Jackie Kennedy’s Childhood and Early Education

On July 28, 1929, Jackie was born as Jacqueline Lee Bouvier in Southampton, New York, in Southampton Hospital. Her mother was Janet Norton Lee (1907 –1989), and her father was John Vernou “Black Jack” Bouvier III (1891 – 1957). Janet Norton Lee’s ancestry was of Irish descent, while John Vernou Bouvier III’s family hailed from France, Scotland, and England. Soon after her birth, Jacqueline was baptized at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in Manhattan. A few years later in 1933, the Bouvier family welcomed a new member, Caroline Lee Bouvier, who would later be Caroline Lee Radziwill-Ross. Both sisters were reared strictly in the Catholic faith.

As a young child, Jackie was establishing her independence and quick wit, and it was noticeable to everyone who interacted with her. While on a walk with her nanny and little sister, Jackie wandered away from the small group. When a police officer stopped her, worried about a young girl alone, she told him, “My nurse and baby sister seem to be lost,” effectively displaying that she did not blame herself for the situation.[i] Her take-control attitude followed her throughout her entire life.

Jacqueline spent much of her early childhood between Manhattan and Lasata, which was the Bouviers’ country estate in East Hampton on Long Island. She and her father formed a very close relationship that often excluded her sister, Lee, much to the younger sister’s disappointment. John Vernou Bouvier III claimed that Jackie was the “most beautiful daughter a man ever had.”[ii]

In her childhood, Jacqueline dabbled in multiple hobbies, as many children do. She exceeded all expectations with her mastery of horseback-riding. In fact, her mother placed her on a horse when she was only one year old. By the time Jackie turned twelve years old, she had a few national championships under her belt. In 1940, The New York Times wrote, “Jacqueline Bouvier, an eleven-year-old equestrienne from Easy Hampton, Long Island, scored a double victory in the horsemanship competition. Miss Bouvier achieved a rare distinction. The occasions are few when a young rider wins both contests in the same show.”[iii] She continued to compete successfully in the sport and lived on as an avid equestrienne for the rest of her life.[iv]

She did not stop her hobbies at horseback-riding. Additionally, Jackie spent long hours buried in books, took ballet lessons, and developed a passion for learning languages. French was a particular favorite and was emphasized in her childhood education.[v] These developed language skills helped Jacqueline as she entered her husband’s political realm. Whereas John F. Kennedy often needed a translator in foreign countries and with foreign dignitaries, his wife could often speak their language fluently.

Before she even began school, young Jackie read all the books on her bookshelves. She loved Mowgli from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, Little Lord Fauntleroy’s grandfather, Robin Hood, Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind, and the poetry of Lord Byron. Her mother often wondered if she would one day make a career of writing.[vi] Near a childhood Christmas, she penned the following poem:

“Christmas is coming

Santa Claus is near

Reindeer hooves will soon be drumming

On the roof tops loud and clear.”[vii]

Referring to reading as a child, Jackie said, “I lived in New York City until I was thirteen and spent the summers in the country. I hated dolls, loved horses and dogs, and had skinned knees and braces on my teeth for what must have seemed an interminable length of time to my family. I read a lot when I was little, much of which was too old for me. There were Chekhov and Shaw in the room where I had to take naps and I never slept but sat on the windowsill reading, then scrubbed the soles of my feet so the nurse would not see I had been out of bed.”[viii] Jacqueline had a thirst for learning, and she never quite quenched it.

After attending kindergarten, Jackie enrolled in Manhattan’s Chapin School in 1935. The Chapin School, an all-girls independent day school, presented a space for young Jackie to learn everything she needed to know from grades one to six.[ix] Although she was quite smart, Jackie often found herself in trouble at school. Her teacher said that she was “a darling child, the prettiest little girl, very clever, very artistic, and full of the devil.”[x] She was a very mischievous child and found herself sent to the headmistress, Miss Ethel Stringfellow, many times. Stringfellow wrote on Jacqueline’s report card: “Jacqueline was given a D in Form because her disturbing conduct in her geography class made it necessary to exclude her from the room.”[xi] Like most parents, Jackie’s mother made excuses for her daughter’s actions, saying that Jackie finished assignments early and acted out in boredom.[xii] Janet Bouvier once asked her daughter, “What happens when you’re sent to Miss Stringfellow?” Young Jackie replied, “Well, I go to the office and Miss Stringfellow says, ‘Jacqueline, sit down. I’ve heard bad reports about you.’ I sit down. Then Miss Stringfellow says a lot of things—but I don’t listen.” Cool and calm, she was unwilling to admit guilt.

Biographer Sarah Bradford says, “Jackie was already a rebel, unsubdued by the discipline at Miss Chapin’s. She was brighter than most of her classmates and would get through her work quickly, then was left with nothing to do but doodle and daydream. All the teachers interviewed by Mary Van Rensselaer Thayer twenty years later remembered her for her beauty and, above all, her mischief.”[xiii] Even then, Jackie was creating a name for herself. She would not be forgotten easily.

Nothing in Jackie’s life was smooth. Jacqueline’s father had a reputation for cheating on his wife and partaking in too much liquor too fast. By the time young Jackie was born, John Bouvier was involved in several affairs already. Jackie’s mother attempted to give the marriage another chance, encouraging her husband to focus on his job as a stockbroker, which had thus far produced no positive results.[xiv] She grew embittered with her husband and quickly realized she wanted out of the marriage. She still had her children to consider, though. It bothered Janet Bouvier to no end that her children obviously preferred their father’s company over hers. She had a tendency to overreact to situations and occasionally hit her girls, which only made them prefer their father even more.

In a 2013 interview, Lee, Jackie’s sister, said that her mother was too concerned with her “almost irrational social climbing,” but when referring to her father she said, “He was a wonderful man … He had such funny idiosyncrasies, like always wearing his black patent evening shoes with his swimming trunks. One thing which infuriates me is how he’s always labeled the drunk black prince. He was never drunk with me, though I’m sure he sometimes drank, due to my mother’s constant nagging. You would, and I would.”[xv]

During Jacqueline’s time at the Chapin School, her parents were experiencing another bout of marital issues. On top of her father’s extramarital affairs, he was also an alcoholic. To boot, the family drowned in financial instability after Wall Street crashed in 1929. Although her father built some of the most distinguished apartments on Park Avenue in New York, his loss of money was excessive. He made too many bad investments and did not spend well, in general. Jacqueline later said that she was afraid that her father would not be able to pay her tuition to school.

In 1936, Jacqueline’s parents separated and were granted a divorce four years later. Janet Bouvier hoped that the time apart—the separation—would show her husband that he needed to learn family responsibility. During their separation, the press published all the gory and intimate details of their personal lives. Detailed photographs showed evidence of John Bouvier’s dalliances, which embarrassed his wife no end.[xvi] Lee said, “There was such relentless bitterness on both sides. Jackie was really fortunate to have or acquire the ability to tune out, which she always kept … It was like for the years from ten to twenty never hearing anything [from your parents] except how awful the other one was.”[xvii]

Apparently, Jackie learned at a very young age how to conceal her true feelings. Her cousin John H. Davis said that she had a “tendency to withdraw frequently into a private world of her own.”[xviii] Although she was able to restrain her opinions as a younger woman and child, the truth of it all came out later: she was deeply affected by the divorce and the media attention that came along with it. For the rest of her life, Jackie would hate the press and would try at all costs to control the narrative they were printing. Often, she would seek journalists who would print what she wanted, such as Theodore White, the man who printed her story of Camelot she invented the week after her husband’s assassination.

Jacqueline’s mother remarried later to Hugh Dudley Auchincloss, Jr., the heir of Standard Oil.[xix] The Bouvier sisters had three new stepsiblings from the wedding, offspring of Auchincloss’ previous two marriages. Additionally, Jacqueline’s mother and Auchincloss had two more children together.

After the marriage, the Bouvier sisters moved their primary residence to Auchincloss’ Merrywood estate in McLean, Virginia. They also spent a good deal of time at their new stepfather’s other estate, Hammersmith Farm, in Newport, Rhode Island, and in their father’s homes in Long Island and New York City. Jackie began to see her stepfather as a source of stability; he was able to provide monetary funding and a pampered childhood, which her father could never do on quite as grand a scale. Although Jacqueline felt at home with her new family, she was a bit of an outcast within their new social circle. Many of her new family’s friends were white Anglo-Saxon protestants (WASPS), and her position as a Catholic left her as an outsider with her religion and her status as a child of divorce, which was an uncommon trait in the elite social group.[xx]

Jacqueline grew very fond of her stepfather, regardless of the issues of social anxiety and distance. At the age of twenty-three, she wrote a series of poems that highlighted things in her life made possible by her mother’s marriage to Auchincloss. In an introduction, she wrote: “It seems so hard to believe that you’ve been married ten years. I think they must have been the very best decade of your lives. At the start, in 1942, we all had other lives and we were seven people thrown together, so many little separate units that could have stayed that way. Now we are nine—and what you’ve given us and what we’ve shared has bound us all to each other for the rest of our lives.”[xxi] Jacqueline truly appreciated the stability granted to her by her mother’s divorce.

When Jackie finished six years at the Chapin School, she moved on to the Holton-Arms School in Northwest Washington, D.C., which she attended from 1942 to 1944. Here, she grew fond of Miss Helen Shearman, the Latin teacher. She claimed that the instructor was demanding, “But she was right. We were all lazy teenagers. Everything she taught me stuck, and though I hated to admit it, I adored Latin.”[xxii]

Jacqueline transferred to Miss Porter’s School, a boarding school for girls in Farmington, Connecticut, attending from 1944 to 1947. Along with a rigorous academic schedule, the school emphasized proper manners and the art of conversation. At Miss Porter’s Jacqueline felt she could distance herself from her mother’s new family, allowing her to pursue independence and college preparatory classes.[xxiii] Here, she began learning to function on her own, something she would have to do at various points in her life whether she wanted to do so or not.

Jackie did well at Miss Porter’s School. Upon graduation, Jacqueline was listed as one of the top students of her class; she received the Maria McKinney Memorial Award for Excellence in Literature.[xxiv] Her senior class yearbook claimed that she was known for “her wit, her accomplishment as a horsewoman, and her unwillingness to become a housewife.” She even wrote in the class yearbook under the Ambition in Life section: “Not to be a housewife,” but Jacqueline grew worried about her future prospects eventually.[xxv] She later wrote to a friend: “I just know no one will ever marry me and I’ll end up as a house mother at Farmington.”[xxvi]

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[i] Adler, Bill. The Eloquent Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: A Portrait in Her Own Words. 2009.

[ii] Leaming, Barbara. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: The Untold Story. 2014.

[iii] “Life of Jacqueline B. Kennedy.” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.” https://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/Life-of-Jacqueline-B-Kennedy.aspx. Accessed 9 August 2017.

[iv] Tracy, Kathleen. The Everything Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Book: A Portrait of an American Icon. 2008.

[v] Tracy, Kathleen. The Everything Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Book: A Portrait of an American Icon. 2008.

[vi] “Life of Jacqueline B. Kennedy.” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.” https://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/Life-of-Jacqueline-B-Kennedy.aspx. Accessed 9 August 2017.

[vii] Adler, Bill. The Eloquent Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: A Portrait in Her Own Words. 2009.

[viii] Adler, Bill. The Eloquent Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: A Portrait in Her Own Words. 2009.

[ix] Pottker, Jan. Janet and Jackie: The Story of a Mother and Her Daughter, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. 2002.

[x] “Life of Jacqueline B. Kennedy.” John F. Kennedy: Presidential Library and Museum. https://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/Life-of-Jacqueline-B-Kennedy.aspx. Accessed 24 July 2017.

[xi] “Life of Jacqueline B. Kennedy.” John F. Kennedy: Presidential Library and Museum. https://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/Life-of-Jacqueline-B-Kennedy.aspx. Accessed 24 July 2017.

[xii] Harris, Bill. First Ladies Fact Book—Revised and Updated: The Childhoods, Courtships, Marriages, Campaigns, Accomplishments, and Legacies of Every First Lady from Martha Washington to Michelle Obama. 2012.

[xiii] Hunt, Amber, and David Batcher. Kennedy Wives: Triumph and Tragedy in America’s Most Public Family. 2014.

[xiv] Badrun Alam, Mohammed. Jackie Kennedy: Trailblazer. 2006.

[xv] Hunt, Amber, and David Batcher. Kennedy Wives: Triumph and Tragedy in America’s Most Public Family. 2014.

[xvi] Hunt, Amber, and David Batcher. Kennedy Wives: Triumph and Tragedy in America’s Most Public Family. 2014.

[xvii] Hunt, Amber, and David Batcher. Kennedy Wives: Triumph and Tragedy in America’s Most Public Family. 2014.

[xviii] McFadden, Robert D. “Death of a First Lady: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Dies of Cancer at 64.” New York Times. 20 May 1994. http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0728.html. Accessed 24 July 2017.

[xix] Tracy, Kathleen. The Everything Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Book: A Portrait of an American Icon. 2008.

[xx] Pottker, Jan. Janet and Jackie: The Story of a Mother and Her Daughter, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. 2002.

[xxi] Adler, Bill. The Eloquent Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: A Portrait in Her Own Words. 2009.

[xxii] Adler, Bill. The Eloquent Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: A Portrait in Her Own Words. 2009.

[xxiii] Spoto, Donald. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: A Life. 2000.

[xxiv] Spoto, Donald. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: A Life. 2000.

[xxv] Adler, Bill. The Eloquent Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: A Portrait in Her Own Words. 2009.

[xxvi] Adler, Bill. The Eloquent Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: A Portrait in Her Own Words. 2009.