Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy

Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy was the fourth child and second daughter of Joseph and Rose Kennedy. Always her father’s favorite, Kick spent her adolescence in London while he served as Ambassador to the United Kingdom. She quickly became a society it-girl and eventually married one of the most eligible bachelors in England — much to the chagrin of her very Catholic mother. We’re joined by Paula Byrne, author of Kick: The True Story of JFK's Sister and the Heir to Chatsworth, to discuss Kick’s life and tragic death, her twin-like relationship with JFK, and her complicated legacy.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
I'm George Severs and this is United States of Kennedy,
a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty.
Every week we go into one aspect of the Kennedy story,
and today we are talking about Kathleen Kennedy where she
was known to those close to her, Kick Kennedy. Kick
was born on February twentieth, nineteen twenty, the fourth child

(00:30):
of Joe and Rose Kennedy, after siblings Joseph Junior, John F. Kennedy,
and Rosemary. The book that Fitzgerald's and the Kennedys describes Joe, Junior,
Jack and Kathleen as quote the Golden trio who shared
the inestimable advantages of being wealthy, good looking, confident, and intelligent.
And even within that golden trio, it was no secret

(00:52):
that Kick was her father's favorite. Kick spent her adolescence
in London while her father served as the ambassador to
the United Kingdom. She became an it girl in London
society circles. She later worked as a journalist in the
US before moving back to London and eventually marrying William
Cavendish or Billy as he was called, a British nobleman
who was the heir to his father's dukedom. The marriage

(01:15):
caused a lot of family drama, especially with her mother Rose,
as Billy was, of course not Catholic. A series of
tragedies soon befell Kick. Shortly after her wedding, she lost
her brother Joe, and then her husband, all within a
few very short months. Two years later, she and her
new lover, Peter Fitzwilliams, died in a tragic plane crash.

(01:36):
To talk about Kick's life and legacy, we are joined
by author and literary critic Paula Byrne, writer of the
biography Kick, the true story of JFK's sister and the
heir to Chatsworth. Paula, Welcome to United States of Kennedy.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
And before we begin, I do want to say on
the record while we're recording that you're a big presence
in my household because my husband is one of the
biggest Barbara pim fans in America, and it's something that
I'm ashamed to say. When we first started dating, I
had never even heard of her. I just didn't grow
up reading a lot of literature like that, and so
I remember early on. Your book was one of those

(02:15):
books that I would find in various different bookcases throughout
the home.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Well, I literally love your husband already like that. It's
just the best thing I've ever heard. It's brilliant.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
But we are unfortunately not here to talk about Barbara
pim even though I would love to impress him with
more factoids. We're here to talk about Kick Kennedy. So,
first of all, you yourself are an Irish Kennedy and
I heard you say that on another interview. What was
your relationship to the Kennedys just as public figures growing up?

Speaker 2 (02:43):
Well, we're not obviously related to the Kennedy's. My grandfather
was called Robert Kennedy and we were an Irish Catholic
family living in the northwest of England, nea Liverpool, and
we always had two sort of precious items in all household.
I was one of seven children and they were two
boss and one was of the Pope and one was

(03:05):
of JFK. And it's amazing how many other people have
said exactly the same thing. I thought it was just
my family, but my parents were not given to idolizing anybody, particularly,
so it was really interesting to me that JFK, the
first Catholic president, was put on the same pedestal as

(03:27):
the pope, and my parents like, whatever, don't play football,
don't don't knock, don't knock JFK. You just leave him leaving.
So they sort of really idolized the Kennedy So I
think I always grew up and my parents, my mother
was she was the Kennedy and there were thirteen children,
and you know, they look like the Kennedy family, my parents,
my mother's siblings. They actually they have a lot of personality.

(03:51):
They are great raconteurs, they're really good looking, like they're
just like Kennedy's and through and through. So I kind
of felt there was an affinity before I even wrote
about Kathleen Kennedy. I think I just grew up feeling
that he was somebody that was revered in a family
that didn't really revere anybody apart from the Pope.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
That so interesting and for you know, our predominantly American listeners.
I know you didn't grow up in Ireland, but can
you describe the place that the Kennedys hold in the
Irish imagination. I mean, since I've started doing this podcast,
people I know, well you know, travel to Ireland or
be there on a trip or something, and they will
send me the funniest instances of you know, a framed

(04:29):
photo of JFK and some random pub or they're saying
a bus. I mean, what is the place of the
Kennedy's just day to day in Ireland.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
Oh, it's honestly huge. It's just huge.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
You know.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
We always thought to the Kennedy's as American royalty, and
I think it's mainly because of particularly Catholic families. The
fact that he was the first Catholic president of the
United States was just so huge and let alone sort
of myth of the Kennedy's and all those children, And
of course I guess for my parents' generation, they rema
remembered the Kennedy family coming to England in nineteen thirty

(05:04):
eight to nineteen thirty nine when their father Joe became ambassador,
and the kind of impact on the British press and
the Irish press was so huge. On these gorgeous children,
nine of them, with these dazzling smiles and full of personality.
The impact of that family with their dazzle was just

(05:25):
completely huge. So I feel like and wherever I go
when I said, oh my mom's a Kennedy, people would
be like, oh wow, are you related to the family.
So I think this honestly, even today, there's massive cudos
having some connection to that name because it particularly in
Catholic Irish families, there is such love for the Kennedy family.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
Yeah, your description of the Kennedy's in England especially, and
the entire media ecosystem hounding them and then becoming immediately
like the protagon's of any country that they're in. I mean,
this is different, but it reminds me of My family
is Greek, and when Jackie started spending more time in
Greece because of Onasa's she suddenly became the number one

(06:11):
celebrity in all Greek people's minds. I mean, they just,
all of them have a way of capturing and then
maintaining people's attention.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
Oh yeah, for sure. I think because Kennedy's, particularly JFK.
You know, he was such a young, handsome president, and
I think the advent of televisions in people's rooms was
a really important cultural social phenomenon because it brought Kennedy
into everybody's day to day living, so people felt they
knew him even though they didn't know him, and he

(06:41):
was so personable and charismatic, so I think that he
was just so appealing on all sorts of levels.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
I want to get into Kathleen because she was one
of the sort of three golden children. It was Joe, Junior,
Jack and Kathleen were by all counts chose favorites, so
to speak. But I had not really read too much
about Kathleen before this, and I guess in my mind
based on things I had read, she was almost, if anything,

(07:11):
just a symbol, and that she was emblematic of this
idea of the Kennedy curse. And obviously that is unfair
to make her into adjust that, but there is something
so just deeply tragic about the number of terrible tragedies
that happened to her just within the span of five years.
So if anything, my idea of her was almost as
a passive figure that all these things happened to, rather

(07:33):
than an active person with agency and with her own
ambitions and interests and daily dramas. And there was very
little written specifically about her before your book, So what
was it that drew you to her as a historical figure?

Speaker 2 (07:49):
Well, I mean, just two things to follow up on that.
She absolutely was not a passive person. And it's so
interesting that was your perception of it, because that couldn't
be further from the truth, because in defying her family
into eyeing her faith and defying her country, she was
an absolute feminist in doing what she wanted to do.
So to me, she was a very active figure in

(08:10):
a family where the power of family, the power of
boys in that family was so all pervading, and so
for a child to defy, particularly somebody like Rose Kennedy
the matriarch, was really extraordinary. So that's the first thing
I would say. And you're completely right about the tragedy.
But because the first tragedy was Joe Junior, of course

(08:32):
before Kick herself had her tragedies, so she was almost
like the second. But you're completely right about the grief
that happened in that sort of relatively short space of
time and what drew me to her. So I've always
done biographies were I used to think of myself as
a footnote queen. So I would write a book and
then find a footnote about somebody and I'd be like, Oh,
who's that. I'd written a book about even war and

(08:55):
homosexuality and Bright had re visited and because he is
experiences with boys at Oxford, and it was a source
of revisionist biography of even War because I sort of
upturned many of the cliches about him and that sort
of do that anyway. Anyway, in the course of that book,
I discovered him writing in his diary Kick saw Kick
sat by Kick dead Kick This Kick then got kick

(09:18):
who and earth is Kick? So I looked at Roper,
Oh my god, this is Kathleen Kennedy. This is JFK's sister.
Why is he mentioning Kick Kennedy? Why are they friends?
This is really bizarre evel. When War was not known
to be kind to people. He was serbic, he was intelligent,
he couldn't bear most people, and he obviously was incredibly

(09:38):
fond of this Kick person. So I did my research
and then thought, wow, okay, this woman has been whitewashed
out of the family history. This woman's story has not
been told. So this is my shtick. This is what
I do. I find these voices, I've lost voices, and
I returned them to their stories. And so to me
it was like, I've got to do this book. I've

(10:00):
got to write so also, I wanted to write about
the young Kennedy's being in Britain. Office on British. I
spent a lot of time in America, but it felt
very clear that it was Kicks time.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
Yeah, it's funny. We did an episode on Rosemary Kennedy
and it was obviously a tragic story in a completely
different way, but it was a similar story of that.
Often the women in the Kennedy family get written out
of the mainstream telling of the family story and then
it takes someone going back into the archives later on
to dig out a coherent biography. But to that end,

(10:33):
what was the research process like? Considering there was so
little written specifically about her, were there any sources that
were especially valuable? Oh?

Speaker 2 (10:45):
Yeah, I mean the Kennedy archives. So I obviously spent
lots of time at the library in Boston, and it
was actually incredibly overwhelming as a biographer, because you know,
I always say my two most difficult biographies was one
I wrote a biography of a biracial girl called Dido
Bell who was raised in a household at Lord Mansfield's
house in London. And when I was asked to do

(11:06):
that biogray because a film is being made about it.
I said, there are only eight known facts. What am
I going to do? And they were like, no, you'll
do it. But Kennedy was the opposite. Kick was the
opposite Rose. Kennedy's archive alone has something like eight million
artifacts in it. It's so overwhelming. There are letters by
Kick two Kick, thousands of photographs, all sorts of letters.

(11:29):
This for me, was quite a British story because obviously
she married into one of the most aristocratic families in England,
and she was scooped up by these aristocratic county country
families and they wrote about her. So there was no
short of information, trust me, absolutely none at all. If anything,
there was a lot of information. So having to sieve

(11:50):
through all of that was quite daunting in a different
way to Bell, where I had so little information.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
Right, Okay, so let's get into it. Then. So she
as a teen, she moved to London because her father
became the ambassador, and then what was her adolescence like
in London as a kind of as an American in
London and also as basically a I don't want to
say a celebrity, but someone who stuck out as part
of this kind of American royal family.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
I mean, she was a celebrity really, and she was
probably one of the most famous sort of it girls
on the planet. And you know, she was very young,
she was in her teens. She arrived with her siblings,
and the press really took to her because she was
so lively and very photogenic. She was beautifully dressed, like
all the Kennedys were, but the women were really well dressed,

(12:40):
dazzling smile. And the interesting thing about Kick and while
the press so right from the start, the press latched
onto her. Okay, she's the star, she's the celebrity, she's
the one everybody wants a piece of. Nobody gave a
second look to JFK. Not at all. He was ill.
He was coming later on from the rest of the family.
He was very intellectually, so studious, he was going to

(13:01):
go to the London School of Economics. Nobody cared. It
was Kick, Kick, Kick. Everybody was interested in Kick. So
again for the biographer, lots of stories in the newspapers
about where she's going, what party she's going to. And
the interesting thing about Kick was how long before JFK
and indeed Joe, her brother, even went into these circles.

(13:23):
She was the one that was fated by this group
of very sophisticated aristocratic families. And that's very hard if
you're not British, and if you're American, you don't get in.
It's a closed shop. And she was more than accepted
into and it was through her that JFK and Joe

(13:45):
and all the others were able to gain footage into
these aristocratic homes. So she was the full runner.

Speaker 1 (13:52):
We're going to take a short break, stay with us,
and we're back with United States of Kennedy. I want
to sort of get into the social ecosystem at that time,

(14:16):
because I do think it surely will sound very foreign
to I mean foreign to anyone living in twenty twenty five,
but also especially an American living in twenty twenty five.
So she was a debutante. She was in these sort
of society circles. Can you describe just day to day
what that was like, What were these events like that
she was welcomed into. What did that mean? What did

(14:38):
she get out of it? How do you know if
someone is climbing the ranks, Well.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
It's difficult if you're not British to enter into that
the upper echelons of British society, particularly in nineteen thirty eight.
What she had on her side as her father was
the ambassador, so they lived in this incredible house at
Saint James's, so they instantly had that cachet and they
had that sort of invitation. But even so the British
aristoxy can close ranks. If your face doesn't fit and

(15:06):
they don't like you, or they find you vulgar or
chewing gom and they'd think, oh, you're a ghastly American,
they will not let you in. And that just didn't
happen because everybody fell in love with her, So what
did that look like? So she gets presented at court,
she learns how to curtsey, she learns how to dance.
She has the most beautiful dress imaginable with Rosemary, and

(15:27):
it's very frightening for Kick because she has to look
after Rosemary, who we know about Rosemary and her troubles,
and Kick was incredibly patient and very loving towards Rosemary.
But there was a lot of pressure because to all
intents and purposes, Kick was the eldest girl because of
Rosy's incapacitation, so she was the one leading the way,
and very quickly she became in she was already endearing,

(15:51):
and she was invited to an English country house and
she was put through a test. People were being quite
mean to her because in English country houses you put
your shoes out to get cleaned every night, and she
didn't know some of those rules. And so she did
put all their shoes out, and the girls played a
trick and they stole all the left hand shoes the

(16:12):
right hand shoes I can't remember, so she couldn't wear shoes,
and she does didn't care. She just wore a left
shoe and a right shoe and she went downstairs and
they all said, why are you hobbling and she said, oh,
Robert broke my leg before supper. And she was instantly
accepted because she just charmed everybody. Not easy to do.
And from really that point on, after she passed that test,
the horrible snobby English way of are you one of

(16:36):
us even though you're not, she passed the test, and
then what that then looked like was this English season.
She was welcome to everything, so from horse racing to balls,
to society events, to the opera house to English country
houses where politics are discussed. I mean, I argue in
my book that I think think JFK learned about English

(16:58):
country house politics because of Kick. If Kick had the entree,
he did not have the entree. It was her. She
had the entree. And it was through him that she
met Churchill's Winston Churchill's circle, his son. It was through Kick,
so she was the one who was invited. And because
I'd say, she was so beautiful. She always with these
amazing hats, she had the best shoes, she had the

(17:20):
best clothes, she had the best jewelry. So of course
she's just like catnip to the press. So they're commenting on, Oh,
she's at the Racist, She's at Royal oscar Ascot, She's
at Goodwood, She's at this event, she's at that event,
she's at this ball. Oh she's at that ball. And
Nancy Astor took her under her wing, who was at
the doyen of English aristocratic society. So she just had

(17:42):
this ability, like all the Kennedys do, I suppose, to
completely charm people. So it was really interesting for her,
easy for her to be courted, and all the men
fell in love with that, and the girls, these aristocratic,
sort of beautiful, slend willowy beauties, were furious because he said,
kicks stealing all our men. They loved her, but they

(18:04):
were like, she's stealing on and she says, and the
girls like she's sure. And her brother said, oh, she's
got a short neck and she's got fat ankles, and
you know, and she's not going to be anything like
these willowy, beautiful, aristocratic blondes. And she was stealing all
the men. All the men were in love he everyone
fell in love with her. She just had incredible chrisma
and also she was extremely down to earth, so whenever

(18:28):
English people tried to be snobby, she would just not
rise to it.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
So I want to, you know, I want to go
into her relationship with men, because that is if there's
one thing I did know about her, as you alluded
to earlier, the fallout with her family based on the
men that she decided to date slash Mary, But you
mentioned her relationship to JFK. And I want to go
into that a little bit more. They were very close.

(18:54):
I mean, you describe them as almost twin like they
really gravitated towards one another. And you say Jack wanted
to be an intellectual, He did not want to be
a politician. They talked about writing and literature and politics,
which I think also was something else she brought to
the table in these society environments where she was one
of the only women. As you're saying, that's talking about

(19:14):
politics and talking about current events. But I wonder if
you could talk a little bit about her relationship to
Jack and what they had in common. Something that struck
me was there was this quote here, and of course
it's from a different book, but at some point Kick says,
the thing about me you oughtn't know is that I'm,
like Jack, incapable of deep affection, and that's kind of

(19:37):
sad self. Knowledge about not being able to fully be
in touch with one's emotions was something that they bonded over.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
I think. So I think that's a really great quote
that you picked up there. But also going back to
the twin thing, they were really they were almost like
people described them as a sort of DESSI and you know,
you know, that kind of screwball comedy, because they were
very witty and they were very eluciable, they were very
on it, and she stood off for herself. She stood

(20:07):
up to him. She was as tough as the boys.
She would outrun them in races. She was really sporty.
She held everyone because you have to hold her own
view Kennedy, obviously you do. And she was bright and
she was sassy, and they had quite a teasing relationship,
but they were extremely close and as it almost like twins.

(20:28):
And I think that quote is really interesting because it
hints a deep self knowledge that really it was hard
to be a Kennedy. And Rose was not an affectionate mother.
She was a very cold mother. Their father was deeply affectionate,
and he used to spend time with each children most nights.
He would bring them into the bedroom and talk to them.
But also there was this tension in the family because

(20:49):
obviously Joe was deeply unfaithful to Rose. So family secrets
were there, and the kids knew about their father's affairs
and they joked about it to one in other but
that conceal hurt and damage. So in terms of that
family system, it was deeply dysfunctional. And I think when
Kick talks about that, it was that sense of growing

(21:12):
up in a very dysfunctional marriage and what that meant
for the children, and the sexual double standard. You know
that the boys, you know, Joe would leave out pornographic
magazines for the boys, but the girls are meant to
be virgins until they get married. So you've got this
sexual hypocrisy and the sexual double standard, and that's very difficult.
I actually think Kick was deeply capable of affection and deeperfection,

(21:36):
and she showed that when you know, she married Billy,
so I don't think that was true, but I think
it also hints at this sense of dysfunction.

Speaker 1 (21:46):
So she meets Billy when she's very young in London, correct,
and then she moves back to America, but then eventually
goes back to England, and despite the fact that he
is potentially engaged to a different woman Sally Norton at
the time, goes back and then they eventually do end
up getting married. But can you describe, you know, for
any Americans that might not be proficient in the ins

(22:08):
and outs of British nobility, who Billy was and what
his place was in England.

Speaker 2 (22:13):
I mean, it's hard to overemphasize just how he was
literally the most eligible bachelor in the whole of Britain,
and I would say above royalty, even because you know,
his father was the owner of Chatsworth and numerous other
stately homes. He was rich beyond wildest dreams. He had

(22:34):
an aristocratic pedigree going back centuries, and all the women
wanted to bag him. They all were in love with
Billy Harsingden. And it's so extraordinary that when and you
mentioned that he met Kick and then she went back
to American came back from the minute Billy, the most
eligible bachelor in the whole of England, met her. He

(22:54):
said she is the only one for me. And although
he did get engaged, it was only because he didn't
think he could ever get her. And so when she
came back, he dropped everything to be with her. But
I mean, Chatsworth is for people who watched Pride and
Prejudice in nineteen ninety five. You know, Chatsworth is at Pemberley.
It's this enormous, stately home in Derbyshire which is completely

(23:19):
beautiful and as I say, the most aristocratic family. He's
a duke, and Kick Burley sort of knows what this
is and she makes a joke with Billy and says,
duky Wookie, and she's sort of teasing him, and she says, oh,
you don't really believe in all that? Do you need
to really take that serious, and he says, all work.
You know, I do take that really seriously because she
didn't really understand how the aristocracy worked. So it's almost

(23:42):
hard to overemphasize just how important Billy was. And the
irony of that was the Kennedy family thought he's the
worst man in the world to marry. Not that he's
the richest man in the well in England. He's the
most aristocratic man. He's completely devoted to her. He's the
eldest son, he's going to inherit everything. He's a duke

(24:03):
and you know they're on that many dukes in England.
He's incredibly aristocratic. And yet for Rose it was the
worst match because he's not Catholic. So you can imagine,
I mean, talk about the family discord as a result
of this. But he was extremely eligible, handsome, tall, and
as I said, he completely fell in love with her.

(24:24):
He could have had any girl was his for the
picking and he just said it's kick, that's the woman
and he fell in love with at first sight and
said she's the one for me. It's an extraordinary love story.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
Well it is, especially because it really seemed like when
she moved back to America and this was during the
beginning of the war. I believe she moved back to
America in what like thirty.

Speaker 2 (24:46):
Nine Yeah, I mean yeah, yeah, s't you dine?

Speaker 1 (24:50):
And so she leaves London, he becomes engaged to someone else.
Clearly it seems like the love story is doomed. So
it is especially very Rombo and Juliet that they end
up miraculously through her efforts to find a job placement
back in London in a few years. And it is
a real sort of tortured love story. But in terms

(25:10):
of the family's disapproval, because this is something that is
such a huge part of Kick's life, is that eventually
the family almost disowns her in a way. Joe is
the only Kennedy I think at her funeral after she dies.
Can you talk a little bit about Rose's relationship to Kick,

(25:31):
because it's interesting. On the one hand, as you're saying,
Rose was very has this reputation of being very cold
and very concerned with being proper and having her family
be this emblem of polite American society and everything. On
the other hand, as you have talked about in the past,

(25:51):
Rose on a literal level, believes that if Kick marries
someone who is in the Catholic she won't go to heaven.
So of course if she actually on a literal level,
beloe believe that it is the kind and loving thing
to do to try to prevent it.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
Sure, absolutely, for sure. And you know, I've never taken
a particularly since Sorry's attitude towards Rose or Joe, because
I think actually they were pretty in many ways good
parents and in many ways terrible parents, like most of us.
But I think for Rose, although she liked Billy and
she could not have failed to have fell flattered that
the Duke of Evan's son, who was going to inherit

(26:26):
all of this, would have chose her daughter. But it
was the religion. In Rose's defense, and I make no
bones about this. In my biography of Kick, Rose says,
what will all the other Catholic girls do if I
sanction this? And if I say this is completely fine,
people will say, well, Kick Kennedy married out of their faith.
And it's hard to describe that to a modern day

(26:48):
audience about just how huge that intermarriage was, but it
was a hugely important thing given Rosemary's problems. She was
the first Kennedy girl and Rose envisited the big wedding,
the Catholic wedding. It was deeply important to all of them.
And Rose was so distraught when Kick did marry Billy
that she had a nervous collapse and she had to

(27:11):
go into hospital. She was completely broken by this because
she really felt that she'd let the side down. And again,
talking to a modern autist, I'm saying, but this was
a really huge thing. She loved Kicks, she wanted Kick
to be happy, but it was just and Billy himself
actually said this is a Romeo and Juliet situation. That
he actually used that metaphor and said it's like that.

(27:32):
He said, it's exactly like that. And they were trying
to find all different ways, and Rose, she was They
would saying, okay, what if we marry and what if
the girls we brought off as cap They tried everything.
We could bring the boys up as Anglicans, we could
bring the girls, and Rose is part of trying to
find a solution. I don't want to demonize Rose, but
there wasn't a solution. There couldn't be a solution. And

(27:54):
they talked to various priests in very high places, archbishops,
all sorts of senior clergyman and a solution couldn't be found.
In the end, Kick said, I'm going to put the
man I loved before. And it was during the war.
She was not sure whether he was going to be
killed during the war, and she decided to defy her family,

(28:15):
and that was a huge thing to do. But her
father supported her, and her father was still sent loving
and all. And the children, you know, the older children
supported her and didn't take a censorious view. The younger
children were disappointed, but they didn't really understand. So it
was just a really tricky situation. But then as soon
as she married, Billy Rose came around and said, I'll

(28:37):
welcome in with the open arms. It's done now. She
said she would do everything to stop it that once
it was done, she was loving and so for forgiveness
and reconciliation and did.

Speaker 1 (28:49):
The disapproval initially at least go both ways. I mean,
the Kennedy family of course did not want their daughter
marrying a non Catholic. But what about you know, the
aristocratic British family, as you're saying, the most eligible bachelor
in all of England, did they care or did they
disapprove of him choosing to marry an American or a Catholic.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
No, they absolutely did not. They absolutely loved her and
they fell in love a Kick, as did everybody, both
Billy's parents did. But his mother, who was very very
close to Billy, just knew how happy Billy was with Kick,
and she adored her, and they adored all of the Kennedy's,
And to this day, the Dukes of Devonshire are still

(29:32):
in touch and friendly with the Kennedy's. There was an
alliance there and it has never broken. There was no
sense of being snobbish, There's no sense of she's Catholic,
there was no sense of her being American. They were
absolutely enchanted by her.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
We'll be back with more United States of Kennedy after
this break, and we're back with United States of Kennedy.
So I want to talk a little bit about, you know,

(30:09):
outside of her relationship with men. You mentioned this idea
of Kick being a feminist in her own time period,
So in terms of her let's say, career and professional ambitions.
When she had that brief period in America between her
adolescence and moving back to Mary Billy, she was a journalist.

(30:31):
She worked at the Washington Herald, the Washington Herald, Yes,
thank you. And then during this early period of the war,
and of course my knowledge of history a spot here,
But during this era of the war, you could almost
argue women got a small taste of liberation because they
had to step in and do the work needed at

(30:52):
home while all the men were away. And so what
was that like for a Kick?

Speaker 2 (30:57):
Oh, you're absolutely right, and it was liberating. So obviously,
Joe Senior wanted all of the children off English soil.
When the war broke out. He was completely convinced Hillar
would win. He said that Hillary would win the war
and Britain would be decimated, and he wanted to get
his short in too safety. So they all went and
Kick didn't want to go because she just loved England
so much and she wanted to join the Red Cross

(31:18):
and all of this, which she did eventually, But she
went back. She as you said, she became a respected journalist.
She had a bit of a relationship with another journalist,
John White. She never did any showing off about who
she was. She used to wrap her fair coat into
a plastic bag. She was amazing and again everybody loved her.
But she had a plan and her plan was to
join the Red Cross as a sort of doughnut girl,

(31:41):
feeding donuts to the GIS and coffee. And she was
on a mission to get back to England despite everything,
and she did get back. And I think that in
itself is hugely feminist to say I am going back
to this country at war and at this point, you know,
her parents again horrified running, but she was completely determined.

(32:02):
And I think you make a really good point that
as with the First World War, women were way more
liberated because of the war, and they did have to
step into male jobs and it was an exciting time
to be and she had a brilliant time. She went back,
she joined the Red Cross, she worked with the GIS.
She was utterly hard working, charming, loved made everybody laugh
as she always brought so much joy and pleasure. She

(32:25):
was brave. There are bombs being dropped left, right and center,
and she gets on with it. She's there with JFK
and Joe when war breaks out and she goes along
to listen to Chamberlain's speech. She's right on the cost
of all this political upheaval and unrest and she's up
for it. You know, she's not saying I want to
be safe in America and want to marry some Harvard jock.

(32:47):
She's not doing that, like she's saying, I want to
go back. And it was hard. It was hard work.
What she did back in England was hard work. It
wasn't cushy.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
The determination she had to be exactly where she wanted
to be. I mean, initially she hoped for an assignment
doing public relations for the Red Cross at the London
Central Office, and then she somehow could not get that,
and so then she was being placed in one of
the Red Cross's rest and recreation clubs, which is what
today I think evolved into the USO. So the job

(33:18):
over there was to entertain gis and sailors on leave,
and then when it became clear that that's what she
would do, I think correct me if I'm wrong that
most of the women at that entry level would be
placed in some sort of more rural environment in one
of these far flung places. But she, through a combination
of determination on her own part and also of course

(33:39):
calling in favors via her father and via her family,
she got placed at like the most high profile, prestigious place,
which was in a posh Victorian hotel, like a block
from Herod's, exactly where someone would want to be that
was at the center of it all. So this is
during the beginning of the war. It is impressive that
she somehow made her way back exactly where she wanted

(33:59):
to be in order to both do more interesting work
and be with the man that she wanted to be with.
Is it worth getting into the fact that in the
meantime Billy became engaged to a different woman. It's unclear
what kind of became a bad Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:16):
I mean it was very soon he broke it off
and he was engaged to Sally Norton, and then he
broke it off because he wasn't in love with Sally.
He was still enough Kick, but I think he didn't
think Kick would come back. And then the minute Kick
came back, he raced to see her and it was
all back on. I don't think anybody ever really saw
he would ever go through with the other engagement. It

(34:39):
was during war. People were making rash decisions. When you
think you're going to die the next morning. All sorts
of rash decisions are Maybe people can become very impulsive,
but his heart was never in it. He just because
he was so in love with Kathleen, and then when
she came back that was it. They were back together,
and this time he said that's it. He was completely

(34:59):
determined and that they would get married.

Speaker 1 (35:01):
As we're moving on, we're getting closer and closer to
the sadder parts of her story. But you know, there's
something about Kick to me that seems almost you know,
not to sound glib, but there's a sense of like
a privileged girl studying abroad, like you know, it's almost
like an Emily and Paris figure. Like she's she has
this very optimistic outlook, and she's always trying to both

(35:21):
have a really full social life and also advance professionally,
and also have love affair well I don't know if
I've called them love affairs, but you know, flirtations with
men whatever. And there's this quote from when she was
working at the Red Cross where she wrote to her
parents the director just had a little chat with me.
The first complaint was that I had too many phone calls. Second,
I should cut down on my personal life. I don't

(35:42):
see how I could possibly do it any more than
I am already doing. So that really adds some personality. Okay,
so I want to walk through the timeline a little bit.
She marries Billy in May of nineteen forty four. Then
in August of nineteen forty four, her brother Joe is
killed in the war, which in this generation of Kennedy's

(36:04):
the first major tragedy that really, you know, begins this
series of tragic accidents and political assassinations, and it's the
first big tragedy. And then just a few months later,
September of nineteen forty four, Billy is killed. So what
was that chapter of her life like? What were her

(36:24):
ratings like during this era?

Speaker 2 (36:26):
Oh, you know, as you can imagine, she was absolutely devastated.
She was actually in America, which she heard that Billy
had died, and her father broke the news to her.
She was in New York and absolutely devastated. And Jack
jeffk said it was one of the worst days of
his life to see her pain and her anguish because
she'd been through so much to marry Billy, and it

(36:48):
was so heartbreaking. They had such a happy honeymoon and
they were just so in love and it was her
worst Nightma. But of course losing Joe before then added
to that sense of loss, So she'd lost a lot
and so she was really devastated. But she was absolutely
determined to go back to England, even though she had

(37:09):
a husband, but she's still all her friends were saying,
come back, come back, come back, and she did go back,
and she writes this really poignant letter when she's I
feel like a cork bobbing, you know, in emotional a
drift without Billy. So she got her other little house
and she was surrounded by love and warmth, and of
course her in laws adored her, and even more so

(37:30):
after Billy's death, because they said, you gave him the
only happiness he really knew in his her whole life.
So they were super indebted to her. But it was
the loss was incalculable, you know it was. It was
an incalculable loss. And as you rightly say, Joe's death
initially was the beginning of this domino effect of tragedy,
and you know, Rosemary's lobotomy, All of these terrible things

(37:52):
started happening to these golden children, these nine beautiful, golden, clever,
talented children, and loss just kept happening because the loss,
it was lost after loss after loss, and rose really
came into her own because she was really a rock
and support to Kick, and she said, look, I know,
I know I wasn't supportive of this, but I did

(38:12):
accept it. And although she said, God works in a
mysterious way and maybe this is what God wanted, which
is what she would do, because she's very pious, so
very devout, she was very supportive. But again I think
testament to kicks courage is she could have EASi less.
You say she was very privileged, she was titled. Now,

(38:34):
she had money beyond her wildest dreams. She could have
just stayed in America. She could have just been surrounded
by her family. The war wasn't over it, but she
was absolutely no determined to go back and that is
where I belong, that is where my friends are, and
I'll pick myself up and dust myself off. And she deeply,
deeply courageous. And I do think the loss of her
brother Joe was huge. He had a huge impact on her.

Speaker 1 (38:58):
And what was her day to day life like after
she became widowed, Well, she.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
Became quite involved in politics. So she had this beautiful
little house at Westminster and she was able to go
and listen to speeches and she hung out in quite
a political intellectual circle. And in fact JFK came over
and she drove him around in her little blue car,
and he was really beginning to understand how politics because
obviously with the death of Joe, he said, I feel

(39:26):
my father's eyes boring into me because now I've got
to be president. So it really changed everything for JFK.
And she again sort of scooped him up and said,
come and live with me, and come and see how
this is done, and come and talk about politics. And
I think in a funny way, she really came into
her own because she was no longer just Billy's wife,

(39:46):
But actually she became more politicized, more fascinated by the
world around her. She lived very close to Winston Churchill
after the war and fed him and used to live eggs.
And she became way more serious, I think than what
she had been perceived to be because she was a socialized,
privileged debutante. And Billy's death and Joe's death made her

(40:07):
very serious in many many ways. But she's still a
girl that everybody wants to dance with the ball and
again people are still saying, oh my goodness, now she's
still stealing all our men. She's stealing Peter Fitzwilliam and
oh my god, they still all fall in love with her.
But when you read those letters after the war, towards
the end of the war and after the war, there's
a note of real seriousness in those letters of the

(40:30):
impact the tragedy of the war, the tragedy of Billy's
death has sorrow and not having had a child, because
that would have been a very different if she'd had
a child, and an air to Chatsworth been very different
for it. But she didn't, and that was a great
tragedy and a great sense of loss for her. But
she was beatling around in a little blue carl, becoming
much more of a political animal than she'd ever been.

(40:51):
So she was moving in quite interesting she had that
journalist background. She was moving in quite interesting circles. But
then she met Peter William FITZWILLI.

Speaker 1 (41:00):
I do want to get into a Fitzilian But because
you mentioned it, I'm curious. You know, you say she
became a political animal, she started moving in these circles.
What were her politics, what were her beliefs, what were
her value? What political issues did you care about?

Speaker 2 (41:13):
I mean she didn't really talk about that. I mean,
obviously after the war in Britain was a very different place,
and it was still a place of utter deprivation and poverty,
and London was bombed. Liverpool was like, you know, it
was a world in utter sort of chaos and what
they were trying to rebuild the country, and so then

(41:35):
labor were starting to become really important, you know. And
I think politics, So when I say she was a
christ politics, she went and listened. She listened. She didn't
affiliate herself to anything. But I think she was deeply
democratic and she was deeply anti Nazi, as everyone in
England was at the time. But I think she was
somebody who just went along and sort of listened to

(41:56):
kept her eye to the ground, took her brother around,
said come and let's listen to this speech. I listen
to that speech. I listened to the other speech. But
she died soon after, so there wasn't enough time for
her to really get into it. But I saw a difference.
I saw a different in the tone of the letters
and in the thinking and her influence on bringing JFK

(42:18):
to see how things were done politically in Britain.

Speaker 1 (42:21):
We're going to take a short break, stay with us,
and we're back with United States of Kennedy. So as
you're saying she's stealing everyone's husband. Speaking of that, she

(42:44):
meets Peter Fitzwilliam. This is the second sort of love
of her life. And Billy was not Catholic, which was
of course controversial. But Peter is not only Protestant but
also married. So I'm sure Rose thought that the worst
was behind her in terms of faux pause. But this
was even worse than she could have imagined. So what
was that courtship? Like?

Speaker 2 (43:04):
Oh, a total Wormand and she wrote a letter to Kick,
wrote to Joe because I think I found my red
Butler gone with the wind with the Big film in
nineteen thirty nine. You know, everyone was in love with
Clark Gable. And if you can imagine the living manifestation
of Clark Gable, that would be Peter Fitzwilliam Tall, dark, handsome,
a war hero, sassy, satirical, clever, unbelievably brave. He was

(43:29):
a war hero, and he was married, he had a child,
and he fell in love with her and a dance
at a ball and was just totally smitten and utterly
determined to marry her. And at one point he said,
just tell your dad did the pope onto church. I'll
build him a church. What do I need to do
to marry you? So again, like with Billy, he was
completely serious. He wasn't messing around. And as you rightly say,

(43:53):
this was a rose that thought she'd had her worst night.
M this was actually even worse because of all problems,
not only not Catholic, but married child. He'd have to
get divorced. He was living apart from his wife. But
he was a roumate. He was a great flirt. He
was a great seductor. Billy was not wildly. Kick was
his first love. Billy was a shy, languid, introvert, and

(44:17):
Peter was the opposite. And I always felt, when I
was doing my research for my book that he was
much more of a Kennedy boy. He was like her brothers,
who she felt very familiar. There were matt Show, they
were dare devils, they were fearless, they were charismatics, very
very different to Billy, and she was quite literally swept

(44:38):
off her feet.

Speaker 1 (44:39):
So was there I mean, of course, this is all unfortunate,
building to them tragically dying in just a few months later,
But was there any hope of reconciliation? With Rose. Were
there conversations about it? What was that like?

Speaker 2 (44:51):
Well, she very cleverly got to her brother, She got
to Jack first and got him on side, and then
she got to her father because she was her father's
favorite child and she felt that if she went via
the brother and her father, they would talk Rose around.
And indeed she was going to meet Joe with Peter
when they're playing crashed. So Rose obviously horrified. But Kick

(45:15):
was on a mission. If I get my dad on side,
if I get Jack on side, and I'm going to
do it. She's going to do it. She's done it before.
She's absolutely going to do it. But obviously, Rose, when
she finally discovers, aid that they were sleeping together because
that was discovered after the plane crash. She was so
devastated that she had been sleeping with a married man

(45:35):
that she that was when the whitewash began. That's where
Rose just lost it and said, I almost I'm just
going to whitewash her from the She almost becomes a
persona non gratted because she was so deeply horrified by
kicks behavior.

Speaker 1 (45:49):
So obviously Kick and Peter end up dying in this
horrible I mean there's the Flight Safety Foundation has this
description of exactly how the plane went down, and I'm
not even going to read it because if you have
any anxiety about flying, this is the worst two paragraphs
you can read. I mean, it's like if there's turbulence
on a plane and you imagine what could happen if

(46:10):
this was a horror movie. Let's just say that's exactly Yes,
that's exactly what happened. I mean, one of the wings
flew off when they were finally out of the turbulence,
they were already in a free fall, nose dive. I mean,
it is truly horrible. They both die and then famously,
Joe is the only Kennedy present at her funeral. So

(46:30):
obviously Rose was incredibly hurt and scandalized by her sleeping
with a married man. What was the rest of the
family's reaction.

Speaker 2 (46:40):
I mean, just devastation. Bobby she was very very close to,
and Jack she was very very close to. So I
think her brother's, because she was so beloved, were absolutely heartbroken.
JFK Was really heartbroken, as was her father, and he
said this beautiful thing about God must have wanted her
for himself to have taken her from us. So they

(47:02):
were all completely devastated. But there was this scandal because
of the circumstances in which you know, she was found
with a married man. There was contraception in her luggage,
you know, there were flimsy negliges. It was very clear
they'd been off on a dirty weekend before they met Joe,
and so it was a huge scandal but obviously complete devastation.

(47:22):
And she was buried at Chatsworth. So the Devon just
swooped in again and said she should be buried in
England in Chatsworth. And I'm always very moved by the
story of JFK, you know, stopping his helicopter on the
way to Ireland when he makes his presidential visit, and
he stopped and nelt Kick's grave. He stopped at Chatsworth
and laid flowers and prayed at her grave. Nelted down
and prayed. You know, it was absolutely devastating. And Joe dies,

(47:46):
Billy dies, Kick Dice, Peter Dice. I mean, it's just
a terrible tragedy all round. But I think Rose was
really damage limitation, really, so she was very determined that
this was a scandal, and particularly as it's very clear
that Jack's going places. They just don't want to scandal
like this on the family name. And that's when the

(48:08):
whole apparatus sort of kicks in of we don't talk
about this. None of us are going to go to
the funeral. It will only be Joe. You know, this
will not get discussed. And of course Rose was devaster,
wrote about it in her memoir, but absolutely devastated as
she would be. But this begins the process of we
don't really talk about kick. Yeah, and that was entirely

(48:29):
to do with the circumstances, not just of Billy and
her defection, but Peter. I mean, she'd really gone one
step further and that was for her mother untenable, but
not for the rest of the family, just completely devastated
by her loss.

Speaker 1 (48:43):
Yeah. It's such a recurring Kennedy theme, this kind of
push and pull between private and public and sometimes public
Trump's private and doing the quote unquote the right thing
is simply not a good enough reason to do something
if it will also cause scandal and outcry and you know,
cause a stain to the family name. I want to
ask one final question, which is sort of a I

(49:04):
don't know. It's one that I often think about when
reading things about the Kennedy's, which is that anyone who
writes about the Kennedys is immediately accused of being either
too hard on them or too reverential. And this is
obviously a book that you are explicitly saying, you know,
you want to portray Kick Kennedy as this empowered woman,

(49:24):
as a feminist, as you're saying, you know, you want
to tell her story which has not been told before,
in this sort of a comprehensive way. Did you face
criticism that it is too you know, hagiographic like that
you are almost you know, putting the Kennedy's on a pedestal,
so to speak, not on the whole.

Speaker 2 (49:41):
I think that I had one review that accused me
of that, but that was a lone voice. I mean,
most of the critics really liked what I was doing,
not least because I said from the start, I'm not
getting into the politics of Joe Sen. I'm simply looking
at him as a parent. And what was so interesting
was the Kennedy Found really embraced me after I published

(50:02):
the book and wrote to me and invited me to
JFK's fiftieth anniversary, and I met the family and got
invited to the party, and the Kennedy family said to me,
thank you for seeing our grandparents as people. And that
was really moving to me, because you know, whether you
think Joe's a monster, whether you think Rose a monster,
I don't really care. And also I don't really think
anybody's a monster. Nobody's black or white. We're all shades

(50:24):
of gray. We all do our best, We're not all great. Parents,
were all flawed human beings. So I came at it
from quite a humanist point of view. And the family said,
we really appreciated that. They did say a lot of
Americans really knock the Kennedys and vilified the Kennedy's, and
she said, particularly the eldest daughter, Bobby's eldest daughter said

(50:44):
to me, as a family, we were quite moved by
the fact that you seem to be one of the
few people saying, hang on a minute, these were parents,
and they actually did some great things, and they did
some terrible things, but they were human and they were flawed,
but they were still in their own way loving, And
she said to the Kennedys were so lovely, as were
the Duke of Devnger's family, who also were very moved

(51:07):
by the book because they loved Kick so much, and
so the Duke of Devonnger invited me and said, we
love your book because it's so easy to take a
pop with the Kennedys. It's so easy for me to
do that and to be really dismissive and scathing. But
I was really interested in the YOUNGJFK. The young JFK
went around Germany picking up hitchhikers because he said, their

(51:27):
students they speak English. Tami, what's happening with Hitler? Not
the playboy JFK, but the deeply intelligent intellectual who was
diagnosed in England because he was so ill. I just
wanted to shine a light on a time in the Kennedys'
lives other people perhaps didn't see, because people still say
I didn't know they lived in England. I didn't know
JFK went around Germany when he was a young man.

(51:48):
So I just wanted to shine a light. Yes, you
know you're going to get people who said I was
too kind towards them, but I also felt for me.
She was heroic, and I wanted to bring out that
defying your country, to find your faith, to find your mother,
who's so strong and your family was deeply courageous, and
so I just wanted to shine a light on that.
And then you just have to then leave up to

(52:09):
the reader to make up their mind as to whether
they agree or not.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
You know, that's right, And this is something we run
into in this podcast as well. I mean, the point
of view of each guest is so completely different. I mean,
there are some people that come in basically wanting to
argue that the Kennedys are all complete frauds and they
have been, you know, a stay in on American history.
There are other people that, as I'm sure you know

(52:33):
from the ecosystem of writing about the Kennedy's, there are
people that exaggerate their connection with some Kennedy that has
long deceased, that could never speak out and be like, actually,
we weren't friends and we weren't at that party to
get you know, there are people whose whole thing is
being like a former friend of Jackie's writing books about
it and as a family that especially on the interpersonal level,

(52:55):
it is so difficult to find anything resembling objective, actual truth.
So all of these narrative I have to coexist, and
some of them are more human, and some of them
are more systemic and about power dynamics and their place
in American history. But I think this was for me,
you know, just as a pure biography of someone's life
that was caught up in such strange circumstances during such

(53:17):
a pivotal time in American history. Was really it was
really very fascinating. So thank you so much. This was
really really great.

Speaker 2 (53:22):
Thank you, thanks so much for having me. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (53:25):
That's it for this week's episode. United States of Kennedy
is hosted by me George Severes. Original music by Joshua Topolski.
Production help by Carmen lorenz Our. Executive producer is Jenna Cagel.
Research by Dave Rus and Austin Thompson, Edited by Graham Gibson,
and mixed by Doug Bain. United States of Kennedy is
a production of iHeart Podcasts. Subscribe and follow United States

(53:47):
of Kennedy for all Things Kennedy each week