Jackie's Newport Read online

  Jackie’s

  Newport

  g

  Jackie’s

  Newport

  AMERICA’g

  S FIRST LADY

  and the City by the Sea

  Raymond Sinibaldi

  Guilford, Connecticut

  An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

  4501 Forbes Blvd., Ste. 200

  Lanham, MD 20706

  www.rowman.com

  Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

  Copyright © 2019 Raymond Sinibaldi

  Photos courtesy of: The JFK Library; JFK Library Toni Frissell Collection; JFK

  Library White House Photographers Robert Knudsen, Abbie Rowe and Cecil

  Stoughton; The Associated Press; Fort Worth Star-Telegram Collection; Special Collections, The University of Texas at Arlington Library, Arlington, Texas; Newscom Services, Inc., Stan Stearns

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

  ISBN 978-1-4930-3654-7 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-4930-3655-4 (e-book)

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of

  American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992

  Printed in the United States of America

  To Nancy Marie Sinibaldi Cappellini, the very best of us . . .

  Our Connection is pure love.

  Contents g

  A U T H O R ’ S N O T E 1

  P A R T I :

  Jackie, Newport and Hammersmith Farm

  3

  P A R T I I :

  The Summer White House

  31

  P A R T I I I :

  Mr. and Mrs. America

  83

  E P I L O G U E

  203

  A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

  211

  E N D N O T E S

  213

  I N D E X

  227

  Author's Note g

  I dare say no biographer will ever truly come to know Jackie, a passionately private person. She saved that for those whom she treasured and loved. It is my hope that these pages will bring you a greater understanding of the challenges she faced, the strength and resiliency it took to simply endure and the depth of character exhibited while doing so. I hope this will bring a deeper perspective of the toughness and inner strength she carried within that slender frame and behind her soft whispery voice.

  To those of you who met Jackie only in later books and media, it is my

  hope that you will come to a deeper appreciation and understanding of her triumphs, her tragedies, what she means to this country and why she still resonates today.

  For those of you who lived in the times in which she lived, you will

  find within these pages a window to them. You are about to journey to a

  bygone American era, when televisions first began bringing America’s

  leaders into America’s homes. When John F. Kennedy was sworn in to his

  first term in Congress there were 44,000 television sets in the country, and fifteen years later that number grew to over 67,000,000. There were no DVRs and certainly no remotes. Phones were dialed and usually hung on kitchen

  JACKIE'S NEWPORT

  walls. Rhythm and blues and rock and roll were born, and Elvis’s gyrating hips were censored off television. Rap was a sheet one acquired upon being arrested, and hip hop was something Peter Cottontail did on the bunny trail.

  Baseball and boxing dominated the sports world.

  The end of World War II ushered in the Cold War. The arms race raged,

  the space race dawned, and the Civil Rights Movement refused to be denied.

  Only 20 percent of Americans graduated college, of which only 5 percent were women who comprised but 20 percent of the work force.

  It was in this cauldron of simplicity and tumult that Jack and Jackie

  Kennedy emerged. Glamorous, dashing, and young, they changed the face

  of the American political landscape: she, a uniquely beautiful Newport

  socialite, and he a war hero. She was thirty-one when she became the first lady, the third youngest wife of a president, and only thirty-four when she led the nation through the horrors of that November weekend in 1963.

  Remember, as you take this journey into the past, that the hard drives

  of bygone eras do not contain the same computer chips of today. Chips are added, chips are deleted as society and culture evolves. History itself is a living, breathing entity, to be evaluated without judgement, but in the knowledge that there remains a universality among people, crossing all the professed barriers of race, age, religion, economic station, ethnicity, sexual orientation or political affiliation and which is best articulated in Jackie’s own words.

  “Even though people may be well known, they still hold in their hearts

  the emotions of a simple person, for the moments that are most important of those we know on earth…birth, marriage and death.”

  Raymond Sinibaldi

  December 2018

  2

  PART I

  Jackie, Newport and

  Hammersmith Farm g

  “ We both went bareback riding in a field in Newport

  on two unbroken horses.”

  Jacqueline Kennedy

  These last bitter days we have had a queen. She came to us, not by

  heredity or coronation, but by marriage to our president and by

  the chrism of sorrow and the grace of God. With majestic pace

  and instant dignity, she disciplined our grief, made us proud in our shame, and gave us gentle strength to nurture future Americans. Every woman has a new grace, every wife a new radiance, every mother a new tender courage.

  Our gratitude shall make us better men, more appreciative husbands

  and more responsible fathers. But above all, women and men alike we shall walk with more erect humility, in the way of restrained freedom, forgiving justice and untarnished peace.”

  3

  JACKIE'S NEWPORT

  Thus wrote Albert T. Mollegan, professor at the Virginia Theological

  Seminary, to the Washington Post just three days after Jackie Kennedy laid her husband to rest in Arlington National Cemetery. Embodied within lay

  the elucidation of how Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy seized the soul of her country and captured the hearts of the world.

  When history’s cruel hand struck her, she persevered through its horror, bringing sense and sensibility to the chaos of madness. With a combined

  sense of duty, loyalty, determination, and self-preservation, she set forth to create and preserve Jack’s legacy, in which she now shares.

  Jacqueline Lee Bouvier arrived in Newport in June 1942, one month shy of her thirteenth birthday, a sudden upheaval brought on by her mother Janet’s marriage to Hugh D. Auchincloss Jr. Jackie and her sister, Lee, four years younger, were visiting their grandfather when a phone call came. “She’s

  gotten married,” Jackie said to Lee. “To Mr. Auchincloss.”1

  The twisted and tangled web that blended the families Auchincloss and

  Bouvier began in the waning summer days of the late nineteenth century.

  Hugh Dudley Auchincloss Jr. was born at Hammersmith Farm on August

  15, 1897. One week later, nearly 700 visito
rs “were taken around the Ocean Drive,” making a stop at “the Auchincloss place ‘Hammersmith Farm’…

  Where the fine view of the bay and harbor was heartily appreciated by the strangers.”2 Unbeknownst to any of those strangers, inside lay a new baby boy who would become the conduit that would bring to Newport one of the

  world’s most admired women of the twentieth century.

  Hugh married three times. The first, to Russian noblewoman Maya

  Chrapovitsky, produced Hugh Dudley Auchincloss III. He came to be called Yusha, and he was the Auchincloss to whom Jackie was the closest. Yusha

  grew to become an expert on Middle Eastern affairs and, in that capacity, worked as an unofficial, unpaid advisor to JFK during his presidency. In 1935, Hugh married again, this time to divorced socialite and Broadway

  4

  JACKIE, NEWPORT AND HAMMERSMITH FARM

  Jackie with Janet Lee Bouvier at the East Hampton Long Island Fair in July of 1935. Jackie followed in her mother’s footsteps becoming an award winning equestrian.

  actress Nina Gore Vidal. She brought a son, Gore, to the union, which ended in 1941 after producing a daughter, Nina, and another son, Thomas.

  5

  JACKIE'S NEWPORT

  New York socialite and nationally known equestrian Janet Thornton

  Lee married fellow socialite and Wall Street broker John Vernon Bouvier

  III in 1928. Known as “Black Jack” for his perpetual tan and swashbuckling, extravagant ways, his drinking, gambling, and philandering would lead to divorce in 1940. That was not, however, before the birth of two daughters, Jacqueline Lee and Caroline Lee. Janet and Black Jack’s bitter divorce would leave Jackie and Caroline, called Lee, in the crossfire of their parents’ personal war throughout their lives.

  Hammersmith Farm suited Jackie well. Perched above Narragansett

  Bay, it satisfied a calling she’d always heard from the sea and one she answered with a poem, written and illustrated at the age of ten, about summers and the sea on the beaches of the Hamptons.

  Sea Joy

  When I go down by the sandy shore

  I can think of nothing I want more

  Than to live by the blooming blue sea

  As the seagulls flutter round about me

  I can run about-when the tide is out

  With the wind and the sand and the sea all about

  And the seagulls are swirling and diving for fish

  Oh-to live by the sea is my only wish.

  Me 1939 3

  As Jackie was familiarizing herself with her new summer home, just

  across Narragansett Bay John F. Kennedy was instructing young naval

  officers on the finer points of PT boat command. World War II was raging, and Jackie became ensconced in it as much as a thirteen-year-old girl could be. Uncle Hughdie, as she would come to call her stepfather, reopened

  6

  JACKIE, NEWPORT AND HAMMERSMITH FARM

  Jackie, atop her Piebald pony Dance Step, receives her winner’s cup for the nine and under division at the East Hampton Horseshow in August 1937.

  Hammersmith as a working farm with the purchase of two Guernsey cows.

  He named them Jacqueline and Caroline. The ninety acres of green fields

  once again produced food supplies, this time for the U.S. Navy. Jackie’s chore was tending to more than two thousand Rhode Island Red hens.

  For the three remaining summers of World War II, Jackie shared

  Hammersmith with her stepbrothers Yusha and Thomas and stepsister,

  Nina. Half-sister Janet joined the fray in 1945, with half-brother Jamie rounding out the family two years later, leaving Jackie’s sibling tally at six.

  To the credit of all, they never considered themselves as step or halves, only brothers and sisters. Jackie’s room was on the third floor with a large window overlooking the lawn, the woods, and the river.

  7

  JACKIE'S NEWPORT

  Jackie’s winters were spent in McLean, Virginia, on the Auchincloss

  Merrywood Estate. The eleven-bedroom, 23,000-square-foot mansion

  perched on fifty acres overlooking the Potomac River was only eight miles from downtown Washington, D.C. Jackie found solace and joy in both

  places. “I always love it so at Merrywood,” she wrote to Yusha. “So peaceful, with the river and the dogs, listening to the Victrola…I will never know which I love best, Hammersmith with its green fields and summer winds or Merrywood in the snow with the river and those great steep hills.”4

  Both homes provided comfort even when away from them. While

  traveling in Italy Jackie wrote to Hughdie, “I began to feel terribly homesick as I was driving…I started thinking of things like the path leading to the stable at Merrywood…and Hammersmith with the foghorns blowing at

  night…all the places…that bind you to a family you love…you take with

  you, no matter how far you go.”5

  Jackie was dichotomous, cut from a different cloth, alternately lamenting her conviction that “no one will ever marry me and I’ll end up a housemother at Farmington,”6 whilst writing in her Farmington yearbook that her ambition in life was “not to be a housewife.”

  “To meet her, even during those adolescent years, was never to forget

  her,” remembered Letitia Baldridge, who became Jackie’s White House

  social secretary. “She was a natural beauty wearing none of the teenage

  cosmetic fashions of the day.” What captivated Baldridge the most was “her voice…unforgettable in its soft breathy tones…a sound that forced you to draw close and listen well.”7

  Some contemporaries were critical within their complimentary

  observations. “A little bit too well dressed,” observed Priscilla McMillan upon seeing her for the first time at a debutante party on Long Island. “She was stylish even though she was only sixteen.” Apparently too stylish for McMillan’s tastes. “If you were really upper draw,” she continued, “You

  8

  JACKIE, NEWPORT AND HAMMERSMITH FARM

  might be pretty and…well dressed…not glamorous and socially precocious.

  You were just well bred and nice…you didn’t necessarily have clusters and clusters of boys around you.”8 Jackie did, though. “She was the center of attention even then and of course it made the other girls quite jealous.”9

  Selwa “Lucky” Roosevelt, a Vassar classmate, observed Jackie’s

  dichotomy, recalling “an almost star like quality…when she entered a room you couldn’t help but notice her, she was such an exquisite creature…” and yet “she seemed so private.”10

  “I remember seeing her once as a debutant,” recalled Newport

  contemporary Susan Neuberger Wilson. “I remember catching my breath…

  as she walked down a flight of stairs…she was so regal…I’ve never forgotten that moment.”11

  Columbus O’Donnell, another Newport acquaintance, remembered

  her as “a bit standoffish…[not] a bubbling teenager by any means…very

  bright…interested in her family and books and more serious things than just going out on dates.” An Auchincloss cousin recalled, “I would have preferred a little less seriousness and a little more partying.”12

  “Miss Bouvier’s coming out party took the form of a reception and

  dance…at Hammersmith Farm” on Thursday afternoon, August 7, 1947.13

  Eight days later a party followed at the Clambake Club, where Jackie was joined by Rose Grosvenor and presented to Newport society. In reporting, Nancy Randolph captured the dichotomy of Newport itself: “There are

  estates magnificent enough to jolt a maharajah; others weed grown, closed and clammy enough to attract ghosts. And like the houses the people, some brilliantly decorating the social scene on lawns and sand…others walking Bellevue Ave in solitary out of date grandeur, in clothes more in the style of the Smithsonian Institute than Schiaparelli.”14
r />   Jackie was not a stranger to the social pages of newspapers. She made her first appearance at the top of the Brooklyn Eagle Society page in December 1929 at five months of age. Throughout her young life, her equestrian exploits 9

  JACKIE'S NEWPORT

  were chronicled as she, like her mother, became a highly accomplished

  horsewoman. However, her appearance in Cholly Knickerbocker’s nationally syndicated column in January 1947 established a new paradigm on par with Hollywood starlets.

  For the first time since the inception of World War II, the society pages resumed their tradition of naming Queen Debutant of the Year. The 1947

  winner was Vassar freshman Jacqueline Bouvier, “a regal brunette who has classic features and the daintiness of Dresden porcelain [with] all the poise, soft-spoken-ness and intelligence that the leading debutante should have.

  You don’t have to read a batch of press clippings to notice her qualities.”15

  Her passion for “serious things” did not preclude her propensity for boys, but it was older boys who held her interest. One in particular was twenty-four-year-old Charles Whitehouse. An American born in Paris, Charles’s

  family summered at Newport’s Eastbourne Lodge. Eight years Jackie’s

  senior, his studies at Yale were interrupted by World War II, after which he returned to Yale, Newport, and his horses. “Jackie was crazy about Charlie,”

  said his cousin Susan Alsop. “Charlie was a great horseman, which made

  him even more attractive to Jackie.”16 Whitehouse remembered she was as

  “brave as a lioness” on the back of a horse. 17 Following Jackie’s coming out, they spent considerable time together. “We were very fond of each other,” he recalled, “and that fondness continued over the years.”18

  College, Europe, a career, and marriage all lay before Jackie. The

  particulars of each were just waiting to be chosen.

  Charlie Bartlett first met Jack Kennedy in 1940, when he accompanied

  a mutual friend to supper at the Kennedy home in Hyannis Port. They

  became friends and then political associates when Bartlett was appointed the Washington correspondent for the Chattanooga Times in 1948. He also knew Jacqueline Bouvier, having met her in Easthampton. “An enormously