The Mitford Girls

by Mary S. Lovell

  The couple were in Spain by this time. Decca had finally been granted a Spanish visa and after a rough three-day voyage in a small cargo boat across the Bay of Biscay, she and Esmond arrived at Bilbao. Whenever she stopped to think about what had happened it seemed like a dream to her: here she was, in Spain, with Esmond, the embodiment of years of fantasizing. As members of the accredited press corps they were given free board and lodging in the Hotel Torrontegui in the centre of the town which, although it was some distance from the fighting, showed all the signs of a war zone. Food was scarce; meat, eggs, butter and milk were unobtainable. Every meal, breakfast, lunch, supper, was the same, and they existed on beans and coarse grey bread, with an occasional treat of fish, all washed down with the thick chocolate drink of the region. Utility services were spasmodic and garbage was piled up in the nearly deserted streets.

  After a few days they were taken by jeep to the front where a representative of the Press Bureau explained the various battle positions to the assembled reporters. Decca, looking out of place among the contingent of hardened war correspondents, was asked if she would like to shoot a rifle. At that moment she must have wished that she had gone out shooting occasionally with her father for the recoil knocked her off her feet and the bullet embedded itself in a tree. This was Decca’s sole experience of front-line fighting in Spain, and it seemed ‘unreal’. After that, she and Esmond settled quickly into a routine in Bilbao, checking each day with the Press Bureau for war news and spending a few hours each afternoon preparing and typing dispatches for the News Chronicle such as ‘One Night on the Spanish Front: by Esmond Romilly’.12 But she was fidgety and anxious about what was happening at home, half worried that her parents would find a way of bringing her back. She wrote to her mother with pretended insouciance: she and Esmond were quite safe, she said, and they were not to worry about her. She told of how they had been taken to see a prisoner-of-war camp where she thought the prisoners were rather too well looked-after - ‘when you think how the fascists treat their prisoners...’13 Often, at night she could hear the heavy guns as war raged an hour’s drive away.

  At Rutland Gate the Mitford children had soon clustered round the distraught and bewildered Redesdales. Unity had ‘scrammed back’ from Munich as soon as she heard the news of the elopement, and by the time she arrived they had heard via the consul in Bayonne that Esmond and Decca were now in Spain. Prod was well to the fore when legal options were being discussed, with plenty of ‘I-know-I-am-a-lawyer’ suggestions and it was agreed that he and Nancy should go out to Spain and bring Decca home. ‘Prod was boring about the whole thing,’ Unity wrote later. ‘Right from the beginning he wanted to arrange everything and he was dying to be the heroic brother-in-law who rushed out . . . (expenses paid by Farve) to bring you back. Also it was his silly and expensive idea to make you a ward in chancery. I don’t suppose, either, that you loved his piece in the Daily Mail, in which he said that you only became a communist to get even with me.’14 Meanwhile she told of the sad spectre of their parents sleepless for nights on end, with David clumsily making pots of tea for Sydney.

  Through Churchill, the Foreign Office had become involved ever since the Redesdales realized that Decca was missing. Now, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden agreed to allow the Rodds to travel aboard a naval destroyer just leaving for the port of Bermeo (thirty miles from Bilbao) to take off British subjects and refugees trapped by the fighting. Eden also sent a personal cable to the consul in Bilbao: ‘FIND JESSICA MITFORD AND PERSUADE HER TO RETURN’. Meanwhile the family solicitors, Hasties, were instructed to cable Esmond: ‘MISS JESSICA MITFORD IS A WARD OF COURT STOP IF YOU MARRY HER WITHOUT LEAVE OF JUDGE YOU WILL BE LIABLE TO IMPRISONMENT STOP HASTIES’.15

  The same day the British newspapers got on to the story when the Daily Express headlined its front page: ‘Peer’s Daughter Elopes to Spain’.16 This was the sort of romantic episode that reporters could make something of: the pretty teenage daughter of a peer of the realm, eloping with a younger cousin who also happened to be the notorious and rebellious ‘red’ nephew of Winston Churchill. What was more, the girl came from a family with two already newsworthy daughters: Diana, who supported (they dared not go further) Sir Oswald Mosley, and Unity, who had already made her position on Hitler and the Nazis well known. The story, with considerable embellishment, made headlines in all the British papers, and many European ones, for weeks: ‘Another Mitford Anarchist’, ‘Consul Chases Peer’s Daughter’, ‘Mixed Up Mitford Girls Still Confusing Europe’. Unfortunately, despite their scoop, the Daily Express got the sisters mixed up and stated that it was the Hon. Deborah Freeman Mitford who had eloped. Debo subsequently sued for libel because of the damage to her reputation, and settled out of court for a thousand pounds, which she spent on a fur coat. Esmond, who felt that he and Decca had undergone all the hardships and were desperately short of money, never got over the injustice of Debo’s windfall.

  Now that her whereabouts were known, Decca was besieged with mail from home. Nanny was frantic about her wardrobe and whether she had enough underclothes - ‘We shall have no peace while you remain in Spain. Darling, how could you do it?’ she wrote. ‘Do please come.’ On the eve of what should have been the departure of their world cruise Sydney wrote,

  Darling beloved Little D;

  I am writing this for Peter to take to you . . . I think I am living in the most frightful nightmare and half expect to wake up and find it never happened and Little D is here . . . Nannie’s heart is broken . . . Bobo and Debo miss you all the time and the house is so sad . . . I beg you to listen to Nancy and Peter and do as they say . . . It is something to know where you are, I nearly went mad when it seemed you had quite disappeared . . . I can’t help blaming myself terribly for it all . . . I knew you were unhappy, but the cause of it all was beyond me, except that like many girls you had nothing to do. I ought to have been able to help you more . . . Farve is better now but it was frightful to see him so down, I have never seen him like that . . . Tom & Diana & Bobo have been wonderful and helped so much...17

  Tom, Diana and Unity had all sided with Decca, provoking uproar at Rutland Gate. Two weeks later Unity wrote from Munich that when she arrived home she found Aunt Weenie announcing that it would be better if Decca were dead, ‘but I know she thinks that about me and Diana, too’. Unlike her gentler older sister Sydney, Weenie was all for sending Tom to give Esmond a good thrashing, and accused Diana of causing all the problems of Decca and Unity by ‘setting a bad example’. But futile threats to horsewhip Esmond were all that David could manage. Coming on top of Diana’s divorce and marriage to ‘that man’, and Unity’s obsession with Hitler, Decca’s defection had a devastating effect on him and what was to be a rapid physical decline appears to date from this point. The ‘poor old Fem and Male’ were utterly miserable, Unity continued. At first they had suggested that Unity went out to get Decca, but then they decided that,

  as Esmond is by way of hating the idea of me . . . it might do more harm than good. So I came here instead, in the new car Farve gave me . . . four-seater and black. I stayed two days . . . at Nuremburg on the way [and] met the Führer by great good luck last Tuesday . . . he asked me to go to tea with him and I followed his car to his flat and sat with him for 21ł2 hours alone, chatting. He wanted to hear all about you and what happened since I saw him last. He had forbidden it to appear in the German newspapers which was nice of him wasn’t it - at least perhaps you won’t think so as Nancy says Esmond adores publicity.18

  Rudbin wrote to advise that ‘Your elopement has caused the biggest stir since the abdication . . . but darling, you never would have done it if you’d known what misery you’d cause here . . . poor Aunt Sydney seems absolutely broken and wretched, and poor Debo’s eyes filled with tears...’19 Idden wrote as well, and confessed that when she first heard the news she really thought Decca had run off to fight, ‘and I kept thinking of you dead or in screaming agony, and no food or baths. It is absolutely true about Muv and Farve a
nd all the family being broken by it, really sist, what else could you have expected? You must have known the agony it would cause them . . . Uncle Jack [David’s brother] is more wildly against you than all the rest put together. He thinks you ought to be flogged till your nose bleeds!! But I must say he giggled at your letter this morning . . .’20

  The distress of the Redesdales was predictable, but Debo was also deeply affected. The sale of Swinbrook some months earlier had been a great sadness to her, for alone of her siblings she loved the house and considered her childhood there to have been idyllic. Furthermore, Decca had been the nearest sister in age to her: Unity at six years older was virtually grown up by the time Debo was ten. The sight of her parents and Nanny in anguished despair, the absence of Decca on top of losing Swinbrook, and the cancellation of the cruise to which she had been looking forward, hit her hard. Even now she regards this period as one of the unhappiest times in her life.21 However, when she told Decca this, in a letter fifty years later, Decca was truly astonished, apparently never realizing how deeply her running away had affected her youngest sister.22

  But there was no turning back for Decca, any more than there had been for Diana when she made her decision to leave Bryan for Mosley, or for Unity once she had met Hitler. The British consul at Bilbao had gone out of town for a few days and his secretary spoke limited English, so Esmond composed the reply to the Foreign Secretary’s cable for him. The wording of this cable is perhaps a measure of this extraordinary young man and his attitude to authority: ‘HAVE FOUND JESSICA MITFORD STOP IMPOSSIBLE TO PERSUADE HER TO RETURN’.

  Within days, however, Hasties’ cable was delivered to Esmond by the vice-consul, Arthur Pack, who had been sent to the town to deal with the impending emergency of refugees.23 He spelled out the full legal implications of Decca’s being made a ward of court. His warning was reinforced when the British ambassador, Sir Henry Chilton, called Esmond and Decca to his temporary embassy in a hotel. Chilton was renowned as a problem-solver, but one can imagine his irritation: he was in the midst of a real crisis, plagued by hundreds of anxious people wanting assurance that they would be rescued by the Royal Navy, his staff had hardly enough to eat, and now his attention was diverted by this frivolous young couple who appeared to be under the personal protection of the Foreign Secretary.

  He told them that the Basque government was relying on the assistance of the Royal Navy to evacuate women and children refugees, as the battlefront moved towards the coast. Unless Decca boarded the destroyer, he said, the British government would refuse all further co-operation in the evacuation programme; furthermore if they chose not to comply he would notify the Press Bureau of the reason why British co-operation was being withdrawn. It was a no-win situation, for even if Esmond and Decca called the ambassador’s bluff, and Esmond was pretty sure it was a bluff, their Spanish visas would almost certainly be withdrawn. Esmond won one concession: he and Decca would board the destroyer, he said, but would travel only as far as St Jean de Luz, where Nancy and Peter had disembarked a few days earlier as they had no visas to enter Spain.

  Twenty-four hours later Nancy and Peter, surrounded by British reporters, were waiting for them at the end of the dock. Decca, convinced that she could count on Nancy ‘to be on my side through thick and thin’24 had looked forward to seeing her elder sister, though Esmond scowled every time she said this. As far as he was concerned the entire Mitford family were Nazis. ‘Nancy, tall and beautiful’ waved her gloves at them and a fusillade of flashbulbs went off as Decca walked down the gangplank. Hours of intense argument followed, Nancy - no doubt hoping to save Decca from making a similar mistake to her own (and Diana’s) by marrying in haste - argued hotly that Decca should come home and ‘do things properly’, not live with Esmond as she was doing. It was not respectable and Society could ‘make things pretty beastly to those who disobey its rules’.25 Decca was mortified to find that Nancy had ‘ganged up with the Grown Ups’ against her. Prod told Esmond that if Decca went back to England he felt sure Lord Redesdale could be persuaded to give her an allowance, but the implication that he wanted money out of his proposed marriage to Decca, and from such a tainted source as Lord Redesdale whom he referred to as ‘the Nazi Baron’,26 infuriated Esmond. Next morning Nancy and Peter left, somewhat to the surprise of Decca and Esmond, who had expected them to put up more of a fight.

  It was not so much success for the runaways as stalemate, for the British consul made it clear that Esmond’s application for a renewal of his Spanish visa would not be sanctioned as things stood. Yet the couple could not marry. Furthermore their finances were critical. They had spent Esmond’s original advance and two or three sums sent to him by Peter Nevile for the News Chronicle articles. Decca’s running-away money, the thirty-pound dress allowance and an extra ten pounds that David had given her for spending money were also long gone. They now had nine shillings between them,27 so Esmond walked round to the Reuters office and talked himself into a job, translating and transmitting what was being reported by radio from both sides in the Spanish war. This paid two pounds a week, which was exactly the cost of a double bed and board at the Hôtel des Basques. Esmond did not speak Spanish well enough to translate the excitable transmission so the manager of the hotel did it for him each night, refusing however to listen to or translate Falange broadcasts. Esmond made that part up based on what he gleaned from that of the republicans. The couple decided to remain at Bayonne until they could see a way out of the present situation, and meanwhile there was a rapid-fire exchange of letters between Sydney and Esmond, in which he, still livid at Prod’s implied charge that he was after money, was coolly offensive and advised that they considered themselves married so that any letters addressed to Miss Jessica Mitford were being returned unopened.

  Decca had replied to Unity’s chatty letter that she didn’t think Esmond would be very keen on her keeping in touch with a Fascist and Unity’s response was matter-of-fact:

  About Esmond’s feeling for Fascists (actually I prefer to be called a National Socialist) . . . I hate communists as much as he hates Nazis . . . but I don’t see why we shouldn’t personally be quite good friends, though political enemies . . . I do think family ties ought to make a difference. My attitude towards Esmond is as follows - and I rather expect his to me to be the same. I naturally wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him if it was necessary for my cause, and I should expect him to do the same to me, but in the meantime I don’t see why we shouldn’t be quite good friends.28

  Esmond, of course, could see every reason why they should not be friends and his reaction is probably best summed up by a single paragraph in Boadilla:

  I am not a pacifist, though I wish it were possible to lead one’s life without the intrusion of this ugly monster of force and killing - war . . . And it is not with the happiness of the convinced communist, but reluctantly, that I realise that there will never be any peace, or any of the things that I like and want, until that mixture of profit-seeking, self-interest, cheap emotion and organised brutality which is called fascism has been fought and destroyed forever.29

  Sydney now decided to see Decca. She travelled out to Bayonne with the aim of talking her daughter into going home with her. Perhaps if she had gone in the first place, instead of Nancy and Prod, she might have been saved a good deal of heartache, although there was never any chance that she would change Decca’s resolve. Sydney’s calm manner and ability to laugh at most things won Esmond’s grudging respect, while the Rodds had made him bitter and intractable against the entire Mitford family, an attitude he was fast transmitting to Decca. When Sydney left, she had realized that Decca could not be talked out of marrying Esmond and - since Decca had admitted to her in confidence that there was a strong possibility she was pregnant - she said she would see what she could do to help them. Esmond contacted Peter Nevile to say that there was no change in their plans and that Lady Redesdale had left after two days of amicable discussion. On the other hand they were in urgent need of more cash so he
suggested leaking the latest position on the runaways to the News Chronicle - ‘It can’t do any harm, provided it’s not presented with too many details as though a “story” sold to the press. Then we can combine the proper attitude to this “hateful publicity” with a little more filthy lucre.’30 The resultant ‘interview with the runaways’ appeared on 12 March. ‘Unfair tactics on behalf of the British Government - diplomatic blackmail, if you like - are responsible for the fact that Decca and I are [here] . . . I am hoping to return to Spain to continue my journalistic work, and I hope to take Decca with me . . .’

  Esmond and Sydney then engaged in a series of letters in which he bluffed that he was beginning to think that there was not a lot of point in marrying at all. And, when Sydney wrote to say she had persuaded the judge to consent to the marriage and that she would like to attend the wedding, he wrote saying that since the Redesdales had such a low opinion of him he did not want anyone from Decca’s family present. Perhaps this was due to the fact that the same post that brought Sydney’s placatory letter also brought a furious letter from David saying that Decca would never get a penny from him while she remained with Esmond, married or unmarried. The couple now conveniently forgot that they had acted badly and caused distress. They began to regard themselves as victims and it was the start of a long period of acrimony between Decca and various members of her family.

  In the event, both Sydney and Nellie Romilly attended the civil wedding on 18 May. It was, the newspapers said, ‘the wedding that even a destroyer could not stop’ (for by now it was accepted by the press that the Foreign Secretary had sent the destroyer solely to find Decca). After a ceremony of a very few words at the British consulate, Esmond Mark Romilly, bachelor and journalist of the Hôtel des Basques, and the Hon. Jessica Lucy Freeman Mitford became man and wife. Lady Redesdale took the small wedding party to lunch at Bayonne’s smartest hotel. It was all she could do to make a celebration of the day but she regarded it as an ineffably sad rather than happy occasion. It was difficult to accept that her darling funny ‘Little D’, the natural clown of her children, had chosen to marry in such a hole-in-the-corner manner, with no friends or jovial family group to support her. She had not even a wedding gown, just a simple summer dress, bought by Sydney in Bayonne, with a sufficiently relaxed shape to accommodate the slight bulge in the bride’s waistline.31 There were a few gifts to unwrap, which Sydney had carried over with her, and which provided a brief degree of festivity: a portable gramophone from Unity, a pearl and amethyst necklace and earrings from Diana and some books Decca had asked for.