Love to Esmond & you, Susan
P.S. I hope you got our wedding telegram all right. The Fem didn’t seem to think so.
Dear Hen whose Hen has by now given up all hope of her Hen writing to her Hen
Well dear we are in the train doing a horrid long journey of 6 hours from Vienna to Salzburg to meet Birdie.
Yesterday we went to stay with Janos [von Almasy] & Baby1 took us in her car. We found Mrs Janos in a great state because Janos had been taken off by the gendarmes because he was thought to be plotting for the Nazis & the soldiers had been through all his papers & writing desk & they had found the picture of Bobo & H. & were in a state about it.
Baby has got the most fascinating collection of Angela Brazil2 school stories I have ever seen.
How are you getting on with your honeymoon & when are you going back to Bayonne.
I must say I have enjoyed myself in filthy abroad although I am longing to get back to the old homeland. (Angela Brazil almost.)
I am in a frenzy because I can’t find out what has won the Derby although it happened yesterday.
Bobo – the brute – has started an anti the WID league & Diana has joined. So I have started a pro one & Tom & Nancy & Muv are joining.
Will you too? If so I will send you the forms, & the conditions are (i) that you will always pay her taxis etc for her & (ii) that you will always give her any clothes that she asks for & (iii) that you help her with her packing or whatever is worrying her at the moment & (iv) that you will always buy her clothes off her at 4 times their price.
The subscription is £500 a year which will go towards her upkeep.
Love from Embittered Hen
Dear Miss Girdlestone or Geldedstone,
I got your letter1 on arriving here last night, forwarded from Bayonne. It must have taken ages getting here, & what’s more I’m afraid you won’t get this for ages as I’ve only got your address up to the 23rd which seems to be today. Oh how cheerless. Dear I simply can’t thank you enough for the absolutely HEAVENLY gramophone, oh I do adore it you really are a cheery young tart to send me such a marvellous present. It’s easily one of the nicest we’ve had. I wrote to my Boud thanking her too. The following are what I’ve had so far: Muv, lovely brush set with JLR on the back, a ruby & diamond ring which is absolute heaven & I can’t stop looking at my hands on account of it; Tello,2 killing hideous black bag with rosebuds on it (‘at least three pence, Sydney’)3 but wasn’t it sweet of her to send it; Woman, cheque; Derek, cheque; Tuddemy, cheque (goodness how nice). That isn’t all but I can’t remember all the others now. Sweet Peter Ram’s bottom wrote asking what I wanted & apologising for not sending a present out to Spain!! So I thought of suggesting records, which I’ve asked George for, too.
I expect Muv’s told you all the low down on the wedding so I won’t bother to enlarge on it. It really was great fun, & we nearly giggled from nerves during the ceremony. Afterwards we went to Paris where we jollied ourselves up in nightclubs etc for two days, it was fun but rather tiring & it’s lovely to be here for a bit. Dieppe is full of the most extraorder people, they all seem about 70 but according to Cousin Nellie never stop having affairs with each other, chiefly as far as I can make out in the darkened corners of the Bridge club.
Being a married Hen is not at all unlike being an unmarried Hen has been during the last few months, except it seems rather extraorder to have a wedding ring & a mother in law & everything. Well Henderson dear I must thank you again millions of times for the phone, it was too sweet of you to give me such a lovely expensive gift.
Best love from Decca
P.S. Maggot sent me a photo of a statue of a naked gentleman: do thank her for it if she is with you. Cousin Nellie has got The Well of Loneliness4 here, your poor old Hen is reading it but goodness it is boring, she can skeke [hardly] get through it.
Dear Straight Eight or Racing Eight
What a kind old Hen to write her Hen at last. I thought I’d give you some of your own bread or whatever it’s called & not write for ages but then I thought I must tell you about the fascinator I have fallen in love with.
There is a wonderful band led by the most wonderful & sweet man called Barnabas von Géczy1 & they play at a delicious café called the Luitpold. Dear, there is a man in that band who simply makes your hair stand on end to look at him. We don’t know his name but he plays the violin the 2nd from the right so that is what we’ve called him. He is the personification of my type – awfully like Franchot Tone2 & he sometimes makes the most fascinating faces like Maurice Chevalier.3 We go there every night so I can sit & stare at him & it makes Muv furious. The terrible thing is that he smiled twice at Bobo last night & not once at me but I think that was partly because I didn’t dare look at him much. Géczy himself is a perfect love & he always roars when he sees us. I bought two gramophone records of his yesterday, they are wonderful.
We have had quite a nice time here & we’ve had tea with Hitler & seen all the other sights.
We are going to try & get Géczy for my dance next March if he comes to London. But I expect he would be much too expensive & anyhow dance music isn’t his line so much as wonderful Hungarian tunes.
I have bought a delicious locked diary to note down all about the 2nd from the right in.
We are going home tomorrow. I am quite pleased although I have enjoyed myself like anything. If it hadn’t been for Géczy & the 2nd from the right I should have longed to go ages ago. I think Munich is no end nice all the same. If I had to live anywhere abroad I should certainly live here.
We have been away for a whole month, a record almost. I miss My Man & Studley4 so much that it is really them that I long to get home to.
I am going to Jean’s dance on the 23rd, & Elizabeth Wellesley’s5 & Gina’s. The King & Queen are going to be at Gina’s which will be wonderful because everyone will be dressed in their best. But I am terrified because I haven’t been asked to any dinner party & it will be terrifying just arriving at a dance like that.
Do write dear. Write to Wycombe.
Love from Poor Hen
who swarms for the 2nd from the right.
Dear Bird
My case1 came on yesterday & there is a long account of the apology in The Times & a furious one in the Daily Express.
Muv wouldn’t allow me to go for some unknown reason, I was simply furious. It would have been so exciting, the first case I had ever been to to be my own, like one’s own wedding being the first one has ever been to. (Rather involved I’m afraid.)
Did the Führer go through Munich on his way to Berlin? If so I suppose we missed him by a day. Typical.
Muv was simply wonderful at Ascot yesterday, the things she said. Luckily I had my Femmerism note book with me so I wrote them down. The first was this: there were fifty aeroplanes going overhead practising for the display & I said ‘wouldn’t it be terrifying if they were enemy ones & we were being attacked from the air’. So the Fem said quite slowly and unconcernedly ‘Orrhhn, well I should always expect them to miss me’. But the way she said it – in her best Mae West style.
As we were getting out of the crowd she made her best remark for weeks. She said ‘I always think that if one had any sense one would always bring stilts to this kind of thing & just hop up on them.’ You must say that beats nearly everything. Of course they don’t look half as funny written down as they do when they are said. The important thing is to get just the right pause between ‘this kind of thing’ and ‘just hop up on them’.
Love from Tiny
1
Dear Crackinjay
We arrived here yesterday for the first time & it is really very nice if very cold. The fishing is terrific, we caught five trout last night. As Muv & Farve are always going on about how they love housework I leave it all to them to serve them right. All I have done so far is to make a Mitford Mess – tomatoes & potato fried in oil – which is the only thing I can cook & is it delicious.
It is more than ever like a Russian novel h
ere because Farve has taken terrific trouble to buy things he thinks Muv will like & she goes round putting all the things away that he has chosen. The worst of all was when she went to her bedroom for the first time & saw two wonderfully hideous lampshades with stars on them & she said ‘I certainly never bought these horrors’ & Farve’s face fell several miles. It is simply pathetic.
Last night a child was murdered at Capps Lodge & they haven’t arrested the man yet so I am terrified that he will be after us & I keep thinking I see his face at the window. He was the chef from the Lamb Inn at Burford.
Pam came to lunch the other day & they talked for 2½ hours about servants. Pam has had her hair dyed orange & it makes her look like a tart.
Bobo & Terence O’Connor2 are having a terrific get off, but I am going to steal a march on her at his cktl pty on Wednesday as Birdie is in Germany.
The Hitler tea party was fascinating. Bobo was like someone transformed when she was with him & going upstairs she was shaking so much she could hardly walk. I think Hitler must be very fond of her, he never took his eyes off her. Muv asked whether there were any laws about having good flour for bread, wasn’t it killing.
Well dear do write often, there is nothing yr Hen likes better than a letter from hr Hen.
Love from André Gide
Darling Nancy
I only got your letter this morning because it was sent to me in a packet and then followed me back here. It was so sweet of you to write darling, and wish me happiness. Driberg’s story was all wrong and from the date on your letter I was here and not in Berlin when he offered you a free call!1 There was no such romantic reason for my going as he told you. When you get back I will tell you the story or Muv & Farve can. Farve says the press telephone him constantly and ask him for TPOL’s2 address, and he says ‘But I don’t know it, I’ve never met him’ isn’t it wonderful. I expect he adds: ‘the damned sewer’.3
So for the present I am Mrs G and intend to remain so for some time.
Best love from Bodley
Darling Boud
We sit all day playing a sad tune called ‘Somebody stole my Boud’ (alternatively ‘Somebody stole my Hen’).1
Love, Your Boud
Dear Hen’s Egg
Well dear, the dances have begun in earnest. I must say they are exactly like what you said always – perfectly killing. I have never seen anything like the collection of young men – all completely chinless & all looking exactly alike. Last night was the Wellesleys.
According to everyone it was a really typical deb dance. Rather a small square room to dance in & many too many people in the doorway & on the stairs. I thought I should be alright & then they started to cut my dances till, in the end, in desperation I had to go home. Tuddemy has been to all the ones I have, luckily for me. He is simply wonderful & literally waits around till I haven’t got anyone to dance with & then comes & sits on a sofa or dances with me. I must say it is terribly nice of him. My conversation to the debs’ young men goes like this:
The chinless horror ‘I think this is our dance.’
Me (knowing all the time that it is & only too thankful to see him, thinking I’d been cut again) ‘Oh yes, I think it is.’
The C.H. ‘What a crowd in the doorway.’
Me ‘Yes isn’t it awful.’
The C.H. then clutches me round the waist & I almost fall over as I try & put my feet where his aren’t.
Me ‘Sorry.’
The C.H. ‘No, my fault.’
Me ‘Oh I think it must have been me.’
The C.H. ‘Oh no, that wouldn’t be possible.’ (Supposed to be a compliment.)
Then follows a long & dreary silence sometimes one of us saying ‘sorry’ & the other ‘my fault’. After a bit we both feel we can’t bear it any longer so we decide to go & sit down.
The C.H. ‘Got off camp this time, told them it was a sprained ankle, look at the bandages, ha ha’. (I look & see no bandages so suppose it must be a joke & say ‘ha ha’ too.)
Then one hears the drums rumbling & one knows that is the end of the dance & goes hopelessly back to the doorway hoping for the other chinless horror to turn up & of course he doesn’t so one scrams thankfully off to bed.
Yesterday one young man told me the same funny (?) story three times. At least I think it was the same young man but one can’t possibly tell.
Well dear, Family Life seems to go on in the same old way & I never see any of the sisters except sometimes Bobo, & the boredom of Wycombe is absolutely unbelievable. One never dares ask any of one’s friends for fear of the family taking against them & being fearfully rude ‘like only Mitfords can’. Bobo has just come back from Germany. She is going back again soon. I wish I was going with her. I should at least be able to go every night to listen to the band with the man I love in it. When she goes I shall be absolutely alone again which I hate so. There isn’t anyone to talk to because you know how the parents simply don’t listen.
Pam comes over sometimes which is awful. When Derek comes too it is worse. I never see Diana & very seldom see Nancy or Tom. So altogether it isn’t much fun. We have got to be at Wycombe for three months now. Lord only knows what I shall find to do all that time.
Everyone does the same old things here. Farve goes off to The Lady & the House of Lords & Muv paints chairs & reads books called things like ‘Stalin: My Father’ or ‘Mussolini: The Man’ or ‘Hitler: My Brother’s Uncle’ or ‘I Was In Spain’ or ‘The Jews – By One Who Knows Them’ etc etc etc. I haven’t read a book for eight months now.
I never can remember what jokes you’ve heard & what you’ve missed, but I know you can’t have heard this one. It’s a summing up of the Fem’s character by Bobo & me. It goes like this ‘Nelson, bread of my life, meet me tonight without any doctors or any medicine under the kitchen table’.1 You must say it’s a wonderful summing up. Well dear, hotcha.
Love from Yr Hen
Dear Henderson,
Thanks v. much for amusing letters
Have you been to any more dances? I gather from your letters that you more or less loathe most of them, I must say deb dances aren’t the cheeriest form of entertainment. But it seems all the more marvellous when one doesn’t have to go any more; Esmond says that’s the same as being at a public school or remand home, that always afterwards you think how lucky you are not to be there still. Anyway I expect next year it really will be more fun; I call the middle of July an extraorder time to come out, you might have liked it more if you had come out at the beginning of the summer.
Couldn’t you cheer off abroad somewhere, e.g. to Italy with the Rodds, or Germany with the Boud? Or even France with your Hen. Where are you all going to be in the winter – R Gate or the cottage? Your Hen will be in London then, we are coming back after our Tour to live there for a few months while your Hen has her baby etc. Shall I call it Henderson, or even Hon Henderson & everyone’ll think it’s the Hon(ble) Henderson. Did you know your old Hen was in pig.1 Yes dear, you had better be training as a young midwife, as soon as possible. I hope you will be its Henmother (Honnish for Godmother) anyway. Do write to your Hen & say if you are interested about it. Your poor Hen never stopped sicking up all her food for about three months on account of it, which was so cheerless.
Peter R[amsbotham] & George Howard have sent us an absolute mass of phone records which is such bliss of them. Do impress how grateful I am if you see them, there’s such a terrific lot.
Love from Henry
Darling Susan,
Thanks for yr. letter. All is oke now really, but Susan I must just remind you of a few things you seem to have forgotten! Susan how can you say you & Rodd were pro Esmond & me living together when you wrote saying how unrespectable it was & how Society would shun me, & Rodd wrote saying how French workmen would shun me. In fact what you actually wanted us to do was to come home to England, in which case I should have been caught by the P’s1 & narst old Judge & altogether teased in every way. So what you were really against was both us gettin
g married and us living together not married. Do you admit, Susan. Do you also admit it was a bit disloyal just as I was thinking you were the one I could count on to be on my side through thick and. Anyway it’s all such ages ago now I expect you’ve forgotten a bit what you did do, &, as you say, now we are married there’s no point in [illegible].
I am going to have a baby in January (1st to be exact, oh Susan do you remember poor Lottie’s2 agonies, & I expect it’s much worse for humans), yes Susan some of us do our duty to the community unlike others I could name. Shall I call it Nancy? I think skeke [hardly] as I have a feeling it’s going to be a boy, & being called Nancy might prove a handicap to it throughout life. I do hope it will be sweet & pretty & everything. Goodness I have been sick but I’m not any more now.
The bathing here is absolute heaven, we go to Biarritz nearly every day. Well Soose. End of paper.
Love from Susan
Darling Sooze
Oh thank goodness what a weight off my mind. Well Susan now I know that all is OKE I am sending you a) a narst little diamond ring as I know it is nice to have things of popping value even if only for a few pounds & b) which you will like much more Busman’s Honeymoon1 which must be the funniest book ere written. And I daresay some cash will be forthcoming in Jan. when needed. Susan fancy you with a scrapage. I don’t think you are fit to bring one up after your terribly awful behaviour but what luck that you will always have dear old aunt Nancy at hand to advise & help.
Love from Sooze
Dearest Henderson,
It WAS lovely seeing you & Blor, you can’t think how terribly pleased I was you could come. I only wish you were still here, it seemed such an awfully short time.
The Mitfords Page 10