The Sisters_The Saga of the Mitford Family

by Mary S. Lovell

  At the time, though, all that the family thought of was the onset of the Great War. While Sydney was lying-in at Victoria Road, the children were sitting on the balcony of Grandfather Redesdale’s town house looking down on troops of men marching along Kensington High Street on their way to the slaughterhouse that lay in France. Nancy recalled that she was a miniature tricoteuse, knitting an ‘endless scarf’ in wool of a disagreeable shade of purple, ‘for a soldier’. All the children did this knitting, even Tom – and the entire nation felt personally involved in the war.

  Within a short time David had managed to persuade the doctors that he was fit enough to be sent to the front as one of a group of sorely needed officer reinforcements for the regiment’s 1st Battalion. Before he left, and with his previous experience of war in mind, he set up an elaborate code so that Sydney could learn the most up-to-date news in a seemingly casual letter, merely from the manner and punctuation of the way he addressed her, or mentioned various fictional family members. For example, ‘Tell this to Nelly’, meant ‘We are marching north.’

  He returned home unexpectedly on embarkation leave to find his house strangely quiet. As usual during August Sydney had taken the children to spend the month with their grandfather Bowles in a rented cottage on the south coast, overlooking the Solent and the Isle of Wight.42 However, the cook had received disturbing news by that morning’s post. The cottage had been burned to the ground during the previous night and though she was expecting Mrs Mitford back later that day she was unable to tell David whether anyone had been hurt. Fortunately, they had escaped unscathed with only the loss of Diana’s teddy bear (a great sadness to her), but it must have been a traumatic few hours for David while he waited for the family’s return to London by train.

  In subsequent years Nanny Blor usually took the children to her family home at the seaside resort of Bexhill in Sussex, to spend part of the summer months. Sometimes they stayed at the neighbouring town of Hastings with St Leonards where Nanny’s twin sister43 lived. During these holidays the children enjoyed climbing ‘the perilous cliffs’, and ‘the scrumptious teas of brandy snaps, shop-butter, biscuits and marmalade’.44 More than seventy years later Debo still recalls the delight of the sea, waves and sand to children brought up in the country. They bathed daily in the icy waters of the English Channel, with Nanny sitting waiting for them, wearing her beige cotton gloves. ‘The comforting feel of holding her hand in its fabric glove is with me now, a refuge in time of trouble,’ Debo wrote. ‘She waited with striped bathing towels stretched out, wrapping [us], rubbing the sand into our mauve arms and legs, which was part of the sensation of well-being after bathing. We were rewarded with a Huntley and Palmer’s ginger biscuit and a hot drink out of the ever-present Thermos.’45

  David’s first spell at the front ended in January 1915 when he suffered a complete breakdown of health, no doubt due to the effect of the cold and rain of that first winter of the war on his one remaining lung. He was invalided home and it was there, while he was recovering, in the early spring that he received terrible news. His elder brother, the family’s golden child, Clement, had been killed in the fighting within a month of being awarded the DSO. Everyone was distraught with grief and Pam, who was about seven at the time, always recalled her father weeping openly at the news. She had not realized until then that grown-ups could cry. Clement left a three-year-old daughter Rosemary, and a young widow, Helen, just three months pregnant with her second child. If it was a boy, he would be heir to the Redesdale title. If it was a girl, David would inherit, but he, like the rest of his family, was so devastated by loss that it is almost certain he gave little thought to what this would mean to him in pecuniary terms. In any case his father was very much alive and expected to remain so for many years.

  Once he recovered from his infection David was determined to return to the front. He knew that the Army was desperate for officers because the life expectancy of a junior officer at the front was so short. With his experience and service record he managed again to get himself passed fit. He was appointed transport officer to the 2nd Battalion and shortly after he rejoined his regiment in France the second battle of Ypres began. Every night, and often twice a night, he had to get supplies through to his battalion on the other side of the town of Ypres, which was under constant heavy bombardment. David’s method was to quicken the pace of the horses as they approached the town and lead the wagons through Ypres at full gallop until they were clear of the Menin Gate. His men worked in two shifts but David refused any relief and personally accompanied every convoy, for which he was mentioned in dispatches. Not only was his battalion never without its supplies, but remarkably David never lost a man. Although his children do not recall him mentioning the war in later years, he did say modestly to a fellow officer that although no one could call his work ‘a picnic . . . it was of course a very soft job compared with the trenches’.46

  In October 1915 David and Sydney learned that Clement’s posthumous child was a girl, named Clementine.47 David became his father’s heir but it made little obvious difference to him, absorbed in the fight, and in contact with normal family life only by letters and occasional periods of leave.

  Several letters, written by Nancy to her father in France, survive. She had been learning French after David’s mother told Sydney, ‘There is nothing so inferior as a gentlewoman who has no French.’ In her first attempt at writing to him in French, in April 1916, Nancy tells him of a robin’s nest in their garden, that she had heard a cuckoo, and about her pet goat: ‘Ma chèvre est très bonne, elle aime beaucoup le soleil, et elle mange les chous que je lui donnes’. David’s delightful response is in verse:

  Unusual things have come to pass

  A goat gets praised for eating grass!

  A robin in a tree has built!

  The coo coo has not changed its lilt!

  And I have no desire to quench

  My child’s desire for learning French –

  Might I ask without being rude,

  Who pays the bill for Bon Chèvre’s food?

  Are cabbages for goats war diet?

  Or are they given to keep her quiet.

  His letters to his children, written in a tidy script, were always laced with fun, and he obviously took with good humour the numerous nicknames they bestowed on him such as ‘jolly old Farve of Victoria Road’ and ‘Toad’ or ‘Toad-catcher’. In turn he had pet names for his children: he called Nancy ‘my little Blobnose’, or more often ‘Koko’ after the character from Mikado, because he considered that her high cheekbones, dark curly hair and green eyes gave her a slightly oriental look.

  Sydney was able to meet David on at least one occasion while he was on leave in Paris. Her news was worrying: with the loss of his salary from the Lady, she found it difficult to manage on her allowance and his Army pay. Then her father wrote to say that, due to increased taxation, he had no alternative but to reduce her allowance. Fortunately, Lord Redesdale came to the rescue with the offer of a house on his land at Batsford. It was called Malcolm House and was next to the church. Sydney was not enthusiastic about moving to the deeply rural part of Gloucestershire, but she could not bear the thought of debt. The London house was let and the children were delighted to be living in ‘the real country’ at last.

  It was while the children were visiting their grandfather that six-year-old Diana developed appendicitis. Sydney had no option but to call in a doctor for what was a potentially fatal condition. Appendectomy was still regarded as highly dangerous and the surgery had to be performed ‘on the kitchen table’. Put to bed in one of the guest bedrooms, the patient made a rapid recovery, thanks – she suggests – to the comfort and luxury of her surroundings.

  Shortly after this the children saw seventy-nine-year-old Grandfather Redesdale for the last time. He was very ill and yellow with jaundice. He died in August 1916, his death undoubtedly hastened by the loss of Clement on whom he had pinned all his hopes for the future.

  David now became th
e 2nd Lord Redesdale. Eight months later he was invalided home again, this time suffering from extreme exhaustion. As he convalesced the Army, recognizing his service record and his new responsibilities, gave him a home posting. He was made assistant provost marshal, based in Oxford from where he could travel to Batsford by motorcycle in an hour, a journey he made once a week.

  3

  Nursery Days

  (1915–22)

  After a decent interval Sydney, the new Lady Redesdale, moved into Batsford with her lively brood. David’s mother, Clementine, the dowager Lady Redesdale, tactfully moved to Redesdale Cottage in Northumberland.

  In 1917, when Sydney moved in, Batsford was rather different from how it had been on her first visit in 1894 when she had met David and been overwhelmed by light, warmth and exotic scents. With only the ailing elderly Redesdales in residence for some time, many of the huge rooms had been closed off and the furniture shrouded in dust covers. Wartime restrictions and lack of money meant things did not change when Sydney took over. She opened only those rooms essential to house her family in comfort.

  David’s father left an estate valued at £33,000 gross.1 After tax and other bequests David was left with just under £17,000. According to the Bank of England, this equates to a present-day monetary value of more than £600,000, although it must be said that the properties and chattels could not be purchased today for seven or eight times that amount. It was a useful inheritance, but most of it was not in cash but land and property in Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Redesdale in Northumberland, and the income was insufficient to run Batsford House and its estate.

  Bertie, the 1st Lord Redesdale, was said to have inherited a fortune from an uncle. In addition to this he had enjoyed a successful career heading the Board of Works under Disraeli for twelve years, and he had had royalties from several books, especially his runaway bestseller Memories, which detailed his life as a diplomat in Russia, China and latterly Japan. In fact, he had been successful at anything to which he turned his hand – eminent Victorian traveller, writer, linguist, yachtsman, senior civil servant, MP, garden designer, and horse breeder. Although he moved in the rather fast (and costly) circles of the Prince of Wales’ set there is no evidence that he was a notable spendthrift or gambler. It appears that, apart from a wife who had little concept of living within her allowance, he spent most of his fortune on demolishing a perfectly good Georgian house at Batsford in 1880, and building the Victorian Gothic mansion with its elaborate gardens, arboretum and huge stables that still occupies the site. From the start it was obvious to David and Sydney that Batsford would have to be sold, but they could not even consider doing so until after the war.

  Few women of her class were as financially prudent as Sydney but running the vast house with its five staircases on a limited budget must have taxed even her ingenuity. Although the family was technically better off because of David’s inheritance, they had merely swapped one form of relative poverty for another. Some of Sydney’s economies have gone down in family history, and one caused much merriment for it somehow made its way into the Daily Sketch under the headline, ‘Peeress Saves Ha’pence’ when she decided to save on the cost of washing, starching and ironing several dozen table napkins each day. Yet it was not ha’pence she was saving, but a considerable amount over a year, for the household would have used close to two hundred napkins a week. Napkin rings were unacceptable, and paper napkins unthinkable and expensive, so the family did without. She also provided hard, shiny Bromo lavatory paper, which discouraged any extravagance in that department. Further aid to the exchequer came when the four Norman children were boarded out at Batsford for the duration of the war because their parents, Ronald and Lady Florence, were anxious to get them out of London with the threat of Zeppelins. So the Mitford children had built-in companions, as well as the children in the village as playmates.

  At this point Unity was still a toddler in the sole charge of Nanny, but the others, Nancy (thirteen), Pam (ten), Tom (seven) and Diana (six), and the Norman children were all taught by a governess, Miss Mirams, in the schoolroom. David and Sydney were not alone in believing that it was unnecessary to educate girls beyond reading, writing and basic arithmetic to enable them to keep household books, French (essential for a well-bred girl), and enough geography and history to prevent them appearing ignorant in polite society. Music, needlework and deportment were also included. Only Tom was to go away for formal education and David made no financial allowance to educate the girls, assuming that Sydney would be responsible for this. Later, Sydney would herself teach her three younger children to read (they all had to be able to read aloud The Times leader by the age of six), and the basics of arithmetic, history and geography, before they joined the schoolroom at about eight. In those early days at Batsford, though, she was too busy to teach them, with the demands of a large, though well-staffed, house and a growing family as well as another pregnancy.

  On 11 September 1917, Sydney gave birth to her sixth child, another girl whom they called Jessica after Sydney’s mother, but the baby was known from the start as Decca. If there was ever any doubt about the relationship between David and Sydney, and the basis of their marriage, it is dispelled by a letter from Aunt Natty written a few weeks before the birth of Decca. Sydney, she writes, ‘is good – unselfish – beautiful – and she and her husband [are] the greatest lovers . . .’2

  Miss Mirams, the second governess Sydney recruited, seems to have been something of a paragon. She taught the children in two groups, and in the early days Nancy, quick, bright and a voracious reader, was way ahead on her own. Pam, Tom and Diana formed a younger group with Sibell and Mark Norman. Pam, like David, was a slow learner and had difficulty even in keeping up with her two younger siblings. In later life dyslexia was diagnosed,3 but throughout her childhood Nancy and her younger sisters teased her about her slowness. However, the standard of Miss Mirams’ teaching became obvious when Tom applied for a place at Lockers Park Preparatory School. Many of the applicants would have had a conventional pre-prep education but Tom’s entrance exam marks resulted in his being placed in the highest new-boy form. Certainly, then, the education the girls received in the schoolroom was not sub-standard and Miss Mirams’ teaching was supplemented with exploration of the Batsford library, the repository of the remarkable book collection made by Bertie Redesdale throughout his adult life.

  To pay the governess’s salary of about £150 a year, and to fund the necessary books and teaching aids, Sydney set out to make money from eggs and honey, which she sold locally at first, but which later went up to London by train to smart clubs. She employed a full-time man to look after the five hundred hens, but she washed the eggs herself: ‘I never sell an unwashed egg,’ she told a visitor, and advised him that keeping chickens was no good as a project unless you knew what you were doing.4 Soft-shelled or cracked eggs were eaten by the family, the hens ate all kitchen waste, and when they became too old to lay they became ‘boiling fowl’. She managed the beehives herself, with the help of the redoubtable Miss Mirams. Other than to ensure the garden was well kept by the outside staff and produced sufficient fruit and vegetables for the kitchen, she was never much interested in it, and her hen-and-hive activities were merely a way of earning extra income. She always cleared a hundred pounds a year from her chickens, after expenses, and she tried to pass the ethic of prudent management on to her children. As soon as they were old enough they were all encouraged to keep chickens, pigs and even calves. They paid ‘rent’ to David for the land and stables, bought the feed from, and sold the produce to, the estate and were allowed to keep as pocket money any profits from their enterprise. Pam once fought her father over the matter of rent when she discovered at a tenants’ supper that she was paying more, pro rata, for her small piece of land than the local farmers on their commercial acreage. Pam shone at stock-rearing, Nancy was not interested, and Diana recalls that she did it as well as she could because it was her only source of pocket money.

  In 191
8 Miss Mirams left and a succession of governesses followed her. Each summer a mademoiselle came to teach them French. During these visits only French was allowed to be spoken at the table, and Diana remembered that meals were often very quiet.5 Even when French was not the order of the day, mealtimes could be fraught. It was one of David’s foibles that he could not bear sloppiness and crumbs: spills irritated him beyond reasonable complaint, and since there were no napkins to disguise the results of a moment of clumsiness the children learned to be extra careful. Woe betide the child or unwary guest who dropped a spot of soup on ‘the good tablecloth’ or inadvertently scraped a knife across ‘the good plate’.6 The child would be yelled at, the guest (depending on status) glared at or David would explode to himself, not quite sotto voce, ‘Filthy beast!’

  In 1918 Tom went off to boarding school aged eight. He was never homesick or bullied, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Perhaps in comparison with the teasing and bullying by his sisters at home prep school seemed tame. He particularly appreciated being allowed to eat sausages every day for breakfast. In the Mitford home the only person allowed this pork product was David, and naturally the children ‘longed’ for anything forbidden them. Tom’s letters home lingered on this treat, a good tease on his sisters. Sometimes, though, Mabel the parlourmaid would take a chance and retrieve a leftover sausage as a treat for the girls who ‘danced around the pantry with a delicious end of a congealing sausage’, Debo recalled.7