MANUSCRIPT: Cherchez La Femme: Annotated typescript.
“Cherchez La Femme…”:
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis on “Jackie”
[Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier]. Anthony, Carl. “Cherchez La Femme…” Typescript draft chapter on Jacqueline Kennedy; ca. 1989.
124 leaves: 86 of Anthony’s photocopied typescript leaves paginated 819-932 with some gaps, and 38 of Kennedy’s “replacement” typescript leaves, ribbon, on blue paper interleaved with Anthony’s text and occasionally adding additional pages (for example, in Anthony’s draft page 826 is replaced by Kennedy’s pages 826, 826a, and 826b; his page 841 is replaced by her 841 and 841a); 64 of Anthony’s typescript leaves, as well as 24 of the blue leaves, bear additional annotations and emendations in Kennedy’s hand.
Carl Anthony’s second draft typescript of his chapter devoted to Jacqueline Kennedy – which begins with a section titled, “Cherchez la Femme” – for his book First Ladies (Vol. II. NY: William Morrow, 1991), edited by Kennedy in pencil, red pencil, and blue and black ink. Kennedy’s edits include corrections of grammar, the addition of descriptive details, and the fine-tuning of Anthony’s underlying text. Her most significant alterations are, surely, her deletions and clarifications.
Together with two of Anthony’s earlier drafts of the chapter and related correspondence (see Inventory).
A letter in the archive from Anthony’s editor, Lisa Drew, explains how Kennedy came to revise the typescript. Drew herself took a first stab at reining in Anthony’s text: present here is her marked-up copy, paginated 1- 179, with copious excisions and revisions. After Anthony incorporated those edits into the chapter and wove the chapter into the book, he sent it again to Drew – this time paginated 819-932. Drew, retaining a clean copy for herself, diplomatically sent Anthony’s new version to Nancy Tuckerman, Kennedy’s White House Social Secretary (and dear friend since kindergarten), who, in turn, forwarded it to the subject herself. A working editor since 1975, when she was hired at Viking, Kennedy put her skills to full use here. When she finished, Tuckerman returned the revised text to Drew, with an explanatory note: “I return your pages. Some names, facts, chronology have been corrected. The blue pages are ones that were retyped for your convenience” (September 28, 1989). Drew, of course, sent the pages to Anthony, who incorporated all of Kennedy’s emendations into his final draft. (According to Anthony, though he interviewed all of the then surviving former First Ladies for his book – Lady Bird Johnson, Betty Ford, Rosalynn Carter, and Nancy Reagan – and received written responses from a frail Pat Nixon and the incumbent Barbara Bush, none of the others took a stab at editing their chapters.)
Kennedy’s edits render the text more accurate, concise, and elegant. She changed names, added or deleted text, and left numerous marginal comments. She revised some pages so extensively that she had to discard them and have fresh pages typed onto her unlettered blue stationery. However, not always satisfied with a single pass-through, she continued to revise, at times adding further annotations to the blue pages. Kennedy’s influence over the chapter’s content is colorfully revealed in her manuscript edits – she went through the draft in red pencil, then in black ink, then in grey pencil and, finally, in blue ink – as well as through a collation between her text and Anthony’s.
Anthony divided the chapter into six parts:
61. “Cherchez La Femme,” 30 pages (pp. 819-849)
62. “Madam President,” 23 pages (pp. 849-872)
63. “…goddess of power,” 30 pages (pp. 872-902)
64. “1963,” 15 pages (pp. 902-917)
65. “November 22,” 4 pages (pp. 917-921)
66. “Symbol,” 11 pages (pp. 921-932)
He opens on Jackie’s work in restoring the White House – through consultation, legislation, and fund raising – and reveals her influence in enlivening individual states to jumpstart their own preservation efforts. Fifteen pages later he segues into her
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