The Mitfords: Letters between Six Sisters

So for the present I am Mrs G and intend to remain so for some time.

Best love from Bodley

Darling Boud

We sit all day playing a sad tune called ‘Somebody stole my Boud’ (alternatively ‘Somebody stole my Hen’).1

Love, Your Boud

Dear Hen’s Egg

Well dear, the dances have begun in earnest. I must say they are exactly like what you said always – perfectly killing. I have never seen anything like the collection of young men – all completely chinless & all looking exactly alike. Last night was the Wellesleys.

According to everyone it was a really typical deb dance. Rather a small square room to dance in & many too many people in the doorway & on the stairs. I thought I should be alright & then they started to cut my dances till, in the end, in desperation I had to go home. Tuddemy has been to all the ones I have, luckily for me. He is simply wonderful & literally waits around till I haven’t got anyone to dance with & then comes & sits on a sofa or dances with me. I must say it is terribly nice of him. My conversation to the debs’ young men goes like this:

The chinless horror ‘I think this is our dance.’

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

The C.H. ‘What a crowd in the doorway.’

Me ‘Yes isn’t it awful.’

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

Me ‘Sorry.’

The C.H. ‘No, my fault.’

Me ‘Oh I think it must have been me.’

The C.H. ‘Oh no, that wouldn’t be possible.’ (Supposed to be a compliment.)

Then follows a long & dreary silence sometimes one of us saying ‘sorry’ & the other ‘my fault’. After a bit we both feel we can’t bear it any longer so we decide to go & sit down.

The C.H. ‘Got off camp this time, told them it was a sprained ankle, look at the bandages, ha ha’. (I look & see no bandages so suppose it must be a joke & say ‘ha ha’ too.)

Then one hears the drums rumbling & one knows that is the end of the dance & goes hopelessly back to the doorway hoping for the other chinless horror to turn up & of course he doesn’t so one scrams thankfully off to bed.

Yesterday one young man told me the same funny (?) story three times. At least I think it was the same young man but one can’t possibly tell.

Well dear, Family Life seems to go on in the same old way & I never see any of the sisters except sometimes Bobo, & the boredom of Wycombe is absolutely unbelievable. One never dares ask any of one’s friends for fear of the family taking against them & being fearfully rude ‘like only Mitfords can’. Bobo has just come back from Germany. She is going back again soon. I wish I was going with her. I should at least be able to go every night to listen to the band with the man I love in it. When she goes I shall be absolutely alone again which I hate so. There isn’t anyone to talk to because you know how the parents simply don’t listen.

Pam comes over sometimes which is awful. When Derek comes too it is worse. I never see Diana & very seldom see Nancy or Tom. So altogether it isn’t much fun. We have got to be at Wycombe for three months now. Lord only knows what I shall find to do all that time.

Everyone does the same old things here. Farve goes off to The Lady & the House of Lords & Muv paints chairs & reads books called things 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’ etc etc etc. I haven’t read a book for eight months now.

I never can remember what jokes you’ve heard & what you’ve missed, but I know you can’t have heard this one. It’s a summing up of the Fem’s character by Bobo & me. It goes like this ‘Nelson, bread of my life, meet me tonight without any doctors or any medicine under the kitchen table’.1 You must say it’s a wonderful summing up. Well dear, hotcha.

Love from Yr Hen

Dear Henderson,

Thanks v. much for amusing letters

Have you been to any more dances? I gather from your letters that you more or less loathe most of them, I must say deb dances aren’t the cheeriest form of entertainment. But it seems all the more marvellous when one doesn’t have to go any more; Esmond says that’s the same as being at a public school or remand home, that always afterwards you think how lucky you are not to be there still. Anyway I expect next year it really will be more fun; I call the middle of July an extraorder time to come out, you might have liked it more if you had come out at the beginning of the summer.

Couldn’t you cheer off abroad somewhere, e.g. to Italy with the Rodds, or Germany with the Boud? Or even France with your Hen. Where are you all going to be in the winter – R Gate or the cottage? Your Hen will be in London then, we are coming back after our Tour to live there for a few months while your Hen has her baby etc. Shall I call it Henderson, or even Hon Henderson & everyone’ll think it’s the Hon(ble) Henderson. Did you know your old Hen was in pig.1 Yes dear, you had better be training as a young midwife, as soon as possible. I hope you will be its Henmother (Honnish for Godmother) anyway. Do write to your Hen & say if you are interested about it. Your poor Hen never stopped sicking up all her food for about three months on account of it, which was so cheerless.

Peter R[amsbotham] & George Howard have sent us an absolute mass of phone records which is such bliss of them. Do impress how grateful I am if you see them, there’s such a terrific lot.

Love from Henry

Darling Susan,

Thanks for yr. letter. All is oke now really, but Susan I must just remind you of a few things you seem to have forgotten! Susan how can you say you & Rodd were pro Esmond & me living together when you wrote saying how unrespectable it was & how Society would shun me, & Rodd wrote saying how French workmen would shun me. In fact what you actually wanted us to do was to come home to England, in which case I should have been caught by the P’s1 & narst old Judge & altogether teased in every way. So what you were really against was both us getting married and us living together not married. Do you admit, Susan. Do you also admit it was a bit disloyal just as I was thinking you were the one I could count on to be on my side through thick and. Anyway it’s all such ages ago now I expect you’ve forgotten a bit what you did do, &, as you say, now we are married there’s no point in [illegible].

I am going to have a baby in January (1st to be exact, oh Susan do you remember poor Lottie’s2 agonies, & I expect it’s much worse for humans), yes Susan some of us do our duty to the community unlike others I could name. Shall I call it Nancy? I think skeke [hardly] as I have a feeling it’s going to be a boy, & being called Nancy might prove a handicap to it throughout life. I do hope it will be sweet & pretty & everything. Goodness I have been sick but I’m not any more now.

The bathing here is absolute heaven, we go to Biarritz nearly every day. Well Soose. End of paper.

Love from Susan

Darling Sooze

Oh thank goodness what a weight off my mind. Well Susan now I know that all is OKE I am sending you a) a narst little diamond ring as I know it is nice to have things of popping value even if only for a few pounds & b) which you will like much more Busman’s Honeymoon1 which must be the funniest book ere written. And I daresay some cash will be forthcoming in Jan. when needed. Susan fancy you with a scrapage. I don’t think you are fit to bring one up after your terribly awful behaviour but what luck that you will always have dear old aunt Nancy at hand to advise & help.

Love from Sooze

Dearest Henderson,

It WAS lovely seeing you & Blor, you can’t think how terribly pleased I was you could come. I only wish you were still here, it seemed such an awfully short time.

I do hope you weren’t bored & I didn’t talk about Esmond all the time like Woman does about Derek, but you know it seems such an AGE since he went, however he’s coming back today for certain.

I think I only really realized, from seeing you, what things had been like at home; it is so extraorder how people can make themselves so miserable when there’s nothing to be miserable about, & of course I’m dreadfully sorry they were so unhappy. It seems such a tease that one can’t be what one likes without causing all that misery. The more I think of it the less I can understand it.

Best love from Squalor

It’s early Spring in January, because I’m in pig.

Darling:

I would have written ages ago, but we are having a heat wave of terrific proportions and it is really boiling and I spend the days in a pair of bathing pants and a shirt. I am reading Mein Kampf.1 Everything looks unbelievably beautiful.

4th August. I have got a lot to erzähl [tell] about the Oxford Group. Annemarie2 said could she come here, so I said yes (I was alone) and she came needless to say with Mr [Reginald] Holme & Miles Phillimore.3 They arrived for lunch and made an onslaught which lasted till 10.45, trying to persuade me to go back to Oxford with them for the weekend. It was a very special weekend with very important people, and Frank [Buchman] had said would I come etc. I did not want to go in the least but as I was alone here I had no reason. When they saw I was set against it they tried a sort of mixture of flattery (‘you could change the world’) and blackmail and threats (‘you are afraid of being converted. You are not a revolutionary if you don’t give us a fair trial’). ‘Why not?’ is the answer I think!!

Anyway it ended with a Quiet Time. I did not write anything on the bit of paper they gave me although I thought of lots of jokes. They all read out their guidance and it consisted mostly of God saying he wanted me to go to Oxford. In the end they went off in despair. I suppose Frank had told them to bring me back. But during the day I got a terrific nausea for the whole silly affair, and when they said Frank had changed the world and prevented industrial disputes etc I asked how long he had been at it; they replied since 1921, so I said that was as long as the Führer, leaving them to make the comparison. I said in order to change anything properly in the modern world you had to have a political organization and several thousand people willing to give their lives and some machine guns. I said why the hell didn’t Frank stick to America and try and change that, because the industrial disputes there were the horror of the whole world.

They were very hurt and made all kinds of lame answers. 6 August. So then I said you will never get me for your sort of ‘revolution’ because I am a realist and we must have a framework first in England. Miles Phillimore, ‘We are realists too, and after all when I had been in New Zealand a year, the Prime Minister said “the Oxford group is the only policy for the world”.’ And what difference has it made him saying that?

But the thing that makes me angriest is when they harp on the fact that Frank said publicly ‘thank God for Adolf Hitler’. They tell one that as if it were gleichzeitig [at the same time] very brave and a terrific compliment for the Führer.

I am sorry for all this boring outburst but I longed for you to be there at the time. Although I am really fond of Annemarie I shall not lift a finger for her to see the Führer while she is with that ghastly Frank.

It is so lovely and calm here with Kit. We don’t even ride, but just lie in the sun and listen to the wireless, and fish, and row in a tiny little boat he has brought. I am so happy. At the end of next week Vivien4 & Nicky5 come, and then it will be less peaceful. The boys are coming too and I am perfectly dying for them.

This letter has gone on so long it must be a birthday letter now darling, so many happy returns, and I enclose the usual dull-but-useful.

I wish you were here. Kit wants you to come & bring the Princesses Wrede6 with you!!

All love, Nardy

P.S. Miles & co kept being guided to use my telephone for trunk calls! They all ring up nearly every day but I say I am away. They are nothing daunted by my firmness. Of course they are mad to get to see the Führer. But then who isn’t?

Darling Nard

Thank you so much for your letter. It arrived just after I had posted my letter to you, with the photo

I quite forgot to thank you for the lovely photos of the boys, I was so pleased with them & I shall stick them in my family book when I go to England.

Erna is most terribly aufgeregt [excited] about ‘Entartete Kunst’,1 she says that the artists in it are the only good ones in Germany today and the whole world envies Germany for them. She has stopped working in her shop because her brother is afraid the SS will come & smash the windows if she is caught selling reproductions of modern pictures (that sounds unlikely doesn’t it) and she sits at home in Solln all by herself getting aufgeregter & aufgeregter. I spent a whole afternoon & evening with her & she didn’t speak of anything else at all, just a torrent of Aufregung [excitement]. She goes to the exhibition every day, & she says that all the really artistic people in Munich are freu-ing [enjoying] themselves like anything because they say, never before have we had a chance of seeing all these wonderful pictures collected together in one Ausstellung [exhibition], & they go every day, & noch dazu [what’s more] the entrance is free. She says all the Americans come to her & say ‘If only we could have this wonderful collection in America, wouldn’t they let us take it over?’ I asked Erna to let me go to it with her but she refused but at last I persuaded her & we went, I feel I learnt quite a lot by it. She has small pictures by two of the artists, which they gave her themselves, hanging in her house, in fact she has three pictures by Nolde. [incomplete]

Darling Boud

I have been wanting to write to you for ages but I didn’t know your address, now Muv has sent me the Dieppe one & says it will find you. I hope it will. Do write to your Boud soon.

I did envy Blor & Tiny going to see my Boud, I do hope I will soon. I hear you had a tooth out without anaesthetic, poor Boud how awful. How is the baby, I hear you can feel it kicking already. It is so exciting, I do envy you. I think I really must have a darling little Bastard, it would be so sweet & I should love it. Do you hope for a boy or a girl? What will you call it?

Clementine [Mitford] & I went with the Führer to Bayreuth for the festival, we were there ten days, it was lovely. Kukuli von Arent1 was in Bayreuth, & she hadn’t heard about you, she was perfectly amazed when I told her & kept on saying ‘Aber die Decca war doch so nett! Sie war doch so lustig und reizend!2 Do you remember when the two SS men here called you ‘die lustige Kommunistin’? Clementine went to England from Bayreuth, & I returned here. I have seen the Führer a lot lately which has been heaven, only now he has gone back to his mountain for a bit.

I do hope you are having lovely weather for your motor tour. We have been having a heat wave here for a week, but today alas it’s raining. The other day when it was boiling hot I found a secluded spot in the Englischer Garten3 where I took off all my clothes & sunbathed, luckily no-one came along. While I was lying in the sun I suddenly wondered whether Muv knew I was sun-bathing naked, like when she knew that you were bathing naked, & I laughed till I ached, if anyone had come along they would have thought me mad as well as indecent.

Well Boud pray write to your Boud as soon as you get this, she does so long to hear from her Boud.

Best love from Yr Boud

Darling:

I have got a lot to erzähl [tell] about a wonderfully typical day I spent at Schwanenwerder yesterday. After discovering that the people I have come to see are all away, I rang up Magda on the chance and she asked me to come at once. Kukuli was there, radiant after spending a week with her loved one, her idyll was spoilt later in the day by Benno von Arent who bullied her to go back to her Kinder [children]. The Doktor was there and the food, conversation and whole set-up was so exactly like last year that I kept thinking it was last year. Magda wanted to play Animal Vegetable or Mineral, and when we chose something for her to guess she always complained either that it was, ‘Wirklich zu dumm, viel zu leicht’1 etc. Or if she couldn’t guess it, it was ‘a frightfully unfair one’. When it was one of our turns she kept saying, ‘Aber Sie müssen nur logisch denken, ich hätte das in zwei minuten gefunden’.2

It was pure heaven. Then we played Analogies which I taught them. Magda got the hang of it in a moment, and we had a heavenly time doing Helldorf, Frau Funk, Frau Hoffmann and so on. Then the Doktor joined us and we, or rather he, did the Führer for Kukuli. Here is what he said (we all helped and this was the result)

Animal: Pure-bred Arab stallion Colour: Feuerrot3 Drink: Ein schwerer Wein4 Flower: Madonna lily* Style: Michaelangelo – Renaissance* Landschaft:5 Top of the Alps Weather: A hot storm* Frau: Eine grosse schöne blonde Frau6

Needless to say although Harald7 who came halfway through kept saying, ‘Aber Kinder, ganz klar, es gibt nur einer’,8 Kukuli failed to guess, and when she was told said, ‘Ich habe die ganze Zeit an den Führer gedacht, aber er trinkt doch nur Wasser!’9 Whereupon both Goebbels rounded on her so cruelly that she nearly cried. I must say it was rather dotty because we had told 23 times it had nothing to do with what the person liked, or wore etc. Well I was pleased when the Doktor said, ‘Eine grosse schöne blonde Frau’.

The lovely part of the day was a wonderful film called Entscheidende Tage [Decisive Days] and it is only real-life films, of the war, the Versailles Treaty, the revolution here, the coming of the Führer, 1923 Parteitag, meetings, Schlageter10 being shot, Jews, Nazis, the 1929 Parteitag, Machtübernahme [taking power], Aufbau [rebuilding], 1936 Parteitag. It was pure heaven, except that the Doktor schimpfed [railed] all the way through at the man who had spent eight months making it. I must say he was perfectly right because it was an awful muddle and terribly hard to know what was going on. The Doktor said he himself didn’t know half the time although he lived it all. So it has to be entirely altered, but darling the material is simply thrilling.

There was a lovely moment when the Doktor said, ‘Ich stelle mich meine Mutter vor; sie hätte fast nichts davon verstanden; es muss absolut klar sein für die einfachsten und dummsten Leute.’11

There is the most heavenly picture of the Führer at the 1929 Parteitag, laughing and throwing flowers at the SA as they march vorbei [past]. Oh how I wished we had been there, it makes me cry with rage to think we were alive and yet missing everything.

Do you really think the Führer might come here? I thirst for only a glimpse of him. I know he’s at Nürnberg today because the Doktor is meeting him there. If you see Wiedemann12 give him my fondest love and tell him I am here, could you darling.

MASSES of love, do write again, Nardy

Darling Nard,

I had lunch with the Führer in the Ost the day before the Duce1 came, & said goodbye to him as I shan’t see him again. The little Doktor was there. We had rather a stormy scene as all of them, except the Führer, set on me because I said I didn’t like Musso, & bullied me till I was almost in tears, it was dreadful. I thought I wouldn’t be able to prevent myself crying. However the Führer took my part (without of course saying anything against Musso) & he was perfectly sweet. Of course the one that led the attack was Dr Brandt.2

Two days before Musso’s visit Wardie3 & Randolph [Churchill] arrived here. I met them at the plane & spent the whole three days with them, it was great fun. Randolph never stopped complaining because I didn’t get him an interview with the Führer & grumbling about the lack of ‘facilities’ whatever that may be, but he was very nice. Altogether, the three days were great fun & I adored it in spite of the misery of Musso coming.

May I come to Wootton for a few days when I get to England?

Best love, & to the boys, Heil Hitler, Bobo

P.S. Have you read Gone with the Wind?4 It is the most fascinating book ever written. I read it in under a week although it’s got 1036 pages & you know what a slow reader I am, so that just shows. One can’t put it down.

Unity on the cover of a news magazine, November 1937. Hardly a week went by during the 1930s without one of the sisters making headlines.

Darling Cord

Thank you so much for the delicious cheque for £5, I was pleased to get it, & it arrived on my birthday, too.

We went to Biddesden the other day for the wknd, it was a scream, Bryan made everyone slave away from morning till on the farm, & he kept saying to his wife ‘would you like to come for a bicycle ride?’ although it was only a week before the baby was born!1 We have got a house looking over the river, which is heaven, I think I shall be staying here for the baby.

Thank you again for the lovely birthday gift.

Love from Decca

Dearest Crackinjay

Oh goodness the Bridgetness1 of it! She is being so awful that I would really like to be very rude to her if it wasn’t for Maggot. This afternoon she said ‘Of course I think it is so awful for gals not to play games like tennis & golf because not only are they left out of everything but they are a fearful bore to have in the house & it is very selfish of them because they ruin everybody else’s good time’. Don’t you think it is the damn rudest thing you have ever heard when I was sitting there & she knows I can’t (& won’t) do anything like that. I was simply furious.