Twenty years after her death, letters former first lady Jackie Kennedy Onassis sent to an Irish priest have surfaced.
The letters contain 14 years' worth of her thoughts on her marriage to President John F. Kennedy, his assassination and life inside the White House. Michael Parsons of The Irish Times explains the letters' origins.
"She came to Dublin with her stepbrother and looked up a family friend, Father Leonard ... and they began this extraordinary correspondence when she left Ireland." (Via The Irish Times)
The correspondence continued until Father Leonard died in 1964. The letters give a deeper perspective into what was going through Jackie's mind before, during and just after her husband's presidency.
As The Washington Post points out, Jackie worried about her husband's womanizing. In one letter, she wrote about "her early fears that the president might be like her father, who '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.'"
The New York Daily News focuses on another letter in which Jackie expressed her frustration over her husband's death, writing, "God will have a bit of explaining to do to me if I ever see him."
There are 33 letters in total that will be auctioned off with 21 lots of associated correspondence and photographs.
They'll go up for sale June 10 at Sheppard's Irish Auction House in Durrow and are expected to go for nearly 1.2 million euros — about $1.6 million U.S. (Via Sheppard's Irish Auction House)
Sheppard's did not provide any information about the seller of the letters, and there have been no reports the Kennedy family has attempted to contact the auction house.
