Bev Corbin (left) and Jackie in Newport with friends, summer 1945.
“Buddy darling,” Jackie begins many of her letters written on both personal and Miss Porter’s School stationery.
Before Ari Onassis, before Jack Kennedy, there was Bev — Beverley Corbin, Jr., a Harvard student and early flame of a teenaged Jacqueline Bouvier. On Thursday, Christie’s New York will auction off 22 private letters from Jackie to Bev, one telegram and a photograph of the pair for an estimated $25,000-$35,000. Even at 16, Jackie displays her famous wit in her musings, as well as a romantic side. “I do love you though — and can love you without kissing you every time I see you,” she wrote. The young lovers’ correspondence ends with Jackie letting Bev know about her engagement to John Husted: “What I hope for you is for the same thing to happen as quickly and as surely as it did with me. It will when you least expect it.” What a heart-breaker….