Jackie, Janet & Lee

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Lee learned about the pending nuptials from Aristotle Onassis, who called her while she was on a vacation in Tunisia to extend a personal invitation. “He begged me to come,” is how she later put it. The details of their conversation are unknown, but one might imagine it was tense, considering their painful history. The fact that Jackie wasn’t the one to call Lee had to have stung.

  Of course, Lee was angry and upset when she arrived in Greece on Saturday, and she would be the first to admit it. However, when she eventually laid eyes on her sister standing on board the deck of the Christina with Onassis, both bathed in moonlight, Jackie was laughing. Lee had to stop and try to remember the last time she’d seen her sister truly happy; most certainly, it had not been in years. This was a defining moment for Lee, as she would later recall it to intimates. Was it possible that this man, Aristotle Onassis—someone who had vexed and confounded her for many years, a man with whom she’d had such a tortured relationship—could be a worthwhile, valuable person in her sister’s life? From a safe distance, she stood and watched the two speak to each other for about half an hour. There was nothing romantic about their interaction, just something easy and relaxed. Lee hadn’t spent much time with Onassis lately, but whenever she did, there was nothing but tension and angst between them. There was no doubt about it; Lee had to acknowledge that Jackie seemed happy.

  The most searing images of Jackie in Lee’s mind of late were of her taking copious amounts of prescription pills just to get through the days and nights. There was her talk of suicide, her musings about joining Jack in the afterlife, her great despair, which had only gotten worse after Bobby’s death. In fact, after his funeral, Jackie sometimes even seemed delusional, talking about Jack and Bobby as if they were still alive, fretting about some imagined White House duty as if she was still First Lady. She seemed to be losing her grip on reality. Moreover, the recent spate of death and kidnapping threats against Caroline and John had made it so that she was afraid to even leave the house with them. She was frantic. “If anything happens to either one, I will never forgive myself,” she had told Lee in front of other family members, “and I would also never survive it. I simply would not survive it.” There was no arguing that she had good reason to be worried. Therefore, to see her now, smiling, laughing, and appearing so lighthearted, was stunning for Lee. To hear her tell it, it brought real tears to her eyes.

  After a while, Lee approached. Onassis, apparently, didn’t have the heart to even face her. When he saw her come close, he turned and walked away from Jackie after giving her a small peck on the cheek. The two sisters then stood on the massive deck of the Christina, alone in the shadows. Jackie embraced Lee and thanked her for coming. Then, according to what Lee would remember, Jackie firmly grabbed her forearm with her two hands and, with great urgency, said just four words: “I need this, Lee.” That’s was all she said—“I need this, Lee.” Lee looked at her closely, studied her anguished face … and she knew it was true. “I know you do,” she said. “And you should have it.” That was the full extent of the Bouvier sisters’ discussion about Aristotle Onassis.

  Jackie then asked Lee to be her matron of honor. Lee agreed.

  “It’s Not Too Late!”

  Sunday, October 20, 1968.

  “Jacqueline, you don’t have to do this,” Janet whispered in her daughter’s ear as they took measured steps in the group procession up the middle aisle of the small chapel in Skorpios. “Mummy, please!” Jackie hissed out of the corner of her mouth. This heated back-and-forth between mother and daughter would, in years to come, become a big part of the family’s history of Jackie’s wedding to Ari. Janet was still trying to prevent Jackie’s marrying Onassis from coming between the sisters. Eventually, Jackie’s stubborn defiance and her insubordination began to vex Janet almost as much as her concern about how the marriage might affect her daughters.

  It was five P.M. in Greece and raining outside the little chapel known as Panayitas—the Little Virgin—as the ceremony to join Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy and Aristotle Socrates Onassis in holy matrimony commenced. As she walked down the aisle on Hugh’s arm, Jackie was a beautiful bride in a cream-colored chiffon-and-lace knee-length pleated dress with long bishop sleeves and a mock turtleneck. It had been designed by Valentino of Rome. A small procession of family members followed, with Janet on Jackie’s heels, her neck craned upward as she spoke in her daughter’ ear. “Janet told me she did everything she could think of to talk Jackie out of it,” recalled Eileen Slocum. “‘Don’t do it,’ she kept whispering in her ear. ‘It’s not too late to back out!’ She said that Jackie kept whispering angrily back at her, ‘Stop it or I will never speak to you again!’”

  Meanwhile, a beaming Aristotle Onassis, jaunty and as debonair as ever in a smart dark suit, stood at the altar with a priest as he watched Jackie and the procession approach him and Father Polykarpos, a close friend of Onassis’s from Athens. A trio of Byzantine choristers harmonized as Caroline and John took their seats in the front of the church. Onassis’s children, Alexander and Christina, watched warily from a corner, neither appearing to be happy about their father’s decision to take Jackie as his wife.

  Marie-Hélène de Rothschild, a French socialite from the prominent Rothschild banking family, was a close friend of Ari’s who attended the wedding. She once recalled, “It was so crowded, you couldn’t see a thing, really. I could barely see Jackie and Janet as they walked down the aisle. It seemed to me that Mrs. Auchincloss and her daughter were having a disagreement about something. They were whispering to one another through clenched smiles.”

  Finally, and mercifully, Jackie made it to the front of the chapel, where she took her place next to Ari. Hugh then accompanied Janet to her seat. Sitting in the front row with Stas, matron of honor Lee probably couldn’t help but be bemused. As a Bouvier woman, she certainly knew a whispered argument when she saw one.

  Forty-five minutes later, Jackie and Ari walked together around the altar three times and then kissed as man and wife. “Servant of God Aristotle Onassis is wedlocked to the servant of God, Jacqueline,” intoned the priest, first in Greek and then in English, “in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

  Like Mother, Like Daughter?

  While Jackie and Ari continued on to their honeymoon aboard the Christina, Janet and Hugh took John and Caroline back with them to O Street for a few weeks. Janet so appreciated Hugh’s support. Even though he had not been able to talk Jackie out of marriage, he was there for Janet, always with a shoulder for her to cry on. “Isn’t it wonderful to be married to a man you love?” Janet remarked to her niece Joan Gaylord at this time.

  When finally Jackie returned to retrieve her children, Janet calmly asked her to join her in the master bedroom. Then, according to what Janet would later recall to family members, she and Jackie became embroiled in another passionate exchange about Onassis. During their argument, Janet apparently told Jackie that she hoped she had a good financial deal in place with the Greek magnate since she was now sure this was the only reason for the marriage. Of course, it was about more than just money for Jackie. It was also out of concern for her children that she married Onassis. However, if Janet wanted to make it only about money, fine. Jackie must have decided she could also play that game. “You mean for the exact same reason you married Uncle Hughdie?” she shot back at her mother.

  For Jackie to bring up the fact that Janet had long ago married Hugh Auchincloss for money was a low blow, at least in Janet’s view. After all, she’d done so to provide a better life for her two daughters. It came with a steep price, too. It meant giving up true passion, accepting that she would never have it with Hugh, and then making the best of it. Happily, Janet felt she had married someone with more strength of character than her first husband’s, not less. Now Jackie was drawing a parallel between her choice to marry Ari and Janet’s decision to marry Hugh? This was going too far, even for the most famous, most celebrated woman in the world. Without saying anothe
r word, Janet just hauled off and slapped her daughter across the face, twice—first on her right cheek with the palm of her hand, then on her left with the back of it—just as she had done so often when her girls were younger. Janet then angrily told her that she should have taken similar action in Greece, and that if she had done so, maybe then Jackie would have listened to her admonitions about Onassis.

  “A Matter of Life or Death”

  Three months after the wedding, Lee’s friend Agnetta Castallanos had dinner with her at the Manhattan restaurant La Caravelle, during which the two discussed Jackie’s marriage to Ari. Lee said she regretted that she and Jackie had not been able to more fully discuss Jackie’s desire to marry Onassis. She said she was afraid it spoke volumes about the lack of candor in their relationship. Agnetta couldn’t help but wonder, though, if Lee would have understood. “Not at first,” Lee admitted with a sigh. She was more self-aware than to think she would have said, “Oh, great, Jackie! That’s marvelous! Take Ari. I’m fine with it.” No, she said she would have been hurt and angry. In fact, she probably would have experienced a wide spectrum of emotions, all of which she felt would have been justified. However, after she first saw Jackie on the deck of the Christina with Ari the night before their wedding, there was no way she could have kept them apart. “It had become a matter of life or death for my sister,” she said, “and I knew it.” She finally realized that Onassis was Jackie’s “lifeblood.” She concluded, “In the end, she needed him more than I did. It was as simple and as complicated as that.”

  Agnetta questioned why Lee never told Jackie what she’d done for her back in ’63—the sacrifice she’d made of giving up Onassis rather than scandalize the First Lady. Many people in Lee’s family who would later learn of this selfless act would wonder the same thing. “What would have been the point?” Lee asked. What if, as a result of that revelation, Jackie had decided not to marry Onassis? How would Lee ever live with herself if something were to then happen to her sister, her niece, or her nephew as a result of Onassis’s absence in their lives? Considering what they’d all gone through in the last five years with Jack and Bobby—“loss upon loss” is how Lee put it—it wasn’t as if Lee’s fear for her sister was irrational.

  Many years later, in 2000, Lee Radziwill published a coffee-table book of photographs, Happy Times, which included extended captions about both the good and bad times of her life. In the introduction, she wrote of JFK’s assassination and hinted at the inner turmoil it caused everyone: “Then the President was killed and things became flat. Many people couldn’t handle his loss; their true colors began to show. The carefree and exciting times vanished. People had to struggle with themselves.”

  “Over the intervening years, I don’t think anyone in her family—including Jackie—ever fully acknowledged the sacrifices Lee made for her where Onassis was concerned,” Agnetta Castallanos would observe years later. “It has always bothered me when people questioned Lee’s love for her sister. The depth of love one has to feel for someone else to sacrifice so much cannot be measured, it is just that great. As I see it, the facts speak for themselves.”

  “Secrets. That’s What We Do Best.”

  With the passing of time, Jackie continually tried to smooth things over with Janet by inviting her and Hugh to cruise on the Christina. They always begged off, however; after the wedding, never once did they step foot on Onassis’s yacht again, nor did they ever return to Skorpios while Onassis was alive. Jackie and Ari would visit Hammersmith several times in the years to come, but it would be an overstatement to say that things were copacetic. Janet had a lot on her mind, anyway. The rest of ’68, ’69, and the beginning of the 1970s found her dealing with Hugh’s declining health, his emphysema having taken a turn for the worse.

  Also, Hugh would soon have to close the Washington branch of Auchincloss, Parker & Redpath. “Because the war in Vietnam continued to rage on, a sense of unpredictability caused most of our clientele to forgo big investments,” said Garrett Johnston. “As a result, their portfolios shrunk dramatically, meaning less income for Auchincloss, Parker & Redpath. We ended up with an SEC citation because our record-keeping was a little shoddy. In the end, we had no choice but to merge with Thomson & McKinnon, Inc. The new firm name would then be Thomson & McKinnon, Auchincloss. None of this was good for Mr. Auchincloss, his ego taking a real beating.”

  Keeping their money troubles from scrutiny by friends in high society was becoming next to impossible. “You don’t say you have money problems when you are an Auchincloss,” Letitia Baldrige, who had been Jackie’s social secretary, once said. “Mrs. Auchincloss would never admit it to others, and her husband could barely admit it to her! Everyone knew, though, that they were in trouble by the end of the 1960s.”

  As the decade came to a close, life continued to unfold for Janet and Hugh with unpredictable twists and turns. Janet remained committed to her work with Stratford Hall. And her many grandchildren—both natural from Jackie, Lee, and Janet, and step from Hugh’s offspring—continued to give her great pleasure.

  With the wearing of the years, Jackie’s life with Ari unraveled. In the end, many of Onassis’s associates would come to believe that Jackie was as much an acquisition for him as she was his wife. His personal assistant at that time, Kiki Feroudi Moutsatsos, says, “At first, Ari swept Jackie away from her troubles. When he was with her, he gave her all of his attention and made her feel like the most important person in his world. He also got along with the children; John, in particular, admired him greatly. And, yes, he did protect them. To Jackie’s great relief, no one could even come near the kids. Between their own Secret Service detail and Ari’s hard-core security force trailing them, she knew Caroline and John were finally safe.”

  After about two years, though, things began to sour. Onassis’s relationship with Maria Callas continued, and likely there were other women, too. Jackie once again found herself in a marriage with a cheater.

  By the beginning of the 1970s, Jackie seemed to have a better understanding of the PTSD symptoms that had motivated her marriage to Ari. After a couple of years, she began to realize that Onassis was a choice she probably wouldn’t have made at any other time in her life. It had been driven by despair, fear, and pain, and not just over Jack and Bobby. She told one confidante at this time, “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about the children I lost.”

  Going back to the White House in February of ’71 helped a lot; the Nixons invited Jackie and the children so that they could see the official portraits of her and Jack before their unveiling. For years, Jackie had refused to go back. She decided, though, that it was time to face her fears and return to the place where she and Jack had once been so happy. “Never have I seen such magnanimity and such tenderness,” she wrote to President Richard Nixon and First Lady Pat after the visit. “Can you imagine the gift you gave me to return to the White House privately with my little ones while they are still young enough to rediscover their childhood, with you both as guides?” Jackie closed saying, “Thank you with all my heart. A day I always dreaded turned out to be one of the most precious ones I have spent with my children.”

  By the summer of ’71, Lee had managed to reconcile herself to and even accept Jackie’s marriage to Ari. From a strictly practical standpoint, there was a certain lifestyle attached to remaining a part of Onassis’s world. After all, even as just his sister-in-law, she traveled in the highest strata of society. There were exotic vacations; leisurely shopping expeditions; the enjoyment of fabulous restaurants and nightclubs all over the world. There would always be the spark and excitement of adventure in the air—and money perks, too. “[Lee] owned a valuable piece of land in Greece,” Truman Capote once observed. “She got it from Onassis.”

  “Lee was a smart woman,” said Kiki Feroudi Moutsatsos. “Of course there was an upside to her continuing to have Ari in her life. Ari was generous, put it that way.”

  While it was not easy, Lee tried not to look back with
regret at any of her decisions relating to Onassis. Janet, for one, had great admiration for the way her daughter had handled things. “She put family first,” Janet told one relative. “I will always respect that about Lee.”

  In the years to come, there would be countless family moments—holidays, birthdays, and other special occasions that would bring the Onassis, Radziwill, and Auchincloss families together. Once they got on with their lives with their respective spouses and children, the sisters made the best of it. It’s doubtful that Caroline, John, Tina, or Anthony had anything but happy memories of growing up together as cousins. “Jackie and Lee took a joint approach in raising their children,” said Gustavo Paredes, the son of Jackie’s White House assistant, Provi, who was close to all of them. “There was a lot of flow between the households. Jackie thought of Anthony and Tina as her own, and Lee thought of John and Caroline as hers. The kids never knew anything about their mothers’ private lives, just as it should have been. They were raised in a safe world without adult concerns, which their mothers created for them.”

  Though Janet respected Lee’s devotion to family, she knew both of her daughters well. She would go to her grave believing that they would never get past the Onassis complication, a man she felt had seriously damaged the trust between them. She noticed a marked difference in their relationship. For instance, in the spring of ’71, she watched the sisters interact at a party at Hammersmith. It appeared friendly between them. However, after Jackie walked away from Lee, Janet could detect a flicker of hurt in Lee’s eyes. In that moment, said Janet, she could discern that Lee harbored something, maybe resentment, maybe pain, she didn’t know for certain what it was, but, as she put at the time, “there was definitely something there, something that kept me up that night.”