White-haired, red-faced, cheerfully garrulous, outgoing, pugnacious when nec- essary, portly: in his last years Senator Ted Kennedy strikingly resembled the Irish-American politicos of old, particularly his maternal grandfather, John Fitzgerald, ‘Honey Fitz,’ twice mayor of Boston.
White-haired, red-faced, cheerfully garrulous, outgoing, pugnacious when nec- essary, portly: in his last years Senator Ted Kennedy strikingly resembled the Irish-American politicos of old, particularly his maternal grandfather, John Fitzgerald, ‘Honey Fitz,’ twice mayor of Boston. Kennedy was well aware of the likeness, and his account of Honey Fitz is one of the most enjoyable passages in this memoir; but he did not go so far as to concede that he was more of a Fitzgerald than a Kennedy. Readers will form their own opinions.
Yet the dominant theme of the book is the burden and difficulty of becoming a Kennedy, as if it were a profession with a fiendishly exacting entrance exam (Kennedy was not always good at exams, and notoriously was detected when cheating for a Spanish exam at Harvard). Teddy (as his family called him) was the youngest of the nine children of Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald, and was both inspired and intimidated by his brilliant siblings. His father directed the lives of all his children, with incessant suggestions that were received as unquestionable commands; when he was not spying on them (he had a network of agents operating wherever they went), he was instilling such family maxims as ‘Kennedys don’t cry’ and ‘Kennedys don’t complain.’ When the 14-year-old Teddy was caught out in some naughtiness, his father asked him if he meant to lead a serious or non-serious life. ‘I’ll still love you whatever choice you make. But if you decide to have a non-serious life I won’t have much time for you .
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