Jackie, Janet & Lee

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Janet decided to schedule a Mother-Daughter Tea to clear the air between Jackie and Lee. She arranged for her daughters to meet her at the Plaza in New York, their favorite place for such conferences. During the tea, as Janet later recalled it, she very plainly told them, “Whatever is going on with you two, we need to settle it right now. We are not leaving here until it is settled.” However, Jackie and Lee remained resolute that there was no problem. Maybe there wasn’t. After all, it did seem as if, with few words but an abundance of emotion, they had settled things somewhat on the deck of the Christina the night before the wedding. Obviously, both were grown women with complex lives and children of their own. There was only so much their mother could do to try to repair any damage she feared existed between them. For Janet, it was maddening. “No one ever talks in this family,” she complained. “Secrets. That’s what we do best.”

  PART TEN

  SHIFTING TIDES

  Peter Beard

  “What a strange, quirky man,” Jacqueline Onassis said of Peter Beard when she first met him in the spring of ’71 at a party in New York. She was fascinated by the blond and beautiful thirty-three-year-old bon vivant as he told his story of growing up in New York and becoming so strangely obsessed by African culture that he would feature it as the centerpiece of his photographic work. He’d been to Africa twice before graduating from Yale. After graduation, he returned and got a job working at Tsavo National Park in Kenya. He’d also begun to photograph wildlife threatened with extinction, the pictures eventually being compiled for his first book, The End of the Game.

  Peter was a real eccentric, known for composing collages of noteworthy moments from his life by incorporating photographs, newspaper clippings, and poetic musings about pop culture and the world around him. A fixture of nightlife in Manhattan, he also loved to party with A-listers like Andy Warhol, Mick and Bianca Jagger, Dick Cavett, and anyone else who made the New York social scene so much fun at that time. He hailed from a family that had made great wealth in the railway business. However, as in the cases of Jackie and Lee, not much of the family’s money ever really trickled down to him.

  In the summer of ’71, Jackie invited Peter to spend time with her and Ari on Skorpios. It’s been repeatedly published in many biographies over the years that the only reason Peter was on Skorpios was to “amuse” Jackie with his painting and sculpting. He was also babysitter to Jackie’s children and any other kids who happened to be on the island. Since Jackie found marriage to Onassis increasingly challenging, having a young sexy guy around made her situation a little less bleak. However, her stance on fidelity remained unchanged; she would never sleep with Peter.

  Jackie had also invited Lee to Skorpios to lift her spirits since she’d been recovering from a hysterectomy for the last several months. While there, Lee, who brought Stas with her, became as “amused” by Peter Beard as Jackie, which would lead to a conclusion many in their lives found inevitable.

  Peter and Stas were complete opposites in almost every way. Peter was fun and creative whereas Stas was, at least in Lee’s view, dour and uninspired. About twenty-five years younger than Stas, Peter was also passionate in a way Lee’s husband hadn’t been in years. She had a hard time resisting Peter when he came on to her. For his part, he found her more beautiful than Jackie and more interesting. He told Jackie’s biographer Sarah Bradford that Jackie was a “person hiding from in-depth experiences in life. She was on the surface of life, trying to remain there.” Lee, though, had a “sense of adventure and devil-may-care attitude I could not resist.” When asked about the Jackie/Lee sisterhood, Peter described it this way: “All the older sister, younger sister cliché … Jackie the classic responsible older sister, Lee the rebellious younger one. Lots of loyalty, lots of bad things.”

  “Peter was the anti-Ari,” is how one of Lee’s friends at that time put it. “Onassis was rich. Peter was poor. Onassis demanded the best hotels and living accommodations everywhere he went. Peter was happy sleeping in a tent. Onassis bought expensive art. Peter made collages. Everything Onassis was, Peter was not, and everything Peter was, Onassis was not, and Lee knew it. She told me, ‘I had a chance to be with a man who had all the money in the world, and I decided against it. That was my decision. Now I have decided on Peter.’”

  When Ari saw Peter sneaking out of Lee’s bungalow, he knew something was going on between them. When he mentioned it to Jackie, she said she didn’t want to know anything about it. Lee was obviously having an affair with Peter; she admitted it openly. Jackie decided to stay out of Lee’s business; she had her hands full with Ari, anyway.

  Typical of the way Lee and Stas had begun to conduct their marriage, Peter soon became a third player in it, going on safari with the Radziwills, visiting them at their home in London, and staying with them for extended periods of time. Ironically, Stas had a prior intersection with Peter back in May of 1969 when Stas was hunting in Africa (much to Lee’s horror, Stas loved big-game shooting, especially in Kenya). Beard had been arrested for beating up an antelope poacher. He had stuffed a glove in the poacher’s mouth and tied his hands and feet to two separate trees. Six months after Peter’s arrest, it was Stas—along with the successful Kenyan entrepreneur Jack Block—who paid Beard’s bail to get him released from a dank Nairobi prison. Eventually, Peter would be found guilty and sentenced to eighteen months—which he served—and a dozen lashes with a rhinoceros-hide whip.

  At the end of ’71, Audrey Cheaver and her husband, Thomas, visited Lee and Stas at Buckingham Place. They were surprised to see the Radziwills acting so chummy with Peter Beard. “Stas had made up his mind to accept what was going on with Peter,” recalled Audrey Cheaver. “He and Lee had an understanding, an arrangement. That was the way it was back then, you were exceedingly polite in awkward situations. However, Stas later told me it annoyed him that he’d helped Peter out of a tight spot and now Peter was showing his gratitude by doing a walk-out with his wife. However, Peter’s position was that he’d ended up doing prison time anyway, so how much help had Stas really been?”

  Stas hadn’t been faithful to Lee for some time. After his first affair years earlier, he had tried to devote himself to his marriage. However, his rapport with Lee was never the same after the children were born. “If I am with other women, it makes her feel less guilty about wanting to be with other men,” he told Thomas Cheaver. “By this time, our infidelities cancel each other out,” he added.

  “Stas still loved Lee, though, and said he didn’t want to let her go,” recalled Thomas Cheaver. However, with Peter now in the picture, it would seem that Lee was already gone. “‘He just gave me so many more interests and so much more curiosity about possibilities,’ Lee would later explain.”

  “I have to re-create myself,” Lee said at this time. “I still have a chance to change things. What I most fear is one day coming to the realization that it’s too late. But that moment hasn’t arrived yet. I still have a chance to start anew.”

  With hope continuing to spring eternal for Lee Radziwill, she now wanted a chance to right her life with Peter Beard. She wasn’t thinking of marriage yet—after all, she was still married to Stas—but she was thinking of some sort of long-term future with him that might one day include taking him as a husband. Apparently, her mother didn’t share her enthusiasm.

  A story handed down from one generation of Auchinclosses to the next has it that Janet and Lee had harsh words about Peter while Janet was visiting Lee in London. The two were in a limousine being driven to a theater in Piccadilly Circus when Janet said she didn’t approve of Peter. Not only would she never approve of Lee’s affair with him because of how she still felt about the responsibility of marriage, but she’d also heard that Peter had no money. Therefore, the situation made no sense to her. Lee tried to explain. Hadn’t they learned anything at all from the Onassis imbroglio? Hadn’t they seen what resulted from placing a premium on a man’s bank account rather than on his personal integrity? Were they just destined to repea
t the same mistakes with the men in their lives? Peter didn’t have money but, unlike Onassis, he was a decent man, Lee argued, and he treated her with respect. That had to count for something!

  Janet didn’t want to hear it. “Stop the car,” she demanded of the chauffeur. He slammed on the brakes and pulled over to the side of the street. “Out,” Janet told Lee. Lee looked at her mother with a confused expression. Then, at the top of her lungs, Janet shouted, “Get out of the car, Lee! Now! Get out! Get out!” Lee gathered her things as quickly as she possibly could and did as she was told. The car then pulled away, leaving the princess stranded in the middle of a busy Piccadilly Circus mob scene.

  Janet Asks Jackie to Appeal to Ari

  In late November of 1971, Janet and Jackie had what would turn out to be a fateful lunch at the Colony Club in New York. During their meal, Janet gave her daughter the upsetting news that it looked like the family’s storied homestead, Hammersmith Farm, would have to be sold. According to a later recollection, she said that she and Hugh felt dreadful about it. It was a shame, she said, especially given how hard Hugh had worked to keep the place going.

  For many years, Hugh Auchincloss had managed to support a large family—Janet and her daughters Jackie and Lee, as well as his offspring from his two previous marriages, Yusha, Nini, and Tommy and their own broods, along with his and Janet’s children, Janet Jr. and Jamie—in a lifestyle they’d all enjoyed. However, by the end of ’71, with his brokerage business in New York in serious trouble, it had become clear that serious cutbacks were needed across the board. Hugh’s reversal of fortune was not particular to his own entitled family as much as a response to the country’s economic recession. The Auchinclosses had been cutting back for years, going all the way back to when they were forced to sell Merrywood, and would have no choice but to continue to do so, like many others in the country, no matter their economic situations. “We just have to continue to adjust down” is how Hugh put it.

  “Adjusting down” was not a concept Janet relished, but she was used to doing so these last few years. At sixty-two, though, she said she was “heartsick about what cutting back would do to Hammersmith,” recalled her son, Jamie, “but, yet, letting it go was not something she and Daddy would ever have wanted.” There seemed no way to keep the farm, though, especially given that they couldn’t afford the property tax on it, which was almost $32,000 a year (about $190,000 today).

  Of course, Jackie knew that Janet and Hugh had been struggling for years to keep Hammersmith going; the first time Janet had confided in her about it was back in ’67 when Jackie told Janet about Jack Warnecke’s surprising financial problems. Jackie had long felt that Hammersmith was just too much for her mother and stepfather to afford, but she knew how much they loved it and just hoped they’d be able to find ways to keep it. Janet did have an idea, though, as to how to solve the long-standing problem of Hammersmith Farm. What about Ari? Could he possibly help? After all, he was one of the wealthiest men in the world. Maybe he would like to purchase Hammersmith so that they could keep it in the family?

  Though Janet and Ari didn’t have much of a relationship, they did have what could at least be described as a cautious rapport. Earlier in the year, when Jackie had brought Ari to Hammersmith with the children for a week, Janet did her best to keep the peace. Ari joined her for her walks along the beach every morning, the two reminiscing about their fascinating lives. He was her son-in-law now, and just as she had accepted Michael Canfield, Stas Radziwill, John Kennedy, and Lewis Rutherfurd, she would try to do the same with Onassis. He was family, and Janet was all about family. Three months after that visit, Jackie and Ari returned for more quality time with Janet and Hugh, with whom Ari enjoyed playing chess and even sailing. So, it’s not as if Janet had no foundation to ask Jackie if it was possible for Onassis to help save Hammersmith.

  When Jackie said she would have to think about whether or not to ask Ari for help, Janet was surprised. She just assumed Jackie would immediately say yes, and couldn’t understand her reluctance. After all, she and Lee were raised at Hammersmith. Moreover, Hugh had been born there. Even Jack Kennedy had loved the place. Did Jackie feel no sentimental connection to the property at all? In Jackie’s mind, though, it was a business decision. She said she wasn’t going to ask Ari for help until she had André Meyer look into the feasibility of purchasing the farm. Having reached a stalemate, mother and daughter left their luncheon displeased with each other.

  Janet felt that the clock was ticking on Hammersmith and she was desperate to do something about it. At a Kennedy Center party for the Fivers, an exclusive dancing club in Washington, the first week of December, Janet—on Hugh’s arm—may have looked gorgeous in a black velvet gown with pearl earrings, but she wasn’t feeling well. While at the event, she told her good friend Oatsie Charles that her “blood pressure is sky high.” Oatsie recalled, “She also said she was desolate about Hammersmith. She confided in me that the bills were mounting, as was the pressure.”

  It was more than just finances, though. Janet had a real emotional attachment to Hammersmith. Not only had it been her home for thirty years, it remained a strong connection to a time in her life that had meant a lot to her, the White House years. She would say that she could still sense Jack’s presence in many of the rooms. “I can’t let it go,” she told Jamie. “It’s a part of me. A part of us. We must find a way to keep it in the family.”

  Back when Jackie married Ari and Janet would rail against it to anyone who would listen, their mutual friend Bunny Mellon had told her, “Oh, dear Janet. No worries. You haven’t lost a daughter. You’ve gained a gold mine!” Now, when Janet relayed that anecdote, she would end it with, “Apparently not!”

  After Janet told Hugh about her difficult conversation with Jackie, he knew what he and Janet had to do. Jackie had been their last resort, and he had to admit that even if she’d agreed to do so, he wasn’t sure he would take her or Ari’s money. It’s not known if Jackie talked to Andre Meyer or even Onassis about the possible investment at this time. All we know is that the Auchinclosses felt they had no choice but to put Hammersmith Farm on the market, listing it with Sotheby Parke-Bernet for $985,000 (which would be about $5.5 million in today’s money).

  Andy Warhol and Montauk

  One evening in the spring of 1972, Peter Beard introduced Lee to Andy Warhol by bringing the iconic artist to her apartment in Manhattan. Warhol was a real character. With his pale face, haunted look, and surprising silver wig, the filmmaker and commercial illustrator was known back in the 1960s as much for his hard-partying ways as for his artistic output. By the 1970s, though, he was living a more relaxed and sedate life, seriously intent on fine-tuning his work as a filmmaker, photographer, and pop art illustrator.

  At the same time she met Andy, Lee also became acquainted with his business manager and close friend, Paul Morrissey. The two owned an expansive property in Montauk outside of East Hampton on Long Island, an enclave that had once been a fishing camp back in the 1920s. The twenty-acre estate’s primary, five-bedroom home was perched high atop a cliff, among a cluster of smaller clapboard structures. When Lee first saw it, she fell in love with it. She then made the swift decision to officially leave Stas in London and move to the States with Peter and her children, both of whom were about to start their summer vacations from school. Stas was unhappy about all of it. Though he still wanted to work on the marriage, Lee was done with it. Because she’d not had her needs met by Stas for a long time, she was simply unable to resist the possibility of a life with the much more exciting Peter.

  Within about a week’s time, Lee and Peter were living together in Montauk, and there they would remain for the rest of the summer of ’72, “one of my best summers of my entire life,” she would recall. Every day was fun and energizing, with no arguments or high-stakes drama, which, for Lee, was a big relief after her recent years of tumult.

  These days, Jackie could see a real change in Lee for the better. One night over steaks and wi
ne, Lee, Peter, Andy, and Jackie started brainstorming ideas for Lee, who, as usual, was trying to find a new proposition for herself. What they came up with was the idea of Lee writing a book and producing a companion documentary about her and Jackie’s summer days as little girls in East Hampton with Black Jack. Those had been wonderful times for the Bouvier sisters, even though Lee would have to admit they meant more to her than they did to Jackie. “Jackie was absolutely ready to marry and move on to a bigger screen and more scope, and excited about it and curious,” Lee would recall of those early days she and her sister spent in East Hampton. “I was, I’d say, fearful, sorry to leave East Hampton because I loved my life there, and I suppose it was the happiest time and certainly the time I felt the safest.”

  As she considered her documentary and book idea, Lee thought she might utilize certain childhood memories to illustrate important life lessons, such as what she picked up from her father while struggling with horseback riding. Jackie excelled at riding, of course. Lee didn’t. However, she had still been forced by Jack to ride an unruly pony called Dancestep. While trying to jump her first fence, she was thrown off the horse no fewer than three times. She remembered Jack forcing her to remount each time, telling her he would not let her quit until she got that stubborn horse over a fence. He warned that if the pony sensed her fear, it would always have its way with her. In the end, Lee never did get Dancestep to jump successfully. In fact, she would finish the day with a broken front tooth and the indentation of a hoof print on her stomach! However, as a grown woman, her father’s words resonated with her. In looking back, she saw that hostile critics had sensed her fear of acting and making a fool of herself during her beleaguered time onstage in The Philadelphia Story. This, she now believed, was why the reviews had been so scathing. She knew that her acting could have used improvement, but she now felt that if she had presented herself with more self-confidence and assurance, it might have influenced the way people viewed her.