Two days later, Ethel telephoned Jackie to invite her to the party and inform her of the unusual theme: All of the guests were to wear black, which seemed particularly strange for a St. Patrick’s Day party.
On the night of the party, Jack showed up first, on crutches and slippers, his chronic back troubles causing him great discomfort. “I’m dying here,” he said. “This damn back is killing me.” Jim Buckley, brother of magazine publisher William F Buckley and who would go on to become a New York senator and one day marry Ethel’s college friend Ann Cooley, asked Jack about his date. “Oh, she’s a looker,” Jack said. “Wait until you get a load of her. She’s my new dance partner,” he added with a grin.
Anxious to make an entrance befitting a Bouvier—and perhaps hoping to impress her new beau and his friends—Jackie was the last to arrive. Whereas everyone else had either driven his or her own car or took a cab to Bobby and Ethel’s, Jackie showed up in a chauffeur-driven black Rolls Royce. She did wear black, though, as did all of the guests. Jackie wore an elegant dark cocktail dress embroidered with silver threads in medallion shapes, along with white pearls and matching earrings. A black fur coat was the perfect wintry touch.
As if on cue, shortly after Jackie’s arrival, Ethel came swooping down the staircase from the second floor. “Here I am, everybody. How are you all?” Her smile was dazzling as she walked about the room, meeting and greeting her guests, all of whom looked at her with expressions of astonishment. Ethel was wearing a stunning green diaphanous gown—and not just one shade, but layer upon layer of different hues of green. The center of attention, Ethel graciously spent time with each guest and began to acquit herself well as the ideal hostess.
Jackie stood in a corner and watched Ethel with an inscrutable expression. Lem Billings, who attended the party, remembered, “About an hour into the party, she came over to me and said, ‘Interesting woman, that Ethel.’ I told her, ‘Once you get to know her, I think you’ll like her.’ ”
Billings asked Jackie, “Now, does it upset you, the way she set this up?”
“Oh, no. Not in the least,” Jackie said with a chuckle. “After all, it is her party. As hostess, she can do whatever she likes, don’t you agree? Now, personally, I would never do anything like that. But how utterly clever of her.”
To another guest, Jackie said, “How refreshing it will be to know someone who has no interest whatsoever in impressing anyone with her fashion taste.”
When Jackie and Ethel finally met for the first time, their exchange was unmemorable, chilly and brief. Jackie stayed to herself for the rest of the evening, not mingling but rather seeming to pose regally in front of the roaring fireplace—a perfect picture. The way she had positioned herself she had everyone’s attention, and so for the next hour Jack fetched his senatorial friends and brought them over to make her acquaintance. All the while, Ethel eyed Jackie, muttering to Bobby that the Bouvier interloper was trying to pull the room’s focus to her. “It’s not my imagination,” she was overheard saying angrily. Finally, long before any of the other invitees, Jackie walked over to Ethel and Bobby and told them that she had to go.
“Before dinner?” Ethel was flabbergasted. “But we have a wonderful meal prepared.”
Jack was already helping Jackie with her fur as she apologized and said that she had “the most dreadful headache ever.” As much as she wanted to stay, she said, she couldn’t.
Jackie then walked through the small crowd, shaking hands and kissing cheeks as if she were royalty. After she had bid adieu to everyone, Jack escorted her to the front door and to her waiting Rolls. Some of Ethel’s guests peered through the front windows to watch with mesmerized expressions as the uniformed chauffeur popped out of the driver’s side of the car, whipped around to the other side, and opened the door for Jackie. After she had gotten into the automobile, he closed the door and ran back to the driver’s seat. As the car started to pull away, Jackie rolled down the window and grandly waved farewell to her fans in Ethel’s living room.
“Well, I never…” Ethel said, not bothering to hide her fury.
“Clearly,” Bobby said, his eye twinkling. He was taken with Jack’s new girlfriend and liked her from the start.
Later, over dinner, Ethel still couldn’t get over what had occurred with Jackie. “Jack-leen,” she observed as she and her guests discussed Jack’s new girlfriend. “Rhymes with ‘queen,’ doesn’t it?” It was a stolen quip, actually; Eunice had already said it after meeting Jackie for the first time.
Still, Jack was amused by the observation. “Seems rather appropriate, doesn’t it?” he said.
The next day, Jackie sent Ethel a letter. “I had such a wonderful time,” she wrote in her difficult-to-read backhand. “So many fascinating people, so much wonderful conversation. And you, Ethel, were the most perfect hostess, so lovley [sic], and so beautiful in your greenery. I thank you so much for inviting me, and I feel absolutely dreadful that I had to leave in such a completely inappropriate rush.”
Upon receipt of the note, Ethel found herself confused about “Jackleen.” Anyone who complimented her on one of her parties was definitely a person Ethel appreciated and wanted in her circle. However, because Jackie had also proved herself to be a scene-stealer, Ethel didn’t know whether to love her or loathe her. Of course, in years to come, Ethel’s predicament would be one in which many people would find themselves when it came to Jackie.
Despite the letter Ethel had received—which, because it was so confounding to her, she shared with anyone—most of her friends were appalled by Jackie’s behavior at the gathering. However Ethel, never one to conform, decided to take an opposing point of view. “You know what? I like her,” she said approvingly. “I really do. I like her nerve. My mother would get a kick out of her, too.”
A week later, as Ethel and Jackie enjoyed lunch together in a Washington restaurant, Jackie gifted her with a pin: a delicate green four-leaf clover with a small diamond in the center of each leaf. Jackie further ingratiated herself by sharing a confidence with Ethel: The reason she had to leave the party in such a rush was that she was suffering from premenstrual cramps. According to what Ethel would later recall, Jackie said that her illness made it unbearable for her to have to meet all of the people Jack kept bringing over to her. Also, she said she was “absolutely freezing,” which was the reason she was standing in front of the fireplace during most of the party.
Ethel explained that the reason the temperature was so frigid in her home was that Rose Kennedy was angry at her and Bobby for their spending habits, “and Bobby said I could only have the party if I didn’t use any heat. He said, ‘It’s either heat or a parry. You choose.’ So, naturally, I chose the party.”
“Well, naturally,” Jackie agreed.
After the two women shared a hearty laugh, Jackie asked Ethel to keep sacred the secret of her premenstrual cramps. Ethel promised to tell “not a soul.”
But how could she resist? In weeks to come, Ethel would tell just about everyone she knew all of the details of her lunch with Jackie, including her little secret. Ethel also proved herself to be a perceptive woman because, after just one luncheon with Jackie, she seemed to understand something about her that it usually took others much longer to discern. “She asks a lot of questions, on and on and on with the questions,” Ethel said. “And I’m sitting there answering all of these questions when it suddenly hit me: As long as she keeps me busy talking, she doesn’t have to give me any information about herself.”
Jack Proposes Marriage
In the months after their first meeting, Ethel Kennedy and Jackie Bouvier got to know each other on weekend Kennedy outings. Football games at the Georgetown Recreation Center were particularly amusing. Ethel fit right in with the Kennedy brothers—and even their sisters, who played a raucous and sometimes even violent game. Jackie, of course, hated these kinds of sports. The first time she got out on the field, she somehow managed to catch a ball hurled at her by Jack. Stunned at her good luck, she stoo
d in the middle of the field, dazed, and said, “Now, which way do I run, exactly?”
“Aw, get that debutante off the field,” Ethel said, annoyed. “You gotta be kidding me!” (Ethel had never gotten over her astonishment when Bobby told her that Jackie had once been given the title “Queen Deb of the Year” by New York society reporter Cholly Knicker-bocker—a.k.a. Igor Cassini, brother of designer Oleg. “And she was actually proud of that?” Ethel wanted to know.)
Trying to fit in, Jackie continued to play football every time a game was organized, until one weekend she sprained her ankle. (Some say she broke it.) As she sat in the middle of the field, sobbing and holding her foot, Jack, Bobby, and the other Kennedys stared at her in disbelief. Kennedys don’t cry, after all—or at least that had always been the family myth. It was Ethel who ran over to the “debutante,” her mothering instincts surfacing. “Oh, you poor dear,” she said as she helped Jackie hobble to the sidelines. “Now, you have to go straight home and get some ice and put it in a towel, then use it on your ankle. Otherwise it will swell.” Then she turned to the others, who were by now laughing, and screamed at them, “Don’t laugh at her. Don’t be so mean. She’s getting better at the game.”
After that incident, however, Jackie decided that she would never play football with the Kennedys again.
For years, it has been said that Jackie and Ethel were not, and could never be, friends. That was not the case. In fact, Jackie and Ethel treaded warily into a friendship and developed a deep, profound understanding that would last for decades. At the beginning they set certain boundaries.
For instance, Jackie loved to talk about her father’s sexual exploits, shocking Ethel with her frank discussions. Because Ethel, who never liked talking about sex, was clearly uncomfortable hearing about Black Jack’s private life, he soon became a subject the two women rarely discussed. Jackie’s parents were divorced, and Jackie had no problem with divorce at all. Ethel didn’t believe in divorce, however, and was vocal about her disapproval. Once, at a family picnic, the two women engaged in a heated discussion about whether or not Jackie was a true Catholic because, as Ethel put it, “If you were, you wouldn’t approve of divorce.”
“Well, if you were, you wouldn’t be so judgmental about what I do and do not approve of,” Jackie shot back.
“Oh yeah? Well, I… I… I don’t even know what you’re talkin’ about,” Ethel said.
In time, the two women learned not to broach the subject of divorce, though they did have many more discussions about the pros and cons of Roman Catholicism. (Jackie was fairly religious, actually, but few could match Ethel’s devotion.)
Nevertheless, Ethel did continue to give Jackie a hard time for many years to come. “Ethel was more Kennedy than the Kennedys,” says John Davis. “She made Jackie prove herself, yes. She could try a saint’s patience, and even though my cousin [Jackie] was not a saint, she was pretty close just by virtue of the fact that she never went to blows with Ethel, at least not to my knowledge.”
“Jackie was put through her paces by the whole family,” says family friend Dinah Bridge. “And she stood up extremely well to the Kennedy barrage of questions, and that was quite a barrage. You had to know the form to keep up, you know, because the jokes went so fast, and the chitter-chat.”
It’s often been reported over the years that Jackie worked hard to win the Kennedys’ acceptance, that she longed for their approval; yet this was an inaccurate assessment. While she did want to make Jack happy, and hoped his family would accept her, Jackie had the self-confidence to know that they would have no choice. “She already had Jack,” says Lem Billings. “She didn’t need the rest of them. That was her attitude. If they like me, great. If not, the hell with them. I am who I am. They’re lucky to have me in the family at all.”
At one Kennedy outing on one of their yachts, Eunice opened the picnic basket she always packed for the family and began handing out thick peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches to all aboard.
“I put extra strawberry jam on this one for you,” Eunice said as she handed Jackie a sandwich, the messy jelly dripping out of its sides and down her hands.
“Oh my God, no,” Jackie said, looking at the offering with disgust. She hated jelly, “I brought my own lunch.” She opened her own wicker picnic basket and pulled from it a plate of pâté, a vegetable quiche, and a bottle of white wine. “Anyone care for some?” she offered, as family members around her shared not-so-secret looks of exasperation.
“Pâté? Hell, yeah,” Joseph said enthusiastically. “I’d love some.” From the start, Joseph liked Jackie and appreciated her individuality and sense of flair. “Who else do we know who speaks French, Spanish, and Italian?” he would say. “That’s going to come in handy for Jack, believe me.” For her part, Jackie would say of Joseph, “When I first met him, I did not realize that I was supposed to be scared of him—so I wasn’t. That may have been lèse-majesté—but it was a wonderful way to start.”
By the summer of 1953, Jackie had won over the rest of the Kennedys. “I’m so glad we’ll be sisters-in-law,” she told Ethel one afternoon at a pre-wedding party at Joseph and Rose’s. After Bobby proposed a toast to the soon-to-be-newlyweds, Jackie gave a small speech to those present at the table: Rose and Joseph, Bobby and Ethel, Ted, Eunice, Pat, Lem Billings, and a few others. She loathed the idea of getting up and speaking, but it was a Kennedy tradition that everyone had to give a toast, whether he or she liked it or not.
“Ethel and I couldn’t he more different,” Jackie said, her toast directed to her future sister-in-law. She continued to say that if all of the family members were of the same disposition, “we’d be a very prosaic bunch, now wouldn’t we?” In conclusion, she added that in the short time she had known the family, she’d come to realize that the Kennedys “are nothing if not the most exciting family, perhaps in the world.”
“Hear, hear!” Joseph said, laughing. “That’s the truth, isn’t it, Rose?”
“Hear, hear!” Rose repeated, smiling approvingly.
She sat back down next to Jack, who smiled warmly at his fiancée, who had once again dazzled his entire family.
“Okay then. Here’s to Jack and Jackie,” Ethel said, raising her glass and seizing some attention for herself in the process. “Long may they be happy.”
“Long may they be happy,” everyone repeated as they clicked glasses.
In time, Jackie began to reveal concerns about her future husband’s philandering. Estelle Parker, the fashion designer who fitted Jackie for her trousseau, recalls Jackie asking her for her opinion about men who cheat on their wives. “She seemed confused, undecided,” said Parker. “She also realized that if she married into that family she would be expected to cater to their every whim. Kennedy women were treated like second-class citizens. Jackie wasn’t prepared to tolerate that sort of treatment.”
However, Jackie dismissed her apprehension and decided she could handle any problems she might encounter with her husband and his family. She was the type of woman who could look at a problem from all sides, make a decision about its solution, and then follow through with it. “I’ll find my own place in this family,” she told Lem Billings. “Don’t worry about me.”
So the wedding was on. “I’ll never forget when I got a letter from Jack asking me to be an usher,” recalled his good friend Paul “Red” Fay. “It said, ‘I guess this is the end of a promising career in politics, which has been mostly based on sex appeal.’ ”
On September 12, 1953, in a lavish ceremony at St, Mary’s in Newport, Jacqueline Bouvier and John Fitzgerald Kennedy were wed. No one was happier than Jack’s father, Joseph. Not only did his son have a beautiful new wife who would one day make the perfect First Lady, but the media coverage was all that the publicity-hungry Kennedy patriarch could hope for.
While Janet Auchincloss had hoped for a small, elegant wedding, Joseph wanted it large and showy. For Joseph, this ceremony was not just a social event, it was part of a political campaign. In
the end, Janet gave in. It was important to her that her daughter marry well. If the Kennedys weren’t as aristocratic as she would have liked (she had hoped that Jackie would marry a French nobleman, or at least a Rockefeller), they did have money, and right now she didn’t. Her husband was cash-poor, even though he and his wife were still somehow living like royalty.
Bobby was the best man, and Ethel was one of the bridesmaids. Jackie’s sister, Lee, was matron of honor. Among the six hundred invited guests were prominent politicians and influential newspaper and magazine writers. Boston Archbishop Richard Cushing celebrated the nuptial mass, assisted by four other prominent Catholic clergymen. As an added bonus, Cushing read a telegram from Pope Pius XII, who also approved of the marriage. The church was decorated with pink gladioli and white chrysanthemums, and three thousand spectators converged upon it to get a glimpse of the thirty-six-year-old groom and his twenty-four-year-old bride.
“It was a beautiful, fairy tale of a wedding,” recalls Sancy Newman, who attended all three of the brothers’ weddings. “Everyone said the most perfect things, wore the most perfect clothes, and had the most perfect manners. It was picture perfect.”
After the ceremony, Jack and Jackie spent their wedding night at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York before departing for a honeymoon in Acapulco and then, on the way back, at the bucolic San Ysidro Ranch outside Santa Barbara, California.
Upon their return, the newlyweds rented a two-bedroom home in Georgetown, a short distance from where Ethel and Bobby lived, Ethel loaned drapes and slipcovers to Jackie for the new house, and even though their tastes were completely different, Jackie still appreciated Ethel’s thoughtfulness.
Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot Page 8
