On her father’s orders, she made an effort to contact her man at the Vatican, Count Galeazzi, but failed to understand his maid. It was Galeazzi who was intending to arrange a private audience with the Pope. It was Holy Week, the most important week in the calendar of the Catholic Church.
Kick was desperate for a glimpse of the Pope, who was saying mass on Holy Thursday in the Sistine Chapel, so she went along with the other girls and they sat outside on camp stools: ‘What a crowd we were all nearly squashed to death.’43
In the afternoon of Maundy Thursday, the girls attended Tenebrae at St Peter’s. This is a special service in the Roman Church in which psalms and prayers are read to a gradual extinguishing of candles. The final candle, hidden beneath the altar, ends the service, leaving the church in complete darkness. At St Peter’s three ‘wonderful’ relics were being shown: ‘Veronica’s veil, part of the true cross and the spear that pierced our Lord’s heart’. Kick was extremely moved by the experience – ‘Never have seen so many American priests all together at once,’ she reported to her father.44
That evening Galeazzi called at the Convent to see her: ‘He is one of the most charming men I have ever met.’ He arranged for her to have three tickets for the Pope’s mass on Good Friday at the Sistine Chapel. She was thrilled by the honour. The girls dressed themselves carefully in black and a car was sent to fetch them. At St Peter’s they went through the ‘magnificent’ Pacelli apartments and then through to the Sistine Chapel, where ‘the Mass was most impressive’. The girls were special guests of Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (Secretary of State in the Vatican). Kick felt proud of her father’s Vatican connections.
The next morning on the way to the Capitoline Hill, they were caught up in a demonstration: ‘a policeman told us that Mussolini would probably appear from his office in response to cheering and yelling’. Kick was thrilled that she got to see Il Duce. ‘Lo and behold we had only been there about an hour … Il Duce came out with a big stride and an even bigger grin.’ Kick was the only girl who had brought along her camera, and in the crowd she was pushed and shoved as she tried to take his picture. ‘He is magnificent and one cannot help liking him after seeing the patriotism of the Italians.’ She had seen both the Pope and Mussolini on the same day.
Kick was happy in Rome. She enjoyed the Vatican museum, where she shopped for Vatican stamps to send home to Bobby. She had expected rationed food but found it delicious: ‘Am still getting very fat and spaghetti is helping plenty.’ She loved the way the Italian priests blessed everything, and was amused when the girls were sipping sodas in a café and a priest came in to bless the soda fountain. ‘It seems they bless every store, restaurant etc in Italy on Holy Saturday.’
Galeazzi duly arranged the private audience with the Pope. Kick was thrilled: ‘The Holy Father spoke a few words to us in French and gave holy cards.’ Galeazzi singled Kick out for special attention. Later he took her and a few friends to the ruins of Tivoli, outside Rome. The nuns insisted that the girls had a chaperone since they were ‘going out with a man’. Kick was furious and told the nuns that he was ‘old enough to be her father’. But they insisted that this was how things were done in Rome.45
They left Rome for Naples, and visited a small volcano, where she collected pieces of lava for little Bobby. She shopped for leather handbags, and they drove along the Amalfi coast – ‘never have I seen such blue water’ – but the road twisted and turned so much that the girls ‘were saying our prayers continuously’.46 In the Bay of Naples she saw a troop ship ‘bound for Abyssinia’.47 They visited Pompeii, lunched at a former Franciscan monastery and then boarded the train for Rome, where they made a final trip to St Peter’s. They climbed the Scala Sancta (the staircase said to have been ascended in Jerusalem by Jesus and brought to Rome by St Helena), saw the city by night for the last time, and then went home to pack for Paris. Kick loved the Forum Mussolini (‘tremendous’) and was sorry to be leaving as there were parades planned for the following day, and Il Duce would be making a speech.
She saw Galeazzi and made her farewells. He gave her a parting gift – his Fascist brooch. ‘All the girls are very jealous,’ she told her father.48
10
Travels with my Mother: Russia and England
I haven’t seen any beautiful Kennedy faces for seven months – long, long time that.
Kick Kennedy
Latvia, May 1936.
Kick Kennedy and her mother Rose eyed the tiny, old-fashioned plane with suspicion. As it trundled towards them, they got the impression that its fuselage and wings were lashed together by ropes. To her horror, Rose spotted her luggage being wheeled across the tarmac and realized that, indeed, this was their plane.
During his time in Europe, Joe Jr had toured Russia and had regaled the family with tales that had inspired the intrepid Rose to see it for herself. She asked Kick to accompany her and they flew by commercial jet to Latvia from Paris on the first leg of the journey. Now the small Russian plane would take them on to Moscow. There were only four seats and they were the only passengers. As they strapped themselves in, Rose began reciting Hail Marys silently to herself, thinking of the children she had left behind, whom she was convinced would soon be motherless.
There was a ‘convulsive shudder’ and the tiny plane was airborne. In the absence of technology, the pilot flew by visual landmarks, tipping the wings so that he could navigate. Rose recalled ‘an endless expanse of dark, dense, impenetrable forest, which for variety was sometimes obscured by fog or low-hovering clouds’. It was a terrifying journey. As the landscape loomed up towards them, the pilot would suddenly pull out the choke and rise, ‘leaving our stomach’s Kick’s and mine, back on the latest cloud’.1
Suddenly the plane experienced severe turbulence. The pilot, to their shock, after several ‘near misses’, took his eyes off the terrain and gave over the controls to his co-pilot in order to turn around to smile and wave to Kick and Rose. Rose later recalled that ‘After some hours we landed safely. Neither Kick nor I had become airsick. Probably because our normal reflexes were paralysed.’2
Kick, homesick for her mother, had been looking forward to the trip, writing to Bobby: ‘Mother shall be here in three days and can’t wait to see her. I haven’t seen any beautiful Kennedy faces for seven months – long, long time that.’3 She treated herself to a new smart suit and hat, desperate to show her beloved mother that some Parisian chic had rubbed off on her. They had met at the Ritz. Rose recalled the first moment she saw her daughter: ‘She looked so pretty and sophisticated, but the moment she saw me she dissolved in tears of happiness as if she were still a little girl. I will never forget what I felt when I saw her. I realized so clearly how lucky I was to have this wonderfully effervescent, adorably loving and extremely pretty child as my daughter and friend.’4
Rose was especially moved by her time with Kick because it reminded her of the time she had travelled with her sister Agnes: ‘Traveling with Kathleen was such a joy.’