The Kennedys

by Thomas Maier

  Despite their different styles, Kick and Eunice were still very much products of their mother’s influence and direction, counsel that taught them how to be Irish Catholic women in a world that sometimes looked askance at their heritage. Rose’s instructions would stretch across generations among the Kennedy women.“She was the one who would tell the stories about the discrimination against the Irish,” observed her granddaughter, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (née Kathleen Hartington Kennedy), who was named for her aunt. “She was very well aware of her place in history. Her faith in the Catholic Church taught her a great deal and had a lot to say to her, and that it should be adhered to.”

  AT AGE EIGHTEEN, Kick met Billy Hartington, a tall, brooding Englishman two years her senior, while living in England during her father’s time as ambassador. When she was forced to return to America because of the war, Kick stayed in contact with Billy through letters, even though she dated other men in the United States and he became engaged, for a short while, to another woman.“It was a very long time before I gave up all hope of marrying you,” Billy later explained in a letter. Eventually, in July 1943, Kick left for England, ostensibly to work for the Red Cross but with the intent of renewing her love affair with Billy. She assured her family that she saw no future with the future Duke of Devonshire. “Of course I know he would never give in about the religion and he knows that I never would,” she wrote to Jack. “It’s all rather difficult as he is very, very fond of me and as long as I am about he’ll never marry.” She sent the same reassurances to her mother. “Billy and I went out together for the first time last Saturday. It really is fun to see people put their heads together the minute we arrive any place,” she wrote. “There’s heavy betting on when we are going to announce it. Some people have gotten the idea that I’m going to give in. Little do they know.”

  On the surface, the couple appeared as opposites attracting. Their own backgrounds seemed to preclude all chances of a serious relationship. The Cavendishes were Protestants with a long history of Irish Catholic bias. Many of their lands were confiscated from Catholics by King Henry VIII and bestowed upon Sir William Cavendish, who opposed the ascension of the Catholic king, James II, in a bloody rebellion. On Billy’s maternal side, another relative, Robert Cecil, chief minister to James I, objected to the Prince of Wales’s marriage to the Spanish Infanta because she was a Roman Catholic. Billy’s grandfather, Lord Salisbury, had, as prime minister, ridiculed the idea of Irish self-government. But much of their ill will toward the Irish stemmed from one violent act. Billy’s paternal granduncle, Lord Frederick Cavendish, was appointed chief secretary for Ireland in 1882 by Prime Minister Gladstone. History would record Gladstone as a British ruler who showed more sympathy for the Irish than most, yet his new man in Ireland wasn’t greeted warmly. “We will tear him in pieces within a fortnight,” promised an Irish Party leader. The Irish were true to their word:Cavendish was murdered within his first week of arrival, hacked to death by assassins wielding twelve-inch surgical knives. Cavendish’s body was found in a pool of blood outside Phoenix Park in Dublin. His killers were later traced to a secret Irish nationalist group headed by an Irish-American ex-Fenian and called the Invincibles. Five were hanged for the plot and three imprisoned. To many horrified British people,Cavendish’s assassination justified their ill will toward the Irish and their opposition to Ireland’s long-held desire for self-rule. This event would be seen quite differently in the Kennedy family, particularly by grandfather John F. Fitzgerald. When he visited Dublin with his daughter Rose in 1908, Honey Fitz—a Fenian at heart if not in secret membership—pointed out the site of Cavendish’s murder as “a Catholic monument.” (One Irish Republican newspaper would claim years later that Fitzgerald and other prominent Boston Irish Catholics were involved in a secret society named for an Irish patriot that helped to procure surplus arms from American police departments and then ship them to the rebel Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the fight for independence. Guns from America were said to be hidden in the false bottoms of coffins, trunks and crated farm tools sent to Irish ports. However, no other evidence points to Fitzgerald’s involvement in such efforts.)

  Like his forebears, Billy’s father was proud of the Cavendish family’s long anti-papist legacy. He was a Freemason, part of the secret society opposed to Catholics and condemned by the church for more than two centuries. “I think it’s fair to say that my father was a bigoted Protestant,” Billy’s brother, Andrew, later conceded.“My father and mother both felt very strongly that Catholics proselytized. And that our family had a long tradition opposed to Catholicism.” Indeed, in a self-published pamphlet, the duke warned about a papal scheme to “re-Catholicize” their country by encouraging Catholic women to marry into the British upper classes, including his fellow English noblemen. In Kick, the duke recognized her danger as well as her beguiling charm.“She is very sharp, very witty, and so sweet in every way,” the duke described.“The Irish blood is evident, of course, and she is no great beauty, but her smile and her chatty enthusiasm are her salvation. I doubt, of course, she’d be any sort of a match for our Billy even if we managed to lure her out from under the papal shadow.”

  Most members of the British social circles entertaining the Kennedys, particularly those on the Cliveden estate, shared a similar view about Catholics. Though they could be personally gracious to the Kennedys, and shared much of the ambassador’s political wish to negotiate with the Germans rather than fight them, there was an air of privilege and tradition among the so-called Cliveden set that necessarily cast Roman Catholics in an inferior light. Lady Nancy Astor, who hosted these gatherings on her family’s estate, befriended the Kennedys in a generous way, yet her views about their religion were evident. In a letter home, Kick recalled how a friend “spent the night at Cliveden and [did] nothing but argue with Lady Astor about Catholicism. Although I don’t think he is a very strong Catholic himself, he was going to get a list of books for her to read on the subject.” Lady Astor, a Christian Scientist, harbored deep suspicions about the Roman Catholic Church and its ways—what she called “the candlestick plot.” When their friend David Ormsby-Gore, a British lord with nearly the same pedigree as Hartington, decided to marry Sissy Lloyd- Thomas in a Catholic Church, Astor asked: “How could you, David?” But Kick’s romance brought a different response. Lady Astor decided that if the Kennedy family back in America disapproved of this match, she would become its biggest booster in England. As an American-born woman, “Aunt Nancy,” as Kick called Lady Astor, identified with Kathleen’s situation.“ Of course, she still hopes I’ll marry Billy and keeps telling me I’ll only be happy in England,” Kick wrote home.

  Though she preferred things light and gay, Kick was compelled by events to face her own set of beliefs. In many ways, she remained eager to please her parents, and she shared their outlook, particularly the strong Catholic antipathy toward communism. “Father [Fulton J.] Sheen who speaks on ‘The Catholic Hour’ was up a week ago Saturday,” she mentioned in one letter to her mother.“He spoke on communism and was really marvelous.” In a letter to his eldest son shortly after Kick’s arrival in London, Joe Kennedy relayed a story from a U.S.Army friend about seeing one of their hard-bitten sergeants in church with Kick. As her proud father recounted: “On inquiring as to how it came about, he said that he hadn’t been to Mass for a year and Kathleen at the Red Cross had urged him to go, and he said he would go if she’d go with him, so it seems like she’s still working on the side of God.” Kathleen Kennedy also shared her father’s prejudices. In mentioning to her parents that she had attended an Oscar Levant concert in which the well-known entertainer refused to play anything but Gershwin, Kick commented:“The Hebes stick together even in death.”

  On her return trip to London in July 1943, as her ship carrying Red Cross volunteers bobbed between enemy submarines in the Atlantic, Kick managed to find time to pray daily.“We have had Mass every afternoon at 3:30—a wartime measure and guess where we have it—in the syn
agogue,” she wrote to her family in her first letter from London.“I have been serving Mass as the soldiers didn’t seem to show up. We are allowed to go to Communion then and yesterday we had Mass on the deck under the most crude circumstances.” While spending a weekend with Billy Hartington and other English friends soon after her arrival in 1943, Kick found how difficult it could be as a Catholic in this crowd. “Of course on Sunday morning, there was a great problem of my going to church,” she recalled in a letter. “They all told me that the church was miles away and I couldn’t possibly go. I think they would have considered it a moral triumph if I hadn’t so I was determined to get there no matter how far away it was. Had a chat with the priest who said it was about four miles each way and it was just according to my conscience whether I should attend mass. Finally hoppped [sic] on a bike and was there in twenty-five minutes. I must say it would have been a bit far to walk.”

  Some accounts portray Kick as a headlong romantic, but her letters reveal a deep ambivalence about the religious difficulties she’d face in her relationship with Billy. In her jaunty, joking way, she was keenly aware of the prejudices aimed at her.“It is really funny how worried and how much talking is being done, by all those old Cecil and Devonshire spooks,” she wrote home. In another letter, she repeated the same thought, almost word for word, as if repetition might convince her that the situation was truly humorous.“Some of those old Devonshire and Cecil ancestors would certainly jump out of their graves if anything happened to some of their ancient traditions,” she commented.“It just amused me to see how worried they all are.” Certainly, Billy’s father wasn’t amused. For her birthday in February 1944, Kick received “a lovely old leather book” from the Duke of Devonshire. As she began to unwrap the gift, Billy’s mother rushed toward her.

  “The Duchess said she had nothing to do with it and when I opened it up I knew why,” Kick recalled.

  The gift was a copy of the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer. Typically, Kick laughed it off, and thanked the duke very much. But his thinly veiled joke was transparent: Kathleen Kennedy must renounce her religion and embrace the Anglican church if she wanted to marry his son.

  AS THEIR love affair turned more serious, Kick and Billy searched for ways to uphold their family traditions and please their parents while still being able to marry. At her parish church on Farm Street in London, Kick consulted the Reverend Martin Cyril D’Arcy, a highly influential Jesuit philosopher and priest who, she thought,was most likely to be sympathetic to her cause. If anyone could arrive at a wise and equitable answer to her dilemma, she felt it would be this extraordinary priest.

  Many of the Kennedy family friends belonged to a group of British Catholics who turned to Father D’Arcy for spiritual guidance. During Sunday Mass, the Kennedys were enthralled by D’Arcy, who was lionized as England’s favorite Catholic at a time when allegiances to Rome could hardly be considered a social enhancement. Erudite and witty, D’Arcy personified the highly distinguished cadre of Catholic intellectuals who carved a small but commanding niche in British society in the 1930s. He counted Albert Einstein,T. S. Eliot and Bertrand Russell among his friends. D’Arcy gave invigorating radio sermons and wrote several critically acclaimed books. His most famous work, The Mind and the Heart of Love, tried to reconcile the passionate love of Eros with the selfless ideals of Christian love. Father D’Arcy became a central figure in the movement by some British intellectuals to convert to Roman Catholicism—their fervent response to the “wasteland” of secular modernism. “His urbane charm and cultivated mind,” Time magazine later commented,“have influenced a quarter century’s crop of Oxonians and helped bring many a British highbrow into his broad-browed church.”The Oxford-educated Jesuit helped convert novelist Evelyn Waugh, a social acquaintance of the Kennedys, and Dame Edith Sitwell to the faith. In Vile Bodies,Waugh used D’Arcy as the prototype for the character called Father Rothschild, who knew “everyone who could possibly be of any importance” in London. Waugh was one of a handful of British writers—including G. K. Chesterton and the poet Maurice Baring, also converts—who blended their strong Catholicism with a sense of British aristocracy. This atmosphere was the perfect blend of influences for the Kennedys. Kick embraced the work of Maurice Baring and socialized with Waugh. Their friend Hugh Fraser’s mother, Laura, would later write a biography of Baring and their days up to the start of the war. Baring’s poetic sensibility became deeply engrained in these young Kennedys. When Bill Coleman, Jack’s good friend from Harvard, was killed in the war, Kick wrote to his grieving sister and suggested that she read a book of Maurice Baring’s poems to soothe her grieving soul.“I know what a sock in the eyes it will be for you because I have never heard you talk so well of anyone as you did Bill,” Kick consoled Jack in a letter.

  But though Father D’Arcy had helped many fellow Catholics in London, Kick misjudged him on her pressing matter. With the full force of a priest long convinced that he could convert the most ardent skeptic, D’Arcy warned that marrying Billy would mean leaving the church, living in sin and being forever separated from the God of her Catholic heritage. He reminded her of what the catechism she learned from the Sacred Heart nuns said about mixed marriage: “Instead of a blessing, the guilty parties draw down upon themselves the anger of God.” D’Arcy referred her to a friendly bishop to seek a dispensation, but, as she wrote to her parents, “I suppose it will [be] practically impossible.”

  On the home front, Kick’s search for an answer proved equally unsuccessful. In America, intermarriage among Catholics and Protestants was not common, and in Boston it was rare. Teachings from the church hierarchy certainly counseled Irish Catholics to marry among themselves, and the hostile reception from Brahmins only reinforced this cultural alienation. Rose Kennedy’s opposition to her daughter’s impending marriage is often discounted as simply a prejudice of her own, a tribal acrimony against Protestants. For example, as Barbara Gibson, one of several aides to write of their Kennedy days, contended: “It horrified Rose, as a Child of Mary, to think that her daughter could become the example cited by other Catholics in love with other Protestant boys. Nothing could be worse than Kathleen’s marriage to a man of the wrong faith.” However, the available letters and documentation give little if any evidence to support the notion of Rose’s alleged bias as they do, say, Joe’s obvious anti-Semitism. Most historical accounts of this fated Romeo and Juliet romance rarely explore the overt bigotry faced by the Kennedys that obviously exacerbated their response and barely mention the extensive anti-Catholic history of Billy’s family. Yet given the repeated instances of religious bias mentioned in Kick’s own letters, it doesn’t seem unreasonable for Joe and Rose Kennedy to be quite concerned about their daughter’s decision to marry into a family holding such rancor toward their faith.

  Rather than make a frontal attack on Billy’s religion, Rose took a different tack. She attempted to sway her daughter’s decisionmaking by appealing to their own cultural heritage. In her view, Kick not only learned the church commandments but possessed a “gift of faith,” and understood what the Catholic Church meant to their family and Irish ancestors. As Rose later argued in her memoir, the Catholic Church “had, in fact, as I think historians of almost any persuasion would agree, been the main cohesive force, more than language, custom, any circumstance that had enabled the Irish people to survive and in some ways prevail during the course of many centuries of domination by the English.” If Kathleen made a choice based on her religion—similar to the one Rose’s father made for her with Wellesley—she would learn to accept it over time.

  In one letter in late February 1944, Rose composed a subtly manipulative message to her daughter about staying true to her religion. After a breezy salutation, she told Kick of getting a letter from a Boston friend “whose third cousin watches you go to Communion frequently, so the news has been carried across the waters.” Of course, the underlying message was not only parental approval of Kick’s continued religious observance but al
so the hint that she was being watched by an ever-present army of her parents’ minions, not to mention Almighty God.“It is Lent now and I am praying morning, noon and night, so do not be exhausting yourself and running your little legs off going to Church, as your first duty is to your job,” Rose instructed. “The little verse—‘Do your duty, that is best; leave unto the Lord the rest’ may be Protestant or Catholic, but it really teaches us that our first responsibility is towards our immediate job.” In a direct reference to their internal struggle, Rose cast doubt about the outcome of Joe Kennedy’s effort to secure special Vatican approval for her marriage. “Galleazzi’s [sic] pal said of course the authorities were always the same and frankly I do not seem to think Dad can do anything,” reported Rose.“He feels terribly sympathetic and so do I and I only wish we could offer some suggestions.”Then Rose underlined her view with a brief sermon.“When both people have been handed something all their lives, how ironic it is that they can not have what they want most,” she commented. The detached pose here, the mention of irony, is remarkable given Rose’s expressed sympathy for her daughter in the previous line. While expressing empathy, Rose underlined what Kick’s decision would mean for the family, and placed the ethical dilemma equally on Billy’s shoulders.“I wonder if the next generation will feel that it is worth sacrificing a life’s happiness for all the old family tradition. So much wealth, titles, etc. seem to be disappearing. But I understand perfectly the terrific responsibilities and the disappointment of it all.”