Peter CostelloWriting history about living people is a perilous trade
The matter of the letters of Jacqueline Kennedy, later Madame Onassis, to her Irish spiritual confidant has passed through the High Court and is now the subject of private settlement.
The case, which attracted international interest, still promises to provide nice legal entanglements. Certainly it reveals the very strange ideas current among otherwise well-informed people in positions of authority about the difference between mere Property and Intellectual Property, as copyright is nowadays called.
Indeed, we understand from a source close to the matter, that the college was advised from the start that the letters should be given as a gift to Caroline Kennedy. But professional advisors of a different kind suggested otherwise. Up to this only parties in Ireland have been enjoined in the dispute. We have yet to hear fully from any of the powerful US lawyers customarily employed by such
pre-eminent American families as the Kennedys.
It would not be appropriate to comment on the present case in detail. But there is much to be learned about how the Kennedys go about these things, and about the perils that face authors who are involved in writing, not so much about the great and the good, as the rich and the powerful. The categories do not always coincide. Writing history about living people is a perilous trade.
Many will have read in the past, or at least heard about, William Manchester’s epic book The Death of a President, published in 1967. This was a full account of the events surrounding that grim day in Dallas in November 1963 which Manchester, a young historian admired by the president, was invited to write.
What is perhaps forgotten by many is that this important book was the cause of an extraordinary amount of unhappy dispute, which at one point threatened the very life of the author, who fell ill with pneumonia, his health broken down by the pressure of events, the bad faith of others and the failure of communications between the interested parties.
He himself has described the affair in chilling detail in the lead essay that gives its name to his book Controversy and other Essays in Journalism 1950-1975 (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1976).
He describes how he was engaged to write the book in his personal professional capacity, not as an employee of the Kennedys. The family were eager to forestall a popular book by Walter Lord (author of A Night to Remember, about the Titanic, The Day Lincoln Died and also The Day Jesus Died). Moreover controversy was already raging over the Warren Commission Report.
But Jackie Kennedy in truth did not really want any book at all, let alone a detailed historical one. If there was to be a book, she did not want anyone to make money out her tragedy. It was eventually arranged that all the Manchester’s royalties from the book's sale would go to the Kennedy Library ñ though when they were sent by his publisher they received the minimum of thanks.
Serialisation rights
Manchester was left with the serialisation rights, but when these turned out to be worth more than the Kennedys had expected, efforts were made to cut his text and to reduce the number of articles in the serialisation. Manchester’s sharp political assessments of such people as Lyndon Johnston were also a problem. Robert Kennedy’s friends felt that criticism of the man who had become president might harm Robert’s chance of running for that office in 1968. Political expediency is never a friend of truth.
No-one emerged from this row with credit except the author. It damaged Robert Kennedy. But most of all it damaged the reputation of Jackie Kennedy. At one point she told Manchester that anyone who opposed her would be seen as a rat. She could only fall from grace if she “ran off with Eddie Fisher”.
She did not run off with the much married Eddie Fisher. Instead, in October 1968, after the assassination of Robert Kennedy, she became Madame Aristotle Onassis, which was just as bad in the eyes of her millions of fans.
The moral of the story? Tangling with the Kennedys and their associates can seriously damage your health – and wealth. The Vincentians might have been wiser to heed the lessons of history.