The Mitford Girls

by Mary S. Lovell

  19

  RETURN TO THE OLD COUNTRY 1955-8

  Looking back, the early fifties had been an extraordinary time for Decca. In 1950 she and Bob had intended to visit England but were denied passports owing to their membership of the Communist Party. There was some compensation: Debo visited them in Oakland, ‘for a Honnish reunion’, during which they entertained Bob with Honnish songs and stories, and Debo generally wowed the comrades who, to Decca’s amazement, couldn’t wait to meet a real live duchess, just as they had crowded in to meet Sydney. During the next half-decade the Treuhafts made several unsuccessful attempts to get passports. Decca ‘longed’ to go to England to see her mother and one or two others such as Nancy, Idden and Nanny Blor, and finally asked Sydney to appeal to Winston Churchill. ‘Do see what you can do . . . it may be the only chance,’ she wrote. ‘But if you correspond with him, please send me a copy.’1

  Sydney refused. ‘I’m afraid there’s nothing doing as regards asking favours, it would not be possible for me anyhow, and surely not for you either, as you are heart and soul against him.’2

  Regrets were soon buried under a welter of work. For Decca, with the house and family to care for, there were hardly enough hours in the day as the CRC gathered strength. At first she was confined to the office, involved in mass mailings and the organization of protest meetings, but she became more personally involved with the case of a young black man, Willie McGee, who had been sentenced to death in Mississippi for raping a white woman. There was evidence that the plaintiff had been his willing mistress for several years and had accused him of rape only when he attempted to end their relationship. This, however, was not admissible in court and in McGee’s home town no one dared speak out on his behalf for fear of retribution from the powerful Ku Klux Klan. No one, that is, except McGee’s wife Rosalee, an uneducated twenty-eight-year-old, who left the town for the first time in her life and embarked on a nationwide speaking tour funded by the CRC. Her aim was to recruit sufficient national sympathy to persuade the Governor of Mississippi to commute the death sentence.

  Decca met Rosalee in Oakland and was appalled when she heard how the family lived. Rosalee had already lost three close male relatives to white lynch mobs or a vicious justice. Decca talked three women comrades into joining her, and drove to Jackson, Mississippi, to take up the cause in person. She and her three-woman ‘delegation’ were unable to prevent McGee’s execution, but Decca’s self-confident aplomb - she thought nothing of telephoning the Governor at his home to discuss the McGee case - and the fact that she had ventured into the town during the row gave others the courage to speak out where before they had remained silent. When she organized a protest, other white women came from the northern states to join it. Hundreds of black people streamed in, too, in defiance of the Ku Klux Klan, to stand in silent protest. Decca’s spark helped to light the fire that the fight for civil rights became during the next decade. During her time in Mississippi the McGee case was national news, and although most national newspapers presented the protests as a desperate ploy of Communists to further the cause of international Communism and foment racial strife, the case was groundbreaking in the history of civil rights in the USA.

  In 1951 Decca was subpoenaed by the California State Committee on Un-American Activities. She had to present herself at a court hearing, bringing with her the membership records of the East Bay Civil Rights Congress. This caused consternation among her friends and comrades, for the records contained the names and addresses of anyone who had supported the organization, including most of the Communists in the Bay area. Bob could not help her: he was already in hiding to avoid being subpoenaed himself, and as their phones were tapped and she knew the FBI was watching her, she dared not contact him. Recently, numbers of people had been sent to prison and she was nervous. She contacted the CRC lawyer who insisted she must take the Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer, to avoid incriminating herself. ‘What if one elected to testify about oneself, but refused to answer questions about others?’ she asked. ‘No good,’ he replied. ‘If you answer one single question, the committee will say you waived the privilege and insist you answer as to related facts, meaning the names of your colleagues and other details.’3 So Decca learned her single statement: ‘I refuse to answer on the ground that my answer might tend to incriminate me.’ She took Dinky with her to the court, having obtained permission from the headmistress to absent her from school that day in case her classmates teased her.

  The scenes in the court are familiar to us now from old news-reels of grim-faced bullying inquisitors such as Joseph McCarthy demanding loudly of Hollywood notables, ‘Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?’ Decca was not called to the stand until after the lunchtime recess. All morning she had watched others undergo the trauma of examination, saw how some had fought back, causing uproar, how others had wilted under pressure, and how some had stuck to the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer anything, just as she had been told to do. She took the stand clutching her membership-records file and after she had taken the oath the questions she had rehearsed were asked: ‘Are you now or have you ever been . . .? Have you ever heard of or read the People’s World ? Have you been a director of the East Bay Civil Rights Congress since May 1950? Do you maintain a bank account for the Civil Rights Congress? Is your husband, Robert Treuhaft, legal counsel for the Civil Rights Congress?’ To each question she responded with the memorized incantation.4

  But she began to grow irritated. She wanted to retaliate to the bullying, to play to her friends in the gallery and make them laugh, but she clenched her teeth and replied as rehearsed. Suddenly a curious question was asked: ‘Are you a member of the Berkeley Tenants Club?’ She was puzzled for a moment, never having heard of it and thinking it must have some connection with bad landlords. Then she began her answer: ‘I refuse to answer that question on the grounds . . .’ To her confusion the courtroom erupted in a roar of laughter. The question had been ‘Do you belong to the Berkeley Tennis Club?’ and was an attempt at heavy sarcasm by the prosecutor, goaded by Decca’s plummy voice and the fact that the club was a bastion of conservatism. In the uproar the chairman rapped his gavel for order and dismissed Decca as being ‘totally uncooperative’. As she stepped down from the stand her lawyer grabbed her arm and hissed at her to get out fast and go into hiding. ‘Don’t go home . . . or to any house that might be under surveillance.’ The court had been so confused by the noise and laughter that the chairman had forgotten to ask for the CRC records.

  Decca cast an agonized glance at Dinky in the gallery, and bolted for her car having insisted that the lawyer saw Dinky home. She hardly had a chance to get clear of the building before the mistake was realized and she was recalled. By then she was in her car driving blindly away from the courthouse, hoping she was not followed. She hid with friends for a few days as Bob was doing, until they knew that the hearings were over, then Decca telephoned Dinky, who was looking after Nicholas and Benjamin. ‘Thank goodness,’ the redoubtable Dinky said, when Decca announced that she was coming right home. ‘I’ve been doing all the cooking and we’re sick of scrambled eggs.’5

  The next few years were spent subpoena-dodging, going into hiding whenever a friend was served with one. As their phone was tapped and they were under surveillance by the FBI,6 Bob and Decca were careful never to mention the name of a friend or comrade unless they were in an open space and knew they could not be overheard. Bob appeared once before the commission and scourged them with clever oratory that made the evening papers. On another occasion he was so angry with the Attorney General over some unfairness that he kicked down the door of the District Attorney’s office. One of his partners overheard a policeman at the courthouse say to another, ‘Do you think Treuhaft really wants to overthrow the government?’ ‘Well, no,’ was the reply. ‘But I think he wants to get someone else to do it.’7 The newspaper reports of these incidents, sent home to Sydney by Decca, were stuck into a great album, alongside the Rede
sdales’ invitation to Westminster Abbey for the Coronation of George VI, and Sydney’s authorization to visit Diana in Holloway.

  Decca went on with her work, and wrote regularly to Sydney: news of the progress of ‘Dinky, Nicky and Benj’ was interspersed with details of her trips around the country on CRC business. She sounded fulfilled and happy, if occasionally downcast by what she regarded as pettiness and the inevitable ‘persecution’ by investigators for the Un-American Activities Committee. The Treuhafts had moved to 61st Street in Oakland, a larger house, which they liked very much. ‘We’ll probably stay here for ever,’ Decca wrote happily to Sydney. There was still no news of their passports, and it seemed that the children would be fully grown by the time Sydney saw them again. Then suddenly, with no warning, this busy, happy life was shattered.

  All three children did extra jobs to earn pocket money so that they could buy things they wanted and pay for Christmas and birthday presents. They did chores like ironing Bob’s shirts, or taking out the trash. Ten-year-old Nicholas had a paper round, delivering the Oakland Tribune, after school. On the afternoon of Thursday, 15 February 1955, while riding his bicycle home, he was hit by a bus and killed. Dinky had been on her way to look for him as he was late for supper, and heard the sound of the crash. She ran to the corner of the road to see what had happened and was with her dying brother within seconds. He was probably dead before the ambulance arrived. By then a small shocked and hushed crowd had gathered at the scene. One neighbour voiced her opinion that if Mrs Treuhaft spent more time at home this wouldn’t have happened. Dinky flew at the woman in a blind fury and had to be pulled off.8

  Friends rallied round the family but the hurt was too deep for comfort. In the evening, when Decca and Bob returned from the hospital, Dinky remembers wandering around the house with Decca alone in one room and Bob in another, all unable to share their grief. They buried Nicholas in Guerneville, the town where Bob and Decca had been married, and from then on Decca, in the only way she knew how to cope, bottled up her feelings. By tacit agreement Bob, Dinky and Benjamin followed her lead and Nicholas was airbrushed out of their lives, but never their thoughts. Dinky always kept a photo of him on her dressing-table, but shut it away in a drawer when Decca came in. Benjamin lost the person who had been perhaps closest to him. Those who knew them at that time recall the two little boys endlessly play-wrestling on the floor of the living room, sparking each other off with funny remarks. After his brother’s death Benjamin had problems at school, getting low grades and into scrapes. On one occasion, decades later, when Decca was lunching with Kay Graham, her old friend from Washington, Nicholas was mentioned. A few days later Decca wrote, ‘Sorry I damn near blubbed . . . I should have supposed I had totally recovered, not to mention that we were brought up never to cry in front of other people . . . so forgive the unaccustomed lapse.’9

  Sydney, desperately upset about ‘my little Okay’, as she called him, and knowing what it meant to lose a son, wrote inadequately to Decca, ‘Your letter came. You are very brave, but I always knew you were that . . .’10 Debo was the only other member of Decca’s family who had met Nicholas, but she was on holiday in Brazil when he died and Sydney decided not to tell her until she returned. For Decca Nicholas’s death, she once said, was the last of the four big losses in her life: Julia, Esmond and Unity were the others.

  The aftermath of Nicholas’ death was a grim time for the Treuhafts. Bob felt helpless to comfort Decca and, in any case, she was unable to accept any form of sympathy. Because she had been in charge on the day of the accident, Dinky inevitably felt responsible for what had happened: she had been almost a surrogate mother as well as elder sister to Nicholas, and suffered greatly because she could not talk to either parent. Also there was a shift in her relationship with Benjamin, for Nicholas had been the connecting link between them. Dinky felt that the death of her brother distanced them all in a way and life was never quite the same again.11 At the age of sixteen she developed a gastric ulcer, more usually associated with middle-age executive stress than the carefree life of an American teenager.

  Twelve weeks later, to their immense surprise, the passports for which the Treuhafts had applied with dreary regularity over the previous five years arrived in the post. Decca lost no time in arranging a trip to England for her, Bob and Dinky. She felt Benjamin was too young to appreciate the trip, so he was to stay with his grandmother Aranka, in New York. She was horrified to discover the cost of the journey but there was still some money in her old running-away account at Drummonds bank that they could draw upon while they were in London. They had tried unsuccessfully to have this transferred to them shortly after Sydney’s visit, and at Decca’s request Sydney had arranged a meeting with the manager, to see if there was some way round the currency restrictions, as they were desperately short of money. ‘Now let me see, your ladyship,’ said the accommodating manager, ‘we are unable to send the money to the United States, unless there is some strong mitigating reason such as that the money is needed for school fees, or to pay hospital bills and so forth. What is the money required for?’ He could hardly have given a stronger hint. ‘Oh I think she wants to give it to the Communist Party,’ Sydney answered truthfully.12 Whereupon the manager assumed a stern expression and refused the application. It had annoyed Decca at the time - as well as spawning a dozen after-dinner stories - but now the money would prove useful.

  The travelling party was to include Nebby Lou, the daughter of friends. ‘They were black intelligentsia with connections in New York,’ Bob recalled. ‘They were desperate about Nebby, she was at Berkeley High and had no interest in politics. She seemed unaware that there were any racial differences and was friends with, and stayed with, mainly white girls, shopped with them for cashmere sweaters and so on, all that high-school scene.’ They asked Bob and Decca if they would take Nebby with them to broaden her horizons, and the trip was the start of a long friendship between her and Dinky. The Treuhafts planned to spend several months touring the UK and Europe, but their first call would be at Inch Kenneth, to visit Sydney. Decca wanted to show the others the high points of the English Season, such as Ascot, Henley and Lords, ‘But where are they?’ she asked Sydney. She had forgotten. ‘Also I long to show them the Widow [Violet Hammersley]. I had a very nice letter from her not long ago, all about plans for her death bed. Perhaps she could arrange to have it while we’re there? . . . About Farve, I quite agree we should see him, only he will have to agree to be nice to Bob, Dinky and Nebby Lou and not to roar at them. Does he still?’13 Sydney had been delighted that Decca would have this holiday to take her mind off the tragedy of Nicholas, but her relationship with David was just as important. She would never brook what she considered to be impertinence about him. Nebby Lou was very welcome, she replied firmly, but since Decca had chosen to lay down conditions about visiting her father, it was better that she didn’t see him after all.

  David was still living at Redesdale Cottage. Nancy, Pam, Diana and Debo visited him at least once each year, Debo more often than the other three who were living on the Continent. Once when Diana visited him, he asked if she would like the fire lit. When she said she would he took out his keys, opened the safe and took out a firelighter. ‘Nothing else was kept in the safe,’ she said, recalling that he had done the same thing at Asthall to prevent the children taking firelighters to make the damp logs burn on the schoolroom fire. ‘It was a relic of the old days. At Redesdale Cottage there were no children to take his firelighters but the idea they might was ingrained. Farve’s safe would have been a grave disappointment to burglars.’14 David and Sydney still met occasionally at Rutland Gate, during his increasingly rare visits to London, and she sometimes went to visit him in Northumberland. Like Sydney he was never sure whether to be flattered or annoyed by his portrayal in Nancy’s novels. ‘It shows how savage I must have been,’ he wrote to Sydney once, ‘but without knowing it.’15

  After a succession of jolly send-off parties from their friends, Decca, Benjamin
and Nebby Lou set off by train for New York where they were to spend a week with Aranka. Dinky was already there and Bob was to fly to New York just before the ship departed. Dinky met them at Grand Central Station with terrible news. A cable had arrived, demanding that the passports be returned. They had apparently been granted by mistake and representatives of the State Department had been to the house at Oakland, to Bob’s offices and Aranka’s house, looking for Bob and Decca. By now skilled at evading officialdom, Bob had eluded them and was on a flight to New York, due to arrive at any minute. They drove straight to the airport and met him. During the flight he had made alternative plans. They would hide at his sister’s house overnight. He had discovered that a ship was sailing for Europe on the following day, the SS Liberté. If they went straight to the agent they could try to get on that, pretending, if they were stopped, that they had not received the cable.

  They spent an anxious hour at the travel agent’s. The ship was fully booked but there was a last-minute cancellation in cabin class. They decided to take it. Then they found that the price of their original tourist-class tickets was not refundable unless the agency could sell on the tickets to someone else. Decca saw her trip disappearing, but Aranka came to the rescue and offered to pay for the cabin, then whisked Benjy away before Decca had a chance to say a proper goodbye to him. Next morning there were heart-stopping moments at Customs and during the boarding process; at every moment they expected to be recognized and stopped. They did not dare to go to their cabin but mingled on deck among the other passengers until the ship steamed out and they knew they were clear. After that they enjoyed five days of peace and unaccustomed luxury on the voyage to Southampton.

  Bob spent his time reading a series of humorous books on how to survive in a Society environment, Lifemanship, Gamesmanship and One-Upmanship. When Decca asked what he was reading he showed her and told her he was going to practise on her family. ‘Decca exploded with laughter. She knew what a dim chance I’d have; they wrote the rules,’ he said.16