I bravely took 14 prs of specs to the Bakewell fellow who produces them because he’s got a machine which tells which prescription each one is. I’m afraid he thinks I’m mad, said soothing things about how lots of people do the same but I’m not convinced. Anyway he noted on them whether they are for reading or distance & now I’ve got green & red cotton tied on them. Shall I remember green is for reading, red is for distance? I don’t know.
I’ve found a lot of Granny’s notes re this house & Hardwick. One wail starts ‘Can someone tell me how many chimney stacks there are & to which rooms they belong?’ I’m ‘doing’ the Back Passage here for Book,1 good sport. I’ll send when done.
More soon & you can’t write too many letters. When I get back to The Pile I sift till I find yours – gold among the dross.
Much love, Debo
Darling Debo
Very funny description of the Queen at the New Tate. She was steered away from the unmade bed and the bits of animals preserved in tanks of brine and allowed to look at a few bright abstracts.
My wonderful treat of laughing I had with the Kingsley Amis letters1 has now stopped. He is a wild success with his novels and teaches at Cambridge & not Swansea, and worst of all he has fallen in love. The screams (mine) have died away. Love letters are always boring and he’s no longer angry and seldom funny. However I shall go on reading because I want to see what happens, new wife etc.
Hymns have ceased to plague me. It was awful, their boring tunes & absurd words followed me even when walking in the street. I love ‘Now The Day Is Over’ but I must be careful not to get it in my head non-stop.
I thought Blair & his infant2 would be the last nail in his coffin but I was quite wrong, he’s gone up in the poll.
Love darling, Honks
Darling Honks
I can’t remember how much I’ve bored you with last wk-end.
We were hanging around the front door because the telephone said the car was just starting up the drive when a battered dirty thing arrived & it was Christopher Sykes.1 V. comical. The shiny one followed with Queen,2 her garden designer, lady in waiting & policeman & several tons of luggage in other cars.
The night before was very jolly, de la Rentas, Jayne W[rightsman], the Italian architect whom I love,3 the ex Amb from France,4 his friend,5 the Roberts’s,6 he head of, & she drawings & prints, of the Royal collection, both wonderful, & beloved Neil McGregor7 who was fearless in pulling the broodies off their nests when collecting eggs. So that was a goodly lot. We had really tried with flowers for the last three years so I thought we’d get some recs & eggs for the table to make a change. Alan8 washed the huge Buff Cochin cock & a little black bantam hen & we put them in those glass accumulators out of the electric house on some hay. We piled up white & dark brown eggs in the Bachelor Duke’s wildly decorated silver wine coolers with eagles round them and, as luck wd have it, some chicks had hatched in the farmyard in the morning so we filled 2 baskets with them (only put for ½ an hour in a warm hay heap). It had the desired effect & I don’t think they’ll ever get over it. The bantam laid an egg which put the lid on it.
No one coming this wk end thank heavens. I wish it could be sunny, it can’t manage it.
Much love, Debo
Darling Debo:
I’ve found letters from Woo ever since 1925. I can’t tell you how it takes one back to Asthall. I am rather horrified by how unfairly strict Muv seems to have been. Poor Woo envying me because I was at Bexhill recovering from something, therefore I had no ‘rows’. Oh how I hate rows. Are they an inevitable part of family life? I really don’t think they need be. I think both Muv and Farve were in a way bored stiff without quite realizing what was wrong. It was not having enough to do. I have got nothing to do now, but feel so contented and spoilt and read all the time. But they were in their forties, and I’m ninety.
Love darling, Honks
Darling Honks
Re your letter from Woman in 1925 & Muv’s strictness. What was she strict about? I suppose it is nearly impossible to remember the general carry on & the mad rules there were so long ago, I’m sure you remember events (like I do but not as well as you I know) but I wonder if she was stricter than the next mother of daughters. 76 years ago was another world, only just not Victorian. Poor Woman, she never wd have gone off the rails. She was 16? Awful age. I wonder if Muv believed in all the restrictions or if she was just doing the same as other people.
When I was 16 & 17 I think I was allowed to do more than my contemporaries like the Hermon-Hodges, Ogilvys, Gina Wernher & co. But I know everything had changed in those 14 or so years.
Rows. I know about them. You either have to retreat completely – & even then an ‘atmosphere’ remains – but if you stick to what you think, it ends in the banged door. Do you think Farve’s terrifying temper was the result of ghoul experiences in the war, his brother killed & all that? I suppose Muv never would be a nondescript agree-er even before politics became such an issue.
You’re right about them having nothing to do, well him really, she always seemed to be busy, but goodness knows how he spent the day & when you think how young he was when Woman wrote that letter, 46 I suppose. OH DEAR.
Much love, Debo
Darling Debo
A photocopy of Juliet’s article arrived, so silly about fond.1 The truth is anyone but a moron would have loved the opportunity to talk in private to Hitler, the man everyone spoke of, so powerful & unpredictable. Of course I often saw him in company, every evening at dinner at the Opera & often at his bistro, but what was fascinating was to get him alone and hear what he had to say. It wasn’t often that this happened, but you can imagine how very interesting & fascinating. Nothing would ever make me pretend I was sorry to have had this unique experience. He is part of history, a terrible part, but very important, & he was usually surrounded by several people which makes chatting rather dull, always.
Poor Juliet is so upset. She’s going to show her original article, so that I can see what was deleted. I just wish I’d refused the whole idea but she was so anxious to do it. Being hated means absolutely nothing to me as you know. I’m quite sure I would do the same again if I had the chance. But of course ‘fond’ has absolutely nothing to do with it. Just catty journalist nonsense. I only mind if it does her harm.
Love darling, Honks
Darling Debo
You have been so GOOD to continue writing despite your 31 guests.
Did you see Hardy’s New Year poem in D Telegraph? It says God has ended a year and is beginning a new one ‘In his unweeting way’.1 I looked up unweeting and it’s ‘meaningless’. Oh Debo, exactly what I think. The Queen urges faith, but that too is unweeting unless you are able to feel it, which I am not. Some people feel it so strongly that they really hate those with a different faith. The Queen seems to say it doesn’t much matter what the faith is about, so long as you’ve got it. Derek [Jackson] used to say ‘Faith is believing what you know isn’t true. If it were true, you wouldn’t need faith’.
I do believe in hope. I hope all the time, but hope is not faith, it’s a sort of wishful longing. I love seeing children because there’s plenty of scope for hope. Katie’s2 children are adorable. They had sunshine for their Disney day, having motored here from Dordogne, rain & sleet all the way so far. Imagine luggage and 3 children in the back seat. What good parents. Fathers have become nannies, how will it all end?
Margaret Hudson writes to ask if I went to church on Xmas day. I would have at Edensor but not some dreary Mass in the local. Only for the music, to me it’s all unweeting.
Jean-Noël [Liaut] is back, I really missed him. I’m going to list my bosom friends to end my poor book.3 They must not be in any way exclusive, it was that which ruined my friendship with Evelyn [Waugh]. Bosom friends must all be allowed any number of other friends, and lovers. But they must be confidants, not relations. I can see, looking back, how important they have been to me. The two longest were Gerald [Berners], from when I was 22 until his death, and then the
Count [de Baglion], from when I was 41 until his death. Now I’ve got Jean-No?l and he is 60 years younger than me. It’s more laughing at the same things than anything else, plus fondness. And of course books. Gerald told me what to read, so have all of them. Robert Skidelsky is another bosom friend but too busy really, rushing round the world, for the job. I dread my book, the muddle I am in. But I must force myself to clear it up. It’s really so short and easy, but I sometimes feel terribly old and paralysed. Jasmine says she’ll bring her baby4 & we will have a five generation photograph. Quelle idée!
Well darling you won’t have got as far as this.
Happy new year and ALL LOVE Honks
Darling Honks
So thrilled with two from you this A.M. Keep at it but please make the ghoul effort & finish yr book for OUR SAKES. I’ve just written you a long letter but this is to say we’re still alive in the snow & cold. THEY give a thaw but God seems to think otherwise in his unweeting way.
I wish he’d weet a bit.
Hurrying over the ice to the post in the village.
Much love, Debo
At the end of July 2003, during the intense heat that enveloped France that summer, Diana suffered a small stroke. She refused to be hospitalized or accept any treatment that might stabilize her condition. Her four sons, several grandchildren and Deborah made their way to Paris to say goodbye, and she died peacefully at home on 11 August, aged ninety-three. She was cremated at Père Lachaise cemetery and the following week her ashes were buried next to Unity’s in the churchyard at Swinbrook, after just the sort of simple service she had wanted. With her death, the extraordinary correspondence between the Mitford sisters came to an end.
* * *
1 Phillip Whitehead (1937–2005). Journalist, author and Labour MEP. He was president of the Oxford Union in 1961.
2 Diana had recently been operated on for skin cancer.
3 Pamela Digby (1920–97). The legendary Washington hostess and Egeria of the Democrats was married to Winston Churchill’s son, Randolph 1939–46, to the film producer Leland Hayward 1960–71, and to the millionaire W. Averell Harriman 1971–86. In 1993, she was appointed American ambassador to Paris.
4 Winston Churchill’s father, Lord Randolph, was believed to have died of general Paralysis of the Insane brought on by advanced syphilis.
5 John Major, Prime Minister since 1990, resigned as party leader in 1995 but was re-elected. In 1997 he resigned after the Conservative defeat in the general election.
1 The article by Christopher Hitchens described Mother Teresa as ‘the ghoul of Calcutta’ and a self-serving egotist. Vanity Fair, February 1995.
2 Jessica’s grandson James had joined the Public Defender Service in Washington.
1 Roy Hattersley (1932–). The former Deputy Leader of the Labour Party was a neighbour of the Devonshires at Great Longstone, Derbyshire.
1 Diana and Deborah were reading the manuscript of The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh.
2 Noblesse Oblige.
3 Paul-César Helleu (1859–1927). The fashionable French artist, a friend of the sisters’grandfather, had painted and drawn several members of the family and had been an admirer of Diana when she was in Paris aged seventeen.
4 Giovanni Boldini (1842–1931). Fashionable Italian portrait painter who settled in Paris in 1872.
5 Georges Goursat (1863–1934). French caricaturist of the Belle Époque who worked under the pseudonym ‘Sem’.
1 Henriette Mabille de Poncheville (1926–). A friend of Diana. Married Leonard Byng in 1961.
2 Deborah was encouraging Diana to write another book about the people she had known.
3 Boris Anrep (1883–1969). Russian artist best known for his floor mosaics in the London National Gallery in which he portrayed Diana as Polyhymnia, muse of sacred music and oratory.
4 George Kennedy (1884–1954). The well-known architect had designed the swimming pool and gazebo at Biddesden.
5 Stephen Tomlin (1901–37). Bloomsbury sculptor.
6 Peter Quennell (1908–93). The author wrote in the first volume of his memoirs that he had formed ‘a romantic devotion’ to Diana when she was married to Bryan.
7 Diana met the composer Kurt Weill (1900–50) and his wife, Lotte Lenya (1898–1981), in the early 1930s, soon after they were driven out of Germany by a Nazi-orchestrated campaign.
1 When Max Hastings took over as editor of the Evening Standard, Diana was indeed dropped as a regular reviewer
2 A. N. Wilson (1950–). The novelist, biographer and literary editor at the Evening Standard had become a friend and correspondent of Diana.
1 Britain was in the grip of a BSE ‘mad cow disease’ epidemic. Jessica had written to ask whether it was not mad to kill cattle when nobody knew which cows were infected.
1 Lady Mersey died in 1995 and Jean de Baglion in 1993.
2 Mary Pearsall Smith (1864–1945). Married the art critic Bernard Berenson in 1900. She underwent an operation in 1931 from which she never properly recovered. Diana was reading A Self Portrait from her Letters and Diaries, edited by Barbara Strachey (1983)
3 François Mitterrand (1916–96). The French President had died at the beginning of the year.
1 Auberon Waugh (1939–2001). Son of Evelyn Waugh and prolific author who contributed his decided opinions to many publications including the Daily Telegraph, Private Eye, Spectator, Books & Bookmen, Evening Standard and Literary Review.
2 Andrew Devonshire had been installed as a Knight of the Garter in a ceremony at Windsor Castle.
3 th Duke of Norfolk in 1937.
4 Philip Lever, 3rd Viscount Leverhulme (1915–2000). Lieutenant of Cheshire 1949–90. Steward of the Jockey Club 1973–6.
5 Deborah’s nickname for the Prince of Wales who was a regular guest at Chatsworth
6 The Chatsworth butler, land agent, comptroller and their wives.
7 Deborah’s son, who had been chairman of the British Horseracing Board since 1993, was appointed Her Majesty’s Representative at Ascot in 1998.
1 Constancia was a qualified nurse.
1 Jayne Larkin (1919–). Trustee and munificent benefactor of New York’s Metropolitan Museum. Married Standard Oil mogul Charles Wrightsman in 1944.
2 Jacob,4th Baron Rothschild (1936–). Chairman of the National Heritage Memorial Fund 1992–8. Married Serena Dunn in 1961.
3 Oscar de la Renta (1932–). Fashion designer from the Dominican Republic. Married Annette Reid in 1989.
4 Henry Kissinger (1923–). The former US Secretary of State was a well-known soccer enthusiast. Married Nancy Maginnes in 1974.
5 The Kniphausen ‘Hawk’; a late-17th-century gem-encrusted goblet in the shape of an eagle.
6 See Deborah to Nancy, 26 October 1959, p. 319.
7 Dorothy Dean; housekeeper of the public side of Chatsworth.
8 Friend and supporter of the Mosleys; commissioned Diana to write a monthly ‘Letter from Paris’ in Tatler in 1968.
1 A letter from Constancia.
2 The American Way of Death Revisited, a revision of her 1963 bestseller, was completed by Jessica’s husband and published after her death.
1 Service Corporation International, the largest funeral services company in America. In the event, Jessica’s cremation was simple and inexpensive
1 Benjamin Treuhaft had set up ‘Send a Piana to Havana’, a project for exporting pianos to schools in Cuba in defiance of US trade sanctions.
1 Jessica died ten days later, before Deborah was able to go to America to see her.
1 Reprinted in Counting My Chickens, pp. 97–9.
* Look at the people walking down Oxford St, all products of Having Sex.
1 Jean-Pierre Béraud, the chef at Chatsworth, had been killed in a car accident.
1 Diane Peach married Jean-Pierre Béraud in 1983
1 Christine Thompson was head of the sewing room at Chatsworth and her husband, John, was in charge of clocks and carpets.
2 Prince Charles.
3 A London florist.
1 Deborah had visited her idol Elvis Presley’s Memphis home for the first time.
2 Blanche Lindo (1912–). The Jamaican-born friend of Deborah and Diana was a close friend of Ian Fleming during his last years. Married to Joseph Blackwell 1936–45.
3 Warren Davis (1937–). Head of Communications at the National Trust.
4 The upstairs rooms at Graceland were not open to the public.
1 Diana’s eldest son was sixty-seven.
2 Nancy Morrison (1995–). Deborah’s youngest granddaughter.
3 Deborah was a Trustee of the Royal Collection 1993–9.
4 Seventeenth-century tombs of the Fettiplace family, Lords of the Manor of Swinbrook.
1 James Lees-Milne, Ancient as the Hills: Diaries, 1973–1974 (1997).
1 Princess Diana had died in a car crash on 31 August.
2 Peter Maitland (1937–). Director and chief executive of the London antique dealers Mallett & Son 1978–97. He often signed off his letters to Diana (Mosley): ‘I live and die to see you.’
1 Emad (Dodi) Fayed (1955–97). Egyptian-born film producer who was killed in the car crash with Princess Diana. He was the son of Mohamed al Fayed, the owner of Harrods, whose application for British citizenship was rejected on the grounds that he was not of good character, and Samira Khashoggi, sister of Adnan Khashoggi (1935–), the Saudi international arms dealer who was repeatedly involved in allegations of stock manipulation and fraud.
1 Diana’s review of Mark Amory, Lord Berners, The Last Eccentric, appeared in The Times, 27 March 1998.
2 Diana had chosen A la Recherche du temps perdu as her book for ‘On the Shelf’, Sunday Times, 15 March 1998.
1 The land agent at Chatsworth.
2 What Deborah’s grandson William had said to her when trying to explain a game she could not understand
1 Sarah Ferguson was married to Prince Andrew, Duke of York, 1986–96.
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