Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter (13 page)

The children already had significant training and preparation for the spotlight. Stars in the entertainment industry, social and cultural icons, literary figures, journalists, and business leaders were already regular fixtures of their lives. The older children had traveled abroad, as well, and had been groomed for the cultural and social adjustments and responsibilities expected of them. When Joe first entered government service, the children never thought twice about it. Intermittent news stories over the years about the family had also partially prepared them for the onslaught of attention they would receive in England and Europe. Rose would later explain that the children “were used to seeing their grandfather’s picture in the paper,” and public discussions involving their grandfather and father had long seasoned them to the benefits and disadvantages of press attention.

Children made for good stories that sold newspapers and magazines. During the Great Depression, the media promoted feel-good ideals of home and family and triumphant efforts to weather the economic storms that threatened social and family stability. Sentimental feature-length news stories about children and childhood belied the tension in a society filled with families living on the edge. The Dionne quintuplets, born in 1934 in Ontario, Canada, became a popular craze. A medical miracle, the birth of five babies without the aid of fertility drugs was unheard of. Taken away from their parents as toddlers, the five girls were raised by a doctor and several nurses in a specially built home where tourists and the media could watch their every move. Their daily routines, playtime, and education captivated a fascinated public weary of economic uncertainty and despair. As a tourist attraction, the
quintuplets brought nearly half a billion dollars into the Canadian province.

Hollywood movies tapped into this phenomenon, too: child stars Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney, and Judy Garland delighted moviegoers, offering an escape from daily worries and hopelessness. Portrayed as spontaneous, innocent, and charming, these youngsters were among the movie industry’s biggest box-office draws. Shirley Temple, for instance, appeared in numerous films as, typically, an orphaned but incredibly resourceful, optimistic, and cute little girl who could charm millionaires, defend the defenseless, and “dispense moral advice” to adults who had somehow lost their way.
Such movies and themes drew attention away from the stark realities of the thousands of children who were abandoned by poor and destitute parents who could no longer provide for them, crowding orphanages that once catered to truly parentless children. One in five children in New York City suffered from malnutrition, while nine in ten in the coal-mining regions of the country suffered starvation.
The commercial exploitation and marketing of children—whether through film, magazine, or news coverage—satisfied adult needs to sentimentalize children, helping them avoid the realities of the Depression’s effects on society’s most vulnerable. The Kennedy children—well fed, well dressed, attractive, charming, and rich—offered a hopeful and idyllic view of family life.

Newspapers eagerly covered the Kennedys’ move to London. Rose and Joe had determined that the family would travel in small groups rather than as one big family. Joe set sail on the USS
Manhattan
on February 23, 1938, after delaying his trip for two weeks to be with Rose, who had suffered a sudden attack of appendicitis and had to be hospitalized. Bidding farewell to his family and friends attending his departure from New York, Kennedy was be
sieged by the press. In spite of his successes as SEC chairman and chairman of the Maritime Commission, it was the incredible novelty of an Irish Catholic ambassador—a job that had previously been held only by elite Protestant Americans—that so excited the press.

In March, Rose set sail from New York on the USS
Washington
with Kick and the younger children—Pat, Bobby, Jean, and Teddy—along with the family’s new nurse, Luella Hennessey, and governess, Elizabeth Dunn.
Kathryn “Kiko” Conboy, the full-time nurse Rose had depended upon for nearly eighteen years, stayed behind, disappointing some of the children, who loved her and considered her a member of the family. Rosemary would keenly miss Kiko—an Irishwoman who loved all the Kennedy children and served as a surrogate mother—whom she had known nearly her entire life as a constant, nurturing presence.
Dunn had already replaced former governess Alice Cahill, so that transition was less jarring, benefiting the younger children especially. Rose insisted the family cook, Margaret Ambrose, be brought along, ensuring that the family did not experience an interruption in their “regular family fare and our favorite American desserts, like strawberry shortcake and Boston cream pie.”
Joe Jr. and Jack would follow once their studies at Harvard had concluded, later that spring.

Kick had already graduated from the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Noroton, Connecticut, and had been taking courses in interior design at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art.
The interruption in her studies apparently did not worry Rose or Joe, nor did any concern over the pause in the four youngest children’s education prevent them from pulling those children from their classes. Eddie and Mary Moore, it was decided, would accompany Eunice and Rosemary to London later, in April. Sixteen-year-old Eunice was boarding at Sacred Heart in Noroton, and the
delay in traveling to London with Rosemary and the Moores enabled her to finish her sophomore year there.

Preparing Rosemary for yet another transition required help. The
Boston Globe
reported on April 6 that Rosemary had been admitted to New England Baptist Hospital in Boston, with the family clarifying that Rosemary was there merely for a physical checkup, “following the example of her distinguished father who came to Boston for a physical examination at the Lahey Clinic before his departure for London.”
The hospital told reporters that she was not ill but would remain under observation for about a week. In fact, Rosemary had been in the hospital since the third week in March. “Rosemary has been in Boston,” Eddie Moore wrote to Joe in London on March 23, “and all reports are most encouraging.” Dr. Dearborn was sending the latest information on Rosemary, Eddie told Joe, and another physician, Dr. Jordan, had suggested that Rosemary “could take off 6 to 8 pounds in ten days” if she stayed at Baptist Hospital.
By April 6, Amanda Rohde had arrived in Boston and reported to Eddie Moore in New York that Rosemary was “very well and happy.” Rosemary had been “rather uncomfortable for a couple of days,” but the cold she was “also” suffering from was responding to medicine.
She did not leave the hospital until April 13. The specifics of Rosemary’s health issues at that moment remain a mystery, though it is possible that anxiety regarding the upcoming trip abroad may have exacerbated preexisting physical or mental conditions. The loss of “6 to 8 pounds in ten days” seems very likely to have been a secondary, if not a primary, goal of the hospitalization.

Though the
Boston Globe
reported that Rosemary was “a graduate of Sacred Heart Academy, Manhattanville, N.Y., [and] is at present a student at Marymount Convent, Tarrytown, N.Y.,” Rosemary had never officially graduated from Manhattanville;
and it is likely that she was simply living at the convent, where the Sacred Heart sisters lived, rather than taking college-level courses at their New York City campus, on Fifth Avenue.
The nuns had asked for a private showing of the latest Disney animated film,
Snow White,
and Eddie Moore was eager to oblige them, he told Joe, because “they have been so sweet about Rosemary.”

Rosemary went directly to New York City after leaving the hospital, moving in with the Moores at the Chatham Hotel until Eunice could join them and they could all leave together on the USS
Manhattan,
on April 20.
Rosemary’s adjustment to the new surroundings was bound to be difficult and slow, and this was probably why her arrival in London was scheduled to occur after the majority of the family had already settled in: the delay helped Rose, the personal family staff, and the embassy personnel to plan for Rosemary’s needs and to accommodate them once she arrived.

Located at 14 Princess Gate, on Grosvenor Square, the embassy had been donated to the United States by the industrialist J. P. Morgan. The kitchen occupied the basement level, whereas the first floor was used as public space: a large, long dining room, two smaller reception rooms, another reception room for larger teas, and a small study for more private meetings and gatherings. The second and third floors contained eight bedrooms for the family, and the top two floors held the living quarters for embassy and family staff. Six-year-old Teddy enjoyed riding up and down the elevator for hours playing “department store,” much to the chagrin of the embassy staff.
Rose described the embassy as “simple” in decoration, though newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst loaned some of his art collection to grace its walls. Aside from commenting on the Lenox china bearing the seal of the United States, Rose had little to say about her surroundings.
With the help of governesses and secretaries on the ambassador’s staff, Rose managed the busy schedules for all the children, whether they were in school, attending public functions with their parents, or traveling.

Astonishingly, the presentation of Rosemary and Kick at the British court a mere two weeks after Rosemary’s arrival in London was a Kennedy priority. Presentation at court to Britain’s king and queen was the apogee of the ritual London debutante “season” for elite young women of Britain’s highest society. Weeks of parties, balls, formal dinners, and sporting events littered their calendars. The season served as the official “coming out” of eligible young women to a social world in keeping with a family’s elite lineage and social status. It also offered an opportunity for the formal and public recognition of marriageable young women whose families hoped to pair them with socially and economically suitable young men. Such marriages often cemented social and financial alliances between Great Britain’s and Europe’s aristocratic families. The purpose of the season and the events it spawned over several months were taken very seriously. A tradition dating back hundreds of years, presentation to the king and queen at the royal court was reserved for the wealthiest and most politically powerful of British society. Not all debutantes were presented, however, and some wealthy married women coveted the invitation for themselves. The honor conveyed lifetime status, making them eligible to attend the many social functions hosted by the royals for the rest of their lives. This was what Rose aspired to: social status both in the United States and abroad for herself and her daughters. Although marriage for her daughters to aristocratic British heirs sounded appealing, the fact was that most eligible men were Protestant. Interfaith marriages were frowned upon by both Catholics and Protestants, and Rose would be no exception. The
social cachet and privilege that emanated from a formal presentation at court were what Rose wanted, not necessarily husbands for her daughters.

The presentation would mark the first time that Rosemary would be in almost constant public view. The social pressure would be enormous. Her family and close friends, like the Moores, worried that she might do or say something inappropriate or reveal her intellectual limitations. The British aristocracy had long shunned their own mentally disabled and mentally ill family members, hiding them away in sanitariums, mental hospitals, country farms and cottages, and—a favorite of British novelists—attic rooms. To present Rosemary, an intellectually disabled adult, to the monarchy at Buckingham Palace during the debutante season was more than a bold act; a debutante with intellectual disabilities would have stirred long-held prejudices about passing along “defective” traits to the next generation. Joe and Rose were determined to keep the family secret, making sure that Rosemary was treated just like all the other eligible young women presented at court that year.

The formal presentation at court was “very rich in pageantry and very elaborate,” Rose would write years later.
Most eligible young women and their families spent months planning for the presentation, but the Kennedys’ late arrival that spring had given Rose and the two girls little time to prepare. Rose privately complained that having such an event, with all the parties, balls, and social gatherings leading up to it, during springtime interrupted opportunities to travel. The social season in the United States traditionally took place during the fall or winter months, when the nights were longer and there was less to do and when fewer vacations were planned. Spring, with its “lovely days when one could go to the country,” seemed less sensible to Rose.
Hunting season
dominated the fall and winter social scene in Britain, she later learned, leaving the spring to be the domain of the debutantes.

Young women who had been presented to the court in the years before the current one were called upon to help prepare the next group. Their mothers, often titled Englishwomen or wives of diplomats or military officers, coached the new group of debutante mothers on the rigid protocols, procedures, and rules that each woman was required to follow. Strict fashion guidelines were respected: dress designs were governed more by conservative court prescriptions than by fashion trends; lace trains and long gloves were uniform; and headdress styles were carefully regulated. The distance between each girl in the procession had to be the same so that the equally measured trains would not be stepped on. Two girls would approach the king and queen at the same time; months of collective curtsy practice were crucial so as “not to have one lady bobbing up while the other was stooping down.”

Rose had long been a devotee of Paris fashion houses, and she was eager to make the trip from London to Paris to buy Kick’s and Rosemary’s dresses. She was warned, however, that buying from an English designer was expected. English designers “knew the type to be worn at Court, understood the importance of the train, etc.”
This was frustrating for Rose, who always wanted the latest and finest for herself and her daughters. Though she did not appreciate being told how to dress, Rose would not completely abandon British standards. For Rosemary and herself, she found a compromise in dresses designed by Edward H. Molyneux, a British-born designer who had established a successful fashion house in Paris decades before. Molyneux ran a smaller shop in London in the early 1930s to serve his British clients, but it was at his Paris salon that Rose chose her own and Rosemary’s dresses. In a bit of
nonconformity, Rose decided on a couture gown for Kick from the French fashion designer Lucien Lelong.