Just Jackie by Edward Klein (web based ebook reader txt) 📗

Jackie subscribed to her friend’s definition of what was boring and vulgar and a nuisance, and to her determination to keep the world at bay. And Jackie appreciated how Bunny dealt with the fact that her husband had had the same mistress for as long as anyone could remember (Bunny lived her own life, apart from Paul Mellon, and even kept her financial assets separate from his).

Most of all, Jackie admired the fact that Bunny was unbelievably rich. Bunny showered Jackie with presents, everything from the finest handmade stationery to a $5,000 Schlumberger bracelet from Tiffany’s. This generosity may have been Bunny’s special way of overcoming her feelings of timidity. As a young girl, she could not bear for anyone to look at her. She had such low self-esteem that her parents took her to a psychotherapist, who gave her a special exercise to overcome her problem. Bunny was told to stand in front of a mirror and repeat over and over that she was the most glamorous child, the most wonderful child, the prettiest child on earth.

Bunny never talked about the things that she collected. For instance, Jackie never heard Bunny say, “Oh, isn’t that silver tureen beautiful,” or “Isn’t that a great painting,” or “Aren’t those chairs wonderful.” Bunny did not focus on things as such. She was interested in what people did with those things.

She took being rich for granted, as her due. Her father, Gerard Barnes Lambert, had built the family fortune on Listerine mouthwash and Gillette Blue Blades, and he instilled in his daughter a view of money that Jackie found captivating.

“[W]ith the acquisition of almost unlimited funds, all the joy of getting new things disappears…., ” Gerard Lambert wrote in his memoirs, All Out of Step, “You are completely bored with the things for which those less comfortably off would give their souls. In desperation you seek new thrills through material purchases, but find them disappointing when you get them. It is like a Pyrrhic victory, better not achieved…. Wealth has a sort of Siamese twin, satiety, of which it cannot rid itself.”

To stimulate the jaded appetites of her guests in Antigua, Bunny flew in her chefs and butlers from the mainland to help her local staff with the cooking and serving. Her servants’ uniforms were designed by Hubert de Givenchy, and were of different colors and patterns for each day of the week. When she noticed that the potato chips in the pantry weren’t perfectly round, she dispatched her private Gulfstream jet to fetch ones that were.

No one could match Bunny’s talent for creating an atmosphere of rarified luxury without a hint of vulgarity. Adjoining her dining room in Antigua was a little slat house, where she grew orchids and seedlings and kept three tree toads that serenaded Jackie and the other guests all evening long.

Much of what Jackie had accomplished as first lady was done with Bunny’s artistic guidance and financial support. Bunny had donated $485,000 (several million dollars in today’s money) to the United States Park Service to restore Lafayette Square. It was Bunny’s loose, mixed Flemish-style flower arrangements that Jackie had used in the White House. For the state dinner that Jack and Jackie gave for Pakistan’s President Ayub Khan at Mount Vernon, Bunny provided the gold vermeil cachepots on the tables, and the chairs, which she had recovered in fabric that cost $24 a yard. The White House Rose Garden was designed and executed entirely by Bunny.

In the months after Dallas, when Jackie was at her most vulnerable, Bunny gained a great deal of control over her. Jackie tried to please Bunny, as she had once tried to please her mother, and she frequently asked Bunny for advice. One question that weighed heavily on Jackie’s mind was whether she would ever be able to shake off her melancholy, and feel pleasure again.

She talked this over with Bunny, and they agreed that she would eventually recover. But a life of refined pleasure, such as Bunny’s, required a great deal of money. And, of course, a very rich husband.

“I wrote Ben and Tony Bradlee that I would never marry again,” Jackie said to Bunny. “Do you think what I said was right? That I will never want to marry again?”

Before Bunny had a chance to answer, Lee broke in.

“Jacks,” she said, “I see no reason why you would ever want to marry again. You have already had a great love affair with a wonderful man. You have children. You have already had everything—love, romance, and all that marriage can offer. Why would you ever want to marry again?”

“AS CLOSE AS YOU CAN GET”

“While we were in Antigua over Easter, Jackie and Bobby were as close as you can get,” said Chuck Spalding. “What do I mean by that? Just anything you want to make of it.”

One person who did not know what to make of it was Clint Hill. The Secret Service agent’s nerves were shot, but he insisted on accompanying Jackie to Antigua anyway. He never let her out of his sight, and what he saw, day after day, was the spectacle of Jackie clinging to Bobby like a moonstruck lover.

One time, after they had waterskied on Nonesuch Bay, Jackie threw her arms around Bobby’s neck and hugged and kissed him. Another time, on Mill Reef Beach, they strolled arm in arm, heads together, reading aloud to each other from a copy of one of Jackie’s favorite books, Edith Hamilton’s classic study of ancient Greece, The Greek Way.

“I’d read it quite a lot before, and I brought it with me,” Jackie said. “So I gave it to him and I remember he’d disappear. He’d be in his room an awful lot of the time … reading that and underlining things.”

Bobby was seeking solace in ancient Greek literature, and he compared his underlined passages with Jackie’s. His favorite, which reflected the anguish he was suffering over the loss of his brother, came from Aeschylus’s Agamemnon:

He who