The obsession was not to last. After four terms – about the limit of time any governess could tolerate the children – Miss Price packed up her shrine and departed. Diana abandoned her religious ways, but she was grateful to Miss Price for igniting the phase; it taught her how deeply one could feel about their convictions, regardless of opposition.
Although this fixation with religion proved to be a mere phase, Diana still possessed an inquiring mind and her desire to learn could not be quelled. The schoolroom lessons could not satisfy her thirst for knowledge and she looked to the library to hone her intellect. This love for books stemmed from Nancy’s example, when at the age of 7, Diana spied her eldest sister reading a large leather bound book. Questioned about her literary taste, the 13-year-old Nancy’s triangular green eyes sparkled and her shrill voice boasted, ‘My favourite book is King Solomon’s Mines or The Chaplet of Pearls.’ At the time, Diana glanced inside the books to sample their complex text and found herself completely baffled. Feeling defeated, she returned to her old favourites, Mrs Tiggy Winkle and Herr Baby.
The boredom of family life was interrupted by a surge of unexpected excitement, though at Diana’s expense. For some time she had been complaining about feeling unwell and moaned of a twinge in her lower abdomen, but as always, Sydney dismissed any mentions of ill health. When the pain became unbearable, her mother finally relented and summoned the doctor for a check-up. Diana’s suffering was diagnosed as acute appendicitis and the doctor promptly ordered an emergency appendectomy. The news of Diana’s operation spread through Asthall, with siblings and servants alike baffled by Sydney’s approval of the procedure. Believing ‘The Good Body’ would eventually heal itself, Sydney opposed operations, and as with medicine, they were almost taboo. Without an ounce of squeamishness, David stood in the sterile visitors’ room, transformed into a makeshift operating theatre, to supervise the operation.
When the anaesthetic wore off, Diana found herself in a huge brocade bed, surrounded by presents. The proclamation on the day of her birth: ‘She can’t live long,’ haunted her siblings. Pamela, quite distressed by the premonition, spent all of her pocket money on a paint box for the patient. For a fleeting moment, Diana was the centre of attention – something, she felt, she could get used to.
NOTE
1 ‘Legs like gateposts from playing hockey, and the worst seat on a horse of any woman I ever knew.’ Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love. As read by Pamela Mitford in Nancy Mitford: A Portrait by her Sisters. BBC, 1980.
2
CLEVER BY ASSOCIATION
The limited surroundings of Asthall Manor and the Oxfordshire countryside was the only world Diana had known. Few outside influences could intrude on her quiet routine which, by the age of 14, included endless hours spent in the library.
During the Eton school holidays, Tom returned to Asthall, bringing with him a fellow pupil. The shy, unassuming 16-year-old introduced himself as James Lees-Milne, known to his friends as Jim. By the end of the visit, his small circle of friends included Diana. Both Jim and Diana were intrigued by one another, and he was bewitched by her beauty as he silently observed her sitting next to Tom as he played the piano. Diana, too, thought Jim quite possibly the cleverest person she knew. She was impressed by his loathing of games and his preference for sitting indoors, listening to classical music and conversing about art and literature. Tom seemed to share an easy-going, brotherly type of affection with Jim, but this schoolboy camaraderie concealed a discreet affair.
The close bond between Diana and Tom reminded Jim of his loneliness and lack of familial ties – he despised his father, saw little of his mother and had nothing in common with his siblings. Adding to this misery, all through his childhood and early adolescent years, Jim wished he were a girl. Society’s expectations placed on him as a boy, and his countrified father’s disapproval, conspired to make him ‘feel desperately ashamed’ of his wish. Adding to Jim’s feelings of shame was the guilt of his affair with Tom and he desired to replace him with Diana, a socially acceptable catalyst for romance.
After his stay at Asthall, Jim immediately sent Diana a letter, asking her, ‘May I treat you as a much cherished sister to whom I can say everything? You don’t realise how essential they are to boys. Why are you so amazingly sympathique as well as charming?’2 Surrounded by six sisters and an all-female staff – David and Sydney disapproved of male servants, believing them to be drunken, dirty and unreliable – Diana was unsure of how to respond to such flattery. She acted with indifference, which could have been mistaken as modesty – an appealing attribute in one so beautiful.
Jim returned to Asthall, and soon he, Tom and Diana became a peculiar trio. When the other Mitford children were outside riding and hunting, they spent their days indoors, lapping up joyous hours in the library where Jim expressed his devotion by teaching her to read the greats. They read poetry and fantasised about going to live in Greece, where they ‘would scorn material things and live on a handful of grapes by the sea’.
Jim appointed himself as Diana’s faithful correspondent and the letters exchanged during this precarious time provide an insight into her outlook. As her intellect developed, she felt comfortable to confide her innermost thoughts to Jim. ‘There will never be another Shelley. I wish I had been alive then to marry him. He was more beautiful physically and mentally than an angel.’3 Her philosophy on life was extremely modern for a sheltered teenager in the 1920s; ‘why on earth should two souls (I wish there was a better word, I think SPIRIT is better). Why on earth should two spirits who are in love a bit have to marry … and renounce all other men and women?’ Monogamy, to Diana, was ‘SUPREMELY foolish’, but she was quick to acknowledge that speaking of ‘free love is almost a sin’. And, to dispel any hint of romance, she quickly informed Jim of his platonic place in her life, ‘I sometimes feel that I love you too much, but you are my spiritual brother.’4
It was not only Diana’s beauty which served to enchant those who met her; her outward qualities attracted solitary individuals, and those of a lonely or melancholic disposition were drawn in by her friendly demeanour. Her sparkling intelligence, sincere interest in others and natural conversation eased any initial feelings of awkwardness. A victim of Nancy’s critique, and used to being reminded that she was the ‘least important person in the room’, Diana knew only too well the burden of feeling unwanted and unworthy of attention.
Jim was not the only admirer competing for Diana’s affection. Clementine and Winston Churchill’s only son, Randolph – known as ‘The Chumbolly’ – had fallen madly in love with her during a visit to Asthall. Clementine was David’s first cousin, though it was whispered in family circles that she was the product of a lengthy affair between Bertie Redesdale and his wife’s sister, Lady Blanche Hozier. Such rumours remained unfounded, but the eldest Churchill children, Diana – known as Dina – and Randolph were brought up alongside their Mitford cousins. Dina, a year older than Diana, was a highly nervous child prone to dark moods. She tagged alongside Randolph who, with his boisterous behaviour, was often on the receiving end of the grown-ups’ disapproval. Randolph was unlike Jim in every way: he lacked Jim’s refined aesthetic tastes and, being a year younger than Diana, he held no charm for her.
Relatives falling in love with Diana was not an unusual concept. When she was aged 10, her 16-year-old cousin, Michael Bowles, fell violently in love with her. This disturbing obsession came about after a visit to Asthall, where he had spent the weekend in the company of his rambunctious Mitford cousins. Despite being closer in age to Nancy and Pamela, it was Diana’s enthusiasm for life that had a lasting effect on the lonely schoolboy. Like Jim, Michael felt isolated in his home life, and this loneliness was emphasised by his unhappy experience at Marlborough.
Diana was oblivious to the true nature of Michael’s passion and she politely received his letters with an air of detachment. Michael went to great efforts to ensure his letters escaped the attention of David and Sydney, and he convinced the
family’s parlour maid, Mabel, to act as his channel to Diana. To the horror of Mabel, David learned of this infatuation with his daughter, when Michael wistfully wrote: ‘I suppose we must wait six years and then you will be old enough to marry.’
Without questioning Diana about the correspondence – entirely one sided on Michael’s behalf – David stormed into Marlborough with the intention to kill the boy. Intruding into the dorm that Michael shared with his friend Mitchell, David roared, ‘Is this Michael Bowles’s room? My name is Redesdale and I want to talk to him!’ David’s temper so terrified Mitchell that he ran off to find his lovelorn friend. ‘Somebody called Redesdale has come to see you,’ he said, hardly taking a moment to catch his breath. ‘You’ve got to hide for a couple of hours until he goes away, otherwise I think he’ll kill you.’ Michael successfully hid and David departed. Michael was so disturbed by David’s reaction that he ceased contact with Diana for forty years.
The story of Michael Bowles was a cautionary tale for future suitors, and Randolph, already wary of David’s quick temper, restrained his admiration during visits to Asthall. Randolph would have to wait until Diana was old enough to visit his family home before openly pursuing her.
Soon, the trivialities of family life evaporated into the background. James Lees-Milne once said, ‘My world was the only real world.’ But Diana was not content to live vicariously through the characters in the books that she read and she looked further afield to broaden her horizons.
NOTES
2 James Lees-Milne: The Life, Michael Bloch.
3 Letter from Diana to James Lees-Milne, September 1926, James Lees-Milne: The Life, Michael Bloch.
4 Letter from Diana to James Lees-Milne, 19 March 1927. Source as above.
3
A DEMI PARADISE
The Churchill family home, Chartwell, situated on a heavenly, tree-crowned hill overlooking a view to the south over the Weald of Kent, served as a portal of escapism for Diana during her first visit in the summer of 1924. The regal history of the house captured her imagination: Henry VIII had stayed there during his courtship of Anne Boleyn, whose family seat, Hever Castle, was located close by. Winston Churchill commissioned the architect Sir Phillip Tilden to modernise the exterior of the house, and he extended the building between 1924 and 1926, but the original red brick remained intact, complete with tile hung gables and tiny oriel windows.
With an outburst of impulsive critique, Diana crushed Randolph when she announced that Chartwell was not as aesthetically pleasing as Asthall. Though, as the stay progressed, she realised the freedom granted to the ‘brats’ – a Churchillian term of endearment – compensated for its cosmetic shortcomings. This freedom came in the form of a tree house, constructed in the fork of a great lime on the front driveway. Access to the house was by a rope ladder, quickly pulled up to preserve the privacy of ‘the big ones’: Randolph and Diana Churchill and Diana and Tom Mitford. When they were not hiding in the tree house, Randolph proudly held court with Diana.
They made a striking pair, with Randolph the eager suitor standing several inches shorter than Diana, who at 14 was already edging towards her adult height of 5ft 10in. As Diana grew older – perhaps there was a hint of truth in the rumours surrounding Clementine’s paternity – she strongly resembled his mother, with whom he had a complicated relationship.
Ever the hospitable companion, Randolph delighted in showing Diana the beautiful grounds surrounding the house. A hillside fell away to a lake fed by a spring, the Chartwell, and alongside the valley was a scattering of beech woods sheltering the house from the north and east. They explored the house together and no rooms were off-limits to the children, with the exception of Churchill’s bedroom and study. When the children were sent to the study, often on an errand to deliver a message, they were instructed to remain completely silent, as noise of any variety, especially whistling, was met by a thunderous roar of displeasure from Churchill.
Diana was fond of ‘Cousin Clementine’, whom she praised as ‘beautiful and kind’, and ‘Cousin Winston’ made an impression on her as ‘a perennial wonder’. To her own children – most especially Randolph and his sister Diana – Clementine was a difficult character to fathom. She was extremely demanding when it suited her and the children dreaded the emotional storms that lurked beneath her otherwise aloof personality. Churchill was largely absent, but when present he would indulge his attentions onto Randolph, treating him as though he were his most cherished possession, and the affection bestowed by his father gave the boy an air of arrogance. Struck by Diana’s extraordinary beauty, Churchill thrilled her with the nickname ‘Dina-mite’.
Randolph’s immature sense of humour struck a familiar chord with Diana. Nancy, too, verged on childishness; it was a form of escapism for a generation that had seen its elder brothers and fathers killed on the battlefields of the Somme. Although quite the norm in behaviour for debutantes of the twenties when an entire decade was caught up in an everlasting adolescence, Diana found Randolph’s stunted personality exasperating and unattractive. Despite his idiosyncrasies, she praised the lighter side of Randolph’s character, especially his eagerness to please her. In an attempt to keep Diana to himself, Randolph invited her to watch Clementine play tennis and they spent endless hours alone strolling in the gardens.
The visits to Chartwell corresponded with school holidays, but for Randolph they always seemed painfully short. A feeling reciprocated in Diana, but for unromantic reasons. When she returned to Asthall, she longed for the comforts of Chartwell with its pretty rooms, indulgent food and fascinating guests. ‘I loved the [Churchill] family,’ Diana said, fifty years later. ‘When people say Clementine was so cold, well, she was particularly kind to us and, to me particularly, wonderful.’ To the outside world, Clementine was the picture of serenity and self-control, something Diana could mimic. Their personalities were alike; Clementine’s coldness was also apparent in Diana’s own nature and as she matured she honed this side of her personality to contrast with her extreme kindness, which she would overindulge onto those she liked best.
Randolph wrote to Diana, inviting her to return to Chartwell – a lure she could never resist. ‘My darling Diana, I am so longing to see you before I go back to Eton.’ Inviting her to stay for the weekend, Randolph boldly informed her that his parents and siblings were staying elsewhere (the Churchill family’s nanny, Cousin Moppet, would be on hand as a suitable chaperone). ‘I will come and pick you up and deposit you again on the Monday …’ Should an air of indecency lurk in his suggestion, he advised Diana to tell her mother three significant things: she had visited the previous year under similar circumstances; they were, after all, family; and ‘Darling Randolph’ – as he referred to himself – was returning to Eton soon, before which, he would be all alone. Randolph’s sympathetic appeal floundered once Diana mentioned it to Sydney.
Sydney decided that Diana’s visits to Chartwell had been plentiful. Diana often said that her mother took pleasure in saying no to her children, without bothering to explain the reasoning behind her decision. Both Sydney and David were mindful of their children indulging in a liberal sense of fun, and enjoyment outside of Asthall was to be dispensed in frugal measures. This lack of enthusiasm for Chartwell was founded on Diana’s endless chatter about the procession of guests spilling through the front door for supper, tennis matches with Cousin Clementine and private political conferences with Cousin Winston, then a hub of excitement for the impressionable teenager. ‘I’m sure Chartwell’s lovely,’ Sydney often said, as she stretched out her arms, yawning to demonstrate her boredom. ‘Clementine is so clever,’ was about all she could muster.
When referring to their father’s absence from parliament, the Churchill children often hypothetically asked, ‘What is the use of a WC without a seat?’ By the time Sydney permitted Diana to return to Chartwell, Winston Churchill was back in parliament as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Stanley Baldwin’s Conservative government. Interesting guests were forever com
ing and going from Chartwell, unlike at Asthall where Sydney and David loathed entertaining. With her longing for culture, Diana always fixed her attention on the most intellectual visitor in the room. The conversation at dinner often centred on a political theme and, perhaps for the first time, Diana was exposed to casual political references. Edward Stanley, a cousin from David and Clementine’s side of the family, was asked by Churchill over dinner if he was a Liberal – the traditional political view in the modern-thinking Stanley family. ‘No,’ answered Edward. He was, in fact, a Conservative politician; Churchill’s question was in jest.
‘Why not?’ implored Churchill, goading his in-law.
Having served as Secretary of State for War under Lloyd George in 1916, Edward spoke candidly when he informed Churchill that he could not belong to a party led by Lloyd George. Upon which, Churchill launched into an argument glorifying his old friend and former leader, as to convert at least one of his listeners. Diana was one of those listeners; she observed the argument and collected her thoughts, but it would be set aside for a later date. The political tension did not last and Churchill was quick to overlook any acid remarks from an opponent. Always larger than life and filled with bonhomie, he gave an impromptu solo of Soldiers of the Queen, beating time with his large, white hand.
Brendan Bracken was another guest who seemed to be a permanent fixture at the Churchill table, much to the annoyance of Clementine who could not tolerate the young man. The Irish-born Bracken spent a delinquent childhood, he often vandalised neighbours’ gardens and threw one of his schoolfellows into a canal, and this spirited behaviour, so similar to Randolph’s, endeared him to Churchill. In 1923, Bracken organised Churchill’s political campaign and accompanying him to the family home, he slept, uninvited, on the sofa in Clementine’s drawing room with his shoes on.
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