The Mitford Girls Page 22

  The relationship between both women and Hitler had now progressed to a stage where they could even hector him gently. At one luncheon party at Goebbels’ home, he sat with Unity on one side and Diana on the other while they ‘attacked’ him for appointing Ribbentrop as ambassador to London. Ribbentrop was absolutely the wrong man for London, they told him. Such lèse majesté did not go down well with Nazi officials who were always on their guard in the presence of Hitler. No one ever contradicted him. For these two ‘over made-up British women’ to dare to do so did not make them popular. Increasingly Unity found them blocking her access to Hitler. Meanwhile Hitler appeared to enjoy their company, and there is one eyewitness account of them, both dressed in powder-blue jumpers, blonde and striking, sitting on either side of him while they all discussed the reason for the Mitfords’ peachy skin. The English rain was responsible, they told him. In their presence Hitler could be tempted into one or other of his party pieces, either an elaborate pantomime of himself carefully rolling and smoking a cigarette, or an impersonation of Mussolini strutting and bellowing and receiving the gift of ceremonial sword which he drew from its scabbard and flourished dramatically. Hitler usually finished this mimicry by saying in a self-deprecating manner guaranteed to draw good-humoured applause, ‘Of course I’m no good at that sort of thing. I’d just murmur, “Here, Schaub,5 you hang on to this.”’30

  But despite appearances, a more serious purpose than mere junketing lay behind Diana’s four visits to Germany in 1936.31 The BUF required huge sums of money to run its headquarters with full-time staff, its advertising and promotion, and the cost of Mosley’s hectic programme all over the country. Its revenue, which consisted of the combined income from BUF subscriptions and donations from wealthy sympathizers, were proving insufficient. Eventually, Mosley used virtually all of his own fortune propping up his party, but in 1936 he was confident he could find some way to provide for the necessary shortfall in income. Several schemes were floated but Mosley settled on the only really serious one, which, if it could be brought off, was the equivalent of a licence to print money.

  In essence it was to start a commercial radio station, based in Germany and broadcasting in Britain. The BBC held a monopoly on radio transmission for the UK in the thirties, and there were no commercial stations. There were, however, two overseas radio stations that provided what the audiences wanted, and which the BBC staidly refused to offer: evening programmes offering popular music. The most famous of these, the foreign-owned Radio Luxembourg, which played modern recordings hour after hour, interspersed with advertisements, was the only commercial station available in most of England and Scotland, and even though reception was patchy at times it was extremely popular until well into the 1960s. The other station was owned and run by Captain Plugge, a Tory MP, who had obtained a wavelength from the French government. He called his station Radio Normandie and though it could only be received in southern England he made a small fortune from it. Bill Allen, a senior figure in the BUF, was in the advertising business and knew all about Radio Normandie. He backed the idea enthusiastically for he knew that large national companies were looking for alternative advertising platforms to the traditional ones of newspapers and magazines, and the huge success of radio advertising in the USA had pointed the way.

  What was required was a medium-band wavelength, powerful enough to reach most of the United Kingdom, so Diana, whose German was by now fluent, was asked to use her friendships and contacts with top Nazis to try to secure permission for the establishment of such a radio station. Apart from the much-needed revenue that would be generated from advertising commercial products, Mosley and Diana planned a range of own-label cosmetics and other domestic items. And despite the station’s declared aim of being strictly commercial, and relaying only sport, sweet music, beauty hints and similar domestic delights, the opportunity for covert propaganda to the mainly young audience that such a station would attract was incalculable, though Diana refutes this was ever on the agenda. As bait Diana offered payment in hard currency to aid the Reich’s serious balance-of-payments deficit.

  To ensure that advertisers would not be put off advertising on a station that was so firmly allied politically, no mention of Mosley’s name was ever made in connection with it. However, the directors of the company, Air Time Ltd, formed to float the idea were senior members of the BUF. The secrecy over Mosley’s involvement was not mere paranoia: in the previous year Lord Rothermere’s Daily Mail complied instantly when a Jewish industrialist threatened to withdraw all advertising from the newspaper if it continued to support Mosley. For this reason absolute confidentiality concerning Diana’s mission was maintained, and even Unity - perhaps especially Unity, who was a chatterbox - was not party to the plan.

  Immediately Diana ran up against a major hurdle. Her friendship with Joseph and Magda Goebbels might have led her to assume some support from the propaganda minister who was the person who most mattered in the scheme, but Goebbels was implacably opposed to any broadcasting from Germany over which he did not have ultimate control. Diana knew, however, that the right word from Hitler could change Goebbels’ mind and she was working to this end, while at the same time cementing other friendships that might prove useful. But although her friendship with Hitler was now a matter of record, ‘occasionally . . . we dined and watched a film or talked by the fire. We did not discuss the radio project,’ Diana wrote. ‘It was the sort of thing that bored him and was left to his ministers.’32

  She did not get far with the radio station project in 1936, but one positive thing for her came out of the series of visits. Diana got on well with Magda Goebbels, and the two women spent a good deal of time together and were close enough for Magda to confide her unhappiness in her marriage. The women had something in common: Goebbels was a notorious womanizer and at one point the marriage almost ended in divorce over his affair with the beautiful Czechoslovakian film star Lida Baarova. On that occasion Magda appealed to Hitler asking for a divorce, but Hitler insisted the couple remain married and that Goebbels give up his lover. Press photographs of the apparently happily married couple with their six beautiful blond children projected too powerful an image of a perfect German family to be discarded. Furthermore, as Hitler had no wife, Magda occupied the position of ‘first lady’ in the Nazi administration. She complied on this occasion as on others, the chief reason, she said, being her children. In turn Diana told her about the problems she and Mosley had experienced in keeping their marriage ceremony secret from the British press. Here, Magda was able to help: she invited Diana to hold her marriage ceremony at her Berlin home. When this proposal was put to Hitler he agreed to ensure that no news of the ceremony would reach the German press, and furthermore that he would attend as guest of honour. Goebbels was less than enchanted by the arrangement, especially when he found that Mosley proposed Bill Allen as his witness. Allen was one of the directors of Air Time Ltd and Goebbels did not trust him (probably he was aware that Allen was an MI5 agent). He did not like or trust Mosley either, and quarrelled with Magda about the forthcoming wedding,33 but with Hitler’s sanction the plan went ahead

  Diana and Mosley were married in the drawing room of the Goebbels’ apartment on 6 October 1936. In her autobiography Diana recalled that she wore a pale gold silk tunic dress.

  Unity and I, standing at the window in an upstairs room, saw Hitler walking through the trees of the park-like garden . . . the leaves were turning yellow and there was bright sunshine. Behind him came an adjutant carrying a box and some flowers . . . The ceremony was short; the Registrar said a few words, we exchanged rings, signed our names and the deed was done. Hitler’s gift was a photograph in a silver frame with [the initials] A.H. and the German eagle.34

  Apart from Hitler, Unity and their hosts, the only people present at the ceremony besides the bride and groom and the registrar were Mosley’s witnesses, Bill Allen and Captain Gordon-Canning, an officer in the 14th Hussars. The British consul had been advised of the marriage, for th
e sake of legality, but was asked not to publish information about the wedding, which he was not obliged to do since it was not performed under British jurisdiction. He was also invited to attend but declined owing to a previous engagement.35 The small party went straight from the ceremony to a wedding feast organized by Magda Goebbels, and there was no time for Mosley and Hitler to speak privately as Diana had hoped there would be. Afterwards they attended a meeting at the Sportsplatz where Hitler addressed a crowd of twenty thousand. Although Mosley spoke no German Diana thought it would be interesting for him to see Hitler’s technique. Hitler then left on a special train for Munich and the newly-weds went to their hotel, the Kaiserhof. It had been a long day and they were both tired. What should have been a romantic occasion was spoiled by a quarrel, ‘of which, try as I will, I cannot remember the reason,’ Diana wrote, ‘and we went to bed in dudgeon. Next day we flew home to England.’36

  Apart from Unity, only David, Sydney and Tom were told of the marriage, under a strict vow of secrecy. Although David was not reconciled to Mosley, both the Redesdales were relieved that at least Diana was no longer living in sin and the rule that he must never be mentioned was relaxed. However, Sydney realized shortly afterwards that the world still thought Diana was living in sin, and that therefore she could still not allow Debo to visit Diana at Wootton. ‘The poor thing was quite distraught about it,’ Unity wrote to Diana, ‘and . . . did hope you would understand. ’37

  There was still no change in the relationship between Nancy, Diana and Unity. And the singular thing about this quarrel is that Nancy, the queen of all teasers, was deeply hurt by Diana’s continuation of the ‘non-speakers’ rule, and from this hurt grew an increasing bitterness. Perhaps she was not even aware of it herself, but it shows in waspish comments in her correspondence. During the summer she and Prod had taken Decca on holiday to Brittany. Decca enjoyed herself, especially as they treated her as a grown-up and took her to nightclubs, but it was traumatic for Nancy because Prod was in the middle of a love affair, one of many but this one seemed more serious than the others. The girlfriend, Mary Sewell (née Lutyens, she was married for a short time to Unity and Decca’s ‘white slaver’), lived a few doors from Rutland Gate, and the Sewells and the Rodds used to meet regularly to play bridge together. Mary followed the Rodds to Brittany and stayed in the same hotel, causing an aura of emotional tension to pervade the holiday. The Rodd marriage, which had started off so well, was already a sham whose front was wholly maintained by Nancy. She might have accepted the infidelity, for she saw so much of it in the circles in which she moved, but Prod had also started to drink heavily, which made him unpleasant and aggressive. Also Nancy desperately wanted a child, and tried for years. It was altogether an unhappy period for her as the Rodds moved from their first married home, Rose Cottage, at Strand-on-the-Green, into a small Victorian house at 12 Blomfield Road in Maida Vale. The tiny garden backed on to the Grand Union Canal, which was ‘enchanting’ and the saving feature of the otherwise poky little house.

  It could not have helped that Diana and Mosley had moved into beautiful Wootton Lodge earlier in the year. It was tranquil indoors and out: bluebell woods surrounded the house and clothed the valleys that were dotted with trout pools. Diana had made there ‘an atmosphere of extraordinary beauty and stillness,’ Nicholas Mosley recalled. ‘Whenever [my father] became exhausted or ill - such as the time he was hit by a brick at Liverpool - he would return to Wootton as if it were his fairy castle and Diana his princess.’ They were so happy there that they spent all their holidays at home in preference to going abroad. When they were apart they sent each other loving notes: ‘Today,’ wrote Diana, ‘as my heart is full of love I shall write what is always in my thoughts; and that is, that I love you more than all the world and more than life. Thank you my precious wonderful darling for the loveliest days I could possibly imagine . . .’ And Mosley wrote in kind, ‘Tried to ring you Saturday night but told no answer - nothing special - just love!’38 In Diana’s diaries during their time at Wootton the same entries occur over and over. ‘Perfect day with Kit [her name for Mosley],’ and ‘Wonderful day.’39

  Romance was in the air, it seems, for Pam, the ‘most rural’ Mitford, had at last fallen in love. For some time she had been seeing Derek Ainslie Jackson, the thirty-year-old good-looking son of Sir Charles Jackson, founder of the News of the World.40 He had married Poppet John (daughter of Augustus John) in 1931 but a divorce was in progress when he and Pam began their relationship. Derek and his identical twin Vivian had been orphaned while still teenagers at Rugby, and were inseparable. They took scholarship examinations for different universities because it was thought best for their development that they were split up (Derek applied to Trinity, Cambridge, and Vivian to Oxford), and when they parted company at Bletchley Junction41 it was believed to be the first time in their lives that they had been apart. Although their guardian cheated them by selling blocks of their shares in News of the World at rock-bottom market price and then bought them back himself, they were gleefully aware that they would be millionaires when they reached their majority. They had a highly developed sense of fun and were great teasers. They could be bombastic and arrogant, but they were also lively, charming, generous, funny and devoted to animals.

  They had first-class brains and read science subjects. When Derek graduated with a first, as anticipated,42 he was contacted by Professor Lindemann, who offered him laboratory facilities of his own at the Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford to work on his doctorate. Later Derek would say that Professor Lindemann had ‘bought’ him, ‘just as you might buy a promising yearling. But this particular yearling was a spectacular winner, for at the age of only twenty-two his specialist research in the field of spectroscopy led to a leap of thought considered so brilliant that no book on physics could ever be written again without including his findings.43 He would go on to become a world-renowned physicist, and a professor at Oxford, and although his life outside his work was filled with activity and pleasurable pursuits, science was always what mattered most to him, ultimately taking precedence over everything else: nothing was so sacred that it could not be shelved or cancelled if he happened to be at a crucial point in his research.

  Second only to his love of science was Derek’s love of horses. He rode with significant success and great bravery as an amateur in National Hunt races, including several times in the Grand National, and he hunted like a hawk with the Heythrop hounds two or even three days a week in the season. Compared to the Mitfords he was not tall at five foot eight; compactly built, he could hunt thoroughbreds when most men needed a heavyweight hunter - thus he had an incomparable advantage when following hounds across fast country. His riding, jumping and off-the-cuff quips (an important part of hunt social life), as well as his eccentricity, became the stuff of Heythrop legend. He once came off into a ditch and was soaked through but, undaunted, he dashed home, changed, and returned to finish the day. To sixteen-year-old Debo he had been a hero-figure for some time. She considered herself in love with him, and was delighted when Pam began going out with him, for it meant she got to see him at home. In the autumn of 1936, however, Pam moved into Derek’s home, Rignell House, anticipating his divorce by a few months, and the couple drove over to High Wycombe to announce their engagement to her family. On hearing their news the infatuated Debo ‘slid gracefully onto the flagstones in a dead faint’.44

  That December saw the abdication of Edward VIII that most people had been hoping would somehow be avoided. James Lees-Milne recalls in his diary that he stayed overnight at Wootton with Diana and listened to the broadcast with her. ‘We both wept when Edward VIII made his abdication broadcast. I remember it well, and Diana speaking in eggy-peggy [baby talk] to Tom Mosley over the telephone.’45 Christmas carollers that year invented new words to add to the old favourite: ‘Hark the herald angels si-ing/Mrs Simpson’s pinched our King . . .’

  Three weeks later, just two days before the end of 1936, Derek and Pam (the latter ‘laden
with jewels, which her generous bridegroom had showered upon her’), were married at the Carlton register office. In the formal wedding picture, the small group of Mitfords and family friends are muffled in furs and dark winter clothes. No one is smiling, but this is probably because it was no more customary, then, to smile for formal photographs than it was when sitting for an artist for a portrait. The posed annual family photographs of the Mitfords are equally serious. Diana and Nancy, apparently with hatchets temporarily buried, stand shoulder-to-shoulder behind Pam, Derek and Sydney. Tom is half hidden behind David. Unity, Decca and the heartbroken Debo are not in evidence.

  The newly-weds left for Austria on honeymoon. On arrival at their hotel in Vienna in early January the manager came out to meet them and asked Derek quietly if he could speak to him alone. Derek spoke fluent German and it was from this complete stranger that he received the news that his twin Vivian had been killed in St Moritz. A horse-drawn sleigh he was driving had overturned after hitting a telegraph pole. Pam told Diana that Derek was never the same again. ‘Part of him died with Vivian, who meant more to him than any other being on earth ever could.’46

  10

  ELOPEMENT (1937)

  Hardly had the Redesdales recovered from the news of Vivian Jackson’s tragic death, and worry over the inevitable unhappiness this meant for Pam at the start of her marriage, when another crisis was upon them.

  During the autumn of 1936, prior to Pam’s wedding, Sydney had been conscious of Decca’s unhappiness. It was for this reason that the Redesdales took her up to Scotland with them in December to visit David’s Airlie cousins, but she seemed even more bored there than at home despite the pre-Christmas festivities. Racking her brains to try to bring her daughter out of the doldrums Sydney came up with the idea of taking her, Debo, and a friend of theirs on a world cruise departing in March. Debo was due to make her début the following year and a cruise would be as good as a period at finishing-school, which in any case Debo did not want. But nothing could please Decca at that time and in her autobiography she admitted that ‘even the exciting planning of the trip was marred by my bad temper’. There were arguments about every stop on the itinerary, which usually ended with Sydney saying in the languid drawl that came from the top of the back of her throat, ‘You’re very silly, Little D.’ After these rows Decca was always angry with herself because she recognized that her mother was only trying to help her. But the source of her misery was that she felt trapped, living a life of luxury, provided by ‘the very people’ who upheld the non-intervention policy that allowed the barbarous war in Spain to escalate. So it was probably somewhat to Sydney’s relief when an invitation arrived for Decca that was greeted by its recipient with unusual enthusiasm.