The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family (36 page)

Esmond was keen to save so that they could travel to Mexico, so he got a job at five pounds a week, at J. Walter Thompson’s advertising agency on the Strand, writing copy for Radio Luxembourg commercials. Even Decca got a job for a few weeks, while she could still work, as part of a market-research team employed by the same agency. She travelled, ate and shared rooms with a group of women who conducted the surveys and it was the first time she had met anyone who was truly working class. Formerly her socialist and Communist contacts had all come from the upper classes, which was Esmond’s chief objection to the Communist Party in England: he felt that it was overloaded with young intellectuals and was therefore unrealistic. The local branch of the Labour Party was closer to his ideology. The coarse attitude towards their menfolk, and to life in general, of the other women in Decca’s group was a great shock to her and depressed her. Surely these were not the working classes for whom she had battled with Unity in the DFD? Occasionally she and Esmond would row about her ‘upper-classishness’, but they were so much in love with each other that all disagreements were quickly made up. And she was young and resilient enough to accept the hardships of the life they shared. The freedom from all restrictions and restraint, so utterly different from life with her parents, made it acceptable and enjoyable – a fulfilment of rebellion.

Occasionally the couple made plundering sorties to the homes of the rich, in response to any casual invitations that came their way, teased right-wingers and filled pockets and handbags with cigars, cigarettes, and any small knick-knacks that took their fancy. Esmond claimed he once had to restrain Decca who had her nail scissors poised above a set of bedroom curtains she fancied for the sitting room at Rotherhithe.
³⁵
The young Romillys regarded this behaviour as amusing and acceptable, for in their persistent war against the upper classes no holds were barred. However, when the stories got out their behaviour was regarded with shocked disgust.

Esmond had some other novel ideas about making a profit from well-heeled friends. The Romillys held parties to which guests were invited to ‘bring a bottle’, but any wine or spirit that appeared was carefully stashed away in the grandfather clock and only beer was served.
³⁶
Then there were the gambling parties. Esmond seems to have been an eternal optimist when it came to gambling and most weeks spent the best part of his earnings from the agency at the greyhound track, always certain that he was going to make their fortune. When he found he could not win as a punter, he had the brilliant idea of becoming ‘the bank’ so he acquired a roulette wheel and set up a casino in the sitting room. Any idea he had of fleecing their connections to recoup losses was bound to failure if the single experience of Bryan Guinness is anything to go by.

Bryan had remarried, very happily, and he and his wife had a child a few months old. Relations between him and Diana were friendly again and remained so for the rest of their lives. He also maintained contact with other members of the Mitford family but he was surprised when he and his wife were invited to lunch at Rotherhithe with Decca and Esmond. He soon realized why for ‘They told us in all frankness,’ he wrote, ‘of their intention to make a little money by organizing some gambling for their friends.’ Subsequently the Guinnesses played roulette in the homespun casino. Bryan was well aware that he was expected to lose and he was perfectly willing to do so – indeed, he looked on it as a form of charitable giving to help Decca, of whom he was fond. But the evening did not go as planned: ‘The stakes were low, but we determined to lose a little to our kind hosts,’ Bryan recalled. He staked recklessly, and to his growing despair found that he had won large sums of money. Much more, he realized, than Esmond and Decca could possibly afford. In desperation he continued to play for long hours after he and his wife wanted to go home to bed, and it was almost dawn before he had managed to make a small loss and felt he could retire with honour. ‘It was fortunate I think’, he wrote, ‘that the Romillys did not adopt the profession of croupiers.’
³⁷

This sort of contact was rare, however, for Esmond was absolutely opposed to Decca seeing any of her family, and although she did meet some of them, she did so in secret to prevent an argument. Tom was the exception. He went to Rotherhithe often, the only member of the family allowed to visit there. Despite his written statements to friends that he supported Fascism, and that had he lived in Germany he would be a Nazi, he somehow convinced Decca and Esmond that he supported them. ‘Tom was pure Cudum [Boudledidge for Communist] when he used to come to see us at Rotherhithe Street,’ Decca wrote later. ‘Esmond adored him (the only one of our family he did) . . . but of course
he
adored the Boud [Unity]. In some ways I always thought she was his Favourite Sister.’
³⁸
One is forced to the conclusion that Tom Mitford was not deeply po litically committed in any direction and was happy to be whatever was necessary to be allowed to visit his sisters.

When Unity came home in October she and Decca met in Harrods without Esmond’s knowledge. He was apparently incapable of understanding that the affection between the two sisters could survive their political differences. They used to drive around London, shopping for the baby’s layette or visiting friends, and when Esmond was not there Unity sometimes took Sydney out to Rotherhithe, a journey of about an hour from the West End. Unity was at the height of her relationship with Hitler, and she was even considering becoming a German citizen. The newspapers had somehow discovered that she had enquired about this, and rumours swirled about that she and Hitler planned to marry. There is no denying that Unity enjoyed all the attention. She drove around in her MG with a pennant on the bonnet emblazoned with a swastika, and that she had become a personality in her own right, not simply the sister of Diana or Decca, pleased her. It was at about this time that Sydney made her famous remark, ‘Whenever I see a headline beginning with “Peer’s Daughter” I know one of you children has been in trouble.’

A few friends ventured out to Rotherhithe. One, Debo’s friend Christian Howard,
³⁹
of Castle Howard, went in the spirit of friendship to a social outcast. ‘I was so scared to come into the slums,’ she told Decca, ‘that I wore my oldest clothes.’ Decca was seared by the patronage. ‘You don’t need to worry,’ she said hotly. ‘Nobody would know, as your best clothes look like other people’s oldest.’
⁴⁰
It was the last time Decca ever set eyes on her.

Sydney had hoped that Decca’s baby would be born late as first babies often are. Early January, with the possibility of calling it premature, would be the best that could be hoped for, and she had instructed the other girls to say, if asked, that Decca’s baby was due ‘in the spring’, which caused much scoffing from the mother-to-be. Decca was something of a lost cause, but Sydney had Debo to think of, and she was undoubtedly thinking of the baby, too, for stigma clung to a child and arbiters of social niceties had long memories. In any case the lusty full-term infant did not oblige. Julia Decca Romilly was born on 20 December
⁴¹
in the Rotherhithe flat, and three days later Unity drove Sydney there with her car loaded with presents for Christmas and the new baby. Esmond was at work.

Decca had no idea about housework, and now, with a newborn baby, things got out of hand. It was fortunate, therefore, that the brand of extreme socialism practised by the Romillys did not prevent them from hiring a housemaid. Rose cost them £1 1s 3d a week (‘The odd one shilling and threepence is insurance,’ Decca told Debo).
⁴²
Decca wrote movingly of the first months of little Julia’s life, of the two doting parents gleefully watching as the baby grew, ‘learned to smile, wave her feet, and catch them with an unsteady hand’.
⁴³
Sydney, however, was always concerned about Julia’s appearance, and thought she was ‘too thin’ and pale, with none of the pleasing chubbiness of her own children as babies. When Unity returned from Germany in early March, she saw Julia for the first time since she was a few days old, and reported to Diana that she was ‘absolutely sweet, but her legs are like Marlene Dietrich’s’.
⁴⁴
Sydney offered to send Nanny Blor, who was eager to help out, but Esmond would not allow it. For the same reason Decca returned Diana’s gift of baby clothes.

Baby Julia was four months old when a measles epidemic struck Rotherhithe. Concerned, Decca took her baby to the local clinic for inoculation but the nurse assured her that this was unnecessary as a breast-fed baby was immune to the disease. In giving this information she assumed, of course, that Decca had already had measles and would confer immunity, and who could blame her? It was inconceivable that any child brought up in the docks of London would have escaped the disease. But Decca had never had measles, and had never been inoculated, and within days both she and baby Julia succumbed. Childhood diseases are always more serious in an adult and most of the time Decca was barely conscious. In desperation Esmond engaged nurses to look after them both round the clock, and Decca finally surfaced to the agony of watching her baby fight for breath in an oxygen tent. Julia died on 28 May of pneumonia.

Decca and Esmond were stupefied with grief, ‘like people,’ she wrote, ‘battered into semi-consciousness in a vicious street fight’.
⁴⁵
Esmond drew out all their savings and made reservations, and the day after the funeral the couple ‘fled’. They went to Corsica for three months, during which time Decca recovered her health, protected by time and distance from family sympathy that she could not have borne. Not everyone
was
sympathetic. Philip Toynbee, who had
entrée
to all social events despite his dedication to Communism, was shocked when Julia’s death was discussed at dinner parties in Kensington and Mayfair and people said callously that it was more or less to be expected since the baby had been raised in a slum, neglected by its feckless parents.
⁴⁶
There was a spitefulness, Toynbee considered, out of all proportion to the irritation inflicted by Esmond’s pranks. Like most radicals he seems not to have realized that people who quietly conform may feel as deeply about their ideology as those who aggressively try to inflict an opposing one. The remarks about the Romillys were cruel and tasteless, but so was Esmond’s behaviour.

The Mitford family was now sadly fragmented with most of them not speaking to at least one other person. Nancy was not allowed to visit Diana at Wootton, or Decca at Rotherhithe, although she and Decca maintained an occasional correspondence. Diana could now visit her parents, but Mosley was still forbidden, and even when Sydney let Rutland Gate it was with the proviso to the tenants that Oswald Mosley must never be allowed to set foot in the house. Nor was Diana allowed to visit Decca, for her support of Mosley made her ‘the enemy’. Unity was able to write to Decca but not allowed to visit while Esmond was at home. Debo was forbidden by her parents to visit Decca, but she did so secretly a few times and recalls Esmond as being ‘very charismatic – sort of lit up inside’.
⁴⁷
She wrote frequently to Decca giving news of the wider family: ‘The other day there was a wonderful family gloat, a cocktail party given by Aunt Helen
⁴⁸
for a farewell for Rosemary who is going to New Zealand for three years.’
⁴⁹
Pam – who had suffered a miscarriage – was away travelling a lot with Derek. Only Tom was welcomed everywhere.

12
Slide Towards Conflict
(1938)

By the summer of 1938 war was looming as a distinct possibility. Indeed, pundits said that it was no longer a matter of ‘if’, but ‘when’. However, most people in Britain still preferred to ignore this. After all, public opinion reasoned, why should a central European war affect Britain? So what if Hitler’s armies were threatening to overrun Czechoslovakia? The Czechoslovakian state was not an ancient country, but had been cobbled together by modern politicians who, when the boundaries were drawn up for the Versailles Treaty, had placed 3.5 million Germans – formerly subjects of the old Habsburg empire – inside Czechoslovakia’s border facing Germany and Austria. Perhaps the Germans had a genuine grievance concerning ‘self-determination’ – and look how the Austrians had welcomed the Anschluss. Hitler, as shown on Pathé Pictorial news, might sound disagreeable, with his ranting oratory, and look comical, with his little moustache, but what he said made a sort of sense. ‘I am in no way willing that here in the heart of Germany a second Palestine should be permitted to arise. The poor Arabs are defenceless and deserted. The Germans in Czechoslovakia are neither defenceless nor are they deserted, and people should take notice of that fact.’
¹
As for Kristallnacht, yes, it had been objectionable, but all this was someone else’s fight. Let them get on with it. The new slogan that Mosley had adopted had an undoubted appeal to many who feared another all-out war: ‘
MIND BRITAIN’S BUSINESS
’.

Yet for thinking people it was difficult to ignore what was happening in Germany. Czechoslovakia had been the last democracy in central Europe and now only force could prevent Hitler from establishing a German nation stretching from the Ural mountains to the French coast. In 1938, also, there was a marked change of attitude in Germany towards its Jewish citizens. For the previous five years German Jews had lived under the constant threat of physical abuse, but from 1938 their persecution became a relentless legal reality. On Kristallnacht, 276 synagogues were burned to the ground and over 7,500 Jewish businesses were burned, looted and vandalized. The government impounded the insurance money claimed by the dispossessed, stating that the Jews had brought the horror upon themselves. From that point no Jew was allowed to own a business or to run one. It became difficult to keep up with new legislation concerning what civil rights remained to them. They were not allowed to own or drive a car or motorcycle, and were barred from public transport. They were not allowed to attend theatres, cinemas or art galleries, and were banned from beaches, swimming-pools and gymnasia. They were banned from owning a radio. Their children were not allowed to attend schools where there were Aryan children. Sex or marriage between an Aryan and a Jew became a criminal offence carrying a prison sentence. And so it went on: the slide towards genocide. Reading the newspapers of that time now, it is hard to believe the scale of anti-Semitism being perpetrated in Germany with such little comment in the world press.
²

Esmond was one of those who made it his business to know what was going on, and when he and Decca returned to England in August they flung themselves into activism. A rebel by nature, he now had a genuine cause, and for Esmond this meant physical action against Mosley’s Blackshirts and other British Fascist organizations. In his memoir
Friends Apar
t,
³
Philip Toynbee details the fist fights with knuckle-dusters and even razors used on both sides to inflict as much damage as possible, and vividly portrays the raw hatred of the opposing factions. For Decca, activism meant raising money for the Spanish fight against Fascism, helping to sabotage Mosley’s marches, or participating in Labour Party and trade-union marches for better conditions for the working classes.

In
Hons and Rebels
Decca recalled one such march: it was a May Day march to Hyde Park and the entire community of Rotherhithe turned out in a holiday atmosphere, waving a forest of banners that read, ‘United Front against Fascism’. They linked arms and sang songs, ‘Ohhhh! ’Tis my delight of a dirty night to bomb the bourgeoisie . . .’ and a bowdlerized version of ‘The Red Flag’, ‘The people’s flag is palest pink, it’s not as red as you might think . . .’ as they marched. They had been warned that the event would probably be disrupted by Mosley’s supporters, Decca said, ‘and sure enough there were groups of them lying in wait at several points along the way . . .’ There were several skirmishes, and at one point, ‘I caught sight of two familiar, tall blonde figures: Boud and Diana, waving Swastika flags. I shook my fist at them in the Red Front salute, and was barely dissuaded by Esmond and Philip who reminded me of my now pregnant condition, from joining in the fray.’
⁴
Diana has no memory of this incident, and points out that Decca claimed she was pregnant when the reported May Day incident occurred: ‘she was still in Spain in May 1937,’ she states. ‘She wasn’t pregnant in 1938, and by May 1939 she was in the USA.’
⁵
Furthermore Diana states that she ‘never possessed such a flag’ and never went to any marches, either Communist or Fascist, because Mosley did not wish her to. ‘I greatly doubt Bobo being there,’ she wrote, ‘but I am certain I was not.’
⁶

But Unity was active for the Fascist cause and there is photographic evidence that she attended marches as a bystander. She was now so notorious that she hardly had to make a protest; her mere presence was enough to upset bystanders and an objective witness of one incident was shocked at the reaction she provoked. One day in April 1938 Joe Allen, who owned a bookshop and publishing company near by, was standing listening to Sir Stafford Cripps who was speaking at Hyde Park Corner when a fight broke out between some Communists and Fascists from the Imperial Fascist League (not part of Mosley’s organization). Unity was standing close to Allen and turned, as he did, to watch. Almost simultaneously someone spotted Unity’s swastika badge, reached out and tore it off her lapel. She retaliated, striking out and kicking her assailant. When the crowd around her recognized her some turned ugly, shouting, ‘Why don’t you go back to Germany?’ and made rude remarks about Hitler. Then there was a sort of crush towards her with shouts of ‘Let’s duck her.’

Allen assumed they meant to throw her in the nearby Serpentine. Together with another gentleman,
⁷
and a police officer, he helped form a shield around Unity to protect her from the blows that were landed on their shoulders, and stones that were thrown. Even so, someone managed to kick Unity before her protectors got her to a nearby bus stop, where she boarded a bus and quickly got away. Joe Allen and the policeman had to restrain people from following her on to the bus to continue the affray. ‘I was very concerned for her safety,’ he said. ‘People were just beginning to think they didn’t like Herr Hitler very much.’
⁸
The press got hold of the story and coverage of the incident was anti-Unity, with headlines such as ‘Hitler’s Nordic Beauty Beaten Up By London Mob’ and ‘At it Again, the Mad, Mad Mitfords’. Unity did not mind: she later said that she wasn’t at all frightened, just excited.
⁹
She seems to have enjoyed all the publicity and was pleased at the postbag that resulted from the Hyde Park scuffle. After attending Debo’s coming-out ball, she returned to Munich, where a sympathetic Hitler, who had learned of the affair through the newspaper reports, replaced the lost badge with two new ones, each engraved with his signature on the back.

Within weeks she was in the newspapers again, photographs of her and Julius Streicher (whom Decca described as ‘a filthy butcher’) splashed under headlines such as ‘Unity Mitford – Detained in Czechoslovakia’ and ‘Stay at Home, There’s a Good Girl’.
¹⁰
She had been arrested in Prague on 31 May, hardly surprising since Germany and Czechoslovakia were on the brink of war and Unity persisted in strolling around the city ‘flaunting’ her gold swastika badge. She was instantly recognizable with her tall, blonde good looks, and the confident air that made even her manner of walking an aggressive statement. Nor could she claim that she was unaware of the delicacy of the situation for in her letter to Diana she wrote of the Czechs’ scorched-earth policy in Sudetenland, of seeing railways, bridges and important buildings mined against the coming of the German army, of the 8 p.m. curfew, and of tanks and machine-guns on the roads leading to Prague.
¹¹
She was travelling with two Fascist companions and a Sudeten MP, Senator Wollner, and her car had been stopped several times at roadblocks. Although Wollner was a citizen of Czechoslovakia, Unity had been advised at the frontier, as ‘a known Nazi’, not to proceed. Her arrival, in the face of these warnings was, said a dispatch from the British consulate, ‘a clearly provocative act’.
¹²
She was soon released, but her passport and other items were withheld for a further forty-eight hours. Diplomatic reaction from the British legation was that she had asked for trouble and got what she deserved.

It seems as though her actions were a natural progression from her lifelong urge to shock and gain attention. Where she had once been content to release Ratular into a flock of débutantes, her actions now seemed designed to court physical danger; perhaps she hoped that Hitler would notice and that such incidents would prove to him her absolute loyalty. There is no evidence to prove the growing rumour that she hoped to marry Hitler, but it cannot be discounted either, since her behaviour was obsessive. And Hitler
did
know of these incidents. The Czechs refused to return Unity’s camera but a few days later Hitler presented her with a new Leica, which, she wrote to Diana, ‘cost £50’ – ten weeks’ wages to a white-collar worker in England.

That the relationship between Hitler and Unity was considerably more than that of an adoring fan and a superstar is proven by small incidents rather than great sequences. She began referring to him as ‘Wolf’ and he called her ‘Kind’ – Child. They exchanged gifts. As well as the camera, he gave her a framed signed photograph of himself, and at Christmas he sent her a tree complete with decorations. Unity made up one of her collages for him, of Hannibal crossing the Alps, and she gave him the ‘chicken’s mess’ ring.
¹³
They were close enough to share private jokes. When Unity had been disparaging of Italy and Mussolini, and was ticked off by one of Hitler’s adjutants, Hitler came to her defence, albeit without agreeing with her comments. Subsequently, even the slightest discussion of Italy would cause him to catch her eye and ‘blither’ (Boudledidge for giggle). When one guest at a Hitler luncheon said that the Osteria was just like an Italian
trattoria
, but cleaner, Hitler looked at Unity out of the corner of his eye, and the two began to giggle ‘quite uncontrollably’. When he had mastered himself sufficiently Hitler pointed at Unity and said to the astonished guest, ‘She likes to hear that.’
¹⁴
The thought of Hitler giggling at all, let alone ‘quite uncontrollably’, is difficult to imagine, and suggests that Unity brought to his life an uncomplicated form of friendship in which laughter played a significant part. Judging from biographies of him – there have been about a hundred – it was the sort of relationship he had never known elsewhere.

In August Hitler invited Unity to accompany him on a trip to Breslau, a city situated in the tongue of German land lying between Czechoslovakia and Poland. Although she was feeling unwell with a head and chest cold, Unity could not refuse such a wonderful opportunity to be with him, especially at such an exciting time, though it is clear from her letters to Diana and Sydney that she was forcing herself by willpower to stay on her feet throughout a daunting programme. She sat ‘just behind’ Hitler as 150,000 men paraded past him in unbearable heat. Wollner sat behind her and she was pleased that he was ‘frightfully impressed’ that she had travelled in Hitler’s party. At one point Sudeten marchers broke ranks and surrounded Hitler, holding out their hands and crying, ‘Dear Führer, when are you coming to help us?’ Unity was very moved: ‘I never expect to see such scenes again,’ she wrote to Diana. In reply Diana agreed that it must have been an unforgettable experience: ‘Even in
The Times
one could see how wonderful it must have been. I was frightfully jealous,’ she wrote.
¹⁵

Hitler’s contingent left Breslau and flew to Nuremberg in two planes, and continued on by car to Bayreuth. By now Unity was feeling so ill that she chose to fly in the second plane, fearing that she might infect Hitler. On arrival at Bayreuth she collapsed with pneumonia and was admitted to a private clinic. Hitler instructed that all medical bills were to be sent to him and before he left for Berlin he sent Unity flowers and ordered his personal physician to remain in Bayreuth to care for her. Sydney flew out immediately, and was horrified to find that instead of relying on the natural healing processes of ‘the good body’, Unity was submitting to ten or fifteen different injections each day from Theodor Morrell. She was very unhappy about this, but as Hitler – who trusted the doctor implicitly, even though it was later discovered that Morrell’s treatments caused him harm – had sent a telegram begging Unity to do everything the doctor ordered, she realized that any protests were pointless.
¹⁶

Ten days later David flew out to take over as bedside-sitter while Sydney returned to England. On the day Unity was discharged David discovered that Hitler had already paid her bill and sent signed photographs of himself to her nurses.
¹⁷
There were no circumstances under which David would have been prepared to allow another man to foot the expenses of his unmarried daughter. However, his immense old-fashioned charm ensured that no feelings were ruffled when he reimbursed Hitler, and during Unity’s convalescence the two men met several times. With the exception of Derek Jackson, whom he scarcely understood, David seldom liked the men his daughters liked, and referred to his sons-in-law as ‘the man Mosley, the boy Romilly and the bore Rodd’. Somewhat to his surprise, however, he found that he rather liked Hitler. ‘Farve really does adore him in the way we do,’ Unity wrote to Diana, grossly exaggerating this, ‘and treasures every word and expression.’
¹⁸