Showing posts with label hugh d auchincloss. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hugh d auchincloss. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Lessons in Nobility - A Real Downton Abbey Story

Now Available on Amazon 


Who wouldn’t want a fairy godmother? They would lavish you with gifts, of course, but more importantly they would teach you how to be a better person by bringing out your inner nobility. Lessons in Nobility is about how a very real fairy godmother changed the author’s life from a self-destructive one to a life of noble aspirations and wonderful achievements. 

While still a teenager, Robert Westover was introduced to his “fairy godmother” who, like the plot of so many Russian novels, was a delightfully eccentric countess. Countess Olga de Chravpovitsky was raised in the court of Tsar Nicholas II. She was a playmate of the legendary Grand Duchess Anastasia and at one point even encountered the mysterious Siberian monk, Rasputin. 

Despite the horrors of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Olga’s family managed to escape. Exiled in America, she became a relative (through marriage) to Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy and helped influence the former First Lady’s fascination with imperial Russia—a fact known by few. But all these things were just the baubles of a life of any well-born person with great connections. What made Olga special was the nobility she expressed in nearly everything she did—and how she taught it to Robert. 

So how did a middle class kid from LA become the “honorary godson” to such a regal and highborn woman? That will be for the reader to decide. Some will see it as pure luck while others will see it as fate. But, no matter the conclusion, the story of how Robert was taught to be noble is one that everyone can gain from. 

The reader will walk away with a better understanding of what being noble is and how they can apply these lessons in their own lives. Sometimes dramatic and often moving, Lessons in Nobility has a timeless appeal. 

Never before Published Insight into Jackie Kennedy’s Life 
As an exciting addition to the book, the author has included an article he wrote about the relationship between Jackie Kennedy Onassis and Hugh D. “Yusha” Auchincloss III, Olga's newphew. Step brother and sister, Yusha and Jackie shared a love that lasted their entire lives. 

Mr. Westover had unique access to Yusha Auchincloss and interviewed him on several occasions at Hammersmith Farm in Newport, Rhode Island. The interviews, in the twilight of Mr. Auchincloss' life, reveal just how much love he and Jackie had for each other. 

Robert Hudson Westover is a professional writer of articles, humorous columns, and was the subject of many national news stories including ABC World News Tonight (2000), The New York Times (1998/2003) and the BBC (1998/2000). His "Lord Westover" blog was nominated to the Washington Post's "Best Blog Award" by its readers and mentioned in the Christian Science Monitor. Mr. Westover is co-author of the well-received “S.S. United States – Fastest Ship in the World” (Turner). He and his husband, Gay rights activist Tom Fulton, live in Virginia.

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

The Last Knight of JFK’s Camelot has Died

A tribute to Hugh D. "Yusha" Auchincloss III

By Robert Hudson Westover

I believe the course of history changed one summer evening over steak and daiquiris at the Auchincloss family estate, Merrywood, in northern Virginia. That was the night Hugh D. “Yusha” Auchincloss III entertained, with his stepsister, a young Congressman from Massachusetts.

Despite some confusion by biographers and journalists, the dinner party was Yusha’s idea (or so he told me). His stepsister, Jackie, was attempting to win over the heart of a man she had met a few months prior but was getting nowhere with him romantically. 

His name was John F. Kennedy. 

After that fateful dinner party a match was made and shortly thereafter Jaqueline Bouvier would become Mrs. John F. Kennedy and play a role in history that would put both her and her husband in the pantheon of the unforgettable personages of recorded civilization.


Yusha Auchincloss (left) with Robert H. Westover
Hammersmith Farm, Newport, RI 2013
Years later, at another dinner party, at yet another Auchincloss estate, Hammersmith Farm, in Newport, Rhode Island, Yusha had this to say about the couple he’d helped to match make,  “First, Mr. President, I want to congratulate you. You’ve been a very good president. I’m glad you had your wedding here in Newport. I’m glad you’re celebrating your wedding anniversary here with Jackie. But I have to remind you: if you hadn’t gotten engaged to Jackie, my stepsister, neither one of you would have been in the White House. And I wouldn’t have had a chance to stay in the White House. So I have to thank you for that!”

What Yusha left out in his now famous toast was that without him, JFK’s Camelot would possibly have never existed.

I call Yusha a knight of Camelot because he not only facilitated that decisive evening at Merrywood, he also became an important adviser to the future President on Middle Eastern issues right up until JFK’s assassination.

But most importantly he was a man both JFK and Jackie could confide in and never worry about a tell-all-book-deal. The First couple was not mistaken in relying on this thoughtful, gentle man. He never betrayed them. He never revealed to the press so many of their secrets. Because of this, few know that Yusha spent many an hour at a sickly John Kennedy’s bedside reading or watching TV with the future President. And, few know that it was Yusha who Jackie considered her dearest friend until her dying day. “You know how much I love you…” she wrote to him just before her death in 1994.





My relationship with Yusha developed in the twilight years of his life. His beloved aunt, a former Russian countess, Olga C. Morgan, was a dear friend of mine and someone I was so close to that I referred to her as my “honorary godmother”. Yusha and I would sit and listen to tapes that I had recorded of Olga, who had passed away in 1991(to read more about my relationship with Olga see previous blog postings below). We became instant “family” and he let me call him “uncle” because “a lot of people call me that…” he jovially commented in his charming wit that only those who knew him could understand.


My husband, Tom Fulton (left), chats with Uncle Yusha about middle east politics. The cane Yusha is holding
was given to him by President John F. Kennedy on one of his visits to Hammersmith Farm in Newport, RI

I will greatly miss my uncle Yusha and only regret I had not spent more time with him. He was the embodiment of a true Noble spirit. If the world were full of Yusha Auchincloss’ we’d have a much better place to live and, now without him, the world has one less living example of honesty and kindness.


The aspect of his passing I'm comforted by is knowing that he died peacefully at his beloved home on Hammersmith Farm—the home of his ancestors. “Behold the upright man, for the end of that man is peace.”


Monday, June 9, 2014

Robert and Tom in NYC and Newport, RI


On our recent visit to New York City we made a couple of patriotic stops along the way for both straight and Gay America! And while in Newport, Rhode Island, we stopped by Hammersmith Farm to say hello to Uncle Yusha. The weather was simply perfect and it was difficult to take a bad picture. Some of the shots in the video (click on link) came near "postcard" quality!
Check out the video at this link! Copy of NYC and Newport, RI

Enjoy!

Tom E. Fulton and Robert H. Westover


Thursday, April 10, 2014

JFK's Summer White House - A Visit to the Fountainhead of Camelot





Hammersmith Farm was JFK's Summer White House. Jackie O spent much of her childhood on the Auchincloss family estate and a young Jack Kennedy courted her there. Jack and Jackie had their wedding reception at Hammersmith Farm and the pictures they took that beautiful September day have become iconic symbols of an age of elegance and grace so unfamiliar now.   
My honorary uncle, Hugh D. "Yusha" Auchincloss, was Jackie O's older stepbrother and is the nephew of my Godmother, the Countess Olga C. Morgan. Although my relationship to the patriarch of the Auchincloss family is an honorary one, my family's history with the Countess goes back to the 1940s when, as a child, my father lived just down the street from Olga Morgan in Laguna Beach, California.
Robert Hudson Westover,
Washington, DC