Sam Kashner - The Fabulous Bouvier Sisters: The Tragic and Glamorous Lives of Jackie and Lee

Never praise a sister to a sister.

RUDYARD KIPLING

J acqueline Kennedy, the greatly admired former First Lady, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma at the age of sixty-four. The illness spread rapidly through her body, and Jackie opted to die at home, in her spacious apartment at 1040 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Lee Radziwill rushed to Jackies side when she learned of her sisters illness. For a brief time, their long, complicated relationship seemed to melt away and they were just sisters, as close as they had been in their youth. Jackie refused invasive treatment, and the cancer spread to her liver, spinal cord, and brain. She died at home on May 19, 1994ironically on her father Black Jack Bouviers birthdaysurrounded by her family. Her son, John Kennedy Jr., announced her death to the world, commenting that she died at home, on her own terms.

Lee wept.

But when Jackies thirty-eight-page will was read, Lee discovered that substantial cash bequests were left to family members (including Lees two adult children), friends, and employeesbut nothing to her. Not even a memento. Jackies last words to her sister, for whom I have great affection, were:

I have made no provision in this my Will for my sister, Lee B. Radziwill, for whom I have great affection, because I have already done so during my lifetime. I do wish, however, to remember her children, and thus I direct my Executors to set aside the amount of five hundred thousand dollars ($500,000) for each child surviving me of my sister, Lee B. Radziwill...

She left her one-sixth share of Hammersmith Farm to her stepbrother Yusha, to whom Jackie had remained close throughout her life.

After reading about Jackies will, Gore Vidal recalled that she once told him in Hyannis Port, Ive kept a book. With names. He thought she was joking about this enemies list, but thought otherwise after learning about Lee being cut out of the will. By way of explanation he said, Her life in the world had been a good deal harder than she ever let on.

Lee was deeply hurt; the public humiliation was like a slap in the face. Jackie had certainly been well aware that Lee struggled to have a semblance of Jackies riches, often having to sell treasured homes and apartments and paintings in order to maintain the lifestyle that she and Jackie had been born to. So the question remains, twenty-four years following Jackies death: After Jackie and Lee had been close friends, confidantes, and coconspirators during the most formative years of their lives, why was Lee so completely left out of her sisters will?

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THEY WERE ALIKE in so many ways. In an era that clung to conventional roles for women despite new opportunities ushered in with the second wave of feminism, both women were raised to marry well, look to men for financial support, and always present an impeccable appearance to the world.

Both women had a keen eye for beauty in all its formsfashion, design, painting, music, dance, sculpture, poetryand both were talented artists (Lee drew elegant botanical sketches, and Jackie wrote poetry, painted, and drew delightful caricatures). Both loved couture and both would be criticized for spending fortunes on their wardrobes. Both created a series of beautiful, beloved homes that would become refuges from harsh fates that often shadowed their lives. Both loved prerevolutionary Russian culture, and both loved the blinding sunlight, calm seas, and ancient olive groves of Greece. Both loved the siren call of the Atlantic, sharing sweet, early memories of swimming with their father, Jack Vernou Bouvier, at his familial seaside retreat in East Hampton known as Lasata (a Native American word for place of peace). Both adored their rakish father and missed him terribly when their parents separated in 1935.

But they were different in important ways. One loved to stand out; one sought to fit in. One was outgoing, flirtatious, and fun-loving; the other was bookish and intellectual, with a deep thirst for knowledge. Although both sisters claimed they wanted to work and be self-supporting, one embraced modernism and feminism, and one remained deeply traditional, adapting herself to fit into societally accepted roles for women. Both were animal lovers: one particularly loved dogs; the other loved horses. One often found herself struggling for funds; the other attracted vast riches. One needed to shine on the public stage; one resisted fame and clung to the shreds of her privacy.

The great irony of their lives is that fate handed shy, introverted Jackie a role on the world stagefor much of her adult lifetime she was arguably the most famous and admired woman in the worldand Lee, who longed to shine, was handed the lesser role of lady-in-waiting. Being Jacqueline Kennedys sister, their Bouvier cousin John H. Davis explained, involved crosses and laurels no other Bouvier but she would have to bear.

But Lee rebelled against the role of lady-in-waiting. She was the first of the two sisters to make a sharp break with the milieu in which she was raised when she proposed to her first husband, Michael Canfield, settled in London, and later became the first Bouvier to hold an aristocratic title, as Davis has noted. She has always known who she is, but has been frustrated in finding ways to express herself on the world stage; she needed to battle those who would keep her in a conventionaland secondaryrole. Jackie, on the other hand, did not truly become herself until she was in her forties, after her first husband John F. Kennedys assassination and her second husband Aristotle Onassiss death. Her inner life and her outward actions finally came together, and her originality and perspicacity were given a chance to fully bloom.

Their story is also one of paradise lost and the struggle to regain it, because at the center of their core, they both yearned for the bliss of their earliest childhood, spent with their parents at Lasata, swimming in the sun-dappled waves off the Hamptons in the arms of their beloved father.