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The Mitford Sisters | 1 : life of the week
00:49:28
In the first of two episodes, Mary S Lovell unpacks the extraordinary and outrageous lives of the six aristocratic sisters who scandalised society and reflected the extremes of the 20th century
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- [00:00]
Ryan Reynolds
Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile.
- [00:02]
Dani Bird
Now.
- [00:02]
Mary S. Lovell
I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal, so there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [00:22]
Dani Bird
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- [00:29]
Mary S. Lovell
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- [01:01]
Dani Bird
Have you ever spotted McDonald's hot crispy fries right as they're being scooped into the carton and time just stands still?
- [01:16]
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- [01:48]
Narrator
Hello and welcome to Life of the Week, where leading historians delve into the lives of some of history's most intriguing and significant figures, from ancient Egyptian pharaohs and medieval warriors to daring 20th century spies. For much of the 20th century, six sisters from Britain's minor aristocracy had a knack for making headline after scandalous headline. They were Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah Mitford. Now the sisters incredible shared story has been adapted into a TV drama called Outrageous, based on the best selling biography by Mary S. Lovell. Speaking to Dani Bird across two episodes, Mary recalls her own personal encounters with several of the Mitfords, and in this first of two episodes she explores the sisters lives up to the end of the Second World War in in 1945. They cover the hedonistic 1920s, the ideological rupture between fascism and communism of the 1930s and how the sisters seemed to be on the front line of history wherever it was happening.
- [03:07]
Historian
Mary, thanks for joining us on the History Extra podcast to discuss the lives of the six Mitford sisters. Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah. But before we get into their lives, perhaps we could start with their parents. Who were they?
- [03:22]
Dani Bird
Well, their parents were Lord and Lady Redesdale, so they're minor British aristocracy, very well connected. They called the father Favre and the mother Muv, so I'll call them Muv and Fav because that's how I remember them. They were cousins of Winston Churchill, they lived in rural Oxfordshire and they were Victorians, basically. I think they were both born around about 1880, and the girls were all born from 1903 up to 1920. Big spread. So that gives you the time scale that they Lived in. Brought up in the early Edwardian era. Well, the parents were David and Sidney, and they inherited. Because David's elder brother was killed in the First World War, he never expected to inherit the barony, but then they did. Now, the thing was, there wasn't a lot of money. They always lived in rather grand country houses, but there wasn't a great deal of money that came with it. And David was a lousy investor. So what money they did inherit he more or less lost by crazy investments, including going gold mining at one point in the Yukon in Canada. So the girls had rather an odd upbringing. They had no education as we know it. They had governesses and Sydney educated them. I think their standard of education was they had to all read, be able to read the Times leader by the time they were five, and then a governess came in and took over.
- [04:52]
Historian
Interesting education. But, yes, I think, as you've mentioned, the parents were rather suspicious of formal education and especially for young women at the time.
- [05:02]
Dani Bird
Yes, I think Favre was particularly concerned that if the girls went to school, they'd be made to play hockey and they'd get very big thighs. And some of the girls didn't mind. They didn't particularly want to go to school, but they were all very intelligent and particularly, I think, Nancy and Decca. Jessica was always called Decca. They really resented it. The other girls didn't mind, actually, because when they got older, their governesses used the PNEU system, which is a system used for educating across the world. And so they were educated at that level, but they had no tertiary education and it wasn't directed. One of the things that Favre inherited from his grandfather was the most fantastic library of, I don't know, something like about Eight or nine thousand books. And they had free run of this library. So that was a lot of their education. They would, you know, buzz off into the library for a couple of hours and just read.
- [06:02]
Historian
I want to ask you about the various houses they lived in growing up, because they factor heavily in their recollections later on in life. Could you tell me a little bit about those properties?
- [06:12]
Dani Bird
They lived in quite a small London house until Favre inherited the barony during the First World War. And then they moved to Batsford, which is a big house and it's still standing and occasionally it's open, you can go and look around it. And then they move to Asthal Manor, which is the one that you mostly hear about. One of the things that Favre did to waste a bit more of the family money was to build a brand new family mansion. Most of the girls hated it. It was called Swinbrooke. When you read about the Mitford family, and particularly in Nancy's wonderful novels, the setting is Swinbrook House, which the girls called Swinbrooke. The ones who didn't like it, the only one who loved it was the last one, the baby of the family, who's Debo.
- [06:59]
Historian
The Mitford sisters courted public attention throughout the 20th century. And apparently Lady Redesdale once exclaimed, whenever I read the words peer's daughter in a headline, I know it's going to be something about one of you children. Just how outrageous were the Mitford sisters?
- [07:15]
Dani Bird
Well, to put it in context, when I was growing up in the 40s and 50s, they were never out of the headlines. They were all so different. You see, two of them were fascists, one of them was a leading communist. And I think in the late 1930s, running up towards the World War, you can imagine the sort of ideological clashes that they have. Unity, for example, stalked Hitler. I mean, you can't call it anything else. She went to Munich, she sat around in a cafe that he was known to use, a sort of little bistro y caffe, until he actually noticed her. And then she inveigled her way somehow into his inner circle and became actually a very, very, very close friend of Hitler's. And then when she came back to England, she was continuously spouting off in the newspapers about how marvelous Hitler was. You can imagine this is not going to bring favorable headlines, really. Diana fell in love with, left her lovely husband and went to live as the mistress of the leading fascist leader, who was Oswald Mosley, leader of the Blackshirts. Again, this is not going to give very Favorable headlines. Another one, Decca, she was the Communist. She ran away with Churchill's nephew, who was also a leading communist, Esmond Romilly. And they eloped to Spain in 1937 to go and fight against Franco. And this made headlines. You know, Piers daughter elopes with Churchill's nephew. And actually Anthony Eden sent a gunboat to bring them back, a destroyer to bring them back. In those days, it paid to know people in the right places wanted to bring your errant daughter back.
- [09:02]
Historian
And as you've mentioned there, the sisters did take wildly different political trajectories. Was there anything about their upbringing and the family environment that set the stage for such sharp divisions, do you think?
- [09:14]
Dani Bird
Well, you see, this is the thing that puzzles everybody. These girls were all brought up in exactly the same way, had exactly the same education, by the same people, and yet they were polarized ideologically and no one can quite understand it. I think the main division was between Unity, who was the girl who fell in love with Hitler, and Jessica, who became the leading communist. And I think that started out as a childhood thing where just basically sibling rivalry, where Unity had started to be interested in right wing ideology. And so just to be different, Jessica went the other way. I don't think it was anything more than that initially. You see, they would hear their parents and grownups talking about the problems you have to think about in the 30s. We'd been through the Great Depression, no one quite knew how the world was going to recover from it. Particularly in Germany, you know, they were recovering from the war, they had massive debts, massive war debts. And yet here comes this man called Adolf Hitler who's made the new chancellor. And Germany suddenly picks up. People are saying, well, maybe this is the way to go. You know, maybe his way is the way to go. And then the alternative to that seemed to a lot of people, particularly in the aristocracy, the alternative was Bolshevism. Politics was very mixed up, I would say almost. Well, probably about the same as it's mixed up now. But you had these two sharply divided sides. So I think eventually what happened was one girl had taken this stance, I'm going to be a fascist, and the other girl took the stance that I'm going to be a communist. So they shared a sitting room, these two girls. They drew a line down the middle. On one side it was decorated with swash stickers and, and Nazi material. And the other side was Con Miss and the Daily Worker, you know, but they loved each other and they actually talked about, well, would you be prepared to shoot me? If it came to it, you know, things like that.
- [11:21]
Historian
So you're saying that it sounds like a youthful contrarian position, as in my sister's doing this, I'm going to do the opposite.
- [11:28]
Dani Bird
Exactly, yes. And the other thing, I mean, they lived in a big family and they were all, it seemed to me when I was researching them, they were always scrabbling for attention. Someone said to me about Nancy, she's the eldest one who became the best selling writer and her books are still in print and still selling. Her cousin said to me, if you want to understand Nancy, you have to understand she never felt loved by anyone in her whole life. She was always sharing love. And actually when you look at her history, that's quite true because with her parents she never came first. Tom, I suppose the one brother of these six girls came first with the parents and even in her love life. Her first husband was a serial womanizer and the man really the love of her life, Gaston Poleschi, which was during the war she met him, he was a Free French leader. He also was not faithful to her. So she never really came first. Throughout her entire life she was looking for love. Actually a very apt name for her novel, the Pursuit of Love, that almost you could describe her life in that way. But all the girls, they were always sort of looking for attention. I think they were attention seekers, you know, apart from Debo. Debo came at the end and I think she felt she had her parents love and was very happy.
- [12:45]
Historian
I believe it's also true that as well as the division within Unity and Jessica's bedroom, they also used to carve swastikas and hammers and sickles into the windows.
- [12:54]
Dani Bird
Yes, they took an old diamond ring to do that. And I've got a few. Yes, there's still, I think there is still one window overlooking the church in Astle Manor that has still got those insignias in the window.
- [13:10]
Historian
So just to clarify the atmosphere within the Mitford household growing up, there wasn't much room for political debate. Was it a daily occurrence or were the parents politically active themselves?
- [13:21]
Dani Bird
No, they weren't politically active. Muv was a countrywoman really. She, she was running that big house without a lot of money and running almost a market garden to earn enough money for the girls education. There was enough money to educate Tom, but not for the girls. So she wasn't politically active and she was a little bit absent minded. Favre was not politically active, although he did take his seat in the Lords. So he would go and have a snooze in the lords every now and again. This doesn't mean that he was not intelligent. When Unity was in such trouble leading up to the Second World War and the press were really besieging them, he made some very pertinent remarks. He had at first. When he was first introduced to Hitler, they'd all thought that he was quite a nice man. But Favre, when he assessed it and what was happening, Favre went the other way and he, you know, he really was absolutely opposed to Hitler. Mauve never did. Mauve had met Hitler. They talked about making bread, believe it or not, and she just thought he was that nice man in a brown suit. And she never changed her mind, even during the war. She just thought he was just a nice man, you know, who was thoroughly misunderstood. So, no, they weren't politically active. No.
- [14:39]
Historian
The three youngest sisters, Unity, Jessica and Deborah, had their own secret language and world, didn't they? Could you touch on that a little bit for me, Bowdledge?
- [14:50]
Dani Bird
They made it up. Well, lots of children make up secret languages, don't they? But they took this to an nth degree and I mean, they could actually talk to each other for hours in this language that few people understood. I've seen some notes in it and it's very, very difficult to understand it. So, I mean, just, it's a measure of their intelligence. I think, you know, that they're bored children. They invented this secret language. When I met Debo, she was in her 80s, she could still speak it, you know, she remembered it all that time. They started this club, which really started as the Hens Club, became the Hons Club. The Hons cupboard was actually an airing cupboard and one of their cost cutting exercises to save money was that Favre wouldn't allow them to heat the house only in the depth of winter and only the drawing room, I think, and the dining room was allowed to be heated. And so these children all used to squeeze into the airing cupboard to keep warm. It was one of the few places that would warm in the house.
- [15:51]
Historian
Now you've touched upon it already, but Nancy was known for her sharp wit and her novels. How did her writing before 1945 engage with and even reflect her sister's very public and often extreme lives?
- [16:03]
Dani Bird
Yes. I'm often asked, who's my favourite sister? And people think I'm going to say Nancy, because Nancy is the writer. In fact, I found it quite hard to like Nancy. I admire her and I certainly admire her writing, but her wit was cruel. She didn't mind hurting people. I mean, she was funny as well. But it didn't matter to her if her wit certainly hurt her mother. She said things that really upset her mother. For her novel, Wigs on the Green, she used Mosley, who was the lover of her sister, and she made this caricature of Mosley, whom she called the leader. It was a bit like talking heads showed him in a ridiculous light at a time when he was trying hard to raise money for his political party. You can imagine Diana was absolutely livid about this. It caused a split between them that lasted for many, many years, I think, really from the late 30s until after the war. And the split was so intense that Nancy thought nothing of going and shopping Diana to the authorities. When Mosley was arrested at the start of the war as a potential danger, Nancy went to a civil servant friend of hers and said, well, you've got the wrong person, because Diana's much more dangerous than Mosley. As a result, Diana was arrested and she spent, I think, three or four years in Holloway Prison.
- [17:41]
Historian
The one sister that's perhaps often overlooked is Pamela, and she's referred to as the quiet Mitford or the rural Mitford.
- [17:47]
Dani Bird
Yes.
- [17:47]
Historian
Was she really on the sidelines?
- [17:49]
Dani Bird
She really was on the sidelines. I mean, she had quite a full life for her. It didn't shine or sparkle in the way that the sisters, the other sisters did. She was very content. She was. She was marvellous at animal husbandry. She loved being with animals, loved working with animals, loved working on a farm, she loved driving. So very early on, she had earned money actually running a farm to buy herself a car. And she went touring alone on the continent, which was unheard of. Thing for a young unmarried woman to do in those days. It wasn't very exciting compared with the things that the other sisters did. But, I mean, she had, you know, quite an interesting life and she was friends with a lot of interesting people, such as John Betjeman, who was in love with her for a while. And when she married, she married an amazing man, really. He was a leading physicist, one of the brightest men, I think, employed by Churchill in the run up to the war. There was a lot to Pamela, but as I say, she doesn't sparkle. She was the first one I actually met in person. I met her at a dinner party. I didn't know who she was. I just noticed that this one woman at the table had kept everybody in absolute tux of laughter, really. And it's very difficult to quantify humour. What makes someone. It's timing as well as what they say. I was thinking about it afterwards. What did she say that was so funny? We never stopped laughing at her.
- [19:15]
Historian
Just out of curiosity, how many of them did you meet?
- [19:18]
Dani Bird
Well, I met in person Pam, Diana and Debo. I knew Diana and Debo very well, but the other sister that I knew only on the telephone and through writing was Decca. I was in Santa Barbara doing a speaking tour and the phone went and I was in a motel and the phone went and this woman said she was Jessica. She introduced herself as Decca Trewhaft. Meant nothing to me. And then she said, oh, you might know me better as Mitford. And of course I'd read her book Cons and Rebels and I had no idea why she was calling me, but she had read my book straight on till morning and she said, I think it will make a wonderful film and I'm going to introduce you to someone who might be able to help you. And you know, it was sort of a boat from the blue. So that was Decca. And then I wrote to her several times and we always meant I was always so busy in those days and I guess she was too, I think far busier than me probably. And by the time I actually got to she lived near San Francisco. By the time I got there she was dead. So I went and I visited her husband and daughter instead. But so I never actually met her in person.
- [20:27]
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- [20:59]
Mary S. Lovell
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- [21:25]
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- [21:41]
Dani Bird
What My pozole.
- [21:43]
Alex Von Tanzelman
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- [21:49]
Dani Bird
Cholula.
- [21:51]
Historian
I'd like to turn now to Diana. She became a fixture of the so called bright young things in the 1920s. Can you tell me a little bit about her life at that time?
- [22:00]
Dani Bird
Well, she married very young, she was very beautiful. She was always regarded as the beauty of the family. And people now look at her pictures and say, well, she wasn't really that beautiful, actually. She was. She just was one of those people that the camera doesn't really like, I think. Or she froze when the camera looked at her. When I met her, she was in her late 80s and she opened the door of her Paris apartment and this beautiful woman looked out at me. So anyway, she fell in love with Brian Guinness, who was the Guinness heir. So she married, I mean, serious money, you know, not, not just a rich person, but serious money. And they were the leaders of society, really. You can imagine Brian was liked by everybody. He was a thoroughly nice man and he was head over heels in love with Diana. They kicked up their heels. They had these parties, three or four or five a night that they would go to. And they were called the bright young things by the older people who'd been through the war in the 20s and didn't really think, think this was the right sort of behavior. It wasn't an admiring description. When they called them bright young things, you know, people were disapproving of them. But anyway, that's where they were and they were the leaders of society. So it was very, very shocking, shocking to everybody when she met Mosley, fell head over heels in love with Mosley, left Brian and their two young children and went to live as Mosley's mistress. She then did take the children as part of the divorce. But she was literally from having been the leader of society, she was a fallen woman because Mosley was married and his wife was a very important woman and very popular. So for Diana to leave her husband and family and go and live openly as Mosley's mistress, I can't tell you how scandalous that was at the time. You know, she was well known by everybody and everybody knew what she'd done. She didn't try to hide it. It was thanks largely to Brian that she could afford to take a lovely apartment in Sloane Square. And every night Mosley would come along with his silver topped cane and tap on her window to let him know he was outside. So, I mean, they weren't very, very discreet and it was shocking. Mother and Father were both absolutely scandalised by it. And the children, the other girls, were told to have absolutely nothing to do with her. Of course, they disobeyed and they did. They did go and visit, but that was the first scandal that hit the family.
- [24:36]
Historian
What was it about fascism that you think appealed to Diana and how did it affect her life after she had eloped with Mosley?
- [24:44]
Dani Bird
Well, I mentioned earlier that there seemed to be the two possible solutions to the problems that they were experiencing. One was right wing and one was left wing. And right wing meant fascism. It was either Nazism or fascism. I don't think Diana was very politically interested. She was interested in other things until she fell in love with Mosley. Now, Mosley had been a leading Conservative mp. He had crossed the floor and then he decided, you know, a plague on both your houses. You're neither of you any good, I'm going to start my own party. So he did. He started the British Union of Fascists. He had loads of energy and quite a lot of money, which he actually piled. You know, he spent his money getting this party off the ground. He was very dynamic and it was literally love at first sight for Diana. And she was very beautiful. So, of course, he, as a known womanizer, I don't think he realized that he was eventually going to marry her, meaning she was just a fling to him at first, but they were very much in love and they wanted to get married. But he felt his own wife had. His wife Simi, had died of peritonitis. She'd had appendicitis that had turned to sepsis, and so she died. But he didn't feel it would be a good idea for the image of the party for him to marry his former mistress. Nevertheless, Diana wanted to get married. And by then Unity and Diana had become very friendly with Hitler. And so she asked Hitler if it would be possible for them to marry secretly in Germany so that the British press didn't get hold of it. And Hitler had that arranged for them. Hitler was at the wedding. He was guest of honor. He wasn't the best man. When the British papers eventually did report it, it was mentioned that Hitler was the best man. But he wasn't. But he was certainly at the wedding.
- [26:42]
Historian
Now I'd like to dwell more on Unity and how she became besotted with Hitler and the Nazis. And eventually, of course, she moved to Germany during this time. Could you tell me a bit more about this obsession, where it came from and how she managed to become part of Hitler's Entourage.
- [26:57]
Dani Bird
Well, it all started back with this rivalry between her and Decca and eventually they each adopted their stance. I suppose she was reading more and more and more about Hitler and hearing people saying, oh, he's a dreadful man. You know, very often when you're young you will kick against the traces. And I think this is what happened. She eventually decided she was going to go to Germany. She persuaded her parents to let her go to Munich to speak German. While she was there, she devised this way of getting to see and meet Hitler. She found out that he, he dined most, or lunched most various days in a little cafe, a certain cafe. So every single day she would go there and she would take a place in this cafe and sit and wait. And sometimes Hitler came in with his people and sometimes they didn't. But he must have noticed after about two months, every time he came in this tall, blonde, Nordic looking woman, she was absolutely the epitome of the look that Hitler espoused for women. You know, blonde, blue eyed, tall, slim. Anyway, he noticed her and then eventually he sent one of his henchmen over to ask who she was. Somehow the word got about that she was Lady Mitford. A lot of them called her Lady. Then one day she wrote in her diary, the most magnificent day of my life. Hitler invited her to come across to the table. I mean, this is extraordinary, isn't it? You know, here she was, she's a foreign language student. In the years running up to the war, I think this would be about 1937. Can you imagine Churchill going into a cafe and inviting a German foreign language student to come and join her at the table? The whole thing is just extraordinary really. And then it happened so often that she became accepted as part of Hitler's inner circle. She would go to his apartment in the evening. I mean, I don't think there was anything between them at all, but I think he was amused by her. You have to also remember that she had an aristocratic upbringing which gave her a sort of inbuilt confidence. She saw nothing unusual in the fact that here she was talking to a world leader and called him her friend and would ask him favors and tell him jokes and make him giggle. And I mean, nobody else spoke to Hitler like that. His henchmen were in awe of him. So she must have been a sort of breath of fresh air, I think, to him. Anyway, he was very fond of her, he gave her lots of presents and again, the whole thing is extraordinary. At that time there were just beginning to be rumblings of war about the Time that she met him, 37. And the other odd thing about Unity, she was born in Canada, the other girls are all born in this country. But her father had gone on this wild goose chase of finding gold in the Yukon to up their finances, you know, and Muv went with him. Unity was conceived in Swastika, a town called Swastika, and they called her Unity Valkyrie. I mean, these are odd things. She took this as a sign that actually her mission in life, she was actually put on this earth to prevent war between the two countries. Don't forget, she had access to Churchill, he was, you know, related. And she had access to Hitler and she talked to both of them. So she became sort of obsessed with the fact that it was her mission, her role in life was to prevent any war between the two countries she loved.
- [30:42]
Historian
And of course that ultimately failed in September 1939. Could you tell me a little bit about how Unity dealt with, with that outcome?
- [30:49]
Dani Bird
Hitler did tell her a couple of days before, I'm afraid there is no turning back. It's all England's fault, of course, but it is going to be war and really, my dear, you ought to go home. So she packed up her things and everybody assumed that she was going to go home, but in fact Hitler had given her a tiny pearl handled gun for protection, self protection. She went to the police station and left messages for people telling them that she was leaving. And then she walked into the park in the middle of Munich and put the gun to her head and shot herself. She didn't actually kill herself as she intended, but she was unconscious at first. She was taken up unconscious and taken into hospital. Her family knew nothing, they didn't know where she was. All communications between the two countries had failed at this point. It was September 3, 1939. So her parents, it was weeks before they knew that she was even alive. They didn't know if she was dead or alive or there were rumors that she'd been taken by the Nazis and put into a prisoner of war camp. You know, it must have been awful for them. And then finally a cousin found out that she was in fact in hospital, being very well looked after, all paid for by Hitler. And so he got in touch with the family. So then Muv and Debo, and don't forget, the two countries are at war. They went out on trains and Hitler sent a special train, a hospital train with a special carriage for Unity with nurses to meet them. And they met, I think at the Belgian border, it may have been Switzerland, I can't remember now. And then they came back with Unity. She was brain damaged. She recognized them, but they hardly recognized her. Debo said it was the biggest shock of her life when she saw this poor creature, you know, with hair that hadn't been washed in weeks and weeks. It was matted and she'd not eaten. You know, she's very thin. So she came back to England. Of course, the newspapers were screaming that this Hitler lover, you can imagine, at the start of the war, this didn't go down a whole, you know, in favour with many people and the government was really roundly abused for allowing her back. It was terrible for the family because she was really, really a very sick woman indeed. Whether she deserved it or not is a different thing. That's an opinion. But in fact, she was a very sick woman and they were trying to get her back at a time when all transport was so difficult that they got her onto a boat, they got off the boat at this side and the press were there in a massive big pack, you know, screaming and flashing. I think they went into a hotel for the night and then Favre had hired an ambulance and they drove her in the ambulance back to Swinbrooke.
- [33:44]
Historian
I know you have dismissed the notion that there was anything romantic between Unity and Hitler, but nevertheless, there have been rumours that came up about 20 years ago that she may have been burying his love child. You buy into that?
- [33:57]
Dani Bird
Well, I remember the incident 20 years ago when a lot of reporters called me and asked me if there was anything to it. And of course, I mean, you know, had there been anything to, it would have been the most fantastic story. So I did research it a lot and I talked it over with Debo and in fact, I think it would have had to have been something like a 14 month gestation. Anyway, she was in that hospital, but she, she had some other illness. It was a nursing home in Oxfordshire. And actually the reporter who contacted me was already, by the time I'd finished my research and I talked to Debo about it, he had made a TV documentary. And so when I pointed out to him that it couldn't be right, you know, because we had the dates that she came home and we had the dates, you know, the last time she must have seen Hitler. And it was way over nine months, I can tell you. This would have been the longest gestation ever. And he said, ah, well, we've made the program now, so I'll add a bit on the end. So, I mean, he'd left right up to about, let's say the program is an hour. So 57 minutes said that this child was Hitler's. And then the last three minutes said, actually it couldn't have been, because I think you can probably see this on YouTube. But no, it wasn't Hitler's child. And I don't believe that Unity was intimate in that way with Hitler. I did ask Diana and she said, no, absolutely not. And Diana knew them both very well. So I said, had Hitler wanted to, do you think Unity would have slept with him? Definitely, yes. So the reluctance came from Hitler, not from Unity. I mean, she was madly in love with him. She thought the sun shone out of his ears. Diana thought that Hitler didn't have a big sex drive. I mean, Diana, don't forget, was a blonde bombshell. Lots of men fell for Diana, and she used to go and sit with him and listen to music in his apartment, but he never made a move on her. And she felt he probably had a low libido, or else he was just too blooming busy running the country and preparing the country for war.
- [36:10]
Historian
Very intriguing and disturbing thoughts to contemplate. I'd like to return, if we may, to Jessica, because throughout most of her childhood, she had a running away fund. And eventually, as you've mentioned, she eloped with Esmond Romilly to Spain during the civil war that broke out there in 1936. Firstly, could you tell me who exactly Esmond was and why do you think Jessica was desperate to break away from her family?
- [36:33]
Dani Bird
Let's deal with Esmond first, then. Esmond was the nephew of Winston Churchill's wife. His parents had split when he was quite young, and I think he really had had quite a disturbed childhood. He was sent away to boarding school. He became really a very, very naughty boy that grew up into really an intolerable teenager. He espoused communism. And you can imagine in a public school, I think he was asked to leave about three or four public schools. His parents didn't know what to do with him and eventually he just left the school. I think he started a communist newspaper. The Exploits of Esmond had sort of percolated through the family. That's what happened. So Jessica was always a rebellious little girl. She badly wanted to go to school. I mean, it was a recurring theme. She wanted to be well educated. And she asked, I don't know how many times she asked her parents, you know, please let me go to school. And she didn't want to go to, you know, some posh private school. She wanted to go to the grammar school Again, absolutely. Favre said, no, we're not having you going to school, you'll get fat calves, you know. And also you meet the wrong kind of people. You meet people that they couldn't recognize because again, there was very much a class division in those days that we almost would hardly recognize. So she became very rebellious. One of the things that she insisted on as a child, she was, as soon as she was old enough she was going to run away. And so she started a running away fund and everything went into this. You know, when relatives came and gave children tips that that went in her pocket money went in. She very rarely spent her pocket money unless it was to buy copies of the Daily Worker or books that her parents wouldn't allow her to have. She just became almost isolated within the family. Self isolated. I don't think the parents even realized. And so she, she grew up and Esmond became to her, I won't say as Hitler appeared to Unity because it wasn't quite that way. But she just thought he was marvelous. She eventually wrote to him and they arranged to meet. Decca couldn't just go and meet someone in those days no young girl would be allowed out without chaperone. But as they were related, Esmond got an aunt to invite Decca and invite him. So they were at the same house party all weekend. Not really chaperoned though they were able to go out and walk and talk. And they fell in love with each other that weekend and decided to run away together that weekend. So when she came back, Muv was planning to take them on a world cruise as part of their education. Two or three of the said it was Debo and Decca and some friends of theirs. Anyway, while Muv was busy doing all this, Decca was plotting how to run away. And so that's what she did. She faked another invitation with friends of hers. Letters were forged and sent to the house. The mother believed it. And the last time that she ever saw her father, he and Muv put her on a train to Dieppe where she was going to meet these so called friends of hers. But in fact Esmond was on the same train and they, you know, they just ran away together. So this was 1937. I mean, it was big news and papers were full of it. She went missing for about three weeks. By the time they caught up with her, she was already pregnant. In fact, Nancy and Peter Rodd, Nancy's husband, they were sent off on this destroyer and they tried to persuade Decca to go back. Decca was absolutely adamant she wasn't going back. Then Muv came out and Decca told Her, she was pregnant. So then the trick was to get them married, which they did. They married and they went to Spain. They didn't actually do any fighting, but Esmond was reporting about the Spanish Civil War. But nevertheless, I mean, they were in war torn Spain, which was a dangerous place to be. And I mean, she was very young, she was only, you know, 17 or 18. Eventually they did come back to England. They had the baby. Baby only lived a very short time. They were living in a very poor way in a sort of slum in the Docklands in London and the baby caught measles and died. They then decided that they would go to America and that's what they did. I think it was very difficult for the family because they couldn't speak to Diana because of Mosley the younger. Well, certainly Debo was told she must have absolutely nothing to do with Decca. Unity by that time had gone her own way anyway, so Unity was seeing Decca, but of course Esmond had told Decca she was not to see Unity, you know, because she was a Hitler lover. You can imagine the dynamics of this family were almost impossible. Who was speaking to whom and who was not allowed to see whom? It's an extraordinary family.
- [41:42]
Historian
The outbreak of the Second world war in 1939 inflicted greater tensions within the family. And perhaps the most notable moment came in 1940 when Diana was imprisoned by the British government on the grounds of national security. Could you elaborate on what happened to her and the conditions she faced in prison?
- [41:59]
Dani Bird
Yes, they had sort of expected that Mosley would be picked up because, after all, the war was against fascism and he was the British Union of Fascists. And it had been called for in the newspapers for Mosley to be picked up, arrested and imprisoned. Thanks to Nancy, Diana was also picked up and arrested. It was very, very shortly after, just weeks after she'd given birth and she was still breastfeeding the child and she had to leave that child and she was taken into Holloway. She was slung into a cell that had no heating, no mattress, I don't think. It was just very hard, very cold. And, you know, she had lived in the lap of luxury all her life, so it was even harder for her. It was filthy dirty, she said, and of course she didn't really know what was happening. Nobody was able to see her for quite a while, so it was very difficult circumstances. She was still feeding the baby when she went in. It was a very painful experience for her. And not least, of course, because she was missing her children. And of course it was also in Bomb Alley, Holloway was in Bomb alley. So when the Germans came over, they were bombing raids almost every night. And these women prisoners were suddenly rushed out in the middle of the night and herded into another part of the prison, you know, for their own safety. I think it was a very, very difficult time for her. Again, people might say, well, it serves her right, you know, she deserved it. That is not my business. When I'm writing about it, I'm writing the facts. I don't sympathise one way or the other.
- [43:33]
Historian
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Jessica was settling into her new life in America. But Esmond had gone off to fight in the Second World War.
- [43:42]
Dani Bird
That's right. They had a wonderful time. This young couple, very talented young couple, you know, buzzing around and they were having a marvellous time. People in America welcomed these young aristocrats, really, who were terrific sponges, I've got to say. But Esmond wanted to fight, so he joined the RAF and came over to England and left Jessica there. Jessica had had her baby, Dinky by then, and Esmond went off to fight and then he didn't come back from a bombing raid. He was on a bomber and he would go on these raids over to Germany and one night he didn't come back. And of course, because of who he was, I mean, a big search was made for him, but nothing was ever found. They had no trace at all. There was no wreckage. Nothing was ever heard of Esmond again. It was terrible for Decca. You know, she was madly in love with him and this made her terribly bitter against Churchill and England and her family. Very, very bitter. She had joined the Communist Party in the States by then and was active, very active. I mean, actually, Churchill went over to visit the President, fdr, and so she went to the White House and saw Churchill there, hoping that he was going to give her good news about Esmond, because he told her there was no hope at all. He wrote about it, actually, and he gave her some money, which she said she was going to give away to the Communist Party. Even though she needed money badly, she wasn't going to take it from Churchill. He had effectively killed Esmond. Anyway, so she's working within the Communist Party and she meets a young lawyer called Bob Trewhath and he falls madly in love with her. She's attracted to him, but she's still in love with Esmond, really. She decides she's going to move to the west coast, so she moves to California. Actually, in time, Bob followed her and they got married and they had a long and happy marriage. Actually, they were both active communists. And when the McCarthy witch hunt trials took place in the United States, she was one of those on the witness stand. You know, we've all seen those black and white movies with McCarthy saying, Are you now or have you ever been a Communist? You know, she had been. I mean, she couldn't. She was the treasurer of the local branch. She could hardly say she wasn't. You know, as a result, she was not allowed to leave the United States. So it was a long time before she was ever allowed to come back to the uk.
- [46:17]
Narrator
That was Mary S. Lovell, whose book the Mitford Girls is out now, published by Abacus and was the basis for the new TV series Outrageous, available through UK TVs U&U Drama streaming service as well as BritBox. Mary was speaking to Danny Bird. Thanks for listening to today's Life of the Week. Be sure to join us again next time to learn about another fascinating figure from the past.
- [46:52]
Dani Bird
This is history's heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me Alex Von Tanzelman for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes Wherever you get your podcasts.