A Life of Contrasts: The Autobiography of Diana Mosley

by Diana Mitford

  Public speaking is now a lost art, but in the twenties and thirties and indeed right up to the time when television finished it off it was an essential part of the equipment of a politician, the amulet of power. Vast crowds gathered to hear him speak all over the country.

  M. had crossed the floor of the House, in company with the Cecil brothers, Lord Henry Bentinck and Aubrey Herbert in 1920. He subsequently joined the Labour Party, and in 1929 became Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in Ramsay MacDonald’s government. He, J. H. Thomas, Lansbury and Johnstone were to deal with unemployment. With another clever young Labour M.P., John Strachey, who was his P.P.S., M. studied this intractable problem and devised an economic solution. He wrote a memorandum, described thirty years later (1961) by R. H. S. Crossman: ‘… this brilliant memorandum was a whole generation ahead of Labour thinking.’ When his plan was rejected he resigned, in May 1930. The Nation wrote: ‘The resignation of Sir Oswald Mosley is an event of capital importance in domestic politics… We feel that Sir Oswald has acted rightly—as he has certainly acted courageously—in declining to share any longer in the responsibility for inertia.’ He had become increasingly disillusioned with the leaders of the Labour Party, who were content to remain in office and do nothing about a worsening situation. He wrote a Manifesto which was signed by sixteen M.P.s including Aneurin Bevan, and by Arthur Cook the miners’ leader. Nothing was done on any front, and caught in the world depression the government fell.

  M. decided that in order to be able to translate his ideas into action none of the old parties would be adequate, yet of what use were ideas unless they were acted upon? He formed his New Party, and all the candidates were defeated in the 1931 Tory landslide. Public meetings were his only means of propagating his ideas; he had no daily newspaper. His meetings were frequently attacked, therefore his supporters stewarded them and threw out the smashers. Hecklers he welcomed, for a clever speaker can always amuse his audience at their expense. M.’s movement evolved from New Party to British Union of Fascists as a direct result of smashed meetings; he could no longer be silenced by the meaningless noises of a few rowdies, as in the days before his followers wore black shirts. He called his movement Fascist because it would have been dishonest not to recognize that fascism was a universal movement in the Europe of the period, although it took very different forms in different countries. He was convinced that the English form would transcend the others. M. had a regard for Mussolini as a man who had brought order out of chaos in Italy, but he thought the corporate state, now so widely imitated, was too bureaucratic.

  I went to dozens of his meetings, in halls and out of doors, during the next few years, one or two of which I shall describe. For three years before the war M.’s meetings were perfectly orderly; they culminated in the demonstration at Earl’s Court in July 1939 which filled the biggest indoor hall in Europe. All this was in the future; when I first met him in 1932 M. was about to launch his Fascist movement. Fascism seemed at the time the only dynamic movement led by the only politician in England who combined the experience, the force, the intellect and all the other essential qualities of leadership to make possible the difficult task of shifting the dead weight of Baldwinites on the right and MacDonaldites in the centre with the rump of Labour led by Attlee on the left, which was smothering the country with inertia and complacency. The only notable politicians of the older generation, Lloyd George and Churchill, were both excluded and isolated. This suited the Tory rank and file, who mistrusted brilliance. Like the sphinxes in Goethe’s Faust, their motto seemed to be: ‘Im heiligen Sitz, lassen wir uns nicht stören’. (Do not disturb our sacred repose.)

  Very briefly stated, M. had a national plan to end unemployment and poverty in the midst of plenty; a plan to develop the Empire, a quarter of the globe neglected even by the Conservatives; and he advocated a foreign policy designed to unite Europe rather than seeking always to divide it in the out-dated manoeuvres of balance-of-power politics. He also, two years before Churchill began his campaign, demanded re-armament and parity with any other country in the air. England must not be disarmed in an armed world, he said.

  With his lucidity and intelligence and his gift of oratory, M. appeared to me then, as he does still, the cleverest, most balanced and most honest of English politicians. Above all, it was his generosity and his hatred of cant that made him attractively unlike the general run of men in English public life. He was not what Churchill called ‘one of the goody-goodies’ any more than was Churchill himself.

  In private life M. was the best of companions; he had every gift, being handsome, generous, intelligent and full of wonderful gaiety and joie de vivre. Of course I fell in love with him, and decided to throw in my lot with him. Forty-four years have since gone by; we have had our ups and downs and sorrows and joys and never have I regretted the step I took then. If I have a regret, it is that I could not have done more to help him and further his aims, for there is no doubt in my mind that the disasters which have befallen our country and our continent need never have been.

  M. himself did not underestimate the difficulty of his attempt to change the course of history. He knew the inertia of the mass and the cowardice and petty ambition of politicians as well as anyone. But taking it all into account and with uncanny foresight of what the future would hold for England if the old politicians remained in charge, he wrote prophetic words:

  Better the great adventure, better the great attempt for England’s sake, better defeat, disaster, better far the end of that trivial thing called a political career than stifling in a uniform of blue and gold, strutting and posturing on the stage of little England amid the scenery of decadence until history, in turning over an heroic page of the human story, writes of us the contemptuous postscript: ‘These were the men to whom was entrusted the Empire of Great Britain, and whose idleness, ignorance and cowardice left it a Spain.

  Bryan and I were divorced. We were the recipients of a great deal of advice from friends and relations, but our minds were made up. Roy Harrod, a great friend of us both, wrote me long letters; he thought, as most people did, that we were making a great mistake. Years later I was staying in the same house as his son Henry and on the hall table I saw the well-known tiny handwriting and square envelope used by Roy. I picked up the letter and saw in the nick of time that it was not addressed to me. ‘You’ve got a lovely thick letter from your father,’ I told Henry. He said, ‘Oh,’ and put it in his pocket. I had a feeling that it might have been, like the ones I used to get, a mine of good advice.

  Advice is given by the unworldly. Perhaps worldly people know from experience that it is never taken. Emerald, for example, and Gerald Berners, forbore to cavil.

  Bryan soon married again; a Scotch girl who, like me, was one of a big country family. They had many children and lived happily ever after.

  For me there was no question of marriage, for M. was married already. I looked forward to a long life alone, seeing my beloved M. when he could spare time from his all-absorbing political work and the family to which he was devoted.

  I took a small house at the eastern end of Eaton Square. Nanny was rather pleased because it was within easy reach of the park and the other nannies; she had never cared for Cheyne Walk. Nancy was also quite pleased; she had her room at Eaton Square and we saw more of one another than formerly. Everyone else was cross, predicting disasters. None of my friends approved. However, having delivered a few lectures they soon settled down, and Eaton Square was full of the old familiar faces.

  Then a devastating blow fell upon M. His wife, Cimmie, was operated upon for acute appendicitis, got peritonitis and died. This could hardly happen now, but before the discovery of antibiotics it was fairly common. She left three children, Vivien, Nicholas and Michael.

  M. immersed himself in his political work; his life was entirely given to it. Except that occasionally we went to Paris for a few days, and sometimes I stayed with him at a country house he had at Denham, we saw one another from time to time at
Eaton Square or at his flat in Ebury Street, and my friends became accustomed to my unsociable habit of changing plans at the last minute. For me, M. always came first. He had little leisure, he worked long hours and travelled all over the country, speaking.

  That summer saw the end of Nancy’s love for Hamish St. Clair Erskine, an unfortunate attachment which had lasted for several years. It was obvious that unless a break was made Nancy would remain faithful to the idea of him which she had imagined to herself. Now the break came, and she immediately got engaged to Peter Rodd, a handsome and clever man who despite his undoubted intelligence and even charm managed to be an excruciating bore, buttonholing one and inexorably imparting information upon subjects one was only too happy to know nothing about. Jonathan and Desmond, aged three and two, were pages at Nancy’s wedding in December 1933. Very young and very wild, they were constantly being asked to be pages and every time I dreaded some act of indiscipline which might disrupt the proceedings; however they always behaved perfectly. The solemnity of church and the ladies in feathered hats who gathered for fashionable weddings subdued them.

  Nancy’s letters to Mark Ogilvie-Grant show that for some time she was happy with Prod, as she called him, and thought him a paragon. There can seldom have been anyone whose geese became such glistening swans as Nancy’s. They were very poor and she wrote novels to supplement their income, and also wrote for various magazines. Not for publication was her story The Old Ladies of Eaton Square about herself and me. In it we were frequently visited by an old gentleman who wore a butter-coloured wig, and lived at the other end of the square: Mark. Sometimes our visitor failed to arrive and we knew he had been caught and detained by a pretty young lady in Eaton Terrace, Anne Armstrong-Jones. As well as being much more attractive, she was much cleverer than the old ladies; she could sew her own dresses and was once found by the Old Gentleman sitting on the floor ironing her shoes. We were jealous of her and her talents. This story was the beginning of Mark’s name of Old Gent, or O.G., and of the legend of the butter-coloured wig, which recurs in so much of Nancy’s voluminous correspondence with him and which puzzled her biographer Harold Acton.

  2 Eaton Square was a comfortable, sunny little house looking down the length of the square gardens. The dining-room was minute, and I could no longer give the big luncheon parties I used so much to enjoy at Cheyne Walk. There was just room for six, three a side on red velvet banquettes. Emerald said: ‘Diana’s dining-room is very nice, once you get in,’ an incomprehensible remark to anyone who had not been invited to squeeze on to the banquette.

  At about this time her own parties changed character. One saw fewer writers and painters at 7 Grosvenor Square. More and more she loved to entertain the princes and their friends; that is, the Prince of Wales and Prince George. Partly in order to get more money for Sir Thomas Beecham, the Opera and music in general she tried very hard to enlist the help of the King and Queen, but here she had no luck at all. One realized this rankled; she often said: ‘Who do the King and Queen see? Who is in the King’s set?’ I remember her putting this question to an old courtier, Sir Harry Stonor. He was very deaf, but when at last he understood what she was asking him he blinked his disapproval. The mere thought of the King and Queen having a ‘set’ made us all laugh. The princes were another matter; they often went to Emerald’s, and soon the Prince of Wales began to be accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Simpson; the three of them used to troop in together. This in itself was hardly calculated to commend Emerald to the King and Queen, but in any case she had given them up as a bad job.

  Emerald was always in love. She kept the capacity—as rare in old age as it is common in youth—for concentrating her affection, esteem and illusions upon an individual. The love of her life was Sir Thomas Beecham; George Moore’s adoration she accepted with an uneasy mixture of pleasure and embarrassment. She never knew what he would do next in the way of poetical reminiscences and flowery dedications: Dear Lady of my Heart, dear Lady Cunard. There was more Dichtung than Wahrheit in his writings. ‘To Lady Cunard’, he wrote, ‘a woman of genius. Her genius is manifest in her conversation, and like Jesus and Socrates, she has refrained from the other arts.’

  The audience for this marvellous, intelligent, inconsequent conversation was formed by her luncheon and dinner guests, and although she often invited clever men some of the company was not as amusing as it was fashionable. ‘There are people about that are of no interest to me, as little intelligent they seem as squeaking dolls,’ complained George Moore, and once, with a nip of sarcasm: ‘I was glad to see you brightening as usual the lives of dull people.’

  Sir Thomas she found it impossible to corral, he was always breaking out in various directions. He was often very unkind to Emerald, but probably her love irked him. To console herself she tried to become infatuated with a series of younger men; they all conformed to a recognizable physical type. The antithesis of the ebullient and irrepressible Beecham who was short, stout, rapid, witty and sarcastic, they were tall, languid, gentleman-like and vague. ‘He’s an idealist, dear,’ she used to say of one of them. There was nothing physical in these love affairs; for Emerald they were less than satisfactory, the love all on her side.

  It was this need of hers, together with her vivid intelligence and wide reading, that lifted her into an altogether higher category from the general run of snobbish worldly ‘hostesses’ of whom one has known so many. This is not to suggest that worldliness and snobbishness had no part in her; they had, but there was more to her besides.

  Emerald had lived in England for forty years or so; perhaps she sometimes forgot she had ever lived anywhere else. She once rented a friend’s house while 7 Grosvenor Square was being re-painted; she was loud in her complaints of the rigours of her temporary home.

  ‘There are no faucets near the basin,’ she announced in her high-pitched voice.

  ‘Faucets, Emerald? What are faucets?’ asked several of us. She became quite furious.

  ‘Faucets! Everybody knows what a faucet is.’ ‘It’s American for tap,’ said somebody.

  She was very much put out, and one had the feeling she disliked being reminded in this way of her origins.

  Harold Acton was the only person who succeeded in being friends with both Emerald and her daughter Nancy, until he went away to Peking. Nancy usually lived in France, but she brought her negro friend to London and they stayed at Stulik’s Eiffel Tower. In a moment of spite Lady Oxford informed Emerald of this fact which everyone else knew already. There was a bitter quarrel between mother and daughter; Nancy wrote a polemic ‘Black man and white ladyship’ attacking Emerald, and after that their friends had to choose between them.

  Nancy Cunard was rather beautiful; if Emerald was bird-like she was snake-like. She may have been a good poet, I cannot judge; she was certainly a good writer, and her book about George Moore, ‘G.M.’ deserved a success it never had. Her favourite sport, shocking the bourgeoisie, became such an over-riding passion that she wrecked herself and was more or less crazed with drugs and other excesses. Her black friend, a simple soul, had been taught by Nancy that he must admire, everything African. He equated African with large size: ‘Is this African?’ I once heard him ask, pointing to one of William Acton’s enormous rococo Italian tables.

  Sometimes Emerald took me to rehearsals at Covent Garden. Sir Thomas allowed her to go but she was not supposed to bring her friends, so I kept in the shadows at the back of her box. One day Beecham was annoying Lotte Lehmann, as he often annoyed singers, by rushing the orchestra along at top speed so that I suppose she felt she could not develop the full beauty of her magnificent voice. After he had taken the same few bars three times and left her behind each time, Lotte Lehmann stamped her foot and burst into tears. I felt as embarrassed as someone who inadvertently witnesses a row between husband and wife. Beecham was a great conductor, but his tempi and his sarcasms were exasperating for the singers.

  It is absurd to pretend that Lady Cunard and Lady Colefax were twin hostesses
in pre-war London. There was no comparison between them. Lady Colefax liked to see famous people at her parties, but when she had got them there she had no idea what to do with them. If at her table some clever man began to talk she quickly interrupted; the conversation was stillborn. Emerald made her guests perform to the best of their ability, so that the atmosphere was exhilarating and charged. She fanned the spark of intelligence, fun, interest and amusement into the flame of conversation in a way that was rare in London, where as a rule each person talked only with his neighbour.

  Sibyl Colefax, in order to induce people to come to her house, held out the bait of lions as fellow guests. She invited by postcard, scrawled with initials, and one was supposed to be able to guess that ‘N.C. and W.S.M. are coming’ meant Noel Coward and Somerset Maugham. Gerald Berners sent her a postcard inviting her to luncheon ‘to meet the P. of W.’ Lady Colefax accepted with alacrity, and when she arrived Gerald introduced the Provost of Worcester.

  He sometimes teased Emerald. She had a positive passion for the charming Bertie Abdy, whom she extolled in extravagant terms. ‘Bertie knows all about art,’ she announced one day. ‘In that case,’ said Gerald, ‘how do you account for the fact that he has bought two Fragonards which have turned out not to be by Fragonard after all?’ Emerald was undefeated. ‘They weren’t art!’ she said firmly, and the logic of her reply gave Gerald intense pleasure.

  John Betjeman brought Lord Alfred Douglas to see me at Eaton Square. We tried hard to like him, but we failed. We tried, because he had been ostracized for so many years; we failed, because he was a self-centred bore. All traces of the beauty which had so entranced Oscar Wilde were vanished. Lord Alfred, prompted by us, spoke freely about Wilde, whom he called ‘O. W’, but he had nothing of interest to tell; it was a well-worn twice-told tale. John looked upon him as an ancient, though minor, Victorian monument. Acquaintanceship with ‘Bosey’ probably inspired his marvellous poem about the arrest of Oscar Wilde in the Cadogan Hotel, which he read to us at that time.