by Thomas Maier
The duke was no help. He pressured his son increasingly to abandon his quest to marry the Irish Catholic girl from America. Without an easy solution of her own, Billy’s mother offered many of the same words as Rose. “Had a long chat with the Duchess and she is very sympathetic,” Kick wrote back to her parents. “She said to me, ‘It’s a shame because you are both so good and it would please everyone so much.’”
As in most Kennedy family crises, Kick turned to her father to search for an answer. Joe Kennedy wasn’t inclined to find a solution through prayer or divine intervention. Rather, he preferred to rely on his contacts with powerful clerical figures, hoping that they could discover some special dispensation so that his favorite daughter could stay in her church and still marry the man she loved.“Please try and discover loopholes although I keep feeling that the particular parties involved would make compromise impossible,” Kick implored. “The Catholics say it would give scandal. This situation, Daddy, is a stickler.”
IN THEIR secret code across the Atlantic, they called him “Archie Spell.” Because of the wartime censorship of letters, the Kennedys referred to Archbishop Francis Spellman of New York by this rather flippant moniker. “Archie Spell has made investigation—there & here,” telegraphed Rose to her daughter. “Can you write or cable what concessions your friend will consider—Hoping for some solution but looks extremely difficult.”
Spellman, vicar of the most powerful Catholic diocese in the United States, welcomed the opportunity to help Joe Kennedy with his troublesome personal matter, even though he knew it would do little good. As America’s top churchman and the church’s most influential layman, they traded favors, big and small. Two years earlier, Spellman had written a glowing letter of recommendation for Eunice to attend Stanford University. In his letter of thanks, Joe Kennedy relayed how much Rose wanted the archbishop to say Mass at their house. When the diocese’s chancery needed expanded offices,Kennedy sold a block of houses on Madison Avenue near Spellman’s residence at terms very favorable to the church. But Kick’s request was different, far more complex. At the urging of his daughter, and aware of the possible political consequences for his sons, Kennedy requested a private visit with Spellman in April 1944 to determine whether the church might somehow recognize Kick’s marriage to the Marquess of Hartington. “One of our closest friends among the Catholic clergy in America was Francis Spellman,” Rose later recalled. “We enlisted him as our adviser and also as our friend at court, so to speak, with Pope Pius XII.” In a lengthy meeting, Spellman listened to the ex-ambassador pour out his heart about his daughter; during the same meeting, the archbishop pursued his own political agenda.
Spellman had gained stature with President Roosevelt following the Pacelli visit arranged by Kennedy. Since then, he’d pursued his own kind of foreign policy, acting as a liaison between the Vatican and the White House. During the war, the Pope relied on Spellman for advice and to deal with war-time leaders such as France’s Charles de Gaulle and such sensitive issues as the Allied bombing around Rome (for which the Vatican wanted U.S. reimbursement for its damaged properties). Roosevelt also enlisted Spellman’s help in a variety of ways, including a well-publicized mission to Ireland in 1943 to secure support for England in the Allied effort, particularly the use of Irish ports for British ships. Ireland remained determined to keep its neutrality. At a dinner at Ivegh House, the seat of Irish government, Prime Minister Eamon De Valera introduced the archbishop and underlined his Irish Catholic ancestry. But Spellman, as he did in private talks with De Valera, made sure that Ireland realized whose side he was on. The archbishop raised his glass in a toast.“To the President of the United States,” the Archbishop proposed, “and the cause he serves!” De Valera remained unmoved.
Undoubtedly, some of the archbishop’s political concerns were discussed during his meeting with Joe Kennedy. As Rose later wrote in her diary, Joe “talked with him about three hours but not all about Kick.” Rather than fuss and fume about intermarriage as other prelates might, Spellman “did not seem unduly excited” about the prospect of Kathleen marrying a Protestant. Spellman’s placid response, in Rose’s estimation, caused her to second-guess her own view. She thought of Kick’s engagement as “a blow to the family prestige,” and her husband bemoaned all those lost votes in Boston, where newspaper rumors scandalized his daughter’s romance with the British lord.“I thought it would have such mighty repercussions in that every little young girl would say if K-Kennedy can—why can’t I?” Rose inscribed in her diary.“No one seemed to be as excited about that as I.”On the scale of world events, Spellman considered this concern very small indeed. Later, in another conversation with the archbishop, Joe Jr. received the same impression as his father. “His [Spellman’s] attitude seemed to be that if they loved each other a lot, then marry outside the Church,” Joe wrote to his father.“He didn’t seem to be disturbed about it creating a bad example.”
Nevertheless, in their common language of political bartering, Spellman promised Kennedy he would try somehow to gain Vatican approval for Kick’s marriage, just as Count Galeazzi assured his American friend that he’d attempt to find a solution. Spellman asked Archbishop William Godfrey, the first apostolic representative to Britain since the Reformation, to intercede with Kathleen and discuss the religious ramifications of her plans. Rose prayed that her daughter might change her mind. “Feel you have been wrongly influenced,” Rose cabled her daughter.“Sending Archie Spell’s friend to talk to you. Anything done for Our Lord will be rewarded hundredfold.” But Godfrey’s premarital advice reflected more of Spellman’s practical view than Rose’s hope for a miraculous turn of events. “The Bishop told me that it would put the Church in a very difficult position for us to get a dispensation,” Kick explained to her family,“and it would be better if we went ahead and got married and then something might possibly be done afterwards. Of course, he wouldn’t guarantee that anything could be done, but I’m quite sure that if we wait to see them about a dispensation we might have to wait years.” Godfrey later sent a telegram back to Spellman saying that he had done the archbishop’s bidding but “in vain.” After his conversation with Kick, the Vatican’s man in London became convinced that only Rose could influence her. “Mother could try again with all her power,” Godfrey cabled from London.“Am convinced this only chance.”
AS KICK AGONIZED over her choices, however, she also faced the religious terms insisted by her future husband and in-laws. For Billy’s family, the ideal solution would be for Kick to convert and, not too subtly, they pressured her to do so. During a weekend trip to Churchdale, the Duchess of Devonshire arranged for Kick to meet a family friend, the Reverend Ted Talbot, a chaplain to King George VI, who explained the history of the Cavendish family in the Church of England and why Billy could never bring up his son as a Roman Catholic. As Kick recounted in a letter home, Talbot outlined the “fundamental differences” between the two religions. “Of course, I explained that something one had been brought up to believe in and which was largely responsible for the character and personality of an individual is a very difficult thing for which to find a substitute,” Kick wrote in a section of her missive marked “THIS IS FOR MOTHER AND DADDY ONLY.” She admitted that “it seemed rather cheap and weak to give in at the first real crisis in my life.” Both the duchess and “Father Talbot,” as she wrote, “don’t for a minute want me to give up something. They just hoped that I might find the same thing in the Anglican version of Catholicism.”
Ultimately, Kick decided not to convert, though in just about every other way she had given in. At least one of Kick’s confidants, Sissy Ormsby- Gore, felt that Billy’s demands were unreasonable, almost selfish. Her own husband, David, a cousin of Billy’s, had compromised far more with her spiritual needs.“Sissy wondered if Billy really understood what he was asking Kick to do,” observed Lynne McTaggart, a biographer of Kathleen Kennedy. “He was going to give up nothing, while she was going to be made to give up so much.” In her own op
inion, Kick felt that Billy had been placed in a nonnegotiable position.“Poor Billy is very, very sad but he sees his duty must come first,” Kick explained to her parents. “He is a fanatic on this subject and I suppose just such a spirit is what has made England great.”
In a letter dated April 30, 1944, Billy finally addressed the religious issue with his future mother-in-law. Beginning on a conciliatory note, he apologized for not writing sooner.“I have loved Kick for a long time, but I did try hard to face the fact that the religious difficulties seemed insurmountable,” Billy confessed. After spending his first Christmas with Kick in years, Billy said he could not bear to let her go ever again. The war only made their desire to marry more pressing. “I could not believe, either, that God could really intend two loving people, both of whom wanted to do the right thing, and both of whom are Christians, to miss the opportunity to be happy, and perhaps even useful, together because of the religious squabbles of His human servants several hundred years ago,” he observed. And yet, Billy had no intention of bending his adamant stand, nor did he attempt to ameliorate the “religious squabbles” separating him from the Kennedy family’s Catholicism. His perceived duty to country superceded duties to his future family. His references to Kick’s religion were at best patronizing, and he made no indications that he might compromise in any way. Instead, he made it quite clear who would be in charge of their children’s upbringing. As he informed Rose:
I do feel extremely strongly about the religion of my children both from a personal and from a national point of view, otherwise I should never have asked Kick to make such sacrifices in agreeing to their being brought up Anglican. I know that I should only be justified in allowing my children to be brought up Roman Catholic, if I believed it to be desirable for England to become a Roman Catholic country. Therefore, believing in the National Church of England, as I do very strongly, and having so many advantages, and all the responsibilities that they entail, I am convinced that I should be setting a very bad example if I gave in, and that nothing would justify doing so.
BY THE TIME Billy Hartington sent his letter, Kick had already decided to acquiesce to her future husband’s wishes. She’d fallen in love not only with Billy but with the idea of becoming the Duchess of Devonshire, of having a castle in Ireland, and another in Scotland, in Yorkshire and in Sussex. Unlike most other Kennedys, she had learned to love Great Britain and all its long-held traditions.“I can’t really understand why I like Englishmen so much as they treat one in quite an off-hand manner and aren’t really as nice to their women as Americans but I suppose it’s just that sort of treatment that women really like,” Kick teased her brother, Jack, a few months earlier. “That’s your technique isn’t it?” But months of emotional turmoil had drained the humor out of Kick. She relied on the only other Kennedy in Europe—her older brother Joe Jr.—to meet with the Devonshire lawyer and read over the marriage settlement. The terms spelled out how much of the Devonshire fortune Billy would receive in annual income, how much Kick would receive if she became his widow and how much their children would have for education and maintenance. “All of this is conditional on them not becoming Catholics, which would automatically cut them out of the gift and the income,” Joe Jr. relayed to his parents. After his perusal, Joe expressed surprise that Billy had no capital of his own and that his future income “depends entirely on the Duke, and there is nothing automatic about it.”The duke exerted increasing pressure on the bride and groom to conform to his religious dictates, urging them to agree to a blessing from the Archbishop of Canterbury, which Joe Jr. rejected in his negotiations. “Kick did not sign a paper saying that she would bring the children up as Anglicans, though I think the Duke did want her to do it,” her brother reported. When young Joe went to see him, the duke—“a shy old bird,” as he called him—conversed in a strained way about the whole matter but assured young Kennedy that he wasn’t trying to pressure Kick to become an Anglican. In her own letter home, Kathleen tried to put the best face possible on a difficult situation.
Of course the Dukie is very worried about having A Roman Catholic [sic] in the family. In fact, he’s fanatic on the subject. In their eyes, the most awful thing that could happen to our son would be for it [sic] to become a Roman. With me in the family that danger becomes immediate even though I would promise that the child could be brought up as an Anglican. The Church would not marry us and the result would be that I would be married in a registry office. I could continue to go to Church but not Communion. How long this state would continue is impossible to say. I certainly am not going to count on everything being made okay—I shall only hope for it.
ONE CAN only imagine what Joe and Rose Kennedy said to each other about their daughter’s predicament. Though their letters and telegrams to Kathleen were carefully composed to avoid offending or inciting emotions, they had to be distressed, particularly over the underlying bigotry of Billy’s family. As Rose later recalled,“The only way for Kick to marry Billy within the sacraments of the Catholic Church—and even this would be a civil ceremony— would be for Billy to agree that their children would be raised as Catholics; and, of course, he could not agree to that.” Even after the fact, Rose continued to discuss the idea of an annulment with Archbishop Spellman. Back in America, both Bobby and Eunice, perhaps Kick’s most religiously orthodox siblings, expressed displeasure with Kick’s decision. Jack thought Billy should make some concession to Kick’s religion, to a degree that surprised the ambassador. However, in writing to his friend Lem Billings, Jack commented,“You might as well take it in your stride and as sister Eunice from the depth of her righteous Catholic wrath so truly said: ‘It’s a horrible thing—but it will be nice visiting her after the war, so we might as well face it.’”
With the battle lines drawn, Joe Kennedy surrendered atypically. Though his dislike for the British and his own sense of Irish Catholic aggrievement were more sharply etched than his wife’s, Joe couldn’t bring himself to dislodge his favorite daughter from his heart. In one letter urging Kick to find the right choice, Joe mentioned her success at inspiring converts to Catholicism.“Maybe if you made enough of them a couple of them could take your place,” he quipped. “If Mother ever saw that sentence I’d be thrown right out into the street.” He trod down every avenue, right to the Pope’s door, to find a special dispensation to accommodate his daughter’s love and his wife’s faith. Realizing its futility, however, he could only wish his beloved daughter Godspeed. As a father, Joe Kennedy experienced one of his shining moments. In a telegram, he encouraged Kick to continue writing letters, and assured her of their confidentiality. “I feel terribly unhappy you have to face your biggest crisis without Mother or me,” he admitted. But in a lasting touch, he let his daughter know just how much he cared for her. “With your faith in God you can’t make a mistake,” he ended. “Remember you are still and always will be tops with me, Love, Dad.”
WITHIN TEN MINUTES, inside the sparse and cramped red-brick Chelsea Register Office building, Billy and Kick married in a civil ceremony in which no religious words were exchanged. The room was filled with vases of pink carnations from the Chatsworth estate. Kathleen Kennedy was given away by her oldest brother. After the couple exchanged vows, Billy slipped a family heirloom on Kick’s finger. They both signed a contract and were done. As they left on the morning of May 6, 1944, a small group of photographers, reporters and onlookers caught the couple off-guard and snapped the bridal party’s picture. To his sister, Joe cracked that he would be “finished in Boston” when his potential Irish Catholic constituency spotted that photo. With war-time restrictions in full effect, the reception featured a chocolate cake with no icing, offered to a crowd of some two hundred people. “Everything went over quite well considering the problems,” Joe wrote home.“Once she had definitely made up her mind to do it, I did the best I could to help her through. She was under a terrific strain all the time, and as the various wires came in she became more and more upset. It is extremely difficult over
here to tell exactly what everyone there thought about it.”
The newspapers carried the message from America. The ancient rifts and traditional schisms between Catholic and Protestant were emphasized in many of the accounts from Boston. “The marriage of the Boston girl and British nobleman,” reported the Boston Globe, “is now providing a choice morsel of gossip for the dowagers, matrons and debutantes of Mayfair, as well as the crusty and tweedy set of the British squirearchy.” If the Kennedys felt a vicarious thrill at their daughter’s marriage into the aristocracy, it was quickly chilled and tempered by her alleged conversion.“Kick’s apostasy is a sad thing,” declared Evelyn Waugh.“It is second front nerves that has driven her to this grave sin and I am sorry for the girl.”When the announcement of their engagement was made two days before the wedding, gossips on both sides of the Atlantic howled. “Parnell’s ghost must be smiling sardonically,” said London’s Evening News. “It was the Lord Hartington of the ’eighties who headed the Liberal-Unionist revolt that wrecked Gladstone’s Home Rule Bill. Hartington it was who moved the second rejection of the Bill, and the hopes of Parnell and Irish-America vanished in the division lobbies. Now a Hartington is to marry a Catholic Irish-American who comes from one of the great Home Rule Families of Boston.”
Caught off-guard by the engagement announcement, the Kennedys in Boston denied the marriage plans to the local press. Honey Fitz, even further out of the loop, conceded the marriage plans but “did not know whether the British nobleman, a member of one of the leading Protestant families of history, would embrace the Catholic faith,” reported the Boston Herald. Fitzgerald confidently predicted his granddaughter’s wedding would take place in a Catholic church. “When non-Catholic young people were week-end guests at the Kennedy home,” the former mayor recalled, “Kathleen would take them all to Mass every Sunday morning.”With the scent of scandal in the air, the inquiring press quizzed Honey Fitz extensively about his granddaughter’s religious beliefs. In his own way, he was defending Rose as much as Kick.“Although Kathleen and the young man have been friends for some time, the announcement has come in a rush,” he explained. “Quite apart from her family training, she is by choice and conviction a Catholic.”