Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy: From Brookline to Chatsworth

Kathleen Kennedy in her American Red Cross uniform, 1943. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

Kathleen Kennedy, known to everyone as Kick, was the second daughter of Rose and Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. She was born at 83 Beals Street in Brookline, Massachusetts, on February 20, 1920, and died in May 1948. In that short span she worked on a newspaper, joined the American Red Cross in wartime London, married into one of England's grandest families, and became, in the words of The Times of London, an American "so much loved" in England that none had been loved more.

Growing up a Kennedy

Kick was baptized at St. Aidan's Roman Catholic Church and went to the Edward Devotion School. Her mother later remembered her as "lovely to look at, full of joie de vivre, and so tremendously popular"; the nickname came from that zest. After the family moved to Riverdale, New York, in 1927, summers were spent at the cottage in Hyannis Port, where she rode, swam, sailed and played tennis and touch football.

Eunice, Kick (middle) and Rosemary Kennedy in Brookline, Massachusetts, around 1925. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

With Joe Jr. and Jack she made up what the family called the "golden trio", and the three were meant to set an example for the six younger children. Rose Kennedy liked to quote St. Luke: "to whom much is given, much is expected." Kick bristled at being made caretaker of her younger siblings and of her older sister Rosemary, who had an intellectual disability, and she felt closest to Jack, who shared her independent streak. Even so, she guarded Rosemary against gossip and stayed a devout Catholic.

Her brothers went to Choate and Harvard; Kick went to a convent school in Noroton, Connecticut, where, despite asthma and appendicitis, she finished near the top of her class. In 1935 she moved on to the Holy Child Convent at Neuilly, just outside Paris. She loved the city's art and history, and her habit of questioning the nuns' rules earned her the name "Mademoiselle Pourquoi", Miss Why.

The ambassador's daughter

Kick reached London in March 1938, after her father became Ambassador to the Court of St. James. The British press treated the family almost as royalty, and she quickly stood out among the season's debutantes. At a garden party at Buckingham Palace that July she met William "Billy" Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington and heir to the Duke of Devonshire. His family was among the richest in England and openly anti-Catholic, but the two were drawn to each other at once.

The Kennedy family at the coronation of Pope Pius XII; Kick stands at far left, beside a Swiss Guard. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

In March 1939 the family, all but Joe Jr., gathered in Rome for the coronation of Pope Pius XII. Kick wrote that the crowd's welcome was "mightier, more spontaneous, than any number of 'Heils' from a drilled populace"; the piece, published in Boston, was her first article and was noticed in American Catholic circles.

On September 3, Kick, Joe Jr. and Jack walked to Westminster to hear Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announce the war, and heard Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, rouse the chamber. Her father soon judged London too dangerous and sent the family home. After 18 months abroad, Kick left, promising herself she would return. At Finch College in Manhattan, when students voted on whether the United States should join the war, hers was one of only two "yes" votes.

Joe Jr., Kick and Jack on their way to the Palace of Westminster to hear Britain declare war on Germany. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

Reporter and Red Cross worker

In 1941 Kick took a job at the Washington Times-Herald, first as the editor's secretary, and set about earning a reporter's standing. Washington broadened her; a colleague said she argued progressive positions as if she wanted "the exercise of defending something she'd never even dreamt was attackable before."

The American Red Cross was her way back to England. She arrived in London in June 1943 to a city scarred by the Blitz, lived at the Hans Crescent Club and worked long hours keeping up soldiers' spirits. She and Billy grew closer than ever. His mother invited her for Christmas, and Billy proposed, but religion stood between them: the Cavendishes were Anglican, and Billy felt that the heir to the dukedom could not raise his children Catholic. His father, the most anti-Catholic of them, promised not to disinherit him if he married a Catholic, but Billy would not ask that of the family. Kick would have to give up her faith, and she took the question to priests and to Joe Jr.

Marriage and loss

In spring 1944 Billy stood for the family's traditional seat in Parliament and lost badly; Kick loved the campaign anyway, canvassing under a false name. On May 6, 1944, they married in a register office. Joe Jr. was the only Kennedy there, and many Catholics, Rose Kennedy among them, disapproved. Five weeks later Billy left for Normandy.

That summer London was struck by German flying bombs, the "doodlebugs". Kick's diary described people "always listening first for them to arrive and next for the sound that the dreaded engine has stopped", followed by the twelve seconds of silence before the blast. In August, speaking at the Bakewell Fair as Lady Hartington, she charmed the same voters who had just turned Billy down.

Then the blows came together. Joe Jr. volunteered for a secret mission against the doodlebugs' launch site in Normandy, and on August 12, 1944, his plane exploded in flight. Billy helped liberate Brussels on September 3 and wrote that he longed for Kick to share it; on September 9 he was killed in action. She spent that Christmas with his family, went on a retreat at a convent, and decided England was her home.

Lady Hartington

In March 1945 she spoke to the Women's Institute in Derby on the housewife's part in the war, and set the crowd cheering with a remark about women keeping the household accounts. After Victory in Europe Day she kept up her public duties. When Jack came to London that June to cover the British election, she introduced him to people, drove him to Churchill's speeches and advised him as an insider; after hearing her speak, he wrote that she seemed "like a possible candidate." She took a house near Parliament and filled it with political talk.

Kick and Peter Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, 8th Earl Fitzwilliam, on a patio. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

In 1946, chairing the Commandos Benevolent Fund Ball, she met Peter Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, 8th Earl Fitzwilliam, a naval hero with a scandalous reputation, and found in him the connection she had lost. In May 1948 the two flew toward the French Riviera to talk to her father about marrying. The plane never arrived. The Cavendishes buried her at Chatsworth with a full Catholic service; her father was the only Kennedy at the funeral. Her gravestone reads "Joy she gave Joy she has found."

Sources

• National Park Service, "Kathleen Kennedy Cavendish: Joy Given, Joy Found," John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site; rewritten in hubnx's own words. Photographs: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.