BOSTON (AP) – Love letters that John F. Kennedy wrote to a Swedish lover a few years after his marriage to Jacqueline Bouvier will be auctioned.
“You are wonderful and I miss you,” Kennedy scribbled at the end of a letter dated February 1956 to the aristocrat Gunilla von Post, whom he had met on the French Riviera a few weeks before his 1953 wedding to Bouvier.
Kennedy was a Democratic U.S. Senator from Massachusetts at the time, and the handwritten letters were written on Senate letterhead. He just signed one: “Jack.”
The letters, which were submitted for online bidding by Boston-based RR Auction through May 12, underscore the 35th President’s reputation as a womanizer long before he won the White House in 1960. Kennedy was murdered in Dallas on November 22, 1963.
Von Post, who died in Palm Beach, Florida in 2011, wrote a 1997 memoir entitled “Love, Jack” about her relationship with Kennedy.
A letter from 1955 began: “Dear Gunilla, I have to say that you looked good and happy in the photo you sent me at the regatta.” Kennedy then outlined his plans after the break of the congress in early August this one Year to travel to Europe, and wrote: “I will be in Sweden on the 12th. Where am I going. Send me your address in Bastaad, where you should be.”
In the 1956 letter, Kennedy regretted that von Post would not travel to the United States as he had hoped.
“I have to say I was sad to learn that you are not coming to the US after all,” he wrote.
“If you don’t get married, come by as I would like to see you. I had a wonderful time with you last summer. It’s a bright reminder of my life, “wrote Kennedy. “I’m curious about you. Isn’t it strange after all these months? Maybe it will be a little difficult at first as we will be strangers – but not strangers – and I’m sure everything will work and I’ll think so anyway. It is a long way to Gunilla – it’s worth it. “
“This is the only Kennedy letter we have offered that shows open affection for another woman during their marriage,” the auction house said in a statement.
In her memoir, von Post reported on Kennedy’s efforts to end his marriage to Bouvier and bring her to the United States. In the end, the future president’s hopes of doing so were thwarted by his authoritarian father, Joseph P. Kennedy. JFK’s own political ambitions; and the future first lady’s miscarriage in 1955 and pregnancy in 1956.
Von Post and Kennedy only saw each other once more: a chance encounter at a gala at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City in 1958 when the Swede was pregnant with their first child.
The auctioned letters came from the estate of Post, said RR Auction.
Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed in any way without permission.
