if he had brought up the idea of an allowance. Hugh apparently lied and said he’d done so, rather than have to face his wife’s wrath. He then compounded the lie by saying that Jackie had turned it down. “Poor Daddy, he probably couldn’t help it,” said his son Jamie. “He was so intimidated by Mummy.”

  There was a third phone call from Jackie. During this one, Jackie said she was worried about how it would look to others if Janet wasn’t present for the wedding. The two went back and forth, arguing about it. Finally, Janet relented and agreed to go to Greece for the ceremony. By the time she hung up, though, she’d pretty much had it with her daughter. Now Janet would have to cut her important retreat short by two days, drive back to Washington, and then pack for a last-minute trip to Greece. “My goodness, Janet, what’s the problem?” asked trustee Mary Tyler Freeman Cheek McClenahan. “I would not say it’s critical,” Janet told her, “but it is an emergency, something I need to tend to.” McClenahan, one of Richmond’s most prominent civic leaders, asked if there was anything she could do. No, Janet told her. “I have a sense you will be reading about it in the papers, though, soon enough,” she said.

  When Janet got back to her home on O Street, she found the telephone ringing in the parlor. She raced to it and picked it up herself rather than wait for one of the maids. It was Nancy Tuckerman, who was now Jackie’s secretary in New York. “Mrs. A., we’re releasing a statement about Jackie’s marriage to Aristotle Onassis,” Nancy told Janet, “and I need your help.” The two women then spoke and agreed that a prepared statement would simply announce that “Mrs. Hugh D. Auchincloss” had informed Nancy that “her daughter, Mrs. John F. Kennedy,” would marry Aristotle Onassis, “sometime next week. No place or date has been set for the moment.”

  Her emotions still running high, Janet then telephoned Jamie at Columbia. “Can you believe what your sister is doing?” she asked. She told him she was beginning to believe that Jackie’s marrying Onassis was really just her way of punishing her mother for divorcing her father so long ago. To Jamie, Janet’s theory seemed unlikely. “No, Mummy,” he said, “that can’t be it.” Janet said she didn’t know how else to explain it. Jamie suggested that maybe Jackie really was worried about the children. Certainly, she had good reason to be. “Look what’s been going on in our lives,” he exclaimed. Janet wasn’t so sure. Her gut told her it was not about the children at all, that it was really about money. “Well, if so, why is that such a problem?” Jamie asked, well aware of the premium both his mother and sister had always placed on marrying well. Janet didn’t want to discuss it any further, though.

  Actually, there was a money deal in place.

  A significant amount of haggling had recently concluded with Ted Kennedy getting Jackie about $1.5 million from Onassis in an immediate lump sum. André Meyer then managed to double that amount for a lump sum of $3 million (which, in today’s money, would be more than $20 million). Jackie would also receive $30,000 a month for expenses, after taxes, for the duration of the marriage (again, about $200,000 in today’s money). Each of her children would receive $1 million, the annual interest on which would revert back to Jackie. Mona Latham, who was André Meyer’s assistant, recalled, “After it was all over, Jackie told André that she’d had a ‘crisis of conscience’ over it. On one hand, she was raised to consider a man’s finances before marriage. On the other, I think she viewed this deal as being unsavory. I believe she wanted to forget it had ever happened.”

  During their telephone conversation, Jamie asked if Janet was going to the wedding. “Of course I am,” she said without hesitation. “She’s my daughter! But do I approve? No, I do not.” She then told him that he should be careful not speak to any reporters. Too late. He’d already talked to The National Enquirer and The Washington Post! “They got to me so fast,” Jamie said, worried. “But I didn’t know anything yet. So I couldn’t say much.” A loud sigh escaped Janet’s lips. “Oh my God, Jamie,” she said. “Don’t even answer the phone, then! I have enough problems with your sister.”

  After she hung up, Janet tore through her bedroom looking for her passport. Where was it? Her maid and butler searched the house to no avail. Adora Rule suggested that perhaps it was at Hammersmith in Janet’s dresser drawer. However, when Janet contacted the superintendent there, Mannie Faria, and had him search her bedroom, he couldn’t find it. She was frantic. Nancy Tuckerman suggested Janet pull a few strings by calling Frances Knight, director of the United States Passport Office. Knight—a staunch Republican—was controversial at the time because of her seemingly dictatorial decisions about whom she would allow access to the country. When Janet reached her, Knight told her how much she loved Jackie (from afar, they’d never met) and eagerly agreed to have a replacement passport sent by messenger to O Sreet within the hour.1

  Meanwhile, Hugh, at his office in Washington, asked his secretary, Margaret Kearney, “Do you have my passport?” When she wondered why he needed it, he explained to her that it looked like he and Janet were headed to Greece. “Jackie is marrying Onassis,” he told her, seeming weary about the whole thing. “Is that a good idea?” Margaret asked. “I spoke to her for an hour and a half last night,” he answered, “and she’s got a mind of her own, that one. Pretty much like you-know-who,” he said with a chuckle.

  In a few hours’ time, Janet and Hugh flew from Washington to New York. There, they were joined by Jackie and her children, as well as her former sisters-in-law Jean Kennedy Smith and Pat Lawford, and Pat’s young daughter, Sydney. All told, with Secret Service agents and other functionaries, it would be a party of eleven boarding a chartered Olympic Airways jet headed to Greece. The plane landed at a military airport on the Peloponnesian peninsula, where it was met by Ari. The small contingent then took another flight to Preveza. From there, they boarded helicopters, their destination Skorpios.

  “I Need This, Lee”

  “How could she do this to me?” Lee Radziwill asked Truman Capote, at least according to the later memory of the writer Eleanor Perry. Perry was collaborating with Capote on writing a screenplay for television when the call came in from Lee. She says that Lee was screaming so loudly, she (Perry) could hear her words through the receiver: “How could she? How could this happen?” Truman didn’t know what to tell her. “She’s crying and weeping and sobbing,” he later told friends of Lee. “I can’t tell you what she said, but it’s going to be in the news. It’s the biggest piece of gossip there is, and she’s crying her eyes out because of it.”

  After Truman had a falling-out with Lee (in 1977), he made more than a few telling statements about the famous siblings. Since he had been Lee’s best friend, his commentary can’t be ignored, though it should probably be put into context by noting that the ending of their friendship was particularly bitter. “Once, Lee called me in a rage,” he recalled. “She said Jackie had just told her that everything Lee had in the world she owed to Jac
kie. I didn’t say it to her at the time, but there’s a lot of truth to that. I don’t think Jackie had the vaguest idea the extent of Lee’s obsession with her. Lee used to say that she was the one who was good-looking, who had taste, who was chic, who could run a home, who was clever, who read books, but it was always Jackie who got all the publicity. And, of course, there was some truth to that, too.”

  Where the shipping mogul was concerned, Truman said, “Lee really thought she had Onassis nailed down. She pretended to have great contempt for Onassis and the marriage. She wasn’t in love with him. But she liked all those tankers.”

  Obviously, Truman Capote couldn’t have known for certain whether or not Lee was in love with Onassis, since she herself seemed to have so little clarity about it. However, she knew for sure she’d missed out on her golden opportunity with the shipping tycoon, that small sliver of time when she could have had him to herself back in the summer of 1962. Ari had specifically asked her not to renew her vows to Stas in the Catholic Church, but she’d decided to do so, anyway. Things had never really been the same for them since.

  “It was actually a simple equation,” reasons Jamie Auchincloss. “Jackie’s husband and brother-in-law were now both dead. Onassis was, in effect, saying to Lee, ‘I’m going to be the person whose shoulder Jackie can cry on now. I can provide her with the protection, the security, the love, and the money nobody else can.’ It wasn’t exactly him saying, ‘Lee, I’m choosing your sister over you.’ It was more the equivalent of: ‘Though I know this is hard on you, I feel it’s my duty to help a widow in distress. I also can likely get a lot of mileage out of doing so just in terms of status in the world. Given that you know me better than anyone else, I’m sure you understand. It’s nothing personal.’ That’s the nicest light I can put on it, anyway.”