Kick Kennedy: The Charmed Life and Tragic Death of the Favorite Kennedy Daughter (35 page)

In light of the paralysis and disarray in the Kennedy camp, Joe Kennedy agreed to the plan. Rose refused to travel to England to see her daughter buried. Nor did any other Kennedy fly over from the U.S. Even Jack, though he said he would be there, failed to materialize in the end. He, Rose, and the others held their own memorial service in Hyannis Port. Joe, meanwhile, was the sole family member to attend the Requiem Mass. While Joe was in London, his palpable and monumental sadness did not, however, restrain him from making a pass at Billy’s twenty-two-year-old-sister, Elizabeth.

Friends from every period and facet of Kick’s life in England crowded the Farm Street Church on Thursday, May 20. The young aristocrats with whom she had frolicked at Cliveden, Hatfield, Cortachy, and other great houses before the war; guests at the legendary party she had cohosted in London in 1943, where not a few of the uniformed young men were soon to die; habitués of the Conservative political salon she had established in Westminster after the war; members of the louche London set she had been cultivating of late—all these and many more came to the Requiem Mass. Collectively, they had endured war, death, trauma, social and political cataclysm—and now this. Some onlookers wept and others fought back tears when Sissie Ormsby-Gore fell to her knees before the casket, placed her head sideways on the lid, and began to wail.

Following the Mass, a good many of the mourners proceeded to a special train that had been made available to them by the duke. When the large party arrived in Derbyshire, Chatsworth employees and tenants lined the road to the old churchyard of St. Peter’s Church in Edensor, where a Roman Catholic priest was set to officiate. Standing at Kick’s graveside were two old men for whom her death amounted almost to a mortal blow. Both men had battled long and arduously to bar Kick from Chatsworth, yet both were here today to see her laid to rest in the cemetery, where the grass around the centuries-old headstones was trimmed by grazing sheep. Eddy Devonshire had once regarded Kick as an evil influence who deployed her powers to insinuate herself into his family. He had later come to view her as the one person who might help his eldest son and heir to retrieve the family’s power. And finally, she had become the person who could best help assuage the duke’s anguish at the death of that son.

Like the duke, who had seen his glory snatched away by Derbyshire electors on the one hand and by a Nazi bullet on the other, Joe Kennedy cut a devastated and diminished figure at the graveyard. He who had enjoyed such immense popularity and influence when he first arrived in Britain had since become an outcast, many of whose confident assumptions and predictions had, like Eddy Devonshire’s, been disproven in the fullness of time. Joe also shared with Eddy the loss of a much-worshipped eldest son, and now of Kick. In 1938, Joe, the most proactive of parents, had presented England to Kick as a gift like all the others it had afforded him such pleasure to lavish upon her in the past. In 1948, all he could do was passively consent to allow another family to bury her there.

At last, the fraught and much-contested matter of Kick’s identity was settled not by her own efforts, but by the duchess’s. The very fact of her burial in the Cavendish plot; the inscription memorializing her as the widow of Major the Marquess of Hartington; and the various Cavendishes, Cecils, and other members of the tribe who collected at the graveside—all of these elements conspired to enfold her, both for those present and for posterity, in her late husband’s family, even though at the time of her death she had been about to marry into a rival dynasty.

By interring her in this place and in this manner, the duchess—who, ten years before, had claimed Kick for her son Billy because of the energy and life force with which, it was hoped, she would reinvigorate the stock—claimed her for him in death as well.

*   *   *

I
t was very late that night when the old duke finished his tale.

Billy’s younger brother, “the boy who couldn’t wait to grow up,” was a fragile figure as he sat hunched over in his leather chair in the golden palace that Kick had once dreamed would be hers. Earlier in the evening, he had sent me on with introductions to other members of the aristocratic cousinhood who would fill out Kick’s story for me, but he had been determined to tell his part first.

The house was still and dark when we finally said good night. As I closed the door of the library, he remained behind, alone with the ghost of the Little American Girl who had become for him and the aristocratic cousinhood the emblem of the world they’d lost.

SOURCE NOTES

One

“I fancied her. I wanted to claim her for myself”: Andrew Devonshire (formerly Andrew Cavendish) to BL, author interview.

it was exclusively the friends: Jean Lloyd (formerly Jean Ogilvy) to BL, author interview. Also, Cliveden visitors’ book, University of Reading (hereafter UR). Also, Jean Ogilvy’s diary.

He had spotted something: Andrew Devonshire to BL, author interview.

he should not even have been included: Anne Tree (formerly Anne Cavendish) to BL, author interview.

“the boy who couldn’t wait to grow up”: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

A year earlier…: Anne Tree to BL, author interview.

“constipated older brother”: Jakie Astor quoted by Debo Devonshire (formerly Debo Mitford) to BL, author interview.

frequently made miserable: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview. Also, Anne Tree to BL, author interview.

not to his taste: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

“mousy brown”: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

set much too high: Debo Devonshire to BL, author interview.

“on the lumpy side”: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

British girls much envied: Debo Devonshire to BL, author interview.

obsessed with the conviction: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

Andrew would long remember: Andrew Devonshire to BL, author interview.

“such vitality”: Andrew Devonshire to BL, author interview.

Andrew had realized by this time: Andrew Devonshire to BL, author interview.

unprecedented blast: Debo Devonshire to BL, author interview.

liked to take care of compatriots: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

“I’ve got this little American girl…”: Nancy Astor quoted by Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

“rather lost”: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

“didn’t need any looking after!”: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

a long series of treats: Joseph P. Kennedy’s generosity toward his daughter is apparent in Kathleen Kennedy’s early correspondence with her parents, John F. Kennedy Library, Boston (hereafter JFKL).

“unshakable self-confidence”: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

Kick appeared to sense: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

For a long moment: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

To her the aristocratic cousinhood: Debo Devonshire to BL, author interview.

who was himself not always quite certain: Andrew Devonshire to BL, author interview.

Andrew realized…: Andrew Devonshire to BL, author interview.

a major crush: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview. Also, Debo Devonshire to BL, author interview.

virtually as a brother: Andrew Devonshire to BL, author interview.

“the essence of charm”: Andrew Devonshire to BL, author interview.

“country-member bad boys”: Andrew Devonshire to BL, author interview.

matchlessly endearing and entertaining: Andrew Devonshire, author interview.

chatter: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

acted as though: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

arrival: Hugh Fraser’s arrival is registered in the Cliveden visitors’ book, UR.

“a decadent, degenerate Britain”: Winston S. Churchill,
The Second World War, Volume I, The Gathering Storm
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1985), p. 71.

“foolish boys”: Winston S. Churchill,
The Gathering Storm,
p. 71.

“ever-shameful”: Winston S. Churchill,
The Gathering Storm,
p. 71.

“entitled”: Andrew Devonshire to BL, author interview.

“excuse”: Andrew Devonshire to BL, author interview.

Jean explained to her: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

“nose-to-nose”: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

“the next dance…”: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

eagerness to listen: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview. Also, Andrew Devonshire to BL, author interview.

“decadent”: Kathleen Kennedy to John F. Kennedy, February 13, 1942, JFKL.

“the best thing that ever happened to me”: Kathleen Kennedy to Nancy Astor, April 19, 1938, UR.

shut down: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

a matter of etiquette: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

“I’ve got my dad, too”: Kathleen Kennedy quoted by Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

Two

“over and over”: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

“the lunch of the two Joes”: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

Jean could not but be struck: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

“twinkle”: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

“coarseness”: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

“a little backward”: Kathleen Kennedy quoted by Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

launched herself far more successfully: Debo Devonshire to BL, author interview.

include her in lunches with leading debs: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview. Also, Jean Ogilvy’s diary. Also, Debo Devonshire to BL, author interview.

“frightfully beautiful”: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

her diary entry: Kathleen Kennedy, diary entry, May 11, 1938, JFKL.

her visit three days later: Kathleen Kennedy, diary entry, May 14, 1938, JFKL.

“drunken youths from Oxford”: Kathleen Kennedy, diary entry, May 14, 1938, JFKL.

Because of Robert’s prodigious drinking: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

exceptionally strict with her daughters: Debo Devonshire to BL, author interview.

On one particular evening: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

took her along with him to Oxford: Kathleen Kennedy, diary entry, May 20, 1938, JFKL.

Ciro’s: Kathleen Kennedy, diary entry, May 26, 1938, JFKL.

“to her English contemporaries…”: Deborah Devonshire,
Wait for Me!: Memoirs of the Youngest Mitford Sister
(London: John Murray, 2010), p. 98.

“petty jealousies”: Kathleen Kennedy, diary entry, June 2, 1938, JFKL.

seemed taken anew: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

the Cecils: See David Cecil,
The Cecils of Hatfield House: An English Ruling Family
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973).

when she arrived at Hatfield House: Kathleen Kennedy, diary entry, June 17, 1938, JFKL.

secret egress via a closet: Veronica Maclean,
Past Forgetting: A Memoir of Heroes, Adventure and Love
(London: Headline Publishing, 2002), p. 88.

intervened: Debo Devonshire to BL, author interview.

conniving Catholic girls: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

a good deal of trouble: Kathleen Kennedy, diary entry, June 17, 1938, JFKL.

“John Stanley got rather rough”: Kathleen Kennedy, diary entry, June 18, 1938, JFKL.

short-sheeted as a prank: Kathleen Kennedy, diary entry, June 18, 1938, JFKL.

Tony Loughborough helped: Kathleen Kennedy, diary entry, June 18, 1938, JFKL.

his grandmother who had suggested: Kathleen Kennedy, diary entry, June 18, 1938, JFKL.

made a vivid impression: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview. Also, Andrew Devonshire to BL, author interview.

a reputation for being tough: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview. Also, Andrew Devonshire to BL, author interview.

tennis matches at Wimbledon: Kathleen Kennedy, diary entry, June 14, 1938, JFKL.

dinner party hosted by Lord and Lady Airlie: Kathleen Kennedy, diary entry, June 24, 1938, JFKL.

half smile: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

“rather sleepy”: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

“I can’t be bothered to drink it”: Billy Hartington quoted by Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

jealous of Andrew’s greater ease: Debo Devonshire to BL, author interview.

“a good talk”: Billy Hartington and Lady Alice Salisbury quoted by Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

absorbed in each other: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

visibly distressed: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

“forced”: Kathleen Kennedy, diary entry, June 24, 1938, JFKL.

David Ormsby-Gore rescued: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

“It was difficult for each to imagine…”: Andrew Devonshire to BL, author interview.

This evening, her consummate disappointment…: Deborah Devonshire,
Wait for Me! Memoirs of the Youngest Mitford Sister,
p. 98.

spent as much time as possible: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

“romantic”: Kathleen Kennedy, diary entry, June 24, 1938, JFKL.

in the scrapbook she maintained: Kathleen Kennedy’s scrapbook, JFKL.

As a consequence of their nearly having lost him: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

“more than ordinary affection”: Harold Macmillan, diary entry, September 24, 1944,
War Diaries
(London: Macmillan, 1984), p. 530.

Andrew further resented: Anne Tree to BL, author interview.

A lifetime of fraught personal relations: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

two oft-spoken-of episodes: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

“outdo”: Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

“heresy”: Kathleen Kennedy quoted by Betty Coxe Spalding to BL, author interview.

“favorite of all the children”: Rose F. Kennedy to Nancy Astor, June 14, 1948, UR.

“the Big One”: Fiona Arran (formerly Fiona Gore) to BL, author interview.

“gravitas”: Hugh Fraser, oral history, JFKL.

roughness and aggressiveness: Fiona Arran to BL, author interview. Also, Jean Lloyd to BL, author interview.

“I would not be surprised…”: Lady Redesdale quoted by Debo Devonshire to BL, author interview.