There is always room for another biography about Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, the graced and spirited legend of contemporary America.
If it doesn't come with the promise of previously unpublished photos, there's always the chance that it might offer some insight into the mysterious beauty of the former first lady and heroine of a national tragedy."Jacqueline Bouvier: An Intimate Memoir" is written by her cousin, John H. Davis, who uses carefully worded, polite prose to display more than a few skeletons in their shared family closet.
The tenor of Davis' exploration into what shaped Jackie into the great woman she became is tinged by a static reminiscent of sibling rivalry. It is difficult to scan even the book's chapter titles without sensing a quiet, sardonic seething.
Davis' book ends at Jackie's enchanted wedding to John F. Kennedy in 1953 - perhaps to conclude on a high note, after having played so many low ones.
The reader is told that the dashing "Black Jack" Bouvier was a devoted father and a philandering drunk; that Jackie's mother, Janet Lee Bouvier Auchincloss, was a chilly, social-climbing stage mother-type who pushed her into all the best circles; and that Jackie's sister Lee was a devoted, sympathetic ear who faded at the edge of her older sister's spotlight.
Davis describes the awe Jackie must have felt after reading Grampy Jack's self-published Bouvier family history, "Our Forebears," which told of a knighthood granted to one gentleman Bouvier by Louis XIV and of many other French honors bestowed upon the family.
But Davis counters that vision with his own research:
"I discovered that both the Bouviers and the Vernous came from humble petite-bourgeoisie stock, that the founder of the family, Michael Bouvier, hailed from a family of carpenters and cabinetmakers and that his wife Louise's father, John Vernou, had been listed in the `Philadelphia Directory' as a `hairdresser' and later as a `tobacconist'. . . . These discoveries did not endear me to contemporary Bouviers.
"The point of all this is that the `fact' of one's ancestry can make no difference in one's self-image if one `believes' since the age of 10 that one is a born aristocrat."
Davis' memoir is entertaining, a guilty pleasure despite its solicitous tone. The reader who looks beyond Davis' soap-operatics might see Jackie as a force of brilliance transcending a bitter vision.