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Letter from Unity to Diana.

By mid-1933, to all appearances, the three eldest Mitford sisters were settling down. At almost thirty, Nancy had at last reached the end of her affair with Hamish and was engaged to Peter Rodd, a clever, handsome banker, son of the diplomat Lord Rennell, who seemed on the surface a far better prospective husband than Hamish. Pamela was living in a cottage at Biddesden and managing the Guinness farm. Diana’s affair with Oswald Mosley was still regarded with disapproval by her parents, but her divorce from Bryan and the sudden death of Mosley’s wife had weakened the Redesdales’ opposition. The three youngest Mitfords were giving no outward cause for worry. Unity had become a keen member of the British Union of Fascists but this had been kept secret from her parents and they had no reason to suspect her growing fanaticism. Jessica, who was going to Paris for a year to learn French, was about to have her first taste of longed-for freedom. Thirteen-year-old Deborah was content in the Swinbrook schoolroom.

But beneath the deceptively calm surface, personal choices and political events combined to make the years leading up to the war a period of turmoil in the sisters’ lives. Nancy had accepted Peter’s proposal of marriage on the rebound, just a week after Hamish, desperate to extricate himself from their sham engagement, had pretended to be engaged to another woman. Peter, or ‘Prod’ as he soon became known in the family, was no more in love with Nancy than Hamish had been, but, like her, he was nearing thirty and was under pressure from his parents to marry. Peter’s career before meeting Nancy was as inglorious as his record after their marriage: he had been sent down from Oxford and was then sacked or had resigned from a succession of jobs, mostly found for him by his father. He was not only a drinker and a spendthrift, but pedantic and arrogant to boot. For Nancy, however, his proposal came as balm after the humiliation of being jilted by Hamish and she remained blind to his shortcomings. They were married at the end of 1933 and settled in Rose Cottage, a small house near Chiswick, where Nancy, in love with being in love, played for a while at being happy, writing to a friend, with no apparent irony, that she had found ‘a feeling of shelter & security hitherto untasted’. Since Pamela’s engagement to Oliver Watney had been called off, Nancy was now the only married Mitford – a not unimportant consideration as the eldest daughter. It was not long, however, before her determination to be amused by Peter’s inadequacies began to falter and her ability to overlook his unfaithfulness, neglect and over – spending was severely tested. In 1936, they moved into London, to Blomfield Road in Maida Vale, which suited Nancy because it brought her closer to her friends. But with no children – she suffered a miscarriage in 1938 – her marriage was increasingly unhappy.

Nancy could never take politics very seriously. Peter had left-wing leanings and she too became a socialist for a while, ‘synthetic cochineal’ according to Diana. When they returned from their honeymoon Peter and Nancy went to several BUF rallies, bought black shirts and subscribed to the movement for a few months. In June 1934 they even attended Mosley’s huge meeting at Olympia, which must have led Diana to hope that another sister was being won round to the cause. But Nancy was beginning to find Unity and Diana’s fanaticism distasteful. It was not just their political opinions that she disliked, she also deplored the seriousness with which they defended them. The posturing and self-importance that accompanied extremism went against her philosophy that nothing in life should be taken too seriously. Characteristically, she responded with mockery and wrote Wigs on the Green, a novel that satirized Mosley, fascism and Unity’s blind enthusiasm. Its publication in 1935 angered Diana: Mosley and his movement were one area where jokes were unacceptable and she regarded any attack on him as an act of betrayal. She broke off relations with Nancy and the two sisters hardly saw or wrote to each other until the outbreak of war four years later. Unity also threatened never to speak to Nancy again if she went ahead with publication but failed to put her threat into action. Nancy’s letters to Unity, written in the same mocking tone that she used in her novel, betrayed an underlying affection for her wayward younger sister in spite of her aversion to her politics.

Pamela ran the Biddesden dairy farm until the end of 1934. After her broken engagement she had many suitors but formed no deep emotional attachments. John Betjeman, the future poet laureate, proposed to her twice but, although fond of him, she was not in love and turned him down. Her hobby was motoring; she was a tireless driver and made several visits to the Continent in her open-topped car, travelling as far as the Carpathians in Eastern Europe. In 1935, Derek Jackson, a brilliant physicist with a passion for horses, who worked at the Clarendon Laboratory in Oxford and hunted with the Heythrop hounds in the Cotswolds, began to court her. He had known the Mitfords for some years and, according to Diana, was in love with most of them, including Tom. Pamela was the sister most readily available and he proposed to her. Fifteen – year – old Deborah, who had a crush on Derek, fainted when she heard the news. Pamela and Derek were married at the end of 1936 and set off for Vienna for their honeymoon. On arrival, they were greeted with the news that Derek’s identical twin, Vivian, also a gifted physicist, had been killed in a sleigh-riding accident. Part of Derek died with his brother, who meant more to him than anyone – including Pamela – ever could. Derek’s speciality, spectroscopy, the study of electromagnetic radiation, was, unsurprisingly, a closed book to Pamela and she did not share his interest in painting and literature. Their joint passion was for their four long-haired dachshunds and the dogs may have gone some way towards making up for the children Derek did not want and which Pamela never had. Derek had inherited a large fortune from shares in the News of the World and was a generous man. They settled at Rignell House, not far from Swinbrook, where Pamela’s housekeeping talents made them very comfortable. Pamela’s few letters that survive from this period are written to Jessica, after Jessica’s elopement with Esmond Romilly, and to Diana to thank her for visits to Wootton Lodge, the house in Staffordshire that the Mosleys rented between 1936 and 1939. Derek got on well with Mosley and shared many of his political opinions. Nancy attended Pamela’s wedding but saw little of her until after the war; she did not like Derek and he in turn resented her treatment of Pamela.

In May 1933, Mosley’s 34-year-old wife, Cynthia, died from peritonitis, a month before Diana was granted a divorce from Bryan. Diana records that both she and Mosley were shattered by Cimmie’s unexpected death. Mosley threw himself into building up the BUF, which was growing increasingly militaristic and disreputable in the eyes of the general public, and embarked on an affair with Alexandra (Baba), Metcalfe, his wife’s younger sister. That summer, while the man for whom she had sacrificed so much was on holiday with another woman, Diana received an invitation to visit Germany from Putzi Hanfstaengl, Hitler’s Foreign Press Secretary, whom she met at a party in London. The British press had been criticizing the Nazis’ attacks on the Jews, and the BUF’s anti-Semitic stance was bringing it into conflict with British Jewry. When Diana questioned Hanfstaengl about the German regime’s attitude to Jews, he issued a challenge: ‘You must see with your own eyes what lies are being told about us in your newspapers’. In August, while her two sons – Jonathan was now three and a half and Desmond nearly two – were spending the holidays with Bryan, Diana left for Germany, taking with her nineteen-year-old Unity whose allegiance to Mosley made her a natural ally. Hitler had been elected Chancellor at the beginning of the year and the sisters’ arrival coincided with the annual Nuremberg Party Congress, a four-day celebration of the Nazis’ accession to power. The gigantic parades impressed Diana and demonstrated that fascism could restore a country’s faith in itself. Although Hanfstaengl’s promise of an introduction to Hitler did not materialize on this visit, she saw that links with Germany could be useful for furthering the interests of Mosley, whose career and welfare had now become the centre of her existence. At the end of 1934, with Mosley’s encouragement, she returned to Munich for a few weeks to learn German.

Unity had been in Germany since the spring of that year. She too had been enthralled by the Parteitag parades and her burning ambition was now to meet Hitler, whom she considered ‘the greatest man of all time’. Confident that she would succeed, she persuaded the Redesdales to allow her to live in Munich, where she set herself to learn German so as to be able to understand the Führer when they eventually met. From then until the outbreak of war, Unity lived mostly in Germany. Heedless of the inhumanity of the regime, she embraced the Nazi creed unquestioningly and let it take over her life. Hitler became her god and National Socialism, as she wrote exultantly to a cousin, ‘my religion, not merely my political party’. When she discovered that the Führer often lunched informally at the Osteria Bavaria, a small local restaurant, she started going there daily, sitting at a table where he could see her, and waited to be noticed. In February 1935, her patience was rewarded when Hitler invited her over to his table, spoke to her for half an hour and paid for her lunch. Over the next five years she was to see him more than a hundred times. She was rarely alone with him and, in spite of what has often been speculated, there was no love affair. Just to be in her idol’s orbit was sufficiently intoxicating and gave Unity a sense of importance which led her to imagine that she had a role to play in Anglo-German relations.

Unity spent her first months in Munich lodging with Baroness Laroche, an elderly lady who ran a finishing school for young English girls; she then lodged in a students’ hostel and a succession of flats before moving, in June 1939, into accommodation in Agnesstrasse found for her by Hitler and belonging, she wrote insouciantly to Diana, ‘to a young Jewish couple who are going abroad’. All the other members of the Mitford family, except Nancy, eventually made their way out to Germany. The Redesdales, who had initially disapproved of Nazism, were eventually won round to Unity’s point of view – permanently so in the case of Lady Redesdale.

Diana also met Hitler for the first time in the spring of 1935 and she remained loyal to their friendship for the rest of her life. In her view, the Second World War and its horrific consequences could have been avoided. Of all the sisters, the contradictions in Diana’s character are perhaps the most difficult to reconcile. The latent anti-Semitism and racism of pre-war Britain, assumptions that she never questioned, were at odds with her innately empathetic nature. Her admiration for a barbaric regime, whose essential characteristic was dehumanizing its opponents, jarred with the qualities of generosity and tolerance that led her family and many friends to cherish her. Endowed with originality and intelligence, and priding herself on intellectual honesty, she never acknowledged the reality of Hitler’s criminal aims. While her pre-war sympathy with Nazism can be accounted for by her witnessing the economic transformation of Germany under National Socialism, Diana’s post-war defence of Hitler can be mainly explained by her devotion and undeviating commitment to her husband. Mosley’s links with the Nazis and his opposition to the war brought his political career to an end and led to his and Diana’s imprisonment for three and a half years – years of social ostracism and public vilification during which they were separated from their young children. Diana, who possessed all the Mitford obduracy, sacrificed so much for Mosley that forever afterwards she had to go on defending his cause or admit that the losses and privations she had suffered were for no purpose.

Diana made several visits to Germany before the war and in 1936 she and Mosley were secretly married in the Berlin house of Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels, with Hitler as a guest. Ostensibly the secrecy was to protect Mosley’s political image but the main purpose was to keep the press from discovering the reasons for Diana’s frequent trips to Germany. The British Union of Fascists was in urgent need of funds and, with the help of a member, Bill Allen, who was an advertising magnate, Mosley had developed a scheme to set up a commercial radio station on German soil from which to broadcast to southern England. (No advertising was allowed on British wireless at the time and companies had no means of promoting their goods on the airwave.) Diana’s friendship with Hitler and other Nazi officials placed her in an ideal position to negotiate a deal, but it was essential that the connection between the proposed radio station and Mosley was not made public since the BUF’s unpopularity would almost certainly have led advertisers to boycott the project. It also suited Mosley to keep his marriage secret because he was still carrying on an affair with his sister-in-law. At the end of 1938, Diana successfully obtained Hitler’s agreement to the project and the station would have started broadcasting the following year had war not put an end to the venture. The birth of the Mosleys’ first son, Alexander, in November 1938, coincided with the signing of the contract and precipitated public disclosure of their marriage.

Diana’s closest confidante in the family during this period was Unity and they wrote to each other regularly during the pre-war years. Their correspondence, especially Unity’s, forms the bulk of surviving letters from the late 1930s. Incongruously written in the gushing tones of breathless excitement normally reserved for romantic fiction, the two sisters’ letters about Nazi Germany unavoidably dominate this section.

In the autumn of 1933, sixteen-year-old Jessica and her first cousin Ann Farrer travelled to Paris. Here they attended classes at the Sorbonne and lived with a Madame Paulain who was conveniently lax about chaperoning her charges and allowed the girls to slip out unobserved to nightclubs and the Folies-Bergère. In letters to her mother Jessica was careful not to mention these escapades but she did describe the riots that broke out in Paris following the sacking of the city’s right-wing police chief. She quoted from the communist daily, l‘Humanité, as well as from the Daily Mail, and expressed regret that her quartier had been much too quiet during the unrest. On returning to England, she endured a season as a debutante, a custom that went against her progressive principles but which she confessed to have been ‘rather guiltily looking forward to’. In 1935, Jessica read two more books that influenced her deeply: The Brown Book of the Hitler Terror, published in 1933, which detailed the horrors perpetrated after the burning of the Reichstag when communist and other opponents of the Nazis were rounded up, savagely beaten and in some cases murdered; and Out of Bounds: The Education of Giles and Esmond Romilly, written by two rebellious young cousins of the Mitfords. The Romilly brothers were the sons of Clementine Churchill’s sister, Nellie, and nephews by marriage, therefore, of Winston Churchill. Esmond’s contribution to Out of Bounds enthralled Jessica because his attitudes and opinions were so similar to her own. As a schoolboy at Wellington College, Esmond had interrupted Armistice Day commemorations by distributing anti-war leaflets, started a subversive magazine attacking public schools and, aged sixteen, had run away to work in a left-wing London bookshop. Jessica had followed his exploits – the subject of scandalized family gossip – for several years and hero-worshipped her cousin from afar, judging her own revolt against parental authority trivial by comparison.

In early 1937, Jessica and Esmond met by chance at the house of a cousin. Esmond had recently come back from Spain, where he had been fighting with the International Brigades and where he was planning to return as correspondent for the News Chronicle. For nineteen-year-old Jessica, this was the chance to translate her romantic idealism into reality and she begged Esmond to take her with him. They improvised a plan to trick the Redesdales into believing that Jessica was on holiday with friends, drew the money out of her ‘running-away’ account and disappeared to Spain. It was two weeks before their ruse was discovered. Nancy and Peter, to whom it was thought Jessica would be most likely to listen, went out to try to persuade her to come home but the attempt ended in a bitter row. Jessica had made up her mind and she and Esmond were married in Bayonne on 18 May, with Lady Redesdale in attendance. If there was any residual element of playfulness about Jessica’s politics – Nancy used teasingly to call her a ‘ballroom communist’ – it was eradicated by her marriage to Esmond, which also marked the beginning of a hardening in her feelings towards her family. Esmond was not amused by Unity’s friendship with the ‘sweet’ Führer, and although Diana had sided with Jessica over her elopement, Esmond’s hatred of fascism was unconditional.

Jessica’s break with Diana was final and, except in 1973 when Nancy was dying, they did not meet or correspond after 1937. Whenever Unity was in England, however, Jessica would arrange to see her – without Esmond’s knowledge – and although few of their letters from the period have survived, they continued to write to each other up to, and after, the war. That Jessica never broke with Unity as she had done with Diana – Nazism, after all, was no less abhorrent to her than fascism – highlights the complexity of the relations between the sisters. In a letter to her mother, Jessica wrote that she considered Diana a dangerous enemy and the fact that she ‘was once related’ to her made no difference to her feelings, yet in the very same letter she sent her love to Unity. In Unity’s last letter to her parents before she tried to kill herself, she sent ‘particular love’ to Jessica. Perhaps the close ties Jessica and Unity had formed as children were too strong to break, or perhaps Unity’s childishly boastful behaviour masked her sincerity of purpose and meant that Jessica could never take her seriously. Or did Jessica recognize in Unity a fellow zealot whom she could respect, even though they were at opposite ends of the political spectrum? Whatever the reasons, Unity’s espousal of Nazism remained an unsolvable riddle to her sister. ‘Why had she’, Jessica mused, ‘to those of us who knew her the most human of people, turned her back on humanity?’

In February 1939, Jessica and Esmond left for the United States. They had expected a storm of indignation to greet Chamberlain’s signing of the Munich Agreement, which handed over part of Czechoslovakia to Germany, and when it did not materialize the spectre of a completely Nazified Europe no longer seemed remote. Esmond looked to America for a new adventure, somewhere to explore while waiting to see whether Britain would fight. Money difficulties also contributed to their decision to leave the country: they had run up debts on their London flat and were being hounded by bailiffs. When Jessica came into a trust fund of £100 on her twenty-first birthday, rather than pay the bills they decided to spend it on one-way tickets to New York.

For Deborah, alone among the sisters, the sale of Swinbrook in 1936 was a lasting sorrow and spelt an end to what she regarded as an idyllic childhood. Lord Redesdale’s fortunes had not recovered from the Depression and he could no longer meet the cost of maintaining a large house and estate. Although Lady Redesdale had grown fond of the village and enjoyed living in the country, she went along with her husband’s decision. They moved to the Old Mill Cottage on the outskirts of High Wycombe, some thirty miles from London, taking with them Jessica and Deborah, the only two sisters still at home. The picture in the public mind of the Mitfords’ childhood is largely formed by Jessica’s first volume of memoirs, Hons and Rebels, and by Nancy’s novels. Both Jessica and Nancy remembered their childhood essentially as a period of unhappiness and discontent, and their parents as cold and unloving. Deborah had a much easier time than her older sisters; she found Lady Redesdale no stricter than other mothers and was fond of her father. The shock waves sent out by the escapades of her older siblings reached her as distant disturbances and were not sufficient to undermine the security of her well-ordered life, in which lessons with a succession of governesses alternated with long hours in the stable and on the hunting field. There was also a single term at The Monkey Club, a London finishing school from which Lady Redesdale quickly removed her when Deborah told her that it was full of communists. Jessica’s elopement, however, came as a complete surprise and, following closely after the sale of Swinbrook, shook her profoundly. It was a betrayal of the complicity she thought she shared with her beloved childhood companion and it brought an end to their intimacy. Jessica, who envied Deborah’s beauty and her position as their parents’ favourite, never realized how much she had meant to her youngest sister or understood how deeply her disappearance had upset her. To add to Deborah’s distress, the Redesdales forbade her to go to Jessica’s wedding and would not allow her to visit the Romillys when they returned to England. Although Deborah managed to see her sister a few times in secret, the visits were not a success. She did not get on with Esmond, did not like his communist friends, and found being in their company a ‘lowering experience’.

Deborah’s adolescent letters show that she could be quite as sharp and funny as Nancy but without her eldest sister’s spiteful streak. She adopted an apolitical stance early on, partly because she had seen the damage that extremism had inflicted on her family and partly because, unlike her sisters, politics simply did not excite her. When she visited Germany in 1937 and had tea with Hitler, she dismissed him as one of the ‘sights’, and was far more interested in a handsome musician in a band. Like Nancy, she deplored the fact that politics made people lose their sense of the ridiculous and she poked fun at Unity and Diana’s earnest involvement. Deborah looked forward to being a debutante, enjoyed her London Season, and, shortly after her ‘coming-out’ dance in March 1938, fell in love with Lord Andrew Cavendish, younger son of the Duke of Devonshire, to whom she soon became unofficially engaged.

Darling Corduroy,

You really are the most brick like girl I know. Thank you a MILLION times for the divine pound which I found here last night when I arrived back from the Isle of [Wight] nearly crying with tiredness, and I nearly died of joy when I saw the £1 because naturally I thought that the £10 was meant for my birthday you are a brick. We had a lovely time at the Widow’s¹ except that Muv & Debo had to do her knitting for her all the time so that wasn’t too good. Debo found a copy of Farve’s letter² to you in TPOF’s³ bag, poor Corda you do have bad luck, but the worst of the storm of fury fell before you came back, & was braved by Tuddemy,⁴ who softened them both down a heap. Boudy is in top-hole form & has told me all about her semi romance with Putzi,⁵ at least I call it a semi romance.

Idden⁶ & I went on the Sunday school outing to Southsea, & had some romance with (a) a Frenchman who we picked up on the Prom, & (b) two men on a switchback & one of them asked Idden to go to Blackpool with him for a week but I don’t think she’s going. It was fun.

Give my love to TPOL⁷ & Jonathan & Demi⁸ if they are there.

Much love & millions of thanks from Decca

Darling Honks

Thank you SO much for the HEVERN eveninger,¹ Blor was ‘dumfounded’ when Nancy told her what it cost. I honestly never seen anything quite so lovely in all my.

I even forgive you being a fascist for that.

Thanks ever so much.

Best love from Debo

We are having a fine time though very sorry to miss all the fun at home. We hear such dreadful accounts of the weather that we really couldn’t face the journey. Why do people say they don’t enjoy honeymoons? I am adoring mine.¹ You must come out here soon it is wonderful & everyone is so nice & kind.

Best love, NR

Darling Forgery

The book¹ about you is going to be extraordinary, your grandparents who you live with are called Lord & Lady Tremorgan (TPTPOF)² & you are called Eugenia let me know if you would rather not be.

I will finish this later.

Oh deary. Aunt Sport³ came & said some wonderful things & the chiefly wonderful was in Kew. She wanted to find out why her camellia drops its buds, so went up to a gardener & said ‘Good afternoon. Bud dropping by a camellia please?’ The gardener just said ‘Overfeeding’ & went on with his work. It was funny.

Nancy’s engagement to Peter Rodd was announced in July 1933. They were married five months later.

Much love, NR

WRITE

Darling Nard

I’m so dreadfully sorry to hear you are so ill & couldn’t go to the great meeting,¹ I think it’s too awful for you to have missed it. It does sound such heaven. What an outcry in the papers, though! As to Bill Anstruther-Gray,² I’m longing to see him thoroughly beaten up. He does deserve it. Was Nancy at the meeting?

Poor Nard, how awful, your illness costing you such a lot. I do hope you’re better by now, & not in pain. It sounds horrid.

Such a terribly exciting thing happened yesterday. I saw Hitler.³ At about six last night Derek⁴ rang me up from the Carlton Teeraum & said that He was there. Derek was having tea with his mother & aunt, & they were sitting just opposite Him. Of course I jumped straight into a taxi, in which in my excitement I left my camera which I was going to take to the shop. I went & sat down with them, & there was the Führer opposite. The aunt said ‘You’re trembling all over with excitement’, and sure enough I was, so much that Derek had to drink my chocolate for me because I couldn’t hold the cup. He sat there for 1½ hours. It was all so thrilling I can still hardly believe it. If only Putzi had been there! When he went he gave me a special salute all to myself.

Do write & tell me whether or not you think Olympia was a success? Does the Leader think so? I suppose all these absurd attacks in the papers are bound to do the Party a certain amount of harm. The accounts in the German papers were marvellous.

I do love hearing stories about the kits⁵ in your letters, do always tell me if they say anything funny.

With best love from Bobo

Darling Nard

Thank you so much for your letter, & the cutting about Tilly’s divorce.¹ I’m so glad Edward won, although I hardly know him, because I do think she was a little brute to say such horrid things about him.

Thank you so much too for sending me the cutting about Putzi² – I never see the Express here. I wonder if it’s true or if the Express put it in out of spite – I should think it is probably true, it’s just the sort of thing Putzi would do. Members of the Party are furious about it & I don’t wonder, they don’t like their high-up members making themselves ridiculous abroad. I saw to it that the cutting was shown all round the Brown House.³ I hope Putzi is coming back in about a fortnight, or even sooner, I hope he won’t bring Miss Olive Jones here, I would be cross.

The excitement here over the Röhm⁴ affair is terrific, everyone is horrified. No-one knew about it until last night. I heard rumours after dinner & immediately went into the town, where there were printed accounts of it stuck up in the chief squares. I couldn’t believe it at first. I went to the Brown House, but the street was guarded by SS men so I couldn’t get near. I waited in a huge crowd in a square near for two hours, they were all waiting to see Hitler & Goebbels⁵ come away from the Brown House. While we stood there several huge columns of SS, SA & Stahlhelm marched past us to the Brown House, & huge lorries full of sandbags with SS or Reichswehr sitting on top, & there were SS men dashing about the whole time on motorbikes & cars. It was all very exciting. Then word was passed round that Hitler & Goebbels had left by a back entrance & were already flying to Berlin, so I came home. Today no-one can talk of anything else, & there is a rumour that Schleicher⁶ & his wife, Röhm & Heines⁷ have all killed themselves. I wonder if it is true. I am so terribly sorry for the Führer – you know Röhm was his oldest comrade & friend, the only one that called him ‘du’ in public. How anyone could do what Röhm did I don’t know. It must have been so dreadful for Hitler when he arrested Röhm himself & tore off his decorations. Then he went to arrest Heines & found him in bed with a boy. Did that get into the English papers? Poor Hitler. The whole thing is so dreadful. I must now go into the town & find out what has happened since last night.

With best love to you & the Kits & Nan from

Bobo

Darling Nancy

Thank you ever so for your letter. How lovely, are you really going to give a party when I get back? I hope it will be as lovely as the one before I went. I actually return next Thursday the 19th, but have to go straight to Swinbrook, and please give me time to have my one-&-only evening dress altered by Gladys¹ so it fits me, otherwise I couldn’t possibly come. So could it be about 1½ weeks after my return?

Now seriously, about that book.² I have heard a bit about it from Muv, & I warn you you can’t possibly publish it, so you’d better not waste any more time on it. Because if you did publish it I couldn’t possibly ever speak to you again, as from the date of publication. And as for the article in the Vanguard³ I’m furious about it. You might have a little thought for poor me, all the boys know that you’re my sister you know.

The Passion Play⁴ was very long. So was the opera we went to last night. It’s fun having TPOF & Decca & Ann [Farrer] here, only TPO isn’t in a very good temper. I am though.

You must come to Swinbrook when I get back, as you will be wanting to see my 304 postcards of the Führer I’m sure. Poor sweet Führer, he’s having such a dreadful time. Well now I must go. But I must tell you one thing first. You see there is a monument in the town to the Nazis who were shot down in 1923, & everyone must salute while they pass it. I took the old Fem⁵ past it once & she wouldn’t salute, & the next time we passed it she went round a different way alone. So to pay her out, Decca & Ann & I dashed for a tram, & went home, & left her in the town quite lost & not being able to speak a word of German & that was in the morning, & poor old girl she didn’t find the way back until dinner time! Wasn’t it a good pay-out.

Heil Hitler! Love Bobo

P.S. No I didn’t fumble with Röhm at the Brown House. He preferred men you know.

Darling Honks

Could you possibly send the belt of the wonder gown as I’m going to wear it soon. I expect you heard the story of me leaving school after two days.¹ I had to see the headmistress for two hrs and she lectured me about stone walls not making a prison, and I said of course not if you’ve got a horse that’ll jump them. She was furious.

Best love from Debo

I argue for fascism at school as all the girls are Conservatives. Please tell Mr. Maize.²

Darling Eugenia Fitzforgery (& Bodley)

Tell Bodley I couldn’t go to the case¹ as my car is quite smashed up again & we are frightfully in the dee pend in many ways. We fear we shall have to do without a car in fact. But it appeared the Lead was a wonderful witness, everyone is talking about it & as the case has been reported in full & as he has managed to make nearly all of ‘the speech’ during the course of it, I expect it will do the Party a heap of good.

I met a friend of Serge² last night, she says the whole summer Serge was madly in love with Woman [Pamela]. So it looks as if the old thing didn’t play her cards very well.

The book is getting along – 34,000 words so far with 60,000 to do so only another 17,000. It is funnier than it was because there is more about E.U.G.E.N.I.A. – Eugenia.

Well do come home soon oh do.

My best love to Nard & you, NR

Darling Birdie

Oh what a thrill! The Hill Top¹ is coming to the dance – at least I hope he is. I took great care to see that he was asked. I am really dying for it because it has been so dull and AWFUL.

This is what I am giving to Filthy Rodd for Xmas

They are links called ‘road to ruin’ and are ballet girls, cards, drink and racing. I am giving Tuddemy a pair of 6d Woolworth little boy’s shorts with an opening in front and nothing to do it up with!!

Best love from Dawly

Darling Bird

I have a French gov this afternoon who, since she has seen her, has never stopped raving over the beauties of Diana. If one mentions Muv, she says ‘Et la fille!’ meaning Diana, or if you mention Decca she says, ‘Et la soeur!’, or Jonathan she says ‘Et la mère!’ It makes Muv say Orrhhn when she flatters all of us!!! She thinks you look like heaven from your photograph.

Best love from Dawly

Darling Boud

See! I write to you – !

Your Boud¹ read Wigs on the G. & said that it quite inclined her to join the movement. I swear that’s true. So please don’t stone up or

Where brain should be – bone

Where heart should be – stone

will sum you up all too truly.

I went over to see Penelope Betjeman² & her German maids were thrilled to see the Sister of One who knew Hitler & asked me a lot about him. I told them about how wonderful he is & all about Hannibal³ & they sent him a post card for his birthday. When they heard that I know Mrs Wessel⁴ quite well too they were beside themselves with delight & excitement. I told them I would try & get a lock of her hair for them.

What d’you think I have found in a Witney curio shop? A church, about eighteen inches high & with a steeple about two foot made entirely of white quills & pins. It is wonderful & you would absolutely adore it. We thought you might make one of brown quills just like the B House. The doors, Gothic windows, & even a clock in the tower are really marvellous & all for 30/–(in a glass case). I am too poor alas to buy it.

Tom has been awful, disappointing Farve by not coming, & resultant tempers very distressing for all.

I go back to Rose Cot on Fri but shall soon be coming over to see

Head of Bone

Heart of Stone

So au revoir till then

Love, NR

Darling Nard

The last two days have been wonderful. On Tuesday evening Muv & Miss Fenwick¹ & I went to your hated Platzl,² they loved it, I came away in the middle & went to the Osteria, & the Führer was there.³ He sent Brückner⁴ to invite me to his table, & I went & sat next to him, & on my other side was Gauleiter Forster of Danzig, who was very nice & invited me to visit Danzig. The Führer was sweet & stayed a long time & talked a lot about all these Notes.⁵ He said he would like to see Muv. The next day (yesterday) Brückner came to the Osteria to invite us to tea with the Führer at the Carlton at 6. We went, & there he was, and he said I must be interpreter, but as you can imagine it was very embarrassing as no-one could think of anything to say. After a bit, when Werlin⁶ came, the conversation warmed up a bit. Muv tactfully went away after about an hour, I stayed on & after that of course all went swimmingly, he stayed until ¼ to nine. Of course it was bound to be embarrassing with Muv, as she can’t speak German, that is always rather a wet blanket. Whenever I translated anything for either of them it always sounded stupid translated. On Tuesday by the way he asked after you, & sent you Grusses [greetings]. I do hope you will come soon Nardy, don’t forget to. I fear the whole thing was wasted on Muv, she is just the same about him as before. Having so little feeling she doesn’t feel his goodness & wonderfulness radiating out like we do, & like even Farve did. She still says things like ‘Well I’m sure he is very good for Germany, but’ and then she enumerates the things she disapproves of. The most she will admit is that he has a very nice face. She is going back to England this evening.

Collage of Hannibal crossing the Alps made by Unity for Hitler’s birthday.

Last night I went out with Stadelmann,⁷ he also sent you many greetings. He has been skiing & is dark brown, can you imagine it.

Do write soon & tell me all about what it is like where you are. And DO come soon to Munich.

Heil Hitler!

Best love from Bobo

Darling Nard

I got your letter yesterday but couldn’t answer it at once as Tom didn’t go until last night, and as you know when there is someone here one never has a moment. I think he enjoyed his stay, the heat was terrific the whole time. We lunched with the Führer twice – Saturday & yesterday – and although I didn’t want him to meet him I am quite pleased now.¹ He adored the Führer – he almost got into a frenzy like us sometimes, though I expect he will have cooled down by the time he gets home – and I am sure the Führer liked him, & found him intelligent to talk to. So really I think no harm is done, though on Saturday as we went to his table my heart sank. If it hadn’t been for the Führer’s sudden habit of lunching early it would never have happened.

Did you like Ribbentrop?² Did he remember me? He was at Berchtesgaden with the Führer for the week-end.

Tom Mitford, from Unity’s album. Munich, 1936.

Tom quite loved the Good Girl,³ yesterday we took her out to a café. They had a long argument – though of course GG took no notice of his arguments – and GG has requested him to keep her informed, on postcards, about the relations between America, Japan, Russia & Europe!

Heil Hitler!

With best love from Bobo

Darling Corduroy,

Many Happy Returns of the Day. I’m sorry this present is so beastly. I got it (as usual) at The Little Shop.¹

You are lucky to have been out to Germany to see my hated Boudle. Did she write & tell you how she saw the Führer, of whom she writes as ‘Him’ with a capital H, as for Christ or God!! I love my Boud in spite of all.

Love from Decca

Darling Bodley

My book comes out on the 25th inst:, & in view of our conversation at the Ritz ages ago I feel I must make a few observations to you.

When I got home that day I read it all through & found that it would be impossible to eliminate the bits that you & the Leader objected to. As you know our finances are such that I really couldn’t afford to scrap the book then. I did however hold it up for about a month (thus missing the Spring list) in order to take out everything which directly related to Captain Jack, amounting to nearly 3 chapters & a lot of paragraphs. There are now, I think, about 4 references to him & he never appears in the book as a character at all.

Diana and Jessica in 1935, two years before politics separated them for ever.

In spite of this I am very much worried at the idea of publishing a book which you may object to. It completely blights all the pleasure which one ordinarily feels in a forthcoming book.

And yet, consider. A book of this kind can’t do your movement any harm. Honestly, if I thought it could set the Leader back by so much as half an hour I would have scrapped it, or indeed never written it in the first place.

The 2 or 3 thousand people who read my books, are, to begin with, just the kind of people the Leader admittedly doesn’t want in his movement. Furthermore it would be absurd to suppose that anyone who was intellectually or emotionally convinced of the truths of Fascism could be influenced against the movement by such a book.

I still maintain that it is far more in favour of Fascism than otherwise. Far the nicest character in the book is a Fascist, the others all become much nicer as soon as they have joined up.

But I also know your point of view, that Fascism is something too serious to be dealt with in a funny book at all. Surely that is a little unreasonable? Fascism is now such a notable feature of modern life all over the world that it must be possible to consider it in any context, when attempting to give a picture of life as it is lived today.

Personally I believe that when you have read the book, if you do, you will find that all objections to it except perhaps the last (that my particular style is an unsuitable medium) will have disappeared.

On darling I do hope so!

Always much love from NR

Darling Stony-heart

We were all very interested to see that you were the Queen of the May this year at Hesselberg.¹

Call me early, Goering dear.

For I’m to be Queen of the May.²

Good gracious, that interview you sent us, fantasia fantasia. 5 July. I have been too busy in the giddy social whirl to finish this but will do so now – or never.

We are off to Amsterdam tomorrow so shall be nearer to you in body if not in spirit. By the way aren’t you going abroad, to England, quite soon. Well then I shan’t bother to send this to the nasty land of blood baths & that will save me 1d.

We were asked to stay with somebody called Himmler or something, tickets & everything paid for, but we can’t go as we are going to Venice & the Adriatic for our hols. I suppose he read my book & longed for a good giggle with the witty authoress. Actually he wanted to show us over a concentration camp,³ now why? So that I could write a funny book about them.

We went to Lord Beaverbrook’s⁴ party last night, it was lovely & I told him about how Goering called you early & he roared.

I must say you are a wonderful noble girl, & everyone who has read my book longs to meet you.

Well, I hope to see you when we get back from Amsterdam.

Love from your favourite sister, NR

Darling Cord

I was sad to hear about your accident,¹ you can’t think how sorry we all were. I do hope you’re better now & not in too much agony, it sounded too frightful, poor Cord, having stitches in while you were still conscious (at least that’s what Farve said, I hope it wasn’t true).

All the Farrers wrote & sent you their love & sympathy.

Have you had any results from the chain letter yet, I’ve had about 3/–I think which, after all, although it isn’t exactly £312 isn’t too bad for 6d is it.

Much love from Decca

Darling Forge

This is to wish you many happy returns of your 21 birthday. I hope you will have a lot of lovely presents, & enclose a miserable cheque to buy yourself some pretty little Nazi emblem with.

Well much love from NR

¹

Darling Boud

I’ve saved up £4 towards the Tour,² it’s in the bank, I expect to add another £6 at the end of the month. When shall we go? About the beginning of October do you think? Also are we definitely going?

This is the new Honnish poem (to be pronounced in true Honnish)³

For into bed she sped

And in her bed she read

And while she read

A lump of lead

Fell on her head in bed.

Well Boud, write soon to your old Boud who loves her Boud in zbeed udj al⁴ and it’s in zbeed of a good deal.

P.S. I went to see poor Cord after her operation, she looked terribly ill. I kept nearly having to leave the room because she and Muv would keep talking about an awful thing called the after-birth.⁵

Darling Nard

I’m afraid you must have had an awful journey. Even I, travelling only as far as here, was frozen when I arrived; and when I woke up yesterday morning and heard the wind whistling I thought of your poor crossing.

Well now I have a lot to tell you. Yesterday about 12, on my way to the hairdresser, I was walking up the Ludwigstrasse & just going to cross one of the side streets & there was a large Merc in it waiting to be able to cross the Ludwigstrasse & to my astonishment in front sat the Führer. I stood for about ½ a minute saluting about 5 feet from him, but he didn’t see me. When I got to the hairdresser I felt quite faint & my knees were giving, you know how one does when one sees him unexpectedly. But I was so pleased, because it was the first time I had seen him like that, quite by chance, in the street. Hardly any of the other people recognised him.

I went to the Osteria, & found Erich¹ & Heemstra² & Micky³ there, I made them sit in the garden & I sat alone inside. He came about 2.30, & smiled wonderfully as he shook hands, but then I waited & waited & no-one came. I was in despair, I thought he wasn’t going to ask me. Rosa⁴ came & told me she had heard he wasn’t in at all a good mood, so then I thought he certainly wouldn’t invite me. However at last, at about 3, Brückner came & asked me to go to him. I feel sure the Führer had pains,⁵ which I know he sometimes does have. For one thing he didn’t stand up when I came to the table, which he always does. Also the skin round the outside corners of his eyes was yellow. And then he couldn’t seem to keep still, he moved backwards & forwards the whole time, with his hands on his knees, you know how he does. I was so unhappy about it, it is so terrible to think of him being in pain. However he was in the most divine mood imaginable, I think he was almost sweeter yesterday than I have ever known him. We talked a lot about the Parteitag, he was terribly pleased at the way it had all gone off. He said he felt terribly flat now that it’s all over, & that it was so depressing driving away from Nürnberg, a few people in the street for about 100 yards & then no-one. I explained to him why that was, that they all thought he was going to the Flughafen [airport] and I think that cheered him up, but he was sad that the people had waited so long & hadn’t seen him. He told me where we had sat at both the Congresses, and said he had seen me at the opera, but of course that was you. He put his hand on my shoulder twice & on my arm once. I told him about having to go to Paris, & he was sorry for me, but then he said ‘But in Paris you will see real Life, and then Munich will seem like a rocky island to you’. (He said the word ‘island’ in English.) I said no, Munich will always be my Paradise.

Now Nardy I am going to tell you a thing that will make you so jealous. We came to speak of the English National Anthem, and he whistled it all the way through. Wasn’t it wonderful. Hoffmann⁶ showed him a book of photos of him (Hoffmann) as a child, in different costumes – artist, soldier, sailor etc – and the Führer simply roared. I must say, although I don’t much like Hoffmann now, he was a most divine looking & lovely child, even at about 14. There were only Brückner, Dietrich,⁷ Hoffmann & the Doctor [Goebbels] at the table, & Dietrich left half-way through. After a bit the Führer sent to see if he was telephoning, but they said he had gone, and the Führer said quite sadly ‘einfach weggelaufen’.⁸ You would have loved him when he said that. Apparently he talked to Lord Rennell⁹ on Tuesday, and was full of praise of him. He was very surprised to hear he is a sort of relation of ours. He thinks he is wonderful. I asked him to sign my belt, and he laughed like anything, he didn’t do it very well but you can see it. I think it is the first time he has ever signed a belt. I have definitely arranged to go to Berlin in November, and he is going to take me on the Wannsee in Dr Goebbels’ ship. There was no one else in the garden except Erich & co & one old woman, who presently came up to the Führer & with a trembling voice asked if she might greet him, she had never seen him & this was the second time she had come all the way from Dresden to see him, the first time she hadn’t succeeded. He stood up & gave her his hand & she said ‘God bless you mein Führer. This is the schönster Augenblick meines Lebens’.¹⁰ Then she was so overcome she went away, but he called her back to sign a postcard she had in her hand. It was really wonderful. He asked where you were, & whether you were coming back. Have you sent your letter? I wrote one & sent it, I do hope he will understand what I mean, I think he will.

Well Nardy this letter is already far too long, so now I will stop. But I thought you would like to hear some of the little details of my lunch with the Führer.

I do hope your journey wasn’t too bad. Please give my love to all Kits.

V Best love, German greetings & Heil Hitler!

Bobo

²

Darling Cord,

I did mean to write ages ago but somehow time really flew.

It is so lovely being in Paris again, we are all enjoying it terrifically, specially me. Do try & get the Boud not to come as I don’t think she’d like it, one doesn’t want a really huge wet blanket in such a small flat.

Cordy it was kind of you to lend me that beautiful fur, it’s naturally made the whole difference to the coat.

We went to Molyneux dress show, where we saw several lovely things, and we are going to Worth’s & Vionnet’s if the Fem can get a card for that one. Yesterday we went to tea with Princess F Lucinge,² she is a spamp³ I must say, & her house is too fascinating & wonderful for words.

Are you coming to Paris soon? You did say so. Nancy’s coming on the 25th for a bit. Hm.

Muv saw in the papers that the filthy old Boud has been putting posters in people’s cars saying ‘The Jews take everything, even our names’ (it didn’t actually say Boud, but of course we guessed).

Didn’t it seem awful & in a way unnatural Lady A.S. & the Duke of⁴ having rose petals sprinkled over them. I see it said in the Tatler, ‘PART of the h.moon is bound to be delightful as it’s being spent in hunting country’. Well Cord goodbye, I DO hope you will SOON come.

Much love from Decca

Dee Droudled Boudle,

Well here I am back again. What agony to leave Paris. You can’t think what a lovely time we had, but still I am thrilled for my dance which is fairly soon. I do think you might come back for it. I gave Diana a present for you, I am afraid it’s beastly & anyhow I hope you will throw it from you with disgust as it was made by enemies of Germany.

This is the new Boud song, Id¹ came in to my room in Paris one day & found me singing it to myself. I will write it in English as it is easier to understand & takes up less space.

I went down to St James’ infirmary

I saw my Boudle there

Stretched out on a long white table

So cold so beastly so fair

I went up to see the doctor

‘She’s very low’, he said;

I went back to see my Boudle

Good god!!! She’s lying there DEAD Let her go, let her go, God bless her; Wherever she may be She can search the whole world over And never find a sweet Boud like me.

It has actions, too.

We are going to see Womb [Pamela] today, & stay there a night. Diana has given me a HEAVENLY evening dress.

Give her my love, & hate to Hitler

Lodge Vrudub, Je Boudle²

Darling Nard

I must write again, because such a lot seems to have happened since I wrote.

Firstly DO write & say when you are coming. Everyone keeps asking. I will get you a room here when I know.

I didn’t expect to see the Führer, as he apparently hasn’t been to the Osteria for weeks. However today at last he came, it was wonderful, & he was tremendously surprised to see me. He immediately asked me, as he came in (himself, for the first time), to go & sit with him. A bit later Max Schmeling¹ came with Hoffmann, & sat on the Führer’s other side. He remembered you & me from the Parteitag. The Führer was heavenly, in his best mood, & very gay. There was a choice of two soups & he tossed a coin to see which one he would have, & he was so sweet doing it. He asked after you, & I told him you were coming soon. He talked a lot about Jews, which was lovely. News from Abyssinia & Egypt kept on coming through on the telephone, which was rather exciting. The Führer stayed in the Osteria for two hours, wasn’t it lovely. After he went Werlin drove me to see his new shop, which is wonderful.

The most amazing piece of news of all is – Baum² is out of the Partei! She was in the Osteria yesterday, & Rosa told me. According to Stadelmann she was discovered to be a half-Jüdin [Jewess]. Isn’t it amazing. She also hasn’t any work poor thing, as there was a big row in her Mütterheim at Starnberg & she was kicked out. I am really sorry for her, as the Partei & her hate for the Jews were really all she had.

This evening I went to the Christmas party in Hössl’s³ Clinic, it was terribly pathetic, with all the little lupus-faced children dressed up as angels. The grown-up patients were very pathetic too. I think you would have hated it. The head doctor rushed up to me & thanked me profusely for all my kindness to the children, I felt awful as all I have ever done is to club with Armida & Rosemary⁴ & send them a Prinz-Regenten-Kuchen [cake]. So I sent them another today. Hössl, of course, sends you best love. He walked all the way home with me this evening, & I must say he is sweet.

Luckily Stadelmann has got hols now, so he stays around most of the time as a sort of Adjutant. Erich comes to-morrow evening.

Come SOON.

With best love & Heil Hitler! Bobo

Darling Nard

Yesterday the Führer was in the Ost, he came about 3 & left at 5 & was in a wonderful mood, quite different from last week. He told me that Lord & Lady Londonderry & the youngest daughter¹ had visited him in the Reichskanzlei last week. I felt bound to say that I was horrified that he should receive such people, and that he would soon find that practically all his English acquaintances were in concentration camps. He also admitted to having seen Beaverbrook, which horrified me even more. You know Nardy he must have a very bad adviser as to which English people he receives. I think this time it wasn’t Ribbentrop. After all, he isn’t like an ordinary politician, who has to receive anyone who is important. Visits to him should be reserved for those who have deserved it, by doing something for his cause or at any rate for really loving him, regardless of titles & money & importance, don’t you think. I mean, to my mind it would have been much better to receive your Mrs Newall,² who really does adore him, than Lady Londonderry, who will simply go back & say just as nasty things as ever. If they want to get on the right side of some important person, they should take them to see Hess³ or Goebbels or Goering or anyone, but not the Führer. We talked about it quite a lot, and he seemed to understand. Of course it’s impossible for him to know whom to receive, but he should be better advised. However he said that to make up for it, whenever you & I are in Berlin, he will give an ‘Abend [evening]’ for us in the Reichskanzlei. So that is lovely, isn’t it. We must go. He said he had never seen such jewels as Lady L wore.

He talked a lot about England & Germany, & said that in 2 years time the German army will be the strongest, not only in Europe but in the WORLD. Isn’t it wonderful. And he said that with the German army & the English navy we could rule the world. Oh if we could have that, and what wouldn’t be worth doing to help the cause of friendship between the two countries even a little.

He is going to invite Mary⁴ & me to tea in the Wohnung [flat] tomorrow, isn’t it wonderful. To a ‘kleine Gesellschaft’.⁵ Herr & Frau Hoffmann were also at lunch yesterday, & he invited them too. I am thrilled. And Oh Nardy, what do you think, he mentioned his SISTER.⁶ Wasn’t it thrilling. He said he had wanted to send for her to come to Munich, but couldn’t get hold of her. I am so miserable, because if she had been in Munich PERHAPS she would have come to the kleine Gesellschaft.

The curse came today, & I have a pain, thank god it didn’t come tomorrow. Mary is in a quandary as she hasn’t anything to wear. I shall wear my white fur blouse & black skirt.

Tonight is the Osteria Faschings ball, it is wonderfully decorated. Hess & Frau are going to the 2nd one. Now I must scram. Do write soon, & we must go to Berlin.

With best love & Heil Hitler! Bobo

¹

Darling Birdie

Thanks ever so much for the postcard.

I am here quite alone except at weekends which gets rather boring. My gov is quite nice and I haven’t done any arithmetic since she came (don’t tell Muv) I can’t imagine why.

I don’t think Decca is enjoying her season much but don’t tell Muv.

Are you excited for the Cruise thing we’re going on?² I’m not because we’re probably going to Greece and there are going to be lectures on the Greek one which I’m not going to attend if I can help it. I hate lectures. Besides, I thought the whole point of a cruise was the romance on it, not lectures. I shall be having romance while you and the others go to the beastly lectures.

Love from Dawly

Deborah, 1936.

¹

Dearest Cheerless,

Thank you for your letter dear, it was quite funny in parts. But poor young gelding what a dull time you must be having. When are you scramming to Scotland?

Everyone in our party has gone from here except us & the slavers.² The male slaver has taken a terrific hate on me because I told him a lot of lies. Yesterday we went to an extraorder nightclub in a town near here, run by an ex-Folies Bergère lady called Popo (or Pot-pot perhaps). And there are notices on the walls saying things like ‘Popo a soixante ans, elle est garantie pour cent.’³ And she did a dance & took off her jersey. Wasn’t it extraorder. And then she waltzed with Mary Sewell. Nancy didn’t come because she thinks nightclubs boring, & the Sewells (evidently) thought it was because she was shocked by them, & on the way home kept saying ‘I wonder what NANCY would have thought of it!’ Wasn’t it killing.⁴

I got a ’gram this morning saying I can’t go down the Danube with Tom & Boud, will you tell whoever sent it it was j.n. or jolly nice of them to spend an extra 5d on saying ‘very sorry’?

There are some lousy people called the Grevilles here & the other day they asked Chris & me to go on a picnic with them. But when the time came they simply went without us, wasn’t it rude of them. So we pretended to the others that we had been on the ’nic & that it was heaven with champagne & everything. But when I saw the slaver’s killing old père de famille-ish face believing it all I couldn’t contain my giggles so it all came out. So the s. was simply horrified at me telling such a lie & he said his faith in human nature was shaken. So now we’re always telling him lies like ‘we saw two people fall out of a boat this morning’ & then he says ‘did you really’ & we say ‘no!’ It teases like mad.

Love from Tarty

Dear Bird

Would you send me a letter with a German stamp & an Olympic Games stamp on it like you sent to Muv because Sex Hay¹ longs for one. DON’T FORGET.

I’ve started a new National Movement & its slogan is FOOD & DIRT. That’s what we stand for. There are 3 members. It started with Peter Ramsbotham² & me & then Sex joined.

It’s called Nourishilism.

It’s a very swell movement.

Goodness the weather.

What a silly muddle about the Danube thing. Poor old Squalor will be disappointed again I suppose.³ The whole family is abroad except me. Typical.

Jaky⁴ sends his love.

Sex has been staying here. Ivan⁵ has got a job about anti-aircraft intelligence at the Home Office. Isn’t it killing, I mean the intelligence bit. I’m afraid poor England will be beaten in a war if we have Ivan as chief.

Isn’t it wicked about the bombing of the Alhambra. If only all the Spaniards could be converted to Nourishilism it would never have happened. THE BRUTES.

Well DON’T FORGET about the Olympic stamp.

Hail Food!

Hail Dirt!

Hail our leader Ramsbotham!

Yours in National Nourishilism, Dawly

Diana with Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Propaganda Minister; Heinrich Hofmann, Hitler’s official photographer; and Albert Speer, the Reich’s chief architect. Haus Wahnfried, Bayreuth, 1936.

Darling:

I have so much to erzähl [tell] and as I can’t sleep I have got up to erzähl it. When I arrived here I felt so ill that I went to bed and took a lot of aspirin, and then I rang up Magda¹ and arranged to meet her the next morning, and I rang up the Kit² and told him about everything being put off.³ Next morning Bill⁴ came round, and then he left and Magda and I took all the papers and went to the police etc. While we were talking she happened to let it out that the Führer was in Berlin, but she added it would be impossible to see him because he was just off to the manoeuvres. Then she rang up Brückner and said she would like to talk to the Führer for a minute about my affair. We went shopping to get her clothes for Greece and while she was trying on a message came, would she ring Brückner up. She only did so an hour later, it was pure agony because I kept thinking the Führer would have scrammed. However we were asked to go round at 7.30, and in the end we stayed for dinner and saw a lovely film with Lillian Harvey.⁵

But now I must tell you how sweet the Führer was. He came into the room and made his beloved surprised face, and then he patted my hand and said ‘Es hat mir so eine Freude gemacht, dass Sie sind zum Parteitag gekommen und jeden Tag im Kongress gewesen sind’⁶ or words to that effect, and he was so wonderful and really seemed pleased we had gone every day, and he said specially to the Schlusskongress, so I said we had been freuing [enjoying] ourselves over that the whole week. He asked after Tom and I said ‘Der Judenknecht is fast National-sozialist geworden’⁷ and he roared with laughter and said ‘Ihr Bruder ist ein fabelhafter Junge’⁸ twice over. Isn’t Tom lucky. Then I said we loved the wonderful parades and he said it was the best Parteitag he had ever had because everything had geklappt [worked]. He had noticed Janos.⁹ He sent you his love; and darling everything is arranged for the 6th, and it is to be in Schwanenwerder¹⁰ and the Führer is giving up his day to it and everything is to be done without Joan Glover¹¹ I am so happy now because it all seemed to be hopeless without talking to the Führer first, but now it is all perfect, and not too late for you, is it? I terribly want to bring J[onathan] & D[esmond] over, what do you think? They needn’t know what is going on but I would so love them to be blessed by a glimpse of the Führer. He has gone off last night to the manoeuvres at Kiel or somewhere. He looks in blooming health & his skin is peeling from so much sun.

All love darling, Nardy

Magda is being an angel, and she can talk of nothing but your marvellous attack on Joan Glover and how pleased they all were with you for doing it, that day you know.

Darling

I am sitting in a bower of orchids envying you, because I expect you are still in the Führer’s train. Yesterday was the loveliest and at the same time the most terrible day for me. The wedding itself was so beautiful, and the blick [sight] out of Magda’s window of the Führer walking across the sunny garden from the Reichskanzlei was the happiest moment of my life. I felt everything was perfect, the Kit, you, the Führer, the weather, my dress, Magda, the Standesbeamter [registry clerk], the Doktor, and even Bobbie¹ and Bill [Allen]. The Führer’s orchids and Widemann’s roses, and the Kit’s orchids, and the ceremony, and the Führer’s wonderful present,² and the drive to Schwanenwerder, and the wonderful essen [food], and Magda’s and your sweetness, and Maria’s³ sweetness too; and then your present and the detective reading a detective novel, and the Standesbeamter’s heart beating so loud because he was so happy to see the Führer; but in any case, I could write for ever about that part of the day.

The other part I cannot describe, how they spoilt the meeting for me, and made me late for dinner at the Reichskanzlei, and the Kit’s awful childish behaviour, and the way in which he tried to say everything he could to wound me.⁴ He succeeded in a way because I had been so happy and excited. However, it is all over now and I shall be frightfully busy today; and tomorrow I shall go to England.

I thought the Führer’s speech was wonderful⁵ and it was a perfect ending to the day when I blotted out of my mind the sad part.

Well darling, I can never thank you enough for all your sweetness and we will have such a lot to talk over at home. I will send the money.

All love & masses of kisses, Nardy

Darling Nard,

I did so hate having to leave you in such a hurry last night & there were such a lot of things to discuss. I do hope the Kit is less nasty by now; but all the same he didn’t succeed in spoiling the day did he, it was a lovely day wasn’t it. And wasn’t the Winterhilfswerk wonderful, I simply thought the Führer’s speech was one of the best I ever heard him make. He was sweet in the train last night & we had a lot of jokes, he went to bed about 2 but I stayed for ages talking to Gauleiter Wagner¹ whom I love like anything, and Hoffmann got terrifically drunk & started telling me how cold English women are. He said he had been ages in England & had only had one affair!

I do hope you will be coming south some time soon when I return. I may not arrive in London till Monday, as the Kreistag lasts till then & Wagner has promised me tickets for everything. I shall hear Frau Scholtz-Klink² speak, aren’t I lucky.

Well I do hope the Kit is being better now.

With best love & Heil Hitler, Bobo

Darling:

I did not mean to write but I am so bored and miserable that I feel I must. I have been here a week tomorrow and I have been alone the entire time.¹ The Führer is here but he is frightfully busy and I haven’t seen him. The only person who has been beloved is Wagner, he is so wonderfully sweet and he said he will ring us up in England just to say ‘Good night sleep well’. But he has gone, ages ago, back to Munich. The real reason why I am writing is because I am worried about Jonathan. He looked so sad when I left and it must seem very long to him. Please darling will you write to him. I can’t you see.² I have got them their Reichswehr uniforms and a few other things. It is very odd you know but in the summer I spent 10 weeks on end without seeing them, and I didn’t worry about them, but I can hardly bear it this time, I feel sure they think I have forgotten my promise to be back in a very few days.

There was snow when I arrived but now it is warm and horrid. I thought I would come back on Sunday, but now it looks more like being next Sunday.

This letter is as boring as I feel, I am afraid. When I do get back I will ring up, but I expect I shall go straight to the Unexpected.³ I have missed seeing the Kit, he will be there tonight & tomorrow during his tour. Now I shall not see him for more than a week. Altogether everything is vile.

Please wish me luck.

By the way do you remember how we thought we would hate it if the Führer called us good souls? Well Wagner said to me ‘Sie sind ja eine gute Seele’⁴ and it made my day.

Well goodbye darling, and please write to little Jonathan and say I send him love and a hug and everything; and to Desmond too, though I don’t think he misses me very much. I miss them both so terribly much.

All love darling & Heil Hitler! Nardy

Darling Boud

Peter Rodd is going off to try & find you¹ so I am writing this on the chance. I do hope he will find you. I expect you will have realized what agonizing worry the whole family has been in ever since we heard. It was really as if there had been a death in the family when I arrived – it still is, people are always coming round to condole or sending flowers, the house is a bower.

I was in Munich when I heard, oh I was sad, it seemed like my old Boud had died or something, of course I came scramming back at once, but thank goodness I saw my friend² before I left & he was a perfect angel & comforted me like anything, tho’ he was terribly sad himself about it. When I returned I couldn’t believe that my woolgathering Boud wouldn’t be on the doorstep to greet me. I miss my Boud terribly – more than I would anyone else in the family. Debo keeps saying she is ‘bidding her messengers ride forth, E. & W. & S. & N., to summon her cenoi’.³ Oh Boud do come back & see us all, even if it’s only for a bit. It would make everything so much better. You see ever since you left Muv & Farve haven’t slept, Muv cries all night & Farve has to make her tea, and they both look 10 years older, & Blor’s face has gone all grey & she divides her time between crying & saying ‘Jessica has only taken two pairs of knickers & they are both too small for her & I’m afraid they will burst’. Tom is here nearly all day & when he’s not here he’s ringing up. Poor little Debo has had a dreadful time & misses you dreadfully. DO come back Boud, no one wants to prevent you from marrying Esmond,⁴ & they are all so unhappy, so is your Boud. I’m dying to see Esmond, & hear all about him, Tina⁵ knows him so I have heard some. Tina sends her love.

With best love from your Boud

Darling Sue

I got back to find such a mass of things to do that I haven’t time for a long letter.¹

I saw the family yesterday & they are miserable. Susan it isn’t very respectable what you are doing & I see their point of view I must say.

Oh dear you were stupid on the platform, those men were quite bamboozled until you got back on the train – battering on my door & asking if you were there. Why didn’t you stop in the cabinet?²

Here is a letter from Rodd. I am inclined to agree with it – after all one has to live in this world as it is & society (I don’t mean duchesses) can make things pretty beastly to those who disobey its rules.

The Daily Express named the wrong ‘peer’s daughter’ and had to pay £1,000 to Deborah for compromising her prospects of marriage.

Susan do come back. No Susan. Well Susan if anything happens don’t forget there is a spare room here (£4.10. bed).

Love from Sue

Darling:

Thank you so much for your lovely long letter. I am so terribly sorry for Muv over everything and I do not blame her for not letting Debo come.¹ It is obviously no good to argue that no one need know she has been here. I have left it and did not answer her letter at all because I could not think what to put; but I answered her long and marvellously ausführlich [detailed] letter about her visit to Decca, without mentioning Debo’s visit.

I suppose they will let them be married and I suppose it is better so. Apparently (the Wid rang up and told me this) poor Muv is again plunged in melancholy gloom.

In the mean time the Kit and I spent the long Easter weekend here in a sort of delirium of happiness. You know how that sometimes happens quite unaccountably. We were so happy, the weather was so fine, the landscape so beautiful, the horses such fun, the flowers so pretty, our walks and rides so delightful, and the food so delicious, that really it seemed like Heaven on earth.

I was depressed last week about the Debo thing (as I expect you noticed in my letter) and so it was all the more lovely in a way. After all, my darling Kit is more to me than all the visitors who are not allowed to come here.

You will see from the enclosed Private Document that Beckett & Joyce² have been too vile for any words. All the others (102 of them) have behaved nobly and written the most wonderful loyal letters etc, but these two are really disgusting rats. I am sending it to you so that if anyone of importance asks you will know the facts. Keep it carefully or send it back.

Do write all about Frank,³ I am sure he is frightfully marling [embarrassing] but I expect he has got a personality – in fact of course he must have. Mr Holme⁴ wrote me a very terrible marling letter which I must answer.

How LOVELY the new Führer-stamps are. Oh darling I wish you were here there is so much to tell & to hear.

All love Nardy

Darling Boud

Jung va ja leddra.¹ I’m glad the stockings are useful.

Your letter is really so extraorder, on reading it over again I can hardly believe you wrote it yourself, it’s so unlike you. However I suppose my good Boud has been changed by recent events.

It’s really hard for me to describe how Aunt Iris & everyone reacted to your scramming, as you ask. You see I didn’t return until after they first heard of it, & when I saw them they were mostly only thinking of the poor Fem & Male & how miserable they were & how they could possibly comfort or help them. But the vile Aunt Weenie² was heard to remark that it would be better if you were dead! But I know she thinks that about Diana & me too, & has probably often said it.

Boud how extraorder of you to say did I know that Muv went out to see you, of course I knew, a) because otherwise how could I have sent you the stockings and b) there was a terrific family conference about it beforehand, & no-one talked of anything else, & at first the idea was that I should go too, of course I wanted to awfully to see my Boud, but then it was decided that as Esmond is by way of hating the idea of me so, it might do more harm than good. So I came here instead, in the new car Farve gave me.

I met the Führer by great good luck last Tuesday, I was driving along in my car & met him at a street corner driving in his car, he hadn’t known I was back & seemed very pleased to see me & got out into the street to speak to me & everyone rushed from all directions shouting ‘Heil!’ when they saw him. He asked me to go back to tea with him & I followed his cars to his flat & sat with him for 2½ hours alone chatting. He wanted to hear all about you & what had happened since I saw him last. He had forbidden it to appear in the German papers which was nice of him wasn’t it – at least perhaps you won’t think so as Nancy says Esmond adores publicity. However he got enough of it in other countries.

I think Rodd was boring about the whole thing, right from the beginning he wanted to arrange everything & adored it, & he was dying to be the Heroic Brother-in-law who rushed out to France (expenses paid by Farve) to bring you back. Also it was his silly & expensive idea to make you a ward in Chancery. I don’t suppose, either, that you much loved his interview to the Daily Mail – or perhaps you didn’t see it – in which he said that you only became a communist in order to ‘get even’ with me.

Well I wonder when your wedding will be, I don’t suppose I shall be invited but still.

Bedsd Lodge Vruddemb³, Je Boudle

Dear Madrigal¹

I was pleased to get my old Hen’s letter. I thought I should never hear from her again.

A good many things seem to have happened since you left, but nothing of much importance.

It’s pretty dull down here without a Hen to chat to. Muv & Farve have been so depressed since you left, it’s made them look quite ill.

The cruise would have been so good for Muv but it’s rather natural she doesn’t want to go any more.² She said all the fun would have gone without you & I think she meant it. I do hope you have enough to eat & everything. I envy you the coffee you must get there.

Do write & give an exact description of Esmond. It’s so fascinating to think of my old Hen in love that I must hear everything about him.

The hunting all the winter has been fun, & now I am training a horse.

The Grand National was marvellous, but Derek’s³ horse got knocked over by a loose horse which was disappointing. Lord Berners⁴ had a horse in for the first time in his life & the Mad Boy⁵ said to us before the race ‘If it falls at the first fence Gerald will be broken hearted’. And it did! Wasn’t it awful. But luckily he is very short-sighted & he thinks it was the second fence so all is OK.

Well dear, do write & if you want anything in the way of clothes just write to your Hen & she’ll get them for her Hen. Or anything else in fact.

Do write often to Blor. It would cheer her up. She has gone to Hastings for a week as I’m going to Castle Howard next week.

Much love from Scott Wallace

Dear Henri Heine,

Thanks for your letter, I did like getting it. I expect you are at Castle Howard now. If so will you ask George¹ what was in his Greetings ’Gram that Nancy brought out with her among my letters? I opened it & saw some message about Dolly² but I didn’t really take it in as I was so busy reading all the other letters, & now it’s lost. Anyway tell him that jokes about Dolly are rather ‘vieux jeu’ [old hat] now, & give him my love!

Well here’s a description of Esmond which you ask for. He has got blue eyes & beige hair about the colour of mine and he talks rather like Michael Farrer³ only with a slight cockney pronunciation – for instance he says riowd instead of rood for rude. Also he can do awfully good imitations of people like Winston Churchill⁴ & he talks French so well you’d take him for a Frenchman, because once a Frenchman said to him ‘vous êtes Alsacien, Monsieur?’ which proves it. (He is frightfully good at languages altogether & has already learnt enough Spanish to talk in quite easily, but your poor old Hen can hardly speak a word.) I expect you know most about his doings such as scramming from Wellington etc from seeing it in the papers so won’t bother to tell you. Didn’t you guess slightly what your old Hen was up to in London the week before I left, for instance when I hurriedly rang off when you came into the room one day & you asked me why I did & I was cross?

Now dear about my clothes; it’s very cheery & Hen-like of you to say you’ll get them for me etc in fact you are the only one to have made a nice suggestion like that. I’ll tell you what though; you know my Worth satin dress that’s been dyed purple? Well I don’t suppose I shall need a dress like that for ages by which time it’ll be out of fashion; so I wonder if you could very kindly try & sell it for me? Being Worth & just newly cleaned & dyed it might fetch quite a lot. I suggest you should take it to Fine Feathers or somewhere & try & get about three to five pounds for it. It would really be most Beery of you if you could dear & I would be grateful. I don’t actually need any of my other clothes at present but when the hot weather comes I’ll write to you for them.

I wonder if you could write me a really delicious long letter telling among other things exactly what account the Rodds gave of their visit out here. Rodd wrote me a long & incredibly boring letter with points numbered 1), 1(a), 2), etc!!! about how silly it was of me not to come home & I think they were rather cross because we were not impressed by it! I had a letter from Boud the other day in which she said ‘Nancy says Esmond adores publicity’, which seems to me to be absolutely incomprehensible considering we spent the whole time in St Jean de Luz frantically trying to escape reporters; so if everything she said has been as untrue as that I wish she’d never come out here. Not that it matters, but it seems so stupid of her. Do tell me any other bits of fascinating gossip that you have heard.

Well Dear I long to see you; we may be coming to England about the end of Sept so I’ll see you then.

Love from (Stone) Henge

P.S. Your letter was much the nicest I’ve had for ages.

Darling Nard

Fancy you being in Berlin again, I was so surprised to get your letter. I imagine the Führer is there isn’t he?

Do come here for the weekend, everyone has been asking when you are coming, it’s such ages since you were here. The Baroness¹ would be so thrilled – you know how she hates me & adores you.

I think I gave the impression that our conversation about the party was more important than it was. Only he said very emphatically, & enlarged upon it quite a lot, that he thought it might have proved a fatal mistake in England to call them fascists & Blackshirts instead of something typically English, and suggested that if he had been starting a party in England he would have gone back to Cromwell & perhaps called his SA ‘Ironsides’. I thought that rather a sweet idea don’t you.

Well let me know when & where you arrive & I will meet you in the car.

Best love from Bobo

P.S. Have you seen Frau Doktor [Magda Goebbels]? She really wrote such a sweet letter about Decca.

Darling Boud

Thanks so much for your letter, I was so pleased to get it.

About Esmond’s feeling for fascists (actually I prefer to be called a National Socialist as you know) I will explain how I feel about it, & I don’t really see why he should feel any different. I hate the communists just as much as he hated Nazis, as you know, and it naturally wouldn’t occur to me, nor would I want, to make friends with a lot of communists, if I had no reason to. But I don’t see why we shouldn’t personally be quite good friends, though politically enemies. Of course one can’t separate one’s politics & one’s private life, as you know Nazism is my life & I very much despise that democratic-liberal-conservative-English idea of walking about arm-in-arm with one’s opponent in private life and looking upon politics as a business or hobby; but I do think that family ties ought to make a difference. After all, violent differences of opinion didn’t prevent you & me from remaining good friends did they. My attitude to Esmond is as follows – and I rather expect his to me to be the same. I naturally wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him if it was necessary for my cause, and I should expect him to do the same to me. But in the meanwhile, as that isn’t necessary, I don’t see why we shouldn’t be quite good friends, do you. I wonder if he agrees.

As to me turning against my Boud as you say, how could you think I would. On the contrary I was one of the very few who always was on your side, all through. The only other ones who always stuck up for you, & who I never heard say anything against you or blame you in any way, were Diana & Tom. (And Muv of course, but that was a bit different.) I am longing to see you & tell all about the different attitudes, I expect you are longing to hear too aren’t you.

I hear from the old boy that the judge says you can marry, that is good news.

Oh dear I would love to see you & have a good chat – there are so many things one can’t really ask or discuss in a letter, if one did one would spend the whole day writing.

Mrs Ham is coming on Friday, it will be funny having her here & showing her round, somehow the idea of the Wid in Munich is so incongruous.

I wonder what you do in Bayonne all day, & what it’s like. Does Esmond speak French well.

By the way I think the only person who thoroughly enjoyed the family crisis was Mrs Ham. She used to come round to Rutland G about five times a day to see one or other of the family, she always insisted on seeing each of us alone so as to get all our individual slants on the affair. Do you remember she used to call you the ballroom communist?

Well Boud do write again at once, I long to hear from you. I plan to return to England about the 25th April & stay for the coronation.¹

Do you remember P. Nevile’s ridiculous demonstration for Edward VIII?² If I didn’t think him so odious I should really be sorry for him. He must be congratulating himself, by the way, on making quite a bit out of your affair. I should claim it if I were you.³

Well Boud do write soon.

Best love fruddem, je Boudle

Dear Hengist & Horsa,

Your old Hen is sorry she hasn’t written for such an age, she has kept meaning to & is always starting letters to her Hen & then losing them. You were kind to take all that trouble about my dresses at Fine Feathers, & I was pleased with the £2.10. I know what a bore it is seeing about that sort of thing, & thank you so much for doing it. I certainly don’t think I shall sell the Worth for so little. As for the white chiffon dress, I don’t think it’s worth anything at all as it’s so badly made; why don’t you get Blor to make you a smart evening shirt out of it to go with your navy moiré coat & anyway, I don’t want it any more.

Are you coming to your old Hen’s wedding with Muv on the way to Italy? I do hope so. At least I’m afraid it’ll be very dull for you being at the Consulate. But do come all the same. Was it fun at Cortachy? I saw in Vogue that there was a list of ‘important debutantes’ (such as Gina,¹ & Iris Mountbatten²) & a list of beauties, & Jean³ was in a horrid sort of side list which included neither!

Peter Nevile has been out here for a few days on his hol, he told all about his visit to Rutland Gate & seemed to admire you very much – we played ‘Which would you push out of bed’ with him & he kept you for nearly everyone!

Two other English people have been out here, they are absolute torture, (a married couple), the wife writes in Woman & Beauty, & kept saying how she is an attractive woman & hopes still to be so when she is 35! Somehow we couldn’t get rid of them, you know how one can’t with English acquaintances in foreign towns.

I saw a dachshund just like Jaky today, & suddenly realized I had completely forgotten his existence. Is he still alive? Der mann, der pet.

I’m sorry this letter is so short & boring, but anyway I hope to see you soon. Give my love to Muv & Boud.

Love from an old Ho Hon

P.S. Sweet Blor sent me a weddinger of £1, isn’t she an angel.

Dear Anglo Saxon

Thank you so much for your letter, I was pleased to get it.

I am having rather a fascinating time. For instance I went to London to see Jean & Gina in their dresses before they went to the court. All the Wernhers’ servants from Lubenham came up & the stud groom was rather drunk & lay full length on the sofa whistling!! It was a scream.

There is going to be a terrific party on coronation night with the Ogilvys & the Lloyd Thomas’s & Wellesleys & Astors. It will be a riot. Maggot¹ & I are going to Florence on Friday.

I do so wish I was coming to your wedding, it cuts into a Hen’s heart not to be at her Hen’s wedding.

I know I shan’t enjoy Florence because I shall be wishing I was at your wedding.

Well dear, do write often, the letters will be forwarded to wherever we are.

Love from Sack of Rome

Dear Henry Hall

Dear, you can’t imagine how terribly sad I am about not coming to your wedding. You must know that I want to come & I certainly don’t think that going to Florence with Maggot is a good enough excuse but you know how hopeless the parents are when they get something into their heads. I am writing this on mourning paper, because of not coming.

I did like ringing you up last night.

I am sitting in the Marlborough Club waiting for the coronation.¹ We got up at 5 this morning & helped Muv dress. She was so killing because she went to Phyllis Earle’s² yesterday to be made up & she slept on her makeup & I must say she looked wonderful this morning. The robes are too wonderful & she looked marvellous in her jewels.

Tud³ came to breakfast at 6 & he looked a knockout in his uniform, really wonderful. We got here by tube with the old boy. The crowds are terrific & they cheer everything that goes by, even fainting people on stretchers so I sing ‘cheer cheer what shall we cheer’.

Love from Jack Harris

Oh dear, I do wish I was coming to Bayonne. I can’t tell you how furious I am about it.

Dear, do write when we go abroad.

Darling Boud

This is to wish you happiness & a lovely wedding, I don’t suppose it will get to you in time but still. The Fem started off this morning, and she is taking with her a gram[ophone] which is a club present from Tiny [Deborah] & your Boud, I hope it plays all right, it seemed to when I bought it.

PLEASE write & tell your Boud all about your wedding, & what presents you have had & everything, I am dying to hear. The Fem told me she had bought you a wedding dress.

Oh dear it will be extraorder to think of my Boud being married, and you can’t think how much I miss her. I DO hope you will come back a bit before the autumn. I would like to motor from Munich to see you, but I suppose I should skeke [hardly] be very welcome among the comrades at Bayonne.

Well Boud I DO hope you will be very happy, and I shall think of you all day on your wedding day, & wish I was there.

I drove Blor over to Egham yesterday for her hol.

Farve sends his best love.

With very best love from your Boud

Darling Cord,

A delicious looking tin parcel arrived for me this morning with postmark Ashbourne, so it must have been your present.¹ I did long to open it but the awful thing was there was 500 francs customs to pay on it. So I asked the postman if there was any way of getting out of paying it & he said only by returning it to the sender. So I thought perhaps that would be the best, although I hated seeing it go without even opening it, but as we may be returning to England in the autumn perhaps I can have it then? Anyway thank you millions of times for sending it. I am excited to have it. The others told me it was a lovely necklace & I am so longing for it. The only other way I could have it would be if anyone going to Paris or somewhere could send it to me from there.

We are staying in Cousin Nellie’s² house, it is too lovely here & we adore it. We are going back to Bayonne (Hôtel des Basques) on Friday, as Csn Nellie & Bertram are coming here.

Well thank you again so much for the weddinger.

Love from Decca

Page from Lady Redesdale’s scrapbook with cuttings about Jessica’s wedding to Esmond Romilly.

Darling Sooze

Really Susan it was your turn to write – or not? Anyway I would have written for your wedding only the typical Fem never told me until the day before or so & I didn’t note on my mantelpiece ‘Col & Mrs Romilly request the honour (pleasure) of your company at the wedding of their son’ etc etc but perhaps it slipped down the back, all my invites do.

Life here is very hectic & I am having a good time. In August we go to Naples, why don’t you come? The German Amb. invited us to a party in German which is very rude so Rodd refused in Yiddish but I took the letter away because of my weak mind & not wanting to be tortured when the G’s have conquered us.

Love to Esmond & you, Susan

P.S. I hope you got our wedding telegram all right. The Fem didn’t seem to think so.

Dear Hen whose Hen has by now given up all hope of her Hen writing to her Hen

Well dear we are in the train doing a horrid long journey of 6 hours from Vienna to Salzburg to meet Birdie.

Yesterday we went to stay with Janos [von Almasy] & Baby¹ took us in her car. We found Mrs Janos in a great state because Janos had been taken off by the gendarmes because he was thought to be plotting for the Nazis & the soldiers had been through all his papers & writing desk & they had found the picture of Bobo & H. & were in a state about it.

Baby has got the most fascinating collection of Angela Brazil² school stories I have ever seen.

How are you getting on with your honeymoon & when are you going back to Bayonne.

I must say I have enjoyed myself in filthy abroad although I am longing to get back to the old homeland. (Angela Brazil almost.)

I am in a frenzy because I can’t find out what has won the Derby although it happened yesterday.

Bobo – the brute – has started an anti the WID league & Diana has joined. So I have started a pro one & Tom & Nancy & Muv are joining.

Will you too? If so I will send you the forms, & the conditions are (i) that you will always pay her taxis etc for her & (ii) that you will always give her any clothes that she asks for & (iii) that you help her with her packing or whatever is worrying her at the moment & (iv) that you will always buy her clothes off her at 4 times their price.

The subscription is £500 a year which will go towards her upkeep.

Love from Embittered Hen

Dear Miss Girdlestone or Geldedstone,

I got your letter¹ on arriving here last night, forwarded from Bayonne. It must have taken ages getting here, & what’s more I’m afraid you won’t get this for ages as I’ve only got your address up to the 23rd which seems to be today. Oh how cheerless. Dear I simply can’t thank you enough for the absolutely HEAVENLY gramophone, oh I do adore it you really are a cheery young tart to send me such a marvellous present. It’s easily one of the nicest we’ve had. I wrote to my Boud thanking her too. The following are what I’ve had so far: Muv, lovely brush set with JLR on the back, a ruby & diamond ring which is absolute heaven & I can’t stop looking at my hands on account of it; Tello,² killing hideous black bag with rosebuds on it (‘at least three pence, Sydney’)³ but wasn’t it sweet of her to send it; Woman, cheque; Derek, cheque; Tuddemy, cheque (goodness how nice). That isn’t all but I can’t remember all the others now. Sweet Peter Ram’s bottom wrote asking what I wanted & apologising for not sending a present out to Spain!! So I thought of suggesting records, which I’ve asked George for, too.

I expect Muv’s told you all the low down on the wedding so I won’t bother to enlarge on it. It really was great fun, & we nearly giggled from nerves during the ceremony. Afterwards we went to Paris where we jollied ourselves up in nightclubs etc for two days, it was fun but rather tiring & it’s lovely to be here for a bit. Dieppe is full of the most extraorder people, they all seem about 70 but according to Cousin Nellie never stop having affairs with each other, chiefly as far as I can make out in the darkened corners of the Bridge club.

Being a married Hen is not at all unlike being an unmarried Hen has been during the last few months, except it seems rather extraorder to have a wedding ring & a mother in law & everything. Well Henderson dear I must thank you again millions of times for the phone, it was too sweet of you to give me such a lovely expensive gift.

Best love from Decca

P.S. Maggot sent me a photo of a statue of a naked gentleman: do thank her for it if she is with you. Cousin Nellie has got The Well of Loneliness⁴ here, your poor old Hen is reading it but goodness it is boring, she can skeke [hardly] get through it.

Dear Straight Eight or Racing Eight

What a kind old Hen to write her Hen at last. I thought I’d give you some of your own bread or whatever it’s called & not write for ages but then I thought I must tell you about the fascinator I have fallen in love with.

There is a wonderful band led by the most wonderful & sweet man called Barnabas von Géczy¹ & they play at a delicious café called the Luitpold. Dear, there is a man in that band who simply makes your hair stand on end to look at him. We don’t know his name but he plays the violin the 2nd from the right so that is what we’ve called him. He is the personification of my type – awfully like Franchot Tone² & he sometimes makes the most fascinating faces like Maurice Chevalier.³ We go there every night so I can sit & stare at him & it makes Muv furious. The terrible thing is that he smiled twice at Bobo last night & not once at me but I think that was partly because I didn’t dare look at him much. Géczy himself is a perfect love & he always roars when he sees us. I bought two gramophone records of his yesterday, they are wonderful.

We have had quite a nice time here & we’ve had tea with Hitler & seen all the other sights.

We are going to try & get Géczy for my dance next March if he comes to London. But I expect he would be much too expensive & anyhow dance music isn’t his line so much as wonderful Hungarian tunes.

I have bought a delicious locked diary to note down all about the 2nd from the right in.

We are going home tomorrow. I am quite pleased although I have enjoyed myself like anything. If it hadn’t been for Géczy & the 2nd from the right I should have longed to go ages ago. I think Munich is no end nice all the same. If I had to live anywhere abroad I should certainly live here.

We have been away for a whole month, a record almost. I miss My Man & Studley⁴ so much that it is really them that I long to get home to.

I am going to Jean’s dance on the 23rd, & Elizabeth Wellesley’s⁵ & Gina’s. The King & Queen are going to be at Gina’s which will be wonderful because everyone will be dressed in their best. But I am terrified because I haven’t been asked to any dinner party & it will be terrifying just arriving at a dance like that.

Do write dear. Write to Wycombe.

Love from Poor Hen

who swarms for the 2nd from the right.

Dear Bird

My case¹ came on yesterday & there is a long account of the apology in The Times & a furious one in the Daily Express.

Muv wouldn’t allow me to go for some unknown reason, I was simply furious. It would have been so exciting, the first case I had ever been to to be my own, like one’s own wedding being the first one has ever been to. (Rather involved I’m afraid.)

Did the Führer go through Munich on his way to Berlin? If so I suppose we missed him by a day. Typical.

Muv was simply wonderful at Ascot yesterday, the things she said. Luckily I had my Femmerism note book with me so I wrote them down. The first was this: there were fifty aeroplanes going overhead practising for the display & I said ‘wouldn’t it be terrifying if they were enemy ones & we were being attacked from the air’. So the Fem said quite slowly and unconcernedly ‘Orrhhn, well I should always expect them to miss me’. But the way she said it – in her best Mae West style.

As we were getting out of the crowd she made her best remark for weeks. She said ‘I always think that if one had any sense one would always bring stilts to this kind of thing & just hop up on them.’ You must say that beats nearly everything. Of course they don’t look half as funny written down as they do when they are said. The important thing is to get just the right pause between ‘this kind of thing’ and ‘just hop up on them’.

Love from Tiny

¹

Dear Crackinjay

We arrived here yesterday for the first time & it is really very nice if very cold. The fishing is terrific, we caught five trout last night. As Muv & Farve are always going on about how they love housework I leave it all to them to serve them right. All I have done so far is to make a Mitford Mess – tomatoes & potato fried in oil – which is the only thing I can cook & is it delicious.

It is more than ever like a Russian novel here because Farve has taken terrific trouble to buy things he thinks Muv will like & she goes round putting all the things away that he has chosen. The worst of all was when she went to her bedroom for the first time & saw two wonderfully hideous lampshades with stars on them & she said ‘I certainly never bought these horrors’ & Farve’s face fell several miles. It is simply pathetic.

Last night a child was murdered at Capps Lodge & they haven’t arrested the man yet so I am terrified that he will be after us & I keep thinking I see his face at the window. He was the chef from the Lamb Inn at Burford.

Pam came to lunch the other day & they talked for 2½ hours about servants. Pam has had her hair dyed orange & it makes her look like a tart.

Bobo & Terence O’Connor² are having a terrific get off, but I am going to steal a march on her at his cktl pty on Wednesday as Birdie is in Germany.

The Hitler tea party was fascinating. Bobo was like someone transformed when she was with him & going upstairs she was shaking so much she could hardly walk. I think Hitler must be very fond of her, he never took his eyes off her. Muv asked whether there were any laws about having good flour for bread, wasn’t it killing.

Well dear do write often, there is nothing yr Hen likes better than a letter from hr Hen.

Love from André Gide

Darling Nancy

I only got your letter this morning because it was sent to me in a packet and then followed me back here. It was so sweet of you to write darling, and wish me happiness. Driberg’s story was all wrong and from the date on your letter I was here and not in Berlin when he offered you a free call!¹ There was no such romantic reason for my going as he told you. When you get back I will tell you the story or Muv & Farve can. Farve says the press telephone him constantly and ask him for TPOL’s² address, and he says ‘But I don’t know it, I’ve never met him’ isn’t it wonderful. I expect he adds: ‘the damned sewer’.³

So for the present I am Mrs G and intend to remain so for some time.

Best love from Bodley

Darling Boud

We sit all day playing a sad tune called ‘Somebody stole my Boud’ (alternatively ‘Somebody stole my Hen’).¹

Love, Your Boud

Dear Hen’s Egg

Well dear, the dances have begun in earnest. I must say they are exactly like what you said always – perfectly killing. I have never seen anything like the collection of young men – all completely chinless & all looking exactly alike. Last night was the Wellesleys.

According to everyone it was a really typical deb dance. Rather a small square room to dance in & many too many people in the doorway & on the stairs. I thought I should be alright & then they started to cut my dances till, in the end, in desperation I had to go home. Tuddemy has been to all the ones I have, luckily for me. He is simply wonderful & literally waits around till I haven’t got anyone to dance with & then comes & sits on a sofa or dances with me. I must say it is terribly nice of him. My conversation to the debs’ young men goes like this:

The chinless horror ‘I think this is our dance.’

Me (knowing all the time that it is & only too thankful to see him, thinking I’d been cut again) ‘Oh yes, I think it is.’

The C.H. ‘What a crowd in the doorway.’

Me ‘Yes isn’t it awful.’

The C.H. then clutches me round the waist & I almost fall over as I try & put my feet where his aren’t.

Me ‘Sorry.’

The C.H. ‘No, my fault.’

Me ‘Oh I think it must have been me.’

The C.H. ‘Oh no, that wouldn’t be possible.’ (Supposed to be a compliment.)

Then follows a long & dreary silence sometimes one of us saying ‘sorry’ & the other ‘my fault’. After a bit we both feel we can’t bear it any longer so we decide to go & sit down.

The C.H. ‘Got off camp this time, told them it was a sprained ankle, look at the bandages, ha ha’. (I look & see no bandages so suppose it must be a joke & say ‘ha ha’ too.)

Then one hears the drums rumbling & one knows that is the end of the dance & goes hopelessly back to the doorway hoping for the other chinless horror to turn up & of course he doesn’t so one scrams thankfully off to bed.

Yesterday one young man told me the same funny (?) story three times. At least I think it was the same young man but one can’t possibly tell.

Well dear, Family Life seems to go on in the same old way & I never see any of the sisters except sometimes Bobo, & the boredom of Wycombe is absolutely unbelievable. One never dares ask any of one’s friends for fear of the family taking against them & being fearfully rude ‘like only Mitfords can’. Bobo has just come back from Germany. She is going back again soon. I wish I was going with her. I should at least be able to go every night to listen to the band with the man I love in it. When she goes I shall be absolutely alone again which I hate so. There isn’t anyone to talk to because you know how the parents simply don’t listen.

Pam comes over sometimes which is awful. When Derek comes too it is worse. I never see Diana & very seldom see Nancy or Tom. So altogether it isn’t much fun. We have got to be at Wycombe for three months now. Lord only knows what I shall find to do all that time.

Everyone does the same old things here. Farve goes off to The Lady & the House of Lords & Muv paints chairs & reads books called things like ‘Stalin: My Father’ or ‘Mussolini: The Man’ or ‘Hitler: My Brother’s Uncle’ or ‘I Was In Spain’ or ‘The Jews – By One Who Knows Them’ etc etc etc. I haven’t read a book for eight months now.

I never can remember what jokes you’ve heard & what you’ve missed, but I know you can’t have heard this one. It’s a summing up of the Fem’s character by Bobo & me. It goes like this ‘Nelson, bread of my life, meet me tonight without any doctors or any medicine under the kitchen table’.¹ You must say it’s a wonderful summing up. Well dear, hotcha.

Love from Yr Hen

Dear Henderson,

Thanks v. much for amusing letters

Have you been to any more dances? I gather from your letters that you more or less loathe most of them, I must say deb dances aren’t the cheeriest form of entertainment. But it seems all the more marvellous when one doesn’t have to go any more; Esmond says that’s the same as being at a public school or remand home, that always afterwards you think how lucky you are not to be there still. Anyway I expect next year it really will be more fun; I call the middle of July an extraorder time to come out, you might have liked it more if you had come out at the beginning of the summer.

Couldn’t you cheer off abroad somewhere, e.g. to Italy with the Rodds, or Germany with the Boud? Or even France with your Hen. Where are you all going to be in the winter – R Gate or the cottage? Your Hen will be in London then, we are coming back after our Tour to live there for a few months while your Hen has her baby etc. Shall I call it Henderson, or even Hon Henderson & everyone’ll think it’s the Hon(ble) Henderson. Did you know your old Hen was in pig.¹ Yes dear, you had better be training as a young midwife, as soon as possible. I hope you will be its Henmother (Honnish for Godmother) anyway. Do write to your Hen & say if you are interested about it. Your poor Hen never stopped sicking up all her food for about three months on account of it, which was so cheerless.

Peter R[amsbotham] & George Howard have sent us an absolute mass of phone records which is such bliss of them. Do impress how grateful I am if you see them, there’s such a terrific lot.

Love from Henry

Darling Susan,

Thanks for yr. letter. All is oke now really, but Susan I must just remind you of a few things you seem to have forgotten! Susan how can you say you & Rodd were pro Esmond & me living together when you wrote saying how unrespectable it was & how Society would shun me, & Rodd wrote saying how French workmen would shun me. In fact what you actually wanted us to do was to come home to England, in which case I should have been caught by the P’s¹ & narst old Judge & altogether teased in every way. So what you were really against was both us getting married and us living together not married. Do you admit, Susan. Do you also admit it was a bit disloyal just as I was thinking you were the one I could count on to be on my side through thick and. Anyway it’s all such ages ago now I expect you’ve forgotten a bit what you did do, &, as you say, now we are married there’s no point in [illegible].

I am going to have a baby in January (1st to be exact, oh Susan do you remember poor Lottie’s² agonies, & I expect it’s much worse for humans), yes Susan some of us do our duty to the community unlike others I could name. Shall I call it Nancy? I think skeke [hardly] as I have a feeling it’s going to be a boy, & being called Nancy might prove a handicap to it throughout life. I do hope it will be sweet & pretty & everything. Goodness I have been sick but I’m not any more now.

The bathing here is absolute heaven, we go to Biarritz nearly every day. Well Soose. End of paper.

Love from Susan

Darling Sooze

Oh thank goodness what a weight off my mind. Well Susan now I know that all is OKE I am sending you a) a narst little diamond ring as I know it is nice to have things of popping value even if only for a few pounds & b) which you will like much more Busman’s Honeymoon¹ which must be the funniest book ere written. And I daresay some cash will be forthcoming in Jan. when needed. Susan fancy you with a scrapage. I don’t think you are fit to bring one up after your terribly awful behaviour but what luck that you will always have dear old aunt Nancy at hand to advise & help.

Love from Sooze

Dearest Henderson,

It WAS lovely seeing you & Blor, you can’t think how terribly pleased I was you could come. I only wish you were still here, it seemed such an awfully short time.

I do hope you weren’t bored & I didn’t talk about Esmond all the time like Woman does about Derek, but you know it seems such an AGE since he went, however he’s coming back today for certain.

I think I only really realized, from seeing you, what things had been like at home; it is so extraorder how people can make themselves so miserable when there’s nothing to be miserable about, & of course I’m dreadfully sorry they were so unhappy. It seems such a tease that one can’t be what one likes without causing all that misery. The more I think of it the less I can understand it.

Best love from Squalor

It’s early Spring in January, because I’m in pig.

Darling:

I would have written ages ago, but we are having a heat wave of terrific proportions and it is really boiling and I spend the days in a pair of bathing pants and a shirt. I am reading Mein Kampf.¹ Everything looks unbelievably beautiful.

4th August. I have got a lot to erzähl [tell] about the Oxford Group. Annemarie² said could she come here, so I said yes (I was alone) and she came needless to say with Mr [Reginald] Holme & Miles Phillimore.³ They arrived for lunch and made an onslaught which lasted till 10.45, trying to persuade me to go back to Oxford with them for the weekend. It was a very special weekend with very important people, and Frank [Buchman] had said would I come etc. I did not want to go in the least but as I was alone here I had no reason. When they saw I was set against it they tried a sort of mixture of flattery (‘you could change the world’) and blackmail and threats (‘you are afraid of being converted. You are not a revolutionary if you don’t give us a fair trial’). ‘Why not?’ is the answer I think!!

Anyway it ended with a Quiet Time. I did not write anything on the bit of paper they gave me although I thought of lots of jokes. They all read out their guidance and it consisted mostly of God saying he wanted me to go to Oxford. In the end they went off in despair. I suppose Frank had told them to bring me back. But during the day I got a terrific nausea for the whole silly affair, and when they said Frank had changed the world and prevented industrial disputes etc I asked how long he had been at it; they replied since 1921, so I said that was as long as the Führer, leaving them to make the comparison. I said in order to change anything properly in the modern world you had to have a political organization and several thousand people willing to give their lives and some machine guns. I said why the hell didn’t Frank stick to America and try and change that, because the industrial disputes there were the horror of the whole world.

They were very hurt and made all kinds of lame answers. 6 August. So then I said you will never get me for your sort of ‘revolution’ because I am a realist and we must have a framework first in England. Miles Phillimore, ‘We are realists too, and after all when I had been in New Zealand a year, the Prime Minister said “the Oxford group is the only policy for the world”.’ And what difference has it made him saying that?

But the thing that makes me angriest is when they harp on the fact that Frank said publicly ‘thank God for Adolf Hitler’. They tell one that as if it were gleichzeitig [at the same time] very brave and a terrific compliment for the Führer.

I am sorry for all this boring outburst but I longed for you to be there at the time. Although I am really fond of Annemarie I shall not lift a finger for her to see the Führer while she is with that ghastly Frank.

It is so lovely and calm here with Kit. We don’t even ride, but just lie in the sun and listen to the wireless, and fish, and row in a tiny little boat he has brought. I am so happy. At the end of next week Vivien⁴ & Nicky⁵ come, and then it will be less peaceful. The boys are coming too and I am perfectly dying for them.

This letter has gone on so long it must be a birthday letter now darling, so many happy returns, and I enclose the usual dull-but-useful.

I wish you were here. Kit wants you to come & bring the Princesses Wrede⁶ with you!!

All love, Nardy

P.S. Miles & co kept being guided to use my telephone for trunk calls! They all ring up nearly every day but I say I am away. They are nothing daunted by my firmness. Of course they are mad to get to see the Führer. But then who isn’t?

Darling Nard

Thank you so much for your letter. It arrived just after I had posted my letter to you, with the photo

I quite forgot to thank you for the lovely photos of the boys, I was so pleased with them & I shall stick them in my family book when I go to England.

Erna is most terribly aufgeregt [excited] about ‘Entartete Kunst’,¹ she says that the artists in it are the only good ones in Germany today and the whole world envies Germany for them. She has stopped working in her shop because her brother is afraid the SS will come & smash the windows if she is caught selling reproductions of modern pictures (that sounds unlikely doesn’t it) and she sits at home in Solln all by herself getting aufgeregter & aufgeregter. I spent a whole afternoon & evening with her & she didn’t speak of anything else at all, just a torrent of Aufregung [excitement]. She goes to the exhibition every day, & she says that all the really artistic people in Munich are freu-ing [enjoying] themselves like anything because they say, never before have we had a chance of seeing all these wonderful pictures collected together in one Ausstellung [exhibition], & they go every day, & noch dazu [what’s more] the entrance is free. She says all the Americans come to her & say ‘If only we could have this wonderful collection in America, wouldn’t they let us take it over?’ I asked Erna to let me go to it with her but she refused but at last I persuaded her & we went, I feel I learnt quite a lot by it. She has small pictures by two of the artists, which they gave her themselves, hanging in her house, in fact she has three pictures by Nolde. [incomplete]

Darling Boud

I have been wanting to write to you for ages but I didn’t know your address, now Muv has sent me the Dieppe one & says it will find you. I hope it will. Do write to your Boud soon.

I did envy Blor & Tiny going to see my Boud, I do hope I will soon. I hear you had a tooth out without anaesthetic, poor Boud how awful. How is the baby, I hear you can feel it kicking already. It is so exciting, I do envy you. I think I really must have a darling little Bastard, it would be so sweet & I should love it. Do you hope for a boy or a girl? What will you call it?

Clementine [Mitford] & I went with the Führer to Bayreuth for the festival, we were there ten days, it was lovely. Kukuli von Arent¹ was in Bayreuth, & she hadn’t heard about you, she was perfectly amazed when I told her & kept on saying ‘Aber die Decca war doch so nett! Sie war doch so lustig und reizend!² Do you remember when the two SS men here called you ‘die lustige Kommunistin’? Clementine went to England from Bayreuth, & I returned here. I have seen the Führer a lot lately which has been heaven, only now he has gone back to his mountain for a bit.

I do hope you are having lovely weather for your motor tour. We have been having a heat wave here for a week, but today alas it’s raining. The other day when it was boiling hot I found a secluded spot in the Englischer Garten³ where I took off all my clothes & sunbathed, luckily no-one came along. While I was lying in the sun I suddenly wondered whether Muv knew I was sun-bathing naked, like when she knew that you were bathing naked, & I laughed till I ached, if anyone had come along they would have thought me mad as well as indecent.

Well Boud pray write to your Boud as soon as you get this, she does so long to hear from her Boud.

Best love from Yr Boud

Darling:

I have got a lot to erzähl [tell] about a wonderfully typical day I spent at Schwanenwerder yesterday. After discovering that the people I have come to see are all away, I rang up Magda on the chance and she asked me to come at once. Kukuli was there, radiant after spending a week with her loved one, her idyll was spoilt later in the day by Benno von Arent who bullied her to go back to her Kinder [children]. The Doktor was there and the food, conversation and whole set-up was so exactly like last year that I kept thinking it was last year. Magda wanted to play Animal Vegetable or Mineral, and when we chose something for her to guess she always complained either that it was, ‘Wirklich zu dumm, viel zu leicht’¹ etc. Or if she couldn’t guess it, it was ‘a frightfully unfair one’. When it was one of our turns she kept saying, ‘Aber Sie müssen nur logisch denken, ich hätte das in zwei minuten gefunden’.²

It was pure heaven. Then we played Analogies which I taught them. Magda got the hang of it in a moment, and we had a heavenly time doing Helldorf, Frau Funk, Frau Hoffmann and so on. Then the Doktor joined us and we, or rather he, did the Führer for Kukuli. Here is what he said (we all helped and this was the result)

Animal:	Pure-bred Arab stallion
Colour:	Feuerrot3
Drink:	Ein schwerer Wein4
Flower:	Madonna lily*
Style:	Michaelangelo – Renaissance*
Landschaft:5	Top of the Alps
Weather:	A hot storm*
Frau:	Eine grosse schöne blonde Frau6