The Mitfords
Page 71
Oh Debo the hymns I’m afraid they will set us off again, can’t be helped. Al, Max, Desmond everyone such a help & so good, also of course Jerry. My misery is that I haven’t been able to help in any way & just hindered with my tears.
I feel worse than useless.
Love darling, Honks
Dearest Hen,
How v. excellent that Emma [Tennant] is to have the house & contents. I know she adored Tante Femme as she called Woman. Ages ago, Em told me how at age 14 she was for the 1st time together with all the sisters (except me: Nancy, Pam, Diana & you), & how appalled she was at how all of you teased Woman – worse ragging than any seen since school, she said! So in a way, I think Em saw herself as a Woman champion or protectress. Actually, Woman rather thrived on all that teasing, don’t you agree? Anyhow, as I saw it from afar there was a marked change after Nancy died & Woman had been such an utter trooper looking after her. Somehow it looked to me as though she really came into her own re appreciation of her efforts, & rare qualities.
As for me – there was a fairly long estrangement following her missing scrapbook accusation (which you may have forgotten, but I haven’t) but of recent yrs we became great friends, Bob & I adored going there, she used to come to parties in London – last one, at S. Belfrage’s where she & I sat side by side as a sort of inappropriate Receiving Line. All my friends loved meeting her & vice-versa, I think.
Well Hen, I long for all reports of funeral etc.
Much love, Yr Hen
Darling Debo:
You must be just so tired. Sorrow makes one tired & then all the myriad arrangements fall upon you and I feel hopelessly inadequate, just an extra burden hearing nothing or very little. You have been fantastically wonderful. I can’t tell you how much I feel it & how grateful. Of course you know as well as I do that you MADE Woo’s life in EVERY way. Just as you do mine. You are a genius of true sympathy and what that means is you are pure gold. But we batten too much and I implore you to REST if you possibly can. Oh darling how I wish we were together this minute.
I want to explain something you may not know, about the hymn ‘Eternal Father, Strong to Save’. When we were at Batsford Uncle Tommy came once on leave, about the time of Jutland.1 We all went to church of course & Uncle Tommy was outraged that there was no prayer for sailors, only soldiers, & from then on the parson Mr Spencer Jones was told every Sunday there must be ‘Eternal Father, Strong to Save’. It was always the last hymn & one longed for it because it meant the end of durance vile. Woman loved Batsford & that hymn must have simply meant Batsford to her.
When I think of happy childhood it’s of Batsford I think. Whenever Farve came he was in high spirits & we had such fun but also we had much more freedom than after the war when (for example) we weren’t allowed to play with the village boys. Farve made many rules. The first year at Asthall was lovely but I missed Tom when he went to school, & after that except the holidays I wasn’t very happy, at least only on & off. I think after the building at Asthall & the disastrous farming Farve was eaten up with worry about money. He made a few quite wild investments all egged on by Uncle Geoffrey. Muv could have kept everything all right but he would do it without her. We did have lovely times but his miseries made an atmosphere of worry & there were too many of us, Muv must have so hated it, successions of dull governesses at all times, really agony I should find it. Leaving Asthall was the last straw for us. The time Woo & I were completely happy was until I was ten or eleven & she twelve or thirteen, but we never again had the heavenly freedom & fun of Batsford with the Normans.2 You may know all this but you may not. At Asthall her joy was the animals, & my joy was you & Decca. I literally worshipped you both and Nanny. It is lovely to be alone & I’m thinking about her, and you.
Love darling, Honks
Darling Honks
In some ways (selfishly) I wish you’d stayed & in lots of ways I’m thankful you didn’t. Arriving here was awful. When I started my task I felt like a burglar & still do, rather. It’s odd beyond anything not to find her here. I’ve faithfully been round the garden plant by plant & am glad she can’t see the precious new tree peony (expensive) which has been struck by a frost & the new growth hangs in that horrid way. I’m also glad she can’t see the way we treat the water & the electric light, wickedly extravagant.
Keith, Stella’s husband,1 has been through the larder & thrown away some items, the earliest should have been eaten in 1977. Lots left. Heck Knight came & was a great help in that I suddenly saw it isn’t necessary to empty every drawer, so now anything of use remains.
Derek’s letters are so boring, just plans or a little list of things, all the sadness which goes with divorce. Really that was so horrid for her, one is apt to forget because she became so serene later on but must have suffered terribly at the time. Very few letters (so far) from anyone else but there is a little cache of Muv’s in one cupboard which we will come to today. I’ll report.
Much love, Debo
I hope you’re alright?
Darling Debo
Me yet again. Don’t be too sad about 1951. I think the 2 or 3 years when she realized the Irish adventure wasn’t going to do were very horrid, but Derek after the war thought he would be so happy hunting & racing & of course he quickly got bored because he wasn’t working, & he got cross no doubt. But, probably luckily, 1951 was when we left Crowood. It was deathly for me because Al minded so terribly, & I hated leaving the people who had worked on the farm, but we filled Tullamaine. I don’t suppose she much cared for having the boys & tutor, & me rushing every day to Clonfert, but she wasn’t alone. Rudi came, & she (Woo) often came to Clonfert where she met Giuditta, & G. settled into Tullamaine. She may have been a mixed blessing but at that stage she was a blessing & when they went to live in Switzerland Woo really loved it at first. She was Queen there for ages with devoted friends. She often drove here with the Elles,1 I remember them being sick & that she was terrified of rabies.
I often stayed in Switz, in one cottage & then in the other. Of course Woodfield suited her much better in the end but at first she did love Switz & constant visits to Rudi. I went with her to her divorce, I think he’d been so horrid & cross she was quite glad to be rid of him. Then all that stopped & he remained her friend. I do think Switz filled the gap. She went all over the place but on the Island had to leave the Elles. Taking them to Switz was a terrific decision. The divorce was naturally horrid but also a relief I believe, & her new life very much what she liked (‘the Continent’). When Naunce died she said ‘Nard, let’s face it, she’s ruined four years of our lives’. Poor Woo how she hated Versailles & I expect Naunce blew hot & cold, in fact I know she did. Oh Debo! Her best & happiest years were Biddesden cot, Rignell & above all Chatsworth, Woodfield &YOU.
Dear good darling Woo I want her here this minute.
Love darling, Honks
Darling Honks
I’d really forgotten about the happy Swiss years, that’s true & a comforting thought. I know she knew Derek was mad, well not like others, & perhaps it made it easier to bear. I wonder, looking back, that she didn’t marry again. I suppose Giuditta really put a stop to it & then it was too late.
One thing (very tiny, but something) I’m glad about, is that I wrote & told her the kitchen garden here was entirely her doing, it was too. She inspired it and I’m so pleased it’s there & that she got the richly deserved credit.
Gone back to yr letter & I had QUITE forgotten that you all lived at Tullamaine while Clonfert was readying itself, just shows. I suppose I was completely taken up with SELF (I know I was, I remember). N’s poor illness certainly did take up 4 years for you & Woman & I remember her hating Versailles & you juggling Sir O & Nancy like a Three Card Trick. Impossibly exhausting, how did you manage it. She took you completely for granted & wrote all those horrid things but if she had been without you please picture. All too strange for any words.
Much love, Debo
Dearest Hen,
I WAS glad to get yrs of 1
1 May – anyway, I thought it was me delinquent re writing as I’ve been thinking so much about you & longing to be in touch. You/Dink must have same genes or whatever it is that makes you plunge ahead & simply do what must be done, such as arduousness of all the planning of Woman’s funeral plus aftermath. Dink was so impressed by yr v. smashing letter to her, which she read out to me by t.phone; and so was I, in view of obviously thousands to answer. (But Hen, someone wrote & said you’d forbidden the clergyman to do a sermon – well done, although you must admit it was rather cheeky of you, and SO like Farve with his stopwatch set for 10 mins. for sermons in Swinbrook Church.)
After Woman died (12 April, right? so just about a month ago) I kept thinking of all the dead people I’ve known beginning, obviously with people like Nanny, Muv and my own dead children. Also Hen do you remember as children: ‘She’s dead. She’s expired. She’s too neriogely [horribly] put out her tongue, she’s (etc). I must make her alive again. How shall I do that? I must prod, I must poke.’ I don’t think I’ve remembered that for 60 years. But it doesn’t work, alas, in real life.
Anyway, for you the loss of Woman must be incredibly awful. For me – obviously far less so, as we so seldom saw each other & also barely wrote letters to & fro. I did get v. fond of her in late years, but absolutely nothing like your v. long-standing & v. close symbiotic relationship – in which she was a familiar in your house & you in hers. I did come across a few Womanly letters of last year – but as usual, mostly about hoping to meet etc. & naught of stunning interest. I barely knew her as a child, and only fleetingly in the last many decades; but I did (even dimly) note her amazing qualities, which Emma described so vividly.1
Yr loving Hen
Dearest Hen,
Funeral arrangements. Do FAX or LAX me a copy of yours when you’ve got them in order. So far, I’ve only thought of one idea for mine, arising out of the long-ago funeral of Sonia Orwell. It was a memorial mtg è la Belfrage & many others we’ve been to. David Plante1- do you wot of him? A controversial writer, I rather like him – took it upon himself to arrange the whole thing & he sent for Mary McCarthy to come from Paris for the event. Sonia & Mary had been absolute bosom best friends for years, but had had a complete falling-out after McC. wrote a catty review of G. Orwell,2 total non-spkrs for ages, although they’d made friends again before S. died – anyway so M. McC gave the main eulogy, something like this: ‘of course we all loved Sonia, but she was a terrific snob – not just a social snob, but an intellectual snob … Poor Sonia had absolutely no sense of style, her clothes were atrocious …’ & more along same lines. This, it seems from many reports I had from various friends who went, set the tone for the post-funeral drink-up where all gathered to chat. It went like this: ‘I was SO fond of dear Sonia, but …’ then came the complaints against her. So my plan is to have my Estate pay the fare for my students from Yale etc to come to my funeral, with one proviso: if they hear the word BUT, surround the But-sayer & eject him forthwith. But perhaps I’ll take yr advice & settle for C of E service, less complicated. By the way – did you note that they had ‘For Those in Peril on the Sea’ for J. Onassis?3 Was that because of the Onassis yacht?
Much love, Henderson
Dearest Hen,
Thanks awfully for the Toby reading.1 Actually Verse 13 was v. apt – ‘that every man should eat & drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour’ what with all the obits saying about Woman’s noting of all menus at all meals.
I’ve often wondered about Woman not having any children. Was there any reason that you know of? I suppose she’d have made a super mum, esp. in view of the reviews of Emma & others of that generation, how they adored her when they were little. Conversely, Nancy – although she was said to long for children, I rather pity their fate if she’d had any.
I do so sympathize with your point – things reminding you of her, & suddenly realizing that there she isn’t. The exact same thought kept occurring to me when P. Toynbee died, ditto more recently S. Belfrage. It really takes ages for the fact they are dead to sink in properly.
Thinking it over, in my case it’s the letters that I miss mostly – which, obviously, comes from living so far away from most dead people I really adored. (Oh for the writing on the env!)
Much love, Henderson
* * *
1 David Pryce-Jones’ biography, Unity Mitford, A Quest, was published in 1976.
1Jessica and Deborah had been looking through old family letters at Chatsworth and had discussed Jessica’s elopement and the effect it had had on the family.
1 Deborah had asked Jessica if she would agree to lunch with Diana.
1 Anne Aldridge; a housemaid with the Redesdales for many years who went to work for Diana after her marriage to Bryan.
1 Deborah was staying with Harold Acton at his magnificent fifteenth-century Florentine villa.
2 Harold Acton, Nancy Mitford, A Memoir (1975).
1 The Mosleys’ driver and butler, Jerry Lehane, had been a tireless help during Nancy’s illness.
1In the draft of his memoir, Acton had referred to Gaston Palewski by his initials.
1 The page featured an article about a fire at the Alabama Browns Ferry nuclear power station that was started by an employee using a candle flame to check for air leaks. The fire burned out of control for seven and a half hours and almost triggered a catastrophe.
1 Richard Kahn (1905–89). Professor of Economics at Cambridge University 1951–72. Created life peer in 1965.
2 Tony Benn (1925–). The left-wing politician was campaigning against Britain’s membership of the European Economic Community.
1 The photograph on the cover of Acton’s memoir of Nancy showed her sitting primly at her desk in the rue Monsieur. The portrait by Mogens Tvede shows her wearing Dior’s ‘New Look’ in the flat on the quai Malaquais where she lived in 1947.
2 The journey between Violet Hammersley’s home on the Isle of Wight and Chatsworth involved a sea crossing and 230-mile drive.
1 Published as A Life of Contrasts in 1977.
2 Diana kept a diary from 1968 until shortly before she died.
1 Deborah was president of the Royal Smithfield Show, a livestock and farm machinery exhibition, 1972–4, and president of the Royal Smithfield Club in 1975.
2 Frederick Peart (1914–88). Labour Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries 1964–8 and 1974–6.
3 Margaret Thatcher (1925–). Chosen as Conservative Party leader at the beginning of 1975, she was elected Britain’s first woman Prime Minister four years later.
1 The clergyman at Swinbrook.
2 Mark Wyndham (1921–). Married to Anne Winn in 1947.
1 Jessica was teaching a semester at Yale.
2 Jessica’s two grandsons, James and Chaka Forman.
1 The nickname given by the Radletts to Boy Dougdale in Love in a Cold Climate after he had addressed the Women’s Institute. ‘The lecture, it seemed … had been very dull, but the things the lecturer did afterwards to Linda and Jassy were not dull at all.’
1 Pressure was being put on the Rhodesian government by the US and Britain to introduce black majority rule. Nicholas Mosley who had been a committed Christian as a young man, supported black rule while Diana, who was an atheist and contemptuous of Christianity, was strongly against it.
2 Lady Redesdale’s father, Thomas Gibson Bowles.
1 Nicholas Mosley, Julian Grenfell, His Life and the Times of his Death (1976). A biography of the First World War soldier-poet, the son of Ettie Desborough, siren of her generation and a leading member of the mainly aristocratic group of friends, The Souls.
1 An early eighteenth-century house in Wiltshire which had been Lady Redesdale’s home for much of her late childhood and adolescence.
1 An attaché case of fine leather which Pamela would allow no one to touch in case it got scratched. It travelled in a cloth bag of its own so as not to be damaged.
1 When Pamela was farm manager at Biddesden, she bid for an expensive cow at a local sale. I
t was not until she got home that she discovered, to her outrage, that ‘the brute was bagless’ and useless therefore as a milking cow.
2 Diana’s spaniel and mare.
3 Lady Evelyn Erskine (1883–1939). Diana’s fey and unconventional first mother-in-law. Married Walter Guinness in 1903.
1 Deborah used to say that when Elizabeth Cavendish was Lady-in-Waiting to Princess Margaret she carried the tiny princess in her pouch and produced her when asked.
2 Henri Sauguet had been made a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts.
3 Jean de Baglion was a fanatical bridge player who warned Diana that she was in for a sad old age because she did not know the game.
1 The Reverend Float was vicar of All Saints’ Church, High Wycombe. One day, his mother went to tea with Lady Redesdale and said to Pamela, ‘Has Wilfred asked you?’ The question was referring to whether Pamela would have a stall at the village bazaar.
2 Paulette Helleu (1904–). Daughter of the painter Paul-César Helleu and a friend of the sisters since before the war. Married Rear-Admiral Clarence Howard-Johnston in 1955.
3 Mary Ormsby-Gore (1914–2006). A debutante at the same time as Unity. Married to Robin Campbell 1936–46 and to Alexander Lees Mayall in 1947.
4 Penelope Dudley Ward (1914–82). Beautiful daughter of Freda Dudley Ward, mistress of Edward VIII. Like Unity, she had lodged with Baroness Laroche in Munich in the 1930s. Married the film director Carol Reed in 1948.
5 Julius Streicher (1885–1946). Virulent anti-Semite who founded and edited the inflammatory newspaper Der Stürmer (’Hotspur’).