The Mitfords

by Charlotte Mosley

  Must be off; otherwise shall miss aeroplane. DO drop a line to above address if inclined (put To Await Arrival). Longing for your review of my review of your Dial article.

  Much love, Henderson

  Darling Honks

  I’m afraid you’ve had a truly awful fortnight, it’s so odd those two dying within days of each other.1

  How wonderful that J Belmore2 exists, I mean he, Geoffrey, might so easily have been quite alone except for you. There is something so sad about people who haven’t got anyone, & I can think of quite a lot.

  Honks don’t think that about Sir O, death is so seldom like Geoffrey’s, it nearly always has something horrible attached & the wonderful thing about Sir O’s was the lack of that for him. One can’t arrange that fading out way, you know what I mean. It was wonderful for him when you think what might have been – hospitals, indignities, pain & all that misery. Oh Honks, whatever it had been it would have been awful for you, but I keep thinking it could have been so much more awful for him.

  Much love, Debo

  Darling Debo

  I will write you the full horror of Nicky’s book1 when I’ve got a moment. Such wonderful Woo news. I die to mention but of course I won’t. She is being so wondair. A moment ago I said something about the by-election in Glasgow & she said ‘I suppose Andrew will be in full flower’.2

  I think Al is so horrified by the book that he’s going to London to see Nicky. But there’s no tinkering to be done. The whole tone is VILE. And Nicky went on & on emphasizing how he thought it would give people a new insight into Kit. Even this last visit he kept telling me. I needn’t tell you I don’t mind a bit for myself, it’s for him. Al can’t get over the way everything of the most nasty is carefully selected, & everything else passed over in silence. Far the worst part is to publish one’s parents’ poor little loving or silly or cross letters to the world. It is frightful. I completely trusted him.

  Love darling, Honks

  P.S. Woman has just said she ‘had to sign something in Switz for Derek to do with America’. Horrors! What?

  Darling Nard

  I can’t get over Derek’s will of the American money, I shall be so well off & won’t know myself. What is terribly sad is the fact that I will never be able to thank him, it quite haunts me.

  For me, one great worry has been taken away – Mr Machell1 says the cooking book would be no good. I am deeply relieved & can now really relax, it was such a hideous effort & I had to struggle to find time to do it. He quite rightly says that there are already too many cookery books on the market & unless it was something completely out of the ordinary it would not sell. It was E. Winn Esq2 who suggested it to Jamie [Hamilton] who had already twice asked me to write a book & I had declined each time. It’s not like me to burst into print & your book on our childhood is so perfect & so there is no need to do another.

  Again millions of thanks & much love from Woman

  Darling Debo

  Many happy returns darling of your birthday. Heaven knows when I shall see you but how lovely to be at Lismore. Viv & Micky [Mosley] came, their reaction to Nicky’s book is that they are ‘out-raged’ by it. I can’t tell you the incredible tastelessness of it. I feel I have failed Kit in not having read his private ‘papers’ but I trusted Nicky in a way that one naturally would never have trusted an ordinary biographer. Also I felt (& still feel) that letters between Kit & his first wife belong absolutely to their children & not to me. I suppose with hindsight I should have given them to all three, & then Viv & Micky could have overruled Nicky & refused to allow these agonizingly private outpourings to be published.

  The utterly unfair & biased view of Kit is painful but I feel, although he’s not here, he can take care of himself. He was such a strangely unique figure & will always interest people. Al disagrees; he says this is ultimately true, but that Nicky has destroyed him as a serious political figure for a generation. (Al also says that later on he will recover from the attack, because he was intrinsically of great interest despite his failure.) Nicky’s mother would mind so much, isn’t it odd that a soi-disant [so-called] ‘sensitive’ man should behave in such a way. I still can hardly believe it. A French writer I’m very fond of told me months ago that he was really touched by Nicky’s attitude to his father (it was Michel Mohrt,1 he & his wife, devoted to Kit). Well, so was I. He went on even last January when he was here, saying he had tried to depict idealists who hoped & believed they could ‘change the world’.

  Another thing, he has got Auntie Ni’s diary, & he said he couldn’t use it because it was so histrionic and crazy. He knows & I know that she was usually drunk, but the ‘public’ doesn’t know it, & contrary to what he told me he has constantly quoted from it & always to Kit’s discredit. Ordinary people (who, for example, didn’t read her memoirs, an incredibly absurd book) will think ‘there now, even his sister-in-law’, etc.

  As to me, I truly don’t mind for myself. I suppose I shall come out badly in the next vol (pretty awful in this one). I mind for Kit & for Cimmie & the whole family, & for Nicky himself because he will seem such a shit to anyone not blinded by hate for me & Kit. I trusted Nicky absolutely. I haven’t spoken to Max who is only just back from Brazil, but I think he will say that although the letters belong to me, I gave them to Nicky knowing he was writing a book. I didn’t read them, that was my awful mistake. Sorry darling to go on. Viv & Micky were very good.

  All love, Honks (Haste for post)

  Darling Woman

  I should like to hear your screams at the prices of things here. They are FIERCE.

  Conversation between Rothwell1 & me re shepherd’s ancient cottage. Me ‘Has it got a bath?’ Rothwell ‘Well you could say it has a kinda bath’. Me ‘What kind of bath?’ Rothwell ‘Well it’s a type of a half dry kinda bath … & you have to climb under the roof to get at it.’

  And Betty2 in our diner: Betty, ‘What kind of china is this?’ Me: ‘Belleek’. Betty: ‘Ow, I love Belleek but this is HIDEOUS’.

  Such astonishing weather here, really hot in the day out of the wind & v. cool at night. Not a drop of rain since we arrived, getting very dry.

  WONDERFUL VEG.

  Much love, Stublow

  Darling Honks

  Never fear, that book of Nicky’s will infuriate &, I think, SHOCK everyone, not just you & Al & Max.

  Even nowadays, when all is revealed by all about all, people have a sort of standard of not dragging nearest & dearest through the mud. All the remaining Curzon side will hate it, poor old Bar Bar,1 her children, & anyone else mentioned but of course specially her & them will be enraged by Nicky’s totally unnecessary way of doing it. This may not be any comfort to you but it ought to be because it just shows he’s gone berserk and people will turn it on to him & won’t like it. If he’s trying to squeeze out of himself his own unhappy childhood he has done it at the expense of all the others & no one will love him for it, at best they will pity him for being so pathetic as having to publish it to rid himself of unhappy memories but that jolly well isn’t good enough & I’m sure even the most anti-Sir O will think it pretty squalid. It will be fascinating to see the reviews. But the point of writing all this is to say how you are only one of the sufferers-to-be through his awfulness in doing it. What a strange muddled up man he is, so charming to meet & then throws up something as squalid & LOW as this. Idiotic as well as unpleasant.

  Much love, Debo

  Darling Debo:

  I am desperately sad these days, much worse than last year, I think it’s because last year I was still half ill myself. It’s the days, not the dates, that one suffers from & I’m in the middle of them & luckily alone.

  I’ve finished Mrs Ham,1 wish you were here to give an opinion. Don’t know who to be at now. I’m longing for my visit to Woman but also terrified because she suggests we cook each every other day. First of all I can’t, & second, imagine how I’d do every single thing WRONG, wrong times, wrong ingredients, wrong casseroles (the latter bound to be ruined
if I cook in them). Oh Debo do you think she wd take me to Marks & Sparks & I could secretly buy all? You see I’d love to ‘make the dust’ but there again I’m so bad at it, can’t manage Hoover except by knocking over every bit of furniture & dainty china going west. Actual dusting a dead loss when I do it, it looks worse after I’ve finished. You see I did cook for Kit at Villedo but he loved whatever one produced, not at all critical. Can’t you picture Woman & Beetle back from walk & Woman saying ‘I smell burning’ or ‘Nard, you should have put the potatoes on long ago’. Do you think she wd allow what she calls ‘a pub lunch’ on my day? Probably not as we shall be snowed in. It really will be the agony & the ecstasy because I love Woodfield & Woman & all but am not house trained. I am a drone & no mistake.

  All love darling, Honks

  There’s such a disgusting article by Penelope Betj about killing a hen it made me feel sick.

  Dearest Hen

  Now then Hen. Things are bad here, in that poor Andrew is really ill, that is to say the real cause of all his troubles, which I guess you guessed ages ago, is drink & it has really taken him over.

  It was the cause of his falls which dislocated the hip, & so on & on, it is just much worse than it has ever been partly because of the awful hazard of the hip, as you can picture. So we (me & the children) have consulted all sorts of drs & they all agree that covering up, acting that all is well etc, not only doesn’t help but hinders, & that we must all make a stand and say we love him & long for him to get better but that until he decides to get what they call ‘help’ we will disappear & leave him to it.

  I can tell you this decision wasn’t come to lightly, it has taken AGES & endless meetings & telephonings & all that, but there was a ghoulish crisis last weekend when he fell downstairs & that decided us all that we must act on the advice of all. So we’ve said that we’re not going to be around when he gets back from Ireland. You can imagine the agony of it. I’ve told the people here, & exactly why & all that.

  I’m not sure where I’ll go, have to see what happens. The good Wife says I can go to her for a bit, Heck Knight1 ditto, & Sto has a cottage at Bolton which would be good. It is altogether FOUL as ½ of one feels such a rat going off when he’s in such a bad way but they all say I’ll get ill if it just goes on & on as it has for years so there we are. The great hope is that he will go for treatment as he did once before, then all will be as ever.

  Sorry to weary you with all this Hen, but it’s better to out with it.

  Meanwhile much love, Yr Hen

  Dearest Hen,

  What a thoroughly despairing & beastly situation for all of you – Oh I’m so v v sad about it. I suppose the ray of hope is that he might agree to try a cure, given the drasticness of you & children’s decision – also, he must himself be so very miserable. Oh Hen. I do think you did the right thing; from all you say, that sort of JOLT might be the best help you can give.

  Do send every word as to outcome-that is, when you’ve got time; I imagine that all the implementing of everything will be the time-consumer of all time. Anyway I really long to know what happens next. Far from being ½ a rat, I thought what you decided was bold as a lion & exactly right.

  Much love, Henderson

  Dearest Hen

  Now Hen things are much much better here, a sort of miracle after crises one after another & each one more horrid, depressing & foul heaping itself on an already awful situation. Anyway, the fact is that no drink has been taken for 2 weeks and health seems to be coming back gradually, spirits not too brill, but not too bad except sometimes. Walking better (the poor new hip got a terrible hammering with so many falls) & so everything is definitely looking up. Still it’s all supremely delicate as you can imagine. He hasn’t agreed to see & talk to any of the people who kindly offer themselves. But he may come to it, hasn’t turned it down completely, just says he hates talking & wants to do it on his own. But that is what they one & all say is nigh on impossible.1

  Much love from Yr Hen

  Darling Debo:

  I go to Wifey today, longing for the country, & her. I can hear on bedroom telephone but not downstairs I’ve discovered.1 So sorry about the other evening.

  Yesterday I lunched with Frank [Longford]; at H of Lords because he had to rush to a committee. He asked me to be early & I was & sat in an armchair to wait & a very very old man tottered in dressed in corduroys. He hung a filthy mac & a plastic bag on a hook, & something made me say very quietly ‘Bryan?’ He rushed over & kissed me & said ‘Which of you is it?’ At that juncture Frank loomed & I said ‘Look who’s here & he doesn’t know me!’ Great laughter of course. I hope he thought I was you, our only peeress, if so it takes ten years off, but you see I had my back to the light.2

  He came & stood by our table for ages at luncheon. Oh Debo! Then he said ‘See you on the great day’ (Catherine’s wedding)3 & I feel sure he’s no idea of the scrum it will be, & all night too. He said ‘I’ve no idea who’s coming’. Just as well, like not knowing beforehand how painful an operation is going to be.

  This is really to say that Margaret [Willes] is very remorseful about Soph4 but she’s got a book OUT by Carol Thatcher5 which is a record, about the election, & it entailed Margaret working day & night. She is v pleased with Soph. She says the reason Frank was late at H of Lords was that he changed into a suit from the cleaners & couldn’t make the zip work & she said ‘Give it to me’ & he said ‘Promise not to look’ & handed the trousers round the door & of course it worked. This happened TWICE. Somehow so typical of Frank. All at Sidgwick office. She told me later.

  I die for you.

  All love darling, Honks

  Darling Honks

  50 years.1 It is AMAZING that you were grown up & on the go such an age ago. It’s the suddenness of getting old that has surprised me, looking in the glass one day & the face being sort of alright & the next it’s as old as the hills & as full of ups & downs & brown patches & beards & all sorts of odd & horrible things that were never there before. And reading in the paper of An Elderly Woman Aged 63 being knocked down, murdered, standing up to armed robbers in her Sub Post Office, all the things which seem to happen to Elderly Woman in the papers. And realizing …

  We’ve had a marvellous time here, I suppose it was the weather that made it, day after day of boiling calm, as rare as rare in these parts. The atmosphere in the house has been lovely, perhaps because there were so many servitors of every description it was a question of coffee in the pantry for hours for most of them as there can’t have been anything else to do. (Not Henry of course, he is for ever working.) When they lined up to say goodbye to Prince Philip I was really embarrassed by the number & the fact that I couldn’t remember the names of ½ the dailies, oh Honks how awful.

  On Bank Hol Monday I judged the Shetlands at Keswick Show in the Lake District. I started at 6.30, as I feared bumper to bumper, but there wasn’t a car in sight even when I left the M6 for the lakes & I shall never forget the stunning beauty of the country all the way with the early morning sun behind me and the certainty of a brilliant day.

  Honks the people there, the ones which belonged to the animals (Herdwick Sheep like pink guinea pigs, sheep dogs on binder-twine leads which have to walk along a door laid on the grass to show their paces, indecent looking long legged terriers brown & tan, Lakelands I think, Fell ponies, as well as the really bad lot of Shetlands I judged), were v. easily sorted out from the Bank Holiday-ites.

  The lunch in the tent looked so disgusting I bought some goat yoghurt & plums, delicious.

  There was a tent called INDUSTRIAL which turned out to be jam, cakes, knitting, arts & crafts etc. I’ve never thought of Crab Apple Jelly being Heavy Industry but that just shows how wrong I was. The man on the loudspeaker said please no worms in the Pet Class. Last year someone dug up & entered 3. The best of it was the astonishing country & mountains & the women in cotton frocks which surely they can hardly ever wear & all looking so happy in the sun. And for me the rare luxury of not knowing one si
ngle human being.

  Much love, Debo

  Darling Nard

  Alas, we will never see the Chicken programme because it was shown only to London viewers-so unkind-and it was late Monday night, 11.50 P.M. Never mind; I was only talking for 2 minutes, one of many others & the thing only lasted 15 minutes. The others were so funny, 6 ladies from the Liberace Club, which of course I had never heard of before, a couple from near Manchester who were Railway enthusiasts & have beautiful model Railways all over their garden, a Canadian who now lives in Sussex & also a Railway enthusiast but his railway is indoors & very small. He had some beautiful models in plastic cases, one was a Canadian Pacific engine just like the ones I remember. There was a peculiar seedy looking man dressed in a pink satin suit all embroidered with jewels & very open in the front to show a tattoo on his chest ‘King Elvis’!!! A girl with hideous crinkled hair that looks greasy & never combed out, she was in a black suit the jacket of which was very open in front so that she looked as though she had nothing underneath. When it was her turn to talk she stepped down & took off the suit & a very bronzed figure stood there in a tight-fitting swimsuit & then she figured about & showed the muscles in her arms & stanced about-she certainly had a beautiful figure. She belonged to the Health & Beauty people. When it was my turn I was questioned about chickens & how I had become ‘obsessed’ with them. I said that as a child it was just my hobby & that we had all kept chickens or ducks. Then I told about the hen that Nancy had in the rue Monsieur. It was all so funny, I wish you had been there.