Kick Kennedy: The Charmed Life and Tragic Death of the Favorite Kennedy Daughter (5 page)

Not surprisingly, the institution of primogeniture often led to feelings of acute bitterness and resentment on the part of those who had, as Andrew Cavendish liked to say, drawn the short straw in life. In Andrew’s own case the family tensions were exacerbated by what he perceived to be their parents’ greater love for Billy. When the firstborn son was an infant he had had to be placed in an incubator, and for a time it had seemed as if he might not live. As a consequence of their nearly having lost him, his father and mother, Edward and Mary, known as Eddy and Moucher, respectively, had always loved him with what his uncle the future prime minister Harold Macmillan later described as “more than ordinary affection.”

At length, the tendency of both parents to dote on Billy had had a deleterious effect on Andrew. Recognizing his upset, Eddy and Moucher strove to reassure him of their affections. Nonetheless, Andrew seemed always to interpret their special feeling for his brother to mean that he was himself somehow unlovable. Andrew further resented the fact that both his father and mother encouraged Billy’s efforts to manage the second son in public, as when Billy sought to check Andrew’s often rambunctious behavior at the country house weekends and other social events that they both attended.

A lifetime of fraught personal relations between the Cavendish brothers formed the backdrop to Andrew’s discovery that, in his absence, Billy had met and become besotted with the girl whom the second son had previously had it in mind to claim for himself. Under the circumstances, was Andrew likely to simply step back? He had certainly never seemed at all inclined to defer to Billy in the past.

In the lore of the set, two oft-spoken-of episodes encapsulated the many: There was the time when Billy had asked a group of young people to spend the weekend at Compton Place, his family’s house near the seaside village of Eastbourne. Andrew, known to covet whatever his brother had, promptly invited all the same young people back the next weekend for a house party of his own—without Billy.

And there was the time when, during a country house weekend at Rossdhu, the Scottish family estate of the brothers’ friend Ivar Colquhoun, Billy had indignantly escorted Andrew, whom he accused of being drunk, from the house. Andrew, finding that Billy had gone so far as to lock him out, climbed up a drainpipe and catapulted himself back in through the window of the drawing room where all of the young people were gathered. Jean Ogilvy, who had been present on both occasions, later fondly compared the younger Cavendish boy to a small dog who is forever trying to “outdo” a big dog.

By the time Charlie Lansdowne’s coming of age had drawn to a close, it therefore remained an open question as to just how matters were going to play out among the elite quartet comprised of Kick Kennedy, Andrew Cavendish, Billy Hartington, and Debo Mitford.

Might the small dog yet take some unexpected action to outdo the larger one?

Kick, of course, had had a great deal of experience with highly competitive and contentious relations between her own two elder brothers, Joe Junior and Jack. But whereas the unwritten law of primogeniture had presented a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to Andrew Cavendish, Jack Kennedy, at least theoretically, had faced no such roadblock. Sickly, scrawny, and altogether lacking in their father’s approbation though Jack had been, he had long and quietly proceeded in life as though he might yet dislodge Joe Junior from his position of preeminence. Not without justification, Jack regarded himself as cleverer and wilier than his leadenly self-serious and therefore easily satirized and provoked older brother. Frustratingly, however, nothing Jack had done to date had managed to alter old Joe Kennedy’s belief in the firstborn son’s innate superiority. As Kick would later remark, in the Kennedy household it had been “heresy” to so much as suggest that Jack was better in any way than the anointed older brother. Nonetheless, throughout her girlhood, Kick had repeatedly and unabashedly made exactly that claim, confident that her status as what Rose Kennedy would later call old Joe’s “favorite of all the children” would permit her to get away with her preference for the underdog in the fraternal struggle.

Suddenly, that enduring struggle was transplanted to London when both Joe Junior and Jack arrived from America in the company of Ambassador Kennedy, who had gone over to collect them, on July 4, 1938. Before long, both Kennedy brothers were cutting conspicuous figures on the London scene. Joe Junior—“the Big One,” as the English debs referred to him—was widely touted by his father as the more brilliant and promising of the brothers, a young man destined to become U.S. president one day. Young Joe certainly looked the part; he seemed more poised and mature than his twenty-two years might have led one to anticipate. In contrast to his outward air of “gravitas,” however, he was in truth replete with anxiety and insecurity, ever fearful as he was of failing to satisfy the patriarch’s expectations. Also in contrast to his distinguished public demeanor, young Joe soon developed a reputation among the girls of the set for what two of them, Fiona Gore and Jean Ogilvy, described many years later as roughness and aggressiveness. In an episode that did Joe Junior’s reputation in London no favors, when Gina Wernher fell ill and went off to the country to recuperate, the Big One frightened and horrified her and her duenna by turning up unexpectedly at the hotel in mad pursuit.

Jack, on the other hand, was regarded by most of the debs as the more appealing and more attractive of the Kennedy brothers by far. His exceedingly boyish appearance and manner caused some members of the set to assume that he was Kick’s younger brother, when he was in fact more than two years her senior. Whereas in the U.S., Kick had been adopted as a mascot by Jack’s adoring claque of friends, upon his arrival in London it quickly became apparent to him that she was no one’s mascot anymore, having swiftly established herself at the very center of her select new English group. Henceforward, Jack’s identity in London would be as Kick Kennedy’s brother, rather than the other way around.

Meanwhile, Joe Junior, in keeping with the preconceptions established by his father, entered into an important friendship with Hugh Fraser. As the most ambitious and promising member of the set, Hugh, often spoken of as a possible future British prime minister, seemed very much Joe Junior’s compeer. Jack, for his part, gravitated to less promising and less ambitious fellows, such as David Ormsby-Gore and Tony Loughborough. Nonetheless, the assumption that it was the elder Kennedy brother who was destined for political preeminence was challenged on at least one occasion—and by someone other than Kick, who had long been alone in taking such a contrarian view. After observing Jack Kennedy at a dance, Lady Redesdale was heard to declare, “I would not be surprised if that young man becomes President of the United States.” Not everyone was equally taken with the second son, however. Lady Redesdale’s daughter, Debo Mitford—who in later years would become a close friend of President John F. Kennedy’s—danced with him at the July 13, 1938, ball presided over by Lady Mountbatten at her London penthouse in honor of her niece Sally Norton. Debo dismissed Jack Kennedy afterward in her diary as “rather boring but nice.”

At the time, of course, no young man seemed quite as fascinating to Debo as that other much-thwarted second son, Andrew Cavendish. And never perhaps had Andrew seemed more effectively thwarted than on the night of Sally Norton’s party, to which Billy had made a point of asking to escort Kick.

Earlier in the evening, Billy had come to collect her at the American Embassy residence in anticipation of taking her to a smaller, preliminary dinner party hosted by the King’s brother and sister-in-law, the Duke and Duchess of Kent. When Billy arrived at the embassy residence, he had been accompanied by his aunt, Adele Astaire Cavendish. The sister and former dancing partner of Fred Astaire, and now the wife of Eddy Devonshire’s alcoholic younger brother Lord Charles Cavendish, Adele also had an invitation to dine with the Kents. At length, insisting that she knew which residence was theirs, she ushered her nephew and his date into the wrong house. Kick, as was her nature, thought the entire incident hilarious—and, following her lead, so did Billy, though in other company he almost certainly would have been plunged into a fit of agitation at his theatrical and often controversial aunt’s mistake. Fortuitously, that air of hilarity and relaxation established the tone for the young people’s first real date, which continued at the Mountbatten penthouse, where guests danced on a large balcony that gave long views of the city below.

The romantic evening was but a prelude to an invitation from the Duchess of Devonshire asking Kick to attend a house party at Compton Place. The occasion was to be one of many parties timed to coincide with the annual Goodwood races, which served as the finale to the London Season. Kick was eager to accept, though she, her mother, and the other Kennedy children—with the exception of Rosemary, who was going to Ireland—were scheduled to leave London on the twenty-second of July to spend the rest of the summer in Cannes, where old Joe had taken a house. The event at Compton Place was not due to begin until the twenty-fifth.

Though Rose Kennedy had her reservations about allowing Kick to remain behind with her father in order to attend the house party at the duke’s, Kick did at length manage to secure permission. The day after Rose and the other Kennedy siblings embarked for the South of France, Kick went off for the weekend to Cliveden. Meanwhile, it was agreed that on Monday, Jakie Astor would collect her at the embassy and drive her to Compton Place, to which he too had been invited, along with, among others, Robert Cecil; Andrew’s best friend, Tom Egerton; Debo Mitford; and Dawyck Haig’s sister Rene, who till then had been Billy’s acknowledged “favorite” of all the girls in the set. Tellingly perhaps, Kick had altogether forgotten that her American suitor, Peter Grace, was also due at the embassy residence, he and she having previously made informal arrangements to be together during his summer vacation. She would have been in Cannes that day in any case, but when Peter appeared at Prince’s Gate on the twenty-fifth, he found her waiting not for him, but rather for Jakie.

Later that day, Kick had her first glimpse of the gray stucco-faced Elizabethan Jacobean house where, over the course of a decade, she was to experience some of the most joyous, as well as some of the saddest, days and nights of her life. There would come a time in the not so remote future when Compton Place, which was ever redolent of the duke’s pungent Turkish cigarettes, would by turns beckon to Kick as a sanctuary from her misery and sense of personal isolation, and repel her on account of the excruciating memories it threatened to trigger. For now, however, it was the locale where matters of the heart seemed to quietly arrange themselves at last, with Billy and Kick, on the one hand, and Andrew and Debo, on the other, operating as established couples—Andrew having uncharacteristically, and by his own account reluctantly but unavoidably, acquiesced to his brother’s claim to Kick. Andrew might have paired off with Debo in any case, but he would long be irked by his mother’s having invited Kick as Billy’s guest. His mother’s invitation had signaled to Andrew that it was time for him to step back.

The Duchess of Devonshire, whom Kick first encountered at Compton Place, was to become one of the most important figures in her life, a woman who would over the years sympathize with her, love her, inspire her, comfort her, and, in the end, bury her when her own mother did not. At Hatfield House, Lady Alice Salisbury had tested Kick, who by her response had amply demonstrated the prized red blood that coursed in her veins. At Compton Place, Lady Alice’s daughter had a chance to observe the phenomenon for herself. That the duchess very much approved of what she saw would be suggested by the stream of invitations Kick received from her in the months that followed.

After her stay at Compton Place, Kick was due to join her mother and siblings in Cannes, but before she left England she and Billy arranged to meet again on September 21, on the occasion of Jean Ogilvy’s twentieth birthday celebration at Cortachy Castle, during what was known as the Scottish Season. Kick had begun her British sojourn with the intention of going home after six months. She now meant to stay indefinitely—if, that is, her father did not insist on sending her home due to the looming threat of war.

For all that spring and summer, the international tensions that had been so passionately spoken of in the course of Kick’s life-changing first country house weekend, at Lady Astor’s, had been steadily worsening. The London Season of 1938 overlapped with the mounting Czech crisis. Hitler, persuaded—precisely as Hugh Fraser, echoing Churchill, had warned he would be—that the British were unprepared to fight, had been moving inexorably toward the seizure of Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain in the meantime had put intense pressure on the Czechs to acquiesce to German demands of self-determination for the approximately three and a half million Sudeten German residents along the northern, western, and southern borders of Czechoslovakia. On the day Kick flew to the South of France with her father, a British emissary arrived in Prague with instructions from Chamberlain to prepare the Czechs for the handover of the Sudetenland to Hitler.

In the anxious weeks that followed, while Kick swam and sunbathed with her family, word reached the British Foreign Office that Hitler had already made up his mind to seize all of Czechoslovakia in September, a report that was soon bolstered by sightings of German troop movements between Nuremberg and the Czech frontier. By mid-August, the Nazis had amassed over one and a half million troops. Kick, meanwhile, accompanied Jack on a side trip to Austria, in the course of which her brother hoped to assess the impact of the German occupation, as well as to derive some sense of what might be in store for the Czechs.

In early September, as Kick shopped for clothes in Paris with her mother, the world nervously awaited Hitler’s address to the annual party rally at Nuremberg, a speech in which it was widely anticipated he would clarify his intentions with regard to Czechoslovakia. Hitler’s ranting September 12, 1938, performance, broadcast internationally, was not reassuring. By turns insulting the Czech state and demanding self-determination for the German-speaking minority, Hitler made it clear that he was ready to intervene.