The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family (59 page)

20
A Cold Wind to
the Heart
(1958–66)

The Mosleys lived at the graceful old Bishop’s Palace at Clonfert in Ireland for only two and a half years. During that time Diana spent a good deal of her energy turning it into the lovely home in which she expected they would spend the rest of their lives. It stood on the edge of a bog and was approached by a long avenue of ancient yews called the Nun’s Walk. For twelve-year-old Max, who loved foxhunting, it was a kind of heaven. Hounds met within reach of Clonfert several times a week and he would go off alone on his useful little pony, Johnny, who loved hunting as much as Max did, and could jump walls higher than himself. On frosty days, when Max followed hounds on foot, Johnny would stand in his stable and squeal with rage at being left when he could hear hounds hunting in the bog near by. In the first winter there Max was let off school for the entire season by his father, so that he could concentrate on hunting. After that he had to knuckle down and went off to school in Germany. ‘We thought, as Europeans, our sons should know at least two languages,’ Diana wrote. ‘Alexander went to school in France and Max in Germany, but both were expelled. After that Max went to a crammer and then to Christ Church, Oxford, where he read physics. Christ Church said it would take Alexander just on his A level results but he utterly refused to go and went instead to Ohio State University where he read philosophy. Their languages have been very useful to them.’
¹

Just before Christmas in 1954, Mosley and Alexander were alone in the house while Diana was in London. During the night a chimney fire set the house alight. The horses whinnying in the stables raised the alarm, but there was no telephone and a member of staff was sent by car to fetch the fire brigade. In saving the life of the cook, who had been safely evacuated but returned to an upper room to rescue her savings, Mosley and Alexander had no time to control the blaze, which, by the time the fire brigade arrived, had taken hold. It consumed the old house, which had been as dry as tinder since Diana had installed central heating, and many of their most treasured belongings, including most of their pictures. In the morning Mosley and Max drove to the airport to meet Diana, and break the news to her before she heard it from anyone else. ‘The aircraft landed and she came across the tarmac waving and smiling happily,’ Mosley wrote, ‘. . . then came to me a strange sense, heavy with the sorrow of things: for . . . we were in the sad position of the fates of classic tragedy, aware of what is coming to happy mortals who themselves are unconscious of . . . destiny.’
²

As I approached [Diana wrote], I noticed that he was unshaven. He took my hand and said gently, ‘Sit down here on this seat. Everything is all right, nobody is hurt.’ ‘Hurt!’ I said, and my heart missed a beat . . . For many days afterwards, my hands trembled so that I could not hold a pen . . . The losses I minded most were a drawer-full of letters . . . three studies in sepia ink that Tchelichew had done of me and the boys . . . A drawing by Lamb of Jonathan . . . photographs of M and the children, the irreplaceable things with which one surrounds oneself.
³

They bought a house near the Devonshires’ Irish seat at Lismore where they lived until 1963, but by then they also owned a small property at Orsay about twenty miles from Paris. It was a delightful little jewel of a property, a
pavillon
, built in the exaggerated classical Palladian Directoire style, in 1800, to celebrate General Moreau’s victory at Hohenlinden by the architect of the Madeleine. It was called Le Temple de la Gloire, and potential buyers were told they were not allowed to change this; it was the only thing about it that Mosley did not like. Even years later, as an elderly man, he suffered twinges of embarrassment when asked by a fellow Englishman for his address. On giving it he sensed polite restraint, and somehow knew that his questioner was thinking, ‘He was always a little
exalté
and now is right round the bend.’
⁴
Diana adored everything about it. They purchased it as an empty shell in 1950 when it needed complete restoration, having stood empty for a number of years. They had no furniture, and because of currency restrictions Diana had a limited amount of francs, but she haunted the salerooms and got tremendous bargains as the Empire style she liked was temporarily out of fashion. Shortly after they bought the Temple, David had visited Paris – his last trip to France – and given Diana five hundred pounds to buy curtains. He met Mosley then, and to Diana’s delight the two men got on well together.

From now on Diana’s life was a kind of reverse of Nancy’s.
⁵
Where Nancy had great professional success and an unhappy personal life, Diana and Mosley enjoyed the sort of happy relationship where each partner was an exact half of a loving and interdependent union; the sort of marital relationship everyone would choose. But both Mosley and Diana wasted their considerable abilities in attempting to revive his career. He had mellowed: his actions, speech and even his appearance were somehow less theatrically threatening, but his post-war political aspirations were doomed to impotence.

This is not to say the Mosleys achieved nothing after the war. Between 1953 and 1959 Diana was the editor of an intellectual magazine they founded, called the
European
, and demonstrated that, like Nancy, she was a natural writer. Eventually it folded because its limited circulation meant it could not support itself, but it attracted many respected writers. In the years that followed she became a noted reviewer for
Books and Bookmen
and also for the London
Evening Standard
.

In 1959 Mosley stood for Parliament in North Kensington as the Union Movement candidate, espousing a united Europe and opposing non-white immigration. Although he insisted that his policies were economic, not racist, most people regarded him as being ‘anti-black’. Nevertheless, he received almost 10 per cent of the vote, and although this was insufficient to win the seat he was heartened that he had achieved a notable result without party support. He was never able to capitalize on this base, however, and during a series of meetings of the Union Party, held around the UK in 1962, he was the target of several physical attacks. The worst of these occurred on 31 July in the East End of London when he was thrown to the ground, kicked and punched before his supporters could help him. So serious was that attack that it was believed there might be a plot to kill him. He was still loathed by the general public, and his meetings were always portrayed as rowdy in the newspapers, though in reality they tended to be tame and quiet compared with his pre-war rallies. In private, however, the Mosleys were not only accepted but welcomed whenever they appeared in London, even by former enemies. On one occasion when they were lunching with Frank Pakenham, now Lord Longford, at the Gay Hussar in London, the arch-socialist Michael Foot was at the next table. ‘I saw Mosley look at him uneasily,’ Lord Longford said. ‘After Foot had finished his meal he stopped at our table and said, “What a pleasure to see you again, Sir Oswald.” After he left Mosley said softly, “How English. How English. Only in England could that happen.”’
⁶

Mosley continued to attend Fascist meetings in Europe, though one scheduled in Venice while Nancy was there was cancelled after Communists rioted about it. Nancy declared that she was ‘outraged that Mosley is still going about lecturing as if the war had never happened’, although the lectures were about a united Europe. Although Nancy and Diana were once again on friendly terms, Nancy had never taken to Mosley: she considered that he had irreparably damaged Diana’s life, and that because of loyalty to him Diana could never say so. Mosley did not like Nancy much, either, regarding her as silly, frivolous and disloyal to Diana. They tolerated each other because they both loved Diana, but they realized that politics was a subject to be avoided.

In 1968 when Mosley’s autobiography
My Life
was published Nancy wrote to Decca, ‘Have you noted all the carry-on about Sir Os? He says he was never anti-Semitic. Good gracious! I quite love the old soul now but really –!’
⁷

Time had done nothing to lessen Nancy’s attachment to Palewski and she was badly shocked when she learned that he had been involved in a long-term liaison with a married woman who had a son by him. Even this did not affect her love for him. Gradually she became resigned to the situation but she was unhappy that she was ‘no use to you. When things go badly you don’t need me, when they go well you turn to other, prettier ladies,’ she wrote to him. ‘So I seem to have no function . . . we are both trapped and frustrated in our different ways – I must say we take it well, neither of us shows a sad face to the world nor are we specially embittered.’ She had sat by the telephone for three long days waiting for him to call, she told him, only to hear he had called a mutual woman friend ‘for a chat. It was too much to bear.’
⁸

When David’s will was published his treatment of Decca created more headlines: ‘Redesdale Will Cuts Out Madcap Jessica’ and ‘Red Sheep Cut Out Of Will’ were typical (‘It did so remind me of Miranda,’ said Decca). Nancy was intensely irritated by her father’s ‘mad’ will, considering it unjust. After thinking it over for a few weeks, she decided to give her share of the island to Decca by way of compensation. ‘It seems to me the very least after the way Farve treated her,’ she wrote to Sydney. ‘What does she want it for? She doesn’t say. Atom base I suppose; you’ll probably see Khrushchev arriving any day.’ It was yet another of Nancy’s amazing acts of kindness, and Decca was touched. She had taken no umbrage against her father: as far as she was concerned they had parted ways long ago and she was astonished, while on holiday in Mexico, to be tracked down by journalists and asked to comment. ‘I simply told them I wasn’t expecting to be left anything,’ she wrote, ‘and couldn’t see why it was such staggering news.’
⁹

Nancy’s gift meant that Decca now owned two-fifths of Inch Kenneth, with Diana, Debo and Pam owning the remainder. After David’s death, Sydney thought she could no longer afford to go on living there and that the island would have to be sold. However, Decca’s Romilly inheritance had now been announced at £11,400, and Dinky begged her parents, with tears in her eyes, to buy the island and let Granny Muv live there. And this is what happened. Because of Nancy’s gift Decca was able to buy out her sisters’ shares,
¹⁰
and the legal arrangements were finalized during her visit to England in 1959. It was to be a momentous, even life-changing, visit for her in more ways than one.

Dinky had just started as a freshman at Sarah Lawrence College
¹¹
and did not accompany Decca and Benjamin, who travelled to England by ship, leaving Bob to fly over some weeks later, after he had completed a particularly important case. A month before Decca sailed, Blor died, a great sadness to Decca because Blor had always represented the one fixed star of her childhood. She had longed to see her again and show her the manuscript. Sydney met Decca and Benjamin at Paddington Station ‘tottering’ down the platform, ‘palsieder than ever,’ Decca wrote to Bob, knowing how he loved to hear Mitford stories. ‘She told me later she had arrived at 1.30, only to find that we couldn’t arrive until 3.30. She wondered how to fill the time and noticed some public baths so decided to have a bath while waiting . . .’ They had driven straight to the mews where Nancy was waiting and they had laughed so much that her face ached.
¹²

Decca’s family and childhood friends were all convinced that Esmond had been the love of Decca’s life and that her marriage to Bob was a friendly but far less passionate relationship. Her letters to him during this trip and over the years that followed disprove that view. Here were all the same loving phrases she had used in her letters to Esmond: ‘darling angel’ and ‘I so long for you to arrive’ and ‘Goodnight darling . . . do remind me not to plan these long trips without you any more, as I miss you fearfully.’
¹³

A few days after her arrival in London, while visiting the offices of the Communist Party, she asked one of the lawyers there if he knew of a good literary agent. He recommended James McGibbon at Curtis Brown. She made an appointment and went to see him. They chatted pleasantly until suddenly he floored her with the question: ‘Oh, by the way, were you a member of the American Communist Party?’ From an American this would have been an extremely hostile question, and the precursor to having the manuscript returned across the desk. Decca’s heart thumped, and she flushed, but she looked at his friendly expression and decided to be open about it. ‘Yes,’ she answered, and explained that she had left a year earlier and why. ‘Oh, so was I,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘I left for the same reason.’ Decca thought the conversation ‘superbly un-American’.
¹⁴

She left the manuscript with him and expected to hear nothing for about six weeks, the length of time it had taken to hear back from publishers in the USA. But within days McGibbon had sold the book to Gollancz. Furthermore Lovell Thompson of Houghton Mifflin in New York happened to be in London and he bought the American rights. By then Decca was staying with one of her Farrer cousins, Rudbin – Joan Farrer, now married to Michael Rodzianko, whom Bob and Decca disliked intensely. She returned from a freezing outing with Benjamin on the Thames to find Rudbin jumping up and down screaming that the book had been sold in the UK, with a £250 advance, and in the USA for $1,500. ‘You’ve got to go round there tomorrow and sign the contracts.’ Decca had hoped for five hundred dollars if the book was accepted, and scarcely able to believe it, she cabled Bob. Back came his teasing reply: ‘
QUITTING JOB HOLD OUT FOR $2000
’.
¹⁵
Later she wrote that she was so excited her knees buckled and Rudbin had more or less forced a whisky down her throat. ‘To my sorrow Rudbin had to go out,’ she wrote to Bob, ‘but Benjy was a very satisfactory co-celebrant. He really was decent and rushed out then and there to the corner flower stand to buy me a dear little fivepenny orchid! The awful thing was that I had a date with Woman for dinner, so had to bottle all during dinner as of course I didn’t want any of
them
knowing about it till ’tis actually out.’