Читать книгу The Mitfords: Letters between Six Sisters - Charlotte Mosley - Страница 12
ОглавлениеNeedless to say although Harald7 who came halfway through kept saying, ‘Aber Kinder, ganz klar, es gibt nur einer’,8 Kukuli failed to guess, and when she was told said, ‘Ich habe die ganze Zeit an den Führer gedacht, aber er trinkt doch nur Wasser!’9 Whereupon both Goebbels rounded on her so cruelly that she nearly cried. I must say it was rather dotty because we had told 23 times it had nothing to do with what the person liked, or wore etc. Well I was pleased when the Doktor said, ‘Eine grosse schöne blonde Frau’.
The lovely part of the day was a wonderful film called Entscheidende Tage [Decisive Days] and it is only real-life films, of the war, the Versailles Treaty, the revolution here, the coming of the Führer, 1923 Parteitag, meetings, Schlageter10 being shot, Jews, Nazis, the 1929 Parteitag, Machtübernahme [taking power], Aufbau [rebuilding], 1936 Parteitag. It was pure heaven, except that the Doktor schimpfed [railed] all the way through at the man who had spent eight months making it. I must say he was perfectly right because it was an awful muddle and terribly hard to know what was going on. The Doktor said he himself didn’t know half the time although he lived it all. So it has to be entirely altered, but darling the material is simply thrilling.
There was a lovely moment when the Doktor said, ‘Ich stelle mich meine Mutter vor; sie hätte fast nichts davon verstanden; es muss absolut klar sein für die einfachsten und dummsten Leute.’11
There is the most heavenly picture of the Führer at the 1929 Parteitag, laughing and throwing flowers at the SA as they march vorbei [past]. Oh how I wished we had been there, it makes me cry with rage to think we were alive and yet missing everything.
Do you really think the Führer might come here? I thirst for only a glimpse of him. I know he’s at Nürnberg today because the Doktor is meeting him there. If you see Wiedemann12 give him my fondest love and tell him I am here, could you darling.
MASSES of love, do write again, Nardy
Darling Nard,
I had lunch with the Führer in the Ost the day before the Duce1 came, & said goodbye to him as I shan’t see him again. The little Doktor was there. We had rather a stormy scene as all of them, except the Führer, set on me because I said I didn’t like Musso, & bullied me till I was almost in tears, it was dreadful. I thought I wouldn’t be able to prevent myself crying. However the Führer took my part (without of course saying anything against Musso) & he was perfectly sweet. Of course the one that led the attack was Dr Brandt.2
Two days before Musso’s visit Wardie3 & Randolph [Churchill] arrived here. I met them at the plane & spent the whole three days with them, it was great fun. Randolph never stopped complaining because I didn’t get him an interview with the Führer & grumbling about the lack of ‘facilities’ whatever that may be, but he was very nice. Altogether, the three days were great fun & I adored it in spite of the misery of Musso coming.
May I come to Wootton for a few days when I get to England?
Best love, & to the boys, Heil Hitler, Bobo
P.S. Have you read Gone with the Wind?4 It is the most fascinating book ever written. I read it in under a week although it’s got 1036 pages & you know what a slow reader I am, so that just shows. One can’t put it down.
Unity on the cover of a news magazine, November 1937. Hardly a week went by during the 1930s without one of the sisters making headlines.
Darling Cord
Thank you so much for the delicious cheque for £5, I was pleased to get it, & it arrived on my birthday, too.
We went to Biddesden the other day for the wknd, it was a scream, Bryan made everyone slave away from morning till on the farm, & he kept saying to his wife ‘would you like to come for a bicycle ride?’ although it was only a week before the baby was born!1 We have got a house looking over the river, which is heaven, I think I shall be staying here for the baby.
Thank you again for the lovely birthday gift.
Love from Decca
Dearest Crackinjay
Oh goodness the Bridgetness1 of it! She is being so awful that I would really like to be very rude to her if it wasn’t for Maggot. This afternoon she said ‘Of course I think it is so awful for gals not to play games like tennis & golf because not only are they left out of everything but they are a fearful bore to have in the house & it is very selfish of them because they ruin everybody else’s good time’. Don’t you think it is the damn rudest thing you have ever heard when I was sitting there & she knows I can’t (& won’t) do anything like that. I was simply furious.
She says that ‘gals’ never get asked anywhere unless they are good at games. I hate the idea of being asked somewhere to ‘make up a four at tennis’. I’d much rather not go away to stay anywhere if I thought I was being asked to make even numbers for tennis of all blasted games. Why they can’t sit & talk like normal humans I can’t imagine. They are always driving you to ‘do something’. Goodness it does make me angry. I hate Bridget more than I ever have before. She is perfectly bloody.
Tom is back from Germany & has been down to Wycombe.
Well dear, do write.
The Forfar ball is on Friday. I hope it will be nice.
Much love from Henderson
Darling Honks
Thank you so much for the really wonderful gift, they are things I have always longed for but I have never afforded them as Blor always makes me buy woollen combies. They are such heaven, thank you a million times.
I had measles all through merry Xmas. It was so awful I nearly died of the horror of it.
This letter has been disinfected by Blor putting it in the oven, at least it will have been by the time you get it. The one I wrote to Bridget I specially didn’t have done.
You are kind to have sent the gorgeous gift, goodness you are.
Tuddemy says they are pretties, like the adverts.
Much love from Debo
I am still in bed for seven days as the doctor says I shall get bronchitis if I get up which makes Muv furious. I have also had some glorious medicine.
Dear Miss Measles
Oh those little armless hands* I simply adore them. Rodd thinks they are awfully sinister & they terrify him but I wear them the whole time.1 It was kind of you.
Poor Miss how awful about yr blindness, of course one can’t help wondering what sort it is when remembering yr awful reputation.2
Yes it is very nice here – Rodd spends his time making hats for Helen,3 & SHE WEARS them. So we are happy.
Love from Get on & get out of here.4
* The little armless hand
It lies upon the land
It cannot hold
It cannot mould
Nor rub an aching gland
It lies alone & makes no moan5
Dearest young Hen,
How I do love your delicious gift of face cream, it really is just what I wanted dear thank you so much.
I was amazed at your letter in the Fem’s writing, it seemed so extraorder to see Honnish terms in a non-Hon’s handwriting.
How simply wretched for you having measles, poor old Hohon.
The baby1 is terribly strong already & you could have seen it and me any time if you hadn’t been a young germ carrier.
We had the most heavenly Xmas you can image. Yr Hen had in her stocking: E. Arden bath salts & hand lotion, L. Philippe lipstick, Atkinson scent, Turkish delight, two boxes of chocolates, a book and 1s worth of cream which she drank down at one gulp. The poor Babe hung its sock but didn’t get a damn thing! Luckily it didn’t seem to notice.
Dear you can’t imagine how sweet it is, I long for you to come & see it. She hasn’t got any of the disadvantages of so many babes such as excessive redness & baldness & smelling of sick.
Yr Hen is loving her delicious time in bed, tho of course it isn’t nearly such heaven now as over the Xmas hol when Esmond was here all the time;2 but Id is coming today & I hope lots of people will be scramming down here.
Well dear
Not much news
So cheer ha.
Love from Beery
Darling Nard
I had great fun my last week in Vienna, Heine Bleckmann took me out a lot, & I also met some other friends who I went out with; so I saw quite a lot of the life in Vienna.
Of course hopes are high here about the Reichstagsrede;1 and the evening on which it came out that Schuschnigg2 was with the Führer, Vienna was in an uproar. No-one could think of anything else, & the first thing everyone – taxi-men, shop assistants or friends – said to one was ‘Haben Sie gehört? Der Schuschnigg ist beim Führer!’3 I do hope the result won’t be a disappointment. Poor Austria is such a tragic country, & the people here really such heroes, I had never realized how really heroic the Kampf [struggle] here is until my time in Vienna. I have never met such fanatics in Germany as I have here. Several times young men have come up to me & said, ‘May I kiss the hand the Führer has touched?’ – not at all in a gallant or complimentary way, but merely because they do really so worship him, rather like a Christian might kiss a bit of wood which Christ had touched. And they all talk of ‘draussen im Reich’4 with bated breath, as if they were talking of Heaven.
Do write – to [Pension] Doering.
Best love from Bobo
Dearest Hen,
Thank you so much for writing.1
We are going tomorrow morning, so I do hope you will write to yr hen. Please give my love to Muv, & thank her for her letter & for offering to help with the house, but as a matter of fact Esmond has already arranged for Peter Nevile to try & let it for us. If any of you hear of a likely person, would you let him know? They would have to keep Rose on at £1.1.3 a week (the 1/3d is insurance).
Love from Henderson
Darling Debo
Last night the Führer was talking about which of us was going to the Parteitag, and he says he specially wants you to go. Isn’t it wonderful. I told what a marvellous rider you are and he thinks you are so beautiful and wants you to see the Parteitag while you are young. So of course I said you would be thrilled and he arranged it all, on the spot. Isn’t he kind and sweet. He talked a lot about Farve and his speech1 and said he should thank him very specially when he sees him at Nürnberg.
I must rush off now, but I know you will be excited when you get this.
Lots of love from Honks
Darling Boud
You can’t think how thrilled your Boud was – in fact we all were – to read your letter to the Fem, the Fem was out when it arrived & your Boud died to open it but she managed not to. I am so glad you are in Corsica because ever since we went there I have thought it the most heavenly place in the world – do you remember the attractive French officer Yobboud fell in love with in that fortress in Ajaccio, and is he still there?1
Boud ee ub je eedjend vegudden je Boudle2 because she thinks the whole time about you. I was so terribly sad to be coming back knowing my Boud wouldn’t be there, and altogether your Boud has been so much in despair about it all & so miserable that she couldn’t write until now.
I feel sure you are having the most wonderful time & I envy you all the sun & bathing like anything.
Baby [Erdödy] is here, she came back to England with me in my car & we both return to the Continent next week. She sends you lots of love. I think she is quite enjoying it here. Yesterday Aunt Puss3 took us both to a play & was killing as usual. The Widow adores Baby & wants her to go to Totland Bay. The other day there was a huge headline in the E. Standard – ‘BLACK WIDOWS DOOMED IN CASE OF WAR’. Naturally we all supposed it included the Widow but it turned out that it means the Black Widow spiders at the Zoo, because their bites are fatal & they intend killing them at once in case a bomb or something might break their cage & let them loose. Isn’t it killing. The Widow stayed here for two nights she was a scream, she wore a shiny green satin blouse which Farve insisted on calling her ‘imperméable’, he also kept saying she had à ‘coiffure à la jolie femme’.4 We all shrieked.
Well Boud I have enjoyed writing to you because I almost feel as if we had had a chat.
Very best love from Yobboud
Darling Nard
It is a shame you can’t come to Bayreuth, & also to the Berg1 tomorrow, I am really awfully excited for that because it’s the only side of his life which I don’t know at all. Magda will be sorry you’re not in Bayreuth, won’t she.
What I couldn’t tell you on the telephone was this. You remember my little friend from Vienna who you said was like an Indian, & his pretty blonde fiancée who asked the Führer for an autograph in the Osteria. Well yesterday she telephoned & said could she come & see me for five minutes, but her fiancé mustn’t know anything about it. So this morning she came, & she was here when you telephoned. You know Heinz, her fiancé, was a member of the SS in Vienna – I believe since 1932. He was a tremendously enthusiastic Nazi & really risked everything for the cause during the Schuschnigg Regime. Well it seems that just after the Machtübernahme2 his father, also a member of the Partei, who had brought him up to be very ‘national-denkend’ [nationalistically minded], told him that both his (Heinz’s) mother’s parents were Jewish. Of course poor Heinz was completely erledigt [shattered] when he heard it, & wanted to shoot himself at once, which it seems to me would have been the best way out. Though, officially, he doesn’t count as a Jew as both the grandparents were baptized. But for Heinz, being a real Nazi ‘aus Überzeugung’ [by conviction], that naturally made no difference. His father made him promise not to do anything until they had had a reply to their Ersuch [request] to the Führer, but so far there has been no reply, & in the meanwhile of course he is having what is practically a nervous breakdown. Well it seems that there are several half-Jews who have, at one time or another, been allowed to remain in the Party on account of special Verdienste [services]. So they hope that he also will, though of course this will anyhow, from his own point of view, have ruined his life. So she came to ask me if I would help her, & I told her that if she would write a personal letter to the Führer I would give it to him personally. Isn’t it awful for them, poor things. I must say it gave me an awful shock when she told me.
At lunch, a man who was there, said the Osteria was just like an Italian Osteria, ‘nur viel sauberer’.3 At that the Führer looked at me out of the corner of his eye & then started to blither [giggle] quite uncontrollably, & when he had sufficiently regained his composure he said ‘Das hört sie gern’.4 I think the man was amazed. When he left he said, ‘come to the Berg any day you like between now & the 20th’. Later I rang up & said might I come today, but he sent a message to say that today he has Besprechungen [meetings] but would I come tomorrow. It is a shame you’re not here.
Well now I will run out & post your dress. I will finish this letter after my Obersalzberg visit, so I can tell you about it. Later. I have just returned from posting your dress, and just as a matter of interest I must tell you what it was like, & I think you might speak to your Minister O.5 about it. Well I had to fill in six long & quite unintelligible forms, and then take one of them to the Reichsbank in the Briennerstrasse. Of course, all this didn’t matter at all to me as I have all the time in the world & a motor; but imagine some wretched person who had to work hard & had no motor! I think it really might be changed, do speak to the Minister about it. 20th July. Well I arrived back late last night from the Berg, & will tell you about it. It was really simply heavenly. Well the drive up takes about 20 minutes, & when I arrived at the house, there were the Führer & Wagner waiting for me on the balcony or terrass. I was taken to them through the house, & they both said, ‘Wo ist die Schwester?’6 so I explained. Well I must say I never in my life saw such a view as one sees from that house, the whole chain of mountains lying at one’s feet so to speak. Well the Führer & Wagner & Schaubchen7 & I went & had tea in the big room or hall. It is simply huge & hung with wonderful pictures & tapestry, & at one end it has a raised platform with a big round tea table & a huge Kamin [chimney], & at the other end the whole wall is one huge window. The effect is simply extraordinary. The window – the largest piece of glass ever made – can be wound down like a motor window, as it was yesterday, leaving it quite open. Through it one just sees this huge chain of mountains, and it looks more like an enormous cinema screen than like reality. Needless to say the génial [brilliant] idea was the Führer’s own, & he said Frau Troost8 wanted to insist on having three windows. Well after tea he showed me the whole house, even the kitchen & the maids’ bedrooms & bathrooms, and I must say it is perfectly lovely, I know you will think so. After seeing the house, which took quite a time, we went & sat in the terrace & chatted to Werlin & Dietrich & his little daughter Gisela, then the Führer said would I like to go for a walk so I said yes. Just as we were starting off, the Führer’s new huge car arrived from the Mercedes works, so of course we examined it all over. When told it went easily 150 km.p.h., he said something so typical: ‘Das ist natürlich für mich ein Nachteil, denn wenn ich so schnell fahre, bin ich 20 Minuten früher da, und muss 20 Minuten länger im Hotel oder in meiner Wohnung sitzen.’9 Well we started on our walk, which turned out to be a pretty long one: he & I in front, & the others following us a good way behind. We walked down the mountains, quite slowly, & the view is too lovely for words. The ‘Ziel’ [aim] of our walk was a little teahouse he has built on a projecting piece of hill, it is too pretty for words inside, round, with a big round table & very comfy armchairs all round, & flat marble pillars round the walls, & a pretty fireplace with a lovely 18th-century clock on it. We sat & had tea & he talked about politics for about an hour, in his best style, & then we walked down to where the cars were standing below the teahouse, & he put me in my car & then got into his & we drove through the new Bauernhof that is being built & then he drove back up the mountain, & I down to Berchtesgaden at about 9.
Well now I must scram out, I will write to you from Bayreuth.
My best love to the boys.
Best love from Bobo
Darling Nard
I have been meaning to write to you for several days but there hasn’t seemed to be much to tell. I am living, as you see, in the same house as always. It’s terribly hot & one can hardly sleep, & the heat is awful in the opera.
On Sunday – the morning after I arrived – I drove over to Eger to an SdP1 demonstration at which Konrad Henlein spoke. When I arrived I was met by Wollner,2 who said he could only stay five minutes ‘denn ich muss den Führer ausholen’.3 I was amazed. I was taken to the Rathaus [town hall] where there was to be a Begrüssung [reception] & there we waited & at last everyone said, ‘Der Führer kommt! Der Führer kommt!’4 & in came Konrad Henlein, followed by Wollner & others. Well the mayor began his Begrüssungsrede, ‘Mein Führer! Es ist für mich eine Freude und Ehre, Sie, mein Führer, begrüssen zu dürfen’5 etc etc. I was amazed. Afterwards I was presented to Konrad Henlein, but there was no time to chat because we had to go out to the demonstration, & I had to leave early to be in time for Tristan.
At dinner, the Führer & the Doktor & Kannenberg6 were all in their best form, so you can imagine we had a riotous evening. But I think the Führer teased Kannenberg dreadfully by saying that the food in the Quirinal & also in Florence was much better than his (K’s) food, and that he would never be able to achieve such perfection.
The next evening, the Führer got into quite a rage twice; the first time with Kannenberg, for whom I felt heartily sorry! The second rage, however, was over Reichsminister Gürtner7 & the new laws he is making. He got angrier & angrier, & at last thundered – you know how he can – like a machine-gun – ‘Das nächste Mai, dass die Richter so einen Mann freilassen, so lasse ich ihn von meiner Leibstandarte verhaften und ins Konzentrationslager schicken; und dann werden wir sehen, welches am stärksten ist, the letter of Herr Gürtner’s law oder MEINE MASCHINEN GEWEHRE!’8 It was wonderful. Everyone was silent for quite a time after that.
I have been having rather a terrible time on account of a young man I met in Munich just after you left – Wolfgang Hoesch by name, no relation to the Ambassador9 – has been pestering me with marriage proposals, & to my horror followed me here! I do have an awful time with ‘Wolfgangs’ don’t I. I have a terrible time getting rid of him here, in fact I have to get up early & drive off somewhere for the day. However thank god he has to go tomorrow anyway.
Well I will now close because I feel I must go for a walk. My love to the boys – did they get my P.C.s?
Best love & Heil Hitler! Bobo
Darling Nard
Thank you for your letter forwarded from Munich. I didn’t mean for you to feel guilty about the dress, I only told you as a matter of interest & I didn’t mind at all a bit. But of course as a matter of fact you always feel guilty, don’t you.
Well I had meant to write before but the fact is, I have had flu since Friday. I felt queer Friday night on coming home very late from the Führer’s, after Walküre. The Führer, however, had said he would take me with him to Breslau, & of course I would rather have died than miss that. So on Saturday I stayed in bed till 5, & then got up & packed, & the Sonderzug1 left at 7. By the time it started I felt like death, & dreaded being called to dinner. You know how one sometimes can’t even raise one’s hand to comb one’s hair. However when I was with the Führer I felt sort of stimulated like one does, & he was in a sweet mood. We sat at a table with the Reichsärzteführer Wagner.2 Of course eating was agony & yet I had to because I couldn’t say I was ill. Luckily the Führer had to have a Besprechung [meeting] with an officer after dinner, so I got to bed early, feeling frightfully sick. We arrived at Breslau at the unearthly hour of 7.30 A.M. We drove in Kolonne [procession] to a hotel which had been abgesperrt [closed]. One of the Führer’s secretaries had come too so that I shouldn’t be the only female on the train, & she was my sort of Begleitung [chaperone]. The hotel was full of Greatnesses of course, & Seyss Inquart3 was there. Tschammer-Osten4 gave us Ehrenkarten [free tickets] & a man to go with us, and we walked to the square where the march-past was to be, which was next-door to the hotel. Already the sun was almost unbearably hot – before 8 A.M. – so you can imagine what the next 4 hours were like, & I had a high temperature. We sat on the front row of the Tribüne, just behind the Führer’s little jutting-out box. Behind us were Wollner & the other Sudeten-deutsch leaders. I think Wollner was terrifically impressed that I had come with the Führer, though I think he only believed it sometimes. Well then the Führer arrived & the march-past began – 150,000 people (i.e. half as much again as the SA & SS Vorbeimarsch in Nürnberg) but they marched in three columns, the middle one going in the opposite direction from the other two. At first came the Reichsdeutsche from the various Gaus [regions]; then the Sudetendeutsche. I never expect to see such scenes again as when the Sudetendeutsch women arrived. You will have read about it in the papers but the accounts I saw seemed to bear no relation to what actually happened. Really everyone was crying & I thought they would never sort out the muddle when the marchers broke ranks & surrounded the Führer in a seething mass, & those who had already passed came running back to try & see the Führer once more, & they were all sobbing & stretching out their hands & some of them managed to shout in chorus ‘Lieber Führer, wann kommst Du zu uns?’ and ‘Führer, wir schwören Dir aufs Neu, wir bleiben Dir auf ewig treu’.5 Henlein stood beside the Führer and it must have been his greatest day.
Well after that was over we went into the hotel & I went up to a room & lay down. The lade with me was in her element, as she is very pretty & very loud & coy with the Umgebung & Begleitung [staff] & calls them all ‘du’, from Sepp Dietrich6 to the chauffeurs. I was able to sleep till 3 & then we had to leave for a stadium outside the town where there were very wonderful demonstrations of Leibesubüngen, etc, including a dance by 5,000 women & club-swinging by 15,000. We had to leave early so as to get to the Flugplatz [airport] before the Führer, our planes left at 8, I didn’t go in the Führer’s because I was suddenly terrified I would give him my flu. We landed at Nürnberg & drove in Kolonne in ten huge cars to Bayreuth. After we arrived a car was sent round to take me to dinner but of course I felt like death & couldn’t go. Well ever since then I have been in bed, & have missed Siegfried and Götterdämmerung. Siegfried I would have missed anyhow as it was the day we started for Breslau.
On Monday night – the last night he was here – when the Führer heard I was ill, he sent me the most lovely huge bouquet of roses, & the next morning he sent round to enquire how I was. Then he left by plane for Berlin. It seems that when he left he told Frau Wagner7 I was ill & would she look after me a bit & send a doctor. Also, that he wanted all bills to be sent to him. Isn’t he really too sweet for words. Someone even came – I don’t know who – to say I was to be given back all the money I had spent on oranges etc. I am really so terribly grateful to him.
Well yesterday Frau Wagner came & brought the hugest & most lovely bouquet of garden flowers I ever saw, evidently picked by herself, & it makes my room smell like a garden. She was awfully nice & motherly, & said she would send a doctor.
A large bouquet arrived tied with two broad red satin ribbons with Hakenkreuzes [swastikas] on them – the sort of thing one puts on Horst Wessel’s grave – from the Lord Mayor of Bayreuth, whom so far as I know I have never met. All the flowers make one much more cheerful. Also Wollner came & brought a large bunch of gladioli.
Well this letter has got awfully long & may be frightfully dull but I do love writing to pass the time, now that I can sit up. My salvation has been A Passage to India8 which thank goodness I hadn’t read before, what a wonderful book, only much too short. I am so grateful to you for telling me about it. Alas I have finished it.
Please give my best love to the boys – did they get my postcards from Breslau? I hope so because they were quite special.
The Führer asked in the train how you were, I said I thought very well, I hope you are.
Well I will now close this weighty letter.
Best love & Heil Hitler! Bobo
The B[urden] of my S[ong] is I am awfully sorry you are ill. I always think to be ill abroad is most un-hochworthy. I hope there is an agreeable Gesellschaft [society] in the town to go and see you, anyway the Fem has gone now. I remember being ill in Napoli and a bearded Doctor laid his bearded face on my bosom which was his old world way of taking my temp. I thought luckily that it was only part of my delirium.
I am getting on well with my German. I know Herrschaft, Tisch and pfui; Pfennig, gemütlich and Rassenschande.2 Six words which would get one a long way if made good use of. Oh and mit mir [with me]. Did Muv enjoy her flight? She must be enchanted by the injections you describe. I fear modern science means 0 to her.
Well, head of bone, heart of stone – here is a little poem to show you what a lot of German I know.
Rassenschande is my joy
(Tisch Tisch and a merry go round)
Gemütlich is my hochgeboren [highborn] boy.
My hochgeboren love sits mit mir
(Tisch Tisch and a merry go round)
With all our Pfennigs we buy delicious beer.
And Rassenschande we do all day
(Tisch Tisch and a merry go round)
For my lover is a geboren Malay.
Pretty good, eh what?
P.S. I saw Bernstein3 who remembered sitting next to you at Emerald’s4 and saying, ‘I hate you, I don’t know why’ and you replied ‘But I know why’.
Darling Nard –
Your wonderful cheque arrived today from Pension Doering – you shouldn’t have sent me so much, it’s much too much, but you can imagine how thrilled I was to get it. You are so kind, thank you a million times.
This is the first letter I have been able to write but can’t sit up hence the scrawl. The doctors say I may not be able to go to the Parteitag, so you & I may be in the same boat – tho’ you get a lovely prize for it1 & I get nothing. I hope however that I may get well quicker than they think & be able to go. The old doctor2 the Führer sent me looks like the Aga Khan, he cured the Führer of indigestion. The Führer rang him up in the middle of the night & said he must leave for Bayreuth at once, so he arrived here at 3 A.M. & examined me at once & phoned the Führer. He had to leave several patients in Berlin including – who do you think? – your lover Joan Glover!3 The Führer rings up several times a day from the Berg & speaks to the doctor, & two days ago a phone was brought into my room & I spoke to him, wasn’t it heaven. He sent me a sweet telegram & masses of flowers for my birthday.
Oh dear I envy you all at Wootton, it is so dull here but thank goodness the Fem is here. She flew out, to Farve’s horror. Please give the boys my best love. I do hope I will see them soon.
Best love & Heil Hitler, Bobo
Darling:
How simply dreadful to have had pneumonia; we were so sorry about it. The Führer is the kindest man in the world isn’t he? I bet Joan is teased at his doctor being snatched away. He looks as if he might die any minute I must say. What is the matter with him? Do ask the Doc.
The boys have gone off to Biddesden, looking very well. Kit and I are here alone now. The day before the boys went we were all down by the lake, Kit was fishing, when all of a sudden Debo appeared! Kit had never seen her before. He stayed where he was and Debo and I walked back to the house, and hiding a few hundred yards away were two friends of Debo’s, Lord Andrew Cavendish1 and a troglodyte of sorts. They had been to some races. They stayed literally ten mins and then scrammed. They all looked as if they had seen a ghost, Debo said they were frightened they might be shot at. Apparently the day before they had come within a few yards of the house and then been too afraid to approach. It seems so odd to think they are grown up; they seemed incredibly babyish and so shy. (Not Debo of course.)
Kit has got such a lovely new rod for spinning minnows, he caught a huge trout last night with it. We are having such heavenly hols.
How too awful if you have to miss the Parteitag, but thank goodness it is the same year as me. I expect you will go but don’t overdo it darling. Come back soon.
You know the grey flannel dress and coat you gave me; well Nanny has let the dress out and it makes the most wonderfully concealing garment for best. I shall have to give it back when you have one. You can’t think how I bless you every time I wear it.
All love darling from Nard
Dear Miss
Poor Boud got beaten up in the Express, did you see (I know you read the papers from cover to cover all except the news, the book reviews or anything of interest). I must say I think it was silly not to write the letter herself but then Boud always is silly.1
Love from NR
The dr just been says that for two months I mayn’t go in any sort of vehicle, isn’t it deadly. I mayn’t even take a taxi & go out to lunch.2
Darling Diana
Wasn’t it funny – the very day your baby1 was born I was transcribing letters about Alice Stanley’s2 baby & she called it Alexander St George. I recommend St George to your attention, I think it’s so pretty.
I expect you will have a lovely Xmas in bed which I envy you in every way.
Much love from Nancy
I am going to Roy3 & Billa tomorrow, did you know they are having a baby also the David Cecils.4
Darling Nard
Thank you for your letter.
I had lunch with the Führer on Sunday & Monday, & he asked me to send you viele Grüsse. Both days he was in his very sweetest mood, particularly on Monday, he held my hand most of the time & looked sweet & said ‘Kind [child]!’ in his sympathetic way because he was so sorry about England & Germany being such enemies.1 However he said nothing but wonderful things about England & he completely gave me faith again that it will all come right in the end.
Yesterday I visited the new English Consul, he is awfully funny & rather nice.
There is still snow on the ground here, but it’s getting a bit warmer.
Do write soon.
Best love from Bobo
Well, I had lunch with Wolf2 today. We are invited to Bayreuth, I don’t know when it begins but will let you know later. He was in his least forthcoming mood, you know, all preoccupied.
He asked after you and Alexander and when I told him Alexander was bald, he said ‘Other people lose their hair through wisdom. He is wise from birth.’ So when I said ‘Let’s hope so’ he said ‘Let’s hope not. It’s better to have hair than wisdom. Weisheit hilft nichts.’3
Darling Nard
Your letter of the 30th just arrived. You can’t think how thrilling it is every time I hear the letterbox click, as I always expect every letter to be the last that will get through.
I listened in to the English news last night, it seems quite hopeless doesn’t it.1 I wonder if this letter will get through.
I think Chamberlain & co are criminals & should be hanged.
In case you didn’t hear the Führer’s speech, this is what he said about England. ‘Ich habe England immer wieder eine Freundschaft und, wenn notwendig, das engste Zusammengehen angeboten. Aber Liebe kann nicht nur von einer Seite angeboten werden, die muss von der anderen ihre Erwiderung finden.’2
I tried to ring you up last night but was a few hours too late – no more calls to England allowed.
Last night we had blackout for the first time, the streets were so pitchy black one had to feel one’s way. Today I covered all my windows with black paper.
I fear I shan’t see the Führer again. Nardy if anything should happen to me, & the English press try to make some untrue story out of it against W, you will see to it that the truth is known won’t you.
When the war is over, do try to get Boy3 back, I am so worried about him. Baby knows where he is.
Very best love, to you & the boys, from Bobo
I do hope you will feel better soon. It must be awful to be feeling ill just now.
1 Violet Williams-Freeman (1877–1964). A childhood friend of Lady Redesdale, ‘Mrs Ham’ was also a favourite with those she called the ‘Horror Sisters’. The butt of many of their teases, she could be querulous and demanding but her intelligence and sympathy ensured that she remained a cherished friend. After her husband Arthur Hammersley’s death in 1913, she became known as ‘the Widow’ or ‘Wid’, which suited her pessimistic outlook. She lived between Tite Street, Chelsea, and Wilmington, Totland Bay, on the Isle of Wight.
2 When Lord Redesdale learnt that Diana had taken Unity to the Parteitag, the annual Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, he wrote her a furious letter saying that he and Lady Redesdale were ‘absolutely horrified’ that they should accept hospitality from ‘people we regard as a murderous gang of pests’, and begged her to avoid embroiling Unity ‘with matters & people you know we cannot tolerate’. (Lord Redesdale to Diana, 7 September 1933)
3 The Poor Old Female, i.e. Lady Redesdale.
4 Tom Mitford.
5 Ernst (Putzi) Hanfstaengl (1887–1975). The Harvard-educated German-American who first encouraged Diana to visit Nazi Germany had been made Foreign Press Secretary in 1931. Alienated from Hitler in 1937, he left Germany for England and later lived in the United States. Married to Helene Neemeyer 1920–36.
6 Ann (Id, Idden) Farrer (1916–95). A first cousin of the Mitfords and lifelong friend and correspondent of Jessica. Worked as an actress and married the actor David Horne in 1941. Author, under the pseudonym Catherine York, of If Hopes Were Dupes (1966), an account of her nervous breakdown.
7 The Poor Old Leader, i.e. Mosley.
8 Desmond Guinness (1931–). Diana’s second son. President of the Irish Georgian Society 1958–91 and author of books on architecture. Married to Princess Mariga von Urach 1954–81 and to Penelope Cuthbertson in 1985.
1 ‘A heavenly evening bag’; a sophisticated present for a thirteen-year-old.
1 Nancy had married Peter (Prod) Rodd (1904–68) in London on 4 December. They were honeymooning in his parents’ flat in Rome.
1 Wigs on the Green (1935). Nancy’s satirical novel, which poked fun at Unity and Diana’s extremism, was the only one of her books never to be reissued after the war. She wrote to Evelyn Waugh, ‘Too much has happened for jokes about Nazis to be regarded as funny or as anything but the worst of taste.’ The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, edited by Charlotte Mosley (Hodder & Stoughton, 1996), p. 249.
2 The Poor Tremorgan Poor Old Female.
3 Dorothy Cordes (1887–1967). Married Lord Redesdale’s younger brother Bertram (Tommy) in 1925.
1 Mosley had addressed a huge audience at Olympia, Kensington, where violent fights broke out between Blackshirts and communists. Diana was unable to attend the meeting because she had a high fever.
2 William Anstruther-Gray (1905–85). Conservative MP who co-signed a letter to The Times accusing the uniformed Blackshirts at Olympia of ‘wholly unnecessary violence’.
3 Adolf Hitler (1889–1945). Eighteen months after his appointment as Chancellor, the Führer’s Nazification of Germany was well under way.
4 Derek Hill (1916–2000). Painter, notable for his portraits and landscapes, who was studying stage design in Munich.
5 ‘The kittens’; i.e. Diana’s two sons, Jonathan and Desmond.
1 Ottilie (Tilly) Losch (1907–75). Austrian dancer and actress who had been a girlfriend of Tom. Married the capricious poet and collector Edward James in 1931 and sued for separation in 1934, charging him with homosexuality among other things. James scandalized everyone by counter-suing, accusing her of adultery with Prince Serge Obolensky.
2 The Daily Express was waging a vendetta against Hanfstaengl for expelling their Munich correspondent, and reported that on a visit to America he had fallen in love with a nightclub hostess and invited her to Germany where he would ‘personally supervise’ her career. (20 June 1934)
3 The Nazi Party headquarters in Munich.
4 Ernst Röhm (1887–1934). Chief of Staff of the Sturmabteilung (SA), a large, unruly army that constituted a potential threat to Hitler’s dictatorship. On 30 June, in the Night of the Long Knives, Röhm and members of his staff were dragged from their beds and shot, ostensibly for plotting a coup.
5 Josef Goebbels (1897–1945). Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda since March 1933. Married his secretary, Magda Ritschel-Friedländer, in 1931.
6 Kurt von Schleicher (1882–1934). The former Chancellor of Germany and his wife were murdered by the SS in Berlin on 30 June.
7 Edmund Heines (1898–1934). The SA commander who, like Röhm, was a homosexual, was also executed for his part in the alleged plot.
1 Lady Redesdale’s maid who ran up the sisters’ evening dresses for £1 a time.
2 Wigs on the Green.
3 Nancy had written an ambivalent article in which she began by decrying Britain’s ‘decaying democracy’ that could be saved only by a ‘great Leader’, before going on to lampoon Mosley in the same mocking tones that she had used in Wigs on the Green. ‘Fascism as I See It’, Vanguard, July 1934.
4 Unity, Jessica and Lady Redesdale had attended the 300th anniversary performance of the Passionsspiel, the annual re-enactment of Christ’s Passion performed at Oberammergau, where Hitler was also present.
Jessica (left) on her second visit to Germany, with Unity. Weilheim, 1935.
5 Lady Redesdale.
1 Lady Redesdale considered it too expensive to keep a governess just for Deborah and had enrolled her as a day girl at Wychwood, a weekly boarding school in Oxford, where she lasted for just one term.
2 A newsreel at the cinema was showing a short interview with Mosley. Diana complained that in order to see it twice she twice had to sit through a boring documentary called Amazing Maize.
1 Mosley had brought a libel case against the Daily Star for reporting that his movement was ready to ‘take over government with machine guns when the moment arrived’. He was awarded £5,000 damages.
2 Count Serge Orloff-Davidoff (d.1945). Married Elisabeth Scott-Ellis in 1935.
1 Derek Hill.
1 Jessica.
2 Penelope Chetwode (1910–86). Writer and traveller. Married the poet John Betjeman in 1933. They lived at Uffington, not far from Swinbrook.
3 Unity had presented Hitler with a collage she had made of Hannibal crossing the Alps.
4 Nancy’s nickname for Unity. Horst Wessel (1907–30) was an SA storm trooper murdered by communist sympathizers in a private quarrel. Goebbels exploited his death and transformed him into a martyr. A poem written by Wessel and set to music became the marching song of the SA and later the official song of the Nazi Party.
1 Cecily Fenwick; a friend of Lady Redesdale.
2 A noisy beer hall with a rustic cabaret that performed Bavarian dances.
3 On 9 February, Unity had met Hitler for the first time at the Osteria Bavaria.
4 Wilhelm Brückner (1884–1954). Hitler’s chief adjutant.
5 Probably diplomatic notes that were being exchanged following Hitler’s violation of the military clauses of the Treaty of Versailles.
6 Jakob Werlin (1886–1958). An SS regional commander and manager of Daimler-Benz in Munich who supplied Hitler with Mercedes cars.
7 Julius Stadelmann; one of Hitler’s junior adjutants.
1 Unity had been apprehensive about introducing Tom to Hitler as he was anti-Nazi – or lukewarm towards Nazi policies at best – and was not an anti-Semite. Although Unity tried to reassure Diana that Tom had been won over by meeting Hitler, Diana remained uncertain of her brother’s allegiance. When Hitler extended an invitation to Tom for the 1936 Parteitag, Unity wrote to Diana, ‘Oh Nardy please don’t think it’s my fault because it really isn’t, it was his [Hitler’s] own idea.’ A year later, however, she wrote to Diana that she was composing a verse to celebrate Tom’s conversion.
2 Joachim ‘von’ Ribbentrop (1893–1946). Hitler’s foreign affairs adviser since 1933. Appointed ambassador to London in August 1936 and Reich Foreign Minister in 1938. Unity and Diana both disliked him and regarded him as a poor choice for ambassador.
3 Erna Hanfstaengl; Putzi’s sister, whom he once referred to as ‘a good girl’, worked in the family shop selling prints of Old Masters. She often invited Unity to stay at her cottage at Uffing near Munich.
1 A Burford antique shop.
1 Unity had addressed the annual Nazi festival at Hesselberg where she expressed sympathy with the German people and admiration for the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews. She also gave an interview to a Munich newspaper about the BUF and its anti-Semitic stance.
2 Hermann Göring (1893–1946). The most powerful man in the Third Reich after Hitler was present at the Hesselberg rally. Nancy was parodying Alfred Lord Tennyson’s ‘The May Queen’ (1833): ‘You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear … For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother.’
3 Germany’s first concentration camp had been opened at Dachau in March 1933 by Heinrich Himmler (1900–45), head of the Gestapo and Waffen-SS. The first prisoners were political detainees, rounded up after the burning of the Reichstag.
4 William Maxwell Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook (1879–1964). The politician, financier and newspaper proprietor campaigned for appeasement with Germany.
1 Diana had been involved in a car crash in which her face was badly injured.
1 This letter was transcribed in Lady Redesdale’s unpublished memoir of Unity. The orìginal has not been found.
2 Jessica and Unity left on a ten-day sightseeing tour of Germany on 24 September.
3 Although they both knew the invented language, it was unusual for Jessica and Unity to communicate in Honnish rather than Boudledidge.
4 ‘In spite of all.’
5 For the second time in two years, Diana had aborted a child she was expecting with Mosley.
1 Erich Widmann; Unity’s SS boyfriend who worked in a photography shop.
2 Ella van Heemstra (1900–84). Dutch-born mother of the actress Audrey Hepburn. She and her English husband, Joseph Hepburn-Ruston, were both keen BUF members at the time.
3 Michael Burn (1912–). A young reporter on the Gloucester Citizen who had met Unity in London. An initial enthusiasm for Hitler soon turned to disenchantment. He was imprisoned in Colditz during the war and became a convert to Marxism.
4 A waitress at the Osteria Bavaria.
5 Hitler suffered from a chronic stomach condition.
6 Heinrich Hoffmann (1885–1957). Hitler’s official photographer and author of The Hitler Nobody Knows (1933).
7 Otto Dietrich (1897–1952). Hitler’s press chief 1933–45.
8 ‘Just ran away.’
9 James Rennell Rodd, 1st Baron Rennell (1858–1941). Nancy’s father-in-law was a diplomat, poet and scholar. Married Lilias Guthrie in 1894. He and his wife attended the 1936 Olympic Games.
10 ‘The most beautiful moment of my life.’
1 Lady Redesdale had taken Jessica and Deborah to Paris for a few weeks.
2 Liliane (Baba) d’Erlanger (1902–45). A girlfriend of Tom Mitford. Married Prince Jean-Louis de Faucigny-Lucinge in 1923.
3 A Mitford word for spaniel, hence anything very sweet.
4 The Duke of Gloucester (1900–74), third son of King George V, and Lady Alice Montagu-Douglas-Scott (1901–2004) were married on 6 November 1935.
1 Ann Farrer.
2 ‘Love forever, Your Boud.’
1 Max Schmeling (1905–2005). German world heavyweight boxing champion 1930–32. In June 1936, he beat Joe Louis in his first fight against the black American heavyweight champion.
2 Eva Baum was a keen Nazi who taught German to Unity. Having been friends, they fell out when Baum reported Unity to the SS, claiming, amongst other things, that she was bloodthirsty and had an ‘hysterical’ passion for Hitler. She also reported that Unity was having ‘a real affair’ with Erich Widmann and that she was not a suitable friend for an SS member. (Unity to Diana, 8 February 1935) The rumour that Unity had in turn denounced Baum for being Jewish is not borne out by this letter.
3 An SS doctor who ran a children’s clinic in Munich.
4 Armida (1917–) and Rosemary (1918–) Macindoe were English sisters studying German in Munich.
1 7th Marquess of Londonderry (1878–1949). Until 1938, the former Air Minister was an admirer of Hitler and worked for rapprochement with Germany. His wife, Edith, was more sceptical and saw that ‘to live in the upper levels of National Socialism may be quite pleasant, but woe to the poor folk who do not belong to the upper orders’. (Quoted in Anne de Courcy, Circe, Sinclair-Stevenson, 1992, p. 270) After their visit to Germany, the Londonderrys and their fourteen-year-old daughter, Mairi, left bearing photographs of the Nazi leaders in silver frames, which may have made Unity jealous.
2 Mary Pollen (1892–1983). Married Colonel J. D. Macindoe in 1915 and K. W. Newall in 1933. Contrary to what Unity believed, the mother of her friends Armida and Rosemary was not an admirer of Hitler.
3 Rudolf Hess (1894–1987). Deputy leader of the Nazi Party since 1933.
4 Mary Wooddisse; an exact contemporary and close friend of Unity who was also studying German in Munich.
5 A small gathering.’
6 Paula Hitler (1896–1960). Hitler’s younger sister was the only one of his five full siblings to survive to adulthood.
1 Lady Redesdale transcribed this letter in her unpublished memoir of Unity. The original has not been found.
2 Lady Redesdale was taking Unity, Jessica and Deborah on a cultural cruise of the Mediterranean.
1 Jessica was on holiday in Brittany with Nancy and Peter.
2 As children, Jessica and Deborah imagined that Anthony Sewell, a neighbour at Rutland Gate, was a white-slave trader – their nanny having warned them that London was the centre of the traffic. Sewell was married, 1930–45, to Mary Lutyens, daughter of the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens.
3 ‘Popo is sixty, she is guaranteed for a hundred.’
4 It is more likely that Nancy stayed at home because her husband and Mary Sewell were having an affair.
1 Alexandra Cecilia Hay (1922–91). A friend of Deborah who did lessons with her at Swinbrook.
2 Peter Ramsbotham (1919–). The future distinguished diplomat had made friends with the sisters during their Mediterranean cruise.
3 Unity had cancelled her plan to travel down the Danube and on to Constantinople with Tom and Jessica because the Redesdales had forbidden Jessica to go.
4 Deborah’s dachshund.
5 Ivan Hay (1884–1936). Cecilia’s father.
1 Magda Ritschel-Friedländer (1901–45). The ideal of German motherhood married Dr Joseph Goebbels in 1931 in order to be close to Hitler, whom she idolized. Her first marriage in 1921 to Gunther Quandt, a rich industrialist, ended in 1929.
2 ‘Kitten’; Diana’s nickname for Mosley.
3 Diana’s marriage had been postponed until 6 October while the official paperwork was being arranged.
4 W. E. D. Allen (1901–73). Chairman of an advertising company and Ulster MP for West Belfast who resigned his seat in 1931 to take up a senior post in Mosley’s New Party. He may also have been reporting back on the Mosleys to British intelligence services.
5 Lillian Harvey (1907–68). The English-born actress spent her youth in Germany before moving to Hollywood in 1933. She released two films in 1936, Glückskinder and Schwarze Rosen.
6 ‘It has given me such pleasure that you came to the Party Rally and that you have attended every day.’
7 ‘The lackey of the Jews has almost become a National Socialist.’
8 ‘Your brother is a splendid young man.’
9 Count Janos von Almasy (1893–1968). An Hungarian friend of Tom who lived at Bernstein Castle in the Austrian province of Burgenland. Tom introduced him to Unity who often stayed at Bernstein and became Janos’s lover. Married Princess Maria Esterhazy in 1929.
10 Goebbels had recently bought a villa in the fashionable Berlin suburb and it is there that the Mosleys’ wedding lunch was given.
11 Ribbentrop. Tom Mitford had made up the nickname, inspired, for no particular reason, by the medieval song, ‘Go to Joan Glover, and tell her I love her and at the mid of the moon I will come to her’.
1 Robert Gordon-Canning was best man at Mosley’s wedding. Joined the BUF in 1934 before breaking with it in 1938 on personal grounds.
2 Hitler presented Diana with a large signed photograph of himself in a silver frame.
3 Maria Goebbels; Dr Goebbels’ younger sister lived with her brother until she married the film director Max W. Kimmich in 1938.
4 Diana was unable to remember the exact reasons for this quarrel but could only suppose that Mosley was irritated by her admiration for Hitler. In her appointment diary for 10 October 1936, four days after her wedding, she noted, ‘We discuss H and the wedding, He compares H with Ramsay MacDonald. I am furious. We quarrel.’
5 Hitler had addressed a meeting of the Winterhilfswerk, a Nazi charity that raised money to help the poor during the winter months.
1 Adolf Wagner (1890–1944). Nazi provincial chief of Munich and Upper Bavaria; Bavarian Interior Minister from 1933.
2 Gertrud Scholtz-Klink (1902–99). Reich Women’s Leader and the only woman to reach ministerial status in the Nazi Party.
1 Diana was in Berlin trying to get Hitler’s agreement to Mosley’s plan to set up a commercial radio station in Germany to broadcast to Britain.
2 It is not clear why Diana could not write to her son at the time.
3 Wootton Lodge. An article in Country Life had described the house as ‘the home of the unexpected’.
4 ‘You certainly are a good soul.’
1 The news of Jessica’s elopement had at last reached the Redesdales, two weeks after her disappearance.
2 Hitler.
3 ‘Hen’ in ‘Honnish’, Jessica and Deborah’s private language.
4 Esmond Romilly (1918–41). In her memoirs, Jessica described Esmond when she first met him as ‘a star around which everything revolved … He represented to me all that was bright, attractive and powerful’. Hons and Rebels, p. 105.
5 Clementine Mitford (1915–2005). Posthumous daughter of Lord Redesdale’s eldest brother, Clement. Married Sir Alfred Beit in 1939.
1 Nancy and Peter had returned from Bayonne where they had tried, unsuccessfully, to convince Jessica to come home.
2 Nancy had endeavoured to persuade Jessica to hide in the train lavatory to avoid the press.
1 The Redesdales refused to allow seventeen-year-old Deborah to visit Diana while her marriage to Mosley was still a secret and in the eyes of the world she was ‘living in sin’.
2 John Beckett (1894–1964), ex-Labour MP, and William Joyce (1906–46) had been dismissed from their positions in the BUF, which was in financial trouble and was sacking many of its employees. After the war, Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) was accused of high treason for broadcasting from Germany – where he had fled to avoid arrest – and was executed.
3 Frank Buchman (1878–1961). Founder of the Oxford Group, a fundamentalist religious movement renamed Moral Rearmament in 1938. In 1936, Buchman had publicly thanked heaven for the existence of Hitler as a defence against communism.
4 Reginald Holme; author of memoirs, A Journalist for God (1995).
1 ‘Thanks for your letter.’
2 Dorothy (Weenie) Bowles (1885–1971). Lady Redesdale’s disapproving younger sister. Married Percy Bailey in 1907.
3 ‘Best love from.’
1 Deborah could not remember the origin of the rush of fantastic nicknames she and Jessica used in their letters to each other at the time of the elopement. They were perhaps a way of trying to re-establish their relationship which had been so shaken by Jessica’s disappearance.
2 Lady Redesdale, worried that Jessica seemed depressed, had been planning to take Deborah and her on a world cruise in March.
3 Derek Jackson (1906–82). Distinguished physicist, amateur jockey and heir to the News of the World. Married Pamela, as the second of his six wives, in December 1936. They were divorced in 1951. In 1940 he joined the RAF, winning the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1941. The following year he transferred to Fighter Command and was decorated with the Air Force Cross.
4 Gerald Tyrwhitt, 14th Baron Berners (1883–1950). Composer, painter and writer. A friend of both Nancy, who depicted him as Lord Merlin in The Pursuit of Love (1945), and Diana, who wrote an appreciation of him in Loved Ones (1985). He lived at Faringdon House, Berkshire.
5 Robert Heber-Percy (1911–87). Known as the ‘Mad Boy’ because of his wild behaviour. Married twice, to Jennifer Fry, 1942–7, and to Lady Dorothy Lygon in 1985, but his liaisons were mostly with men, principally with Gerald Berners whom he met in 1932 and with whom he carried on a stormy relationship for eighteen years.
1 George Howard (1920–84). A cousin of both Esmond Romilly and the Mitfords. Chairman of the BBC 1980–83.
2 Dolly Wilde (1895–1941). Witty lesbian niece of Oscar Wilde. The sisters used to tease their mother by pretending to be in love with her.
3 Michael Farrer (1920–68). A first cousin of the Mitfords.
4 Winston Churchill (1874–1965). The statesman was related through his wife, Clementine Hozier, to both Esmond Romilly and the Mitfords. There was also a rumour in some circles that he was Esmond’s father.
1 Unity had kept in touch with Baroness Laroche with whom she lodged when first in Munich.
1 King George VI, who succeeded to the throne after the abdication of his brother Edward VIII, was crowned on 12 May 1937.
2 In 1936, Peter Nevile, a friend of Jessica and Esmond, tried to stage a demonstration in favour of Edward VIII at a time when the government was putting pressure on the king to give up Wallis Simpson or abdicate.
3 When the publicity surrounding Jessica’s elopement was at its height, Peter Nevile sold an interview with Esmond to the News Chronicle. Esmond and Nevile shared the proceeds.
1 Georgina Wernher (1919–). Daughter of Sir Harold Wernher of Lubenham Hall, Leicestershire, one of the richest men in England, and Lady Zia, daughter of Grand Duke Michael of Russia. Married Harold Phillips in 1944.
2 Lady Iris Mountbatten (1920–82). Great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria.
3 Lady Jean Ogilvy (1918–2004). A cousin of the Mitfords and the eldest daughter of the 12th Earl of Airlie, who lived at Cortachy Castle in Scotland. Married 2nd Baron Lloyd in 1942.
1 Lady Margaret Ogilvy (1920–). Daughter of the 12th Earl of Airlie and a great friend of Deborah. Married Sir Iain Tennant in 1946.
1 From the windows of the Marlborough Club, Deborah could watch the coronation procession on its way to Westminster Abbey. As a peer of the realm, Lord Redesdale attended the service with Lady Redesdale, who was dressed in coronation robes of ermine-trimmed crimson velvet with a three-foot train.
2 Phyllis Earle; a hairdresser and beauty parlour in Dover Street.
3 Tom Mitford.
1 A necklace and earrings of pearls and amethysts.
2 Nellie Hozier (1888–1955). Esmond’s mother was a first cousin of Lord Redesdale and a sister-in-law of Winston Churchill. Married Bertram Romilly in 1915.
1 Countess Francesca (Baby) Palffy-Erdödy a girlfriend of Tom Mitford, and her older sister, Johanna (Jimmy), were friends of Unity and lived at Kohfidisch, Austria.
2 Angela Brazil (1868–1947). Prolific author of racy books about schoolgirls.
1 A letter from Deborah sent on 16 May from Florence.
2 Henrietta (Tello) Shell (1864–1950). Governess to Lady Redesdale and her siblings when they were children. After their mother’s death in 1887, she became their father’s mistress, bore him three sons and assumed the name Mrs John Stewart. In 1894 she became editor of The Lady, a position she occupied for twenty-five years.
3 Lady Redesdale’s unusual Christian name came from one of her father’s half-sisters, Sydney Isabella, who was a goddaughter of Sydney, Lady Morgan, the nineteenth-century Irish novelist.
4 Radclyffe Hall’s lesbian novel was banned on publication in 1928 and not republished in Britain until 1949.
1 Barnabas von Géczy (1897–1971). Hungarian-born leader of one of the most popular swing orchestras of the time. Deborah’s admiration for him was reciprocated: when Unity saw the band the following year, Géczy whispered into her ear, ‘Wheer ees Debo?’ (Unity to Lady Redesdale, 12 July 1938).
2 Franchot Tone (1905–68). Suave American actor who starred in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935). Married to Joan Crawford 1935–9.
3 Maurice Chevalier (1888–1972). Actor who played the quintessential Frenchman in 1930s American cinema.
4 Deborah’s whippets.
5 Lady Elizabeth Wellesley (1918–). Daughter of the 7th Duke of Wellington.
1 Deborah had sued the Daily Express for saying that she, not Jessica, had eloped with Esmond. The case was settled out of court and Deborah was awarded £1,000.
1 After the sale of Swinbrook, Lord Redesdale rented a cottage in the village so that he could continue fishing on the Windrush.
2 Terence O’Connor (1891–1940). Conservative MP and Solicitor-General 1936–40. A keen follower of the Heythrop, he died after straining his heart on the hunting field. Married Cecil Cook in 1920.
1 Tom Driberg (1905–76). Labour MP, author and journalist. Since 1933 he had been the ‘William Hickey’ gossip columnist on the Daily Express. The press suspected that Diana and Mosley were married but were unable to find proof. Of the family, only the Redesdales, Unity and Tom knew about the marriage; Nancy, who was incapable of keeping a secret, had not been told.
2 ‘The Poor Old Leader’, i.e. Mosley.
3 Lord Redesdale’s favourite term of abuse derived from ‘suar’, meaning ‘pig’ in Hindi, a word he learnt when he worked as a tea planter in Ceylon.
1 From a popular song of 1937, ‘Somebody Stole my Gal’.
1 Lady Redesdale, whose admiration for Nelson was as great as her distrust of the medical profession, used to give lectures at the Women’s Institute on bread-making.
1 When one of the Mitford children’s guinea pigs was pregnant, the sisters called it ‘in pig’, as ‘in foal’, and used the expression for humans and animals alike.
1 ‘The Parent Birds’, i.e. the Redesdales.
2 Nancy’s French bulldog.
1 Dorothy L. Sayers’ eleventh thriller featuring Lord Peter Wimsey (1937).
1 Hitler’s autobiography, My Struggle, was first published in two volumes, in 1925 and 1926.
2 Annemarie Ortaus; a keen German follower of Moral Rearmament whom Diana had met in Munich.
3 Miles Phillimore (1915–72). Author of Just for Today, a Moral Rearmament pamphlet (1940).
4 Vivien Mosley (1921–2002). Diana’s stepdaughter. Married Desmond Forbes-Adam in 1949.
5 Nicholas Mosley, 3rd Baron Ravensdale (1923–). Diana’s stepson became a novelist and biographer. His books include Accident (1964), Julian Grenfell (1976), Hopeful Monsters (1990) and a two-volume life of his father, Rules of the Game (1982) and Beyond the Pale (1983). Married to Rosemary Salmon 1947–74 and to Verity Raymond in 1974.
6 The Princesses Edda and Carmen von Wrede were twin daughters of a German father and Argentinian mother. They lived at Schloss Fantaisie near Bayreuth and had been friends of Unity’s since 1935.
1 The celebrated exhibition of ‘Degenerate Art’, comprising pictures that had been removed from state collections, was designed to educate the Germans on the ‘evils’ of modern art. Works by Max Beckmann, Chagall, Otto Dix, Max Ernst, Kandinsky and Nolde attracted five times as many visitors as a show of Nazi-approved art held at the same time.
1 The wife of Benno von Arent (1898–1956), Hitler’s favourite theatre designer.
2 ‘But Decca was so nice! She was so funny and charming!’
3 The city park in the centre of Munich where two years later Unity attempted to commit suicide.
1 ‘Really too stupid, much too easy.’
2 ‘But you’ve only got to think logically, I’d have guessed it in two minutes.’
3 ‘Fiery red.’
4 ‘A full-bodied wine.’
* I have marked my own contributions with a star.
5 ‘Landscape.’
6 ‘A tall, beautiful blonde woman.’
7 Harald Quandt (1921–67). Magda Goebbels’ son by her first marriage.
8 ‘But children, it’s obvious, it couldn’t be anyone else.’
9 ‘I was thinking of the Führer all along, but he drinks only water!’
10 Leo Schlageter (1894–1923). A Nazi martyr executed by the French for resisting their forces in the Ruhr.
11 I’m thinking of my mother; she’d have understood hardly anything; it must be absolutely clear for the simplest and stupidest people.’
12 Fritz Wiedemann (1891–1970). Hitler’s immediate superior during the First World War and subsequently one of his military aides and policy advisers.
1 Mussolini’s state visit to Germany, during which Hitler put on a massive display of military power, was instrumental in convincing the Italian dictator to join forces with Germany.
2 Karl Brandt (1904–1947). Surgeon who joined the Nazi Party in 1932 and served as Hitler’s doctor 1934–44.
3 George Ward Price (1886–1961). Munich correspondent for the Daily Mail and author of I Know These Dictators (1937), a sympathetic portrait of Hitler and Mussolini.
4 Margaret Mitchell’s bestseller had been published the previous year.
1 Rosaleen, Bryan and Elizabeth Guinness’s first child, was born on 7 September 1937.
1 Lady Bridget Coke (1891–1984). Mother of Deborah’s great friend Margaret (Maggot) Ogilvy. Married the 12th Earl of Airlie in 1917.
1 Deborah’s Christmas present to Nancy was a bracelet of Hand of Fatima charms.
2 The attack of measles had affected Deborah’s eyes. The sisters used to tease each other about syphilis, which can lead to blindness in its later stages.
3 Helen Eaton (1899–1989). Nancy’s nickname for her hostess at West Wycombe was ‘Hell Bags’. Married Sir John Dashwood in 1922.
4 ‘Get on’, Deborah’s way of addressing Nancy, was an interpretation of the sort of growl that the Mitfords’ groom used to greet people with. Deborah took it up as a way of fighting back at her eldest sister.
5 When Deborah was small, Nancy used to tease her with a rhyme that never failed to make her little sister cry: ‘A little houseless match, it has no roof, no thatch / It lies alone, it makes no moan, that little, houseless match’. She put the poem into The Pursuit of Love, where it induced ‘rivers of tears’ in the heroine, Linda.
1 Jessica’s daughter, Julia, was born on 20 December.
2 Esmond had found work as a copywriter with a London advertising agency.
1 The foreign policy speech that Hitler made four days later gave encouragement to the Austrian Nazi Party.
2 Kurt von Schuschnigg (1897–1977). Anti-Nazi Chancellor of Austria since 1934. Hitler threatened to invade Austria unless concessions were made to the Nazi Party. Schuschnigg resigned and in March 1938 Germany annexed Austria.
3 ‘Have you heard? Schuschnigg is with the Führer.’
4 ‘Over there in the Reich.’
1 Jessica and Esmond’s baby daughter, Julia, had just died from measles, aged five months. They had decided to go to Corsica for three months to try to recover.
1 Lord Redesdale’s visits to Germany to see Unity had led him to revise his opinion of Nazism and, until Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939, he was sympathetic to the regime. In a speech to the House of Lords, he had announced that the Anschluss was the ‘sincere desire’ of a large majority of Austrians and that the gratitude of Europe was due to Hitler for averting bloodshed.
1 Unity had flirted with the French officer when the sisters visited Corsica during their cruise of the Mediterranean in 1936.
2 ‘Boud, I hope you haven’t forgotten your Boud.’
3 Frances Mitford (1875–1951). Lord Redesdale’s eldest sister who was popular with all her nieces. Married Alexander (Alec) Kearsey in 1907.
4 ‘A pretty woman’s hairstyle.’
1 The Berghof was Hitler’s mountain retreat at Obersalzberg, which he had converted from a simple Alpine house into a residence suitable for receiving foreign dignitaries.
2 The annexation of Austria.
3 ‘Only much cleaner.’
4 ‘She’s delighted to hear you say that.’ Unity’s dislike of Italians was a running joke between her and Hitler.
5 Wilhelm Ohnesorge (d. 1962). German Minister of Posts and Telegraphs who was sympathetic to the Mosleys’ plan to set up a radio station.
6 ‘Where is your sister?’
7 Julius Schaub; Hitler’s personal adjutant and former head of his bodyguard.
8 Gerdy Troost (1904–2003). Interior designer and a confidante of Hitler. Married to Paul Ludwig Troost (1878–1934), one of Hitler’s favourite architects.
9 ‘Of course it’s a disadvantage for me because if I drive that fast I get there twenty minutes early, then I have to sit and wait in my hotel or at home for twenty minutes.’
1 The Sudeten-German Party of Czechoslovakia, led by Konrad Henlein (1898–1945) who was instrumental in preparing the way for Hitler’s occupation of his country in 1939.
2 Georg Wollner; Gauleiter of Reichenberg.
3 ‘Because I have to bring the Führer out.’
4 ‘The Führer is coming! The Führer is coming!’
5 ‘It is a pleasure and an honour for me to greet you, my Führer.’
6 Willy Kannenberg; Hitler’s cook.
7 Franz Gürtner (1881–1941). Reich Minister of Justice since 1932 who opposed Nazi brutality but was unable to stand up to Hitler.
8 ‘Next time the judges let that sort of man free, I’ll have him arrested by my bodyguards and sent to a concentration camp; then we’ll see who is stronger, the letter of Herr Gürtner’s law or my machine guns!’
9 Dr Leopold von Hoesch (1881–1936). German ambassador to London 1932–6.
1 Hitler’s special train.
2 Gerhardt Wagner (1888–1938). Reich Medical Leader who was instrumental in formulating the infamous Nuremberg Laws that established anti-Semitism and euthanasia as official Nazi policy.
3 Arthur Seyss-Inquart (1892–1946). Leader of the Austrian Nazi Party and keen supporter of Austria’s union with Germany, who became governor of Austria after the Anschluss.
4 Hans von Tschammer-Osten (1887–1943). Reich Sports Leader and president of the German Olympic Committee in 1936.
5 ‘Dear Führer, when are you coming to us?’ and ‘Führer, once again we swear undying loyalty to you’.
6 Joseph (Sepp) Dietrich (1892–1966). Hitler’s close associate and head of his SS bodyguard.
7 Winifred Williams (1897–1980). The English-born wife of Richard Wagner’s son, Siegfried, had been a friend and ardent admirer of Hitler since 1923. In 1930, she became head of the Bayreuth Festival and ran it until the end of the war.
8 E. M. Forster’s novel was first published in 1924.
1 This letter was transcribed in Lady Redesdale’s memoir of Unity. The original has not been found.
2 ‘Power, table and ugh; penny cosy and racial disgrace,’ (i.e. interracial sex).
3 Henry Bernstein (1876–1953). French boulevard-theatre playwright.
4 Maud Burke (1872–1948). American-born widow of Sir Bache Cunard, the shipping-line magnate, whom she married in 1895. Changed her name to ‘Emerald’ in 1926 and was one of London’s leading society hostesses between the wars.
1 Diana was expecting a baby in November.
2 Theodor Morell (1886–1948). Hitler’s private physician.
3 Ribbentrop.
1 Lord Andrew Cavendish (1920–2004). Succeeded as nth Duke of Devonshire in 1950. Deborah’s future husband was a student at Cambridge when they first met.
1 Unity had written to the Daily Express to deny an article in ‘William Hickey’ which said that ‘those members of Britain’s governing class whose Aryanism has been okayed by Unity Mitford are packing their bags for Nuremberg’. (2 September 1938) A photograph of her letter accompanying the article shows that it had been signed by Unity but was in Lady Redesdale’s handwriting.
2 After more than four years of marriage, Nancy was at last expecting a child but in spite of carefully following her doctor’s instructions, she miscarried a few weeks later.
1 Diana’s son, Alexander (Al) Mosley (1938–2005), was born on 26 November.
2 Nancy was editing the letters of her ancestors Maria Josepha, Lady Stanley of Alderley, and Henrietta Maria Stanley. Published as The Ladies of Alderley (1938) and The Stanleys of Alderley (1939).
3 Roy Harrod (1900–78). Influential economist who taught at Christ Church, Oxford. Married Wilhelmine (Billa) Cresswell in 1938.
4 Lord David Cecil (1902–86). Biographer and professor of English Literature at Oxford 1948–70. Married Rachel McCarthy in 1932. Their son Jonathan was born in 1939.
1 Hitler’s occupation of Czechoslovakia on 15 March violated the Munich Agreement and had brought all efforts at appeasement to an end.
1 This extract was transcribed in Lady Redesdale’s memoir of Unity. The original has not been found.
2 The cover name used by Hitler at the beginning of his political career and adopted as a nickname by his intimates. Neither Unity nor Diana used the name to his face but from 1938 often referred to him as ‘Wolf in letters.
3 ‘Wisdom is no help.’
1 On the previous day, the German army had invaded Poland. Hitler ignored Britain and France’s ultimatum to withdraw and on 3 September Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, declared war.
2 ‘I have proposed friendship to England again and again and, when necessary, the closest collaboration. But love cannot be all one-sided, it must be reciprocated.’
3 Unity’s Great Dane, given to her by Diana.
