The House of Kennedy(7)
Upon receiving word of his reaction to the offer, the president calls Joe to the Oval Office. In his memoir, My Parents, James Roosevelt recalls the fun his father unleashes at Joe’s expense.
FDR makes two requests. “Would you mind stepping back a bit, by the fireplace perhaps, so I can get a good look at you?” Then, “Joe, would you mind taking your pants down?”
“I guess it was the power of the presidency,” James Roosevelt theorizes as despite their mutual confusion, Joe complies, standing in front of the president in his underwear.
“Someone who saw you in a bathing suit once said something I now know to be true,” FDR states. “Joe, just look at your legs. You are just about the most bowlegged man I have ever seen. Don’t you know that the ambassador to the Court of Saint James’s has to go through an induction ceremony in which he wears knee breeches and silk stockings? Can you imagine how you’ll look? When photos of our new ambassador appear all over the world, we’ll be a laughingstock. You’re just not right for the job, Joe.”
Still working the angles in spite of his embarrassment, Joe pleads, “Mr. President, if I can get the permission of His Majesty’s government to wear a cutaway coat and striped pants to the ceremony, would you agree to appoint me?”
FDR won’t relent. “Well, Joe, you know how the British are about tradition. There is no way you are going to get permission, and I must name a new ambassador soon.”
Joe continues to bargain. “Will you give me two weeks?”
The president agrees—and how he laughs when Joe returns with official permission from the British government to wear trousers.
When Joe later presents his credentials to His Majesty King George VI, some observers credit his stubborn Irish moxie for bucking the traditional garb of breeches and silk stockings. They have no idea it was FDR who put him up to it.
Chapter 4
On February 23, 1938, Joe Kennedy Sr. sets sail on the SS Manhattan for Southhampton, England, as the new American ambassador to the Court of St. James. He travels alone that day, but his family continues to make news. “The Kennedy Family: Nine Children and Nine Million Dollars” trumpets Life magazine in advance of their transatlantic crossing, and “Jolly Joe, the Nine-Child Envoy” is widely celebrated in London. “The Kennedys were the royal family that England wanted to have,” notes Will Swift, who writes about the Kennedys’ “thousand days” in London.
The new ambassador, his wife, Rose, and their children settle in fashionable St. James Square, enjoying the diplomatic perks of chauffeured limos and a glittering social calendar. Rose delights in studying royal protocol in preparation for a May 11, 1938, presentation at Buckingham Palace for herself and her husband, along with their eldest daughters, eighteen-year-old Kathleen and nineteen-year-old Rosemary.
The Kennedys are popular guests among British high society. At one 1938 dance, Lady Redesdale observes of Jack Kennedy, “I would not be surprised if that young man becomes President of the United States.”
Jack’s sister Kathleen—originally nicknamed “Kick” because her siblings stumbled over the full pronunciation, but it stuck for her spirited antics—also makes a heightened impression. At elite parties, she chews gum and, in her unmistakable American accent, calls the Duke of Marlborough “Dookie-Wookie.” Lady Jean Ogilvy remembers Kick once starting a food fight, and how everyone at the table joined in. “If someone else had done that, it might have been rude or shocking…But she had this way about her that made it seem an absolute liberation,” notes Paula Byrne, a Kick biographer.
Lem Billings, a family friend, recalls Kick’s declaration that her days in England made her “a person in her own right, not just a Kennedy girl.”
Around the same time, Joe and Charles Lindbergh, America’s famous aviator, meet at the home of Lady Astor and form an instant friendship. Lindbergh is a Nazi sympathizer, and friendly with Hitler. Regarding the brewing war in Europe, Joe declares, “For the life of me I cannot see anything involved which could be remotely considered worth shedding blood for,” and blames the Jews for instigating the Nazi persecution, bluntly stating to his aide Harvey Klemmer, “They brought it on themselves.”
The British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, also favors appeasement, and in September 1938 signs the Munich Agreement, which paves the way for Hitler to invade Czechoslovakia. “I believe it is peace for our time,” Chamberlain optimistically declares.
But peace ends on September 3, 1939, when Hitler marches into Poland and England declares war on Germany.
When Joe calls FDR with the news, his voice is trembling. “It’s the end of the world. The end of everything,” he says, and asks to come back to Washington. Roosevelt forbids any such acknowledgment of American fear.
Nevertheless, Joe surreptitiously sends his family home immediately—taking precaution to book them on separate travel accommodations. Rose, Kick (age nineteen), Eunice (eighteen), and Bobby (thirteen), set out on September 12, 1939, aboard the SS Washington, crowded with nearly fifteen hundred Americans fleeing Europe. Patricia (fifteen), Jean (eleven), and Ted (seven), board a second vessel, and Joe Jr. (twenty-four), a third. Jack (twenty-two), crosses the Atlantic by plane. Only Rosemary, who turns twenty-one that September 13, stays “out of duty to remain behind with [her] father” at a convent school in rural Hertfordshire.