Jacqueline Kennedy confided her innermost thoughts to an Irish priest that began when she was 21 years old and he was 73.
The future first lady began writing the priest, Rev. Joseph Leonard, after meeting him during a visit to Ireland in 1950.
NBC News reports that “Over the next 14 years, in a neat, back-slanting hand, she wrote of dating and marriage and of her ultimate heartbreak. She wrote freely of how she felt, a departure from the controlled image of previously released letters and books.”
The Irish Times elaborated that:
“Her letters acknowledged the crucial importance of the correspondence and she explained, at the end of one especially long and frank letter about her love life: ‘It’s so good in a way to write all this down and get it off your chest – because I never do really talk about it with anyone – but poor you has to read it!’”
The letters, 33 in all, are now up for auction in June by Sheppard’s Auction House of Ireland and are expected to fetch between €800k to €1.2 million (from $1.1 to $1.64 million) according to the auction notice published by Sheppard’s.
This long and close correspondence provides unique insight in a private life that Jackie jealously guarded over the years, with Sheppard’s saying that the letters amount to “the unpublished autobiography of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.”
Sheppard’s writes on their website:
“Sheppard’s is proud to have been entrusted with selling thirty-three letters written by Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy to Fr Joseph Leonard, a Dublin, Ireland based priest. Written during the key years 1950 – 1964, the unpublished personal correspondence covers seminal events that include her engagement to Senator Kennedy and his assassination in 1963.”
Although Jackie worked for several publishing houses in her later years, as The Irish Times reports:
When Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis died in May 1994 her obituary in the New York Times (by Robert D McFadden) described her as “a quintessentially private person, poised and glamorous but shy and aloof”. She “never created an oral history” and, noted McFadden, “her silence about her past, especially about the Kennedy years and her marriage to the president, was always something of a mystery.”
The auctioneer, Philip Sheppard, writes in the notice:
“We are thrilled at Sheppard’s to offer what is in effect the unpublished autobiograpy of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. The collection – comprised mostly of manuscript letters – reveals a fascinating insight into America’s most famous First Lady and are an unique opportunity to acquire Kennedy-related unpublished primary source material that has never before been offered on the open market.”
The Irish Times notes that “Jackie seems to have found a safety valve in the letters to express sentiments that might not have been appreciated by the Kennedy clan, such as a wickedly succinct description of her mother-in-law, the matriarchal Rose Kennedy: “I don’t think Jack’s mother is too bright – and she would rather say a rosary than read a book.”
As NBC reports, according to Philip Sheppard, “What comes though from the letters is Jacqueline’s obvious love for Ireland, which pre-dated her engagement and marriage to John F. Kennedy, but there’s also wonderful insight into their courtship and into the character of the man who would become president.”
Of John F. Kennedy, she wrote: “He’s like my father in a way — loves the chase and is bored with the conquest — and once married needs proof he’s still attractive, so flirts with other women and resents you. I saw how that nearly killed Mummy.”
The Kennedys married in 1953. After a year, Mrs. Kennedy wrote: “I love being married much more than I did even in the beginning.”
Jackie wrote to the priest in 1964 after her husband was assassinated that
“God will have some explaining to do to me if I ever see him. I have to think there is a God — or I have no hope of finding Jack again.”
You can watch a news clip from The Irish Times by clicking here, and you can watch a short overview by Newsy, below.
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