The Mitford Girls Read online

  On the following day, with many misgivings, Sydney left the newly-weds to the life they appeared to enjoy, in an untidy and, she thought, a rather squalid hotel room. Although she had wanted her girls to be comfortably married within their own class, she had never wanted them to marry for money, and they had all grown up believing that love was the most important ingredient in a marriage. Sydney’s initial objection to Bryan Guinness had not only been Diana’s age but his excessive wealth, and she must have felt that if Diana had had to budget and work hard at running a house, as she herself did, that the Guinness marriage might not have come under such pressure. But Decca’s marriage seemed to be starting out with everything against it: she and Esmond were hardly more than children, without any prospects whatsoever, no home to go to and no income. Decca knew nothing about the practicalities of running a house, as was obvious from the untidiness in which they were living. Furthermore, their ideology seemed destined to alienate them from everyone who might be persuaded to help them. Her only reassurance was that they were, clearly, very much in love and Esmond appeared protective of Decca. They talked a lot about earning their living and were fine, intelligent young people if, in her opinion, misguided. So she clung to a hope that it would eventually work itself out. She had arranged a touring holiday for Debo to compensate for the disappointment of the cancelled world cruise, and when she left Bayonne she went to Florence where they were to meet.

  Esmond then landed a job of sorts. He became an interpreter between the Basque government and the captains of several merchant vessels who were trying to land vital supplies at Bilbao, despite a reported blockade. This provided him with a number of reporting scoops for which the News Chronicle paid him an extra five pounds a story, through Peter Nevile who was acting as his agent. When not writing his dispatches Esmond worked doggedly at his book Boadilla, his brown head bent over his typewriter and the hotel-room floor littered with pages of typescript. With its historical perspective, and its reasoned argument, it is a remarkable book, by any standards, for an eighteen-year-old to have written. Decca teased that he was the only person she had ever heard of who had written two biographies before he was nineteen. She felt proud, but also sad and guilty, knowing that it was because of her that Esmond could not get to Spain, which he really wanted to do. In the event he never returned.

  Most days he finished work by early afternoon, after which they had lunch and went to Biarritz to bathe in the sea.32 These pleasant visits almost came to an abrupt end when Esmond was caught in an undertow and nearly drowned. Decca could see that he was struggling but the person she begged to go to his rescue was a poor swimmer and sensibly refused.33 She was in despair, but Esmond somehow fought his way back and sat exhausted on the beach, with Decca in floods of tears at his side. They had decided to stick around in Bayonne for the July fiesta, a carnival which emulated the famous bull-run of Pamplona except that in Bayonne cows were released on to the streets. It was a few days of drunken revelry, providing respite from the miserable news from Spain during the interim weeks. Between Guernica - Franco’s first experiment in ‘total war’, in which the town was mercilessly bombed until nothing remained standing - and the eventual capture of Bilbao on 19 June there had been a remorseless stream of bad news.

  The only comfort was that, with a few wedding-present cheques, Esmond’s earnings and an advance for his book, their exchequer was boosted again to something over fifty pounds. With the confidence of a wealthy man Esmond came up with a brilliant idea to resolve all their financial problems permanently, inventing a system that would ‘break the bank’ at the local casino. Like all such gambling systems it could not fail, and when he explained it even Decca was convinced that in a night they would become millionaires. Predictably, within two hours they had lost everything. In desperation and in secret Decca wrote to Sydney to ask for help. Although she could not resist an uncomfortable dig about their spending, Sydney sent three pounds as a gift, and a ten-pound dress allowance, explaining that she had been obliged to reduce the allowance for both Decca and Debo from £140 a year to £120 because of a rise in income tax, which had reduced her salary from the Lady. In future, the dress allowance would be paid into their accounts at Drummonds in monthly instalments of ten pounds. Clearly, there were to be no more lump-sum advances large enough to finance elopements.

  After the fiesta the Romillys spent several months touring France in a car borrowed from a fellow reporter who had returned to England, and camping in a two-man tent. They lived on small sums sent over by Peter Nevile. Eventually, in Dieppe, where they had spent a few weeks as Nellie Romilly’s guest, the car seized up as they had forgotten to put any oil in it. The weather was turning too cold for camping and Decca was becoming increasingly ungainly, so they decided to return to England, where another friend had offered them a flat in his house at Rotherhithe in south-east London.

  11

  FAMILY AT ODDS (1937-8)

  Debo was seventeen on 31 March 1937 but her moment of metamorphosis was overshadowed by the elopement crisis. Her coming-out ball was postponed for a year and she left London after a birthday party for a visit to Castle Howard as a welcome break from the tensions at Rutland Gate. With no children left at home, Nanny Blor - who had also been badly upset by Decca’s elopement - took a long holiday with her family at Hastings, followed by ‘doing the rounds’, visiting Nancy and Diana, before going to stay with Pam who was recuperating from gynaecological surgery. It was hoped this would enable her to have a child, but it was not successful and she never carried a child to term.

  For her birthday Debo was given a car and a course of driving lessons. It looks as if Sydney was taking no chances of her becoming bored, and bolting. But there was never any real danger of that for, in general, Debo enjoyed her life at home. On the other hand, this youngest of the Mitford sisters had every right to feel aggrieved by the actions of some of her siblings. Not only had Decca’s elopement upset her emotionally, it dampened her birthday celebrations. Even worse, the notoriety of Diana, Unity and Decca inevitably cast a blight on her prospects. What mother of an eligible son could have felt unalloyed pleasure in a connection with a family where three elder sisters had already demonstrated such contempt of Society’s values? Sydney realized this and was ultra-careful on Debo’s behalf. But Debo was never affected with the jealousy from which Nancy suffered or with Decca’s inexplicable bitterness. She was uncomplicated, like Pam, although far more lively and everyone liked her.

  While Sydney went to Bayonne for Decca’s wedding, Debo - somewhat cross at not being allowed to see her sister married - travelled with a friend to Italy and waited in Florence for her mother. There, she was closely watched by her temporary guardians: ‘I wasn’t allowed into town so I couldn’t send you a telegram on the wedding day,’ she explained to Decca.1 When Sydney joined her they toured northern Italy together, and stayed in Venice before travelling north to join a party at Janos von Almassy’s Schloss in Austria, which, since the Anschluss a few months earlier, was now in Hitler’s Reich. Janos was an ardent supporter of Hitler but it was not simply from this partisan source that Sydney and Debo received their impression - so different from that reported by the British press - that the Austrians were overjoyed at this development: everyone they met seemed truly pleased with it.

  Prior to the Anschluss, having read about his anti-Hitler speeches, Unity had written to Winston Churchill setting out a number of facts for him about Austria and telling him of her own experiences. She received a kindly worded but firm reply that ‘a fair plebiscite would have shown that a large majority of the people of Austria would loathe the idea of coming under Nazi rule’.2 It must have seemed to Unity that Churchill was wrong, for on 14 March she was able to witness for herself the scenes of wild jubilation, German troops pelted with flowers, and the deafening chant of ‘Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!’ And ‘Heil, Hitler!’ that rang joyously through Vienna when Hitler appeared on the balcony of the Hotel Imperial. What Unity did not witness, of course, wa
s the brutal treatment of anyone opposed to the new regime: the beatings, the arrests, the deportations to concentration camps.

  From Austria Sydney and Debo went on to stay with Unity at Pension Doering.

  12 June 1937,

  My darling Little D, We are leaving for home tomorrow . . . and it has been great fun touring around with Bobo . . . of course the little car has been a real comfort . . . yesterday we went out to Nymphenburg [and] I am hoping to go round one of the girls’ work camps before we go. I think the others told you of our tea party with the Fuhrer. He asked after Little D. I wished I could speak German I must say. He is very ‘easy’ to be with and no feeling of shyness would be possible, and such very good manners . . . All love, darling, and to E, Muv.3

  Decca and Esmond were not at all amused to learn that her name was on Hitler’s lips, but they decided that it was all that could be expected from Decca’s ‘Nazi family’. Sydney kept Decca au fait with all family news, writing every week while Decca was in France. David and Tom, she reported, had joined them in Munich for a few days, but Tom had gone on to visit Janos von Almassy, and David had returned home and rented ‘the fishing cottage’ (also, confusingly, called Mill Cottage) at Swinbrook for the summer, so that they could all go there for weekends if they wanted. While they were together in Munich, the Redesdales had been given a tour of the city by one of Hitler’s adjutants and years later, in Hons and Rebels, Decca would state that they were driven round in Hitler’s car. ‘Not true,’ Sydney pointed out, ‘you wouldn’t catch Farve in anything but his own Morris.’4 News of her father from other members of the family was the closest Decca would ever get to him. The day he put her solicitously on the train for Paris, tucking the travelling rug around her legs and handing her ten pounds as spending money, was the last time she ever saw him, although he lived for another twenty years.

  Debo, meanwhile, was thoroughly enjoying her tour and looking forward to her début as a Grown-Up when she returned home. ‘I think Munich is no end nice . . . if I had to live anywhere abroad I should certainly live here,’ she wrote to Decca. The Hitler tea party had been fascinating: ‘Bobo was like someone transformed when she was with him and going up stairs she was shaking so much she could hardly walk. I think Hitler must be very fond of her, as he never took his eyes off her. Muv asked if there were any laws about having good flour for bread, wasn’t it killing?’5 They spoke about the Anschluss and Hitler told Sydney, ‘They said England would be there to stop me, but the only English person I saw there [Unity] was on my side.’6

  Sydney was happy to get back to her bread-making at High Wycombe: ‘We had lovely times abroad but it is very nice to be at home,’7 she wrote, telling Decca that Debo was looking forward to attending Royal Ascot in the following week, and had received invitations to a number of smart dances including one given by the American ambassador for which she had bought a dress of white tulle. One cannot avoid wondering if, when relaying this sort of detail, Sydney hoped to make Decca regret what she had done, even at this late stage. ‘Tom spends all his time with the Territorials and will be going to camp with them. He is nearly every weekend shooting at Bisley or doing something of the kind. You know how thorough he is when he does anything.’ Tom, like David before him, had discovered a real enjoyment of military life and would subsequently go to Sandhurst with a view to making the Army his career. ‘Woman [Pam] is coming over to see us tomorrow,’ the letter concluded, ‘and Nancy has gone to Scotland to escape the hay fever.’8

  Decca now advised her sisters that the doctor had confirmed the anticipated date of confinement was 1 January: ‘Do you remember poor Lottie’s agonies [a pet dog] and I expect it’s much worse for humans . . . I do hope it will be sweet and pretty and everything. Goodness I have been sick but I’m not any more.’9

  ‘My darling Little D,’ Sydney wrote from High Wycombe, ‘Bobo tells me you have told her about the baby . . . No one else except Farve knows because I didn’t tell anybody, not even Nanny, but will now. She will be pleased. I wonder if you would like to have this cottage for 3 months from 8 December when we will be at Rutland Gate.’10

  Debo was staying with her parents at Mill Cottage, Swinbrook, by the time she wrote to Decca to congratulate her on the baby. ‘It is more than ever like a Russian Novel here, because Farve has taken terrific trouble to buy things he think Muv will like and she goes round putting away all the things that he has chosen. The worst of all was when she went up to her bedroom for the first time and saw two wonderfully hideous lampshades with stars on them and said, “I certainly never bought those horrors,” and Farve’s face fell several miles.’ However, despite the cold, she said, they were enjoying being back at Swinbrook and the trout fishing was good.11

  Debo was now embarked upon a round of débutante dances, two or three a week, and her Grown-Up status required her to be sophisticated about these:

  I must say they exactly are as you said - perfectly killing . . . Luckily for me Tuddemy has been to all the ones I have. He is simply wonderful and waits around until I haven’t anyone to dance with and then comes and sits on a sofa or dances with me. I must say it’s terribly nice of him. My conversation to the deb’s young men goes something like this:

  Chinless horror: I think this is our dance.

  Me (knowing all the time that it is and only too thankful to see him, thinking I’d been cut again): Oh yes, I think it is.

  C.H.: What a crowd in the doorway.

  Me: Yes, Isn’t it awful.

  (The C.H. then clutches me round the waist and I almost fall over as I try to put my feet where his aren’t.)

  Me: Sorry.

  C.H.: No, my fault.

  Me: Oh I think it must have been me.

  C.H.: Oh no, that wouldn’t be possible (supposed to be a compliment).

  Then follows a dreary silence sometimes one or other of us says, ‘sorry’ and the other ‘my fault,’ until . . . the end of the dance and one goes hopelessly back to the door to wait for the next CH.

  Besides her social life, she continued, ‘nothing has changed much, Farve goes off to the Lady and the House of Lords, and Muv paints chairs and reads books like Stalin, my Father, or Mussolini, the Man, or Hitler, my Brother’s Uncle, or I was in Spain, or The Jews, by one who knows them.’ 12 Debo’s letters, Decca said, made her ‘roar’.

  With the exception of Decca the entire family attended the Coronation of George VI, and Unity and David had places of honour aboard a royal escort vessel for the fleet review at Spithead. At her first ball Debo was presented to the King and Queen: ‘He looks a changed man since he was King, so much happier looking and alert,’ Sydney wrote to Decca. ‘She looks more serious.’13

  After the Coronation, Unity drove back to Germany, taking her cousin Clementine Mitford back with her for a short holiday. Munich was also en fête, she reported to Decca, and looked so gay that by comparison the Coronation decorations appeared insipid. Her friendship with Hitler went from strength to strength and her letters were full of incidents where he chanced to ‘spot her’ in the midst of a crowd and called her out. Often, now, he would invite her back to his flat: ‘We sat for hours, chatting, quite alone’ and ‘The next night I went with him to the opera to see Aida done by the Milan Scala company. It was lovely to be able to go as all the tickets had been sold out 3 months before and it was a wonderful performance.’ He invited Unity and Clementine to accompany him to the Bayreuth Festival, and sent his long black Mercedes to collect them. ‘We were there ten days,’ Unity wrote, and then they returned on Hitler’s special train, watching delightedly as loyal Germans lined the track waving swastika flags and saluting Hitler. ‘I have seen the Führer a lot lately which has been heaven, but now he has gone back to his mountain for a bit.’14

  Although she was only twice invited to Hitler’s mountain eyrie, the Berghof overlooking Berchtesgaden, which was the domain of his mistress, Eva Braun, Unity was now a frequent guest at gatherings of Hitler’s inner circle, and sometimes she saw him alone in hi
s quarters. Some of Hitler’s senior officers regarded her naïve prattling with the Führer as potentially dangerous, and were concerned about the niche she had established for herself in his life. She now signed her name ‘Unity Walküre’, in the German manner, adding a small swastika underneath. She told people that she been named ‘Unity’ at the outbreak of the Great War because her pro-German family hoped that England and Germany would soon be at peace again. Probably she had even begun to regard this exaggeration together with the curious fact of being conceived in Swastika as evidence of her destiny. True, she saw Hitler only in his off-duty moments when - as the memoirs of those close to him testify - he could be immensely charming and jovial, especially when he was in the company of women. Diana, who also saw him in his off-duty periods, was never witness to the aggressive outbursts, megalomania or cruel humour that those who knew him for many years at a personal and professional level have catalogued. Unity saw him lose his temper twice, but she was so obsessed that she regarded the incidents with awe rather than disgust. ‘He got angrier and angrier,’ she wrote to Diana, ‘and at last he thundered - you know how he can . . . “Next time . . . I shall have him arrested . . . and sent to a concentration camp; then we shall see who is the stronger; Herr Gurtner’s law or my machine guns!” . . . It was wonderful. Everyone was silent for quite a time after that.’15