I was so interested in your letter about Decca & longing to hear what transpired, viz., what does she think of that book? She told you once she thought Rud had got Unity about right, that’s to say the Jones version of poor Rud. Does she take that back? & what about Muv?
The private Decca is Decca, but the public Decca is somebody unforgivably callous & hard. Of course you are in a different position from me, because I can never forget that she gave interviews to the papers when we were released saying that Kit must be imprisoned at once. He was so ill. Of course one may say it doesn’t matter as nobody wd pay any attention to Decca, but in my wildest nightmares I cannot imagine myself doing that about either of her husbands. It was so brutal as well as so stupidly unnecessary to intervene, when one’s a near relation.
Well then you say she’s going to say that Muv made Nancy walk to the station because of something she said about Hitler. Whether the story is true (& we all know how Nancy could distort) it makes Muv appear a bit mad, to anyone who doesn’t realize what Nancy could be like to her, needling for days on end, trailing her coat, being as nasty as she possibly could. No. For the public, Nancy is the delightful writer of funny books. Muv is unknown, & therefore anything against her will be readily believed. And Nancy comes out of the story as a sinned-against right-minded liberal & patriot. I do think this is monstrous, even if Decca does say on television that she loved Unity. If you are friends again please make her take that out. Nobody who hadn’t seen Nancy & Muv together could ever realize how vile Nancy could be. I’m sure she often longed to be vile to me, but she relied on me & just managed not to be (!). I remember how years & years later when Muv was old how she unkindly complained about the (delicious) island food, just being nasty for nastiness’s sake so to speak, & upset Muv.
I hate unfairness. Muv was so much more marvellous than Nancy, & now that they are both dead to recite Nancy’s version of a dispute to an audience of millions seems to me simply frightful in its hard disloyalty.
All love, Honks
Darling Honks
I’ve just got yours of 15th, not bad for strikes & Xmas mixed. Glad to think you’re installed in the nice warm flat, don’t DO TOO MUCH, will you have to struggle out on Xmas night, I hope NOT.
As for Hen & what you write, it is perfectly right. I think her sojourn in W. America (which I believe is much nastier than E. ditto) has given her some blind spots & she just does not see that it’s nasty (the book, for a start) & nothing seems to touch part of her. Yet she is as soft as soft in places.
One can’t understand it, or her. She is a mystery & a complete muddle as well. As for the sayings about you in 1943 they beggar all, & THEY are what is lost in that lost book. Yet when I asked her to come to lunch that day ages ago in London when you were coming she wouldn’t because she had loved you so much years ago, she pretty well said that. What can you make of it? I don’t know. Hard & soft. Some of the old invented stories she must know to be invented but she sort of believes them now. OH DEAR.
Well Honks HOW I wish you were here, but you aren’t.
Much love, Debo
Doesn’t the wireless go soppy at this time of year, such a bore.
Darling Debo
Don’t breathe one word about Kit even to Wifey or Andrew. I’m just as worried since the Dr came, and it is worth anything to be able to tell you. Of course all may yet be well, but Dumas offered no explanation. He has given several medicines which I will rush for today. I just don’t feel very hopeful of medicine. It was Tuesday eve that the temperature shot up. It’s all been very quick & a very short time, but it weighs upon me so that I feel months have gone by. He was (has been) so cheerful & so well & has loved all we’ve done in the last three weeks. He doesn’t seem nearly as depressed about himself as one would imagine. He eats, not much but quite likes it. I pretend everything is quite normal & ordinary & speak of flu, chill & all those silly words which mean nothing.
Well darling ’tis the limit to inflict all this on YOU, but you understand. I love him so much & sometimes can’t, literally can’t bear the thought that he’s eighty. Oh Debo. I’m so glad we’ve had these happy cheerful weeks.
All love darling, Honks
Dearest Hen,
Your Xmas sounds marvellous, so was ours, Bob came to NY & we stayed there for a wickertoo, doing massive Oy work, such as poor Bob took them to an 11 A.M. showing of King Kong.
I note from Rud’s letter that Aunt Joan1 died. Muv & I went down there once, & on the way in the train Muv was saying the last time she’d seen Aunt J. they’d had a terrible row. ‘Goodness, what about?’ I asked. ‘Mmmmm, it was about Queen Victoria.’
Much love, Henderson
Darling Debo
It was so kind of Tony1 to occupy the (empty) slot & so kind to say he liked my interview.2 How I wish you & I could have watched it together, I think you might have died of laughing. It was my appearance & my voice, one couldn’t imagine anything so ghastly & ladylike. I shall have to have elocution lessons like Mrs Thatcher, to change it. Of course it gave me a shock but Jonathan said to Kit ‘Of course it didn’t worry us because we’ve always known it, haven’t we?’ Well I haven’t, & ’twas a shock. Russell Harty had cleverly put a working-class actor dressed in leather & home-spun just before me, for an interview, & this man said ‘the trouble with England is class, it’s rotten with it’, & he said it was usually the fault of people like his own relations who often come home & say they’ve met a real lady on a bus, which drives him completely mad with rage. Then for good measure Harty showed a bit of a film this person had acted in, where Jews are being herded into a train. I knew none of this, naturally, at the time; I suppose the interview was done really on another day. I wished I hadn’t done what they told me to about wearing evening dress.
However Tony & two or three other kind people found us in our lair at Dolphin [Square] & telephoned that they’d liked my interview, which consoled me. You would have been helpless with laughter that’s all.
Well darling I think you are all very good to put up with someone with a voice like mine.
All love, Honks
Hen, oh good I note you’ll be in London a bit of the time when I am. Letters crossed as usual.
As for the beige book,1 a proper one should be arriving any day now as they are ready, & I asked them to send. Well Hen I doubt if you’ll like it much; by the way, the Introduction is a fearful re-hash of old stuff but I more or less had to, to put the reader in the picture. But (see page 25, para 2) I did put in, as I said I would, practically yr. exact words about the Boud, that is, cribbed from you as my views. Which they are.2
There’s an index in the finished book – I rather fought against it as far too pompous for this sort of book (none in the American edition), besides lots of the names are fictitious (see last para. of Acknowledgements-Hen, I keep telling you what to look for so you won’t have to plough through the whole thing, well I know you won’t anyway).
So, index story this end: Do you wot of 2 American writers called Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer?3 G. Vidal wrote his memoirs, sent a copy to N. Mailer who was rather surprised that there was no inscription in front. Instead, G. Vidal had written, ‘Hi, Norm!’ next N. Mailer’s name in the index. Do admit that’s rich, I mean people always turn first to Index to see if they’re in.
Yr loving Henderson
Darling Stublow
We are deep in our Jubilee Party arrangements.1 Just only the people of Caudle Green & it will be on the Monday because all the other parties are on the Tuesday. It will be a Barbecue, Sausages from the Monks, rolls from the Nudist Colony!!! a real Cheddar cheese in its own skin, a barrel of jolly beer, some of the Appenzeller eggs pickled in vinegar as one sees them in the Pubs. There will be a bonfire and games, three-legged & sack races etc etc. And the room with the great west window2 is to be tidied up for the occasion – it’s exactly what we need with light & water laid on!
How worrying about there being so few visitors to Chatsworth. Don’t you
think it is partly due to this very bitter weather? When it gets warmer people feel more like going out for a jaunt.
Much love from Woman
Darling Honks
Two odd things about Henderson’s book – she doesn’t mention two of the most searing things in her life – the death of her first baby which surely was the reason they went to America, nor the death of Nicky Treuhaft. The other thing is, and I shall ask her why she did it, why if she is so ashamed of & so hates all to do with her childhood & first youth did she write her first book under the name of Mitford. I’m only asking. It seems so odd.
Have you had Woman’s descrip of Caudle Green Jubilee celebrations? It’s going to be held in her Chicken House!!!! Oh Honks, would that we could all be there.
Much love, Debo
Darling Debo
Wooms is being wondair. Yesterday I got the whole descrip of her Jubilee party, I couldn’t stop laughing, it went like this, ‘The farmer on the hill said no he wouldn’t come & he was sure his sons had a party already, well one day before, he caved in, & of course they all loved it, I knew they would. Most people said yes at once when they heard it was in my cowshed, but some said no, but in the end they all caved in. I just got hold of the monks & the nudists for more sausages, we hung up tea towels everywhere, it was just like the little dog herself,1 & of course everyone loved it, & we lit our bonfire when the Queen lit hers. One man who said no came in the end with two guests, he just caved in at the last moment, I knew he would, I said to Mr Mills they are sure to want to come & of course they did. They just caved in.’ Oh Debo why weren’t we there.
At dinner last night we had half a dozen menus, one of them was ‘Nard, do you remember the liver we used to have at Asthall?’ ‘No Wooms, I don’t think I do.’ ‘Oh yes Nard, that liver. You see, Kit, we had it at least twice a week, it was made with a thick, brown sauce, oh ghoul, don’t you remember?’
All love darling, Honks
Wooms showed me Country Life with all your lovely shop things2 – I’m sure people will fly to the shop from far & wide. A marvellous advertisement.
Darling Debo
I wrote yesterday but in such a hurry & never had a second to put how thrilled I am to think of your BOOK1 darling, Jamie Hamilton will be out of his mind with excitement. It will be a raging best-seller until kingdom come because it will never grow old as we who are left grow old. You must give it chief priority over everything even Haflingers2 & cows. When you get a bit depressed just picture it in the SHOP & you will cheer up & go on with the grind.
We are going to Ireland next week. Please write Leixlip Castle, Co. Kildare. I haven’t been to Desmond for about fifteen years.3 Kit was asked to stand as Rector (yes) of Glasgow University & he accepted. He says he will get two votes (proposer & seconder). He doesn’t have to go up there, it seems the candidates never speak on their own behalf. Hearing this is what decided him to say yes. A Scotchman wearing a kilt appeared at the Temple while I was in Switz, in connection with this outing. The people in the metro must have loved it, you know how frogs feel about tartan.
We came back from Paris via Versailles yesterday. I never go there now, it makes me frightfully depressed. I saw the top cupola of St Symphorien – Naunce’s church. Every house & street there is full of the most horrible sad memories for me, not to speak of the drive home through Jouy. Of course Kit noticed nothing except the fall tints but then he didn’t really take part, did he, in those awful years.
Hope everyone has now got the same date for our three-day event, ’tis Wednesday 23rd November eh?4 I can’t wait. We must discuss the menu one of these days. Of course we don’t know numbers yet do we. Wooms recited her lovers – all dead. She didn’t say they were lovers but they were ha ha.
All love darling, Honks
EUREKA PHOTOGRAPH BOOK HAS TURNED UP.
HENDERSON
Hen, your telegram. I was amazed, as had expected it to be found 100 years hence mouldering in a trunk like the Bride at Minster Lovell.
Obviously I’m incredibly pleased. Yet there is, it seems to me, a certain amount of Unfinished Business (an expression from agendas, Hen – but I expect you know that from the Royal Bantam Club etc). I suppose what I really want to know now is whether, from your point of view, true friendship is still possible – as perhaps in your mind the scrapbook thing was only a small part, the major point being that you loathed my book & the BBC film? I’ve no way of knowing if this is so, so please say.
As for me, 18 May (date of that horrible evening at 4 Chesterfield St)1 marked the beginning of what seemed like an interminable & incurable illness, or a sort of non-stop condition of mourning. At least with the scrapbook find, convalescence is now setting in.
I’m going on a dig, in Egypt! Next March, a place called the Temple of Mut (Luxor-Thebes, I’d no idea where these were until I looked them up on a v. inefficient map). I do hope that Mut doesn’t turn out to be an early version of Mitford, hence yet more Mit-industry. No, Hen, I don’t think so judging by pix of Mut, a goddess with v. slanting eyes.
But the major archeological find of recent years was, to me, the one at the Temple of Henderson.
Not much news otherwise.
Yr loving Hen
P.S. I should love to have details of the Find, if possible set forth in proper Archeological fashion including use of such up-to-date data as X-ray technology used by the diggers. In any event, The Great House of Henderson Shall Suffer Wrong No More, don’t you agree?
But actually Hen, I can’t say how delighted I was to get the ’gram. And to think it might be the prelude to Peace Talks.
Dearest Hen
I was more than delighted & relieved to get your letter.
Convalescence is definitely ON. THANK GOODNESS.
The bloody thing was suddenly there, in its place. I shall never know (archaeologically speaking) when or why it turned up. The drawing room is, as you know, crowded with many a book, photograph & otherwise, & I’d got so used to it not being there, having searched high & low again & again that I stopped a detailed study of the pile. And then, when we had some young folk of Sophy’s who were looking at those albums, my eye suddenly lit on it. I could hardly believe it. Anyway, there it was, just as if it had never been away, the most extraorder thing, complete, and its old self. So I rushed to send the gram, & now yr letter has come & it is a GREAT LIFTING OF WEIGHT I promise you. Oh Hen how odd life is. One thing which makes it odder or less odd is that a tiny silver thing, about two inches long, with weeny ivory numbers in it to do with shooting (birds not people) disappeared from its accustomed place just inside the safe in the pantry. It was mourned by Andrew, who for some reason was very fond of it, everyone did the high & the low search, to no avail, & lo & behold this curious little object was back in its place last week – no explanation of any sort, it had been missing for nearly a year.
Is this a Poltergeist? If so, it’s MORE than a BORE. I wish I could explain the success of the Mut dig. The Data is meaningless, the X ray (my eyes) ditto, anyway all’s well that starts Peace Talks & that’s what it’s done. Thank goodness.
Did you realize Woman was 70 last Fri? Unbelievable. She looks younger than me I’m afraid. Honks & I had a few folk in a hired flat (v. nice but v. small) in Rutland Gate, it was like a Jubilee Street Party, squashed up like sardines. I think she rather loved it. Derek Jackson came all the way from Paris for the night, insisted on sitting next to her, huge bunch of red roses & VAST cheque as presents, & he took her back to Claridge’s where they quaffed champagne till one in the morning. Do you think he’ll marry her again?
She’s bought Mrs Stobe’s cot in Swinbrook to retire into when she can’t cope with her palace-ette any more, egged on by us. I shall be opposite in Mill Cottage & Honks promises to go to Winnie Crooks’1 but I said only if she swears to sell acid drops in twists of paper & 2d bars. So will you be a grand lady at the Lodge?2 I fear your loathing of Swinbrook would win, oh dear.
Well Hen bottoms up, keep in touch.
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Much love, Yr Hen
Darling Woman,
Yes Debo told me about the photograph book being found; apparently it was there all along. Very strange.
Of course now that obstacle has been removed (or rather found!) I’d love to see you again. But you must realize that it is pretty impossible to rub out of one’s mind your original accusation, and all that followed from it. All that business about borrowing – once & for all, to borrow something means to take it with permission of the owner with promise to return. Doesn’t at all apply to swiping a huge scrapbook, size of a table as I remember it, smuggling it past everybody at Chatsworth, and using photos out of it, which I was accused of doing.
I’ll be coming to London in March for a couple of nights. Perhaps we could meet on neutral ground?
Much love, Steake
Dearest Hen
V. many thanks for yours.
Now Hen. You say you wonder if I didn’t notice that awful evening last May.
Notice it I did. I couldn’t sleep that night nor for many a night after, it made me miserable and still haunts after 9 months. I LOATHE a row of any sort, probably much more than you do because I note whenever you give an interview it ends with ‘I love a scrap’ or something like, but I know those scraps are matters of principle or theory or political something and not inter-family – still you are more of a row-er than me I guess.
Anyway a row of that proportion between sisters who love each other in the depths is foul beyond anything.
I could write down the things I minded in yr book & yr television programme if you really want to know, but it seems utterly pointless & will get us nowhere except probably a further quarrel since we are diametrically opposed on many things chiefly your strange view of the past and chronicling thereof. If you press for enlargement on this I will tell you but again I just think it will make a bother & do no good.
The Mitfords Page 62