The loss of the baby was a sadness of which Nancy never spoke. She complained of the tedium of having to stay quiet, how ‘deadly’ it was not to be allowed to go in a car – ‘I mayn’t even take a taxi & go out to lunch’ – but never of her grief. Her doctor had told her that there was no reason why she should not conceive again, but at thirty-four she was not hopeful. Her husband’s attention was for women other than his wife, and, a further cause of worry, Peter was yet again out of work. He had been hoping for a job in the BBC, but Francis, helpfully stepping in, had advised the Corporation against employing his irresponsible brother, a gratuitous act of interference which had made Nancy furious. ‘I have put F’s name in a drawer & I hope he dies,’10 she told Robert Byron, begging him to use his influence to get Peter the job of Registrar at Kensington School of Art.
But the problem of a job for Peter was soon to be solved, quite unexpectedly, by a turn in international events. The Spanish Civil War had broken out in 1936; by January 1939 General Franco’s rebel army was moving north through Valencia and Tarragona, driving before it half a million Republicans from Catalonia who were fleeing over the Pyrenees into the Roussillon, an impoverished region of France with no resources to spare and no provision made for the feeding and sheltering of thousands of refugees. The French authorities hastily set up a few barbed-wire enclosures on the salt-marshes along the coast, into which, without food, water or medical supplies, the Spaniards were herded. There they were left, until the international charitable organisations arrived to do what they could to feed and clothe them and provide passage for those with relations in France, Mexico or Morocco.
Peter, who had felt slightly guilty at not having fought in the war in Spain, immediately volunteered to help with the refugees. He arrived in Perpignan to find over 200,000 people encamped in appalling conditions and dying at the rate of 400 a day. ‘Darling Paul,’ he wrote to Nancy, ‘the thing that was happening is so appalling that it amounts to the cold blooded murder of thousands of chaps. It is impossible to get at the mortality figures but the dying has not even properly begun. They’ve got typhoid and possibly cholera as well now and it began raining today.’ He threw himself into the seemingly impossible task of imposing order on this miserable chaos, distributing supplies, writing reports, and instituting a system whereby separated members of the same family could be put in touch with each other. It was in this kind of work that his talents lay; although by and large indifferent to the sufferings of any one individual, especially if that individual were his wife, to incidences of mass wretchedness he was very much alive.
Nancy, who had been doing what she could to ensure that Peter’s reports were seen by the right people, went out to Perpignan in May to join him. Peter himself was far too busy to give her more than an absent-minded peck on the cheek and rush her over to his office – a large shed on the Avenue de la Gare – to introduce her to his assistants, Donald Darling and Humphrey Hare, ‘2 chaps who talk the New Statesmans English which is always a comfort abroad I find’. Fortunately both Darling and Hare took to Nancy – her jokes cheered them up – and they went to the trouble, as Peter had not, of finding her something useful to do, a problem requiring a certain ingenuity as she spoke not a word of Spanish, knew nothing about First Aid or calories, and had not the faintest idea what to do with a newly-born baby. In the end she spent most of her time behind the wheel of a dilapidated Ford van, a straw coolie hat on her head, delivering supplies, waiting around for messages, and on one occasion driving a group of expectant mothers to Sète for embarkation on a ship bound for Mexico. ‘Well we got our ship off,’ she wrote to Muv.
There was a fearful hurricane and she couldn’t get into Port Vendre so all the arrangements had to be altered & she was sent to Sette (150 miles from P.V.) & at an hours notice special trains had to be changed etc etc the result was Peter was up for 2 whole nights, never went to bed at all. However he is none the worse. I was up all yesterday night as the embarkation went on until 6AM & the people on the quay had to be fed & the babies given their bottles. There were 200 babies under 2 & 12 women are to have babies on board. One poor shell shocked man went mad & had to be given an anaesthetic & taken off, but apart from that all went smoothly if slowly. The women were on the quayside first & then the men arrived. None of them had seen each other since the retreat & I believe thought really that they wouldn’t find each other then, & when they did you never saw such scenes of hugging. The boat sailed at 12 yesterday, the pathetic little band on board played first God Save the King, for us, then the Marseillaise & then the Spanish National Anthem. Then the poor things gave 3 Vivas for Espana which they will never see again. I don’t think there was a single person not crying – I have never cried so much in my life. They had all learned to say Goodbye & thank you & they crowded round us so that we could hardly get off the ship. Many of them are great friends of Peter, & I know a lot of them too by now as some have been working in our office, & it was really sad to see them go – to what?’
The plight of the refugee families was desolate and pathetic, and Nancy was deeply moved by the dignity with which they accepted their dreadful situation. Peter’s office was in a state of constant siege, surrounded all day by patient men, women, and children with their little parcels and their cardboard suitcases, their dogs, their donkeys and their goats. Peter was in his element, the uncrowned King of Perpignan, with even the official English representative, General Molesworth, under his thumb. (Molesworth was a type Nancy knew: ‘When confronted with a foreigner he breaks into fluent Hindostanee & he has already confided in me that he is longing to get away & throw a fly over a salmon.’) Sometimes Nancy saw nothing of her husband for several days at a time, and then he would turn up light-headed with exhaustion, get quickly drunk, abuse everyone within earshot, then still drunk, still abusive, plunge into the sea for a swim.
At weekends, true to national habit, the British contingent shut up shop, and with the arrival of the warmth of early summer went picnicking in the Pyrenees or bathing at Collioure. In spite of the misery around her, Nancy found a lot to enjoy, happy to be in beautiful France again and enchanted by the prettiness of Perpignan with its narrow streets of rose-coloured brick, its huge, wild-looking plane-trees, its river and broad quays. With her sharp eye for comic detail, she was quick to notice such curiosities as the leech in a bottle kept in the window of a chemist’s shop beside a typewritten notice: ‘SI LA SANGSUE MONTE DANS LA BOUTEILLE IL FERA BEAU TEMPS. SI LA SANGSUE DESCEND – L’ORAGE.’
Nancy returned to England in June determined ‘to enjoy my last fling before the war … I am leading a very gay life, & tomorrow am dressing lamb (powdered hair, white satin, blue bows & roses) for the ball at Osterley.’ She was much taken up, too, with her ‘dear bullies’, as Millie had given birth to four puppies one of which, Agnes, was to go to Robert Byron. ‘Really Agnes is such a pet I can hardly bear to let her go – couldn’t to anyone but you … She is very anti-appeasement.’
But that unsettled summer ended with the declaration of war between Great Britain and Germany on September 3 when, for Nancy as for the rest of the country, more serious preoccupations took over. There can have been few families in England more deeply divided between right and left, Fascist and Communist, appeasement and war, than the Mitfords. The Mosleys, with Unity and Tom, Derek and Pam Jackson, made up the anti-war faction; Decca and Esmond Romilly were ranged vociferously on the opposite side – anti-German and in favour of war and of the overthrow of the established order; while Nancy and Peter stood in the middle, believing, with the majority of the British nation, that war with Germany was necessary and inevitable, largely to preserve this established order. The Redesdales themselves, for the first time in their lives, were in bitter opposition. Originally Muv had gone along with her husband’s contempt for Hitler: the man was, after all, a Hun, one of the categories – on a par with Negroes, Jews and Roman Catholics – that Farve most loathed. But then they both went to Germany to visit Unity, had been present at the
Nuremberg rally of 1938, and had met the Führer himself. Farve had instantly succumbed and the phrase ‘that feller Hitler’ turned overnight from opprobrium to a term of the highest approbation. Muv, at first, had been less impressed but was eventually won over by the sheer niceness of the man. She had been taken to tea with Hitler in his flat in Munich and, although neither could speak the other’s language, it was a friendly occasion. ‘He is very “easy” to be with,’ she told Decca, ‘… & such very good manners.’ Back in London Farve spoke in the House of Lords in favour of returning the German colonies confiscated after the First World War while Muv made her contribution with a couple of newspaper articles in defence of Nazism (‘In Fascism and National Socialism there is no class war, but friendship and co-operation between all classes for the common welfare …’); and she gave a luncheon for a group of forty-five visiting Hitler Jugend in the ballroom at Rutland Gate11.
When war broke out Farve, his country first and foremost, immediately recanted. ‘Farve has publicly recanted like Latimer in the Daily Mirror & said he was mistaken all along (& how),’ Nancy wrote. Muv, however, although as fiercely patriotic as her husband in wishing for victory, refused to yield in her admiration either for Hitler or for his régime. To her, war with Germany was a disaster. To Farve, as to Nancy, it was a matter of necessity.
Nancy had already had several run-ins with her mother on the subject. She had written to her from Perpignan in May: ‘If you could have a look, as I have, at some of the less agreeable results of fascism in a country I think you would be less anxious for the swastika to become a flag on which the sun never sets. And, what ever may be the good produced by that régime that the first result is always a horde of unhappy refugees cannot be denied. Personally I would join hands with the devil himself to stop any further extension of the disease. As for encirclement, if a person goes mad he is encircled, not out of any hatred for the person but for the safety of his neighbours & the same applies to countries. Furthermore, I consider that if the Russian alliance does not go through we shall be at war in a fortnight, & as I have a husband of fighting age I am not particularly anxious for that eventuality. You began this argument so don’t be cross if I say what I think!’
On the day that war was declared Nancy was on her way home, having been staying with her mother on Inch Kenneth, an island in the Hebrides Farve had bought on the spur of the moment the year before from a man at his club. Inevitably an argument started and Nancy, always one to put comfort before principle, had rather hurriedly to climb down. ‘I was leaving the island & Muv was taking me to the station & I said something only fairly rude about Hitler & she said get out of this car & walk to the station then so after that I had to be honey about Adolph. Then later I said Peter had joined up so she said I expect he’ll get shot soon which I thought fairly tactless of her. Altogether she is acting very queer.’ Two weeks later she was retailing with relish a highly selective version of Muv’s opinions. Rarely able to let pass an opportunity of portraying her mother in an unflattering light, Nancy took a wicked pleasure in exaggerating the one aspect of Muv’s beliefs guaranteed to shock, while choosing to ignore the rest. ‘Muv has gone finally off her head She seems to regard Adolph as her favourite son in law (the kind of which people say he has been like a son to me) … she is impossible. Hopes we shall lose the war & makes no bones about it. Debo is having a wild time with young cannon fodders at the Ritz etc. Apparently Muv said to her “never discuss politics, not even for 5 minutes, with Nancy” Rather as some devout RC mama might shield her little one from a fearful atheist!’
This letter was written to Violet Hammersley, whom Muv had known from the time she and Violet were girls, as their fathers had been friends. Now a widow with three grown-up children, Mrs Hammersley had become almost part of the Mitford family, as important a figure in the lives of the children as of their parents. Her husband had died in 1913, leaving her very well off, but she lost the bulk of her fortune when the bank in which he had been a partner went into liquidation ten years later. From that time on Mrs Hammersley considered herself the most unfortunate of mortals. Always dressed in black or dark brown, swathed in shawls and veils, she looked the picture of prophetic doom, with her melancholy expression and low, hollow laugh. But she also had a strong sense of humour, was intelligent, musical, and widely read in English and French literature. (She had been born and brought up in Paris and loved France and the French.) To Nancy, she was in part a maternal figure, but cleverer and more worldly than Muv, to whom could be confided details of her life which she would never dream of revealing to her mother. Mrs Ham, as the girls called her, had an appetite for gossip nearly equal to Nancy’s own, and with her fondness for, and intimate knowledge of, the Mitfords and their affairs, she became an invaluable correspondent, relied upon as an appreciative recipient of Nancy’s wit, while at the same time trusted to know better than to believe the more elaborate exaggerations.
Both Nancy and Peter volunteered at once for war work. Peter, with a commission in the Welsh Guards, was filling in time before being called up working at a First Aid Post in Chelsea. Nancy did the same at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, sitting from eleven to seven every day in a gas-proof room with little to do and a cracking headache from the lack of fresh air. ‘This is my 9th day & feels like 7 years (which I am told the war will last),’ she complained to Mrs Ham. ‘Anyway in case I didn’t I must tell you about the foreheads. Well my job is writing on the foreheads of dead & dying in indelible pencil. What I write I haven’t yet discovered. What happens when a coloured man presents his forehead I also ignore. I was just about to ask all these little details when the Queen arrived to see over (in fawn) so I never found out. Isn’t it awful.
‘Meanwhile I sit twiddling my indelible pencil & aching for a forehead to write on … Sitting in this hateful cellar (gas & therefore air proof, electric light all day & cold as the grave) my brain has become like the inside of a bad walnut … I really see nobody, impossible to lunch out & in the evening I am too tired & it is too dark & frightening to go out.’
Then at the beginning of October came the news of one of the first casualties of the war: a friend of Tom’s in Budapest sent word that Unity had been taken seriously ill and was in hospital in Munich. Nobody seemed to know exactly what was the matter. The next bulletin, retailed by Nancy to Mrs Hammersley with a detectable lack of sisterly sympathy, revealed that Bobo was ‘in a concentration camp for Czech women which much as I deplore it has a sort of poetic justice. Peter is going to make the Aostas12 get her out in a month or two when she has had a sufficient dose to wish to go.’ The truth finally came out when the story broke in the Daily Express: on the day war was declared Unity had shot herself. Badly but not fatally wounded, she had been taken to a clinic where it was found that the bullet had lodged at the back of her skull and would be impossible to extract. As soon as she was well enough to travel, Hitler had arranged for her to go to neutral Berne, where, at the end of December, Muv accompanied by Debo went to fetch her home. In a blaze of press publicity they arrived back at Folkestone on January 3 and the next day were at the Old Mill Cottage in High Wycombe, where Nancy was waiting for them. She described to Mrs Hammersley her sister’s pathetic state: ‘The whole thing is most poignant. She is like a child in many ways & has very much lost her memory (a mercy I expect) does not know why she was ill but seems to think the doctor made a hole in her head … She is very happy to be back, keeps on saying “I thought you all hated me but I don’t remember why.” She said to me You are not one of those who would be cruel to somebody are you? So I said I was very much against that.
‘She saw Mr X continually the last time 2 days before she left. Don’t tell this. She was unconscious for 2 months.
‘I think that is all of interest, such a scribble but you do understand. They were literally hunted by the press … Of course M & F were not clever –!’
After a few days, Nancy returned to London, as Peter, looking glamorous in his Welsh Guards uniform �
� ‘masses of gold on his hat & a wonderful coat lined with scarlet satin which cost £25’ – had been called to join his regiment in Colchester. Nancy was left to do what she could to make ends meet at Blomfield Road. Their financial situation, always precarious, was in an even worse state than usual: Farve in a gesture of economy had cut Nancy’s allowance by £50, while Peter, whose army pay barely covered his mess bills, had chosen that moment to dive deep into hot water with his parents. ‘I have just received a rare stinker from Pa, clearly written at Ma’s dictation’, he told his wife. ‘I think you will have to go and mend something there, though really I don’t see that the old boy has any serious grouch. He bloody well has to pay the settlements because he signed on the dotted line and when he makes an advance he stops it out of the settlement. So that’s all square anyway except that he’s had the fun of making a noise.’ To eke out the housekeeping money Nancy started taking occasional paying guests: Robert Byron came for a short time, and so, looking tired, did her brother Tom, now in the Rifle Brigade and stationed nearby. She also established a hen-house in the garden and started growing her own vegetables. ‘Words long forgotten like creosote & bran mash are never off my tongue, not to speak of droppings board & nest box,’ and, she told Mrs Hammersley, ‘I am hoarding, in a very small way, shoes & olive oil … I have also bought … 12 pkts of you know what, which I’m told are already nearly unobtainable!’
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