The Toast accepted this piece prior to the death of Debo Mitford, and is running it now in her memory. You would probably enjoy the book in question. “He begged plumes from the hats of his women friends and, picking one up, would sigh with nostalgia and say things like, ‘Ettie Desborough, Ascot, 1921.’ Once the flies were ready, he lay in the bath imagining he was a salmon while Edward, the butler,…

Yes, she was 94. Yes, time passes and mows down various generations with it. People die every day. I myself am subject to the laws of decay and death, I'm told. And yet: Age, thou art shamed. Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods. Deborah, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, has died; she was the last of the Mitford sisters. They are all now gone from the earth.