The Mitford Girls

by Mary S. Lovell

  That year Diana was sixteen and in her final year of education before her début. David’s dream house was in the final stages of building and Asthall was to be sold. In the autumn Sydney took all the girls to Paris on an ‘economical trip’ for three months accompanied by Nanny and Miss Bedell, while David finalized the sale of Asthall, organized the move to Swinbrook House, and purchased a town house, in a leafy cul-de-sac, distinguished by two tall white pillars guarding its entrance and overlooking Hyde Park. It was situated in that exclusive triangle bordered by the Harrods end of Brompton Road, Kensington Road and Exhibition Road, and was Sydney’s quid pro quo for the sale of Asthall. It was not a mere whim on her part, although the money she had inherited from her father perhaps entitled her to more of a say in the matter than she would previously have had. With five younger girls to bring out, and the probability of ‘doing the Season’ for at least another fifteen years it made sound financial sense not to continue renting houses in London, and for David - who spent days at a time working at the House of Lords - a home in London would be convenient. For Nancy’s first Season they had rented a house in Gloucester Square, which was not only expensive but ‘dead money’; furthermore, a house in London at that time - in 1926 the year of the general strike - was nothing like the drain on resources that it would be today.

  The Victorian house, 26 Rutland Gate, was - and is - elegant, tall, cream-stuccoed, and on the first of its six storeys it boasted a ballroom for those all-important coming-out dances. David was especially proud of the passenger lift, which he had installed. He was not in London a great deal - he was far too busy at Swinbrook overseeing the finishing off of the new house. The family teased him about his obsession, Nancy especially, addressing letters to him from Paris to ‘Builder Redesdale, The Buildings, South Lawn, Burford, Oxfordshire’. South Lawn had been the name of the old farmhouse on the site but David had decreed the new house would be called Swinbrook House. It was a good tease to refer to it innocently as ‘South Lawn’, which never failed to annoy him.

  The main purpose of the visit to Paris was to establish Diana in a day-school to ‘finish’ her education and improve her French. Pam had done the same thing and it had worked well for her. Sydney had written in advance to the Helleus asking them to suggest suitable establishments and the result, after an interview, was that Diana was accepted by the Cours Fénelon in the rue de la Pompe for a year. Having accomplished her mission Sydney and the others were free to enjoy the remainder of their holiday.

  They stayed in a modest hotel, Les Villas St Honoré d’Eylau in the avenue Victor Hugo, close to the Helleus’ flat, and within a short time of their arrival Sydney took her family along to meet her old friends. Diana was already exhibiting the classical beauty for which she would become renowned. One friend, James Lees-Milne, wrote in his diary that Diana was the most beautiful adolescent he had ever seen: ‘Divine is the word, for she was a goddess. More immaculate, more perfect more celestial than Botticelli’s seaborne Venus.’30 This blossoming allure was not lost on Helleu, either: ‘Voici la Grèce,’ he remarked, taking her by the hand to lead her in and introduce her to his family. Although it was generally acknowledged in the family that Diana was ‘the only one of us who had a face’, any pretensions were firmly squashed by the sensible Sydney, or Nanny Blor, whose famous put-downs, chiefly intended to spare self-consciousness, ran along the lines of ‘Don’t be silly, darling, nobody’s going to look at you.’ Helleu became almost obsessed with Diana’s small, neat head and cool, classical features, which exactly matched a stylized ideal for beauty in the twenties and thirties, and he made a number of portraits of her. ‘He was even a bit in love with me, which complicated things,’ Diana wrote, many years later to a friend, ‘[but] he was the first grown-up . . . who treated me on an equal footing and not as a silly little fool.’31 It was heady stuff to an impressionable teenager.

  ‘I learned more at the Cours Fénelon in six months than I learned at Asthall in six years,’ Diana wrote. Each morning the class of a dozen or so girls did ‘prep’ and in the afternoon they were lectured to and questioned by professors from the Sorbonne. The afternoon classes were larger, for some girls who were taught at home by governesses attended the lectures and question periods. They came mostly from rich backgrounds and were accompanied by footmen who sat and waited all afternoon for their charges. Diana felt very grown-up in being allowed to walk back unattended to the hotel, which was close to the school, but to her annoyance she was still lumped with her younger sisters when it came to experiencing Paris Society.

  While Diana was at school the younger ones were given daily lessons by a French governess. After lessons they would go for a walk in the bois and bowl hoops along the gravel paths. Nancy and Pam were allowed to spend time sightseeing, shopping and were even allowed to go and stay at a château with a family whom Pam had met during her year in Paris and of whom Sydney approved. She would not have been so sanguine had she known that Nancy spent some of her time flirting outrageously with a fellow guest whom she described as ‘the most seductive young man in the country’. One of Nancy’s best friends was Middy O’Neil, granddaughter of Lord Crewe, the British ambassador in Paris, so she and Pam went frequently to the embassy where they met interesting company. Even Diana was allowed to go there occasionally because she would be returning to Paris alone in the new year and Sydney wished her to be introduced to suitable young people. More often, though, Diana had to share tea with Nanny, Unity, Decca and Debo, and for these three the biggest drama of the trip revolved around the temporary escape of their pet hamsters which they called ‘desert rats’. The children feared that if the loss was discovered they would be asked to leave the hotel, and Sydney would be angry at their carelessness. A round-the-clock watch system was established by the sisters, including Diana, during which they sat near the small hole in the floor through which the furry delinquents had escaped, holding out tempting titbits until they were all recovered.

  For Nancy, Paris increasingly became the beau idéal of life. She found there an elegance, glitter, warmth and freedom that were lacking in London. One could be uninhibited there without drawing clucks of disapproval, ‘I have often danced all down the Champs Élysées,’ she wrote to Tom, ‘and no one notices they are so used to that sort of thing . . . Oh I am so excited.’32

  When the Cours Fénelon term ended in December Sydney returned with her brood to London and moved into Rutland Gate. The house was furnished with French furniture brought from Asthall: Louis XVI commodes and secretaires, and white chairs covered with needlepoint. Sydney splashed out and bought new curtains and soft furnishings, and the effect was light and elegant with the exception of David’s business room, which he had furnished himself. He had chosen as curtain material ‘a frightful sort of sham tapestry covered in dingy leaves and berries’, Diana wrote.33 When the children groaned at its ugliness he told them he imagined he saw birds and squirrels peeping through the foliage, which made him feel nearer his coverts at home.

  David was generally down at Swinbrook but Sydney, always happiest in London, busy with her family and running Rutland Gate, never bothered to go down to see what he was up to. Perhaps in view of his taste in curtain material it was unwise of her to allow him a free hand with the new house. But that, surprisingly, is what she did. He told his family he intended it to be even better than their beloved Asthall: there was a bedroom for each member of the family instead of the girls having to ‘double-up’, and even tennis and squash courts. There were garages, staff cottages, greenhouses and gardens. Uncle Tommy, the brother next in age to David, recently married, had seen it all and when he paid a visit to Rutland Gate he assured them, rubbing his hands, that David had provided ‘the best of everything for everybody’. They all missed Asthall but they had every reason to expect that when Swinbrook was completed it would be a marvellous place to live.

  During that Christmas holiday Diana was invited to stay at Chartwell, home of the Winston Churchills. At least at Chartwell, Dian
a noticed with gratification, she was no longer treated as a child. She admired ‘Cousin Winston’ enormously and was always thrilled when she was seated next to him, hanging on his words as he talked politics incessantly. Churchill called her, affectionately, ‘Dina-mite’. Clementine, whom Diana adopted as a role model of elegance and beauty, told her ‘just pull his sleeve to start him off’.

  In the new year of 1927 Winston and Randolph were due to leave for Rome to visit Mussolini, and when Diana returned to Cours Fénelon in early January she travelled to Paris in their company, which obviated the need for Sydney to arrange a chaperone. At the Gare du Nord, she parted from the Churchills and was met by an old woman, one of two sisters who made a living by taking in English girls who were attending finishing schools in Paris. Their boarding-house was close to the hotel where the family had stayed, the school and the Helleus’. Consequently, Diana was allowed to walk alone to school, to her music lessons and to visit the Helleu family. Even this limited freedom was intoxicating.

  Life in the boarding-house was not exactly comfortable. There was no bathroom and twice a week a small tin bath was filled with an inch or two of hot water so that the young residents could bathe. When Sydney sent Diana a small amount of money to enable her to go to the hotel and take a proper bath occasionally the two old ladies considered it not only personally insulting but highly extravagant.

  Diana settled in well at the school and found that as her French improved she could cope easily with the work. Immediately she arrived in Paris she had contacted the young friends made through Nancy and Pam, and used the limits of her freedom to the utmost. Just as Nancy had once used her visits to Eton to cover meeting with her Oxford friends, so Diana invented extra music lessons in order to go to the cinema with a young man, and even - occasionally - to a tea dance.

  And there was Monsieur Helleu, admiring and uncritical, who would take her for a sandwich or coffee, to visit fellow artists, or to walk in the wintry gardens at Versailles, or to Rouen to see the exquisite rose window in the cathedral. As he was a friend of Sydney, this was perfectly allowable. But when Helleu became ill and Diana called at the flat, his daughter Paulette refused to let her see him, which indicates that she was aware of her father’s obsession with Diana and was probably jealous. Diana reciprocated Helleu’s admiration but their relationship was innocent. ‘Monsieur Helleu is terribly ill,’ she wrote to James Lees-Milne. ‘I don’t know how I can write it, coldly like this . . . a man whom I have almost worshipped, and who has worshipped me for three months is going to die. I shall never see him again, never hear his voice saying, “Sweetheart, comme tu es belle,” never ring at his door and hear him come to open it with a happy step. How can I bear it?’34 She had never experienced such gaiety, liveliness and enthusiasm in any man she had ever met. Within a few days Helleu had died and Diana wrote to tell Lees-Milne: ‘. . . Nobody will ever admire me as he did. He called me “beauté divine” always, and said, “Tu es la femme la plus voluptueuse que je n’ai jamais connu.” This from a man who has known all the lovely women of his day in Paris, London and New York, and had the most amazing vie amoureuse. He didn’t believe in God, but he believed in beauty . . . He loved the wind, and clouds, and leaves, and statues, and above all very young women.’35 She returned sadly to London for the Easter recess, taking with her one of the portraits he had made of her, which had been reproduced in the magazine L’illustration and brought her considerable cachet at school. The entire family sympathized at the loss of her friend and she was comforted.

  Shortly before she was due to return to Paris Diana was out walking in the park with Pam one morning when she suddenly realized she had left her diary lying open in the drawing room. She had been writing in it after breakfast when someone had telephoned and she had forgotten to return to it. She returned home hastily but as soon as the door was opened she knew there was trouble. ‘Her Ladyship wants to see you,’ said Mabel, the parlourmaid. She heard her mother calling her to come at once, and the dreaded ‘Diana!’ From that she knew things were bad. She was never called Diana in the family: Sydney called her ‘Dana’, David called her ‘Dina’, Nancy ‘Bodley’, Pam and Unity ‘Nardy’, Decca called her ‘Cord’, and Debo called her ‘Honks’. ‘Diana’ meant she was in deep trouble. ‘Useless to protest the harmless-ness of what I had done; to have been to the cinema alone with a young man, in Paris, even in the afternoon, was a frightful disobedience and an almost unforgivable crime.’36 Of course, if she had written of all the things that Monsieur Helleu had said to her, her parents might have been even more upset.

  It was the worst Mitford row in years. After the initial explosion David and Sydney did not speak to her for several days, and at first her sisters were sympathetic. But the tense atmosphere in the house persisted while their parents decided what to do about the matter and soon her sisters were all affected by the tension and gloom, and by the inevitable tightened restrictions on their own freedom. They became irritated with Diana, calling her a fool for leaving her diary lying about in the drawing room - ‘How could anyone be so stupid!’

  There was no question of her being allowed to return to Paris: telegrams were sent cancelling all her arrangements there. Neither, since she was in disgrace, could she simply be detained at Rutland Gate. The Season was just about to begin with lots of plans already made for Nancy and Pam; she would be in the way and she certainly did not deserve any treats. Nor could she be sent to Swinbrook, which was not yet ready for habitation. At last a decision was reached. She was to spend the summer with ‘the little ones’, Nanny and Miss Bedell, the current governess, at Bucks Mill, a seaside cottage at Clovelly in Devon belonging to a great-aunt, Lady Maude Whyte. There, Diana suffered the terrible agony of boredom. Only Unity at twelve and Decca, nine, were of schoolroom age. Debo was taught by Sydney when she was at home, and now, on holiday, was in Nanny’s sole charge. There was nothing to capture Diana’s interest: she had nothing to read, no money to buy books, no one of interest called on them, and the three long months limped by with an agonizing slowness. She ‘ached’ at the waste of time. In Paris she had been so close to everything that was worth living for, and the wonderful opportunity to learn, to use her brain. That summer at Bucks Mill was a truly awesome punishment.

  At the end of the holidays Nanny took them home, not to lovely Asthall but to the newly completed Swinbrook House. They claim to have been horrified. With the exception of seven-year-old Debo, who came to love it, and David, the family hated it. Everything was wrong: the design, the materials, the very newness of it. Instead of Asthall’s weathered old stone, encrusted here and there with lichen, they found a huge, square, three-storey, new stone building, which the family described as looking like ‘an institution’. Nancy called it Swine-Brook.

  For the older children the worst aspect was its lack of a bolt-hole. One of the best things about Asthall had been the privacy of the library, situated away from the main part of the house. The grand piano had been in the library at Asthall, and Tom had practised there for hours; he was an excellent pianist and might easily have become a professional musician. At Swinbrook, though, the piano was in the drawing room, so Tom hardly bothered to play it because he could never do so without being disturbed. More often at Swinbrook it was Sydney who played the piano, and the family and visitors gathered round to sing old parlour favourites, like the stirring ‘Grace Darling’ or sentimental Victorian ballads such as ‘The Last Rose of Summer’.

  True, the girls each had their own bedroom, but they were on the top floor, and fires were never allowed there unless they were ill. Sometimes in the winter they found their sponges and face-cloths solid with ice. Sydney especially hated the rustic look of rough-hewn beams and local stone fireplaces. The green elm of the new doors warped and shrank, and made the house draughty. Situated on the top of a hill, on the site of the original old Georgian farmhouse, Swinbrook had wonderful views but it was exposed to the worst of the weather, and with its draughts, and the damp chill from plasterw
ork that had still not dried out, it always seemed cold. A guest who visited there, however, describes it as a cheerful, light house. The drawing room was especially comfortable with its brilliant white walls and chimneypiece of rough stone, while the tall french windows provided long views across the valley. It was ‘lavishly provided with books and flowers’ - a typical Sydney touch.

  David was hurt by the family’s rejection of Swinbrook: it even affected his enjoyment of his fishing, and shooting in his own coverts. He had never felt about Asthall as his family did, and one of his nieces thought he was always troubled by the ghosts at Asthall and was ‘jolly pleased to leave it’. At Swinbrook he closeted himself gloomily in his study, which he had made child-proof by fitting an oversize mortice lock to the door. His plan was not only to lock out his children, but sometimes to lock them in for a telling-off. ‘However,’ Nancy wrote, ‘we children usually managed to effect an escape.’ The family called it ‘the closing room’, after Decca pointed out that since he spent virtually all his time in there, often with his eyes closed while he was ‘thinking’, it was almost inevitable that one day he would close his eyes there for the last time. Even the servants began to use the term: ‘Miss, His Lordship wants you in the closing room . . .’