Description:

Kennedy Jacqueline



Jackie Kennedy Early Illustrated Letter Re: Secret Passwords and Boarding School

 

4pp ALS inscribed overall and signed by Jacqueline Lee Bouvier (1929-1994) as "Love Jackie" at the top of the fourth page, along with a companion envelope and a black and white photograph of the adolescent Jackie. The letter, addressed to Jackie's childhood best friend Rosamund Lee, features two hand-drawn cartoons, including two comical self-portraits. The letter was written at Merrywood in McLean, Virginia sometime during the spring of 1943.

 

1. The letter is scrawled in a messy, girlish script on cream bifold note paper trimmed with a mourning border. With isolated areas of smeared fingerprints or minor water run not affecting legibility. Near fine, 3.875" x 5.375".

 

2. A matching black-trimmed transmittal envelope inscribed in Jackie's hand, "Miss Rosamond Lee / c/o Charles C. Auchincloss / 'Builtover' / Roslyn / L.I." Bearing two cancelled purple "Thomas Jefferson, 1801-1809" stamps and postmarked from Washington, D.C. on April 26, 1943. Letter-opened verso, and with minor rusted paperclip impression at top, else near fine.

 

3. The semi-glossy black and white snapshot depicts Jackie and Rosie in matching plaid flannel shirts and oversized jeans posing near a barn. 3.5" x 5".

 

Merrywood was a 23,000-square-foot Georgian style mansion belonging to Jackie's new stepfather, Hugh D. Auchincloss (1897-1976), located in McLean Virginia.

 

Jackie and Rosamund enjoyed a lifelong friendship. The two girls had befriended each other in the early 1940s. Of a similar age, Jackie and Rosamund had extended family connections, and both had lived in Long Island.  Jackie's stepfather Hugh D. Auchincloss's cousin Charles C. Auchincloss was Rosie's maternal grandfather; thus Hugh was Rosie's first cousin twice removed. (Rosamund was the daughter of Rosamund Plowden-Wardlow and James Burton Lee, Jr., who married in 1929.) This branch of the wealthy Auchincloss family summered at "Builtover," their estate in Roslyn, Long Island, approximately 70 miles to the east of Jackie's birthplace, Southampton, Long Island.

 

Jackie's letter is filled with silliness and affection reserved for her "Rosie lovely thing." Earlier that year, and found elsewhere in different correspondence, Jackie had coined a secret password for the pair, which varied in spelling from "Lee Bouspinacherina" to "Lee Boosmacherina." This unforgettable password appears not once, but twice in our letter. Jackie explained, in formulating the password, that she loved the exclusivity of secret societies.

 

At this juncture of her life, the future First Lady resembled a typical adolescent. The tone of her letter ranges from adoring to supplicating, and is filled to the brim with angst and longing. Like all teenager girls, Jackie was apparently obsessed with friendship and romantic love, vowing to attend the same boarding school as her bosom friend, and inquiring after her friend's crush.

 

Jackie's drawings include, on the first page (functioning as a type of postscript), a rather macabre sketch of nine daggers dripping with the "brother's blood" uniting Jackie and Rosie. On the last page, Jackie devotes the entire bottom half of the page to a 2-frame illustration. On the left, Rosie and her current crush Curtis are depicted at the altar, with Jackie as a bridesmaid wearing a large, stylish straw hat; on the right, Jackie acts as godmother to "little Rosie" while a priest sprinkles holy water on the infant.

 

In part, with unchanged spelling and grammar. Paragraph breaks have been added for ease of reading.

 

"Rosie Lovely Thing

 

I got your delicious letter + I will guard it with my life. I can spell Curtis Cushman now

 

see

 

CURTIS CUSHMAN

 

I have a wonderful plan. Are you going to boarding school. I don't know if I am but Mummy might send me. We have to solemnly swear that we won't go to different schools. We can room together + be reunited after long years of lonliness. You write me what schools you want to go to. I don't want to go to Farmington I hope you don't. It'll probably turn out you do

 

These are my schools

 

Foxcroft

Miss Walkers

 

I can't think of any others

 

I haven't written you for months. I don't blame you if you don't write back but please do.

 

I got your letter just as I came home from school + it made me so wonderful, I got an A on my homework…

 

You will be the godmother of all my children + you can be the godmother of my dog's children too, because she is having puppie soon.

 

Don't you love our password. I can't say it. Lee Boosmacherina forever dear Rosie,

 

Love

 

Jackie.

 

Yours till Lee Boosmacherina do us part."

 

The letter paints an effervescent portrait of the teenaged Jackie, filled with affection for her absent friend.

 

Jackie ended up attending Miss Porter's School, an all-girls college preparatory school located in Farmington, Connecticut, between 1944-1947. Ironically, then, Miss Bouvier did not attend either of the top choices mentioned in her letter: Foxcroft, established in 1914 and located near Middleburg, Virginia; or Ethel Walker School, established in 1911 and transplanted to its Simsbury, Connecticut campus in 1917.

 

Despite her initial reservations about Farmington, the future First Lady adored her experience at Miss Porter's. While a student there, "Merrywood" worked on the newspaper staff and in theater. Her Miss Porter's yearbook profile lists her defining attribute as "wit." Rosamund Lee did not become Jackie's roommate there as the latter had hoped. Instead, Jackie roomed with her other old childhood friend, Nancy "Tucky" Tuckerman (1928-2018). Tuckerman served as a bridesmaid at Jackie's wedding and later as White House Social Secretary.

 



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