What’s the best way to get the upper hand in an argument solely through letters? How should you liven up a dull night at Buckingham Palace? When, exactly, is the best time to run away to the Spanish Civil War? The Mitford sisters – Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah – knew the answers to all these questions and more.
Perhaps the most remarkable family of the mid-twentieth century, their exciting and varied lives, from communist to fascist to aristocrat, mean that there’s no problem they can’t solve.
What’s the best way to get the upper hand in an argument solely through letters? How should you liven up a dull night at Buckingham Palace? When, exactly, is the best time to run away to the Spanish Civil War? The Mitford sisters – Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah – knew the answers to all these questions and more.
Perhaps the most remarkable family of the mid-twentieth century, their exciting and varied lives, from communist to fascist to aristocrat, mean that there’s no problem they can’t solve.
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Overview
What’s the best way to get the upper hand in an argument solely through letters? How should you liven up a dull night at Buckingham Palace? When, exactly, is the best time to run away to the Spanish Civil War? The Mitford sisters – Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah – knew the answers to all these questions and more.
Perhaps the most remarkable family of the mid-twentieth century, their exciting and varied lives, from communist to fascist to aristocrat, mean that there’s no problem they can’t solve.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780750994255 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2021 |
| Edition description: | Second Edition,New edition |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.08(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Keeping Up Appearances
An Index of Everyday Obstacles
Nancy is a very curious character.
– Muv
The Mitfords had a unique way of approaching everyday obstacles, often with the view that there was a funny side to everything. You too can use their approach, following their attitudes to such obstacles:
Adultery: Discretion and acceptance are everything.
Alcohol: Indulge in the occasional tipple, refrain from excessive drinking.
Alimony: Always accept.
Apologising: Sometimes a necessity in life but refrain from admitting blame.
Beauty: One is born with it.
Boundaries: Non-existent.
Bourgeoisie: Laughable.
Charm: According to Diana, charm was much more important than beauty.
Children: Deborah advised that one should love one's children but there is no rule in liking them.
Church: To relieve the boredom of the Sunday sermons, the children would lick the pews.
Coming Out: A seasonal trudge around the marriage market.
Corrective Surgery: i.e. Diana's car crash in 1935. Yes.
Cosmetic Surgery: Diana claimed that vanity prevented her from having a facelift.
Crime: A fascinating subject.
Day School: Prison to Pamela, Diana and Deborah. Freedom for Nancy, Unity and Jessica.
Death: A fact of life.
Disagreements: An argument is a great way to show off one's intellect.
Divorce: Be prepared for social suicide.
Exercise: Only if one has to wear tennis whites, a golf jersey or equestrian clothing.
Fancifier: How awful, Deborah thought, that two honest people like Muv and Farve could give life to such 'fancifiers' as Nancy and Jessica. A fancifier is a lovely name for a liar.
Friendship: In the style of Deborah, always refer to your female friends as 'the wife'.
Funerals: Sing Holy, Holy, Holy followed by absolute floods.
Holidays: To be spent on the Venice Lido.
Honourables: 'To be drowned at birth?' Discuss.
Illnesses: Denial can be comforting but not a cure.
Insults: Do make them memorable or forever hold your peace.
Jealously: It is rather a privilege to consume other people's thoughts.
Jobs: To be tolerated until one discovers their niche or something better comes along.
Language Barrier: Nod in agreement, and in the style of Deborah exclaim, 'Quelle Surprise!'
Life: Seems to be, as Nancy claimed, a massive joke.
Love: A fleeting fancy.
Marriage: Essential if one is trained in little else.
Medication: Gleefully consume the forbidden fruits of one's childhood. See Muv's Medicines (p. 197).
Money: It was Nancy's motto that lack of money should never prevent one from having a good time.
Nicknames: A must, the more far-fetched the better.
Nightclubs: In the words of Diana, they are 'very dull-awful noise, second-rate jazz, hideous people, and lights going on and off'.
Nouvelle Rich: Terribly Non-U.
Organisations: It is in true Mitford fashion to get completely caught up in one's beliefs and whims.
Peer Pressure: What peer pressure? The Mitfords set the trend.
Politics: Causing family feuds since 1932.
Public Transport: Yes. In her youth, if Nancy had nothing to do on a Friday night, she would have hopped on board a double-decker bus for a trip through the leafy London suburbs.
Post Office: One is always at their mercy.
Religion: 'The Church of England', Diana freely admitted was, 'the fount of all evil'.
Shopping: As Nancy advised, shopping is an art form that takes years to perfect and cannot be accomplished in a weekend. One must carefully select and build a collection of clothing.
Swearing: Terribly Non-U.
Tanning: Nancy believed that a tanned complexion was nothing more than 'one mass of well-oiled cracks'.
Telephone: Farve only used the telephone if it was an emergency.
Travelling: 'All tourists half expect to be murdered,' Nancy once said, so it is awfully brave to attempt to travel. Do admit.
Unity [Mitford]: Testing one's patience since 1914.
Visitors: A terrible inconvenience. In the style of Farve, if one should be inconvenienced by house guests, one should bellow from the table, 'Have these people no homes of their own to go to?'
Weddings: See Nancy's Guide to Planning a Wedding (p. 152).
* * *
How to Behave: Mitford Style
Maintaining a Persona: 'The Shop Front'
I may seem calm but everything is churning underneath.
– Pamela
As a rule, the Mitfords never allowed the outside world to catch a glimpse of how they truly felt about a certain situation. They hid their feelings, mainly sorrow, beneath an exterior known as 'The Shop Front'. This established persona was, as Nancy often told friends, founded in the nursery. The shop front, their chosen expression for trying times, took on many disguises. Nancy and Diana used humour to mask their heartache, whereas Pamela exuded calmness to the point of being vacant. And, despite her passionate views on things, and being very vocal about almost everything, Jessica, too, could blank out her true feelings to protect herself whenever she felt vulnerable.
She [Nancy] and Decca were (and are) equally economical with truth or whatever the expression for malicious imaginings.
– Deborah
When Nancy's marriage was failing, she would often invent funny stories about her husband and sail through life with an air of hilarity, taking nothing seriously, but behind the scenes she was deeply depressed and at a loose end. Nancy received the news of her brother's death while staying with friends, and rather than retreating to her bedroom under a cloud of grief, Nancy applied her make-up, changed into evening clothes and attended supper. She made a conscious effort to be bright and amusing all through the meal because she did not wish to spoil it for the other guests. Critics might dismiss this as being unfeeling or too afraid to face the facts, but friends often remarked on Nancy's bravery in desolate situations.
For the public, Nancy is the delightful writer of funny books. Nobody who hadn't seen Nancy could ever realise how vile Nancy could be.
– Deborah
Nancy's persevering nature paid off when she was visiting friends in Oxford. During the visit, she began to feel unwell and realised it was serious. Unsure of what to say, as she did not wish to make a scene, Nancy tactfully made up a story of having an attack of appendicitis. She carried her suitcase herself, so as not to show how ill she felt, and boarded a bus straight for London. Upon reaching London, she immediately checked into hospital. It turned out that Nancy was dangerously ill, suffering from an ectopic pregnancy, and to save her life she had to have emergency surgery, which banished all hopes of her having the children she desperately wanted. Rather than wallowing in the gloominess of her new situation, she put on a brave face. That was her way of dealing with things. The shop front must be maintained at all times.
The private Decca is Decca, but the public Decca is somebody unforgivably callous and hard.
– Diana
Double Standards
It should not come as a surprise that each Mitford girl made up their own rules for living – and then changed them accordingly to adapt to whatever mindset they were in or whatever obstacle they faced. As we know, Jessica despised Diana due to her association with fascism, so it would seem natural that she would also loathe Unity for her close friendship with Hitler; after all, it was verging on the same principle. This is, in fact, wrong. Jessica adjusted her views to make room for her beloved 'Boud'. She blamed Diana for Unity's extreme beliefs, and for her early death in 1948. In Jessica's eyes, Diana was to blame for everything.
It would be three decades before the opposing sisters would meet again, briefly reuniting over Nancy's deathbed, and then going their separate ways until Jessica's death in 1996.
'The more I see of Bryan the more it surprises me that Diana should be in love with him, but I think he's amazingly nice,' Nancy wrote to their brother, Tom. 'Nice' was the preferable term used for describing Bryan. Indeed, he had a nice personality, a nice demeanour and a nice, gentle way of handling people; his nature was without malice and, unlike his sisters-in-law, he did not thrive on catty gossip or teasing people for his own amusement. But his niceness did not discourage Diana's wicked treatment of him.
Nancy was not the only person astonished to discover Bryan and Diana's unusual love match. Nancy predicted that Diana would soon grow tired of sentimental Bryan. Diana craved excitement and culture, whereas Bryan preferred to stay at home. As a pastime, Bryan wrote poetry: many poems were dedicated to Diana, but she cared little for his devotion. Here were two people, so different in spirit and in their awareness. He was blinded by love and admiration for her, so in essence, whenever she was conducting her affair with Sir Oswald Mosley she was knowingly wounding him each time. But it did not matter; his passive attitude seemed to endure her cruel treatment.
Even though Diana instigated her divorce from Bryan, she felt it best to blatantly remain in the family home, thus creating an uncomfortable atmosphere so Bryan would be forced to leave her. In doing so, Diana predicted, 'The onus was on him'.
Diana viewed Nancy as her only ally during the divorce proceedings from Bryan in 1932. For a short time, Nancy displayed an unshakable loyalty towards Diana, and moved into her spare bedroom at 'The Eatonary', the silly nickname the younger girls had given her posh townhouse in Eaton Square.
Muv and Farve disapproved of Nancy's siding with Diana, and they blamed her for encouraging Diana's decision to leave Bryan. Although she appeared to be completely loyal to Diana in her hour of need, Nancy was not above accepting a gift from Bryan when he sent her an expensive dress of white tulle for her wedding to Peter Rodd in 1933.
The gesture of buying Nancy a wedding present serves as an example of Bryan's personality. He wished to remain close to the Mitford family; he enjoyed the sibling camaraderie, the banter and teasing, and often holidayed with the family, minus Diana, during their annual skating holiday to Switzerland.
Although Diana devastated Bryan by leaving him for Sir Oswald, he was still besotted with her and found it difficult to evoke feelings of hatred. When she suffered broken facial bones as a result of a car accident in 1934, he rushed to her aid and arranged for the top plastic surgeon, Sir Harold Gillies, to tend to her. The previous doctor who tended to Diana had stitched her face together using rough thread due to the surgical thread being locked up for the evening. Had Bryan not intervened, her face would have been left badly disfigured. Upon her recovery, Diana left her sickbed and rushed to Naples to holiday with Sir Oswald.
Upon reaching Naples, Diana discovered Baba Metcalfe sunbathing on the terrace. She rushed into the villa to locate Sir Oswald, but he was at the beach with his children. He hurried up the steps to the villa to be confronted by his two mistresses. Diana, enraged by his deception, caused a scene. Wires had been crossed and Sir Oswald had not been expecting her until the following week. He had hoped to spend one week with Baba and the other with Diana, without either woman knowing about it. The exasperated Italian butler was overheard saying, 'It ees Mrs Guinness', when the children became alarmed by the raised voices. The next morning, Sir Oswald and Baba left for Capri. This disregard for Diana's feelings did little to discourage her relationship with him.
Family dynamics were firmly established in the nursery. Pamela stood alone, much more drawn to Muv than to her sisters, although in their later years she became the star of the family and her common sense was valued by all the sisters, especially Nancy whom she nursed through cancer and Diana with whom she travelled after Sir Oswald's death. Deborah claimed that Pamela still told her what to do long after she had grown up.
Jessica and Deborah were close in their childhood, and after Unity's departure to Germany, they grew even closer and shared a bedroom, always. It pained Deborah when she learned of Jessica's elopement with Esmond Romilly; how could she have deceived her, Deborah wondered. It was, as Deborah said, almost like a death in the family. Deborah could never forgive Jessica for tearing the family apart, disappearing without a trace and then cutting all familial ties once her secret was revealed.
Jessica and Nancy were most alike in their talents and in their wit. They had the same sharp tongue and eye for mockery, and got along wonderfully in person. But Nancy could not control her disloyalty to Jessica, and Jessica did not seem to mind much – she half expected it – and was disappointed when Charlotte Mosley withheld certain 'offensive' letters from Nancy's volume of letters, Love from Nancy.
The girls were alarmingly double-faced in their letters, about each other and to each other. Nancy 'dies for' Jessica and yet ridicules her behind her back. It was a common art practised by each girl in their endless correspondence, spanning decades; all except Diana. Yes, on the surface Diana was loyal to the core, not only towards her irrational beliefs but to her sisters too. Also, despite her association with Hitler and Sir Oswald, two figures of hate, she was very much 'the favourite sister'. Deborah adored her, which is obvious in her letters and recollections of Diana, and Diana loved her little sister. For almost a decade they were the only two sisters left: they could only write to each other and this confirmed their closeness. Deborah was present when Diana died during the notorious Parisian heat wave of 2003. 'I still pick up a pen to write to Diana,' Deborah solemnly said in an interview in 2010.
So, how could Diana win such admiration from her sisters, all except Jessica, of course? Nancy's teases tested the girls' nerves and Farve's rages put them on edge. Their mother was of little use in terms of companionship and Unity and Jessica were too busy with their political causes, something that was viewed as a lark. Pamela was vague and uninterested in them, and Nancy was 'a remote star'. Diana was reliable; her unchanging nature was a comfort to the girls and she was outwardly maternal to Jessica and Deborah. She taught Jessica to ride and gently prompted her, 'Do try to hang on this time, darling. You know how cross Muv will be if you break your arm again.' In their youth, Jessica adored Diana, Deborah claimed to hardly know her until she was much more grown up and Nancy came to rely on her generosity. Those attributes painted a saintly portrait of Diana, which in turbulent times the sisters still remembered. Diana's loyalty stood for something in the Mitford household, especially to sentimental Deborah.
Delusions of Grandeur
Nancy became an Honourable at the age of 12, 'by the skin of her pointed teeth', when Farve's eldest brother, the heir of the Redesdale estate, died in the First World War. However, it is a theory widely accepted by Nancy and explained in her infamous essay, 'The English Aristocracy', that the non-eldest children of a lord, especially girls, are in fact commoners as they cannot inherit their father's title or land, something which the entire monetary estate is tied to.
On that note, the Mitford message seemed to be that 'common' people should always behave as though one were an Honourable; good breeding often goes hand in hand with good manners. The Mitfords never changed their behaviour for anyone because it was their own natural character. Manners were instilled in the nursery and thus became a way of life. It has been said that, as a rule, when one is overly aware of one's own personality traits one becomes self-conscious of them. The Mitfords were never self-conscious about anything, at least not on the surface. Muv used the term 'what-a-set' when she was at a loss of words to describe anybody who behaved flamboyantly. It is a tactful description that contains a multitude of interpretations.
In 1967, a formal occasion hosted by Deborah brought Pamela into the company of Lord Mountbatten, who was the ambitious uncle of Prince Philip, great-grandson of Queen Victoria and previous Viceroy of India. Everybody had heard of him, and he and his glamorous wife, Lady Edwina, were prominent members of high society. 'I know you are Woman,' he mischievously said to Pamela. Pamela turned and barked, 'Yes, and may I ask who you are?' Relaying the outburst, Nancy gravely wrote to Jessica, 'Collapse of stout party'.
Bryan would try to forget he was rich in a bid to be ordinary, when, in fact, Diana wanted to be anything but ordinary. Perhaps this is a good example of how new money and old money perceived things to be: Bryan's family had made their money from trade, whereas Diana was the daughter of a lord and her grandparents, on both sides, were in the peerage long before the Guinness family.
This façade caused problems in their marriage, and the pivotal moment in this ordinariness charade came when Bryan invited his architect friend, George Kennedy, and his wife to supper. Bryan thought it would make a good impression if he allowed the servants to have the night off and he optimistically suggested that they should cook the supper. Of course, Diana could see the insensitivity of the scenario. 'What that meant, of course, is that Poor Mrs. Kennedy, who cooked every night of her life, simply had to set to and peel potatoes yet again – Bryan couldn't do it. They weren't well off. What she would have liked was to have been taken to the Ritz.'
What a bore to be anything other than yourself, do admit.
(Continues...)Table of Contents
Foreword Joseph Dumas 6
Acknowledgements 8
Author's Note 10
Introduction: The Mitfords 11
1 Keeping Up Appearances 39
2 Looking the Part 102
3 At Home & Abroad 120
4 The Trivialities of Life 139
5 Hons & Counter-Hons 181
Afterword 203
Personal Recollections 211
Mitford Bibliography 251
Unrealised Projects 254