Culture Watch

by Eileen Frost

 

The Sisters: the Saga of the Mitford Family,
by Mary S. Lovell
W.W. Norton, 2002

Seen Gosford Park? Smitten by Upstairs, Downstairs or Brideshead Revisited? Faithful consumer of P.G. Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, Margaret Drabble? You may have more than a touch of Anglophilia. For those with unquenchable curiosity about the inner workings of the British nobility, The Sisters: the Saga of the Mitford Family comes like a spring tonic.

Descendants of the Earl of Airlie, the six Mitford girls were born between 1906 and 1920. (Their only brother, Tom, was killed in World War Two.) Beautiful and intelligent, they grew up in the country, taught by governesses, riding, hunting, enjoying the fun of their large family. They were always short of money because their father was the second son, who didn't inherit much. He attempted to augment their meager income by prospecting for gold in Canada, while their mother sold eggs and produce to meet household expenses. The girls were all very close, with their own secret language, a secret society (the Hons), and a series of confusing nicknames. To their great resentment, none of the girls was permitted to go to college, but several were allowed to study a foreign language abroad for a year, before returning home to make their debuts. Despite a rather idyllic youth, their lives were to be intimately intertwined with twentieth-century tragedy.

Who were they? And why do their lives seem to represent the mother lode for so much British film and fiction? For starters, they grew up amid the depression and shock following World War One and the Russian Revolution when for some in Britain, fascism seemed an attractive alternative to the alarming prospect of communism. The girls' father was briefly attracted to fascism, but young Unity Mitford actually fell in love with Hitler during the year she spent studying German in Munich.

Finding him charming and kind, as did her sister Diana, Unity proudly wore her Nazi party badge. She spoke at rallies and embraced antisemitism, even accepting an apartment from which a Jewish couple had to be evicted. Because the Mitfords were related to Winston Churchill, Unity may have been cultivated by Hitler as an unwitting intelligence source. In any case, when war broke out between England and Germany, she went to a park in Munich and shot herself, a failed suicide attempt; she lived on another ten years with her mother in England, brain-damaged. Her patriotic father was so undone by his wife's fascist sympathies that they never lived together again.

Dazzlingly beautiful Diana Mitford first married the heir to the Guinness fortune but divorced him after becoming smitten with Sir Oswald Mosley. Mosley, the love of her life, was a brilliant, charismatic politician whose leadership, had he not backed the wrong horse, might have challenged even Churchill's. Mosley embraced fascism as the answer for Britain and founded the British Union of Fascists, which rallied all over England in black uniforms and swastikas. Both he and Diana were arrested when war broke out and spent most of the war in prison.

Profound political differences created a chasm between Diana, Unity, and those sisters who believed communism offered a better future. Jessica Mitford, well-known author of The American Way of Death and other muckraking works, emigrated to the United States in the late 40's where she lived in California, working for workers and the poor. She never spoke to Diana again. Witty, acerbic novelist Nancy Mitford worked with refugees during the Spanish Civil War and helped house Jewish refugees during World War. Although eventually reconciled with Diana, staunchly patriotic Nancy never again spoke to Diana's fascist husband,Oswald Mosley.

Imagine being a Duchess! Youngest of the sisters, Deborah's husband Andrew became Duke of Devonshire after his elder brother was killed in the war. At first Andrew and Deborah were to have a small house next to his military post, and before her marriage, she wrote her sister Diana: "Think how nice it will be to have as many dear dogs and things as one likes without anyone saying they must get off the furniture. I do so wish you weren't in prison, it will be vile not having you to go [trousseau] shopping with." Although after the war Chatsworth was too run down to live in, Deborah and her husband were among the first to conceive of ways to keep a treasure house alive despite the confiscatory (80%) death duties imposed by the post-war socialist government. By selling their other land and several masterpieces from the art collection, they gradually paid off the tax debt and began restoration. They then initiated management of the estate as a family trust to be kept alive by fees from tourists, among the first in England to do so.

Collective biography is a tricky business, particularly when there apparently is something of a "Mitford Industry," and, it appears, all the sisters have already been subjects of biography. I kept wondering why I remained glued to successive pages about a group of women whose irritating qualities often outweighed virtues and talents. Perhaps it is because The Sisters answers many of the questions American readers may have about British aristocracy. Maybe it is because The Sisters provides us with additional insights into the complex, fascinating circumstances of England during the first half of the twentieth century. More likely, however, we keep on reading because the Mitford women themselves are so interesting.