Grace and Power

by Sally Bedell Smith

  xxvii “happiness compartment”: Richard Neustadt interview, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Papers, JFKL.

  xxvii “Whatever his waywardness”: Arthur Schlesinger interview.

  xxvii He was intrigued by what women: Walton interview, JCBC.

  xxvii “It drove him wild”: Walton OH.

  xxvii “capacity to state problems”: Arthur Schlesinger interview.

  xxvii “She was an intellectual”: Marian Schlesinger interview.

  xxvii “I don’t think she found”: Radziwill interview.

  xxvii “she did keep in touch”: Baldrige e-mail to author, July 11, 2002.

  xxvii “She would cozy up”: Patricia Hass interview.

  xxvii “confidante of an important”: Bradford, p. 55.

  xxviii “She enjoyed the thoughts”: McNamara interview.

  xxviii Jackie Kennedy prized loyalty: Interviews with Suzanne Wilson, Hugh D. “Yusha” Auchincloss III, Martha Bartlett, Vivian Crespi, Solange Herter, Jessie Wood, and Letitia Baldrige on JBK’s views of friendship.

  xxviii “She didn’t like empty-headed”: Herter interview.

  xxviii “pushy creature”: JBK to Walton, June 8, 1962, Walton Papers, JFKL.

  xxviii “She liked women who were feminine”: Herter interview.

  xxviii “Jackie didn’t enjoy superficial”: Deeda Blair interview.

  xxviii She had high standards: Cassini II, p. 304; Crespi interview.

  xxviii “ran hot and cold”: Herter interview.

  xxviii “hermetic periods”: Cassini II, p. 304.

  xxviii “She would have enthusiasms”: Baldrige interview. In her application for Vogue magazine’s Prix de Paris (May 21, 1951) when she was twenty-one years old, Jackie wrote in “Feature-Question 1”: “One of my most annoying faults is getting very enthusiastic over something at the beginning and then tiring of it halfway through. I am trying to counteract this by not getting too enthusiastic over too many things at once.” Vogue Materials, JFKL.

  xxviii “gave a great impression of affection”: Arthur Schlesinger interview.

  xxviii “a source of his fascination and power”: ATD, p. 78.

  xxviii “unto herself”: Baldrige interview.

  xxviii “Jack Kennedy enjoyed his friends”: Arthur Schlesinger interview.

  xxviii “I doubt life would have been”: ibid.

  xxix “I was writing some things”: Theodore Sorensen interview.

  xxix “great man” theory: Arthur Schlesinger interview; Berlin OH.

  Chapter One

  3 “Where’s Jackie?”: Leo Damore, The Cape Cod Years of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, p. 226; Theodore H. White, The Making of the President 1960 (White I), p. 379; NYHT, Nov. 11, 1960.

  3 nerve center for thirty-five years: HTF, p. 64.

  3 her cheery white and yellow: Apple Parish Bartlett and Susan Bartlett Crater, Sister: The Life of Legendary American Interior Decorator Mrs. Henry Parish II, p. 79; AH, p. 241.

  3 “pixie things”: Liz Carpenter interview.

  3 droll watercolors: Laura Bergquist manuscript for profile of Jackie Kennedy, ND, Laura Bergquist Papers, the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.

  4 her artistic mentor Ludwig Bemelmans: Thomas Guinzburg OH-CU.

  4 “fairly important young executive”: Norman Mailer, “An Evening with Jackie Kennedy: Being an Essay in Three Acts,” Esquire, July 1962.

  4 Jack, however, had: AH, p. 241; White I, pp. 6, 16.

  4 “He’s lost another state”: AH, p. 235.

  4 The Washington artist Bill Walton: White I, p. 19.

  4 “Oh, Bunny, you’re President”: ibid., p. 20.

  4 Jackie went to bed before: NYHT, Nov. 11, 1960.

  4 “the heat and crowds”: NYT, Sept. 15, 1960.

  4 She had awakened: White I, pp. 378–79.

  5 “unusually large”: JKWH, p. 63.

  5 a source of vanity: Hugh Sidey interview; KE, p. 24.

  5 “it would be unendurable”: Sunday Standard-Times (Cape Cod), Feb. 28, 1954.

  5 “the look of a beautiful lion”: NYT, July 15, 1960.

  5 “unfortunately far apart”: Jacqueline Bouvier essay, “Feature-Question 1,” Vogue Materials, JFKL.

  5 “bouffant purple coat”: NYHT, Nov. 10, 1960.

  5 “It was involuntary”: ATD, p. 114.

  5 “a very naughty eight-year-old”: Mailer, Esquire, July 1962.

  5 the French phrase spelled out: Mini Rhea, I Was Jacqueline Kennedy’s Dressmaker, p. 79.

  6 “Love me, love my dog”: ibid.

  6 “The coat of arms for this Administration”: NYT, Jan. 30, 1961. In her unpublished manuscript on Jackie, Laura Bergquist attributes this quote to JBK. Laura Bergquist Papers, Boston University.

  6 “All I ask is someone with”: Jacqueline Bouvier to Lee Bouvier, ND (probably 1950), Lee Radziwill book proposal.

  6 Their Newport wedding: Newport Daily News, Sept. 12, 1953; Sept. 13, 1953.

  6 “humiliation she would suffer”: Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys (Goodwin I), p. 774. This is the definitive work on the Kennedy family, ending with the election of JFK to the presidency.

  6 “You’re pretty much in love”: Peter Davis, Jack, a documentary on CBS, Nov. 17, 1993.

  6 “really drove him out”: Lem Billings OH. The Billings oral history was originally intended to be off-limits to historians for fifty years after his death. However, it has been opened to some writers, and copies are now available outside the Kennedy Library.

  7 “She breathes all the”: Donald Wilson, “John Kennedy’s Lovely Lady,” Life, Aug. 24, 1959.

  7 “a vegetable wife”: Cape Cod Times, Feb. 28, 1954.

  7 “things of the spirit”: Wilson, Life, Aug. 24, 1959.

  7 “direct, energetic types”: Laura Bergquist Knebel OH.

  7 “curious inquiring mind”: Wilson, Life, Aug. 24, 1959.

  7 “fascinated by the way he thinks”: Rhea, p. 171.

  7 “imperturbable self-confidence”: KE, p. 120.

  7 “exchanged eyes”: DOAP, p. 84.

  7 “Jackie was the only woman”: Crespi interview.

  7 “mesmerized”: Iris Turner Kelso OH-CU.

  7 “We loved them in every way”: Nellie Connally, From Love Field: My Final Hours with President John F. Kennedy, p. 85, quoting from JBK to Nellie Connally, Dec. 1, 1963.

  7 “Jack’s love had certain”: Robin Chandler Duke interview.

  7 “I would describe Jack”: JBK to Fletcher Knebel, ND, for use in Knebel’s article “What You Don’t Know About Kennedy,” Look, Jan. 17, 1961, Fletcher Knebel Papers, Boston University.

  8 trembling hands: According to Robert Kennedy biographer Evan Thomas, John, Robert, and Edward Kennedy were periodically affected by what Eunice Shriver described as a “family tremor” (RKHL, p. 398).

  8 “My wife and I prepare”: NYHT, Nov. 10, 1960.

  8 “Hard-hearted Jack”: Mary McGrory to Theodore H. White, Nov. 12, 1960, Theodore White Papers, Harvard University.

  8 “all made out of the same clay”: Philip Ziegler, Diana Cooper, p. 308.

  8 cared for by nuns since: Laurence Leamer, The Kennedy Women (Leamer I), pp. 319–23; 412–13. As of this writing, Rosemary at age eighty-five is still living at the St. Coletta School for Exceptional Children in Jefferson, Wisconsin.

  8 “childhood victim”: Time, July 11, 1960.

  8 Almost twenty years earlier: Goodwin I, p. 614; HTF, p. 511.

  9 But this time Jack Kennedy: Damore, p. 227.

  9 “grim and pale”: ibid.

  9 “awkward moment”: Theodore White notes on the day after JFK’s election, ND, Theodore White Papers, Harvard University.

  Chapter Two

  10 Excluded from their group: CWK, p. 34.

  10 “Lem couldn’t stand me”: Ben Bradlee interview.

  10 “a dud”: AH, p. 275.

  10 “Okay, girls, you can take”: CWK, p. 32.

  10 “Do you think I should
stuff”: Bergquist manuscript for profile of Jackie Kennedy, ND, Laura Bergquist Papers, Boston University.

  11 Bradlee said Kennedy should: CWK, p. 33.

  11 when the newspapers announced: ATD, p. 125.

  11 For more than a year: Nigel Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, p. 435; Joan and Clay Blair Jr., The Search for JFK, p. 151; Goodwin I, p. 632.

  11 “not evil as he is depicted”: Hamilton, pp. 431–32.

  11 Even after JFK had been: Hamilton, pp. 438, 489; Goodwin I, p. 633.

  11 JFK’s defiance was: Hamilton, p. 458.

  11 “He’s got a lot to learn”: ibid., p. 423, quoting from an interview with John White, recalling Arvad’s comments.

  11 Kennedy knew that Hoover: ibid., p. 489.

  11 But JFK was unaware: Confidential Airtel to J. Edgar Hoover from SAC, Los Angeles, Apr. 1, 1960, FBI, mentioned JFK’s “association with SINATRA . . . the Senator is vulnerable to bad publicity. . . . Sex activities by Kennedy . . . involving the Senator and Sinatra occurred in Palm Springs, Las Vegas, and New York City”; FBI, J. Edgar Hoover O&C Files #96 (Kennedy, John Fitzgerald) memorandum July 13, 1960 alleged “immoral activities” by JFK including the possibility that he “was ‘compromised’ with a woman in Las Vegas and that Kennedy and Frank Sinatra in the recent past have been involved in parties in Palm Springs, Las Vegas, and New York.”

  11 because he thought her resemblance: Garry Wills, The Kennedy Imprisonment, p. 22.

  11 they had been friends since: Walton OH.

  11 The son of an Illinois: ibid.

  12 “gloriously florid”: JKWH, p. 51.

  12 “rather like a clever”: Martha Gellhorn to Adlai Stevenson, Aug. 15, 1960, Adlai E. Stevenson Papers, Princeton University.

  12 Walton was forthright: Nancy White Hector interview; Anne Truitt interview.

  12 “glorious fun”: Gellhorn to Stevenson, Aug. 15, 1960, Stevenson Papers, Princeton University.

  12 Bradlee had entered: Benjamin C. Bradlee, A Good Life (Bradlee II), p. 204.

  12 a love affair that began: ibid., pp. 158–60.

  12 Bradlee’s family mingled: ibid., pp. 21–23.

  12 “the private lives and public postures”: CWK, p. 21.

  12 “nineteenth-century court gossip”: KE, p. 373.

  12 He was unconventional enough: Bradlee II, p. 53.

  12 “You had to have a light touch”: Ben Bradlee interview.

  12 “I married a whirlwind”: Deane and David Heller, Jacqueline Kennedy, p. 92.

  13 Anthony Trollope’s The Warden: Anne Truitt interview; Manchester II, p. 92.

  13 cast for bluefish: Time, Nov. 28, 1960.

  13 saw a play (Gore Vidal’s): Fred Kaplan, Gore Vidal: A Biography, p. 486.

  13 “a city upon a hill”: WP, Jan. 10, 1961.

  13 “We’ll kill a deer”: NYHT, Nov. 12, 1960.

  13 more recently had shot quail: WS, Apr. 17, 1961.

  13 Johnson pressed him: CWK, p. 212; Collier and Horowitz, p. 251; Newsweek, Nov. 28, 1960.

  13 “Lyndon, I thank you”: Lloyd Hand interview.

  13 “whale” . . . “minnow”: Harry McPherson, A Political Education: A Washington Memoir, p. 48.

  13 “To Johnson . . . [JFK] was”: ibid., p. 42.

  14 four inches taller, he could: Carpenter interview.

  14 Johnson had been born: Robert Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate, p. 115.

  14 “Lyndon was a powerhouse”: Ben Bradlee interview.

  14 “He’d suck your guts out”: Orville Freeman Reminiscence, Nov. 23, 1963, WMP.

  14 rarely read a book and tended: Hand interview; Harry McPherson interview.

  14 many of Kennedy’s acolytes: Stewart Alsop, The Center (Alsop I), p. 38.

  14 LBJ’s simple words and colorful locutions: Many of these appeared in the extensive tape recordings Johnson made of his telephone conversations during his presidency. On Aug. 16, 1965, for example, Johnson told Senator Richard Russell, Democrat of Georgia, “You can be poor and ignorant all your life. Then you take a few drinks, and you’ll be rich and smart in an hour.” LBJ Tapes, LBJL.

  14 Kennedy cringed at: Alsop I, p. 47; Otto Fuerbringer interview; Caro, pp. 121–22.

  14 “uncouth and somewhat of an oaf”: George Smathers Senate OH.

  14 Yet he admired: ibid.; McPherson, p. 42.

  15 While LBJ did not actively: Newton Minow OH-CU; ATD, p. 19.

  15 take “the Catholic flavor”: AJ, p. 112.

  15 “the smartest thing”: ATD, p.58.

  15 “collaborator . . . than”: ibid., p. 50.

  15 “I’m not going to die”: AH, p. 178.

  15 “significant assignments”: ATD, p. 49.

  15 For his part: Bill Moyers interview, Schlesinger Papers, JFKL.

  15 because Kennedy would take credit: McPherson, p. 179.

  15 “I looked it up”: Ralph G. Martin, Henry and Clare: An Intimate Portrait of the Luces (Martin II), p. 363.

  15 Her instinct was to surround: WP, Jan. 8, 1961; Gallagher, pp. 29–31.

  15 For her social secretary: Baldrige I, p. 68.

  16 Baldrige had acquired discipline: ibid., p. 13.

  16 Having grown to six foot one: ibid., p. 19.

  16 “commando from the White House”: Letitia Baldrige, Of Diamonds and Diplomats (Baldrige II), p. 248.

  16 “that floorflusher Kennedy”: Letitia Baldrige to Clare Boothe Luce, Feb. 17, 1959, Clare Boothe Luce Papers, LOC.

  16 “Vixen for Nixon”: Clare Luce to Baldrige, May 20, 1963, Clare Luce Papers, LOC.

  16 “Jack Kennedy has shown”: Baldrige to Clare Luce, July 25, 1960, Clare Luce Papers, LOC.

  16 “a complete makeover of”: Baldrige I, p. 182.

  16 “redecorate” . . . “a word I hate”: ATD, p. 670.

  16 “Jackie was suddenly on fire”: Baldrige I, p. 165.

  16 “a showcase for great American”: NYHT, Nov. 23, 1960; JKWH, p. 15; Baldrige II, p. 158.

  16 “I’ve learned lesson number one”: Baldrige to Clare Luce, Dec. 16, 1960, Clare Luce Papers, LOC.

  17 “a very inexperienced, beautiful”: Baldrige I, p. 168.

  17 this petite twenty-three-year-old: J. B. West, Upstairs at the White House, p. 205.

  17 “learn the duties gradually”: Gallagher, p. 106.

  17 “notably aggressive feminine”: JKWH, p. 30.

  17 The choice mystified: Beale, p. 87.

  17 Turnure’s landlady: “Allegation Against John F. Kennedy, President of the United States,” April 19, 1963, FBI; D. C. Morrell to Cartha DeLoach, April 11, 1963, FBI; A. Rosen to Belmont, May 24, 1963, FBI.

  17 “This lady claimed he was having”: Fletcher Knebel OH.

  17 “The rumors were rampant”: Barbara Gamarekian interview.

  17 “asked me if I knew [Jack] was”: AH, p. 314.

  17 “heroines”: Hamish Bowles, “Defining Style: Jacqueline Kennedy’s White House Years,” Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years, Metropolitan Museum of Art (hereafter referred to as Met Catalogue), p. 17.

  18 cool and laconic: Arthur Schlesinger interview.

  18 “small, fine-boned brunette”: JKWH, p. 30.

  18 “could almost be taken for”: Gallagher, p. 147.

  18 she was the daughter of: NYT, Jan. 12, 1961; WP, Jan. 12, 1961; Louise Drake interview.

  18 “proved efficient”: JKWH, p. 30.

  18 “Pam was always very quiet”: Drake interview.

  18 Jack and Jackie spent: NYHT, Nov. 25, 1960.

  18 dinner that included caviar: Newsweek, Dec. 5, 1960.

  18 Jackie’s due date was still: NYHT, Nov. 25, 1960; JKWH, p. x.

  18 “because of all the excitement”: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis OH, John Sherman Cooper Oral History Project, University of Kentucky.

  18 The ambulance driver found: WP, Nov. 25, 1960; NYT, Nov. 26, 1960.

  18 “She was smiling”: NYT, Nov. 25, 1960.

  18 But her anxiety showed: NYHT, Nov. 26, 1960.r />
  18 The scenario was alarmingly similar: United Press International (UPI), Aug. 26, 1956; JKWH, p. 107.

  18 In 1956 she had returned: UPI, Aug. 26, 1956. Laurence Leamer, in The Kennedy Men: 1901–1963 (Leamer II), p. 358, describes JFK’s secrecy surrounding the yacht rental. In March 1956, Kennedy had directed William Thompson, a railroad lobbyist, to secure the eighty-five-foot yacht for $1,750 for two weeks. JFK could have paid himself, but asked the yacht broker to omit his name from the transaction. In his letter to the agent in Cannes, Kennedy wrote, “Do not wish . . . in any way connected with the hiring of the boat” for the rental beginning Aug. 21, 1956.

  19 “Oh no, not that!”: NYT, Nov. 25, 1960.

  19 Teddy Roosevelt, who had six: Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex, p. 251.

  19 “If you bungle raising”: Heller, p. 118.

  Chapter Three

  20 For two weeks she worked: Baldrige I, p. 165.

  20 While Baldrige and other: ATD, pp. 669–70.

  20 At 55,000 square feet: NYT, Feb. 15, 1962.

  20 By comparison, the Seattle: WP, May 17, 2003.

  20 Completed in 1802: Betty C. Monkman, The White House: Its Historic Furnishings and First Families, pp. 10–11.

  20 Jackie consulted forty books: JKWH, p. 281.

  20 including the January 1946 issue: ibid., p. 116.

  20 After examining fabric: JKWH, p. 111; Monkman, pp. 224–26; James A. Abbott and Elaine M. Rice, Designing Camelot: The Kennedy White House Restoration, pp. 16–17.

  21 a quick refurbishment: JKWH, p. 15.

  21 using $50,000 designated: Abbott and Rice, p. 17.

  21 “a woman of quality and taste”: Bartlett and Crater, p. 88.

  21 Room after room: Bowles, Met Catalogue, p. 22.

  21 “seasick green”: West, p. 200.

  21 the ambiance was as cold: JBK to Henry du Pont, Oct. 10, 1961, Courtesy Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, Winterthur Archives.

  21 “so sad”: JKWH, p. 281.

  21 “Jackie did not have two big”: Bartlett and Crater, p. 82.

  21 a number of twentieth-century presidents: James Ketchum interview; Abbott and Rice, pp. 13–17.

  21 Jackie had grown up: West, p. 209.

  21 “a bit Henry Jamesian”: Bergquist manuscript for profile of Jackie Kennedy, ND, Laura Bergquist Papers, Boston University.

  22 “Our background was influential”: Radziwill interview.

  22 “Every library . . . had chintz”: William Norwich, “A New Balance: Lee Radziwill Finds Serenity in Paris,” NYT Magazine, Oct. 22, 2000.