“But how could she do this to me? Lee, the sister of Jackie Kennedy, the world's most famous widow, does not confide in a grave as she explodes with rage. The writer Truman Capote observes it as an entomologist.
To read also: 20 years after his death - Jackie Kennedy. Epistolary confidences
For the film adaptation of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" ("Diamonds on the sofa", Blake Edwards, 1961), he already wanted his carbon copy, Audrey Hepburn. The so-called "leapfrog", frail and whimsical, elegant by her futility even more than by her Givenchy suits, is in reality an East Coast princess.
Truman Capote named the species to which the Bouvier sisters belong: geishas. Nothing to do with easy women, as tipsy tourists believe. To seduce, the geisha excels in all the arts, that of wearing the kimono, making bouquets, serving tea, writing verses and playing music. On the literature side, Lee hardly went further than the "scrapbook", the holiday album with photos, dried flowers, various objects, legends. She does not play any instrument, but dances the twist. And, above all, she knows how to dress, a daughter of the high to the end of her diaries, on which the addresses evoke the triangle inevitably stuck to luxury brands: Paris, London, New York. Janet Bouvier, the mother, did everything for Lee and Jackie to make up for the heavy handicap of having a reveler for a father, ruined by the crash of 1929.
She enrolled them in schools where you learn to behave at the table, to speak with the right accent, to make useful friends. Lee was an exemplary student, anorexic at the age of 12 on the advice of her sister who, to lose weight, told her to start smoking. Jackie gave a little more trouble: her taste for history books, the "Memoirs" of Saint-Simon, the Letters of Madame de Sévigné, risked making her evolve into an old maid, the great fear of their mother. Jackie even pretended to work. And carry the heavy camera of the reporters of the 1950s! She was already approaching 25, the cutting age, and Janet predicted that she would never find a husband. What she was wrong about, since that's how she pleased John F. Kennedy, whom she reminded of a journalist sister, who died at 28.
Lee never claimed to work, or only to fulfill those sorts of vocations that are called acting or decorating. She got married the same year as Jackie, in 1953, but she was 20 years old. Jackie with her senator, Lee with a young British diplomat. They made their children simultaneously: a girl and a boy for Jackie, a boy and a girl for Lee. Caroline Kennedy was born in 1957, followed by her cousin Anthony in 1959, then by her cousin Christina and her little brother John in 1960. Lee's children are not those of the diplomat. Because the marriage of one and the other also flopped. But while Jackie was reportedly convinced to stay by her stepfather Joe Kennedy for $1 million, Michael, Lee's first husband, couldn't find a way to hold her back. He was, however, ready to make an effort. But which one? he asks Jackie.
To read also: Jackie Kennedy was his sister - Lee Radziwill, an American princess
" Earn money. – Exactly, I found a new job in a publishing house. – No, Michael, real money. Exit Michael. Anyway, Lee was in love with Stas, with whom she will have her children. And there she made the point. JFK had just experienced his first failure in the presidential election of 1956, in which he had presented himself as vice-president; she, she married a prince, Polish, certainly, and ruined by communism, but a prince all the same, descendant of the kings of Prussia, Poland and even George I of England. Stanislas Radziwill's capital was reduced to charm, luck, and an innate ease in moving in the upper class. That was enough to pull off some brilliant moves in real estate. And Lee didn't ask for more. A Georgian house in the shadow of Buckingham, parties with fun people, designer dresses. And a husband who gets along wonderfully with his brother-in-law, the president.
Along with Stas, JFK plays backgammon, at least in front of the ladies. We can't get enough of Stas. Except Lee. In this time of abundance, love is volatile, it does not escape the laws of consumption. We take, we throw. If there is loyalty, other fields of application must be found for it. This is how, in a club in London or Monte-Carlo, Lee met Aristotle Onassis. Some say he has an irresistible charm. Others that he is short, fat and, even worse, that he has no class. To these, Onassis replies that “class cannot be bought, but the tolerance of people who have it… yes”. And Lee is not far from thinking that with his cigars, his tinted glasses and his wads of notes, he has a mad class.
She is just 30 years old, he admits 57. But he invented the flag of convenience and the supertankers, and he is generous and full of spirit. He also has his own island and the most beautiful of yachts, the “Christina O.”. His friends are called Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, the Aga Khan, Prince Rainier, Winston Churchill… Divorced, two children, Onassis is above all the lover of Callas, the diva of the 20th century. Because "Ari", as his friends call him, "the Greek", as his enemies say, feeds on fame like his fellow citizens on olives and feta. If she is his sun, he is not one of those gnats that burn themselves in the light that attracts them. Ari has thick skin. He looks at Lee as a pretty girl - "sexy", he says, to which Callas pays no attention because she doesn't think she has any assets to be his rival - and sees her as the brother's sister-in-law. President of the United States.
It is claimed that her affair with Lee began in the spring of 1963. Is it because he offered Stas the position of director of his aviation company? During the summer, this gossip Drew Pearson wrote in the "Washington Post": "Does the ambitious tycoon have any hope of becoming the president's brother-in-law?" This does not make anyone laugh at the White House where the campaign for the second term is being prepared. The president is all crowned with his speech from Berlin, at the foot of the Wall. Onassis and his "menagerie", his band of stars and freeloaders, are a little too bling-bling for a Democratic government. Especially since the shipowner is in trouble with American justice, which banned him from territory and threatened him with prison.
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Jackie was already approaching 25, and Janet, her mother, predicted that she would not find a husband.
It would be fitting for Lee to remember that a dispensation was once granted to him to remarry in church with Stas. Let her at least wait for JFK's re-election before thinking about a new divorce! But this Lee butterfly doesn't care much about these heavinesses. As the television news is filled with images of German Shepherds baring their fangs in front of black college students, she gazes out over the transparent waters, thinking of the life that awaits her if Ari proposes to her. Jackie is in a less playful mood. In Hyannis Port, she is expecting a child at the end of August. At 34, Jackie has already lost two children. As for Caroline and John, they were born by Caesarean section. This new pregnancy is therefore high risk. And then comes the tragedy.
On August 7, 1963, Jackie was rushed to the Otis military hospital: Patrick was born more than three weeks early. He weighs barely 2 kg and suffers from severe respiratory failure. He is transported to intensive care in Boston. The president, who kept his eyes fixed on his incubator for almost forty-eight hours, said he "fought like a boxer". Still on her hospital bed, Jackie will not go to the funeral; she will not see Cardinal Cushing lift John up to snatch him from the little white coffin on which he has collapsed, in tears. John is a strange, unfaithful and loving husband, but an ideal father. He who hates demonstrations of tenderness takes her hand on leaving the clinic, not like an American wife, but like a brother in arms, facing the peloton of looks. Lee also gave birth to a premature child: Christina, whom she was afraid of losing. The cruise loses its charm. Ari offers, "Why don't you invite your sister to rest here?" »
This is how, despite Ari's reputation and the upcoming campaign, Jackie embarked on the "Christina O." in October 1963. With delicacy, Ari offered to clear the way. We dissuade him. What would “Christina O.” be without him? He will go out of his way for Jackie, "the captain of the boat". He shows him around Smyrna, where he was born, explains to him how the Turks drove the Greeks out and how they made him a pirate. The Mediterranean sun heals wounds. Onassis' attentions are a balm. The two sisters simper like schoolgirls. At the end of the stay, he offers each a souvenir signed Van Cleef & Arpels. To Lee, three diamond bracelets; to Jackie, a ruby choker.
Half fig half grape, Lee will tell her brother-in-law that she received miniature bracelets that would be perfect for Caroline, 5, while Jackie was inundated with rubies. But photos have been published. They have two immediate consequences: first, to divert the attention of the Americans, JFK offers them what Jackie deprives them of, a report on the children at the White House, with the famous photograph of John-John hidden under his desk . Then, Jackie's promise to support him in his campaign, which he wants to open with a bang: the visit to Dallas a month later. We know what will happen to it.
Everyone remembers where he was when he learned of Kennedy's assassination. Lee was in London and Ari in Hamburg, for the launch of a new tanker. She immediately telephoned him to invite him to join her in Washington, where he is however forbidden to stay. An official invitation from the White House follows. During John's lifetime, Jackie was unable to thank Ari as she would have liked. She does now. He will walk among kings and heads of state in the indistinct crowd behind the black horse. In the maelstrom sweeping America, who would be surprised by the presence of this man on whose arm the most famous First Lady in history took a few steps, in a garden in mourning? Ari entered the first circle. He is the friend, the confdent, and soon more.
Jackie could never live without a man. Now she has a hard time choosing. It took the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, the 1968 presidential candidate, for Fifth Avenue's best-kept secret to make headlines. Yes, after the death of her dearest Bobby, Jackie had had enough of the tragedy. She's had enough of the Kennedys being targeted because she has a son. She even uttered this kind of oath: “I hate this country, I despise America and I don't want my children to live there anymore. She couldn't find a better way to break the bonds and break her pedestal. For America, the union of Jackie and the Greek is a sacrilege. For Lee, it's much worse: this marriage is an outrage, it inflicts on him one of those wounds of pride from which one never recovers.
Ari, she wanted him for herself. The introductions of the future son-in-law to Madame Mère are a matter of Cold War diplomacy. Janet nearly faints. She already knows Ari. A few years earlier, she had landed in her suite at the Claridge. He had just been told that Lee was there. It was noon, and he had received her in her dressing gown. A first inconvenience, but which was nothing compared to the second. As she demanded to see her daughter, Ari replied with his usual flippancy, "And who exactly is your daughter, if I may say so?" On Princess Radziwill's behalf, he added, not at all impressed, "In that case, ma'am, you just missed her." »
Lee never gave up the extravagance that made his charm
On October 15, 1968, four months after Bobby's assassination, the Boston Herald Traveler broke the news. And since it was a newspaper from Boston, home of the Kennedys, the gossip began to seem plausible. Jackie had decided that the ceremony should not be celebrated in the United States. Onassis attempted the embassy in Athens: he was met with an implacable refusal. So Ari decided to fall back on the small chapel of Skorpios. "And find me a priest who doesn't look like Rasputin!" he ordered.
On October 17, 1968, the 90 passengers of the Olympic Airways 707, who had hoped to board at 8 p.m. in New York and land in Athens some ten hours later, learned that their flight had been cancelled. They did not see Jackie, her children, her mother, her stepfather and three representatives of the Kennedy clan stepping into their seats. The plane landed on a military base and the travelers finished the journey aboard Ari's jet. Lee did not think it necessary to justify his absence from this ceremony celebrated under a rain complicit in his gloomy mood. She had always applied to the letter the aristocratic rule never to take seriously what is, and to always treat seriously what is not. But not this time.
Faced with Truman Capote, the tears that flowed were not those of an actress. Moreover, on the intellectual scenes of the New York avant-garde, she had never convinced anyone. Lee could be light as a butterfly, she didn't accept being crushed. It was an old story that went back much further than Ari and his billions, to the time when Jackie stole all their father's admiration from him, with his taste for horses, which Lee was so afraid of. A story of sisters. To calm her, Ari offered her a property near Athens, says Truman Capote, adding that she immediately sold it. Then Lee rebuilt his life with the photographer Peter Beard, whose beauty could soothe many regrets. She never gave up the extravagance that made her charm. Unlike Jackie, whom time made more and more reasonable. The present had taken them away for a moment, they didn't care about the future, which no longer had much to offer them. The past remained.
In 1975, Lee and Jackie, who had realized her ambition to find work in publishing, published the diary of their trip to Europe in 1951, when they were two young girls who passers-by turned on. The same year, Lee was not seen at Ari's funeral. It is said that Jackie had asked her not to come, so that no one would remember her reasons for being there.
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