Oh, Really? or, Strategies And Appearances

Jack and Jackie were consummate performers individually, but it was as a team that they were at their most dazzling, and they reveled in their joint performance.  That first Sunday night in the White House was to prove no exception.  Jackie, as was her custom, wrote, choreographed, and stage-designed an evening of pure theater.  Jack had only to make his entrance and hit his marks. 

--------- [excerpts, Mrs. Kennedy - Leaming] -----------

Jackie's one comfort, as she lay in bed listening to her mother's demands that she come downstairs immediately and perform her duties as hostess, was that she knew Janet would retreat the moment Jack arrived.

He thought Mrs. Auchincloss faintly ridiculous and found it difficult to understand how Jackie could take her ranting so seriously.  But then, Jack had not been a child in Janet's household.  Whatever faults his own parents had had, he had grown up in a house where both parents, especially the father, lavished praise on their children and carefully nurtured their egos in order to breed a fearless self-confidence that often bordered on arrogance. 

Janet...had from the first been as dazzled by him as Jackie was.  She remained at once in awe and "absolutely terrified" of Jack.  To Jackie's delight, Janet never dared try to push her around in his presence.

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Despite her carefully constructed aura of fey innocence, Jackie was very much a realist, a woman who had lived an emotionally brutal life.  Though she worked hard to appear helpless, she was anything but that. ...

In the past four years, she had simply remained at home while Jack traveled....Henceforth, Jackie would be the one to leave....Central to her plan was a country retreat close enough to Washington to use on a regular basis.  The moment Jack was elected, she had begun to seek the right spot, and while in Florida they had finalized arrangements to rent an estate in the Virginia hunt country just outside Middleburg. 

In addition to weekends in the country with Jack, she intended to withdraw there with the children several days during the week....In the summer, she would spend three months with the children on Cape Cod, at the house they already owned in the Kennedy family compound in Hyannis Port.  Jack would...join her on weekends.

...She had not recovered from the birth of her son before it was time for her to begin her duties as First Lady.  It was nearly 5 P.M. when the Caroline landed.  Accompanied by Secret Service men, Jackie descended the steps of the plane, her over-sized dark glasses in place, as press and another crowd of the curious watched her.

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On Saturday morning, Jackie started work immediately....Before she got out of bed, she called the usher's office to inform Mr. West that she would be down that morning to go through all the back rooms of the Mansion to meet the dozens of White House staff members and familiarize herself with their roles....

...Jackie was also on the phone first thing to the director of the National Gallery, keen to arrange a meeting about paintings for the White House.  What she had in mind, he learned, was not an appointment a few weeks later, but the next day at the very latest....There was already a stack of lined yellow memo pads next to the bed....When she thought of yet another matter she must deal with, she jotted it down on one of the long lists she habitually made.

The first major test of her skills was to be a dinner party that Sunday, January 22, only two days after their arrival in the White House. All weekend, in addition to interviewing staff, scrutinizing art and antiques from the National Gallery and the Smithsonian Institute, attending a swearing-in ceremony downstairs in the East Room for members of the Cabinet, and periodically halting everything to greet visitors whom Jack brought up to the family quarters, she tirelessly planned for Sunday night.

She went from room to room, upstairs and down, deciding which to use, devising the choreography of entrances and exits, and calculating how things would look from each guest's point of view.  She pushed and pulled heavy furniture in an effort to make the spaces more visually appealing....

She conferred constantly with Mr. West, whom she had quickly realized would be her most important ally, and whom she soon came to love for all he taught her as well as for his ability to make her laugh in difficult situations.  She made voluminous lists on the yellow lined pads that would soon become familiar to the White House staff, and wrote up every minuscule detail with the seriousness of a general readying his troops for a decisive battle.

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Jack and Jackie were consummate performers individually, but it was as a team that they were at their most dazzling, and they reveled in their joint performance.  That first Sunday night in the White House was to prove no exception.  Jackie, as was her custom, wrote, choreographed, and stage-designed an evening of pure theater.  Jack had only to make his entrance and hit his marks.  ...

Both Kennedys were still in Florida when Joseph Alsop asked them to his Georgetown home on January 21, that same Saturday, to meet his fiancée.  The fifty-year-old Alsop, who had a secret life as a homosexual, was about to enter a platonic marriage with a friend's widow, and some people in Washington half joked that he was motivated by a desire to avoid embarrassment to the new president, whom he expected to see a good deal of socially in the next four years. 

...During his early career as a congressman, JFK had been a guest at a number of Alsop's dinner parties, until his flippant remark that there never seemed to be any pretty girls in attendance irritated Alsop, who cut off further invitations.  Kennedy was reinstated after he took up with Jackie....

Alsop had been an influential supporter of JFK during the presidential campaign....As the President was already booked for the evening of the 21st, Jackie invited Alsop and his fiancée to dinner on Sunday instead.  Exquisitely attuned to matters of status and favor, Alsop was certain to appreciate that the invitation was a coup, something to crow about to his vast network of rich and influential friends around the world.

It was what Alsop would say afterward to those people that really mattered to Jackie.  [end excerpts]-------------------------

====================  I began reading about Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy after 1994, when she died.  All these people being interviewed on TV talked about her -- Letitia Baldrige:  "Oh, she was so well-read!"  And Jack Valenti recalling Mrs. Onassis phoning him up about a book deal, etc.  I saw the photos and clips and listened to people talk, and became interested, involuntarily.

I read these descriptions, steeped in the style of their era, & they seem to me both close-by, and far-away, at the same time.  Both familiar and foreign.  Easily imaginable, and other-worldly. 
Now, total relatability;
now, bizarre.

The -- balancing, and management -- of high callings and crushing disappointments and mundane day-to-day and world peace, etc.

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{excerpts from Mrs. Kennedy, by Barbara Leaming.  Copyright, 2001.  The Free Press; Simon & Schuster, New York.}

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