The Mitfords

by Charlotte Mosley

  I wrote to you once before to say something of this sort, as we are all getting OLD & will soon be quietly dead so I guess it’s better not to delve into row-making subjects.

  It’s up to you Hen. I would LOVE to see you & would rush to London, specially 8th lunch if it suits you?

  Much love, Yr Hen

  Nothing I can say wd change your view of things & ditto the other way round if you see what I mean.

  I absolutely admit that the episode of the photograph book was very odd indeed but I think I did tell you of other strange losings & findings in this house & that it must have been like them. I am very sorry indeed if you still think I wrongfully accused you (which I did not) it was all so odd.

  Darling Steake

  At last, this winter, I have had plenty of time to settle down to some reading which is impossible in the summer as I am usually out till it’s dark. I have read your book1 & so much enjoyed it. There are so many things you tell about which I had almost forgotten & many people also! And I hardly knew about your life after you had gone to America, except for the short while when Derek & I were in New York in 1939 & we saw a good deal of you & Esmond then. Do you remember the boiling hot August day when we lunched with you in your flat in Greenwich Village? You asked me to carve the chicken & even that slight effort got me into a muck sweat by the time I had finished. You kept all your money in books in the bookshelf & I was always worried that you might have left a lot behind when you moved! There are a few inaccuracies such as you say I broke a leg at the canteen on the main road. So far, luckily, I have never broken a leg although I may well do so one day as I fall about like a ninepin.

  You say you couldn’t return to England after Esmond’s death because all the family were pro-Nazi. This was a sad figment of your imagination, what about Nancy, rabid anti-Nazi & always announced she was a socialist, Debo, Andrew, Tom, Derek & myself? We had all very much hoped you would return & I thought it was probably because of the very hazardous journey that you decided not to do so. I had to skip a great deal of the American political part as I couldn’t really understand it all, but everything else I enjoyed & you do explain all the incidents so well.

  Much love from Woman

  Darling Debo

  The publisher I did the translation for telephoned & he seems so pleased, wasn’t it nice.1 Really quite a struggle because Kit was so anti & quite put out if I went to my room ever, to work. He likes 100% attention & really he does get it because I only translated during the night, mostly, when he was in land of nod. Kay Gaudin2 typed & we are now both so inter-ested in Lauda. I feel I know him so well. Of course nobody but fans will read the book, like all those sport books no doubt. Al’s book about Roger Dean3 – the only picture I’ve seen absolutely sends me. He is a sort of fairy story illustrator. (Al publishes it.)

  Love darling, Honks

  P.S. Ages ago you asked whether Gladys Marlborough4 was fascinating, yes, she was, though (when I knew her) mad. Now did you see, last week, she left a quarter of a million pounds? What can this mean? Either she was an incredible miser, or else she had about tuppence & it was all invested in IBM or something; Daph5 said she was miserably poor in the loony place & delighted with a new woolly coat, or an orange, brought by Daphne, & I think D told me the nephew was paying for her to have a room, though a very measly one, to herself.

  Darling Honks

  The International Sheep-dog Trials have been & gone & left me drained of all emotion.

  No good starting on about it, but just picture those sheep men (Wales, Scotland, Ireland, England, that’s what International means, FOOL) in their stiff new suits, stiffer new boots, dogs of all shapes & sizes (no standards of make & shape, the only criterion is performance), the tension is worse & more tense than in any competition I have ever seen of any sort. The packed stands (thanks to television chiefly) were silent as grave while the dog was working, & a great cheer went up when it finally penned its sheep.

  The prize-giving has completely finished me. The supreme winner was a small farmer from Ayrshire, white as a sheet, unable even to say thank you for the cups & trophies which were loaded on him, supreme dog of nondescript appearance on huge heavy rusty chain loathing the crowds & only wanting to be left alone.

  The chief of the Scotch team was an ancient of terrific charm & eye, he held on for ages, hugging, repeating ‘this is the GRREATEST Day of M’Life, Ooooh, the grrreatest day’.

  I’ve been interviewing cooks till I’m blue in the face, all seem so nice competent young clean smart but how does one tell if they can cook? The very young ones speak of hygiene. No thanks. I suppose that’s all they’ve learnt, washing the taste out of everything.

  Uncle Harold says he had a typed letter from Bristol saying ‘We note you are now a Senior Citizen’. Twenty years late I guess & going on to enlarge on pension etc. He wrote back & said ‘I am not a citizen but a subject of the Queen’. No good, the computer had sent the first one so it just comes shooting back every month.

  I asked him to send a copy to the Queen as it might tickle her.

  Much love, Debo

  Darling Debo

  It was so rich having a chat yesterday.

  I don’t think I told you a very odd thing about Colonel. We were alone & he suddenly said he’d been terribly hurt because Naunce didn’t mention him in her testament. So I said ‘But her will was just one line leaving everything to Debo’, & he said ‘Oui, je sais, mais elle aurait pu quand même dire un mot de moi’.1

  Well, can you imagine, isn’t that wanting everything all at once? He married, & yet expects that! I feel certain he simply wants it for his biographers, if any. He was almost in tears. When I told him about the telly thing2 he cheered up & wanted to know who is to act him in it. I’m afraid vanity is strong. He must be very put out by the Pope dying3 because he knew him from Venice & loved saying so.

  Well darling I must fly. I know I’m not to expect a letter & in any case a strike looms.

  All love, Honks

  Darling Debo

  Such a dreadfully sad thing has happened, Eric1 has been killed. He was on his way to work, on a motorbike, vile motor road, & a car touched the bike & it turned head over heels & he was killed. All going too fast & probably half asleep (8 A.M., dark). They telephoned at 8.30 & I flew to dress & tell Maurice before the police came & I went down & said something to Jerry & Maurice rushed into the dining room, he was in the kitchen, & I hugged him & told him & I shall never forget, his poor head just sank down in such a gesture of despair. Everyone loved Eric, he was such a dear charming boy. Then his mother had to be fetched from work & then the granny & we had a terrible visit in the cottage all in floods. Emmy’s John is in despair – they were really like brothers as you can imagine. We go to Paris today, all very deep-laid, the Lehanes are off on Monday. I shall come down by train for the funeral. What a horrible waste that it isn’t one of us old people killed. Oh darling I’m so sorry to inflict all this on you.

  I set myself a task in order not to sit & think & I cleared up Kit’s papers. Made four monster bonfires. Al always says when I do that thousands of pounds worth of archives go up in smoke.

  All love darling, Honks

  Dearest Hen

  Well, what d’you know (as I heard one American say to another & it made me laugh all day) your friend Billy Abrahams1 came to lunch on Monday. Odd enough you’ll say, but WHAT DO YOU KNOW, Benj [Treuhaft] telephoned that evening & now I’ve got a letter from you, so it’s Hen Week.

  I’ll start with B Abrahams. I LOVED him, so quick & funny. He glided in & out, much too fast, not the gliding but the time he spent here, arrived on a train just in time to swallow lunch & bugger off again. I know he’s got heaps to do & I was honoured by being given a few minutes of his time but it did seem a bit dotty. I guess he’s more interested in people than things so perhaps he didn’t want an endless Rembrandt-ish tour. Anyway the upshot is I see his point & he certainly sees yours.

  The idea is (don’t laugh, I can hear a
CACKLE) Macmillan’s want me to do a book so I suppose he wanted to have a decko from the American angle. I keep thinking how Nancy would have laughed at this wild idea. I’ve told them I can’t read let alone write but nothing daunted they phone away like mad & speak of contracts. Mr Billy says you love contracts, not as much as I will I bet. Does he always glide? RSVP.

  The other excitement (as I know you won’t want a chronicle of the Royal Show, or talks with Manners re Farm Buildings, or discoveries of ghoulish heaps of FILTHY sheets in the linen cupboard here on retirement of ancient & dotty housemaid, plus things like Christmas Cake of three cooks ago, grapefruit skins with thick fur coats of green stuff, FOUL) was a glimpse of the filming of Love in a C C at Swinbrook church. The idea was it would be the wedding scene (Louisa was it, years since I read the book) & therefore the whole cast would be there. But, needless to say, the electricians were on strike so they could only film outside the church. It was a boiling hot day & Swinbrook looked incredibly beautiful.

  So ODD to see all the followers of filmers, trailers of picnic food, people everywhere who seemed to have nothing to do with it but perhaps they did & us Hen, acted by three girls who may turn out to be very good but somehow didn’t remind me of us.

  They did a rotten thing, clipped in a bit of talk which was NOT in Simon Raven’s script & I’m sure he would not have written, one of us (you I think) coming out of the church in a great hurry dying for the lav, someone else comes out & says ‘what’s the matter with Jassy – she’s Gone to the Bathroom on Uncle Matthew’. Well, Hen the Bathroom. How hopeless. Otherwise it was quite alright.

  Much love, Yr Hen

  Darling Debo

  It is so sad (for me) but I think I must refuse the wedding1 alas, you see I can’t leave Kit. I long to come. I have loved Sophy so much, never will forget her aged two to eight, the intense sweetness. I will get her present next week, there’s a list at P[eter] J[ones] isn’t there.

  I got a letter from E. Winn with snaps of you in Yorkshire. She said Collie is Norman Scott to Beetle.2

  We are still swimming, so good for Kit. The garden is full of flowers but rather hideous. Maurice isn’t up to hoeing, badly needed.

  I feel very sorry for Decca about her son, it must be a constant worry.3 There is something about Decca which sort of kills one, even me, I can well imagine your feelings. Of course mine are mixed but there is something. One feels she is acting most of the time & wd prefer to be quite different.

  All love darling, Honks

  Darling Debo

  When you say Tig is having an awful time finding a school for her expelled daughter it takes me right back to when my boys were always being expelled, Desmond & Max once each & Al twice. One feels total despair, who will take them on. Schools are so feeble the way when anyone is the least bit difficult they make no attempt at reform but just expel. How I hate them ALL.

  Did you see Diana Cooper in some mag saying ‘Of course we were not allowed to go to school, the idea was if one did one would come back wearing bangles’. Now if Naunce had said that it would have made headlines. Why is it that anything we say or do is always supposed to be so interesting, I wonder.

  Now darling is your book extremely serious or can you have an absurd joke, just remembered a marvellous description by Mrs Hwfa Williams in her memoirs.1 She & Mr Hwfa always spent Xmas at Chatsworth & the side splitting joke was to give the Duke a gift-wrapped present & it was a box & out jumped a jack in the box & they all died laughing.

  I am so sad about Cecil,2 had just re-found him after so many years.

  All love, I die for you, Honks

  Darling Debo:

  Our conversation of last night. Here are my thoughts. I don’t think it is fair for Decca to use this rather frivolous programme for her tiresome political spite.1 It is all so easy to answer but naturally one isn’t given the chance to do so. The idea that Tom, a clever man & very deliberate in his actions always, should need poor drunken Randolph to ‘defend’ him is really almost too mad, even for Naunce, yet as we know she wd say anything. Rather awful of her not to mention all this to me, as we saw one another non-stop. I expect this particular letter of hers to Decca was in response to some sort of furious outburst of Decca’s. Who knows & who cares. But I don’t wish to be branded a liar in that programme (I said in my memoirs about the attack on Tom by the gutter press for giving a fascist salute at Kit’s Earls Ct meeting July 1939).

  I haven’t discussed the thing with Kit though I may have to. He will take ages to understand who wrote to whom etc (!) & then he will harp until kingdom come. One of the things I most dread is conversations about Decca, he asks questions I can’t answer, I really know so little about her since 43 years ago. He never thinks about her unless prompted by someone & then my heart rather sinks.

  All love, Honks

  Dearest Hen,

  Good J. Jebb telephoned to say the filming (viewing of) had all gone off well, I AM GLAD. Should love a blow-by-blow of it, so do write all. The sad thing is I suppose we’ll never see it, although JJ did promise to send a sort of video cassette, in which case I’m sure we can get some kindly telly studio to run it through.

  Funeral plans: There’s an embalmer’s aid called the Natural Expression Former, it’s a sort of half-moon-shaped bit of plastic, rather like dentures without the false teeth if you see what I mean, that they put into the deceased mouth after Rig-Mo (as we call it in the trade) has set in. Then they can make a seraphic smile. So you can guess what my natural expression will be (the Impasse, or Boudledidge face). Am making Benj promise to see to it.

  Your book: I long to know more about it. Will it be the room-by-room organization that you once described? Do you do it every day? Obviously it isn’t boring, or they wouldn’t have forked over dough. How long do you reckon it will be? Title? Etc etc, do enlarge.

  Much love, Henderson

  Did you ever hear the sad tale of Mitty’s1 honeymoon? Muv had asked them to Inch K. for it, so they went. She took them up to see their rooms, saying, ‘Mmmmm, Jean, this is your room, and mmmm, Mitty, here is yours’ – which turned out to be miles down a corridor. So never having noted form of a dressing room, poor Mitty thought he was supposed to stay in it at all times – and did. Not much of an h. moon.

  Dearest Hen

  Honks & Sir O & Woman & I went to see the film of us re Nancy last week, also Jonathan & Middy [Gascoigne]. We squeezed into a tiny room in a basement in Soho among Porn, Hard & Soft (whatever that may mean), & saw the uncut version.

  You will SCREAM – Woman’s the star, absolutely at ease & saying things like ‘Of course it was most unusual for ANYONE to travel 3rd class in those days’ (describing the journey when Brownie wasn’t allowed in the guard’s van so Farve put him in a carriage with the rest).1 I love the idea of masses of 3rd class carriages thundering empty through the length and breadth of England. And feeding her recs & talking to them, ‘Woman in conversation with a chicken’, she is brill, & reading about the Chubb Fuddler on a tree stump by the Windrush.

  Diana & I are v. boringly discreet, I look like a headmistress about to retire & sit absolutely still, don’t move in front of the camera, you know. Honks looks 1,000, which she doesn’t in real life. Her house looks beautiful, which it does in real life. You are practised in the art, the only one of us (except Honks, once) who has done it before, oh how unfair. The view from your typewriter is distinctly limited, oh Hen fancy staring into a wall when between words, how can you think what to put. The Colonel is fearfully good. He makes one killing mistake in English & says she was a ‘spiritualist’.2 Jonathan too is good. Julian says there is much alteration to do, viz. he has left out all re Mitford voice & awfulness thereof but he’s going to put that in.

  When the thing really comes to life is at the very end & he records the last bit of N & Madeau’s interview on the wireless fairly ages ago & N’s voice is proper, not shy like all of us (except you) earlier in the film, & ‘The Lost Chord’ mixed with a nightingale comes thunderin
g out. Marvellous. And she says how she’s looking forward to heaven. Really funny & good.

  As for yr letter which you want in. Of course we could all have found letters being beastly about brothers-in-law, what is plain is that they none of them liked her, nor she them, & one doesn’t have to look far without finding such a one about Andrew, Bob, Derek or Sir O. She was a great hunter with hare and hounds & often dashed off what wd please at the other end, like everyone does to a certain extent, but her more than most. What struck me was it is a shame for someone v. old, but v. much still alive, to hear that Tom ‘hated him’ forty years after, when I believe Tom stayed at Wootton a terrific lot in the late 30’s & they were all great friends. Tom was against Honks’ divorce I don’t doubt so I expect it may have telescoped time in Nancy’s mind, because they certainly were friends later & it was Nancy who didn’t go & see Honks at that time, not Tud.

  Anyway I believe Honks will answer, so there we are re that.

  The television film showers, JJ plus two mates, were astonished when they heard that neither Sir O nor Andrew (nor Derek I guess) have read one word of N’s writings. V. comical, somehow, & I suppose people wouldn’t believe it. Has Bob, I wonder.

  Much love, Yr Hen

  Dearest Hen,

  The filming sounds marvellous, & I can see J. Jebb thinks so too. Last I heard from him he had unearthed a hitherto-lost telly interview she did, & may be using some of that. Apparently BBC has absolutely no system for keeping track of old programmes, & often simply destroys them for lack of storage space.