5.17.2014

JACQUELINE KENNEDY PAPERS: SHE WANTED THE GLITTER AND POWER


Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy’s correspondence with Father Joseph Leonard will be sold at Sheppard’s Irish Auction House in Laois, Ireland, on June 10. (Courtesy of Sheppard’s Irish Auction House)

Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis did put instructions for her personal papers etc. in her will. However these letters were not her property. They have been kept under wraps for many decades, and I for one, would like to read them. Here is what Jackie put in her will regarding her private letters.

F. I give and bequeath all copyright interests owned by me at the time of my death in my personal papers, letters or other writings by me, including any royalty or other rights with respect thereto, to my children who survive me, in equal shares. I request, but do not direct, my children to respect my wish for privacy with respect to such paper, letters and writings and, consistent with that wish, to take whatever action is warranted to prevent the display, publication or distribution, in whole or in part, of these papers, letters and writings. - See more


I have always wondered if Jackie went into her marriage with John Kennedy with her eyes open or was she a victim of the Joe Kennedy political machine. These letters answer that....Jackie knew exactly what she was doing and why.  She chose the glamour over being a bored housewife.


Not naive at all in her choice of husband

Jackie wrote candidly of her concerns that JFK might stray. "He's like my father in a way," she wrote to the priest in the early days of her romance with the future U.S. president. "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 see how that nearly killed Mummy."


Kennedy also confided how their relationship gave her "an amazing insight on politicians – they really are a breed apart." And she described him as being consumed by ambition "like Macbeth."

Still, she admitted, the power was intoxicating. "Maybe I'm just dazzled and picture myself in a glittering world of crowned heads and Men of Destiny," she wrote in 1953, "and not just a sad little housewife."

Well she could never have been accused of being that little housewife....Read more on this topic

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