The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother, and Me

by Sofka Zinovieff

  When Diana first knew Gerald, it was before she and her five sisters took their paths in extreme and varied political directions. They were not yet stereotyped as ‘Diana the Fascist, Jessica the Communist, Unity the Hitler-lover, Nancy the Novelist, Deborah the Duchess and Pamela the unobtrusive poultry connoisseur’.182 Now they have been so well documented in countless memoirs, biographies and films that a Mitford mythology has grown up. Their private expressions and nicknames have long become public: the absurdities of ‘Farve’ and ‘Muv’ are as familiar to readers as the gatherings of ‘the Hons’ in the linen cupboard. Both their jokes and their seriousness can seem ridiculous, even horrifying, yet they still fascinate.

  It was while Diana was in a vulnerable phase, kept away from her younger sisters and known as a home-wrecker, that Gerald came to her rescue. He had a penchant for outsider-insiders, who knew the rules but could also break them. Throughout his life he displayed a tenderness towards friends who were vulnerable, irrespective of whether – or perhaps particularly when – this flew in the face of public opinion. Certainly Gerald provided Diana with a haven, both at Faringdon and in Rome. ‘He never failed me,’ she wrote. ‘It is impossible to exaggerate how much I owed him.’183 She was charmed by the older man, and wrote with warm affection about her time with him. Diana first met the Mad Boy at Gerald’s house in Rome, and she liked the crazy youth who was a year younger than her, and who shared her uncompromising refusal to take any prisoners. They remained lifelong friends.

  The charged chaos of Diana’s scandalous love life and Gerald’s newly ensconced Mad Boy did not alter the daily routine at via Foro Romano. Gerald got up early to work at his music, sitting at the piano to compose, or going out with an easel and paints. In the afternoon there was sightseeing. Social life remained of utmost importance and both luncheon and dinner appointments were made with Romans and visiting foreigners, whose own gossip and scandals would be discussed at length. ‘Half way through the morning Gerald would telephone from the landing outside my room, making plans for parties and expeditions,’ wrote Diana. ‘“Pronto, pronto, e Lord Berners,” he began. His Italian was fluent but he made no concessions, he pronounced it as though it were English. He never embarrassed with a good accent like some of one’s compatriots.’184 Gerald’s fictional character Percy Wallingford remarks, ‘An Englishman should not speak French too well.’ This, claims the narrator, is absolutely true: ‘Except for purposes of secret service, a too perfect French accent is inadvisable and is apt to disconcert the English and the French alike.’

  Diana may have been in love with Oswald Mosley, but she was not the only person to be enamoured with his new brand of politics in the 1930s. Fresh ideas and extreme political tendencies were a natural product of the combustible post-war combination of too much partying, disillusionment with democracy and economic decline. Mosley was attracted by Mussolini’s brand of Fascism, and although he supported the King (Edward VIII was viewed as a representative of new ways), he rejected the old ruling class, which, he declared, was not to be trusted any more. The ‘spineless’ politicians who didn’t dare confront the problems, the ‘old muttons’ who had sent a generation of young men to their death in the war, had to be got rid of.185

  Mosley’s New Party attracted all sorts of people when it was founded. It appealed to the young, rather as Communism did, with its loathing of lukewarm liberalism, its patricidal tendencies and its romantic talk of new beginnings and ridding society of ‘parasites’. There was an emphasis on athletics, fighting and uniforms, and with its military comradeship and the veneration of young male heroes, there were many in Gerald’s circle who were seduced, at least initially. These included Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell, Cecil Beaton and Harold Nicolson, who wrote in his diary, ‘I find myself having daydreams of power and youth.’186 The Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror also gave their support to this movement in its early days: ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’ trumpeted Lord Rothermere’s Daily Mail. Most of these people fell away when Mosley’s views became increasingly objectionable and extreme after the founding of the British Union of Fascists in 1932; Diana only became more convinced of the righteous cause of the love of her life.

  DIANA GUINNESS (NÉE MITFORD, LATER MOSLEY) ON A TRIP OUTSIDE ROME WITH GERALD

  It was not long before Diana began visiting her sister Unity in Munich. They attended the first Nuremberg rally and the 1936 Olympic Games, and Diana became almost as enthusiastic as Unity about ‘Wolf’ – the nickname Hitler’s friends used. She read Mein Kampf and declared Hitler ‘the kindest man in the world’, a position she hardly retracted during a lifetime of rejection, criticism, imprisonment and, ultimately, exile. Diana and Mosley were married in secret in October 1936 in Goebbels’s Berlin drawing room, with ‘Wolf’ as the guest of honour. The bride wore a gold dress and the Fuhrer’s gift was a photograph of himself in a silver frame. Later, Diana wrote to Unity about the occasion:

  Darling

  I am sitting in a bower of orchids envying you, because I expect you are still in the Fuhrer’s train . . .

  The wedding itself was so beautiful and the blick [sight] out of Magda [Goebbels]’s window of the Fuhrer walking across the sunny garden from the Reichskanzlei was the happiest moment of my life. I felt everything was perfect, Kit [Mosley], you, the Fuhrer, the weather, my dress . . .

  With hindsight, Diana seems a beautiful monster. It is now almost inconceivable that she could have stubbornly maintained her dreadful and dangerous opinion of Hitler. Even the Holocaust did little to alter her beliefs and her anti-Semitism. She became as fanatical as her increasingly rabid husband and never changed. According to her youngest sister, Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire, ‘Her rigid views on race were partly influenced by Grandfather Redesdale, an advocate of Teutonic supremacy, and were hardened by the experience of war and her unyielding nature.’ The unyielding nature also seemed to apply to Jessica (‘Decca’), who became a Communist and moved to America, and Unity, who was infatuated with Hitler and shot herself (but survived as an invalid) when war was declared. ‘Once Diana had decided on a course of action there was no deviating or turning back and, like them, she was drawn to extreme politics.’187 Yet in spite of her revolting views, even Diana’s detractors often agreed that she was one of the most charming people, who could win over those who thought they’d hate her.

  It is unsettling to think about Diana’s enormous charisma combined with such poisonous attitudes, particularly because, at least in the early years, she was far from being alone in holding them. The question of where Gerald and Robert stood politically is much less clear, although neither of them ever seemed to take politics seriously; entertainment, excitement and the pleasure principle were much more important. Gerald detested pomposity and posturing and was much too pessimistic to believe in the grand ideals of extremist politics – he had moved in both Fascist and anti-Fascist circles in Rome. Neither was he interested in attending the House of Lords after he took his seat in 1923; when Diana asked him if he’d ever been, he said, ‘Yes I did go once but a bishop stole my umbrella and I never went there again.’ Robert was too undisciplined and flighty for the paramilitary element of the Blackshirts and could not have taken his place in such an authoritarian system.

  Whatever Gerald and Robert’s reservations about politics, their social circle was overwhelmingly one that leaned to conservatism or further to the right, even if this was largely due to social circumstances rather than design. They also had friends of other political convictions, including the journalist Tom Driberg and their neighbour at Buscot Park, Lord Faringdon. The latter was a socialist who supported the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, and while he was known as a ‘roaring pansy’, he was serious about his Labour Party politics and was a pacifist during the Second World War. He commissioned murals at Buscot that depicted dinner parties with Gerald, Robert and a surprisingly demure-looking Marchesa Casati at his table. A friendly rivalry existed between the two bachelor peers, though Gavin Faringdon was acc
used of being both a ‘champagne socialist’ and parsimonious, especially with the alcohol. Robert was known to announce to friends, ‘We’ve got to go for drinks at Buscot, so we’d better start now.’188

  Gerald had Jewish friends, but anti-Semitism was not only acceptable in his milieu, it existed throughout European society. A 1930s survey suggested that up to three-quarters of the British population harboured unfavourable attitudes towards Jews.189 Robert may have been too disorderly for politics, but he was certainly anti-Semitic. At a time before the Holocaust changed everything, the concept of Jews as money-grubbing, vulgar and ostentatious was only too prevalent. T. S. Eliot’s implied comparison of Jews to rats (’money in furs’) was far from unique.190

  As Mosley’s Fascists gained strength their message became increasingly anti-Jewish, and there was an increased reaction from their opponents. In June 1934, the huge Olympia stadium was hired for a Blackshirts’ rally and Gerald and Robert went along, driven by William Crack. It seems likely that they went out of curiosity, though all the muscular young men in uniform were an added attraction; this feature of Mosley’s movement did not go unobserved. Certainly, Gerald and Robert also wanted to support Diana by going, though in the event she had a temperature and was unable to attend. Nevertheless, they dined with her beforehand, along with their mutual friend Vivian Jackson, a young and brilliant astrophysicist and beloved twin brother of the equally intelligent, rich, small-built, fearless scientist Derek (who married Diana’s sister Pamela).191 Both brothers were extremely right-wing and favoured Mosley, but their true love was horses; Derek’s greatest compliment was ‘As perfect as someone on two legs can be.’ It was Vivian who accompanied Gerald and Robert to the rally.

  The violence that erupted at Olympia is well documented, with each side blaming the other. Groups of anti-Fascists, including Communists and Jews, arrived with the intention of heckling Mosley and disrupting the event. Soon there were vicious fights going on between the uniformed Blackshirts patrolling the stadium and their unwelcome guests. Hecklers were set upon by Mosley’s ‘Biff Boys’ and the numerous casualties on both sides were taken to hospital. The police made many arrests, among them the twenty-seven-year-old Vivian. Gerald rang Diana at midnight to say that Robert had just bailed him out and that he was charged with obstructing the police. The next day, the two men gave evidence in Jackson’s defence at the West London Police Court before Sir Gervais Rentoul, KC, something that was reported in The Times. Robert described himself as a horse-trainer and gave a Shropshire address. He said that a policeman knocked Lord Berners against the railings and Jackson had shouted, ‘You can’t do that.’ Gerald claimed a policeman spoke to him very rudely and then hit him on the head with ‘a weapon like a sword’ and that Jackson had gone to his defence. The crowd was not rioting, he said, but was singing ‘a very dreary song’ which he believed was called ‘The Internationale’.

  Jackson was fined twenty shillings and acquired a good story on which to dine out, but public distaste for what had happened at Olympia resulted in a backlash against Mosley. The Daily Mail withdrew its support and many people began to realise what odious views British Fascists held. As a result, Mosley dropped the word ‘Fascist’, but the British Union only became further entrenched in its anti-Semitism, and there were marches through the East End of London resulting in street-fighting such as the infamous ‘Battle of Cable Street’, where East Enders tried to stop the Fascists passing through. In 1937, the Public Order Act banned political uniforms and made these marches increasingly difficult to stage. Hitler already appeared threatening, war was in the air, and Fascists were not looked upon kindly by most people.

  Earlier in 1934, Gerald had written ‘A Fascist March’ for the piano; apparently Diana thought he might come up with something nice for the Blackshirts to march to. The first eight bars were published in the Daily Express – and nothing more is known of it. It is hard to imagine that Gerald could have done this with an entirely straight face, as his music nearly always contained jokes, parody and a lightness that is inimical to the tenets of Fascism. But what with Mussolini’s boys strutting about all over Rome (where Gerald wrote the piece) and Mosley being flavour of the year in England, perhaps he really did do his little bit. After all, plenty of political thinkers took Mosley seriously at the start. What does appear to have been a joke was Gerald’s claim to have had lunch with Hitler, though the evidence is highly contradictory. It is true is that Gerald and Robert were in Munich in the late summer of 1935, where they spent most days with Diana and Unity, whose growing obsession with the Fuhrer was most amusing to Gerald. William Crack said he drove Gerald to a restaurant where Hitler was dining, and Robert (whose version is probably less reliable) claimed that Gerald dined with Hitler and that he was invited for coffee. According to the Mad Boy, the English lord and the German dictator discussed composition. Hitler mentioned ‘his own composer’ (never identified) who was not in favour, and said: ‘I thought of sending him up in an aeroplane,’ presumably with the implication that he would not be coming back.192 Robert then returned alone to Faringdon and Gerald sent him a postcard, giving various practical details: ‘Did you find any visiting cards? If so please post here as soon as possible. Sorry you had such a lousy journey back. Lucky you had a little Ham to keep you company. It was lovely meeting Hitler. Will write you a nice letter shortly. Love Gerald.’

  Diana later claimed that Gerald didn’t meet the dictator and that she would have known, as they were constantly together. Diana was less of a joker than Gerald and more in the know than the chauffeur, so she may well have been right. John Betjeman wrote to Penelope, ‘Apparently it is all rot about Robert and Gerald lunching with Hitler.’ So maybe, in this open postcard, Gerald just wanted naughtily to set the gossip mills spinning. He was certainly no supporter of Nazism. In a notebook he wrote that he had been put off Wagner’s music (that he had loved so much in his youth) because it had been taken up by the Nazis, and he claimed that it was their banning of the poet Heine that first led him to execrate them.193 In 1935, when Diana brought Mosley to stay at Faringdon, Oliver Messel added a satisfying provocation under Mosley’s signature in the visitors’ book: ‘F.S.P.M.B.W.N.R. Founder of The Society for the Propagation of Marriages between the White and Negro Races.’ Other old friends confirmed that Gerald was not interested in politics. ‘He’d only have been intrigued because it was intriguing,’ said one.194

  Nancy Mitford, Diana’s eldest sister, had a brief flirtation with Mosley’s movement, but soon took against it and leaned leftwards, or merely in the direction of satire, ever after. Diana accused her of being ‘synthetic cochineal’ – unlike Decca, whose dedication to Communism was almost as unwavering as Diana’s to Fascism. But Nancy despised both extremes. In 1939, she wrote to a friend, ‘There isn’t a pin to put between Nazis & Bolshies. If one is a Jew one prefers one and if an aristocrat the other, that’s all as far as I can see. Fiends!’ Nancy’s approach was far more in line with Gerald’s, and he became an increasingly important friend to her. Like him, she preferred humour and thoughtfulness to the bombast and grand plans of Mosley. Both Diana and Mosley were appalled when Nancy satirised their movement in her 1935 novel Wigs on the Green. Unity (who was over six foot tall) is portrayed as ‘England’s largest heiress’, Eugenia Malmains. Mosley is the Captain, who must be obeyed in all things. The innocent, passionate Eugenia stands on a washtub on a village green, calling ‘in thrilling tones . . . “Britons, awake! Arise! Oh, British lion! . . . [the] Union Jack Movement is a youth movement . . . we are tired of the old."’ Eugenia has a dog called the Reichshund, after Bismarck’s dog, and a horse named Vivian Jackson. Diana was outraged, Mosley furious and Nancy was banned from their house for years.

  ERALD MAY HAVE BEEN running around with a younger set and getting caught up in politics more than was his natural inclination, but he didn’t neglect his long-standing friends. He continued to visit the famous London hostesses Lady Cunard and Lady Colefax, who skimmed off the cream of s
ociety for their gatherings. Robert might stay in the country or see his own pals; he was not generally interested in finely wrought soirées, where everybody was ‘somebody’. Gerald could catch up with worldly, cultured people like the Princesse de Polignac, Harold Nicolson or Lady Diana Cooper, the celebrated society beauty and actress who might be found there with her husband, Duff, politician and diplomat. People tended to speak of the two hostesses in one breath, and there were many who found them tiresome. ‘Coarse and usual and dull these Cunards and Colefaxes are,’ wrote Virginia Woolf, though there were many who adored one or the other and remained their supporters and friends.195 Gerald was far from being a Bloomsbury bohemian type (‘not for him the rufty-tufty Bloomsbury clothes with their unpressed trousers’, wrote Diana Mosley), but he was interested in meeting certain members of this influential group and a few cropped up at these parties. He had friendly relations with Virginia Woolf, who mentions him in the preface to Orlando, her 1928 novel that created a transsexual, time-hopping hero based partly on the life of her lover Vita Sackville-West. Woolf thanks Lord Berners, ‘whose knowledge of Elizabethan music has proved invaluable’. It sounds like a friendly little tease – a wink from one cerebral, creative, depressive type with an unconventional love life to another.

  Gerald himself joked that while the tea parties of Sibyl Colefax were ‘a party of lunatics presided over by an efficient, trained hospital nurse’, those of Emerald Cunard were ‘a party of lunatics presided over by a lunatic’.196 Of course, there were those who claimed that Gerald himself offered more to this type of gathering than he took. Osbert Sitwell wrote, ‘In the years between the wars, Berners did more to civilise the wealthy than anyone in England. Through London’s darkest drawing rooms, as well as through the lightest, he moved, dedicated to their conversion, a sort of missionary of the arts, bringing a touch of unwanted fun into many a dreary life – fun perhaps all the more funny for its being unwanted.’197 Gerald was the perfect guest for these ladies – accomplished, titled and witty. His increasingly notorious eccentricity only added a dash of welcome spice to the mix.