The Sisters_The Saga of the Mitford Family

by Mary S. Lovell

  Although by 16 March Decca had still not made up her mind whether to stay in San Francisco or to go to Mexico to fulfil an ambition of Esmond’s, she adopted a defiant tone in her letters to Sydney. ‘We love San Francisco . . . we have got an apartment in this building,’ she wrote. ‘It is $25 a month and Mrs Betts is going to look after the Donk and feed her for an extra $40. This is a terrific bargain as nurses here in SF are about $10016 . . . You asked whether the Donk has Mitford eyes; no, she hasn’t. In fact she doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to any Mitford either in looks or character, but is exactly like Esmond.’17 This was patently untrue: Dinky would have fitted into any of those annual Mitford photographs at Asthall and Swinbrook, without raising any suspicion of being an interloper.18 But Decca was truthful about her work and enthusiastic about the new friends she had made in the union. ‘My job is heaven; tho unfortunately the reactionaries here are trying to prevent a lot of the things we want to do & it may even result in us all losing our jobs. If so, I can get another job; but I do love the OPA The FBI (like Scotland Yard) are investigating a lot of people in our division at the moment, including me. This is part of a red-baiting program. The Durrs were investigated, too.’19 Her future, she thought, did not lie in England but in the USA ‘I feel that in my job here, I’m working for the cause I always believed in – the destruction of fascism.’

  In May 1943 she was sent to Seattle for two weeks to train some new OPA recruits, and as a result of one operation in which she successfully obtained a prosecution of a lumber company there, she was offered a permanent job in Seattle at $2,600 a year. It was a big temptation, she wrote to Sydney, especially as the government would pay all her removal expenses, and rents there were much cheaper than in San Francisco. She had not turned down the offer, but she wanted to wait until after the visit of a friend who was coming out from Washington in early June. ‘By the way,’ she finished, ‘please don’t put “The Hon” on the envelopes as when I get them at the office they leave them around on my desk and of course no-one knows anything about my family. If they did, it would soon get around to some beastly journalists and all that publicity would start again.’20

  The friend she was waiting to see was Bob Treuhaft. He took a ‘streamliner’ train out to California and spent five days with Decca. During this time they spent a few days vacationing at Stinson Beach with Dinky, declared their love for each other, and Bob decided to move out to California as soon as he could arrange to do so. Fortunately there were vacancies for lawyers in the San Francisco branch of the OPA and within two weeks he had packed up his apartment, arranged to ship his furniture (‘at government expense’), and pulled strings to get an airline seat. Tickets were limited and priority was given to official travellers. ‘It was hard work but I finally persuaded the airlines how vital it was for me to get to see my old Dec in the shortest possible time,’ he wrote to Aranka on 19 June from ‘over Chicago’. ‘I’m looking forward tremendously to life in a real earthy community, after the ivory tower campus atmosphere of Washington . . . Decca’s in the swing already in local politics, clubs and unions and even in my short stay there I began to feel a part of it.’

  Eight days later he wrote again:

  If I didn’t say much over the phone it was only because the wonder and the beauty of it all just left me speechless . . . I came out here knowing that Decca loved me, but with little hope of persuading her to marry me. The second day here I asked her the question and she said yes before I had a chance to finish, because she had been thinking about this for months, and had already made her decision. When Decca makes up her mind she never changes it . . . We parked the Dinkydonk with some friends and went out to a beautiful resort [Guerneville, California] among the Redwoods on Russian River and got married by a lady justice of the peace the next day [21 June]. I never dreamed that so much glorious living could be packed into one week. Aranka she is just magnificent in every way – and completely devoted. She is the only girl that I’ve ever known that I know I can be completely happy with, whatever may happen.21

  Decca’s best friends, Marge (Frantz) and ‘Dobbie’ (Doris Brin), were not entirely sure about the marriage. ‘When he first arrived he was obviously nuts about her, but we thought he wasn’t good enough for her,’ one said..22

  Decca also wrote home with news that dumbfounded her family.

  Darling Muv, you will be v. surprised to hear I am married to Bob Treuhaft. I know I haven’t told you about him before, so I’ll do so now. I have known him since last December . . . and since coming out here in February I was terrifically lonely without him. We are tremendously happy and all the bitter, horrible past months seem to have vanished . . . we are going to live out here and we will come on a trip to Europe after the war . . . The Donk adores Bob. I do hope you realise how wonderful everything is. I would have written you sooner about it except that it was so terrifically sudden . . .23

  It was very fortunate, she wrote, that the whole thing had been done secretly and there had been no publicity in the papers.

  They would have made an awful stink, especially as Bob is Jewish and they would have brought out all the old stuff about our family . . . I really didn’t mean to tease when I wrote about being turned out by the family. That’s all a long time ago anyway. What I really meant was . . . that all our ideas and beliefs are so tremendously different and opposed that it would be impossible to go back to an ordinary family life. But I don’t think anymore, as I once did, that this means one can’t be on writers or even speakers if close enough.24

  However, this policy was not to be universally applied. Later that year when writing to advise that Bob had been promoted and had a job at the magnificent salary of $4,600, and that she had applied for US citizenship, she added angrily that she was furious to hear about the release of the Mosleys and felt it was a betrayal of those engaged in fighting Fascism. Indeed, if she were to hear that Diana and Mosley were staying with Muv she had decided not to continue writing.25

  Having read that there had been a mass demonstration of protest from forty thousand people, who marched on the House of Commons demanding ‘Put Mosley Back’, Decca went further. She wrote to Churchill (‘Dear Cousin Winston’) protesting that the release of her sister appeared to indicate that the government was out of touch with the will of the people of Britain to defeat Fascism in all its guises and an absolute betrayal of all those who had given their lives in the war to date.26 She demanded that the Mosleys be kept in jail, and she felt so strongly that she broke her own rules. She made the letter public by giving it with an exclusive press release to the San Francisco Chronicle, thus ending her period as a closet Mitford.

  The papers had been on to her anyway. The Examiner had run the story headlined, ‘Sister of Nordic Goddess in OPA Job Here’ after a journalist talked his way into Decca’s office and – when he took her picture through a glass partition – was attacked by a furious Decca who knocked the camera out of his hands, kicked it and grabbed him by the throat. The other papers ran stories inventing facts where they could find none, and her own polite ‘No comment’ to journalists waiting outside her office building was construed in the press as ‘a reluctance to discuss her presence in San Francisco’. This, she said, reminded her of a similar incident when she and Esmond were runaways in Bayonne and Esmond had threatened to punch a reporter if he continued to pester them. The reporter filed his story next day, quoting Esmond as saying, ‘I am with the girl I love.’

  For some days Decca and Bob hid in their apartment with the blinds pulled. The difficulty of access to it suddenly became an asset, as reporters had to knock on the door of the boarding-house whereupon Mrs Betts sent them packing. Fifteen years later Decca wrote that she regretted the tone of her letter to Churchill, because with hindsight she found it ‘painfully stuffy and self-righteous – and also, as Nancy pointed out in her understated fashion, it was “not very sisterly”’ but, she said, when she wrote it she was feeling ‘a deep bitterness over Esmond’s death and a go
odly dash of familial spitefulness’.27 Her letter led to her being invited to join the Communist Party through her friend Dobbie Brin (later Walker), whom Decca had met during her first weeks in San Francisco.

  There was a slight hiccup in D ecca’s application to join the party because the membership application form contained the ominous question: ‘Occupation of father?’ and she did not feel that ‘Aristocrat’ or ‘Peer of the Realm’ was acceptable. Fortunately she remembered her father’s gold mine, and was able to answer ‘miner’.28 Her background and connections were known about, of course. And though there were a few dissenters she was elected to membership on the understanding that she would do all she could to ‘overcome the handicaps of birth and upbringing’. To Decca, being elected did not mean simply being content to be a card-carrying member and attend meetings. It meant being an activist, and her enthusiastic participation in party activities was soon rewarded. ‘Within a few months of joining the Party, Bob and I rose in the ranks.’ Bob was elected to serve on the campaign committee for the party’s municipal election platform. Decca became ‘Drive Director’, responsible for collecting a sort of monthly ‘tithe’ of a day’s pay from party members. She excelled at this, and her enormous charm made her popular with almost everyone. Shortly afterwards she was nominated for the full-time job of county financial director.

  The amount of publicity that the Mosleys’ release provoked in San Francisco and throughout the USA was nothing to what was happening in England. Until the autumn, 1943 had been a reasonably quiet year for Sydney. In the spring David had undergone surgery to remove the cataracts which had made him quite blind. To everyone’s relief this was successful, and though he now had to wear thick glasses he could see again. There was also great joy when Debo gave birth safely, in April, to a baby girl, Emma. Tom had been in Libya but was now in Italy; he wrote as regularly as the war allowed, short letters just to let Sydney know he was safe. Pam was happy with her country life. Unity was now able to travel alone and could spend short periods with friends and relations. Doctors said she had recovered as far as she was likely to, and although friends who had known her before she shot herself found her an uncomfortable caricature of her former self, she seemed contented enough. Then, in October, Mosley became ill and they were all pitchforked into front-page drama again.

  Because of prison conditions, lack of exercise and inadequate diet, both Mosley and Diana had suffered from periods of illness during the two years they were in Holloway. Diana collapsed at one point with dysentery, which fellow prisoner Major de Laessoe treated, with some pills he found in his old first-aid kit that dated from a residence in Angola. She was unconscious for twelve hours and when the pills were analysed they were found to be opium, of which she had been given a massive dose. Mosley’s was an old weakness: phlebitis caused by poor circulation in his right leg, which had been damaged in the First World War flying accident. He was unwell and in a lot of pain in June 1943, when the eminent doctor Lord Dawson examined him and concluded that the phlebitis would not clear up in prison. He advised the government that Mosley should be released. Prison doctors disagreed. In November 1943, the illness flared up again. This time Mosley’s condition deteriorated rapidly, and so much so that the prison doctors were now inclined to agree with Lord Dawson’s earlier opinion, although releasing him hardly seemed an option. Diana was worried that he might not survive the winter and decided that she must let Churchill know how seriously ill Mosley was, and appeal for better treatment. Tom was serving abroad so, much as she hated to do it, she asked Sydney to go and see Clementine Churchill for her.

  Clementine had been a bridesmaid at Sydney’s wedding forty years earlier, and both Redesdales had once been proud of their connection with Winston. Since 1939, however, Sydney considered that Churchill bore a major responsibility for causing the war (‘a warmonger’ was her description of him), and was certainly responsible for Diana’s incarceration. For Diana’s sake, however, she swallowed her reluctance to ask a favour of him, and went to see Cousin Clementine. It was a difficult interview. Clementine began by saying, ‘Winston has always been so fond of Diana,’ and telling her that the Mosleys were better off in prison as they would probably be lynched if released. Sydney said frostily that they were prepared to take the risk. ‘I can picture her cold and proud demeanour,’ Diana wrote in her autobiography.

  Whether Sydney’s appeal influenced the matter is not known, but shortly afterwards a medical report submitted by a Home Office doctor, sent to examine the invalid, worried the government enough to consider releasing Mosley forthwith. They weighed the fact that his death in captivity might confer on him a form of martyrdom and provide a new rallying point for English Fascists. The Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, argued strongly against releasing the Mosleys but Churchill was in favour and he carried the cabinet on 18 November. The war rumbled on but England no longer stood alone: the alliance with Russia and the USA had made a tremendous difference, and Churchill’s popularity as war leader was riding high. He must have anticipated a level of protest from Labour MPs, trade unions and Communists, but no one was quite prepared for the storm that broke. On 19 November he wrote to his wife, ‘Today Mr Morrison is going to tell the House about the Mosleys. I hope it goes all right.’29

  The Mosleys learned about the decision from their wardress, who heard it announced on the radio on 20 November, burst into tears and ran to tell them they were free. It was a restricted form of freedom: they were advised that they would be permitted to live only in locations approved by the Home Office, and under house arrest, ‘for the duration’. They were not allowed to live in London, to own a car, or to travel beyond a seven-mile radius of their accommodation. Nor were they allowed to meet or associate with anyone in the Fascist movement, or to make any political speeches or announcements or put out press releases. The initial problem was where they were to go. Savehay Farm was still requisitioned by the War Office and the only other property they owned was the London flat, which they were forbidden to use. Diana got a message to Pam and Derek, who immediately offered to take them in at Rignell House.

  During the three days it took to make the necessary arrangements a countrywide outcry grew. Newspapermen waited outside the prison gates on hastily erected press stands, newspapers filled their front pages with reports on the matter and protest demonstrations were organized. It must have been an agonizing three-day wait for Diana, with the fear that their release might yet fall through because of the protests. But finally they were smuggled out in pitch darkness some hours before dawn through a little-used side gate in the prison, which the reporters had overlooked. There, two police cars were waiting with engines running.

  We were driven fast through the dark, sleeping city [Diana wrote]. The police kept looking behind them but we had given the journalists the slip. As day broke and revealed the frosty country landscape M[osley] and I thought that nothing so beautiful was ever seen by human eye. At Rignell a wonderful welcome awaited us. Derek had got leave; Muv used her month’s allowance of petrol and came over with Debo. We had delicious food, beautiful wine, talk, and laughter, perfect happiness. Then, for the first time in three and a half years we slept in soft, fine linen, in soft warm beds.30

  Neither Sydney nor Diana ever really gave Churchill credit for what he did on Diana’s behalf. His papers now reveal that he had always been opposed to the Mosleys’ imprisonment without trial, that he had a ‘deep loathing’ of Rule 18B, and that he had stuck his neck out on Diana’s behalf to get better treatment for them and, ultimately, to allow them to leave the prison. He was in Cairo when they were released and it was left to Herbert Morrison to bear the brunt of the protests. Clementine reported to her husband what was happening in his absence. On 23 November twenty thousand union members and factory workers from all over the country (many undertook long, difficult train journeys) handed in a petition to Downing Street and stood in protest in Whitehall. The newspapers had a field day. Three days later another mass protest was held in Parl
iament Square and MPs were lobbied as they went in to hear Morrison defend the decision. There was a debate in which a backbencher asked why Lady Mosley had been released since it was her husband who was ill. ‘Yesterday, Mr Morrison lunched with me,’ Clementine Churchill wrote to Winston. ‘He seemed battered by what he is going through in the Mosley affair. I felt very sorry for him . . . the crowds at various points of London have been quite large but good-tempered. I ran into hundreds [in] Parliament Square . . . rather like a football crowd.’31

  Mosley was confined to bed but he and Diana were not allowed to remain long at Rignell House. Journalists soon discovered their whereabouts and pictures of Diana looking fit and glamorous – from a photo taken years earlier at Ascot with Randolph Churchill, though he had been cropped out – appeared alongside stories that the couple were living in a luxurious country mansion protected by baying hounds, though the only dogs were Pam and Derek’s dachshunds, Wüde and Hamelin. Suddenly it was realized by someone at the War Office that Diana’s sister Pamela Jackson was the wife of the eminent scientist Derek Jackson, who had been involved in top-secret scientific projects at Oxford.32 Herbert Morrison telephoned Derek personally to explain why the Mosleys could not be permitted to remain at Rignell. Derek, the war hero who was afraid of nobody, was unimpressed: he replied that he needed no lessons in patriotism from a man who had spent the First World War dodging around in apple orchards.33

  In any event the Mosleys decided that it was best for them to move, but houses were impossible to find. All country towns and villages were bulging with people who had fled the cities, or had been evacuated due to bombing. Sydney heard that the partly disused inn at Shipton-under-Wychwood was available to rent, and as it was only three miles from Swinbrook, it meant they could visit each other. It was called, somewhat bizarrely, the Shaven Crown, and the hotel had been closed since the beginning of the war though the bar still functioned as a village pub. The rooms were as cold, dirty and uncared-for as any building neglected for so long would be, but they moved in with Nanny and the two little boys – Alexander, now five, and Max, three. Diana set about turning it into a temporary home, and when Jonathan and Desmond came home from boarding-school for the Christmas holidays Diana had the joy of having all her children around her at last. It was their first Christmas together since 1939. They spent the day at Mill Cottage with Sydney and Unity, all crammed into the tiny dining room.