Long-lost love letters written by Jackie Kennedy to a British aristocrat are about to be auctioned.
Bonhams auction house in London is getting ready to sell the letters which have lain undiscovered for 30 years.
The letters were written in the late 1960s to a former British ambassador to the United States, David Ormsby-Gore
. Photo: Wikicommons
One of the hand-written notes explains her decision to turn down his proposal of marriage in favour of one from the Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis.
The letters have been discovered at the family home of the Ormsby-Gores in Wales. David Ormsby-Gore died in the mid-80s after being seriously injured in a car crash.
Bonhams' head of books and manuscripts, Matthew Haley, told Morning Report it was an amazing find.
“You rarely get an opportunity like this to look into Jackie Kennedy’s inner world. She hated press intrusion and here we have her inner most thoughts on someone whom she nearly married.”
David Ormsby-Gore Photo: Wikicommons
In the letters she said Ormsby-Gore was like a “beloved brother” to her.
But she said he was too associated with her “past of pain.”
The Kennedys and the Ormsby-Gores were close in the early 1960s, with President Kennedy and the first Lady often spending weekends with Ormsby -Gore and his wife Sylvia.
When Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 Ormsby-Gore was a source of comfort to the First Lady. In 1967 his own wife was killed in a car accident.
“They were a source of support to each other, they went on a couple of holidays together and had a very close friendship - and probably more,” Haley says.
The correspondence was locked up in two British parliamentary dispatch boxes, Haley says.
Ormsby-Gore went on to be Conservative Party leader of the House of Lords.
“Bonhams had to cut open these boxes to retrieve the contents because the keys had been lost,” Hayley says.
Bonhams expects the letters to fetch more the $200,000.
