Photo: Bettmann Archive
She wasn’t considered a great beauty, nor was she noted for her intellect. But when Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy — the fourth child of Joseph P. Kennedy, the U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, and his wife, Rose — arrived in London in 1938, she caused an unlikely sensation.
In the 2016 biographyKick Kennedy:The Charmed Life and Tragic Death of the Favorite Kennedy Daughter, authorBarbara Leamingrevealed fresh insight into the Kennedy daughter who died in a plane crash in 1948, just four years after her eldest brother, Joe Jr., was killed in a top-secret mission during World War II.
Leaming wrote that Kick was “actually quite plain in appearance. Her hair was a shade of “mousy brown,” and verged on being frizzy. Her shoulders were also unfortunate, set much too high, and her neck was far too short. In height, she was not quite 5 feet, 3 [inches], and her figure was, at that point anyway, ‘on the lumpy side.'”
But the British aristocrats had never met anyone like Kick.
“She did not hang back shyly or demurely,” the author wrote. “The newcomer was willing to laugh at herself — her mistakes, her gaucheries and even her physical flaws — in a way that was simply unknown among English girls.”
Not long after Kick made her London debut in 1938, she met Billy Hartington, the future Duke of Devonshire and one of the city’s richest and most eligible bachelors, at a dinner party and they quickly became an item.
It was a classic case of opposites attract. Billy was quiet and reserved; Kick was adventurous and outgoing. But one of their biggest differences would also cause them great pain. Billy was a Protestant, and Kick’s devout Catholic family, specifically her mother, vehemently opposed their romance.
When Billy, a future duke, proposed to Kick, he insisted their children be raised Protestant.
Within two years, a devastated Kick began an affair with Earl Peter Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, a Protestant, married drinker and gambler who was even richer than Billy. (She even compared him to Rhett Butler fromGone with the Wind.) When Peter promised to leave his wife and marry Kick, she told her parents, who were furious. Rose threatened to cut Kick off from the family, which left her in further turmoil.
A Tremendous Loss
In 1948, Peter and Kick — always her father’s favorite — arranged to meet her father in Paris to appeal for his help. Two days before the planned meeting, Kick and Peter were en route to Cannes on a ten-seat plane when they stopped to refuel near Paris. When the pilot insisted that the turbulent weather conditions had made it unsafe to take off, Peter demanded that the aircraft leave without delay.
The plane crashed and Kick was instantly killed, along with Peter, the pilot and a navigator.
Kick’s death was “a tremendous loss” for her family, Leaming said. “She was the star of the family, and it left them, particularly her mother, with terrible, unresolved agony over a relationship with the child that was closest to her. Her mother was left with something that was so unresolved — that she didn’t go to her daughter’s funeral, she didn’t bring the body back here to bury her.”
source: people.com
