by Leslie Brody
It wasn’t often that Decca would admit to being shaken by a tease. They still had so much to learn about each other. Bob had seen her angry before, but never speechless. Though capable in so many ways and quite discreet, Bob was a little tone-deaf early on when it came to applying new gadgetry to their lives. (That phonograph-proposal prank had cost him dearly back in Washington.) Within two weeks, Bob had wrangled moving expenses from OPA and a transfer to San Francisco. He also had a case of galloping poison oak, which Decca discounted with typical sangfroid as some “flea bites.”
IN THE WEEKS after her marriage, there were several competing reasons for Decca to accelerate her application for citizenship. The regional office of the OPA had instituted a loyalty ordinance, which excluded resident aliens from employment. Dobby launched an appeal to defend Decca’s job. The campaign cemented Decca’s friendship with Dobby, who succeeded in persuading national headquarters to revoke the ordinance.
Meanwhile, the Communist Party USA had also introduced a policy that only U.S. citizens could become members. This was part of a greater (and ultimately self-defeating) effort to identify and exclude anyone liable to inform under stress. Poor recruitment risks included anyone subject to the array of weaknesses a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe might discover: unorthodox sexual proclivities or orientation (as identified by the Feds), financial improprieties, mental instability, or lack of citizenship. Such precautions explain in part the straight-arrow character of the war-era rank and file. The FBI had ways of discerning vulnerabilities that some people didn’t know they had. As time would tell, even the most stable person might break down.
The final leg of Decca’s application for citizenship was her interview. When the immigration official asked, “Why do you want to become a citizen?” she may have thought back to when she and Esmond had first applied for visas in England. America had seemed to them a distant and gigantic country, its denizens “endearingly childish.” The House Committee on Un-American Activities, for example (brand-new in 1938), they had thought “bizarre . . . a joke. Imagine a committee on un-English activities. What’s that? Not taking tea?” Almost five years later, she bit her tongue to avoid saying, “So I can join the Communist Party.” She officially became an American citizen in January of 1944.
Membership in the Communist Party was still a matter of some protocol. Both Bob and Decca, judged of high moral probity (notwithstanding some small concern about whether Decca showed “too much levity toward the Left”), still had to wait patiently to be invited. By late summer, the local Communist membership was thoroughly impressed with both prospective members. Once Decca’s immigration interview was over and her citizenship papers approved, Dobby presented the Treuhafts’ names to her Communist Party “club,” whose approval would allow her officially to recruit them. The motion carried unanimously.
That September, the Congress of Industrial Organizations held its national convention in Fresno, the market center of California’s greatest agricultural valley. Since the 1930s, this location had been a flashpoint of the kind of farmworker strikes Decca had read about in her labor history classes and in The Grapes of Wrath. Fresno is a hot, dry tinderbox in early fall, surrounded by well-hydrated fields of crops. Further east, yellow hills step to the Sierras. Dobby, attending as a leader of the United Federal Workers local, couldn’t wait to take Decca and Bob out on a hike at their first opportunity. She wanted them to see California from a great height, the way she loved it best. Decca didn’t want to disappoint her friend, but hiking in the heat wasn’t high on her list of fun things to do in Fresno. Decca was at the convention as one of her union’s elected delegates. She had been to the 1940 Democratic Convention with Virginia Durr and marveled at those old Chicago pols in action. Now in Fresno, she looked forward to a gathering of “working class heroes,” organizers of the 1934 waterfront strike, and American veterans of the Spanish Civil War.
Decca might have wanted to keep a low profile on the Mitford front, but she must also have had a desire to talk about Spain, pride when she would run into someone who knew of Esmond or had read Boadilla, euphoria to hear of so many people doing so many of the things she believed in. After the first night of the conference, Dobby invited Decca and Bob (on hand in his new job capacity as a member of the War Labor Board) to meet her in a hotel bar away from the crowd. They’d been looking forward to this, and Decca was glad she hadn’t had to hike anywhere to hear her friend “pop the question.” “Would you be interested in joining the Communist Party?” Dobby asked. To which Decca and Bob replied singsong in unison, “We thought you’d never ask.” Dobby’s club had approved their recruitment some months previous, but since everything had to be done in elaborate secrecy, the Treuhafts hadn’t known they were approved until this ritual invitation was concluded.
This new commitment demanded a kind of investment that Decca was eager to make. She understood there would be a party line, which she would be required to endorse, and that the kind of defiance or escape she was used to indulging in might result in criticism or chastisement all the way up to expulsion (an unthinkable and terrible outcome). “It was indeed a matter of conform or get out,” she said, “but this did not particularly bother me. I had regarded joining the Party as one of the most important decisions of my adult life. I loved and admired the people in it, and was more than willing to accept the leadership of those far more experienced than I.”
Whatever the future held, her experience had proved that there was always wiggle room and that a little joke often helped to lubricate a difficult situation. She had no fear, unless it was—as always—of being bored. There were, of course, “bores and misfits in our organization but even these seemed to be to some extent redeemed by their dedication to our cause,” she said. On the whole, she was “enchanted by the flesh and blood Communists” she met.
If at first Decca indulged in the romance of the movement, it was all of a piece with being in love again, being happy, watching as the war turned their way. But over the long run, she and Bob would need to exercise the distinctly unromantic dedication, stamina, and discipline. An all-in, modern-day American Communist needed to be physically able to take risks, to withstand the persecution. The discipline this required was not for the faint of heart. Decca was not an innocent, and she wasn’t sentimental. She knew of the deceptions and betrayals of the Communists in Spain, as well as their heroism and success in hopeless situations. She knew her Orwell and read Koestler, and she felt she could say her “conversion to Communism was not an instant process, nor did it ever have the profound religious overtones ascribed by ex-Communists to their experience. It developed . . . on looking back, out of the political exigencies of the times,” a rich brew including but not exclusive to memory, love, and shared conviction, new friendships, education, and the encouragement of those for whom she now cared most.
She and Bob began attending weekly meetings. So, what was that secret coven like? There was no initiation fee, no blood-letting ceremony, no funny masks or headgear. “We didn’t do anything terribly subversive,” Bob said. It was just a meeting. What about those notorious cards that Commies were suppose to carry, the ones that gave them their evil power, in the imaginations of the John Birch Society, the Ku Klux Klan, certain congressional inquisitors, and the FBI? Bob did have a card, which was issued to a fictitious name. The name (which he didn’t remember after a while) was a joke, the card was a joke, and all the Moscow gold they were supposed to be bathing in was a terrific joke. The local chapters were always short of money, and the greater part of every agenda included how to raise more. Each week, whoever was able to do so gave what he or she could to aid the defense of comrades caught up in the courts, in loyalty commissions, or suffering from civil rights abuses. There were discussions of benefits, drives, rummage sales, and potluck parties to plan; small committee reports on labor, education, literature, and family issues like the cost of milk and hamburger meat; and sign-ups to carpool to the all-day child-care center at San Francisco S
tate College. There was always a cry for more petty cash to keep the chapter (or club, as they called it) in coffee and pencils and toilet paper. No gathering was complete without some discussion about how to keep the People’s Daily World afloat.
At some point in the meeting, sometimes even first thing before people got too drowsy, there would be an “educational” period. One week’s assignment might be a thudding bore and another’s an inspiration; more often, the lesson fell somewhere in between. It wasn’t easy to slog through dense theory from Marxist journals while holding down a job or caring for young children, but members prepared as best they could. Bob was used to rigorous study, but for Decca, cramming was a new and thrilling experience. Assigned to read Marx’s Capital, Decca remembers that “dead tired from the round of work, housework, and meetings,” Bob and she would sometimes “read aloud to each other until three in the morning.” Even slackers could amuse themselves at meetings by checking out what their comrades wore and who was giving whom special looks. The clubs were anything but salacious, but even in the Puritan churches of Massachusetts, everybody looked. And in these meetings, the members were often young and handsome, of rude health and passionate energy.
Like many of their comrades, Bob and Decca were still government workers, and any hint of membership could bring dangerous scrutiny by the FBI. The Congressional Dies Committee (named after its first chair, Martin Dies Jr.), otherwise known as the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA or, more commonly, HUAC), had as its mandate to uncover just those people who were determined to stay covered. There was something Shakespearean in the doubling that membership compelled: Like men playing women playing men, your true nature only appeared ordinary. Perhaps you thought your membership was nobody’s business but your own, perhaps you were proud to proclaim it, but if you wanted to keep your job and your effectiveness, then you had to lie.
In November, Decca learned that her sister Diana and Diana’s husband, Oswald Mosley, had been released from prison after three and a half years. By then, Decca had pretty much come to terms with her sister Unity’s permanent mental disability and had forgiven Unity to the best of her ability. Diana was another story, and Decca felt a powerful inclination to immediately denounce the Mosleys’ release, but there was a glitch. The pleasure she felt in the New World was due in no small way to her relative anonymity. The Mitford sisters were news however you sliced it, and if she wished to renounce Diana and her hateful trappings, she would lose her precious privacy. The dilemma resolved itself when a reporter from the San Francisco Examiner tracked her to her desk in the OPA. When the “cameraman,” as she described him, ignored her pleas to go away, and proceeded to snap her picture, she tackled him and kicked his camera.
Back in their apartment, while reporters milled outside, Bob and Decca “locked the doors, pulled down the blinds and prepared to wait it out.” When she and Esmond had eloped, they had waited out the whole British government, and later in London, there had been that unfortunate electric-company employee who had tried to shadow them. This time, Decca had the redoubtable Mrs. Betts to bring food and bulletins and the next day’s Examiner, with its story full of outright mistakes. Starting at the top, the headline was just ridiculous—“Sister of Hitler’s Nordic Goddess in OPA Job Here”—when, after all, had Unity ascended to Valhalla? Last that Decca had heard, her brain-damaged sister had been helping out in the church kitchen, following the parson around like a kitten. The subhead was cause for further hilarity, but again only down the line. It read “Beauty Hates Nazis,” which led Muv to exclaim, “Fancy Little D being a beauty!” According to some unnamed source, Unity had attempted suicide “when Hitler’s friendship for her cooled.” How could any reporter possibly know that? Far worse, the story contended that Decca had married Bob Treuhaft several months previously in Washington “shortly after Romilly had been killed.” Decca had waited deliberately, she had even run away to San Francisco to put some space between them, and now here was this horrible rag, broadcasting lies.
She had already lost her privacy; now she would get to work. Not only was she Oswald Mosley’s sister-in-law, but she was also Winston Churchill’s cousin and niece by marriage. That cameraman had no idea whom he was tangling with. Esmond might have known instinctively how to use the press, but Bob was no slouch. Together, with the editor of their union newspaper, they mapped out a campaign. First of all, there would be a public letter to Winston Churchill, decrying the Mosleys’ release from jail. This document would be an exclusive to the San Francisco Chronicle, the Examiner’s competition.
Dear Cousin Winston:I am writing to you to add my protest to the thousands which I imagine you are receiving against the release of the Mosleys.
Their release is being interpreted in this country, even by the reactionary press, as an indication that there is a real cleavage between the will of the people and the actions of the ruling class in England, and that the Government is not truly dedicated to the cause of exterminating fascism in whatever place and in whatever form it rears its head. Unless the Mosleys are immediately put back in jail where they belong, great harm will be done to the cause of friendship between Britain and America.
My personal feeling is that the release of the Mosleys is a slap in the face to antifascists in every country, and that it is a direct betrayal of those who have died for the cause of anti-fascism. The fact that Diana is my sister doesn’t alter my opinion on this subject.
Churchill did not reply to the published letter.
Decca was not alone in her rejection of the Mosleys. On November 23, there was a huge demonstration to demand that the government put Mosley back in prison. The protest brought much of central London to a standstill. Diana, who under the conditions of her release was not allowed to visit London, give political speeches, or meet with fascists, wrote to Nancy that she was disappointed that she couldn’t attend.
PART TWO
Dissension has begun to spread in the ranks of the living.
—JESSICA MITFORD, “ST. PETER, DON’T YOU CALL ME”
CHAPTER 13
IN JANUARY 1944,the Red Army defeated the Nazis to end the twenty-nine-month siege of Stalingrad. The next month, the Allies began their offensive, dropping seventeen thousand tons of bombs on Germany in one week. In Decca and Bob’s household, these staggering events paled temporarily beside the springtime invasion of Bob’s mother.
Aranka Treuhaft arrived from Manhattan with feathered hats, furs, high heels, creams, and perfumes, to find her son’s new wife—when at home—clothed efficiently in workman’s overalls and their house in a permanent state of disorder. Dishes went unwashed, floors unswept, meals haphazard, and her adorable new stepgranddaughter left to the care of an eccentric landlady.
Decca’s previous experience as a daughter-in-law offered little to recommend it. She held Nellie Romilly in contempt as an unregenerate class enemy. Aranka would work harder to find common ground. Her character was in general more accommodating, but she was no pushover.
The writer Judith Viorst, who would marry Bob’s closest friend, Abe Glasser, remembered being told that Aranka had mixed feelings about the marriage. “Upside,” said Viorst, “Bob had married an aristocrat. Downside she wasn’t Jewish.” Bob agreed that Aranka “was rather put out when I married Decca without consulting her, and it took some time for her to accept the idea.”
Bob’s younger sister, Edith, said that during this period, their mother “demanded a lot from the people around her.” Their father, Albin, Edith called a luftmensch, someone with his head in the air, in contrast to the energetic Aranka. When Albin’s restaurant business had failed in the 1930s, he’d wanted to start all over again in California, but Aranka was “so New York-ish, she wouldn’t think of leaving.”
Aranka found Bob’s radical politics and California home life equally disappointing. After the education he had received, she hoped he would have established a more comfortable, affluent life. It was convenient early on to imagine that Decca’s influenc
e was responsible for this dissatisfying turn of events. To Aranka, Bob and Decca’s home seemed too wide open, and maybe that was the California way, but there were always too many people of all shapes, sizes, and colors wandering through singing, playing games, eating, and always talking about what must be done. (On one visit, Aranka arrived to find Decca also playing host to the blues musician Huddie William Ledbetter—aka Leadbelly—who was in town to play a benefit. Leadbelly chivalrously camped on the living room floor, while Aranka took the couch.) She may have thought it odd, too, that Bob took on most of the household responsibilities (but she was glad to share her recipes), but since there was nothing to be done, she adapted. Her daughter-in-law, she discovered, was a whirlwind, very persuasive, a natural saleswoman, a quality they had in common, though Aranka preferred the soft sell. When Decca wrote requests for donations to causes, she was virtually impossible to resist. A few years later on a visit to Paris, Aranka found that she was more like her daughter-in-law’s sister Nancy, with whom she shared among other things impeccable fashion sense, mutual bad luck in men, and bafflement over the things Decca did.
It was around this time that Decca began to hit her stride as a fund-raiser. This was the adult fulfillment of an incipient talent. Given the opportunity to raise money for the causes she believed in, Decca quickly rose to her club’s director of fund-raising. In the future, her organizational zeal would find its zone in activities investigative and journalistic, but for the time being, it was sufficient to be recognized for accomplishing her assignments quickly and well. One of Decca’s earliest challenges was to plan a benefit for the People’s Daily World fund drive. The “coveted prize of a lifetime subscription to the People’s Daily World” was promised to the comrade who could raise more than one hundred dollars in donations. Decca fully intended to surpass that mark and do so with brio and originality. The party she and Bob would give at Mrs. Betts’s would serve notice to the Communist community of the Bay Area that a new compañera was on the scene, and she was one of a kind. Invitations were passed along the grapevine to party members and fellow travelers—and a party of this sort always included a few undercover agents in the mix.