This post includes the names of several people previously mentioned in Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot. Run searches for the names in bold!
Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy (our Mistress of the Month for March 2017) was a debutante, presented to the Queen the same year as Pamela Digby, when her father was Ambassador to Britain. However, Kick didn't think much of Pamela that year.
Surprisingly, the two would become good friends and Kick would provide Pamela important social and political connections to her American, Democratic Family. Pamela went along on a back-to-Ireland trip that Kennedy made to see his family roots there. Pamela provided a young sickly John F. Kennedy, Kick's brother and future President of the United States, an introduction to her personal doctor in England, the doctor who first diagnosed him with Addison's disease.
According to Sally Bedell Smith, the author of Reflected Glory, a biography of Pamela Digby Churchill Harriman, the two young women were fast friends and enjoyed socializing together when Kick was widowed from Billy Hartington at age 24. (Billy was killed by a sniper's bulled just months after their controversial marriage and after a years long courtship.) Kick remained Lady Hartington and lived in London on funds provided her by Billy's family and her own Kennedy inheritance. Pamela joined Kick and her friends whenever possible and went out of her way to be friendly. So Kick invited Pamela to spend some of her winter vacation in Palm Beach at the Kennedy oceanside villa. Pam loved the elegance and ease of Palm Beach where Rose Kennedy, the matriarch of the family, helped her fit in to society. Pamela became part of the Kennedy Entourage and got to take a break from World War II in Europe. Pamela went from Palm Beach to New York City.
From previous work on Kick Kennedy, we know that she as a Catholic had to wait a long time to marry Billy, a Protestant, and her marriage to him had disappointed Rose who was devout. The young widow Kick had then become involved with the married Earl Fitzwilliam, so she was a mistress to him. Kick footed the bill to take Pamela along with their traveling peers. Pamela went back to France in the summer of 1946 when her return to England proved to be a disaster. Her divorce from Winston Churchill's son Randolph had ruin ed her socially. She was there when Kick and Fitzwilliam took off in the plane that would crash and kill them both and was one of hundreds who attended Kick's funeral.
Pamela eventually converted to Catholicism when she was the mistress of Gianni Agnelli and remained Catholic for the rest of her life. Eventually she would leave Britain feeling herself to be more American. She remained a friend of the Kennedy family and stood behind the Democratic Party in her later years as an influential fund raiser and campaigner.
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