When living in Switzerland Pam became friendly with Margrit’s parents who lived in the Jura mountains, and Margrit and her family visited Pam at her house in Grüningen, the tiny, low-lying village near Zurich where she had finally chosen to live. Years later, after Pam had left Switzerland, Giuditta, who had stayed on in the house, died suddenly from an asthma attack; it was Margrit’s son, Dan, and his friend Chris Thring who drove from Gloucestershire to Grüningen in an ancient van to bring back some furniture which Pam had left there. She had been quoted a price by a local removal firm which she was not prepared to pay!
The house in Grüningen was set amid picture-book scenery and was what Debo described as ‘an odd little house with a ladder to the bedrooms’ – not, you might think, a suitable staircase for someone with a weak leg but, ‘I’ve insured myself against accidents hurrying down to answer the telephone,’ Pam assured Diana. Inside, Pam’s house had a ‘vast china stove fed from the kitchen with wood’, which added to the warm and welcoming atmosphere always associated with her homes; the fact that all the houses in the village had very low doorways must have added to the feeling of cosiness inside.
The relationship between Pam and Giuditta has caused speculation, though not as much as it would if they were sharing a home today. Jessica was convinced it was a lesbian relationship and during a visit to England in 1955 wrote home to her husband Bob that her sister had become a ‘you-know-what-bian’. But Jessica’s descriptions of family members are notoriously inaccurate – her book Hons and Rebels, entertaining though it is, caused a great furore among the family due to some of the things she had said about them, which may have been as she saw them but were not entirely true. Diana, characteristically, was kinder about Pam: ‘I don’t know if they were lovers but it really was a kind of marriage’; while Diana’s son Jonathan Guinness is of the opinion that the exact relationship was not important – Pam had found a good companion to share her life with at a time when she badly needed friends.
Men certainly continued to find her attractive. Those she met in Switzerland couldn’t wait to take her out to meals and in 1969 Danish architect and painter Mogens Tvede wanted to marry her (‘He saw at a glance that she is the PICK of the Bunch. Clever old Dane,’ wrote Nancy to Debo), though this came to nothing. Not long after this – and she was over 60 at the time – she was asked out to lunch at a very expensive Paris restaurant by an old admirer whom she hadn’t seen for thirty-five years. She was somewhat apprehensive because she feared she might not recognise him since she could only remember that he was very tall. Sadly, there is no record of the actual meeting – if indeed they ever found one another – but, according to Nancy, Pam threw caution to the winds and went to the restaurant in a taxi. ‘She had her hair done yesterday and looks smashing … One can see the eyes from the other end of the passage.’ (More than all the others Pam had inherited her father’s bright blue eyes.) Even Derek, after they had settled their post-marital differences, made no secret of the fact that he found her very attractive, always paying great attention to her at the family parties to which he was still invited.
Pam got on very well with the Swiss people. She spoke to them in very correct high-class German, but those who spoke English, when they met her in the street, would cry, ‘Pamailah, how vonderful to see you!’
‘She is absolute monarch of ALL she surveys. She is Queen in Gruningen and receives waves and smiles from every door and window as she pounds along screaming at the Elles [dogs],’ wrote Diana to Debo after a visit. The sisters used to tease Pam that she knew all the Gnomes in Zurich and it wasn’t far from the truth. ‘I worship the Gnomes,’ she would say, and she especially enjoyed the way they would click their heels, kiss her hand and ask her out to lunch. In Switzerland she was loved for all the qualities which made her popular wherever she went and her Swiss friends would listen hour on hour while she regaled them with tales of her childhood.
Switzerland was a good centre for Pam to indulge in her love of travel and she often visited Rudi von Simolin in Bavaria, drove to Paris to see Nancy and Diana, and to Chatsworth to stay with Debo. She made many visits to Nancy after she was diagnosed with cancer in 1968. Pam hated staying in Nancy’s flat, which she found uncomfortable and claustrophobic, but she went whenever she could because of all the sisters it was she who gave Nancy the most comfort when she was at her worst. In her better moments, Pam would make her laugh, recalling stories of her dogs, her household affairs and Derek’s eccentricities during their married life. In 1969 she went with Nancy to Dresden and Potsdam for Nancy to research the life of Frederick the Great, whose biography she was writing. Pam was the ideal companion for the trip, not only because she spoke German fluently, which Nancy did not, but also because, as the journey progressed, Nancy’s condition worsened and Pam was there to comfort and reassure her.
Pam had also been invaluable some years earlier, in May 1963, when Lady Redesdale was dying on the island of Inch Kenneth, and Nancy, Pam, Diana and Debo all travelled to the island to look after her. Although they relished being together and were very glad that they could all share in looking after their mother, it was a heart- rending time for them. But the practicalities of life had to go on and Pam was the one who came to the rescue. ‘My clothes are all dirty, so I said to Debo, “I’m going to make Woman teach me to wash and I’ll stand and look on while she does.” Well it worked like a charm and now she’s going to teach me to iron,’ wrote Nancy to Jessica, in one of her many letters keeping her informed of their mother’s deteriorating condition. Needless to say, Pam also did the cooking, which must have raised their spirits at this very difficult time.
Lady Redesdale died on 25 May 1963, aged 83, but long before this her face showed the strain which her family had caused her: Nancy’s writing about the family could be very cruel and gave her much pain; Diana’s divorce and remarriage were a terrible worry until she realised that Diana was supremely happy with Sir Oswald Mosley; Jessica running away to Spain with her cousin Esmond Romilly was a dreadful shock; and the estrangement from her husband made her very unhappy. None of this, though, could compare with the loss of Unity, whom she looked after until she died, and the death of Tom on active service in Burma in the final year of the war. In spite of all her anxiety, she was always the rock on whom her children depended. That mantle now passed jointly to Pam and Debo, the two daughters who had seldom given her any cause for worry. Debo did her best – and largely succeeded – to smooth over the many differences between the sisters, while Pam used her womanly skills and great kindness and understanding to look after them when they were sick or sad.
When Pam went to live in Switzerland, she took her dachshunds with her, announcing that she would stay there until they died. She told a reporter from a Swiss magazine (to whom she was giving an interview for an article about the Mitford sisters entitled ‘Six Black Sheep’) that this was not just because of the quarantine regulations which then existed, but because she thought they would like to spend their old age on the Continent. What the reporter thought of this reply can only be a matter of speculation; but she was serious.
The removal of the dachshunds to Switzerland in the first place must have been something of a relief to Debo who, although a real dog-lover herself, had had more than enough of Pam and her dogs after a visit to Chatsworth for Christmas 1960. She describes to Diana how Pam dedicated the whole time to her dogs: cooking ‘crank foods’ like rice and brown bread, as well as meat, feeding them and taking them out for walks, then repeating these three operations at intervals throughout the day. When the dogs came in muddy from their walks they jumped up on the sofas and she made no attempt to stop them except by speaking very loudly to them, to which they took no notice. Debo bore this recipe for a disastrous Christmas with great fortitude, remarking only that: ‘She is herself with knobs on.’
Pam enjoyed her time in Switzerland but eventually she longed to come home and only the two remaining dogs, Hexlie (German for little witch) and Susie, kept her there. She
may also have begun to find the Swiss pride in hygiene a little irksome because on one of her visits to England she remarked triumphantly to Margrit and George Powell: ‘I’m delighted to hear that they’ve found salmon in the Thames and there aren’t many in the river down there [in Switzerland]. Raise the Union Jack!’
It should be added, however, that Pam’s command of the German language, which she had taught herself and made her very comfortable with the Swiss, is yet another indication that she was quite as intelligent as her siblings.
Eventually both dogs shuffled off their canine coil and Pam was able to return to England, after more than twenty years of living in Ireland and ‘on the Continent’ as she called it. She couldn’t wait to get home.
Thirteen
Middle-Aged Mitfords
One of the first big events for Debo in the swinging sixties was the inauguration of President Kennedy in 1961, to which she and Andrew were invited and treated as important guests. This was due to Debo’s staunch friendship with ‘Kick’ Kennedy, the president’s sister, who was married to Andrew’s elder brother who was killed in Belgium in 1944. When Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963 they were also present at his state funeral.
The death of Sydney in May 1963 shook the Mitford Girls possibly more than they expected, especially Nancy and Jessica, whose portrayal of the family in their writing had been very hurtful to their mother, although she usually tried to conceal her feelings. She had, however, had a furious row with Nancy about a very unsympathetic portrait of her in a little book entitled The Water Beetle, published in 1962, and this had not really been resolved.
Sydney, having spent the winter of 1962/63 in London, set off for Inch Kenneth in the spring, accompanied by Madeau Stewart, one of the Mitford cousins, who loved both Sydney and the island and had spent much time there in recent years. Sydney had had Parkinson’s disease for some time but she had not let it affect her life. After the journey to the island, however, Madeau was worried about her and called the doctor, who diagnosed her to be in the terminal stages of the disease and deteriorating rapidly. Nancy, Pam, Diana and Debo all came to the island to look after her, with the help of two trained nurses. The sisters kept Jessica up to date by almost daily letters. Sydney died on 25 May, shortly after her 83rd birthday.
It was an agonising time for the sisters as Sydney hovered between life and death, but it was also cathartic since they had time to spend together and to reflect on the mother which some of them had felt to be inadequate but who was really the rock of their extraordinary family. This was the time when gentle, capable Pam took over many of the aspects of caring for Sydney and looking after the others. Sydney, by her own wish, was buried at Swinbrook, next to David, on the first really warm spring day of the year, when Swinbrook looked at its very best.
The same year, Jessica enjoyed enormous success with The American Way of Death, a description and attack on the American funeral industry which for years had divested bereaved families of huge sums of money for their loved ones’ funerals. The cost of dying, Jessica declared, was rising faster than the cost of living. The book, with which just about every reader could identify and which was savagely funny, was top of the bestseller charts for months and was the book of which Jessica became most proud. Except for A Fine Old Conflict, the sequel to Hons and Rebels, published in 1977, which again ruffled family feathers, she never quite reached the heights of The American Way of Death. (An inexpensive coffin became known as a Mitford, causing hilarity among the sisters.) Her campaign for a fairer world which she had once demonstrated by her actions, she now fought for in her writing, and she was always supported by Bob who helped her with the research. The Making of a Muckraker, published in 1979, is a collection of her articles on the subjects about which she felt most strongly, including funerals, prison conditions and civil rights.
Jessica was offered several short-term academic posts, including one at Harvard and another at Yale, and as a lecturer her humour and wit meant that she was very popular with her students. The honorary degree of Doctor of Letters which she received from San Jose University caused her to write to one of her sisters: ‘Wouldn’t Muv be amazed to find that Little D [Sydney’s pet name for Jessica] has been transformed into D Litt?’ The irony of the situation for one who claimed she had been denied a proper education by her parents cannot have been lost on her sisters.
By the 1960s it was obvious to Nancy that her relationship with the Colonel was never again going to be any more than that of a dear friend. She tried not to be jealous when she saw him with other women and to avoid this happening too often she moved to an apartment in Versailles in 1967. Worse was to come. Palewski had always told Nancy that to marry a divorced Protestant (Nancy and Peter had finally divorced in 1958) would harm his political career, but he then married in the mid-1960s a duchess who was also a divorced Protestant. Nancy tried to pretend, even to Diana, that she didn’t mind but she was bitterly unhappy, even though she and the Colonel remained friends. Only two years after moving to Versailles, Nancy became ill with what was eventually diagnosed as Hodgkin’s disease, a form of leukaemia; this was after many misdiagnoses, numerous tests and treatments which failed to help at all. For much of the time she was in great pain, particularly in her back. An operation to remove a lump, supposedly benign, from the base of her spine did not help for long, though she had a period of remission in which she started the research for her biography of Frederick the Great, travelling to Germany with Pam as interpreter; when the pain gradually returned Pam also acted as her nurse.
Nancy never knew that she had cancer because Pam, Diana and Debo felt that if she was told she would give up. Jessica, as usual (though it was a valid opinion and one which would be unquestioned today), felt that this was wrong because it deprived Nancy of any feeling of urgency about setting her life in order. But Jessica was far away and the others, particularly Pam and Diana, were caring for Nancy so their view prevailed. One good thing which came of Nancy’s illness was that for the first time since before the war, Diana and Jessica spent time together when Jessica visited Nancy in Versailles. On the surface they enjoyed friendly chats but never spoke of the events which had divided them and they did not meet again after Nancy’s death. She died on 30 June 1973 and it is thought that the last person she recognised was the Colonel, who was one of the few non-family visitors during her last days.
She was cremated in Paris and her ashes buried at Swinbrook, next to Unity. ‘Nancy was the brightest star of our youth,’ wrote their cousin Joan Farrer to Jessica, who did not attend the funeral but had it described to her by Diana and Debo. Unlucky in love, Nancy was incredibly successful in her career and she had been delighted when, the previous year, she was awarded both the CBE and the Legion of Honour for her contribution to literature.
After fighting the 1959 general election on behalf of his Union Movement, Sir Oswald Mosley stood once again in 1966 but once again was defeated, although he did receive 10 per cent of the vote. He then gave up the leadership of the party but continued to promote a European union both on the Continent and also in Britain. This was not easy because he was still very much the bogey man to the British public – as late as 1962 he had been beaten up at a meeting of the party in London’s East End and he was banned from appearing on the BBC and ITV. After 1966, however, as time had passed and views had become more liberal, he began to appear on both channels, most notably on a Panorama programme in 1968 which attracted an audience of 8½ million. In the same year he published an autobiography, My Life, which sold well. Mosley by now was being regarded less as a national threat and more as an interesting historical figure. This view of him was emphasised even more when, in 1975, Robert Skidelsky brought out a biography of Mosley which was not only balanced but gave a fair appreciation of Mosley’s thinking since the war.
Diana was not so lucky and her autobiographical book, A Life of Contrasts, was not well received since it included praise of Hitler and a failure to condemn some of the nastier elements o
f the Nazi regime, particularly anti-Semitism. This, coupled with her obviously comfortable life, did not make her an object of sympathy and influenced the reviewers’ attitude to her book.
Away from the public eye, the Mosleys were now accepted by many people both in England and France; their family life was happy, they were on good terms with all their seven children and with Nancy, Pam and Debo, and the thaw in the relationship between Diana and Jessica must have been welcome, at least to Diana. Sydney’s death, followed by Nancy’s illness and death, brought the sisters closer than they had been since politics and war divided them. But this was not to last.
The publication of Unity Mitford – A Quest, the biography of Unity by David Pryce-Jones, once again led to division between the sisters. Jessica was largely in favour and Diana, Pam and Debo were very much against. This event and the connected one of the mislaid scrapbook is related in detail in Chapter 17, but it is particularly relevant to the activities of the Mitfords during the 1970s as it illustrates the grouping which the four remaining sisters tended to fall into after Nancy’s death: Jessica would take one side of an argument; Debo, Diana and Pam would take another.
Debo, particularly, felt that it was too soon to tackle a book on someone so controversial and that any biographer would emphasise the aspects of Unity’s life which had so mesmerised the press in the pre-war years and after her suicide attempt. She and the others wanted to remember Unity as Jessica had actually described her in Hons and Rebels: ‘I loved Boud for her huge, glittering personality, for her rare breed of eccentricity, for a kind of loyalty to me which she preserved in spite of our now very real differences of outlook.’
The others also testify to these traits and to her originality and eccentricity – there really was no one like her; but Pryce-Jones focused on her relationship with Hitler and her life in Germany. He had done much research, including interviewing some of Unity’s remaining German friends and some of the Mitford cousins, but after the book came out many claimed they had been misquoted. Jessica told the other sisters that she had agreed to speak to Pryce-Jones so that he would have her view of Unity, but even she was not entirely happy with what he had written. What would have made the picture of Unity more balanced was if Diana, Debo and Pam had agreed to speak to him, but they had refused. They were so angry when they saw the finished biography that they wrote a furious letter to The Times. Unfortunately, this and subsequent adverse publicity made people want to read the book and sales soared.
The Other Mitford Page 12