She was the doyenne of political wives, and a new paragon for beauty in a rapidly changing era. But for all Jackie Kennedy’s lustre and renown, she was rarely heard from directly.
Now that silence has been shattered, after almost half a century, with the publication of a book and audio recording based on her conversations with historian and friend Arthur Schlesinger.
The tapes were sealed for 47 years but have now been released by Jackie's daughter Caroline under the title Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F Kennedy.
The tapes show the former first lady has plenty to say, in her distinctively breathy little voice. In the 1964 recording, the 34-year-old widow could be unsparing and caustic - except about her sometimes imperfect husband, whom she bathes in an impossibly perfect glow.
But she maintains her reputation as JFK.'s best image wizard, a novelistic observer of history and the most deliciously original and compelling political spouse we'll ever see.
Who else would read War and Peace during the Wisconsin primary and recommend the Memoirs of Duc de Saint-Simon as the best preparation for life in the White House? Who else could persuade the Egyptians to hand over the Temple of Dendur and rediscover the sidelined HMS Resolute desk for the Oval Office?
Who else could talk about "that egomaniac" de Gaulle in one breath and the fact that her husband had Gemini characteristics in the next? Who else could argue that JFK. should be seen as a Whig and as a Greek, not a Roman, and then astutely dissect why the ambassador to Pakistan didn't understand the culture there?Wh
Her snobbery was mostly directed at the egomaniacal, the incompetent and the power-crazed and at anyone she felt was hurting her husband or children.
President Kennedy always told her not to get angry at his foes at any given moment, because they might be allies the next. He treated politics like a chessboard, she said. But she was protective of JFK, who was often in physical pain, and always on guard against men and women who might resist or envy his youth and sex appeal and "ease.”
Defending her husband against charges that he was overly concerned with image, she described her own vulnerability during the period when some around JFK wondered if she was too exotic a bird for rough-and-tumble politics. "I was always a liability to him until we got to the White House," she told Mr Schlesinger. "And he never asked me to change or said anything about it. Everyone thought I was a snob from Newport, who had bouffant hair and had French clothes and hated politics.”
She could be cutting about other women, calling the earnest Indira Gandhi "a real prune, bitter, kind of pushy, horrible woman" who looked like she'd "been sucking a lemon" and suggesting in a naughty whisper that Clare Boothe Luce was so macho she must be a lesbian.
She said she considered her main job to distract and soothe her husband and make sure the children were in a good mood when the leader of the free world got home. She did not see herself as an Eleanor Roosevelt, wanting to pester him about some pressing political matter.
The young Jacqueline Kennedy underestimated herself in those dark days long ago. She had plenty of opinions of her own, tart and tantalising.
New York Times News Service