Previously in this series.
You grow up in a family that is aristocratic, but on such a limited budget as to be able to employ no more than a cook, a parlor-maid, a housemaid, a kitchen maid, a nanny and a nursemaid. The family pays for the nanny by keeping a flock of several hundred chickens and selling the eggs in town. Other budgeting measures include an absolute ban on the use of dinner napkins.
You spend hours in the chicken house learning to do an exact imitation of a hen’s expression when it lays an egg.
Your father is hilariously witty, but prone to frightening rages. You participate in the favorite family game of “child hunt,” in which the children run and hide in the fields, until caught by the hound.
Later, your father bitterly denounces all of your male friends as “damned puppies” and “young swine.” Once, he picks up an admirer and shakes him like a rat. When you dare to wear trousers at home, your father becomes apoplectic with rage. You nickname your father the Feudal Remnant.
Your mother does not allow any vaccinations or medicine of any kind; bedroom windows must always be kept open six inches, even in the dead of winter. Although you are very near-sighted, your mother forbids glasses, saying that your body will heal itself, and “you’ll probably be able to see more as time goes on.”
Your uncle writes letters to the paper expounding his theory that England’s decline is due to a reduction in the use of manure in farming.
Your father determines to improve the family fortunes by gold mining in Canada, and the family lives for a time in a small cabin in a Canadian town called Swastika, never finding gold. Your middle name is actually Valkyrie.
You and some of your sisters declare yourselves members of the Society of Hons, dedicated to opposition of the Society of Counter-Hons, led by your terrible brother Tom (whom you all actually adore). The Hons and Counter-Hons fight with toy spears. You spend hours together in the linen closet creating Society rules, and speak in a private invented language, Boudledidge, that allows you to sing obscene songs in front of the adults.
You are known as Queen of the Teasers. Even as a young girl, your wit is likened to a barbed hook hidden within the feathers of a fishing lure. You enjoy composing cruel poems to make your sisters cry. A favorite insult: “You look like the eldest and ugliest of the Bronte sisters today.”
Your closest companion is a pet lamb named Miranda that you bring with you to church and to bed. You write a poem about her that includes the rhyme “Me-ran-der/ Soon to the butcher I must hand her.”
After an emergency appendectomy, you sell your sister your appendix in a bottle, for one pound. It soon smells so much that Nanny must wash it down the loo.
You are legendarily beautiful. When your incredibly wealthy fiancé introduces you to his mother, he declares, “And she can cook, Mummy,” to which she replies faintly, “I’ve never heard of such a thing. It’s too clever.” But in reality, you can make nothing other than fried eggs.
By age 15, you have become fascinated by Fascism (you later become a close confidante of Adolf Hitler).
By age 15, you are a Socialist (you later become a famous left-wing activist and muckraking journalist).
You have always voted Conservative and would never do otherwise.
The drawing room is divided down the middle, one side decorated with swastikas and photos of Mussolini, the other side with a bust of Lenin, the hammer and sickle, and copies of the Daily Worker. You imagine what it would be like to have to give the order to execute your sister.
As a debutante, you bring your pet white rat, Ratular, and your grass snake, Enid, to dances, and sit stroking them, intimidating all the young men. If a party becomes dull, you allow one to escape.
If someone upsets you during a meal, you slide silently to the floor and remain under the table, reappearing only when you think the episode will have been forgotten.
You are deeply oppressed by the thick fog of deadly boredom that surrounds you at home. Since your mother believes in the Loch Ness monster, you hatch a plan for escape: travel to Loch Ness, leave a suicide note, and flee; it will be assumed the monster ate your body.
You are fascinated by a rebellious second cousin, Winston Churchill’s nephew, who has joined the International Brigade fighting fascism in Spain. At age 19, after meeting him at a family event, having spent only a few hours together, you elope with him to Spain, where you work together as Loyalist journalists.
Back home, on a United Front anti-Fascist march in London, you are attacked by Blackshirt thugs with rubber truncheons. You see a familiar sight: two of your blond sisters, waving swastika flags. You shake your fist at them in the Red Front salute.
You seriously consider pretending to convert to Fascism, going with your sister to meet Hitler, and “whipping out a pistol” to assassinate him. Later you bitterly regret your lack of courage in failing to go through with this plan.
You become a close personal confidante – and, it is always rumored, the lover – of Adolf Hitler; the two of you share private jokes and “giggle uncontrollably” together. Hitler gives you a flat in Munich previously owned by a young Jewish couple “who were going abroad.” You are arrested in Prague for distributing Nazi propaganda. On holiday in Spain, you are attacked by crowds who are enraged by your swastika brooch. After the war begins, you attempt suicide by gunshot to the head (using a pistol provided to you by Hitler, for safety) and never fully recover.
Although you married one of the richest men in England, you begin an affair with the leader of the British Union of Fascists, whom you later marry. When Britain enters World War Two, you are both arrested for having fraternized with and encouraged Hitler and the Nazi party. You spend over three years in jail, apart from your young children. You always say that you only had England’s safety in mind.
Your autobiographical fiction makes you a world-famous author, living in style in Paris and dressing in couture. Your life is somewhat tragic, however, because you never stop pining for your unfaithful lover, an acne-scarred but charming French diplomat.
Your exposé leads to lasting reform of the U.S. funeral industry.
No family member ever calls you by your actual name. You and your sisters often address one another in letters as “Susan,” for some reason.
You become the Duchess of Devonshire, overseeing the 1,704,233 cubic feet of Chatsworth House. Of the home’s 297 rooms, 48 are admittedly very large, but some are “no more than glorified cupboards.”
Your father disowns you and leaves you no share of the family island in Scotland, because you have declared your intention to leave your portion of it to the Communist Party. You, however, buy out your sisters and take possession of the island.
You become dear friends with Maya Angelou. On your deathbed, she comes to visit every night, and sings you bawdy and romantic songs.
You do not speak to your Fascist sister for decades.
You do not speak to your Communist sister for decades.
When a journalist quotes your sister’s remark, “Sisters are a shield against life’s cruel adversity,” you reply, “But sisters ARE life’s cruel adversity!”
Your mother observes, “Whenever I see a headline beginning with ‘Peer’s Daughter’ I know one of you children has been in trouble.”
*
If you are still not certain whether or not you are a Mitford sister, you might try these for more guidance: Jessica Mitford, Hons and Rebels; Mary S. Lovell, The Sisters: the Saga of the Mitford Family; Deborah Mitford, Wait for Me!: Memoirs.
Tags: books, how to tell what novel you’re in, ivan kreilkamp, the mitfords
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I AM HERE FOR EVERYTHING ABOUT THE MITFORDS.
As a debutante, you bring your pet white rat, Ratular, and your grass snake, Enid, to dances, and sit stroking them, intimidating all the young men. If a party becomes dull, you allow one to escape. God, Unity must have been a trip before the whole Fascism thing came along. I mean, you definitely can’t discount it AT ALL, but it’s hard not to admire someone who sits in the corner at a party, stroking a snake and staring down men. Just a little bit.
But Decca will always have my heart.
Debo FTW!
Debo was too conservative and far too forgiving of Diana. Decca forever.
cf. Patricia Highsmith, snails.
In your dotage you basically blame Jews fleeing pogroms in Russia for the Holocaust, and say that the July 4th plotters were traitors and terrorists, but you’re so beautiful that everyone goes on fawning over you and your sub-par intellect, and saying things like “But she was terribly clever and charming, and it was simply awful that she was jailed during the war.”
https://quartetbooks.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/no-…
Well, to her credit, she WAS beautiful, and probably was quite clever and charming. She was also just, you know. Evil.
I took everyone’s word for it that she was clever till I read that interview. Than I decided she was a moron. But so many people are charmed! That Mary S Lovell biog of the sisters is great, but it really breezes over Diana’s true beliefs. You have to wonder what, if anything, will come out now about them…
Oh, I find her to be very charming, which would have made her all the more dangerous. I don’t believe for an instant that she was nearly as naive as she would have had people believe.
But, having been on the receiving end of my fair share of anti-Semitism in both Europe and the United States, I’m perhaps not so shocked that these are opinions people still have.
Have you ever listened to Diana Mitford on Desert Island Discs? Its on youtube I think. It is chilling and charming in equal measure, she was quite sociopathic, and yet people adored her. The fake-naïve act was a real winner.
I’ve heard it. She’s absolutely terrifying. Her defence of Hitler’s crimes is that “people will say anything about people they dislike”. Completely insane, and a completely unrepentant fascist.
A friend of a friend was at a dinner party with Diana, Mosley and a prominent member of Thatcher’s government who (oddly enough) couldn’t resist asking them questions. Mosley was asked what he thought he’d done wrong, and said it was “having uniforms.” I can’t remember what the man asked Diana, but do remember the reply, about Hitler, “No, because you see, the poor lamb was gaaaaassed in the war.”
Lovell’s book was very frustrating in its dismissal of Diana’s hardline fascism. “Oh, but she was so beautiful! And unapologetically fascist. But beautiful!” Ugh.
Huh. I thought I remembered that the author was related to Diana by marriage in some way. Wikipedia doesn’t bear that out, so I guess Lovell’s just a bit of an apologist for fascism when it’s pretty people being the fascists.
That’s Charlotte Mosley #IhatethatIknowallthisstuff.
It really was! I find it so odd that the fascism is just excused so often (this is one of the reasons I cannot warm to Debo; referring to Diana as a saint is deeply creepy). I mean, in many ways I think Diana sounds like she was interesting and intelligent and perhaps more pleasant to spend time with than several of her sisters, but the fascism renders all of that completely irrelevant.
That interview is a trip. I cannot get over the level of denial, and the sheer privilege she posseses, to be able to hold the beliefs she did in [year]. And the gall of comparing her imprisonment to the Japanese internment camps. And the cluelessness of hand-waving away the concentration camps by saying they had floating populations–!!
Did know much about the Mitfords beyond that a few had Nazi sympathies, but wow, what an awful woman. Now I know. Thanks for linking!
Your father does seem to have been a very eccentric man – he chased the children with a bloodhound, for example.
“I don’t think he was nearly as eccentric as people imagine. You see, he had a bloodhound, and it was rather fun to hunt with him, and we children were there, available. Most men love hunting after all. He didn’t hunt us very often with his bloodhound, and in any case the bloodhound died. He didn’t have what you might call a kennelful of bloodhounds; there was just one dear old one and he thought, well, let’s give him a run.”
whut.
Look, it was just the one bloodhound, and he only set it on his children occasionally, god.
I mean, it does possibly shed some light on her breezily cavalier attitude toward Nazi atrocities. “The guards set the dogs on them? What, like after Nanny wakes you from naptime and Father hunts you down in a moor? We always had finger sandwiches after that.”
So I just read that interview with my jaw hanging open. Diana was completely nutty and totally self-assured. I can see why she was fascinating, because it’s rare to see such complete self-absorption.
SWOON.
Duchess not of Davenport but Devonshire.
I have NEVER been more horrified by a missed typo!
To be fair, there are a confusing number of D-names there. At the time of her death, she was the brilliantly alliterative Deborah, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire.
I absolutely refuse to entertain the notion that each and every Mitford sibling (except, perhaps, Deborah) was not aggressively, flamboyantly bisexual. Also, I would pay so much money for HBO to do a series about their lives
Right??? Where is the Mitfords miniseries for which the public clamors???
Forget the miniseries, I want a two season minimum!
Pam and Tom, definitely.
I have such a strange obsession with all of the Mitford sisters that I sometimes feel guilty over, on account of some of them being spectacularly evil and none of them being particularly nice. But I will still read anything about them or by them that I can get my hands on.
Forget nice, Decca was a badass.
Oh, she was a total badass. But if I had ever met her I would have been terrified to say anything. All of the Mitford sisters (except maybe Pamela? I never remember anything about Pamela except she raised chickens and horses, maybe?) could cut you down mercilessly with their words or even just a snide look.
My parents were invited to lunch by the Duchess as my Dad is a local writer, and historian, and she was very nice indeed, they said.
Decca is my absolute favourite, and I admire her very much, but I don’t think I could manage to be friends with her.
I feel guilty about owning Diana’s autobiography, even though I bought it in a charity shop and well after her death, so it cannot profit her in any way.
You have a fling with a French guy and spend the rest of your damn life trying to get him to love you back. He says he can’t marry you because he’s Catholic and you’re divorced but he is also plainly just not that into you. When he finally marries someone else who’s divorced, you do not shoot him, you keep right on making a banquet of crumbs.
Comparable events in my teenage life: Realizing Scarlett O’Hara was basically an idiot about men, and realizing Nancy was pathetic about the Col.
If anyone likes heroic aristos in World War Two, can recommend Missie Vassiltchikov’s Berlin Diaries. Lots of Saturdays-to-Mondays and hat shopping, but also trying to kill Hitler.
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/05/books/an-outsid…
That is a wonderful book! I’ve never before met (or written to) anyone else who has read it.Thanks for the link to the NYTimes review.
Yeah, the whole “most likely you were a straight-up Nazi and never really sorry about it” thing sort of puts a damper on any imaginative play here, even if one does sympathize with Jessica.
Nancy was the brilliant one, if the others had never written a word it wouldn’t really matter.
Memorably described by Julie Burchill as "a bunch of debs brought up in a madhouse".
A friend of a friend was at a dinner party with Diana, Mosley and a prominent member of Thatcher's government who (oddly enough) couldn't resist asking them questions. Mosley was asked what he thought he'd done wrong, and said it was "having uniforms." I can't remember what the man asked Diana, but do remember the reply, about Hitler, "No, because you see, the poor lamb was gaaaaassed in the war."
I had a brief but extremely passionate love of all the Mitfords a few years back, when I knew nothing but Nancy’s writing and “hons” and saying “NQOCD” to piss off my mother. So when I read the two ridiculous extreme routes Unity, Diana and Jessica took, I just sort of sat there, probably with my jaw hanging open. Jessica forever, But with Nancy’s clothes.
Jessica was a communist, sure, but she spent her life working for legitimate social causes. She was a civil rights activist in the 1940’s!! Also, her journalism was excellent. There’s not much of a comparison between her and Unity/Diana IMO–they were literally Nazis and friends of Hitler!
You are quite simply the loveliest girl in the county, if not the whole country. You refer to one of the greatest murderers of the twentieth century as “naughty,” as in “Certainly he did some naughty things,” as though he had perhaps brought a rat to the ball or scared the chickens out of laying or perhaps put a frog into Nanny’s bed.
Even after being jailed for your revolting sympathies you remain perfectly coifed and attired in the latest French fashions. Your icy perfection and sang froid is disturbing. You never, ever, ever apologize for frolicking while the continent burned itself out. Perhaps you didn’t even notice.
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