The Mitford Girls

by Mary S. Lovell

  In Mosley’s book The Greater Britain, upon which he was working when he and Diana met and which he published a few months later through the BUF press, he unashamedly advocated totalitarian government: freedom for the individual but within complete state control; a democratically elected government headed by an authoritarian leader, who, he insisted, could not be described as a dictator as long as an elected parliament retained the power to dismiss the government. Unlike Hitler’s Mein Kampf, in which Jews are specifically mentioned as the enemy of the people, Mosley’s book made no reference to Jews but - paradoxically one might think upon the most cursory examination of his own lifestyle - he regarded decadence as the real adversary. His vision included a nation of citizens living ‘like athletes’, working wholeheartedly towards the common goal of a nation made great again, ‘shrinking from no effort and from no sacrifice to secure that mighty end’. The political commentator Beatrice Webb’s reaction was that he was merely imitating Hitler, whose policies were degraded because they followed primitive values ‘of blood lust, racial superstition, [and] blind obedience. As for Mosley,’ she wrote, ‘he has not even Hitler’s respectable personal character nor Mussolini’s distinction . . . he [is] dissolute and unprincipled, without common sense in every sense of the word.’55

  At this point Mosley had been married for twelve years to Cynthia ‘Cimmie’ Curzon, second daughter of Lord Curzon, a former viceroy of India and, during the war years and until his death in 1924, one of the outstanding figures in British political history. Mosley first saw Cimmie on Armistice Night in 1918 when, swathed in the Union Flag, the sweet-faced twenty-year-old had climbed on to one of the lions in Trafalgar Square to lead a rousing chorus of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’. A year later they were formally introduced. Curzon was then Foreign Secretary, and though the wildly ambitious Mosley clearly fell in love with the personable and intelligent young woman, her father’s position, and her own personal wealth (through trusts settled on her by her millionaire American grandfather),56 undoubtedly affected his decision to marry her.

  After a fashion the marriage worked well. Soon after their marriage, Cimmie, no slight politician herself, was elected Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent. When she was not pursuing her own career she was Mosley’s staunch supporter and campaigned strongly for him. They were an unlikely pair to represent socialism: members of the élite upper class, with a serious side to their lives but living an unashamedly luxurious and highly privileged lifestyle. Mosley made no secret of his ‘almost-unlimited appetite for fun’, and the single significant problem in the marriage was his sexual incontinence. Even prior to marrying Cimmie, he had a reputation as a womanizer, and his marriage vows did not change what was a virtual obsession. Cimmie soon learned about his serial affairs, and her misery was increased by his expectation that she accept them. As time went on she tried hard to ‘look the other way’, sometimes even bringing herself to tease him about it in her letters to him. The unwritten rules of upper-class society accepted that liaisons outside marriage were inevitable and, though regrettable, were allowable provided they were conducted with discretion. Divorce, of course, was unthinkable and amounted to social suicide.

  Mosley was happy to abide by the rules and was usually reasonably discreet. His infidelities were trivial, he insisted to Cimmie, and would never affect the deep and meaningful love he felt for her. Their son Nicholas wrote that when his father met Diana he continued to love Cimmie deeply, though probably he had ceased to find her sexually attractive.57 Mosley’s London flat in Ebury Street, ostensibly necessary for his work, was by unspoken agreement off-limits to his wife. There seems to be a general belief that it consisted of a single palatial room with a large bed on a raised dais, and that it was clearly unsuitable as a place to entertain political contacts. However, Diana remembers that ‘The bed was upstairs and invisible from the big room, which had a sofa and chairs, and was very suitable for serious politicians to visit.’58

  In that spring of 1932, when Mosley and Diana were falling in love, Cimmie had recently given birth, by Caesarean section, to her third child. She had not been in full health for over a year, suffering from a mild kidney infection after a fall but complaining over a prolonged period of backache, headaches, weight gain and a general malaise. Today such symptoms in an intelligent and apparently healthy young woman who appeared to have the world at her feet would immediately invite suspicion of an unacceptable level of stress.

  In July 1932, a month after the birthday party at Cheyne Walk, Mosley attended a ball at Biddesden held by Diana to celebrate the end of Unity and Rudbin’s first season. There Unity met Mosley for the first time, and she, too, fell under his mesmeric influence, though for her it was an ideological surrender. He became her ideal of a political leader - indeed she referred to him thereafter as ‘The Leader’ - and her allegiance to Fascism became as deep, fulfilling and enduring as was Diana’s emotional attachment to Mosley.

  Diana and Bryan had arranged to spend the hot summer months touring southern Europe, culminating in Venice. The Mosleys made similar plans, travelling separately so that Cimmie could make the journey in comfort by train. Diana and Mosley arranged to meet, apparently accidentally, at Arles or Avignon but the plan went awry when Diana became ill at Avignon with diphtheria. She and Mosley were writing to each other virtually daily, and fearful that his letters, addressed to await her arrival at various points on her itinerary, might be innocently intercepted and opened by Bryan during her enforced isolation, Diana had to take her friend Barbara Hutchinson, at whose house she and Mosley had first met, into her confidence to avert discovery.59

  Within weeks Mosley and Cimmie, Bryan and Diana were all together holidaying on Venice’s Lido as part of a British contingent that included Tom Mitford, Randolph Churchill, Bob Boothby, Emerald Cunard and - the love of her life - Sir Thomas Beecham, Edward James and his wife Ottilie (the Viennese dancer Tilly Losch, with whom Tom was still half in love despite her marriage), and Doris Castlerosse, who was not only one of Diana’s closest friends at the time but also a girlfriend of Tom before her marriage to Viscount Castlerosse. In telling Barbara Hutchinson about Mosley, Diana had opened Pandora’s box, and the mere fact of being away from England in a holiday environment perhaps led to a lack of normal reserves. The lovers lost all sense of discretion and were always at each other’s side laughing into each other’s eyes. It was patently obvious to everyone, especially Cimmie and Bryan, that Mosley and Diana were seriously involved with each other. They disappeared for hours at a time, and everyone knew that they were together somewhere; Mosley openly borrowed a room from Bob Boothby on one occasion. The discomfited Bryan and Cimmie could only hope that at the end of the holiday the affair would have run its course. Cimmie cried a good deal of the time.

  But back in England matters merely candesced. At a fête champêtre at Biddesden in September, Diana and Mosley danced together the entire evening. They made a striking couple, he with his black eyes, black hair and black moustache, dressed in stark black, she with her blond hair and fair skin in white. They had eyes only for each other and hardly even spoke to anyone else, although at one point she had a short conversation with Henry Lamb, the artist, who was working on a portrait of her and was consequently spending a lot of time at Biddesden. She noticed him frowning in Mosley’s direction, and said to him, ‘You’re thinking what a frightful bounder he is . . .’60 Cimmie wrote letters full of hurt to Mosley in London, agonizing openly at the knowledge that he entertained Diana at his Ebury Street flat: ‘Bloody damnable, cursed Ebury - how often does she come there?’ she asked bitterly. She knew that he lied to her when he stayed away from home, she wrote, and that when he was being sweetest to her he was really ‘trying to get away with something’. 61 Mosley was experienced at dalliance and could handle this. He wrote loving replies, ridiculing her fears, full of ‘lovey-dovey, baby-talk’, using their pet names for each other, dismissing Diana and other liaisons as part of his ‘frolicsome little ways’ and declaring continued u
ndying devotion to Cimmie, insisting that she was ‘the one’ for him. Cimmie wanted, needed, to believe him and so the game went on.

  It was far more difficult for Diana to live with the deception as she was, and is, congenitally unable to lie.62 Furthermore she had time in which to think about it all, while Mosley was always frenetically busy, his mind and his life filled with matters other than their affair. The Greater Britain, which defined his policies, and acted as a manifesto for his party, sold rapidly and went into three editions. He was a member of the British fencing team that year, which involved not only the dedicated training demanded of any international athlete, but bouts of epée around the country. He represented Great Britain several times up to 1937, even though surgery after his flying accident had left him with one leg several inches shorter than the other, and he had to wear special shoes to counteract this disability.63 But, more importantly, Mosley had worked that year to form the BUF, which demanded the majority of his time and attention for many months. There was always an aura of excited energy about Mosley that transmitted itself to those with whom he came into contact, and it is difficult to avoid the analogy that Diana was like a moth drawn to a flame. ‘The fact that Mosley was so busy in a variety of ways,’ Diana wrote, ‘was one of his great attractions for me. I wanted more freedom than Bryan was prepared to give me.’64

  The opening rally of the BUF was held on 15 October in Trafalgar Square, and as usual the devoted Cimmie was there to support and help Mosley win the popular vote, even though she was personally undecided about Fascism. A week or so later there was a well-attended meeting in a hall in Farringdon Street. In Italy and Germany Fascist meetings were quiet, respectful and nationalistic. In England every shade of political opinion wanted its say and Mosley’s meetings were characterized by noisy barrages. In fielding questions from a small group of hecklers in the gallery Mosley referred to them facetiously as ‘three warriors of [the] class war, all from Jerusalem’. This was the first time he had made any public reference to Jews and though it would not then have been considered universally the racist remark it would be today it was a major error and enabled his opponents to charge him with anti-Semitism. Another mistake, with hindsight, was his decision to uniform active members of the BUF in black shirts designed on the same clean, classic lines as Mosley’s fencing jacket; within weeks of their introduction the shirts had become a symbol, were slashed with razors and torn off the backs of wearers. Somehow Mosley did not recognize that his methods, and his rousing speeches, attracted to his standard every working-class tough spoiling for a fight, the 1930s equivalent of skinheads and soccer hooligans.

  After the Farringdon Street function Mosley went to Rome to see Mussolini, ostensibly to attend the tenth anniversary celebration of the dictator’s accession as leader of the Italian Fascist Party, but more importantly to try to persuade him to back the BUF with financial support. But before he left he visited Diana at Biddesden to discuss their relationship. She had already decided that she had to leave Bryan, even though Mosley made it clear that he could not leave Cimmie for her. She knew that divorce would mean social ostracism, and that was bad enough, but she was proposing not simply to divorce a thoroughly nice and popular man but to live openly as the paramour of a man in public life who had a wife and three young children. Curious as it may seem now, Mosley’s political stance was not a significant factor in the equation for at that time Fascism was ‘still on the edge of being respectable’.65 She also understood that because of his hectic political schedule, and the time he needed and wanted to devote to his family, Mosley could spend only limited amounts of time with her. She would have to be satisfied with the dregs. Furthermore, all the principals of this drama were young and ostensibly healthy: Diana was looking at, and fully prepared for, a lifetime commitment in which she gave everything for little in return. But the strength of her love for Mosley, and her confidence in his love for her, gave her the courage to decide that, no matter what difficulties would result, it was what she wanted. Mosley accepted her decision.

  While he was away Diana told a devastated Bryan that she was leaving him, though there seems to have been some sort of agreement that she would postpone it until after Christmas - probably for the sake of the children. Perhaps Bryan hoped that given time he could persuade her to change her mind. But there were frequent quarrels between them over Mosley. Diana was aware that she was behaving badly, but there was no turning back. Eventually she confided in Tom and Nancy, who were shocked at her decision, and deeply concerned for her; ‘Mitty [Tom] and I spent the whole of yesterday afternoon discussing your affairs,’ Nancy wrote on 27 November, ‘and we are having another session in a minute. He is horrified, & says your social position will be nil if you do this. Darling I do hope you are making the right decision. You are SO young to begin getting in wrong with the world ...’66 Two days later she wrote again:

  I feel convinced that you won’t be allowed to take this step, I mean that Muv & Farve & Tom, Randolph, Doris [Castlerosse], Aunt Iris, John [Sutro], Lord Moyne & in fact everybody that you know will band together and somehow stop it . . . Oh dear I believe you have a much worse time in store for you than you imagine. I’m sorry to be so gloomy darling . . . Mitty says £2,000 a year will seem tiny to you & he will urge Farve, as your Trustee, to stand out for more . . . if you want me at Cheyne Walk I’ll come of course. Only I think I can do more good down here.67

  A few days before Christmas David and Lord Moyne (Bryan’s father) went together to see Mosley.68 It was a difficult interview for all concerned, but Mosley refused to be lectured or intimidated into giving Diana up, just as she had when her parents and, indeed, all her relatives attempted to pressure her. She listened to all the arguments, persuasions, impatient anger and pleading - she was only twenty-two, she hardly knew her own mind, she was throwing her life away, she was ruining the children’s lives, no one, including the family, would ever speak to her again, she would be an outcast and, even worse, her actions would rebound on the reputations of her sisters - but she had taken it all into account before making her decision. The only disapproval she really minded, she said, was Tom’s, for he sided with his old friend. ‘He was fond of Bryan,’ Diana wrote. ‘He also thought that for a temporary infatuation I was ruining my life and that I should bitterly regret it.’69

  At this point, having extracted from Diana her word that she would not invite Mosley to their house, Bryan agreed to go away to Switzerland for three weeks, to give her some time for reflection. He had spent several holidays there with David and enjoyed winter sports, which Diana did not. Their agreement did not, however, prevent Diana attending a New Year’s Eve party at the house in Somerset that Mosley and Cimmie had rented for the holidays. Also present was Cimmie’s younger sister Alexandra (‘Baba’ to her family and soon to be known in the press as ‘Baba Blackshirt’), together with her husband Major ‘Fruity’ Metcalfe, equerry to and close friend of the Prince of Wales.

  When Bryan returned home to Cheyne Walk in mid-January Diana moved out, leasing a small house at 2 Eaton Square for herself, her two sons and their nanny. The Guinnesses’ marriage was over. In the same month Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany.

  7

  SLINGS AND ARROWS (1932-4)

  Highland Fling was not a bestseller but it went into a second impression within weeks of publication, which Nancy found gratifying. She told her friend Mark Ogilvie-Grant, who designed the cover, that it was selling at the rate of thirty a day, ‘which I’m told is definitely good for a first novel’.1 It earned her ninety pounds, which was soon swallowed up by a trip to the Côte d’Azur, where she stayed with friends. By the following autumn she was stuck at Swinbrook bewailing the fact that she could not afford to be in London because of the cuts in her ‘already non-existent’ allowance.

  If anyone flourished among London’s smart set it was Nancy, but at least she was occupied for her few months of enforced imprisonment in the country as 1932 drew to a close. She hunted twice a week with t
he Heythrop, and began work on a new book. Decca recalls her sitting by the drawing-room fire giggling helplessly as her pen flew across the lines of a child’s school exercise book while she wrote Christmas Pudding. She maintained the same bright style used in Highland Fling, drawing on friends and relations for characters, and places she knew well as settings. ‘It is all about Hamish at Eton,’ she reported to Mark Ogilvie-Grant. ‘Betjeman is co-hero.’2 Sometimes she read extracts out loud. ‘You can’t publish that under your own name,’ Sydney said, aghast at Nancy’s thinly veiled caricatures.3

  But while the literary side of her life was progressing reasonably well Nancy’s informal engagement to Hamish Erskine had not prospered. Indeed, she appeared to be the only person who ever thought it might. She was obsessed with him and her letters to friends are peppered with comments about him that are invariably witty but often leave the impression of hurt. Both sets of parents were implacably opposed to the match and Hamish dithered about announcing an engagement, though at one point he gave Nancy a ring ‘from Cartier’. He was sent down from Oxford because of his dissolute lifestyle there, shortly afterwards. Without allowing him to go to London where Nancy was staying with friends, his parents shipped him off to America where they had lined up a job for him.

  The news of his departure came as a body blow to Nancy and she wrote to him, breaking off their informal engagement. Though she put on a brave face for most of her friends (‘I don’t mind at all,’ she wrote to several), she confided in Mark Ogilvie-Grant that she had made a half-hearted attempt at suicide by switching on the gas fire in her room without lighting it. ‘It is a lovely sensation,’ she wrote, ‘just like taking anaesthetic . . .’ Fortunately she remembered in time that her hostess, who was pregnant, might find her body and miscarry: ‘so I got back to bed and was sick . . . I am really very unhappy because there is no one to tell the funny things that happen to one & that is half the fun in life don’t you agree? . . . How can I possibly write a funny book in the next 6 months, which my publisher says I must do. How can I when I’ve practically got a pain from being miserable and cry in buses quite continually?’4