Kick

by Paula Byrne

  Letters from the family kept her going during the harsh winter of 1945, as snow fell deep on the ground and food rationing was making her miserable. Bobby Kennedy, Kick’s favourite little sibling, wrote to her constantly. She liked his style. She was also deriving great comfort from reading poetry. The poet Maurice Baring had sent her some autographed verses, which she loved: ‘Because of you we will be glad and gay / Remembering you, we will be brave and strong / And hail the advent of each dangerous day / And meet the last adventure with a song.’36

  The family also sent presents from America: pineapple juice, ham, chocolate, stockings, records and clothes. Her friends were rallying around her and most evenings her little dining room was filled with people. She had a small but intimate party for her twenty-fifth birthday in February 1945. The Duke and Duchess gave her a Crown Derby tea service. The Duke brought claret and port, and her friend Fiona Gore made her a cake, using up all her sugar ration for the month. Her birthday present from the Kennedy family was a diamond and sapphire watch: ‘There is no doubt I LOVE large expensive gifts.’37

  She wrote to Lem to tell him that she was looking to the future: ‘One thing you can be sure of life holds no fears for someone who has faced love, marriage and death before the age of 25. It’s hard to face the future, without someone who you thought would always be there to help and guide and for whom you’d sacrificed a lot. Luckily I am a Kennedy. I have a very strong feeling that makes a big difference about how to take things . . . I know we’ve all got the ability to be not got down.’38

  Kick took great comfort in the fact that Billy had been so brave and a wonderful leader: ‘I have so much to be proud of.’ And she never relented from her belief that, for all the anguish it had caused the families, she had been right to marry him: ‘I thank God every night I married him and I think it must have been God’s way of making Billy’s life, though short, completely happy.’39

  47

  The Widow Hartington

  During the war everybody lived in a state of flux but now we must all settle down & make definite plans.

  Kick Kennedy Hartington1

  It was Tuesday, 8 May 1945 and Kick was playing bridge in her flat with her friends Major-General Bob Laycock and his wife Angie, and an American who had been out in the Pacific. Kick had been staying in Yorkshire but returned hurriedly to London to hear the announcement about VE Day. She turned on the wireless to hear that the Prime Minister was going to speak. Kick thought it funny that Bob remarked to her, an American, how quietly the British were celebrating the end of the war. But ‘At that moment bedlam broke loose and never stopped for two days.’2

  That evening, Kick, accompanied by the Gores and Hugh Fraser, joined the crowds outside Buckingham Palace: ‘I must say it was a most moving sight.’ Everyone shouted, ‘We Want the King!’ and finally the royal family appeared on the flood-lit balcony, the Queen wearing her tiara. The people screamed and cheered as the King and Queen waved. Behind her in the crowd, Noël Coward was signing autographs. Many were dressed in red, white and blue.

  Later, Kick and her friends gathered around a huge bonfire in Green Park, where effigies of Hitler were burnt. Then they headed off to Piccadilly, ‘which was absolute bedlam. Fire-works, dancing in the streets.’3 The day after VE Day, Kick lunched at the House of Commons and then climbed to the top of Big Ben to survey the crowd.

  Kick wrote to her parents to say that during the week of celebrations she felt that she had ‘lived five years rather than five days’. Joe wrote back, ‘Mother and I were talking it over last night and decided that nobody in the world twenty-five years of age has had the kind of life you’ve had or as interesting.’4

  The spring and summer of 1945 was a bittersweet time for Kick. The returning soldiers only brought back memories of Billy. The Duchess noticed how her face would suddenly look ineffably sad, which caught at her heart.5 Kick still felt rudderless without Billy. She also felt isolated by the fact that so many of her friends were married to husbands who had survived the war while she had lost so much. She decided that she wouldn’t wear black widow’s weeds, though Evelyn Waugh began calling her the widow Hartington.

  The Duke had been in Burma in his capacity of Under-Secretary at the Colonial Office and then had accompanied his son Andrew back from Italy, where he had been fighting. He brought Kick a beautiful white and gold sari. Seeing Andrew, and thinking that he, not Billy, would one day be Duke of Devonshire, was difficult for Kick: ‘It nearly kills me to see him, not that he is really at all like Billy but the whole idea of seeing Andy makes Billy’s absence much more noticeable.’6 She was upset when she saw Billy’s poodle, Lupin, bounding about looking for his master. Kick sorted through Billy’s things and sent his diamond and sapphire cufflinks to his godson, Andrew Parker Bowles, with a kind note.7

  Kick’s new cook was working out well: ‘looks like the sort that would stick around and not disappear into a factory seeking a higher wage’.8 Postwar Britain was changing at a rapid rate. After the freedoms of the war, domestic servants did not want to go back to a life of servitude. That March Kick had been asked to give a speech at the Women’s Institute on the subject of the American housewife in wartime. She was initially nervous but once on her feet she was fine and by the end the housewives were ‘screaming Give the English country housewife the recognition she deserves – more freedom for women’.9

  In March the family had heard the news that Billy had been mentioned in dispatches. She immediately cabled the family and then wrote to express her delight and pride: ‘Isn’t that wonderful? We are all so pleased.’10 There had even been talk about Billy getting a posthumous VC and Kick told her parents that the King and Queen had sent a condolence message on Billy’s death. Billy’s servant Ingles had been to see Kick and told her that after the war she would be able to get a photograph of Billy entering Brussels with Billy on top of the tank. Ingles said that Billy had ‘volunteered for everything . . . was always in a good humour and he was the best-liked company commander’.11

  She had planned a political life at Billy’s side, which had now been snatched away from her, but Kick had not lost her interest in politics. She had been reporting back to Jack the news about the upcoming general election and urging him to come to London for a ringside seat. She joked to her parents: ‘Tell Jack not to get married for a long time. I’ll keep house for him.’12 She warned her brother of the ‘terrific swing to the left’ in Britain. Kick also promised that she had a few girls lined up for him for when he came to London to cover the election for the Hearst newspapers.13 He arrived on 31 May and was met by an excited Kick. Jack’s friend Pat Lannan joined them. He thought Kick was an Anglicized version of Jack, completely at home in England:

  She was a very industrious, animated young woman, and by that time very English, or British orientated. I felt that she had really melded herself into the city of London and England, as though it were her adopted home – that was my very distinct impression . . . Whereas I felt that Jack was an outsider, he was an American visiting there, as I was an American visiting there – but I never felt that way about Kick.14

  Kick, keen to be involved and to spend as much time as possible with Jack, offered to drive the young reporters around in her car, a little Austin Seven:

  When the two of us got in it we were filled. I remember it ran like hell – the windshield wipers didn’t work and a lot of things like that, but we were grateful to have it because in following Churchill around, he was delivering speeches at racecourses, dog tracks and what have you and they were very difficult places to get to.15

  Kick’s little flat became the centre of activity and political gossip.

  Jack, who had so impressed the Duchess with his condolence letter, was invited to Compton Place. On 29 June he dined with the Duke and Duchess and was a great success. He saw that Kick had been, in the words of her youngest sister-in-law Anne, ‘completely amalgamated into our family – it had become her family’.16 The Duke and Duchess, he noted, treated h
er like a daughter, and therefore Jack was to be treated as a family member.17

  Kick also took Jack to Chatsworth. She made speeches to the Red Cross in Derbyshire. He told the family, ‘Kathleen is fine – does very well with her speeches by looking extremely girlish and sweet and looks like a possible candidate to me.’18 When he went into hospital for yet another operation on his back, a diplomatic correspondent visited and saw the ‘beautiful young widow of the Marquess of Hartington, was sitting on foot of Jack’s bed’.19

  In July, Kick spent a weekend at Hatley Park, the new home of Jakie Astor. Kick took William Douglas-Home out to ride on a donkey to cheer him up, after his release from incarceration following a court martial for disobeying orders. William was still besotted with Kick. He began writing a play about post-war socialist England, in which a beautiful, spirited American heiress called June is engaged to the hero, an English peer, who wants to be a politician. June was based on Kick Kennedy.

  In July, Kick stayed for the first time at the Devonshires’ Irish home, Lismore Castle in south-east Ireland. She described it as ‘the most lovely old castle ever’.20 The chatelaine was Adele Cavendish, Fred Astaire’s sister. This mesmerizing, vibrant woman had nursed Billy’s uncle Charlie through alcoholism, which in 1944 had claimed his life at the age of thirty-eight. Adele, like Kick, was perceived as part of the Cavendish family and they gave her Lismore Castle as her home. She saw Kick as a kindred spirit. Kick adored the Castle. She swam in the pool, sunbathed and had a good rest. The place prompted her to think of her Irish ancestors, and she made plans to return. She told her parents how Billy had loved to come to Lismore to fish. Adele wrote to Joe to say how much she had loved Kick’s company, ‘overflowing with big political talks’.21

  She stayed for the whole summer. Towards the end of her stay, she attended the opening meet of the autumn hunting season at Shillelagh, a little further north in County Wicklow: ‘I must say to see them all in red coats moving off with the hounds into the Irish countryside is one of the most lovely sights imaginable.’22 She was beginning to fall in love with Ireland. The hunt was led by the local aristocrat, Peter Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, who two years before had inherited the title of 8th Earl Fitzwilliam.

  Jack had fallen ill again and in August, on the day that the first atom bomb was dropped, he flew back to recuperate at Hyannis Port. After the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, and the surrender of the Japanese, Kick celebrated with Evelyn Waugh and Hugh Fraser in London. Hugh had been a tremendous support to Kick in the months after Billy’s death. Hugh had won a seat in the Commons in the 1945 general election, and Kick often went along to listen to him speak in the House.

  This was the famous election that Churchill lost to Clement Attlee. He moved out of 10 Downing Street and into a flat above Kick’s. People came every night to sing under his window. She was unimpressed by Attlee: ‘the Prime Minister’s [i.e. Churchill’s] definition “a sheep in sheep’s clothing” fits perfectly’.23 She talked at length with Harold Macmillan (Billy’s uncle) about Eisenhower in North Africa and Italy. When he told her that Churchill had no eggs or milk she left some outside his door.24 She dined at the House of Commons with Evelyn Waugh, Christopher Hollis and Hugh Fraser, and was pleased to insult the left-wing journalist and MP Tom Driberg who had written a ‘terrible’ article about Billy when he lost the by-election.25

  Billy’s sister Elizabeth recalled the change in atmosphere following the end of the war and the defeat of Churchill. Britain had changed irrevocably. From living in the moment, people were beginning to think of the future. Kick told her parents that during the war everyone had existed in a state of flux, but now it was time to ‘settle down & make plans’.26 That summer of 1945, she pondered her future: America or England. Her friend Janey Lindsay (née Kenyon-Slaney) recalled her once saying, ‘It’s such a wonderful day. You don’t think Billy would mind if I wore a really flowery dress, do you?’27 She was moving on.

  Jack’s departure left a hole in Kick’s life and she began to think about returning home to America. After VJ Day, she resigned her post at the Red Cross.28 The first anniversary of Billy’s death in September was difficult. All of his family wrote her ‘the nicest letters’: ‘I must say that it is difficult to realize it has been a year but then sometimes it seems like a hundred years . . . even though one is surrounded by friends etc there are always moments when one feels very lonely.’29

  She was back in Hyannis Port with the family for Thanksgiving and then headed off to Washington, where she met up with old friends, including John White, who had recently broken up with his fiancée. But Cape Cod no longer felt like the place where she belonged. She began to think about returning to England and making it her permanent home. She wanted to be among friends who had loved Billy, and who wanted to talk to her about him and keep his memory alive. She wrote to her mother-in-law, ‘Darling Dutch’, and told her that staying in England was what Billy would have wanted.30

  In the meantime, she stayed at the Chatham Hotel in New York. Winston Frost, a lawyer from an old Virginian family, dated her and she began to fall in love. Frost – tall, blond and handsome – was a ladies’ man and he did not meet with Joe’s approval. Having made his usual investigations, Joe told his daughter that Frost was seeing another woman, and that she should break off the romance. Joe got his way. Kick thanked her father: ‘You told me what you thought. I listened. The rest was up to me and in the cold light of morning after having the life I have had one doesn’t waste it going from El Morocco to the Stork Club.’31 But she had had enough of her father’s interference and her mother’s controlling ways.

  When she returned to her London flat, the sitting room was ‘swamped with flowers’ welcoming her home.32 Back in England, Kick found herself attracting more suitors than ever before. At twenty-six, she was at the height of her loveliness. Her sadness seemed only to enhance her attraction. She had lost weight, which suited her. She was no longer the all-American girl with the gorgeous smile, or the quintessential Red Cross girl on the bicycle. She was the impeccably dressed Lady Hartington, with beautiful jewels, the most elegant wardrobe, her own car: an independent woman of means. She now seemed more English than American. She had finally thrown off the shackles of family, confiding to a friend, ‘it’s rather nice not having to be a Kennedy. Lord knows there are enough of them as it is.’33

  Men, young and old, fell in love with her. The forty-nine-year-old Anthony Eden, who had been Churchill’s Foreign Secretary, was smitten and asked her to continue writing her wonderful letters: ‘For then I can imagine that you are here. How I wish that you were, and I do believe that you would enjoy it too.’34 Her friends admired not only her courage and her dignity, but her enduring vivacity. One of them, Angela Lambert, put it especially well perhaps: ‘Gaiety, like honesty, is a kind of social courage. It is not easy to be unfailingly charming, lively and original. It requires energy and generosity always to make the effort to be on one’s form.’35 Kick wrote to the Dowager Duchess, Billy’s grandmother, telling her that it was her duty to be strong and brave, and that if men like Billy found ‘the courage to die so one must have the courage to live’.36

  Kick had resumed a romantic affair with Richard Wood. She admired him greatly for not allowing his disability to affect his life, and he was determined on a political career. He had been fitted with new artificial legs, and walked with just a cane. They came close to becoming engaged, but, once again, she would have the obstacle of a mixed marriage. Richard, more flexible than Billy, and without the encumbrances that came with his status, agreed that their children could be raised as Catholics, and he even agreed to convert if it made her happy. In the end, she decided not to marry Richard. He was overwhelmed with sorrow. When he was a very old man, he met a female relation of Kick’s and asked if they were related. He then told her that he had thought about Kick Kennedy every single day of his life.

  The problem for Kick was that nobody, it seemed, could come close to Billy. She stayed wi
th Lord Dudley at Himley Hall in Staffordshire, but was unimpressed by the stuffiness and formality of the place: ‘I keep thinking how Billy would laugh at it all – there’s even a coronet on the butter. That was a great thing about him. He hated show or ostentation of any kind.’37 The Duchess was the one person who really understood. Kick wrote to her from Compton Place, where she had spent her honeymoon with Billy two years before: ‘the hot weather always makes me think of Billy . . . sometimes it seems like six years at other times six minutes’.38

  48

  Politics or Passion?

  Mother, if possible, will you please bring me some evening shoes (gold and silver), an evening bra (strapless, size 34), a black evening sweater or one in fuchsia colour, any pretty wool dress.

  Kick Kennedy, letter of 3 August 19471

  Kick kept a close eye on Jack’s political career as he campaigned to get to Washington to represent the Eleventh Congressional District in Boston. Kick was delighted when he won the Democratic primary in June 1946. She wrote to congratulate him from Garrowby in Yorkshire, where she was staying with Richard Wood and Lord and Lady Halifax: ‘Everyone says you were so good in the Election and that the outcome must have been a great source of satisfaction. It’s nice to know you are as appreciated in the 11th district as you are among your brothers & sisters. Gee, aren’t you lucky?’ She added that everyone on her side of the Atlantic ‘thinks you are madly pro-British so don’t go destroying that illusion until I get my house fixed. The painters might just not like your attitude.’2

  The house she was referring to was her new home in Westminster. Her beloved brother she believed was on the way to the White House, but she had her own plans too. She had been looking out for a house near Westminster where she could preside over a political salon. Her suitor Richard Wood thought that she perceived a role for herself as a political hostess: ‘I think she was ambitious to play a part as great ladies have played a part in the past.’3 In part this was a tribute to Billy, who had seen her as a second Georgiana. She would never now be the Duchess of Devonshire but she could carve out a place for herself as Lady Hartington.