Editor from Camelot

Jackie as Editor

Alfred Eisenstaedt / Time & Life Pictures / Getty

The Literary Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

by Greg Lawrence

Thomas Dunne, 336 pp., $25.99

About a million years ago, when Jackie Onassis was an editor at Doubleday and I was a lowly reporter at the Washington Post, I ran into her at a party for Lillian Hellman. Well, “ran into” might not be the correct term; my editors knew for a fact that Jackie would be at this party, and they dispatched me with the express purpose of (a) getting a quote from Jackie and (b) talking to Hellman without completely pissing Hellman off—which was very, very difficult because she had the temperament of a Rottweiler, but was necessary because she was a friend of Katharine Graham, the Post’s publisher. Getting a quote from Jackie, of course, was the more important goal.

So, on catching sight of the beautiful Most Famous Woman in the Universe, I said: “Ummm, excuse me, Mrs. Onassis, but I gather Caroline is in England now, living with your friend Hugh Fraser and dating a guy of whom you disapprove. Why is that? What’s wrong with him?” And Jackie said, in her hushed, miraculously girly voice, which belied both her age and whatever sentiments she harbored: “I’m sorry, but I never talk about Caroline”—and turned her back on me.

From then on, whenever Jackie appeared, or was supposed to appear anywhere, I was dispatched by my newspaper. You cannot believe the stupid parties, the number and length of them, that made up Jackie’s social life and my work life. It was extremely annoying. And futile.

“Send someone else!” I used to plead. “She told me nothing except she wouldn’t discuss her kid.”

“But that was wonderful,” I was told. “You are the first and only person at the ‘Style’ section to get a quote out of her, so she’s your beat.”