JFK's love letters to Swedish beauty fetch 115,000 dollars

Mar 5, 2010, 18:56 GMT

Washington - After three weeks on the auction block, John F Kennedy's love letters to a Swedish aristocrat fetched 115,537.50 dollars, according to legendaryauctions.com.

There were 18 bids for the 11 hand-written letters plus one telegram. The documents detailed how the then playful 36-year-old senator courted the 21-year Gunilla von Post, even on the eve of his marriage to the storied Jacqueline Bouvier.

The buyer was not named by the Chicago-based auction house, which confirmed the final price Friday on its website.

Kennedy is well known for his many love affairs, including one reportedly with sex goddess Marilyn Monroe. His affair with von Post lasted two years after his September 1953 marriage with Jackie.

The 78-year-old von Post wrote a book about the affair in 1997, 'Love, Jack,' in which she revealed all about the affair and quoted from the letters. But she had kept under cover the passionate written evidence of her affair with the man who would become US president.

The bidding started at 25,000 dollars in February and jumped to 42,500 dollars the same day.

Von Post, the daughter of an upstanding Swedish family, met Kennedy in August 1953 while vacationing on the French Riviera, a month before Kennedy's wedding. They danced and shared a farewell kiss, von Post says in her book. All the while her heart went 'boom boom boom boom,' she once told ABC News.

The young senator was similarly infatuated, and could not get her out of his mind. He tracked down her address and sent her a letter in March 1954, followed by another in June suggesting a possible meeting.

'I thought I might get a boat and sail around the Mediterranean for two weeks - with you as crew. What do you think? Best, Jack,' he wrote.

Gunilla warmed to the idea, writing in her book: 'I longed to be close to him again, to feel that exciting intimacy that had been so intense (on the Riviera.) The boat, the blue water, the idea of Jack and me alone at sea was romantic beyond belief.

'I knew, however, that Jack had a wife and that I shouldnt be having this dream. But every time I pushed this vision away, it crept back, invading my heart.'

Instead of sailing off into the sunset with Gunilla - whom he starts calling his 'Swedish gorilla' and 'my Swedish flicka' - Kennedy ended up in hospital with a serious, life-threatening back operation followed by months of recovery and more letters.

Finally, in August 1955, two years after their first enchanted Riviera meeting, the pair spent a week together on a Swedish beach - not Kennedy's first choice, but the only one offered by Gunilla.

Later in the month, they tried to meet again in Europe, but he writes his lover to say he had just gotten word 'that my wife and sister are coming here. It will be complicated.' He ends the letter: 'All I have done is sit in the sun & look at the ocean & think of Gunilla ... All love, Jack.'

After returning from Europe to Washington, Kennedy insists that Gunilla move to be near him, promises he will find her a job as a model and indicates he will discuss a divorce from Jackie with his father.

Gunilla recalls in her book Jack's description of his father, Joseph Kennedy's, irate reaction at the suggestion: 'You're out of your mind. Youre going to be president someday. This would ruin everything. Divorce is impossible.'

In the following weeks, Jackie miscarried a pregnancy. In July 1956, Gunilla married Anders Ekman. In November 1960, Kennedy was elected the first Catholic president to the US presidency. He was assassinated in 1963.