Remembering Jackie Kennedy

This article first appeared in the July 1994 issue of Town & Country.

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis was the most private public person on earth. She gave only one interview in the last 30 years—to a publishing trade journal, and only on the condition that it would focus on her work as a book editor. The last interview before that was in 1963 with Theodore H. White for Life magazine, in which she immortalized John F. Kennedy’s fabled Presidency as Camelot. After her husband’s assassination, she sat for only one portrait and never once posed for a formal photograph—which only made the paparazzi stalk her with greater vengeance and kept the tabloids and other vultures at the ready.

Here, the people whose lives she touched talk to us.

Gloria Emerson: “The most ordinary day required Jackie to be braver than most Americans will ever understand. Years ago, meeting for lunch at The Plaza, I made sure she sat with her back to the room so people could not gawk. By then, she knew how to transcend such intrusive scrutiny and somehow had lifted herself into a zone where strangers could not harm her. After lunch, we walked together to the silver shop S.J. Shrubsole, a few blocks away, but it seemed a dreadful distance. As we went down Fifth Avenue, people broke their stride to stare at her. How peculiar that I, the war correspondent, was so fearful that someone might approach her or even hurt her, while she walked as if on a country lane. When I left her at the shop, a small knot of people stood on the sidewalk, waiting for her to emerge. I told them how nice it would be if they moved on, out of respect, so they did.”

Andre Previn: “Jackie edited a book of mine, and I had occasion to see her often. I remember how unprepared I was for her wicked sense of humor and her appreciation of the absurd. Once, over lunch, I asked her whether it ever bothered her that every pair of eyes was trained upon her. ‘That’s why I always wear my dark glasses,’ she said. ‘It may be that they’re looking at me, but none of them can ever tell which ones I’m looking back at. That way I can have fun with it!’ A smile of almost pure glee illuminated her face.”

Thomas Hoving: “She was an electric presence. She had huge magnetism. I used to walk ten feet behind her when we were in Moscow to watch people do a double take when they saw her. They’d drop things they were carrying.”

Alice Thuermer, Devonshire garden-accessory shop, Middleburg, Virginia: “I was in the shop alone one day with the classical-music station on, and Jackie walked around for about ten minutes. I left her alone, and then she said in a very peaceful way, ‘It’s so wonderful in here: the flowers, the fragrance, the music, the books—just like being in a church.’”

C.Z. Guest: “I knew she was very ill and wasn’t going to live long. I left her one of my garden books, and I ended my note by saying, ‘Let’s go hunting together next year.’ She sent me a handwritten note back that said, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun. Let’s do it.’”

Pierre Salinger: “Just four days after JFK’s killing, she gave me a leather cigar case—one that could hold two cigars—with ‘JFK’ printed on it. Her handwritten note said, ‘For dear Pierre. I know you carry more cigars than this, but I thought you might like to have this cigar case that belonged to Jack. It comes with all my love and appreciation for all you did to make his days here unforgettable. Jackie.’”

Cordelia Frances Biddle: “When Janet Auchincloss Rutherford [Jackie’s half sister] died after her own extraordinarily courageous battle with cancer, Jackie spoke at the service. It was a drizzly day, and the mourners were a pallid, unhappy bunch. ‘Mrs. Onassis is here,’ someone whispered. And there she was: Her presence radiated through the church. It was something tangible, like heat. I have never forgotten what she said. In the midst of a long and moving memorial, she paused and simply said: ‘Knowing Janet was like having a cardinal in your garden. She was bright and lovely and incredibly alive.’ Whenever I see a cardinal, I remember those words.”

Bunny (Mrs. Paul) Mellon: “Friends for thirty years, we shared life with selfless trust, whatever came along—hard knocks or success—but with truth and laughter never far away.”

Marc Riboud, photographer: “Once I was visiting Jackie in her New York apartment, after Ari Onassis died, when all the papers were full of stories about a fight between Jackie and Christina Onassis. Christina unexpectedly dropped in, and I tried to excuse myself. But Jackie said, ‘Oh, no, stay and we’ll all have a good time.’ She and Christina sat there, telling stories about Ari and laughing together. They certainly were not fighting.”

Ruth Carpenter, The Brearley School: “Mrs. Onassis was that wonderful kind of parent who takes an interest without giving an answer. She read every story in Caroline’s short-story book and went on to Marlory’s Le Morte D’Arthur. I remember Caroline’s class put on a program of musical skits in assembly that were such a hit they’d perform them over and over for any group they could find. And Mrs. Onassis would show up every time.”