COVERING the Kennedy campaign in the Wisconsin primary last April, TIME Washington Correspondent Anne Chamberlin wore black tights under her skirt--the sort of couture that back in 1940 earned her a full-page picture in a national magazine as "the worst-dressed girl in Vassar" (a portrait later published in a book entitled The Revolt of American Women). Her fellow reporters on the Wisconsin hustings--mostly male--taunted her about the costume, but the principal subject of her reportage, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, who is one of the best-dressed women in the world, took a different view. "She loyally told me," recalls Reporter Chamberlin, "that it looked like a perfectly sensible costume."

From Wisconsin to last week, when she finished a major part of the reporting for this week's cover story, Anne Chamberlin has shared important moments with the new First Lady. Last July in Hyannisport, she was present when Jacqueline tuned in a borrowed television set to watch the Democratic Convention. Wrote Correspondent Chamberlin: "Jackie settled into a huge flowered arm chair, draped a striped beach towel over her knees, and spread out a vast clutter of paint tubes, palette, brushes, a glass of water, a glass of rose wine (left from dinner), a cup of coffee, a jarful of L & M cigarettes, and pulled an immense easel, with a half-started painting*, to a spot between her and the TV screen. When something was said that caught her interest, she would peer around the painting for a minute, then go back to her art with furious concentration. Occasionally she would comment, without looking at the screen. We were in a world far removed from the Los Angeles arena."

A language major at Vassar ('42), Anne Chamberlin speaks French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish, plus a smidgen of Arabic retained from a World War II stint with the U.S. Office of War Information in Cairo. She worked seven years for the LIFE Paris bureau before joining TIME in 1958. Since then, her assignments have included covering facets of the U.S. tours of Frol Kozlov, Nikita Khrushchev, Sekou Toure and Charles de Gaulle.

All this was mere preparation for what she regards as the toughest confrontation of her career--with Caroline Kennedy, then 2 1/2, in Hyannisport last summer. "A true Kennedy," Reporter Chamberlin discovered, "she likes to test your mettle by setting you some impossible challenge, then sitting back to watch you disentangle yourself. In any case, she put me in charge of a fast-melting frozen custard while she went to find one of her kittens. I got frozen custard on the rug, in my shoes, on the dog, on the front door and part of the terrace before I was rescued. Now, when I see her, Caroline gives me that look you get from people who have taken your measure and found you a button or two short."

* For the finished painting, see NATIONAL

AFFAIRS.

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