First Ladies by Margaret Truman Read Free Book Online

and research could restore. For most of its long career, the place had been an unnerving mixture of the elegant and the shabby. No President ever had the time—or could persuade Congress to cough up the money—to create the kind of splendor that its spacious public rooms and lofty corridors demanded.
    Jackie hurled herself into her task with a passion that swept away obstacles and enlisted enthusiasts everywhere. With Clark Clifford’s help, she formed the Fine Arts Committee for the White House, to seek out furniture, paintings, and other historic objects. She did not a little of the seeking herself. Clad in jodhpurs and riding boots, she plunged into the cavernous Fort Washington warehouse on the Maryland side of the Potomac, where White House castoffs were stored, rummaging through hundreds of dust-covered crates to rescue long-discarded chairs and tables and lamps for restoration. She also pursued historic paintings, rugs, and furniture with pleading phone calls to their startled owners, frequently persuading them to surrender valuable family heirlooms on the spot.
    Next Jackie formed the White House Historical Association to raise funds for the overall renovation. When a knowledgeable friend predicted she would need a minimum of two million dollars, JFK was ready to abandon the project all over again. He could almost hear the uproar the figure would cause. But Jackie rescued the situation by coming up with the idea for a full-color guidebook, describing the White House through its architecture, furnishings, and history. The book has since become a small publishing industry unto itself. Over eight million copies have been sold, making it the equivalent of an oil well or a gold mine in the basement, pumping funds into ongoing acquisitions of art and antiques, rugs and curtains.
    Jackie’s French taste coincided in a remarkable, almost spooky way with that of previous upper-class First Lady, Elizabeth Monroe. In fact, she made the Monroe White House the focus of her renovation. Jackie loved France so much, she inserted a French decorator, Stephane Boudin, into the process, making him more or less coequalwith the man who thought he was in charge, Henry Francis du Pont, of the famed Winterthur Museum. Du Pont was the acknowledged greatest living expert on American antiques. Boudin knew nothing about them and cared even less. How could they be any good? They weren’t French. The result was some spectacular behind-the-scenes fireworks.
    Not only was Boudin arrogant but he was rude—and he listened to nobody. He stunned du Pont and his staff by painting the Blue Room white and the Green Room chartreuse. Jackie backed him, ignoring frantic protests from du Pont and a pointed comment from her husband that he preferred the traditional colors. Redecorating the White House was not a joint venture, as far as Jackie was concerned. It was her thing, and she brooked no interference and very little criticism from anyone, including the President.
    Any staffer who talked loosely to the press about the project got into deep trouble, if Jackie did not like the resulting story Maxine Cheshire of
The Washington Post
wrote a seven-part series that was anything but complimentary, pointing out that several of the newly acquired—and in some cases very costly—antiques were fakes. An outraged Jackie forced Jack to call the publisher of the paper to protest and ruthlessly banned those who had talked to Cheshire from further association with the White House.
    Friends and staff alike were amazed by both the energy and the willpower Jackie displayed in her drive for a perfect White House. No detail escaped her often furious attention. She fired off enraged memos to staffers about antique dealers who tried to overcharge them. She badgered old friends in Newport who were reluctant to part with favorite antiques. Only once did anyone recall her being recalcitrant about any aspect of the operation: that was when her passion for privacy clashed with