by Paula Byrne
It seemed that everyone was involved in the Agnes and Hartie situation. Rose appealed to Archbishop Spellman of New York, Enrico Galeazzi and Pope Pius. Everyone was trying to find a way through.
In her friend Evelyn Waugh’s Catholic novel Brideshead Revisited, the beautiful aristocratic Catholic heroine Julia Flyte is faced with Kick’s dilemma when she falls in love with an Anglican. Waugh was writing the novel during this time, and there is a scene in the novel where the heroine visits a priest from Farm Street to talk about her problem: ‘not in the confessional, but in a dark little parlour kept for such interviews’. The priest, like D’Arcy, is a ‘gentle old Jesuit . . . unyielding as rock’. Waugh was clearly drawing on Kick’s experience: ‘She barely listened to him; he was refusing her what she wanted, that was all she needed to know.’10
This was Kick’s dilemma as she went back and forth on visits to D’Arcy’s parlour to discuss the situation. D’Arcy was unrelenting as he painted a bleak picture of a Godless life. Marriage to Billy meant ‘living in sin’ in the eyes of the Catholic Church. She would be unable to take Holy Communion, unable to make an Act of Confession. She would not go to Heaven and nor would her children.
In March, Billy’s mother had arranged for Kick to meet with Father Ted Talbot, a prominent High Anglican clergyman and former chaplain to the King. His role was to explain to Kick why Billy was so adamant that his children should not be brought up as Catholics, what the Cavendishes stood for in the English Church. ‘He also took a great deal of trouble to explain to me the fundamental differences between the Anglican and Roman Churches.’ The clear intention of the meeting was to persuade Kick to convert to Anglicanism, so that they could at least be married in a church. As Billy was the eldest son and heir to one of the greatest dukedoms in the land, it was expected that, despite wartime restrictions, the wedding would be an important social occasion. Kick was undaunted, defending her faith to the hilt: ‘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.’11 She was not slavishly following her faith simply because she was born that way, but proclaiming that Catholicism had shaped her character and personality, had made her who she was. She went on to say that ‘I had been blessed with so many of this world’s goods that it [would have] seemed rather cheap and weak to give in at the first real crisis in my life.’12
In an addition to her round-robin letter to ‘dearest Family’, headed ‘THIS IS FOR MOTHER AND DADDY ONLY’, she wrote, ‘The Duchess is so wonderful and so kind.’ And then, ‘I want to do the right thing so badly and yet I hope I’m not giving up the most important thing in my life . . . Poor Billy is very, very sad but he sees his duty must come first. He is a fanatic on this subject.’13 Kick made it clear to her parents that Billy’s parents were being remarkably supportive. He would not be ‘cut off’ if he married her – they ‘would make the best of it’. Kick was ‘discouraged and sad’. She said that the Duchess and Father Talbot understood perfectly about the importance of her faith, but ‘they just hoped that I might find the same thing in the Anglican version of Catholicism’. The Duchess wrote Kick the kindest of letters, and she took the trouble to quote a lengthy passage of it in her letter to her own parents:
You are always in my thoughts and how I feel for you alone here without your mother and father when you are going through so much and have had such overwhelmingly difficult things to decide about. It is desperately hard, that you should have all this great unhappiness with the second front always at the back of one’s mind. I know how lonely you must feel and almost forsaken but we must trust in God that things will come out for the best in the end. I do hope you know how much we love you and if there is even the smallest thing we can do to help you have only to say.14
Sensing his daughter’s deep unhappiness and loneliness, Joe was quick to send a telegram: ‘CONTINUE WRITING LETTERS AS ALWAYS THEY ARE WONDERFUL . . . I FEEL TERRIBLE UNHAPPY YOU HAVE TO FACE YOUR BIGGEST CRISIS WITHOUT MOTHER AND ME YOUR CONFIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM WORTHY OF CHESTERTON MAGNIFICENT.’ He told her: ‘with your faith in God you cannot make a mistake and remember you are still and always will be tops with me’.15
By April, Kick felt that she was going mad, and that matters had to be resolved one way or the other. Worn down with all the talks, she succumbed to an attack of laryngitis. Her two surrogate mothers stepped in. First Mrs Bruce nursed her in London and then she went to Cliveden in the country to recuperate with Lady Astor. She was well looked after, and Joe Jr came down on the Sunday night to see her, and they walked together. She thought he was ‘slightly dejected’. That night the young people just wanted to sit and talk but Nancy insisted on games, one called ‘Subjects’. Joe had to talk for two minutes on the subject of ‘Jam’. He didn’t do a very good job. Kick called her hostess the ‘soul of generosity’, adding, ‘of course she still hopes I’ll marry Billy and keeps telling me I’ll only be happy in England’.16 Nancy Astor wrote to a friend, ‘I have had Kick Kennedy here for three days. She is a very nice girl and I believe that if she says she will not bring up her children RCs that she will honourably keep her promise. I had a most interesting talk with her on the subject and warned her against the traps that would be set.’17
41
Telegrams and Anger
‘They [Catholics] seem just like other people.’
‘My dear Charles, that’s exactly what they’re not . . . they’ve got an entirely different outlook on life; everything they think important is different from other people.’
Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (1945)
On 4 April 1944 Kick told her parents that she and Billy and young Joe had seen Bishop Mathew, who had said that there would be no immediate ‘dispensations’ nor ‘concessions’ from the Catholic Church. The only possibility was to ‘be married in a registry office’ and then ‘perhaps at a later date’ their marriage ‘could be made valid’ by some sort of special dispensation.1
She reiterated that fifteen years earlier her marriage could have been ‘solemnized in the Church – the boys being brought up in the father’s religion – the girls in the mother’s’.2 Kick also told them that the Duke was ‘very worried about having A Roman Catholic in the family. In their eyes the most awful thing that could happen to our son would be for it 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.’3
What Kick was really preparing her parents for was the idea that she would more than likely be married in a registry office. For a Roman Catholic this would have been the greatest disappointment. Kick refused to have an Anglican ceremony, so this was the compromise position. Not a Roman Catholic church but also not the beautiful English church in which Billy’s ancestors had been married.
It was sad, and disappointing and grim, but wartime made this compromise seem not so terrible. She told her parents: ‘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.’ Her anguish was clear. Then Kick got down to the real issue of the letter: ‘If I do marry Billy within the next few months, please be quite sure that I am doing it with the full knowledge of what I am doing and that I’m quite happy about it and feel quite sure that I am doing the right thing.’ No doubt for her mother’s sake, she added, ‘As my Bishop said, “No one can say that you are committing a sin because a sin is done from a selfish motive. What you are doing is done entirely from a non-selfish motive.”’4 Her P.S. was typically upbeat: ‘Feeling happy & well – Don’t worry! Sorry you’ll have to face the McDonnells.’ She well knew how humiliating it was for Rose to face her friends, knowing that her daughter was renouncing her church.
On 20 April Kick went to Yorkshire to stay with Jean Lloyd, who had broken her foot. Kick was glad to help. The door suddenly opene
d and there was Billy carrying a sack of oranges: a great rarity in wartime. He had also managed to procure champagne and lobster, and they had a sumptuous supper. Jean remembered Billy’s joy that evening, as he had heard the news he had long desired: that the Allied invasion of France was afoot. Billy’s smile was radiant and he rubbed his hands together with the words ‘We’re off.’5 He had never truly recovered from the ignominious defeat at Dunkirk and had longed for honour to be restored. Kick, terrified by the prospect of Billy fighting in what she knew would be a fierce and bloody invasion, finally agreed to marry him. On his terms. It was one of the happiest days of Billy Hartington’s twenty-six-year life. He had Kick and he was off to fight for his honour and that of his country. Jean took a photograph, capturing his look of complete joy.
On 24 April, Kick typed a long round-robin letter to her ‘Dearest family’ to prepare them for the inevitable. It was the most difficult letter she had ever had to write. She began talking about how the war had changed her friends. Jean Ogilvy, daughter of the Earl of Airlie, was living in a tiny house in Yorkshire, with no phone and no domestic help, and was not at all regretful about the loss of her luxurious, pre-war life. Like many of his fellow aristocrats, Billy knew in his heart that the old world would never come back. He had no expectations of being able to afford to maintain Chatsworth in a new age of post-war austerity and swingeing death duties. ‘But’, wrote Kick, ‘he won’t give up all hope’. She then dropped her bombshell: ‘I have definitely decided to marry him.’ With the thought of the war coming to an end, and gaining the woman he loved, Billy was in ‘tremendous spirits . . . he has been sending for rings from all the jewelry stores in London’. And then the painful news: ‘You understand that the ceremony would have to be performed in a registry office which is rather sordid but the only thing to do as I wouldn’t have an Anglican service.’6
Rose and Joe were genuinely shocked. Joe wrote back, saying that even Jack, ‘much to my amazement because I am not particularly impressed with the depth of his Catholic faith’, felt that ‘some sort of concession should be made on the part of Billy . . . In the meantime, I want you to know that I feel for you very deeply.’ But she had to live her own life.7
Kick had promised her parents that she would ‘let them know in advance’ the date of the wedding. On 29 April she sent a cable to her parents to say that she was definitely going to be married in a registry office.
Rose was distraught. In normal circumstances, she was scrupulous about punctuation and grammar, always writing in lucid, perfectly formed sentences. But on this occasion her anguish is clear. She wrote down her feelings in a haphazard, broken, stream-of-consciousness fragment that she entitled ‘Notes on My Reactions at Kick’s Marriage’:
Personal Reminiscences Private
K – sent cable Sat April 29th that she would marry in a registry office – Joe phoned me said he hadn’t slept – Naturally I was disturbed horrified – heartbroken – Talked for a minute on our responsibility in allowing her to drift into this dilemma then decided we should think of practical way to extricate her. I said I would think it out & then call him later.8
Rose was convinced that there was still hope. She had been furious that Joe had not flown out to exert his powers of persuasion, and now they were paying the price. Her panic is evident. As she continued, her normally impeccable prose fell to pieces: ‘Later we decided we would send a cable about like this Heartbroken – think-feel you have been wrongly influenced – Sending Archie Spell’s friend to talk to you. Anything done for our Lord will be rewarded hundredfold.’ Rose was reasoning with herself about why she was so distraught: ‘I thought it would have such mighty repercussions in that every little young girl would say if K— Kennedy can – why can’t I? – why all the fuss, then everyone pointed to our family with pride as well behaved – level headed & deeply religious. What a blow to the family prestige.’9
Rose was on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Cables flew back and forth as she tried to prevent the inevitable. What should have been a joyous time for Kick, the happiest time of her life, was marred by her mother’s misery. Rose had never really thought that Kick would capitulate. She believed that her daughter’s faith and her respect for Rose would win out over her love for Billy. She simply could not and would not believe that her compliant, sweet-natured daughter would rebel in this, the most disastrous of ways.
On 30 April, Billy wrote a beautiful letter to Rose, apologizing for not having written before: ‘I have loved Kick for a long time, but I did try so hard to face the fact that the religious difficulties seemed insurmountable, and I tried to make up my mind that I should have to make do with second best. I felt too that if she could find someone else she could really be happy with, it would be much better & more satisfactory for her.’10 Billy then explained that after Christmas he had made up his mind to propose: ‘I couldn’t bear to let her go without ever asking her if we couldn’t find a way out.’ He added that he knew he was going back out to fight and time was getting short.
He told Rose, ‘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 were Christians, to miss the opportunity of being happy, and perhaps even useful, together because of the religious squabbles of His human servants several hundred years ago.’ Rose would not have warmed to this. For her, Roman Catholicism was the only true religion, and for her, religion was never about men but about God.
Billy also explained his strong feelings about the religious upbringing of his own children. He told Rose that the reason he wanted his children to be raised as Anglicans was bound up with the national Church of England. As England was not a Roman Catholic country, and as he benefited from many of the advantages of his position, he felt that he should be setting a very bad example if he gave in and allowed his children to be raised as Catholics: ‘I do feel terribly keenly the sacrifices I’m asking Kick to make, but I can’t see that she will be doing anything that is wrong in the eyes of God . . . I do think in my heart that she is so holy and good that God will continue to help her and that she can be happy, and I know that selfish though it sounds, I should never be happy or be much good without her.’
He thanked Rose for her consent, which she hadn’t given, and told her that he felt ‘punch drunk after the emotional battering of the last few months’. He wrote of his ‘amazing good fortune in being allowed to have Kick as my wife; it still seems incredibly wonderful’. He apologized for his ‘dopey & after reading over, pompous letter’, and for ‘what must seem to you a tyrannical attitude’ and closed by saying: ‘I promise that both Kick & I have only done what we really believed in our hearts to be right.’11
By this time, Billy’s parents were reconciled to the marriage. On 27 April 1944, the Duke of Devonshire wrote to his ‘darling mother’ on the headed notepaper of the Zoological Society (London Zoo), of which he was President:
I am afraid that you will not like what I have to tell you, which is that I do not feel justified in opposing Bill’s engagement any longer. He & Kick are so desperately in love and so unhappy, and have both been so good and so dutiful, and, alas, Bill’s tenure of life is so uncertain that I should feel almost like a murderer if I refused him the chance of being happy while he can.
Kick is seeing [Archbishop] William Temple on Monday with a view to her conversion, which is, of course, the best that can happen.
I do not think she will come over now, but it may bear fruit in the future.
You will be unhappy, as I am. The religious question apart, I would not choose as a wife for Bill a Boston Irish girl, but she is a good and a nice girl . . . Both Bill and Kick are for some reason against an announcement, but I want one very much and I think it will appear early next week.12
The Duke and Duchess were readying themselves to attend the wedding. The British establishment was, for the most part, duly reconciled. Nine days later, the Duke received a letter from King George VI:
I am very
glad that you have gone into the matter of her religion so carefully, and that she has promised that the children shall be brought up as Protestants and that she herself may come over to the church later . . . I am sure the girl takes after her mother and not her father, as his behaviour here as ambassador in the early days of the war was anything but helpful.13
The week before her marriage was torture for Kick. She wrote to her mother that it had been a ‘most difficult’ week: ‘The clergy of both churches were after me.’14 She had a meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury, ‘charming and so desirous to be helpful’, and Archbishop Spellman, her parents’ cardinal friend in America, sent a papal delegate, ‘absolutely charming and made me feel very sad about Mother’.15
‘Brother Joe’ was indeed Kick’s rock. Every time she received a letter or cable from the family she would telephone him for advice. ‘Once she had made up her mind, I did the best I could to help her through,’ he explained to their parents.16 He also told them of the terrific strain she was under. He took on the paternal role, in his father’s absence, and went to London to meet with the Cavendish lawyers. The terms of the marriage settlement were set out: in the event of Billy’s death (the stark reality was that he would soon be embarking for the Second Front), Kick was to be given an annual allowance of £3,000, but if she remarried it would be cut down to £1,000. The children were to receive a lump sum of £25,000 pounds and an income of £1,000 per year for education and maintenance, but ‘All this is conditional on them not becoming Catholics, which would automatically cut them out of the gift and income.’17