The Sisters_The Saga of the Mitford Family

by Mary S. Lovell

  Perhaps even more responsible for Nancy’s remarkable literary success was a small book that she produced almost as a joke. It was called Noblesse Oblige – an enquiry into the identifiable characteristics of the English aristocracy, and was a compilation of essays by various writers such as Evelyn Waugh and John Betjeman, taking an ironic look at fashionable mores and manners. Nancy edited the book and included an article she had previously published in Encounter on the aristocracy, which had appeared with an article on upper-class speech by Alan S.C. Ross.

  Professor Ross was a sort of latter-day version of Eliza Doolittle’s Professor Higgins, a learned if somewhat eccentric philologist working at Birmingham University. He was introduced to Nancy at a luncheon given by a mutual friend: her exaggerated drawl to him was what Eliza’s Cockney was to Higgins; a prime subject for study. He told her that he had written an article on sociological linguistics for the Finnish magazine Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, in which he had quoted The Pursuit of Love as a source for indicators of upper-class speech. Nancy was captivated and having learned that it was written in English begged for a copy. It was entitled ‘Linguistic Class Indicators in Present Day English’, and she found its serious presentation killingly funny. ‘It has sentences like, “The ideal U-address (U stands for upper class) is P.Q.R. where P is a place, Q is a describer (manor, court, house etc) and R the name of the County, But today few gentlemen can maintain this standard and they often live in houses with non-U names such as Fairfields or El Nido,”’ she wrote, chortling, to Heywood Hill. ‘To me it seems a natural for the Xmas market illustrated by O[sbert] Lancaster and entitled “Are you U?”’

  Her lively confidence in this proposal owed much to reaction to her article in Encounter (September 1955), which had sparked furious debate about the half-teasing theory that one could identify true members of the upper classes by manners, words and expressions; those who used fish knives and poured milk into a cup before the tea (MIF = milk in first), and who referred to ‘note-paper’, ‘mirror’, settee’, ‘serviette’ and ‘toilet paper’ betrayed their lower-class origins. Those properly taught by Nanny spoke of writing-paper, a looking-glass, a sofa, napkins and lavatory paper. There was a lot more nonsense in this vein and the great British public took it seriously. As a result, Nancy said, she had practically to rewrite Pigeon Pie, which was about to be republished. It was, she explained to Evelyn Waugh, ‘full of mirrors, mantelpieces and handbags, etc. Don’t tell my public or I’m done for.’40 Waugh provided a piece for the book: ‘An open letter to the Honble Mrs Peter Rodd (Nancy Mitford) on a very serious subject.’ John Betjeman wrote a poem called ‘How to Get on in Society’.41 Professor Ross rewrote his original article.

  But even Nancy was surprised at the book’s success. It was a worldwide smash hit and no one could quite work out why. Surely, with the new emphasis on socialism, she reasoned, few people were interested in the aristocracy and old-fashioned manners. But the correspondence columns of national newspapers, even the weightiest, were full of letters on the correct or incorrectness of the word ‘lounge’ as opposed to ‘sitting room’, and the social implication of calling pudding ‘a sweet’. Bookshops could not keep Noblesse Oblige on the shelves: ‘U and non-U’ was the buzz phrase of the day. Decca wrote in bewilderment to Sydney that the New York Times had reported that ten thousand copies had sold there in a week. ‘What’s that about?’ she asked. In fact, Nancy’s comments, never intended by her to be taken seriously, made her the arbiter of good manners for several generations. Professor Ross, however, resented her making fun of his serious academic thesis. Nancy found it all hilarious, and told the Colonel that her favourite joke was the new lyric to the old song: ‘I’m dancing with tears in my eyes, ’Cos the girl in my arms isn’t U’. Diana found the book rather distasteful and vulgar. Prod called it ‘decaying tripe’ in a letter to the editor of the Daily Telegraph. But, like it or not, Noblesse Oblige made Nancy a cult figure.

  There was another biography in 1957, Voltaire in Love, followed by Don’t Tell Alfred, a Society romp through the diplomatic salons of Paris with Fanny (the narrator of Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate) as the main character. Uncle Matthew is revived, Diana Cooper puts in an appearance as Lady Leone, and characters from The Blessing otherwise populate the pages. Friends loved it – and members of Nancy’s inner circle were best placed to appreciate the in-jokes. For example, when Nancy wrote of Fanny’s mother, always known as ‘the Bolter’, those in the know were particularly tickled: ‘The bolter’, based on the delightful and much-married Angela ‘Trixie’ Culme-Seymour, had appeared in the previous novels, but since then Trixie had eloped with the husband of her half-sister – who just happened to be Nancy’s former brother-in-law, Derek Jackson. It was all too delicious. Between producing her own books Nancy had also done several translations, The Princesse de Cleves (1950) and The Little Hut (1951), for which she was also involved in writing the screenplay for the film. In 1954, after endless trouble trying to get a visa, she made a trip to Russia. Decca was putrid with jealousy – ‘It’s not fair,’ she wailed in a letter to Sydney.

  Except in her relationship with the Colonel, and her lack of children, Nancy had everything she had ever wanted. In 1955 Palewski was offered a ministerial post in Fauré’s government, which meant that he had even less time for Nancy. She compensated by spending her summers in Venice with an Italian friend, a contessa who owned one of the old palazzos and could offer the sybaritic life Nancy loved. In the quiet early mornings she could do a few hours’ work on her biography of Voltaire (‘Not a life of Voltaire,’ she wrote to a friend. ‘Just a Kinsey report of his romps with Mme de Châtelet and her romps with Saint-Lambert and his romps with Mme de Boufflers and her romps with Panpan and his romps with Mme de Grafigny. I could go on for pages . . .’).42 At eleven o’clock she would board the Contessa’s sleek motor launch bound for the Lido to swim, sunbathe and gossip with friends, then eat a late luncheon served by the Contessa’s white-gloved footmen. In the afternoons there was time for a siesta with the windows thrown wide open to passing breezes. In the evenings there were dinner parties at palazzos, or in the cafés and restaurants around St Mark’s Square where, dressed in couturier creations, she met old friends and members of the international set. It was an idyllic existence.

  In the summer of 1957 she heard from the Colonel that he had been offered, with the influence of General de Gaulle, the post of ambassador in Rome. It was said to be the only personal favour that de Gaulle ever requested of the French government in his time out of office. At the time Paris was hot, and seemed a little small to Palewski, for he was involved in a passionate affair with a married woman who lived just round the corner from Nancy. From this date Nancy and he saw each other far less frequently, although she remained convinced that he could not manage without her and all would come right in the end.

  When Debo gave birth to a healthy daughter, Sophia,43 after a series of miscarriages, everyone was thrilled for her, but then, six months later, in the spring of 1958, David died at Redesdale Cottage. Diana had woken one morning with a strong presentiment that she must join Sydney and Debo, who were going up to Redesdale to visit David for his eightieth birthday, which was just a few days away. David and Sydney were in constant touch by letter and they all knew he had been unwell. ‘I shall never forget the expression on Farve’s face when Muv appeared at his bedside, and his smile of pure delight,’ Diana wrote. ‘All their differences forgotten, they seemed to have gone back twenty years to happy days before the tragedies. She sat with him for hours, Debo and I going in and out. After a couple of days Muv and Debo travelled on to Scotland and I returned to London . . . A few days later he died.’44

  ‘My darling Little D,’ Sydney wrote to Decca, ‘Farve died peacefully two days ago . . . Diana and Debo and I had been up to see him on his 80th birthday and he died 3 days later, we did so wish we had stayed. He was pleased to see us, dear old boy, and we were able to have a little conversation, but he was te
rribly deaf. He was in bed, and obviously very weak . . .’ But he had been quite like the old David and said such characteristic things that they were all kept laughing. The last thing David said to Sydney was ‘Are you going to the Oban Hotel?’ She replied that she was. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘remember me to the hall porter.’ Sydney left for Inch Kenneth and had just arrived when the news of his death reached her. ‘I turned right round and came back,’ she wrote to Decca.45

  He was cremated at Redesdale, and a funeral service took place at Swinbrook. Nancy wrote to Decca that they were both ‘tear-jerkers’, with all his old favourite hymns: ‘Holy, Holy, Holy . . . I was in fountains each time. Then the ashes were done up in the sort of parcel he used to bring back from London, rich thick brown paper and incredibly neat knots. Woman and Aunt Iris took it down to Burford and it was buried at Swinbrook. Alas one’s life.’46 Diana mourned the Farve of long ago, the huge towering man with tempers like an inferno, humour that often made family mealtimes like a scene from a farce, and eccentricities such as chub-fuddling, which somehow made him more endearing in retrospect. Once, when she had been the subject of one of her father’s rages, Tom had consoled her with the sage remark that Farve would mellow as he got older. He had been right, but Diana found that with hindsight she preferred the unmellowed version.

  The last time Decca had seen David was when she had set off for Paris to elope with Esmond. She might easily have effected a reconciliation. David had written several times to her, brief kind letters on the birth of Benjamin and the death of Nicholas, and she might have gone to see him in Redesdale, but she took umbrage at Sydney’s comment, ‘Since you have imposed conditions it would be better not to see Farve . . .’ When his will was read it was found that she had been cut out in a marked manner: he had never recovered from her attempt to hand over part of Inch Kenneth to ‘the Bolshies’ and was fearful that anything he left her would be given away. In every clause where he left assets to be shared between ‘my surviving children’, he had added the words ‘except Jessica’.

  20

  A Cold Wind to

  the Heart

  (1958–66)

  The Mosleys lived at the graceful old Bishop’s Palace at Clonfert in Ireland for only two and a half years. During that time Diana spent a good deal of her energy turning it into the lovely home in which she expected they would spend the rest of their lives. It stood on the edge of a bog and was approached by a long avenue of ancient yews called the Nun’s Walk. For twelve-year-old Max, who loved foxhunting, it was a kind of heaven. Hounds met within reach of Clonfert several times a week and he would go off alone on his useful little pony, Johnny, who loved hunting as much as Max did, and could jump walls higher than himself. On frosty days, when Max followed hounds on foot, Johnny would stand in his stable and squeal with rage at being left when he could hear hounds hunting in the bog near by. In the first winter there Max was let off school for the entire season by his father, so that he could concentrate on hunting. After that he had to knuckle down and went off to school in Germany. ‘We thought, as Europeans, our sons should know at least two languages,’ Diana wrote. ‘Alexander went to school in France and Max in Germany, but both were expelled. After that Max went to a crammer and then to Christ Church, Oxford, where he read physics. Christ Church said it would take Alexander just on his A level results but he utterly refused to go and went instead to Ohio State University where he read philosophy. Their languages have been very useful to them.’1

  Just before Christmas in 1954, Mosley and Alexander were alone in the house while Diana was in London. During the night a chimney fire set the house alight. The horses whinnying in the stables raised the alarm, but there was no telephone and a member of staff was sent by car to fetch the fire brigade. In saving the life of the cook, who had been safely evacuated but returned to an upper room to rescue her savings, Mosley and Alexander had no time to control the blaze, which, by the time the fire brigade arrived, had taken hold. It consumed the old house, which had been as dry as tinder since Diana had installed central heating, and many of their most treasured belongings, including most of their pictures. In the morning Mosley and Max drove to the airport to meet Diana, and break the news to her before she heard it from anyone else. ‘The aircraft landed and she came across the tarmac waving and smiling happily,’ Mosley wrote, ‘. . . then came to me a strange sense, heavy with the sorrow of things: for . . . we were in the sad position of the fates of classic tragedy, aware of what is coming to happy mortals who themselves are unconscious of . . . destiny.’2

  As I approached [Diana wrote], I noticed that he was unshaven. He took my hand and said gently, ‘Sit down here on this seat. Everything is all right, nobody is hurt.’ ‘Hurt!’ I said, and my heart missed a beat . . . For many days afterwards, my hands trembled so that I could not hold a pen . . . The losses I minded most were a drawer-full of letters . . . three studies in sepia ink that Tchelichew had done of me and the boys . . . A drawing by Lamb of Jonathan . . . photographs of M and the children, the irreplaceable things with which one surrounds oneself.3

  They bought a house near the Devonshires’ Irish seat at Lismore where they lived until 1963, but by then they also owned a small property at Orsay about twenty miles from Paris. It was a delightful little jewel of a property, a pavillon, built in the exaggerated classical Palladian Directoire style, in 1800, to celebrate General Moreau’s victory at Hohenlinden by the architect of the Madeleine. It was called Le Temple de la Gloire, and potential buyers were told they were not allowed to change this; it was the only thing about it that Mosley did not like. Even years later, as an elderly man, he suffered twinges of embarrassment when asked by a fellow Englishman for his address. On giving it he sensed polite restraint, and somehow knew that his questioner was thinking, ‘He was always a little exalté and now is right round the bend.’4 Diana adored everything about it. They purchased it as an empty shell in 1950 when it needed complete restoration, having stood empty for a number of years. They had no furniture, and because of currency restrictions Diana had a limited amount of francs, but she haunted the salerooms and got tremendous bargains as the Empire style she liked was temporarily out of fashion. Shortly after they bought the Temple, David had visited Paris – his last trip to France – and given Diana five hundred pounds to buy curtains. He met Mosley then, and to Diana’s delight the two men got on well together.

  From now on Diana’s life was a kind of reverse of Nancy’s.5 Where Nancy had great professional success and an unhappy personal life, Diana and Mosley enjoyed the sort of happy relationship where each partner was an exact half of a loving and interdependent union; the sort of marital relationship everyone would choose. But both Mosley and Diana wasted their considerable abilities in attempting to revive his career. He had mellowed: his actions, speech and even his appearance were somehow less theatrically threatening, but his post-war political aspirations were doomed to impotence.

  This is not to say the Mosleys achieved nothing after the war. Between 1953 and 1959 Diana was the editor of an intellectual magazine they founded, called the European, and demonstrated that, like Nancy, she was a natural writer. Eventually it folded because its limited circulation meant it could not support itself, but it attracted many respected writers. In the years that followed she became a noted reviewer for Books and Bookmen and also for the London Evening Standard.

  In 1959 Mosley stood for Parliament in North Kensington as the Union Movement candidate, espousing a united Europe and opposing non-white immigration. Although he insisted that his policies were economic, not racist, most people regarded him as being ‘anti-black’. Nevertheless, he received almost 10 per cent of the vote, and although this was insufficient to win the seat he was heartened that he had achieved a notable result without party support. He was never able to capitalize on this base, however, and during a series of meetings of the Union Party, held around the UK in 1962, he was the target of several physical attacks. The worst of these occurred on 31 July in the East End of
London when he was thrown to the ground, kicked and punched before his supporters could help him. So serious was that attack that it was believed there might be a plot to kill him. He was still loathed by the general public, and his meetings were always portrayed as rowdy in the newspapers, though in reality they tended to be tame and quiet compared with his pre-war rallies. In private, however, the Mosleys were not only accepted but welcomed whenever they appeared in London, even by former enemies. On one occasion when they were lunching with Frank Pakenham, now Lord Longford, at the Gay Hussar in London, the arch-socialist Michael Foot was at the next table. ‘I saw Mosley look at him uneasily,’ Lord Longford said. ‘After Foot had finished his meal he stopped at our table and said, “What a pleasure to see you again, Sir Oswald.” After he left Mosley said softly, “How English. How English. Only in England could that happen.”’6

  Mosley continued to attend Fascist meetings in Europe, though one scheduled in Venice while Nancy was there was cancelled after Communists rioted about it. Nancy declared that she was ‘outraged that Mosley is still going about lecturing as if the war had never happened’, although the lectures were about a united Europe. Although Nancy and Diana were once again on friendly terms, Nancy had never taken to Mosley: she considered that he had irreparably damaged Diana’s life, and that because of loyalty to him Diana could never say so. Mosley did not like Nancy much, either, regarding her as silly, frivolous and disloyal to Diana. They tolerated each other because they both loved Diana, but they realized that politics was a subject to be avoided.

  In 1968 when Mosley’s autobiography My Life was published Nancy wrote to Decca, ‘Have you noted all the carry-on about Sir Os? He says he was never anti-Semitic. Good gracious! I quite love the old soul now but really –!’7