Kick Kennedy: The Charmed Life and Tragic Death of the Favorite Kennedy Daughter (10 page)

On the assumption that London and Paris, having vindicated their honor by the declaration of war, would be relieved to be spared the need to do any actual fighting, Hitler proposed a peace settlement that required them to accept German hegemony in East and Central Europe. The Nazi leader calculated that the immediate, brutal, and overwhelming destruction of Poland would persuade the British and the French to back down. During the maddening months of stalemate and stasis known by turns as the Twilight War, the Bore War (a pun on the Boer War), and the Phony War, a jest made the rounds in London that Hitler was seeking to bore the British people into peace. Meanwhile, the prolonged passivity seemed to have a corrosive effect on British morale.

In any case, as far as Kick was concerned her father had sent her home for no good reason. To make matters worse, unlike many Britons, Kick’s patrician friends in London were finding this curious interlude anything but monotonous and dispiriting. Their mothers’ having fled to the countryside in anticipation of an early aerial assault, the girls, in particular, were suddenly enjoying a good deal more fun and freedom than ever before. Former debs, on their own now, worked by day and spent as many evenings as possible with their uniformed young men in the very nightclubs they’d previously frequented only when they had managed to elude their chaperones.

Finally, the ambassador’s return to the U.S. on home leave in the late autumn provided Kick with an opportunity to pitch her father in person about her wish to be allowed to spend her summer vacation with him at Prince’s Gate. For obvious reasons, she cast the idea of another London visit not in terms of any reunion with Billy, but rather of her eagerness to see old friends in general. This subterfuge had the very great advantage of being true, as far as it went.

Ambassador Kennedy arrived in the U.S. at a pivotal moment in his tumultuous personal and political saga. He carried with him a sealed private message from Nancy Astor to her close friend, Philip Lothian, the British ambassador in Washington. Formerly a proponent of the policy of appeasement, Lady Astor was now a staunch supporter of the war, and she regarded Joe Kennedy’s opposition to U.S. participation as “scandalous.” Noting humorously that she hoped the American ambassador did not take the opportunity to open her letter to Lothian, she reported on Kennedy’s defeatist attitude and on his view that the continuation of the European war would be disastrous for the financial markets. She made it clear that as a consequence of these and similar attitudes on Kennedy’s part, people in Britain had begun to fear him. It is evident from her letter that in spite of all this, she persisted in her immense personal affection for Joe Kennedy and in her belief that he had otherwise been a splendid ambassador. Nonetheless, she warned Philip Lothian to watch him closely in Washington.

None of what Nancy Astor had to say about Joe Kennedy was unfamiliar to Philip Lothian, who had had previous, decidedly less benign, communications on the matter from officials at the British Foreign Office, where there was the feeling that a complaint about the U.S. ambassador, possibly even a request that he be recalled, might soon need to be made. It had been one thing for Kennedy to speak in such a manner prior to the British declaration of war, but it was quite another for him to persist in doing so now. Lothian, a former German sympathizer who had entirely revised his views on Hitler after the occupation of Prague, had made it his mission to drive home to the Americans that Britain’s survival was crucial to U.S. security. Kennedy, when he conferred with Lothian during his home visit, was careful not to express any of his controversial opinions. Presently, however, Lothian sent word to Lady Astor that Kennedy apparently had shown no such reluctance with various others in Washington. Still, up to that point Kennedy’s remarks, to figures that included President Roosevelt, had been uttered in private.

As Christmas drew near, Ambassador Kennedy, joined by Jack and Joe Junior, visited the East Boston church, Our Lady of the Assumption, where in ancient times old Joe had been an altar boy. On the present occasion, he gave an impromptu speech that, however he may have intended his comments to be construed, amounted to his first public address since the inception of the European war. Openly and unabashedly, Joe Kennedy urged that the U.S. refrain from getting involved. “As you love America,” Kennedy declared, “don’t let anything that comes out of any country in this world make you believe that you can make the situation one whit better by getting into the war. There’s no place in the fight for us. It’s going to be bad enough as it is.” Kennedy, who was usually a good deal more astute about public relations matters, appears to have been oddly oblivious to the prospect that his remarks would be disseminated in the British press. Nor, as he went off to Palm Beach to spend the holiday with Rose and the children, did he yet have any inkling of the calamitous impact that accounts of the speech were already having on his reputation in Britain, where his comments were widely regarded as anti-British.

Joe Kennedy’s home leave extended through late February, during which time he again met with Franklin Roosevelt, conferred with doctors in Boston about the state of his health, recuperated from a serious stomach disorder—and considered Kick’s proposal of a summertime trip to London. There was talk that Jack might accompany his sister abroad, and even that Rose and the rest of the Kennedy children might come over as well.

Meanwhile, the news of Sissie Lloyd Thomas’s February 9, 1940, marriage to David Ormsby-Gore, with Billy Hartington serving as David’s best man, at the Roman Catholic Church of St. James’s, Spanish Place, fueled Kick’s hopes that she and Billy might similarly be able to overcome the religious obstacles. In stark contrast, the love affair of Robert Cecil and Veronica Fraser had finally concluded in great sadness, when Robert’s mother put an official end to it. Robert had previously told Veronica that when the relationship ended he would send her a family brooch or locket with the inscription, “It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” Convinced that Lady Cranborne had indeed broken things off, Veronica waited for a package, a letter, or even a card from him. But she waited in vain—Cecils, she later reflected, being taught from early on to always be cautious and to avoid committing themselves in writing.

Whether Kick’s fate when she reached London at last would be more like Sissie’s or Veronica’s remained to be seen. In any case, Joe Kennedy sailed on the liner
Manhattan
with his daughter’s pleas that she be allowed to come over, on her own or in the company of other family members, still fresh in his ears. In the belief that her father seemed inclined to agree to a visit, Kick wrote at once to Billy and others in Britain to confidently announce that she would be with them again before long. She spoke too soon, for the situation that confronted Ambassador Kennedy when he arrived in London on March 9, 1940, instantly changed everything.

The brash American diplomat who had been so popular when he first took up his post two years previously was surprised and appalled to discover that in his absence from London he had been transformed into a pariah. There was much public anger about his remarks at the East Boston church. There was resentment that at such a critical point in British history he had chosen to remain out of the country for several months; there was indignation that when at length he did return he had failed to bring his wife and children; and there was anxiety that he would use what was thought to be his great influence at the White House to press for a negotiated peace. In fact, Joe Kennedy was far from the trusted counselor to Roosevelt that many Britons believed him to be. The President, while publicly pledging that the U.S. would never enter this war, had rejected Joe Kennedy’s repeated urgings that Washington broker a peace settlement with the Nazis. Roosevelt had gone so far as to initiate a secret correspondence with Churchill, a maneuver that Kennedy saw as a deliberate affront. More and more, Kennedy would find that he was being ignored, bypassed, and otherwise marginalized by a White House that thought it best to work around rather than through its own ambassador. At the moment, however, it was his low standing in Britain that seemed to concern Kennedy most when he ruled on Kick’s request.

On March 14, 1940, the ambassador wrote to notify Rose of his change of heart about any sort of family visit. He spoke of his desire to spare his children exposure to the negativity about the U.S. in general and to himself in particular that now seemed to prevail in Britain. But it is clear from his comments that the father’s principal concern was the impact that such sentiment threatened to have on Kick. He knew of her immense affection for her British friends, and of the warm feeling they had shown for her in turn.

And now, he worried that were she to be reunited with them, the nasty political arguments that were likely to break out might spoil her happy memories. As if the old man meant to counter in advance Kick’s inevitable assurances that she understood the British so much better than he, and that there really was nothing to worry about, Joe asked Rose to convey a remark recently heard from the lips of one prominent member of Kick’s set.

On a visit to Cliveden, to which he had brought an armload of gifts of Lady Astor’s favorite chocolate and chewing gum, old Joe had also happened to encounter Jakie Astor. At a moment when the British were known to be very keen to involve America in the European war, Jakie purported to take a contrarian view. Always ready with a barbed witticism, he insisted that he was actually rather pleased that the Americans had chosen to stay out. The British, Jakie continued, were eager to win this war on their own—“without America taking credit for it.” Joe Kennedy offered Jakie Astor’s comments as a specimen of the anti-American sentiment that he feared would upset his daughter.

Kick, for her part, saw nothing very disturbing or daunting in any of it. She was confident that her British friends knew that she did not share her father’s views on the war. When over time she kept on pressing to be allowed to come over, the old man responded with a new argument. He pointed out that these days there was really nothing for young people in London to do “but spend practically every night in a night club.” That particular prospect, it need hardly be said, did not seem so objectionable to Kick.

Her father, however, remained adamant. He refused to be influenced even by a message from Jack in which the second son shrewdly appealed to old Joe’s self-interest. Knowing how dependent on public perception his father was, Jack maintained that Kick’s London vacation would benefit the Kennedy family overall by showing that they had not merely left Britain because things had become unpleasant there. Kick, though she refused to abandon hope, finally wrote to let Billy know that she probably would not be able to come over after all. When she sent off that message, she had no idea that by the time it reached him he would be far from Britain.

On April 9, 1940, what Churchill characterized as the trance in which the British and the French had been agonizingly suspended for eight months was abruptly broken when Hitler invaded Denmark and Norway. A week later, Joe Kennedy offered a new rationale for why Kick could not possibly return to London anytime soon. All the young fellows, he grimly reported, were being “shuttled off to war.”

So, at least for now, events in Europe seemed to have derailed Kick’s campaign to be reunited with Billy. The next letter she had from him confirmed the futility of her hopes of seeing him again anytime soon. Billy wrote from the Maginot Line in France, where he was with the British Expeditionary Force, waiting along with the rest of humankind to see what Hitler’s next move would be.

In the early hours of May 10, 1940, German forces, moving by land and air, overran Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg. Belgium, abandoning its long-insisted-upon neutrality, removed border barriers so as to permit the entry of the British Expeditionary Force. Among the hundreds of thousands of advancing soldiers, Billy and his Coldstream Guards regiment were soon passing into Belgium, to the joyous greetings of a slew of girls, who rushed up to garland the troops and their rifles with lilacs.

Press coverage in the U.S. initially emphasized the clockwork efficiency of the British onslaught, confirming a sense that prevailed among not a few Americans at the time that Britain and France together would handily manage to turn back the Germans without the U.S. needing to get involved. Adding to the tone of optimism were the newspaper descriptions of perfect spring weather and nearly cloudless blue skies, and of joyously singing, newly energized British troops to whom the summons to action had proven, in the phrase of
The New York Times
’s correspondent, “a psychological tonic” after the long months of waiting and training since war had been declared.

Meanwhile, that same day in London, Neville Chamberlain was left with little choice but to tender his resignation as a consequence of wide dismay with his administration’s botched efforts to rescue Norway. He handed over to Winston Churchill, who soon faced a devastating series of setbacks. German tanks broke through the supposedly impregnable Maginot Line. The Battle of Flanders took a disastrous turn for the British, who began to retreat into France. Overall, the Allies were stunned by the ferocity and unstoppability of the Nazi war machine. Official opinion in London held that it was only a matter of time before Hitler struck at Britain.

On Sunday evening, May 19, 1940, Churchill delivered the first radio address of his premiership. His intended audience consisted of three distinct groups. He aimed to steel the British people for the monumental struggle that lay ahead. He meant to put the Germans on notice that Britain was prepared to fight to the death. And he hoped to persuade the Americans that this was their fight as well and that the time had arrived that they really must join in.

Churchill spoke of the tremendous battle then raging in France and Flanders; of the remarkable combination of air bombing and heavily armored tanks that had permitted Hitler to break through the French defenses; and of the alarm and confusion that the Germans had managed to spread in the course of their attack. He admitted that it would be foolish to disguise the gravity of the hour, but insisted that it would be still more foolish to lose heart and courage. “Our task is not only to win the battle, but to win the war,” he went on. “After this battle in France abates its force there will come the battle for our island, for all that Britain is and all that Britain means—that will be the struggle.”