The Nine of Us

by Jean Kennedy Smith

  “Joe, Jack, and Rosemary, you stick together. Kick and Eunice, you stay close. Bobby and Teddy, you sit together. Pat, keep your eye on Jean.”

  Then, breezing south along the Hudson River, we would alight in the shining center of it all: New York City. Broadway. Our cars would stop at Forty-Ninth Street and Madison Avenue, just down from the queen of department stores, Sax Fifth Avenue. And just up the street was the only restaurant that most of us had ever visited: Longchamps.

  With nine children, it was a very rare occasion for us to go to a restaurant. Mother rightly believed that eating at home was a more economical and less chaotic option. So if we ever dined out, it was a special event. Longchamps held a magical spot in our lives and in our dreams.

  We crossed the street and filed, two by two, through the door. The doorman nodded his head to each one of us as we passed: “Welcome to Longchamps, sir.” “Welcome to Longchamps, madam.” “Thank you!” we intoned. Dad, who was just excited as we were, brought up the rear.

  The elegant interior was air-cooled and dazzling. Murals and mirrors decorated the walls. Sliding across the banquette, we took our seats and opened our enormous menus stamped with a beautifully scripted L. The offerings were exotic and alien: curried lobster, frog’s leg platter, New Orleans prawns, Blue Point oysters, soft shell crab, baba au rhum. Our eyes gobbled up the choices, which were so different from what was on our table each night. What to pick?

  Dad made the decision easy for us. Every time we went to Longchamps we ate the same meal: “Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding for the table,” Dad would announce to the waiter. It was his favorite, and we loved it, too. Delivered on steaming plates, the meat pink, the pudding light, we kept our eyes on Dad. When he raised his knife and fork, we followed suit and dove in. “Yuumm.”

  We hardly spoke as we finished our meals. Then, as the elegant waiters in white coats began to clear our places, Dad made his pronouncement: “It’s time!”

  Dad was always on time. He felt it was the ultimate insult to keep someone waiting. And he expected all of us to be on time, too.

  Once, Kick scheduled a lunch date with Dad at noon in the city, but she lost track of time while shopping with friends on Fifth Avenue. When she finally arrived at the restaurant, thirty minutes late, she met him coming out the door. “The next time, be on time,” he said, as he calmly walked past her. I still imagine her there, standing wide-eyed in front of the restaurant, not knowing what to do, as he walked away down the sidewalk toward his next appointment. It was a lesson that neither she, nor any of us whom she later told about it, ever forgot.

  So when Dad said, “It’s time!” we put our napkins on the table, slid out of the booth, and were on our way.

  “Goodbye, sir. Goodbye, madam. I hope you enjoyed Longchamps.”

  Two by two, we walked up Forty-Ninth Street and across Fifth Avenue toward Sixth. There it was: Radio City Music Hall. As far as we were concerned, it was the most famous building in New York. The brainchild of philanthropist and developer John D. Rockefeller, the music hall was only a few years old at that time but was already a mecca for anyone who loved the movies. And all of us adored them. To come with Dad into the city, and to see a film at Radio City Music Hall, was the ultimate treat.

  Kick

  Photographer Unknown. Kennedy Family Collection. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

  We hustled forward together under the towering marquee, which seemed to glow with a million lights: Lionel Barrymore, Evelyn Venable, and my favorite, Shirley Temple, the dimpled little girl with corkscrew curls who tap-danced her way into our imaginations and hearts. She spoke so sweetly and sang so adorably, it was hard to believe that anyone could be that cute. And in fact, in the years since, I don’t believe any child star has come close to matching her box office appeal.

  We saw all her films, but this Sunday, Radio City Music Hall was showing The Little Colonel. Shirley played a little girl living in the South during the Reconstruction who warmed the heart of her crusty grandfather, played by the great Lionel Barrymore. We had been looking forward to the film for weeks.

  My sister Pat held tight to my hand as she steered me through the throbbing crowd in the Radio City Music Hall lobby. I looked up to Pat and wanted to be like her, always. In my eyes, she was like the actress Rita Hayworth, a natural beauty with auburn hair. She always looked divine. It all seemed so effortless to her.

  Pat was my caretaker throughout our childhood. Four years older, she was innately kind and made sure I was okay. When we were both away at school—she at Rosemont College in Pennsylvania and I at the Convent of the Sacred Heart about thirty minutes away—Pat would plan fun outings on my days off, meeting me at the train station and taking me to lunch or out shopping with her gaggle of friends. It was such a thoughtful thing for an older, glamorous sister to do for a younger fledgling. But I also could test her patience.

  “Jean, do you have to use the restroom?” Pat said, turning to me as we entered the theater at Radio City Music Hall. I tugged at her hand, ready to take my seat. The megaphone-shaped stage of the Music Hall beckoned me: Jean. Jean. Jean.

  “No, I don’t have to go,” I replied.

  “Are you sure, Jean, because I don’t want to leave the film once it starts.”

  The theater darkened. We were going to miss the start. I had to move her along.

  “I’m positive, Pat,” I huffed anxiously. “I don’t have to go!”

  She accepted my assurances, and in we went.

  Our family took up nearly an entire row. We settled in precisely on time, just as Dad liked it. The velvet curtains glided to either side, revealing the imposing screen, and the movie began. The South just after the Civil War. A stubborn, mean colonel named Lloyd throws his daughter out for marrying a Yankee. Years later, she must leave her husband out West, where he is working, and return home with their little girl, whom they also have named Lloyd. (“That’s an unfortunate name for a girl,” I whispered to Pat. She nodded her agreement.) The angry grandfather first wants nothing to do with his granddaughter but soon begins to melt under her charms.

  pat

  The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

  The story reached out and grabbed us. Little Lloyd tap-dances with her grandfather’s butler up the staircase to bed. The colonel softens all the more.

  Lloyd’s father returns and he and the mother are soon taken hostage by two crooks after their money. The little girl runs through the dark woods to get her grandfather’s help, but he refuses.

  Pat’s face glowed in the screen light, and her fingers gripped the arm of the seat.

  But I started to twitch.

  Then I started to squirm.

  I tried to ignore it, but it was impossible to ignore. All those lemonades at Longchamps had started to take their toll. I had to go to the restroom. And badly.

  “Pat,” I whispered, just as little Lloyd stands up to her grandfather.

  “Pat,” I urged again, as the colonel is moved by his granddaughter and agrees to go with her to save her parents.

  “Pat, I have to go,” I whimpered.

  “Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” she pleaded.

  “Pat, I really have to go—now!” I cried.

  “Oh, Jean!” she moaned. Grabbing hold of my wrist, she dragged me out the row, up the aisle, and out into the lobby. By the time I was finished and we had returned to the dark, the parents had been saved, Shirley Temple and Lionel Barrymore were hugging, and “The End” was scrolling across the screen.

  “What happened? What happened?” Pat asked the others as we filed out of the row.

  In the dark, I blushed. I had made her miss the end of the film. And I had missed it as well.

  “I’m sorry, Pat.” I was close to tears.

  She looked down with resigned but understanding eyes.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll come back again.”

  Out the front doors of the magnificent music hall and back
down Forty-Ninth Street we walked, hands clasped: Pat always taking care of me and always the good sport.

  10

  A Life Full of Lessons

  I have always felt that the more experiences a child has and the more things he sees and hears, the more interested in life he is likely to be, and the more interesting his own life is likely to be.

  — ROSE FITZGERALD KENNEDY

  Mother was devoted to the cultivation of the mind. And she felt that the fastest way to achieve proficiency in any pursuit was through lessons.

  “Kick, have you practiced your piano?”

  “Please run through your multiplication tables, Pat.”

  “Eunice, could you please take Jean to the tennis court and work on her stroke for a while?”

  It makes me laugh to remember how often Mother and her lessons wreaked havoc on our lives. She could not comprehend why anyone would ever pursue an activity or sport without learning the proper technique. She felt that lessons strengthened our knowledge and resolve.

  Piano, golf, sailing, French, painting, ice-skating—Mother encouraged us to explore every subject and hobby that interested us, and even some that did not.

  “I really think it would be a very good idea if you went to dancing school,” she wrote to Bobby. “I know that you loathe [dancing lessons], but . . . I can see where practice every week would make a lot of difference in your confidence and in your dancing ability.”

  Dad heartily agreed with her philosophy.

  “I am glad that you are sailing and doing so well,” he wrote me one summer. “I think if you really got interested in it, with your good little head, you could make your sisters hustle. Also do keep after tennis because being proficient in sports helps you to get a lot more fun out of being with people.”

  Not surprisingly, Mother and Dad enlisted the older siblings to help the younger ones in our lessons. Some of our activities tested their patience. One year, I drove my brothers and sisters mad practicing my tap dancing on the wooden floor under the arch in the front hall in Bronxville. I wanted to be the next Shirley Temple. Mother informed me that I first needed to perfect the steps. It was hard and noisy work, as Mother most probably knew it would be. “What a racket!” Eunice moaned as she passed through the hall. I soon gave it up, and Shirley Temple remained solo in the spotlight.

  Me in my Highland Fling costume (1936)

  John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. Kennedy Family Collection. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

  I drew the same reaction when I took up the traditional Scottish dance, the Highland Fling. I can only imagine the figure I cut as I bounced through the house, in kilt and argyle socks, kicking out my legs and swinging my arms back and forth above my head.

  Mother and Eunice (1941)

  Bert Morgan/Getty Images.

  Other pursuits were more tolerable to our older brothers and sisters. Every summer at Hyannis Port we took two swimming lessons per week with our instructor. But on top of that, Mother asked our siblings to spend time reinforcing our schooling in the water. Eunice, a natural teacher, was particularly gentle with Teddy and me, observing our crawl or backstroke and then adjusting our feet so that we moved more smoothly or faster. “If you hold your hips higher, Jeannie, you won’t struggle so much,” she advised me. I still enjoy swimming today thanks to my sister Eunice and my mother.

  The same was true of tennis, where in addition to regular lessons, we spent hours on the court volleying, pushing one another to improve. Our constant practice made us strong tennis players, and often we ended up facing off one another across the net in the finals of local tournaments. Jack and I were usually matched up as doubles. He had a natural swing but was not as fast; I was fast with the lesser swing. Pat and Eunice were our regular opponents. We laughed a lot.

  One time, in a particularly heated game, I was up to serve. Just as I tossed the ball in the air, Jack told me a joke. It was ridiculously silly, and I collapsed into laughter, missing the ball entirely. I got back in position to serve, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not pull myself together. For the rest of the game, I was useless. We lost, but I still laugh out loud thinking about it.

  Mother’s love of learning all things was most certainly instilled in her by her parents. Grandpa was a largely self-taught man. He read up on absolutely every subject, and retained it all, too. One of Mother’s favorite poems was written by a clever Boston poet, whose name is long lost. It ran in a Boston newspaper:

  Honey Fitz can talk you blind

  On any subject you can find.

  Fish and fishing, motorboats,

  Railroads, streetcars, getting votes,

  Proper ways to open clams,

  How to cure existing shams;

  State Street, Goo-Goos, aeroplanes,

  Malefactors, thieving gains,

  Local transportation rates,

  How to run the nearby states;

  On all these things, and many more,

  Honey Fitz is crammed with lore.

  Grandpa and Grandma made sure their six children applied the same discipline in their own lives. Mother’s schooling was rigorous at Dorchester High School and beyond. She spent long hours at the piano scrolling through scales and doing other exacting exercises. Her parents took her and Aunt Agnes on a two-month tour of Europe, where they walked in hushed steps under the vaulted ceilings of cathedrals and along the rambling passages of museums. The Middle Ages, the Renaissance, Shakespeare, Raphael, Da Vinci—their young minds expanded as they took it all in.

  Mother and Aunt Agnes had formed a solid foundation in Latin in school and were well on their way to learning French. So at the end of their trip, their parents decided they should remain in Europe for the coming year, at a convent school in Germany, to further improve their language skills. Mother immersed herself in that quest, and had achieved a very high level of proficiency in both French and German by the time she returned home. But her pursuit of those languages did not stop there. Practice makes perfect. There were dialects to hone and diction to refine. French came more easily, but German was a particular challenge for her. For the rest of her life, well into her nineties, most often in the late evenings, we could hear a scratchy voice blasting from the phonograph in Mother’s sitting room:

  Kannst Du mir mehr über Dich erzählen? (“Can you tell me more about yourself?”)

  “Kannst Du mir mehr über Dich erzählen?” Mother would dutifully repeat.

  Ich würde glücklich sein. (“I’d be happy to.”)

  “Ich würde glücklich sein.” She would respond.

  Mother even went to modeling school as an adult, to better understand how the professionals pulled off their exquisite posture and bearing. In class alongside a string of aspiring models several decades her junior, Mother discovered which colors suited her skin tone and how to pose in photographs to look her most attractive—chin up, hands on the hips, and arms never against the body. She always wanted to look smart and well dressed for Dad. In addition to using the tips herself, she made sure to pass them down to us.

  “Don’t wear brown, Jean. That’s not flattering,” she told me. “Always wear blue, because you have beautiful blue eyes.”

  With such discipline in her own life, it is no wonder she worked to instill it in ours.

  Mother and Dad closely investigated the schools they chose for us to make sure they were up to the job of our education. When they moved from Boston to New York, they selected their new home primarily because the local Bronxville public schools had a stellar reputation and we could easily walk or bike there in the mornings. Mother felt that walking to school was good for our spirits. She also felt it was important for us to receive a public school education so we could meet and become friends with the children in our neighborhood.

  At our local schools we learned the fundamentals: literature, grammar, arithmetic. Then, when we reached the age of thirteen or so, Mother and Dad selected a boarding school for us. The boys were enrolled in a num
ber of different schools over the years, beginning with the Choate School in Connecticut. In contrast, Mother decided that we girls should attend only schools run by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart throughout our middle and secondary school years. In this way she made sure that we were following one consistent curriculum whether we were studying at Maplehurst in the Bronx, Noroton in Connecticut, or Roehampton outside London. It certainly made it easier for us to progress without having to adapt to a new approach to learning each time we moved to a new school.

  Throughout our schooling, Mother carefully monitored our studies and assessed our marks. But she never felt our learning should start or end at the schoolhouse door.

  Mother and Teddy (Boston, 1938)

  Photographer Unknown. Kennedy Family Collection. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

  At the table together, in addition to conversations about current events, she taught us mathematics, science, geometry, and religion.

  “We have twelve baked potatoes. If we divided them equally, how many would each person get, Jean? How many would be left over?”

  “How many triangles can you find in this room, children? Look at that painting—do you see any triangles there?”

  Her approach was often playful and never suffocating. Yet we were learning every second.

  Most of all, Mother would read, read, read. For our entire childhood, she placed a premium on books, and covered us in them. She called reading “the most important instrument of knowledge,” and she chose books for us carefully from lists that were put out by the Parent Teachers Association or the public library. Mother made sure the books were not just good stories, but instructional and inspirational. After lunch each day, she would send us off to our separate corners of the house to spend an hour with our books. Some of us enjoyed it more than others. Especially when the sun shone bright outside, we bemoaned having to sit indoors. Yet all of us in later life thanked Mother profusely for insisting that we read.