by Paula Byrne
On 2 June, a few weeks after she had been presented at court, Kick had her coming-out ball at Prince’s Gate. Rosemary was coming out too, but all eyes were on Kick. Dinner was for eighty, and then a ball for 300 guests. Jean Ogilvy helped Kick arrange the all-important seating plan. ‘Quite a sweat as there is so many petty jealousies in London,’ Kick remarked in her diary.7 Each table had eight places, and one of the guests on her table was pretty Debo Mitford, the youngest of the Mitford girls, the gaggle of daughters of the eccentric Lord Redesdale. On her right was Prince Frederick of Prussia and on her left Eric Duncannon, the Earl of Bessborough’s son. Lord Duncannon, Kick’s age exactly, was a handsome, charming man, whose perfect French earned him the nickname ‘Le Dauphin’. Nancy Mitford called him the ‘Angelic Eric Duncannon’.8
The ballroom was festooned with pink and purple flowers. Entertainment was laid on by Harry Richman (famous for Puttin’ on the Ritz), together with Ambrose and his Band. Kick danced with many noblemen: the Duke of Kent, Viscount Newport and Prince Frederick.9 She was twirled around the dance floor to ‘Got a Date with an Angel’ and ‘By Myself’.10 Rosemary danced with just one man who had been hired for the occasion. She danced beautifully, but there were rumours in London that the eldest Kennedy daughter, though lovely, was ‘slow’.11
Debo Mitford, Jean Ogilvy’s cousin, recalled in her memoirs only three debut parties in that Season of 1938, and the outstanding one was Kick’s. She described the scintillating company at her table and the wonderful Ambrose band and Harry Richman: ‘but it was the Kennedys themselves who lit up the evening’.12
In her diary, Kick recorded that the party went on until 3 a.m. To Lem she wrote: ‘Our brawl went off very well . . . tried to get everyone to cut in but it was the most terrific effort. They all acted as if it was absolutely the lowest thing in life to tap someone on the shoulder . . . but otherwise everything was wonderbar.’13
Once again, she had demonstrated her ability to circumvent English propriety without seeming vulgar. This lack of concern for social niceties was very much part of Kick’s particular charm. She would chew gum and walk around barefoot or hold pyjama parties for her friends at the Embassy. One of her most endearing qualities was her manner of telling jokes or funny stories. She would get halfway through and then burst into uncontrollable laughter before reaching the punch line, a trait inherited from her grandfather John Fitzgerald.14 Everyone around her would be laughing with her, not at her.
She would regale her friends with a joke about an American who tells an Englishman that his favourite breakfast is ‘a roll in bed with Honey’. The Englishman retells the joke at White’s: ‘I’ve heard a frightfully funny story from an American. I asked him, what’s your favourite breakfast? And do you know what he said to me . . . a roll in bed with strawb’ry jaaahm.’15 It was Kick’s attempt at an upper-class English accent that was so delicious and enthralling. She had a taste for a bawdy joke and somehow seemed to get away with behaviour that would not be tolerated by anyone else.
Jean Ogilvy remembered a formal dinner party where Kick threw a bread roll down the table at a guest, and before long everyone was throwing food. By the end of the evening Kick was standing on the table hurling bread rolls: ‘If someone else had done that, it might have been rude or shocking . . . But she had this way about her that made it seem an absolute liberation.’16 Friends realized that what she was doing was stripping away stuffy and suffocating English reserve. Her friends giggled when she nicknamed the King and Queen ‘George and Lizzie’.
The more she was teased (‘Do speak English again, Kick’), the more she laughed with that dazzling Kennedy smile. Her self-deprecating sense of humour and her sense of irony were just so English. Kick intuited that once won over, the English would be friends for life.
Rose fussed and fretted over being accepted, whether finger bowls were required, should she wear tweeds for a country-house weekend. Her voice (‘like a duck with laryngitis’) was mocked among Kick’s friends.17 She began to speak with a slight English accent, and it was whispered that Mrs Kennedy was giving herself airs and graces. If Kick, by contrast, didn’t understand rules of protocol, she simply asked one of her English girlfriends: ‘Okay, so what do I do now?’18 She sensed that the way in to English high society was not to ape the English or to conform but to set herself apart, to be utterly and completely herself. The British upper classes loved the way she played up to her Americanness rather than copy the British and adopt a phoney English accent. At the same time, she poked fun at all the things her aristocratic friends thought sacred. Her strategy worked perfectly, and, to everyone’s astonishment, she rose to the top of English society. She was voted England’s most important debutante of 1938.
Debo, a great beauty herself, recalled that 1938 was a vintage year for beautiful girls, but, for her, one girl stood out:
Two ‘Sylvias’ (Lloyd Thomas and Muir), Ursula (Jane) Kenyon-Slaney, tall, blonde and willowy; June Capel, unbeatable for looks and charm; Gina Wernher, of unmistakable Russian descent, with high cheekbones and slanting eyes; Pat Douglas, striking, with veritable violet eyes; Sally Norton, whose perfect figure in Victor Stiebel was made for jealousy; Clarissa Churchill, with more than a whiff of Garbo in a dress by Maggy Rouff of Paris. Pamela Digby – whose famous career was to culminate in the American Ambassadorship to Paris – was rather fat, fast and the butt of many teases; and there was Kathleen (Kick) Kennedy, sister of John F. Kennedy, not strictly a beauty but by far the most popular of all.19
16
Lords a-Leaping
We weren’t always listening, but Kick was, you see. That was her great charm and fascination to all those boys – part of it.
Lady Lloyd
In America, Kick’s friends bewailed the fact that every man whom she met fell in love with her, and now the same thing was happening in stuffy, class-conscious England. This time, however, it wasn’t Harvard and Princeton friends of her brothers, but English noblemen. They simply couldn’t get enough of her.
Debo Mitford later recalled: ‘Vital, intelligent and outgoing, Kick was able to talk to anyone with ease and her shining niceness somehow ruled out any jealousy. Suitors appeared instantly but I noticed from the start that none of the girls was annoyed by her success and I never heard a catty remark made behind her back.’1
The young aristocratic men she met, raised by nannies and sent to boarding school at an early age, found her warmth irresistible. And they came a-courting: Anthony Loughborough (grandson of the Earl of Rosslyn), William Douglas-Home, son of the Earl of Home, Jakie Astor (Nancy’s youngest son), Robert Cecil and Hugh Fraser. They were titled, rich and handsome, most of them Old Etonians.
The men found her so different from the English aristocratic girls they met. It was not simply that she was funny and friendly and charming, and exuded sex appeal, but that she was interested in politics and conversation. This was a girl raised to have an opinion about the world: it was meat and drink to her. Kick’s friend, Lady Jean Ogilvy, eldest daughter of a grand Scottish aristocrat, the Earl of Airlie, recalled that she was always interested in the men’s talk, especially as they endlessly discussed the deepening political crisis in Europe: ‘We weren’t always listening, but Kick was, you see. That was her great charm and fascination to all those boys – part of it.’2
William Douglas-Home was a handsome, rakish figure, with the voice of a ‘constipated Bishop’. Home, who would later base a character in one of his plays on Kick, was smitten. He came to visit her in Prince’s Gate and was served a drink by a man in white tie and tails. ‘Could I have a small one?’ he asked, assuming that he was addressing the butler. ‘You could if you poured it’ was the reply from the man who introduced himself as Kick’s father. Joseph, as ever, was keeping a keen eye on the men who were paying court to his daughter. Douglas-Home described Kick as ‘the merriest girl you ever met. She had the same witty conversation that Jack had.’3 One night at Hever Castle in Kent, Kick agreed to marry Douglas-Home, but
the next morning she had forgotten all about it. She asked him to drive her to meet another suitor.
Kick’s London scrapbooks were filled with messages from her suitors: ‘Your devoted lover, Prince Ahmed Husain, Oxford’; ‘Darling Kick, when – oh when?’; ‘You’ll always mean everything to me.’ Kick enjoyed the attention, but she kept them all at a distance, which only made her more alluring. She had the same ability as Jack to focus all her attention on the person she was speaking to, as though they were the only person in the world.
Debo remembered meeting Kick time and again in the ‘heady atmosphere of that summer’.4 Together they would go to the Pathé cinema in Piccadilly, ‘a one-hour programme that included news, a Walt Disney film and an inferior imitation’.5
Kick’s diary for 1938–9 reads like a roll call of the rich and famous. She listed the people she had met: Lord and Lady Bessborough, Lord Ogilvie, Lady Colefax (an English Elsa Maxwell, she noted wryly), Duff and Diana Cooper, the Earl of Portsmouth and so on. In May, she attended a house party at Blenheim Palace, where she sipped punch and wrote up the historical details in her diary: ‘Beautiful palace belonging to the Duke of Marlborough in Oxfordshire . . . Built by Vanbrugh 1705–24 Façade 400 ft. long. Park 2700 acres’.6 After dinner a group of drunken Oxford undergraduates arrived, including Jakie Astor, Hugh Fraser and Robert Cecil. They were so inebriated that they began flinging champagne bottles around the room and broke a statue.7 The next morning they went to watch cricket at Ditchley. Then at Sunday lunch they were joined by a ‘walking minister’, a preacher who was ‘walking around the countryside collecting his flock (a very curious sight with staff in hand)’.8
Kick went to Oxford for Eights Week, a four-day regatta of bumps races on the River Isis. There was a reception in honour of her father, and she won the admiration of the undergraduates by her keen interest in their (male) debates. The Rhodes Scholars, she noted, were mainly from the Middle West of America.9
On 23 May she attended Lady Astor’s dance given in honour of the King and Queen: ‘Everyone had decorations on but no knee breeches.’ The guests all wore white gloves, and she noticed Charles Lindbergh talking to the Queen on the sofa.10 She went on to another coming-out dinner and danced the ‘Big Apple’ until the early hours.
Two days later, she lunched at St James’s Palace with Pat Britten of the Grenadier Guards, and was highly amused to be encouraged to take snuff from a horse’s hoof. The next day she was invited to a dinner given by Lady Violet Astor. It went on and on and on. When her parents went to the Opera House to see Joe’s favourite, Toscanini, Kick slipped off to the theatre, and then on to a club to hear Harry Richman ‘who sings Thanks for the Memory perfectly’.11
She was unimpressed by the Cambridge Footlights, but ran into the celebrated Oxford don Maurice Bowra, who recognized her from press photographs. At Oxford she spotted the infamous Bullingdon boys, dressed in their dining club’s blue tailcoats. Then it was on to Glyndebourne, the private opera house in Sussex, with its ‘most lovely gardens’.12 They saw Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Next was Wimbledon, dominated by American players. Rose’s parents had come to London from Boston, and Josie attended Wimbledon, seated in the Royal Box with Queen Mary, George V’s widow.
On 1 June Kick went to Epsom for Derby Day, taking Lord Derby’s private train. She loved the races, even though the rain fell. Later that day she returned to London for the Court Ball. She wore a white lace gown with a shocking-pink bodice. She noticed ‘all the women beautifully bejeweled’. She giggled to see her father (the only man not in breeches) trying so hard to ‘force a smile out of old Queen Mary’. Band leader Ambrose played at the ball, and the highlight of the evening was when a crooner arrived and started singing. Ambrose had asked the Lord Chamberlain if he was allowed to bring a crooner. He agreed, thinking a ‘crooner’ was a musical instrument.13 Kick noted in her diary that the Duke of Kent danced the ‘Big Apple for all he’s worth’, and that Duff Cooper, First Lord of the Admiralty, was hopping about with a shoe on his head.14 Kick’s Convent days were well and truly over.
Royal Ascot in mid-June was for many the social highlight of the Season. Special trains were put on to convey people to the racecourse, and if you were a deb you took your place in the Royal Enclosure. Kick stayed at Cliveden for Ascot week: ‘House chock full’.15 On the first day of the races she was amused to see the finery: ‘Everyone dressed up like stuffed turkeys’.
For Gold Cup Day at Ascot, the women were dressed in beautiful soft pastels of blue, lavender and dusky pinks. Rose Kennedy caused something of a sensation by wearing a gorgeous black organdie Patou dress and hat. She wrote in her diary that she was determined to ‘stand out’. Her strategy worked. The Evening Standard described the Queen’s and the Princess Royal’s dresses, but the only photograph was of Mrs Kennedy.16 When the King and Queen arrived in their carriage, Joe exclaimed, ‘Well, if that’s not just like Hollywood.’17
During the Season there were balls on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, with occasional dinners on Fridays in the country. Debo Mitford recalled how humiliating it was for the less popular girls, who had no dance partners. They would hide in the powder room or fill in pretend names on their dance cards. Kick also noted in her diary that the ‘card system is beastly’.18 She was acquiring English phrases. She never had a problem with dance partners.
All through June, Kick attended party after party. Receptions would take place before the balls, often in hotels or in a private house. As well as the ‘Big Apple’ the young people danced ‘The Lambeth Walk’. It was the era of the big bands: Joe Loss, Carroll Gibbons, Roy Fox, Nat Gonella, Ambrose (Kick’s favourite), the great Harry Roy and Benny Goodman, ‘the King of Swing’. They danced to the songs of Cole Porter, Noël Coward and Irving Berlin.
Debo Mitford recalled that Robert Cecil and Hugh Fraser were the most energetic dancers: ‘coats off, pouring with sweat, stumping and thumping with no real steps, just enjoying themselves madly. Muv [Lady Redesdale] said, “If young men all go on like this there will be a war.”’19 By the summer of 1938, war was indeed a distinct possibility, but everyone seemed to ignore it. They were all living for the moment.
Debo remembered that Kick was always beautifully dressed, shopping in Paris for her clothes. Debo herself was on a strict budget, but her friend spent a small fortune on dresses, hats and shoes. Kick wore her trademark single pearls and white gloves, her hair perfectly coiffed. Like her mother, she was slim as a pencil and kept a close eye on her weight. But if she looked like an American princess, she did not play up to the role. Friends noted that she would often be seen patiently walking her sister Rosemary in Hyde Park, relieving the maid.20
17
‘A Merry Girl’
Grace is wildly in love with you and is heading for England this summer in order to clinch the romance – so watch it, Kick.
Lem Billings
Kick’s new English friends noticed that she talked incessantly about her brother Jack, who was shortly to arrive from Harvard for the summer. Jack, she told them, was obsessed by everything British, from history to literature to politicians. He was fascinated by Winston Churchill and had read everything he had published, including his edited speeches. Churchill’s Great Contemporaries was one of his favourite books. In Churchill’s Marlborough Jack read about the great British families that he was now about to meet in the flesh: the Cavendishes, the Marlboroughs and the Cecils.
Jack was amazed by Kick’s popularity and by the way she had risen inexorably to the top of this exclusive set. She dragged him along to every party and dinner, proudly introducing him. Her friends were charmed by this tall, skinny, handsome young man who looked as if he were Kick’s twin; they were so similar in face and manners, finishing one another’s sentences, talking non-stop about anything and everything. They made a fascinating double act. Kick’s friends noted the peculiar closeness between her and Jack. She threw a party at Prince’s Gate to introduce him to her friends. She took him around the
room, whispering into his ear; then the two of them would descend into fits of laughter.1
Jean Ogilvy thought him ‘very much a boy, all long skinny arms and legs, but very, very attractive’. Nobody knew how ill he had been just a few months before arriving in England. He exuded health and vitality, moving with a ‘careless grace . . . not arrogant, but simply confident’.2
Young Joe had arrived in England at the same time as Jack, so the family was reunited for American Independence Day. The English press went wild when young Joe, with his movie-star good looks, and Jack arrived to join the family. That July, Vogue magazine lauded the Kennedys as a family who had ‘swept like a conquering horde upon London, which has lowered its defences and admitted itself stormed’. The magazine devoted pages and pages to the photogenic Kennedys.3
The press kept up their fascination with the American Ambassador, ‘whose whole family is taking to London life with the ease of the proverbial ducks to the pond’. One member stood out: ‘But it is Kathleen especially who is about everywhere, at all the parties, alert, observant, a merry girl who when she talks to you makes you feel as if you were seeing it all for the first time, too.’4
Kick was thrilled to have her good-looking elder brothers in London. Young Joe and Kick got up early most mornings to ride together, cantering down Rotten Row. Though young Joe was extremely handsome, he was not as popular as Jack. He was too irascible, like his father, and espoused similarly isolationist views about the increasingly worrying European situation. British men found him brash and quick-tempered, and the women thought he was sexually aggressive.5