by Paula Byrne
Rose recalled that she felt that once they were in England they became ‘public property’, and had become ‘adopted’ by the British people: ‘Wherever we went, we were greeted with smiles and waves and bright looks – a spontaneous outpouring of human warmth that I shall never forget.’10
Debo Mitford later wrote of the immense impact that the family made: ‘nothing like the Kennedy family had been seen before in the rarefied atmosphere of London diplomatic circles. For the next seventeen months they enlivened the scene.’11 Teddy and Bobby sailed their boats in Hyde Park, rode their bikes around the city and took photographs of the Guards at Buckingham Palace. The press greedily noted every detail, treating the family like celebrities or royalty. When Kick delivered homemade biscuits to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children or rode a horse on Rotten Row in Hyde Park, the press recorded it.12 The high-society magazine Queen predicted that she would be the star of the Season, the most exciting debutante.
The ambassadorial residence at 14 Prince’s Gate was impressive, even by Kennedy standards. It was a six-storey, fifty-two-room mansion on the edge of Hyde Park and within walking distance of the Embassy. It had a huge ballroom with Aubusson carpets. One of the first-floor rooms was a copy of a chamber in Versailles. Rose chose a beautiful first-floor room for her own study. The house had twenty-one bedrooms, though thirteen of them were for live-in servants, which Rose thought excessive. She took over some of the servants’ bedrooms for the children, for her nannies and as guest rooms.
Despite its grandeur, the house had fallen into disrepair. Joe Kennedy spent a quarter of a million dollars of his own money on refurbishment.13 Rose thought that the rooms were too bare, so several works of art were loaned by William Randolph Hearst from his castle in Wales. The house had its own lift, much to the delight of twelve-year-old Bobby and six-year-old Teddy who pretended to be bell boys, to the amusement of the staff.
Joe had prepared Prince’s Gate for the arrival of the family.14 He had imported an American freezer from New York and consumables such as coffee, clam chowder, candy, Nivea Creme and cough medicine. Rose brought her own American cook, Margaret Ambrose, who supplied the family with their much loved home dishes of creamed chicken, strawberry shortcake and Boston cream pie.15
Though not a drinker himself (apart from the odd tumbler of Haig & Haig whisky), Joe ordered 2,000 bottles of champagne for his cellars. He intended to throw memorable parties.16 Once again, his time in Hollywood had proved useful for his understanding of the power of image. For him, the Court of St James’s was merely another stage set.
As Ambassador, Joe was invited to all of the most important events, and was automatically made a member of the most exclusive British clubs. Rose and Joe initiated a succession of dinners, luncheons and tea parties to entertain their many guests. (The tea-party idea was later a major feature of Jack’s presidential campaign.) The newspapers noted that Kathleen helped her parents to entertain. At one of their Thursday entertainments, tea was served from a buffet covered with a yellow damask cloth and decorated with a large bowl of sweet peas. The press made much of the Kennedy women’s clothes. Rose was ‘charming in a long skirted dress of light sky blue crepe’, Kick wore ‘a smart frock of black with white stars’.17 Rosemary, who could not be trusted at such events, was rarely mentioned.
Joe and Rose were invited to stay at Windsor Castle with the King and Queen and their two small daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret (Edward VIII had abdicated in order to marry the now divorced Mrs Simpson, and had been succeeded by his brother Bertie as George VI). Rose later remembered this as one of the ‘most fabulous, fascinating events of her life’. She decided that she would model her own behaviour on that of the Queen: ‘She has a very pleasant voice, a beautiful English complexion, great dignity and charm; is simple in manners, stands very erect and holds herself well and is every inch a Queen . . . I lay in bed thinking I must be dreaming, that I, Rose Kennedy, a simple, young matron from Boston, am really here at Windsor Castle the guest of the queen and two little princesses.’18
Rose later ranked the weekend as the fifth best of her life. Her daughter Kathleen would also describe an English country-house weekend as ‘the best thing that ever happened to me’, when she was invited as a house-guest to Cliveden, the seat of Lord and Lady Astor.19 A few days after her parents’ visit to Windsor Castle, Kick joined the Astors for Easter weekend. It was there that she was introduced to a smart set of aristocratic young people who would embrace the wholesome American girl with the dazzling smile.
14
‘I Get a Kick Out of You’
Very chummy and much gaiety. Dukes running around like mad freshmen.
Kick Kennedy
Kick had arrived in time for the English Season – that dizzying round of balls, dinners, teas, races and regattas that began with the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and the First Spring Meeting at Newmarket, and ended with the royal garden party at Buckingham Palace. The Season was the time when society families left their country estates and headed to Mayfair for three months of socializing. It was a huge industry dedicated to the marriage market: getting the right sort of people to marry the right sort of people. As Debo Mitford observed: ‘Dance bands, dressmakers, milliners, hairdressers, caterers, hotels, restaurants, florists, hire car firms and photographers all benefited from the trade whipped up by the frenzy of the Season.’1
Many of the men had titles, others were impoverished noblemen or second sons looking for the right kind of American heiress from the land of plenty. From late Victorian times such transatlantic transactions became the norm. Wealthy American girls were known as ‘dollar princesses’ who found themselves mixing in the upper echelons of the British aristocracy. Winston Churchill’s mother, Jenny Jerome, the daughter of a Wall Street speculator, married the Duke of Marlborough’s younger son, Lord Randolph, in 1874. A generation later the 9th Duke of Marlborough married the eighteen-year-old Consuelo Vanderbilt, a beautiful, rich American from one of New York’s most famous families, for a $2.5 million marriage settlement.
One of the most famous American expatriates was Nancy Astor. She first came to England as a divorced woman with a small child, and then met and married the son of Viscount Astor. Her wit was legendary, which endeared her to English society. When one woman asked whether Nancy had come to England to ‘get our husbands’ she retorted: ‘If you knew the trouble I had getting rid of mine.’
From the moment Nancy set eyes on Kick Kennedy, she sensed a kindred spirit. Lady Astor had given a dance at her London home in St James’s Square for the King and Queen, to which the Kennedys and Kick were invited. The evening was a great success, and the Kennedys were awed by the opulence and extravagance with which the Astors entertained their guests. Great clusters of laburnum blossoms and lilac cut from Cliveden adorned the golden ballroom in which the King and Queen danced. The rest of the house was full of flowers: vases of arum lilies, bright red and delicate pink carnations, and sweet-smelling stock covered every available surface. Lovingly placed on the oval dining-room table were Lord Astor’s gold racing trophies as well as valuable gold plate.
The women were dressed in their finery with diamond tiaras and glittering jewels. Kick wore a gown of pink and white, and dazzled everyone with her wit and warmth. Nancy invited her to Cliveden. It was Kick’s introduction to an English stately home. Lady Astor became ‘Aunt Nancy’.
Cliveden was a huge Italianate, Baroque mansion nestling on the edge of the Thames. It stood within 400 acres of beautiful woods and formal gardens. Kick later admitted to Nancy that she had been ‘scared to death’ at the prospect of spending the weekend there.2 It was Nancy who asked Lady Jean Ogilvy, daughter of the Earl of Airlie, to take Kick under her wing and teach her the ropes. Jean was to become one of her closest friends. Jean took her role seriously, though it soon became clear that Kick did not require looking after. She was amazed when Kick, eschewing formality, telephoned and invited her to the Embassy to listen to American jazz on her p
rized Victrola.3
Jean was also close to her cousin Billy Hartington, the eldest son of the Duke of Devonshire. His younger brother, Andrew, first set eyes on Kick on the staircase of Cliveden that April weekend. ‘It was her vitality that overwhelmed us,’ he later recalled. ‘I had never met anyone with such vitality before.’4 That weekend, Kick met another of Andrew Cavendish’s cousins, David Ormsby Gore, the second son of Lord Harlech, who was to become a close friend of Jack Kennedy. Like Andrew, David was one of the second-sons club – the ‘spare and not the heir’. Though he was bookish and intellectual, David was a rebel as an undergraduate at Oxford, where he refused to do much academic work, drank heavily and spent hours listening to jazz.
Andrew’s and David’s mothers were Cecils, members of an illustrious Tory family descended from William Cecil, Lord Burghley, chief minister to Queen Elizabeth I. Burghley’s son, Robert Cecil, followed him in the role of Secretary of State and King James I rewarded him with the title Earl of Salisbury and the wealth to build a magnificent seat, Hatfield House, which remained the Cecil family home. The Cecils were known to be great talkers. This was an attribute extremely attractive to the Kennedy children, who were such superb raconteurs themselves. That weekend, Kick heard about but did not meet Andrew’s elder brother, Billy, who, not caring much for Cliveden or parties, had declined the invitation.
A weekend house party at Cliveden would be intimidating to any eighteen-year-old girl, and especially for an American unused to English country-house ways. Each guest would be assigned a maid who would unpack the suitcase and lay out clothes and toiletries. After supper, beds would be turned down and toothpaste would be squeezed on to toothbrushes, hairbrushes laid out and fires lit. Dinner would be a formal affair, tables set with gleaming silver and sparkling crystal, the food served by liveried footmen.
Kick took it all in her stride and charmed the redoubtable Nancy. What Nancy realized was that Kick was not a typical debutante. Most of the English debs were shy and silent, would speak only when spoken to and rarely ventured a strong opinion. In this kind of stilted and repressed company, Kick shone. She had been raised in a noisy, spirited and clever family, had opinions of her own, but voiced them in such a warm and witty manner that she rarely caused offence.
The weekend was a tremendous success, but it didn’t turn her head. The Astor crowd was agape when she nicknamed the formidable Duke of Marlborough ‘Dukie-Wookie’. She wrote to Lem of her weekend: ‘Very chummy and much gaiety. Dukes running around like mad freshmen.’ Lem, still in love with Kick, had made a marriage proposal, which she had gracefully declined – ‘Come on, Lem, you’re not the marrying kind’ – but she continued a correspondence with him.5 To Nancy Astor she wrote with gratitude for turning everything around for her. ‘All the loneliness I had for America has disappeared because now England seems so very jolly,’ she wrote in her thank-you letter.6
Kick was soon invited to another country weekend, this time at the Cecil family seat, Hatfield House in Hertfordshire, the magnificent Jacobean mansion built on the site of the old Hatfield Palace where Elizabeth I had spent her childhood. The Marble Hall holds the Rainbow Portrait of Elizabeth and her gloves and silk stockings were treasured items. If ever Kick were to feel thousands of miles away from home it would be in this historic house. Robert Cecil, Andrew Cavendish’s cousin, was the tall, charming heir to Hatfield. His coming-of-age party the year before had lasted for five days.
Robert invited his Etonian and Oxford friends for a country weekend party. Kick was also asked to attend. She was put into the Oliver Cromwell room (‘rather ironic’, she noted in her diary). She observed that several Catholic girls had been invited to the house party, including Clarissa Churchill, Lady Lovat, Veronica Fraser, Virginia Brand and Sybil Cavendish. ‘Rather funny as they hate them so much,’ Kick wrote, knowing of the Cecils’ long-standing contempt for Roman Catholics.7
The young people played tennis and rounders and were taken through the famous maze. One of the guests got drunk at dinner and squirted Kick with a water siphon. When she went to bed early she discovered that someone had sneaked in to arrange an apple-pie bed. This was a practical joke in which the sheet was doubled back to prevent anyone from stretching out full length. Anthony Eden helped her to straighten out the sheets.8 Tony was the brilliant younger son of Sir William Eden, and had recently resigned as Foreign Secretary in protest at Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement. Kick appreciated his kindness.
The next morning, she discovered that Robert Cecil had hidden all her left shoes in the maze. Robert and his friends were trying to teach her a gentle lesson in English mores: her habit of kicking off her shoes when in company was not quite the done thing. In her diary, she notes that it was his grandmother’s idea. It was a churlish prank to play, given the potential for embarrassment and humiliation. If she were ever to feel like a gauche American Catholic arriviste, an outsider, this would do the trick.
But they were not reckoning on a Kennedy. Kick was not the sort of girl to sit quietly in her room. She dressed as normal and came down to dinner wearing one black and one white shoe: ‘all very tricky as I had on black & white dress’, she reported in her diary.9 Throughout the weekend she wore two right shoes which meant that she found it difficult to walk properly. One of the girls, Lord Lovat’s daughter Veronica Fraser, drawled: ‘Why are you limping, Kick?’ ‘Oh,’ Kick replied with insouciance, ‘Robert broke my leg before dinner.’10
Everyone in the room roared with laughter, and she was instantly accepted. Veronica was amazed at her sangfroid: ‘what a terrific sport’, she thought.11 With this one brilliant move, she had become accepted into British upper-class society. Kick couldn’t seem to put a foot wrong, even in the wrong shoe.
15
The Debutante
My train not fastened on – only put on at last minute. Walked by very quickly.
Kick Kennedy’s diary
The three women posed for the cameras outside the American Embassy. Rose Kennedy was in the middle, flanked by her two pretty daughters, Rosemary and Kick. Rose was so glamorous and beautiful that she looked more like another sister than a mother. As usual, the press could not get enough of the Kennedy girls. A Movietone News crew filmed them preparing for their presentation at the Court of St James’s. Joe Kennedy’s eldest daughters were ‘coming out’.
Rose was in her element in England, and she had finally won the social acceptance that she had always sought. One of her most important duties was to choose the American debutantes to be presented at court. The Boston Globe duly reported: ‘American debutantes of 1938 cannot stick three white feathers in their hair and drop three curtsies before the Queen of England without the sanction of Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy.’1 She must have been more than a little surprised to discover later on that Joe was limiting her power by insisting that all American girls presented at court must have parents living in England. If she felt annoyed with Joe’s new sanction, she did not say so. Besides, it just meant that the spotlight shone more brightly on her own daughters.
In early May, Kick wrote to Lem Billings to tell him that she was to be presented at court: ‘Wish you could be here for it. I so often think of you when I meet a guy who thinks he’s absolutely the tops and is just a big ham. What laughs you and Jack would get. Very few of them can take any kidding at all.’2
Kick and Rosemary had spent weeks being prepared for court. They practised their curtsey over and over again, mainly for Rosemary’s benefit. Many debs attended the Vacani School of Dance near Harrods for the same reason. It wasn’t simply a matter of mastering the deep curtsey and keeping one’s back perfectly straight, it was mastering it wearing a full-length gown without tripping on the long train of the dress while wearing a headdress of ostrich feathers. Lem was endlessly amused by Kick’s tales of the absurd manners and traditions of England.3
Rose was determined that everything should run smoothly. Her girls would be the best-dressed debs on the big day. For
the court presentation, Rose had been advised to choose a British fashion designer who would understand the particular requirements, such as the correct length of the train. The dress code was extremely strict. Trains on gowns were required to be no longer than 2 yards from the shoulder, veils no longer than 45 inches. Rose went to Molyneux, the foremost designer in London, and chose for herself an exquisite gown of white lace, embroidered with tiny gold and silver beads. Twenty-two years later, she would wear this dress for Jack’s inauguration as President.
Rosemary also wore a Molyneux gown of white tulle with silver thread. Kick’s gown was from Lelong in Paris. It was white, trimmed with silver croquettes. Their veils were made of the finest net, and they wore the requisite three ostrich feathers in their hair, the insignia of the Prince of Wales. No jewellery was permitted for the young women, who carried simple bouquets of roses and lily of the valley.
Kick’s diary entry records the preparations for the day, the hairdressers, the press photographers and the early supper. Once at Buckingham Palace, she waited in a room with diplomatic staff; her father took up his place ‘in front of Throne’.4 There was a last-minute glitch when she realized that her train was not properly fastened on.
Kick entered the great Throne Room, a magnificent red, white and gold ballroom. The King and Queen sat on gold thrones on a dais. The girls were ‘called’ by the Lord Chamberlain and each was drilled to walk slowly until she reached a gold crown embroidered in the carpet; there, careful not to step on her train, she would make her curtsey, smiling before stepping to the right, never turning her back on the Queen.
Rosemary made a slight stumble when she curtseyed to the Queen, but it was barely noticed. The evening was a huge success. The Evening Standard singled out Rosemary, who ‘looked particularly well in her picture dress of white tulle embroidered with silver’.5 The May issue of Queen singled out Kick: ‘I was impressed by her approximation to the best type of our own English girls of the same age. She had none of that rather sophisticated air and ultra self confidence which is sometimes associated with youthful Americans.’6
