Jacqueline in Paris
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Synopsis
“Captivating...Mah channels Kennedy and brings postwar Paris to life with exquisite detail and insight.” -- People
From the bestselling author of The Lost Vintage, a rare and dazzling portrait of Jacqueline Bouvier’s college year abroad in postwar Paris, an intimate and electrifying story of love and betrayal, and the coming-of-age of an American icon – before the world knew her as Jackie.
In September 1949 Jacqueline Bouvier arrives in postwar Paris to begin her junior year abroad. She’s twenty years old, socially poised but financially precarious, and all too aware of her mother’s expectations that she make a brilliant match. Before relenting to family pressure, she has one year to herself far away from sleepy Vassar College and the rigid social circles of New York, a year to explore and absorb the luminous beauty of the City of Light. Jacqueline is immediately catapulted into an intoxicating new world of champagne and châteaux, art and avant-garde theater, cafés and jazz clubs. She strikes up a romance with a talented young writer who shares her love of literature and passion for culture – even though her mother would think him most unsuitable.
But beneath the glitter and rush, France is a fragile place still haunted by the Occupation. Jacqueline lives in a rambling apartment with a widowed countess and her daughters, all of whom suffered as part of the French Resistance just a few years before. In the aftermath of World War II, Paris has become a nest of spies, and suspicion, deception, and betrayal lurk around every corner. Jacqueline is stunned to watch the rise of communism – anathema in America, but an active movement in France – never guessing she is witnessing the beginning of the political environment that will shape the rest of her life—and that of her future husband.
Evocative, sensitive, and rich in historic detail, Jacqueline in Paris portrays the origin story of an American icon. Ann Mah brilliantly imagines the intellectual and aesthetic awakening of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, and illuminates how France would prove to be her one true love, and one of the greatest influences on her life.
Release date: September 27, 2022
Publisher: HarperCollins
Print pages: 352
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Jacqueline in Paris
Ann Mah
In all my excitement I had scarcely managed to choke down a hardtack biscuit at dinner. It was September 1949, and I was hanging over the ship’s rail with a couple of other Smith girls, hoping to spot the port. After several hours in our lookout spot, we were famished, out of cigarettes, and almost out of patience.
“Are those lights?”
“Where?”
“Over there on the horizon!”
“I think we’re still too far.”
“Gosh, this is taking ages.”
“Can’t be much longer now . . .”
“Evening, girls,” said a voice behind us, and we turned to find the chief purser regarding us with a twinkle in his dark eyes. “Standing watch?”
“Lloyd!” We giggled and stepped back to gather around him. “We’re hoping for land ahoy,” said Mary Ann, blinking her round blue eyes. She had blond fringed hair and the placid features of a porcelain doll.
“We’re longing to get to France,” I added.
“And to get off this ship. No offense,” said Martha, who’d been sick for nine days. “I forgot to pack my sea legs,” she joked. Even queasy and wan, Martha had a sharpness that sliced across the stodgy, well-bred manner of the other Smith girls. A few days ago, I’d overheard her passionately defending one of my favorite French novels, Colette’s Chéri, and was left thinking she was someone I’d like to get to know.
“Can’t wait to see the back of us, eh?” Lloyd said. “And here I thought you girls’ve had a swell crossing!”
“Oh, yes, we have!” we chorused. In fact, ever since we boarded the SS De Grasse in New York Harbor, we had been showered with attention, feted, and photographed stepping arm in arm across the deck in our best travel suits. The long days at sea held plenty of diversions—screenings of French films and ping-pong tournaments, dances and costume contests. But what I loved most was strolling the promenade deck and staring out at the same vast ocean my French ancestors had crossed to come to America, conscious that I was making my own voyage to meet my fate, albeit in reverse.
Last night at the farewell gala the captain had asked our group to perform “La Vie en rose”—we were all crazy for Edith Piaf’s sentimental ballad and knew the words by heart—and to my embarrassment he’d insisted that I sing the last verse alone. As the final chorus crested, I had seen more than one passenger blink away tears. Our ship, the De Grasse, had been sunk by German troops in defeat, retrieved from a watery grave in Bordeaux, and only recently restored to service as an ocean liner. Our group of about thirty-five young women from Smith College was an anomaly among the diplomats and tourists making the crossing—more than that, we were a sign of hope.
“We should be docking at about twenty-four hundred hours—that’s what you girls call midnight,” Lloyd said. “Maybe my expert eye can help you find the port.” Leaning over the rail, he squinted into the distance. “See those lights?” He pointed. “Bright and still. That’s Le Havre.”
The lights were mere specks, as faint as distant stars, but I stared at them until my vision blurred. For so long the Normandy coast had existed only as a small square of newsprint map upon which all of us had pinned our hopes during those harrowing days of June 1944, when Allied troops had stormed ashore. Now it was becoming real before my very eyes. Though I wore a coat against the Atlantic’s damp summer chill, I shivered a little.
“All right, m’lady?” Lloyd turned to me and proffered a courtly bow. A few days ago someone had told him I’d been named Queen Debutante of 1947, a silly old title invented by one of the New York gossip columns. Lloyd had teasingly addressed me with the chivalrous manners of a Renaissance knight ever since.
“Sure,” I said, giving him a sidelong smile. The girls all thought he was dreamy, with his dapper white uniform and cleft chin, and I’d been flattered last night to find his gaze upon me while singing “La Vie en rose.” Of course, Mummy would rather I perish of the black plague than carry on with an ocean liner’s crewman—but my mother wasn’t here and a mild flirtation wouldn’t hurt anyone. “Isn’t this thrilling?” I added in a soft voice. “You must’ve seen it a thousand times, but I’ll never forget it.”
“France is darn beautiful, all right. It’s the French you have to watch out for.” He grinned.
“Oh!” Mary Ann exclaimed. “I can see little boats in the harbor!” I resisted the urge to look. Daddy always told me and Lee that giving a man our complete attention was a girl’s most charming lure. “Play hard to get, play hard to get . . . and bam! Turn it on like a lighthouse beam,” he had instructed. “Men go wild for that.”
“Won’t be much longer now,” Lloyd said agreeably. “Say, are you girls really going to spend an entire year in this place? I’d have thought a bunch of pretty ladies like you would be settling down with your fellows.”
Martha looked askance at the idea. “And miss out on this?” she said.
Privately I had to agree with her. I had toured the continent the previous summer, a whirlwind itinerary with three boarding school friends and dear Miss Shearman, our former Latin teacher, as chaperone. But it had been so rushed I felt like I had been allowed only dainty sips of Europe, when I wanted great greedy gulps. Ever since I had first set eyes on Paris, the desire to live there had intoxicated me, making me sick with a longing that felt overwhelming once I returned to the constraints of Vassar’s isolated world. Art club. Drama club. The college newspaper. All the while, my soul hungered for experimental theater and modern dance, jazz clubs and art museums, and flirting with a man who could talk about all of it.
And now here I was, sailing to spend my junior year abroad in Paris. I could almost taste the bitter tang of French coffee on my lips, smell the coarse heavy smoke of the tobacco. I tipped my face to the wind, feeling it whip across me with its chill and strength and scent of salt.
“Won’t you get homesick?” Lloyd leaned forward to ask. “I can’t imagine being away from my mama for so long.”
Mary Ann—who had spent the first three days at sea in floods—welled up. “A whole year!” She sighed.
“You’ll feel better on dry land,” Martha told her.
“Of course I’ll miss everyone,” I said, so faintly Lloyd had to bend closer to hear me. “But it helps to meet a nice fellow like you.”
“But how’re you going to talk to people?” he pressed. “Can you speak French?”
“Of course,” said Martha, and Mary Ann nodded.
“A little,” I said.
“I took French in high school but whenever I try it out, I swear everyone is speaking gobbledygook.” Lloyd gave a comic grimace, and we laughed. But a flush crept up his neck, betraying his embarrassment.
“I have that problem too,” I said, touching his arm.
Before he could respond, a bell rang. “Excuse me, girls,” Lloyd said, springing to attention. “Duty calls. Don’t forget to come say goodbye before you disembark, all right?” We agreed, and he stepped briskly away.
An hour later we docked, the De Grasse slipping majestically through fog and darkness into the still ravaged port of Le Havre. Above, the midnight sky was choked with clouds of sulfur, beams of light filtering through dense smoke; below, the harbor traffic bustled with shouts and loud noises. “Do let’s drink a toast!” cried Mary Ann. “In lemonade,” she added hastily. We managed to find three fresh glasses and clinked them together. “To France!” said Mary Ann, and Martha and I echoed her, our faces bright enough to pierce the night.
In our stateroom below, we attempted to sleep before Martha’s alarm clock rang at half past four for the predawn passport examination. Despite the early hour, the portside deck was mobbed with what appeared to be the entire ship’s manifest of passengers, shouting, shoving, and waving documents as they swarmed around two French officers who seemed more interested in chatting with each other than stamping anyone’s papers.
“Complete and typical French inefficiency,” muttered Martha.
“Is this what it’s going to be like all year long?” Mary Ann asked, her voice small.
Confronted with the melee, I too felt my spirits beginning to dim.
“What if we miss our train to Paris?” Mary Ann fretted. “How will we find the rest of the group? Do either of you have the address for Reid Hall?”
“Hold on.” I seized her arm. “Did you hear that?” Someone was making an announcement, but it was difficult to catch the words above the hum of the crowd.
“Hear what?” Martha froze.
“Wait.” I closed my eyes to concentrate on the French: Visas . . . long séjour . . . à tribord . . . “Come on,” I said, attempting to turn against the crush. “It’s on the other side.”
“Jackie, no!” Martha pulled my sleeve. “We have to go through passport control.”
I shook my head. “Long-stay visas are being processed on the starboard side. Listen, there it is again.” Once more I closed my eyes to decipher the words. When I opened them, both girls were staring at me like I’d pulled a kitten from my coat pocket.
“You understood that?” Mary Ann said finally. “It sounded like . . . like . . .”
“Gobbledygook,” Martha finished her sentence.
“It took me a few tries,” I said as we struggled against the crowd toward the stairs.
“Why did you say you couldn’t speak French?” asked Martha when we had reached the starboard deck and joined the queue.
“Did I say that?” Glancing behind us, I spotted a few other girls from our program at the end of the line and lifted a hand to wave at them.
“Earlier, when we were talking with Lloyd . . .” She looked at me sharply. “You don’t have to do that, you know. Play dumb.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I turned to rummage in my pocketbook, bristling at the criticism.
I had just checked my passport for the hundredth time when a tiny woman approached us with a brisk step. A long dark braid, threaded with gray, wound in a heavy crown around her head, and she wore a tailored black suit with a delicate pointed collar. In her hands she held a clipboard, which gave her an official air.
“Bonjour, mesdemoiselles,” she said. “Smith in Paris, I suppose? I am Jeanne Saleil, the program director.” A heavy accent blurred her words, making them almost unintelligible.
“Madame Saleil!” I exclaimed, almost forgetting my fatigue. “How do you do?”
Her chin tilted up, dark eyes assessing me in a glance, before she shook hands with each of us. “Bienvenue en France,” she continued, switching to rapid French. “Let’s begin right away, yes? We will speak only French together, and this is how you will progress. Please introduce yourselves,” she instructed. “Who will go first?” The three of us stole looks at each other, but no one stepped forward. “Come, girls,” she chided. “You’ll never learn this way. You must seize the moment!”
Finally, I cleared my throat. “Bonjour, je suisMademoiselle Bouvier de New York.” I tried not to wince at the sounds emerging from my mouth, rough and graceless, especially when contrasted with the lilt of her native eloquence.
“Let me see . . .” She ran a finger down the list on her clipboard. “Ah, yes, here you are.” She ticked the sheet with a pencil. “Bouvier, Jacqueline.”
I started to shake my head. I had been christened Jacqueline after my grandfather Bouvier by parents who hoped it would make me his favorite. But I had always been Jackie—or sometimes Jacks to my sister’s Pekes—clipped and boyish, which I’d preferred to the dowdy Anglophone pronunciation of my name. Jack-lyn, my aunts used to say. Jack-lyn, you look peaky. Jack-lyn, your knees are dirty. Jack-lyn, the stables aren’t for little ladies.
“Is that correct? Jacqueline?” Madame Saleil repeated. She said it with a swoop—zhakleen—all crisp consonants and liquid vowels. It sounded like the name of a novelist who had won the Prix Goncourt, the name of an artist collected in the Louvre—the name of the type of person I longed to be.
I hesitated, but only for an instant. “Yes,” I said. “Call me Jacqueline.”
There was Normandy flashing through the windows of our rattletrap little train, its lush green fields a shocking contrast to the battle-scarred villages. There was Paris, chipped and scratched but still magnificent even in the driving rain, the landmarks looming out of the mist as we traipsed by them on an afternoon’s sightseeing excursion. How I yearned for the city! But not yet, not yet, for as darkness fell, there was the Gare de Lyon, its cavernous hall quiet after the day’s bustle. There we were, all thirty-five of us plus Madame Saleil, boarding the 22h07 to Grenoble, squeezing four by four into our train compartments, preparing for a night of upright sleep as we traveled 575 kilometers—“You should start thinking in the metric system,” advised Madame S.—to this university town at the foot of the French Alps.
Sleep seemed impossible as I twisted in my narrow seat, trying to find a comfortable position, my head falling forward every time I drifted off. And yet I must have slept, for I woke to the sight of jagged, snowy peaks set against a rose-streaked sky. “The Alps,” I whispered, touching my fingertips to the train window. The mountains’ dark and rugged mass emerged from a cloud bank as if from a dream.
A short while later, we were standing in an overlooked corner of the Grenoble train station, suitcases and hatboxes strewn at our feet. “Mesdemoiselles!” Madame Saleil clapped lightly, calling our group to attention. “Before I send you to your host families, we have an important task. As you know, Smith respects the most rigorous academic standards. Over the next six weeks here in Grenoble, an intensive language course will prepare you for your studies in Paris. An important part of the program is our engagement sur l’honneur.” She held aloft her ever-present clipboard, to which was attached a sheet of lined paper. “By signing this pledge, you promise to speak French, and only French, at all times, with everyone—your professors, friends, host families, and each other. For the entire year.”
She handed the clipboard to Mary Ann, who stared at her with huge, blank eyes. “Sign here!” Madame S. urged her, pointing and miming. Mary Ann obediently scrawled her name and passed the clipboard to her neighbor. “Soon you will start thinking in French,” Madame S. proclaimed. “Soon you will even be dreaming in French!”
All of this, however, seemed very distant as I stood in my host mother’s living room attempting to ask if I could take a bath. Widowed during the war, Madame Laurent lived in the suburb of La Tronche, a few miles from the university. Her rambling cottage, once charming, now appeared dilapidated, with flaking stucco walls and a sunken pitched roof. The surrounding garden had been turned into a vegetable patch, so crammed full it resembled an overflowing market basket. Walking to her front door, I had admired a laden fig tree and a trellis sagging with grapes the size of ping-pong balls. Little did I suspect they’d be the only fruit we’d eat for weeks.
“A bath?” I touched a hand to my chest. “It is possible?” It had been two days since I’d seen a basin of hot water—and a few weeks since I’d taken a real bath in a tub that didn’t pitch and tumble with the moods of the Atlantic.
Madame Laurent raised her eyebrows, revealing a web of fine lines across her forehead. “In fact,” she began, and then launched into an explanation of which I understood nearly all the verbs and only a few nouns: hot water, kitchen, toilet. Or was it toilette? Did she just mention the tramway? Why was she talking about place Victor Hugo? I struggled to make sense of it all, conscious that my face had frozen into a nervous grin.
“Come,” she finally said. “I will show you the rest of the house.” I followed her up the crooked staircase, averting my eyes from the vivid patches of wallpaper where paintings must have hung, to the second floor. “Here is your bedroom, which you’ve already seen,” she said. “I hope it’s suitable.”
“It’s perfect,” I assured her. The room was very simple, almost Spartan, with a narrow white bed, a wooden chair and desk, and an enormous window that offered views of the craggy Alps surrounding us in every direction.
Next to me was the bedroom of the other lodger, Eero, a young Finn studying engineering at the university, our coed housing arrangement the result of postwar shortages. Then came Madame and, at the end of the hall, a closed door. “The bathroom,” she said. Peeping inside, I found a bright and airy room furnished with a washstand, pitcher, and bowl—and an uncomfortable truth dawned on me. Was it possible the house didn’t have the type of bathroom I took for granted at home, one with shining taps, bright lights for primping, and hot water gushing into a porcelain tub?
Downstairs, Madame Laurent showed me the dining room—another set of French windows, another exquisite view of the Alps; the kitchen, with its wood-burning stove and antiquated cold-water spigot; and, finally, opening the back door, she gestured toward a small wooden structure a few yards from the house. “The W.C.,” she said, and I knew this to mean the water closet, or toilet. At least there was one of those.
As the weeks went on, I learned about the quick, cold sponge bath known as la toilette succincte. I learned that hot water was precious, warmed on the stove, and allotted in three-inch increments at the monthly clothes washing. I learned to admire Madame Laurent’s thrift. Like all Frenchwomen, and possibly all Europeans, the dark years had given her a flair for using things I would have thrown away: bits of string, laddered nylons, broken buttons. I learned to value the small American luxuries I’d taken for granted: running water, central heating, toilet paper. I learned to carry my own newsprint squares to the privy, in case there were none. And I discovered what Madame Laurent was saying that first day when I so presumptuously asked if I could bathe: Take the tramway to the public bath on place Victor Hugo, where ablutions cost 75 francs.
Grenoble had a way of making you forget about the other places in France you wanted to visit. The enchantment, I think, lay in the mountains circling the town, their presence so commanding you learned to use them for orientation. In the city center, you saw stately stone buildings embellished with ornate wrought-iron balconies, narrow cobblestoned streets lined with cafés, bakeries, and pastry shops. But only a brisk walk away, the countryside slumbered in wild beauty. Peasants clad in traditional Dauphinois dress—men in cropped trousers and white knee socks, women wearing embroidered aprons over rustling skirts—herded cows along twisting footpaths. The mountains concealed vineyards and farms, icy Alpine lakes ringed with birch trees, and even a medieval monastery where the silent devout had produced a sharp yellow-green liqueur called chartreuse for over three hundred years, steeping it with native herbs and flowers.
When Madame Saleil announced that our group would be making a weekend excursion to Provence, I begged her to allow me to visit my ancestral home of Pont Saint-Esprit. I had dreamed of seeing Provence for as long as I could remember, drawn to the bright sun and blazing colors depicted in paintings at the Met and enticed by the tales of Grampy Jack, my Bouvier grandfather, who often told his grandchildren of our noble lineage and lost ancient manor. The truth of the matter was that I was scarcely French, only one eighth on my father’s side if I stopped to consider the family tree, which I rarely did because I didn’t like to be reminded of it. “We are descended from a house of Pont Saint-Esprit in Provence,” Grampy Jack used to say, scattering his lore with royal decrees and aristocratic marriages. “The blood of the nobility courses within your veins.” On the worst days of my childhood, when my parents’ quarreling rang so loudly in the apartment that I took to hiding in my closet, I would close my eyes and imagine my ancestors gliding along intricate parquet floors and candlelit mirrored halls. It wasn’t quite the stuff of fairy tales, but it was enough to make me feel special when Mummy picked and poked at me, when Daddy drank too much and flirted inappropriately.
“Do you have relatives there? I could write to them,” Madame Saleil offered when I explained.
“We lost each other many years ago. But my grandfather spoke often of our French family when I was younger.”
“The name of a cousin, perhaps? I could ask my sister, who lives in the next village.”
I had nothing more than the book Grampy Jack had written and published himself, Our Forebears, bound in red leather with gold-tipped pages, which I had tucked at the bottom of my valise despite its leaden weight, then lugged all the way to town to show her. “You see?” I said, as she examined our family coat of arms.
“It’s a beautiful history,” she said after a lengthy pause. Or had she meant story? In French the word was the same. “I do believe,” she said slowly, “one should seize the occasion when it presents itself. What if, while the rest of us visit the Roman theater in Orange, you spent the afternoon in Pont Saint-Esprit?”
“Oh, Madame,” I exclaimed. “That would be wonderful!”
“On one condition.” She raised a hand. “You must bring a friend.”
I tried to hide my dismay. “Really? Must I? I’m sure I’ll be perfectly safe, and . . . I wouldn’t want to inconvenience anyone. The girls are so excited about the excursion. It would be a shame if anyone missed it.”
Madame S. was unmoved. “Before we leave on Friday, please let me know who will be accompanying you.”
I spent the next few days thinking about whom I would ask. At this point, most of the girls had drifted into social groups formed by their friendships at Smith, or through residing with the same family in groups of two or three. Living out in La Tronche with Madame Laurent and Eero the Finn, I hadn’t made any close relationships—but if I was being honest, I couldn’t blame my circumstances alone. Fond though I was of the other girls, I kept my distance, hoping for a more authentic experience rather than one lumped with other Americans. Anyway, I never found it necessary to be part of a crowd. I preferred solitude, especially after long days of lectures on nineteenth-century novels and grammar drills in unheated classrooms. I knew I could have joined them at the nearby Café Anglais, drinking tea or sweet wine, and flirting madly with the other foreign students who gathered there. On Saturday nights, I could have double-dated to the school dance at the Vieux Temple, everyone so fresh faced, friendly, and cheerful, making plans for mountain climbing the next day. But I cherished the moments I spent alone, lost in a book, or, more often, my dreams and imagination. More than anything else, they sustained me.
“Six o’clock,” Madame Saleil told us firmly. “That is when we will be back to pick you up. Au revoir—and good luck!”
We waved at the bus as it drove away, trailing a stream of exhaust from its rusted tailpipe. “What do you think?” I lifted a hand to shield my eyes against the glare. “Shall we have lunch first, or explore?”
“Let’s eat,” said Martha. “It’s half past two already.”
“There’s a café open over there.” I pointed to a restaurant spilling tables and chairs onto the square. “Do you think it’s suitable?”
“Fine with me,” Martha said agreeably, ...
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