The Mitfords

by Charlotte Mosley

  1 Duncan Sandys (1908—87). Commonwealth Secretary of State 1960—2, and Commonwealth and Colonies Secretary 1962—4, during which period Andrew Devonshire was Parliamentary Under – Secretary for Commonwealth Relations.

  1 Derek Parker – Bowles (1915—77). Married Ann de Trafford in 1939.

  1 Jonathan and Ingrid Guinness were divorced in 1963. Ingrid married Paul Channon, MP, a few months later and Jonathan married Suzanne Lisney the following year.

  1 Isaac Wolfson (1897—1991). Businessman, philanthropist and founder of Great Universal Stores.

  1 Jean Feray, Inspector of Monuments Historiques, and his younger brother, Thierry, a banker, lived in Paris in the rue Cambon and shared a passion for beautiful objects and the Almanac de Gotha. They died in a car crash in 1999.

  2 Where the Devonshire collection of gold, silver and family jewels was kept.

  3 ‘What a disappointment … Garden parties with ten thousand other people, it’s just not the same.’

  4 Diana had written from Inch Kenneth, where she was staying with Lady Redesdale, with suggestions for making sure that Jessica’s visit to the island later in the month went smoothly.

  1 A neighbour on the Isle of Ulva.

  1 After a Union Movement meeting in Trafalgar Square ended in a fight, a man who was mistaken for Mosley wrote to the Daily Telegraph thanking the police for having protected him. (25 July 1962)

  2 Madame (Mémé) Ménégand; an elderly dressmaker who copied expensive dresses for Nancy and Diana. She lived in the rue Villedo, above the Mosleys’ Paris flat.

  3 Jasper Guinness (1954—). Jonathan’s eldest son.

  4 A Gallicism for ‘very soon’.

  1 Deborah had accompanied Andrew to newly independent Jamaica for the first meeting of Parliament. Princess Margaret, representing the Queen, opened the session.

  2 Lyndon B. Johnson (1908—73). US Vice President 1961—3. Succeeded J. F. Kennedy as President 1963—9. Married Claudia (Lady Bird) Taylor in 1934.

  3 Donald MacGillivray (1906—66). Colonial secretary in Jamaica 1947—52, High Commissioner for the Federation of Malaya 1954—7. Lady Redesdale’s boatman on Inch Kenneth was Neil MacGillivray

  4 Antony Armstrong – Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon (1930—). The photographer married Princess Margaret in 1960.

  5 Elizabeth Cavendish, John Betjeman’s companion, was appointed Lady – in—Waiting to Princess Margaret in 1960.

  6 Sir Michael Duff (1907—80). A society figure who lived at Vaynol in North Wales.

  7 Alfons (Alphy) Fürst Clary – Aldringen (1887—1978) and his wife, Ludwine (Lidi) zu Eltz (1894—1984). Prince Clary, an Austro – Hungarian nobleman of the old school and friend of the Mitfords, had fled his estates in Bohemia in 1945 and settled in Venice.

  8 Robinson & Sons, manufacturers of sanitary towels, were also the inventors of the disposable nappy.

  1 In her essay on the Mitfords’ nanny, which appeared in the Sunday Times, Nancy depicted Lady Redesdale as an idle, vague and neglectful mother. The piece was taken from The Water Beetle, a collection of Nancy’s essays and journalism published later that year.

  2 Osbert Lancaster (1908—86). Author, theatre designer and for forty years cartoonist on the Daily Express.

  1 Only daughter of Violet Hammersley, who favoured her sons, Christopher and David.

  1 Kwame Nkrumah (1909—72). First leader of independent Ghana.

  2 The OAS (Secret Army Organization), a terrorist group that opposed President de Gaulle’s plans to grant independence to Algeria, had attempted to assassinate him.

  1 Deborah had forwarded to Nancy the photograph from The Field of David Smith, the Mitfords’ putative uncle.

  1 Edward Albee’s play opened on Broadway on 13 October 1962 after ten preview performances.

  2 Deborah’s nickname for President Kennedy, who had telephoned her at Thanksgiving and asked, ‘Have you got all your loved ones around you?’

  1 ‘To hold a pen is to be at war.’

  2 A flasher.

  1 Following Nancy’s Sunday Times article, a woman had written to ask her if she had ever had a feeling ‘of herself as herself’.

  2 ‘A lunatic asylum.’ Mosley’s Union Movement was campaigning against the influx of Commonwealth immigrants into Britain.

  3 In Curzon, The End of an Epoch (1960), Leonard Mosley (no relation) quoted cloying letters from the Viceroy to his future wife, which were signed off, typically, ‘Put up your lips to kiss and be kissed, Mary, and sway your lissom body in your lover’s arms.’

  4 Grace Hinds (1877—1958). The American – born widow of historical novelist Alfred Duggan became Curzon’s second wife in 1917. She took little interest in Curzon’s political career and was never able to give him the son and heir he longed for, which undermined their marriage and eventually led to their separation.

  5 General de Gaulle had returned from a five – day official visit to Germany.

  1 Lady Redesdale had been injured in a car accident.

  2 Jomo Kenyatta (1889—1978). President of the Kenya African National Union 1961—3. Elected first Prime Minister of self – governing Kenya in 1963 and President in 1964.

  3 Tom Mboya (1930—69). Kenyan Minister of Labour 1962—3.

  1 The Water Beetle.

  1 Rachel (Bunny) Lambert Lloyd; Listerine heiress and wife of the philanthropist and art collector Paul Mellon.

  2 ‘Nancy says when she heard the L[oved] One was to broadcast she sat up all night because she was sure he was going to announce that he was abdicating because he couldn’t go on without the woman he loved by his side.’ (Diana to Deborah, 28 October 1962) In fact, Deborah’s visit to Washington had coincided with the Cuban missile crisis and President Kennedy’s broadcast had been to announce that the USSR was dismantling its bases in Cuba.

  3 A socialite friend of President Kennedy.

  4 Edward Kennedy (1932—). Elected to the US Senate in 1962, filling the seat vacated by his brother when he became President.

  5 Deborah had managed to persuade President Kennedy to visit the exhibition of Chatsworth drawings at the Washington National Gallery, the first time he had set foot inside the Gallery.

  1 Kennedy had abruptly cancelled the Skybolt air – to—ground nuclear missile programme, which had been promised to Harold Macmillan earlier in the year, thus depriving Britain of an independent nuclear deterrent. The decision sparked a crisis that severely tested Anglo – American relations.

  2 Diana Cooper.

  3 ‘The awful avalanche’ that killed the young hero of Longfellow’s poem Excelsior (1841).

  1 UN forces had launched a decisive attack on the secessionist Congolese province of Katanga.

  1 Nancy had once seen a photograph of President Kennedy in a bathing suit and given him this nickname.

  1 Nancy was staying at the Mosleys’ London flat, looked after by Emmy and her husband Jerry Lehane, an Irish couple who worked for the Mosleys as cook and driver for over forty years.

  2 Lesley Prynne (1928—). Lady Redesdale’s great – nephew had married Dorothy Slim.

  3 Pamela was staying at Woodfield while in England.

  1 Diana was clearing out Ileclash before it was sold.

  1 ‘Lios mor Mochuda’, the Irish name for Lismore.

  1 Handasyde Buchanan (1907—84). Antiquarian bookseller who worked at Heywood Hill 1945—74.

  2 John Profumo (1913—2006). Conservative Secretary of State for War 1960—63. On 2 March, a Labour MP made a speech in the House of Commons hinting at Profumo’s relationship with Christine Keeler, a showgirl, who was also having an affair with a naval attaché at the Soviet embassy. Profumo denied any ‘impropriety’ in his relationship with Keeler but later admitted that he had lied, and resigned.

  3 David Bruce (1898—1977). US ambassador to London 1961—9. Married Evangeline Bell in 1945.

  1 Sir Angus Ogilvy (1928—2004). A cousin of the Mitfords. Married Princess Alexandra of Kent on 24 April 1963.

  1 The Ogi
lvie – Forbeses; Lady Redesdale’s only neighbours were interested in buying Inch Kenneth.

  1 Desmond Guinness’s six – year—old son, Patrick, and five – year—old daughter, Marina.

  1 As children, the sisters used to lick the church pews during services at Swinbrook.

  1 President Kennedy was stopping at Edensor to visit his sister Kathleen’s grave, following a state visit to Ireland and en route to talks with Harold Macmillan.

  2 James Lees – Milne (1908—97). Architectural historian, diarist and biographer. An intimate of Tom Mitford since their schooldays, he fell in love with the ‘celestial’ beauty of Diana when she was an adolescent, became a close friend of Nancy in spite of detecting a ‘vein of callousness in her which almost amounts to cruelty’, and was a devoted admirer of Deborah, at whose instigation he wrote The Bachelor Duke (1991), a life of the 6th Duke of Devonshire. Married Alvilde Chaplin in 1951.

  3 Yehudi Menuhin (1916—99). The celebrated violinist had recently opened his school for musically gifted children.

  4 In the wake of the Profumo affair, Mandy Rice – Davies, a showgirl, had made lurid allegations about Lord Astor’s house parties.

  1 Diana had offered to lend the Temple de la Gloire to her niece, Emma Cavendish, for her honeymoon after her marriage to Toby Tennant,

  2 Dorothy Macmillan’s long affair with Robert Boothby began in 1930.

  3 A report by Lord Denning on the Profumo affair criticized the government for not acting more quickly but concluded that there had been no breach of national security.

  4 ‘It is a house with two masters.’ Château Le Marais belonged to Violette de Talleyrand Périgord, Duchess of Sagan (1915–2003), the daughter of Anna Gould and heiress to a large American railway fortune. She was married to Count James (Jimmy) de Pourtalès and was the long – standing mistress of Gaston Palewski.

  1 Alexander (Alec) Douglas – Home, 14th Earl of Home (1903–95). The Conservative MP, who was automatically disqualified from the House of Commons when he inherited his father’s seat in the Lords in 1951, had renounced his peerage in order to return to the Commons and contest the party leadership. Prime Minister 1963–4.

  2 Quintin Hogg, 2nd Viscount Hailsham (1907–2001). Conservative politician who, like Home, disclaimed his title for his lifetime in order to stand for party leader.

  1 The President had been assassinated on 22 November.

  1 Harold Wilson (1916–95). The Labour MP had been elected leader of his party earlier in the year. Prime Minister 1964–70 and 1974–6.

  2 Joseph (Jo) Grimond (1913–93). Leader of the Liberal Party 1956–67.

  1 Diana and Mosley had been planning a holiday in Egypt when Palewski warned Nancy that Mosley was suspected of being involved in a plot with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.

  1 The Mosleys’

  Paris flat

  2 Max Mosley was training as a parachutist in the Territorial Army.

  1 Antony, 1st Viscount Head (1906–83). Minister of Defence 1955–7, High Commander in Malaysia 1963–6. Married Lady Dorothea (Dot) Ashley-Cooper in 1935.

  2 John Stuart.

  3 Alexander Kearsey (1891–1967). The widowed husband of the Mitfords’ Aunt Frances had had a leg amputated and was in a home for retired officers

  4 Maud Barnes; Deborah’s maid.

  1 Julian Huxley (1887–1975). The biologist and first Director-General of UNESCO had been a friend of Violet Hammersley since his undergraduate days.

  2 Raymond Mortimer wrote the appreciation of Violet Hammersley in The Times and compared her to one of El Greco’s daughters. He described how she would float upon the Thames in a gondola, rowed by a gondolier from Venice.

  1 A fishing lodge on the Blackwater in Co. Cork, belonging to Andrew Devonshire.

  2 La Force des chases 1963

  1 Clementine Kearsey; Uncle Alec’s retarded daughter.

  2 William, 1st Viscount Slim (1897–1970). The Field Marshal served as Governor-General of Australia 1953–60.

  3 There was a joke circulating that Cyril Connolly, who was not a handsome man, ‘was not as nice as he looked’.

  1 A famous Careysville ghillie.

  1 Deborah was staying with her sister-in-law Anne (Tig) Tree

  2 The American Way of Death.

  3 Woodrow Wyatt (1918–97). Labour MP and journalist who became a staunch supporter of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.

  4 Anthony Crosland (1918–77). Hard-drinking Labour Minister of State for Economic Affairs 1964–5. Author of the influential The Future of Socialism (1956).

  5 Lyrics from a 1930s song that Harold Macmillan had quoted when taunting the Labour Party on its indecision over Britain’s bid to join the Common Market. Private Eye had set the words to music and released a best-selling record, ‘Only MacBelieve’.

  1 Baroness Thyssen had once said to Deborah (about the Thyssens’ baby daughter), ‘Pooor leeettle Cissie, she is 5000 reech, I feeel sorry for her.’

  2 Christian Fouchet (1911–74). Gaullist politician and Minister of Education in 1964.

  1 Isabel Tennant, Deborah’s four-month-old granddaughter, had just been christened.

  2 Seventeen-year-old Benjamin Treuhaft was spending a few months at the Collège Cévenol near Lyons before going to college in the US.

  1 A pâtisserie near the rue Monsieur where Nancy and Deborah used to buy cakes.

  1 Labour had won the general election and Harold Wilson was entering his first term as Prime Minister.

  2 The Russian leader had been ousted from office.

  1 Nancy was working on The Sun King (1966), a life of Louis XIV.

  1 Robert Kennedy (1925–68). The younger brother of the assassinated president had resigned as Attorney-General in order to run for the US Senate. Married Ethel Skakel in 1950.

  1 Pamela’s fifteenth birthday.

  1 Earl of Ancram (1945-). Conservative MP since 1974.

  1 A French diplomat and old friend of the Mosleys.

  1 Simone de Beauvoir, Une Mort très douce (1964), published in English as A Very Easy Death.

  2 Edward Sackville-West had collapsed and died at his house in Ireland on 4 July.‘Simone is the disgrace of the family.’

  3 ‘The execution post.’

  1 Ronald Reagan (1911–2004). After appearing in more than fifty films, the actor was elected Governor of California in 1966 and President in 1981.

  2 Esquire eventually turned down Jessica’s article.

  1 Winston Churchill died on 24 January and was buried six days after a state funeral at St Paul’s Cathedral.

  1 Deborah was celebrating her forty-fifth birthday. Lord and Lady Redesdale had been hoping for a boy and, according to Nancy, ‘everybody cried’ when Deborah was born.

  1 Robert Skidelsky (1939-). Historian, politician and author of Oswald Mosley (1975).

  2 Vijay Joshi (1941-). Research Fellow at St John’s in 1965 and subsequently a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford.

  1 Philippe Jullian (1920–77). French painter, writer and book illustrator in the rococo style.

  1 Françoise Gilot, Ma vie avec Picasso (1964).

  1 So designated by the Mitfords’ Uncle Jack who used to pretend he was a Yogi and decreed 6 May to be ‘Yogi Day’, an occasion on which everyone was supposed to give him some 24-carat gold.

  2 The guest lists for Pèregrine’s coming-of-age celebrations.

  1 The Queen Mother was a keen gardener and regular visitor to the Royal Horticultural Society’s annual show held in the grounds of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea.

  2 Robert (Bobbety) Cecil, 5th Marquess of Salisbury (1893–1972). Married Elizabeth Vere Cavendish, a cousin of Andrew Devonshire, in 1915.

  3 Arthur (Boofy) Gore, 8th Earl of Arran (1910–83). The peer had presented a Bill in the House of Lords to legalize homosexual acts between consenting adults.

  1 Barbara Skelton (1916–96). Writer and femme fatale. Married Derek Jackson in 1966 and divorced him in 1967. She had previously been married to the writer
Cyril Connolly 1950–56, and to the publisher George Weidenfeld 1956–61.

  1 ‘Maine Chance Diary’, McCall’s, March 1966. Reprinted in The Making of a Muckraker (1979), a collection of Jessica’s journalism.

  1 Mosley was having an operation on his nose, which had been broken in a boxing match when he was young.

  1 Nancy had been staying in Athens with Mark Ogilvie-Grant.

  2 Edward Sackville-West had collapsed and died at his house in Ireland on 4 July.

  3 Nancy stayed at Fontaines-les-Nonnes for the last time in December 1965. Her old friend Madame Costa died the following February.

  4 Tom Wragg, the Chatsworth librarian, was beaten up by a gang of thugs in Bakewell, Deborah’s small local town, and never fully recovered.

  5 Count Brandolino Brandolini d’Adda (1918–2005). A Venetian friend of Nancy and Deborah. Married Cristiana Agnelli in 1947.

  6 Palewski had been appointed head of the Constitutional Council.

  7 Nancy did indeed leave her literary estate to be administered by Deborah for the benefit of needy friends and relations.

  1 Deborah’s Shetland pony had taken first prize at the Bakewell Show.

  2 André Courrèges (1923-). Designer who invented the ‘Mod’ look and opened his own fashion house in 1961.

  3 ‘A widow’s collection, all in black.’

  1 Julian Slade (1930–2006). The composer of the light-hearted musical Salad Days (1954) the longest-running UK show of the 1950s, was having less success in the swinging 1960s.

  2 Kenneth Tynan (1927–80). The influential and often savage theatre reviewer had left the Observer and was working as literary manager of the National Theatre.

  3 Riots had broken out in the Watts section of the city.

  4 Marie-Zéphyre Costa de Beauregard (1947-). Granddaughter of Nancy’s great friend Madame Costa.

  5 ‘It’s such a pity.’

  6 Elizabeth (Doodie) Millar (1908–95). English-born wife of Madame Costa’s son, Amedée, whom she married in 1940, and the mother of Marie-Zéphyre.

  1 ‘Exactly right, don’t you think Ghislaine?’

  1 Robert Morley (1908–92). Nancy first met the actor in 1950 when he was playing the cuckolded husband in The Little Hut, her adaptation of André Roussin’s play La Petite Hutte.