Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter (15 page)

Whatever arrangements were made, Rosemary was soon transferred to another convent school, the Convent of the Assumption School, in Kensington Square, just across Hyde Park from the embassy and opposite Kensington Palace. Mother Eugenie Isabel, the Mother Superior, who directed the various schools run by the convent for children in elementary grades through high school, soon proved especially sympathetic to Rosemary and her needs. By the spring of 1939, Rosemary was making “remarkable progress.” Mother Isabel (as she was known) assured Rose and Joe that there had been “a great change in her lately,” relieving Rose and Joe’s anxiety over yet another school transition. At the time, the schoolboy antics of baby brother Teddy, then seven years old, seemed to be much more of a concern to the sisters at the convent’s boys’ school than Rosemary’s progress.

Tension over Hitler’s aggression in Europe was escalating, but Joe was adamant that America remain neutral. He believed that the United States’ interests would not be served by supporting Great Britain and other European nations in another war against Germany, but the British keenly felt their vulnerability in the face of an aggressive German army. In November 1938, Joe recommended that the United States refuse settlement of German Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis. Britain had requested help with resettlement by suggesting that the “American government apply the unused portion of the sixty-thousand quota for British immigrants” to German Jews.
Kennedy, without approval from Washington, suggested that the British open their own colonies for resettlement instead. His isolationist views tarnished his reputation among the British, who were actively preparing for even
tual war with Germany. Kennedy firmly believed that England and France would be defeated by the Germans. To avoid war, negotiations to surrender their vast colonial possessions around the world to Japan, Germany, and Italy would be necessary, leading to the “collapse of the British Empire,” Kennedy argued.
Some of his arguments, as some officials in Washington believed, came dangerously close to accommodation rather than opposition to Hitler. By the end of November 1938, Joe was called to Washington by Roosevelt to defend his views regarding the situation in Europe. By this time, Roosevelt did not care much for Kennedy or his views, and the men met only briefly. Frustrated and defeated, Joe joined Jack—who had returned to Harvard—for a six-week stay in Palm Beach. Rose and the rest of the children spent Christmas in Saint Moritz.

Rosemary and her siblings went skiing, skating, and sleigh riding.
“Everything is so beautiful . . . I wish I could stay for a month,” Rosemary wrote her father. She was once again on a diet, eating her meals at the “diet table.” Desperately wanting Joe to approve of her, she told him, “I don’t want to be [fat]. I will. surprise you,” she wrote in her usual poor scrawl. She assured him that she would try not to worry her mother.

Back in London after the New Year, the Kennedy children all returned to school. The Assumption Convent school had adopted the educational methods of Italian physician and educator Dr. Maria Montessori. Rosemary reported to her parents that she was extremely busy working on an “Album for Dr. Montessori when she comes in March,” and she was finding it an “awful lot of work.” She was taking elocution, and contemplating her next set of courses once the current term was over. She was working toward a “diploma,” which, she believed, would qualify her to be a kindergarten schoolteacher.
The entire school community prob
ably shared Rosemary’s excitement over Dr. Montessori’s visit to the school.

The Montessori program at the Assumption school seemed to be a good fit for Rosemary. The Montessori method of education emphasized hands-on, individualized learning strategies and methods of teaching in multiage group settings. Children of varying intellectual abilities and levels worked side by side, learning at their own pace in open classroom settings. Dr. Montessori’s methods spread quickly throughout Europe and then the United States, mostly in private schools, although some public schools embraced her ideas, too. Mother Isabel had been trained personally by Montessori and had become one of the method’s most innovative and active adherents.

Born in 1870, Maria Montessori was a precocious child whose well-educated parents encouraged her sharp mind. She was awarded a medical degree in 1896, becoming one of Italy’s first female doctors. Her medical training had taken her into the slums and orphanages of Rome, where she witnessed the ravaging effects of poverty and the lack of education on the city’s most vulnerable children. She became particularly interested in disabled children—those with intellectual disabilities and emotional problems who were destined to live in empty, lifeless rooms. She opened a day-care center in the slums, the Casa dei Bambini, through which she developed theories about childhood development and learning. Montessori required that teachers and caregivers speak to the children with respect and caring, recognizing that in spite of their disabilities, ill health, neglect, and poverty, these children had an innate desire to learn.

Montessori believed that if children were exposed to a safe, experiential learning environment (as opposed to a structured classroom), with access to specific learning materials and supplies, and
if they were supervised by a gentle and attentive teacher, they would become self-motivated to learn. She discovered that, in this environment, older children readily worked with younger children, helping them to learn from, and cooperate with, each other. Montessori advocated teaching practical skills, like cooking, carpentry, and domestic arts, as an integrated part of a classical education in literature, science, and math. To her surprise, teenagers seemed to benefit from this approach the most; it built confidence, and the students became less resistant to traditional educational goals. Through this method, each child could reach his or her potential, regardless of age and intellectual ability.

The Montessori method arrived in the United States just a few years before Rosemary’s birth, in 1915, and it would be years before it was widely accepted. Although Rosemary might have benefited from such instruction as a young child, as it was, she would not be exposed to it until she enrolled at the Assumption school in London. For the Assumption Sisters, Montessori’s ideas on good and evil also fit with their Catholic theology: “The first idea that the child must acquire, in order to be actively disciplined, is that of the difference between
good
and
evil;
and the task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound
good
with
immobility,
and
evil
with
activity,
as often happens in the case of old time discipline.”

Rosemary was hoping to please her parents when she reported in February 1939 that she had earned her “diploma for being a child of Mary.”
Rosemary would have known how important this was to her mother, who had become a Child of Mary herself at the Convent of the Sacred Heart school at Blumenthal, in the Netherlands, thirty years before. Rosemary also assured her father, again, that she was keeping faithful to her diet. “This diet of Elizabeth Arden is very good. I have gone down between 5 and 7 pounds al
ready living on salads, egg at night, meat once a day, fish if I want, spinach and soup. Wait to [
sic
] you see me. I will be thin when Jack sees me.”
In spite of the pressure from home to conform both physically and intellectually, Rosemary flourished under the Assumption school’s individual instruction, constant reinforcement, repetitious exercises, and emotional support, a program better suited to Rosemary’s needs than that of any other institution she had attended.

During early February, Pope Pius XI died at the Vatican. Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the Vatican secretary of state, was elected his successor. Pacelli had met Joe Kennedy in November 1936, after Joe had successfully facilitated a meeting for Pacelli with President Roosevelt to discuss reestablishing long-severed diplomatic relations between Washington and the Vatican. The success of that meeting—a private luncheon hosted by the president at Springwood, Roosevelt’s family home in Hyde Park, New York, two days after his second, landslide election that November—endeared Kennedy to Pacelli. The Kennedys later entertained the cardinal in their home in Bronxville before he returned to the Vatican, an event that thrilled both Joe and Rose. Now, with Pacelli’s selection as the new pope, Kennedy requested the honor of attending the coronation as the president’s representative. Joe was overjoyed when Roosevelt agreed.

Pacelli was crowned Pope Pius XII in the balcony of Saint Peter’s Basilica looking over Saint Peter’s Square, where thousands of people watched. It was the first coronation to be filmed and broadcast live on radio. Millions of devoted Catholics around the world shared in the holy and joyous occasion. The Kennedy girls were dressed in conservative dresses and black veils, and the boys in suits and ties. Their parents’ excitement must have heightened their own anticipation and sense of honor.

Rose would remember this as one of the most important days of her life. The Kennedys were seated on the balcony with other dignitaries, causing an unexpected stir when it was discovered that the Vatican had planned seating only for Joe and Rose, not their children, the Moores, Luella Hennessey, and Elizabeth Dunn, all of whom were present. Either Joe had neglected to get permission to bring his entire family with him, or he had not sought such permission, knowing that such a large entourage would have been discouraged. Regardless, he proceeded with the entire family. Gian Galeazzo Ciano, Benito Mussolini’s son-in-law and the Italian minister of foreign affairs under Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship, arrived for the coronation to discover a Kennedy child sitting in his seat. A loud tirade ensued, punctuated by threats from Ciano that he would storm off the balcony and leave before the ceremony could start, insinuating that this would imperil the relationship between the Vatican and Mussolini. The seating arrangements were quickly resolved, and the ceremony proceeded without further unscripted drama.
The Kennedy children got more of a performance than they had expected. The next day, the family arrived back at the Vatican for a private audience with the new pope, who individually presented them with specially blessed rosary beads. Two days later, young Teddy, age seven, received his First Communion in the pope’s private chapel. Mother Isabel had personally seen to Teddy’s preparation as the first American to receive the sacrament directly from a pope.
This was an extraordinary moment for the Kennedy family.

That summer the family vacationed again on the French Riviera, staying at the Domaine de Ranguin, near Cannes. The usual stars and dignitaries were there, including Marlene Dietrich. Parties, luncheons, dances, and beach bathing occupied everyone for weeks. Though banned in fascist Spain, two-piece bathing suits
were becoming increasingly popular, and Joe enjoyed the “leg show.”
Rose, however, objected to the “little brassiere[s],” bare midriffs, and “abbreviated” shorts, and would not allow her girls to wear “such a costume,” so they stuck to the traditional one-piece suits she had purchased in New York.

Such gaiety and revelry on the Riviera belied the threat of war darkening the Continent. Germany’s aggression and demands were escalating. Joe, still arguing for patience and appeasement, found himself mostly isolated by the growing sentiment that Germany needed to be stopped. France and England finally declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939. With the start of war, the Kennedys decided the children would be safer back in the States. Kick, Bobby, and Eunice sailed on September 14 on the
Washington;
it was Joe and Rose’s preference that the large family never travel together so that, in the event of an accident, not all would be lost. German submarines had been patrolling the Atlantic and had sunk several British ships already, so the fear was quite real. Four days later, Joe Jr. left for Harvard on the RMS
Mauretania,
followed by Jack, who flew to New York the following day. Teddy, Pat, and Jean, accompanied by the family nurse Luella Hennessey, sailed on the
Manhattan
the next day.

Rosemary, it was decided, would stay behind, safely ensconced, it was believed, at the Assumption school. The school had transferred its students earlier that summer to Belmont House, on the grounds of a large Catholic estate at Boxmoor in Hertfordshire, thirty miles northwest of London, presumably safe from pending German airstrikes targeting the city.
Rosemary thrived here—perhaps more so without the pressures of the family, embassy life, the press, and the city. Dorothy Gibbs, a young woman hired as her companion, reported that on her birthday, September 13, Rosemary “toasted Belmont in her tea-cup at her Birthday tea
party saying ‘It is the most “wonderfulest” place I’ve been to.’ Everyone clapped her tremendously & she looked so very charming.”
At Belmont House, Rosemary would be constantly attended by at least one aide or teacher, and sometimes two. Weekly transitions between school and home, with weekends spent at the embassy—including the demands of numerous social functions and the high-level activity typical of the Kennedy family—had caused exceptional stress for her, because she was constantly controlled by her parents. Now, less would be asked of her and she could feel more relaxed.

Dorothy Gibbs was her constant companion and assisted her with her studies, social engagements, and any excursions away from the school. The sheltered environment and busy days kept Rosemary content and happy; but here, too, she would lose her temper and lash out at her new friends, nuns and teachers, and even younger students. The Assumption Sisters’ letters to Joe and Rose suggest that they were very aware of Rosemary’s disabilities, consistently remarking on the twenty-year-old’s “marked improvement” in her studies and attitude since her arrival. But the sisters also reported that on occasion she needed to be reminded not to be so “fierce” in front of the children.

Joe made sure the convent school had a working telephone—a wartime luxury the ambassador could deliver immediately, putting his own mind at ease, as well as the minds of the Assumption Sisters and the students living there. He provided many other niceties for the school, including access to private transportation and a fire-extinguishing system, “to fight incendiary bombs.”
The Moores, who had remained behind in London, checked in on Rosemary, spending weekends with her and taking her on short trips off school grounds, just as they had always done. Joe sometimes spent weekends at Wall Hall, a Hertfordshire estate owned
by J. P. Morgan and on loan to the United States government for use by the American ambassador as a retreat from the city and from the embassy. Joe flattered Rosemary, telling her “she was going to be the one to keep me company,” since the rest of the family had returned home. He assured her that because he would be so close on weekends, he would be able to invite her and some of her friends from the school to private showings of movies. “That tickled her to no end,” he wrote Rose, now back in New York.
Joe also arranged to hire another young woman to work with Rosemary, to give Dorothy Gibbs some time off each week.
Rosemary clearly enjoyed her time with her father and excursions for shopping and entertainment nearby.