Kick met a handsome shipping heir called Peter Grace. She was seventeen and he was twenty-three when her closest friend Charlotte McDonnell introduced them. She took Kick to a dinner at her friend Michael Grace’s home. That evening his elder brother Peter, a Yale graduate, turned up. He was instantly dazzled by Kick. When his brother offered him a challenge he took it up in order to impress. Michael, knowing that his brother was a hockey player and not a footballer, challenged Peter to tackle a huge football player who was one of the guests. Peter, still in his business suit, tackled the man and broke his leg. With utter insouciance, Peter, without breaking a sweat, walked away with the words: ‘If you don’t want your friend hurt, don’t bring him around here.’
Kick, as he fully expected, was impressed. He had a hunch that she liked tough men. He became her first serious boyfriend. She liked to remind him of their first meeting: ‘pretty tough guy, aren’t you?’6
Peter Grace was similar to her brothers. He had Irish Catholic roots, was educated at an Ivy League college, was a first-rate sportsman and was wealthy. Peter was captivated by Kick. He liked the fact that she was a good convent girl, and wanted to marry her, even though she was only seventeen. When he picked her up for dates he noticed that her father was away on business but her sharp-eyed mother would sit and talk to him while he waited for Kick to get ready.7
In June 1937, Kick finally graduated from Noroton. Joe sent her a congratulatory telegram: ‘You have proved to me very definitely that you are made of fine stuff and I am more than proud of you.’ She was free at last. She enrolled at Parsons School of Fine and Applied Art in New York to learn design and decorating. But, for the summer, it was back to Europe.
Rose, young Joe and Kick boarded the SS Washington for their European tour, planning, vaguely, to meet up with Jack later in the summer.
Jack’s trip was on a low budget, as Lem was short of money. Lem was impressed by Jack’s ability to slum it.8 Kick had given her brother a present of a leather-bound diary entitled ‘My Trip’. Lem observed that this European tour was a seminal moment in Jack’s life. ‘He had been studying French and European history at Harvard, and now he wanted to see it all himself.’9
They travelled to France, Italy, Germany, Holland and England. Jack was disappointed that they were forbidden entry to Spain on account of the civil war. Lem observed a new seriousness in Jack as he encountered Europe in those pre-war years, showing advanced powers of ‘observation and judgment’.10 ‘He was the same irrepressible, girl-obsessed millionaire’s son from Bronxville, yet also a different Jack, for the intellect that he normally kept so well concealed was at last engaged. Harvard had begun to bite.’11
Jack kept detailed notes in the diary that Kick had given him, and sent letters home to his father about the European situation. Though no fans of Fascism, both young men were impressed by Italy, as had been Kick the year before. ‘Italy was cleaner and the people looked more prosperous than we had anticipated,’ recalled Lem. ‘I had a feeling when I was in Italy that Mussolini had done a lot of good for Italy.’12
In Germany, Lem noticed that Jack insisted on picking up every hitchhiker. He was puzzled about this until he realized Jack’s strategy. Most of the hikers were students, who had good English, which meant that the two Americans learnt a lot about the situation in Germany. Jack and Lem loathed Germany and the Germans. Jack noted in his diary: ‘Hitler seems popular here, as Mussolini was in Italy. Although propaganda seems to be his strongest point.’13 He found the Germans arrogant and insufferable, virulently nationalistic and anti-American. The nicest German they met, he said, was a dog called Dunker, which they bought for Jack’s current girlfriend. They missed seeing Hitler speak at Nuremberg by just a few days, something they always regretted.
Kick and Joe Jr took in tours of Ireland, home of their ancestors, and of Scotland. In Ireland they stayed for two weeks. ‘Loved every part of it from Killarney upwards,’ Kick told her father.14 Killarney, in County Kerry, is one of the most beautiful parts of south-western Ireland. Lush and green, it boasts lakes, waterfalls, woodland, beaches and moors. She thought the scenery ‘gorgeous’, and sent her father a postcard of Dinis Island, with its spectacular hills and lake. One of the most memorable sights was the fifteenth-century Ross Castle, on the edge of the waters of Lough Leane. Kick could never have anticipated that one day she would have her very own Irish castle. She wrote excitedly to her father, in Washington, that she was ‘amidst many Kennedys’.15
She visited her Neuilly Irish friends in the small seaside resort of Portrush in County Antrim, in Northern Ireland: ‘It was cold but a lot of fun.’16 Rose and Joe had spent their lives trying to escape their Irish roots, but Kick loved the Irish: ‘they really are awfully nice, but there is quite a marked difference between a Northern and Southern Irishman. Prefer the Southerners.’ She told Joe Sr that she had ‘kissed the Blarney Stone, which was quite a feat’. Kissing the stone, which is supposed to give you the gift of the gab, involves climbing to the top of Blarney Castle, near Cork, and stretching backwards over the edge of a parapet. Kick achieved it, while Joe Jr, pessimistically, told her how easy it was to fall to your death below.
From Ireland it was on to Scotland. They were staying at the grand country house of their father’s friend and business associate Sir James Calder, with whom relations were now less strained than they had been. They went trout fishing and met some Scottish friends of the Calders, and Kick went shopping to buy tweeds and sweaters. An English MP took a shine to Kick, and asked her to go out with him when she got back to London.17 Joe went shooting every day, and walked across the moors wearing only one shoe, as his other foot had blisters. Sir James gave Kick a small rifle to shoot rabbits: ‘I shall try my luck today.’
Back in London, Kick arranged less glamorous lodgings, a cheap boarding house in Talbot Square, off Hyde Park. She met up with Jack, now back from Germany, and they went shopping before heading off on a train to Southampton to meet Rose. Kick and Rose left for home and Jack made his way back to London and Lem. On the journey, he consumed a ‘liberal dose of chocolates and tomato juice’. He suddenly became very ill, covered in hives. He saw no fewer than four doctors, who were puzzled by his hives and low blood count. Lem said that Jack was terribly sick, but as usual he did not complain. Lem joked to Jack that if he ever wrote his life story he would call it ‘John F. Kennedy, a Medical History’.18 Suddenly the hives disappeared and off they went, exploring England.
At the end of August, the boys went home and were met by Kick in New York. They proudly handed over the brace of grouse they had shot in Scotland for her to look after while they went through customs. When they met up afterwards, she told them that the birds had smelt so bad that she had thrown them off the dock. Jack and Lem were furious.
This trip to Great Britain was memorable for Jack and Kick. It was when they truly fell in love with England. Both romantic by nature, they adored the lush scenery, the stately homes and castles and, above all, the people. They intuitively understood the understated British humour. Both being gifted with ‘Irish Blarney’, they appreciated wit and irony. They had a very British sensibility: never cry, don’t show your emotions, make light of troubles and always keep a sense of humour. Kick and Jack were drawn to emotional coolness, but also to loyalty and kindness. A friend was a friend for life.
Lem said that Jack would do anything to hide his emotions,