The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family (50 page)

In any event the Mosleys decided that it was best for them to move, but houses were impossible to find. All country towns and villages were bulging with people who had fled the cities, or had been evacuated due to bombing. Sydney heard that the partly disused inn at Shipton-under-Wychwood was available to rent, and as it was only three miles from Swinbrook, it meant they could visit each other. It was called, somewhat bizarrely, the Shaven Crown, and the hotel had been closed since the beginning of the war though the bar still functioned as a village pub. The rooms were as cold, dirty and uncared-for as any building neglected for so long would be, but they moved in with Nanny and the two little boys – Alexander, now five, and Max, three. Diana set about turning it into a temporary home, and when Jonathan and Desmond came home from boarding-school for the Christmas holidays Diana had the joy of having all her children around her at last. It was their first Christmas together since 1939. They spent the day at Mill Cottage with Sydney and Unity, all crammed into the tiny dining room.

The Shaven Crown was intended only as a short-term solution to their housing problem and at once Diana set about looking for a suitable house. In January she found Crux Easton, ‘the most delightful house one could imagine’. Meanwhile, Mosley was still very ill and the burden of caring for him, doing the housework and cooking for the family was hers. Feeding them all was the most immediate difficulty for rationing was at its height and she had no store of the basic provisions that most prudent housewives had built up. Sydney often gave her a few eggs, which were like gold dust, but, Jonathan recalled, everyone was obsessed with food. When Unity’s dachshund was drowned in the Windrush Diana returned home and announced solemnly, ‘There’s terrible news I’m afraid.’ Thirteen-year-old Desmond immediately assumed the worst: ‘What,’ he asked anxiously. ‘No sausages at Hammett’s?’
³⁴

Wisely, Sydney, did not mention the Mosleys in her next letter to Decca, for fear she would stop writing.

We had a very cheerful Christmas, couldn’t get a turkey or a goose but had a large, enormous chicken, almost as good. Very horrid not being with Farve and I greatly hope that next Christmas we may be together. I have not heard lately from Tom; he may be in Italy now . . . Debo spent Christmas with the Devonshires, her house is very cold and she was quite glad to go somewhere warm for a bit. She and Emma are perhaps coming here when I expect to go to Inch Kenneth for a month or more.

She said that what she had most enjoyed was organizing a Christmas party for fifty village children, evacuees and thirty old people. ‘We had the Christmas tree and . . . I have still got all the old decorations & the old Father Christmas clothes, of course one can’t buy anything of that sort, and I’m nearly at the end of the candles.’ She had swapped two dozen eggs for a Christmas cake from a caterer: ‘It is worth anything to have a few hens . . . if you depended on a shop you get one egg, per head, per month – perhaps.’

Debo, she reported, was expecting a second baby in May, Andrew was in Italy, Pam was alone, but Derek got leave occasionally and managed to get home to see her. It was now impossible to get any domestic help, she said,

but no one minds a bit . . . I am sure most . . . would never go back even if they could to a house full of servants. Things like carrying coals and keeping fires going and ordinary housework are so easy and quickly done. Of course we are completely spoiled having the good Mrs Stobie, but when she goes away for a bit I see to what there is to do. My outside work takes about three hours a day and because of this I am allowed an extra 10 clothing coupons for gumboots etc. I am so pleased.
³⁵

Sydney’s chatty letter was not answered and when, after three months, she queried whether Decca had received it, Decca wrote on paper bearing the letterhead Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee:

The main reason why I haven’t written . . . is that you never answered my question about the Mosleys. I see in the papers that they are now living at Shipton, so I suppose you do see them. I was so disgusted when they were released, and so much in sympathy with the demonstrators against their release that it actually made me feel like a traitor to write to anyone who had anything to do with them. However I see that it is difficult for you, and not your fault . . .
³⁶

That year Decca’s romance with Bob was not the only one to affect the family. Before she moved from Washington she met Kick Kennedy at just about the time that Billy Hartington became engaged to a niece of Lord Mountbatten.
³⁷
Kick was still madly in love with him, and was convinced that he had proposed to someone else only because she had left England.
³⁸
She felt sure that if she returned he would change his mind. Her parents objected when she resigned from her job on the
Herald Tribune
, and joined a Red Cross programme with the aim of returning to England to help the war effort. But Kick was more self-confident than she had been in 1939 and ignored their protests. In June she sailed for England aboard HMS
Queen Mary
, which had been converted to a troopship. She had been correct about Hartington’s feelings: shortly after she arrived in London they became secretly engaged. The old stalemate, however, still existed: to her brother Jack she wrote, ‘Of course I know he would never give in about the religion, and he knows I never would. It’s all rather difficult as he is very, very fond of me, and as long as I’m about he’ll never marry . . .
³⁹

As the winter lengthened into spring and everyone waited for the invasion of France, which was now only a matter of time, the Devonshires, realizing how much the couple cared for each other, withdrew their opposition. Rose Kennedy, however, was implacable: no daughter of hers would marry out of the Church. Cardinal Spellman and Archbishop Godfrey (the English papal legate), and through him the Pope, were all involved in the heated exchanges that flew between London and Hyannis Port, in letters, phone calls and cables, in the vain hope of finding a resolution to the problem.

Eventually Kick realized that she could never hope to win over her mother, and her father had abdicated any say in the matter by embarking upon an affair with a married woman. Although she was warned that she would be excommunicated from the Church, and that her only hope of salvation was for Hartington to die first, Kick reached a private agreement about the religious education of any future children, and the couple decided to marry in a civil ceremony.

17
The French Lady Writer
(1944–7)

On 27 April 1944 Debo gave birth to a son, Peregrine Andrew Morny
¹
Cavendish. Three weeks later Decca gave birth to a son, Nicholas Tito Treuhaft, and Idden, now Mrs David Horne – Sydney wrote to Decca – was also about to produce.

Sydney had been able to spend two weeks with Debo after the birth, but Decca’s announcement by cable of her new baby came as a complete surprise for she had not told them she was pregnant. She rectified her former reticence with enthusiastic descriptions of the birth, and the baby who was ‘wonderful. He weighed over 9lbs . . . having him was no trouble at all . . . the actual birth took only 7 minutes, so Bob was able to stay with me till almost the end . . . We call the new baby “the Mong” because of his Mongolian eyes (Bob is part Mongolian).’ Decca had left the OPA in December, she said, and within a few weeks would begin a new job as financial director of the California Labour School, ‘which trains Union people in organising economics etc. My job is to raise funds to keep the school going, write publicity etc. I think it will be very interesting . . .’ Dinky was growing up fast, she reported, and at three years old she could already dress herself and make her own bed. Furthermore, ‘standing perilously on a high stool by the stove . . . she always cooks the bacon for breakfast . . . and is learning to cook scrambled eggs’.
²
She liked to wash the dishes and was very motherly with the new baby, and these ‘Womanly’ – as in Pamela – qualities in her small daughter were a source of amused surprise to Decca. But there were signs of Decca, too: ‘She gets furious if you try to help her do anything and she has a habit now of threatening to run away if we scold her . . . the other day she got her little suitcase and packed her doll and nightgown and started for the door. We think she has running-away blood in her, and is bound to really do it one day.’
³
The family at home ‘roared’ at this.

The news of Nicholas’ birth also prompted the offering of an olive branch from David, who wrote to Decca for the first time since she had run off with Esmond. In his neat, clear handwriting, he wrote, ‘Just to send you my love and every good wish for him and his future. Some day, when things are in a more settled state, I greatly hope to see you all, and judging from all news and the look of things it seems to me there is some prospect that I may last that long – I should much like to. Much love, Farve.’
⁴
There was a slight improvement in his failing health, undoubtedly due to the fact that Sydney had received permission to visit Inch Kenneth, and the couple spent two and a half weeks together there. Writing from the island, Sydney told Decca,

Farve looks terribly thin and frail and very easily gets tired. He sleeps a lot in the day. All the same he sees to the farm and animals and boats etc. We are in the middle of a tiresome cut-off period, the sea is too rough to get across and we have had no letters or papers for 4 days. We can always manage for food as there’s enough on the island, and of course the ‘news’ comes on the wireless. Tom is, I suppose, in this fighting in Italy. I heard from him . . . 1 May, [he was] living in a peasant’s hut in company with two Italian families and their cows! I left Debo . . . with all the excitement of Billy’s wedding . . . they really have been so faithful over 5 years and would have married years ago but for the difference in religion. To me it seems like
Old Forgotten Far-off Things & Tales of Long Ag
o and a reversion to the days of Queen Elizabeth . . . Everyone likes her enormously, Debo and Andrew especially . . . you know her don’t you?
⁵

The wedding of Debo’s brother-in-law Billy Hartington and Kick Kennedy finally took place at the Chelsea register office on 6 May 1944. Joseph Kennedy cabled his best wishes and made a generous settlement so that Kick would never be financially dependent upon the Cavendish family, but Rose Kennedy remained opposed to the union. As a result only one member of the Kennedy family attended the wedding, Kick’s eldest brother, Joe. He was serving in the United States Air Force, based at Dunkerswell in East Anglia, and attended the ceremony in defiance of his mother’s wishes.

The newly-weds honeymooned at Compton Place, Eastbourne, the same family property used by Debo and Andrew for their honeymoon four years earlier. Then Billy returned to his regiment to take part in the preparations for the D-Day offensive. On 13 August the Kennedy family were devastated by the distressing news that Joe Jr had been killed on the previous day, when his bomber exploded during a top-secret mission. Kick wangled a place on a military flight to the USA to attend her brother’s memorial service. She stayed in Boston with her mother, having sent word to Billy to say that if there was any chance he might get leave she would return immediately. On 13 September a person-to-person call came through from London for the Marchioness of Hartington to tell her that Billy had been killed. While leading his men in a rush on German lines in Belgium he had been hit in the chest by a sniper’s bullet and died instantly.
⁶
Frantically, Kick cabled Billy’s parents for information, but her cable crossed with one from them, telling her about Billy’s death, and asking her to come back to England. To a close friend in Washington
⁷
she confided the gnawing pain of losing part of herself: ‘The amazing thing about Billy was that he loved me so much. I felt needed. I really thought I could make him happy.’ That she had not conceived a child during their short time together was an added misery.
⁸

Churchill arranged a place on an RAF flight for Kick, and she turned up at Chatsworth looking small, pale and absolutely lost. Rose Kennedy had apparently done a good job of convincing her daughter that in marrying Billy she had committed a mortal sin, so in addition to her deep grief over the loss of her husband and her favourite brother, Kick was concerned about her immortal soul. She and Billy had spent only five weeks together as man and wife, and she could not help reflecting that so much of their time before their marriage had been overshadowed by discussions about the religion of any future children. She said bitterly to a friend, ‘Well, I guess God has taken care of the matter in His own way, hasn’t He?’
⁹
Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, sister of Billy and Andrew, said that in all her life she had never seen anyone so desperately unhappy as Kick at that time. The Cavendish family liked Kick a great deal and rallied round, supporting her as much as they could. The Duchess told her, ‘All your life I shall love you – not only for yourself but that you gave such perfect happiness to my son whom I loved above anything in the world.’
¹⁰
Some months later Kick took up Red Cross work in London.

The obvious significance of Billy’s death was that – as soon as it was established that Kick was not pregnant – Andrew now became heir to the dukedom. In that, there was no joy for Andrew and Debo and, indeed, it took years for Andrew to come to terms with the fact that he had inherited through a frightful incident. He was serving in Italy, and Debo, who was constantly fearful for him, was staying with Diana at Crux Easton when the news of Billy’s death came. She took her two babies to stay with the grieving Devonshires. ‘Poor little Debo is quite distracted,’ Nancy had written to Sydney a short time earlier, ‘all these deaths must terrify her for Andrew,’ although Prod had assured her that the worst was over in Italy.
¹¹

Sydney and Unity stayed with Debo for two days in July on their way up to Scotland. Following the successful invasion of France a few weeks earlier, Unity had been given permission to visit the island and it was to be her first visit there since the outbreak of war. Debo had driven them over to Chatsworth in a flat farm cart pulled by her piebald horse. ‘She puts a mattress in it . . . and you can sit propped up with masses of cushions. The whole thing looks very queer but really it is most comfortable and the horse goes at a steady trot up hill and down for miles and miles.’ They had admired the gardens at Chatsworth but did not go inside as it was being used as a girls’ school and Sydney could not face ‘rows of hideous little iron beds everywhere’. Meanwhile, Nancy was coping well with the new and terrifying flying bombs in London, Sydney reported, and Tom had returned home for a few months having been promoted to major. He had to undergo a period of training at the Army Staff College but he had gone directly to the island to see her as soon as he landed.
¹²

Nancy
was
coping with the flying bombs, as her mother said. Indeed, after the first few weeks of the war she had adopted a fatalistic attitude and more or less ignored the bombing, never going into an air-raid shelter. She coped so well that after one raid in which she helped to deal with incendiaries, early in the Blitz, she was thrilled to be asked to deliver a series of lectures to trainee fire-watchers. After the first lecture she was sacked: apparently her upper-class vowels irritated her listeners so much that they wanted to put her
on
the fire. But despite the insouciance of her letters, Nancy was less able to cope when her husband suddenly put in an unexpected appearance.

One morning Prod simply appeared in the shop, having come straight from an Italian beachhead. Within no time at all he was living up to his nickname of Toll-gater and regaling Nancy with boring diatribes. ‘I felt quite faint,’ she reported to Decca. ‘3 years he was away. So you can imagine there was some wonderful toll-gating. He is toll-gating round the place now . . . and completely blissful the dear old fellow – a
Colonel
. . . . “Is the Colonel in for dinner?” You must say it’s funny.’
¹³

James Lees-Milne came across the couple celebrating at the Ritz. Peter looked tough and bronzed, well, and slightly drunk. ‘Even so,’ he wrote in his diary, ‘I expected he might lash out at Nancy at a moment’s notice and on the slightest provocation. Nancy, apprehensive and solicitous, plied Peter with questions but he never answered any. Instead he talked incessantly in his boring manner . . . the sad truth is that one should believe only a quarter of what Peter says.’
¹⁴
Fortunately for Nancy, Prod had left again by the time the adored Palewski returned in June, but he was only there for a week, then left for France with de Gaulle.

‘I must go. Au revoir, Linda.’ [Fabrice] kissed her hand politely, almost absent mindedly, it was as if he had already gone, and he walked quickly from the room. Linda went to the open window and leaned out. He was getting into a large motor-car with two French soldiers on the box and a Free French flag waving from the bonnet . . . As it moved away he looked up. ‘Navette – navette,’ cried Linda with a brilliant smile. Then she got back into bed and cried very much. She felt utter despair at this second parting.
¹⁵

After a short stay with Sydney at Inch Kenneth, Tom returned to London. A few days later as James-Lees Milne was walking past the Ritz he suddenly heard Nancy’s voice calling him, and he turned round to see her with Tom ‘back from the Mediterranean after two and half years’ absence. He almost embraced me in the street, saying, “My dear old friend, my very oldest and dearest friend”, which was most affecting. He looks younger than his age, is rather thin, and still extremely handsome.’
¹⁶
When the two men dined together a few nights later, Tom told Lees-Milne

that he must marry and asked my advice which of his girls he should choose. I said, ‘Let me know which are in the running?’ So he began, ticking them off one by one on his fingers. He told me with that engaging frankness with which he always confides in me, the names of those he had already slept with, and how often, and those he rather loved, and those he merely liked, until I stopped him with, ‘But all this sounds most unromantic to me. If I were one of those girls and knew how you were discussing me, I wouldn’t dream of marrying you’ . . . and he roared and roared with laughter.
¹⁷

When Lees-Milne asked Tom if he still sympathized with the Nazis, ‘he emphatically said Yes’.
¹⁸
He said he knew a lot of Germans and the best sort were Nazis, also that he was an imperialist by nature. Shortly after this conversation, Tom requested a transfer to Burma: ‘He does not wish to go to Germany killing German civilians whom he likes,’ Lees-Milne wrote. ‘He prefers to kill Japanese whom he does not like. Tom makes me sad because he looks so sad.’
¹⁹

The two men met often during Tom’s leave and on one occasion drove to Swinbrook together, ‘to see Muv and Bobo’. By 1944 Unity had become ‘rather plain and fat, and says she weighs 131¼2 stone,’ Lees-Milne recorded. ‘Her mind is that of a sophisticated child, and she is still very amusing in that Mitford manner . . . she talked about the Führer, as though she still admired him . . . being with her made me sad, for I love this family, and I see no future for Bobo but a gradually dissolving fantasy existence.’
²⁰

Tom left for Burma (now Myanmar) at the end of the year.
²¹
Having come right through the war in Europe and Africa unscathed, he appeared to be charmed, and was popular with his men as well as his brother officers. Although he was initially posted to a position on Staff it is typical of him that he went immediately to see the general and requested a transfer to a fighting battalion. His exact words were, the general later wrote to David, ‘To hell with the Staff.’ He was subsequently attached to the Devonshire Regiment as brigade major commanding Indian troops. On 24t March 1945, he led a force from the 1st Battalion against a small group of Japanese who were occupying a wooded rise. The enemy had several machine-guns, and the company of men that Tom was leading were pinned down by rapid fire. Tom took shelter behind some sheets of corrugated iron but was hit in the neck and shoulders by several bullets from a machine-gun. He did not lose consciousness, and was taken immediately to the field hospital. Forty-eight hours later an operation was carried out, and a bullet was found to be lodged in the spine, causing paralysis. The surgeon decided against removing it, and on 26 March Tom was evacuated by light aircraft to company headquarters at Sagang where there were better surgery facilities. He was not in any pain, and – perhaps thinking of Unity’s experience – he believed he was getting better. Unfortunately he developed pneumonia, which did not respond to treatment, and he died, aged thirty-six, on 30 March. He was buried in the military cemetery near Yangon (formerly Rangoon).
²²