What Jackie Kennedy Told Pen Pal Priest
Trove of letters former first lady sent to priest are set to be auctioned.
May 13, 2014— -- A trove of newly-discovered letters sent from Jacqueline Kennedy to an Irish priest over a 14-year time period are providing insight into the life of a woman who was intensely private but captivated the world with her style and charisma.
The nearly three dozen letters -- sent between 1950 and 1964 to Father Joseph Leonard, an Irish priest -- will be auctioned in Ireland next month by Sheppard's Irish Auction House.
The previously unpublished letters cover everything from a young Jacqueline Bouvier's courtship with the future president to his assassination in 1963, according to the Sheppard's website.
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Here's how Kennedy described three pivotal moments in her life to the priest, according to the Irish Times, which said it was granted permission to print only excerpts of the letters.
Love and Doubt
Before she married the future president, a young Jacqueline Bouvier expressed concern in a letter that her future husband may be cut from the same cloth as her father, John Vernou Bouvier.
"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," she wrote, according to the Irish Times.
Loneliness
"Maybe I’m just dazzled and picture myself in a glittering world of crowned heads and Men of Destiny -- and not just a sad little housewife," she wrote in a 1953 letter. "That world can be very glamorous from the outside -- but if you’re in it -- and you' re lonely – it could be a Hell."
However, the newlywed wrote that she loved being married, "much more than I did even in the beginning."
Questioning God
After her husband's 1963 assassination, Kennedy wrote to Father Leonard that she felt "bitter" and was trying to find some semblance of comfort in her Catholic faith.
"I have to think there is a God – or I have no hope of finding Jack again," she wrote.
She cheekily added, "God will have a bit of explaining to do to me if I ever see Him."