We had this large railway carriage to ourselves, with a bed in it specially arranged for transporting the wounded … The count and I went to the dining car on the train, for he liked his food. I had the money from the Ministry of the Interior to pay expenses for myself and the count at a hotel. We came to Berne. An ambulance was waiting. Unity was transferred into it and went on to the clinic of Professor Matti.
Janos then phoned Lord Redesdale and handed the phone to Unity who plaintively asked, ‘When are you going to come and get me?’ It was the first they knew of her arrival in Switzerland and while they franticly sprang into action Janos offered to stay and look after Unity while Lord Redesdale and the British Government organised the travel formalities. Doctor Reiser sadly returned to Munich.
Lord Redesdale was apparently deeply concerned that Unity would be arrested on arrival in England, so he ‘went to see Oliver Stanley, the Secretary of State for War to explain that she was desperately ill and he would rather she stayed in Switzerland than suffer arrest’4. Fortunately, Stanley was a relative of the Mitfords and a close personal friend of Oswald Mosley. It was Gaby Bentinck’s opinion, or those diplomatic chums of her husband, that it had been Stanley who was responsible for exaggerating Unity’s injuries. Her staying in Switzerland would of course have saved everyone a great deal of expense and inconvenience. But David was soon reassured and supplied with all the necessary documentation to enable Sydney and Debo set off for Berne by aeroplane on 27 December, and to return on New Year’s Eve with Unity, safely unchallenged. The achievement of these arrangements in just three days would have been remarkable in peacetime, but with war having only recently been declared and hostilities commenced, it was miraculous; the plans had quite obviously been given top priority by the Foreign Office.
Unfortunately, they hadn’t reckoned on the attention of a zealous MI5 operative in the form of Guy Liddell, who expressed his suspicions in his diary the day before Unity’s arrival in Folkestone. ‘We (MI5) had no evidence to support the press allegations that she was in a serious state of health and it might well be she was brought in on a stretcher in order to avoid publicity and unpleasantness to her family.’ He became particularly aggrieved when the home secretary intervened, and his suspicions appeared confirmed when, on 8 January, he recorded, ‘A report on Unity Mitford has now been received from the Security Control Officers [MI5 officers who interviewed new arrivals]. Apparently there was no signs of any bullet wound.’
Liddell was also to become involved in an investigation of the Right Club, which he believed to be operating a German spy ring. However, it was obviously considered a step too far and he was soon being accused of being a double agent. The resulting investigation came up with no incriminating evidence, other than by association, but effectively ended his career.
Meanwhile, British newspapers and newsreel companies had become obsessed by the Unity Mitford story, particularly when it was ‘revealed’ that Unity would be brought home in her own first-class carriage, with twenty pieces of luggage in a special guard’s van, at a cost to her parents of £1,600. This was at a time when a three-bedroom house cost £300 and when £5 a week, or £260 a year, was considered a good wage.
In Folkestone, which was more awash with press and security than sailors, Unity was loaded into a private ambulance and headed off towards London with car loads of reporters in hot pursuit. Press sabotage soon caused the ambulance to break down (according to Sydney, ‘There is no doubt in my mind that the Press and Cinema Company [Pathe News] arranged it’) and the vehicle was forced to return to Folkestone. Here the family spent the night in a small hotel while continuing to be hounded by the journalists, who constantly raised their offers of payment for a story and clutched at the smallest crumbs of information. Predictably, it was a situation that infuriated Lord Redesdale, whose refusal to comment did not last very long.
‘I am not ashamed of Unity,’ he roared at the Daily Mail. ‘I have been offered £5,000 for her story. I would not take £ 25,000.’ In fact, Lady Redesdale had already sold the Daily Express an interview on their way back through Paris.
While Unity was being carried up the steps of the Folkestone Hotel, the press even managed to get a few words from Unity herself. ‘Are you pleased to be home, Miss Mitford?’ someone called. ‘I’m very glad to be in England, even if I’m not on your side,’ she replied.
Debo later claimed that Unity had lost two stone and was all eyes and matted hair, although there was no evidence of this from photographs of her. She claimed that every jolt was agony for her. Of this there was also no evidence. Furthermore, there was no sign of the bullet wound, which may have contributed to the fact that Unity was obviously considered in insufficient danger to be taken to a major London hospital. Instead, she was driven to the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, the Mitfords’ power base, ‘to be attended by Professor (later Sir) Hugh Cairns, one of the foremost neuro-surgeons of his day’, who gave a rather vague statement that made no mention of any ‘lodged bullet’5. ‘Her general health is good and the wound from which she suffered in Germany in September and for which she was skilfully treated in Germany, has healed in a normal and satisfactory manner. After consultation it has been decided that no operation is advisable or desirable.’
Further suspicions would be raised much later when it came to light that in police reports carried out on the instructions of the Home Office in 1941, the Chief Constable of Oxford Constabulary confirmed the fact that, ‘Although stress had been made on the medical aspect of the case, no full medical report had even been obtained, and it was also clear that most of the information available had been obtained second and third hand and little of it had been confirmed.’
* * *
There was no explanation as to why Unity might have spent nearly four weeks at the infirmary if she was no longer ill. Presumably it was a secure environment in which she could wait for the fuss to die down.
On 5 February 1940 Unity was moved from the Radcliffe to Old Mill Cottage, owned by Sydney, situated on the outskirts of High Wycombe. For some months afterwards the cottage was given police protection. But neither the public nor the press were happy about her apparent immunity.
The Daily Mail listed Unity Mitford as one of the things that were most annoying about life in wartime Britain. The Daily Mirror stated, ‘the Mitford girl who has openly been consorting with the King’s enemies (surely a treasonable offence?) goes scot-free. Why? God and the House of Lords only know.’
For some reason, despite the fact that various newspapers and politicians wanted to know why Unity was never questioned by any of the security and/or intelligence agencies, the only person to make any official investigation were the local police who, in 1941, made discreet inquiries following suggestions from the Home Office. Yet Unity was never interviewed directly, unlike Lord Redesdale, Professor Cairns of the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford and a certain Mrs Phillimore of Old Farm, Swinbrook, whose only qualification appeared to be that, according to the local police, she was ‘a person of high social standing and worthy of confidence’.
Despite the fact that MI5 had reason to believe that Unity was soon touring round the country picking up RAF pilots and ‘interrogating’ them, the police insisted this was untrue. When, in October 1941, MI5 confirmed that Unity was indeed having an affair with a test pilot called John Andrews, they relocated the man from Brize Norton to Scotland and no further mention was made of the issue. Herbert Morrison, the Home Secretary, still refused to imprison Unity. This may have had something to do with the fact that his prime minister was Unity’s cousin, Winston Churchill. This partisan behaviour was not particularly unusual. After the war, Winston also assisted Coco Chanel, a fully fledged Nazi agent, code-named ‘Westminster’, in avoiding retribution; largely as a result of his and his friend the Duke of Westminster’s friendship and relationship with Coco.
While this type of situation may have had much to do with the high esteem awarded the privileged classes at the time, it may also have b
een because, with a few obvious exceptions, ‘Military Intelligence’ was still a misnomer.
In November 1940, Brian Howard, like many highly intelligent homosexuals of the day, was given a job at the Ministry of Home Security, otherwise known as MI5. When he spoke to his superior officer about a specific member of the establishment who, according to Brian, still had dangerous fascist sympathies, the officer reacted by saying, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, he went to Eton with me!’ Such a reaction being the norm rather than the exception.
Lady Redesdale, meanwhile, remained totally convinced by the value of fascism and made no attempt to disguise her continued sympathy for Hitler, convinced that he was ‘doing more for the German people than the democratic system (was) doing for England’. She also insisted on telling anyone who cared to listen, ‘we shall lose the war’. But she was not alone in her opinions or her insistence on her freedom to voice them. Virtually all the leading English aristocratic fascists remained at large, presumably to avoid government embarrassment.
Forty years later, Jonathan Guinness made a particularly interesting observation concerning Unity’s freedoms in his book The House of Mitford:
There were protests about Unity’s treatment in The Times and in both Houses of Parliament … the fact was that Unity had enraged too many people. It must be remembered in particular that the Jewish community, whom she had publicly insulted, and with whose deadly enemies she was identified, were disproportionately represented in the cinema and press.
It sounded uncomfortably similar to the type of statement made by the Nazis in justification of their anti-Semitic policies, particularly when voiced by the ex-chairman of the ultra right-wing Monday Club’s Immigration and Repatriation Policy Committee. Jessica Mitford described her nephew Jonathan as ‘a dangerous neo-Nazi’.
Most of the British elite were said to have eventually recognised the malevolence of the Nazis, and rallied to mutate into patriotic supporters of Churchill’s government and its uncompromising anti-German position; but this they did only once it became obvious that Germany was going to lose the war and that Hitler had taken against the German aristocracy (as the German aristocracy took against him).
What was left of the French aristocracy supported the fascist Vichy govern-ment while the leader of the monarchist movement, Charles Maurras, described the German invasion and suppression of the French Republic as a ‘divine surprise’.
* * *
Contrary to Sydney’s refusal to abandon her commitment to fascism and her sympathy for the Nazis, Lord Redesdale displayed unusual expediency by voicing his rapidly revised political views in the Daily Mirror; views that as a peer of the realm he felt it his duty to adjust, as soon as war was declared. ‘By 17 March 1940, Nancy could write to Mrs Ham: “He is more violent now against Germany than anybody I know, and against any form of peace until they are well beaten”6.’ Apparently the Hun was ‘filthy’ again.
The Redesdales had planned to take Unity to Inch Kenneth, their island on the east coast of Scotland, but as a result of national security concerns only Lord Redesdale was given permission to go. He blamed Sydney for this, believing that had she spent less time airing her pro-Nazi views and more time currying sympathy for Unity’s brain damage, there would have been no such problem. But Lady Redesdale, like Diana, was uncompromising.
It seems likely that despite the right friends and relatives in high places, it was Lord Redesdale’s recanting that saved Unity, and the Mosleys’ refusal to do so that guaranteed the continuation of their incarceration.
Eventually, in the spring of 1940, the tensions between the Redesdales became insurmountable and David decided to go to the island without Sydney, ‘taking the under-parlour maid, Margaret Wright, as his housekeeper’7. She was also a trained nurse who looked after David, first at Inch Kenneth and later at Redesdale Cottage, until his death in 1958. But the Mitford girls, strong in their conviction that Margaret was committing the cardinal sin of treating them as her equals, refused to accept her.
Following the Redesdales separation, ‘Sydney decided to return to Swinbrook, reasoning that everyone in the area had known Unity from childhood so she was unlikely to be attacked or harmed’8. The locals, she felt, also ‘knew their place’ and as a result were far less likely to reveal unwanted information to the press, while they would continue to treat Lady Redesdale with respect and deference, regardless of her political views. Having sold all their property in the village, Sydney decided to ‘rent the old “fishing cottage” next door to the Swan Inn, for the summer and took on a Mrs Timms [the landlord’s wife], as a “daily”’. Initially, Nanny Blor helped with the nursing, but when Unity’s health began to improve Blor returned home to her family.
Unity now became increasingly aware of the atrocities that were taking place in Germany, yet displayed no signs of repentance, while family and friends came to believe that her atheism was being replaced by her apparently new obsession with religion. What they failed to realise was that Unity had never been an atheist; she just believed in another deity and her apparently new ‘obsessional fixation on religion’ was nothing more than a manifestation of her determination to continue her worship of Adolf Hitler at every opportunity in every house of god, regardless of its denomination. This was certainly the opinion of Kathleen Atkins while James Lees-Milne described her life as a ‘gradually dissolving fantasy existence’.
If the priests and vicars had known to whom she was praying, they would doubtless have been considerably less welcoming. But perhaps they did know, for presumably as a result of the exorcism of necromantic influence by ecclesiastical pressure, with the assistance of Blake and Milton, the priests eventually managed to replace Hitler with ‘their’ God, or at least thought they had, after Unity was finally confirmed by the Bishop of Dorchester, who may or may not have noticed that she still possessed somewhat of a fixation concerning death.
With Mosley and Diana incarcerated as Nazi sympathisers under the Emergency Powers Act in 1940, there was a public outcry when, following pressure on Churchill by Tom Mitford, Mosley was moved from Brixton to join Diana in Holloway a year later. It was hardly surprising that many, including Diana, must have remained somewhat mystified as to why Unity was allowed to enjoy her freedom. Her other sisters realised that in order to assure Unity’s continued avoidance of Diana’s fate, they would be well advised to encourage the belief that, having turned the gun on her own head, poor sick Unity, destroyed by the bullet, had already paid the ultimate price for the error of her ways.
As Unity’s health improved even further she became increasingly mobile, but while her family admitted to her being capable of taking the bus into Oxford, they were less prepared to mention the fact that she also drove a car by herself and paid visits to friends and family, as well as lovers.
It was also less well known that Unity spent some time staying at ‘The Garage’, the Mitfords’ London house in Rutland Gate, Knightsbridge. This gave Nancy, who was living near the Regent’s Park Canal and working in Heywood Hill’s bookshop in Curzon Street, greater opportunity to fit Unity into her social life:
Harvey Nichols was within walking distance, we’d lunch there and were always looking through the Matrimonial Times for a husband for her. We’d shriek with laughter about it … She’d ring up or pop into the shop two or three times a week at that stage, she’d be sent to spend the afternoon in the Curzon cinema … They kept her very short of money.
What they didn’t shriek with laughter about was the fact that from October 1940 the main house in Knightsbridge was sequestered for homeless people, in particular the victims of German bombing raids on London. Ironically, they were mainly Jewish. This apparently upset Unity ‘no end’; Nancy claiming, ‘She says if she had all the money in the world, she would not ever live in the house after the Jews have had it.’ Unity appears to have been persuaded by her father to be somewhat less forthright about such things.
There can of course be no doubt that Unity suffered some physical and ment
al incapacitation, but this seemed to have been less severe than the authorities and the public were led to believe. It’s also quite possible that it was at least partially the result of mental rather than physical trauma. Perhaps her greatest mental anguish came in fact from the sudden termination of everything that her exotic mental and physical life in Germany had comprised.
So successful was the family’s determination to convince everyone that Unity was suffering from considerably more brain damage than was actually the case, that from time to time she even began to doubt her own sanity. ‘Am I mad?’ she once asked Nancy, who replied, ‘Of course you are, darling Stonyheart, but then you always were.’
* * *
The Mosleys were released from detention in November 1943, and on 29 July 1944 Unity was finally granted permission to visit Inch Kenneth. Until the end of her life, she would spend her summers there.
Being almost treeless, the island possesses a wild beauty that, particularly in the winter, could generously be said to be an acquired taste. Sydney loved Inch Kenneth and visited it as often as she could. But Unity hated it. She missed the social interaction, cinemas and churches of Oxford and London, let alone all that she had left behind in Germany and Austria. Unsurprisingly, Unity failed to appreciate the seemingly constant Inch Kenneth wind and rain, prevalent even in the summer, and the company of midges and goats, which made her extremely grumpy and a trial to be with. Even getting to the island was a major challenge.
The overnight train to Oban was pleasant enough, but the crossing to Mull on the Lochinvar steamer was often ‘lumpy’ and uncomfortable. Then there was the 15-mile-long narrow, winding road to the coastal hamlet of Gribun, followed by the further, often extremely challenging mile of sea to be crossed in The Puffin, their motor launch, piloted by her ladyship’s boatman, before finally arriving at the island.
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