The MITFORD Sisters

Well, there is so much written about them, of which I can add nothing new!  However, I did feel, while preparing these web-pages, that I should at least include a synopsis of these extrovert 'Hons', who lived a comfy, eccentric and often radical life-style!

David Mitford, second Baron Redesdale, and his wife, Sydney Bowles married in February 1904, soon afterwards moving into a little house in Graham Street, London, where Nancy, the first of six sisters and one brother, was born in November the same year.  Both her parents were descended from extraordinary men: David's father, 'Bertie' the first Lord Redesdale, was a distinguished diplomat and friend of Edward VII, and in 1902 he became Lord Redesdale and inherited the family estate in Northumberland, but lived most of his life at Batsford Park in Gloucestershire; and Sydney's father, Thomas Gibson Bowles, was a renown journalist and politician, and the founder/owner of 'Vanity Fair' and 'The Lady'.  He was a clever though eccentric man who had escaped the traditional upbringing of an English gentleman due to illegitimacy.  His father was a Liberal MP, who did accept him into the family.

A sister, Pamela, arrived in 1907; and then Tom, the only boy, in January 1909; Diana in June 1910; then came Unity in 1914; Jessica (Decca) in 1917; and Deborah (Debo) in 1920.  At the age of five Nancy was sent to the Francis Holland School, conveniently situated at the other end of Graham Street, but when later that year the family moved to a larger house in Victoria Road, Kensington, her education was continued by governesses in the schoolroom. In later life she often lamented about the lack of formal education she had received.

David Mitford, always known to his children as "Farve", inherited the title of Baron Redesdale in 1916, and moved from London, to his family house, Batsford Park [which he hated], then to the smaller Asthall Manor in Oxfordshire, before finally settling in a house mainly designed by himself in the nearby village of Swinbrook.  It was this Cotswold childhood with her brother and five sisters that Nancy later portrayed her childhood with her siblings vibrantly in her novel, The Pursuit of Love.

Soon after "coming out" Nancy fell in love with Hamish St Clair Erskine, an old Etonian.  When Hamish broke her heart she almost immediately went off and married Peter Rodd, an Ambassador in Rome and youngest son of Sir Rennell Rodd, in 1933.  Married life was not a happy experience as Peter, though good-looking, intelligent, but also pretentious, weak and adulterous.  By the start of WW2 the marriage had ended, with Peter soon posted overseas.

It was two years after this that Nancy met the love of her life, Gaston Palewski, a Colonel in the Free French forces who had moved to London to work under General De Gaulle. Charismatic, worldly and an incorrigible womaniser, Palewski was happy to conduct a temporary affair with Mrs Rodd. But when she moved to Paris after the end of WW2, to be near him he was at first appalled. However, Nancy made herself indispensable to him by her wit and her skills as a raconteur.  'The Pursuit of Love', published in 1945, was her first big success.  Then followed the even more successful 'Love in a Cold Climate' in 1949, - a world of debutantes, balls, love and marriage.

Nancy never returned to live in England, much preferring her stylish life in Paris where she had an apartment in the rue Monsieur.  She entertained her French friends as well as family and other visitors from England, in between keeping in touch by letter.  As a correspondent she was peerless, and her vibrant, rebellious and humorous exchanges with her sisters and friends [such as Evelyn Waugh] should be counted among the greatest of her literary achievements.

In 1967 she moved to a little house in Versailles, the move coincided with the beginning of a long and painful illness, eventually diagnosed as Hodgkin's Disease, from which she died on 30th June 1973.  She was cremated at the cemetery of Père Lachaise in Paris, from where her ashes were taken to England and buried in the churchyard at Swinbrook.

Thomas started out as a civil servant but became bored and switched to journalism, becoming in time the founder and owner of Vanity Fair and The Lady.  When his wife died he decided to take his daughters everywhere with him.  It was while on a visit to his close friend Bertie Mitford that the fourteen-year-old Sydney met and fell in love with David Mitford.

The Mitford’s lived a secure and privileged life with servants, holidays and different houses, but the children were always aware that money was something to be grappled with and they could not just have anything they wanted. 

Nancy was the first to bring parties of friends to the house, having to find ways of arbitrating between the shyness of her contemporaries and the explosive prejudices of her father.  Debo describes how their father's patience with visitors would suddenly run out so that he would shout down the dinner table ‘haven’t these people got homes to go to?’

On the surface, it seems strange that a household, which revolved around such an authoritarian figure as David Mitford, should have nourished so much individuality in the children.  It may be that the balance of their father’s eccentricity and their mother’s calm provided them with the excitement and fun, as well as the security, which gave them their self-confidence.

Although David Mitford shouted a lot and played the part of the stern father, his children do not seem to have lived in fear of him and he was clearly both a dutiful parent and an affectionate father.  He allowed his children to fill the house with friends most weekends, he chaperoned them to balls when they were "coming out".  He did, of course, have particular foibles.  He couldn’t stand mess of any sort.  All the children were required to be ready ten minutes before a meal or there was trouble.

There were lots of long-standing jokes and teases between the children and they developed an elaborate network of nicknames for each other and everyone else.  The parents were known as Muv and Farve, but between the children they were sometimes referred to as the Birds of the Revereds.  All the children had several nicknames; one that might be used by everyone and one other that would be used by perhaps one other member of the family and signed a particular relationship.

Nancy's names, particularly, were not always kind - she would sometimes address Debo, for instance, as Nine, pretending she thought that was her sister's mental age - but they were unkind within an affectionate context.

The Mitford children created their own private languages.  Mainly Decca and Unity used the oddest of these, 'Boudledidge'.  The other language mostly used by Decca and Debo was called 'Honnish' and was roughly based on the local country speech. 'Hon' was their rendering of the word 'hen', so the 'Hon's Cupboard', which figured both in their childhood and in Nancy's novels, had nothing, originally, to do with their titles.  It was simply the place where Honnish was spoken.  People they disliked or disapproved of were often described as 'horrid counter-hons'.   When the Mitford children sat in the Hons Cupboard discussing life and love, they could never have anticipated how their passions were to lead them all in such different directions.

Pamela, the quietest of the Mitford children, met and married Derek Jackson.

Tom was killed in Burma during the WW2. David Mitford never recovered from the loss of his only son.

Diana caused a scandal by divorcing her first husband Bryan Guinness to become the mistress of a married man, Oswald Mosley.  They finally married in 1936 with the ceremony taking place in Goebbels’ house just outside Berlin and Adolf Hitler as one of the wedding guests.

Unity spent a lot of time in Germany and became a keen supporter of Fascism and the Nazi Party. When war broke out she was so appalled at the idea of her country fighting with Germany that she attempted suicide by shooting herself in the head. She survived but was a semi-invalid for the short remainder of her life.

Jessica was looking for a way to escape her family when she met with Esmond Romilly, a nephew of Winston Churchill.  It was whilst he was home on sick leave from the Spanish Civil War that she engineered a meeting with him and persuaded him to take her back to Spain.  They eventually married and throughout their time together shared a passionate commitment to Communism.  Esmond was killed during the WW2 and Jessica carried on her work for the Cause in the United States eventually marrying a left wing Jewish Lawyer called Robert Treuhaft.  Jessica also caused mayhem in USA by her muckraking into the Funeral Services.

Deborah married Andrew Buxton Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire, making her the Duchess of Devonshire.

Sydney and David Mitford were to ultimately divorce.  Unity had introduced them to Hitler and Fascism whilst they were visiting her in Germany.  David did at first take to Hitler, and was prepared to put aside his distrust of foreigners; he eventually reverted back to his loathing for the "Hun".  Sydney, however, retained her admiration for the Fuhrer and the house rang with violent quarrels.