Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot (19 page)

First, Jackie persuaded Congress to designate the White House a national museum, thus guaranteeing the necessary funding to do whatever she wanted to do with it and also to ensure that her work there would be preserved for future generations. Of course, her purpose would prove to be twofold: She would not only be able to indulge her expen- sive tastes in antiques and other furnishings, she would also be doing something historically relevant for the White

House. By refurbishing the presidential quarters, she would be redesigning her own personal space in a tasteful, elegant way that she and her family could enjoy for years to come.

With typical determination and zeal, Jackie thrust herself full-speed into the project. She used her time while she was recovering from John’s birth to study the history of the White House and its decor. Then she set her plan into action. “Everything in the White House must have a reason for being there,” Jackie declared. “It would be sacrilege merely to
redecorate
—a word I hate. It must be
restored
. And that has nothing to do with decoration. That is a question of scholarship.”

Since some of the rooms cost as much as $250,000 to re- store, Jackie had to rely on the generosity of the multimil- lionaire members of her restoration committee to underwrite the costs. She became an expert at charming the heads of corporations into donating things she wanted for the White House: carpets, fabrics, chairs. While the donor got the honor of supplying a small piece of history to the Kennedy White House, Jackie got those antique wing chairs she wanted so badly.

Using her charm, Jackie managed to coax some of her many socialite friends into donating valuable art to the White House collection. She secured over 160 new paint- ings to adorn the White House walls.

Along with soliciting treasures from outside sources, Jackie also thoroughly explored the White House base- ment and storage facilities. Her treasure hunts uncovered Lincoln’s china, a Bellange pier table, and President Mon- roe’s gold and silver flatware. So focused was she on her work that she once completely ignored Martin Luther

King, Jr., in an elevator because she had just learned of the existence of a certain antique chair in the White House basement.

While it may seem to minimize the importance of Jackie’s work, the fact—at least according to those who knew her best—is that shopping and buying had always been a great ego fortifier for Jackie Kennedy. Even Jackie herself said, “I think that shopping to give yourself a lift is a valuable form of do-it-yourself therapy.”

“Like a lot of women, she felt better about things—and about her marriage, I would venture to say—when she was busy,” concluded her longtime friend Joan Braden. “She stayed busy, a lot,” Braden said with a laugh. “I’d never known anyone so busy.”

Jackie’s White House labor was definitely a great success as far as the country was concerned, and it was historically relevant as well. Her specific ideas on how to use the presi- dential home to preserve the history of the country made her a pioneer in the historical preservation movement, which was sorely needed nationally. Jackie’s work would also di- rectly inspire President Lyndon Johnson to promote success- ful legislation for establishing the National Endowment for the Humanities as well as the National Endowment for the Arts.

Madcap Ethel during the Kennedy Presidency

E
thel Kennedy, taking full advantage of the Kennedy craze, was determined to let her own inimitable personality leave an imprint on the Kennedy years, but in a very different way from her sister-in-law the First Lady. While Jackie was usu- ally serious, refined, and dignified, Ethel was madcap, bois- terous, and fun-loving.

Jackie’s soirees at the White House were written up and much discussed for their careful elegance and sophistica- tion. Under the First Lady’s discerning eye, once-stodgy state dinners became more relaxed and enjoyable, although they were as carefully choreographed as ever. One of her in- novative changes was to have smaller tables at dinner par- ties so that the guests at each table could more easily interact with each other. She mixed artists, musicians, writers, and entertainers with heads of state. “Jackie’s style was unique,” says etiquette expert Letitia Baldrige, who was Jackie’s so- cial secretary. “She knew everything about every person on the guest list.”

During their shortened term in office, the Kennedys would host sixty-six state dinners, not to mention the dozens of private parties for friends, politicians, and other associ- ates. “She wanted everything that was the finest in music, drama, ballet, opera, poetry,” recalls the president’s press secretary Pierre Salinger, “and set a tone that would encour- age culture around the country.”

“Suddenly, this inbred, old-style society that was utterly foreign to the rest of the country was on the stage,” said for- mer White House
Time
magazine correspondent Hugh Sidey. “Washington was visible all over the world. They were young people who liked a good time.”

“The French know this,” Jackie once noted. “Anybody knows this: If you put busy men in an attractive atmosphere where the surroundings are comfortable, the food is good, you relax, you unwind, there’s some stimulating conversa- tion. You know, sometimes quite a lot can happen. Contacts can be made, you might discuss something . . . you might have different foreigners there and then say . . . ‘Maybe we ought to see each other next week on that,’ or . . . it can be very valuable that way. . . . Social life, when it’s used, is part of the art of living in Washington.”

Jackie did it one way; Ethel did it another way entirely. Betty Beale, a society columnist for the
Washington

Evening Star
who covered eight presidents and their wives at glamorous White House functions from Truman through Reagan, observes, “Ethel never pretended to be chic. She was a terribly active frequent mother, who had a busy home life with all of those children, but somehow ended up find- ing herself the second most prominent hostess in the na- tion—Jackie being the first—all as a result of her brother-in-law becoming president. But their styles, from dress to entertaining, were entirely different. She had clearly decided that if she had to do it, she would be as different from Jackie Kennedy doing it as was humanly possible.”

Ethel prided herself on the inelegant, comical touches that set her parties apart and were very much an extension of her own outlandish persona. As a result she became one of the most talked-about party-givers in the country. For example,

at a formal St. Patrick’s Day dinner party, Ethel brought the traditional green motif to new extremes. Men in dressy black tie and ladies in formal evening gowns—all with green accessories—were dumbfounded when they discov- ered, among the green centerpieces, the largest live bull- frogs Ethel could find. Decorative bullfrogs as a living centerpiece were a touch that only Ethel would think of. “At another party, she turned the lights down low,” recalls Betty Beale, “and put a live chicken in the middle of the table, for fun. She really wanted people to be happy. She set a tone for things, and wanted to surround herself and Bobby with a sense of gaiety. She was fun.”

Guests arriving for a dinner party in honor of General Maxwell Taylor, a family friend for whom her youngest son was named, were surprised to drive up to Hickory Hill only to find a man dangling from a tree by parachute. Ethel had hung a dummy from a limb to pay homage to Taylor, who had parachuted into Normandy on D-Day.

Stories about Ethel’s party antics are often recounted with good humor by family members at Hyannis Port gatherings. When she threw a party for the veteran diplomat and states- man Averell Harriman on his seventy-fifth birthday, Ethel decorated Hickory Hill with hundreds of photos of Harri- man taken with world-famous figures through the years, adding an outlandish caption to each photo. And when the much respected poet Robert Frost came to dinner, madcap Ethel handed each guest a pad and pencil and announced a poetry-writing contest. Then there was the time Ethel play- fully sprayed the shirt of a young member of a visiting Eu- ropean family with shaving cream.

C. Wyatt Dickerson, married to the late newscaster Nancy Dickerson, attended many parties at Ethel’s home and re-

calls her as “a spectacular hostess, with all of the Kennedy polish and charm but a dash of madness. At one party, Arthur Schlesinger was pushed into the pool. Peter Lawford and I were hiding in the bushes hoping that we wouldn’t be next.”

Guests in full dress being tossed into the Kennedy swim- ming pool—or “dunking,” as it came to be called in political circles—became another of Ethel Kennedy’s trademarks. In fact, taking an unexpected dip at a formal party at Hickory Hill became a sort of initiation into the Kennedy family’s good favor. One knew he was a beloved friend of Mr. and Mrs. Bobby Kennedy when he was dunked by Ethel during one of her gatherings. Senator Kenneth Keating of New York once sent Ethel a letter saying, “I hope the mad rumor isn’t true—that you’re changing the name of Hickory Hill to Drip-Dry Manor.” Even some of the most respected news- papers of the day, like the
New York Times
, reported on who was dunked at the latest Kennedy bash.

Sometimes Ethel’s eccentric behavior affected the seating arrangements. When she threw herself a birthday party, for instance, she seated the twenty-four women guests at one table, while their male companions found themselves seated at another.

Much of what Ethel did with her life, though, was not considered traditional behavior, especially by the family’s matriarch, Rose.

“Rose Kennedy thought Ethel’s parties were outrageously overdone,” says Barbara Gibson, who was Rose’s secretary. “After attending one, she made a comment to me about it that was typical of the way she felt about Ethel: ‘Oh my, now aren’t
we
rich.’

“Rose disapproved of Ethel, mostly. She didn’t approve

of the way she kept Hickory Hill, the way she raised her children. There were always plates of food lying around all over the place. Whenever anybody finished a meal or a snack, that’s where the dish was left. The kids ran wild. The place was a wreck.

“Ethel used to go through cooks like water. The cooking school would send her chefs just for the experience, but they wouldn’t last long. She could be completely unreasonable. She must have had twenty-five secretaries in a five-year pe- riod, she was that difficult. Her spending habits also an- noyed Mrs. Kennedy,” continues Barbara Gibson. “For instance, she would go shopping and see something she liked, then buy it in every color. If she saw a belt she liked at Saks Fifth Avenue, she would order six of them. Mrs. Kennedy thoroughly disapproved of this kind of spending. Ethel would buy expensive perfumes in decorator bottles, and when Rose would go into the bedroom and see those big bottles on the dresser, she would become absolutely dis- traught.”

Joan’s Social Impasse

W
hile Jackie and Ethel were considered exemplary host- esses by their friends and by others in Washington and Georgetown political circles, Joan Kennedy didn’t fare as well in that regard in the beginning of the Camelot years. In time, she would be regarded as one of the city’s most suc- cessful hostesses—but it wasn’t always that way.

Kennedy intimates still recall what happened when twenty-nine-year-old Joan hosted a fifteenth-anniversary party for Ethel and Bobby at her and Ted’s Georgetown home on June 25, 1965. For Joan, who rarely entertained, this was an important evening. “We’ve never given a big party in Washington,” she said excitedly, “and we want it to be the best ever.” Always insecure in her role as a Kennedy wife, Joan set out to make her sister- and brother-in-law’s party the social event of the season.

Unfortunately, once Joan’s planning was well under way, she discovered that Washington socialite Mrs. Perle Mesta*—well known for her ultraglamorous, ultraextrava- gant parties—was hosting a bash honoring Senate Majority leader Mike Mansfield of Montana on the same night. Perle had invited to her splendid Northwest Washington pent- house many of the same guests Joan had invited to her event. After some quick checking, Joan was horrified to learn that most guests had accepted invitations to both par- ties.