The Mitfords

by Charlotte Mosley

  Dereling,

  Here we are. Nothing works. No telephone (I mean en dérangement).1 Heating boils you alive for ½ an hour & then goes stone until you lean on a yellow button. When Marie lights the gas stove there is a wan flicker on one ring only – when char lights it all flames. And so on. Growing pains no doubt. The move was the greatest perfection I ever saw. Sweet cheerful careful men to whom nothing was too much trouble. Not one object either lost or so much as scratched. We all lived together for three days & I could hardly bear to part. High spot: Marie, face of doom, ‘Has madam seen there is an Arab today?’ ‘Yes I did see him.’ ‘Am I to give my valise to the men?’ ‘Well Marie, I’ve given them mine.’ Stage whisper ‘il y a un million et demi’.2 So we took a taxi & I’m rather glad we did because I noted the price which was exactly 20 francs-you must say not bad & the driver says I can telephone for one just like in Paris.

  The house, if you can see it for muddle, is very nice-that old Jap looks lovely so do the screens & all the furniture. I’m a tiny bit doubtful about so much white but that can be changed in due course & curtains will do much & pictures.

  Much love, N

  Lunching with Col tomorrow so I’ll go & see Mémé.

  Dereling,

  A most terrible thing has happened. You know how I was going to use my old Aubusson. Well I had a raspberry moquette [carpet] put in the drawing room of which about a foot was to show all round. Yesterday they came with my carpet & the FOOLS had cut & torn off the canvas lining to which I used to sew it when torn; so that a fishnet was the result. I cried. Now I’m left with a huge expanse of raspberry far too bright & awful no doubt with my pink curtains. What am I to do? The cruel thing is the old carpet, mostly dark green, was so perfect in the room, exactly what I had hoped comme effet. I’m paralysed-couldn’t sleep & nor could Faithful [Marie]. M. Gallet, the villain, said it was lucky I had the phlegm B-que1 most of his customers would have killed him. As tears were pelting down my cheeks I don’t quite know about the phlegm but I did keep off fisticuffs with a good deal of effort.

  Hamilton is going to do The Ladies of A[lderley]-I’m so pleased. Goodness it’s funny-I’ve just been reading it. Edward is the Col-that awful love of high society so incomprehensible to me but which is perhaps the strongest of all loves & out of which people never seem to grow.

  Do tell your dates.

  Much love, N

  Darling Debo

  A killing letter from Betj[eman], it seems he’s done his bit of the programme on Evelyn (Naunce & I have to do a record. Chris Sykes1 is coming over to get it). Anyway Betj said Evelyn & he & I & May2 used to sing hymns together, of course really May would never even stay in the dining room when the hymn-singing began & used to leave us to the under parlourmaid, even if we were 20 souls clamouring for port. She thought ‘Shall we Gather at the River?’ punctuated by our screams was blasphemous. Now she will go down to history as having sung with us, & Evelyn too, who hated anything in the nature of ‘music’. However we must all say the same nonsense & I will play the game.

  Debo, COME! It is years & years since you did & I haven’t stayed at Chatsworth since Emma’s wedding, it is all too bitter.

  All love darling, Honks

  Well Lady, the inevitable has occurred, Dinky is going to have a baby by a black man.1 I’ve written the saga to Honks but will do the same to you though no doubt she will have phoned with this news if hers arrived first.

  Sonia Orwell2 rang me up, she has just come back from a tour with Henderson & Bob. So she told the news & obviously one wasn’t surprised as in a way it is odd it hadn’t happened before, but Lady the ghoulish & so surprising part is that Bob & Decca MIND. I can’t get over it, & never will, because what do they mind about it, as they have gone out of their way to bring the children up to pour boiling scorn on any old fashioned ideas of any kind, specially that one. Am I not right? I am horrified about them minding because it is such a reversal for them, & old Hen is so set in her ideas & so proud that to admit minding must be truly dread. I wish I knew what they mind, & I can only think it must be that they don’t much like the man. He won’t marry her because she is white & would be a handicap to him in his political career (he is the right-hand man of one of the leading Negro politicians from the South) & I suppose that is rather insulting, but surely Hen must know that side of politics & how very many Africans would never marry a white person, ditto v. religious Jews & Gentiles, & ditto many others who have a life which involves principles to do with such things. She is born yesterday if she wots not of such people. Anyway the object will appear in June. Dinky is longing for it so that part is alright.

  I wish Henderson would appear on a magic carpet & tell all. I don’t know what else she can expect as the children really were brought up to that bigoted sort of liberalism (Toby’s idea) which naturally results in coffee babies & no wedding. Mrs Orwell says that Decca isn’t on at all intimate terms with Dinky, which of course one knew, & no doubt that is beastly for her but it still doesn’t explain why they mind. Mrs O says Bob & Decca are ‘hurt’-why? Oh do explain as I don’t understand. She also said Hen asked her to tell me as she didn’t want to herself. Well I must say. I have a feeling Mrs O is pretty awful-but nevertheless those were Hen’s orders.

  I don’t know how to write to her (Mrs O said we must) because I don’t know what to say. Thank goodness Lady Redesdale wots not of this outcome of a liberal upbringing.

  I am terribly sorry for Hen, as the bubble is sort of burst. Perhaps Mrs O exaggerated.

  Much love, 9

  Darling Debo:

  Your letter about Dinky made me think for hours. The only good thing is that you say Dinky herself is pleased. So she is out of the way, as a problem. Two reasons occur to me as to Decca, & why she should mind something she has (more or less) spent a lifetime in enginéering, willing, advocating. First, don’t you think perhaps Madam Kliot, or whatever she’s called, the mother-in-law, may mind frightfully, & through her, Bob himself? Second, I imagine that among the Civil Rights workers there are a good many prim people (like in the early Labour movement) who think the Dinkys bring the cause into disrepute, & these people may be black as well as white, & there may be a sort of atmosphere of disapproval which Decca feels. Then a third thing, possibly Decca, who seems to have been happy with Bob, thinks that Dinky will now never find a kind intelligent Jew to marry her but will end up lonely, probably with a furious son/daughter on her hands who never stops blaming her, & no loving companion? Decca has reached the age when she discovers that one’s children don’t always in every circumstance think one is complete perfection. AH the same I agree that it seems incredible that Decca should either mind about it or be surprised that it happened. I’m glad Dinky held off until Muv – & even Aunt Iris-had died.

  Naunce & I spoke on telephone & she gave forced shrieks (you know how she can) & when I said I was glad Muv didn’t know she said ‘Oh! Do you think she’d have minded?’ But all that is just her nonsense & by the forced nature of the shrieks I think she minds quite a lot herself. Do you gather it’s the blackness Decca minds or the no-marriage? And are you sure Sonia Orwell has got the right end of the stick? Also did Decca depute her to tell you the glad tidings or was it her own idea? Oh Debo, I wish you were here, there are millions of things I want to ask. Here’s one: do you think Sonia Orwell considers it odd of Decca to mind, or do you think really & truly all those people are just pretending most of the time & underneath the pretence are rather like ONE?

  All love, Honks

  Darling Susan,

  News from here: Susan you won’t like what I’m about to tell you, except I expect you know it already (because Sonia Orwell was here for ages, Entering into our Lives): Dinky’s going to have a baby in June. Beige power is my slogan, as I expect that will be its colour. I don’t quite fathom why she doesn’t get married (as the babe’s father, Jim Foreman [sic], and her have been living together for ages); but she seems happy with her rum lot, so that’s a comfort. I expect
I shall go to NY to note it in June.

  Well I do long to see yr. house, but the dear knows when. I haven’t got any special plans at the moment; possibly might come in Sept or so. What I really long for is the musical of Pursuit of, what a marvellous idea, I do hope it comes to America.

  Much love, Susan

  Darling Soo

  Yes Mrs Orwell circulated a few rumours-she is a busy little thing isn’t she.

  Well the Ogilvys are full of black blood & then think of Alexandre Dumas & Pushkin.1 I expect it will be awfully sweet & I shall think of Dinky, down on the plantation when the day’s work is done, crooning about the old folks at home (you, Susan). Is he the foreman or is he called Foreman? Do you like him?

  Much love Soo, N

  Dear Miss

  My garden I liked so much has turned to dross. A perfectly harmless-looking tree has suddenly burgeoned with the most dreadful flowers I ever saw-the pink of every plastic object in the Prisunic, & all over-I mean I never saw such a mass. As it’s in the foreground it completely blots out lovely pear trees & cherries hung with snow & one sees 0 else. By the way thanks for the radishes. Any seeds are always welcome (hint). Well then, you say, take the axe. If I did I wouldn’t have a friend left. Not only do Tiresome [Marie] & her Wife the char gaze & gaze, from every angle & specially that of getting right under it, drowned in pink plastic, but the neighbours, it seems, live but for it. Oh Miss. And it goes on & on. I can’t look at the garden any more. I suppose in the end the pink plastic will drop off & then there will be the kind of meadow one hopes to find in Paradise.

  The washing up machine fused the lights. Tiresome, already against it, turned on me the look Monmouth turned on the headsman when his head was still on-I’m in thorough disgrace.

  Woman on Wednesday. She seems to have cocktail parties every day in Paris. Wondair.

  Later. Well the fuse was mended by an idiot boy & dirty plates (which she had already washed as far as I could see) were put in the machine & there was a noise like a spacecraft going off for half an hour & then, like Howard Carter waiting for Ld Carnarvon, she summoned me & we OPENED THE DOOR. My dear-washed and dried and polished. It’s like a miracle & even Tiresome is now forced to admit.

  This letter is pretty dull-pray forgive.

  Love, N

  Darling Soo

  I’ve just had two days in London to go over the script of P of Love which is coming on in Bristol next month as a musical. Thank goodness I did-error had crept in & I took out several cartloads of rubbish.

  The people I saw in London with growing up children are obsessed by the drugging & that is awful I think because generally for life & very worrying. When I was young about three great friends drugged, David Greene,1 Brian Howard2 & Tony Gandarillas-all clever people who came to naught, though old Tony is still with us, stinking of opium & telling lies every time he opens his trap.

  Hope all is well in the cotton fields? Mrs Orwell seemed to say you rather minded no marriage but many of our family are not cut out for that you know, of whom I am one. I expect Dinky knows best about her own nature.

  Much love, Soo

  Darling Soo,

  Yes I do agree about the drugging being awful. It is spreading like mad here (LSD, which is the dangerous sort; what Muv used to call Marriage Uana is apparently not specially dangerous). And apart from the danger, the annoying thing is the people of one’s age who try it. Goodness they are boring about it. They at once become pitying of one for not having some. Asked what it is like, they can only say, ‘Indescribable!’ Also it makes one love everyone, they say. For instance, a locally well-known poet called Ginsberg1 said it made him feel very sympathetic to Lyndon Johnson. I wish they would invent a Loather’s Drug.

  Mrs O. slightly mis-reported me about minding no marriage. I only said that now, if someone says ‘Would you want yr. daughter to marry a Negro?’ I could answer, ‘Rather’. New York friends say she is v. happy, and the word radiant recurs. I shall dash there for the Birth, June 22 it is supposed to be.

  Bob is in the midst of re-torturing the CIA, this time about the CIA financing of the Co-op movement. He adores that sort of thing.

  Much love, Susan

  Darling Honks

  The Wife has taken to making coffee like I do, at table. EB1 thinks 0 of this arrangement as it isn’t formal enough. Well that’s to be expected but what is unexpected is the kettle boils full tilt, & a huge funnel of steam goes STRAIGHT up to a Turner watercolour, cunningly hung to receive the brunt. If we all say nothing & go back in a few weeks there will merely be a bit of crimped paper where once there was an Old Master. When Andrew2 saw the sketches he said ‘Oh, Mother, No.’

  We’ve had the furniture valued, & now I’m sorry to say we have all got to practise the Long Jump because there can be no more walking on the yellow drawing-room carpet & we shall have to go into meals by taking a run from the television & Alley Oop over the said carpet.

  I hope Wife will perfect this new technique while she is in Ireland.

  Much love, Debo

  Have phoned Lauragh 3 & Wife sounded much better having done the journey in one drawing-room carpet hop.

  Dear Miss

  Your programme1-very naughty & silly & I don’t pity you, as Blor used to say when one was dead after balls.

  I’m really haunted by that play2 & not on my own account for once but I mind terribly for Slade & the actors. They’ve been playing to more & more enthusiastic audiences, for nearly a month, in a little place like Bristol, & yet can’t go to London for want of backers. Anyway the game is up, the actors are getting other jobs & it’s all over but it seems unbearable, really worse than if it had been a flop in the first place. If I were Slade I should be totally discouraged & I feel deeply sorry for him.

  Decca’s visit was very nice & I do love her but, strictly between ourselves, I get rather tired of the harping on one’s meanness & miserliness considering I gave her my share of the Island, a fact which has never been referred to since. Not that I want continual thanks etc, of course not, but I do think one could be spared such remarks as (about the bookcases, which she offered I never asked for them) ‘Bob says, your sisters certainly know the value of things’. Nevair. I’m rather glad she’s not my only sister.

  Col’s party yesterday was so nice. I fell in with Edwina & Leo [d’Erlanger] & we waited together to see the General arrive & see the people pushing forward with idiotic smiles to try & be introduced to him. Then the Col says You vanished-I wanted to introduce you’. But how could he expect one to push in, knowing me as he does! When the Gen had gone most of the horrors did too & left a very jolly residue of friends. Next year you must come to it. Every single French person started by saying you’ve got far the prettiest dress I’ve seen this year-clever Patou. The coat is ravishing too so I’ll be all right I hope on the 28th.3

  Much love, N

  Dearest Hen,

  Thanks awfully for yr. letter, written no doubt amidst massive weddingry. (DO write a full account of same, I was sad to miss it.)

  Here’s the only extant pic of me grandchild. Don’t you admit fairly sweet, considering it was taken when he was but two days old?

  Shade: Slightly fairer than Dinky, so far; but those who know say they usually are, at birth, & then get pitch later on.

  Other notes: The birth wasn’t too awful, only about five hours of labour. He’s amazingly good, sleeps like mad & seems to be already on a proper feeding schedule. Dinky’s in marvellous shape, and marvellous with him.

  I’m getting along with my grandmotherly duties. They consist of me going to her flat in the morning, doing a terrific lot of cooking, and then there seems to be a daily cktl pty of her friends who start gathering about 6, then I scram around seeing my friends. I expect I’ll be off home next week.

  Much love and do tell about the Wedding, Yr Hen

  Darling Sooze

  The wedding was too lovely. Debo was a rock of diamonds as somebody once said of Pompadour. Every relation & every
servant (ex. alas Mabel, too old) I have ever known was at the reception oh dear it was fun. You were fearfully missed. How maddening that it had to coincide with Hugh (I think he ought to be called it on account of the hue).

  Deborah, Nancy, Pamela, Diana and Emma Cavendish at the dance for the wedding of Deborah’s son, Peregrine, to Amanda Heywood-Lonsdale. London, 28 June 1967.

  Woman sat next Lord Mountbatten1 at dinner (Stoker’s). He said ‘I know you are Woman’. She said, ‘Yes, & may I ask who you are?’ Collapse of stout party.

  Much love Soozy, Susan

  Get on

  Did you see the Duke of Bedford is having a Love-In at Woburn & a furious father of a girl who said she was going said after she’d done that, he hoped she’d go to the Marquis of Bath’s for an Eat-In among his lions.

  There is a nice tale told by my Berkshire friends of Penelope Betjeman. People like Nicole Hornby1 think the smart thing to do is to have a dinner party composed of a couple of crazy old dons from Oxford, a few local grandees & some inties [intellectuals]. So my friend was there (role of grandee) & the Betjemans. After dinner when all the ghoulish women took their embroidery out of chintz bags with wooden handles P. Betj. went to her car & brought out a large plastic bag full of ancient, unwashed, unspeakable underclothes-stays, bust bodices etc-& began mending them. Do admit. Nobody actually said anything, but you can picture the scene.

  Much love, 9

  Darling Soo

  Just back from Venice & have heard about poor Giles.1 It must have happened on your doorstep, how awful. I suppose you hurried him into a Mitford (10/-)?2