Further Praise for The Sisters
“The Mitfords’ stories have been told over and over again, but . . . Lovell, utilizing previously unseen documents, explores the relationships between the sisters . . . and presents the utter ‘fun’ of this privileged but madcap family.”
—Allen Weakland, Booklist
“A captivating read.”
—Amy Strong, Library Journal
“Lovell deftly weaves together the various strands of her subjects’ lives, making great use of letters, interviews and unpublished correspondence, as well as interviews with the two surviving Mitford sisters, Diana and Deborah.”
—Matthew Price, Newsday
“[An] absorbing and delightful biography of the Mitford family.”
—Ann Hellmuth, Chicago Tribune
“Lovell rises with aplomb to the challenges of a group biography, deftly weaving together the narrative threads of six at times radically disparate lives to create a fascinating account of a fascinating family.”
—Publishers Weekly
“This biography presents a fascinating family to a new generation of readers.”
—Lisa Levy, Entertainment Weekly
Biographies by Mary S. Lovell
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A Scandalous Life: The Biography of Jane Digby
The Splendid Outcast: The African Short Stories of Beryl Markham
A Rage to Live: A Biography of Richard and Isabel Burton
www.marylovell.com
THE
SISTERS
The Saga of the
Mitford Family
Mary S. Lovell
W. W. Norton & Company
New York—London
Copyright © 2001 by Mary S. Lovell
First published as a Norton paperback 2003
Originally published in England under the title
The Mitford Girls: The Biography of an Extraordinary Family
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
For information about permission to reproduce selections from
this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
Manufacturing by Quebecor Fairfield
Ebook conversion by Erin Campbell, TIPS Technical Publishing, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lovell, Mary S.
[Mitford girls]
The sisters: the saga of the Mitford family / Mary S. Lovell.—1st
American ed.
p. cm.
Originally published: The Mitford girls. London : Little, Brown, 2001.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-393-01043-0
1. Mitford family. 2. Mitford, Nancy, 1904–1973. 3. Mitford, Jessica,
1917– 4. Mitford, Unity, 1914–1948. 5. Great Britain—Biography.
I. Title.
CT787.M57 L68 2002
920.72’0941—dc21 2001044942
ISBN 0-393-32414-1 pbk.
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.
Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT
234567890
This book is for
Graeme, Shari, Robyn and Imogen
With all the love in the world
Contents
Family Tree
Introduction
1 Victorian Roots, 1894–1904
2 Edwardian Afternoon, 1904–15
3 Nursery Days, 1915–22
4 Roaring Twenties, 1922–9
5 Bright Young Things, 1929–30
6 The Stage is Set, 1930–32
7 Slings and Arrows, 1932–4
8 Unity and the Führer, 1934–5
9 Secret Marriage, 1935–7
10 Elopement, 1937
11 Family at Odds, 1937–8
12 Slide towards Conflict, 1938
13 No Laughing Matter, 1939
14 Irreconcilable Differences, 1940–41
15 Gains and Losses, 1941–3
16 Women at War, 1943–4
17 The French Lady Writer, 1944–7
18 Truth and Consequences, 1948–55
19 Return to the Old Country, 1955–8
20 A Cold Wind to the Heart, 1958–66
21 Views and Reviews, 1966–80
22 Relatively Calm Waters, 1980–2000
Source Notes
Acknowledgements and Credits
Select Bibliography
Index
1. Sydney and Dorothy (‘Weenie’) Bowles in their ubiquitous sailorsuits, c. 1892.
2. Sydney the newlywed, Cowes, Isle of Wight, 1904.
3. David and Sydney with three-year-old Nancy, c. 1907. (Nancy used this image on the cover of her book The Water Beetle.)
4. David Mitford worked his mine in Swastika, Canada, for years but never struck gold. September 1913.
5. The Mitford family in 1912: Nancy, David, Tom, Diana, Sydney and Pam. Note the bloodhound with which David ‘hunted’ the children.
6. Batsford House, which David inherited in 1916.
7. The library at Batsford. A grand house but the Redesdales could not afford to keep it.
8. Seaside holidays at Hastings. Left to right: Diana, Tom and Pam.
9. Diana, Nancy, Pam and Tom with the chickens whose eggs paid for the governess.
10. Nancy aged nine.
11. Nanny ‘Blor’, much loved by all the Mitfords.
12. Unity and Decca (seated), 1922.
13. Decca aged four.
14. Unity aged seven
15. Tom at Eton
16. Nancy (before she cut her hair) and Debo, 1923. There were sixteen years between Nancy and her youngest sister and Sydney asked her to be Debo’s godmother.
17. Annual family photo call at Asthall in 1922. ‘When one looks back at that time, it seems to have been all summers,’ Sydney wrote.
18. Debo skating at St Moritz. She was invited to join the British junior team, but Sydney would not allow it.
19. Nineteen-year-old Diana’s marriage to Bryan Guinness on 30 January 1929, at St Margaret’s, Westminster, was the ‘society wedding of the year’.
20. Diana and Bryan on honeymoon in Sicily.
21. Diana in fancy dress, photographed by Cecil Beaton in 1932 – the year she met Oswald Mosley. Her silver foil wig was made for her by theatre costume designer Oliver Messel.
22. Nancy by Cecil Beaton, 1932.
23. Oswald Mosley with Swedish fencing partner, c. 1932.
24. Unity, Diana and Nancy attending the wedding of a cousin in 1932.
25. Family photo call, Swinbrook House, 1934.
26. Nancy’s marriage to Peter Rodd in 1933.
27. Diana on Mosley’s motorboat during their Mediterranean holiday in 1935.
28. Mosley driving his boat.
29. Julius Streicher presents Unity with a flower.
30. Unity at Hesselberg, 1935.
31. Unity on the front cover of a magazine in 1937. It was widely rumoured that she might marry Hitler.
32. Tom at the Parteitag in 1937. Although in sympathy with Fascist political ideology, he was opposed to Nazi anti-Semitism.
33. Unity and Diana, posing at the request of writer Ward Price. He wanted pictures for his book, I Knew these Dictators.
3
4. Unity with Hitler. One of a series of pictures she and Diana had taken with the Führer.
35. Sir Oswald Mosley takes salute of his BUF ranks, October 1935.
36. Decca with Unity’s storm-trooper ‘boyfriend’, Erich Widemann, in Munich, September 1934. Curiously, she made no mention of this trip in her memoirs.
37. Decca, the reluctant debutante, 1935.
38. The elopers. Decca and Esmond at the Hôtel des Basques on the day of their wedding in May 1937.
39. Esmond and Decca at Rotherhithe, 1937.
40. Esmond and Decca running their bar in Miami.
41. Diana in April 1939, aged twenty-nine, at the height of her beauty.
42. Diana and Mosley, taken the evening before his arrest in 1940.
43. Pam, the ‘most rural’ Mitford, according to John Betjeman.
44. Pam’s marriage to Derek Jackson. (Front row) Sydney, Derek, Pam, David. (Second row) Diana Mosley, Stella Jackson, Nancy Rodd, Aunt Weenie (Dorothy Bailey), Tom Mitford.
45. Debo aged seventeen.
46. David, still prospecting his gold claim in the mid-thirties.
47. Debo and Andrew at their wartime wedding in 1941. David (standing behind Debo, wearing his LDV uniform), broken down by family traumas, ‘looked like an old, old man’. (Left to right, standing) Sydney, 10th Duke of Devonshire, David, Andrew, ‘Billy’ Lord Hartington, Duchess of Devonshire.
48. Unity on her return to England after her attempted suicide, January 1940.
49. Diana with Alexander on holiday at Inch Kenneth, 1947.
50. Nancy, ‘the French lady writer’ in her Paris apartment. A portrait by Mogens Tvede in 1947.
51. Gaston Palewski, Nancy’s beloved ‘Colonel’ and de Gaulle’s right-hand man in the Free French Army.
52. Visit of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip to Debo and Andrew at Edensor House (Emma and ‘Stoker’ in foreground), 1948.
53. Decca, Dinky and Bob, c. 1944.
54. Debo riding Grand National winner Royal Tan at the Devonshire’s Irish castle, Lismore, in the mid-fifties.
55. Diana at the Temple, Paris, 1954.
56. Diana and Mosley with their sons Alexander and Max in Venice, 1955.
57. Nancy and Decca at rue Monsieur in 1962.
58. Sydney with her goats at Inch Kenneth c. 1958.
59. Diana and Mosley in the early sixties. The body language here says it all.
60. Diana with her youngest son Max; Mosley in the background. London, 1962.
61. Four of the sisters in 1967. (Left to right) Cecil Beaton, Nancy, Debo, Pam, Diana and Andrew at a dance after the wedding of Debo and Andrew’s son.
62. Decca in front of a plaque commemorating Tom at Swinbrook church. The pews were donated by David, purchased by a win on the Grand National.
63. Bob and Decca at a testimonial dinner in Oakland, 1993.
INTRODUCTION
During the course of researching and writing this book I have often been asked the question that people ask endlessly of a biographer: ‘Who are you writing about at the moment?’ In answering, ‘The Mitford family,’ I have noticed that recognition begins at about the age of fifty. In other words, if the questioner is over the age of fifty I generally receive a sage nod, below that the polite enquiry, ‘And who are they?’
‘They’ were six beautiful and able sisters, Nancy, Pam, Diana, Unity, Jessica (‘Decca’), and Deborah (‘Debo’). Nancy wrote a series of sparkling bestselling novels, the best known of which are The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, and for which she drew largely upon her family for characters. Decca launched her writing career when she wrote a bestselling memoir of her early life called Hons and Rebels. These three books spawned a genre, which is called by the family the Mitford Industry. Later, both Diana and Debo also produced bestselling books. Yet the Mitford sisters are not known merely for producing literature: they also led extraordinarily full lives, quite independent of each other.
The bones of the sisters’ childhood with their private languages, family jokes and endless nicknames are well known to people of my generation (over fifty), so I have tried to make the story intelligible to readers new to it without dwelling over-much on material about the girls’ childhood that has been told and retold, except when necessary for continuity or when it added measurably to the narrative. What I set out to do was explore the relationships between the sisters, drawing on personal interviews, family papers and correspondence not previously seen outside the family, as well as extensive published sources.
When I began researching, I suppose I had in mind – because of the above books – a frothy biography of life in Society between the wars. Of course I knew of the polarized ideologies of Diana, Unity and Decca but I had not realized how quickly or how completely the mirth of the sisters’ childhood disintegrated into conflict, unexpected private passions, and tragedies.
The girls’ parents, Lord and Lady Redesdale – David Freeman Mitford and his wife Sydney – are perhaps better known to posterity (thanks again to the above-mentioned books) as ‘Farve’ and ‘Muv’. They were honest, well-meaning, salt-of-the-earth, admittedly slightly eccentric, socially retiring minor aristocrats; thoroughly nice people who, because of their extraordinary daughters, were propelled unwillingly, blinking and unprepared, into an international spotlight. Yet if there is a heroine in this book it is surely Sydney. Her loyalty to, degree of concern for and tactful support of all her daughters were unflagging, even when pre-Second World War polemics caused the disintegration of her formerly happy marriage. This strength may come as a surprise to those who recall the ‘Muv’ of her daughters’ writings as a slightly batty, absent-minded and vague personality almost disassociated from the reality of her children’s lives.
Although politics plays a major part in the story of the sisters, this is not a political book, so anyone expecting a stand against Unity or Diana and the far right, or Decca and the far left, must look elsewhere. I accept each of these protagonists as she was, and, in Diana’s case, as she still is. This book seeks to explore the richness of the personalities, not to judge them. The reader is as capable as I am of forming his or her own opinions based on the evidence, and an individual social ideology. Rather, I hope to illustrate the complex loyalties and love, disloyalties and even hate, and above all the laughter that ran through this family’s relationships – they could always find humour even in their own misfortunes. Lord Longford, who has known the family for seventy years, told me, ‘You have to look at that family as fun. They were enormous fun.’1
Two of the sisters are triumphantly alive as I write this book. Diana, at ninety, is still chic and articulate; Debo, serene and utterly charming, celebrated her eightieth birthday in March 2000, yet apparently possesses the energy levels of someone half her age. She is a busy CEO directing a large, successful and constantly expanding organization that employs hundreds of people.
The mere fact that this book deals with nine personalities, three of whom have already been the subject of independent biographies,2 means that for reasons of space much fascinating detail has had to be pruned. For those interested in delving further a bibliography is included. I have had to resist the temptation to explore a multiplicity of players on the twentieth-century world stage with whom various members of the Mitford family came into contact: from Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Adolf Hitler, Paul Joseph Goebbels, Benito Mussolini, Hermann Goering, and General de Gaulle, to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Max Beaverbrook, John and Bobby Kennedy, and Aly Khan; from George Bernard Shaw, Lytton Strachey, Evelyn Waugh, Diana Cooper, Emerald Cunard, John Betjeman and Cecil Beaton, to Katherine Graham, Maya Angelou, Salman Rushdie and Jon Snow. A complete list of the celebrities, heroes and anti-heroes who moved in and out of the lives of the sisters would take pages. Suffice it to say that it is simply not possible to tell the story of the relationships between the members of the family and also indulge the luxury of exploring these fascinating side issues. For the same reason many less wel
l-known personalities who were close to the sisters have had to slip through these pages as mere shadows: their first cousins, for example, who were an important part of their growing-up years, dear family friends, such as Mrs Violet Hammersley, who was like a character from a Victorian novel with her furious pessimism, love of gossip and great affection for the family, and Lord Berners, talented, generous, and eccentric in the grand manner. Then there was a literal host of Decca’s friends in California, among many others.
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