The Sisters_The Saga of the Mitford Family

by Mary S. Lovell

  The distress of the Redesdales was predictable, but Debo was also deeply affected. The sale of Swinbrook some months earlier had been a great sadness to her, for alone of her siblings she loved the house and considered her childhood there to have been idyllic. Furthermore, Decca had been the nearest sister in age to her: Unity at six years older was virtually grown up by the time Debo was ten. The sight of her parents and Nanny in anguished despair, the absence of Decca on top of losing Swinbrook, and the cancellation of the cruise to which she had been looking forward, hit her hard. Even now she regards this period as one of the unhappiest times in her life.21 However, when she told Decca this, in a letter fifty years later, Decca was truly astonished, apparently never realizing how deeply her running away had affected her youngest sister.22

  But there was no turning back for Decca, any more than there had been for Diana when she made her decision to leave Bryan for Mosley, or for Unity once she had met Hitler. The British consul at Bilbao had gone out of town for a few days and his secretary spoke limited English, so Esmond composed the reply to the Foreign Secretary’s cable for him. The wording of this cable is perhaps a measure of this extraordinary young man and his attitude to authority: ‘HAVE FOUND JESSICA MITFORD STOP IMPOSSIBLE TO PERSUADE HER TO RETURN’.

  Within days, however, Hasties’ cable was delivered to Esmond by the vice-consul, Arthur Pack, who had been sent to the town to deal with the impending emergency of refugees.23 He spelled out the full legal implications of Decca’s being made a ward of court. His warning was reinforced when the British ambassador, Sir Henry Chilton, called Esmond and Decca to his temporary embassy in a hotel. Chilton was renowned as a problem-solver, but one can imagine his irritation: he was in the midst of a real crisis, plagued by hundreds of anxious people wanting assurance that they would be rescued by the Royal Navy, his staff had hardly enough to eat, and now his attention was diverted by this frivolous young couple who appeared to be under the personal protection of the Foreign Secretary.

  He told them that the Basque government was relying on the assistance of the Royal Navy to evacuate women and children refugees, as the battlefront moved towards the coast. Unless Decca boarded the destroyer, he said, the British government would refuse all further co-operation in the evacuation programme; furthermore if they chose not to comply he would notify the Press Bureau of the reason why British co-operation was being withdrawn. It was a no-win situation, for even if Esmond and Decca called the ambassador’s bluff, and Esmond was pretty sure it was a bluff, their Spanish visas would almost certainly be withdrawn. Esmond won one concession: he and Decca would board the destroyer, he said, but would travel only as far as St Jean de Luz, where Nancy and Peter had disembarked a few days earlier as they had no visas to enter Spain.

  Twenty-four hours later Nancy and Peter, surrounded by British reporters, were waiting for them at the end of the dock. Decca, convinced that she could count on Nancy ‘to be on my side through thick and thin’24 had looked forward to seeing her elder sister, though Esmond scowled every time she said this. As far as he was concerned the entire Mitford family were Nazis. ‘Nancy, tall and beautiful’ waved her gloves at them and a fusillade of flashbulbs went off as Decca walked down the gangplank. Hours of intense argument followed, Nancy – no doubt hoping to save Decca from making a similar mistake to her own (and Diana’s) by marrying in haste – argued hotly that Decca should come home and ‘do things properly’, not live with Esmond as she was doing. It was not respectable and Society could ‘make things pretty beastly to those who disobey its rules’.25 Decca was mortified to find that Nancy had ‘ganged up with the Grown Ups’ against her. Prod told Esmond that if Decca went back to England he felt sure Lord Redesdale could be persuaded to give her an allowance, but the implication that he wanted money out of his proposed marriage to Decca, and from such a tainted source as Lord Redesdale whom he referred to as ‘the Nazi Baron’,26 infuriated Esmond. Next morning Nancy and Peter left, somewhat to the surprise of Decca and Esmond, who had expected them to put up more of a fight.

  It was not so much success for the runaways as stalemate, for the British consul made it clear that Esmond’s application for a renewal of his Spanish visa would not be sanctioned as things stood. Yet the couple could not marry. Furthermore their finances were critical. They had spent Esmond’s original advance and two or three sums sent to him by Peter Nevile for the News Chronicle articles. Decca’s running-away money, the thirty-pound dress allowance and an extra ten pounds that David had given her for spending money were also long gone. They now had nine shillings between them,27 so Esmond walked round to the Reuters office and talked himself into a job, translating and transmitting what was being reported by radio from both sides in the Spanish war. This paid two pounds a week, which was exactly the cost of a double bed and board at the Hôtel des Basques. Esmond did not speak Spanish well enough to translate the excitable transmission so the manager of the hotel did it for him each night, refusing however to listen to or translate Falange broadcasts. Esmond made that part up based on what he gleaned from that of the republicans. The couple decided to remain at Bayonne until they could see a way out of the present situation, and meanwhile there was a rapid-fire exchange of letters between Sydney and Esmond, in which he, still livid at Prod’s implied charge that he was after money, was coolly offensive and advised that they considered themselves married so that any letters addressed to Miss Jessica Mitford were being returned unopened.

  Decca had replied to Unity’s chatty letter that she didn’t think Esmond would be very keen on her keeping in touch with a Fascist and Unity’s response was matter-of-fact:

  About Esmond’s feeling for Fascists (actually I prefer to be called a National Socialist) . . . I hate communists as much as he hates Nazis . . . but I don’t see why we shouldn’t personally be quite good friends, though political enemies . . . I do think family ties ought to make a difference. My attitude towards Esmond is as follows – and I rather expect his to me to be the same. I naturally wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him if it was necessary for my cause, and I should expect him to do the same to me, but in the meantime I don’t see why we shouldn’t be quite good friends.28

  Esmond, of course, could see every reason why they should not be friends and his reaction is probably best summed up by a single paragraph in Boadilla:

  I am not a pacifist, though I wish it were possible to lead one’s life without the intrusion of this ugly monster of force and killing – war . . . And it is not with the happiness of the convinced communist, but reluctantly, that I realise that there will never be any peace, or any of the things that I like and want, until that mixture of profit-seeking, self-interest, cheap emotion and organised brutality which is called fascism has been fought and destroyed forever.29

  Sydney now decided to see Decca. She travelled out to Bayonne with the aim of talking her daughter into going home with her. Perhaps if she had gone in the first place, instead of Nancy and Prod, she might have been saved a good deal of heartache, although there was never any chance that she would change Decca’s resolve. Sydney’s calm manner and ability to laugh at most things won Esmond’s grudging respect, while the Rodds had made him bitter and intractable against the entire Mitford family, an attitude he was fast transmitting to Decca. When Sydney left, she had realized that Decca could not be talked out of marrying Esmond and – since Decca had admitted to her in confidence that there was a strong possibility she was pregnant – she said she would see what she could do to help them. Esmond contacted Peter Nevile to say that there was no change in their plans and that Lady Redesdale had left after two days of amicable discussion. On the other hand they were in urgent need of more cash so he suggested leaking the latest position on the runaways to the News Chronicle – ‘It can’t do any harm, provided it’s not presented with too many details as though a “story” sold to the press. Then we can combine the proper attitude to this “hateful publicity” with a little more filthy lucre.’30 The resultant ‘interview wit
h the runaways’ appeared on 12 March. ‘Unfair tactics on behalf of the British Government – diplomatic blackmail, if you like – are responsible for the fact that Decca and I are [here] . . . I am hoping to return to Spain to continue my journalistic work, and I hope to take Decca with me . . .’

  Esmond and Sydney then engaged in a series of letters in which he bluffed that he was beginning to think that there was not a lot of point in marrying at all. And, when Sydney wrote to say she had persuaded the judge to consent to the marriage and that she would like to attend the wedding, he wrote saying that since the Redesdales had such a low opinion of him he did not want anyone from Decca’s family present. Perhaps this was due to the fact that the same post that brought Sydney’s placatory letter also brought a furious letter from David saying that Decca would never get a penny from him while she remained with Esmond, married or unmarried. The couple now conveniently forgot that they had acted badly and caused distress. They began to regard themselves as victims and it was the start of a long period of acrimony between Decca and various members of her family.

  In the event, both Sydney and Nellie Romilly attended the civil wedding on 18 May. It was, the newspapers said, ‘the wedding that even a destroyer could not stop’ (for by now it was accepted by the press that the Foreign Secretary had sent the destroyer solely to find Decca). After a ceremony of a very few words at the British consulate, Esmond Mark Romilly, bachelor and journalist of the Hôtel des Basques, and the Hon. Jessica Lucy Freeman Mitford became man and wife. Lady Redesdale took the small wedding party to lunch at Bayonne’s smartest hotel. It was all she could do to make a celebration of the day but she regarded it as an ineffably sad rather than happy occasion. It was difficult to accept that her darling funny ‘Little D’, the natural clown of her children, had chosen to marry in such a hole-in-the-corner manner, with no friends or jovial family group to support her. She had not even a wedding gown, just a simple summer dress, bought by Sydney in Bayonne, with a sufficiently relaxed shape to accommodate the slight bulge in the bride’s waistline.31 There were a few gifts to unwrap, which Sydney had carried over with her, and which provided a brief degree of festivity: a portable gramophone from Unity, a pearl and amethyst necklace and earrings from Diana and some books Decca had asked for.

  On the following day, with many misgivings, Sydney left the newly-weds to the life they appeared to enjoy, in an untidy and, she thought, a rather squalid hotel room. Although she had wanted her girls to be comfortably married within their own class, she had never wanted them to marry for money, and they had all grown up believing that love was the most important ingredient in a marriage. Sydney’s initial objection to Bryan Guinness had not only been Diana’s age but his excessive wealth, and she must have felt that if Diana had had to budget and work hard at running a house, as she herself did, that the Guinness marriage might not have come under such pressure. But Decca’s marriage seemed to be starting out with everything against it: she and Esmond were hardly more than children, without any prospects whatsoever, no home to go to and no income. Decca knew nothing about the practicalities of running a house, as was obvious from the untidiness in which they were living. Furthermore, their ideology seemed destined to alienate them from everyone who might be persuaded to help them. Her only reassurance was that they were, clearly, very much in love and Esmond appeared protective of Decca. They talked a lot about earning their living and were fine, intelligent young people if, in her opinion, misguided. So she clung to a hope that it would eventually work itself out. She had arranged a touring holiday for Debo to compensate for the disappointment of the cancelled world cruise, and when she left Bayonne she went to Florence where they were to meet.

  Esmond then landed a job of sorts. He became an interpreter between the Basque government and the captains of several merchant vessels who were trying to land vital supplies at Bilbao, despite a reported blockade. This provided him with a number of reporting scoops for which the News Chronicle paid him an extra five pounds a story, through Peter Nevile who was acting as his agent. When not writing his dispatches Esmond worked doggedly at his book Boadilla, his brown head bent over his typewriter and the hotel-room floor littered with pages of typescript. With its historical perspective, and its reasoned argument, it is a remarkable book, by any standards, for an eighteen-year-old to have written. Decca teased that he was the only person she had ever heard of who had written two biographies before he was nineteen. She felt proud, but also sad and guilty, knowing that it was because of her that Esmond could not get to Spain, which he really wanted to do. In the event he never returned.

  Most days he finished work by early afternoon, after which they had lunch and went to Biarritz to bathe in the sea.32 These pleasant visits almost came to an abrupt end when Esmond was caught in an undertow and nearly drowned. Decca could see that he was struggling but the person she begged to go to his rescue was a poor swimmer and sensibly refused.33 She was in despair, but Esmond somehow fought his way back and sat exhausted on the beach, with Decca in floods of tears at his side. They had decided to stick around in Bayonne for the July fiesta, a carnival which emulated the famous bull-run of Pamplona except that in Bayonne cows were released on to the streets. It was a few days of drunken revelry, providing respite from the miserable news from Spain during the interim weeks. Between Guernica – Franco’s first experiment in ‘total war’, in which the town was mercilessly bombed until nothing remained standing – and the eventual capture of Bilbao on 19 June there had been a remorseless stream of bad news.

  The only comfort was that, with a few wedding-present cheques, Esmond’s earnings and an advance for his book, their exchequer was boosted again to something over fifty pounds. With the confidence of a wealthy man Esmond came up with a brilliant idea to resolve all their financial problems permanently, inventing a system that would ‘break the bank’ at the local casino. Like all such gambling systems it could not fail, and when he explained it even Decca was convinced that in a night they would become millionaires. Predictably, within two hours they had lost everything. In desperation and in secret Decca wrote to Sydney to ask for help. Although she could not resist an uncomfortable dig about their spending, Sydney sent three pounds as a gift, and a ten-pound dress allowance, explaining that she had been obliged to reduce the allowance for both Decca and Debo from £140 a year to £120 because of a rise in income tax, which had reduced her salary from the Lady. In future, the dress allowance would be paid into their accounts at Drummonds in monthly instalments of ten pounds. Clearly, there were to be no more lump-sum advances large enough to finance elopements.

  After the fiesta the Romillys spent several months touring France in a car borrowed from a fellow reporter who had returned to England, and camping in a two-man tent. They lived on small sums sent over by Peter Nevile. Eventually, in Dieppe, where they had spent a few weeks as Nellie Romilly’s guest, the car seized up as they had forgotten to put any oil in it. The weather was turning too cold for camping and Decca was becoming increasingly ungainly, so they decided to return to England, where another friend had offered them a flat in his house at Rotherhithe in south-east London.

  11

  Family at Odds

  (1937–8)

  Debo was seventeen on 31 March 1937 but her moment of metamorphosis was overshadowed by the elopement crisis. Her coming-out ball was postponed for a year and she left London after a birthday party for a visit to Castle Howard as a welcome break from the tensions at Rutland Gate. With no children left at home, Nanny Blor – who had also been badly upset by Decca’s elopement – took a long holiday with her family at Hastings, followed by ‘doing the rounds’, visiting Nancy and Diana, before going to stay with Pam who was recuperating from gynaecological surgery. It was hoped this would enable her to have a child, but it was not successful and she never carried a child to term.

  For her birthday Debo was given a car and a course of driving lessons. It looks as if Sydney was taking no chances of her becoming bored, and bolting. B
ut there was never any real danger of that for, in general, Debo enjoyed her life at home. On the other hand, this youngest of the Mitford sisters had every right to feel aggrieved by the actions of some of her siblings. Not only had Decca’s elopement upset her emotionally, it dampened her birthday celebrations. Even worse, the notoriety of Diana, Unity and Decca inevitably cast a blight on her prospects. What mother of an eligible son could have felt unalloyed pleasure in a connection with a family where three elder sisters had already demonstrated such contempt of Society’s values? Sydney realized this and was ultra-careful on Debo’s behalf. But Debo was never affected with the jealousy from which Nancy suffered or with Decca’s inexplicable bitterness. She was uncomplicated, like Pam, although far more lively and everyone liked her.

  While Sydney went to Bayonne for Decca’s wedding, Debo – somewhat cross at not being allowed to see her sister married – travelled with a friend to Italy and waited in Florence for her mother. There, she was closely watched by her temporary guardians: ‘I wasn’t allowed into town so I couldn’t send you a telegram on the wedding day,’ she explained to Decca.1 When Sydney joined her they toured northern Italy together, and stayed in Venice before travelling north to join a party at Janos von Almassy’s Schloss in Austria, which, since the Anschluss a few months earlier, was now in Hitler’s Reich. Janos was an ardent supporter of Hitler but it was not simply from this partisan source that Sydney and Debo received their impression – so different from that reported by the British press – that the Austrians were overjoyed at this development: everyone they met seemed truly pleased with it.