Society: Graceful Entrance

It was Jackie Kennedy’s gayest social week since she left the White House. In the ten months since her self-imposed year of mourning ended, she has slipped gradually and gracefully back into circulation, mostly with small sit-down dinner parties at home. Last week, in New York and Boston, she moved back into the world’s whirl with a will.

In midweek, she gave a black-tie dinner for 27 guests in honor of John Kenneth Galbraith, the witty economist who invented the phrase “the affluent society” and likes to continue his researches into it. A crowd stood by oohing and ogling as the Cadillacs began sweeping up to Jackie’s Fifth Avenue apartment. Each guest was checked by Secret Service men before entering the building, but that hardly seemed necessary. The guests were easily recognizable and hardly the crashing type: the Bobby Kennedys (who arrived one at a time in a beige Lincoln Continental convertible), the Stephen Smiths, Pat Lawford, Lee Radziwill, the Robert McNamaras, Douglas Dillon, Cartoonist Charles Addams, Author Truman Capote, Artist William Walton, Mme. Hervé Alphand and Mrs. Paul Mellon.

Off with Ermine. The dinner was pleasant enough, but it was just a starter. Afterward, everybody got into limousines again, bound for an art show at Manhattan’s Asia House, to which Jackie and Galbraith had each lent some of their North Indian paintings. After a 45-minute tour of the exhibit, the group was off to the Sign of the Dove, a Third Avenue restaurant that Jackie and her friends had taken over for the evening and turned into a discothèque decorated with life-sized photographs of Galbraith, who is 6 ft. 8 in. tall. Someone nicknamed it the Galbraith à Go-Go.

When Jackie’s party joined up with another group of invited guests, the Dove was soon flying high. The dancing began to Cole Porter records, but that was not what the gang had come for. “The fastest music you’ve got,” ordered Jackie. She shed her sleeveless ermine jacket to reveal a glistening white crepe sheath, did the frug with John Barry Ryan III, the Watusi with Dance Instructor Killer Joe Piro. “All my nieces and nephews do these dances so well,” she said. “I’d like to do them well too.” Said Killer Joe later: “She’s best at the twist. The other dances are new to her.”

It was the sort of party the Kennedys have become famous for: exclusive but not so exclusive that the public couldn’t get a peek.* Outside the Dove, midnight strollers stopped and gawked through the windows until Secret Service men had to line up in a barricade to keep the celebrity watchers at bay. By 1:45 a.m., there was a buffet—smoked salmon, paté de foie gras, French pastries, goulash and spaghetti. Then everyone went back to dancing and drinking. Jackie left by 2:45, but the party swirled on until 3:30 a.m.

Grandes Domes & Cops. Two days later Jackie made a gala appearance in Boston as honorary chairman of the Golden Trumpet Ball, a $150-a-ticket benefit for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It was her first such acceptance in two years, and Boston’s newspapers had splashed all over Page One the specifics of her arrival. When her car pulled up at Symphony Hall, thousands of shouting, shoving people packed the sidewalk. Mounted policemen desperately maneuvered their horses to hold back the crowd. Looking slightly frightened, Jackie hurried inside, while cops used sheer force to keep the excited mob from pouring in after her.

Inside, she regained her composure. Symphony Conductor Erich Leinsdorf gallantly kissed her hand as she entered, and she chatted comfortably at the dinner table with him and Henry Cabot, board president of the symphony. Amid the dimly lit candelabra and the red-globed lamps of the Edwardian decor, sweating photographers dashed about popping dozens of flashbulbs at her, occasionally overturning chairs and breaking wine glasses. The guests—from Boston grandes dames to college boys—gaped openly at Jackie, but she seemed unperturbed. Dinner was surprisingly good for such an affair: lobster, veal, braised endive and soufflé glacé. Jackie sat serenely through the speeches, then waltzed to the Blue Danube, The Merry Widow and Tales from the Vienna Woods, played by the Boston Pops Orchestra. Her first card dance was with Francis W. Hatch, chairman of the symphony trustees. She also danced once to Ruby Newman’s music with Massachusetts’ Republican Governor John Volpe.

Jackie gamely stuck with it until 12:30, then quietly slipped on her Jean Patou coat over her mint-green gown and left by the stage door, where a car waited to take her to the Ritz-Carlton. Next day she headed for the Kennedy compound at Cape Cod, where an Indian-summer day awaited her.

* The public also got a peek at eight more of Jackie’s letters, written before and during the White House years, when newspapers carried stories that they would go on auction this week. Four were to a haberdasher ordering socks and such for Jack, one a touching but unimportant 1954 regret to an invitation because of her husband’s recent back operation, and three to Actor Basil Rathbone explaining why Jackie wanted a speech from Henry V read for Jack by Rathbone at a White House reception. “It is just one of his favorites,” wrote Jackie. “He also loves Henry V (and he reminds me of him, though I don’t think he knows that!).” Manhattan Autograph Dealer Charles Hamilton, who was also offering other items, including some letters and mementos of Lee Harvey Oswald, refused to withdraw Jackie’s letters despite complaints from Mrs. Kennedy’s press secretary.