Kick: The True Story of Kick Kennedy, JFK’s Forgotten Sister and the Heir to Chatsworth

At the end of March, she joined a group of friends for a month-long trip – chaperoned by the requisite nun, of course. Joe’s secretary wrote to her before she left, sending her the Rome address of a friend of the family, Count Enrico Pietro Galeazzi, a wealthy architect who had close Vatican connections in his capacity as Rome director of the Knights of Columbus, an American Catholic fraternity: ‘Your father would like to have you see him when you arrive in Italy as he thinks he will be able to help you a great deal.’31 (#litres_trial_promo) Kick knew that this was an order, not a request. The nuns also hoped to arrange an audience with the Pope.

They first went to Venice, which Kick adored. They stayed at the Hotel Gabrielli Sandwirth, and she wrote excitedly to her parents, ‘Venice is too wonderful to give you all a good idea of how we are doing here.’ She described how they had taken the train with its impressive view of the snow-capped Alps, before passing through Milan and Verona. Her first view of Venice was in pouring rain, but she was unperturbed and the girls and chaperone nun travelled to the hotel on the Grand Canal in two gondolas. She thought it hilarious to be chaperoned by a nun: ‘it is the funniest thing to be with a nun in a hotel’.

They visited many churches, and the Accademia which had ‘a great many lovely pictures in it’. They took the boat out to the islands of Murano (‘the most lovely glass and Mosaics I have ever seen’),32 (#litres_trial_promo) Burano (‘lace works’) and Torcello (‘noted for old cathedral of ninth century’). She was having the time of her life: ‘we walked for a while after dinner and it was the most perfect night’.33 (#litres_trial_promo)

Kick laughed when a friend was ticked off at mass at San Marco. When her friend was taking communion the priest told her that ‘her lips were too red’. ‘So that’s that,’ she quipped. In the evening the girls took a moonlit gondola ride: ‘Never have I seen such a night – we have all decided to come back here on our honeymoon.’34 (#litres_trial_promo) A gondolier sang Venetian melodies to the girls, and the nun joined in, to ‘help him along … she thought the gondola was tipping over every other minute’.

The trip brought out her romantic side: ‘We sleep and are awoken by the sound of singing gondoliers.’ She loved San Marco and the Doge’s Palace (‘Perfectly marvelous’), and a trip to the Lido was a great success despite a scrum to get on to the crowded ferry. She complained, however, about the lascivious Italian men. ‘It is not very funny here as all the men talk to the girls on the street,’ she wrote to her parents. ‘We had about 6 in a cavalcade following us all over Venice today.’35 (#litres_trial_promo) She sent a postcard to Eunice, Jean and Pat (the other sister, four years Kick’s junior): ‘no cars at all here. The gondolas are marvelous. All the men walk along the street singing.’36 (#litres_trial_promo)

To the boys she wrote: ‘Suppose you are tearing Palm Beach apart.’ She joked: ‘When I made the very crude remark that Venice reminded me of Palm Beach I was all but thrown in the Grand Canal.’ She told her brothers that she had fallen in love with Italy.37 (#litres_trial_promo)

But it wasn’t all gondolas and art galleries and fine dining. Among the gallant Venetians chasing Kick and her friends along the streets of the city were ominous-looking young men wearing black shirts. Kick was ticked off by the nun for not finishing her pea soup: ‘the nun proceeded to tell me that since the country was at war I must eat everything’.38 (#litres_trial_promo) Italy was at war with Ethiopia (known at the time as Abyssinia). Young Italian veterans, returning from the front, strutted down the streets proudly wearing, stitched on to their military caps, the names of the towns they had attacked. Kick was swept up in the fervour, and attended a Fascist demonstration in the Palais des Doges, in honour of a Dominican priest who had been killed in Ethiopia: ‘His brother spoke. – Never seen such a collection of uniforms – very thrilling.’39 (#litres_trial_promo) She bought herself a Fascist hat, ‘which will certainly make a big hit’, reassuring her mother that there was ‘Really no sign of war here at all except of course the [League of Nations] sanctions have closed down a great deal of the glass and lace works’.

She may have felt little sense of the war in Venice, but when the party moved on to Florence on 2 April she got caught up in a Fascist parade: ‘Just saw a parade celebrating victory of Gondar which was taken tonight. Shall be very Fascist by the time I get home.’40 (#litres_trial_promo)

Florence was not what she had expected but she loved it, and described the lovely pensione overlooking the Arno, where Dante had supposedly once lived. They visited art galleries and museums and attended lectures on Italian art.

The party reached Rome on 7 April. Kick was entranced. They were staying in a Sacred Heart convent, where another party from Switzerland was staying, as well as a group of English girls – ‘and are they English!’ she exclaimed.41 (#litres_trial_promo) She did the tourist sights, the Colosseum and an old Roman church, and then ‘It certainly was a thrill to see St Peters.’ After morning mass in the Sacred Heart church, she took a horse and buggy to ride around the Roman parks.42 (#litres_trial_promo)

On her father’s orders, she made an effort to contact her man at the Vatican, Count Galeazzi, but failed to understand his maid. It was Galeazzi who was intending to arrange a private audience with the Pope. It was Holy Week, the most important week in the calendar of the Catholic Church.

Kick was desperate for a glimpse of the Pope, who was saying mass on Holy Thursday in the Sistine Chapel, so she went along with the other girls and they sat outside on camp stools: ‘What a crowd we were all nearly squashed to death.’43 (#litres_trial_promo)

In the afternoon of Maundy Thursday, the girls attended Tenebrae at St Peter’s. This is a special service in the Roman Church in which psalms and prayers are read to a gradual extinguishing of candles. The final candle, hidden beneath the altar, ends the service, leaving the church in complete darkness. At St Peter’s three ‘wonderful’ relics were being shown: ‘Veronica’s veil, part of the true cross and the spear that pierced our Lord’s heart’. Kick was extremely moved by the experience – ‘Never have seen so many American priests all together at once,’ she reported to her father.44 (#litres_trial_promo)

That evening Galeazzi called at the Convent to see her: ‘He is one of the most charming men I have ever met.’ He arranged for her to have three tickets for the Pope’s mass on Good Friday at the Sistine Chapel. She was thrilled by the honour. The girls dressed themselves carefully in black and a car was sent to fetch them. At St Peter’s they went through the ‘magnificent’ Pacelli apartments and then through to the Sistine Chapel, where ‘the Mass was most impressive’. The girls were special guests of Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (Secretary of State in the Vatican). Kick felt proud of her father’s Vatican connections.

The next morning on the way to the Capitoline Hill, they were caught up in a demonstration: ‘a policeman told us that Mussolini would probably appear from his office in response to cheering and yelling’. Kick was thrilled that she got to see Il Duce. ‘Lo and behold we had only been there about an hour … Il Duce came out with a big stride and an even bigger grin.’ Kick was the only girl who had brought along her camera, and in the crowd she was pushed and shoved as she tried to take his picture. ‘He is magnificent and one cannot help liking him after seeing the patriotism of the Italians.’ She had seen both the Pope and Mussolini on the same day.

Kick was happy in Rome. She enjoyed the Vatican museum, where she shopped for Vatican stamps to send home to Bobby. She had expected rationed food but found it delicious: ‘Am still getting very fat and spaghetti is helping plenty.’ She loved the way the Italian priests blessed everything, and was amused when the girls were sipping sodas in a café and a priest came in to bless the soda fountain. ‘It seems they bless every store, restaurant etc in Italy on Holy Saturday.’

Galeazzi duly arranged the private audience with the Pope. Kick was thrilled: ‘The Holy Father spoke a few words to us in French and gave holy cards.’ Galeazzi singled Kick out for special attention. Later he took her and a few friends to the ruins of Tivoli, outside Rome. The nuns insisted that the girls had a chaperone since they were ‘going out with a man’. Kick was furious and told the nuns that he was ‘old enough to be her father’. But they insisted that this was how things were done in Rome.45 (#litres_trial_promo)

They left Rome for Naples, and visited a small volcano, where she collected pieces of lava for little Bobby. She shopped for leather handbags, and they drove along the Amalfi coast – ‘never have I seen such blue water’ – but the road twisted and turned so much that the girls ‘were saying our prayers continuously’.46 (#litres_trial_promo) In the Bay of Naples she saw a troop ship ‘bound for Abyssinia’.47 (#litres_trial_promo) They visited Pompeii, lunched at a former Franciscan monastery and then boarded the train for Rome, where they made a final trip to St Peter’s. They climbed the Scala Sancta (the staircase said to have been ascended in Jerusalem by Jesus and brought to Rome by St Helena), saw the city by night for the last time, and then went home to pack for Paris. Kick loved the Forum Mussolini (‘tremendous’) and was sorry to be leaving as there were parades planned for the following day, and Il Duce would be making a speech.

She saw Galeazzi and made her farewells. He gave her a parting gift – his Fascist brooch. ‘All the girls are very jealous,’ she told her father.48 (#litres_trial_promo)

10

Travels with my Mother: Russia and England (#uf9c37b9e-24ca-51ad-af1e-5774b7de9ba7)

I haven’t seen any beautiful Kennedy faces for seven months – long, long time that.

Kick Kennedy

Latvia, May 1936.

Kick Kennedy and her mother Rose eyed the tiny, old-fashioned plane with suspicion. As it trundled towards them, they got the impression that its fuselage and wings were lashed together by ropes. To her horror, Rose spotted her luggage being wheeled across the tarmac and realized that, indeed, this was their plane.

During his time in Europe, Joe Jr had toured Russia and had regaled the family with tales that had inspired the intrepid Rose to see it for herself. She asked Kick to accompany her and they flew by commercial jet to Latvia from Paris on the first leg of the journey. Now the small Russian plane would take them on to Moscow. There were only four seats and they were the only passengers. As they strapped themselves in, Rose began reciting Hail Marys silently to herself, thinking of the children she had left behind, whom she was convinced would soon be motherless.

There was a ‘convulsive shudder’ and the tiny plane was airborne. In the absence of technology, the pilot flew by visual landmarks, tipping the wings so that he could navigate. Rose recalled ‘an endless expanse of dark, dense, impenetrable forest, which for variety was sometimes obscured by fog or low-hovering clouds’. It was a terrifying journey. As the landscape loomed up towards them, the pilot would suddenly pull out the choke and rise, ‘leaving our stomach’s Kick’s and mine, back on the latest cloud’.1 (#litres_trial_promo)

Suddenly the plane experienced severe turbulence. The pilot, to their shock, after several ‘near misses’, took his eyes off the terrain and gave over the controls to his co-pilot in order to turn around to smile and wave to Kick and Rose. Rose later recalled that ‘After some hours we landed safely. Neither Kick nor I had become airsick. Probably because our normal reflexes were paralysed.’2 (#litres_trial_promo)

Kick, homesick for her mother, had been looking forward to the trip, writing to Bobby: ‘Mother shall be here in three days and can’t wait to see her. I haven’t seen any beautiful Kennedy faces for seven months – long, long time that.’3 (#litres_trial_promo) She treated herself to a new smart suit and hat, desperate to show her beloved mother that some Parisian chic had rubbed off on her. They had met at the Ritz. Rose recalled the first moment she saw her daughter: ‘She looked so pretty and sophisticated, but the moment she saw me she dissolved in tears of happiness as if she were still a little girl. I will never forget what I felt when I saw her. I realized so clearly how lucky I was to have this wonderfully effervescent, adorably loving and extremely pretty child as my daughter and friend.’4 (#litres_trial_promo)

Rose was especially moved by her time with Kick because it reminded her of the time she had travelled with her sister Agnes: ‘Traveling with Kathleen was such a joy.’5 (#litres_trial_promo) She told Kick all the family news, notably that Jack was ‘completely recovered’.

Once in Moscow, the American Ambassador William Bullitt, ‘a perfect host’, met them. Kick and her mother saw the Bolshoi Ballet and, when they took the train to Leningrad, the Hermitage. Rose, always an indefatigable tourist, ensured that they saw ‘everything there was to see’ in Moscow and Leningrad. They visited schools, hospitals, churches, Lenin’s tomb in Red Square and the famous Moscow subway ‘where every station is a work of art in marble and mosaic’.6 (#litres_trial_promo)

Bullitt advised Kick and Rose to exercise caution and discretion when they used the telephone, as the operator was a spy.7 (#litres_trial_promo) Each time they left the Embassy they were followed by a little car. They soon realized that they were under constant surveillance. Rose, with her usual curiosity and love of history, put numerous questions to the guides but was asked to desist, as the guides were being monitored and could get into trouble if the wrong thing was said.

Bill Bullitt told Rose and Kick that one day he had taken himself for a long, relaxing swim in the Black Sea. He swam out deeply, then floated on his back admiring the azure sky. He was enjoying the sense of freedom, of not being followed, until he heard gurgling and splashing from another swimmer. He turned to see the familiar face of one of his NKVD followers, who was pretending to look the other way.

Despite this ominous atmosphere, Rose came to see why Communism was accepted: ‘The masses really were better off in a good many ways than they had been under the Czarist system.’ She spoke to several of the guides who told her that they much preferred the new system and had better lives, education, facilities, childcare and work opportunities, paid for by the state. One attractive guide amazed her by telling her and Kick that people could now read ‘any book in the whole library’ that they wanted to, something the Western world took for granted. Rose and Kick were acutely aware that the libraries were purged of books ‘critical of communism’. Rose was, of course, dismayed by ‘the official doctrine of atheism’.

The Kennedys always believed that experience was better than classroom knowledge. It was an education for Kick to have been to both Italy and the Soviet Union in 1936 during these critical times. She was falling in love with Europe. Travel was opening the world to her in a new and unexpected way. Rose asked her if she wanted to come back home early, but Kick decided that she preferred to stay and do some more travel in Europe. ‘Well, darling, I miss you and wish you were along,’ Rose wrote from RMS Queen Mary, ‘but I am so glad that you decided to stay. You are a great joy to us both.’8 (#litres_trial_promo) Rose advised Kick to get lots of work done in her final months at the Convent. Kick, on the contrary, was ready to have some fun.

She was still determined to attend the Cambridge May Ball with Derek. While her mother headed home on the Queen Mary, she crossed the English Channel with her Noroton friend Ellie Hoguet en route to the university town of Cambridge. They planned to stay for four days and to attend two college balls. She went shopping and bought a beautiful white taffeta evening coat.9 (#litres_trial_promo)

They were staying in a vicarage in Cambridge in rather humble circumstances, sleeping on the floor on airbeds. ‘None of the rooms had any furniture but a bed.’ Kick said she felt as if she were ‘rolling all night’.10 (#litres_trial_promo) The next morning, Derek was rowing on the Cam in the ‘Bump’ races, and Kick went along to support him.

Later, she dressed for the Trinity May Ball. Cambridge in summer is one of the loveliest places on earth and the Trinity Ball a highlight of the academic year. Exams were over, and the ball marked the end of the academic year. Strictly white tie and tails for the boys and long dresses for the girls, the event began at nine and the guests were encouraged to wine, dine and dance until dawn. Then, in the early hours of light, they would gather for a survivors’ photograph, still in their evening wear. Those who were still awake would punt down to Grantchester where breakfast was served in the Orchard tea garden.

A marquee had been erected on the banks of the Cam, lit with hundreds of lanterns. Kick had dressed carefully in silk chiffon. Derek was her partner for the evening, but many men were captivated by her and asked her to dance. Her friend Ellie was disheartened by the sheer number of Englishmen who fell for her, noting that forty men swarmed around her like bees at a honey pot.11 (#litres_trial_promo) They were drawn to her openness and warmth and lack of pretension. The dowdy, prim English girls were simply no match for her, and Kick was incredulous at their drabness. ‘There is something wrong with the English Girls,’ she told her mother. ‘Hardly any pretty evening dresses or girls.’ She thought it amusing ‘to be walking around in evening clothes in broad daylight’.12 (#litres_trial_promo) Her lovely chiffon dress ‘took rather a beating’.

Kick thought her time at Cambridge was ‘marvelous’. From then she went on to Suffolk with a schoolfriend. She was delighted that there had been no rain in England. Kick was asked if she would go back for another weekend the following year. She was a hit in England – a foretaste of things to come. She was determined to return. She told her mother: ‘Tell Jack that he has to come to Cambridge next year.’13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Her time at Neuilly was now over and she was to return to Noroton, but it had been the most thrilling success, and her year in Europe had made a deep impression, one that would never leave her. Eunice Kennedy remarked that for her father experience was the most important thing in life for building character, whereas for her mother it was religion.14 (#litres_trial_promo) Kick chose experience.

Kick’s European adventure had given her a certain polish and sophistication, though she was still only sixteen. She had visited the best museums, galleries, churches and buildings of Europe and had acquired a new confidence. She had seen the Pope and Mussolini in Rome, attended the Bolshoi Ballet in Russia and the May Ball in Cambridge. Home in America seemed dull in comparison, though it was always a joy to return to Hyannis Port for the lengthy summer vacation. It had been a very long time since she had seen Jack, who had spent most of 1936 resting and building up his strength. He had been recuperating in Arizona and appeared to be making a good recovery before heading to Harvard in September, after a short stint at Princeton.

Now that she was older, and had been away for a year, Kick was becoming aware of the strangeness of her parents’ marriage. Rose took solace in her faith. She would go alone to St Xavier’s daily mass and, when she was troubled, take long solitary walks along the beach front. She even had her own little summer house (called ‘the White House’) to retreat to when she wanted to be alone.

Joe, meanwhile, continued to indulge his sexual appetite. Kick’s friends felt uneasy about her father’s unwanted advances. Some of them refused to watch movies in the basement cinema because he would touch them and pinch them. In the evenings, he would insist on a kiss on the lips.15 (#litres_trial_promo) Kick’s close friend Charlotte McDonnell was surprised to discover that Kick’s parents led separate lives, and that when they came to New York City they always stayed in separate hotels, Mrs Kennedy at the Plaza, Mr Kennedy at the Waldorf.

One day, Charlotte went to meet Kick at the Waldorf and mistakenly entered Joe’s suite. He was in the shower and called out that she should leave her coat on the chair and meet Kick and Jack across the hall. He then appeared in just a towel and told the young people: ‘Will Hays came in and saw your coat and turned around and walked away, thinking I had a girl in the bedroom.’ Joe was clearly delighted by this and Jack and Kick thought it delicious that the man in question was responsible for the Hays Code, banning sexual references from Hollywood movies. Charlotte, on the other hand, was shocked. Her own father would never have behaved like this in front of her friends.16 (#litres_trial_promo)

That summer of 1936, Jack invited more of his ‘surprises’ to Hyannis Port, Cam Newberry, Charles Wilson and Herb Merrick. They all fell in love with Kick, who was the female version of her best brother, bubbly, witty, fun-loving.

Kick’s American female friends noticed a new ease in the tomboyish, sporty girl and were amazed by her success and popularity. Kick was not a conventional beauty, especially compared to her sisters, but men continued to flock around her. Kick’s girlfriends wondered privately about the secret to her success. Was it her wealth, her clothes, her connections, her warmth? Later on, her many English girlfriends would have the same thoughts and were equally intrigued by her allure.

Her close friend Nancy came the closest to an explanation when she observed that it was her ‘aloofness’ that set her apart.17 (#litres_trial_promo) Kick sensed intuitively that men liked a girl who was hard to get. What Nancy was getting at was Kick’s unique ability to be simultaneously warm and cool, friendly but distant, sexy but never promiscuous. Women liked her and rarely felt threatened by her charm, while men adored her and were drawn to her natural sexiness and vivacity. One of Jack’s friends, Tom Egerton, recalled, ‘I think she probably had more sex appeal than any girl I’ve ever met in my life. She wasn’t especially pretty, but she just had this appeal.’18 (#litres_trial_promo) Another devoted Englishman trying to put his finger on her elusive charm said that she had the most ‘sex appeal of any woman he had ever known. Not because she was beautiful, but because she was so kind.’19 (#litres_trial_promo)

As the sister of red-blooded brothers and a sexually promiscuous father, she was no innocent, and yet she exuded a kind of purity. She was not a vulnerable or needy girl; she was very happy in her own skin. She had that Kennedy streak of independence and spirit that was extremely appealing to the opposite sex. The more aloofness she exhibited, the more her suitors were drawn to her. Jack had this too.

One element of this coolness was her Catholic prudery. The strict religious education she had been given taught her that fornication, masturbation and birth control were sins. While in Europe, she had been genuinely alarmed by the voracious Italian men and had also warned her sisters about Frenchmen: ‘Don’t eye the Frenchmen or they will be hot on your trail.’20 (#litres_trial_promo)