London, April 23 (IANS) "I do love you and can love you without kissing you every time I see you," wrote a teenaged Jacqueline Bouvier (Kennedy), whose letters to a Harvard student are going to be auctioned.

Jacqueline Lee Bouvier went on to marry John F. Kennedy who became US president.

"Can you think of anything worse than living in a small town like this all your life and competing to see which housewife can bake the best cake," asked Jackie Bouvier who was in Miss Porter's boarding school in Connecticut, The Telegraph reported.

The letters were for R. Beverley Corbin, jr. - or 'Bev' - who was a Harvard student and with whom she enjoyed a long-distance romance from 1945 to 1947.

Auctioneers Christie's have described Jacqueline as "funny, spirited and at times cynical young woman - one with great intelligence and a strong will of her own".

In 1945, when she was aged 16, she wrote: "If school days are the happiest days of your life, I'm hanging myself with my skip-rope tonight."

"Some man is beating his wife in the street," she wrote, "which is the only interesting thing that's happened all day."

The letters are expected to fetch up to 20,000 pounds.

In October 1946, the young Jackie wrote: "I do love you and can love you without kissing you every time I see you and I hope you understand that."

By the time she turned 17, the relationship seemed to falter.

"I do think I'm in love with you when I'm with you.

"But it's awfully hard for me to stay in love with someone when I only see them every three months and when the only contact I have with them is through letters."