Charlotte Mosley - The Mitfords - Letters between Six Sisters

I hope poor little Bryan 4 is better, give him my love & show him the enclosed stitch. He can have half of it.

Love from Decca

Darling Pam

Oh I am so sorry how beastly for you poor darling. 1 Never mind I expect you’ll be rewarded by marrying someone millions of times nicer & obviously Togo would have been a horrid husband. Are you going to Canada? I hope so, that would be lovely for you. 2

Best love & don’t be too miserable, I am, dreadfully, about it but one must make the best of things.

Heaps of love, Naunce

Darling Pam,

Thank you so much for the letter. I am so glad you did not feel sick on the ship. The parrot is very well, and is often let out in the garden. We are going to stay with Diana 1 at Littlehampton a week yesterday, and will probably be there when you get this letter. Nancy is staying in London with a person called Evelyn, 2 and they will do all their own housework like you and Muv. 3

Love from Jessica

Dee Droudled Boudle,

It is rather fun here, but it is a bore having to miss ½ term in London. Debo has been rather cross part of the time. Day before yesterday at lunch she told the maid she wanted ‘a very little ham’, and she was furious with Nanny for saying afterwards she wanted ‘a very, very little ham’. She said ‘What’s the use of my saying I want a very little ham if you go and say I want a very, very little ham?’ 1

Yesterday morning, too, she wanted to go out directly after breakfast, but poor Nanny had to go to the lavatory, and Debo was furious again, and said ‘When Muv was here we didn’t have to do all this silly going to the lavatory’. Nanny said very crossly ‘I shall go to the lavatory when I want to’.

Love from DECCA Je Boudle

I swear it’s quite true about the ham & lavatory, don’t believe Debo.

Darling Bods

After 2 hrs solid of thinking I have at last analysed my feelings.

I am in love with H 2 but as you know the one thing in the world I admire is intellect so I am in the position of someone who is out to marry money & falls in love with a poor man.

I think this is quite the true state of my mind & sounds more sane than my rather hysterical conversation this evening. So frightfully tired.

Love, N

1

Dear Nancy & Corbish,

Last night I went to a party & danced with M. Chaliapine. 2 He IS so sweet he jumped about with me and hummed in a sweet voice to the band. I have struck up an acquaintance with his two daughters at the Pontresina Hotel. They are good and nyang [sweet] – aged 8 and 17. It is snowing and a blizerd today.

Love from Decca

Deborah, Tom, Pamela, Unity, Jessica and ‘Muv’, in one of the rare photographs of Lady Redesdale smiling. Pontresina, 1930.

Darling Honkite

We were so excited when Nan woke us up at six o’clock to tell us about Baby G. 1 What is his name? We are coming up to see him as soon as nurse lets us. Won’t it be fun? There isn’t much more to say except to heartily congratulate you!

Much love (and to the baby) from Debo

Darling Bodley 1

Oh I am having such an awful time. First poor little Decca who happily does seem to be more or less all right. 2 Now today a huge picture of me in the Sunday Dispatch saying that my book 3 is dedicated to Hamish who I’m engaged to. And there is the most appalling row going on. Muv & Farve spent the whole morning telling me that my friends are all drunkards, that I’m ruining my health & my character, hinting that I have taken to drink myself. I simply don’t know what to do. They say if I go to London this summer it will be the end of me & I’ve practically promised not to go.

Then dear Uncle George, 4 to whom I sent an advance copy, has written to Muv saying it’s awfully indecent but he hopes it will sell & I gather Aunt Iris 5 wrote in the same vein. Farve says it is killing Muv by inches.

Why did I dedicate the beastly book at all, as I said to Muv other people can dedicate books without this sort of thing happening but she & Farve appear to think I did it to annoy them. Then they say that as I’m nearly thirty I ought to stop going out at all. Why? And what should I do if I did stop. I can’t make out what they really want me to do. Live permanently in the country I suppose.

Oh dear I do feel miserable.

Best love, N

Darling Bodley

I am so unhappy for you on account of this terrible tragedy. 1

I can’t help thinking that for her it must have been best, as she didn’t do it on an impulse when he died it shows she must have considered it & decided that life without him was & always would be intolerable. But for you & all her friends it is a terrible loss, I am so so sorry darling.

Please give my love & sympathy to Bryan.

V. best love, Naunce

Darling Nard

I thought I would just write & tell you that I went to court last night & enjoyed it very much, though when I came into the PRESENCE my heart failed me & I was almost too nervous to curtsy, though I managed to in the end. 1 Everyone admired my dress, and it really is too lovely, how can I ever thank you enough, I shall never wear anything else at dances now. I was entirely dressed by you – dress, bag, fur coat, & bracelet. It was great fun waiting in the Mall, we waited about two hours. I shouldn’t have enjoyed it nearly as much if I hadn’t had such a lovely dress.

Please give my love to Bryan & Tom. 2

Best love from Bobo

Unity, ‘a huge and rather alarming debutante’, dressed for presentation at court, 1932.

My Darling Bodley

Thank you for the lovely week I had, I enjoyed myself to the full.

Mitty 1 & I spent the whole of yesterday afternoon discussing your affairs 2 & are having another session in a minute! He is horrified, & says that your social position will be nil if you do this. Darling I do hope you are making a right decision. You are SO young to begin getting in wrong with the world, if that’s what is going to happen.

However it is all your own affair & whatever happens I shall always be on your side as you know & so will anybody who cares for you & perhaps the rest really don’t matter.

With all my best love, Nance

Darling Naunce

You are divine to me, I don’t know what I would do without you.

I have read your book 1 and it is simply heavenly and beautifully written and I read a lot of it to the Leader 2 and we laughed so much we couldn’t go on reading.

Bryan has now arrived and is in a state of airy bliss and longing for me to start work on his flat. 3 He is in a magnanimous mood and I told him about the stock of country shoes and crepe de chine 4 I am laying in and he was all for it. He says I can have the pick of Cheyne Walk furniture and in return I am giving him two or three pictures. The future appears to me to be roseate specially now he is so gay and bright.