first cuckoo twitter

Speaking of "old families," and family history, after re-reading the texturous background of Diana Spencer (Diana, Princess of Wales), last week, then was reviewing Bouvier family background in Jackie biography by Donald Spoto:

-------------- [excerpt] [Jackie's father's] great-great-grandfather Michel Bouvier -- the surname means "cowherd" or "cattle driver" -- emigrated from the south of France and settled in Philadelphia, where he prospered as a carpenter, cabinet-maker and designer of first-rate furniture. As he traveled around the eastern United States, Bouvier's talents as an artisan quickly expanded to speculation: his success enabled him to acquire 153,000 acres of coal-rich land in West Virginia and choice Main Line real estate.

...The Bouvier wealth increased still further during the 1920s, thanks to real estate holdings in the Middle Atlantic states and enormous investments in a number of successful companies. ...

Most important of all to the Bouviers, their wealth and intermarriage with prestigious American families put their names in the New York Social Register in 1899 -- no easy feat for Catholics at that time -- and there they remained for sixty years, until the death of Jacqueline's father. The Bouvier name, as donor, is also etched on an altar at St. Patrick's Cathedral.
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Comparing the British tradition against the American: the Spencer family's traditional power and Something-ness (I don't know really what to call this stuff...) came from service to the Crown; the Bouvier "Name" with a capital "N" was established by -- 1st, accomplishments, reflected in Money, and 2nd, being named, by the people who do that (who are they??) to the Social Register. ...(all these competitions, and I don't know the rules...?!?) Or the origin. Or the meaning....

----------------- [excerpt, Spoto]: The Bouviers' first summer residence in East Hampton was a clapboard-and-shingle house called Wildmoor, on Appaquogue Road, which the Major bought about 1910; in 1925, he purchased an additional estate on Further Lane called Lasata ("place of peace" in an American Indian dialect). With the twitter of summer's first cuckoo, the family betook themselves to Long Island, and there the Bouviers remained in stately splendor until the pumpkin harvest.

...Apparently unsatisfied with the family genealogy, John Vernou Bouvier Jr. -- a man who was otherwise a stickler for accuracy -- eventually published a little book called Our Forebears in which, with shameless gravity, he invented the most outrageous accounts of a noble ancestry. These stories he had told for years with rhapsodic fervor.

The line of Bouviers, Jack's father insisted without a shred of evidence, had sprung from the patrician house of Fontaine and included illustrious French patriots and titled aristocrats from the royal courts. With that stroke of his imaginative pen, a modest provencal clan was at once transformed into a family of barons and marquises. Every Bouvier child and grandchild was thenceforth subjected to excerpts from Grandfather's solemn family saga, which was understood to be true.

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Even more fun than the Spencers' real family grandeur, I think, is the Bouviers' invented "aristocratic" heritage....(!)

Several ironies:
1. The point of America was, you could come here from Europe if you weren't grand, and "make it," by working. That was cool, in itself. But not cool enough, at some point -- when this guy (Jacqueline Kennedy's grandfather, or great- or great-great-...) ran out of money to make, he starts making up family history...LOL. And the thing was, you could make it, here, & be proud of that, but then old Grandpa Bouvier, went, "Wait, making good through work, creativity, and investments isn't enough, I want to revert to the old-country ways & have some titles, too."...

2. And the funny (not funny, ha-ha, but funny - odd) thing too, if you look at Diana and Jackie -- as a child Diana knew little of her heritage, because little was communicated to her; Jackie on the other hand was told meticulously and carefully about her aristocratic background on the Bouvier side.

Diana's family history was true, but they didn't bother to educate her on it;
Jackie's "aristocracy" was mythical, and they made sure and drilled it into her; one of those moments when you think, Hmmm, if something's true people may just let it lie around, but when they go to a lot of trouble to drill it into you & convince you, maybe it's suspect. ...

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{Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onasses: A Life.
by Donald Spoto. Copyright 2000. St.
Martin's Press, New York, New York.}

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