The Mitfords: Letters between Six Sisters

She says that ‘gals’ never get asked anywhere unless they are good at games. I hate the idea of being asked somewhere to ‘make up a four at tennis’. I’d much rather not go away to stay anywhere if I thought I was being asked to make even numbers for tennis of all blasted games. Why they can’t sit & talk like normal humans I can’t imagine. They are always driving you to ‘do something’. Goodness it does make me angry. I hate Bridget more than I ever have before. She is perfectly bloody.

Tom is back from Germany & has been down to Wycombe.

Well dear, do write.

The Forfar ball is on Friday. I hope it will be nice.

Much love from Henderson

Darling Honks

Thank you so much for the really wonderful gift, they are things I have always longed for but I have never afforded them as Blor always makes me buy woollen combies. They are such heaven, thank you a million times.

I had measles all through merry Xmas. It was so awful I nearly died of the horror of it.

This letter has been disinfected by Blor putting it in the oven, at least it will have been by the time you get it. The one I wrote to Bridget I specially didn’t have done.

You are kind to have sent the gorgeous gift, goodness you are.

Tuddemy says they are pretties, like the adverts.

Much love from Debo

I am still in bed for seven days as the doctor says I shall get bronchitis if I get up which makes Muv furious. I have also had some glorious medicine.

Dear Miss Measles

Oh those little armless hands* I simply adore them. Rodd thinks they are awfully sinister & they terrify him but I wear them the whole time.1 It was kind of you.

Poor Miss how awful about yr blindness, of course one can’t help wondering what sort it is when remembering yr awful reputation.2

Yes it is very nice here – Rodd spends his time making hats for Helen,3 & SHE WEARS them. So we are happy.

Love from Get on & get out of here.4

* The little armless hand

It lies upon the land

It cannot hold

It cannot mould

Nor rub an aching gland

It lies alone & makes no moan5

Dearest young Hen,

How I do love your delicious gift of face cream, it really is just what I wanted dear thank you so much.

I was amazed at your letter in the Fem’s writing, it seemed so extraorder to see Honnish terms in a non-Hon’s handwriting.

How simply wretched for you having measles, poor old Hohon.

The baby1 is terribly strong already & you could have seen it and me any time if you hadn’t been a young germ carrier.

We had the most heavenly Xmas you can image. Yr Hen had in her stocking: E. Arden bath salts & hand lotion, L. Philippe lipstick, Atkinson scent, Turkish delight, two boxes of chocolates, a book and 1s worth of cream which she drank down at one gulp. The poor Babe hung its sock but didn’t get a damn thing! Luckily it didn’t seem to notice.

Dear you can’t imagine how sweet it is, I long for you to come & see it. She hasn’t got any of the disadvantages of so many babes such as excessive redness & baldness & smelling of sick.

Yr Hen is loving her delicious time in bed, tho of course it isn’t nearly such heaven now as over the Xmas hol when Esmond was here all the time;2 but Id is coming today & I hope lots of people will be scramming down here.

Well dear

Not much news

So cheer ha.

Love from Beery

Darling Nard

I had great fun my last week in Vienna, Heine Bleckmann took me out a lot, & I also met some other friends who I went out with; so I saw quite a lot of the life in Vienna.

Of course hopes are high here about the Reichstagsrede;1 and the evening on which it came out that Schuschnigg2 was with the Führer, Vienna was in an uproar. No-one could think of anything else, & the first thing everyone – taxi-men, shop assistants or friends – said to one was ‘Haben Sie gehört? Der Schuschnigg ist beim Führer!’3 I do hope the result won’t be a disappointment. Poor Austria is such a tragic country, & the people here really such heroes, I had never realized how really heroic the Kampf [struggle] here is until my time in Vienna. I have never met such fanatics in Germany as I have here. Several times young men have come up to me & said, ‘May I kiss the hand the Führer has touched?’ – not at all in a gallant or complimentary way, but merely because they do really so worship him, rather like a Christian might kiss a bit of wood which Christ had touched. And they all talk of ‘draussen im Reich’4 with bated breath, as if they were talking of Heaven.

Do write – to [Pension] Doering.

Best love from Bobo

Dearest Hen,

Thank you so much for writing.1

We are going tomorrow morning, so I do hope you will write to yr hen. Please give my love to Muv, & thank her for her letter & for offering to help with the house, but as a matter of fact Esmond has already arranged for Peter Nevile to try & let it for us. If any of you hear of a likely person, would you let him know? They would have to keep Rose on at £1.1.3 a week (the 1/3d is insurance).

Love from Henderson

Darling Debo

Last night the Führer was talking about which of us was going to the Parteitag, and he says he specially wants you to go. Isn’t it wonderful. I told what a marvellous rider you are and he thinks you are so beautiful and wants you to see the Parteitag while you are young. So of course I said you would be thrilled and he arranged it all, on the spot. Isn’t he kind and sweet. He talked a lot about Farve and his speech1 and said he should thank him very specially when he sees him at Nürnberg.

I must rush off now, but I know you will be excited when you get this.

Lots of love from Honks

Darling Boud

You can’t think how thrilled your Boud was – in fact we all were – to read your letter to the Fem, the Fem was out when it arrived & your Boud died to open it but she managed not to. I am so glad you are in Corsica because ever since we went there I have thought it the most heavenly place in the world – do you remember the attractive French officer Yobboud fell in love with in that fortress in Ajaccio, and is he still there?1

Boud ee ub je eedjend vegudden je Boudle2 because she thinks the whole time about you. I was so terribly sad to be coming back knowing my Boud wouldn’t be there, and altogether your Boud has been so much in despair about it all & so miserable that she couldn’t write until now.

I feel sure you are having the most wonderful time & I envy you all the sun & bathing like anything.

Baby [Erdödy] is here, she came back to England with me in my car & we both return to the Continent next week. She sends you lots of love. I think she is quite enjoying it here. Yesterday Aunt Puss3 took us both to a play & was killing as usual. The Widow adores Baby & wants her to go to Totland Bay. The other day there was a huge headline in the E. Standard – ‘BLACK WIDOWS DOOMED IN CASE OF WAR’. Naturally we all supposed it included the Widow but it turned out that it means the Black Widow spiders at the Zoo, because their bites are fatal & they intend killing them at once in case a bomb or something might break their cage & let them loose. Isn’t it killing. The Widow stayed here for two nights she was a scream, she wore a shiny green satin blouse which Farve insisted on calling her ‘imperméable’, he also kept saying she had à ‘coiffure à la jolie femme’.4 We all shrieked.

Well Boud I have enjoyed writing to you because I almost feel as if we had had a chat.

Very best love from Yobboud

Darling Nard

It is a shame you can’t come to Bayreuth, & also to the Berg1 tomorrow, I am really awfully excited for that because it’s the only side of his life which I don’t know at all. Magda will be sorry you’re not in Bayreuth, won’t she.

What I couldn’t tell you on the telephone was this. You remember my little friend from Vienna who you said was like an Indian, & his pretty blonde fiancée who asked the Führer for an autograph in the Osteria. Well yesterday she telephoned & said could she come & see me for five minutes, but her fiancé mustn’t know anything about it. So this morning she came, & she was here when you telephoned. You know Heinz, her fiancé, was a member of the SS in Vienna – I believe since 1932. He was a tremendously enthusiastic Nazi & really risked everything for the cause during the Schuschnigg Regime. Well it seems that just after the Machtübernahme2 his father, also a member of the Partei, who had brought him up to be very ‘national-denkend’ [nationalistically minded], told him that both his (Heinz’s) mother’s parents were Jewish. Of course poor Heinz was completely erledigt [shattered] when he heard it, & wanted to shoot himself at once, which it seems to me would have been the best way out. Though, officially, he doesn’t count as a Jew as both the grandparents were baptized. But for Heinz, being a real Nazi ‘aus Überzeugung’ [by conviction], that naturally made no difference. His father made him promise not to do anything until they had had a reply to their Ersuch [request] to the Führer, but so far there has been no reply, & in the meanwhile of course he is having what is practically a nervous breakdown. Well it seems that there are several half-Jews who have, at one time or another, been allowed to remain in the Party on account of special Verdienste [services]. So they hope that he also will, though of course this will anyhow, from his own point of view, have ruined his life. So she came to ask me if I would help her, & I told her that if she would write a personal letter to the Führer I would give it to him personally. Isn’t it awful for them, poor things. I must say it gave me an awful shock when she told me.

At lunch, a man who was there, said the Osteria was just like an Italian Osteria, ‘nur viel sauberer’.3 At that the Führer looked at me out of the corner of his eye & then started to blither [giggle] quite uncontrollably, & when he had sufficiently regained his composure he said ‘Das hört sie gern’.4 I think the man was amazed. When he left he said, ‘come to the Berg any day you like between now & the 20th’. Later I rang up & said might I come today, but he sent a message to say that today he has Besprechungen [meetings] but would I come tomorrow. It is a shame you’re not here.

Well now I will run out & post your dress. I will finish this letter after my Obersalzberg visit, so I can tell you about it. Later. I have just returned from posting your dress, and just as a matter of interest I must tell you what it was like, & I think you might speak to your Minister O.5 about it. Well I had to fill in six long & quite unintelligible forms, and then take one of them to the Reichsbank in the Briennerstrasse. Of course, all this didn’t matter at all to me as I have all the time in the world & a motor; but imagine some wretched person who had to work hard & had no motor! I think it really might be changed, do speak to the Minister about it. 20th July. Well I arrived back late last night from the Berg, & will tell you about it. It was really simply heavenly. Well the drive up takes about 20 minutes, & when I arrived at the house, there were the Führer & Wagner waiting for me on the balcony or terrass. I was taken to them through the house, & they both said, ‘Wo ist die Schwester?’6 so I explained. Well I must say I never in my life saw such a view as one sees from that house, the whole chain of mountains lying at one’s feet so to speak. Well the Führer & Wagner & Schaubchen7 & I went & had tea in the big room or hall. It is simply huge & hung with wonderful pictures & tapestry, & at one end it has a raised platform with a big round tea table & a huge Kamin [chimney], & at the other end the whole wall is one huge window. The effect is simply extraordinary. The window – the largest piece of glass ever made – can be wound down like a motor window, as it was yesterday, leaving it quite open. Through it one just sees this huge chain of mountains, and it looks more like an enormous cinema screen than like reality. Needless to say the génial [brilliant] idea was the Führer’s own, & he said Frau Troost8 wanted to insist on having three windows. Well after tea he showed me the whole house, even the kitchen & the maids’ bedrooms & bathrooms, and I must say it is perfectly lovely, I know you will think so. After seeing the house, which took quite a time, we went & sat in the terrace & chatted to Werlin & Dietrich & his little daughter Gisela, then the Führer said would I like to go for a walk so I said yes. Just as we were starting off, the Führer’s new huge car arrived from the Mercedes works, so of course we examined it all over. When told it went easily 150 km.p.h., he said something so typical: ‘Das ist natürlich für mich ein Nachteil, denn wenn ich so schnell fahre, bin ich 20 Minuten früher da, und muss 20 Minuten länger im Hotel oder in meiner Wohnung sitzen.’9 Well we started on our walk, which turned out to be a pretty long one: he & I in front, & the others following us a good way behind. We walked down the mountains, quite slowly, & the view is too lovely for words. The ‘Ziel’ [aim] of our walk was a little teahouse he has built on a projecting piece of hill, it is too pretty for words inside, round, with a big round table & very comfy armchairs all round, & flat marble pillars round the walls, & a pretty fireplace with a lovely 18th-century clock on it. We sat & had tea & he talked about politics for about an hour, in his best style, & then we walked down to where the cars were standing below the teahouse, & he put me in my car & then got into his & we drove through the new Bauernhof that is being built & then he drove back up the mountain, & I down to Berchtesgaden at about 9.

Well now I must scram out, I will write to you from Bayreuth.

My best love to the boys.

Best love from Bobo

Darling Nard

I have been meaning to write to you for several days but there hasn’t seemed to be much to tell. I am living, as you see, in the same house as always. It’s terribly hot & one can hardly sleep, & the heat is awful in the opera.

On Sunday – the morning after I arrived – I drove over to Eger to an SdP1 demonstration at which Konrad Henlein spoke. When I arrived I was met by Wollner,2 who said he could only stay five minutes ‘denn ich muss den Führer ausholen’.3 I was amazed. I was taken to the Rathaus [town hall] where there was to be a Begrüssung [reception] & there we waited & at last everyone said, ‘Der Führer kommt! Der Führer kommt!’4 & in came Konrad Henlein, followed by Wollner & others. Well the mayor began his Begrüssungsrede, ‘Mein Führer! Es ist für mich eine Freude und Ehre, Sie, mein Führer, begrüssen zu dürfen’5 etc etc. I was amazed. Afterwards I was presented to Konrad Henlein, but there was no time to chat because we had to go out to the demonstration, & I had to leave early to be in time for Tristan.

At dinner, the Führer & the Doktor & Kannenberg6 were all in their best form, so you can imagine we had a riotous evening. But I think the Führer teased Kannenberg dreadfully by saying that the food in the Quirinal & also in Florence was much better than his (K’s) food, and that he would never be able to achieve such perfection.

The next evening, the Führer got into quite a rage twice; the first time with Kannenberg, for whom I felt heartily sorry! The second rage, however, was over Reichsminister Gürtner7 & the new laws he is making. He got angrier & angrier, & at last thundered – you know how he can – like a machine-gun – ‘Das nächste Mai, dass die Richter so einen Mann freilassen, so lasse ich ihn von meiner Leibstandarte verhaften und ins Konzentrationslager schicken; und dann werden wir sehen, welches am stärksten ist, the letter of Herr Gürtner’s law oder MEINE MASCHINEN GEWEHRE!’8 It was wonderful. Everyone was silent for quite a time after that.

I have been having rather a terrible time on account of a young man I met in Munich just after you left – Wolfgang Hoesch by name, no relation to the Ambassador9 – has been pestering me with marriage proposals, & to my horror followed me here! I do have an awful time with ‘Wolfgangs’ don’t I. I have a terrible time getting rid of him here, in fact I have to get up early & drive off somewhere for the day. However thank god he has to go tomorrow anyway.

Well I will now close because I feel I must go for a walk. My love to the boys – did they get my P.C.s?

Best love & Heil Hitler! Bobo

Darling Nard

Thank you for your letter forwarded from Munich. I didn’t mean for you to feel guilty about the dress, I only told you as a matter of interest & I didn’t mind at all a bit. But of course as a matter of fact you always feel guilty, don’t you.

Well I had meant to write before but the fact is, I have had flu since Friday. I felt queer Friday night on coming home very late from the Führer’s, after Walküre. The Führer, however, had said he would take me with him to Breslau, & of course I would rather have died than miss that. So on Saturday I stayed in bed till 5, & then got up & packed, & the Sonderzug1 left at 7. By the time it started I felt like death, & dreaded being called to dinner. You know how one sometimes can’t even raise one’s hand to comb one’s hair. However when I was with the Führer I felt sort of stimulated like one does, & he was in a sweet mood. We sat at a table with the Reichsärzteführer Wagner.2 Of course eating was agony & yet I had to because I couldn’t say I was ill. Luckily the Führer had to have a Besprechung [meeting] with an officer after dinner, so I got to bed early, feeling frightfully sick. We arrived at Breslau at the unearthly hour of 7.30 A.M. We drove in Kolonne [procession] to a hotel which had been abgesperrt [closed]. One of the Führer’s secretaries had come too so that I shouldn’t be the only female on the train, & she was my sort of Begleitung [chaperone]. The hotel was full of Greatnesses of course, & Seyss Inquart3 was there. Tschammer-Osten4 gave us Ehrenkarten [free tickets] & a man to go with us, and we walked to the square where the march-past was to be, which was next-door to the hotel. Already the sun was almost unbearably hot – before 8 A.M. – so you can imagine what the next 4 hours were like, & I had a high temperature. We sat on the front row of the Tribüne, just behind the Führer’s little jutting-out box. Behind us were Wollner & the other Sudeten-deutsch leaders. I think Wollner was terrifically impressed that I had come with the Führer, though I think he only believed it sometimes. Well then the Führer arrived & the march-past began – 150,000 people (i.e. half as much again as the SA & SS Vorbeimarsch in Nürnberg) but they marched in three columns, the middle one going in the opposite direction from the other two. At first came the Reichsdeutsche from the various Gaus [regions]; then the Sudetendeutsche. I never expect to see such scenes again as when the Sudetendeutsch women arrived. You will have read about it in the papers but the accounts I saw seemed to bear no relation to what actually happened. Really everyone was crying & I thought they would never sort out the muddle when the marchers broke ranks & surrounded the Führer in a seething mass, & those who had already passed came running back to try & see the Führer once more, & they were all sobbing & stretching out their hands & some of them managed to shout in chorus ‘Lieber Führer, wann kommst Du zu uns?’ and ‘Führer, wir schwören Dir aufs Neu, wir bleiben Dir auf ewig treu’.5 Henlein stood beside the Führer and it must have been his greatest day.

Well after that was over we went into the hotel & I went up to a room & lay down. The lade with me was in her element, as she is very pretty & very loud & coy with the Umgebung & Begleitung [staff] & calls them all ‘du’, from Sepp Dietrich6 to the chauffeurs. I was able to sleep till 3 & then we had to leave for a stadium outside the town where there were very wonderful demonstrations of Leibesubüngen, etc, including a dance by 5,000 women & club-swinging by 15,000. We had to leave early so as to get to the Flugplatz [airport] before the Führer, our planes left at 8, I didn’t go in the Führer’s because I was suddenly terrified I would give him my flu. We landed at Nürnberg & drove in Kolonne in ten huge cars to Bayreuth. After we arrived a car was sent round to take me to dinner but of course I felt like death & couldn’t go. Well ever since then I have been in bed, & have missed Siegfried and Götterdämmerung. Siegfried I would have missed anyhow as it was the day we started for Breslau.

On Monday night – the last night he was here – when the Führer heard I was ill, he sent me the most lovely huge bouquet of roses, & the next morning he sent round to enquire how I was. Then he left by plane for Berlin. It seems that when he left he told Frau Wagner7 I was ill & would she look after me a bit & send a doctor. Also, that he wanted all bills to be sent to him. Isn’t he really too sweet for words. Someone even came – I don’t know who – to say I was to be given back all the money I had spent on oranges etc. I am really so terribly grateful to him.

Well yesterday Frau Wagner came & brought the hugest & most lovely bouquet of garden flowers I ever saw, evidently picked by herself, & it makes my room smell like a garden. She was awfully nice & motherly, & said she would send a doctor.

A large bouquet arrived tied with two broad red satin ribbons with Hakenkreuzes [swastikas] on them – the sort of thing one puts on Horst Wessel’s grave – from the Lord Mayor of Bayreuth, whom so far as I know I have never met. All the flowers make one much more cheerful. Also Wollner came & brought a large bunch of gladioli.

Well this letter has got awfully long & may be frightfully dull but I do love writing to pass the time, now that I can sit up. My salvation has been A Passage to India8 which thank goodness I hadn’t read before, what a wonderful book, only much too short. I am so grateful to you for telling me about it. Alas I have finished it.

Please give my best love to the boys – did they get my postcards from Breslau? I hope so because they were quite special.

The Führer asked in the train how you were, I said I thought very well, I hope you are.

Well I will now close this weighty letter.

Best love & Heil Hitler! Bobo

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