Food was an important part of the Cape Cod experience. The children loved to picnic on the beach, and they would set off with a thermos jug with creamed chicken, fresh fruit, lollipops and always a chocolate cake with thick, gooey icing. They bought ice cream from the store along with a pack of cones.7 One of the favourite Kennedy desserts was Boston cream pie, a luscious confection of light fluffy sponge sandwiched together with custard cream and frosted with chocolate. There were healthy snacks, too: carrot and celery sticks, and in the evenings roast chicken, apple jelly and acorn squash.8 Alcohol was not permitted in the Kennedy household.
Above all for the sporty, wholesome clan there were the outdoor games. The children played touch football on the beach, went swimming and played competitive tennis. Rose colour-coded the children’s bathing caps so she could recognize each child in the water. Each of them (except for Rosemary) had their own sailing boat. When they raced on Nantucket Sound, Joe would follow in his own boat, shouting out their mistakes. After every race the station wagon would be dispatched to collect the trophies. When Rose wanted the children to bring the boats in, she would lower the flag from the flagpole in front of the house.9 Joe later had a pool built, and an outdoor shower was installed by a side entrance. The children could practise their diving and splash about after a day on the beach.
Kick loved to run around barefoot. She was by nature a free spirit, and she and Jack chafed against Rose’s disciplined regime. Clocks were installed in every room and the children knew not to be late for mealtimes, or they would go without. They would learn to charm the cook behind their mother’s back.
Joe would sit in his favourite chair in the corner of the living room or on his bedroom balcony (nicknamed ‘the bullpen’), looking over his brood. If the children fought or dissolved into tears over a quarrel with a sibling Joe would clap his hands in steady rhythm: ‘No – crying – in – this – house! No – crying – in – this – house!’10 He hated tears and impressed upon the children that crying accomplished nothing. Kick and Jack invented a family motto: ‘Kennedys never cry’.
On cold days they played indoor games. A favourite was ‘categories’, a trial of intellectual trivia. The children always had to be doing something.
On Sundays, they would troop downstairs in ‘Sunday Best’. Rose would be waiting at the foot of the stairs to inspect them.11 They would set off for mass at St Xavier’s, the boys preparing to do their altar-boy duty, the girls clutching Bibles and rosary beads. They were the ideal Catholic family.
5
Kathleen … was such a beautiful and lively and outgoing child and girl that I became convinced she never felt neglected at all.
Rose Kennedy1
In May 1929, six months after the renovation of Malcolm Cottage, the Kennedys left their rented home in Riverdale and bought an imposing, luxurious red-brick Georgian house in the Westchester community of Bronxville, called Crownlands. The family had never been really happy at Riverdale, and never felt that they belonged. Bronxville was a leafy, affluent suburb, 15 miles north from central Manhattan, only 1 square mile in area. It had the all-important (recently built) Catholic church, St Joseph’s, good schools for the children and an easy commute for Joe, whose main offices were in Manhattan.
Crownlands at 294 Pondfield Road was a twenty-room house set in 6 acres of lush lawns high on a hill. It had a grass tennis court, a tea-house and a greenhouse. Outbuildings included a five-car garage for Joe’s fleet of ostentatious Rolls-Royces, as well as gardener’s and chauffeur’s cottages.
Rose set to work redecorating the interior. She placed her beloved grand piano in the hall. The main drawing room, impressive with two fireplaces, was adorned with cream carpets, walls painted in antique green and white calla lilies in large vases. Complete sets of Hardy and Shakespeare lined the bookshelves. On the children’s bedside tables, rosaries and crucifixes merged with toys and books.2
The small children occupied the second floor, and the older ones the third. Joe had a large study on the ground floor, and though he was not often home, his door was always open to the children when he was there. They would sprawl on his sofa bed and talk to him about their problems with school or friends, and he would focus on each child directly, giving them the full beam of his attention.
Bronxville was a friendly place, and a perfect one in which to raise a large, lively family. In winter the children skated on the ponds and went sledding and tobogganing on the many hills and open spaces. There was a popular drugstore with a soda fountain on the corner near to the children’s school. When the owner turned away, they would filch gum and Life Saver mints. Kick’s school was the Bronxville Elementary, a short walk from Crownlands. She liked art and took an interest in textiles, asking her parents to be sure to attend her exhibition.3
Kick adored her brothers but she was also a girls’ girl. She spent her allowance on swing records and clothes, shopping for skirt-and-sweater sets at Saks Fifth Avenue with her friend Alice Cahill.4 She loved summer camp, and even though she felt a bit homesick, she threw herself into the experience, riding horses and swimming and gossiping with her friends. She asked Rose to send her cakes and bobby pins and her ‘jadpaws’ for riding.5
When she was ten, Kick went to Washington to visit the White House. She was given a sense of her father’s importance when one of the Senators stopped her and asked her to send his regards to Joe.6 Another Congressman asked after her grandfather and her mother.
Her father had recently decided to get out of Hollywood and Wall Street and turn instead to politics. The year 1929 was a momentous one for Joe Kennedy. He had been consolidating his wealth in Hollywood and on the stock market; he had purchased two vast homes for his ever-expanding family; his father had just died, and his obsession with Gloria Swanson was reaching a critical point. She was often at the new house in Bronxville. As Rose left town in one car, Gloria would arrive in Joe’s Rolls-Royce. The actress stayed at the Gramatan Hotel, and the townspeople gossiped.
Rose was troubled, particularly as the word was out in Catholic circles. After returning to New York City in 1929, Gloria recalled being taken to a meeting with Rose’s friend Cardinal O’Connell, who tried to talk her into ending the affair. O’Connell told Gloria that Joe was talking to senior church officials about seeking a divorce. Did she not realize that his reputation would be ruined and she would be publicly tainted? The affair didn’t stop instantly, but it began to cool.
Joe knew that it was time to get out of Hollywood, and he also began to take his money out of the stock market. He had guessed that the bubble on Wall Street was going to burst. As Rose said of her husband, ‘Part of his genius was an amazing sense of timing.’7 He did indeed always seem to know exactly the moment to get into an investment and the moment to get out. When the market crashed in October, he remained unscathed. He left Hollywood a multi-millionaire.
In February 1932, Kick was given a twelfth-birthday