The Mitford Girls

by Mary S. Lovell

  No matter what Mosley faced, Diana remained steadfastly loyal. She and the children spent the summer of 1947 at Inch Kenneth, and loved it, but like many of her friends following the war years what she really longed for was to travel in Europe again. She hankered after sunshine and the carefree ambience of the Mediterranean, but this was impossible because the government refused to grant the Mosleys passports. ‘Not allowing free travel is one of the typical features of socialism everywhere,’ she wrote with chagrin,13 but Decca and Bob had precisely the same problem in the USA: their membership of the Communist Party made them ineligible for passports.

  As usual Mosley found an answer. He discovered that under Magna Carta any British subject has the right to leave his country and return to it at will. No passport was required in law, though in practice the shipping lines and airlines prevented travel by refusing to sell tickets to anyone without one. His answer to the Foreign Office was to purchase a boat, a sixty-ton ketch called the Alianora, complete with skipper and crew. It was not a smart, gleaming yacht but a strong, sea-kindly, ocean-going working vessel. The Mosleys made no secret of their plans, and mentioned them to many people; on the day before their departure in the early summer of 1949, their passports suddenly arrived in the post. Diana believes that the Foreign Office did not wish to look foolish, but she is, understandably perhaps, jaundiced.

  Unlike her mother, Diana was no sailor and she was seasick, but as they sailed south to Bordeaux, Corunna and Lisbon she was thrilled to be free at last of petty restrictions. Max and Alex went with them and they all celebrated Diana’s thirty-ninth birthday in Lisbon. From there they sailed to Tangier and Formentor. Then the two boys returned to the UK, as they were to spend half of the summer with Sydney at Inch Kenneth while the Mosleys went on to cruise the ports of the Mediterranean and meet up with many old acquaintances from pre-war days. They visited Nancy who was staying with friends near Marseille, and at the end of the summer Debo came to join them in Antibes. On the last night of their holiday the trio dined in one of the old grand restaurants frequented by Mosley a decade earlier. He wrote,

  Debo . . . was now a married woman of some years standing, but she looked so young in her diaphanous summer clothing that no one would have believed it. Waiters observed me dining magnificently in the presence of Diana, then at the height of her extraordinary beauty, and of this lovely child, enchanting and seemingly enchanted for to their astonishment she finally pulled a wad of notes from her pocket and paid the immense bill. An old waiter whispered in my ear, ‘C’est Monsieur qui a la chance.’

  They left the boat in France for the winter and Debo drove them back, ‘along that road,’ Mosley wrote, ‘more golden in our eyes than the one to Samarkand, back to England and politics’.14

  They stopped off at Nancy’s Paris apartment and memories of her sunny courtyard with its pots of geraniums provided a sharp contrast to the grey austerity that gripped England that winter. The Mosleys spent one further summer aboard the Alianora visiting Venice and all their favourite places, and then she was sold, having well served her purpose. Mosley had begun to feel that in order to become a true European it was necessary to leave England. In 1951 Crowood was sold and the Mosleys moved to Ireland, where they bought the former palace of Irish bishops, Clonfert Palace in County Galway.

  Pam and Derek Jackson were already living in Ireland. They had left Rignell in 1947, driven out of England, like so many rich people, by 98 per cent super-tax. Initially they rented Lismore Castle, the Devonshires’ Irish seat, but eventually, through Ikey Bell, one of the most famous names in foxhunting history, they found a house of their own, Tullamaine Castle, near Fethard in County Tipperary. Their life revolved around horses: Derek indulged his passion for foxhunting and steeple-chasing. Pam rode every day, though the weakness in her leg, resulting from the polio, prevented her hunting, and ran the farm. At first the life suited them admirably but after the delights of tax freedom faded, and unlimited horsy society paled, Derek became fidgety. His first love had always been science and he missed being able to pop into the laboratory at Oxford to use the facilities there or argue a technical point with Professor Lindemann, now Lord Cherwell. He was invited to Ohio State University as a visiting professor,15 and began to spend several days a week in Dublin, where he had access to several laboratories at Dublin University and Dunsink Observatory. Pam did not object to his absences, but while he was working in Dublin he met and fell in love with Janetta Kee, a young divorcée. Pam gave Derek the divorce he requested, and remained at Tullamaine for a short time. Then she sold it and went to live near Zurich amid picture-book scenery. She used her house there as a base for the frequent travelling she enjoyed. Later she bought a cottage in Gloucestershire.

  Derek married Janetta and they had a daughter, Rose, of whom he was immensely proud, but a child did not cement the marriage. After a few years the couple divorced and Derek married three times more. This flamboyant character, who was a major personality in the lives of the Mitfords, used his money to enjoy the lifestyle of a bygone age. He would stop trains by pulling the communication cord to complain about dirt in his carriage, would contemptuously toss a ten-pound note at Jockey Club stewards in payment of a fine for some riding misdemeanour, finished twice in the Grand National riding his own horses, and was a much-decorated war hero. His intellect was only just short of genius yet he would happily revise complicated travel plans to avoid ‘hurting the feelings’ of his beloved dachshunds. Pam’s marriage to him lasted fourteen years, and was the only one of his six marriages - apart from the last, which ended with his death - to endure for more than a couple. Pam and Derek always remained great friends and saw each other frequently after he went to live in France, where he became a researcher at the Bellevue Laboratory near Paris.

  Both Prod and Andrew Cavendish, who had become Marquess of Hartington at the death of his elder brother, had tried to get into Parliament after the war. Prod did not get further than the initial interview, which Nancy had forecast because, she said, married to a Mitford he hadn’t a hope of being selected as a candidate. Nevertheless, she said, she ‘egged him on’ because candidates were given ninety extra petrol coupons. Andrew, however, following family tradition,16 twice contested the constituency of Chesterfield in 1945 and 1950, both times unsuccessfully. A friend who canvassed for him was told by a voter, ‘they like ’im, but they say booger ’is party’. 17

  In 1946, Andrew’s father, the 10th Duke of Devonshire, made over the estate to him in an attempt to shelter the family’s assets from the punitive new rate - up to 90 per cent - at which death duties were levied by the post-war Labour government. The assets were transferred into a discretionary trust, called the Chatsworth Settlement, the beneficiaries of which were Andrew and his family. As the inheritance laws stood Andrew’s father had to live for five years after transferring the property to avoid paying duty,18 and since the Duke was a healthy fifty-one-year-old, it seemed a pretty safe bet. Even so, he once told his son that every Sunday when he attended church he mentally ticked off another week of the five years. Meanwhile, there was a great deal for Andrew to learn. He had expected to have to earn his living after the war, and it was Billy who had received all the training appropriate to the duties of the head of the family.

  A year later Debo, Andrew and their two children, Emma and Peregrine - called ‘Stoker’ by everyone, even today19 - moved to the pretty village of Edensor (pronounced locally as ‘Enzer’), which is part of the Chatsworth estate. Living at Edensor House, a fifteen-minute walk across the park, meant that they were able to get to know the great house and its land. But while the estate was in good heart, Chatsworth House was in a sorry condition.

  The family had hardly lived in it for many years, and no decorating had been done at all since before the First World War. The plumbing was Victorian or worse, there were no modern bathrooms and hardly any hot-water supply. The 9th Duke and Duchess had preferred to live in other family properties. Andrew’s father inherited in 1938, but
he and his duchess lived at Chatsworth for only a few months that first winter. They held a lavish party there in August 1939 for Billy’s coming-of-age, but a month later the house was turned over to Penrhos College for the duration of the war. The college’s premises, safe in North Wales, had been requisitioned by the Ministry of Food and it was inevitable that Chatsworth would also be required for the war effort. The Duke wisely reasoned that three hundred girl boarders and teaching staff would do far less damage than a large number of servicemen so it became a boarding-school. The most valuable furniture and pictures were moved to the library, where Rembrandts, Van Dycks and Reynoldses were stacked against the bookshelves. The silk-covered and panelled walls were boarded over to protect them. When the school decamped in 1946 the great state rooms had taken on an institutionalized appearance after six years as dormitories, classrooms, dining hall, gymnasium and study rooms. The only staff employed to clean had been two housemaids left in situ by the family.

  When Debo first saw it after the war she thought it ‘sad, dark, cold and dirty. It wasn’t like a house at all, but more like a barracks . . . careful tenants as Penrhos College and the girls were, the sheer number of them had made the house pretty shabby and worn when they left . . . It was very depressing.’20 Her parents-in-law had lost heart after Billy’s death but they organized the cleaning, the reinstatement of pictures and furnishings, and some redecoration, although the government limited the supply of paint to £150’s worth. At Easter 1949 they reopened the house to the public. There was still a huge amount of work to do but this was planned to take place over years rather than months.

  Like the Mosleys, Debo and Andrew travelled a lot in the post-war years, enjoying the South of France and Italy, which had none of the austerity of England. Debo often stayed with Prince Aly Khan at his fabulous villa Château l’Horizon where she met movie stars and other famous people, the food was delectable and every luxury supplied. Yet she enjoyed life at Edensor House too: she was and is a countrywoman, and was much at home there. She had suffered greatly from the loss of two babies, but ‘Em and Sto’ were plump, healthy and intelligent children and a joy to their aunts. To Diana, they helped to compensate for the years she had lost in seeing her own babies grow up. To Pam, called by Emma’s generation Tante Femme, Emma and Stoker, Max and Alexander were the nearest she would come to having children of her own. Nancy, too, loved her nephews and nieces, recounting stories of them with unalloyed pleasure. When she visited them in September 1946, when Stoker was two and a half, she said to him, ‘Can you talk?’ He answered, ‘Not yet.’21

  On 26 November 1950, Andrew’s father died suddenly of a heart-attack while chopping wood at Compton Place, his house near Eastbourne. He was fifty-five and had given every impression of being fit and healthy so it was a great shock to everyone. Andrew was in Australia studying farming methods and flew back immediately; Debo met him at London airport. The death of his beloved father was a stunning blow to Andrew in every possible way for he had lost in him a friend and mentor. Furthermore, the Duke had died fourteen weeks short of the vitally important five years. As a result death duties of 80 per cent were now due on all resources. It looked as though the estate would have to be broken up, and many of the treasures and works of art, collected by the family over four centuries, sold off to pay the horrendous bill. Andrew was now the 11th Duke, but it seemed that the title might be all that could be salvaged. From this moment Chatsworth became the centre of his and Debo’s lives. It seemed unlikely that they could save it for their children and their descendants, but they were not prepared to give it up without a fight.

  Meanwhile, Nancy was at work on a sequel to The Pursuit of Love. It did not ‘write itself ’ this time and she struggled with it for several years. Love in a Cold Climate was published in July 1949 and was even more successful than its predecessor. Although Sydney was proud of Nancy’s success she was less happy about being cast again as Aunt Sadie. Too many people thought that Aunt Sadie was Lady Redesdale in real life, and Uncle Matthew Lord Redesdale.

  Though riding the crest of a wave in her literary career, Nancy’s personal life was less successful. The Colonel was often too busy to see her, occupied with his political career or engaged in one of his other love affairs. To be fair to him, he did little to encourage Nancy’s dependence: he would never sleep at her apartment, though he was happy to lunch or dine there. She became an emotional beggar: ‘Darling Colonel,’ she wrote typically, ‘I know one is not allowed to say it, but I love you’22 or ‘I wish I were sitting on your doorstep like a faithful dog waiting for you to wake up you darling Col . . . Do miss me.’ She wrote scores of letters to him that are almost painful to read, in consideration of who and what she was. Although she pretended to treat his casual neglect as a joke, and made light of it in correspondence to family and friends, she was deeply wounded. But she had no option if she wanted their relationship to continue. She could not give him up and she hated to leave him even to take a holiday.

  Once, in the Louvre, she saw him wandering around hand in hand with a former resistance heroine who had been in love with him for some time.23 The Colonel looked so ‘fearfully happy’ that Nancy was knocked sideways, and convinced herself he had proposed marriage. She rushed home and in agonies of jealous misery considered taking an overdose. At last she rang Palewski who was delighted to hear from her:

  absolutely angelic. I kept saying but you looked so happy [Nancy wrote to Diana] . . . ‘No, no, I’m not happy,’ he said, ‘I’m very unhappy.’ So dreadful to prefer the loved one to be unhappy - I ought to want him to marry, I know. He did say, ‘but you are married, after all,’ & I know he really longs to be, & I feel like a villainess to make all this fuss . . . the fact is I couldn’t live through it if he married & what is so dreadful is I know I can stop him - or at least I think so - and that condemns him to . . . loneliness and no children. Perhaps I ought to leave Paris for good . . . I must say this has plunged me into a turmoil - oh the horror of love. Later: I’ve just been to see him and told him about the pills, which I see to have been a great mistake, he’s simply delighted at the idea. ‘Oh you must, you must, what a coup for me.’24

  But it is clear that Nancy would never have left Paris. Her apartment was the epitome of elegance; living there was one of the great pleasures of her life and with her earnings she was able to indulge her passion for designer clothes. Her svelte figure suited the New Look admirably and she wallowed in the luxury of Dior and Schiaparelli outfits with tight waists and long, full skirts, so feminine after wartime fashion. Only occasionally was she driven to complain to Palewski about her situation: ‘I said “I’ve given up everything - my family, my friends, my country,” & he simply roared with laughter, & then of course so did I.’25

  One of Nancy’s biographers said that the tragedy of Nancy’s life was that she never came first with anyone. From the moment of Pam’s birth she always had to share affection. To the four loves of her life, Hamish, Prod, André Roy and, most importantly, Gaston Palewski, she was not their great love. This was sad for her, as was the lack of children, but it does not mean her whole life was tragic: one only has to read her letters to see that.

  When Peter Rodd finally asked for a divorce on the grounds that he was tired of being cuckolded, her first reaction was ‘Good’. Although she did not underestimate the social implications of being a divorcee, she had tolerated his womanizing for years, and now that Prod had access to her bank account in England he plundered it. Perhaps if she was free to marry, the Colonel might oblige, despite his protestations that he must marry a rich, single Frenchwoman for career reasons. But divorce was a protracted process, and there were tax considerations, bearing in mind Nancy’s earnings and her domicile in France. In the event it was another seven years before Nancy was free of Prod.

  When Palewski was too busy to see her, Nancy was not lonely - far from it. She had a host of friends and her work; she turned out books regularly. There were two further volumes in the style of The Pur
suit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, called The Blessing (1951) and Don’t Tell Alfred (1960), in which Nancy’s best female friend, Diana Cooper, was the basis for Lady Leonie, counter-heroine to the narrator, Fanny, who was modelled on Nancy’s childhood friend Billa Harrod (née Creswell) - who was conveniently married to Cooper’s replacement as ambassador to France. According to one visitor, 7 rue Monsieur was a cultural annexe of the British embassy, a congenial salon for the upper classes and literati of England and France. Nancy also became an eminent biographer, which she enjoyed even more than writing novels and which was just as financially rewarding. By the time the Duff Coopers left the Paris embassy Nancy had a huge number of friends in the city. Eventually the Mosleys and Derek Jackson also went to live there, and Pam often called in as she passed through between her homes in Gloucestershire and Switzerland.