Dreaming in French, Part II: Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy

The first part of Alice Kaplan's Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis (The University of Chicago Press, 2012) delves into Ms. Bouvier and her cohort's Smith College study-abroad residence in France in 1949-1950.  JB's status was closer to genteel poverty at the time than today's Romney rich, but she had plenty of friends and mentors. Travel across the Atlantic was still primarily by ship, and Smith students boarded with French families just recovering from the damages of the Second World War.

Kaplan summarizes nicely: "Throughout her year in Paris, Jacqueline Bouvier inhabited several worlds and managed to keep them separate -- a talent she would need to maintain throughout her complex life" (page 36).  French immersion proved helpful in the long term. Bouvier studied at the Sorbonne and Reid Hall.  Smith professor Jeanne Saleil noted at the time: "Jacqueline is so brilliant, she could be a stellar academic, but she hasn't thrown herself into the intellectual life. Her heart is elsewhere" (page 38).

Upon return to the USA, Bouvier became engaged to stockbroker John Husted, but this was ended in short order. She considered applying for a CIA job, and did apply for a position at Paris Vogue via a contest that she had for the taking, but then thought better of it.  She met JFK in 1952 and married him in 1953. When her husband became president, she drew upon her knowledge of French culture and history to act dynamically as his unofficial advisor and cultural ambassador. In 1961, the American president quipped about their official state trip to France, "I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris" (page 64).

JBK brought style and insight to "La Maison Blanche," aka the White House. Later, after the  Dallas 1963 nightmare, after her second marriage, she became an influential acquisitions editor at Doubleday.

There's more to go into -- Proust, Simone de Beauvoir, André Malraux and other influences and connections -- at some point, perhaps. Overall, the tone of Alice Kaplan's section on JB/JBK/JBKO is sympathetic and the details interesting. Jacqueline in all of her incarnations comes off very well, indeed.

Today's Rune: Journey.