Charlotte Mosley - The Mitfords - Letters between Six Sisters

I ought to get you a diamond necklace – last chance!

All love, Diana

Darling Bodley

Oh I feel as if I were sitting on a volcano (thank you, by the way, a million times for the life saving gift of £5 THE LAST). You know, back in the sane or insane atmosphere of Swinbrook I feel convinced that you won’t be allowed to take this step. I mean that Muv & Farve & Tom, Randolph, 1 Doris, 2 Aunt Iris, John, 3 Lord Moyne 4 & in fact everybody that you know will band together & somehow stop it. How, I don’t attempt to say.

Oh dear I believe you have a much worse time in store for you than you imagine. I’m sorry to be so gloomy darling.

I am glad you like the book, so do Robert 5 & Niggy, 6 it is a great comfort. But so far there’s not been one single review – is this rather sinister? I think I had quite a lot in the first week of H. Fling.

Mitty says £2,000 a year will seem tiny to you & he will urge Farve, as your trustee, to stand out for more.

Do let me know developments, I think it better in every way that I should stay here at present but if you want me at Cheyne Walk I’ll come of course. Only I think I can do more good down here. I wish I felt certain it was doing good though, it would be so awful later to feel that I had been, even in a tiny way, instrumental in messing up your life. I wish one had a definite table of ethics, for oneself & others like very religious people have, it would make everything easier.

Much love always darling, Naunce

Darling Naunce

The detectives are extraordinary and just like one would imagine. 1 It is really rather heavenly to feel that they are around – no pickpockets can approach etc. Isn’t it all extremely amusing in a way. I mean there is such a great army of them and it is all so expensive for Lord Moyne (may he burn in hell).

I have shirked the Grosvenor Place party 2 because I was advised it would be better not to go. They ALL cried when I wouldn’t & I gave as an excuse ‘Grosvenor Place is such a big house to surround so thought it more friendly to save half a dozen men & stay at home’.

Darling you are my one ally. But it is vastly lying to suggest you encouraged my sot [foolish] behaviour; 3 you always said it would end in TEARS.

Do come here soon. I am not hurrying to leave because if Bryan leaves ME the onus is on HIM and so he will.

All love darling, Diana

Darling,

At last a moment to write you – & now my fingers are too cold to hold the pen! Oh the cold is awful, luckily the ’tectives have made themselves an awfully cosy little wigwam outside with a brazier & are keeping themselves warm & happy taking up the road. Bless them.

Saw Bryan yesterday, he was pretty spiky I thought, keeps saying of course I suppose it’s my duty to take her back & balls of that sort. Henry Yorke 1 told him you had gone to Mürren with Cela. 2 Would I either confirm or deny? I said I thought it very doubtful if Henry knew anything about it & that I would forward a letter to you if B cared to write one.

I may say that the Lambs 3 seem to have turned nasty, apparently they told B they were nearly certain you had an affair with Randolph [Churchill] in the spring.

Lunched with Dolly [Castlerosse] & Delly. 4 Delly said I don’t mind people going off & fucking but I do object to all this free love. She is heaven isn’t she?

I had a long talk with Mrs Mac 5 who refuses to stay with Bryan. She says you are the one she is fond of. I told her it would mean no kitchen maid but she doesn’t seem to mind that idea at all. You must see her as soon as you get back. B & Miss Moore 6 both told her (a) you couldn’t afford her & (b) you wouldn’t be entertaining at all, but living in a very very quiet retirement.

Rather wonderful old ladies in fact. 7

John [Sutro] had a long talk to the Leader & is now won over. Next tease for John, ‘Why even Mosley can talk you round in half an hour’.

Best love darling, Nancy

1Diana had just had her tonsils out and was convalescing at the seaside.

2Patrick Cameron; a dancing partner of Nancy and Pamela, and a frequent visitor at Asthall.

3Mary Milnes-Gaskell; a friend of Nancy from schooldays. Married Lewis Motley in 1934.

4Oliver (Togo) Watney (1908–65). Member of the brewing family and a country neighbour of the Mitfords. He was briefly engaged to Pamela in 1929. Married Christina Nelson in 1936.

5David Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale (1878–1958). The sisters’ father believed that Asthall was haunted by a poltergeist, which was one of the reasons he eventually sold the house and built Swinbrook.

1After much wrangling with her parents, Nancy had been allowed to enrol at the Slade School of Fine Art. She had little artistic talent, received small encouragement from her teachers and left after a few months.

2University College London, of which the Slade is a part, was the first university in England to welcome students regardless of their race, class or religion.

3Diana was in Paris learning French and staying in lodgings where the only bath was a shallow tin of water brought to her room twice a week.

1Unity in ‘Boudledidge’ (the first syllable pronounced as in ‘loud’), the private language invented by Jessica and Unity. This was incomprehensible except to themselves and Deborah who, although she understood it, would never have dared venture on to her older sisters’ territory and speak it.

1A weekend cottage that Lady Redesdale had rented before the First World War when the Mitfords were living in London. After the war, she bought it and the family lived in it during the Depression while Swinbrook was let.

2Laura Dicks (1871–1959). The daughter of a Congregationalist blacksmith who went as nanny to the Mitfords soon after Diana’s birth in 1910 and stayed until 1941. Known as ‘Blor’ or ‘M’Hinket’, she provided a steady, loving presence during the sisters’ childhood and was the model for the nanny in Nancy’s novel The Blessing (1951).

‘Blor’, the Mitfords’ much-loved nanny, Laura Dicks. c.1930.

3In her memoirs, Jessica remembered selling her appendix to Deborah for £1 (£50 today) and that it was later disposed of by their nanny. Hons and Rebels (Victor Gollancz, 1960), p. 39.

4Bryan Guinness, 2nd Baron Moyne (1905–92). Diana had finally overcome parental opposition and became engaged to Bryan in November 1928. He trained to be a barrister but left the Bar in 1931 when he realized that his wealth was preventing him from being given briefs. His first novel, Singing Out of Tune, was published in 1933, followed by further volumes of poetry, novels and plays. Married to Diana 1929–34, and to Elisabeth Nelson in 1936.

1Pamela’s engagement to Oliver Watney had been broken off shortly before they were to be married. Pamela was not in love, and Togo was tubercular and probably impotent, but it was a disappointment nevertheless.