The Mitford Girls

by Mary S. Lovell

  Just before Christmas in 1954, Mosley and Alexander were alone in the house while Diana was in London. During the night a chimney fire set the house alight. The horses whinnying in the stables raised the alarm, but there was no telephone and a member of staff was sent by car to fetch the fire brigade. In saving the life of the cook, who had been safely evacuated but returned to an upper room to rescue her savings, Mosley and Alexander had no time to control the blaze, which, by the time the fire brigade arrived, had taken hold. It consumed the old house, which had been as dry as tinder since Diana had installed central heating, and many of their most treasured belongings, including most of their pictures. In the morning Mosley and Max drove to the airport to meet Diana, and break the news to her before she heard it from anyone else. ‘The aircraft landed and she came across the tarmac waving and smiling happily,’ Mosley wrote, ‘. . . then came to me a strange sense, heavy with the sorrow of things: for . . . we were in the sad position of the fates of classic tragedy, aware of what is coming to happy mortals who themselves are unconscious of . . . destiny.’2

  As I approached [Diana wrote], I noticed that he was unshaven. He took my hand and said gently, ‘Sit down here on this seat. Everything is all right, nobody is hurt.’ ‘Hurt!’ I said, and my heart missed a beat . . . For many days afterwards, my hands trembled so that I could not hold a pen . . . The losses I minded most were a drawer-full of letters . . . three studies in sepia ink that Tchelichew had done of me and the boys . . . A drawing by Lamb of Jonathan . . . photographs of M and the children, the irreplaceable things with which one surrounds oneself.3

  They bought a house near the Devonshires’ Irish seat at Lismore where they lived until 1963, but by then they also owned a small property at Orsay about twenty miles from Paris. It was a delightful little jewel of a property, a pavillon, built in the exaggerated classical Palladian Directoire style, in 1800, to celebrate General Moreau’s victory at Hohenlinden by the architect of the Madeleine. It was called Le Temple de la Gloire, and potential buyers were told they were not allowed to change this; it was the only thing about it that Mosley did not like. Even years later, as an elderly man, he suffered twinges of embarrassment when asked by a fellow Englishman for his address. On giving it he sensed polite restraint, and somehow knew that his questioner was thinking, ‘He was always a little exalté and now is right round the bend.’4 Diana adored everything about it. They purchased it as an empty shell in 1950 when it needed complete restoration, having stood empty for a number of years. They had no furniture, and because of currency restrictions Diana had a limited amount of francs, but she haunted the salerooms and got tremendous bargains as the Empire style she liked was temporarily out of fashion. Shortly after they bought the Temple, David had visited Paris - his last trip to France - and given Diana five hundred pounds to buy curtains. He met Mosley then, and to Diana’s delight the two men got on well together.

  From now on Diana’s life was a kind of reverse of Nancy’s.5 Where Nancy had great professional success and an unhappy personal life, Diana and Mosley enjoyed the sort of happy relationship where each partner was an exact half of a loving and interdependent union; the sort of marital relationship everyone would choose. But both Mosley and Diana wasted their considerable abilities in attempting to revive his career. He had mellowed: his actions, speech and even his appearance were somehow less theatrically threatening, but his post-war political aspirations were doomed to impotence.

  This is not to say the Mosleys achieved nothing after the war. Between 1953 and 1959 Diana was the editor of an intellectual magazine they founded, called the European, and demonstrated that, like Nancy, she was a natural writer. Eventually it folded because its limited circulation meant it could not support itself, but it attracted many respected writers. In the years that followed she became a noted reviewer for Books and Bookmen and also for the London Evening Standard.

  In 1959 Mosley stood for Parliament in North Kensington as the Union Movement candidate, espousing a united Europe and opposing non-white immigration. Although he insisted that his policies were economic, not racist, most people regarded him as being ‘anti-black’. Nevertheless, he received almost 10 per cent of the vote, and although this was insufficient to win the seat he was heartened that he had achieved a notable result without party support. He was never able to capitalize on this base, however, and during a series of meetings of the Union Party, held around the UK in 1962, he was the target of several physical attacks. The worst of these occurred on 31 July in the East End of London when he was thrown to the ground, kicked and punched before his supporters could help him. So serious was that attack that it was believed there might be a plot to kill him. He was still loathed by the general public, and his meetings were always portrayed as rowdy in the newspapers, though in reality they tended to be tame and quiet compared with his pre-war rallies. In private, however, the Mosleys were not only accepted but welcomed whenever they appeared in London, even by former enemies. On one occasion when they were lunching with Frank Pakenham, now Lord Longford, at the Gay Hussar in London, the arch-socialist Michael Foot was at the next table. ‘I saw Mosley look at him uneasily,’ Lord Longford said. ‘After Foot had finished his meal he stopped at our table and said, “What a pleasure to see you again, Sir Oswald.” After he left Mosley said softly, “How English. How English. Only in England could that happen.”’6

  Mosley continued to attend Fascist meetings in Europe, though one scheduled in Venice while Nancy was there was cancelled after Communists rioted about it. Nancy declared that she was ‘outraged that Mosley is still going about lecturing as if the war had never happened’, although the lectures were about a united Europe. Nancy and Diana were once again on friendly terms, but Nancy had never taken to Mosley: she considered that he had irreparably damaged Diana’s life, and that because of loyalty to him Diana could never say so. Mosley did not like Nancy much, either, regarding her as silly, frivolous and disloyal to Diana. They tolerated each other because they both loved Diana, but they realized that politics was a subject to be avoided.

  In 1968 when Mosley’s autobiography My Life was published Nancy wrote to Decca, ‘Have you noted all the carry-on about Sir Os? He says he was never anti-Semitic. Good gracious! I quite love the old soul now but really -!’7

  Time had done nothing to lessen Nancy’s attachment to Palewski and she was badly shocked when she learned that he had been involved in a long-term liaison with a married woman who had a son by him. Even this did not affect her love for him. Gradually she became resigned to the situation but she was unhappy that she was ‘no use to you. When things go badly you don’t need me, when they go well you turn to other, prettier ladies,’ she wrote to him. ‘So I seem to have no function . . . we are both trapped and frustrated in our different ways - I must say we take it well, neither of us shows a sad face to the world nor are we specially embittered.’ She had sat by the telephone for three long days waiting for him to call, she told him, only to hear he had called a mutual woman friend ‘for a chat. It was too much to bear.’8

  When David’s will was published his treatment of Decca created more headlines: ‘Redesdale Will Cuts Out Madcap Jessica’ and ‘Red Sheep Cut Out Of Will’ were typical (‘It did so remind me of Miranda,’ said Decca). Nancy was intensely irritated by her father’s ‘mad’ will, considering it unjust. After thinking it over for a few weeks, she decided to give her share of the island to Decca by way of compensation. ‘It seems to me the very least after the way Farve treated her,’ she wrote to Sydney. ‘What does she want it for? She doesn’t say. Atom base I suppose; you’ll probably see Khrushchev arriving any day.’ It was yet another of Nancy’s amazing acts of kindness, and Decca was touched. She had taken no umbrage against her father: as far as she was concerned they had parted ways long ago and she was astonished, while on holiday in Mexico, to be tracked down by journalists and asked to comment. ‘I simply told them I wasn’t expecting to be left anything,’ she wrote, ‘and couldn’t see why it was su
ch staggering news.’9

  Nancy’s gift meant that Decca now owned two-fifths of Inch Kenneth, with Diana, Debo and Pam owning the remainder. After David’s death, Sydney thought she could no longer afford to go on living there and that the island would have to be sold. However, Decca’s Romilly inheritance had now been announced at £11,400, and Dinky begged her parents, with tears in her eyes, to buy the island and let Granny Muv live there. And this is what happened. Because of Nancy’s gift Decca was able to buy out her sisters’ shares,10 and the legal arrangements were finalized during her visit to England in 1959. It was to be a momentous, even life-changing, visit for her in more ways than one.

  Dinky had just started as a freshman at Sarah Lawrence College11 and did not accompany Decca and Benjamin, who travelled to England by ship, leaving Bob to fly over some weeks later, after he had completed a particularly important case. A month before Decca sailed, Blor died, a great sadness to Decca because Blor had always represented the one fixed star of her childhood. She had longed to see her again and show her the manuscript. Sydney met Decca and Benjamin at Paddington Station ‘tottering’ down the platform, ‘palsieder than ever,’ Decca wrote to Bob, knowing how he loved to hear Mitford stories. ‘She told me later she had arrived at 1.30, only to find that we couldn’t arrive until 3.30. She wondered how to fill the time and noticed some public baths so decided to have a bath while waiting . . .’ They had driven straight to the mews where Nancy was waiting and they had laughed so much that her face ached.12

  Decca’s family and childhood friends were all convinced that Esmond had been the love of Decca’s life and that her marriage to Bob was a friendly but far less passionate relationship. Her letters to him during this trip and over the years that followed disprove that view. Here were all the same loving phrases she had used in her letters to Esmond: ‘darling angel’ and ‘I so long for you to arrive’ and ‘Goodnight darling . . . do remind me not to plan these long trips without you any more, as I miss you fearfully.’ 13

  A few days after her arrival in London, while visiting the offices of the Communist Party, she asked one of the lawyers there if he knew of a good literary agent. He recommended James McGibbon at Curtis Brown. She made an appointment and went to see him. They chatted pleasantly until suddenly he floored her with the question: ‘Oh, by the way, were you a member of the American Communist Party?’ From an American this would have been an extremely hostile question, and the precursor to having the manuscript returned across the desk. Decca’s heart thumped, and she flushed, but she looked at his friendly expression and decided to be open about it. ‘Yes,’ she answered, and explained that she had left a year earlier and why. ‘Oh, so was I,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘I left for the same reason.’ Decca thought the conversation ‘superbly un-American’.14

  She left the manuscript with him and expected to hear nothing for about six weeks, the length of time it had taken to hear back from publishers in the USA. But within days McGibbon had sold the book to Gollancz. Furthermore Lovell Thompson of Houghton Mifflin in New York happened to be in London and he bought the American rights. By then Decca was staying with one of her Farrer cousins, Rudbin - Joan Farrer, now married to Michael Rodzianko, whom Bob and Decca disliked intensely. She returned from a freezing outing with Benjamin on the Thames to find Rudbin jumping up and down screaming that the book had been sold in the UK, with a £250 advance, and in the USA for $1,500. ‘You’ve got to go round there tomorrow and sign the contracts.’ Decca had hoped for five hundred dollars if the book was accepted, and scarcely able to believe it, she cabled Bob. Back came his teasing reply: ‘QUITTING JOB HOLD OUT FOR $2000’.15 Later she wrote that she was so excited her knees buckled and Rudbin had more or less forced a whisky down her throat. ‘To my sorrow Rudbin had to go out,’ she wrote to Bob, ‘but Benjy was a very satisfactory co-celebrant. He really was decent and rushed out then and there to the corner flower stand to buy me a dear little fivepenny orchid! The awful thing was that I had a date with Woman for dinner, so had to bottle all during dinner as of course I didn’t want any of them knowing about it till ’tis actually out.’

  Now, she wrote, there was a lot of work to be done on the manuscript and Benjamin had been invited to stay on with Rudbin while she went to the island to visit her mother. Hearing of this arrangement Diana had sent a friendly message via Sydney saying that she would love to meet Benjy, and would be glad to have him to stay with her while Decca was at Inch Kenneth. Decca refused this offer as she had refused other attempts by Diana to effect a rapprochement.16 She reported to Bob that she intended to finish work on her book while on the island, ‘if I can hide the ms. from Muv, which shouldn’t be too hard . . . I won’t really be in a mood to enjoy anything until you come, so do hurry up.’17

  But she couldn’t keep it to herself. As soon as she had signed the contracts she wrote to Nancy and Sydney to tell them about it. ‘What exciting news,’ Sydney wrote. ‘I believe you all have much talent for writing . . . I thought a lot of yours so good, that you sent me.’ ‘How THRILLING,’ Nancy wrote. ‘What publisher? If I’d known I’d have forced you to go to mine who is a literal saint. You’ll make a lot of money I’m sure.’ Decca’s weeks on the island were busy with fine-tuning, and interrupted only by ghostly noises. ‘Muv . . . told me she had heard distinctly the ring of an anvil. I was terrified,’ she wrote to Bob. ‘There’s also a lady in a white skirt who has been seen in the dressing room. I wouldn’t stay here alone all day for anything in the world. I have spoken to Muv about having them exorcised (often done in these parts) but she seems to like the idea of them . . .’18

  The title was giving her some concern; she rather preferred ‘Red Sheep’ over ‘Revolting Daughters’, but eventually settled on Hons and Rebels.19 ‘Hons comes from Hens, not Honourables,’ she explained to Sydney, who was upset that too much was being made of the family status. ‘James McGibbon thought it up,’ Decca wrote to her friend Pele de Lappe, a professional artist, who at her suggestion was commissioned to design the cover in the USA.

  I don’t think it’s at all bad, and only rather fear that Nancy will think I’m cashing in on her stuff . . . There is a tremendous speculation as to what it will be like (I’m not letting any of them read it . . . except Muv who read the first few chapters and swore not to discuss it with the sisters) . . . Debo keeps saying, ‘Oh Hen, I do hope it’s not going to be frank’ . . . And the other day . . . in Heywood Hill’s bookshop . . . Heywood told us . . . that

  Debo, Nancy and Diana were all in his shop twittering and wringing their hands about it . . . We have bought the island. Are you amazed? Nancy has given me her share . . . because I got a raw deal in Farve’s will. As the old saying goes, ‘It’s an ill will that brings nobody any good.’ Muv will continue to live there for as long as she wants. We had lunch with John Betjeman yesterday. He was one of the major ‘damn sewers’ and ‘What-a-set-ers’ of Swinbrook days. Hadn’t seen him since I was about 15 . . . he is now the highest paid poet in England . . . some pewter beer mugs arrived on our table . . . full of champagne . . . we went through two bottles ere lunch was over. Betjeman is really quite a fascinator and a terrific roarer. He has a lot of Red friends and seems quite L[eft] himself, unlike most of the ex damn-sewers. 20

  Decca stayed on after Bob returned, to see the book through various stages of pre-publication, and complete the transfer of the island. While she was there Sydney was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, which Decca had long suspected from the palsied shaking and the increasingly tottering gait. ‘She will never get really weak, not able to dress herself, etc., or become a charge on people because of the shaking,’ the consultant had told Decca. ‘No danger of loss of mental processes memory, etc.’21 By August she was longing to return to the USA, hanging on only because of some delay in signing contracts for the island. She was dismissive of the family solicitors, Hasties, who were taking an age and whom she had taken against ever since they had written to Esmond in 1937 advising him that Decca was a ward
of court. ‘All the solicitors seem to have been chosen by horse lovers,’ she commented to Bob. ‘Pam’s is called Withers and Debo’s is Curry. Muv was on at me again for making her out to be a snob [in the book], it really rankles it seems.’22

  Sydney felt, among other things, that having mentioned the unheard-of medical treatment meted out ‘by your eccentric parents, in fairness you ought to [explain] that these methods are now in general use and are the most modern medical treatment for those troubles’. Decca had already removed some references from the book at Sydney’s request, after she read part of the galley proofs; ‘the translation of the nickname for Tuddemy [Decca said it was Boudledidge for adultery] not the name itself of course, but the translation of it, because it seems to give him a bad character’23 was one of these. She said she could not recall the ‘dead silences at meals’, only the great laughter at Farve’s funny sayings and ‘the picture of him always in a rage is not a bit true, but it does make a funny book’.24 Nor was she pleased at the picture that Decca had painted of her - she felt that she was being made a figure of fun. It seemed to her, several nieces recalled,25 as though all those years of bringing up her family, working for them, living for them, were now regarded as a mere joke. She was both hurt and annoyed, though she said nothing at the time to Decca for she was always afraid that Decca would cut herself off again and - despite her anguish - she was pleased for her. By the time the reviews appeared she had decided on the line to take: ‘I read a very disagreeable review,’ she wrote to Decca, ‘asserting that Farve and I were both arrogant and dull. I really could not help a hearty laugh . . . the author of it must be such a dreary object. He could not see that the book is not meant to be taken seriously.’26