The Fabulous Bouvier Sisters

by Sam Kashner

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  ONASSIS HAD BEEN there for her during three of the most devastating losses she’d endured: the death of Patrick and the staggering losses of Jack and Bobby. And Jackie did not want Caroline and John Jr. to grow up without a father figure in their lives, so it mattered that Onassis was affectionate with both children. Caroline was gifted with a twenty-foot sailboat bearing the name Caroline; eight-year-old John Jr. was given a red speedboat, also bearing his name. Onassis also brought in Shetland ponies for their entertainment, and flew in Coney Island hot dogs to please them. He even flew John Jr.’s pet rabbit from New York to Greece on an Olympic Airlines flight.

  Onassis often took John Jr. on his knee aboard the Christina and regaled him with tales of Greek heroes. With Telis, Jackie would be starting her life anew, on beautiful, secluded Skorpios, which bore no remembrance of the Kennedys and her former life.

  Nancy Tuckerman issued a wedding announcement that sounded like an engraved invitation: “Mrs. Hugh D. Auchincloss has asked me to tell you that her daughter, Mrs. John F. Kennedy, is planning to marry Aristotle Onassis sometime next week. No place or date has been set for the moment.”

  In Athens, Onassis was besieged by reporters in the lounge of the Hotel Grande Bretagne, where he was having a drink with friends. “Yes, it’s true. I’m marrying her tomorrow—or in three days,” he said, and he quickly left by a back entrance.

  Everyone in café society had an opinion. The celebrated Welsh actor Richard Burton, whose own marriage to Elizabeth Taylor four years earlier had been an international scandale, wrote in his journal on Tuesday, October 22, 1968:

  The Onassis Kennedy thing still fills the papers. It’s odd that you have to search for the news of the three Yanks in orbit in the Apollo. The Vatican says that Mrs. Onassis has sinned against her Church, as expected as ever. We sent Onassis a telegram of congratulations yesterday.

  Many in America did, indeed, feel betrayed. Edmund Wilson, writing in his journal of the 1960s, described several meetings with Arthur Schlesinger for lunch at the Princeton Club grill. On one such occasion, he wrote:

  Lunch with Arthur Schlesinger. When I talk to him about the Kennedy-Onassis marriage, he said that he was at first incredulous, then horrified. I said that she had evidently always had a café society side. He said that somebody . . . had told him that before she married Jack, she had cared about nothing but international society, and that Jack had got her away from this. But until she married Onassis, Arthur had never realized how important this element in her nature was . . . This event had profoundly shaken his faith in his ability to judge character.

  Wilson further wrote that he, too, “enjoyed swinging” and that he had once encountered Onassis at El Morocco, the fashionable New York nightclub, where the Greek tycoon was surrounded by a “retinue of yes men,” and had “held forth to Arthur with his fascist views.” Arthur had suddenly said to himself, “What am I doing in El Morocco listening to this fascist?”

  On October 17, 1968, the Olympic Airlines evening flight from New York to Athens was scratched, stranding ninety-three passengers, so that the flight could leave earlier with just eleven passengers on board: Jackie Kennedy, Caroline and John Jr., Janet and Hugh Auchincloss, Jackie’s sisters-in-law Jean Kennedy Smith and Pat Lawford, the children’s nanny, and three Secret Service agents. Lee was not on board.

  When she arrived in Athens, Jackie was warmly greeted by Artemis, Ari’s sister, who had already forged a friendly bond with the former First Lady. Artemis had first met Jackie in October of 1963 aboard the Christina, after the death of Patrick. Devoted to her brother, she had “a more patient and nuanced understanding of human nature than [Ari] did. She was extraordinarily humorous and hospitable,” according to a friend of the Onassis family. Artemis was glad when Ari decided to marry Jackie, never having approved of his alliance with Maria Callas, and she urged her recalcitrant niece, Christina Onassis, to be more welcoming to her new stepmother. Jackie never forgot her kindness.

  On Sunday, October 20, 1968, Jackie and Ari were married in a Greek Orthodox wedding on Skorpios, among the cypresses, bougainvillea, and trailing jasmine surrounding the tiny, private Chapel of Panayitsa (Chapel of the Little Virgin). It rained all day, considered good luck in Greece, though Onassis’s son and daughter, Alexander and Christina, glowered throughout the ceremony, and Janet Auchincloss reportedly whispered into Jackie’s ear even as she walked down the aisle with her stepfather, “You don’t have to go through with this.” But Jackie seemed radiantly happy, in a short beige lace dress by Valentino, with streaming ribbons in her hair. (The dress became Valentino’s most popular couture in its history.)

  The Greek Orthodox ceremony was officiated over by a tall, bearded metropolitan, and Artemis served as the “koumbara,” whose function was to ceremoniously change the crown of white flowers three times on the bride and groom. Among the twenty-one guests were John Jr. and Caroline—looking a little shell-shocked at the seemingly sudden turn of events—who followed Jackie with long tapered candles. Alexander, who disliked Jackie from the moment he guessed she would be taking his mother’s place, said bitterly, “It’s a perfect match. My father loves names, and Jackie loves money.”

  Although the couple had issued a request for privacy during their wedding, thirty journalists descended on the island, only to be turned back by Onassis’s staff and members of the Greek navy.

  After the ceremony, the wedding reception was held aboard the Christina, with pink champagne and dancing. Janet, realizing that any further objection would be futile, finally toasted the marriage: “I know my daughter is going to find peace and happiness with you,” she said to Onassis.

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  THE WORLD WAS not happy with Jackie and Onassis’s marriage. Headlines such as “Jackie, How Could You?” and “America Has Lost a Saint”—even the cruel “Jack Kennedy Dies Today a Second Time”—lamented her marriage. Jackie did receive good wishes from friends and admirers, however, such as a telegram that arrived from Paris that read:

  All the happiness in the world, magnificent Jacqueline. STOP. Wish my name were Aristotle Onassis instead of Maurice Chevalier.

  She received a warm note from Lady Bird Johnson, and Boston’s Richard Cardinal Cushing, who had been the Kennedys’ spiritual adviser, said publicly, “My advice to people is to stop criticizing the poor woman. She has had an enormous amount of sadness in her life and deserves what happiness she can find . . .”—a sentiment Jackie treasured. Jackie and Lee’s eccentric cousin “Little Edie” Beale wrote from her home in East Hampton, telling Jackie that they should ignore people’s disapproval of their marriage.

  Theirs was not a typical honeymoon. Jackie remained behind on Skorpios, having sent Caroline and John Jr. back to New York, while Onassis returned to Athens to meet with Colonel George Papadopoulos, head of the military junta that had recently taken over the Greek government in a shocking coup. Onassis was trying to launch an ambitious $400 million deal to create an oil refinery, power station, air terminal, and shipyard that would allow him to keep his fleet of oil tankers afloat year-round, dominating the oil industry in the Mediterranean. While he was courting Jackie, he was spending as much time, if not more, wooing the colonels of the junta in order to launch his dream, which he called “Project Omega.” As Nicholas Gage noted:

  Many observers, journalists, and Greek patriots would criticize Onassis for getting into bed with the despised colonels at the same time he was getting into bed with America’s sainted first lady.

  Indeed, some thought that was part of his motivation for the marriage: to use Jackie’s glamour to appeal to the colonels. He had her entertaining Colonel Papadopoulos over a luxurious dinner at Glyfada, his lavish family compound in a suburb of Athens, and the sight of Jackie in a diamond necklace and black dress did indeed dazzle the colonel. “It was obvious that he saw that marriage as a good career move,” remarked one American steel executive.

  For Jackie’s part, she said that she was pleased to he
lp her husband, but one wonders how the widow of the leader of Western democracy could so cozily dine with the leader of a hostile military takeover.

  As for Lee, she arrived in time to be part of the wedding party, and she kept her counsel about her hurt feelings and her sense of betrayal, especially after the Kennedy brothers had warned Lee against becoming involved with the Greek tycoon. But Lee managed, once again, to make peace with it, publicly defending her sister’s marriage in the face of America’s disillusionment. She wrote in Cosmopolitan in September of that year:

  If my sister’s new husband had been blond, young, rich, and Anglo-Saxon, most Americans would have been much happier . . . He’s an outstanding man . . . active, great vitality, very brilliant . . . a fascinating way with women. He surrounds them with attention. He makes sure that they feel admired and desired . . . My sister needs a man . . . who can protect her from the curiosity of the world. She’s tired of having to exercise such enormous control over herself, not to be able to move without all her gestures being judged and all her steps being traced . . . Onassis is rich enough to offer her a good life and powerful enough to protect her privacy.

  Years later, when questioned about their suitability, Lee’s eloquent answer was, “The map of love is uncharted. You don’t need an intellectual passion to sustain a relationship, to be happy. There are many kinds of love.” But in the weeks and months after Jackie’s marriage to Onassis, Lee became convinced that Ari had only pursued her as a way to get to her sister. He had given Lee a promontory in Athens as a kind of farewell gift, another prize that seemed petty and insignificant compared to the riches Jackie was heir to. Yet Lee visited Skorpios, spending part of the summer with her sister and Ari, and acting as graciously as possible.

  A few weeks following the wedding, Jackie and Ari visited Lee and Stas at Turville Grange, spending a weekend there with Lee’s other guests, Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn. But the strain of putting on an approving public face occasionally showed itself, as when another guest criticized Jackie over some social trifle, and Lee commented, “It is about time somebody spoke to Jackie like that . . .”

  Lee returned to her amicable but sexless marriage to Stas, but four months after the wedding, in February of 1969, Lee entered a clinic in Lausanne, Switzerland, suffering from insomnia and possibly anorexia. (She had often disliked being described as “fashionably thin” because even when she had wanted to gain weight, she couldn’t.) Now she was nearly gaunt, but mostly she needed a place to rest—and perhaps to hide.

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  IN THE EARLY weeks and months of her marriage, Jackie seemed supremely happy, despite frequent trips to Manhattan with her children, as they were still attending school in the States. In photographs, she and Onassis appear intimate and playful. Onassis sometimes snatched Jackie’s cigarettes out of her hand to discourage her from smoking too much. On her fortieth birthday, celebrated on Skorpios, Onassis gifted her with a pair of jewel-encrusted, twenty-two-karat gold earrings he’d designed himself, in honor of the July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 moon landing, which took place eight days before her birthday. The earrings were ostentatious—not her style—and she only wore them once, but she was touched by the gesture, especially because it had been President Kennedy, after all, who had pledged to put a man on the moon. “Next year,” Ari had promised her, “if you’re good, I’ll give you the moon itself.”

  Onassis lavished gifts on Jackie, and she thanked him by putting together an album of photographs she took of Ari on Skorpios, posing as Odysseus alongside English translations of Homer’s Odyssey. She doted on her husband, buying him colorful neckties to brighten up his dark suits, and getting Pierre Cardin to design new uniforms for Olympic Airlines stewardesses. (She later advised them to ditch the new sleeveless uniforms, having belatedly realized that Greek women didn’t shave under their arms.)

  When a visiting friend asked her why she had married Ari, she answered, “For the privacy.” But it was far more than that. As one journalist close to Jackie wrote:

  She has always been drawn to men of power, of strength, who took the deepest risks and expected to win . . . He has built the buffer zone, cushioning her from a curious world unable to ever stop watching that famous widow. Perhaps, too, he makes her laugh . . . and he has stories to tell she has not ever heard. Perhaps he is a man she can lean on when she feels like it, but who lets her breathe and be alone when she needs that.

  And then, of course, Jackie and Lee had been in love with Greece and its ancient culture since their idyllic vacation there in 1961. Jackie was a student of Greek tragedy, once disagreeing with Arthur Schlesinger’s description of Jack Kennedy as a classical Roman, suggesting instead that her husband had been more like the ancient Greeks, in that the Greeks fought with their gods, and with fate. “Greeks have esteem and respect for the gods,” she once wrote, “yet the Greek was the first to write and proclaim that Man was the measure of all things. This conflict with the gods is the essence of the Greek tragedy . . .” Even earlier, when Jack Kennedy first confided his intention to run for the presidency, Jackie’s response was to write him a poem comparing him to the Greek hero Jason, writing: “. . . he would find love / he would never find peace / for he must go seeking / the Golden Fleece.”

  Jackie had in common with the Greek people a belief in the crucial role that fate plays in human lives. She had already had her own reckoning with fate, but she didn’t know when she married Onassis that she would continue to live in what increasingly felt like a Greek tragedy. But now, she bloomed in the hot climate of the islands. She especially loved being on Skorpios, an island shaped like a scorpion and ablaze with flowers and light.

  The main house on the island was a neoclassical stucco building known as the Pink Villa; it was beautiful and comfortable, tended to by a cheerful staff. With their help, Jackie served great casual meals (“lush—nonstop Dom Perignon and O.J.,” as one guest described it). She put together fabulous picnics. There were guest cottages as well, and Onassis had spent a fortune turning the rocky island into paradise. He put in orchards and planted bougainvillea, jasmine, and oleander. As a tribute to the memory of his grandmother, he planted the trees of the Old Testament, which flourished in Greece—olive, fig, almond, cypress, pine. He built a harbor where he could dock the Christina and installed a livestock enclosure, reminiscent of Hammersmith Farm, where he housed the Shetland ponies (he had classical music piped in, to keep the livestock calm). With her children, Jackie swam, sunbathed, and water-skied, and whenever she had time for it, she painted watercolors and made beautiful, outsize scrapbooks. In the evenings, she practiced yoga and meditated on the beach, while the small island owls—sacred to Athena—swooped in gold crepuscular light.

  Jackie learned Greek and embraced Greek culture, learning to dance the traditional surtaki and, on one occasion, dressing in the native dress of Corfu. She learned how to make dolmades; she made arrangements from the orchids, tulips, and roses that grew on the island. In Athens, she scoured antique shops for books on Greek art and antiquities. She attended classical performances at the fourth-century-BC amphitheater Epidavros, accompanied by Alexis Miotis, the director of the Greek National Theater. She attended Mass at the Church of St. Francis on Corfu.

  And all around her was the sea. Her friend the archaeologist and curator Karl Katz described Skorpios and its surrounding waters as

  an absolutely fantastic place. The warm water was a color that is often mentioned in Greek mythology as wine colored, a deep purple that wasn’t blue, the clearest, most beautiful water . . . The sun was everywhere, the setting sun, the rising sun, shining on the other islands in the distance . . .

  Surrounded by sea and bathed in sunlight, this was the closest Jackie would come to re-creating the ambience of Lasata. She once described the Greeks as mystics, writing, “This mysticism can be traced to the influence of the sea—the boundlessness and mystery of the sea respond to the yearning of the Greeks for a supernatural rapport with divinity.”

  The
re’s a sweet story told about Jackie visiting a flea market at the foot of the Acropolis on Athens’s Pandrossou Street. There, she met a sandal maker named Stavros Melissinos, who was also a poet. His sandals were fashioned after those depicted on the gods and goddesses of ancient statuary. Admiring his wares, she engaged him in a conversation about Pandrossou Street, which was marked for destruction to make room for an archaeological dig. The Greek government had already posted notices that the street and market would soon be torn down.

  “It would be a pity,” the sandal maker told her, “if this street, which has its own character, were destroyed.” Two days later, the Ministry of Public Works called Melissinos to say that plans had changed to tear down the street and market. Jackie had intervened, just as she would years later in Manhattan, spearheading the preservationist movement to protect the city’s great landmarks, such as Grand Central Terminal and Columbus Circle.

  The Greek people seemed to love her, asking her to pose with them for photographs, greeting her with smiles and good wishes. In countless photographs, she looks radiant: behind oversized sunglasses, seated next to Onassis aboard the Christina; beaming at the camera in a Greek skirt and jewel-green shawl at an outdoor tavern as her new husband reads a newspaper; dazzling in sandals and a short cotton dress festooned with stars and quarter-moons—her hair in pigtails!—smiling at a somberly dressed Onassis.

  Rose Kennedy continued to be supportive of Jackie’s marriage, and she visited her in Greece three times, whereas the Auchinclosses only visited once. “It seems to be a good marriage,” she later commented. Even Christina, Onassis’s unhappy, somewhat spoiled and overly cosseted daughter, at first warmed to Jackie, as Jackie sought to bolster the young woman’s self-confidence. “Maria Callas never liked me very much,” Christina confessed, “but Jackie is my stepmother and great friend.” Alexander, however, never accepted his stepmother and continued to look upon her as an interloper and a gold digger.