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The Mitford sisters | 2 : life of the week
00:33:23
In the second of two episodes, Mary S Lovell unpacks the extraordinary and outrageous lives of the six aristocratic sisters in the decades that followed the Second World War
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- [00:02]
Mary S. Lovell
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- [00:31]
Danny Bird
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- [01:47]
Mary S. Lovell
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. Like many families, the Mitfords emerged from the Second World War bearing scars. Yet as the world entered a new, uncertain era, the sisters knack for making headlines showed no sign of abating. In our second Life of the Week episode on the Mitford Sisters, biographer Mary S. Lovell joins Danny Bird again to unpack the personal and political divisions that shaped the sisters post war lives and revealing how they rubbed shoulders with some of the era's most famous people. And if you haven't listened to part one already, make sure you listen to that first.
- [02:47]
Danny Bird
The Mitfords came out of the Second World War reeling from the death of the family's only son, Tom, who was killed in action in March 1940. He's often overshadowed by his siblings, but I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about Tom and his relationship with his sisters.
- [03:01]
Historian
The one thing about Tom was everybody worshipped him. All the girls absolutely loved him. He didn't make enemies with anyone, of course. He was the apple of his father's eye. He was his heir. And you can imagine, when they had six girls, it must have been so lovely to have a son, especially those girls. So the odd thing about it, each one of those girls, no matter how different they were ideologically, they all thought Tom was on their side. Unity and Diana thought Tom was a fascist and Decca thought Tom was a communist. So there must have been some glib talking somewhere along the line for them to believe that he was a very successful lawyer and I think probably would have been a very successful man in later life. But of course, he didn't live to do that. But he had in the late 30s, as many young men in the aristocracy had done, he had joined the Territorial army. And so as soon as war was declared, they were first in to be sent away to fight. But in fact, he went through the entire war in Europe virtually without a scratch. He had a lot of German friends. He. He didn't want to be marching into Germany as a victor, so he asked to be transferred to the Far east. And so he went out there and he was killed only weeks before the end of the war in the Far East. He'd been decorated. He was a very brave man. And he was killed out there in Burma, Myanmar. Now, of course, I asked Debo if she'd ever been to the grave. None of the family had ever been to the grave. I said, did you not want to? No, she didn't. Wanted to remember him exactly as he was. She couldn't think of him dead. I think it was a terrible thing to all of them.
- [04:49]
Danny Bird
And, of course, the tragedy for the Mitford family didn't end there. Unity never recovered from her suicide attempt. Could you tell me what it was like for her living back home in England after 1939? And when did she die?
- [05:03]
Historian
Well, she was very ill when she first came home. By that time, her parents had separated. Muv and Favre separated at the beginning of the war. It wasn't a formal or public separation, but they lived apart. They had lost the big house, of course, because Favre had lost all the money, but they had little small properties, cottages and things, and Muv moved into a cottage near Swinbrook, next to the pub near the river, and she was looking after Unity, who, I think she did need full time care, really. So they're living in this cottage, which had no central Heating. Muv was doing all the work with one person who came in a couple of days a week to give her a hand cleaning. Don't forget, this is a woman who had run big country houses with fleets of servants. Muv was again still keeping her cottage garden. And Debo said her mother was an absolute saint. I mean, it was a terribly traumatic period for Sidney Muv, because she'd lost her husband, she'd lost her way of life. Here is her daughter terribly ill and she's having to do all of this herself. Unity fought with everybody. Debo was living there for a while with them. She just said it was the most terrible period of her life because Unity would scream at people. There was no peace in the house at all. Fortunately, Debo had by then met Andrew, who was the younger son of the Duke of Devonshire. He was not going to inherit. His older brother was going to inherit the title, fell in love and they were eventually allowed to get married. So she was able to leave these appalling conditions at home. So there's Muv was left caring for Unity, who gradually got a little bit better. So to an extent that she was allowed to go out on her own, catch a bus. After all, she lived in the country. Everybody around knew who she was. She was largely ignored. People didn't like what she'd done, like what she stood for. Right through the war, that was how she sort of lived her life. Just going out on the bus, on rides into Oxford. There wasn't much for her to do. One of the investments that Favre made was to buy an island off the coast of Scotland. He was in his club one day, reading the paper. A man came in who'd lost all his money in the crash and said, I. I don't suppose anyone wants to buy an island. And Favre looked over the top of the times and said, yes, I do. So he bought this island called Inch Kenneth. It had a small, unheated house on it, had no roads. They thought they might go and spend the war there, but in fact they were not allowed to go because of the connections with Diana and Unity. And it was considered that maybe the Germans would come and be easily able to get in contact with them and they would somehow undermine the war effort. So it was not until much later in the war that Sidney was allowed to go to Inch Kenneth and take Unity and go and live there on the island. The bullet was never able to be taken out of her head. It was so embedded in the brain and now and again it would become inflamed and on one of these occasions it became so inflamed it killed her. Basically. She had a stroke. She was taken off to Oban and she died there the next day. So that was the end of Unity. A terribly traumatic time for everybody in the family to lose Unity and lose Tom. Now, Tom, they all loved. The odd thing about Unity is, no matter what you think of her politics, all of the family, especially Decca, they absolutely loved Unity. She was always slightly odd in her behavior, such as, you know, she would take a pet rat when she went to a ball in her handbag and take it out of her handbag to frighten, to shock the other girls. She stole a piece of writing paper. When she was presented in Buckingham palace, there was something outrageous about her always. The rest of her family knew this and they were very tolerant of her. I found it very difficult to find anything likeable about her. When I was researching her, I asked Diana about it. Oh, no. If you knew her, you couldn't fail to like her. And Debo said the same thing. Something about Unity hasn't travelled through time to enable me to know what it was that made them all like her.
- [09:29]
Danny Bird
Now, the years after the war saw Nancy achieve her greatest success as a published writer. What lay behind her two novels, the Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate?
- [09:38]
Historian
Well, the first one, she sort of invented this family called the Radlit family, but they were in fact the Mitford family, just with different names. Although they weren't perfect caricatures, they were mixed up. Her heroine was a mixture of Jessica and a mixture of Diana and a mixture of herself, you know. So she took historic sequences from all their lives and wove them into the life of her heroine in the Pursuit of Love. Now, when the heroine fell in love with the colonel, she calls him in the Pursuit of Love, that was actually Nancy's great love, Gaston Poleschi, who was de Gaulle's right hand man, one of the leaders of the Free French army based in London. And the story of Linda Radlett in the Pursuit of Love. The love story was in fact Nancy's story with Gaston. When you read her books and then you do the research, you can see where she's got all of her material from. So she borrowed very largely on Life and fictionalized it in the most clever and funny way. Extraordinary, really. I mean, she had written by that time probably four or five little books, including the one that caused all the problem between her and Mosley. That was like an apprenticeship for her because suddenly she turned out the Pursuit Of Love, which was absolutely marvellous. And then she followed it up, of course, and those books are still in print today, still selling massively. But she went from being a novelist to being a biographer and actually a very celebrated biographer later in life.
- [11:13]
Danny Bird
Now, we've touched upon Jessica's life in America a little bit already, but I was wondering if we could dig a little deeper into her career as a muckraking journalist, because that's something she's now very well known for, including also her activity with the civil rights movement and her friendships with people like Maya Angelou.
- [11:29]
Historian
Well, she was living in California, very happily married to Bob Trewhart. She'd gone through the big communist purge. They never had a lot of money and if they did have money, actually they were the sort of people to give it away to people who needed it. When she read Nancy's books, I think she thought, I could do that. And that's what she did. So she wrote Pons and Rebels. Now, although the family had liked Nancy's book, apart from Muv, Muv didn't like Nancy's books because she felt she'd been treated in a sort of ridiculous fashion, made to appear ridiculous. But people generally in the family liked Nancy's books. Now, when Decca wrote Hans and Rebels, she used the same material, but she used it in a different way. It was funny, in fact, in some places even funnier, I think, than Nancy's writing. But she. She gave away things in the family that oughtn't to have been given away. It's a little bit like Prince Harry's book, Spare, isn't it? He mentioned things that ought not to have been mentioned outside the family. And that is what Decca did. And it made her a lot of enemies within the family, not just her sisters, but the cousins and the aunts and the uncles. But anyway, her book was a tremendous success, much to her surprise as well, actually. And so suddenly she and Bob had money, real money, for the first time in their lives, and she was being asked to write more books. I mean, her book the American Way of Death was a massive big bestseller. It was read by everybody from President Kennedy and changed the way that funerals were held and dealt with in the United States. Everybody's got to die and the undertakers just thought that this was the biggest money making thing that you could do. So people who were recently bereaved were being fleeced out of thousands. She got to the bottom of that. She stopped it all, really. She made the undertakers offer cheaper funerals as well as more Expensive ones. When I was interviewing Bob Trewhart, that Decker's widower, he told me that he had spoken to Bobby Kennedy and that because of reading the American Way of Death, that they had bought a cheaper coffin for jfk. I think that's extraordinary. And I don't know whether you've noticed that when I've been talking the whole of this time. These internationally known, very, very famous names are running like a ribbon through this family, aren't they? Hitler, Churchill, JFK. I mean, there was almost no one in the 20th century of any note that this family did not bump up against during their lives to go back to Decca and her writing. She started delving into anything that she thought she could muckrake. And she became known as a muckraker. And remember, this is the girl who had no education, fought to get an education and never had one. She was then asked to lecture in universities. Her classes were so popular they had to run them in two sessions. I mean, she was so funny, I suppose. So her classes were always over subscribed and she ended up being paid a lot of money and she had to actually give it up because it was too demanding of her time. And as a rebel, she joined the civil Rights movement at a time when it was not a fashionable thing to do at all. She was marvelous in that respect, you know. As a result of this activity with the civil rights movement, she met Maya Angelou and they became very, very close friends.
- [15:06]
Mary S. Lovell
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- [15:41]
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Mary S. Lovell
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Mary S. Lovell
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Mary S. Lovell
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- [16:41]
Danny Bird
And as you touched upon the families lives intersect with so many huge figures from the last century. And one of the most unexpected developments was that Deborah became the Duchess of Devonshire in 1950. How did she approach this new role?
- [16:55]
Historian
Well, Andrew, her husband, was the younger son of the Duke. His elder brother married JFK's sister. Unfortunately that elder brother was killed during the war. So what had happened to then the Cavendish family, the Devonshire's, was that they had one lot of death duties for the father and one lot for the brother. A double whammy really. So it looked like they would lose Chatsworth and Hardwicke. So when Andrew inherited the Dukedom it was a great shock to him and a great shock to Debo. Nevertheless, Debo, don't forget, you know, she'd been brought up in big houses. Chatsworth was just another big house really, I suppose. But they didn't have any money and it looked like they were just going to be saddled with debt and just lose it. What happened was they started, and I'm fairly sure Debo played a large part in this, they started what turned out to be 18 years of negotiation with the Inland Revenue about how they could pay off this massive debt that involved giving to the National Trust Hardwick hall, which mercifully remains as it was in Tudor times. If you go now and visit it, it's a wonderful place. And they also sold some really wonderful things from the library and also some wonderful paintings like Goya, you know, really masterpieces and a schedule of payments. So they managed to save Chatsworth. Now Chatsworth that they inherited wasn't like Chatsworth is now. During the war it had been a girls school, so it'd been knocked about a bit and they had no money to put it right. But nevertheless they tried. And Debo started her side of the business of trying to make the house pay for itself by opening it at half a crown two and sixpence to get in to visit. And she put up a couple of card tables, she put a tablecloth over them and she was selling matches. And because everybody smoked in those days, but they were always running out of matches. So that was how she started her shops, just on that it gradually built. So I mean if you've ever been to Chatsworth now, you know that the shops are absolutely wonderful. But that was All Debo. She did that and eventually the house was actually supporting the estate, all under Debo's management and actually Debo's fantastic businesswoman.
- [19:22]
Danny Bird
Now we should return to Pamela, who lived a much quieter life compared to her siblings. What was her life like in the decades that followed the Second World War?
- [19:31]
Historian
She had a happy marriage during the war and just after the war. But then her husband also. So many of his men in this family turned out to be womanizers. They split. They split in a very amicable way. They remained friends all their life and he was very generous. So she was left with a very generous alimony, enabled her to live her life exactly as she wanted, a country life, nice houses, nice cars, and she just travelled, really. Basically, she spent her life traveling around the continent and living in the country. And when I met her, I mean, she must have been in her 80s, I guess, and she was living in Gloucestershire and everybody in the village knew her and loved her and she was very, very popular. She just had a nice life, really. Probably the happiest life, because she didn't have any trauma. She did have a very close girlfriend. But I think the whole thing stemmed from a remark of Decca's, sort of nasty sisterly remark that Decca made. She's a. You know, what being she said in a letter to Bob, Decca may have known something that I don't. I mean, it's quite possible she did. And Pam may have been a lesbian, but, I mean, who knows what happened.
- [20:48]
Danny Bird
To Diana after the war? And did she ever regret her dedication to fascism?
- [20:52]
Historian
No, I'm quite convinced she didn't. Well, she lived very happily with Mosley. They bought a little chateau in Paris. They obviously couldn't live in England. I mean, their reputation here was shot. I think she still felt that the right wing was the way to go. I don't think she could quantify Hitler's treatment of the Jews. She couldn't accept it somehow. You know, I mean, she knew historically it had happened, but I don't think she could understand how horrific it was to other people. You know, there was just something odd about it because she wasn't an unkind person or an uncaring person, and I just don't understand it. So to talk to someone like Diana who didn't feel the same was a real. A really odd thing for me. I just. I couldn't understand why she couldn't see how abominable it was. You know, I just. This is something I couldn't understand about Diana. Although I really liked her. I really Liked this woman. She wasn't a horrible person. She wasn't. But she had this glitch in her that she couldn't see what was so awful to the rest of us. Debo also felt this. But she was madly in love, I can tell you, madly in love with Mosley all her life, even after he died, right to her death. She was madly in love with him. He couldn't almost do anything wrong.
- [22:19]
Danny Bird
And is it true that she also had a friendship with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor who were similarly living in self exile?
- [22:25]
Historian
Oh, very close, yes. Well, you see, if you think about it, they were two couples almost in the same boat, absolutely reviled in the United Kingdom, but their roots were in the United Kingdom and they were living in Paris very close to each other. And so, yeah, they used to spend a lot of time together.
- [22:43]
Danny Bird
I wondered if you could talk a little bit about Diana's death. When did that occur?
- [22:48]
Historian
I started going to see her, I think in about 1997, 98. And I was told, actually, Dinky, this is Decca's daughter. Oh, I gather you're going to see the Ice Queen. I mean, she put the fear of God into me. I was very, very scared because again, I grew up at a time when, you know, she was reviled. She was the wife of Mosley, also reviled. And I went to Paris to see her and I can remember it was very, very cold, it was January and I was standing outside her apartment door and literally my knees were knocking. And it wasn't the cold. I was really frightened, I was really scared. But I knew I had to do it. You know, you can't write a book about the Mitford sisters and not research and meet one of the Swiggy sisters. And this perfectly beautiful woman opened the door with a smile and said, oh, do come in, you know, and took me in and gave me a drink and said, you're staying for lunch, of course. Well, after that first meeting, I probably saw her, I think maybe a dozen times anyway, in that really, really hot summer of 2003 when a lot of people in France, older people, died of heat she died of. And it was the heat really that killed her. She was certainly in her 90s. She was born in 1910, so that would have made her 93. She didn't have air conditioning in her apartment either. Was a beautiful old. A Parisian apartment overlooking Napoleon's mother's garden. Debo was out there with her when she died and I think she just faded away.
- [24:26]
Danny Bird
Given the fact that you were obviously researching this Book for a number of years. How did the sisters respond to your research? And how did you go about getting in touch with them?
- [24:34]
Historian
The first one that I had any contact with was deca. And then I'd also met Pamela accidentally. So I had these two Mitford girls in my quiver, if you like, you know. And when my American publisher suggested that I write about an English aristocratic family, I said, well, the only family I know anything about, actually, is the Mitford family. He said, tell me about them. And I told him the very basic stuff. And he said, oh, Mary, there's your book, you know. So there I was, you know, I'd got this commission and I had to actually go and meet them. Decca, I think, had just died. But anyway, I wrote to Debo. Didn't get an answer. And then I wrote again to Debo, and I didn't get an answer. And I thought, oh, she's. They call it these days ghosting, don't they? You know, she just didn't answer. I thought I had absolutely nothing to lose by writing again. I wrote to Debo again and said, I really would like to talk to you in person. And she wrote back and said, look, I'm terribly sorry. I haven't meant to ignore you, but I've just been so busy. She was 80. She said, this week, you know, I've had to. I've entertained 3,000 people to tea at Chatsworth. I'm organizing the Winter Ball. And she told me her diary, and it was, you know, it was like a top executive of a top company where she got the energy from, I don't know. But she said, no, of course, you must come and see me. So we arranged and I went up to lunch. Was the start of a long friendship, as a matter of fact, just talking.
- [26:06]
Danny Bird
About Debo there, as well as her connection to the Kennedys. That wasn't the end of her fascination with America or Americana, because she was also, I believe, a huge fan of Elvis Presley.
- [26:18]
Historian
Yeah, it is extraordinary, isn't it? The first time she took me into her sort of little parlor. You go inside the main door of Chatsworth, you turn right. She had a study, which was a big. I suppose you sort of say it was a morning room. And she used it as her study and her place to sit by the fire and read and so on. On her desk there was a statue of Elvis, and it was a telephone that someone had bought her. A real kitsch thing bought in the States. And it was Elvis. And when it rang, he wiggled his hips. And I think it Played you Ain't Nothing but a Hound Dog. Every time that phone rang, Debo burst into laughter. She just couldn't. She just absolutely adored it. But she really did love Elvis. She went to his house and she had quite a lot of Elvis memorabilia. She loved his music. So we had one sister worshipping Wagner and the other sister worshipping Elvis.
- [27:13]
Danny Bird
Given the internal family squabbles and the ideological differences before the war, did the sisters ever fully reconcile and reunite in the decades that followed?
- [27:22]
Historian
Yes, Decca came back from as soon as she was allowed to travel as a card carrying communist. Decca and Bob came over and it was just at the time that her book was taking off as well. They were never fully reconciled with Decca. They played at being happy families again. But I can tell you there was a lot of talking behind Decca's back between the other sisters. So I don't think Decca fully realized that she was never wholly accepted again by her sister. She thought she was, but you see, she spoke behind their backs as well, you know. So it was never quite the same. Nancy and Diana, they reconciled. But then Diana, you see, never realized that part Nancy had played in having her imprisoned during the war, parted from her children. Debo and Pam, they were friendly with everybody, so they were like the two hubs, but it was never quite the same. MUV died in 1963. So it was just the girls then. And I think Pam almost assumed the role of the nurturer of the family, so that when they were ill, it was Pam they sent for. They were on speaking terms. Speakers they would call it, of course, not on speakers and on speakers. But there were always the ribbons left from behind all of that wartime stuff. They never really wholly recovered from it, I don't think.
- [28:54]
Danny Bird
Finally, Mary, why do you think the Mitford sisters continue to hold our attention in the 21st century?
- [29:00]
Historian
Well, I suppose they're just exciting really, aren't they? They did things and they saw things and they knew people that the rest of us don't. I've met a lot of people through my research, for example, lots of movie stars. And because I'm researching into quite famous people and I've sat next to Prince William at dinner, so I've met a lot of interesting people, but nothing on the scale these girls had. They led glamorous, exciting lives. I mean, what's not to be interested in? I don't know that there is a legacy. They were just people who lived their lives. They had exciting, glamorous lives. Quite a lot of trauma, I suppose their legacies are the writings that they left, oddly enough, for girls who didn't have an education. Nancy, of course, she's the writing one. Diana left Best Selling Books, Decca left Best Selling Books. And Debo, who's supposed to have only read, you know, a couple of books in her life, left something like 12 best selling books. So that's their legacy, I suppose, the writing that tells us so much about them. Because if you just only read the sisters books, you would know quite a lot about that family. You don't really need a biographer like me. I just fill in the jigsaw bits that they don't want to talk about that I discovered in my research. You see.
- [30:20]
Mary S. Lovell
That was writer 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 now through UK TV's View and U Plus 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.
- [30:59]
Historian
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.
- [31:12]
Mary S. Lovell
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.
- [31:18]
Historian
Join me, Alex von Tanzelman for his History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.