The Mitford Girls Read online

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  EDWARDIAN AFTERNOON (1904-15)

  In the first decade of their marriage, life was simple and happy. David did not care to go into Society much, and although Sydney would probably have liked to1 she deferred to David’s wishes. David worked at the Lady during the week, and often at weekends they visited their parents in the country. Perhaps the attribute of David’s that Sydney found so attractive was his sense of humour. ‘She should really have married a more social man,’ one of her children said, ‘but she never complained . . . and she laughed tremendously at my father’s jokes; he could be brilliantly funny.’2

  That David was deeply in love with Sydney is obvious from letters he wrote to his parents.3 It is more difficult to quantify Sydney’s feeling for David. Her teenage diary and more especially her responses to her children as adults prove that she was sensitive and loving, though she always found it difficult to show affection. This was not necessarily unusual for a woman of her class at that time, but in Sydney’s case it was probably due to the example set by her parents.

  Sydney remembered her mother as ‘delicate’, kind and rather remote, though her letters apparently reveal her as an ‘affectionate and solicitous’ personality.4 Tap Bowles, left to bring up a family of four small children, the youngest of whom was only two, was a good father according to his lights, and his children worshipped him, but there is no doubt that he had some odd ideas about child-rearing. Clever, successful, opinionated Tap provided an adventurous life for his children, but although he doted on his youngest child Dorothy, always known as Weenie, there was a lack of warmth in the rearing of his other children.5 He did not believe, for example, in celebrating birthdays, and even though Sydney was running his home by the age of fourteen, she did not own a single party frock. Indeed, Tap did not think to provide her with any clothes other than her sailor suits until she was seventeen and needed to be ‘brought out’. Clearly, then, the lack of a mother affected Sydney in ways that would have been important to most children. Four of Sydney’s children commented that she seemed ‘remote and unaffectionate’ as they were growing up, and stated that they never became close to her, in the sense that they liked and appreciated her, until they were adults. It is probable that she did not know how to behave with her children.

  So why did Sydney - a pretty girl, whose greatest enjoyments in life were sailing, visiting France and ice-skating, and who loved the parties and dancing she attended as a débutante - marry David, who was a countryman at heart, actively disliked meeting new people and regarded ‘abroad’ with suspicion and horror? There can be no other reason but that she fell in love with him. He was a kind man and he was very funny. He made her laugh and unquestionably loved her. Many successful marriages have been founded on less.

  For Sydney, life changed only minimally after her marriage. Even motherhood scarcely ruffled her cool serenity, for her babies, as they appeared, were cared for by a series of nurses and nannies. Being in charge of an establishment was no novelty to her, having run her father’s house for ten years, and her own home was cared for by staffing levels that seem extravagant today but - bearing in mind Sydney’s lifelong financial prudence - were probably merely adequate in a world where there were no electrical appliances, detergents or easy-care fabrics. Advertisements in the National Press (cost, a halfpenny) for domestic servants reveal that a cook might command thirty pounds a year, a housemaid eighteen and a general servant twelve.

  In a house that Nancy described as ‘minute’,6 there was a cook, a parlourmaid, a housemaid, a kitchen maid, a nanny and a nursemaid. Nancy once asked her mother, ‘What did you do all day?’ and received a reply to the effect, ‘I lived for you all.’ Apart from overseeing the staff Sydney’s daily life would have consisted of letter-writing, reading, shopping - principally at the Army and Navy Stores and Harrods - visiting her sister Weenie, who had taken over the running of their father’s house after Sydney’s marriage, and keeping her household accounts, which are almost a work of art in their dark blue leather bindings, tooled in gold.

  Sydney was a good manager, and was of the school of thought that ‘a lazy master makes a lazy servant’. A note among her papers states that one of the reasons she so loved being aboard a sailing ship was ‘the beautiful cleanness . . . there is no luxury where there is dirt; and where everything is shining clean there is luxury’.7 A close family friend has described Sydney as ‘acutely perceptive, well read and fastidious; surprised by nothing and amused by everything . . . she encouraged her children’s interest in music, the arts and reading, and the mental independence that would distinguish them . . . one of her peculiar charms was her patrician reserve . . .’8 Judging from photographs of her various homes, she might easily, in another age, have made a name for herself as an interior designer. What is more she accomplished her furnishing and decorating schemes at minimal cost, for they were simple, relying more on her own natural style and good taste than on colours or artifice. One odd event jars this neat pattern of Edwardian days. The adult Nancy claimed that Sydney once confided to her that early in her marriage she nearly ran away with another man. She only stayed, she said, because of Nancy, who was two years old at the time.9 But Nancy’s stories have always to be taken with a grain of salt, for she invented freely, always teasing, always seeking to entertain or shock.

  Three years after Nancy’s birth another girl, Pamela, was born. Two years later, in 1909, Sydney gave birth to the long-awaited son, Tom, and quickly became pregnant again. Diana arrived only a year after Tom, so that she always felt they were ‘almost twins’. Although Sydney is said to have cried when she learned that her fourth baby was another girl, her disappointment was quickly dispelled, for Diana was beautiful from the first. Like all the Mitford children, except Nancy, Diana was blond-haired with clear fair skin and remarkable blue eyes. Nancy was dark, and her green eyes were later described by Evelyn Waugh, John Betjeman and sister Decca as triangular in shape.

  When Nancy was born Sydney had engaged Lily ‘Ninny’ Kersey, daughter of the captain of Tap’s yacht, as her nanny. This worked beautifully until the arrival of Pam when the thoroughly spoiled little Nancy engaged in a series of jealous rages, alternating with plaintive cries of, ‘Oh, Ninny, I do wish you would still love me.’ Sydney overheard her daughter’s sad request and thought it best to engage a new nanny. Norah Evans came to look after the two little girls and remained until after Tom’s birth. She was replaced by a woman who has gone down in Mitford history as ‘the unkind nanny’. She is remembered for several things, first for her bad-fairy prediction on Diana’s birth, ‘She’s too beautiful; she can’t live long,’ and for banging Nancy’s head against the wooden bedpost, presumably as an effective form of punishment since she had been prohibited from uttering ‘a single angry word’ to the Mitford children. The head-banging came to the notice of David and Sydney, and Nancy wrote, ‘My mother retired to bed, as she often did when things became dramatic, leaving my father to perform the execution. There was a confrontation in the nursery as of two mastodons; oddly enough, throughout the terrifying battle which ensued, I felt entirely on the side of the nanny.’10

  The marvellous outcome of this traumatic episode was the recruitment of Laura Dicks. White-faced and red-haired, everything seemed against her at her interview. She was thirty-nine and Sydney feared at first that she would be too old to care for the lively young family. Furthermore, although Miss Dicks was very religious she was Nonconformist, and she supported the Liberal Party. In a conventional household, to whom the Church of England was the personification of the Conservative Party at prayer, such things mattered. But Miss Dicks’ face when she first beheld baby Diana, and her genuine cry of delight, ‘Oh, what a lovely baby,’ must have convinced Sydney that this nanny could probably be trusted not to bang little heads against bedposts. She became known as ‘Nanny Blor’ and remained with the family for almost thirty years. She was a kind but firm surrogate mother to them, and in return they loved her. That she was also tactful an
d understanding was revealed by her manner on her first day in the Mitford household. As she went into the nursery Nancy was sitting reading, her ‘furious little round face . . . concealed behind the book’.11 The book (unusual perhaps for a six-year-old) was Ivanhoe but Blor made no comment, merely taking off her shiny black straw bonnet, and cape, and hanging them carefully behind the door before settling down to work without disturbing the child.

  In common with their contemporaries, the Mitford children saw little of their parents. They would be dressed and taken down to the dining room after breakfast to say ‘good morning’. Nancy recalled such an occasion when she was six, about the time that Blor joined the household. She entered the room, which she recalled was painted white with a green wreath papered around the cornice, to find her parents sitting at the table reading black-edged newspapers. To her surprise they appeared upset and they told her that the King, Edward VII, had died. Some days later she watched as the funeral cortège passed along the road under the balcony of her grandfather Redesdale’s house.

  Usually the Mitford children spent much of their time in the nursery with daily walks in the park, and occasional treats such as visits to the zoo, Harrods’ pet shop, or one of the Kensington museums. Sometimes an aunt, uncle or grandparent would take them out to tea or to a pantomime. After nursery tea each day they would be dressed in their best clothes and taken down to spend an hour with their parents, after which they were bathed and put to bed. They were sometimes allowed to play with the children of the Norman family, who lived across the street, Hugh, Richard, Mark and Sibell. Ronald Norman was the brother of the banker Montagu Norman.12 Another frequent visitor to the Mitfords’, throughout their childhood and long after, was an enigmatic figure, Violet Hammersley, always referred to as Mrs Ham, or the wid (widow), by the children. She had known Sydney as a teenager and was present at every family celebration, crisis or drama, expressing her opinion (always pessimistic) with the confidence of a member of the family. But as well as friends such as the Normans and Mrs Hammersley, there were the cousins.

  David was one of nine children, and Sydney was one of four. Their respective siblings produced, between 1910 and 1927, twenty-one children with the surnames Mitford, Farrer, Kearsey, Bowyer, Bowles and Bailey, and many of these first cousins were to play major parts in the lives of the Mitford children as they grew up and visited each other’s homes. But the network of kinsmen who were to people the lives of the Mitford children were rooted further back in the family tree.

  Both of David’s parents - ‘Bertie’ Mitford (Bertram, 1st Lord Redesdale) and Lady Clementine Ogilvy - came from large families, and he remained close to many of them and to their numerous offspring.1 Clementine’s sister, Lady Blanche (‘Aunt Natty’), married Henry Hozier and was mother to another Clementine (who married Winston Churchill) and Nellie (who married Colonel Bertram Romilly). David’s children became close friends of the Churchill children, but friendship with the Romilly boys, Giles and Esmond, was not encouraged because Sydney disapproved of the feckless Nellie.

  However, there are more complicated relationships involved than those shown in the official family tree. Although Nellie Romilly was regarded as permissive, her mother was even more so. ‘Aunt Natty’ Hozier’s marriage was desperately unhappy and she was credited with at least nine lovers. She was more discreet than Nellie, perhaps, but it was widely believed - and this is well known in both the Churchill and Mitford families - that she had a love affair with her brother-in-law, Bertie Mitford (David’s father), and that he was the natural father of Clementine. A few biographers have hinted at the facial similarity between David Mitford and his first cousin Clementine Hozier Churchill.13 If the gossip is true this would be hardly surprising for David Mitford and Clementine would then be half-brother and sister, rather than first cousins.

  In addressing this question, one of Clementine Churchill’s daughters stated that her mother never learned the identity of her natural father though she knew he was not Henry Hozier.14 Bertie Mitford is the most likely suspect, even though the poet and writer Wilfred Scawen Blunt claimed that Natty confessed to him that her two elder daughters were fathered by Captain George ‘Bay’ Middleton, known by his foxhunting contemporaries as ‘the bravest of the brave’, and to history as the dashing lover of the sporting Empress, Elizabeth of Austria.15 This, however, must be set against the fact that Natty told a close friend, just before the birth of Clementine, that the child she was carrying was ‘Lord Redesdale’s’.16

  As for Natty’s daughter, naughty Nellie Romilly, it was whispered that her brother-in-law, Winston Churchill, fathered one of her two sons, Esmond. There is a remarkable physical resemblance between the young Winston Churchill and Esmond Romilly, and as an adult Esmond certainly hinted at times that he was Winston’s natural son, but this is jumping ahead of the story.17 None of these dark family secrets touched David and Sydney’s family and Aunt Natty was a great favourite of the children, which suggests she possessed considerable charm.

  By the time Nanny Blor joined the family, Nancy was partially exempted from the dull nursery timetable. She had begun to attend the Frances Holland day school conveniently situated in the same street as the Mitfords’ home.

  Nancy makes no mention of the school in her scraps of autobiography, but admits to being ‘vile’ to her sisters and brother in those early years. It seems that while she loved her siblings in one sense, she never recovered from the halcyon period when, as an only child, she had the undiluted attention of her parents and nanny. Pam became the main target for Nancy’s retribution and temper tantrums (an echo of her father’s), and barbed teasing became second nature to Nancy and the ethos of the Mitford nursery. Recalling Nancy’s childhood Sydney wrote, ‘You were terribly spoiled as a little child, and by all. It was [Aunt] Puma’s18 idea. She said you must never hear an angry word and you never did, but you used to get into tremendous rages, often shaming us in the street . . . Puma adored you and in fact until Pam was born you reigned supreme ...’19 But throughout all Nancy’s tempers and teases and general naughtiness Nanny Blor was scrupulously fair and even-handed with all her charges. ‘I would have been much worse but for Blor,’ Nancy admitted, ‘[she] at least made me feel ashamed of myself.’20

  At about this time Sydney rented the Old Mill Cottage, in High Wycombe,21 as a retreat for her family from the heat of the summer in London. High Wycombe is on the southern side of the Chiltern Hills and the cottage, part of what was then a working mill, was on the outskirts of the town and gave the impression of being in the country. In subsequent years moving out to High Wycombe enabled the Mitfords to let their London house during the Season, which brought in some much-needed extra income, and eventually Sydney purchased the cottage with some help from her father.

  The entire household went with Sydney and David to the Old Mill Cottage - Nancy, Pam, Tom and baby Diana, accompanied by Nanny Blor, Ada the nurserymaid, and all the staff, which had been increased to include Willie Dawkins, ‘the hound boy’. The latter’s job was to look after the family’s menagerie of David and Sydney’s three dogs, innumerable small creatures such as mice, hamsters and grass snakes purchased by the children from Harrods’ pet shop, and Brownie, a miniature pony David had spotted on the eve of their trip while he was on his way to work at the Lady. He bought it on a whim and brought it home in a hansom cab to spend the night in an unused box room.22 On the following day they took the pony with them to High Wycombe but hit a snag when the guard refused to allow it into the goods van. Refusing to be outdone, David exchanged the family’s first-class tickets for third-class ones, and they all - family, animals and servants - clambered into an empty compartment (in those days trains had no corridors). Today the point of this story would be the novelty of taking a pony into a passenger compartment. At the time, however, the impact was quite different. It was unheard of for a family of the Mitfords’ status to travel other than first class.

  The act of buying the pony, with its attendant inconveniences,
done with the sole intention of pleasing his children, is far more characteristic of David than the vivid larger-than-life caricature of him as the terrifying, bellowing ‘Uncle Matthew’ brandishing his ‘entrenching tool’,23 in Nancy’s novels. Much has been made by Mitford biographers of his violent temper, but although he undoubtedly suffered lifelong from spectacular outbursts, most of these could be better described as strong irritation coupled with periods of muttering under his breath (which were, more often than not, justifiable; Debo said, ‘the fact that we couldn’t always judge his mood made things exciting and we used to practise . . . to see how far we dared go before he turned and bellowed at us’).24 His reputation has suffered greatly from the spectre of Uncle Matthew.

  The caricature overshadows the immense charm of the real David. There are stories of him playing noisy games with his children and their cousins, of his chasing them as they ran around the house screaming with delight and pretended terror. He was always ready to play games, it seems, and there was an endearing childlike element in his make-up. Debo recalled that ‘he was wonderfully funny and the source of all the jokes in the family’. Several nieces have recounted how he was ‘so funny that our sides ached with laughing’.25 On the other hand, one said, ‘He was very tall and rather frightening when he used to stand in the garden cracking his stock-whip ...’26 His relationship with Nancy was close; he was immensely fond of his eldest child and she was devoted to him. Their repartee at the dining table was outstanding: ‘When they were on form together,’ Debo recalls, ‘they were funnier than anything I have seen on the stage. I still remember the pain of laughing at them.’27 Nancy teased him with her quick wit and he replied in his uniquely funny turn of phrase, half serious, half aware of how droll were his remarks.28