Charlotte Mosley - The Mitfords - Letters between Six Sisters

Rodd has gone, I can’t say where, which is very dull for me & goodness knows when one will see him again.

I have a simply splendid maid called Gladys, 1 she has been with me now a year. She really enjoys the raids & is awfully funny about everything, she is the greatest comfort in my life.

I go to work now all day, a paid job thank goodness. I find country holidays for A[ir] R[aid] P[recautions] workers – it is jolly nice as they come back saying how the wife & I couldn’t have been better treated if we had been the King & Queen. They are such heaven.

The other people in the office seem to think I’m a sort of joke (Susan how queer) & when there’s a quiet moment do imitations of me on the telephone.

Robert [Byron] has been drowned I am very miserable about it.

I must go to sleep – will write again soon.

Much love, Susan

Darling Nard –

Well, I can hardly tell you my news! I am being allowed to go & see – you! you! I’m SO happy & wonderfully contented! Oh, Nard! Oh, Nard!

With love from Bobo

Darling Soo

Did you get my letter thanking for the parcel, it was wonderful & now I know it took such hours I really feel grateful. Kind little miss.

I haven’t seen Boud for months, you see I WORK Susan also Sat mornings & then one is asked not to travel but if one does do so one has the drunken & licentious soldiery pressed to one’s bosom the whole way except for very occasional weekends.

I never note Rodd’s graph 1 at all & it is 5 months since he left & there is no leave & most people think the war will last another 5 years. So – you see. Also my dear old mother in law has stopped my allowance in order to build a ballroom in memory of my pa in law. I keep saying how I wish she were religious, a nice marble X would cost far less (tho less practical of course).

Well Soo write soon your last was very short.

Love from NR

Darling Honks

It was heaven of you to write your precious letter and all. You can’t think how much better I feel now, really quite alright. 1 The comfort of this place is unbelievable and blissful nurses. It is so odd I’d never even had a bedpan before. Oh Honks, never Gilliat again, I have completely lost confidence in him. He never turned up till ages after he was wanted and when I was lying there with everything over he came in and all the nurses said ‘Here’s a friend to see you’ and if I’d had the strength I really would have kicked him or at least asked him where he had been all the afternoon. 2 What was rather awful was that I’d had a temperature of 103 for four days beforehand so I really wasn’t feeling like an effort. However all one can say is that it can’t have been one quarter so bad for me as it was for Decca because I never knew the baby though it was so alive when it was born that I felt a sort of glimmer of hope though I knew it wasn’t any good. Muv was quite wonderful and Andrew stayed with me till it was nearly born, it was so wonderful to have him. He finishes his leave tomorrow which is terribly sad because he has been here such a lot this week. My duch 3 and everyone have been absolutely wonderful.

Lady Carnarvon 4 embraced Muv wasn’t it wonderful.

Poor Nancy sounds rather bad with her appendix and ovary. 5 I wish she could come here. I think when you first get out of prison you ought to come here for ages, the difference would be so wonderful.

(Everything seems to be wonderful in this letter though it isn’t really.)

Anyhow it was heaven of you to write, I do so long to see you, it is such a tease.

I’m afraid they won’t let me get up for two more weeks which will seem rather long but perhaps be the best in the end.

Much love from Debo

[passed by prison censor 28/11/41]

Darling Diana

Thank you so much for the wonderful grapes, you are really an angel & grapes are so good for me. I have had a horrible time, so depressing because they had to take out both my tubes & therefore I can never now have a child. I can’t say I suffered great agony but quite enough discomfort – but darling when I think of you & the 18 stitches in your face 1 it is absolutely nothing.

The Rodds have been wonderfully true to form – my mother in law was told by the surgeon I shld be in danger for 3 days, & not one of them even rang up to enquire let alone sending a bloom or anything. I long to know if they bothered to look under R in the deaths column, very much doubt it however.

I never hear from Peter or he from me it is too depressing like the grave. Also he never gets his pay.

Muv was wonderful, she swam in a haze of bewilderment between me & Debo. When my symptoms were explained to her she said ‘ovaries – I thought one had 700 like caviar’. Then I said how I couldn’t bear the idea of a great scar on my tum to which she replied ‘But darling who’s ever going to see it?’

Poor Debo it must be wretched, the worst thing in the world I should think – except losing a manuscript of a book which I always think must be the worst.

Have you read Mémoires d’outre tombe 2 it is so wonderful. I’ve had a heavenly time reading my books in peace, such a change from rushing off to the office at 8.30.

I’ve left my address book at home so must send this to Muv.

Nigel [Birch] has just been to see me rather optimistic in mood which is entirely new for him, I nearly fell out of bed.

I spent the week end before I got ill (in considerable pain most of the time) with Roy & Billa [Harrod]. They have an ideal child called Hen[ry] – I think the prettiest, most amusing little boy I ever saw.

Oxford society is very pleasant I think, everybody so amiable & nice, most unlike what one would imagine such a small highly cultivated world to be. Gerald [Berners] has taken up his residence there. Apparently he has a mania for tea-shop life & Billa says it is a kind of task, undertaken in turns, to face Gerald across rather grubby check tablecloths at mealtimes.

Much love darling

& many more thanks for the grapes, Nancy

Darling Nard

Well, Nard About the 1st December. I could come then, again. May I come? Do say yes, do. Because, Nard, I do love visiting you, I do, really. And, you know now I am well again, I can’t bear life. I mean, this war!

You see, when I first came back, I thought all this was a play, and I was looking on. Now, I know I have a part to play, & I can’t bear acting it!

Next week am going to stay with Woman, which will be fun, I shall see Max! Oh, Nard, I love, adore Max!

V Best Love, Nard, from Bobo

1

Darling Honks

I thought I would just write and say how completely better I am although you couldn’t possibly be interested. I came up here in the most glorious luxury with a nurse and I was wheeled in a chair across St Pancras to the train! I am still in bed but getting up tomorrow, I can’t face getting up today as I should be alone with that awful old Eddie M[arsh].

I was terrified that Gilliat would say I wasn’t to start another pig for two years but thank goodness he said six months rather grudgingly and even that depending on my kidney. I write long letters to Muv about my medicines and things but I’m sure she says ‘Orrhhn’ and doesn’t read them.