The Fabulous Bouvier Sisters by Sam Kashner

Author:Sam Kashner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-08-05T16:00:00+00:00

9

This Side of Paradise: Return to New York

I felt this terrible claustrophobia . . . these trees closing in on me. I longed for the sea.

—LEE

If you are a good mother it does not matter much what else you have done.

—JACKIE

Back in London with Stas, Lee missed Peter Beard terribly and wrote him passionate letters. They would meet again in February of 1972, when Lee decided to accompany Stas on a safari in Kenya, something she normally would not have done. She arrived a week ahead of Stas, traveling with a friend, Alan Jay Lerner’s fifth wife, Karen Lerner, who acted as a beard, giving Lee an opportunity to spend time with her lover.

Despite its humble name, Hog Farm attracted many aristocrats and luminaries. Stas arrived with Baron Ashcombe, with whom he had been on many shoots, and they embarked on the safari with Lee trailing behind. Lee, however, managed to sneak back to camp for an assignation with Peter. She resolved to end her marriage to Stas, yet the deception continued for several more weeks. After the Kenyan safari, Peter stayed with the Radziwills at their London house for several days, and then joined them at a villa in Barbados, lent to them by Baron Ashcombe. Soon Jackie and her two children arrived. If Stas knew that Lee and Peter were in love, he did not let on, nor did he make a scene. Instead, he flew to London after their Barbados idyll, while Lee and her children accompanied Jackie and her children to New York, on a private plane owned by Onassis.

And that was how Lee’s thirteen-year marriage ended.

Lee had had enough, not just of her passionless marriage to Stas—whom she still admired and loved in her way—but of her life in London and at Turville Grange. She was lonely. She was homesick. She no longer wanted to live as an expat. She wanted to spend more time with her sister in Manhattan, and in the Hamptons by the ocean that had always nourished her spirit. And she wanted to be with Peter Beard. She was thirty-nine years old, she had recently undergone a hysterectomy, and she felt strongly that it was time for a major change in her life.

Perhaps Stas was not surprised when Lee left, but it broke his heart.

* * *

BACK IN MANHATTAN, Lee continued her love affair with Peter Beard. One night, he invited Lee and Jackie to dine with him in Chinatown, where he introduced the sisters to Andy Warhol, notorious for his entourage of drag queens and dwellers in Manhattan’s drug-infused demimonde. While Peter took endless Polaroid shots throughout the dinner, Lee no doubt relished being in the company of the avant-garde artist, whose unconventional appearance and lifestyle belied his serious gifts as an artist, and the profound, game-changing effect his art and ideas would have on contemporary arts and culture. Lee was usually more open to new ideas, especially in realms of art and design, than Jackie, who was at heart a traditionalist.

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