As the record-breaking viewership of the current season of Netflix’s The Crown tells us, we are endlessly fascinated by what goes on behind the closed doors of the world’s royals. And as much as we bandy about the term “American royalty” to apply to sports or movie stars, there will never be another family that comes as close to actual royalty in this country as the Kennedys have. Wealth, political power, social prestige, and an ample air of untouchable, restrained mystery have set them on a pedestal that no amount of ungenerous speculation has been able to topple. In our
Important Winter Auction we offered a set of correspondence to a Kennedy family friend that both gives a window onto what it was like to be a part of their private social circle, and marks the occasions of their most public celebrations and tragedies.