GREAT BRITAIN: The Cavendishes & the Kennedys

The matter was most awfully urgent. The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire dashed up to London to see her son, Edward William Spencer Cavendish, 10th Duke of Devonshire, and his stately wife, the Lady Mary Alice Gascoyne-Cecil. Lady Mary’s mother, the Marchioness of Salisbury, thought it wise to come, too. Reluctantly the Duke agreed that he was the one to speak to his headstrong son-&-heir, William John Robert Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington and a Captain in the Coldstream Guards.

The Marquess, 26, proposed to marry an American, a Boston girl named Kathleen Kennedy. The Marquess had been mentioned as a suitable suitor for the hand of Princess Elizabeth. Kathleen’s father was Joseph P. Kennedy, wealthy, Irish and no admirer of the British. He had been a popular U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, who had later thrown away his popularity and then some.* What was more, the Kennedys were good Catholics; the Cavendishes have been strenuously Protestant since the 16th Century.

The Duke, the Duchess, the Dowager Duchess and the Marchioness, not to speak of the Kennedys, might have seen it coming. Kathleen had been going with the Marquess since 1938, when Ambassador Joe brought her to London. Paddling about London on a bicycle and working at an American Red Cross Club in Knightsbridge since last summer, Kathleen continued to see the Marquess. Last winter she visited West Derbyshire, when the Marquess tried and failed to win a seat in the House of Commons (TIME, Feb. 28). Apparently, everybody—except the Cavendishes and the Kennedys—understood that Kathleen and the Marquess were as good as engaged.

But the actual prospect of marriage hit the Cavendishes hard. One of England’s oldest and loftiest family trees swayed perceptibly.

Slow Growth. The Cavendish family first appeared in 1366, when Sir John, the lord of Cavendish Overhall, acquired a seat on the King’s Bench. In 1530 Sir William placed a firm foundation under the family fortunes while serving as a commissioner for Henry VIII. Bluff King Hal had yet to put away Catholic Catherine of Aragon, but was already breaking up the church monasteries and preparing to establish the Protestant Church of England. A share of the extensive Catholic lands fell to Sir William Cavendish.

At the beginning of World War II the family owned some 180,000 acres, Chatsworth House, Hardwick Hall, Bolton Abbey, Compton Place, Lismore Castle in Ireland and a town house in Carlton Gardens (now a heap of blitzed rubble). The Cavendishes rank well up among the “twelve families that own England.” Their coat of arms: sable, three bucks’ heads cabossed argent with a crest of a serpent nowed proper and two bucks, each wreathed round the neck with a chaplet of roses, argent and azure, as supporters. The Cavendish motto: Cavendo Tutus, Secure by Caution.

Quick Growth. If Ambassador Joe had a motto, it might well be Operando Tutus, Secure by Operating. Joseph Patrick Kennedy’s father came over from Ireland, became the mellow-voiced boss of Ward 2 in East Boston. Joe was a newsboy, candy butcher, bus operator, Harvard graduate (’12), bank president, shipbuilder, film magnate and a Wall Street operator who left behind a monumental observation: “Anyone can lose his shirt in Wall Street if he has sufficient capital and inside information.” Then he became first chairman of the Securities & Exchange Commission, under Franklin Roosevelt, first chairman of the Maritime Commission and last peacetime Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. At the time of prohibition repeal, Joe set up Somerset Importers, Ltd., secured the U.S. distribution of Haig & Haig, King William IV, other famed brands. The venture was successful.

Back in 1914, while he was just getting started, Joe married Rose Fitzgerald, daughter of onetime Mayor John Francis (“Honey Fitz”) Fitzgerald of Boston. She presented him with four boys and five girls; in recent years she has not been well.

Short Ceremony. Ever since the business with the monasteries, the Caven dishes have been unswervingly Protestant.

In recent years they have been known as positively anti-Catholic. Before the Catholic Church will issue a dispensation permitting marriage with a non-Catholic, there must be agreement that all offspring will be brought up in the Church. Kathleen paid a visit to Archbishop Godfrey, the Apostolic Delegate, who did not need to tell her that if she married outside the Church her children would be regarded by the Church as illegitimate. He told her. Lord Hartington declined to marry in the Church, or to agree that future Caven dishes would be Catholic. Kathleen decided to marry anyway. The Duke, the Duchess, the Dowager Duchess and the Marchioness capitulated.

Last week, the debate concluded, the Marquess of Hartington repaired to the Chelsea Registry Office, accompanied by his best man, the Duke of Rutland. Both wore Guards’ uniforms and snug Sam Brownes. Fifteen minutes later Kathleen Kennedy arrived in delphinium pink suede crepe, a short mink jacket and a little hat of pink & blue ostrich feathers. Lieut. Joseph Kennedy Jr., U.S.N.R., came to give his sister away.

Seven minutes later, in the bare, plain registry room, livened only by carnations on the table, Kathleen became the Marchioness of Hartington. A man named Stream performed the ceremony. After wards the Cavendishes and the Kennedys kept their counsel. But the day before the wedding Kathleen’s mother, ill in a Boston hospital, sent out word that she was “too sick to discuss the marriage.” If Lord Hartington succeeds to the title, becomes the 11th Duke of Devon shire, his Duchess will find herself the Mistress of the Royal Robes, first lady In waiting to the Queen. The Queen may well be Princess Elizabeth.

* The English have never forgiven him for theremark (which he rather half-heartedly deniedhaving made) that “Democracy is finished in England.”