Jacqueline Kennedy and David Ormsby Gore met frequently during John F. Kennedy's presidency, even taking shared vacations with their spouses. But by 1967, both were widowed and bonding over their shared loneliness. A year later, their relationship had turned romantic, at least on one side. Ormsby Gore—a close friend of JFK and a former British ambassador to the US—proposed marriage to Jacqueline, who declined and wed Aristotle Onassis instead, reports the New York Times.
In one of the 19 letters the depth of that relationship is revealed for the first time in the wording of the note. In the letter, which accompanied a book of Shelley's poems from JFK’s library presented to Lord Harlech by Mrs Kennedy on his birthday in May 1964, she says: “I wish I could give you the most precious thing that belonged to him - as precious as your friendship was to him - but nothing tangible could ever express that - so please accept this with all my love. Jackie.”
One letter, from November 1967, shows that Ormsby-Gore wanted to marry Kennedy, but it appears that his long-term association with the Kennedy family was one reason why she rejected him. The letter was written by Kennedy on stationary that belonged to Onassis’ yacht.
“If ever I can find some healing and some comfort — it has to be with somebody who is not part of all my world of past and pain,” she wrote. “I can find that now — if the world will let us.”
In the letter, she wrote that she saw Ormsby-Gore more as a brother. “You are like my beloved beloved brother — and mentor — and the only original spirit I know — as you were to Jack.”
There was speculation back in 1967 about Orsmby-Gore’s relationship with Kennedy, suggesting that the two were romantically involved. In December 1967, the Chicago Tribune reported on the bond between the two in a profile of the diplomat.
“I think people who knew David and Jackie suddenly realized they both were alone in life with this incredible tie between them,” a friend of Kennedy’s told the Tribune at the time. “So, as time passed, a few friends sort of said, ‘Gee, wouldn’t it be wonderful if someday they could get together, make one another happy again, fall in love.'”
Before that profile was published, Ormsby-Gore’s wife, Sylvia Thomas, died in a car crash. In response to he wrote to her after Syliva’s death, Kennedy replied, “Your last letter was such a cri de coeur of loneliness — I would do anything to take that anguish from you. You want to patch the wounds & match the loose pairs — but you can’t because your life won’t turn out that way.”
In a draft letter, Ormsby Gore described how his "pathetic plans" for the pair had been dashed. "As for your photograph I weep when I look at it," he wrote. After marrying Onassis, Jacqueline replied, "We have known so much & shared & lost so much together. I hope that bond of love and pain will never be cut." A rep for Bonhams says it's rare to find items with "this quantity of insight into Jackie’s personal life and that level of intimacy." The letters, along with Ormsby Gore's White House pass from the day after JFK's assassination, are among several family heirlooms that will be sold to pay for the upkeep of the Ormsby Gore family's historic home in Wales, reports the Telegraph. The auction is set for March 29 2017.
On Lord Harlech’s death in 1985, Jackie attended his funeral in Oswestry, along with Kennedy’s younger brother Teddy.