4 Cecil Beaton (1904–80). The photographer of society beauties and royalty had begun a series of portraits of ministers and war leaders.
1 Amy Hussey; one of the Mitfords’ many governesses.
2 The wife of Lord Redesdale’s foreman.
3 Alma Rattenbury (1897–1935). A musical prodigy from Canada who was accused of murdering her husband and acquitted after a sensational trial. Tom Mitford worked on the case in a lowly capacity.
4 Ronald Tree (1897–1976). Marshall Field department – store heir and Conservative MP 1933–45. Married Nancy Field in 1920 and Marietta Peabody in 1947. His son Michael married Deborah’s future sister-in-law Anne Cavendish. Owner of Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire where Winston Churchill held secret meetings during the war.
5 Alfred Duff Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich (1890–1954). Politician, diplomat and writer. Ambassador to Paris 1944–7. Married Lady Diana Manners in 1919.
1 The journey to the Redesdales’ Hebridean island was laborious, involving a night on a sleeper train, a morning’s wait at the mainland port of Oban, a crossing by ferry-steamer to Mull, and a ten-mile drive to Gribun before transferring to a rowing boat to reach the island.
2 Deborah had taken her dogs with her on the long-drawn-out journey to Scotland.
3 Husband of the cook at Inch Kenneth.
4 The village on the west coast of Mull where the ferry to the mainland docked.
5 Nancy’s French bulldogs.
6 Diana had been arrested and was being detained in Holloway Prison.
7 Timothy Bailey (1918–86). The Mitfords’ first cousin, who had been declared missing, was discovered to be a prisoner of war. Two of his brothers, Christopher and Anthony, were killed in action.
1 Alexander and Max were staying with Pamela at Rignell, looked after by Nanny Higgs.
2 Jean Gillies, Jonathan and Desmond Guinness’s governess, was reporting on Diana to Lord Moyne who passed the information to MI5.
3 When she was first arrested, Diana was allowed to send and receive only two letters a week, one of which was always kept for communicating with her husband. After some months this restriction was relaxed.
4 Derek Jackson.
1 A friend and contemporary of Deborah.
2 A Cordon Bleu teacher who had given cookery lessons to Deborah, Diana and Mosley.
1 Desmond Guinness had had a gland on his neck removed.
2 Alexander and Max.
3 Enid Riddell (1903–73). A member of Captain Ramsay’s Right Club who was detained in Holloway for propagating fascist views.
1 The Redesdales’ London house was requisitioned to provide temporary accommodation for Polish Jews evacuated from Whitechapel.
2 Margaret Wright, the Redesdales’ parlourmaid. She later married her young man, a Mr Dance.
3 An unsuccessful attempt by the Allies to capture the French West African port of Dakar had ended in heavy French and British losses. Violet Hammersley, who relished bad news, was invariably swathed in scarves, shawls and veils.
1 Philip Toynbee (1916–81). Left – wing friend and great admirer of Esmond Romilly, who became a novelist and critic on the Observer. In her memoir of him, Faces of Philip (1984), Jessica wrote that when young he was ‘unkempt in the extreme’, would get outrageously drunk and proposition any young girl in sight. Married to Anne Powell 1939–50, and to Frances Smith in 1950.
2 Kathleen (Kick) Kennedy (1920–48). Daughter of Joseph Kennedy, US ambassador to London 1937–40, and younger sister of President Kennedy. Married Andrew Cavendish’s older brother, William (Billy), Marquess of Hartington, in 1944.
1 The Mosleys had successfully sued the Sunday Pictorial for saying that they led a life of luxury in prison. Diana spent her share of the damages on a fur coat to keep her warm in her cell.
1 Sir James Edmondson (1886–1959); the Redesdales’ local MP.
2 Hoarding was a crime punishable by up to two years’ imprisonment.
3 In a debate in Parliament, Richard Stokes, Labour MP for Ipswich, had raised a question concerning the legality of detainment under Regulation 18B and the treatment of detainees in prison.
4 Elective Affinities, Goethe’s novel about love and adultery, was first published in 1809.
1 Mrs Bunce held the licence for the Swan Inn at Swinbrook.
1 Jessica’s daughter, Constancia (Dinky, Donk) Romilly, was born on 9 February.
1 An eighteenth-century house belonging to the Devonshires which became a school in 1954.
1 Fanciful stories about the Mosleys appeared regularly in the British newspapers.
2 William Gilliat (1884–1956). Obstetrician and for more than twenty years gynaecologist to the royal family.
3 Edward Marsh (1872–1953). Civil servant, patron of the arts, private secretary to Winston Churchill. He was knocked down in St James’s Street, London, during the blackout and was taken to nearby Pratt’s Club where Deborah’s father-in-law took pity on him and invited him home to recuperate. He stayed a year and a half with the Devonshires, irritating Deborah.
4 Ivor Novello (1893–1951). The songwriter, playwright and matinee idol was touring with his musical The Dancing Years (1939).
5 Deborah’s sisters-in-law: Lady Anne (Tig) Cavendish (1927–), who married Michael Tree in 1949, and Lady Elizabeth (Deacon) Cavendish (1926–), who never married but in 1951 became the close companion of John Betjeman.
6 The daughter of Lord Redesdale’s foreman and granddaughter of Mrs Bunce who owned the pub in Swinbrook.
1 A different Gladys from the one who made dresses for the sisters when they were debutantes.
1 ‘N[ancy] & I were travelling … and I picked up the D. Telegraph & said, “I must just note the graph”. For some reason N. thought that very funny so it was used for ever – as, for example, “I long to note your graph” meant “I long to see you”.’ (Jessica in a letter to the editor)
1 Six days earlier Deborah had given birth to a premature son who died almost immediately.
2 The obstetrician not only arrived too late to assist at the birth but upset Deborah by saying, ‘You didn’t expect it to live, did you?’
3 Deborah’s mother-in-law.
4 Almina Wombwell (c.1877–1969). Wife of the 5th Earl of Carnarvon who led the expedition to open King Tutankhamun’s tomb. Lady Carnarvon took a close interest in medical matters and in the patients admitted to her nursing home.
5 Nancy had suffered an ectopic pregnancy after a brief affair with a Free French officer, Roy Desplats-Pilter (1904–45).
1 After Diana’s motor accident in 1935.
2 François René de Chateaubriand’s autobiography (1849–50).
1 Deborah was staying with her parents-in-law.
2 After a separation of eighteen months, and on the instructions of Winston Churchill, Diana was joined by her husband in Holloway where they remained imprisoned together for a further two years.
3 Jessica’s husband had been reported missing on 30 November.
1 Nancy had begun working at Heywood Hill’s Curzon Street bookshop in March 1942.
1 Lady Anne Gathorne-Hardy (1911–2006). Married Heywood Hill in 1938 and worked in the bookshop with Nancy.
2 André Roy was the nom de guerre of Nancy’s lover Roy Desplats-Pilter.
1 William (Billy), Marquess of Harrington (1917–44). Andrew Devonshire’s older brother and heir to the dukedom was a major in the Coldstream Guards. Married Kathleen Kennedy in May 1944.
2 During the war Chatsworth, the Devonshire family seat, was occupied by Penrhos College, a school for girls.
3 Lady Emma Cavendish (1943–). Deborah’s six-month-old daughter.
1 Robert Treuhaft (1912–2001). New York-born lawyer who met Jessica when they were both working for the Office of Price Administration. They were married on 8 June 1943.
2 Jessica’s work at the OPA involved checking that regulations on building materials, including lumber, were being met.
1 Mosley’s poor health had led to
his and Diana’s release from prison. They were placed under house arrest and prohibited from going to London or having any contact with politics. After a few days with Pamela they moved to the Shaven Crown inn at Shipton and later bought Crux Easton, near Newbury.
2 In an interview in which he supported the Mosleys’ release, Bernard Shaw wrote, ‘We are still afraid to let Mosley defend himself. And we have produced the ridiculous situation in which we may buy Hitler’s Mein Kampf in any bookshop in Britain, but we may not buy ten lines written by Mosley.’ Daily Express, 26 November 1943.
3 Diana had ordered works by Christoph Martin Wieland, the eighteenth-century German poet and translator of Shakespeare.
1 (George) Heywood Hill (1907–86). Bookseller who opened his Mayfair shop in 1936, where Nancy worked 1942–5.
1 Diana’s stepson, Nicholas Mosley, who was serving in Italy with the Rifle Brigade, had been awarded the Military Cross for capturing a strategic farmhouse held by the Germans.
1 Deborah’s son, born on 27 April, was christened Peregrine Andrew Morny but was soon known as ‘Stoker’ or ‘Sto’.
2 Mrs Cannon was mother of a famous jockey, Mornington Cannon. The courtesy title of the Duke of Wellington’s eldest grandson is the Earl of Mornington.
3 Kathleen Kennedy had fallen in love with Billy Hartington when her father was posted as ambassador to London. Both sets of parents refused to allow them to marry because the Devonshires were firm Protestants and the Kennedys entrenched Catholics. Kathleen was sent back to the US but returned in 1943, determined to get her way.
4 Deborah’s sisters-in-law, Anne and Elizabeth Cavendish.
5 Peter Rodd was notorious among the sisters for his lengthy monologues on the tollgate system of England and Wales.
6 Maurice Baring, C (1924). A popular saga of Edwardian society.
1 Jessica wrote to Nancy that she had named her son ‘after Lenin & Marshal Tito’ to annoy her parents.
2 Geoffrey Bowles (1879–1968). Lady Redesdale’s eccentric and reclusive older brother was an early advocate of the health-food movement and spent much of his time writing letters to newspapers inveighing against ‘murdered food’.
1 Mabel Woolvern; the Redesdales’ parlourmaid.
1 In 1941, Nancy had written to Jessica to say that in her will she had left Constancia a diamond brooch and £20 in war savings.
2 Jessica had written to Lady Redesdale that she thought Constancia had ‘running-away blood’ in her as she would threaten to run away whenever scolded.
3 ‘Three months on a chaise longue.’
1 Ellen Stephens; nanny to Deborah’s children 1943–63.
2 Deborah had backed a winner in the Classic race for three-year-old fillies held on Epsom Downs.
1 Margaret Wright had originally gone to work for the Redesdales as parlourmaid, but as relations between the Redesdales deteriorated, she had gradually taken over Lady Redesdale’s role. The sisters disliked her – she was tactless, bossy and gave herself airs – but their father found her an ideal companion and lived with her until he died.
1 Deborah was staying with her parents-in-law after their eldest son, Billy, had been killed by a sniper’s bullet while serving with his regiment in Belgium. His death made Andrew heir to the dukedom and the Devonshires’ vast estates.
2 7th Marquess of Lansdowne (1917–44). Served in the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry and was killed in a tank explosion in Italy on 20 August.
1 Nancy was writing The Pursuit of Love, which was published in December 1945.
1 Violet Keppel (1894–1972). Novelist best known for her elopement with Vita Sackville West. Married Denys Trefusis in 1919.
2 Cyril Connolly (1903–74). In The Unquiet Grave (1945) the corpulent literary critic noted ruefully, ‘Imprisoned in every fat man a thin man is wildly signalling to be let out.’
3 Lord Redesdale had received a telegram advising that Tom, who was fighting in Burma, was badly wounded. He had in fact died on 30 March, six days after being shot in the neck and chest. He was buried in the military cemetery at Rangoon.
1 ‘During the reading of the Ten Commandments … we’d wait for the signal: “Thou shalt not commit adultery”, then nudge all down the row to where poor Tom was sitting, desperately trying to suffocate giggles. We were sure he led a glamorous life of sin abroad and in his London flat, and needed emphasis on this particular Commandment.’ Hons and Rebels, p. 22.
2 Joan (Rud/Rudbin) Farrer (1913–93). The Mitfords’ first cousin, and sister of Ann (Id), was a debutante at the same time as Unity. Married to Guillermo de Udy 1936–41, and to Paul Rodzianko in 1949.
FOUR
1945–1949
Article in The American Weekly, 1946.
Tom’s death in action, aged thirty-six, in the very last weeks of the war dealt a blow to the Redesdales from which they never recovered and was a loss that his sisters mourned all their lives. Unable to settle the differences that had kept them apart during the war, Lord Redesdale retreated to Redesdale Cottage, one of the last properties still owned by the family on their ancestral Northumberland estate. Here he was looked after by Margaret Wright, who had become his companion after his separation, while Lady Redesdale took Unity to Inch Kenneth. Unity’s condition had improved to the point where she could undertake simple household tasks but she was still as demanding as a small child and could not be left on her own for long. In May 1948, while she and her mother were on Inch Kenneth, Unity contracted an infection from the old bullet wound which quickly developed into meningitis. A storm was blowing and it was several days before a doctor could reach the island, by which time her condition had become critical. She died on 28 May, aged thirty-three, and was buried in the churchyard at Swinbrook.
Perhaps because all the sisters except Jessica were together at the funeral, Unity’s death is hardly mentioned at the time in their letters to one another. In Hons and Rebels, Jessica wrote that she had already thought of Unity as dead when political differences had parted them, but according to her daughter, Constancia, she was heartbroken when the news of her sister’s death reached her. Thirty years later, Jessica wrote to Deborah, ‘To this day sometimes I dream about her, arriving fresh from Germany in full gaiety.’ Nancy wrote to Eddy Sackville-West at the time, ‘I am very sad, I was so fond of her as you know & it seems such a dreadful waste of the charming beautiful & odd creature that she used to be. A victim of these terrible times …’ In her memoirs, Diana described the funeral as the saddest day of her life.
The first tangible result of Nancy’s affair with Gaston Palewski was The Pursuit of Love which she wrote, in a burst of inspiration, in the opening months of 1945. Starring Palewski as Fabrice, duc de Sauveterre, and featuring the Mitfords – minus the politics – as the Radlett children, the book was a paean to the man who had transformed her life and was her first truly accomplished novel. It was an instant success, selling in huge numbers, and almost for the first time the name ‘Mitford’ appeared in the press unattached to scandal. There are no letters between the sisters to record their reactions to Nancy’s fictional rendering of their childhood but Lord Redesdale was said to be delighted with the portrait of himself as Uncle Matthew and to have cried at the end of the book. On the proceeds of her bestseller, Nancy moved to Paris to be close to ‘the Colonel’, living for the moments he could snatch between political obligations and his other girlfriends. But however little time Palewski might have for her, Nancy was happy to be in Paris, to be part of the social and cultural explosion that took place in the city after the Liberation, and to have money to spend on herself for the first time in her life. She moved between small hotels and rented flats on the Left Bank – always close to Palewski’s apartment in the rue Bonaparte – while searching for a permanent home. She became an habituée of the British Embassy, presided over by Duff and Diana Cooper; indulged her love of couture clothes; and made lifelong friends among the cosmopolitan café society and Parisian gratin. Her enjoyment was only clouded by the intermittent ap
pearance of Peter, who would turn up to cadge money and who refused to give her a divorce. Diana became Nancy’s preferred correspondent immediately after the war. In over two hundred marvellously vivid letters that survive from the period, she regaled her sister with descriptions of the parties she had been to, the beautiful clothes she was ordering and the fascinating people she had met – her enjoyment heightened, no doubt, by recounting all this to a sister who could not travel because her passport had been confiscated and whose horizons at the time were limited to the domestic concerns of her immediate family in the austere atmosphere of post-war Britain.
Diana’s letters to Nancy are more guarded. She knew nothing, of course, of Nancy’s two wartime denunciations and invited her to stay at Crux Easton as soon as peace was declared. However, she was well aware that Nancy was capable of disloyalty and that she did not like Mosley. Juggling her allegiance to her husband and enjoyment of her sister’s company was a feat that Diana managed to keep up for many years. Crux Easton was sold at the end of 1945 and the family moved to Crowood, an eighteenth-century manor house near Ramsbury in Wiltshire, which came with 1,100 acres of land that Mosley settled down to farm. He had not given up political ambition or abandoned the dream that he would one day be called upon to rescue his country at a time of national crisis. In 1948, he returned to politics as leader of the Union Movement with a programme promoting a centralized European nation. Diana never lost faith in Mosley’s ideas. She continued to believe in his political diagnoses but she was under no illusion that his policies would ever be adopted or that he himself would be called upon to play an active role. This was not an opinion she could share with her husband – he depended too heavily on her faith in him – and she herself had invested so much in sustaining him that to admit defeat, even to herself, was unthinkable. Keeping tight control of the image she presented to the world and blocking out any areas of pain – the cult of perfection was a key element in Diana’s life and ‘perfect’ a recurrent word in her conversation and letters – she sacrificed her own interests and put all her energy into creating a life that would keep her restless and demanding husband entertained. Mosley was forty-nine when the war ended and lived for a further thirty-five years. Although his name never lost the power to inflame British public opinion, he remained a marginal political figure until the day he died.
The Mitfords Page 21