The Other Mitford (19 page)

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The monks came from Prinknash Abbey, near Painswick, and sold delicious home-made sausages; Pam didn’t share Sydney’s views on the consumption of pork products. The nudists were the inhabitants of the Whiteway colony, founded on Tolstoyan ideas of equality, on the far side of Miserden Park. If they ever bared their bodies, they no longer do so, but they are a somewhat eccentric community which at that time had its own bakery of which Sydney would certainly have approved.

O
ne of Pam’s characteristics which the other sisters joked about was her homeliness, which manifested itself in her lifelong love of cooking and eating good meals cooked either by herself or others. While the other sisters became prolific writers, Pam never actually got round to putting pen to paper, though it had been her intention to write a cookery book. Possibly because of her dyslexia, the thought of it became a burden to her. She had twice been approached by publisher Jamie Hamilton to write the cookery book and twice declined, after which, to her enormous relief, the editor at Hamish Hamilton told her that there was probably no market for it.

She wrote to Diana in March 1982: ‘For me one great worry has been taken away – Mr Machell [the editor] says the cooking book would be no good. I am deeply relieved and can now really relax, it was such a hideous effort and I had to struggle to find time to do it.’ It was a burden which had been worrying her for some years. As early as 1966 Jessica is recorded as saying to Debo: ‘We must get after Woman about the cookery book.’

Some years earlier, when commenting to Debo on Diana’s memoirs, she confessed: ‘If I started my memoirs it would be nearly all Food!’ In the very same letter she talks about a lunch where she gave her guests
pot-au-feu
: ‘I must admit it was delicious and
all
the guests had a second helping. I might give it to you and Andrew when you come.’

‘She remembers meals 40, 50 years ago, even on the boat going to Canada,’ said Debo to Diana; in this she was not entirely accurate for Pam even remembered meals from childhood and was ecstatic when the ‘Super Cinema’ came to Oxford – not because of the films she and her siblings might see, but because they could get supper there. When writing to Nancy for her birthday in October 1966, she says:

Do you remember 42 years ago on my birthday at Asthall [she was 15] when there was such a heavy frost that the wire on the hen pens was quite closed with frost sparkles and the sun was shining brightly; Farve gave us all enough money to take the bus to Oxford and lunch and cinema. When we arrived we had ages to wait for lunch so as it was icy cold you insisted on going to the Ashmolean Museum, we were against it as it was costing sixpence each and we would not have so much lunch as we had hoped. However we agreed to go as it was the only place to keep warm till lunch time. Then, to our joy, we met Uncle George in the museum and he invited us all to a wonderful feast at Fullers!

This letter is well worth further examination, not only because it illustrates Pam’s delight in food and her memory for long-ago meals (she could probably remember exactly what she and the others had eaten at Fullers), but because it shows that the sister who was thought not as bright as the others had a wonderful way with words. How easy it is to picture the bright, sharp coldness of the day, the teenage girls in a freezing Oxford street, arguing about what to do next; going into the Ashmolean, meeting Uncle George (their mother’s eldest brother) and enjoying a wonderful warming lunch. Unlike Nancy and Jessica, Pam tells it exactly as it was, not trying to be funny or clever or endeavouring to appeal to a wider audience. What a pity she found writing such a burden because it would be fascinating to read her version of the Mitford childhood – as seen through her wide blue eyes.

Pam was never happier than when she went to Canada in 1929 with her parents on yet another of their unsuccessful gold prospecting expeditions. She and her mother kept house and cooked in the sturdy log cabin where there were few mod cons, no doubt making appetising dishes which would also be beneficial to the Good Body, including the wholemeal bread made to Lady Redesdale’s own special recipe. She was the only one of the sisters to visit Swastika, since she was the one who most enjoyed both travelling and the simple life.

In the summer of 1939 Pam and Derek travelled to New York where he was on a high-level mission for the Air Ministry. While there they called in on Jessica and Esmond, who by this time were living in Greenwich; the sisters were delighted to see each other. Although Pam hadn’t seen Jessica since she had run away to Spain almost three years earlier, as usual it was the food which she remembered most vividly. Writing to Jessica forty years later she reminded her that they had eaten roast chicken which Pam had carved and it was so hot that even the effort of carving it had brought her out in a ‘muck sweat’. It was after this visit that Pam and Derek made their epic flight home in one of the first sea plane passenger flights.

Throughout her life, important events were best remembered by the food that had been made and consumed at the time. Rudi von St Paul, née Simolin, who had been the one to find Unity in a German hospital after her suicide attempt and who subsequently became one of Pam’s closest friends, was equally keen on food and remembered meals which she had enjoyed. This was a trait which led Debo to refer to them as Professors of Past Menus, leading to screams of laughter from the other sisters. Unluckily for Rudi, nature was less kind to her than to Pam and she became very overweight in later life. ‘Poor Rudi,’ said Pam sadly, on hearing of her friend’s death. ‘How she abused her body.’

It was a pity that Rudi did not live to enjoy Pam’s 80th birthday celebrations, arranged for her by Debo’s husband Andrew at Brooks’s club in London, where forty-three family and friends sat down to delicious food and wine in very congenial surroundings. Pam wrote to Jessica:

The dinner was Borsch soup, Saddle of Lamb, Profiteroles with hot chocolate sauce. Champagne before dinner, a lovely Meursault and then Leoville Barton and Champagne again with coffee. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves and were in top form. It was so good of Andrew to give such a party, I had expected to be here quietly.

Pam was more than capable of giving her own birthday party and cooking it all herself, as she had explained to Diana three years earlier. She had invited her cousins Rosemary Bailey and Madeau Stewart, plus her great-niece Catherine (Jonathan Guinness’s daughter), Catherine’s husband Jamie, Lord Neidpath, and their baby son Richard to lunch to celebrate her 77th birthday. ‘The menu is to be Roast Leg of Lamb (from Chatsworth), chicory and red chicory salad and one other veg, Aura potatoes and then Apple Charlotte and various cheeses and I am already in a worry that it won’t be ready in time! Catherine is such a good cook.’ There is no record of how the party went but there can be no doubt that it was a great success. When Pam dined with the Neidpaths at Stanway House, near Chipping Campden, she always had to remember to wear extra underwear since the dining room was beautiful but very cold.

Having the butchery at Chatsworth which Debo had recently set up, selling meat from the estate, meant that Pam always had access to excellent fresh meat. The snag was that she had no room to freeze a whole lamb so she would buy one and sell half of it to me. On one memorable occasion we had my mother-in-law, a former lady of the Raj, staying at our house. She then lived in a safe and leafy London suburb where the doors were always kept locked and visitors discouraged. One wet and stormy night she was sipping her first whisky and soda in our kitchen, waiting for the rest of the family to get changed for a visit to the cinema, when through the door burst a soaking wet vision in black mackintosh, black sou’wester, and black wellington boots, leading a black Labrador with one hand and holding a bag of raw meat in the other. ‘Is Diana there?’ asked the vision. ‘Could you tell her it’s Mrs Jackson and I’ve brought her lamb?’ The subsequent cinema visit to an Alistair MacLean wartime adventure story was almost an anticlimax.

Aura potatoes were often the subject of Pam’s jokes. Always up to date with the introduction of new types of vegetable, when Aura was put on the market, she was delighted. ‘Oh, Diana,’ she said, when I arrived to clean, ‘I’ve always enjoyed Desiree potatoes because they make me think of Dee [Dee Hancock’s real name was Desiree] and Dee’s sister is Aura. Desiree and Aura,
both
with potatoes named after them!’ This was a very ‘Pam’ joke. It had none of the cleverness of the other sisters but Pam’s delight in it made me laugh and I remembered it thirty years later. It is somewhat reminiscent of a joke Pam heard many years previously at an Eton vs Harrow cricket match, while her brother Tom was still at Eton. In the evening after the match there was a concert, where a comedian regaled his audience with jokes, some about the schools. ‘I’ve Eton College pudding and it’s given me Harrowing pains’ made Pam laugh hilariously, but it would not have raised as much as a smile from the others.

Stories about Pam and food were wrought in Mitford family history from the time the girls were still living with their parents. On one occasion a friend of Lady Redesdale had turned up unexpectedly for lunch and distracted her from the planning of the day’s meals. The result was that rice was served twice at the same meal, first as risotto and then as rice pudding. ‘It was ghoul,
two
rices at
one
meal,’ Pam told Debo in horror. The incident was never forgotten and any disaster was referred to as ‘two rices’ in Pam’s voice. Her dismay was only matched when instructing her cook on how to make game soup. She related the dreadful event to Debo: ‘You know, Stublow, isn’t GS the loveliest and richest soup you ever
laid hands on.
Well, a
milky affair
came up.’

She must also have been unsettled by a letter she once received from Debo who had ‘Uncle Harold’ Macmillan, the former British prime minister, to stay when he was very old.

Uncle Harold is being very good, what Nanny would have called No Trouble. Sometimes he gets up, sometimes he doesn’t. When he stays in his room he has bread and butter for breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner. Yesterday he got up and had 2 helpings of curry at lunch and 2 pancakes after lots of other stuff at dinner. I can’t imagine what his stomach must make of such contrasts.

Pam must have been horrified even to think of such a diet.

When travelling in Austria she remembered the food as clearly as the magnificent scenery. ‘We had a most wonderful first course. It wasn’t a soufflé and it wasn’t an omelette, in a dish about that high,’ she said, measuring two or three inches with her fingers. ‘It was
so
delicious.’ While staying with Diana in Paris she gave her neighbouring dinner table guest the benefit of her cooking knowledge by telling him in detail, in her rather halting French, how to deal with a certain cut of pork. To prevent any misunderstanding as to which cut should be used, she stood up and pointing to her own body pronounced: ‘Il fait le couper LA.’ (‘You must cut it HERE.’) During the same stay, Diana heard her advising other guests on the treatment of potatoes – ‘Then you smash the potatoes in some of the best olive oil.’

‘Isn’t she one in a million?’ wrote Diana to Debo.

Food was so much her domain among her less domestic sisters that Pam could be quite bossy about it. Diana was somewhat daunted by the idea of spending time with Pam when cooking was involved. In a letter to Debo in 1982, she wrote:

I’m longing for my visit to Woman, but also
terrified
because she suggests we each cook every other day. First of all I can’t, and second, imagine how I’d do every single thing WRONG, wrong times, wrong ingredients, wrong casseroles (the latter bound to be ruined if I cook them). Oh Debo do you think she would take me to Marks and Sparks and I could secretly buy all? … Can’t you picture Woman and Beetle back from a walk and Woman saying ‘I smell burning’ or ‘Nard, you should have put the potatoes on
long
ago.’ It really will be the agony and the ecstasy because I love Woodfield and Woman and all but am not house trained.

However much they might laugh among themselves about Pam and her domesticity, they all enjoyed her cooking. Nancy, for instance, told Debo that Pam had cooked trout, chicken and sugared ham for various meals during a visit to Woodfield, and Debo later enthused to Nancy about a meal she and Diana had had with Pam as ‘SUPREMO. Head Soup (out of) and Scotch Collops [were they scallops or a rare cut of meat?], no pouding [pudding]. Huge coal fire. Bottle of wine she had smuggled from France [more smuggling] …’ Nancy, however, was lucky to get any wine with the trout during her gastronomic visit. When Pam collected her from the station, she asked Nancy, ‘Naunceling, air u toird?’ (Nancy, are you tired?)

Nancy said, ‘Oh, well, only rather.’

‘Because if you’re very tired I shan’t give you some really lovely wine, it wouldn’t be worth it.’

Nancy let out such a bellow of rage that Pam nearly ran into the ditch. But all was well. They drank the lovely wine and the dinner was
wondair
.

Head Soup which Debo had so enjoyed before the Scotch Collops was not made of a ‘ghoul’ (Pam’s own word) collection of animals’ brains as its name suggests. It was simply ‘soup out of my head’, as Pam would tell those who wanted the recipe; she could not give it to them because it was never quite the same – it depended what she decided to put in it or what she had in her larder and kitchen garden, but it was always delicious. She usually made the stock from a chicken carcase or a ham or lamb bone, but if she had none of those things to hand she would add water to what she called a ‘K-norr stock cube’. To this would be added all manner of seasonal vegetables and herbs from her garden and the seasoning would often include Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce, nutmeg, lemon juice and a variety of other spices depending on the ingredients. When she was making it a most enticing smell pervaded her kitchen and it was always eaten with Lady Redesdale’s wholemeal bread.