Jackie, Janet & Lee

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  It was back when Lee was seventeen and Yusha was twenty-three. Yusha wanted something more modern than what he was used to at Merrywood and Hammersmith. He would recall, “The job Lee did was magnificent. She found pieces that were contemporary and did the apartment in blacks, whites, and splashes of red and purple. When it was finished, we invited my mother and father and Jackie over to dinner to see it.” According to Yusha, Janet walked into the apartment, took a perplexed look around, said, “Oh dear, dear, dear,” and that was about it. Lee asked Janet if she liked the modern décor, and Janet just said it was “certainly interesting.” Jackie thought it was “just marvelous,” though, took Lee by the arm, and asked her to show her around. The two sisters then walked about the apartment with Lee explaining why she had selected certain pieces and how she had decided on their placement. Later, at dinner at Le Pavillon, Janet kept changing the subject whenever anyone would mention Lee’s work. Now, all these many years later, Janet said that none of this had ever happened. She became belligerent about it, too, according to the witness. “I said it didn’t happen, Jacqueline,” she insisted, her face darkening, “and I won’t hear another word about it!”

  Jackie was concerned. This kind of lapse in Janet’s memory had been happening far too often.

  “The Prince Is Gone”

  June 27, 1976.

  “I’m sorry, but the princess is not available,” Jamie Auchincloss was telling someone on the telephone. He always got a kick out of referring to his sister Lee as “the princess.”

  The entire family was in residence for the Bicentennial Celebration of 1976 in Newport. For the first time in history, so-called Tall Ships—which, as denoted by name, were large sailing ships with tall, majestic masts—would soon gather in Newport from all over the world to sail up Narragansett Bay. It was to be a July Fourth parade of international vessels from Argentina, Russia, Spain, England, and other countries. Thousands of people were expected to converge on Newport’s shorelines to watch. Happily, the Auchinclosses had front-row seats. Nearly everyone came to the farm for the occasion, including Jackie and Lee and three of their children—Caroline, John, and Tina (Anthony was in London)—as well as Yusha, Tommy, and Nini and their broods, and even Janet Jr. and her husband, in from Hong Kong. Though Hugh was confined to a wheelchair because of his worsening emphysema, he, too, was in good spirits. Janet flitted around gaily, making certain that everyone was comfortable. That night, everyone prepared to attend a ball at The Breakers, the great Italian Renaissance–style mansion owned by the Vanderbilt family. It was to be the social event of the season.

  “May I take a message for the princess?” Jamie asked the caller. Then, after a pause: “Oh, no. Not Stas!” He recalled, “Unfortunately, I was the one who had to tell Lee that Stas had suffered a heart attack in London, and had died.”

  Though many people questioned the way Lee and Stas sometimes treated each other, the divorce from Stas had actually been hard on Lee. He had been a part of her life for fourteen years; they had two children together. Afterward, she tried to continue a relationship with him. At first, he was unwilling to do so because of Peter Beard. However, he softened when, two years after the divorce, he also found happiness with a new love, Christine Weckert, just twenty-five. Apparently, Stas had proposed marriage to Christine only hours before he died. He was sixty-two.

  Immediately after hearing the news, Lee and Jackie rushed off to England, along with John, Caroline, and Tina. “Anthony met them at the Ritz Hotel in London, where they all stayed,” recalled Jamie Auchincloss. “Mummy didn’t go because Daddy was too sick to travel. I know she went to church the next day and prayed for Stas, whom she had grown to love dearly. Jackie had also loved Stas like a brother; she was just as distraught as Lee.”

  The funeral took place in a church Stas had had built and dedicated to his mother, St. Anne’s Church at Fawley Court near Henley-on-Thames, England. “The prince is gone,” Lee tearfully told one of Stas’s children from a previous marriage at the funeral. She was completely bereft. “We built a real life,” she said. “There were ups and downs, but at least we were together. In many ways, Stas was my one sane relationship. I will always love him.”

  Maurice Tempelsman Tries to Help

  On a bright, sunny day in August of 1976, Jackie and Lee sat in the New York office of financier and diamond merchant Maurice Tempelsman. Jackie’s attorney, Alexander Forger, and two of Tempelsman’s associates joined them for a meeting around a long mahogany conference table. The beige office was designed with classic antique furniture. Hundreds of books about international law and finance heavily lined two expansive walls, all alphabetically arranged on shelves custom-made in East Indian rosewood. Framed world political maps decorated the other walls. There were no windows; the room was like a dark and intimate study, with Maurice’s desk in a corner. Maurice—about five-eight, balding, and wearing a tan double-breasted suit that seemed a little too big even for his potbellied frame—had a stack of documents before him. Thumbing through them, he shook his head in despair. As he sucked on a Dunhill cigar, he let out a plume of smoke and said, almost under his breath, “No money here. Not a dime.”

  “But how is that even possible?” Jackie asked. “Stas had so many holdings. Didn’t he, Lee?”

  “Well, things were tough” was all Lee had to say.

  Stas had, for years, augmented his family’s wealth from proceeds generated by a small private real-estate-developing firm he owned with a close friend, Felix Donovan Fenston. His and Lee’s lifestyle remained fairly extravagant, with three homes—two in England and one in Manhattan—each of which was well staffed with butlers, cooks, maids, and all sorts of other people pulling a paycheck. At that time, money was never a problem for them; Lee was used to living well and Stas continued to make it possible for her to do so.

  However, after Felix Fenstone died of a heart attack in 1970, things began to change. Stas was an aristocrat used to spending money, not making it. Fenstone had been the brains behind his and Stas’s business whereas Stas was more or less a figurehead. People wanted to meet him not only because of his personal royal history but also because of his connection to the Kennedys. He could close a deal. However, he didn’t know how to orchestrate one or how to compete for business. Therefore, his and Fenstone’s small company was all but ruined within a year of Fenstone’s death. There was no way Stas could keep up with all of his and Lee’s spending. The pressure of such a demanding lifestyle weighed on him heavily.

  After Stas’s death, Lee was upset to learn that he had died broke. Jackie was disappointed as well. She actually couldn’t believe it was true, which is why she wanted Maurice to review the paperwork. Maurice had joined Jackie in England for Stas’s funeral, remaining at her side throughout the ordeal. He’d met the prince a few times in passing and always thought of him as a good fellow.

  Maurice Tempelsman, a wealthy man who made his money in investments, especially diamonds, had been a friend of Jackie’s and JFK’s since the late 1950s, and he was the man she turned to immediately after Ari died. By the early seventies, theirs had become a romantic relationship, but certainly not one either wished to trumpet. Maurice was married with three grown children, but his wife, Lilly, refused to grant him a divorce; both were Orthodox Jews. When Jackie asked him to invest the millions she’d received from Onassis, he did a stunning job of increasing her capital. Because of his wise decisions and guidance, the future looked pretty rosy for her.

  Maurice was a kind person who treated Jackie well. Unlike Ari, he was easygoing and affable, not a hothead. He would gladly acquiesce to Jackie’s will and wouldn’t have dreamed of being combative with her. In many ways, he was exactly the kind of man Jackie deserved at this time in her life. He didn’t cheat on her, had money, was solicitous to her children, and shared the same interests in art, history, music, literature, and theater. She was completely happy, perhaps for the first time. She was also determined not to lose herself in this relationship the way she had w
ith her two husbands. She was dedicated not only to her publishing job but to making certain she cultivated interests outside of anything having to do with Maurice.

  “I’m sorry, ladies,” Maurice said after he’d finished reviewing the papers before him, according to one of the others present for the meeting, “but there’s nothing here.” He said that Stas owed everyone with whom he ever did business. His debt far exceeded what he had in assets.

  “The only thing I care about is my children’s educations,” Lee said, tears springing to her eyes. Jackie reached over and took her hand. “I’ll set up trust funds for Anthony and Tina,” she said. “I love you, Lee, and the kids, too. You know that, don’t you?” Both women began to cry.

  “I could see plainly how much Jackie cared about her sister,” said one of the accountants present, who asked not to be identified since he still does business with Tempelsman. “The princess apparently had some money left from her divorce settlement. ‘Stas was generous to me,’ she said. Jackie agreed, saying, ‘He was a good man. I hate to think of all the sleepless nights he must have endured.’ It was a supportive, if also sad, meeting.”

  Jackie and Lee both rose, Lee taking Maurice’s hand. She thanked him for his time, calling him “M.T.” as did many of his friends and associates. Jackie kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll call you later,” she said. “I’ve got a little surprise for you,” he told her with a twinkle in his eye. “See you tonight.” As it happened, that same morning Maurice had made a substantial killing for Jackie in gold futures. He had invested while the price of gold was $100 an ounce. When it rose to $800 an ounce, he sold, resulting in millions of profit for Jackie. It was the surprise he planned to spring on her at dinner.

  Turning to Alexander Forger, Jackie thanked him for coming to the meeting and said she would be in touch. Then, putting her arm around Lee, she walked her out of the office.

  “Poor kid,” Maurice said to the others after the sisters were gone. “Fourteen years of marriage to royalty and what does she get? Zip. That’s a real kick in the pants for a princess, isn’t it?”

  Emergency Family Meeting

  By September of 1976, the fiscal situation relating to Hammersmith Farm had become dire. Janet and Hugh could simply no longer afford it. Adding to the pressure was the fact that the Washington branch of Hugh’s investment firm had recently been forced to close. Now the New York office was all that was left of his enterprise, but that branch was struggling, too, and would not last long.

  The Auchinclosses had a firm offer for Hammersmith from a conglomerate of seven Massachusetts and Rhode Island businessmen, headed up by an attorney named Edward F. Sughrue. They would buy most of Hammersmith’s nearly one hundred acres, including the Big House, the property around it, the pier, and eight other adjacent buildings, as well as the sixteen-horse stable. Janet and Hugh would be able to keep the Castle, to which they would relocate, and the Windmill, which would be for guests. The Faria family would still be allowed to continue to work at Hammersmith and live in the Caretaker’s House, where they’d lived since 1967. The Caretaker’s House garage—also known as the Carriage House—would still be theirs, as would guest quarters above it called the Palace. The investors’ intention was to open Hammersmith as a tourist museum in May. Therefore, the family would have to leave behind all furnishings as well as memorabilia of President Kennedy’s.

  Janet called an emergency family meeting at the farm to discuss how to move forward. Present would be Janet and Hugh, of course, with Jackie, Lee, Yusha, forty-nine, and Tommy, thirty-nine. Hugh’s daughter Nini (Tommy’s sister) was invited but did not attend; neither did Jamie. Janet Jr. and her husband, Lewis Rutherfurd, also would not be present, both, of course, living in Hong Kong.

  Garrett Johnston, Hugh’s employee from Thomson & McKinnon, Auchincloss, was charged with taking the meeting’s minutes for the firm. Another company associate, Candace Livingston, who worked in its finance department, was also there, as was Margaret Anne Kearney. Until recently, Margaret had worked for Hugh as the secretary of his Washington office and thus had knowledge of the Hammersmith situation. She and Janet had also forged a friendship over the years.

  “There is an offer on the table,” Janet announced, “for $825,000.” She said it was “a pathetic proposal,” but that the family seemed to have no other recourse.

  “What was the asking price, again?” Jackie wanted to know.

  “Nine hundred eighty-five thousand,” Janet said, “and even that was low!”

  Several developers had expressed interest in the property, Janet told the group, but their intention was to demolish the Big House and some of the other structures and build condominiums in their place. She and Hugh refused to allow that to happen. “Mrs. A. said that because the present interested buyers had a museum in mind, it seemed like a good idea to let them have the property,” recalled Garrett Johnston.

  “They’re forming a conglomerate called Camelot Gardens and Associates,” Janet explained. “You’re joking, right?” Jackie asked. “No. I’m afraid not,” Janet observed. Of course, the new company was trying to exploit the mythological Camelot story of the Kennedy administration, which Jackie had spun in her grief for Look magazine back in 1963. Also, they were playing off the popularity of Grey Gardens. Jackie just shook her head sadly. “I guess I’m not surprised,” she said.

  “As the meeting went on, though, I noticed that everyone kept looking to Jackie, waiting, I think, for her to just offer up the money. I had the feeling they wanted her to put forth the $825,000 herself, or perhaps the entire asking price of $985,000. From her expression, though, I knew she was reluctant. Finally, she spoke up.”

  “If everyone chips in and this becomes a family investment, I might do the same,” Jackie said with clear hesitation. Immediately, Yusha said he didn’t have the money to invest. Tommy chimed in that he didn’t, either.

  In fact, if her relatives had wished to do so, Jackie’s suggestion might have had merit. Hugh had earlier told Garrett Johnston that Tommy and Yusha had a significant amount of money stashed away. Also, Hugh said that Janet Jr.’s husband, Lewis, was doing well in Hong Kong as an investment attorney with his own venture capital firm, Inter-Asia Venture Management. The Rutherfurd family had substantial holdings in the States, too, and was well known. Not only that, Nini was now married to Michael Straight, deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, who was from a rich and prominent family. His father was a partner at J. P. Morgan. He and Nini had bought Jack and Jackie’s old house on N Street and paid a bundle for it; they now had a huge place on Martha’s Vineyard. (However, the fact that neither the Rutherfurds nor the Straights showed up for the family meeting suggested that they didn’t want to have anything to do with Hammersmith’s problems.)

  Moreover, Hugh’s older sister Esther Auchincloss Blitz had been married to real-estate developer Norman Blitz, one of the richest men in Nevada, for about the last forty-five years. He had committed suicide five years earlier, leaving Esther with a fortune. She had been loaning Hugh money all along, but even she wasn’t interested in buying Hammersmith.

  “In the end, though, the thinking, at least from what I could discern, was that none of the family members had the kind of money Jackie had—Onassis money,” said Garrett Johnston. “So why should they be forced to maybe stretch their finances to the limit when Jackie could easily just write out a check and keep Hammersmith in the family? Or, at least that’s what I believe everyone was thinking.”

  “I find it quite interesting,” Janet finally said, turning to Jackie, “that you would rather buy a bunch of supermarkets than save the home in which you were raised! The home that Jack loved so much.”

  “Who told you that?” Jackie demanded to know, her temper suddenly rising. “That is my private business, Mummy, and I do not appreciate it being announced to everyone in this manner.” Janet told Jackie she had her ways of getting information. It didn’t matter how she’d learned about it, she said, she just didn’t t
hink it was right.

  It’s not known how Janet found out but, in fact, Jackie had, that very same month, spent $800,000 on three Safeway stores, one in western Utah and the others in North Carolina. It had actually been a wise investment on her part, orchestrated by Maurice Tempelsman, and, if anything, was more a tax shelter for her than a source of income. “Yes, I admit, I am a very wealthy woman,” Jackie told the others. “I make no apologies for that.” Her relatives surely didn’t know as much but, by 1977, Jackie’s money from Onassis had grown from its approximate $20 million to at least $100 million, including her vast real-estate holdings. However, she told the group that she did not make such investments herself and that her “people” had specifically told her that investing in Hammersmith Farm was not prudent. That said, she reiterated that she would probably still contribute if others did the same.

  “Well, that seems fair,” Lee said of Jackie’s offer. However, Lee certainly didn’t have the money to even pitch in as part of any family effort. By this time, her children were finally reunited with one another when, after Stas’s death, Anthony moved to Manhattan. He was boarding at Choate Rosemary Hall in Connecticut, which was pricy. She’d also spent what little money she had left from her divorce to buy a new beach home in Southampton for $329,000. Therefore, even though her design business was going well, Lee was tapped out. Jackie, as promised, had set up trust funds for both of Lee’s children. “If we can’t chip in like Jackie suggests, then I say we sell Hammersmith,” Lee added. “What if we don’t get another offer? Besides, look what it’s doing to us!” she said as she nervously twisted her hands together. “We’re at each other’s throats!”

  “We are not at each other’s throats,” Janet said, her tone sharp. She noted that they were just sorting things out as a family, and asked Lee to never again say that they were “at each other’s throats.” She added, “I don’t like that kind of talk.”