‘Tis the set of a soul
That decides its goal,
And not the calm or the strife.
– Ella Wheeler Wilcox
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
When Diana Mosley died on 11 August 2003, the obituaries printed in British newspapers echoed public sentiment when they proclaimed her to be ‘the most hated woman in England’. Prior to her death, Diana had not resided in England for more than fifty years, and yet she remained something of an arch-villain; the aristocrat who stepped away from the establishment, perhaps intent on tearing it down.
Osbert Sitwell quipped, ‘Sooner or later, everyone marries a Guinness.’ From its intermarriages between the brewing and banking branches of the family to the dazzling society marriages, it was a family that produced philanthropists, politicians, artists, writers and socialites. At the age of 18, Diana could have been forgiven if her brilliant in-laws eclipsed her, but with her beauty and intelligence, she became a shining star in an age when the foundation of celebrity was carved out of frivolity.
It is this period of Diana’s life that intrigues me most: the interval between her Mitford childhood and her downfall in becoming Lady Mosley. The prominent players of this saga are long dead, and although from the outset it may have seemed a hindrance, it has allowed me to write without being influenced. I hope I have remained objective in the telling of Diana’s story.
Two biographies have been written about Diana. The first, Diana Mosley: A Life by Jan Dalley, published during Diana’s lifetime, extensively relates the Mitford childhood. And the latter, Diana Mosley by Anne de Courcy, had the advantage of Diana’s co-operation, on the agreement that it should remain unpublished until after her death. De Courcy’s conversations with Diana and her external sources, such as Irene Ravensdale’s diaries, have proved invaluable.
I am thankful to the following people for their support and helpful insights: Diane Banks, Olivia Morris, Robyn Drury, Mark Beynon, Miriam Crozier, Debbie Catling, Stephen Kennedy, Isobel O‘Neill, Tania Todd, David Platzer, Lee Galston, Christopher Warwick, Joseph Dumas, Meems Ellenberg, Diana Birchall, Rastko Podestà, Terence Pepper, Tracey Spence, Shirley Jaffe, Andrew Budgell, Terence Towles Canote, Kimberly D. Davis, Meredith Whitford, and Victor Olliver. And to the members of my immediate family who encouraged the idea of this book.
I am especially grateful to Michael Bloch for his kind permission to quote from the letters of James Lees-Milne and Diana Mitford, published in his biography James Lees-Milne: The Life. And to Christopher Holmes for making available his collection of photographs. As always, I am indebted to followers of The Mitford Society for their continued support.
CONTENTS
Title
Acknowledgements
1 She Can’t Live Long
2 Clever by Association
3 A Demi Paradise
4 An Age without a Name
5 The Unhappy Youth
6 Coming Out
7 A Deb’s Delight
8 The Engagement
9 A Society Wedding
10 Mrs Bryan Guinness
11 He-Evelyn
12 Confinement
13 A Gilded Life
14 An Interval in Friendships
15 The Bloomsbury Set
16 The Happy Foursome
17 Life and Death
18 The Age of Reason
19 The Man, Mosley
20 The Demon King
21 Turmoil
22 Courting Scandal
23 A Clean Break
24 Social Pariah
25 The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
26 Detour
27 The Golden Month of October
28 The Fall of Fascism
29 Munich: An Idyllic Life
30 A Series of Unfortunate Events
31 The Importance of Unity Mitford
32 A Life Together
33 The Upper Hand
34 Decline and Fall
35 A Token Gesture
36 Lady Mosley
37 Fate
Epilogue
Select Bibliography
Plates
Copyright
1
SHE CAN’T LIVE LONG
Tears of gloom greeted Diana Freeman-Mitford on the day of her birth, on 17 June 1910. After a long and punishing labour, the baby, who was previously referred to as ‘him’, was delivered in the lull of a violent thunderstorm, eventually giving way to a gruelling hot afternoon.
The exhausted mother, Sydney, cried, for she had wanted another son. In sympathetic unison the inhabitants of the family’s tiny London house on Graham Street, relatives and staff alike, were solemn when they learned of the news. The father, David, received his newborn daughter with an air of indifference – a girl was no cause for celebration. They already had two girls, Nancy and Pamela, and each parent longed for another boy to balance out the family. Tom was to be their only son, born ten months previously, and the thought of going through the ordeal of childbirth again in the hope of producing a son, weighed heavily on Sydney. She wanted seven boys and perhaps one girl; she was to have six girls and one boy. As the family and servants gathered to look at Diana, aged about an hour old, the nurse peered down at her newest charge and hissed: ‘She’s too beautiful; she can’t live long.’
Diana was born as the curtain fell on the Edwardian era, a decade forever romanticised in history for its place across the abyss of the First World War and the roaring twenties. In years to come it was remembered with an air of nostalgia; a golden age of endless summers, basking in the sun that never set on the British Empire. The death of King Edward VII and the ascent of King George V to the throne, a month before Diana’s birth, brought change and an air of uncertainty to British society. A new king pushed the monarchy into the twentieth century and a Liberal government quickened society’s pace. The threat of war looming on the horizon and the family’s dwindling finances, meant life for the Mitfords was rapidly changing, too.
David Freeman-Mitford belonged to the British aristocracy. He was loosely tied to the peerage through his father, Bertie, the first Baron Redesdale, and his mother, Lady Clementine Ogilvy, daughter of the 10th Earl of Airlie. Despite this impeccable pedigree, David was not a rich man and he depended on financial handouts from his father-in-law, Thomas Gibson Bowles, known as ‘Tap’.
A self-made man, Tap Bowles was the illegitimate son of a Victorian Cabinet minister, Milner Gibson, and a servant, Susan Bowles. Owing to social mores and her lowly position in domestic service, Susan surrendered the boy to his father. She vanished from Tap’s life and, given his illegitimacy (his half-siblings were born in wedlock), his father sent him to boarding school in France. It was a small consolation to Tap that his father’s wife, a kind and tolerant woman, loved him as though he was her own son. Regardless of his stepmother’s benevolence, when he came of age, Tap knew he would have to make his own way in the world.
Launching a career in freelance journalism, Tap wrote a column for the Morning Post, where, using balloon and pigeon post, he covered the Siege of Paris. At the age of 26, the ambitious young man borrowed £200 to found Vanity Fair in 1868, which he sold nineteen years later for £20,000 following the untimely death of his wife, Jessica. His second magazine, The Lady, was conveniently founded to give his mistress, Rita Shell (known as ‘Tello’), a job. Prior to that, Tello was employed by Tap as a governess for his four children, and she eventually bore him three illegitimate children. With little interest in The Lady except for its financial turnover, Tap’s attention was absorbed in editing The Candid Quarterly, a magazine that gave him a platform to criticise the government.
Perhaps given Tap’s unfortunate start in life, the wealth he accumulated from his own merits served to turn him into a more tolerant and
charitable man than his daughter’s father-in-law, Bertie Redesdale. Tap gave David his first job as manager of The Lady, a highly unsuitable position for a man who once sailed to Ceylon on a tea-planting venture and who had gallantly fought and lost a lung in the Boer War. The refined tone of the magazine – ‘for elegant women with elegant minds’ – did not compliment David’s own philistine views. Although grateful for Tap’s generosity and the salary which afforded his family their house on Graham Street, he was not happy.
It remains unclear what David planned to do to remedy his restlessness, but with an ever-increasing family, he was not in a position to resign. The outbreak of war in 1914 seemed to provide the answer; he rejoined his old regiment, the Northampton Fusiliers, and went to the front line in France. His army pay was significantly less than his salary from The Lady and Sydney’s allowance from Tap was greatly reduced when his vast earnings suffered as a result of the Liberal government’s heavy taxation.
Sydney was not one to wallow in self-pity – a trait Diana inherited – and she set off for Paris to visit David when a spell of leave presented itself. With her typical resourcefulness, she returned to London with yards of the pale blue cloth from which the French officers’ uniforms were made. Using the fabric for the children’s winter coats, first Diana’s, then Pamela’s and eventually Nancy’s, they were handed down and lasted six winters. Sydney was also pregnant with her fifth child and with the harrowing reality of another mouth to feed in the family’s already dire financial situation, another compromise had to be reached. Their London house was let and Sydney and the children went to live at Malcolm House, near the church at Batsford, belonging to David’s father. At her young age, Diana knew they were poor, and she also knew there was no help for it.
The family’s circumstances were further changed when, only one year into the war, David’s eldest brother, Clement, was killed in the Battle of Loos. The shock of losing his firstborn son shattered Bertie and despite the bitter blow of losing a brother, David sought comfort in knowing that should he survive the war, he would inherit Bertie’s title and estate.
With the freedom of living in the ‘real’ countryside for the first time, Diana became an alert child, sensitive to her surroundings and the behaviour of others, particularly the grown-ups. Nursery life was still a shielded world that could not be intruded upon by the sadness of war or the imminent death of her grandfather, Bertie. The kaleidoscope of childhood memories – the vague presence of Sydney, and the comings and goings of nannies and governesses – was momentarily displaced, creating a void for an experience that would strengthen Diana’s future beliefs in predestination.
On a hot summer’s day in 1916, whilst playing in the garden of Malcolm House, Diana paused and looked up at the sky. The blinding sunlight strained her vision, but she kept her gaze fixed upon the clouds, when before her eyes, the heavens opened and a flock of angels appeared. A few seconds later, this eerie phenomenon was over. Racing off to find her siblings and bursting with excitement, she spoke of her experience. Nancy, Pamela and Tom fled inside Malcolm House and moaned in unison to Sydney: ‘Oh, Muv, it’s so unfair, Diana’s seen a vision!’ Their mother, much too logical for such supernatural tales, brushed it aside. There could have been numerous reasons why Diana saw what she did and Sydney did not pander to mystery. Having repeated the tale so often, Diana wondered if she had, in fact, dreamt the entire thing.
Far from having forgotten this vision, it was brought back to Diana when, not long after her sixth birthday, her grandmother, Lady Clementine, fetched her from the garden where she played with Pamela. ‘Come, I will take you to visit grandfather,’ the stately old lady announced to the curious children. This personal interaction was not unusual as Lady Clementine was ‘deeply interested in her children and grandchildren and governesses and nurses and households’ and Diana, along with Pamela, obediently followed her into the house.
After a lengthy walk up the staircase and down a never-ending landing, Lady Clementine opened a door and gently pushed the children into the semi-darkened bedroom. A small, frail man looking quite unlike their grandfather, sat bolt upright in bed, his jaundiced face emphasised by the shock of white hair standing on end. He muttered a few pleasantries to the spooked children, but Diana could barely comprehend what he had said, for she could not take her eyes off his face. The visit was soon over and Bertie died a month later, aged seventy-nine.
David succeeded the barony of Redesdale, and upon his father’s death he inherited Batsford Park, the sprawling estate Bertie had so loved that he plunged the majority of his fortune into restoring it. Diana adored Bertie’s Japanese gardens with the Buddha statues, koi fish ponds and exotic plants. Along with David’s inheritance, Diana and her siblings were now fashioned as Honourable. This elevation in society could potentially change the course of her life in the future; she was now the daughter of a lord, a far more respectable status than the daughter of an impoverished second son on the fringes of the aristocracy.
Despite the peerage and the properties, David inherited little money, the bulk of which was tied up in land in the neighbouring village of Swinbrook. With a large household staff to pay, the upkeep of Batsford and maintaining the dowager cottage on the other Redesdale estate in Northumberland, David’s expenditures were greater than he could afford. The solution to their problem was obvious – Batsford Park would have to be sold. The money garnered from the sale would allow David to purchase Asthall Manor, an attractive Jacobean manor house where Diana’s character thrived and her imagination flourished.
Those who encountered Diana were not quick to forget her. A precocious child, she spent her days in the musty library amongst the polished mahogany bookshelves cluttered with books. Her straight, blonde hair hung around her waist and her limpid blue eyes scoured the pages of Byron, Shelley, Keats and Coleridge, understanding not one word. Although already a great beauty, she lingered in the shadows and her inconspicuous position as the middle child permitted her to manoeuvre through the minefield of everyday family life, emerging relatively unscathed from sibling squabbles and nursery politics.
Diana did not attract the attention of Nancy, the eldest, whose acid wit and quick temper made her someone to fear. Pamela, born three years after Nancy, consumed their mother’s attention with her bouts of infantile paralysis. Tom, the family’s cherished boy, was granted more freedom than his sisters. ‘That’s different, Tom is a boy,’ the girls were often reminded when they protested against the lenience shown towards him. Due to his schooling at Lockers and then on to Eton, Tom was largely removed from family life. The three youngest girls – Unity, Jessica and Deborah – born in 1914, 1917 and 1920, respectively, completed the family.
Diana hovered between the restricted worlds of nursery life and lessons in the schoolroom. Each day was repetitive, with lessons presided over by an English governess who covered a limited curriculum deemed acceptable for a girl’s education. During the holidays a French governess was engaged and the children were supposed to speak French, which subsequently resulted in long silences in the dining room. Her education was sparse and, unlike Nancy, Unity and Jessica, Diana did not harbour an ambition to attend school. In her youth, Sydney had considered the idea of going to Girton, a women’s college in Cambridge, but for unknown reasons she had declined the opportunity. Regardless of her fleeting interest in education, Sydney was quick to dismiss her children’s pleas.
School was also strictly forbidden by David, who feared the rigorous PE lessons would cause his daughters to develop ‘legs like gateposts’.1 Education, to David, was most unattractive in a girl – a view held by many men and women of his class. Although Diana was terrified of being sent away to boarding school – an underlying fear which plagued her – David often reminded his daughters, ‘I have no money to give you.’ Sydney added to Diana’s misery when she conformed to his reasoning. ‘Of course, not,’ she agreed. ‘Girl’s don’t expect it.’ Diana realised the prospect of failing to find a good husband meant
she may have to earn her own living, a thought which filled her with dread. Adding to her turmoil, the girls were forbidden to shave their legs or to wear lipstick. Jessica questioned why, and decided that her parents ‘disliked the idea of trying to attract men by these artificial means’.
Diana heeded David’s warning and spent sleepless nights mulling over her future. Diana’s worries were not eased when, hoping to instil modesty in the young beauty, the governess often reminded her, ‘Now Diana, try to remember that you are the least important person in the room.’ The morbid thoughts of an uncertain future and the boredom from her inadequate school lessons, inspired Diana to firmly attach her attentions towards anything that took her fancy. The first fancy of which came in the form of organised religion.
The Mitfords were not a God-fearing family, in spite of David and Sydney supporting the Church of England, an act they viewed as their patriotic duty. Until the age of 11, Diana loathed church and resentfully proclaimed it a waste of her Sunday. She also thought it unjust when the clergyman, Mr Ward, frequently used his sermons to complain about the Mitfords’ riotous behaviour. He once preached on the evils of ‘people who run shouting with their dogs through God’s holy acre’. Diana told her father, but he only laughed. There were lighter moments, when Mrs Ward sprang to her feet to sing the solo, much to the delight of Diana who screamed with laughter at her powerful, contralto voice.
Diana’s outlook towards religion was changed when she noticed that her new governess, Miss Price, owned a Roman Catholic shrine. There was little explanation for this religious conversion, except that she was drawn in by Miss Price’s crucifix, brass candlesticks and brass vases. Having lost her head to religion, Diana attended church several times a day, she declared her family heathens and claimed that time spent anywhere other than church or praying in her bedroom were wasted hours. Diana eagerly learned the New Testament, the lives of the saints, the history of the early church and the meaning of the sacraments. She fully believed in transubstantiation, original sin and the Immaculate Conception as well as the virgin birth and the real presence. She learned to turn to the east and curtsy at the right moment during the creed.
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