JACKIE KENNEDY – A SISTER’S STORY:
jealousy, rivalry and love: the tangled truth about her most dramatic relationship
This year marks 25 years since Jackie Kennedy Onassis died, and had she lived she would she would have been 90 in July. A fascinating extract from a new biography about Jackie and her only sister Lee Radziwell unties the tangled relationship between the siblings who were alike in so many ways, even loving the same men.
Jacqueline Kennedy, the greatly admired former First Lady, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age of 64. The illness spread rapidly through her body, and Jackie opted to die at home, in her spacious apartment in Manhattan.
Sister Lee Radziwill rushed to Jackie’s side. For a brief time, their long, complicated relationship seemed to melt away and they were just as close as they had been in their youth. She died at home on May 19, 1994 –ironically on her father “Black Jack” Bouvier’s birthday – surrounded by her family.
Lee wept.
But when Jackie’s 38-page will was read, Lee discovered that substantial cash bequests were left to family members (including Lee’s two adult children), friends, and employees – but nothing to her.
Sibling rivalry
It’s been 24 years since the death of her celebrated sister, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, an international icon. In her slow escape from the Kennedy mystique – and from her sister’s long shadow – Lee has retreated ever more into her own exile.
Growing up, both girls had adored their father, so it’s likely that the seeds of Jackie and Lee’s later estrangement were planted early in life, when it became clear that Jackie
was their father’s favourite. She was first-born and was named after him, and she “actually looked almost exactly like him, which was a source of great pride to [him],” Lee said.
To this day, Lee still wants to be written about apart from her sister. Would she have been famous without her? She never wanted to be the footnote in Jackie’s story.
“To be with him when we were children meant joy, excitement and love,” Lee wrote about her father, Black Jack Bouvier III, a stockbroker with a seat on Wall Street, known for his dark good looks and roguish behaviour.
Lee still refers to him as “dashing.”
Although his womanising, heavy drinking, and diminishing fortune ended up derailing his marriage, he doted on his two daughters.
Differences between the two girls would shape the women to come: Jackie had a first-class brain and an inherent shyness. She would mostly follow in the path that Janet had laid out for her two daughters: dress beautifully but conservatively, and marry a rich husband (or two).
Lee would rebel, having several affairs and trying to forge a career and an identity for herself apart from her sister’s. Whereas Jackie would become universally admired – practically deified, especially just following the assassination of John F. Kennedy – Lee would often be swatted down, the object of criticism.
Both women would ultimately be admired for their style, but many considered Lee the beauty of the family, outshining her older sister.
If Jackie was her father’s favourite, Lee, by some accounts, was her mother’s. A longtime Kennedy friend admitted that she “found that household to be really unhealthy. Their mother clearly favoured Lee.”
Janet and Black Jack Bouvier divorced in 1940 after messy public accusations of infidelity. Janet’s remarriage to wealthy investment banker Hugh D. Auchincloss was exactly what she had been trained to do by her wealthy, social-climbing father, Major James Thomas Aloysius Lee.
The usual warfare flourished between the divorced parents, as the girls relished their time with their black sheep father, now cast out of paradise and living in a small, sunless four-room apartment.
At the age of 20, [on April 18, 1953] Lee married Michael Temple Canfield, a shy, handsome 27-year-old publishing scion whom she had dated occasionally since she was 15. Michael was the adopted son of Cass Canfield, the wealthy publisher, but he was rumoured to be the illegitimate son of Prince George, Duke of Kent, and Kiki Whitney Preston, an
American adventuress.
Jackie’s wedding
Within a month after catching Lee’s bouquet, Jackie became engaged to the most eligible bachelor in America, the dashing young senator, John F. Kennedy. Not only was he extremely handsome, witty, and intelligent, but as a Kennedy scion, he was very, very rich. And Canfield was not.
The ceremony was held on September 12, 1953, “the wedding of the year.” Black Jack Bouvier was invited to escort his daughter down the aisle, but he was so abashed by the opulence of the estate that he sulked, half dressed, with a bottle of Scotch in his room.
In London [where Lee and Michael lived] troubles with her marriage persisted and Lee embarked on a number of affairs. One with the émigré Polish aristocrat Stanislas “Stas” Radziwill would change their lives.
Lee first met Stas (nearly 20 years older than she) in
1952 at a shooting party in the English countryside. Stas was there with his second wife and Jackie was there as well, on a visit to London to see her sister.
Seven years after their first meeting, Lee Bouvier Canfield became Princess Lee Radziwill. When Radziwill had become a British citizen, he’d been required to officially give up his princely title, but he managed to cling to it, as did Lee. For Lee, it was a prize she was not going to give away.
Born August 4, 1959, five months after her marriage to Stas, her first child and only son, Antony [later changed to Anthony], arrived. By marrying first and having a child barely two years after Jackie bore [daughter] Caroline, Lee was keeping pace with her older sister.
Curtain calls
Lee fell mightily for Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev, undermining her marriage to Stas. It didn’t matter that Nureyev, though bisexual, was primarily gay. Lee found herself powerfully drawn to the ruggedly beautiful dancer. Another worshipper was Princess Margaret, who commented after attending the London premiere of The Nutcracker in 1968,
“Jackie’s years in the White House brought the sisters closer.”
“He was more beautiful than I can describe, with his flared nostrils, huge eyes, and high cheekbones.”
Not long after, Jackie invited Nureyev and [Margot] Fonteyn to the White House for tea, beginning a 30-year friendship between the “two sixties icons, he, ballet’s most famous prince, and she, the queen of Camelot,” wrote Nureyev’s biographer Diane Solway. He managed to balance his friendship with both sisters, but the two women competed for his attention. Lee was often spotted dancing with Nureyev late into the night at nightclubs. Though he flaunted both friendships, the dancer was much closer to Lee. “I believe my sister was – you’d have to use the word ‘jealousy’ to describe how she felt about how close we were at one time,” Lee later reminisced.
White House sisterhood
The birth of her second child would be more difficult than Anthony’s had been. Anna Christina Radziwill [who was born on August 18, 1960] was three months premature. The Kennedys were disappointed when Lee and Stas had to miss his inauguration as the 35th president on January 20, 1961.
Jackie, too, was left weakened by the birth of her son, John Kennedy Jr., born November 25, 1960, and had to take rests between inaugural activities.
Despite some renewed feelings of competition, Jackie’s two and a half years in the White House brought the sisters closer together. Somewhat overwhelmed by her new status, Jackie relied on Lee, knowing she could exchange confidences.
The President and First Lady, accompanied by Stas and Lee, were guests of Queen Elizabeth II at a dinner at Buckingham Palace [in 1961] ... Lee looked on, wondering how her sister had managed to completely eclipse her in so short a time. As First Lady, Jackie had now trumped Lee in the admiring eyes of the world. From then on, Lee would always be referred to as Jackie’s younger sister.
But she would long remember Prince Philip’s remark during the dinner given by the Queen: “You’re just like me – you have to walk three steps behind.”
The golden Greek
Lee would soon find a way to, if not trump Jackie, at least match her with a consort as worldly, influential, and charming to women as John Kennedy, but far, far richer: the Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis.
Lee, like Jackie, had already fallen in love with Greece during her and her sister’s brief hiatus there after her daughter’s christening. And she found Onassis “magnetic. He walked like a potentate, wanting to be noticed ... His voice sounded like soft gravel – raspy, low.” His estimated worth was $300 million, equivalent to $2.1 billion today.
Onassis was 27 years older than Lee; as had been the case with Stas, Lee was attracted to a man who reminded her of her father. Many speculated that Onassis’s interest in Lee had been enhanced by her connection to the White House. John and Bobby Kennedy actively mistrusted Onassis, considering him “a crook.”
Onassis nursed a lifelong hatred of the Kennedys. The fact that he now had the President’s sister-in-law on his arm must have made the affair all the more satisfying for him.
On August 9, 1963, Jackie gave birth to Patrick, who died a few hours after. Lee immediately flew to Boston to attend Patrick’s funeral and to comfort her sister. Lee urged Onassis to invite Jackie aboard [his yacht] the Christina. Kennedy didn’t want her to go, but Jackie couldn’t face returning to Washington. What many didn’t know was that Jackie was allowed to go on the cruise to take the opportunity to persuade Lee not to marry Onassis, for the sake of the Kennedys.
However, once Jack saw newspaper photos of Jackie strolling with Onassis, her hand in his, he asked that she cut her trip short. Jackie refused.
What neither Lee nor the Kennedys had counted on was the special attention paid to the First Lady, especially
“Lee fell mightily for Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev.”
| JANUARY 2019