The Mitford Girls

by Mary S. Lovell

  She consulted Debo, who advised her to go a little later in the year, and Decca did so, after writing that she would be careful to avoid any friction with Diana and hoped Diana would agree. Diana, of course, as mentioned earlier, had made several attempts over the years to reconcile with Decca, all rejected. Decca stayed at a small hotel round the corner from Nancy’s house and spent her days sitting with Nancy, trying to entertain her when she was awake. When Diana called in, Decca usually went off to do the daily shopping or performed small tasks to keep out of the way. She spent hours ‘removing whole continents of clover from the beds of parsley and lettuce, or anything Nancy asks. Thus I feel useful, in fact indispensable,’ she wrote to Bob. There were times, though, when she and Diana were alone together when Nancy was sleeping after an injection. And Decca was usually scrupulous to be well behaved, as she had promised, for Nancy’s sake. It was curious, meeting Diana again after thirty-four years: ‘She looks like a beautiful bit of aging sculpture (is fifty-nine), they don’t have this thing of wanting to look young here, her hair is almost white, no makeup, marvellous figure, same large, perfect face and huge eyes,’ she wrote to Pele de Lappe. ‘We don’t of course talk about anything but the parsley weeding and Nancy’s illness. God, it’s odd. I thought it must have given her a nasty turn to see me, [I was] aged 18 when last seen by her. But she told Nancy I hadn’t changed except for my voice.’9 Diana’s recollection is that they stayed off the subject of politics but often sat on the sofa together, laughing and chatting about the old days quite normally. However, one day while Diana was visiting Decca asked Nancy if there was some little job that needed doing. Nancy asked her to weed a clump of iris and she went off meekly to do so, returning to say mischievously, ‘I’ve given them Lebensraum.’11 The bitter little joke, at which Nancy choked, would not have been lost on Diana, but she did not react and the matter passed quietly.10

  For a while the worst symptoms retreated and, although it was merely a remission, Nancy thought she had recovered and began work on what was to be another bestselling biography, Frederick the Great. The research took her to East Berlin, accompanied by Pam who spoke German, which Nancy did not. There, Nancy had a similar experience to that of Bob and Decca in Hungary: she was approached by a personable young man who told her of his desperate longing for freedom to travel. ‘You know, how can Decca go on believing in it all?’ Nancy wrote to Debo. ‘I shall tell her it’s all right being a commy in our countries but wait until you are nabbed by the real thing! For ten days we haven’t moved without a policeman. I must say it suited me because I loved being looked after . . . still, it’s a funny feeling . . . Checkpoint Charlie is gruesome.’11

  Decca was not the only sister to feel concern that Nancy had not been told the truth about her condition: Diana also felt pangs of guilt. ‘N. says she has got on so well with the book [Frederick the Great] that there is absolutely no hurry . . . this kills one with guilt, in case she reproaches & says I could have gone quicker & finished if I’d known.’ Her solution was to confide in Nancy’s publisher and ask them to press for an earlier delivery date, which worked as Diana had hoped. After the biography Nancy planned to write her autobiography, but the illness overtook her again. For a further three years she suffered increasingly agonizing bouts of illness and pain, offset by shorter and shorter periods of remission. She spent periods in hospital in France and England while her symptoms were investigated until even she suspected cancer, yet despite the malignant tumour the doctors were unable to diagnose the exact nature of her illness so she always had the hope that they would discover the cause and she would be cured. Meanwhile, with each session of illness, the pain grew relentlessly worse. By the time she took up her autobiography it was too severe to allow her to concentrate on writing and she got no further than mentioning it in a few letters to friends and family.

  Towards the end she could hardly bear visitors except her sisters, and a few very close friends. Decca went to be with her three times, on each occasion for about a week. Debo and Pam stayed as often as they could, and Diana called almost daily. A few very close friends who could amuse Nancy were allowed to visit, and of course her beloved Colonel. On better days she continued to write her wonderful letters, usually managing to find a joke despite expressions of fearful pain. To her great joy she was awarded the Légion d’Honneur, which was conferred in person by the Colonel. And then, shortly afterwards, she wrote to Decca cheerily:

  It’s a deep secret until announced but I’ve been given the CBE [Companion of the British Empire] which is next decoration after Knight or Dame - quite good for a pen pusher . . . I suppose it’s sour grapes but I don’t think I could have accepted Dame, on account of being called it, but I do see in my little book that Hons need not use it [the initials CBE on an envelope] because Hon is so much higher in the hierarchy, Good . . . But it may be withdrawn. I’ve had a furious growl from Downing Street saying too many people know. The reason is that Diana Cooper was sitting with me when I got the intimation - of course you can guess the rest!!12

  In mid-June 1973, warned by her sisters that she should spend some time with Nancy before it was too late, Decca made a final trip to Versailles. While desperately anxious to please, she found that being sister-in-residence was no longer the pleasant task it had been on previous visits. In desperate pain a good deal of the time, Nancy had the querulous air of the acutely ill and had fits of complaining about everything Decca did, from organizing her bedpan to arranging the flowers. When reporting to Debo one day Decca’s despair at not being able to do anything right was obvious:

  Her eyes filled with tears & she said ‘everyone says there are masses of roses in the garden, why doesn’t anyone bring them up here?’ So I said I’ll dash and get some . . . and raced back with three more vases. So N, in cuttingest tones said, ‘I see your life does not contain much art and grace.’ Too true perhaps, but Hen! So I got lots more and put ’em round. Nancy: ‘I can’t think why you didn’t get them earlier, you’ve nothing else to do.’ In other words I think she’s rather taken against me . . . of course as Diana pointed out, she’s not exactly herself, which I do see . . . Isn’t it extraorder how utterly preoccupied one is with this horror scene, everything else fades such as Watergate, hubby and kids, all one’s usual interests.13

  To Bob she wrote of wishing to be home: ‘As you know we’ve always been slightly arms-length in contrast with Nancy/Debo, Nancy/Diana or even Nancy/Woman, so it’s one of those things where, most likely, one can’t do anything right . . . it is all deeply depressing - I rather hope to be fired, in fact.’14 Before she left Nancy told her during a quiet time that she was ‘ready to go’, and she even pleaded with the doctor, in Decca’s presence, to help her die: ‘Je veux que vous me dépêcher [sic] .’15

  Nancy died on 30 June 1973. By then Decca was back in California and Debo sent her a telegram. ‘By a quirk of time I didn’t get it,’ Decca replied to her, ‘until I’d seen the news in the paper, “Author Nancy Mitford Dies”. A chill, yet blank message since the actual mourning for her has been going on so long.’ Indeed, those who had loved Nancy could only feel relief for, if ever there was an occasion when the overused expression ‘happy release’ was apt, Nancy’s death was it. She had suffered harrowing torments, and when the condition was finally diagnosed as Hodgkin’s disease 16 she was not surprised to be told by her doctors that the pain was known to be one of the worst. ‘The very worst is something on your face called tic douloureux,’ she wrote in her customary jokey way. ‘Bags not having that as well!’ Her weight had fallen to under seven stone and her nurses had difficulty finding anywhere to inject morphine. Apart from the fact that the injections hurt, she always held off having morphine as long as possible because she dreaded losing control: ‘I have got a little spot of grey matter & I don’t want to spoil it with drugs or drink or anything else,’ she said. ‘My horror of drugs is the greatest of all my many prejudices.’ But then came the times when she screamed with pain and had to give in; and in the
end only morphine, and the quiet ministrations of Pam, with her loving womanly qualities, could really provide comfort. Just as she had with Sydney, it was Pam who saw Nancy through the worst times towards the end. ‘Woman [was] such an utter trooper,’ Decca wrote. ‘Somehow it looked as though she really came into her own re appreciation of her efforts and rare qualities.’17 One of the last things Nancy said to Debo was that she recalled hunting as a teenager. If there was one thing she would like to have done, she said, it was to have one more day with hounds.

  To James Lees-Milne Nancy had written, ‘It’s very curious, dying, and would have many a droll, amusing & charming side were it not for the pain . . . the doctors will not give one a date, it is so inconvenient they merely say have everything you want (morphia).’18 And to her beloved Colonel a few days before the end, her last letter: ‘I’m truly very ill . . . I suffer as I never imagined possible; the morphine has very little effect and hurts very much as it goes in. I hope and believe I am dying . . . the torture is too great. You cannot imagine . . . I would love to see you.’19 He did visit her sometimes, and then, on 30 June, while he was walking his dog, he suddenly had a strong presentiment that he must go to see her. Although she appeared to be in a coma when he arrived, she seemed to smile as he took her hand and spoke to her. The hearing is the last of the senses to fail and it is almost certain that she was aware of his presence. He was the dearest person in the world to her. Soon afterwards she slipped away. ‘Nancy was the bright star of our youth,’ Rudbin wrote to Decca, ‘a gay butterfly fluttering through attainable territories - quite the wrong person to be ill and suffer. A gossamer personality.’20 Diana wrote, too, and her short note survives in Decca’s papers. ‘Darling Decca, I’m staying with Woman. Nancy’s funeral was yesterday. Swinbrook is looking wonderful . . . Debo will send obit from the Times. All love.’

  The cremation was in Paris, and Diana took the ashes to Swinbrook for burial. She encountered typical bureaucracy, and a few days before the funeral service it looked as though the ashes would not be released to her in time. With arrangements already in hand Debo considered using a substitute box and burying the genuine ashes later. But it all worked out and Nancy’s ashes were duly buried alongside Unity. Later, Pam had a headstone erected on the grave, bearing the heraldic device that Nancy had embossed on her writing-paper. It was a little golden mole, a creature included in the Mitford coat-of-arms. Unfortunately, Debo wrote to Decca, the mason concerned was obviously unfamiliar with moles and on the tombstone ‘the result looked more like galloping baby elephants’. The sisters thought it irritating but, still, rather hilarious. Just as they roared when they heard that Nancy had told someone that her coffin ought to be ‘a Mitford’, so that Decca could collect a 10 per cent royalty. It had been a long-running joke between Nancy and Decca that the inexpensive basic coffin she recommended was called ‘a Mitford’, and that she collected royalties on every one sold. Decca did not attend the funeral but Debo told her all about it: ‘green and summery . . . pink and yellow roses all over the grey-yellow stone . . . there were many friends and none of those ghastly people who crowd into Memorial Services’.21 She sent a photograph of herself, Pam and Diana in ‘deepest black’, taken, she said, by a reporter hiding behind a wool merchant’s grave-stone. ‘The result is enclosed, of 3 witches to make you scream.’ It was one of those unfortunate pictures when all the subjects were caught off guard looking grim, but James Lees-Milne met Pam at a luncheon party shortly afterwards and she was, he wrote in his diary, ‘looking more beautiful than words can say. Her face radiates light.’22

  The middle years of the seventies were busy and fulfilled for Decca, with curious twists of fate intervening to change the direction of her life. One morning, to her gratified amazement, she opened the mail to find she had been offered the post of ‘Distinguished Professor’ by the Department of Sociology at California State University at San José, on the strength of The American Way of Death. Initially she did not intend to take up the offer, and was content to send copies of the letter triumphantly to her family and friends, but the more she thought about it, the more attractive it sounded. She was offered an honorarium of ten thousand dollars and a faculty house on campus to lecture to ‘a small class of honours and/or graduate students’ between the end of September 1973 and the end of January 1974. ‘We seem to be in a period of rather active intellectual ferment,’ the chairman said seductively, ‘which I suspect would be as exciting to you as it is to us.’23

  Decca took on the task with her customary élan and within days had clashed with the university authorities for describing the college’s loyalty oath as ‘obnoxious, silly and demeaning’. Her refusal to have her fingerprints taken ‘for records’ became a cause célèbre when she instigated proceedings against the university after being told that she either gave her fingerprints or faced being locked out of classes. Her lectures were oversubscribed by many times and two hundred students showed up for the first one in a room designed for thirty-five. Though she treated the responsibility seriously her droll manner kept the students in stitches and she made her points as though regaling dinner guests with anecdotes. Deemed a huge success, despite the ‘ruckus’ over fingerprinting, her time at San José University led to other short-term academic contracts, including periods at Yale and Harvard. In 1974 she was awarded an honorary degree as Doctor of Letters by Smith College. This entitled her, she learned, to the letters D. Litt after her name. ‘Wouldn’t Muv be amazed to find that Little D. has been transformed into D. Litt?’ she wrote to her sisters.

  During a trip to Europe after the term at Yale, Decca and Bob spent a few nights at Debo’s Lismore Castle. ‘Bob’s face when the butler came to the door to ask “Shall I lay out your clothes, sir?”’ she wrote to Pele de Lappe, ‘was worth the detour, as the Guide Michelin would say.’ Debo tried hard to bring about reconciliation between Decca and Diana, but Decca felt she could not oblige: ‘It’s not exactly politics now (except for the feeling one must draw the line somewhere, and you know all that part),’ she wrote. ‘It’s more that having adored her through childhood it makes it 10 times more difficult to have just casual meetings . . . Even our meetings over Nancy’s illness (in which Diana was marvellous) were rather agony.’24

  Still, apart from the coldness between Decca and Diana, the four surviving sisters were closer in the early seventies than they had been at any time since before the war. This happy state was brought to an abrupt end by a biography of Unity, written by David Pryce-Jones, whose father had been a ‘what-a-setter’ of the old Swinbrook days. Pryce-Jones had written several books, which Decca respected, and he had done a good interview with Nancy. He and the Treuhafts swapped homes one summer, when it suited Decca to have a long-term London base, and his interest was piqued by the items of Mitford memorabilia he saw lying around in the Oakland house, ‘some of the Acton drawings of the sisters . . . Coronation chairs with blue velvet seats and the royal monogram, and Lady Redesdale’s set of Luneville china’. 25 A copy of Jew Süss with Unity’s signature and the date June 1930 especially intrigued him. Subsequently he approached Decca suggesting that he write a biography of Unity, and she gave him what she said was a noncommittal reply, but which he took to be her approval. ‘It’s not quite like that,’ Decca told Debo later, ‘I told him that while I was not averse to his having a go at it, the other sisters might be. And that I thought it would be hopeless to try to do it in the face of family opposition . . . After that I forgot about it.’26 Debo considered it still too early for a biography of Unity, and that without having known Unity intimately ‘he couldn’t possibly get the hang of the amazing contradictions of her character, nor her great funniness, nor her oddness. Therefore it would miss the point and be Nazis all the way.’27

  The biography went ahead, and was published in 1976. Though she wrote to Pryce-Jones saying that she thought the epilogue ‘really terrific’, Decca refused to allow it to be dedicated to her. Even so, her connection with the author caused a great deal
of bother between Decca and her family and Mitford friends in England. Pryce-Jones did a huge amount of new research, tracking down childhood friends, people who had known Unity in Germany in the late thirties, and even medical staff who had nursed her after her attempted suicide. The result, which contained verbatim transcripts of interviews with Unity’s German connections, and snippets of information gleaned from cousins and family connections, was poorly received by Unity’s loved ones, who tended to blame Decca for its publication. It is true that she helped the author with advice and information, telling him on a number of occasions that he must keep her assistance confidential, as she knew her family would disapprove. She hated the thought of losing contact with her family in England (‘I dread losing Debo for ever’), but that rebellious streak still ran strong and she gibed at the fact that Debo had made herself the

  ‘self-appointed arbiter of all that concerned the family (especially as I am three years older than she is)’.28 But not all the family information in the book came from Decca. Diana gave the author a very long interview telling him things of which Decca had not known. This, he told Decca, led him to believe that if he worked at it he could make Diana ‘an ally’. He underestimated Diana. She was never in favour and wrote ‘an extremely hostile review’ in Books and Bookmen. Several people made a determined attempt to have publication stopped, the Devonshires, Lord Harlech and the Mosleys among them. This rebounded on them for, although undoubtedly upsetting to the author at the time, it nevertheless gave the book much valuable pre-release publicity. Diana states that she wrote to fourteen people who were interviewed and quoted in the book and received back thirteen replies claiming they had been misquoted. One interviewee, Paulette Helleu, daughter of the painter, was prepared to take legal action through French courts.