The Mitfords

by Charlotte Mosley

  The letter re Sir O. Mosley: I quite agree about N. & the bros-in-law in general (although I thought she rather liked Derek? Used to see him a lot in Paris) but Hen that wasn’t the point. Perhaps it’s useless trying to explain, but I’ll have one more go. All the memoirs etc. are now saying Tud was a fascist, which I for one never believed. Neither, apparently, did Nancy, so I wanted to be sure to get that in, which is why I made it a condition of being in the film at all. She said ‘Randolph would have come to his defence if he was alive’; Randolph isn’t alive but I am, so included N’s letter for what it’s worth. The reason I got so FORMAL about it (making J. Jebb sign that paper, which he did with screams of anguish) is that I was told that you & Diana would have final say as to what went in the film, after seeing the rough cut. Speaking of FORMAL: I have sent, as you asked, written permission to J. Jebb to use any photos he wants, & hereby reaffirm same in writing to you. Oh dear. Shall we ever get back on ordinary Honnish terms? I do wish we could.

  Much love, Henderson

  Darling Woman,

  Sorry not to have written for ages. The fact is (as I’m sure you may have realized) that I was fair boiling with rage over the scrapbook theft accusation; that has now receded into a low simmer, & perhaps should be turned off altogether.

  We are indeed extremely pleased about the Dink’s forthcoming nuptials,1 to which we shall nip (Atlanta) in June. We like her bloke no end, a distinct cut above others in her past.

  Longing to know when the film looms, ditto J. Jebb’s article on the subject.

  Much love, Steake

  Darling Honks

  I’ve got your book!1 That nice M. Willes2 sent it, not bound, you know how it is when they’re in bits. I read a long bit out to Andrew, he was completely fascinated & thinks it terribly good (I left out the bit about Evelyn Devonshire).3 He is v. critical, so it was proper praise.

  You are truly clever, because it runs along most wonderfully & isn’t at all gossipy, it’s Discretion Please all the way. Oh well done Honks. How did you do it with people coming & going all the time & Sir O wanting this & that. Goodness knows. I long for it in real book style. Not long to wait, & then another flood of reviews.

  The film seems to have been well received on the whole. A retired carpenter came up to me at Edensor & said without any preamble ‘I always liked Mrs Jackson best’.

  Tomorrow I go unwillingly to London for the Derby & two dinners which I would be happier without, except one is Annenberg4 whose sister (Mrs Neck, of New York) told me her furniture was so Louis it was Louis Louis. Who knows, she might be there, & then ’twill be an evening well spent.

  I’m looking at F Ashton Beatrix Potter film which is so completely wonderful beautiful & sad that if I’ve written more twaddle than usual that’s the reason.

  Honks well done re yr book. It’s lovely to think its reviews will soon be with us.

  Much love, Debo

  Darling Wooms

  Two things I object to in Jebb’s Sunday Times effusion: the fact that he says the picture of Bobo in Nazi uniform was taken out by us, thus drawing attention to it far more than if he had flashed it on the screen. ‘Off the record’ is supposed to be sacred to journalists. Of course she wasn’t in Nazi uniform which was forbidden to foreigners, so he is doubly at fault. The other thing isn’t his fault, but Decca’s story about Farve’s will is a complete lie. Inch Kenneth came to us by mistake when Tom was killed, & Decca asked for her part to be sold & given to the communist party funds. That was why Farve much later cut her out of his will; he didn’t want his money to go to communist funds. Of course she couldn’t sell her bit of Inch Kenneth because we refused to sell ours. By changing the dates round she has a dig at Farve.1

  I’ve written to Jebb about Bobo. Only got the S. Times on Thursday, we don’t get the colour part here.

  Yesterday I ran into Colonel in the street. He wants to see what the papers say about the film but I must censor them because some are rather horrid about him. He & Violette are invited to the Elysée to meet the Pope. I said do take Emmy & Jerry [Lehane] with you.

  All love, Nard

  Darling Honks

  Yours came this A.M. with yours to J Jebb. I should think it will make him shrivel into the very ground. I would love to see the answer, if any. Please remember. I am still composing mine, having had a euphoric one from him saying he’s never had so much praise, from colleagues & strangers alike.

  I’ve had lots of letters, including Holiday1 & the Prince of Wales.

  Ann Fleming, who always has an original point of view, hated Snowdon’s snaps. I thought the one of me was in such a good place all that ivy, & somewhere no-one had chosen before, the old Dutch peasant was lovely,2 Woman & Decca not so good. Ann says Woman does not ‘;throttle herself in white bandages’ like you & I do.3 She says we use them as beauty deterrents.

  J says they are going to repeat it ‘very soon’, three months probably. Apparently, this is proof of much praise (or is it that they are broke, who knows). Anyway people seemed to have enjoyed it. Most of my letters have said ‘don’t worry about your voice dear it’s very nice’. Several have said ‘anyway you all pronounce things so the words can be heard’.

  So there we are. Woman ought to have her own Chicken Chat Show, eh.

  Much love, Debo

  Darling Honks

  Congrats on yr book being reprinted. That really is wonderful.

  Sidgwick has sent (I asked for) a HUGE photo of you, looking 101 & in dire need of a bust bodice, to go up behind the heap of said book in the shop here. People will be terrified & think it’s written by a corpse. The one I’ve got now is truly beautiful & the marvellous person who does the shops has taken terrific trouble making a notice which says, inevitably, Lady Diana Mosley.1

  Maud has gone on her hols. Collie won’t let Mrs Carr2 make my bed, so Henry3 has to come & hold his head while she does it. And he won’t let her open any drawers, he is v. eccentric & possessive. So I must see he doesn’t leave me. (He rather likes slinking off to bed on his own.)

  Much love, Debo

  Darling Debo:

  How good you were to write among the busy-ness. I was so touched to think of the display of my book at your shop & screamed to hear of the corpse needing a bust bodice, it sounds almost too disgusting, well of course it is. Put one (a photo I mean) of Dooky,1 much nicer. I never look in a glass now as I don’t like what I see.

  In the Economist it says Inch Kenneth will sell for £250,000. It’s Rutland Gate over again, I mean such a quick & vertiginous rise.

  Jim [Lees-Milne] loving me, you know it’s very strange. I was devoted to him (as a ‘brother’) & the other day I asked him why, when he was apparently in London & I was at Buckingham St,2 he never came to see me. He says it’s because he was so poor. But he couldn’t have been poorer than for example John Betj & others who came the whole time. I can hardly bear it because one could have fed him. Also I loved being with him. He says he saw Tom. Isn’t it a mystery really. Then I was cross with him because he was rude about Kit in a book, but needless to say Kit neither minds nor holds it against him, so now we can all see each other with one foot in the grave. Alvilde must be thrilled by the success of her garden book.

  I am thrilled by the Treasures going to the Academy.3 Isn’t treasure a lovely word. Colonel calls Violette ‘mon trésor’. He wrote me a very clever & perceptive letter about my Windsor book. When I compare what he said with A. Forbes’s outpourings4 it made me rather value old Colonel. If Forbes were funny as well as spiteful-but he isn’t.

  A French illustrated mag seems to be going to buy two chapters, Al says they pay well. A Swedish one has given £1,500 (but I get v. little, most goes to Sidgwick I think). An American mag called W is sending down a reporter. He sent me six copies of the mag, it’s one of those full of society hags meant to make ordinary people feel out of it & jealous. Now darling don’t get too tahd. Give my love to Jean-Pierre.5

  ALL love, Honks

  Darling Debor />
  About the Nancy book, I don’t think I could ever edit her letters. There are two things about them I abominate, one is the falseness (e.g. the letter Decca read out on the television thing) that one could be seeing her all the time, ‘smarmy as be damned’ as Dooky wd say, & then she’d creep off & write like that, & the other is the sort of snobbish boasting she indulged in to Muv & others partly meant to annoy & partly to impress. I couldn’t say this to anyone but you. I think I knew her just a bit too well & someone like Selina1 would sail on without really seeing it. Of course we know it was all part of her unhappy life & I don’t blame at all only I don’t want to be immersed in it. So you can cross me off the list. I think Selina wd be good in many ways. I also think a vol of letters will have to wait until everyone’s dead, don’t you, because of hurt feelings?

  All love darling, Honks

  Darling Debo:

  I gritted my teeth & dialled your number with the firm intention of spending £10 or so in a mammoth chat only to be told you are in Ireland, which if I’d thought for a moment I would have known.

  Ian Curteis1 came with ½ the dreaded script & we spent seven hours doing it. He was very good & took out most of the worst most embarrassing & inaccurate bits. An example: he’d got an elaborate funeral of Decca’s poor little baby with all of us there together. He imagined it as the last occasion on which we all met. Anyway he was extremely nice & did almost all I asked. I don’t think it’s too bad & I do think it wd have been ghoul with knobs on had I refused to help. But I think it’s rather dull & probably will never reach the screen. Also of course so much depends on the way the actors say things & it may well become far more awful in the end.

  Oh Debo I got such a nice letter from Sally Emerson, the editor of Books & B. You know I was so worried lest the attack on me in N.S., in which Philip Dossé was mentioned in a nasty way, might have precipitated his suicide.2 Sally E says she was with him all the last days & she is sure he never read any papers let alone N.S. She was devoted to Dossé & scarcely knew me so I do believe her & don’t think she says it to comfort me.

  As to Evelyn’s letters3 there’s a gem on every page & I am miserable to have finished the lovely great book. Far the best letters are to Naunce & Ann Fleming. The ones to Maimie4 aren’t a bit amusing or even clever. Isn’t it amazing how the person one’s writing to influences one. Poor Evie at the end, deaf, toothless, bored & boring (unbelievable) at 63, it’s too sad for any words & he must have welcomed death as few do. He dreaded twenty more years getting worse & worse. I am dreading poor old Dig reading things about her & Henry [Yorke] & I’m afraid Jamie Hamilton’s feelings will be lacerated. Both so easily hurt.

  I wish you were here. These golden days it’s paradise on earth. Kit v. well. He reverted to whisky but has given it up again.

  All love darling, Honks

  Dearest Hen:

  Main thing: FINALLY Bob & I saw the Julian Jebb film. We found someone who had the right equipment (for English television) & nipped there yesterday. Well I must say I agree with Jay Allen1 (see my last letter) that you were easily the best, a needed I was so amazed at Nancy’s interview – I’d never seen it, & there she was large as life & twice as unnatural. One could absolutely get the form of how she was loathing doing it, & was coming off far more affected than ever she was in real life. But yet was awfully good, fielding the questions. The whole thing was (to me) so sad yet funny. All extremely old hat to you, but new hat as of yesterday to me. Wasn’t she marvellous about Heaven? Makes me long to be a Believer, the thought of all meeting up there one day. I shouldn’t think St Peter will be best pleased at that moment.

  How is your BOOK coming along? The Glider2 longs.

  Much love, Henderson

  Darling Honks,

  Love in a CC was TOO AWFUL. Hideous children, most fearfully bad actors, couldn’t hear one word but in a way it was a good thing because what one did hear was embarrassing beyond all. The ugliness of the whole outfit was too sad, what would Nancy have said, she’d have minded terribly. Surely there must be some decent looking children somewhere who can speak. And the Hons’ Cupboard with no linen was bleak beyond words.

  J Jebb rang up, he’s hoping they’ll put his film on again immediately after Love in a CC. He hopes for BBC1. He wants to change the name to The Real Mitfords. Has he got mixed up with The Real Charlotte?1 I said why not The Mitfords Now as we’re SO old & depressing & it wd be sad if people thought that’s what we used to be like, eh. Or leave it like it is. Or just not put it on.

  And he, JJ, has been to see Ned Sherrin2 & heard the tunes for the high kicking show. Says they’re marvellous, well of course tunes of 20’s & 30’s ARE marvellous, you can’t go wrong there. I am supposed to go on 20th to see & hear what has been done so far. The burning question is whether to end it at the beginning of the war. I said YES as loud as I could, & said you must because all the gaiety wd go out of it if you start on the sad or controversial stuff. Can you imagine a musical with the things that happened then. I must say I wish they’d leave us alone, people are going to get v. fed up, headed by Andrew.

  Much love, Debo

  Darling Debo:

  I hurried a letter to you yesterday, really in order to rid myself of Decca’s1 & Sherrin’s letters, so now I must finish what I have to say. Over the years, since 1943 when Decca ‘demonstrated’ in an attempt to get Kit & me put back in prison when he was very ill (that no one paid any attention to her is neither here nor there) I have never reacted in any way to her pin-pricks. Nobody has felt the pathos of Decca more than I have. I really suffered in 1973 when Naunce was dying & was so unkind to her. I don’t mind in the least what people’s politics are, I am old enough to realize that if nobody can ‘convert’ me it’s not very likely that I could ‘convert’ anyone else. Between friends, & sisters, it just doesn’t matter. But what happened with Jebb’s silly film shows the depth of seething hatred Decca feels for us. It is much more painful to hate than to be hated, & I am well aware that her life is in many ways rather awful, but not quite awful enough to excuse her behaviour. As far as I go, I put her out of my mind. If someone behaved to you or Woman as she has to me all these years, I should not wish to have friendship with that person. I know you try to be friends with all & sundry & I quite understand why, but for me it wd be absurd, & certainly not what Decca hopes for. I shall never attack her publicly as she attacks us. I always say (when asked) that I know so little that my comment wouldn’t be worth having. I didn’t mention her in my book, except as the dear little child she once was.

  If you think Sherrin is all right I won’t object. I suppose it will be silly, & in so far as Decca has a hand in it, spiteful. The whole point of my being involved in the television film they plan to do is to try & make it vaguely truthful.

  All love, Honks

  Darling Debo:

  Despite our mammoth chat there’s more to say. I just peeped at Kit & he is peacefully asleep poor darling.

  Fancy meeting Bernie.1 Did Max produce him from his pouch like you used to say Deacon did Princess Margaret, & then he failed to perform? You never told the menu.

  I wish I could have been fly on wall while you & Bernie boasted of leaving school at twelve years of age. Robert [Skidelsky] must have relished it. He says he’s to be ‘the Lord Clark of the Slump’,2 a series of telly programmes about 1930–31 of which he is compère & I think he says we shall see them next Feb. I am DEVOTED to him.

  Oh Debo I wonder whether I shall get to London next week, I think it’s most improbable, but I suppose Kit will do his utmost. Think of those stairs in Rosie [Macindoe]’s flat, my heart will be in my mouth.

  County & Lydie [de Pomereu] never stop telephoning, they are such good friends, nobody else knows about Kit being ill.

  Well darling THANK you for being recipient of all my sorrows.

  All love, Honks

  Dearest Hen,

  En route from Los Angeles to Arkansas I read in L.A. paper that Sir O. Mosley died. Diana must be so
incredibly sad & lonely. For obvious reasons I shan’t be writing, but if inclined do transmit message of sympathy.

  Much love, Henderson

  Oh dear what a v. odd & awkward letter. But you know how it is, Hen.

  Darling Debo

  I can’t deny that I have felt very very sad since I got home. Luckily the weather became warm suddenly & everything burst out (hedges etc) & I have been working in the garden, at least transplanting yews, all my silly fads, so I get tired & sleep better. But I can’t get him out of my mind for more than a few minutes ever, even when I’m laughing & chatting the thoughts & sad visions come, I can’t explain. I’m afraid TIME won’t really help much, it is all too much part of me, like losing legs or arms, no not quite that either. People here are very kind they really are. Then what I have to do in the clearing-up line seems endless (despite the smallness of the house) & desperately sad, so full of him in every way.

  Woo telephoned about that vile thing in the D. Mail1 that I also sent to you. She was so lovely on the telephone saying ‘What with the Daily Mail AND the Budget!’ She says she can’t afford to leave the house because of petrol so I said ‘Woo come & live here,’ quite forgetting that petrol here is an even more ghoulish price.

  All love darling, Honks

  Darling Debo

  Selina went to interview Colonel after meeting him here & she had to FIGHT for her honour, it was Cristiana with knobs on,1 she says he’s terribly strong. I must say I hand it to him aged eighty & after three operations. In one way it is wonderful because she sees what he’s like but isn’t it mad of him when he knows she is going to write. I mean he couldn’t hope for ‘success’ so it makes him a bit absurd, doesn’t it? What a funny person to be in love with all one’s life, or at least 30 years or something. Apparently there was no attempt at compliments & seductive words, just a wild rush.