The Private Jackie

A year after Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's death, her intimate possessions have been made public, and her friends have begun to lift the veil of secrecy that surrounded her.

Chartres boasts the Virgin's veil; Vezelay the bones of Mary Magdalene. New York, next spring, will serve as the setting for relics of a modern sort, when the possessions of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis are sold at auction. Both the sale and its contents are dictated by the terms of Onassis's will, signed in March of last year.

It seems strange that the will of one so famous, yet so private, should be available to anyone who asks for it; stranger still that it should be found in a setting as seedy and cramped as the fourthfloor records room of New York's Surrogate Court. There, sitting at a dilapidated, graffitietched table, an ancient fan whirring near a brokendown copy machine, one can (by edict of New York State law, which declares that all wills be made public) leaf through the last instructions of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, arguably the most famous woman of this century. The 36 pages of legalsize paper are contained in a long manila folder and are already well worn by rifling fingers. Although the value of the estate is not given in the will, it has been estimated that she left a fortune of between $100 and $200 million. (An informed source, however, claims it is much less than most people assume.) The will, drawn up by Alexander Forger of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, is as sophisticated as one would expect—and has been cited by Fortune magazine as a model of elegant estate planning. It is notable for the absence of gifts to charitable foundations, although a charitable lead trust is set up to be administered by her children, Forger, and Jackie's last companion, Maurice Tempelsman, for causes that make "a significant difference in the cultural or social betterment of mankind or the relief of human suffering." According to Fortune, "Charitable lead trusts are a great way to give money to family members and charities and save on estate taxes, provided your heirs don't need income right away." John and Caroline are left $250,000 apiece outright and the revenue from the sale of her real estate (the Fifth Avenue apartment, which has already been sold to billionaire David Koch for $9.5 million, and the Martha's Vineyard estate, estimated to be worth $5 million) and of her personal effects—enough money to ensure they live well but not so much as to stifle motivation. William D. Zabel, a leading expert in the field of trusts and estates, says, "The failure to provide any precise guideline for spending huge amounts of money from her newly created foundation makes one wonder what causes Jackie was devoted to other than maintaining her own image and privacy." It is also unusual, says Zabel, "to leave so few bequests of personal property."

Among the subsidiary papers is a sheet, written in her rounded, cerebral hand, specifying only three bequests to close friends: two 18thcentury Indian miniatures to philanthropist and garden expert Bunny Mellon, a copy of J.F.K.'s inaugural address to Forger, and an alabaster Greek head of a woman to Tempelsman.

Another lengthy document, required to be filed within nine months of her death, lists those personal possessions disclaimed by her children. As directed by her will, White House and J.F.K. memorabilia will be donated to the Kennedy Library. The rest will be sold at auction by Sotheby's.

Many find it curious that the family should have chosen this route, with all its voyeuristic ramifications. Even those inured to the commercial theater of the celebrity auction find it bizarre, even "unseemly," that the public be invited to paw through the personal belongings of the former First Lady. "It could have been done discreetly, through private dealers," says one grande dame and former resident of Mrs. Onassis's Fifth Avenue apartment building. "There are many, many other ways to do these things." (In the late 60s, in fact, after Jackie moved to New York, she sold a fair number of objects and furniture anonymously through Sotheby's. One New York collector has 100 wineglasses from the Kennedy White House to prove it.) Most people assume that the motive is money, that the publicity of an auction will generate skyhigh prices. "They're going to pay for the paper napkins," says an art and auction observer. "Americans love provenance."

"You must understand," says one Kennedyfamily friend, "it isn't publicity they mind—it's only publicity they can't control.'' This contradiction is reflected in the way the auction is being handled. No one at Sotheby's will speak publicly about it—not even of its projected date, let alone its contents or the availability of a catalogue. Inquiries to Diana Brooks, the head of the firm, are met with a tense "No comment," as are those to the publicity department; other experts at Sotheby's seem too terrified to speak. Privately, however, there has been whispering in the gossipy auction world throughout the summer; a confidential source believes that the sale is set for next April. Tickets, no doubt, will be issued, as they were for the sale of the Duchess of Windsor's jewelry in 1987, for instance.

The secrecy has only fueled interest in I the sale; as a result of the public filI ing of the will, a list of the probable auction contents was obtained and published last July. Jackie's former White House social secretary, Letitia Baldrige, scoffs that "none of the good stuff is on that list. It's only the residue."

But many New York connoisseurs argue that few of the possessions were "good" in the first place. "People will be surprised at how ungood the things are," says one who knew Jackie's apartment well. That observation may startle those who remember the famous televised tour of the White House (CBS, 1962), in which Jackie assumed the role of the nation's most exalted housekeeper, connoisseur, and scavenger of fine and historic furnishings.

Even if Jackie had a limited amount of money to spend when she moved to New York in 1964, New Yorkers more accustomed to lavish displays of freshly milled chintz and newly quarried marble didn't understand her classic American style, which values comfort and continuity over the whims of fashion. They seem disconcerted that she never traded up: her library carpet was threadbare, the fabric on the diningroom walls (originally bought for a dollar a yard on Orchard Street on New York's Lower East Side) faded, and her kitchen, in the words of one friend, "deplorable." They find it peculiar that she engaged a succession of decorators over the years—notably Albert Hadley, the late Harrison Cultra, the late Vincent Fourcade, Georgina Fairholme, Mark Hampton, and Richard Keith Langham—but the look never changed. (The last refurbishing was done, eerily, in the bedroom where she was to die. Only months before she became ill, Langham replaced the bed hangings with Scalamandre glazed cotton in "Tuileries," a lavenderandsalmon pattern of undulating vines and small flowers. Says Langham, "It's almost as if she knew what was going to happen.")

One friend with an expert eye recalls that one of the few important pieces of furniture in the apartment was a subtly painted Louis XV table with a marble top, on loan from Bunny Mellon. The rest was French and Italian decorative painted furniture, souvenirs from Jackie's travels (an obsidian sphinx said to have been given by Anwar Sadat, Greek worry beads of blue glass), stacks of books, her collection of drawings of animals dating from the 17th century onward, and overstuffed sofas and chairs. A drawing table where she painted was set up in the living room.

"Jackie's taste wasn't chic," says one arbiter of taste, who adds, "Lee [Radziwillj's taste was chic—and always changing."

Those with refined sensibilities found it admirable that Jackie seemed to have remained immune to the decor mania of the late 70s and 80s and that she preferred to spend her time working as a book editor, riding, and playing with her grandchildren, rather than pondering species of fringe or the intricacies of upholstery with a decorator. They see in it a reflection of the uppercrust values of another era (benign neglect) and a reflection, as well, of her private self, as opposed to the immaculate public image. "Her tastes were very French," says art critic and lecturer Rosamond Bernier, who adds, "I think of a warm place, with a fire burning." "It was," says designer Carolina Herrera, "an apartment of someone who comes from an old family. Not a showplace full of marble like the homes of all these new people. It was her taste."

The rarefied New York critics will hardly influence the relic seekers who flock to Sotheby's next spring; they will imbue each object with the romance of the owner's life and myth. Each thud of the auctioneer's gavel will open a Pandora's box of memories: the Van Cleef & Arpels gold rubyanddiamond necklace with matching ring given to her by Aristotle Onassis as wedding presents in the fall of 1968; a wedding dress that many speculate is the gown she wore to marry J.F.K.; the Franchetti portrait of Jackie with Lee; the 19thcentury book Costume of the Russian Empire, which Jackie undoubtedly used for her research with Diana Vreeland for the Russiancostume exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum; the gold snakeform bracelet that may have been her lOthanniversary gift from J.F.K.; much "ungood" furniture (a painted screen, candelabras, urns, commodes) from the apartment; plus bricabrac that will no doubt be invested with history by the creative experts at Sotheby's—an ashtray, a cigarette box, two large tortoise shells, a shovel . . .

What history and what private life did these things witness? Who was the real woman who wore this necklace, this ring?

"You know how it is," Mrs. Onassis once told me when I was a reporter for The New York Times. "When you look back on your life, you hardly recognize the person you once were. Like a snake shedding skins."

She had shed several.

"You must remember that success and power can transform someone, even physically." says Benno Graziani, former editor in chief of Paris Match, who first met Jackie in Paris at a dinner given by Paul de Ganay. "The little brunette I remember—she was then about 20—was shy, reserved, a little bit lost at this dinner, where there were many other women much prettier, more elegant than she. She hardly spoke! . . .

"Jackie Bouvier has nothing to do with Jackie Kennedy," he continues, "and Jackie Kennedy has nothing to do with Jackie Onassis. For those who knew her well, these were three different people."

As the young married Jackie Kennedy, she was "a Beaux Arts type of girl," as Arthur Krock of The New York Times once described her, "merry, arch, satirical, terribly democratic, and, yes, brilliant."

With the 1960 campaign the sprightly senator's wife became the serene, selfeffacing Madonna, often with child, of Joe Kennedy's myth machine. "Joe was careful how he treated Jackie," recalls Robin Duke, the widow of Angier Biddle Duke, chief of protocol in the Kennedy administration. "He knew that the marriage was Jack's whole future." The images from that era would remain the public's favorites—Jackie elegantly robed in white with three chaste strands of pearls, astoundingly poised, and (crucial for maintaining the Kennedy image) as untainted by suggestions of impropriety and sex as her husband was not. Even so, she never abandoned the Bouvier taste for high fashion and luxury. She commissioned Oleg Cassini to design some 300 outfits for her as First Lady— for day, chic, tailored suits; for evening, strapless and oneshoulder goddesslike dresses. Cassini remembers, "She wanted haute couture but with dignity. She wanted to look regal . extremely elegant but detached."

After her husband's assassination the regal figure in white became the tragic, dignified figure in black, who had cradled the shattered head of her husband. That image, more than any other, would forge her role in history.

ith marriage to Onassis—her "privacy marriage," as photographer Peter Beard calls it—she, like Persephone, descended to a dark, pagan world of compulsive spending, barbaric appetites, and gaudy jewels. The American public was repulsed by Aristotle Onassis, whose dark, pirate looks compared unfavorably with those of her dead husband.

Much about Onassis was tinged with the erotic. His yacht, for instance, had barstools made of whale testicles. Even Onassis's sea—the warm, sapphire Aegean—was at odds with the bracing Atlantic of the Kennedys' Hyannisport. Recalls Peter Beard, who spent summers with them aboard the Christina, "Ari was obsessed by mermaids"; Jackie became his sea creature. She was photographed diving from boats, waterskiing in bikinis, dripping with jewels at fashionable nightclubs, strolling through the narrow streets ) of faraway islands in cinchwaisted Gypsy skirts or jeans—costumes wildly different from her ladylike White House clothes.

The barrage of bad publicity hurt her deeply—it was the first and only misstep with her image. She emerged from the Greek underworld richer and wiser. "She went through two terrible times," says Letitia Baldrige. "Once by the tragedy [of the assassination], once by the criticism following the Onassis marriage. . . . She didn't understand why the American public descended on her."

With the death of Onassis, she abandoned jetset freneticism and returned to New York to lead the quiet, controlled life we came to associate with her. Some friends now admit that she underwent psychotherapy and credit it with helping her to center her life. She gave no interviews and made only a few, carefully orchestrated public appearances. She remained mostly aloof from New York society, wore simple, tasteful clothes and jewelry, and took a job as a book editor. In New York, she reassumed the immaculate public mask of the White House era.

The world has always been eager to see her as queen, goddess, mythical figure. Oleg Cassini compared her to Nefertiti when he designed her "Egyptian Aline" silhouette; during her 1961 trip to Paris, the French said, "She is more royal than a queen"; she was called "Durga, Goddess of Power" when she traveled to India in 1962. Camille Paglia memorialized her as "Mona Lisa in motion." Norman Mailer wrote, "Jackie Kennedy Onassis . . . is not merely a celebrity, but a legend; not a legend, but a myth—no, more than a myth; she is now a historic archetype, virtually a demiurge." Yale professor Wayne Koestenbaum recently published the 291page Jackie Under My Skin: Interpreting an Icon, which treats Jackie as "an idea, not a person." The author worried, "I risk sacrilege."

It is generally thought that she was a passive observer to her own myth: shy, retiring, apolitical—the earnest, egoless housewife of the Kennedy campaign spots. In fact, she was the most brilliant orchestrator of image—perhaps the shrewdest politician this century has ever seen.

"Joe Kennedy had no use for women at all," remembers a prominent woman who knew the family well. But Jackie was more than merely useful for his ambitions, and his son's; she was a kindred spirit. Joe had learned from his exposure to Hollywood what his gifted daughterinlaw knew intuitively: that the public might identify with the middle class, but what it craved was royalty. Throughout her life she was a key participant in shaping the Kennedy myth and securing her place in it.

"Please put me in the Queen's Room," she told chief White House usher J. B. West a week before the inauguration. She had already begun to write her life story months before, while preparing for her son's birth. It would emphasize her "noble" French background, and would first appear in Ladies' Home Journal under the byline of Mary Van Rensselaer Thayer.

In the White House, West observed in his memoirs, "every magazine, every newspaper, every television news show carried pictures of Caroline and John. What the public didn't realize was that Mrs. Kennedy carefully planned and directed all the publicity that the children received. . . . And she also learned to exercise control over her children's exposure to the news media in a very subtle way. . As long as she was the director, it was all right."

After the assassination, she staged the funeral as a public ritual of eternal symbols; little more than a week later it was she who appropriated the myth of Camelot as a metaphor for the Kennedy administration, even going so far as to edit journalist Theodore White as he called in the story, late at night, to his editors at Life.

Even later in her life, when she made only rare public appearances, she prepared for them as carefully as an actress, as one always aware of the power of beauty. Pablo Manzoni, the New York makeup expert, saw Jackie twice in the spring of 1993, and applied her makeup for one of her last gala events, the opening of the American Ballet Theatre on May 17. He saw her first on May 6—she had insisted upon a "dress rehearsal" before the ABT gala.

He remembers first seeing Jackie in a red robe at the end of a long foyer. "She had a very small waistline, and this lovely walk," he recalls, "a voluptuous walk, very feline, but not affected." The color of her robe was no accident: she was to wear red that evening, and wanted to make certain her makeup complemented the dress. (For Manzoni's second visit, she wore a white robe, presaging the white crepe Carolina Herrera evening dress she would wear that night.) It was the first time in his career of 30 years, says Manzoni, that a client had thought to coordinate such things.