The Mitford Girls Published: 2010 Tags: pb, Kindle THE MITFORD GIRLS tells the true story behind the gaiety and frivolity of the six Mitford daughters - and the facts are as sensational as any novel: Nancy, whose bright social existence masked an obsessional doomed love which soured her success; Pam, a countrywoman married to one of the best brains in Europe; Diana, an iconic beauty, who was already married when at 22 she fell in love with Oswald Moseley, the leader of the British fascists; Unity, who romantically in love with Hitler, became a member of his inner circle before shooting herself in the temple when WWII was declared; Jessica, the family rebel, who declared herself a communist in the schoolroom and the youngest sister, Debo, who became the Duchess of Devonshire.This is an extraordinary story of an extraordinary family, containing much new material, based on exclusive access to Mitford archives. Table of Contents Title Page Copyright Page Dedication INTRODUCTION Chapter 1 - VICTORIAN ROOTS (1894-1904) Chapter 2 - EDWARDIAN AFTERNOON (1904-15) Chapter 3 - NURSERY DAYS (1915-22) Chapter 4 - ROARING TWENTIES (1922-9) Chapter 5 - BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS (1929-30) Chapter 6 - THE STAGE IS SET (1930-32) Chapter 7 - SLINGS AND ARROWS (1932-4) Chapter 8 - UNITY AND THE FÜHRER (1934-5) Chapter 9 - SECRET MARRIAGE (1935-7) Chapter 10 - ELOPEMENT (1937) Chapter 11 - FAMILY AT ODDS (1937-8) Chapter 12 - SLIDE TOWARDS CONFLICT (1938) Chapter 13 - NO LAUGHING MATTER (1939) Chapter 14 - IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES (1940-41) Chapter 15 - GAINS AND LOSSES (1941-3) Chapter 16 - WOMEN AT WAR (1943-4) Chapter 17 - THE FRENCH LADY WRITER (1944-7) Chapter 18 - TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES (1948-55) Chapter 19 - RETURN TO THE OLD COUNTRY 1955-8 Chapter 20 - A COLD WIND TO THE HEART (1958-66) Chapter 21 - VIEWS AND REVIEWS (1966-80) Chapter 22 - RELATIVELY CALM WATERS (1980-2000) SOURCE NOTES Acknowledgements SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY Prior to The Mitford Girls, Mary S. Lovell has written five major biographies, including the international bestseller Straight on till Morning: The Biography of Beryl Markham. She lives in Gloucestershire. For further information on books by Mary S. Lovell, please visit her website at www.marylovell.com Praise for The Mitford Girls ‘This is an excellent book - calm, dispassionate and respectful of its subjects’ Daily Telegraph ‘By drawing on new sources, Lovell presents a fresh version of the Mitford story . Lovell’s book proves that there was something extraordinary about those six well-bred girls from Gloucestershire’ Independent ‘Lovell’s never-a-dull-moment biography animates usually underrated players such as the girls’ mother, Lady Redesdale, who once lectured Hitler on the importance of wholemeal bread, and Pam, the second eldest and “most rural” Mitford Girl, who had a sky-blue Aga to match her eyes’ Daily Mail Biographies by Mary S. Lovell Straight on till Morning: The Biography of Beryl Markham The Sound of Wings: The Biography of Amelia Earhart Cast No Shadow: The Spy Who Changed the Course of World War II A Scandalous Life: The Biography of Jane Digby The Splendid Outcast: The African Short Stories of Beryl Markham A Rage to Live: A Biography of Richard and Isabel Burton The Mitford Girls MARY S LOVELL Hachette Digital www.littlebrown.co.uk Published by Hachette Digital 2008 Copyright © Mary S. Lovell 2001 The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7481 0921 0 This ebook produced by JOUVE, FRANCE Hachette Digital An imprint of Little, Brown Book Gr oup 100 Victoria Embankment London EC4Y 0DY An Hachette Livre UK Company This book is for Graeme, Shari, Robyn and Imogen With all the love in the world Family Tree INTRODUCTION During the course of researching and writing this book I have often been asked the question that people ask endlessly of a biographer: ‘Who are you writing about at the moment?’ In answering, ‘The Mitford family,’ I have noticed that recognition begins at about the age of fifty. In other words, if the questioner is over the age of fifty I generally receive a sage nod, below that the polite enquiry, ‘And who are they?’ ‘They’ were six beautiful and able sisters, Nancy, Pam, Diana, Unity, Jessica (‘Decca’), and Deborah (‘Debo’). Nancy wrote a series of sparkling bestselling novels, the best known of which are The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, and for which she drew largely upon her family for characters. Decca launched her writing career when she wrote a bestselling memoir of her early life called Hons and Rebels. These three books spawned a genre, which is called by the family the Mitford Industry. Later, both Diana and Debo also produced bestselling books. Yet the Mitford sisters are not known merely for producing literature: they also led extraordinarily full lives, quite independent of each other. The bones of the sisters’ childhood with their private languages, family jokes and endless nicknames are well known to people of my generation (over fifty), so I have tried to make the story intelligible to readers new to it without dwelling overmuch on material about the girls’ childhood that has been told and retold, except when necessary for continuity or when it added measurably to the narrative. What I set out to do was explore the relationships between the sisters, drawing on personal interviews, family papers and correspondence not previously seen outside the family, as well as extensive published sources. When I began researching, I suppose I had in mind - because of the above books - a frothy biography of life in Society between the wars. Of course I knew of the polarized ideologies of Diana, Unity and Decca but I had not realized how quickly or how completely the mirth of the sisters’ childhood disintegrated into conflict, unexpected private passions, and tragedies. The girls’ parents, Lord and Lady Redesdale - David Freeman Mitford and his wife Sydney - are perhaps better known to posterity (thanks again to the above-mentioned books) as ‘Farve’ and ‘Muv’. They were honest, well-meaning, salt-of-the-earth, admittedly slightly eccentric, socially retiring minor aristocrats; thoroughly nice people who, because of their extraordinary daughters, were propelled unwillingly, blinking and unprepared, into an international spotlight. Yet if there is a heroine in this book it is surely Sydney. Her loyalty to, degree of concern for and tactful support of all her daughters were unflagging, even when pre-Second World War polemics caused the disintegration of her formerly happy marriage. This strength may come as a surprise to those who recall the ‘Muv’ of her daughters’ writings as a slightly batty, absent-minded and vague personality almost disassociated from the reality of her children’s lives. Although politics plays a major part in the story of the sisters, this is not a political book, so anyone expecting a stand against Unity or Diana and the far right, or Decca and the far left, must look elsewhere. I accept each of these protagonists as she was, and, in Diana’s case, as she still is. This book seeks to explore the richness of the personalities, not to judge them. The reader is as capable as I am of forming his or her own opinions based on the evidence, and an individual social ideology. Rather, I hope to illustrate the complex loyalties and love, disloyalties and even hate, and above all the laughter that ran through this family’s relationships - they could always find humour even in their own misfortunes. Lord Longford, who has known the family for seventy years, told me, ‘You have to look at that family as fun. They were enormous fun.’1 Two of the sisters are triumphantly alive as I write this book. Diana, at ninety, is still chic and articulate; Debo, serene and utterly charming, celebrated her eightieth birthday in March 2000, yet apparently possesses the energy levels of someone half her age. She is a busy CEO directing a large, successful and constantly expanding organization that employs hundreds of people. The mere fact that this book deals with nine personalities, three of whom have already been the subject of independent biographies,2 means that for reasons of space much fascinating detail has had to be pruned. For those interested in delving further a bibliography is included. I have had to resist the temptation to explore a multiplicity of players on the twentieth-century world stage with whom various members of the Mitford family came into contact: from Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Adolf Hitler, Paul Joseph Goebbels, Benito Mussolini, Hermann Goering, and General de Gaulle, to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Max Beaverbrook, John and Bobby Kennedy, and Aly Khan; from George Bernard Shaw, Lytton Strachey, Evelyn Waugh, Diana Cooper, Emerald Cunard, John Betjeman and Cecil Beaton, to Katherine Graham, Maya Angelou, Salman Rushdie and Jon Snow. A complete list of the celebrities, heroes and anti-heroes who moved in and out of the lives of the sisters would take pages. Suffice it to say that it is simply not possible to tell the story of the relationships between the members of the family and also indulge the luxury of exploring these fascinating side issues.