First A Young Lady
The eyes are dark and wide set, and in most of the photographs they look directly and unflinchingly at the camera. The face is generally serious and unsmiling, but not unfriendly, and radiates poise, confidence, and intelligence.
Strikingly, the face of Jacqueline Bouvier as a child and young woman is the precise face, except for the trace of some added years and a more cultivated beauty, that glamorous Jackie Kennedy became America's first lady and a global celebrity. Later, it would be the face of courage, in full view of a grieving world, when she instantly became the most recognized widow on earth.
The early black-and-white photographs are on display at Clinton Academy in East Hampton, in a show titled "Young Jackie on the South Fork" that was organized by the East Hampton Historical Society. They were taken by Belt Morgan, considered the dean of high-society photographers, who worked in the Hamptons, Palm Beach, Newport, Saratoga, and other fashionable locales from the 1920s to the 1980s. Morgan could hardly have guessed at the destiny of the self-assured girl he photographed in the 1930s and early 1940s, but what he captured suggests a person quite out of the ordinary, even in her predictable social sphere in that time and place. For that reason, the exhibition is provocative. You can't help wondering if you see any foreshadowing, in the resolute, pensive look of this child in her jodhpurs and tweed jacket, of the woman who would later captivate the country, whose images were some of the most iconic of her generation.
"Where we had options, we were able to really decide which look, which expression, which movement was telling a story we wanted to share," says Jill Malusky, executive director of the East Hampton Historical Society, who chose the photos for the show. "Because Be1t photographed her frequently, there was an acceptance, a familiarity, and she let her guard down. He captures some really playful expressions. It was said by teachers that young Jackie was spirited and mischievous, and you can see that look in a few images. I'd like to think this roguish spirit has a strength to it, and over time, she cultivated it into the grace and reserve we see in her later images-that sort of self preservation takes real power."
Morgan's photos in the show and in the related book Young Jackie: Photographs of Jacqueline Bouvier reveal the moneyed, privileged world in which his subject grew up. With the encouragement of her socialite mother, Morgan began photographing Jackie when she was 3 years old for the social pages of local newspapers, then continued shooting her at horse shows, dog shows, and parties. Most of the pictures, particularly the earliest, are equestrian, showing her at 4 and 5 years old on a pony or horse, in riding gear, competing at various shows or mounted on her favorite horse, Danseuse. Riding, jumping, and fox hunting became lifelong passions for Jackie. And when she isn't with a horse in the Morgan photos, she is often with a dog. She appears marginally more comfortable and happy with the animals than with the adults around her.
Jacqueline Lee Bouvier was born in Southampton Hospital on July 28, 1929, and continued to summer in or visit the Hamptons for years. Both sets of her grandparents, the Bouviers and the Lees, newly wealthy Catholic families with newly invented aristocratic lineages, had homes in East Hampton. Her parents were married on Buell Lane in St. Philomena's Catholic Church, now called Church of the Most Holy Trinity. Most of Jackie's parents' and grandparents' generations are buried in East Hampton.
