In the book Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy, based on tapes made in 1964 with historian and former White House aide Arthur M. Schlesinger, the former first lady is not yet the jet-setting celebrity of the late 1960s or the literary editor of the 1970s and '80s.
She is also nothing like the soft-spoken fashion icon of the three previous years. When she made the tapes, in her 18th-century Washington house in the spring and early summer of 1964, she was in her mid-30s, recently widowed, but dry-eyed and determined to set down her thoughts for history. The book came out Wednesday as part of a celebration of the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's first year in office. Jacqueline Kennedy died in 1994, and Schlesinger in 2007.
At home in her 18th-century Washington house, as if receiving a guest for afternoon tea, she chats about her husband and their time in the White House. The Kennedy children, Caroline and John Jr., occasionally pop in. On the accompanying audio discs, you can hear the clink of ice in a drinking glass.
The world, and Jacqueline Kennedy, would change beyond imagination after 1964. But as of these conversations, blacks were still "Negroes" and feminists still suspect, even in the view of a woman as sophisticated as Kennedy.
As historian Michael Beschloss notes in the introduction, Jacqueline Kennedy once accepted that wives were defined by their husbands' careers and worried about "emotional" women entering politics. She enjoyed having her husband "proud of her," saw no reason to have a policy opinion that wasn't the same as his, and laughed at the thought of "violently liberal women" who disliked JFK and preferred the more effete Adlai Stevenson.
"Jack so obviously demanded from a woman - a relationship between a man and a woman where a man would be the leader and a woman be his wife and look up to him as a man," she said. "With Adlai you could have another relationship where - you know, he'd sort of be sweet and you could talk, but you wouldn't ever . . . I always thought women who were scared of sex loved Adlai."
There are no spectacular revelations and virtually nothing about JFK's assassination. Kennedy's health problems and his extramarital affairs were still years from public knowledge. Jacqueline Kennedy speaks warmly throughout of her husband, remembering him as dynamic, perceptive, and free of grudges, an assignment she and others bore for him.
Like any powerful family, the Kennedys had complicated relationships with other people at the top. They valued loyalty, vision, and ingenuity. They hated dullness, indecision, and self-promotion, even among their own.
Jacqueline Kennedy dismissed the idea that the eldest Kennedy son, Joseph Jr., would have been president had he not been killed in World War II. "He would have been so unimaginative, compared to Jack," she said. She contrasted the integrity of Robert F. Kennedy, the president's brother and attorney general, with the designs of sister-in-law Eunice Kennedy Shriver. Robert had begged JFK not to appoint him, fearing charges of nepotism. Eunice, meanwhile, was anxious to see her husband, Sargent Shriver, named head of the department of Health, Education and Welfare.
"Eunice was pestering Jack to death to make Sargent head of HEW because she wanted to be a cabinet wife," she tells Schlesinger. "You know, it shows you some people are ambitious for themselves, and Bobby wasn't."
Speaking on Good Morning America, Caroline Kennedy spoke about her family’s reaction.
“It was funny because my daughters listened to it too and they were just absolutely horrified,' she told GMA,”
Her daughters asked her: “Did she really think that?”
“And of course time has moved on and it shows you both there are many timeless things in here but it really is a snapshot of a world that we barely recognise.”
She added: “I think people really need to understand the purpose of an oral history. And it really - the value of it is immediate, it is honest.”
“I think that was very brave of her to do that and to be honest. But it’s got limitations. It’s just - it’s a primary source document. It’s like a diary or something like that, it’s really a snapshot.”
The only daughter of the former president, Caroline decided to release the transcripts in the lead up to the 50th anniversary of JFK's inauguration, later this year. She first read the transcripts after her mother’s death in 1994.
“There are flashes throughout where I hear her and there are parts to me where it sounds like it was a very long time ago, just the way she speaks and the things she said,” Caroline added.
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