Rose almost immediately got pregnant, giving birth to a healthy 10-pound boy called Joseph on 25 July 1915. He was known as ‘young Joe’, or ‘Joe Junior’. Honey Fitz told a waiting reporter the happy news of his grandson: ‘Of course, he is going to be President of the United States, his mother and father have already decided that.’17 A year after Joe’s arrival, Rose was pregnant again, and she gave birth on 29 May 1917 to another boy, though he was an underweight and sickly child. She called him John Fitzgerald Kennedy, but he was to be called Jack.
Rose now longed for a daughter, and she got her wish when she gave birth to a girl whom she called Rosemary. But the child seems to have been starved of oxygen at birth. The deadly Spanish flu epidemic was as its height. The family physician was worked off his feet and he arrived late. The midwife could easily have delivered the baby herself, but she followed instructions to wait for the doctor and she held back the baby’s head until he arrived (he would receive his full fee only if he was present at the delivery). This decision was to have dire consequences for the baby. Though she was a lovely child, the most classically beautiful of the Kennedy daughters, it became increasingly clear that she was brain-damaged.
Soon Rose was pregnant again. But she was deeply unhappy. Joe was rarely home, and she was lonely. She missed her family, and her father, and the role she had cultivated as Mayor’s daughter. There was also the problem of sex. As a devout Catholic, Rose believed that sexual intercourse was for the sole purpose of procreation. Canon law decreed that contraception was tantamount to murder. Kick would inherit this belief. Rose refused to use birth control and she had been pregnant almost constantly since she was married. But sexual intercourse during menstruation and pregnancy was frowned upon. Joe had embarrassed Rose one evening at dinner with close friends when he began discussing their sex life: ‘Now, listen, Rosie, this idea of yours that there is no romance outside of procreation is simply wrong … It was not part of our contract at the altar, the priest never said that … and if you don’t open your mind on this, I’m going to tell the priest on you.’18 His sexual frustration is evident from this remark. And it no doubt gave him licence to have extramarital affairs and justify them to himself. Joe did not drink or smoke, but his vice was ‘fornication’. Invariably he was drawn towards actresses, waitresses, secretaries and models. Like many powerful men, he had a high libido, and an appetite for ‘fresh meat’, which his son Jack would inherit. He compartmentalized his life, without compunction, into two parts, family and home on the one hand, and his affairs on the other. Rose felt utterly cheated by how her life was turning out. That was why she walked out and returned to her family home.
Rose stayed in her old bedroom, thinking about her future and, for a fortnight, nobody said a word to her. While there, she did agree to accompany Joe to the Ace of Clubs ball, an important event for her as she was President of the organization. Before she married Joe, Rose had founded a club for women who had studied abroad and were interested in current events. Every year she led the grand march in the charity ball.19 She was determined that, despite her marital problems, this year should be no different. It was business as usual. Though heavily pregnant, Rose looked stunning in her ‘black web dress’; one of the reasons she attended was to avoid being the subject of gossip. But after the dance the couple went their separate ways.
Shortly afterwards, her father came to talk and urged her to return to Joe. Divorce was never going to be an option. Rosie had made her choice, and she was going to have to live with it. ‘What is past is past,’ her father told her. ‘The old days are gone. Your children need you and your husband needs you. You can make things work out. I know you can.’20
When she cradled her small daughter, Kathleen Agnes, in her arms in February 1920, Rose knew that she had made the right decision to return to Joe. Just as she had experienced an epiphany at Blumenthal to dedicate her life to God and to marry Joe, she now resolved to become the perfect mother and wife. Like Marmee in her favourite book, Little Women, she would learn to suppress her anger.
Rose Kennedy would apply to motherhood the exacting standards that she brought to bear in her thwarted intellectual life. She would pour her vast reserves of energy and ambition into raising her children, a job she took very seriously: ‘I looked upon child-rearing as a profession and decided it was just as interesting and just as challenging as any profession in the world and one that demanded the best that I could bring to it.’
Furthermore, she wanted those children to be the best: ‘I had made up my mind to raise my children as perfectly as possible.’21 Rose would pay a huge price for her overweening ambition for her children. But she was steadfast in her beliefs: ‘what greater aspiration and challenge are there for a mother than the hope of raising a great son or daughter?’22
2
A Beautiful and Enchanting Child
All my ducks are swans … but Kick was especially special.
Joseph Kennedy
Kick was born, like her brother Jack and sister Rosemary, in the twin bed nearest the window in the upstairs master bedroom at 83 Beals Street in Brookline. From the start, Kathleen was a special baby. One of nine children, she would take on the status of eldest daughter, as a result of Rosemary’s special needs which made her forever a child.
Rose doted on her baby, but on the day that she was born, Jack, just two and a half, developed a serious case of scarlet fever and was hospitalized. In those days, as Rose recalled, it was a ‘dreaded disease, fairly often fatal, quite crippling in aftereffects’.1 Joe proved himself to be an exemplary father, praying for his son and spending hours in the Boston City Hospital. He had ‘never experienced any serious sickness in the family previous to this case of Jack’s’ and he had ‘little realized what an effect such a happening could possibly have’ on him.2
Jack of course did recover, and became particularly close to Kick. He returned home just before his third birthday, and he was shown his new baby sister. On the medical index cards that Rose kept for all of the children, she wrote that Jack seemed ‘very happy’ to see his sister.3 Physically Kick resembled him the most, with thick golden-brown hair and blue-grey eyes. She would not grow up to be conventionally beautiful. She had her mother’s strong jawline and short neck along with a somewhat square face that was unlike Rosemary’s (which was heart-shaped), but she was a striking girl with lovely ivory skin. Kick’s beauty was all within, and she would grow up to have the greatest sexual charisma of all the girls. Men would be utterly captivated by her.
She was a fearless toddler, always wanting to keep up with her two elder brothers in sports and physical activities. Rose noted in her journal that at the age of two and a half she went out in the snow by herself in her little sleigh.4 She was already exhibiting signs of the independent spirit that would define her life. In