'You're like a brother to me': 'Dear John' letters written by Jackie O from the yacht of her new billionaire Greek shipping magnate husband to the besotted British lord desperate to marry her

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Jackie O turned down a marriage proposal from a besotted British lord because she saw him 'like a brother' and he was too entwined in her 'world of past and pain', letters have revealed. 

Jackie Kennedy wrote to David Ormsby Gore - the 5th Lord Harlech and one of JFK’s most intimate confidantes - explaining how marrying him would stop her finding 'healing and comfort'.

She penned the rejection letter five years after JFK's death as she sailed on the yacht of Aristotle Onassis, a shipping magnate who became her second husband.

Jackie O turned down a marriage proposal from besotted Lord Harlech (pictured together in 1966) because she saw him 'like a brother', letters have revealed 

Jackie wrote to David Ormsby Gore - the 5th Lord Harlech and one of JFK’s most intimate confidantes - explaining how marrying him would stop her finding 'healing and comfort'. The letters are among a collection (pictured) which have been found on the Harlech family estate

Lord Harlech had recently lost his wife in a car crash and was said to have proposed to Jackie while they were on holiday together in February 1968.  

She wrote: 'You and I have shared so many lives and deaths and hopes and pain - we will share them forever and be forever bound together by them.

'If ever I can find some healing and some comfort, it has to be with someone who is not a part of all my world of past and pain - I can find that now - if the world will let us.'

Jackie and her Lord Harlech had a deep friendship, which was cemented through grief after the president's assassination in 1963. 

They then grew even close following the death of Lord Harlech's wife Sissy in May 1967.

At the time, rumours of romance between the pair swept through Washington, with one leading US newspaper proclaiming him ‘The Man Most Likely To Win Jackie’. 

But, when he proposed, she replied: 'We have known so much & shared & lost so much together - Even if it isn't the way you wish now - I hope that bond of love and pain will never be cut.

'You are like my beloved beloved brother - and mentor - and the only original spirit I know - as you were to Jack.

'I just wanted to tell you all that love has so many different way.' 

In a letter in which she explains her feelings, she tells him: 'I just wanted to tell you all that love has so many different way' (pictured)

Jackie and her Lord Harlech had a deep friendship, which was cemented through grief after the president's assassination in 1963, and wrote to one another often (pictured) 

In another, Jackie offers Lord Harlech comfort about the death of his wife.

She wrote: '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.'

The letters are part of a 19-strong collection which have been unearthed after being hidden away in two locked government dispatch boxes for 40 years at the Harlech's family estate at Glyn Cywarch, in Gwynedd, Wales.

The discovery is poignant, coinciding with the year of the 100th anniversary of JFK’s birth, as well as the film Jackie, for which its star Natalie Portman has been nominated for an Oscar.

Matthew Haley, Bonhams Head of Fine Books and Manuscripts in the UK, said: 'For decades, biographers have speculated on the precise relationship between Jackie Kennedy and David Ormsby Gore.

The letters show how close the pair were to marriage. She wrote to him about several different subjects (as shown above)

'These letters now show without doubt how close they came to marriage and why Jackie decided to marry Onassis instead.'

He added: 'The correspondence has been sitting in two official red Government despatch boxes for more than 40 years.

'The keys were nowhere to be found and in the end we had to call a locksmith to slice through the locks. It was one of those astonishing moments when you can't quite believe what you're seeing.' 

David Ormsby Gore was born in 1918 and educated at Eton and New College Oxford.

The discovery of the letters (pictured) is poignant, coinciding with the year of the 100th anniversary of JFK’s birth, as well as the film Jackie

Elected to parliament in 1950, he held a number of Government Ministerial positions in the Foreign Office, but resigned in 1961 in order to take up the post of British Ambassador to the United States until 1965.

He became the 5th Lord Harlech on the death of his father in 1964, but died in 1985 from injuries sustained in a car crash. Senator Edward Kennedy, Jacqueline Onassis and other Kennedy family members attended his funeral.  

The friendship between the families dates back to the 1930s, when JFK’s father Joseph was US Ambassador to Britain. 

Jackie later said her husband used to claim that Ormsby-Gore ‘was the brightest man he’d ever met’. 

The archive of letters, which includes personal correspondence from President Kennedy and from British Prime Ministers, Harold Macmillan, Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Harold Wilson, will be sold by Bonhams on March 29 in London

A year after Jackie married her new husband, Lord Harlech married Pamela Colin, an US journalist who bore an uncanny resemblance to Jackie.  

Ten years later, when she lay dying of cancer in her New York apartment, Jackie is said to have spoken of her regret that she did not accept Lord Harlech’s proposal. 

The archive of letters, which includes personal correspondence from President Kennedy and from British Prime Ministers, Harold Macmillan, Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Harold Wilson, will be sold by Bonhams on March 29 in London.

They have been given an estimate of £100,000 to £150,000 and are among a number of family heirlooms being auctioned off during the sale.