Sir, – Further to your coverage of the correspondence between Jacqueline Bouvier and Fr Joseph Leonard (May 13th), John A Costello also corresponded with her, as I have detailed in my biography of that taoiseach. Jacqueline went on a year's visit to Paris in 1948. With her stepbrother Hugh Auchinloss, she came to Ireland for the Dublin Horse Show. Her contact in Dublin was Fr Leonard, who had met and become a friend of her uncle Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis at Strawberry Hill in London. Fr Leonard entertained the visitors as they spent a few weeks touring the country. He brought them to meet his friend John A Costello, who described Fr Leonard as a deeply spiritual man who had little time for the "dangerously devout".
Jacqueline again visited Dublin in 1955, with her husband Jack Kennedy. Fr Leonard gave them a book inscribed “To Jack and Jacqueline, with love and admiration. 29 September – October 2 1955”.
Costello recalled that Jacqueline invited Fr Leonard to come to Washington to baptise her son in 1960, but ill-health prevented him from making the trip. – Yours, etc,
ANTHONY J JORDAN,
Gilford Road,
Dublin 4.