by Paula Byrne
Number 4 Smith Square was a lovely three-storey Georgian townhouse in the heart of historic old Westminster, close to the Houses of Parliament. From the three sash windows of her first-floor drawing room, you could see the beautiful Baroque Church of St John’s. The dining room opened on to a small courtyard garden, perfect for entertaining. Jean Lloyd remembered the tiny drawing room ‘crammed with armchairs – and nothing else!’4
Kick hired a cook and a housekeeper called Mabel, bought herself a fridge and filled the house with antiques, mostly given to her by the Duke and Duchess. Her two most prized possessions were a large photograph of the eleven Kennedys, taken just before the war, and a large oil painting of Billy in his uniform by the society portraitist Oswald Birley. She kept herself busy, fixing the garden, painting window boxes and choosing fabrics. Nancy Astor gave her china. She was starting her new life and there was a renewed sense of purpose.
Being so close to Westminster meant she could dine at the House of Commons and listen to the speeches. She went to the state opening of Parliament. Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Eden and George Bernard Shaw dined at her house. That summer, she threw herself into charity work, becoming involved in a fundraising event for the widows and dependants of the Commandos. She was given the position of chair of the Commandos Benevolent Fund Ball at the Dorchester. She was delighted that they sold 500 tickets. She bought herself a beautiful new dress for the ball, and had never looked lovelier.
The Dorchester Hotel, 12 June 1946.
It was a ball reminiscent of the glorious days before the outbreak of war. The women were once again dressed in their finery, the men no longer in their uniforms, but in white tie. Kick, chair of the committee, was dressed in a floor-length dress of blush-pink satin with aquamarine diamond clips. She was back to her best Kennedy self, lighting up the room with her personality and her dazzling smile. One eighteen-year-old debutante was heard to whisper, furiously, ‘It’s absolutely maddening, Kick’s taking all my dance partners.’5 It was inevitable, with all eyes on her, that she would catch the eye of Peter, 8th Earl Fitzwilliam. His reputation as one of the most dashing and fearless of the Commandos was assured.
It was Kick’s friend Bob Laycock who during the war had been commissioned to raise an independent company of army Commandos. They were recruited from the ‘smarter regiments’ such as the Household Cavalry, the Grenadiers and the Coldstream Guards. They were the most raffish of soldiers. Evelyn Waugh, one of them himself, described them as ‘Mr. Churchill’s private army or Buck’s toughs’.6 Peter, handsome and dashing, with swept-back black hair, was one of the most notorious of them. Evelyn Waugh called him ‘king dandy and scum’, but even he fell for his charms. Chips Channon dubbed him the ‘Fabulous Lord Fitzwilliam’.7
Kick knew that he was a decorated war hero who had been awarded the DSO for a highly dangerous mission, reminiscent of her brother Jack’s. Peter had manned high-speed motor boats known as ‘grey ladies’ in extremely dangerous conditions in the North Sea, right under the noses of the German navy. ‘The boats didn’t cut through water, they bounced,’ one crew member recalled.8 At first the men were suspicious of Peter because he was an earl, but they quickly warmed to him: ‘He seemed to take it all in his stride. He came down to our level, he didn’t expect us to go up to his.’ Peter, acting under the codename ‘Peter Lawrence’ (his aristocratic pedigree would have made him especially vulnerable in the event of his being captured), completed twelve missions, earning the respect and admiration of all his men.
Peter came from an extremely privileged background. His seat, Wentworth Woodhouse in Yorkshire, was said to be the largest house in England. It had 365 rooms, was twice the size of Buckingham Palace and was set in 22,000 acres. The family also had an ancestral stately home near Peterborough on the edge of the East Anglian fens, and a beautiful Irish estate, Coolattin in County Wicklow (from where he had ridden to hounds the previous year).
Peter was a womanizer and a gambler. He married a glamorous and spirited woman called Olive (known as Obby), but disappeared for a tryst halfway through the honeymoon, a habit that he never fully broke. He couldn’t be tamed. He loved racehorses, fast cars and beautiful women. When he saw Kick dancing at the Dorchester, he was smitten. Despite the fact that he was married with a young daughter he was determined to win her. To the disapproving looks of the bystanders and the humiliation of his wife, the Earl Fitzwilliam took Lady Hartington in his arms and danced with her. Her friend Charlotte McDonnell, now married to a man called Harris, said, ‘it was overnight and it was the real thing – illicit, passionate, encompassing’. Charlotte continued, ‘One got the impression that she’d discovered something she didn’t really plan to experience in life.’9
Kick’s friends were horrified when they heard about the romance. Nobody could understand the relationship, as she and Peter appeared on the surface to be so different. Kick’s friends were literary, cultivated, intelligent, politically minded. She was a devout Catholic who rarely missed mass and always went to confession. She had a brother on the way to Washington. She was not part of Peter’s playboy, hard-drinking, gambling, fast-living set. Janey Lindsay was especially upset:
Peter and Kick were absolutely different personality types with absolutely different friends. She was totally different to him. She had intellectual friends. His world wasn’t a bit like that. He belonged to a set where you gambled terrifically and drank a lot. He was terribly naughty – frightfully – with loads of girlfriends. And that was just not Kick. Not a bit Kick. As time went by, I got the impression that he must have been a very good lover. It was the only way to explain it. It’s awful, but it can have such a major impact.10
Janey thought that Kick would not have been happy with him for any length of time. The best that could be said of him, and it wasn’t very much, was that, since there was no substitute for Billy, Kick had found a replica of her father: ‘older, sophisticated, quite the rogue male. Perhaps in the last analysis those were the qualities required to make her fall deeply in love.’11
Whatever the reason, Kick was smitten hard. She told Janey that no one she had ever met before had made her so completely forget herself.12 But she said nothing to her family, reporting only that the ball had been a major success. Princess Elizabeth attended and ‘stayed until the bitter end’.
Lismore Castle, County Waterford, Ireland.
‘The first sight of Lismore Castle as you come over the Knockmealdown Mountains in County Waterford makes your jaw drop. A place of mystery and romance, the huge grey castle – half giant, half fairy – rises from the rocks above the banks of the River Blackwater.’13 This was Debo’s description of the magnificent Cavendish property in Ireland. Sir Walter Raleigh had once lived there, in what many described as a fairytale castle. It had a Rapunzel tower, and a forest encircled it. Silver fish flickered in the waters, and in the early summer the grounds were covered in rhododendron blossom. The writer Patrick Leigh Fermor found it so magical that ‘one would hardly have been surprised to see a pterodactyl or an archaeopteryx sail through the twilight’.14
Lismore had been given to Charles Cavendish, Billy’s uncle, as a wedding present when he married Adele Astaire. In the Pugin banqueting hall, with its star-covered ceiling and chandeliers, photographs of Adele’s brother Fred nestled by those of King Edward VII. Adele remained at Lismore until she remarried in 1947, when the castle passed into the hands of Billy’s younger brother Andrew.
Kick loved Lismore, describing it to Lem as ‘the most perfect place’ in the world.15 She took her sister Eunice there in November 1946. They drove around Ireland sightseeing. Kick took the opportunity to drop in at Lord and Lady Fitzwilliam’s house in County Wicklow. Eunice had no idea that Kick had become Peter’s mistress.
Eunice had arrived in London in September for an extended stay with her sister. Kick wrote home with newsy letters, telling of a visit to the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire at Compton Place, where the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret stayed overnight; of a dinne
r with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (should one curtsey to the Duchess or not?); and of a distressing burglary at the house in Smith Square, in which she lost most of her jewellery, worth over £40,000: ‘I’m afraid everything is gone with the exception of my pearls and earrings. It really is the most awful blow especially Daddy’s wedding present and the lovely aquamarines.’16 Billy’s cufflinks had also been stolen and young Joe’s navy wings, inscribed ‘to K from J’.17 She was surprised that the robbers hadn’t stolen her mink coat and short fur jacket, which she had forgotten to put away. After the burglary Kick dismissed her staff, whom she suspected might have been involved in the theft, and hired two Hungarian refugee sisters, Ilona and Elisabeth Solymossy. They were devoted to her and she to them.
The one thing she didn’t talk about was the thing that most mattered to her: her intense romance with Peter.
It was not until the summer of 1947 that she confided in any of the Kennedys. Jack, by now a Congressman, came over to join her at Lismore. Always her closest sibling, he would be the first to know. She could trust him with her secret.
She assembled a group of illustrious guests, including Anthony Eden (Deputy Leader of Churchill’s Conservative Party, now in opposition), Tony Rosslyn, Hugh Fraser, William Douglas-Home and the beautiful Pamela Churchill (née Digby), now divorced from Winston’s son Randolph. Kick was pleased that all her guests mixed so well. Eden arrived laden with ‘official-looking Conservative documents’, but soon got into ‘the Irish spirit’. Jack enjoyed meeting him and Sir Shane Leslie, the writer and cousin of Winston Churchill. They played golf and went riding. ‘I really do think this is one of the loveliest spots in the world,’ Kick wrote to the family. ‘I have never enjoyed a month so much, & I think Jack has enjoyed it too.’18
Jack, with his love of history and interest in his Irish roots, planned a visit to Dunganstown in County Wexford, the home of his forefathers. He brought with him a letter of introduction from his Aunt Loretta, and he drove out to New Ross to find his origins. Pamela went with him. She recalled him looking ill, tall and scrawny and not at all like a Congressman. She remembered Jack being thrilled by meeting ‘the original Kennedys’.19 They drove in Kick’s station wagon, given to her by Evelyn Waugh, on the 50-mile trip. With only Aunt Loretta’s letter for reference, Jack stopped to ask for directions and was pointed to a small farmhouse. He knocked on the door and invited himself in for tea to the astonishment of his hosts. The woman of the house later recorded her meeting with the man who would become President, amazed that he just called in without prior warning and made himself at home.20 He was deeply interested in talking about his ancestors, and was, unlike his father, proud of his Irish roots.21
When they returned to luxurious Lismore, Kick only asked whether the original Kennedys had a bathroom. ‘No, they did not have a bathroom,’ he replied, momentarily irked by her lack of interest in her Irish roots.22
What she talked about instead was her passion for Peter Fitzwilliam. Part of his attraction may have been that he was an embodiment of Ireland, as Billy had been an embodiment of England: the Fitzwilliam earldom belonged to the peerage of Ireland as well as to that of Great Britain and the family were deeply embedded in Irish history (albeit as occupiers), while Peter’s love of his Coolattin estate in County Wicklow matched Kick’s of Lismore.
The secret was kept from Rose and sister Pat when they visited Kick in Ireland later in the year. Jack was the only family member to be told. ‘I’ve found my Rhett Butler at last,’ Kick said. Jack was slightly put out, as he had never experienced such passion himself. He told Lem that he was jealous of this. But he was happy that his dearest sister had found someone who could replace Billy.
Shortly after the Ireland trip, Jack fell ill again and was hospitalized in the London Clinic. Pamela Churchill arranged for him to see her own doctor, Sir Daniel Davis. It was Davis who finally diagnosed Addison’s Disease, a condition affecting the adrenal glands. ‘That American friend of yours, he hasn’t got a year to live,’ he told Pamela.23 For the rest of his life, Jack was treated for Addison’s, regularly injecting himself with cortisone, while keeping his condition a secret from the world.
Just weeks before Jack fell ill, Kick had visited Peter’s stately home in Yorkshire. This was a sign of how serious the relationship had become. Describing Wentworth Woodhouse as ‘the largest house in England’, she remarked how sad it was that all the gardens had been dug up by the government for the coal that lay beneath: ‘I’ve never seen anything so awful as the machinery is right outside one’s windows and these valuable old trees have all been uprooted and it will never be the same. That part of England really is black with coal dust.’24 For all the grandeur of the house, Wentworth Woodhouse could hardly have been in a more different setting from lovely, lost Chatsworth.
As 1947 came towards its end, Kick braced herself to tell her parents about Peter. She planned to tell them in the new year and she asked her sister-in-law Elizabeth Cavendish to accompany her for moral support. She told her father how much she was longing to see the family ‘and discuss all’.
She also told him, ‘Am asked every day why I don’t stand for Parliament.’25 When Rose had stayed with her in London at the end of the Irish visit, she had asked her daughter what she was doing for the church. Kick told her that she was going to Central Office once a week. Rose was placated, not realizing that the Central Office in question was the headquarters not of the Roman Catholic diocese of Westminster but of Winston Churchill’s Conservative Party. Deprived of the opportunity to become a political Duchess of Devonshire like Georgiana in the eighteenth century, she was seriously wondering about following in the footsteps of her friend Nancy Astor, Britain’s first female Member of Parliament, and becoming Political Kick in her own right. Nothing would have made her brother Jack more proud, as his Washington career took flight. But such a future could hardly be reconciled with the scandal of being in a relationship with the married Lord Fitzwilliam while the Devonshires were still taking care of her (she spent Christmas 1947 with the Duke and Duchess). Once again, Kick was faced with a choice.
49
Joy She Gave Joy She Has Found
beneath her potent personality, with which was mingled a fine unshaken integrity – there was something deeper, very beautiful and difficult to define.
Lady Anderson1
Evelyn Waugh was horrified when Kick told him her plan to marry Peter. ‘If you want to commit adultery or fornication & can’t resist, do it, but realize what you are doing, and don’t give the final insult of apostasy,’ he told her.2 It was a taste of things to come. Andrew Cavendish said, with more aristocratic understatement, ‘I liked Peter very much. He was so charming. But if they had married there would have been a reaction.’3
Kick’s female friends believed that she was making a huge mistake, that she and Peter were far too different for the relationship to work out. ‘You don’t know him, you don’t know him,’ she replied, with her old stubbornness.4 But she was terrified of facing her parents and telling them of her intentions. Early in 1948, the night before she sailed for America, she broke down over supper with the Ormsby Gores.
In New York, Kick and Elizabeth Cavendish visited Aunt Adele, who was very happy in her second marriage.5 In New York, she confided in her old friend Charlotte McDonnell Harris. Charlotte had always been privately surprised that Kick should have married someone as seemingly tame as Billy, but nevertheless she was shocked by Kick’s passion: ‘It was hysterical. It was all “I gotta do, I gotta go”.’ Charlotte was convinced that if she couldn’t marry Peter, she would elope with him.6
Kick and Elizabeth then went down to Palm Springs. Elizabeth, twenty-one years old and on her first trip to the United States, was amazed at the contrast between freezing New York City and balmy Florida. ‘Life here is quite unbelievable,’ she wrote to her mother from the Kennedys’ home on North Ocean Boulevard:
I long for you and Daddy to see it all. You really must come sometime because
its like going to a new world completely and is the most perfect place in the world for a holiday. The house is heaven. Quite large and right on the sea. Its tremendously comfortable & all the bedrooms have very pretty chintzes. Its a completely tropical climate . . . we have all our meals in the garden which is floodlit with hidden lighting at night & looks terribly pretty. The gentlemen all wear white dinner jackets on smart occasions & lemon yellow ones otherwise.7
She liked Rose Kennedy but was frightened by her – especially on the occasion of the two of them having an evening alone when Kick went to Cuba for the night with one of her many admirers.
Some time later, young Elizabeth witnessed Rose at her most terrifying when Kick announced her intention to marry a second English Protestant lord: ‘Poor Kick is having rather a difficult time as she has told her parents she is getting married. Mrs K. didn’t take it at all well and is threatening to write to you & Peter Fitzwilliam so look out! Don’t mention to Kick that I have told you all this.’ ‘Getting married’ was presumably Elizabeth’s euphemism for having an affair. It is not clear whether at this point Kick went so far as to tell her parents that the first obstacle in the way of an actual second marriage was not the old matter of religious difference, but the fact that Peter Fitzwilliam was still married to someone else.