Kennedys never cry: Like her brother JFK, Kick Kennedy was raised with a stiff upper lip and a will of iron. The English aristocracy loved her – but her life ended in tragedy

A summer holiday in the Thirties with the Kennedys at their Hyannis Port compound, just above the elbow of Cape Cod, might have seemed an entrancing proposition – but the reality sounds rather more stressful.

Yes, there were endless days swimming and diving, water-skiing and sailing, with table tennis and board games on the rare days it rained.  

America’s aristocracy: Kathleen ‘Kick’ Kennedy and her brother JFK together in Florida in the Thirties

The company was attractive and animated, but the family was so large (nine children) and self-sufficient, like a cult with its own language, that guests were liable to feel very much on the outside. 

And then there was patriarch Joe Kennedy, with his tough-coach ways, treating his offspring as though they were a team of would-be Superbowl champions.

Every day of childhood was training for a future of public service and renown (to produce one President of the United States may be unusual; to produce two…).

Even on the long summer vacation, his wife Rose would pin a newspaper cutting or note on a bulletin board to remind their children to debate important issues over dinner; it is no accident that they ended up being brilliant public speakers.

For Joe, winning was everything. If any of his children came in second, whatever the game or sport, there would be a full-scale analysis of the ‘failure’.A stiff upper lip and emotionally clamped down – why, the family was practically born to join the English aristocracy 

His favourite sayings were, ‘We don’t want any losers around here. In this family, we want winners,’ and ‘Don’t come in second or third – that doesn’t count – but win.’

His other saying, in response to tears, was ‘No crying in this house!’ – which his children turned into their own motto, ‘Kennedys never cry’.

A stiff upper lip and emotionally clamped down – why, the family was practically born to join the English aristocracy!

We are all familiar with Tolstoy’s line, oft-quoted in the context of dysfunctional families: ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’

But the even more appropriate line in Anna Karenina for Paula Byrne’s book, which quietly but devastatingly illuminates the shadows of America’s own royal family, is another one: ‘If you look for perfection, you’ll never be content.’

A portrait of the Kennedy family as they sit in the shade of some trees, Hyannis, Massachussetts, in the 1930s. Seated from left: Patricia Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Rose Kennedy, John F Kennedy, Joseph P Kennedy Sr with Edward Kennedy on his lap. Standing from left : Joseph P Kennedy Jr, Kathleen Kennedy , Rosemary Kennedy, Eunice Kennedy and Jean Kennedy

This story shows us the cracks which open into an abyss. It is almost as though, by insisting on nothing but the best, Joe and his wife ushered in tragedy.

Of their nine children, only two escaped early death, destruction and scandal.

The eponymous Kick, short for Kathleen – her nickname came about because her younger siblings couldn’t pronounce her name – was the second daughter of Joe and Rose Kennedy and the fourth born of the couple’s nine children. Of their nine children, only two escaped early death, destruction and scandal 

Never were Phillip Larkin’s famous words about the sins of the father revisited more evident than in the case of the Kennedy parents.

Rose was able to tolerate the flagrant hypocrisy of her husband – devout Roman Catholic family man in public, philandering womaniser in private – because her own beloved father, the mayor of Boston and later state Senator for the Democrats, John F. Fitzgerald (so charming, he was known as Honey Fitz), behaved in exactly the same way.

Both parents were Catholics and also hugely ambitious – Joe for public office, Rose for social status. 

They were the Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz of their world; they appeared wealthy, successful and happy, with all nine good-looking children turned out in matching outfits, the couple themselves slim and stylish. (Joe and Rose were obsessed with diet and exercise, and their offspring had to be ‘lean.’)

But behind the perfect picture the Kennedys were so estranged that they even stayed in different hotels when they visited New York – presumably to enable Joe to pursue his liaisons.

Paula Byrne’s book quietly but devastatingly illuminates the shadows of America’s own royal family

Like his father-in-law (and later, sons Jack and Bobby) he had a weakness for actresses; his paramours included Gloria Swanson and Marlene Dietrich.

He saw his posting to London as U.S. Ambassador as his route to the highest office (no fewer than five Presidents were groomed through that role).

With the family’s move to Britain, Kick’s fairy tale begins – doing the season as a debutante, then meeting and falling in love with a boy called Billy, otherwise known as the Marquess of Hartington, eldest son of the Duke of Devonshire, heir to Chatsworth and from one of the most anti-Catholic families in England.

Byrne conjures such a vivid portrait of her enchanting heroine that one almost feels deprived never having met her. We become more endeared to her as she grows up; living up to her nickname, she kicks off her shoes, whenever possible.

English society is somewhat appalled by this habit and endeavours to teach her a lesson. 

This takes place during a weekend at the Cecil family seat of Hatfield House in Hertfordshire, stuffed full of Old Etonians and Oxford students, when Kick’s host, the young Robert Cecil, hides all her left-footed shoes in the maze. (Apparently this was the unkind idea of his grandmother.)

Kick, undaunted, resorts to wearing two right-footed shoes, one white and one black, to match a black-and-white dress. When asked why she is limping, she responds: ‘Robert broke my leg before dinner.’

Her sangfroid and good humour lead to her instant acceptance into the fold. The would-be lovers are kept apart by both sets of parents (more assiduously by the Kennedys).

Billy becomes engaged, but breaks it off when he cannot stop thinking about Kick. She, meanwhile, has a (chaste) relationship with a tattooed star reporter in Washington and confesses to him that she fears she is like her brother Jack – ‘incapable of deep affection’.

Kick and William Cavendish (pictured at their wedding) married in 1944, but he died just a few weeks later, on active service. More tragedy was to follow: just four years later, Kick also died in a plane crash

One of the most compelling parts of the book is the section where Billy and Kick are reunited in England. 

They want to marry but struggle to overcome their gravest obstacle: their different faiths. Evelyn Waugh, with all the zeal of the new convert, was the most judgmental of Kick’s friends when – after many discussions with religious advisers – she finally found a way to marry her man.

Waugh warned she’d go to hell (while using her plight for Julia Flyte falling in love with an Anglican in Brideshead Revisited).

Rose, her devout mother, however, was worse, taking herself to hospital with a nervous collapse and refusing to speak to her daughter before, during or after the wedding.

Kick’s view was that her Catholic faith and upbringing had shaped her character and that it would have been ‘rather cheap and weak to give in at the first real crisis in my life’.

Alas, poor Kick – it was not to be the last of her crises.

She and Billy married in 1944, but he died just a few weeks later, on active service. More tragedy was to follow: just four years later, Kick also died in a plane crash.

But what was kept secret was that on the plane with her was a married man. That would have caused scandal, so it was hushed up – and explains why she has been airbrushed out of history.

She is buried in the grounds of Chatsworth, her tombstone engraved with the words: ‘Joy she gave. Joy she has found.’