Two love letters signed by the late US president, John F. Kennedy, to a crush, Swedish aristocrat Gunilla von Post, have been put up for auction at the Boston-based RR Auction house.
The letters are dated 1955 and 1956, and are both penned on United States Senate letterhead.
In the 1955 letter, signed "Jack", Kennedy expressed his eagerness to meet again with von Post, after the two met by chance in Cannes in 1953.
"I am anxious to see you. Is it not strange after all these months? Perhaps at first it shall be a little difficult as we shall be strangers—but not strangers—and I am sure it will all work and I shall think that though it is a long way to Gunilla—it is worth it", the letter said.
In the next letter, Kennedy particularly addressed the news of von Post being about to marry.
"If you don't marry come over as I should like to see you. I had a wonderful time last summer with you. It is a bright memory of my life—you are wonderful and I miss you", he wrote in the 1956 letter.
Von Post broke off contact with the American politician after her engagement, later documenting her connection with Kennedy in a 1997 memoir titled "Love, Jack", referencing his signature in one of the letters. According to the memoir, Kennedy spent a happy week in Sweden in August 1955 and was purportedly making efforts to end his marriage and bring von Post to the United States.
The two only managed to see each other one more time, in 1958, at a gala at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, while von Post was pregnant with her first child.
The letters now up for auction were found in her possession after her death in 2011 and were said by the auction house to originate from her estate.
