The Mitford Girls Read online

  Diana tended to treat Mosley’s philandering as he had once advised Cimmie to do, as a tiresome ‘silliness’ that he somehow could not help. In 2000 she wrote that she was sometimes jealous, but ‘I was so confident about him. I knew he’d always come back to me.’14 But to very close friends at the time she admitted that she suffered ‘agonies of jealousy’,15 and during 1935 there is evidence of at least one major row between the two, concerning his relationship with Baba. That summer Mosley was staying with two of his children, Nicholas and Vivien, on the Bay of Naples; he had bought a thirty-foot motor yacht, which was moored below their rented villa16 and used for day trips to the islands and swimming. The arrangement was that Baba would spend the first half of the holiday with them, and Diana the second.

  Diana had been injured recently in a car accident, and needed quite extensive plastic surgery to her face. While she was convalescing in a London clinic, Mosley wrote to her: ‘Hurry up and get well as this place is lovely - 1,000 steps down to the beach - soon get used to them - we run up and down them now - saying, “Won’t they be fun when Diana arrives!” I feel so badly being away while you are so bad...’17 The letter, with its promise of recuperation in the sunshine and Mosley’s company, was too much for Diana: with her face still in bandages she discharged herself at five-thirty one morning, a week earlier than her surgeon recommended. With David’s help - he hired a car and booked her plane ticket - she drove straight to Croydon airport and flew by seaplane to Naples. It is interesting to reflect that although this was only two years after her divorce David was prepared to assist her to get to Mosley.

  She arrived at the villa four days earlier than planned - during a dinner at which Mosley and Baba were entertaining the Crown Princess of Italy - at almost the same time as the cable she had sent advising Mosley that she was coming. Diana recalls that she was ‘half-dead and only wanted to sleep’.18 Vivien remembered hearing a row between the grown-ups that night, and Nicholas recalls doors banging, and being prevented on the following morning from going into one of the bedrooms. ‘Do not go there,’ a servant warned him. ‘Eet ees Mrs Guinness.’19 With hindsight, Nicholas wrote that the situation was ‘a social and a personal challenge worthy of the mettle of someone like my father - on his tightrope, as it were, juggling his plates above Niagara!’20

  After breakfast Mosley left with Baba and the children for Amalfi, where the adults booked into a hotel and the children slept on the boat. Diana was left alone with the servants at the villa, sitting in the shade and enjoying the peace until Mosley and the children returned on the date originally fixed for her arrival. She soon recovered from her injuries, and took boat trips with them, sitting on the prow with ‘an air of stillness about her like that of the sphinxes and classical statues that looked out over the sea from the terraces of the villas on Capri’.21

  If she was annoyed with Mosley, Diana was quite likely to close the Eatonry and go abroad to stay with a friend in luxury and sunshine. She knew that the removal of her loyal support and love was effective punishment. Her beauty gave her a sort of invulnerability, for she always attracted admiring men wherever she went, and at a personal level this must have been the proverbial double-edged sword for Mosley. He was ‘apt to be jealous’, said Nicholas, when he was apart from Diana.

  As well as the row in Italy that year, Diana became pregnant and had a termination. In those days illegitimacy was a serious stigma, not something to inflict lightly upon a child, and had Diana borne Mosley a child at this point the old scandal would have reopened, with all the resultant bad publicity for him, and hurt for the Redesdales. But the abortion provided some sort of catalyst in the relationship, for Diana loved her babies. Although by modern standards she spent little time with them, and even when she was at the Eatonry they were cared for by Nanny, rather than her, this was not unusual in their circle. Her son Jonathan insists that he and his brother saw as much of their mother as did any of their acquaintances. Diana is on record as saying, ‘Marriage meant nothing to me, yet three years after his wife’s death we did marry, because we wanted children, and in those days it was supposed to be better for children to be born in wedlock.’22

  In the early part of 1936 Diana and Mosley decided to marry, but for various reasons that would become obvious - Baba for one, presumably - Mosley did not want news of this to leak out, so they had to find a way to do it in secret. At first they thought it would be possible to marry in Paris but discovered that the banns would have to be posted at the British consulate. Meanwhile there was the question of where to live. The Eatonry was too small: they needed a family home in the country.

  Mosley’s two sisters-in-law were still running his home, Savehay Farm, and looking after the children with the help of dedicated and loyal staff. Diana occasionally visited there, always to a cool reception, and Nicholas recalled being instructed by his nanny that he must ‘never speak to Mrs Guinness’. Although Cimmie had been dead for nearly three years, Mosley knew it would have caused ructions if he had tried to move Diana in, so Diana set about looking for a suitable home, where they could accommodate all the children of their respective earlier marriages. It had to be convenient for Mosley’s campaigning, which continued unabated, especially in the Midlands and industrial north. She found Wootton Lodge in Staffordshire.

  Wootton has been called ‘one of the most beautiful houses in England’, and is vast, magnificent, romantic, if somewhat impractical as a family home. It was built in 1610 and had been a Royalist stronghold during the civil war. Its architecture is reminiscent of the more famous Hardwick Hall (‘more glass than wall’) with huge mullioned windows, which give it an ethereal appearance. The estate agent openly regarded it as a white elephant - for in the prevailing economic climate it seemed unlikely to be taken off his hands - but Diana fell in love with it and persuaded the owner to lease it to her ‘for almost nothing’ with an option to buy later. Mosley paid the rent and installed a heating system, but they agreed that Diana would have to be responsible for the upkeep and staffing. Bryan had made her a generous settlement but she was not rich and she knew that living at Wootton would mean sacrifices. Fortunately for her, David chose this moment to have one of his regular ‘furniture sales’ Swinbrook was to be sold and already he, Sydney, Decca and Debo were living more or less permanently at Old Mill Cottage in High Wycombe. Diana was able to buy some of the best pieces of furniture and family paintings to furnish her beloved Wootton at a discount.

  It was not quite so fortunate for Sydney: ‘From Batsford Mansion, to Asthall Manor, to Swinbrook House, to Old Mill Cottage’ was the derisive chant coined by Decca and Debo to describe the decline of the Redesdale family fortunes. Despite Sydney’s financial prudence, David’s various moneymaking schemes - the gold mine, and investments in ventures such as diving to a sunken galleon to raise gold bullion - ate into the Redesdale inheritance. He turned down schemes that subsequently made money, such as the first ice-cube-making machine to be introduced to England. Even worse, he seemed to have an uncanny knack for investing at the top of a market, and selling at the bottom.

  As before, when David was selling their homes, Sydney took herself well out of the way. She, Decca, Debo and Unity, whose year of study was now over, went on holiday. After a week in Paris the party boarded the Donaldson-Atlantic Line’s SS Letitia on a ‘cultural cruise’ of ancient sites and places of architectural and archaeological interest such as Napoleon’s house in Corsica and the Parthenon in Athens, and there were a number of public-school parties on board. But there were enough passengers of the right sort to create some interest, and when Decca wrote to Nancy telling her ‘there is a Lord on board called Ld Rathcreedon, he’s rather nice too. His brother is travelling also . . .’ Nancy replied inimically:

  There is a Lord on board,

  A Lord on board, poor Decca roared,

  But the Lord on board is a bit of a fraud,

  ’Cause the Lord on board has a wife called Maud,

  There is a Lord on board...23
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  For the first time in years the three younger Mitford sisters were all together on holiday and Unity and Decca behaved like schoolgirls, giggling and misbehaving. It must have been wearing for Sydney for their cavorting began in Paris and seems to have lasted the entire holiday. In Paris they met Dolly Wilde, daughter of Oscar Wilde’s brother and a noted lesbian. Attractive and witty, she was a leading light in the rich, artistic crowd who peopled Paris Society in the thirties and knew everyone worth knowing. Nancy had provided introductions, and Unity and Decca deliberately irritated Sydney by pretending to be ‘in love’ with Dolly, fighting to sit next to her in a taxi, stroking her fur collar and accepting gifts of frilly night-gowns from her.24 Aboard ship they teased ‘the Lord on board’ and his pale-looking brother, and sang rude songs about sixteen-year-old Debo’s innocent holiday flirtation with ‘Red’ Rathcredon. ‘On the good ship Lollipop,/It’s a night trip, into bed you hop,/With Ld Rathcreedon/All aboard for the Garden of Eden.’25

  They peppered their conversation with their favourite talk of white slavers; they teased other passengers with practical jokes, convincing one young man that Unity said her nightly prayers to Hitler while giving the Nazi salute. Even Decca joined in this one but in general all three followed Unity’s lead as they set out to shock while appearing models of innocence. It was common-room stuff: ‘Did you see the Canon’s balls today?’ one would enquire loudly of the others at dinner after a visit to a crusader castle. At one point following a tour of a haramlek in a palace in Istanbul Sydney summoned them to her room and looked so grave that they feared there had been bad news from home. ‘Now, children,’ she said, ‘you are not to mention that eunuch at dinner.’26 Unity even managed to put across her political message when one passenger, the noted left-wing Duchess of Atholl, gave a lecture on ‘Modern Despots’. Unity insisted on the right to reply, and did so. A few months later, when word of this debate, and in particular Unity’s platform, was being belatedly discussed in newspapers, Sydney wrote to the Daily Telegraph pointing out to the Duchess that ‘Nazism is from every point of view preferable to Communism.’

  But the fun between the sisters came to an abrupt end when in Spain, just before the cruise ended, they went ashore to visit the Alhambra. As they got out of the cars in Granada’s town square, a small crowd gathered to see the tourists and Unity’s Fascist badge was spotted. It was a gold swastika, a special one presented by Hitler, and was engraved on the back with his signature. She was hugely proud of it. Before anyone realized what was happening she was surrounded by hostile Spaniards, trying to tear off the hated symbol. Other members of the party rescued her and the Mitfords were put back into a car and returned to the ship. On the journey Decca and Unity began a physical fight in the back of the car, scratching, hair-pulling and arguing. Sydney separated them, gave them ‘a good talking-to’ and confined them in separate cabins for the remainder of the trip. Decca spent the time mulishly plotting how she could escape and run away.

  Following the cruise there was an uneasy truce between Decca and Unity, which was tested every so often by news of the advance of Fascism across Europe. That spring, 1936, Abyssinia fell to Mussolini’s forces and was annexed by Italy, and Hitler’s army marched into the Rhineland to be greeted rapturously by the inhabitants. To Decca’s dismay the British press began to echo her parents’ opinions, that Hitler and his Nazi troops were a bulwark for the rest of Europe against the threat of Communism. Even Beverly Nichols, whose book Cry Havoc had played such a pivotal role in Decca’s developing ideology, seemed to have changed his tune: in the Sunday Chronicle he admitted that Germany had ‘moral strength . . . There is so much in the new Germany that is beautiful, so much that is fine and great . . . all the time we are being trained to believe that the Germans are a nation of wild beasts who vary their time between roasting Jews and teaching babies to present arms. It is simply not true.’ In July Franco launched his attack on the Popular Front government in Spain and long-sighted commentators began referring to it as a rehearsal for a second world war. Shortly afterwards Decca heard on the family grapevine that Esmond, lucky thing, had run off to Spain to join the International Brigade. Then there were rumours that the King was involved with a married woman, an American for heaven’s sake, and she was to get a divorce - but was it in order for her to marry the King? The question was on everyone’s lips and swept the subject of Germany off the pages of newspapers.

  But Unity was seldom at home while these things were coming to pass: she spent most of her time in Germany. Even before the cruise she had squeezed in a short trip, visiting the Goebbels family in Berlin in February, and joining Diana in Cologne for the general election held in April when Hitler was returned to power by 99 per cent of the electorate (there was, of course, no opposing candidate). They checked into the Dom Hotel and were having lunch when Hitler walked in, his face set, arm raised in a Nazi salute. Then his eye fell on the Mitford sisters and his face broke into a smile. ‘What, you two here?’ he said, and invited them to join him for tea. In the jubilant atmosphere that prevailed following his victory he invited them both as his personal guests to the Olympic Games to be held in Berlin in July, and to the Bayreuth Festival afterwards.

  When she returned to England Diana received an invitation to lunch from the Churchills whom she had not seen since she threw in her lot with Mosley, although she had once been a frequent guest at Chartwell and numbered Randolph and Diana among her best friends. As an artist Churchill is generally known for his landscapes and still lifes, but Diana was among the few people he painted.27 Churchill wanted to hear Diana’s opinions on Hitler, and the others present - Lord Ivor Churchill and Sarah Churchill - were ‘simply fascinated’ as she told them about him. Earlier Hitler had asked her about Churchill, and it is worth noting that Diana was one of the very few, if indeed there were any others, who knew both Hitler and Churchill well at a personal level. She suggested that they should meet, convinced that the two great men would get on, though it was clear they already regarded themselves as rivals. ‘Oh, no. No!’ Winston replied.

  It is tempting to wonder what might have happened had Diana been able to arrange a meeting. Might the war, which tore Europe apart, have been prevented? Hitler was pro-England, and had made a study of its culture and history. He was especially fascinated by the ability of such a small nation to control and apparently subjugate a vast empire containing millions of people. He regarded this as evidence of the superiority of the Aryan race and it is widely considered that this was what saved the United Kingdom from precipitate invasion. When Nazi chiefs of staff were poised and ready to strike, at a time when Britain was at its most vulnerable, Hitler hesitated to give the order until the moment was lost. Churchill, on the other hand, is a heroic figure to us now, but in the mid-1930s he was not regarded in that light. Most people in his own class, in his own party, in the government and in the establishment regarded him as an adventurer and a warmonger, with a great failure in his past. The disastrous First World War campaign at Gallipoli had been his initiative, and he had lost his post as First Lord of the Admiralty because of the huge loss of life there in 1915-16.

  After the cruise Unity shot back to Munich, where she was living more or less permanently now, in a flat in the Pension Doering. She had her two white pet rats there and even a dog, a black Great Dane, called Flopsy as a puppy, but later Rebell. At the end of June she went to stay with Janos von Almassy in Austria for a week. Her time in Munich was spent in a ceaseless circle of waiting to be invited by Hitler to join him for lunch, tea or dinner - sometimes in his flat. ‘The greatest moment in my life,’ she told a friend, ‘was sitting at Hitler’s feet and having him stroke my hair.’28 She gave alcoholic parties in her apartment for her friends from ‘the heim’, and her favourite storm-troopers. One of the SS men, Erich Widemann, she regarded as a boyfriend for some years, but it is unlikely that there was any sexual activity between them. If she was ‘in love’ with anyone it was Hitler, in her naïve, adolescent way.

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nbsp; When they went to the Olympics later that summer, Diana and Unity were invited to stay with the Goebbels at their country house Schwanenwerder, just outside Berlin on the Wannsee Lake. The party was taken each day to the stadium by limousine, and, fortunately, Diana felt, she and Unity were not given seats next to their hosts - they found it boring to sit and watch track events for hour after hour: they preferred to get up and walk around. In the evenings there were social events, state banquets, and parties at which leading Nazis vied with each other to provide the best entertainments: von Ribbentrop gave a decorous ‘embassy-style’ dinner party; Goering held a dinner for eight hundred guests who were entertained by a ballet company, dancing in the moonlight, followed by a vast fête champêtre. Two days later Goebbels entertained two thousand guests on an island on the lake: guests reached the site across pontoons strung from the shore, guided by the light of torches held aloft by lines of Nazi maidens (the girls’ equivalent of the Hitler Youth movement).

  When the Games ended Diana and Unity were driven to the Wagner Festival at Bayreuth, in a Mercedes provided by Hitler, for performances of The Ring and Parsifal. The latter was Diana’s least favourite of Wagner’s works and she said so to Hitler when he asked how she had enjoyed it. ‘That is because you are young,’ he told her. ‘You will find as you get older that you will love Parsifal more and more.’29 She states that his prediction was accurate.