The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [207]
“Their wealth is from an era gone by,” Joe told Red Fay, in a voice brimming with irritation at what he considered an insipid, declining social set. “Most of them are just keeping up a front and owe everybody. If you pulled the carpets up most likely you’d find all the dirt for the summer brushed under there, because they don’t have enough in help to keep those big places running right.”
Jackie’s mother expected that the wedding would be a sedate, exclusive ceremony far from the vulgar flash of cameras. Joe flew down to Newport to disabuse Mrs. Auchincloss of that illusion and to inform her that over one thousand guests would be invited, including most of the U.S. Senate. Gliding down the steps, his face was alight with benevolent charm, his hand in his pocket. As Jackie saw her future father-in-law there, she thought, “Oh Mummy, you don’t have a chance.”
Jackie appreciated Joe’s stylish nature. She admired his Sulka lounging clothes and the light blue gabardine suit he wore when he rode off to Hialeah in his chauffeured Rolls-Royce. She saw too that his manners were as elegant as his clothes, a subtle rendering of social nuance. His charm was not a dandy’s plaything, but a device he used to extract what he wanted. “When he turned on his charm to gain what he wanted, it was great to watch,” she recalled.
Thirty-six-year-old Jack was full of fitful anxiety over his approaching wedding day, concerned most notably over the political cost of his marriage. At a stag party at the Parker House in Boston for many of his cronies, he worried over the price he might pay for no longer being the golden bachelor.
“I was seated next to him on his right, and he was kind of shy,” recalled John Droney, a veteran who had worked in his campaigns since 1946. “He asked if I thought he was doing the right thing and what will the women think. I said, ‘Oh, you are doing the right thing, because I have a little girl and you’ll get a lot of pleasure in this thing.’”
By the time the wedding weekend arrived, Jack no longer was making such public musings. “Well, the first thing you have to do, Jack,” Red whispered, leaning toward his friend at the prewedding dinner at the Newport Clambake Club, “is you’ve got to make a toast to the bride, and you’ve got to throw that glass in the fireplace.”
Jack looked at the superb crystal glass as if divining the future there. His future mother-in-law was a woman of shameless social ambition, narrow snobbishness, and silly garrulousness. Hughie, Jackie’s stepfather, was a man who mistook cheapness for frugality, humbug for humility. Jack sensed that once he scratched their gold veneer he would find little but chintz. Here was an exquisite opportunity to stick it to the Auchinclosses while staying protected behind the shield of civility and a countenance aglow with innocence.
“To my future bride, Jacqueline Bouvier,” Jack said as the guests joined him in the toast. “Everybody throw your glasses in the fireplace.”
As the precious crystal shattered against the stone fireplace, Mrs. Auchincloss’s countenance took on an ashen gray pallor, but the lady was nothing if not game. She motioned to the waiters to bring new glasses; after setting the crystal down in front of the guests, they filled them anew.
Jack rose again. “I realize this is not the custom, but the love that I have for Jacqueline Bouvier overcomes me,” he said as he proposed a second toast to his beautiful young bride. “And now, everybody throw your glasses in the fireplace.”
The guests had become adept at this custom by now, and they hurled the crystal with abandon toward a fireplace alive with shards of glass. Mrs. Auchincloss ordered more glasses, but this time they were cheap water glasses. The evening moved on, since Jack was not about to toast his elegant Jacqueline with anything less than crystal.
This was an evening more for jocular comments than sentimental musings, and when it came time for twenty-four-year-old Jackie to talk, she held