Jackie Kennedy and JFK's last night of love making... and the devastating realization that came the next morning
SOURCE:Daily Mail
One week after JFK's assassination, his grieving widow summoned journalist Teddy White to the family compound at Hyannis Port. His job? To tell the true story of her husband and his legacy.
By RUTH WALKER, U.S. BOOKS EDITOR
On a torrential November evening just one week after John F Kennedy's assassination, his grieving widow Jackie Kennedy summoned her friend, Life magazine journalist Teddy White, to the family compound at Hyannis Port.
His job? To tell the true story of her husband and his legacy.
But the details Jackie disclosed to White that stormy night were beyond anything he could have expected to hear: too salacious to ever appear in print.
It wasn't until more than 30 years later - long after Jackie had died - that White gave up his secrets to former editor-in-chief of The New York Times Magazine, Edward Klein.
Klein, now aged 88 and himself a onetime personal friend of Jackie, is considered one of the foremost experts on the Kennedys.
His multiple books on the dynasty include 'The Kennedy Curse,' 'Farewell Jackie,' and a biography of Senator Ted Kennedy, 'Ted Kennedy: The Dream That Never Died.'
Based on those conversations with White and many others in the Kennedy inner circle, his 1999 biography 'Just Jackie' revealed for the first time the most intimate parts of the first lady's story.
More than 25 years on, it remains the definitive account of her life as she navigated a new reality as a famous widow searching for love and meaning - sometimes in all the wrong places.
It included poignant details of the first couple's last passionate night together, how a blood-drenched Jackie honored her dead husband's body as he lay in the hospital, and how, in her grief, she may have entered into an affair with the most unlikely - and inappropriate - of men.
'She poured out several streams of thought which mingled for two hours,' White recalled of that night in November 1963. 'There was the broken narrative, the personal unwinding from the horror, the tale of the killing… and parts too personal for mention in any book but one of her own.'
White - described by Klein as a 'homely little man with short arms and thick glasses' - took 11 pages of detailed notes during his long conversation with Jackie.
John F Kennedy and Jackie photographed at Hyannis Port a few months before their wedding
The first couple often escaped to the Kennedy compound to relax (photographed in 1953)
The newly widowed Jackie - just returned to Hyannis from Dallas - told White her deepest secrets
But much of what she entrusted to him was so personal, it never made its way on to paper.
For instance, she confided that, the night before her husband's assassination, she'd gone to his room in the Hotel Texas, Forth Worth.
'He was exhausted from the day's politicking,' wrote Klein.
'Normally she would have said a quick goodnight and returned to her room. But something had changed in the chemistry of their relationship, which in the past had been poisoned by Jack's insatiable need for sex with an endless succession of women.'
Their newborn son, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, had died just three months earlier and it had almost destroyed Jack. It was, noted Klein, the first time Jackie had seen her husband cry.
For some couples, a tragedy like that can rip them apart. But the loss had brought them closer than they'd been in years, and it felt like a fresh start for them both.
'And so Jackie slipped into her husband's bed, and... she aroused him from the depths of his fatigue, and they made love for the last time.'
The next morning, much to her surprise, Jackie started her period - the first since Patrick's death - and she told White it filled her with joy.
'She and Jack had talked about having more children,' wrote Klein, 'but she feared that she might never get pregnant again. So the day that ended in blood had begun in blood, but the first blood was a sign of life. It meant that Jackie could begin to try to have another baby.'
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The details Jackie Kennedy revealed were too deeply personal and too salacious to ever appear in print
Jackie and JFK arrive in Texas - that night they were to make love for the last time
There was blood everywhere. Jackie was covered from head to foot - her own and Jack's
Just a few hours later, however, those tiny shoots of hope were destroyed by a bullet that tore through Kennedy's brain as he drove through Dallas in the open-top presidential limousine.
The footage of Jackie - clearly in shock - reaching back across the trunk in an attempt to gather fragments of her husband's shattered skull is etched in the nation's memory.
A secret service agent swiftly pulled her back into the car and she hunched down in the back seat, cradling the lifeless president's body in her lap as his blood seeped into her pink Chanel suit.
Later, as he lay dead in the hospital, naked under a thin, white sheet, Jackie was finally alone with Jack and her unbearable grief.
'She did not see how she could go on without a man in her life,' wrote Klein.
'Her own father was dead. Jack's father, Joe Kennedy, had been left speechless by a stroke, and could not protect her. Her brother-in-law Bobby was as devastated as she was by Jack's murder.
'There was no one to look after her.'
Unable - or unwilling - to let him go, she leaned over her husband's body and covered him with kisses.
Jackie and her brother-in-law, Robert F Kennedy, watch as her husband's casket is placed in the White House East Room by a military honor guard
Robert Kennedy gives Jacqueline the flag at John F Kennedy's funeral
'She kissed his foot, his leg, his thigh, his chest, and his lips,' wrote Klein.
'She ran her hand along her husband's body, Jackie told White. And she found his penis and caressed it.'
But, long before that, she was also alleged to have been involved with her secret service detail, Clint Hill - the man who had swept her into the back of the presidential limousine that day in Dallas.
Klein's book reports a sighting of the pair 'heavy necking and petting' in The Jockey Club, a DC restaurant popular with politicians and celebrities, just two months after the assassination.
There were reports of a one-night stand with actor Paul Newman, and a romance with a besotted former British ambassador David Ormsby-Gore.
Even Marlon Brando gets a brief mention - though their alleged entanglement ended prematurely when the great actor feared that, under the influence of too much alcohol, his performance might be lacking.
He is said to have made his excuses and staggered home. However, Klein alludes to a liaison much closer to home - and much more potentially scandalous - in the months immediately following the assassination.
Over Easter 1964, the widowed first lady and a group of her closest friends traveled to the exclusive Mill Reef Club in Antigua.
Her sister Lee was there with her husband Prince Stanislas Radziwill. Bobby Kennedy was present too, of course. Then there was Jack's old college chum, Chuck Spalding, a well-born advertising executive.
There were many who thought that Jackie secretly wished to replace Jack with Bobby
Klein wrote that a court of friends gathered around Ethel (right) to lend support as the Bobby-Jackie-Ethel triangle became the talk of the nation's capital
While on Antigua, Jackie and Bobby waterskied together. But was there more to their relationship?
'Jackie and Bobby were as close as you can get,' Spalding is quoted as saying.
'What do I mean by that? Just anything you want to make of it.'
The ever-loyal Clint Hill was also in attendance, keeping an eye on 'Mrs Smith,' the code name the Secret Service had given Jackie during her stay.
'The Secret Service agent never let Jackie out of his sight,' wrote Klein, 'and what he saw, day after day, was the spectacle of Jackie clinging to Bobby like a moonstruck lover.
'One time, after they had waterskied on Nonesuch Bay, Jackie threw her arms around Bobby's neck and hugged and kissed him.
'Another time, on Mill Reef Beach, they strolled arm in arm, heads together, reading aloud to each other from a copy of one of Jackie's favorite books, Edith Hamilton's The Greek Way.'
Did Jackie hope to replace one Kennedy with another?
In his 2009 book 'Bobby and Jackie: A Love Story,' author C David Heymann claimed the attorney general was his sister-in-law's 'true love', and quoted Franklin Roosevelt Jr as saying: 'Everybody knew about the affair. The two of them carried on like a pair of lovesick teenagers.'
Certainly, the Washington gossip machine was in overdrive.
Bobby, however, was married. Devoted, in fact, to his wife of 14 years, Ethel, who was at the time pregnant with their ninth child. He was also a committed Catholic.
Still, while he was splashing around, drinking cocktails and taking long beach walks in Antigua, Ethel had stayed behind in Stowe, Vermont, skiing with their children and fielding the increasingly pressing questions from friends and colleagues.
According to Klein, Bobby's sister Eunice confronted Ethel: 'Well, what are you going to do about it? He's spending an awful lot of time with the widder.'
While some resented Jackie, and had her pegged as a shameless husband stealer, however, there were others in the close-knit circle who believed she and Bobby were merely connected in their grief, in a way no one else could understand.
The author William Manchester for instance, was perfectly placed to observe the various goings on, as he was in the midst of writing the authorized account of the assassination.
'To Manchester,' wrote Klein, 'it seemed clear that Bobby and Jackie were enveloped in some kind of love relationship. Each recognized in the other his or her soul's counterpart. They were both recovering from terrible trauma, slowly coming back to life, and if love was the exquisite pain one felt for being truly alive, then Jackie and Bobby felt that emotion.
'But,' he added, 'that was a long way from sexual consummation.'
Manchester told Klein: 'The difference between the brothers was that Jack had a voracious sexual appetite, while Bobby was the exact opposite.
'An affair with Jackie would have been a violation of every moral fiber in Bobby's character. It would have been a desecration of his brother's memory.'
Just Jackie: Her Private Years, by Edward Klein, published by Ballantine Books