By Mark Ellis
NEWLY discovered letters reveal Jacqueline Kennedy’s thoughts about her marriage to President John F Kennedy, their life in the White House, and her bitterness toward God after his assassination.
The spectacular historical archive of her 14-year-long correspondence with Father Joseph Leonard – a Vincentian priest who lived in Dublin – will be sold at an auction in Ireland next month, according to The Irish Times.
In the heretofore unpublished letters, Jackie tells Father Leonard how Kennedy, — then a rising star in American politics — was consumed by ambition “like Macbeth.”
In a letter Jackie penned in July 1952, she said her time with JFK had given her “an amazing insight on politicians – they really are a breed apart,” according to The Irish Times.
She described with some delight that she was in love with “the son of the ambassador to England,” but expressed concern he might prove to be like her father, John 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.”
In one particularly revealing letter written in 1953 — when she was just 23 — she confided to Father Leonard: “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 . . . That world can be very glamorous from the outside – but if you’re in it – and you’re lonely – it could be a Hell.”
But after a year of marriage she wrote to her Irish confidante: “I love being married much more than I did even in the beginning.”
After JFK’s tragic assassination in 1963, she confided to Father Leonard how she became “bitter against God” and struggled to find comfort in her faith. “I have to think there is a God – or I have no hope of finding Jack again,” she wrote, according to The Irish Times. Godreports
