The Mitfords: Letters between Six Sisters

2 ‘Kitten’; Diana’s nickname for Mosley.

3 Diana’s marriage had been postponed until 6 October while the official paperwork was being arranged.

4 W. E. D. Allen (1901–73). Chairman of an advertising company and Ulster MP for West Belfast who resigned his seat in 1931 to take up a senior post in Mosley’s New Party. He may also have been reporting back on the Mosleys to British intelligence services.

5 Lillian Harvey (1907–68). The English-born actress spent her youth in Germany before moving to Hollywood in 1933. She released two films in 1936, Glückskinder and Schwarze Rosen.

6 ‘It has given me such pleasure that you came to the Party Rally and that you have attended every day.’

7 ‘The lackey of the Jews has almost become a National Socialist.’

8 ‘Your brother is a splendid young man.’

9 Count Janos von Almasy (1893–1968). An Hungarian friend of Tom who lived at Bernstein Castle in the Austrian province of Burgenland. Tom introduced him to Unity who often stayed at Bernstein and became Janos’s lover. Married Princess Maria Esterhazy in 1929.

10 Goebbels had recently bought a villa in the fashionable Berlin suburb and it is there that the Mosleys’ wedding lunch was given.

11 Ribbentrop. Tom Mitford had made up the nickname, inspired, for no particular reason, by the medieval song, ‘Go to Joan Glover, and tell her I love her and at the mid of the moon I will come to her’.

1 Robert Gordon-Canning was best man at Mosley’s wedding. Joined the BUF in 1934 before breaking with it in 1938 on personal grounds.

2 Hitler presented Diana with a large signed photograph of himself in a silver frame.

3 Maria Goebbels; Dr Goebbels’ younger sister lived with her brother until she married the film director Max W. Kimmich in 1938.

4 Diana was unable to remember the exact reasons for this quarrel but could only suppose that Mosley was irritated by her admiration for Hitler. In her appointment diary for 10 October 1936, four days after her wedding, she noted, ‘We discuss H and the wedding, He compares H with Ramsay MacDonald. I am furious. We quarrel.’

5 Hitler had addressed a meeting of the Winterhilfswerk, a Nazi charity that raised money to help the poor during the winter months.

1 Adolf Wagner (1890–1944). Nazi provincial chief of Munich and Upper Bavaria; Bavarian Interior Minister from 1933.

2 Gertrud Scholtz-Klink (1902–99). Reich Women’s Leader and the only woman to reach ministerial status in the Nazi Party.

1 Diana was in Berlin trying to get Hitler’s agreement to Mosley’s plan to set up a commercial radio station in Germany to broadcast to Britain.

2 It is not clear why Diana could not write to her son at the time.

3 Wootton Lodge. An article in Country Life had described the house as ‘the home of the unexpected’.

4 ‘You certainly are a good soul.’

1 The news of Jessica’s elopement had at last reached the Redesdales, two weeks after her disappearance.

2 Hitler.

3 ‘Hen’ in ‘Honnish’, Jessica and Deborah’s private language.

4 Esmond Romilly (1918–41). In her memoirs, Jessica described Esmond when she first met him as ‘a star around which everything revolved … He represented to me all that was bright, attractive and powerful’. Hons and Rebels, p. 105.

5 Clementine Mitford (1915–2005). Posthumous daughter of Lord Redesdale’s eldest brother, Clement. Married Sir Alfred Beit in 1939.

1 Nancy and Peter had returned from Bayonne where they had tried, unsuccessfully, to convince Jessica to come home.

2 Nancy had endeavoured to persuade Jessica to hide in the train lavatory to avoid the press.

1 The Redesdales refused to allow seventeen-year-old Deborah to visit Diana while her marriage to Mosley was still a secret and in the eyes of the world she was ‘living in sin’.

2 John Beckett (1894–1964), ex-Labour MP, and William Joyce (1906–46) had been dismissed from their positions in the BUF, which was in financial trouble and was sacking many of its employees. After the war, Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) was accused of high treason for broadcasting from Germany – where he had fled to avoid arrest – and was executed.

3 Frank Buchman (1878–1961). Founder of the Oxford Group, a fundamentalist religious movement renamed Moral Rearmament in 1938. In 1936, Buchman had publicly thanked heaven for the existence of Hitler as a defence against communism.

4 Reginald Holme; author of memoirs, A Journalist for God (1995).

1 ‘Thanks for your letter.’

2 Dorothy (Weenie) Bowles (1885–1971). Lady Redesdale’s disapproving younger sister. Married Percy Bailey in 1907.

3 ‘Best love from.’

1 Deborah could not remember the origin of the rush of fantastic nicknames she and Jessica used in their letters to each other at the time of the elopement. They were perhaps a way of trying to re-establish their relationship which had been so shaken by Jessica’s disappearance.

2 Lady Redesdale, worried that Jessica seemed depressed, had been planning to take Deborah and her on a world cruise in March.

3 Derek Jackson (1906–82). Distinguished physicist, amateur jockey and heir to the News of the World. Married Pamela, as the second of his six wives, in December 1936. They were divorced in 1951. In 1940 he joined the RAF, winning the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1941. The following year he transferred to Fighter Command and was decorated with the Air Force Cross.

4 Gerald Tyrwhitt, 14th Baron Berners (1883–1950). Composer, painter and writer. A friend of both Nancy, who depicted him as Lord Merlin in The Pursuit of Love (1945), and Diana, who wrote an appreciation of him in Loved Ones (1985). He lived at Faringdon House, Berkshire.

5 Robert Heber-Percy (1911–87). Known as the ‘Mad Boy’ because of his wild behaviour. Married twice, to Jennifer Fry, 1942–7, and to Lady Dorothy Lygon in 1985, but his liaisons were mostly with men, principally with Gerald Berners whom he met in 1932 and with whom he carried on a stormy relationship for eighteen years.

1 George Howard (1920–84). A cousin of both Esmond Romilly and the Mitfords. Chairman of the BBC 1980–83.

2 Dolly Wilde (1895–1941). Witty lesbian niece of Oscar Wilde. The sisters used to tease their mother by pretending to be in love with her.

3 Michael Farrer (1920–68). A first cousin of the Mitfords.

4 Winston Churchill (1874–1965). The statesman was related through his wife, Clementine Hozier, to both Esmond Romilly and the Mitfords. There was also a rumour in some circles that he was Esmond’s father.

1 Unity had kept in touch with Baroness Laroche with whom she lodged when first in Munich.

1 King George VI, who succeeded to the throne after the abdication of his brother Edward VIII, was crowned on 12 May 1937.

2 In 1936, Peter Nevile, a friend of Jessica and Esmond, tried to stage a demonstration in favour of Edward VIII at a time when the government was putting pressure on the king to give up Wallis Simpson or abdicate.

3 When the publicity surrounding Jessica’s elopement was at its height, Peter Nevile sold an interview with Esmond to the News Chronicle. Esmond and Nevile shared the proceeds.

1 Georgina Wernher (1919–). Daughter of Sir Harold Wernher of Lubenham Hall, Leicestershire, one of the richest men in England, and Lady Zia, daughter of Grand Duke Michael of Russia. Married Harold Phillips in 1944.

2 Lady Iris Mountbatten (1920–82). Great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria.

3 Lady Jean Ogilvy (1918–2004). A cousin of the Mitfords and the eldest daughter of the 12th Earl of Airlie, who lived at Cortachy Castle in Scotland. Married 2nd Baron Lloyd in 1942.

1 Lady Margaret Ogilvy (1920–). Daughter of the 12th Earl of Airlie and a great friend of Deborah. Married Sir Iain Tennant in 1946.

1 From the windows of the Marlborough Club, Deborah could watch the coronation procession on its way to Westminster Abbey. As a peer of the realm, Lord Redesdale attended the service with Lady Redesdale, who was dressed in coronation robes of ermine-trimmed crimson velvet with a three-foot train.

2 Phyllis Earle; a hairdresser and beauty parlour in Dover Street.

3 Tom Mitford.

1 A necklace and earrings of pearls and amethysts.

2 Nellie Hozier (1888–1955). Esmond’s mother was a first cousin of Lord Redesdale and a sister-in-law of Winston Churchill. Married Bertram Romilly in 1915.

1 Countess Francesca (Baby) Palffy-Erdödy a girlfriend of Tom Mitford, and her older sister, Johanna (Jimmy), were friends of Unity and lived at Kohfidisch, Austria.

2 Angela Brazil (1868–1947). Prolific author of racy books about schoolgirls.

1 A letter from Deborah sent on 16 May from Florence.

2 Henrietta (Tello) Shell (1864–1950). Governess to Lady Redesdale and her siblings when they were children. After their mother’s death in 1887, she became their father’s mistress, bore him three sons and assumed the name Mrs John Stewart. In 1894 she became editor of The Lady, a position she occupied for twenty-five years.

3 Lady Redesdale’s unusual Christian name came from one of her father’s half-sisters, Sydney Isabella, who was a goddaughter of Sydney, Lady Morgan, the nineteenth-century Irish novelist.

4 Radclyffe Hall’s lesbian novel was banned on publication in 1928 and not republished in Britain until 1949.

1 Barnabas von Géczy (1897–1971). Hungarian-born leader of one of the most popular swing orchestras of the time. Deborah’s admiration for him was reciprocated: when Unity saw the band the following year, Géczy whispered into her ear, ‘Wheer ees Debo?’ (Unity to Lady Redesdale, 12 July 1938).

2 Franchot Tone (1905–68). Suave American actor who starred in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935). Married to Joan Crawford 1935–9.

3 Maurice Chevalier (1888–1972). Actor who played the quintessential Frenchman in 1930s American cinema.

4 Deborah’s whippets.

5 Lady Elizabeth Wellesley (1918–). Daughter of the 7th Duke of Wellington.

1 Deborah had sued the Daily Express for saying that she, not Jessica, had eloped with Esmond. The case was settled out of court and Deborah was awarded £1,000.

1 After the sale of Swinbrook, Lord Redesdale rented a cottage in the village so that he could continue fishing on the Windrush.

2 Terence O’Connor (1891–1940). Conservative MP and Solicitor-General 1936–40. A keen follower of the Heythrop, he died after straining his heart on the hunting field. Married Cecil Cook in 1920.

1 Tom Driberg (1905–76). Labour MP, author and journalist. Since 1933 he had been the ‘William Hickey’ gossip columnist on the Daily Express. The press suspected that Diana and Mosley were married but were unable to find proof. Of the family, only the Redesdales, Unity and Tom knew about the marriage; Nancy, who was incapable of keeping a secret, had not been told.

2 ‘The Poor Old Leader’, i.e. Mosley.

3 Lord Redesdale’s favourite term of abuse derived from ‘suar’, meaning ‘pig’ in Hindi, a word he learnt when he worked as a tea planter in Ceylon.

1 From a popular song of 1937, ‘Somebody Stole my Gal’.

1 Lady Redesdale, whose admiration for Nelson was as great as her distrust of the medical profession, used to give lectures at the Women’s Institute on bread-making.

1 When one of the Mitford children’s guinea pigs was pregnant, the sisters called it ‘in pig’, as ‘in foal’, and used the expression for humans and animals alike.

1 ‘The Parent Birds’, i.e. the Redesdales.

2 Nancy’s French bulldog.

1 Dorothy L. Sayers’ eleventh thriller featuring Lord Peter Wimsey (1937).

1 Hitler’s autobiography, My Struggle, was first published in two volumes, in 1925 and 1926.

2 Annemarie Ortaus; a keen German follower of Moral Rearmament whom Diana had met in Munich.

3 Miles Phillimore (1915–72). Author of Just for Today, a Moral Rearmament pamphlet (1940).

4 Vivien Mosley (1921–2002). Diana’s stepdaughter. Married Desmond Forbes-Adam in 1949.

5 Nicholas Mosley, 3rd Baron Ravensdale (1923–). Diana’s stepson became a novelist and biographer. His books include Accident (1964), Julian Grenfell (1976), Hopeful Monsters (1990) and a two-volume life of his father, Rules of the Game (1982) and Beyond the Pale (1983). Married to Rosemary Salmon 1947–74 and to Verity Raymond in 1974.

6 The Princesses Edda and Carmen von Wrede were twin daughters of a German father and Argentinian mother. They lived at Schloss Fantaisie near Bayreuth and had been friends of Unity’s since 1935.

1 The celebrated exhibition of ‘Degenerate Art’, comprising pictures that had been removed from state collections, was designed to educate the Germans on the ‘evils’ of modern art. Works by Max Beckmann, Chagall, Otto Dix, Max Ernst, Kandinsky and Nolde attracted five times as many visitors as a show of Nazi-approved art held at the same time.

1 The wife of Benno von Arent (1898–1956), Hitler’s favourite theatre designer.

2 ‘But Decca was so nice! She was so funny and charming!’

3 The city park in the centre of Munich where two years later Unity attempted to commit suicide.

1 ‘Really too stupid, much too easy.’

2 ‘But you’ve only got to think logically, I’d have guessed it in two minutes.’

3 ‘Fiery red.’

4 ‘A full-bodied wine.’

* I have marked my own contributions with a star.

5 ‘Landscape.’

6 ‘A tall, beautiful blonde woman.’

7 Harald Quandt (1921–67). Magda Goebbels’ son by her first marriage.

8 ‘But children, it’s obvious, it couldn’t be anyone else.’

9 ‘I was thinking of the Führer all along, but he drinks only water!’

10 Leo Schlageter (1894–1923). A Nazi martyr executed by the French for resisting their forces in the Ruhr.

11 I’m thinking of my mother; she’d have understood hardly anything; it must be absolutely clear for the simplest and stupidest people.’

12 Fritz Wiedemann (1891–1970). Hitler’s immediate superior during the First World War and subsequently one of his military aides and policy advisers.

1 Mussolini’s state visit to Germany, during which Hitler put on a massive display of military power, was instrumental in convincing the Italian dictator to join forces with Germany.

2 Karl Brandt (1904–1947). Surgeon who joined the Nazi Party in 1932 and served as Hitler’s doctor 1934–44.

3 George Ward Price (1886–1961). Munich correspondent for the Daily Mail and author of I Know These Dictators (1937), a sympathetic portrait of Hitler and Mussolini.

4 Margaret Mitchell’s bestseller had been published the previous year.

1 Rosaleen, Bryan and Elizabeth Guinness’s first child, was born on 7 September 1937.

1 Lady Bridget Coke (1891–1984). Mother of Deborah’s great friend Margaret (Maggot) Ogilvy. Married the 12th Earl of Airlie in 1917.

1 Deborah’s Christmas present to Nancy was a bracelet of Hand of Fatima charms.

2 The attack of measles had affected Deborah’s eyes. The sisters used to tease each other about syphilis, which can lead to blindness in its later stages.

3 Helen Eaton (1899–1989). Nancy’s nickname for her hostess at West Wycombe was ‘Hell Bags’. Married Sir John Dashwood in 1922.

4 ‘Get on’, Deborah’s way of addressing Nancy, was an interpretation of the sort of growl that the Mitfords’ groom used to greet people with. Deborah took it up as a way of fighting back at her eldest sister.

5 When Deborah was small, Nancy used to tease her with a rhyme that never failed to make her little sister cry: ‘A little houseless match, it has no roof, no thatch / It lies alone, it makes no moan, that little, houseless match’. She put the poem into The Pursuit of Love, where it induced ‘rivers of tears’ in the heroine, Linda.

1 Jessica’s daughter, Julia, was born on 20 December.

2 Esmond had found work as a copywriter with a London advertising agency.

1 The foreign policy speech that Hitler made four days later gave encouragement to the Austrian Nazi Party.

2 Kurt von Schuschnigg (1897–1977). Anti-Nazi Chancellor of Austria since 1934. Hitler threatened to invade Austria unless concessions were made to the Nazi Party. Schuschnigg resigned and in March 1938 Germany annexed Austria.

3 ‘Have you heard? Schuschnigg is with the Führer.’

4 ‘Over there in the Reich.’

1 Jessica and Esmond’s baby daughter, Julia, had just died from measles, aged five months. They had decided to go to Corsica for three months to try to recover.

1 Lord Redesdale’s visits to Germany to see Unity had led him to revise his opinion of Nazism and, until Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939, he was sympathetic to the regime. In a speech to the House of Lords, he had announced that the Anschluss was the ‘sincere desire’ of a large majority of Austrians and that the gratitude of Europe was due to Hitler for averting bloodshed.

1 Unity had flirted with the French officer when the sisters visited Corsica during their cruise of the Mediterranean in 1936.

2 ‘Boud, I hope you haven’t forgotten your Boud.’

3 Frances Mitford (1875–1951). Lord Redesdale’s eldest sister who was popular with all her nieces. Married Alexander (Alec) Kearsey in 1907.

4 ‘A pretty woman’s hairstyle.’

1 The Berghof was Hitler’s mountain retreat at Obersalzberg, which he had converted from a simple Alpine house into a residence suitable for receiving foreign dignitaries.

2 The annexation of Austria.

3 ‘Only much cleaner.’

4 ‘She’s delighted to hear you say that.’ Unity’s dislike of Italians was a running joke between her and Hitler.

5 Wilhelm Ohnesorge (d. 1962). German Minister of Posts and Telegraphs who was sympathetic to the Mosleys’ plan to set up a radio station.

6 ‘Where is your sister?’

7 Julius Schaub; Hitler’s personal adjutant and former head of his bodyguard.

8 Gerdy Troost (1904–2003). Interior designer and a confidante of Hitler. Married to Paul Ludwig Troost (1878–1934), one of Hitler’s favourite architects.

9 ‘Of course it’s a disadvantage for me because if I drive that fast I get there twenty minutes early, then I have to sit and wait in my hotel or at home for twenty minutes.’

1 The Sudeten-German Party of Czechoslovakia, led by Konrad Henlein (1898–1945) who was instrumental in preparing the way for Hitler’s occupation of his country in 1939.

2 Georg Wollner; Gauleiter of Reichenberg.

3 ‘Because I have to bring the Führer out.’

4 ‘The Führer is coming! The Führer is coming!’

5 ‘It is a pleasure and an honour for me to greet you, my Führer.’

6 Willy Kannenberg; Hitler’s cook.

7 Franz Gürtner (1881–1941). Reich Minister of Justice since 1932 who opposed Nazi brutality but was unable to stand up to Hitler.

8 ‘Next time the judges let that sort of man free, I’ll have him arrested by my bodyguards and sent to a concentration camp; then we’ll see who is stronger, the letter of Herr Gürtner’s law or my machine guns!’

9 Dr Leopold von Hoesch (1881–1936). German ambassador to London 1932–6.

1 Hitler’s special train.

2 Gerhardt Wagner (1888–1938). Reich Medical Leader who was instrumental in formulating the infamous Nuremberg Laws that established anti-Semitism and euthanasia as official Nazi policy.

3 Arthur Seyss-Inquart (1892–1946). Leader of the Austrian Nazi Party and keen supporter of Austria’s union with Germany, who became governor of Austria after the Anschluss.

4 Hans von Tschammer-Osten (1887–1943). Reich Sports Leader and president of the German Olympic Committee in 1936.

5 ‘Dear Führer, when are you coming to us?’ and ‘Führer, once again we swear undying loyalty to you’.

6 Joseph (Sepp) Dietrich (1892–1966). Hitler’s close associate and head of his SS bodyguard.

7 Winifred Williams (1897–1980). The English-born wife of Richard Wagner’s son, Siegfried, had been a friend and ardent admirer of Hitler since 1923. In 1930, she became head of the Bayreuth Festival and ran it until the end of the war.

8 E. M. Forster’s novel was first published in 1924.

1 This letter was transcribed in Lady Redesdale’s memoir of Unity. The original has not been found.

2 ‘Power, table and ugh; penny cosy and racial disgrace,’ (i.e. interracial sex).

3 Henry Bernstein (1876–1953). French boulevard-theatre playwright.

4 Maud Burke (1872–1948). American-born widow of Sir Bache Cunard, the shipping-line magnate, whom she married in 1895. Changed her name to ‘Emerald’ in 1926 and was one of London’s leading society hostesses between the wars.

1 Diana was expecting a baby in November.

2 Theodor Morell (1886–1948). Hitler’s private physician.

3 Ribbentrop.

1 Lord Andrew Cavendish (1920–2004). Succeeded as nth Duke of Devonshire in 1950. Deborah’s future husband was a student at Cambridge when they first met.

1 Unity had written to the Daily Express to deny an article in ‘William Hickey’ which said that ‘those members of Britain’s governing class whose Aryanism has been okayed by Unity Mitford are packing their bags for Nuremberg’. (2 September 1938) A photograph of her letter accompanying the article shows that it had been signed by Unity but was in Lady Redesdale’s handwriting.

2 After more than four years of marriage, Nancy was at last expecting a child but in spite of carefully following her doctor’s instructions, she miscarried a few weeks later.

1 Diana’s son, Alexander (Al) Mosley (1938–2005), was born on 26 November.

2 Nancy was editing the letters of her ancestors Maria Josepha, Lady Stanley of Alderley, and Henrietta Maria Stanley. Published as The Ladies of Alderley (1938) and The Stanleys of Alderley (1939).

3 Roy Harrod (1900–78). Influential economist who taught at Christ Church, Oxford. Married Wilhelmine (Billa) Cresswell in 1938.

4 Lord David Cecil (1902–86). Biographer and professor of English Literature at Oxford 1948–70. Married Rachel McCarthy in 1932. Their son Jonathan was born in 1939.

1 Hitler’s occupation of Czechoslovakia on 15 March violated the Munich Agreement and had brought all efforts at appeasement to an end.

1 This extract was transcribed in Lady Redesdale’s memoir of Unity. The original has not been found.

2 The cover name used by Hitler at the beginning of his political career and adopted as a nickname by his intimates. Neither Unity nor Diana used the name to his face but from 1938 often referred to him as ‘Wolf in letters.

3 ‘Wisdom is no help.’

1 On the previous day, the German army had invaded Poland. Hitler ignored Britain and France’s ultimatum to withdraw and on 3 September Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, declared war.

2 ‘I have proposed friendship to England again and again and, when necessary, the closest collaboration. But love cannot be all one-sided, it must be reciprocated.’

3 Unity’s Great Dane, given to her by Diana.

THREE 1939–1945

Unity, Tom, Deborah, Diana, Jessica, Nancy and Pamela, 1935.

On the afternoon of 3 September 1939, the day that Britain and France declared war on Germany, Unity went to the English Garden in the centre of Munich and put a pistol to her head. The bullet lodged in her brain, failed to kill her but inflicted irreversible damage. She was taken to a Munich hospital were she lay unconscious for several weeks. Communications between England and Germany were difficult in the early part of the war and on Hitler’s orders no report of Unity’s suicide attempt appeared in the German press. It was two months before the Redesdales received any definite news of their daughter and a further two months before they were able to fetch her home from a clinic in neutral Switzerland where Hitler had arranged for her to be sent. In January 1940, Lady Redesdale and Deborah travelled to Bern and found Unity still seriously ill, paralysed, with her hair matted and untouched since the day she had tried to shoot herself. They brought her back to England in an ambulance and Lady Redesdale took on the distressing task of looking after her daughter, who was left with the mental age of a twelve-year-old and in whom religious mania had replaced Hitler mania. Unity’s behaviour was unpredictable, alternating between bouts of fury and moments of pathetic vulnerability, and she was untidy, clumsy and incontinent at night. The Redesdales’ marriage was already under stress from political disagreements – when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia Lord Redesdale reverted to being violently anti-German while Lady Redesdale continued to regard the Führer as Germany’s saviour – and it deteriorated further with the strain of Unity’s infirmity. Lord Redesdale withdrew to Inch Kenneth, a small island off the coast of Mull in the Inner Hebrides which he had bought after selling Swinbrook House, taking with him Margaret Wright, the parlourmaid, who became his companion and remained with him until the end of his life. Lady Redesdale took Unity to Mill Cottage in Swinbrook, where they lived for most of the war.