The Other Mitford (21 page)

This was a sad figment of your imagination, what about Nancy, rabid anti-Nazi and always announced she was a socialist, Debo, Andrew, Tom, Derek and myself? We had all very much hoped you would return and I thought it was probably because of the very hazardous journey that you decided not to do so.

On this subject, it has to be said that although not pro-Nazi as such, Debo, Andrew, Tom, Pam and Derek were all right wing by the standards of the day and would certainly have seemed so to left-wing Jessica, who perhaps, on this occasion, had a point.

In their defence, although it at first seems a little unfair that the three sisters thought Jessica had taken the scrapbook, it was an incident in the past which encouraged them to doubt her. When Sir Oswald Mosley stood for Parliament in 1959, Jessica wrote a letter to a friend saying how sorry she was that she could find no photo of Mosley with Hitler or Mussolini just to remind people what he was like. She added – and it was not entirely a joke – ‘I guess that leaves it up to us to steam some out of Muv’s scrapbooks at the Island. I do hope she won’t mind.’

Pam and Diana remained close all their lives. Pam’s polio and different temperament meant that she could never keep up with Nancy, and although Diana was three years younger, the two girls were educated together and played together – when Pam was not inventing solitary games of her own. When Diana married Bryan Guinness Pam ran their farm at Biddesden and remained friendly with Bryan all his life. She also got on well with Mosley and kept in close touch with Diana so that when the Mosleys were imprisoned at the beginning of the war for their pro-Nazi sympathies, it was Pam who took in their two baby sons, together with Nanny Higgs. Pam’s nephews stayed with her and Derek for eighteen months at Rignell Hall, along with their two half-brothers, Jonathan and Desmond Guinness, when they were not at school or with their father.

Many years later, after Pam confessed that she could have been more affectionate towards the two boys, Diana and Debo bewailed the fact that the children could not have gone to another member of the family. But who? Their mother was Unity’s full-time carer, Debo at the time did not have a permanent home of her own, Nancy simply would not have coped and Jessica, even if she had lived in England, was not an option.

Pam was the obvious choice and it says a great deal for her strength of character that she was able to admit to her feelings so many years later. It also seems a little churlish of the other sisters to keep on about something she couldn’t help and which had happened so long ago, even if it was true. Apart from running the risk of being labelled a fascist herself, which probably bothered her not a jot, she must have performed miracles to keep her ever-increasing household fed and clothed after the introduction of rationing. She also had her mother and Unity to stay, which Unity always loved, and at Christmas 1941 she had eight to Christmas lunch and was worried that they wouldn’t have enough to eat. Of course, she managed as she always did.

Diana felt that Pam had been insensitive when she had had her dog, Grousy, and mare, Edna May, put down while she was in Holloway. She thought Pam had had no idea of how upset she would be. But Pam had had to sacrifice the herd of cattle that she had bred, including the bull, Black Hussar, because she could no longer get food for them. She knew exactly how painful such decisions were, but it was wartime, the Mosleys were in prison, and Pam had their children and their animals at a very difficult time.

In any case, although Pam may not have been at her best with babies and toddlers, she was a tremendous success with older children whom she never patronised but treated as adults with ideas of their own. Lady Emma Tennant, her eldest niece, is adamant about her rapport with older children and teenagers; as am I – my children absolutely loved her.

It was Pam’s relationship with Nancy which was the most complex and which really moulded the character she became. Nancy’s admission that Pam’s birth was one of the worst moments of her life was not a frivolous one. She made Pam’s life miserable for most of their childhood, not only teasing her cruelly but picking on her, rather than the others, because she was the least able to defend herself. Looking back over both their lives, it could be said that Nancy had done Pam a favour because, through Nancy’s treatment, Pam developed a character which was at least as strong if not stronger than her sisters’, yet she still retained her kindly, sensible nature.

This character meant that she led a much happier life than Nancy, for whom, aside from her brilliant writing, things never quite worked out. Her relationship with Hamish Erskine was a disaster, her marriage to Peter Rodd was a mistake from the beginning and her love affair with her French colonel, Gaston Palewski, never resulted in marriage – instead he married someone else while still seeing Nancy. Her books brought her success and fame but somehow she never seemed to be really happy and she never wanted to return to live in England.

Pam, however, never lost her joy and enthusiasm for life. It comes through in her letters and in the memories of all who knew her. In the latter part of her life Nancy enjoyed fame and fortune, she lived in Versailles, which she loved, she wore beautiful designer clothes and enjoyed the company of many witty friends; but contentment was not really in her nature. Pam, on the other hand, was still the ‘unknown Mitford sister’ who returned to the Cotswold countryside she loved so much and enjoyed old age clad in ‘good tweed skirts’ with her dog at her side and her friends and family around her.

It was fortunate that when Nancy was diagnosed with cancer in 1969 Pam was able to help look after her. Diana, living in Paris, was able to visit Nancy most often but she was also looking after the ageing Mosley, and while Debo was very keen to help she had many commitments at Chatsworth and with her family. Although Pam at the time was living in Switzerland, she had no family ties there – except her dogs – and it was her visits which Nancy looked forward to most and Pam whom she most needed when she felt really ill. The others could make her laugh and have fun with her but when she wanted to cry, ‘Woman is so perfect … she puts things right in a second.’ Pam took her to the hairdresser to boost her morale, cooked delicious meals when she felt she could eat them and latterly dealt with the more humiliating parts of serious illness, like bedpans.

In her gentle way she made Nancy laugh with memories of their childhood. ‘Wooms is being so truly wondair,’ wrote Diana to Debo after the hairdresser visit. And when Nancy had a new cook who didn’t come up to the mark, Diana wrote again: ‘The only real answer is Woman,’ adding, ‘Naunce says you and I are for fair weather only, and I said no, for foul too, and she says no, only Woo for foul.’

It was Pam who accompanied Nancy to Germany to research her book on Frederick the Great. ‘Woman was the heroine. I shall never go away without her again,’ wrote Nancy to Debo on her return in October 1969. In the following March she wrote to Jessica: ‘Woman is still here – she has been awfully ill but has come to now. I wish to goodness she would settle in for our old ages but don’t like to suggest it. Her company suits me exactly – but people must have their own lives I know, furniture, pictures and so on (worst of all, dogs).’ It was all a very far cry from their childhood days when Pam was constantly at the receiving end of Nancy’s bullying.

It is tempting to think that Pam, with her womanly qualities and her natural nursing skills, felt very much in her element during Nancy’s illness. But although Pam was happy to do all she could for her sister and enjoyed her company, she did not enjoy staying in Nancy’s smart but uncomfortable and draughty flat in Versailles and longed first for her cosy little house in Switzerland and later for Woodfield, where she returned during Nancy’s illness. Nancy, though she was much less sharp when she had Pam to look after her, was often in pain and must have been difficult to live with. Also, by this time Pam was over 60 and was making frequent journeys from either Switzerland or England. She never seemed to age or tire, but the constant driving, much as she enjoyed it, must have taken its toll. In a letter to Debo dated shortly after Pam’s death, Diana writes:

When Naunce died she [Pam] said, ‘Nard, let’s face it, she’s ruined four years of our lives.’ Poor Woo, how she
hated
Versailles and I expect Naunce blew hot and cold, in fact I know she did. Oh Debo! Her best and happiest years were Biddesden, Rignell and above all Chatsworth, Woodfield and YOU.

Diana, of course, was right. The sister to whom Pam was the closest was Debo, in spite of the age gap of thirteen years, which meant that they did not really share a childhood. Unlike the others they were true countrywomen, rejoicing in their love of the land and of animals, especially horses which they both knew a great deal about. Unlike the others they enjoyed living in the various country houses which, due to their father’s fluctuating fortunes, became their homes. Neither craved the bright lights of town life and simply enjoyed being at home. ‘We would have died if we had had to go to boarding school,’ said Debo, still remembering the horror of that idea at the age of 90.

Pam spent a lot of time at Chatsworth, to which her great contribution was the making of the kitchen garden; Debo was delighted with it and wrote to tell her so. Debo also stayed often at Woodfield and the two could be seen walking with Beetle along the Cotswold lanes. When Debo was modernising the Devonshire Arms, a hotel belonging to her husband’s family in the heart of the Yorkshire moors, Pam was at her side to help and would return home to give her friends enthusiastic blow-by-blow accounts of the alterations. I remember these in detail and I can’t help feeling that Debo must have missed Pam’s company, though not necessarily her ideas on interior design, when she later gave the Swan Inn at Swinbrook similar treatment. The pub had been left to the sisters by an elderly lady in the village and Debo has filled it with fascinating Mitford memorabilia which Pam would so have loved.

In 1984 Pam took Debo and her younger daughter Sophy on a trip to Swinbrook, Asthall and Batsford to show Sophy where her mother and aunts had spent their childhood. They were warmly received and one can imagine Pam’s pleasure at showing her niece her childhood haunts. They would also have seen the family gravestones in Swinbrook churchyard, including the one which Pam organised for Nancy. Carved at the top of the slab of Cotswold stone is a mole, reminiscent of the moles which appear on the Redesdale coat of arms. One of the sisters happened to remark that it looked more like a baby elephant galloping across the gravestone, which caused shrieks of laughter among the others.

Pam enormously enjoyed the annual game fair at Chatsworth and took great interest in all the innovations which Debo introduced to the house and estate, especially the restaurant and the food shop. The sisters visited the Royal Show regularly and also went to Smithfield, where Debo served her turn as president.

‘[Pam] was the complete countrywoman. Her life revolved round the kitchen garden, kitchen, her dogs and also her car. She had enormous courage which she inherited from our mother,’ said Debo, who confessed that Pam was the only one who still told her what to do, even in their old age.

W
hile Pam was enjoying rural life in Gloucestershire, her sisters’ lives also continued along the lines of the last two decades but with some marked changes, due to the fact that the Mitford Girls, once an icon for extravagantly behaved youth, were getting older.

The first casualty in the family was Sir Oswald Mosley who, until his late seventies, had remained active and energetic. After his 80th birthday in 1976 he aged quickly. He had Parkinson’s disease and the pills he took for it often caused him to fall over. For the first time in his life he began to look his age, although he still made occasional television appearances; he was due to fly to London to take part in a television programme when he died peacefully in his bed in November 1980.

For Diana it was as if part of her had died too. He had been her whole life for almost half a century. She had given up nearly everything for him and, although she had managed to pursue a literary career – she had just completed a biography of the Duchess of Windsor before Mosley died – her main aims were to convince him that he still had something important to contribute to the world, to defend his ideals and to look after his physical needs. The fact he had little influence on political thinking after the war did not matter; she would back him to the hilt and this included her unrepentant attitude towards Nazi Germany. She supported him willingly because she never stopped loving him, and for him, in spite of his early philandering, she was the love of his life.

Her sisters were not entirely surprised when, the following year, Diana had what at first appeared to be a stroke but was, in fact, a brain tumour. She was flown to a London hospital where the tumour, which turned out to be benign, was removed and she made a complete recovery, greatly helped by a period of convalescence with Debo at Chatsworth and a later holiday with Pam in the peace of Caudle Green. In hospital she had many visitors of which one of the most regular was Lord Longford. ‘Frank’s so faithful. Of course he thinks I’m Myra Hindley,’ she joked with her family.

The sisters’ lives were now calm in comparison to what they had once been but public interest in them did not diminish. In the early 1980s television presenter Julian Jebb made a documentary entitled
Nancy Mitford – A Portrait by her Sisters
to coincide with a dramatisation of
Love in a Cold Climate
and
The Pursuit of Love
. Pam was the star of the programme, with Diana and Debo appearing somewhat stiff and awkward in comparison, but old family differences had also come to the fore once again; Jessica insisted she would only appear on the programme if Jebb included a letter from Nancy which claimed that Tom had only pretended to be a fascist. Once again Diana, Debo and Pam protested, but the item about Tom had little impact on the viewing public and the programme was a success. Jessica just could not resist these political pinpricks although she must have known that they would once again cause family ructions. Nevertheless, when Mosley died, although she could not bring herself to write to Diana directly, she asked Debo to give Diana her sympathy. Of all the sisters, she had, perhaps, the most mixed up loyalties.