Loading summary
Transcript61 lines
- [00:00]
Podcast Host
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
- [00:04]
Sprite Winter Spice Cranberry Advertiser
The holidays are already in full swing. The lights are up. You got good people, good food, and good vibes. And there to help keep that energy going is Sprite Winter Spice Cranberry with that crisp cranberry flavor with a smooth winter spice twist. It's the drink that livens up game nights, gift exchanges, or just catching up in the kitchen with a burst of holiday flavor. It's a seasonal favorite, but it's only here for a limited time, so grab it while you can. Sprite Winter Spice Cranberry Sprite Obey your thirst.
- [00:37]
IBM AI Advertiser
So let me get this straight. Your company has data here, there and everywhere, but your AI can't use the data because it's here, there, and everywhere? Seems like something's missing. Every business has unique data. IBM helps your AI access your data wherever it lives. To change how you do business, let's create Smile to Business IBM.
- [01:06]
Trainer Games Narrator
10 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points. You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract worth $250,000.
- [01:25]
Podcast Host
This is where mindset comes in.
- [01:27]
Trainer Games Narrator
Someone will be eliminated.
- [01:29]
Podcast Host
Pressure is coming down.
- [01:31]
Trainer Games Promo Voice
Trainer games On Prime Video January 8th. Watch the trailer on trainergames.com welcome to.
- [01:37]
Dana Schwartz
Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and mild from Aaron Menke. Listener discretion advised. Welcome to a very special episode of Noble Blood. I am so thrilled to be talking today with Carla Kaplan, the historian, writer, professor, author of the incredible new nonfiction book the Fierce Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford. If you are someone who, like me, has been fascinated with the Mitford sisters, this is absolutely going to be a book you're going to want to read. I feel like I learned so much. I had been circling, you know, information about the Mitford sisters because they're just fascinating. And this book is just so brilliantly, comprehensively done, even though it focuses really on Jessica or Decca Mitford. Thank you so much for joining me.
- [02:26]
Carla Kaplan
Thank you so much for having me. What a pleasure to be here today.
- [02:30]
Dana Schwartz
So, just to start, for audience members who maybe aren't familiar with who the Mitford sisters are, who are they? Why do so many people write and talk about them?
- [02:41]
Carla Kaplan
And why has it been going on for literally 100 years now? So it has been sometimes called Mitchford Mania. Jessica Mitford, the sister about whom I write, called it somewhat derisively the Mitford industry. And there have been waves of Mitfordiana. And we are in One. So there is my book, there is Peter Sussman's incredible book of Jessica Mitford's letters. There is Mimi Pons, Do Admit, which is a graphic group biography of all the sisters. There is in Great Britain now a biography of their mother, just appropriately simply called muv. There was just a play in England which I unfortunately didn't get to see, called Party Girls. And of course, as some of your listeners may very well know, there was the BritBox series called Outrageous, yes, which was based on Mayor Lovell's group biography and covered all the sisters. And if any of your listeners happen to see Outrageous, they get a picture not only of what beautiful, engaging, charming, brilliant, creative, often snarky, rebellious women the six sisters were, but they also get a sense of a kind of split screen reality, that these sisters were born into the British aristocracy, into a very eccentric and a very isolated family, which in classic aristocratic tradition was very land rich and somewhat cash poor. And the parents were really old school. In fact, they were so old school that Jessica Mitford, the sister about whom I write, called them Edwardians, you know, which is quite a bit earlier than they were. But they were very old school when it came to gender roles. They did not believe in any education for these six amazing young women who were brilliant and creative and full of energy and full of ambition and denied formal education, really of any kind. So what did they do? So these six beautiful girls essentially reach up into the air and they pull imaginary futures out of thin air. And part of why I think we're so fascinated with them is almost all of them achieve exactly the imaginary future they pull down from nowhere. So we have Nancy, who wanted to be a great writer, became a famous novelist. Pamela, who lived most quietly of them all, the country woman known as Woman who stayed in the country and stayed out of the press, left a very wealthy marriage for a German woman. That could have been part of why she stayed out of the press. Then we have the notorious Diana, the.
- [05:37]
Dana Schwartz
Beauty of the family.
- [05:39]
Carla Kaplan
Although they're all beautiful, I mean, every one of them is sort of drive your car into the curb and gape at them. Beautiful, you know. But Diana was extraordinary and she looked like a statue, and she actually was that way all her life, just stunningly beautiful and one of the most brilliant of them all, and one of the two who made some of the absolute worst choices, so marries very, very young, marries Brian Guinness, heir to the Guinness fortune, leaves him for a man named Oswald Mosley, head of the British Fascist Party. When she leaves Guinness for Mosley Mosley is married. He is carrying on an affair with two of his wife's sisters. He's really something else. And it's an incredibly scandalous thing for a young woman of the aristocracy with two children to do. But she lives all her life with Oswald. Mosley, as a fascist, never apologizes for her fascism. Completely unrepentant. Diana goes to her grave blaming the Holocaust on the Jews. And then, let's see, there is Unity, Decca's very, very favorite sister, who went even further than Diana. So Unity falls from a distance. She's completely enamored of Adolf Hitler. She goes to Germany, she stalks him for months until he finally notices her. Now, she's pretty hard not to notice. She's 6ft tall, she's gorgeous, and she's staring at him nonstop.
- [07:12]
Dana Schwartz
And, I mean, she's also a member of the aristocracy. Their father is a baron. I imagine that gave them some access.
- [07:20]
Carla Kaplan
Exactly. Well, it also made her very interesting to Hitler because in his mind, he's thinking, okay, she's the daughter of a baron. I'm going to get some inside information, you know, fortunately for England, Unity didn't have much inside information. What she did have was total dedication to Hitler. And when Germany and England declared war, she went into a park, took a tiny pistol out of her handbag, put it up to her temple and pulled the trigger. And she didn't die. The bullet lodged in the back of her brain and at the back of her skull, and she lived for many years with diminished capacities. The youngest sister became the Duchess of Devonshire, the Chatelaine of Chatsworth Estate. If anybody listening is going to England, do not miss the chance to see the hundred plus rooms at Chatsworth. It's an extraordinary place in one of the great, great, old aristocratic noble houses of England. And that's Debo's life. So here comes Jessica Mitford, my subject, who doesn't share any of her sister's politics. All her sisters lean to the right, she leans as far to the left as she can get. And she doesn't really share their values or their protocols like them. She is beautiful. She's quite gorgeous like them. She could have been a society beauty and spent her life in that way, but she wasn't interested. And so she ran away from home at 19 with her second cousin, with whom she quickly fell in love and got married. They fought in the Spanish Civil War. They made their way to the United States. He died in the war, Second World War. She became an activist, and then a famous, famous American muckraking. Writer who proved that she could carry all the wordplay of her childhood right into muckraking. So she takes a form of writing, of journalism. It's almost dead when she touches it. Nobody's doing muckraking in the 1950s and she takes it, she fills it full of the Mitford teas, the Mitford humor, and all of a sudden it's a brand new form. And she's a blockbuster success in 1963 and has a kind of third life as a writer. So she has one life as an aristocrat. She has a life as an American communist and a civil rights activist, and then she has a life as a famous writer. And if you were putting this in a novel, your editor would say it's too much.
- [09:50]
Dana Schwartz
Now, what I find so fascinating about Decca Mitford and I think listeners might find interesting, is the thought of this beautiful young aristocrat becoming a communist. But she didn't really dismiss or make excuses for her childhood or her personality. She sort of used her privilege to. For the benefit of her causes. Can you speak to that sort of interesting contradiction?
- [10:15]
Carla Kaplan
I think it's a great question and it's one of the most interesting things about her. It's one of the reasons, actually, I think she's so useful today because here is someone who, on the face of it, goes about as far from her background and her family of origin as you could go. She goes from a manor house in the Cotswolds to. To a middle class home in Oakland, California. It's pretty hard to go much further than that. And on the face of it, it looks like she leaves everything behind. She certainly leaves behind her rank and her privilege and all of the comforts of the aristocracy. She pays a very high price for the trajectory she chose. But as you say, one of the things that makes her so interesting is even though she throws it all away, she says, I don't want any titles, I don't want that money, I don't want that land, I don't want those aristocratic protocols. I'm setting all of that aside. She takes aristocratic mannerisms and certain aristocratic privileges of risk taking, and she takes them right into her work as an American Communist and right into her work as a muckraker. So she is the aristocratic communist. It's almost a contradiction in terms, and she knows it. And she knows that by being so many different things at once, she becomes even more noticeable than she would have been otherwise. So, as you say, she never attempts to hide that she is of a very different background. Than the people she's organizing. In fact, one of the things I discovered in my research over the 10 long years it took me to write this book was that every year that she was an American, working as an activist, working as a writer, being such an American, that English upper crust accent, it got deeper every year.
- [12:13]
Dana Schwartz
Fascinating, right?
- [12:15]
Carla Kaplan
Where most people work to lose it, she didn't. She increased it and she used it. So here she is, this former British aristocrat, she's organizing in black Oakland, California. She's working on labor issues, she's working on housing issues, and she's very much dedicated to working on police brutality issues. So she's interviewing black Oaklanders who've been beat up by the Oakland police, and she comes into their homes with her English black handbag, with her. A line skirt, with the pumps, you know, with the whole thing, right. And the accent. And they're not put off for the most part. They're actually quite taken to her. Because what she understands, and it really is useful today, I think, is that authenticity works. That if you're not selling a story, if you just are who you are, people will accept your differences. People will accept. And she understood that in a really profound way. But she also enjoyed tweaking everybody around her. She never lost the Richford teaser. So these girls were notorious teases, all six of them. Decca never gave that up. So she would tease her comrades in the Communist Party, she would tease the very people she was organizing. She would tease her guests at fundraisers. And part of her tease was being a British aristocrat in a room full of commies. And she knew, right? She knew that that was a funny, odd thing. And she loved to play it up. It was part of who she was. She couldn't resist a joke. If there was a joke to be had, including at her own expense, she always made the joke.
- [14:00]
Dana Schwartz
One thing that I also love about Decca and that I found so striking in your book is just the visual knowing that if we zoom back to her childhood, she was sharing a bedroom with Unity, the sister who then grew up to be the most fascist. What was their relationship like when they were growing up?
- [14:19]
Carla Kaplan
Unity was her favorite sister by far. And as far as we can tell, Unity never walked away from a dare, never walked away from a challenge. I think of all the six as bold and as brave as Desco was, and she was incredibly brave, Unity may have been even bolder. She didn't get to live out her life, so we don't know what would have happened to her. But she took Everything to extreme, Unity was the one who everybody had an idea and Unity was always the first to actualize it. Unity was apparently a complete card, a total crack up, Very, very rebellious, like Decca, absolutely incapable of bending the knee to anybody or anything. And they were incredibly close in childhood. So. So that when Unity did what she did, when she not just allied herself or aligned herself with Hitler, but became his intimate and was totally devoted to him, this was heartbreaking for Decca. This was somebody she loved deeply. And when Unity came back from Germany through Switzerland with a bullet lodged in her brain, with the capacities sort of of an eight year old child, but sometimes of a two year old child, she had terrible temper tantrums. She didn't always know where she was. Sometimes she was herself, sometimes she drove a car. So they actually let her drive, which is kind of amazing to think about. We wouldn't do that today. But Decca kept in touch with her. So unlike her sister Diana, who Decca completely renounced and blamed for her first husband's death, she kept in touch with Unity. In fact, they wrote each other very loving letters. And I think part of what she did was keep Unity alive by remaining a prankster. Deca kind of remained loyal to the games she and her sister had played with one another. Now she took them into a different world. She took them out of the nursery and into places like the East Bay Communist Party, not where you expect to find them, but some of her pranks, like the kinds of fundraising parties she would have where you paid a dollar to get in, but then 50 cents for your drink, but then 25 cents to get rid of your empty glass. And if you went to the bathroom, you had to pay another 10 cents for toilet paper and another 5 cents to come out of the bathroom and another 50 cents if you wanted to leave the party. So that kind of pranking, that is the kind of thing she and Unity would do. And I think she kept her sister alive in her own mind and at her heart by keeping alive a certain playfulness and insisting on it. They couldn't have been closer. And Unity, even when she was most brain damaged, the person she wanted to talk to most was not Hitler, although she did phone him. They did have phone conversations after the attempted suicide. There's not a record of them that anybody knows about. There's a lot of fake records of them, I'm sure. But the person she wanted most was her sister, Decca. So, you know, here she was a devoted Nazi. Decca was a devoted communist and an anti fascist and couldn't have been a Stronger, anti Nazi. But they longed for one another and that longing never abated. And even after Unity died, Decca was very tender about her memory.
- [17:46]
Dana Schwartz
That's very heartbreaking in a way. You know, she sort of lost her sister three times.
- [17:52]
Carla Kaplan
Almost exactly. Well, in fact, she lost them all. I mean, she kept trying to connect to them, not by pretending to be other than whom she was. She didn't try to connect to them by imitating them or pretending that she, you know, was still pursuing the life they were pursuing. But she went back to England every year at great expense and great trouble. She wrote them constantly. She tried to keep them apprised of her life and they never accepted her. They pretended to sometimes, sometimes they didn't pretend to at all. Sometimes they're quite mean to her directly. They were almost always mean about her behind her back. And she kept trying to still have them as her sisters. And for me, that piece of the story was actually the most heartbreaking. The way in which she kept trying to connect to her sisters and the way in which intimate, playful, brilliant, word, loving story, loving sisterhood marked the rest of her life.
- [18:56]
Dana Schwartz
Here's the thing about being a great gift giver. When you find something that's truly perfect for everyone on your list, you almost don't want to give it away. That's what happened with my Quinter. Everything is so soft and well made. I'm seriously tempted to keep keep it all for myself. I mean, really, the answer is I just buy myself the sweaters. The exact same sweaters that I'm also giving to my sisters and my mom and my mother in law and my sisters in law. Quint's pretty much has your whole list covered. Mongolian cashmere sweaters for $50 when you'd normally pay $200 or more. The kind of sweaters you wear on repeat. Then there's denim that goes with everything. Silk tops and skirts, cashmere beanies and skirts, scarves, down, jackets that actually keep you warm. The Italian wool coats, absolute top of my list. They look designer, feel luxurious and are made with premium materials. But like everything at Quint, the price won't make you panic. We're talking way less than other brands charge. I can't tell you how much I love my cashmere sweaters. I literally have three sweaters from Quint. One V neck, one crew neck, one turtleneck. It's just like my go to everyday sweater. I wear it constantly and I can totally see everyone on my list being happy with this cashmere sweater. Find gifts so good you'll Want to keep them with quince? Go to quince.com noble for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q U I n c e.com noble to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com noble 10 athletes will face the.
- [20:39]
Trainer Games Narrator
Toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points. You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract for $250,000.
- [20:56]
Podcast Host
This is where mindset comes in.
- [20:58]
Trainer Games Narrator
Someone will be eliminated.
- [21:00]
Podcast Host
Pressure is coming down.
- [21:03]
Trainer Games Promo Voice
Trainer Games On Prime Video January 8th Watch the trailer on trainer games.com these.
- [21:07]
Okta Advertiser
Days it seems like AI agents are just about everywhere you turn, every field and every function. But without identity, you can't trust they'll serve your business instead of jeopardizing it. Fortunately, Okta helps you get identity right by securing your AI agent's identity, giving you a single layer of control, a single standard of trust. So whether an AI agent supports a single user or your entire enterprise, with Okta you'll turn risk into opportunity. Secure every agent. Secure any agent. Okta secures AI 10 athletes will face.
- [21:40]
Trainer Games Narrator
The toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points. You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract worth $250,000.
- [21:58]
Podcast Host
This is where mindset comes in.
- [21:59]
Trainer Games Narrator
Someone will be eliminated.
- [22:02]
Podcast Host
Pressure is coming down.
- [22:04]
Trainer Games Promo Voice
Trainer Games On Prime Video January 8th Watch the trailer on trainergames.com these days.
- [22:09]
Okta Advertiser
It seems like AI agents are just about everywhere you turn, every field and every function. But without identity, you can't trust they'll serve your business instead of jeopardizing it. Fortunately, Okta helps you get identity right by securing your AI agents identities, giving you a single layer of control, a single standard of trust. So whether an AI agent supports a single user or your entire enterprise, with Okta you'll turn risk into opportunity. Secure every agent. Secure any agent. Okta secures AI this is Richard Sherman.
- [22:41]
Richard Sherman
From the Richard Sherman Podcast. Ready or not is on sale now for the holidays, a breakout hit with over 13 million global players. Ready or not is the tactical first person shooter, where you take command of the SWAT team and feel the weight of the badge. I reunited with the Legion of Boom for real SWAT training, you can watch it now at the Richard Sherman Podcast YouTube channel. This isn't mindless run and gun like the Legion of Boom's elite defense. Ready or not demands Strategic thinking and coordination command. 18 intense missions now on sale across PlayStation, Xbox and PC. Don't miss this limited time holiday sale.
- [23:21]
Dana Schwartz
Well, fast forwarding a bit after Decca came to America, I want to talk a little bit about the fact that she was summoned to testify in front of the House UN American Activities Committee, which is a pretty exciting incident in her life. Can you talk a little bit about why she was called and then what she did, or rather didn't do when she was there?
- [23:41]
Carla Kaplan
Well put. It was definitely a didn't do. So Decca and her husband Robert Trewhaft, Jewish American progressive left wing lawyer, were both members of the Communist Party. They were deeply involved in the East Bay Communist Party. I don't think Decca, by the way, would have survived in the New York Communist Party or Chicago or Minnesota. The East Bay Communist Party was not as rule bound as others and it was more playful and there was more creativity and it was much less tied to central leadership or the Soviet Union. So she was able to flourish there. And in the East Bay Communist Party she discovered some of her skills. She discovered there as well as in the office of Price Administration for the US Government, what an incredible investigator she was. She was indefatigable. You sent Jessica Mitford on a mission and she is going to get the answers by hook or crook or any means necessary. If she has to hide in bathrooms, if she has to steal files, if she has to pretend to be somebody she's not, she carries all of that, by the way, into her muckraking. It's part of why she succeeds as such a great muckraker. But in the Communist Party she discovers that she's a great investigator, that she has journalistic skills and that she's a really, really good organizer. And she is promoted over and over and over again in the Communist Party. Now for someone like her who never had a responsible position and no education, those promotions are enormously meaningful, these positions of great responsibility. So she is the Acting Executive Secretary of the East Bay Communist Party. This is a highly important job. She has a lot of responsibility and it is her job to have all the files and records of the local organization. So of course she is called before the House UN American Activities Committee. She expects to be. She's fully prepared for it. All of their friends have been called up. Some of their friends have flown the country. They're living in Mexico, they're living in South America. Some of their friends unfortunately killed themselves. This is a piece of the Red Scare that sometimes people forget that the terror of Having their lives ruined and losing their jobs and their families and being called up drove people to suicide. So she and Bob were ready. She gets called up and most of what they want her to do is name names. They want her as the secretary of the party, she knows everything, to come in with all her files and name names. Now they don't know Jessica Mitford. There is just no way that Jessica Mitford is going to name a single name. This is never going to happen. So she shows up at the HUAC hearing with no files at all, not a file to be seen. She'd been subpoenaed and she is in her absolute best outfit. And that entails her best dress, bought with her sister Nancy, probably in Paris, because Nancy had the taste. And she's wearing her finest hat. And her finest hat is from her mother in law, Aranka Treuhaft, who is a milliner, a very famous, very, very high society milliner in New York City. This is Bob's mother. So she's dressed to the nine, she's got her pearls on, she's got her best handbag, I mean the whole thing. And she gets into the committee room and they're asking her a million questions and she refuses to answer any of them, I'm sure. And they're getting more and more and more angry at her. And there's quite an audience there to see all of this because she's a well known celebrity locally by the time. And they finally, in frustration, ask her, well, are you a member of the East Bay Tennis Club? And they meet, ironically, because the tennis club is very right wing and they know that maybe she'll say no to that. Well, she doesn't hear them correctly. He thinks they've just asked her if she's a member of the tenants club, like the association. So she refuses to answer that too. So the whole room erupts in hysterical laughter because she even refuses to answer that. Now everybody's laughing at the committee chairman and their ridiculous questions. She has the whole room cracking up and they're very frustrated with her and they throw her out of the room and they forget to ask her for her files. So she leaves as quickly as she can. She knows what just happened. She goes into four days of hiding because she knows that when they realize they haven't asked her for the files, they're going to call her back in. She sort of escapes the entire HUAC thing and going to jail. She was prepared. She had no files. She was subpoenaed for the files. She could have been Jailed for up to 25 years. She goes to that hearing room expecting that she's going to spend the next few years in prison. I mean, she's ready to do that, but because she's so funny, she escapes it. So her humor all her life got her into trouble. And occasionally her humor got her out of trouble.
- [28:38]
Dana Schwartz
And I think there's also a remarkable power that she had in being able to dress herself that way. I think it was very disarming to people. It was using her privilege to protect herself and her organization.
- [28:51]
Carla Kaplan
Yes, she made sure that she looked like an aristocrat from the Cotswolds, not a commie from Oakland. She was very warm when she wanted to be. She brought people right in when she wanted to be. But she also knew how to make people uncomfortable and put them on edge and make them not sure of themselves. And she used that very effectively.
- [29:13]
Dana Schwartz
There was also another incident I found fascinating which involves a riot led by the KKK and a Martin Luther King rally. Would you mind explaining how Decca Mitford found herself in that situation?
- [29:29]
Carla Kaplan
Jessica Mitford was very close to Virginia and Clifford Durr. And Virginia and Clifford Durr came from the south, spent years and years and years in the Washington, D.C. area. And they were amazing civil rights workers. In fact, Virginia Durr was the person who was really single handedly finally responsible for getting rid of the poll tax which kept poor and people of color from voting. I don't know if you've been following this, but we're looking at new versions of the poll tax coming back around in the attacks on voting rights right now. So Virginia Woolf must be absolutely rolling in her grave in disbelief because she finally got rid of the poll tax and here it is coming again. And Jessica Mitford lived with the Durrs for a couple of years and would go back south to visit them after she moved off to Oakland, she would go often to visit and she was visiting in Montgomery, Alabama during the period of the incredible famous bus boycotts and during the period of the Freedom Rides. So this is the SNCC Freedom Rides which follow the bus boycotts and one of the bloodiest incidents in the history of the Freedom Rides and of the SNCC Freedom Riders who were trying to make a case for integration by riding the buses together. Throughout the south, black and white young people mostly who had left college to do this work in the South. The Freedom Riders were coming into Montgomery, Alabama and organized by the KKK and other racist groups, the buses were attacked. This was one of the periods where John Lewis was Almost killed. This is one of the periods where, famously, John Lewis was beaten over the head to unconsciousness and others. There was actually a white woman activist who was killed in Montgomery at this demonstration. And there was a. Just a horrible race riot, a horrible. Not a race riot, but a white attack. A horrible mob attack on black people. Just a terrible racist. Not race riot, but racist riot. And Jessica Mick sort of threw herself into the middle of it. She was right there. She was in it. And it was followed that evening by an evening service and meeting at the church. And Martin Luther King was there and all of the Freedom Riders were there. And it was a very important gathering to assess this attack and this riot. And as the community of protesters gathered in the church, a white mob assembled all around it. And the white mob tried to kill everybody in the church. They threw in pipe bombs, they threw in smoke bombs. They threatened, they were armed. They took a car and they turned it upside down and they set it on fire in an attempt to set the church on fire. Turned out that car was the car Jessica Mitford had been driving. And over 300 people was trapped in this church overnight, including Jessica Mitford and Martin Luther King. And they kept calling Bobby Kennedy and they kept saying, please, you've got to send the National Guard. And it wasn't until dawn that they were finally rescued by a cadre of National Guards, people who pushed the white mob, the rioters away and got them out. And Jessica Mitford wrote an essay about it. It ended up never being published. It was not one of her most successful. Everybody always wanted her to be funny, and it was not an evening she wanted to be funny about, there wasn't much funny about that night. So she had a hard time placing that essay. But like her time in Spain, where she saw people volunteer from all around the world and put their lives on the line for democracy and to fight fascism, I think that night you're talking about left an indelible mark on her. I think what she looked at, the risk people were taking just to be able to vote, just for the right to have their voices heard in this country, that left a real mark on her, and it influenced the work she later did.
- [33:35]
Dana Schwartz
Before I let you go, there's one more. Like you said, three different lives she lived when she was a muckraking journalist. Her most. I would say maybe her most famous and influential story was an expose on the funeral industry. Would you mind telling us a little bit how she got into that topic and then what she discovered, and you're absolutely right.
- [33:56]
Carla Kaplan
The book was a blockbuster. It was the head. It was the top of the bestseller list for nearly a year. It was called the American Way of Death. She published it in 1963. It's never gone out of print. It's still taught in university classrooms across the country. What's remarkable about it, it's an hysterically funny laugh out loud book about death and dying and funerals. So she manages to do two things. She manages to expose the exploitation of the funeral industry. It was preying on poor people who would lose all their death benefits to fancy funerals they didn't need, but which they were talked into. And at the same time, it managed to expose them by just mocking them using the Mitford Tease. The book is sometimes quite gruesome. It was co written with her husband, Robert Trewhaft, and it came to her through him. He was a lawyer for the Bay Area Memorial Society, a co op designed to help people do essentially DIY funerals and escape all that exploitation. And he would come home with these stories and for months she would dismiss them. Until one day he came home with a story she couldn't dismiss. He came home with a story about a client, a grieving widow who wanted a cheaper coffin. She was being talked into a coffin she could not afford, you know, one of these fancy caskets with the silk and the gilded and all of the stuff. And she said, no, I want that simple wooden one. And the undertaker said to this grieving woman who had just lost her husband, well, lady, I can give you that wooden one, but I'll have to chop his feet off. And when Jessica Mitford heard that story, she said, that's it. We have to write a book about these guys. We have to write a book about what they're doing. And it was really her leaping to the defense of grieving widows. And she wrote that book with her husband and it started her career as a muckraker. And for the rest of her career, she went after people who were exploiting and taking advantage of others. And she did it often with humor. She was remarkably effective.
- [36:02]
Dana Schwartz
And of course, her first husband had died. She could be very empathetic.
- [36:07]
Carla Kaplan
And she had lost two children, so something she almost never talked about. It's hardly in her books at all. But she had lost an infant daughter and then a son who wasn't even a teenager yet. And she knew a great deal about loss and she knew a great deal about what felt to her like both the dignity of dying and the dignity of living. That, you know, she thought it shouldn't be something that people made a profit out of.
- [36:32]
Dana Schwartz
Very well said. Before I let you go, one last question. What was her funeral like?
- [36:38]
Carla Kaplan
Well, she made a joke about her funeral. She always used to joke about it. And the joke was, I want the whole cortege. I want, you know, six horsemen and I want the glass hearse and I want the whole thing. And it was a joke. Well, after she died, when she left very explicit instructions that she wanted the cheapest cremation possible, her friends thought, oh, we can't resist one last joke. We have to have one last piece of fun with Decca. So they did a kind of mock version of the fancy, fancy funeral, including with a New Orleans style band and, you know, the glass hearse and just the whole thing. Unfortunately, some of the American press didn't realize it was a joke. And so some of the American press after her death said, well, we don't really understand it. She was against fancy funerals, but then she left instructions to have one. It was a joke. But she did have a sort of mock version of the fancy funeral. Two enormous memorials. She was a deeply beloved figure and her death was very devastating to people. But she also had the death she chose. She refused a lot of intervention. She wanted to be able to write and think and joke and laugh and sing up until the end. And she died with her friends all around her bed singing her favorite songs.
- [37:58]
Dana Schwartz
That's beautiful. Carla Kaplan, author of the Fierce Unruly Life of Dark Jessica Mitford. Truly, Decca Mitford, a character larger than life. Thank you so much for joining me today.
- [38:12]
Carla Kaplan
Thank you so much for having me.
- [38:23]
Dana Schwartz
Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manke. Noble Blood is hosted by me, Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Courtney Sender, Amy Hite and Julia Milani. The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk with supervising producer Rima Il Kayali and executive producers Erin Menke, Trevor Young and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
- [39:05]
Trainer Games Narrator
10 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points. You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract for 2, $250,000.
- [39:24]
Podcast Host
This is where mindset comes in.
- [39:26]
Trainer Games Narrator
Someone will be eliminated.
- [39:28]
Podcast Host
Pressure is coming down.
- [39:30]
Trainer Games Promo Voice
Trainer games on Prime Video January 8th. Watch the trailer on trainergames.com@cvs.
- [39:36]
Podcast Host
It matters that we're not just in your community, but that we're part of it. It matters that we're here for you when you need us, day or night, and we want everyone to feel welcomed and rewarded. It matters that that CVS is here to fill your prescriptions and here to fill your craving for a tasty and, yeah, healthy snack. At cvs, we're proud to serve your community because we believe where you get your medicine matters. So Visit us@cvs.com or just come by our store. We can't wait to meet you. Store hours vary by location.
- [40:09]
Julian Edelman
This is Julian Edelman from Dudes on Dudes with Gronk and Jewels. Sunday mornings I've got my game day ritual, coffee, Lucky socks and now New Morning Uncrustable Sandwiches. It's all about that 12 gram protein boost with the new Uncrustables Bright Eyed Berry or Up and Apple flavors. Bright Eye Berries got a feisty receiver energy, up and Apple, your classic Do it all tight end, soft, pillowy, packed with protein and easy enough for Gronk to grab from the freezer. Whether you're on the couch, driving to the tailgate or heading to the locker room, New Morning Uncrustable Sandwiches are the MVP of snacks. Your new Sunday kickoff ritual starts here with New Morning Uncrustable Sandwiches packed with with 12 grams of protein.
- [41:11]
Podcast Host
This is an I heart podcast. Guaranteed human.