The Sisters_The Saga of the Mitford Family

by Mary S. Lovell

  By now, though, Nancy was virtually inured to rows at home about her friends and continued to invite them, despite her father’s snarls, teeth grinding and insults. In fact, she was not above engaging David, head on, in rows that caused furious silences at meals. In 1924, aged twenty, she went so far as to have her long hair bobbed without permission (‘Well, anyhow,’ commented Sydney briefly, ‘no one will look at you twice now’), and to wear trousers at home, which made David apoplectic with rage. When he was cross with Nancy, he would be out on the lawn as soon as it was light, cracking his stock-whip in impotent fury. Visiting cousins found this frightening. But the rows were only the tip, as it were, of the real relationship between Nancy and her father, who sparked each other off, provoking the hilarious repartee that listeners found so amusing.

  When Tom began to invite his Oxford friends – ‘the Fat Fairs’, as Nancy called them – David found them more acceptable, but Nancy had broken the ice, just as she made things easier for Pam, who came out in 1924. Pam, however, was never a rebel and her year in France in 1923, where she was sent to improve her French, was incident-free. Unlike all of her sisters (except Debo, much later), Pam loved the country and for her it was not just ‘a nice place to live’, she felt a positive affinity with farming and animals and eventually made a semi-career of it. It was her undisguised enjoyment of domesticated pursuits such as cooking, which the others regarded as boring and ‘womanly’, that led to her lifelong nickname in the family, Woman, sometimes shorted to Woo. But though she lacked Nancy’s vivacity, Pam’s sense of humour was as well developed as that of any of the Mitford girls and she had her own court of admirers. She was always known as ‘the quiet sister’, but her letters to Sydney from France are full of her excitement about the invitations she had received to balls and dances and with pages of detailed discussion about the clothes she would need: ‘. . . a blue-mauve is very fashionable now and it is such a lovely colour . . . I ought to have that colour or a white but I think white rather dull, don’t you? Besides my coming out dress will have to be white . . .’ She describes a ride in a tank with gusto: ‘. . . I should love to do the whole thing over again. I hardly think I have ever enjoyed anything so much,’ and she made a lot of a fancy-dress party to be held later in the week when all her group had decided to dress as Arab women. ‘What fun,’ she wrote, ‘the wretched young men won’t be able to know which is which of us.’24

  Each débutante had to have her own social function so during the London Season there would be a dinner-dance or ball every night from Monday to Thursday. The whole point of the Season was, of course, to find a husband. It was a way of introducing well-bred girls to eligible and suitable young men. Newspapers gave amounts of space to Society activities that today would be considered disproportionate, and journalists were quick to nominate a girl as ‘Deb of the Year’, and an event as ‘the Ball of the Season’ or ‘the Wedding of the Year’. It was regarded as a triumph for a girl to find a husband in her first Season, or at least receive a few marriage proposals, and it goes without saying that beautiful heiresses were the first to be snapped up.

  Nancy was attractive, and her sharp wit was a great asset for those intelligent enough to appreciate it. She took up the ukelele, on which she would sing popular new songs such as ‘Conchita’, ‘. . . she was the child of a hidalgo/and he called her Conchita . . . Sitting by the open casement/There was Conchita the fair/And Count Don Fernando seeing/Ventured to approach her there . . .’; and ‘Ukelele Lady’, ‘If you like-a ukelele lady, ukelele lady like-a you . . . If you like-a linger where it’s shady, ukelele lady linger too . . .’ in her light plummy voice. Her gaiety made her popular, although not necessarily marriageable, but unlike other girls she never took offence at being ‘looked over as though in a horse market’, or rebelled against the system; she enjoyed herself, noted everything from the good to the absurd and filed it away in her memory for later. Nothing was wasted.

  With Nancy’s first Season Sydney had embarked on what was to be her role for many years, as each of her girls came out. She was the chaperone. By 10 p.m. she would have eaten a light supper, and – in evening dress – she would turn down her bed, collect the girls, check them over and take them to whatever function they were attending. While her daughters enjoyed the dinner, and the dancing that followed, Sydney would sit on one of the ubiquitous hired gold chairs that lined the walls of the ballroom, along with the other chaperones. At first she probably enjoyed this, and sometimes David accompanied her to the more important functions or even, rarely, went in her place. She would have met many mothers or aunts she knew, all doing the same thing, and unlike David she had always enjoyed meeting new people and ‘chatting’. Often a ball would go on until the early hours before the girls reappeared, glowing with enjoyment, and though Sydney hated late nights, this was reward enough for her. She never discovered, apparently, that sometimes her daughters slipped out of the back of a house through french windows and a garden exit, to visit nightclubs before returning to a party that had become dull.

  On the morning after a party the débutantes were allowed to sleep in, to recover for the following evening. Sydney, however, was always up and dressed and at the breakfast table by eight-thirty carrying out her daily routine of menu planning and making up the daily shopping list, for even in town she always insisted on good, plain, fresh food. The younger children clamoured for attention, too, and although Unity had now graduated to the schoolroom, Sydney still gave a full quota of daily PNEU lessons to Decca and Debo. It was she, too, who arranged the considerable wardrobe needed by a débutante, and planned the dinners or dances for her daughters, which would have taken considerable organization although the girls thought it was simply a matter of opening up the ballroom, arranging a few flowers and cooking lots of kedgeree. Then, too, as spring ran into summer, when she longed to be at Swinbrook for the loveliest part of the year, she was stuck in London. By the time Debo came out in 1938 Sydney must have been heartily tired of this punishing routine, yet she never complained. It was a refined and rather unusual kind of martyrdom and, it goes without saying, was taken for granted by the girls.

  Pam’s coming-out dance was a fancy dress and Pam was attired as Madame de Pompadour: ‘. . . I felt very self-conscious because I was rather fat,’ she told a niece. ‘In fact I did not enjoy any of the dances I went to when I came out, though I used to write in my diary what a good time I had had. I suppose I wrote it with an eye to be read in the future, and I did not want to be considered a failure at parties.’25 Diana blamed Nancy for this: ‘She was very unkind to Pam and undermined her self-confidence.’26 The greatest preoccupation for both Diana and Pam in 1925 was to get permission to have their hair bobbed like Nancy. Even the younger sisters were recruited to bombard the parents: ‘Darling Muv,’ the eight-year-old Decca wrote, when their parents went off to Ontario, ‘I hope you had a good crossing? Diana and poor Pam want more than ever to have their hair off and Pam did not enjoy her visit at all because everyone says, “Oh yes I like short hair best” and “Why don’t you have your hair off?” Please do let them have it. Please. Love from Eight.’27

  Decca’s best friend at that time was not a sister, or even a brother, but a pet lamb called Miranda. All the children had dogs and Miranda was treated like one of these: she went everywhere with Decca, to church, for walks, to bed sometimes, if she could be smuggled in without Nanny noticing. She was terrified for her pet when sheep-dipping time came round: ‘I used to go in with Miranda because I feared her eyes would be damaged by the virulent poisons in the dip, so I’d hold a hanky over her eyes.’ Nanny used to get cross because her bathing suits got full of holes from the chemicals and she was covered in huge welts from the thrashing animal, but she said, ‘Miranda was the light of my life.’28 She even wrote a poem for her:

  Me-ran-der is my little lamb

  She is a ewe and not a ram

  Me-ran-der, Me-ran-der,

  She has such lovely woolly fur.

  Soon w
e’ll have to cut off her tail

  When we do she’s sure to wail

  Me-ran-der, Me-ran-der

  But I’ll love her just the same, Sir.

  Once I took her for a walk

  My only complaint is she cannot talk,

  Me-ran-der, Me-ran-der

  Soon to the butcher I must hand her.

  In the summer of 1926 to Decca’s delight – she was always trying to get away from home – she was allowed to join dancing classes held in the homes of neighbours. Unity, who was more interested in her new pet goat, did not wish to go, and Debo was too young, so Decca, dressed in organza party frock and cashmere shawl, was taken to classes by Nanny every Wednesday. This pleasant occupation came to an abrupt end when she took the opportunity between dances to tell some of her contemporaries how babies were conceived and born. ‘The telling was a great success,’ she recalled, ‘particularly as I couldn’t help making up a few embellishments as I went along.’ A week or so later Sydney sent for her, having received complaints from parents that their children were disturbed by what Decca had told them. ‘Just retribution,’ Decca wrote, ‘quickly followed. It was clear to everyone, even to me, that I couldn’t be considered fit company for nice children after that. The enormity of my ill-advised act . . . was such that years later, when I was a débutante of seventeen, I learned from an older cousin that two young men of the neighbourhood were still forbidden to associate with me.’29

  That year Diana was sixteen and in her final year of education before her début. David’s dream house was in the final stages of building and Asthall was to be sold. In the autumn Sydney took all the girls to Paris on an ‘economical trip’ for three months accompanied by Nanny and Miss Bedell, while David finalized the sale of Asthall, organized the move to Swinbrook House, and purchased a town house, in a leafy cul-de-sac, distinguished by two tall white pillars guarding its entrance and overlooking Hyde Park. It was situated in that exclusive triangle bordered by the Harrods end of Brompton Road, Kensington Road and Exhibition Road, and was Sydney’s quid pro quo for the sale of Asthall. It was not a mere whim on her part, although the money she had inherited from her father perhaps entitled her to more of a say in the matter than she would previously have had. With five younger girls to bring out, and the probability of ‘doing the Season’ for at least another fifteen years it made sound financial sense not to continue renting houses in London, and for David – who spent days at a time working at the House of Lords – a home in London would be convenient. For Nancy’s first Season they had rented a house in Gloucester Square, which was not only expensive but ‘dead money’; furthermore, a house in London at that time – in 1926 the year of the general strike – was nothing like the drain on resources that it would be today.

  The Victorian house, 26 Rutland Gate, was – and is – elegant, tall, cream-stuccoed, and on the first of its six storeys it boasted a ballroom for those all-important coming-out dances. David was especially proud of the passenger lift, which he had installed. He was not in London a great deal – he was far too busy at Swinbrook overseeing the finishing off of the new house. The family teased him about his obsession, Nancy especially, addressing letters to him from Paris to ‘Builder Redesdale, The Buildings, South Lawn, Burford, Oxfordshire’. South Lawn had been the name of the old farmhouse on the site but David had decreed the new house would be called Swinbrook House. It was a good tease to refer to it innocently as ‘South Lawn’, which never failed to annoy him.

  The main purpose of the visit to Paris was to establish Diana in a day-school to ‘finish’ her education and improve her French. Pam had done the same thing and it had worked well for her. Sydney had written in advance to the Helleus asking them to suggest suitable establishments and the result, after an interview, was that Diana was accepted by the Cours Fénelon in the rue de la Pompe for a year. Having accomplished her mission Sydney and the others were free to enjoy the remainder of their holiday.

  They stayed in a modest hotel, Les Villas St Honoré d’Eylau in the avenue Victor Hugo, close to the Helleus’ flat, and within a short time of their arrival Sydney took her family along to meet her old friends. Diana was already exhibiting the classical beauty for which she would become renowned. One friend, James Lees-Milne, wrote in his diary that Diana was the most beautiful adolescent he had ever seen: ‘Divine is the word, for she was a goddess. More immaculate, more perfect more celestial than Botticelli’s seaborne Venus.’30 This blossoming allure was not lost on Helleu, either: ‘Voici la Grèce,’ he remarked, taking her by the hand to lead her in and introduce her to his family. Although it was generally acknowledged in the family that Diana was ‘the only one of us who had a face’, any pretensions were firmly squashed by the sensible Sydney, or Nanny Blor, whose famous put-downs, chiefly intended to spare self-consciousness, ran along the lines of ‘Don’t be silly, darling, nobody’s going to look at you.’ Helleu became almost obsessed with Diana’s small, neat head and cool, classical features, which exactly matched a stylized ideal for beauty in the twenties and thirties, and he made a number of portraits of her. ‘He was even a bit in love with me, which complicated things,’ Diana wrote, many years later to a friend, ‘[but] he was the first grown-up . . . who treated me on an equal footing and not as a silly little fool.’31 It was heady stuff to an impressionable teenager.

  ‘I learned more at the Cours Fénelon in six months than I learned at Asthall in six years,’ Diana wrote. Each morning the class of a dozen or so girls did ‘prep’ and in the afternoon they were lectured to and questioned by professors from the Sorbonne. The afternoon classes were larger, for some girls who were taught at home by governesses attended the lectures and question periods. They came mostly from rich backgrounds and were accompanied by footmen who sat and waited all afternoon for their charges. Diana felt very grown-up in being allowed to walk back unattended to the hotel, which was close to the school, but to her annoyance she was still lumped with her younger sisters when it came to experiencing Paris Society.

  While Diana was at school the younger ones were given daily lessons by a French governess. After lessons they would go for a walk in the bois and bowl hoops along the gravel paths. Nancy and Pam were allowed to spend time sightseeing, shopping and were even allowed to go and stay at a château with a family whom Pam had met during her year in Paris and of whom Sydney approved. She would not have been so sanguine had she known that Nancy spent some of her time flirting outrageously with a fellow guest whom she described as ‘the most seductive young man in the country’. One of Nancy’s best friends was Middy O’Neil, granddaughter of Lord Crewe, the British ambassador in Paris, so she and Pam went frequently to the embassy where they met interesting company. Even Diana was allowed to go there occasionally because she would be returning to Paris alone in the new year and Sydney wished her to be introduced to suitable young people. More often, though, Diana had to share tea with Nanny, Unity, Decca and Debo, and for these three the biggest drama of the trip revolved around the temporary escape of their pet hamsters which they called ‘desert rats’. The children feared that if the loss was discovered they would be asked to leave the hotel, and Sydney would be angry at their carelessness. A round-the-clock watch system was established by the sisters, including Diana, during which they sat near the small hole in the floor through which the furry delinquents had escaped, holding out tempting titbits until they were all recovered.

  For Nancy, Paris increasingly became the beau idéal of life. She found there an elegance, glitter, warmth and freedom that were lacking in London. One could be uninhibited there without drawing clucks of disapproval, ‘I have often danced all down the Champs Élysées,’ she wrote to Tom, ‘and no one notices they are so used to that sort of thing . . . Oh I am so excited.’32

  When the Cours Fénelon term ended in December Sydney returned with her brood to London and moved into Rutland Gate. The house was furnished with French furniture brought from Asthall: Louis XVI commodes and secretaires, and white chairs covere
d with needlepoint. Sydney splashed out and bought new curtains and soft furnishings, and the effect was light and elegant with the exception of David’s business room, which he had furnished himself. He had chosen as curtain material ‘a frightful sort of sham tapestry covered in dingy leaves and berries’, Diana wrote.33 When the children groaned at its ugliness he told them he imagined he saw birds and squirrels peeping through the foliage, which made him feel nearer his coverts at home.

  David was generally down at Swinbrook but Sydney, always happiest in London, busy with her family and running Rutland Gate, never bothered to go down to see what he was up to. Perhaps in view of his taste in curtain material it was unwise of her to allow him a free hand with the new house. But that, surprisingly, is what she did. He told his family he intended it to be even better than their beloved Asthall: there was a bedroom for each member of the family instead of the girls having to ‘double-up’, and even tennis and squash courts. There were garages, staff cottages, greenhouses and gardens. Uncle Tommy, the brother next in age to David, recently married, had seen it all and when he paid a visit to Rutland Gate he assured them, rubbing his hands, that David had provided ‘the best of everything for everybody’. They all missed Asthall but they had every reason to expect that when Swinbrook was completed it would be a marvellous place to live.