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The Mitfords were famous sisters from both pre and post the Second World War. They were also members of the 'British Upper Class.' The sisters were well known society characters who filled the pages of the press daily, Yet all sisters were highly individual characters who lived very interesting lives. People they knew included Hitler, JFK and Maya Angelou. This is a collection ofsome of the letters they sent to each other during their lives. GOssip, rage, sadness, politics, humour and family issues are all covered here. The family were bought up in the 20s in a run down Victorian mansion in Swinbrook, Oxfordshire and were basically left to run wild. Their father was bonkers, their mother was probably just knackered and depressed and Nancy said that if they had been poor they would have been taken into care from a very young age.
The highlights for me were the extreme politics and how one family could become so polarised, and also how important letters and writing were to these sisters . 4 of them became published authors.
THe fascist sisters, Diana and Unity went to Germany, met Hitler and became besotted. The reaction of the other sisters and family members is outrage and worry and Diana spent the Second World War locked up in a British prison with her fascist husband Oswald Moseley. Unity tried to commit suicide at the outbreak of war, failed and became like an incontinent 5 year old child who needed 24 hour care. (The bullet just lodged in her brain and didn't kill her.) their Mother looked after Unity tirelessly until Unity died about 8 years later. (They were living on a remote Scottish Island at the time and it took the doctor too long to get out there so Unity died of meningitis at 33 , caused by the bullet still lodged in her brain)
NAncy Mitford's jealousy and bitterness towards her sisters and her hatred for her mother, who she blames for not sending them to school and getting an education beyond being society wives,comes out in the letters. Her ascerbic wit is clear and it's obvious that nobody really understand her and her lonely existance in Paris,living next door to this French general she loved but who didn't love her. Plus as Diana has her children Nancy has parallel miscarriages by her feckless, money grabbing useless husband. He refuses to divorce Nancy because he loves her money too much. SHe makes a packet from her novels as well as from her family connections. Nancy is obviously the best writer of all the sisters but it's only in old age when she is alone, in permanent pain living on microwave dinners that her letters become really funny. Her sisters never told her that she had terminal cancer. (They asked the doctors not to share the information with Nancy, ) reading these letters has made me want to read more of her stuff.
Pamela married then divorced, never had kids, became a world renowned specialist on the breeding of a rare type of chicken and then moved in with her Italian female lover. She isn't part of the story much but was known as the most non-maternal of the sisters but obviously quite caring as it was her whom Diana's sons lived with, whilst their Mother was incarcerated in Wormwood Scrubs during the war. The other sisters often joked about Pamela being extremely tight, about her exploding pickled eggs which could shatter out of their glass containers at any time, and Pamela loving animals far more than humans.
DEborah is the youngest and most level headed of the sisters. She is like the rock of the family, the only one who retains friendly relations throughout with all sisters. Deborah never becomes political and at the beginning Nancy takes the piss out of her and calls her 'Nine'. Because that is the age Nancy thinks she got stuck at. Deborah is proud of not being that intellectual or well read...but secretly she was reading and writing and in her later years she also became a writer like her oldest sister. What I love about Deborah is she is the most privileged, marrying into the Devonshire family, but she seems to stay quite connected and able to laugh at herself. When her brother in law dies, Deborah and her husband become the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire and Chatsworth house in Derbyshire becomes their property. After the war this house is an abandoned run down country pile which has millions of pounds of death duties on its head to pay before they can move in. The Devonshire family were shite with money management, plus The post war Britsh government really taxed the wealthy highly. ( Partly the reason why Diana and Nancy moved abroad.) Anyway, Deborah became the project manager of Chatsworth house and after many years of work she got it back to a livable standard, opened up parts to the public and after 20 years was able to pay off the death duties to the government and finally move in to a part of it. Yeah, she is still really posh and privileged but through reading this collection of letters you really get a sense of her great even handedness with all her extremely emotional sisters. Plus she is the only one, apart from their Mother, who was willing to go to America and stay on the sofa bed at Jessica's house. No other sister could even contemplate the horrors of sleeping on a sofa bed...let alone the awfulness of being surrounded by uncouth, classless AMERICANS!
Deborah died last year. The last Mitford sister.
Now Jessica, my favourite of all the sisters. She becomes a communist in her teens, runs away to Spain to support the Republicans and then moves to the USA in 1939. Her and Diana never communicate by letter as they are obviously polar opposites in political allegiance. Jessica is the only sister to run away completely from her family and make a fulfilled life away from the Mitford sister badge. She is highly political and becomes the only sister to work independently with political conviction. She becomes an active member of the civil rights movement and a well known author in the States. She lives a normal life, Invites her sisters over to stay but writes that they don't have any money and they will have to stay on the sofa or in cheap nearby hotels. Only Deborah and Mother take up the offer and both love the trip! Jessica becomes a journalist and a writer, finally releasing a book about her and her sisters. This obviously causes a wedge between her ,Nancy and Diana. But Jessica is also well known for writing a book called 'The AMerican Way of Death' and weirdly I've just seen online that David Bowie cited this book as his all time favourite . Movingly Jessica is the only sister to make sure that their Mother had a comfortable house to live in during the end of her life. She actively cared for her mother even though she only ever saw her once in the States. Plus Jessica's father cut Jessica out of his will. He hated that his daughter was a communist and was ashamed to have a RED daughter. This was the time of the communist witch trials in the States and Jessica could not leave the States because she would never have been allowed back in at the time. I have also just found out that JK Rowling named her daughter Jessica out of respect for this woman.
Reading letters by rich sisters from the British Upper Classes isn't everyone's idea of fun but what I realised is that the back drop of society in these letters is amazing plus these sisters sure are characters! You couldn't make it all up! Hearing about how Deborah's car was turned over by the locals in Bakewell with her in it and the abuse she got was interesting. Plus these women were all products of their time, totally subservient to their class, their husbands and their appearance. Infact lots of these letters make me really glad that I was out alive at this time. Life was obviously tough for all women at this time, and surprisingly still really tough for these Upper Class women too. Emotional release is apparent in these personal letters but even so there is always the stiff upper lip to retain even within letters written to your sisters and this made me mad and sad!
The emotions of losing their one brother in the war, Unity's attempted suicide and end of life care which was pushed totally onto the shoulders of their mother, the mental illness of their father, the drudgery of their mother's life with Unity, their frequent miscarriages, their father's affair with the maid, their awful huge cold damp childhood house which was falling down around them, their father's refusal to educate them. These things were only ever hinted at apart from Nancy who got really angry about their awful childhood. Nancy never really found happiness apart from within writing and when buying both furniture and haute couture clothes. The man she was obsessed with never loved her and she could never move on from him. I didn't feel jealous of any of them apart from maybe Deborah for having complete control over the rebuilding and day to day running of beautiful Chatsworth House and Jessica for finding complete independence away from everything in Oakland California!
These letters were surprisingly moving and a great backdrop to the changes in British society between the 1920s and the year 2001.
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