her daughter to do the same at St Maux. Kick felt she had had a lucky escape. The Holy Child Convent in Neuilly was liberal and sophisticated, located in an affluent suburb, just 4 miles from the centre of Paris. In many ways, it was a finishing school for wealthy Roman Catholic girls. Its close proximity to the art galleries, museums, restaurants and shops of Paris meant that Kick could reach beyond the cloisters in a way which had been impossible at Noroton.
At Neuilly, she threw herself into the life of the Convent, studying Latin in the morning and skating at the outdoor ice rink in the afternoon. Her favourite nun was Mother Bernadette, who taught her History and Latin. One of the other nuns took her out to distribute leaflets about Sunday school: ‘We talked French all the time, so it was not a waste of time.’3 Kick found some of her schoolfriends catty. She had her hair cut shorter and was told by one of the girls that she looked less intelligent with her new style. ‘You can have my full share of her,’ she remarked to her parents. Her roommate was English: ‘she seems very nice’. Kick thanked Rose for sending clothes: ‘my red velvet hat arrived and it is very cute’.4
She enjoyed seeing the sights of Paris. She saw the cell where Marie Antoinette was incarcerated, and the Palais de Justice where she was tried. She thought the Sainte-Chapelle ‘the most lovely thing I have ever seen’.5 She loved the Louvre, where she gazed at the Mona Lisa. ‘Am really getting too cultured for words,’ she wrote. The girls made fortnightly visits to the Louvre to study the paintings: ‘I shall be the official Parisienne guide for the Kennedy family.’ She told her mother that she was going to Solemn High Mass at Notre Dame for All Saints Day.6 She loved the circular rose windows at the great cathedral: ‘Think I know every monument and church in Paris by this time.’7
Her friend Hope was on her way to visit, and they planned to ice-skate together. Hope was enrolled at St Maux, and returned after her weekend with Kick. Kick wrote to her mother as if to vindicate her own decision: ‘Mother, Hope looks simply ghastly. She hates the convent like anything and when she had to go there last nite she was crying terrifically. It is a crime to leave her there …’ She added, melodramatically, ‘if she stays there much longer she will honestly kill herself. Every night I thank God I am not there. The head nun is always trying to turn Hope against me because I left and didn’t have the spirit to stay.’8
Kick was obsessed with not gaining weight: ‘Am eating plenty and getting very fat.’9 She worried that she wouldn’t be able to fit into her evening clothes (‘by the way, the red velvet and blue silk are darling’), and she told Rose that the nuns were trying to fatten her up. She did not want to put herself on a diet the minute she returned to America.
Kick told her parents that Joe Jr had written to her but she had been surprised that Jack had gone quiet. ‘Please tell Jack to drop me a line.’ Jack’s time in London had not been successful. He had been hospitalized in October and was gravely ill, though once again he made an unexpected recovery. Then, having told Lem that he planned to spend Christmas in St Moritz, he fell ill again and decided to return home to America. Kick was furious that he was returning. The news about Jack hit her hard. As he was always the one to share her quick wit and sense of fun, she had looked forward to spending time with him and he was now leaving her alone in Europe. Jack sailed back home and was hospitalized for suspected hepatitis. Then, to her horror, she heard that her best friend Hope was ill and returning home. Kick was devastated: ‘I do not know all the details but she will rest for a while and may have to wear a belt on her stomach for two years. All I can say is a fine lot I came over with. First Jack, then Hope. I shall probably contract something sooner or later.’10 She had lost her two lifelines, but it was Jack’s loss that she felt most keenly: ‘every time I think of that darn brother of mine I burn’.11
She masked her deep love for him by mock anger, that he had ruined her plans and let her down, but she was in fact deeply worried about him. Like Jack, she found it hard to express her feelings and disliked sentimental talk, but underneath the tough exterior she was a deeply emotional girl. When Jack finally got out of hospital she was immensely relieved. But she didn’t reveal her anxiety to her younger siblings. When she wrote to Eunice, who was now at Noroton, it was in her usual jocular, teasing voice, addressed to ‘Puny Euny’: ‘You should write your lonely little sister at least once a week. Boy, I could just see you over here. Lots of time I wished you were here. Now isn’t that sweet of me.’12 To Bobby, she wrote a sweet letter, enclosing stamps for his collection. She told him about the electric animals on the Normandie: ‘you pressed a little button and the horse would trot and then another button and then he would gallop’.13
She missed her siblings, telling Bobby that she would watch from her Convent window and see the little French boys and girls (‘about Teddy’s age’) going to school wearing blue smocks and hats and carrying briefcases laden with schoolbooks. She added that they went to school from 8.30 until 4.30: ‘I don’t think you would like to be a French boy, Bob, because they don’t play football, baseball or any games like that.’14
She confided in Bobby and Eunice her difficulty in speaking French. She was not a natural linguist: ‘It is rather hard at first not to talk English but everyone is supposed to talk French all the time.’15 The nuns forbade the English-speaking girls to go out together without a French girl being present for fear they would start to chat in English. Kick was allowed to speak English for only one hour each evening. It was extremely difficult, but she made the best of it and worked hard, reading a French edition of A Tale of Two Cities and trying not to lapse into English: ‘The French is going quite nicely but it is still rather discouraging at times. Time will tell though. I am trying to read as much as possible as I think it is the greatest help besides talking.’16
She didn’t much like the French girls but bonded with a Belgian girl. She felt frustrated by her accent: ‘It is quite disheartening though to go into a shop and ask for something in perfect French and they don’t understand and when a French girl says seemingly the same thing and they do understand her.’17 Nevertheless, the Kennedy stiff upper lip was in place: ‘All the Frenchies including the nuns say I have made great progress … everything is daisy.’18
Kick was a success at Neuilly, charming everyone with her good humour and curiosity. The nuns called her ‘Mademoiselle Pourquoi’, because she was always questioning the rules. This was of course how she had been brought up around Joe Kennedy’s dinner table, but it was an apt nickname, and a key to her character, because Kick was always one to question and, if possible, break the rules. She was Joe Kennedy’s daughter more than she was Rose’s, and she fought against the nuns in a way that Eunice, more sensitive, more academic, more spiritual, never did. Eunice was very much her mother’s daughter and the family thought that, of all the Kennedy girls, she would have been the one to make an ideal Sacred Heart nun.
Kick was moved by the parades for Armistice Day. ‘Saw all the parades and soldiers and was in Paris during the two minutes silence. It really was marvelous.’ The girls couldn’t get within a mile of the Arc de Triomphe: ‘I have never been so squashed in my life.’19 In the afternoon, she saw lots of Communist parades, ‘and policemen lined all the residential parts of Paris’.
She
