Cannes, France, 1953. The Côte d'Azur is experiencing a moment of splendor after the Second World War. A few years ago, the famous film festival has been held there, which has put the town back on the world map. And there, that summer, two lovers will meet and live a furtive love story; He had only a few weeks left to marry his fiancée, Jacqueline Bouvier. Then their names were famous, but in no case in the projection of now. Swedish and American, they were the aristocrat Gunilla von Post and Senator John F. Kennedy. Von Post was just 21 when she met Kennedy, 36. She had been educated in cooking and hospitality in Lausanne, Switzerland, and was then on the French Riviera to improve the language. Now, six decades after that, their romance has been exposed in the eyes of the world.
The letters that Von Post and Kennedy sent each other go up for public auction through a Boston house called RR that has decided to sell them. It is a complete letter and two partial ones, eight pages in total, dated a few years after that 1953 meeting in France, and in which information is exchanged and appointments are made. Its context is better understood by referring to a memoir called
Love, Jack
that Von Post published in 1997 and where he revealed this little-known romance. The letters that are now being auctioned were his property until he died in 2011. They have been priced at $ 2,500 (almost 2,100 euros) and are estimated to exceed 30,000 (25,000 euros).
Some of the letters written by John F. Kennedy during his time as Senator from Massachusetts, dating from 1955 and 1956, addressed to Gunilla von Post.RR AUCTION
The first epistle that is sold is one of the partial ones and dates from 1955. She had sent him a photograph of her earlier and he asked her to translate some words in Swedish that had been written about her.
"You look great and happy," he tells her.
In addition, there they close a meeting after that French summer.
He was then a senator from Massachusetts, a position he held from January 1953 to December 1960, when he was elected president.
“It seems that the Congress will not end until August 5, so I will leave in the
United States
, which arrives in Le Havre [France] on August 10, and should be in Sweden on the 12th. Where am I going?
Send me the address of Bastaad where you will be ”.
Gunilla Von Post https://t.co/3ra3lgBhBf pic.twitter.com/sfx3VIOtKY
- JFK Video (@JFKVideos) February 9, 2018
Indeed, the appointment took place and Kennedy and Von Post spent almost a week together "consummating their relationship, in Sweden, in August 1955," according to the auction house based on the Von Post book. A passion that, at least she, remembered for a long time, since in her diaries the following year she stated that Kennedy was making great efforts to separate from Jackie Kennedy and thus reunite with the aristocrat and take her with him to the United States. that was frustrated by the senator's political career, as well as by the strong influence of his father. Also influenced by the hard blow of the abortion that Jackie suffered in 1956, which affected both lovers, and the new pregnancy that she lived in 1956 (and from which her daughter Caroline was born).
However, the fact that Gunilla von Post could not make her way to the United States and be officially Kennedy's girlfriend or wife did not imply that he was resigning from her company. Something that proves the second letter, dated Hyannis Port, a coastal town in Massachusetts where the Kennedy family used to spend long periods of time. It is signed "Jack." It has been a year since they last saw each other. The letter starts with a half sentence, but one that is clearly understood: “... arriving and maybe you could make a hole for me. I am eager to see you. Isn't it a while after so many months? As he tells Von Post: "We may at first seem strangers to each other, but we are not, and I'm sure it will work and I think it's worth it." The letter, sealed in Hyannis on August 1, 1956,It is addressed to “Mrs. Anders Ekman”, referring to Gunilla's married name, who married the Swedish landowner of that name.
Some of the letters written by John F. Kennedy during his time as Senator from Massachusetts, dating from 1955 and 1956, addressed to Gunilla von Post.RR Auction
The longest letter dates from 1956, and is a farewell with touches of humor. "Thank you very much for your letter. I have to say that it saddens me to know that you are not coming to America after all and marrying the farmer. Thank God it is not the one we drove in Sweden last summer ”, jokes the then senator. In addition, despite the new situation of her lover, Kennedy affirms. “I was planning to come back next summer to see you… and now this happens. In any case, let me know what you are going to do. If you don't get married, come, I'd like to see you. I had a wonderful time with you last summer. It is a memory full of light in my life, you are wonderful and I miss you ”, the politician writes in his text, which goes on sale with its original envelope. According to the auction house, this is the only known letter from John F.Kennedy in which he shows his love for another woman while he is married, despite having had a multitude of lovers, from Marilyn Monroe to Audrey Hepburn.
The lovers would only see each other on one more occasion: in 1958 during a gala party in New York, at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, and practically by chance. She was already pregnant with her first child, Andrea; then he would have a second, Rosina. What they did not know was that their lives would be separated forever: the aristocrat's husband would die two years later, in 1960, while he was piloting a plane. The president would be assassinated in 1963. In the end, her story could have come true, because she moved to the United States, to Florida, after marrying an IBM executive. But it was too late.