Letters that Jacqueline Kennedy wrote to a priest in her younger years are up for auction through Sheppard’s of Ireland.
Letters that Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy wrote to a priest in her younger years are up for auction through Sheppard’s Irish Auction House in Ireland
There are 33 of them, spanning from 1950, shortly after she and the priest met and prior to her 1953 marriage to John F. Kennedy, to 1964, the year the priest passed away.
In them, she reveals her deepest and most vulnerable feelings, many of which she never showed during her very public life.
The recipient was Father Joseph Leonard, whom Jacqueline had met on a trip to Ireland.
She began writing and continued to do so throughout her courtship by John F. Kennedy, their marriage, her time as first lady, and the devastating 1963
assassination of her husband.
In one of the final letters, dated January of 1964 and written on black-lined mourning paper, she admits she felt ‘bitter towards God’, but was trying to resolve those feelings.
Her motivation to do so, she wrote, was her children.
The two also exchanged several newspaper clippings, photographs, and Christmas cards, which are included in the lot as well.
The auction house is promoting the letters as the ‘unpublished autobiography of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy’. They’re expected to bring 1.6 million dollars.
