Mary S. Lovell, The Mitford Girls: the biography of an extraordinary family. Abacus pb. 2002; first published 2001. 611 pp.
Why are the Mitford sisters, subject of this biography by Mary S. Lovell, so famous (and notorious)? In many ways they were just a typical example of the privileged minor provincial British aristocracy, not particularly endowed with any special qualities. Lovell doesn’t really provide clear answers: she’s too enamoured of her subject.
I don’t need to give much information here about them; there’s a good account on Wikipedia. Here’s a potted version.
David, second baron Redesdale (the irascible xenophobe Uncle Matthew in Nancy’s novels) married Sydney Bowles (not sure if she’s related to the present queen) in 1904 and had six children:
Nancy (1904-73): biographer and novelist of, among others, The Pursuit of Love (1945), Love in a Cold Climate (1949), and Don’t Tell Alfred (1960) which I described in a post here as ‘frothy and insubstantial’ (same with The Pursuit of Love); ‘snobbery and casual racism distasteful’ – especially Uncle Matthew’s loathing of all things foreign and foreigners. She was vaguely socialist.
Pamela (1907-94): didn’t do much of note. John Betjeman was in love with her, for some reason.
Thomas (1909-45): fascist sympathiser. Refused to fight the Germans in WWII; died fighting the Japanese in Burma.
Diana (1910-2003, died two years after this book was published, so the author might have been wary of upsetting her). Had an affair with the British fascist leader Oswald Mosley, and married him in 1936. Evelyn Waugh was in love with her for a time. His novel Vile Bodies is loosely based on the Mitfords’ upper-class social circle.
Unity Valkyrie (1914-48; parents were Wagner fans; she was conceived in her father’s quixotic Canadian gold-seeking venture in a town called, appropriately, Swastika): ardent fascist who adored Hitler, stalked him and became close to him. Shot herself in the head when Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, survived, but with brain damage.
Jessica (known as Decca, 1917-96): communist, lived much of her adult life in America. Also a writer.
Deborah (1920-2014): married the future duke of Devonshire and ran the enormous stately home Chatsworth House (oddly enough it’s in Derbyshire).
Unity, Diana and Jessica/Decca are the most notorious sisters for their extreme political views and allegiances. What was the nature of Unity’s relationship with her adored Hitler? Lovell concedes that she was in love with him, but concludes that there’s no evidence there was ever a ‘sexual element’. Just an infatuated girl who made a bad choice, it seems.
Diana was another frequent visitor to Nazi Germany before the war and also developed an intimate relationship with Hitler. This is Lovell’s gushing comment on all this: ‘Diana is good company, as were all the Mitfords: it can have been no hardship for Hitler to spend time with a sophisticated and beautiful woman who happened to share his taste in art and music.’ So nothing much to disapprove of there, then. Lovell even quotes, clearly thinking this is amusing, the sisters’ mother saying in ‘exasperation’: ‘Oh, why do all my daughters fall for dictators?’
There were fierce loyalties and fissures in the sisters’ relationships. Fascist Diana (and husband Mosley) was interned in Holloway Prison 1940-43 under wartime regulations after being denounced by Nancy. Diana and her politically opposed sister Decca didn’t speak for decades.
This is an entertaining account, but it’s hard to ignore the awfulness and banality of several of the Mitford sisters. Lovell’s account is full of references to their charm, beauty, wittiness and elegance, but she presents the fascist sympathies of several of the siblings and their mother with a lot of sugar coating that I found distasteful and offensive. It’s more of a hagiography than a biography.
One example of their so-called wit: Nancy was particularly noted for her sharp wit: she was known in the family at the Queen of Teases:
She seemed to know exactly what would irritate her victims most, fastening on any insecurities with devastatingly accurate effect…One friend likened her humour to the barbed hook hidden beneath a riot of colourful feathers in a fishing fly…there was often a cruel element to her teasing, which caused real distress…But despite her cruel streak, Nancy’s sheer funniness endeared her to everyone, even when they were the butt of painful tease, for she went to great lengths to make them laugh.
The usual retort of the bully: can’t you take a joke? It’s only a bit of banter. No, this is repellent and inexcusable, and Lovell should have known better than to present this tendency shared by most of the Mitford family as charmingly amusing. The same goes for their father David’s fiery temper, intolerance and racism, as I noted above in my quotation from my post on his portrayal as Uncle Matthew in Nancy’s novels.
Jessica Fellowes, niece of Julian (the Downton Abbey creator and writer of the screenplay of the film ‘Gosford Park’) has written a sequence of six mystery novels based on the Mitford family. I’d be interested to know if anyone reading this has read any of them and what they thought of them.