Kick Kennedy: The Charmed Life and Tragic Death of the Favorite Kennedy Daughter (19 page)

Eddy anticipated settling the matter with his son right away. But in this, as in many other things just then, the duke miscalculated. His scheme confronted Billy with a formidable dilemma. Already frantic about the potential impact upon himself of Andrew’s participation in the Italian campaign, Billy worried that the duke’s manipulations might throw yet another obstacle in his path back to battle. Did the duke intend for his son and heir to sit comfortably in Parliament while other men fought? That, Billy made clear, would be unacceptable to him. In the end, Billy consented to do as his father wished, but only on the strict condition that win or lose he be allowed to return to his regiment following the by-election. The duke had no choice but to agree.

When the Cavendishes forgathered at Churchdale Hall at Christmas of 1943, the duke was consumed with laying out the choreography whereby the West Derbyshire seat would be safely kept in the family. He strategized with the Conservative Party whip, James Stuart, who was his sister Rachel’s husband, and with another of his sisters, Dorothy Macmillan, who had the well-earned reputation of being an astute political hand.

Exhibiting what Kick, in a different context, would later describe as “the certainty of a Duke,” Eddy Devonshire seemed serenely confident about Billy’s candidature. Quite apart from the Cavendishes’ long association with the seat, Billy would also presumably benefit from the truce among the Conservative, Labor, and Liberal parties, which had pledged not to oppose one another in by-elections for the duration of the war. The whole point of Churchill’s wartime coalition government had been for all parties to act as one in winning the war, to which end it had seemed prudent to refrain from engaging in politics as usual.

Not every Cavendish family member shared the duke’s optimism about the by-election. Lady Dorothy’s husband, Harold Macmillan, minister resident in the Mediterranean, wrote to point out that the wartime truce had in fact begun to wear “rather thin.” In a sign of the changing times and of an increasingly radicalized electorate, an amalgam of independent socialists known as the Common Wealth Party was now poised to present a significant challenge to Conservative candidates. Macmillan predicted that there would be trouble from Alderman Charles White, whose father, a local cobbler, had twice vanquished the duke himself, in the key contests of 1918 and 1922. Macmillan warned that Sir Richard Acland, one of the founders of the Common Wealth Party, could be counted on to back Alderman White’s efforts to secure the seat.

Nonetheless, until it was too late the duke appeared to persist in the belief that the 1944 West Derbyshire by-election would be, in his phrase, a “walk-over.” But was he really so blind to the growing class resentment throughout Britain that threatened to transfigure the postwar political landscape? Had Eddy Devonshire been entirely free from concern about his ability to hold on to the seat, would he have been as obsessed with keeping Henry Hunloke’s imminent departure from Parliament a secret until Billy was officially designated the Conservative candidate, and a writ for the by-election moved?

Meanwhile, as always when Billy came home on military leave, his mother had arranged that every element be in place to minister to his happiness. Among other preparations, the letters of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, that Billy loved so well, along with some of the family’s collection of Old Master drawings, were carted over from Chatsworth for his delectation. The jazz recordings he liked to endlessly play as he lay upon a sofa reading and rereading the letters, and examining the drawings, were carefully stacked and ready. Billy’s rambunctious black standard poodle, Lupin, was bathed and clipped in anticipation of his beloved master’s arrival.

And this year, for the first time, the duchess invited Kick to be part of the holiday celebrations. She did this with her son’s, but also with the Cavendish family’s, future in mind. By such efforts to enfold Kick into the Cavendish family, she was thinking politically and strategically every bit as much as, if not rather more creatively and effectively than, the duke, for all of his frantic electoral calculations. Not so long ago, Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy had been much reviled for predicting that the Britain of old could not possibly survive the war. Yet that was precisely the dizzying new reality that was about to confront the Cavendish family in particular and the patrician elite in general over the course of the landmark 1944 West Derbyshire by-election. While her husband clung futilely to the past, the duchess had had the wit to embrace none other than Joseph P. Kennedy’s daughter, in the hope that Kick might one day help Billy, his family, and all that the Cavendishes represented in British life to weather the changes that would unavoidably face their class in the new world that was bound to emerge following the war.

Kick’s presence at Churchdale Hall at Christmastime 1943 had a powerful emotional impact on Billy. Together he and she sat on a sofa, where they read aloud from Georgiana’s correspondence and looked over Old Master drawings. They rode pony carts to Chatsworth, which had been leased to a girls’ boarding school, and which, like other great houses during the war, had been allowed to fall into decrepitude and dilapidation.

Billy spoke to her of the upcoming West Derbyshire by-election and of his dream that, whether or not he managed to secure the seat this time, he might have a useful political career after the war. He spoke of the principle so dear to his father, and to the dukes who had come before, that the great landowner looked out for his tenants, who, in turn, were expected to yield to his political leadership. He spoke not only of Georgiana, but also of other duchesses of Devonshire, of the power and influence the duchesses had wielded, and of the role these women had played in the history of Britain.

To be sure, Billy had talked to Kick of such matters before. But, as the hour drew near when he must return to combat, their conversations in this regard took on a new heat and urgency. It was as if he were portraying for Kick the life she would have, if only certain critical obstacles could be made to vanish. Andrew’s presence in Italy; Debo’s pregnancy; the duke’s political maneuvers; the imminent invasion of France—all of these factors contributed to Billy’s sense that the moment had arrived when he must force the issue with Kick.

In Washington, there had come a point in her relations with John White when the newspaperman had reflected that Kick’s beliefs were so deeply ingrained, so intrinsic to who she was, that to keep pressing her to abandon them would be to harm her. John White professed to love Kick too much to risk doing anything like that. Now, Billy took quite the opposite approach. Billy reasoned that, precisely because he loved Kick as he did, he could not risk losing her. He maintained that the great love they shared, a love that had been tested by years of separation, left him no choice but to act before it was too late.

After much reflection, Billy concluded that Kick was, in his phrase, “so holy and good” that God would continue to help her after her capitulation, and that as a consequence she could indeed be happy. So, after Christmas, he did what he had long been putting off. He asked Kick to marry him, with the proviso that, given his future ducal responsibilities and given the fact that sooner or later his son and heir would be called on to preside in his place, Kick must be the one to compromise. She must agree that any children they might have would be brought up Anglican.

On this vital matter, Billy, who in their prior relations had always been so kind, gentle, and even malleable, made it clear that he intended to be absolutely firm. He cast the great concession that he demanded of Kick entirely in terms of religion, not realizing that for her it was going to prove a good deal more complicated than that.

Eight

Heretofore, Kick had insisted to her family that in spite of what anyone in England might think, hope, or anticipate, she had no intention of giving in on religion. She had affected an air of great amusement at the anxiety that her reunion with Billy had provoked in some British quarters. She had jested that certain of Billy’s Cavendish and Cecil ancestors must be nearly ready to “jump out of their graves” for fear of the threat she posed to their “ancient traditions.” She had left her parents with the impression that it would be up to Billy to make the great compromise, if he wanted her badly enough—which of course she had no doubt that he did.

Now, the unambiguous terms in which Billy had cast his marriage proposal left it entirely up to her whether he and she would ever become husband and wife. Kick could no longer pretend to others, or to herself, that it would be simply a matter of waiting for Billy to cave.

Thus began what David Ormsby-Gore, who had previously agreed that his own children would be brought up in his wife Sissie’s Roman Catholic faith, was to sadly characterize as “a strange episode” in Kick’s life—strange in the sense that had it not been wartime, indeed had it been but two years later, David believed that Billy would hardly have been “so insistent” about the matter. As it was, David judged that by making the particular demands that he did, Billy “was putting unnecessary pressure on Kick.” Persuaded as he was that Billy’s requirement could only “hurt” Kick and her family, David would have talked to his cousin “in detail” with the objective of changing Billy’s views. But as David later lamented, the war deprived him of that opportunity. The rush of events before Billy followed his brother into battle ruled out the kind of passionate and lengthy discussion the cousins had so often enjoyed and benefited from in years past. To David’s lasting regret, there was to be no “nose-to-nose” with Billy on this monumental matter.

Meanwhile, the pressure on Kick was intensified many times over by the tendency—or, more accurately perhaps, the strategy—of Billy’s mother to treat it almost as a fait accompli that the marriage would soon take place, the religious obstacle having been overcome by some grand compromise on Kick’s part. In this regard, the festivities surrounding Elizabeth Cavendish’s January 8, 1944, coming-out party did double duty as a means of presenting Kick, in her new role as Billy’s future bride, to the rest of the family. Seated next to the duchess’s erudite and endlessly amusing brother, David Cecil, whose quicksilver conversation at once thrilled her and left her with the impression that she still had much to learn, Kick was indeed subjected to the “good going over” by Billy’s relatives that she had nervously anticipated having to endure at Elizabeth’s party. No one, apparently, mentioned Billy’s marriage proposal; but everyone seemed to know about it and to be waiting to see what Kick’s next move would be.

In all of this, the duchess’s aim was less to secure the Cecil and Cavendish relatives’ approval of Billy’s beloved than, quite simply, to make Kick feel as if she were already an established member of the family. Perhaps that is also why, at a time when Eddy Devonshire was intent that his political plans remain secret until his son and heir could be smoothly and safely installed as the Conservative candidate in West Derbyshire, Kick nonetheless knew all about those plans—and freely, some might say indiscreetly, wrote of Billy’s candidature, as well as of the military leave that had been granted to him for the duration of the electioneering, in a January 20, 1944, letter to her family. Not long afterward, Kick was invited to join the duchess, Elizabeth, and other members of Billy’s family for the final three days of the campaign prior to the February 17, 1944, by-election. The contest in West Derbyshire would prove to be a critical event in British political history—and in Kick’s life.

Five days before, on February 12, she went to spend a few quiet days with Richard Wood at his sister Anne Feversham’s house in Yorkshire. By now, Richard had acquired a pair of wooden legs, but it was an immense effort for him to walk on them and it would clearly be some time before he would be able to cover any real distance. Whenever Richard and Kick saw each other during this period, they easily fell back into the unique rhythms of the relationship, rhythms they’d established in Washington.

At his sister’s house, once again Richard was cast in the role of helping Kick to work out certain of the agonizing questions that faced her with regard to any future she might or might not have with Billy. Once again, Richard’s unspoken feelings lent a considerable amount of tension to their colloquies. When he was not staying with his sister, he lived alone at Garrowby Hall, the estate where the earls of Halifax had long dwelled. His mother having returned to the U.S., Kick worried that Richard spent too much time at Garrowby by himself. Mindful as always of her feelings for Billy, Richard refrained from disclosing to her that he would then have given almost anything to share his life there with her.

On the present occasion, Richard was encountering Kick at a moment when her Christmastime discussions with Billy were still fresh in her ears. She talked a good deal to Richard of Georgiana, and of other past duchesses of Devonshire. She talked of her sense that, were she to accept Billy’s marriage proposal and the particular terms attached to it, she might one day become, in her pointed phrase, “a woman of influence.”

As he listened to Kick, it struck Richard that she was both “very ambitious” and, as never quite before, “very clear on what she wanted.” Her whole conception of herself and of all that she could be had suddenly come into much sharper focus. There had been a time when it had meant everything to Kick to be a person in her own right apart from her identity as a Kennedy daughter. Five years later, what she wanted was at once much larger and much more specific than anything she had spoken of in 1939. And again, it was her experience of England and of English life that had allowed her to conceptualize herself in this new way.

As Richard perceived it, Kick saw herself in the future as playing the part of “a great political hostess,” in the manner of previous Devonshire duchesses. Kick made it clear by her remarks to Richard that she was keenly interested in the beneficent “power and authority” that would eventually be hers and Billy’s to exercise over the tenants who lived and worked on Cavendish-owned land, and had traditionally submitted to ducal leadership in political affairs. She made a great point of the dynamic between landowner and tenant in Britain being so much more satisfactory, in her view, than that between the classes in the U.S., where, as she saw it, the upper classes took no comparable personal responsibility for the people in their employ.