The Sisters_The Saga of the Mitford Family

by Mary S. Lovell

  Unity subsequently contacted Hanfstaengl in London on several occasions, dismissing the affair as a joke as she tried to persuade him to return to Munich. Even Diana got involved, and tried to win from Hitler a pension for his old friend, and a personal guarantee that it was safe for him to return to Germany. Subsequently, Hanfstaengl received a letter from Goering, which told him: ‘I assure you that the whole affair was intended as a harmless joke. We wanted to give you an opportunity to think over some rather over-audacious utterances you made. Nothing more than that was intended . . . I consider it vitally necessary that you come back to Germany straight away . . . forget your suspicions and act reasonably. Heil Hitler! Herman Goering.’26 But Hanfstaengl dug into his intimate knowledge of Hitler and, having got his son out of Germany to the USA (though his sister Erna remained in Munich), he decided that he was safer where he was. The irony of this episode is that Hanfstaengl was incarcerated as an enemy alien in England during the Second World War. So, indirectly, Unity probably saved not only his life but also his way of life. After the war he and his family returned to Munich and lived out their lives in his old family home, which would scarcely have been possible had he remained an active member of the Nazi hierarchy.

  That September the Redesdales joined Unity for the annual Parteitag. It was the year of Speer’s famous ‘Cathedral of Light’, which received a great deal of attention in the British and US press. The party included David’s sister-in-law, Aunt Helen, mother of Clementine and Rosemary Mitford. Randolph Churchill was also present, but it was the Redesdales the British papers noticed, and they began to ask just why Lord Redesdale’s family were so interested in the Nazi regime.

  Diana made a number of visits to Germany that year, almost all for the purpose of furthering the Air Time Ltd project. She timed her visits to match periods when she knew Hitler would be in Berlin, and she would check into the Kaiserhof Hotel and send a note to let him know she was there. Quite often he would reply through an adjutant, inviting her to the Chancellery after he had finished his day’s work. When he had had a full day, and especially after an important speech, he found it difficult to sleep, so he welcomed the opportunity of a long chatty conversation to wind down before retiring. They used to sit together by an open fire in his private rooms in the Reichskanlei, and talk. ‘I got to know him fairly well,’ Diana states in her autobiography. ‘Sometimes we saw a film, sometimes we talked . . . in conversation he was quick and clever, and, of course, very well informed, and he had that surprising frankness often found in men at the top, in contrast with mystery-making nonentities.’27 Diana is good company, as were all the Mitfords: it can have been no hardship for Hitler to spend time with a sophisticated and beautiful woman who happened to share his taste in art and music. She told Mosley’s son, Nicholas, that they spoke of what was happening in England, what was happening in Germany, of Mosley and the BUF, and the state of the world.28

  Although it took a long time, her calm persistence in the matter of the radio station paid off. Back in October 1937 she had been advised formally that ‘the greatest objection was raised from the side of the appropriate military authorities’ to the idea. ‘The Führer regrets that under these circumstances he is not able to agree to your proposal.’29 Most people would have given up at that point, but Diana continued with her patient strategy. It was no hardship for her, either, to maintain her friendship with Hitler as she enjoyed their tête-a-têtes. In the spring of 1938 she was told by a German contact that Hitler had asked for the radio-station files and had taken them away to read. In June she was advised that he had approved a form of joint venture based in Heligoland, in which Air Time Ltd would share the profits with a German radio station.30 By any standards the obtaining of this concession at such a time was a remarkable achievement by Diana.

  It was at about this time that William Acton drew all six Mitford sisters in works that have since become well known. He had made a pencil sketch of Diana earlier in the year, at the same time as he had made a huge Wagnerian-type oil painting of her, part of a series he did of many of his friends. Sydney liked the sketch so much that she commissioned him to draw the other girls, too. It seemed unlikely that she would see them all together again for a long time (they were never all together again). He worked from photographs, though it is possible that Nancy and Debo also sat for him. Sydney had them mounted in red brocade frames and hung them in her sitting room. Nancy told her that it looked like Bluebeard’s chamber.31

  From early October Decca and Esmond were ensconced at the rented house at 41 Rotherhithe Street. It was tall and thin, linking two of the great warehouses that lined that stretch of the southern bank of the Thames. With its dark wharves and teeming slums Rotherhithe was one of the most deprived areas of London, and when Philip Toynbee first visited he got hopelessly lost. ‘When I asked a muffled stranger the way, he said, “What ship do you want, mate?” and I knew I was in authentic Esmond territory.’32 It was the first time Toynbee had met Decca, and he was impressed not only with her beauty and her cheerful wholehearted support of Esmond, but her upper-class voice, ‘a curiously cadenced sing-song which would have been grotesquely affected if it had not been even more grotesquely natural’.33 Esmond could be all things to all men and his voice though cultured was not obviously so, whereas the Mitford girls are renowned for the manner of their speech. Decca did not try to change this for some years, and Toynbee recalled her once asking a burly working man, ‘Could you be absolutely sweet and tell us where we can get some delicious tea?’34

  Esmond was keen to save so that they could travel to Mexico, so he got a job at five pounds a week, at J. Walter Thompson’s advertising agency on the Strand, writing copy for Radio Luxembourg commercials. Even Decca got a job for a few weeks, while she could still work, as part of a market-research team employed by the same agency. She travelled, ate and shared rooms with a group of women who conducted the surveys and it was the first time she had met anyone who was truly working class. Formerly her socialist and Communist contacts had all come from the upper classes, which was Esmond’s chief objection to the Communist Party in England: he felt that it was overloaded with young intellectuals and was therefore unrealistic. The local branch of the Labour Party was closer to his ideology. The coarse attitude towards their menfolk, and to life in general, of the other women in Decca’s group was a great shock to her and depressed her. Surely these were not the working classes for whom she had battled with Unity in the DFD? Occasionally she and Esmond would row about her ‘upper-classishness’, but they were so much in love with each other that all disagreements were quickly made up. And she was young and resilient enough to accept the hardships of the life they shared. The freedom from all restrictions and restraint, so utterly different from life with her parents, made it acceptable and enjoyable – a fulfilment of rebellion.

  Occasionally the couple made plundering sorties to the homes of the rich, in response to any casual invitations that came their way, teased right-wingers and filled pockets and handbags with cigars, cigarettes, and any small knick-knacks that took their fancy. Esmond claimed he once had to restrain Decca who had her nail scissors poised above a set of bedroom curtains she fancied for the sitting room at Rotherhithe.35 The young Romillys regarded this behaviour as amusing and acceptable, for in their persistent war against the upper classes no holds were barred. However, when the stories got out their behaviour was regarded with shocked disgust.

  Esmond had some other novel ideas about making a profit from well-heeled friends. The Romillys held parties to which guests were invited to ‘bring a bottle’, but any wine or spirit that appeared was carefully stashed away in the grandfather clock and only beer was served.36 Then there were the gambling parties. Esmond seems to have been an eternal optimist when it came to gambling and most weeks spent the best part of his earnings from the agency at the greyhound track, always certain that he was going to make their fortune. When he found he could not win as a punter, he had the brilliant idea of becoming ‘the
bank’ so he acquired a roulette wheel and set up a casino in the sitting room. Any idea he had of fleecing their connections to recoup losses was bound to failure if the single experience of Bryan Guinness is anything to go by.

  Bryan had remarried, very happily, and he and his wife had a child a few months old. Relations between him and Diana were friendly again and remained so for the rest of their lives. He also maintained contact with other members of the Mitford family but he was surprised when he and his wife were invited to lunch at Rotherhithe with Decca and Esmond. He soon realized why for ‘They told us in all frankness,’ he wrote, ‘of their intention to make a little money by organizing some gambling for their friends.’ Subsequently the Guinnesses played roulette in the homespun casino. Bryan was well aware that he was expected to lose and he was perfectly willing to do so – indeed, he looked on it as a form of charitable giving to help Decca, of whom he was fond. But the evening did not go as planned: ‘The stakes were low, but we determined to lose a little to our kind hosts,’ Bryan recalled. He staked recklessly, and to his growing despair found that he had won large sums of money. Much more, he realized, than Esmond and Decca could possibly afford. In desperation he continued to play for long hours after he and his wife wanted to go home to bed, and it was almost dawn before he had managed to make a small loss and felt he could retire with honour. ‘It was fortunate I think’, he wrote, ‘that the Romillys did not adopt the profession of croupiers.’37

  This sort of contact was rare, however, for Esmond was absolutely opposed to Decca seeing any of her family, and although she did meet some of them, she did so in secret to prevent an argument. Tom was the exception. He went to Rotherhithe often, the only member of the family allowed to visit there. Despite his written statements to friends that he supported Fascism, and that had he lived in Germany he would be a Nazi, he somehow convinced Decca and Esmond that he supported them. ‘Tom was pure Cudum [Boudledidge for Communist] when he used to come to see us at Rotherhithe Street,’ Decca wrote later. ‘Esmond adored him (the only one of our family he did) . . . but of course he adored the Boud [Unity]. In some ways I always thought she was his Favourite Sister.’38 One is forced to the conclusion that Tom Mitford was not deeply po litically committed in any direction and was happy to be whatever was necessary to be allowed to visit his sisters.

  When Unity came home in October she and Decca met in Harrods without Esmond’s knowledge. He was apparently incapable of understanding that the affection between the two sisters could survive their political differences. They used to drive around London, shopping for the baby’s layette or visiting friends, and when Esmond was not there Unity sometimes took Sydney out to Rotherhithe, a journey of about an hour from the West End. Unity was at the height of her relationship with Hitler, and she was even considering becoming a German citizen. The newspapers had somehow discovered that she had enquired about this, and rumours swirled about that she and Hitler planned to marry. There is no denying that Unity enjoyed all the attention. She drove around in her MG with a pennant on the bonnet emblazoned with a swastika, and that she had become a personality in her own right, not simply the sister of Diana or Decca, pleased her. It was at about this time that Sydney made her famous remark, ‘Whenever I see a headline beginning with “Peer’s Daughter” I know one of you children has been in trouble.’

  A few friends ventured out to Rotherhithe. One, Debo’s friend Christian Howard,39 of Castle Howard, went in the spirit of friendship to a social outcast. ‘I was so scared to come into the slums,’ she told Decca, ‘that I wore my oldest clothes.’ Decca was seared by the patronage. ‘You don’t need to worry,’ she said hotly. ‘Nobody would know, as your best clothes look like other people’s oldest.’40 It was the last time Decca ever set eyes on her.

  Sydney had hoped that Decca’s baby would be born late as first babies often are. Early January, with the possibility of calling it premature, would be the best that could be hoped for, and she had instructed the other girls to say, if asked, that Decca’s baby was due ‘in the spring’, which caused much scoffing from the mother-to-be. Decca was something of a lost cause, but Sydney had Debo to think of, and she was undoubtedly thinking of the baby, too, for stigma clung to a child and arbiters of social niceties had long memories. In any case the lusty full-term infant did not oblige. Julia Decca Romilly was born on 20 December41 in the Rotherhithe flat, and three days later Unity drove Sydney there with her car loaded with presents for Christmas and the new baby. Esmond was at work.

  Decca had no idea about housework, and now, with a newborn baby, things got out of hand. It was fortunate, therefore, that the brand of extreme socialism practised by the Romillys did not prevent them from hiring a housemaid. Rose cost them £1 1s 3d a week (‘The odd one shilling and threepence is insurance,’ Decca told Debo).42 Decca wrote movingly of the first months of little Julia’s life, of the two doting parents gleefully watching as the baby grew, ‘learned to smile, wave her feet, and catch them with an unsteady hand’.43 Sydney, however, was always concerned about Julia’s appearance, and thought she was ‘too thin’ and pale, with none of the pleasing chubbiness of her own children as babies. When Unity returned from Germany in early March, she saw Julia for the first time since she was a few days old, and reported to Diana that she was ‘absolutely sweet, but her legs are like Marlene Dietrich’s’.44 Sydney offered to send Nanny Blor, who was eager to help out, but Esmond would not allow it. For the same reason Decca returned Diana’s gift of baby clothes.

  Baby Julia was four months old when a measles epidemic struck Rotherhithe. Concerned, Decca took her baby to the local clinic for inoculation but the nurse assured her that this was unnecessary as a breast-fed baby was immune to the disease. In giving this information she assumed, of course, that Decca had already had measles and would confer immunity, and who could blame her? It was inconceivable that any child brought up in the docks of London would have escaped the disease. But Decca had never had measles, and had never been inoculated, and within days both she and baby Julia succumbed. Childhood diseases are always more serious in an adult and most of the time Decca was barely conscious. In desperation Esmond engaged nurses to look after them both round the clock, and Decca finally surfaced to the agony of watching her baby fight for breath in an oxygen tent. Julia died on 28 May of pneumonia.

  Decca and Esmond were stupefied with grief, ‘like people,’ she wrote, ‘battered into semi-consciousness in a vicious street fight’.45 Esmond drew out all their savings and made reservations, and the day after the funeral the couple ‘fled’. They went to Corsica for three months, during which time Decca recovered her health, protected by time and distance from family sympathy that she could not have borne. Not everyone was sympathetic. Philip Toynbee, who had entrée to all social events despite his dedication to Communism, was shocked when Julia’s death was discussed at dinner parties in Kensington and Mayfair and people said callously that it was more or less to be expected since the baby had been raised in a slum, neglected by its feckless parents.46 There was a spitefulness, Toynbee considered, out of all proportion to the irritation inflicted by Esmond’s pranks. Like most radicals he seems not to have realized that people who quietly conform may feel as deeply about their ideology as those who aggressively try to inflict an opposing one. The remarks about the Romillys were cruel and tasteless, but so was Esmond’s behaviour.

  The Mitford family was now sadly fragmented with most of them not speaking to at least one other person. Nancy was not allowed to visit Diana at Wootton, or Decca at Rotherhithe, although she and Decca maintained an occasional correspondence. Diana could now visit her parents, but Mosley was still forbidden, and even when Sydney let Rutland Gate it was with the proviso to the tenants that Oswald Mosley must never be allowed to set foot in the house. Nor was Diana allowed to visit Decca, for her support of Mosley made her ‘the enemy’. Unity was able to write to Decca but not allowed to visit while Esmond was at home. Debo was forbidden by her parents to visit Decca, but she did s
o secretly a few times and recalls Esmond as being ‘very charismatic – sort of lit up inside’.47 She wrote frequently to Decca giving news of the wider family: ‘The other day there was a wonderful family gloat, a cocktail party given by Aunt Helen48 for a farewell for Rosemary who is going to New Zealand for three years.’49 Pam – who had suffered a miscarriage – was away travelling a lot with Derek. Only Tom was welcomed everywhere.

  12

  Slide Towards Conflict

  (1938)

  By the summer of 1938 war was looming as a distinct possibility. Indeed, pundits said that it was no longer a matter of ‘if’, but ‘when’. However, most people in Britain still preferred to ignore this. After all, public opinion reasoned, why should a central European war affect Britain? So what if Hitler’s armies were threatening to overrun Czechoslovakia? The Czechoslovakian state was not an ancient country, but had been cobbled together by modern politicians who, when the boundaries were drawn up for the Versailles Treaty, had placed 3.5 million Germans – formerly subjects of the old Habsburg empire – inside Czechoslovakia’s border facing Germany and Austria. Perhaps the Germans had a genuine grievance concerning ‘self-determination’ – and look how the Austrians had welcomed the Anschluss. Hitler, as shown on Pathé Pictorial news, might sound disagreeable, with his ranting oratory, and look comical, with his little moustache, but what he said made a sort of sense. ‘I am in no way willing that here in the heart of Germany a second Palestine should be permitted to arise. The poor Arabs are defenceless and deserted. The Germans in Czechoslovakia are neither defenceless nor are they deserted, and people should take notice of that fact.’1 As for Kristallnacht, yes, it had been objectionable, but all this was someone else’s fight. Let them get on with it. The new slogan that Mosley had adopted had an undoubted appeal to many who feared another all-out war: ‘MIND BRITAIN’S BUSINESS’.