Grace and Power

by Sally Bedell Smith

  “Betty was in Greenwich, and Chuck was off having fun,” said Nancy Coleman, Betty’s closest friend. Betty had little in common with Jackie, although she later claimed she had been close enough to Jack when he was a senator that he “would talk to me about his sex life with Jackie and ask me about women and marriage. . . . We had a very kind of brotherly, sisterly long association.” Yet when JFK became president, Betty preferred to remain aloof—“always on the outside a bit,” said her son Dick Spalding. Betty was neither stylish nor glamorous, and she lacked any social aspirations. “She was not given to airs,” said Nancy Coleman. “People would kill to go to the White House, but Betty could take it or leave it.”

  Spalding, however, “got White House fever,” said Charley Bartlett. “He saw Jack leading a glamorous life and wanted to emulate it. Chuck loved the glitz and was burned by it.” Since Spalding’s days in Hollywood when Kennedy had joined him for “hunting expeditions,” the two men had pursued women together. “Chuck would serve as a beard for him in situations,” said Betty, “so he had that kind of relationship with him.”

  Kennedy was almost serene in his approach to sexual trysts. “He knew how to take precautions, and he did,” said Spalding. “He certainly wasn’t naÏve.” With its cordon of security, the White House was Kennedy’s most protected venue. When he expected female guests, JFK gave his staff the evening off after they had prepared food and drinks. They would leave the meals in warming containers so that the President and his guests could serve themselves. (The Washington Post once noted charmingly that JFK “has even been known to take dinner guests into the kitchen while he ladles out their soup from the stove.”) Secret Service agents rarely ventured to the second floor. They kept guard downstairs and covered for Kennedy, alerting him when they received word from Jackie’s detail that she was en route home.

  Only after the first public revelations about Kennedy’s womanizing in the mid-seventies did various members of the White House staff give their own accounts of his indiscretions, most famously Traphes Bryant, the White House kennel keeper. He claimed to have seen Kennedy skinny dipping with female visitors, and to have spotted a “naked blonde office girl” running into the West Sitting Hall one evening after Bryant mistakenly opened the elevator door onto the second floor.

  JFK also misbehaved in a less secure setting at the Carlyle apartment in Manhattan. Just once, shortly before the inauguration, the public had a tantalizing glimpse of Kennedy’s nocturnal habits in a Time report that New York City policemen had checked his bedroom at midnight only to discover “a slightly mussed bed” and a “discarded Kennedy shirt.” Newsweek further revealed that Kennedy had escaped down the back stairs and not returned until after 3 a.m.

  Kennedy and his guests could come and go through elevators and stairways with access to both levels of the duplex: the two bedrooms and two baths on its upper floor, and a living room, dining room, library, and kitchen on the lower floor. What’s more, the hotel was connected through a network of tunnels to other hotels as well as apartment houses on the Upper East Side, offering the ability to move around undetected. “It was kind of a weird sight,” Spalding recalled. “Jack and I and two Secret Service men walking in these huge tunnels underneath the city streets alongside those enormous pipes, each of us carrying a flashlight.”

  Kennedy had little fear of disclosure either from the press or the women who passed in and out of his life. Between the tradition of privacy and the bonds he had with journalists, Kennedy did not seem to consider his behavior reckless. “The fact is a lot of reporters were very keen to spend time with him,” observed Diana de Vegh. “I think he assumed they would not turn him in, and they didn’t.”

  Reporters covering the President not only deflected plausible tips about Kennedy’s love life, such as Florence Kater’s letter about Pamela Turnure, they also disregarded their own eyewitness experiences. During a trip to Palm Beach, Robert Pierpoint of CBS saw JFK and a young woman emerge from a cottage early one morning and enter a waiting limousine where “the woman disappeared into the President’s arms and the inside car light went out.” Pierpoint didn’t publicize the incident. “The affairs that I knew about, it seemed to me were private, personal and had no real relationship to his presidency,” he said.

  Other journalists pointed to the absence of proof. Hugh Sidey insisted he was stymied because “it was hearsay, no confessions, no documents. The rumors were there, and circumstantial evidence.” Sidey’s boss, Time managing editor Otto Fuerbringer, had his own tantalizing encounter after an early evening interview with Kennedy in April 1961. Fuerbringer had left his hat on a chair in the private quarters, and when he returned to retrieve it, “there sitting on the sofa was a striking blonde, about thirty-five years old, wearing a short black dress and pearls. Jack handed me my hat, and I left.”

  Even the few women covering Kennedy kept mum. “We knew about his affairs and his—well, scandals,” recalled syndicated columnist Ruth Montgomery, “but we didn’t write about it.” Like their male counterparts, both Laura Bergquist and Nancy Dickerson were flattered by Kennedy’s attentiveness, and tickled by his gossip about the sex lives of public figures and journalists. Bergquist admiringly called him a “very swinging sexual animal” who “saw others in his own light.” Dickerson knew that Kennedy “entertained other women” at the White House in Jackie’s absence, but persuaded herself that “he was extremely discreet about it.”

  Both Jack and Jackie insisted on absolute loyalty from their friends, yet JFK’s profound disloyalty defined their marriage. While she would cut friends who violated her trust, Jackie feigned ignorance about her husband’s behavior. Arthur Schlesinger said many years later that he believed the Kennedys had exercised “reciprocal forbearance,” and that for the sake of harmony, “Jackie didn’t press” her husband. Still, she had great antennae and was far more aware of his activities than she let on. Janet Auchincloss once remarked that Jackie had “marvelous self-control” and concealed “certain inner tensions” but “always felt very intensely about things.”

  Jackie confided in Lee when she was upset, and Lee made an effort to intervene, but to no avail. “I knew exactly what [Jack] was up to and would tell him so,” Lee told her friend Cecil Beaton. “And he’d have absolutely no guilty conscience and say, ‘I love her deeply and have done everything for her. I’ve no feeling of letting her down because I’ve put her foremost in everything.’”

  Around the White House, Jackie used different strategies, some subtle, others more overt, to cope with her husband’s behavior. She may have avoided direct confrontation, but Jackie telegraphed displeasure through her deliberate refusal to show up at official events, which made her husband momentarily uncomfortable or vexed. These inflictions of mild embarrassment were small victories—and reminders of her strength.

  Sometimes she took oblique aim at targets of her disfavor, such as the morning she came into Pierre Salinger’s office looking for a tennis game when her usual opponent, Secret Service agent Clint Hill, was unavailable. Salinger’s assistant, Jill “Faddle” Cowan was conscripted “in her bare feet because she had no tennis shoes” to “give a command performance,” said Barbara Gamarekian.

  On another occasion, Jackie was taking a reporter from Paris-Match on a White House tour. Jackie “walked into Mrs. Lincoln’s office and said hello to Mrs. Lincoln, and Priscilla [Wear] was sitting there,” recalled Gamarekian in her oral history at the Kennedy Library. “Mrs. Kennedy turned to him and said, ‘This is the girl who supposedly is sleeping with my husband’ in French.”

  Afterwards, the reporter asked Gamarekian, “What is going on here?” She was equally dumbfounded. “I think he thought she said it somewhat facetiously and sort of threw it away,” said Gamarekian. “And of course my reaction too was, ‘No matter how little French you know’—and I knew Priscilla knew some—‘I certainly would recognize a few words like “sleep” and “girl” and “my husband!”’ I’m sure Priscilla must have realized what Mrs. Ke
nnedy said.”

  Taking a page out of French court customs, Jackie relied on a pretty but completely trustworthy close friend to entertain JFK. Vivian Stokes Crespi was two years older than Jackie and had grown up with her in Newport, where she visited with her maternal grandparents, the Fahnestocks, during the summers. Their mothers were friendly as well—“creatures of their time,” recalled Vivian, “who criticized us a lot.” Vivian also had a “naughty” father who was “a blond Jack Bouvier.” Jackie’s friendship with Vivian was open and playful. “Vivi, you have curves,” Jackie would say when Crespi put on weight.

  Vivian had attended “ten different schools in five different countries” where she learned Italian, French, and German, but never went to college. At eighteen she married Henry Stillman Taylor, the twenty-six-year-old son of the president of Standard Oil, who introduced her to Jack Kennedy during the war. “Jack and I were great pals,” said Vivian. “He tried everything but I was never interested, because he wasn’t my type, but we always stayed very close friends. When he married Jackie I couldn’t believe he had the brains to choose her.” Vivian’s marriage fell apart quickly, and in 1950 she married Marco Fabio Crespi, a handsome Italian count. By the early sixties they had separated, and Vivian was living in New York.

  The free-spirited Vivian enjoyed Jackie’s “zany quality” as well as her depth and loyalty. “She was like a tomb,” said Vivian. “I would tell the most intimate things to her.” They did not discuss JFK’s infidelity, however. Like other Kennedy intimates seeking to explain away Kennedy’s behavior, Vivian viewed it as “recreational, not emotional. Men of that type need a release.” Nevertheless, Vivian could speak bluntly to JFK: “I said to Jack once, ‘How does Jackie put up with you the way you carry on?’ He said, ‘I guess she loves me.’ ‘You don’t know how lucky you are,’ I said.”

  During the White House years, Jackie and Vivian talked on the phone several times a week (sometimes in French), and Vivian came to dinner dances, small parties, and vacations in Hyannis and Newport. Jackie knew Vivian could be counted on to amuse JFK with jokes and “salty stories,” especially about her friendship with Tammany Hall boss Carmine DeSapio and his “swinging soirees at Sheepshead Bay” with cabaret singers and Democratic leaders from Brooklyn and the Bronx. At Jackie’s urging, Jack and Vivian would take cruises together on the Honey Fitz, the presidential yacht. “Alone on the boat he could talk freely,” said Vivian. “He could relax. We would laugh and laugh.” Afterwards Jackie would tell Vivian, “When he comes back he is in such a good mood.” So was Jackie, who knew that for a few hours her husband had been in safe female company.

  The idea of taking her own lovers had crossed Jackie’s mind when Jack was in the Senate. “She told me she knew Jack had affairs,” said Tony Bradlee. “She was pondering maybe doing it herself. I don’t think she did, but she seemed a little sad at that point.” Once her husband became president, the risks of such behavior escalated. “She was very dignified, she took her job very seriously and she didn’t want to make some scandal,” said Benno Graziani. Instead, Jackie sought friendships with some of JFK’s closest advisers. “The men she liked were all affectionate, all with humor, all wanting to help and be as supportive as they possibly could,” said Lee.

  Robert McNamara periodically had dinner with Jackie, and she introduced him to the work of Gabriela Mistral, the Chilean Nobel laureate who wrote passionate poems about love and nurturing. The First Lady and secretary of defense read Mistral’s poems together, including Jackie’s favorite, called “Prayer,” which implores God to forgive the sins of a man with imperfections. McNamara sensed that the poem resonated deeply with Jackie, with such lines as “You say he was cruel? You forget I loved him ever. . . . To love (as You well understand) is a bitter task.” Jackie admired McNamara because “he was very quick and very affectionate,” said Lee. There was also something vaguely romantic about the hint of torment behind his crisp smile. “Men can’t understand his sex appeal,” Jackie said. “She was flirtatious,” said McNamara, but she was mostly interested in hearing his ideas. McNamara came to understand that Jackie “was much brighter, with a broader intellect than people have given her credit for.”

  Handsome and urbane New York attorney Roswell Gilpatric, McNamara’s deputy secretary of defense, developed a friendship with Jackie that would turn romantic after JFK’s death. During the White House years, they often talked about books that they recommended to each other (she once thanked him for an “insidious slim little volume”), and Gilpatric fielded her questions on power, ambition, and loyalty among the men at the Pentagon. She told Gilpatric that she admired his combination of “force and kindness”; after spending a day with him at his Maryland farm, she was “happy for one whole week,” she wrote.

  Intriguingly, given her husband’s uneasy dealings with him, Jackie also sought the company of Adlai Stevenson, who was old enough to be her father. He frequently escorted her to the ballet and opera in New York, entertained her at his New York apartment, and called her “my little friend Jackie.” For Valentine’s Day one year she gave him a painting she had made in his honor. “There was real rapport between [Adlai] and Jackie,” said Stevenson aide John Sharon. “There was genuine affection. . . . They always kissed each other whenever they met.” Stevenson’s sister, Elizabeth Ives, believed Jackie “had troubles that she liked to discuss” with Stevenson. “He saw a great deal more of her informally than he ever saw of the President.”

  Kennedy was mystified by the appeal Stevenson had for women—not only Jackie but a coterie of ardent admirers such as diplomat Marietta Tree, Katharine Graham and her mother, Agnes Meyer, and Marella Agnelli. To satisfy his curiosity, JFK once queried newsman Clayton Fritchey, who worked for Stevenson at the United Nations. “Look, I may not be the best-looking guy out there, but for God’s sake, Adlai’s half bald, he’s got a paunch, he wears his clothes in a dumpy kind of way,” said Kennedy. “What’s he got that I haven’t got?”

  With surprising alacrity, Fritchey replied, “While you both love women, Adlai also likes them, and women know the difference. They all respond to a kind of message that comes across from him when he talks to them. He conveys the idea that they are intelligent and worth listening to. He cares about what they’re saying and what they’ve done, and that’s really very fetching.” Joked Kennedy, “Well, I don’t say you’re wrong, but I’m not sure I can go to those lengths.”

  Jackie’s most unusual relationship with a man outside her marriage was completely secret—and therapeutic in its purpose. “I always push unpleasant things out of my head on the theory that if you don’t think about them they won’t happen,” Jackie told Ros Gilpatric. But denial worked only up to a point; Jack’s promiscuity caused her anxiety and depression, and she needed to talk about it. Because of her position, Jackie could not seek professional counseling, so she managed to find help through a serendipitous encounter with Dr. Frank Finnerty, a friend and neighbor of Bobby Kennedy in McLean, Virginia. Finnerty was a thirty-seven-year-old cardiologist and professor of medicine at Georgetown University—good looking, charming, and Catholic.

  In the spring of 1961, during a visit to Bobby’s home at Hickory Hill in Virginia, Jackie got lured into one of the family touch football games that she usually avoided. While trying to catch a pass, she tripped and sprained her ankle. Bobby asked Finnerty to treat her, and Jackie was taken with his warm and straightforward manner. When she called the following week to report on her progress, “she startled me by asking if I would mind if she called me once in a while, just to talk, to get an independent opinion,” recalled Finnerty.

  Thus began an unusual sub rosa friendship conducted solely by telephone over the next two years. Calling an average of twice a week for fifteen minutes or so at a time, Jackie spoke intimately about her marital difficulties, the frustrations of her role, and problems in her relationships. “I was like a therapist for her,” said Finnerty. “Here was a guy nobody knew in her circles. She could say anything
to me, and it would go no further. . . . I was useful to her . . . I played the role she wanted.” Their conversations yielded practical advice and offered her “a period of escape, of raising her self-confidence.”

  To ensure confidentiality, Jackie used her private line at the White House, and she initiated all the calls to Finnerty’s office. If someone else answered, she would hang up and call back, sometimes making four or five attempts before Finnerty would be able to pick up the phone. “I would play by her rules,” he said. “I let her completely structure the conversation. She would ask questions, and I would answer.” From Finnerty’s standpoint, “it was a thrilling relationship. I was amazed, surprised, delighted. . . . Very few men knew her as I did, which was good for my ego.”

  In her whispery voice Jackie concentrated initially on her concerns about JFK’s infidelity. “She wanted me to know she was not naÏve or dumb, as people in the White House thought,” said Finnerty. “She did know what was going on. This conversation shocked me.” She said the Secret Service was covering up for her husband, and she was bothered that many people, especially reporters, “thought she was strange and aloof, living in a world of her own.”

  Jackie took more of an analytical approach to problems—what Lee called her “man’s mind”—than most people realized. “Jackie seldom talked without having something pertinent to say,” said Finnerty. “I did not get the impression she was mad or obsessed, she was just telling me the facts.” She reeled off the names of JFK’s various women, none of whom Finnerty recognized with the exception of Marilyn Monroe, who “seemed to bother her the most.”

  Jackie said she didn’t know the identities of many others, nor was she certain JFK even remembered most of them. “She was also sure that Jack felt no love or any kind of affection” for these women. “He was just getting rid of some hormonal surge,” she said. “She was not a jealous girl,” said Finnerty. “She would say he treats all women like that.” Jackie felt incapable of stopping her husband’s activities, which were “an intrinsic part of his life,” a “vicious trait” he had “undoubtedly inherited” from his father.