The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family (62 page)

Nothing was too grisly, sacred or funny for Decca: the cost of dying, she said, was rising faster than the cost of living. Her investigation was savagely incisive and for half a decade she rollicked through funeral parlours opening wide her large blue eyes and asking innocently droll questions that trapped her victims like flies on sticky paper, without their even realizing they’d been had. She used her family as unpaid researchers in England and France, sending them questionnaires to answer about their experiences of funerals. Debo complied willingly, but Nancy balked, writing to explain that she was unable to call on the local
pompes
funèbre. ‘I walk past there every day,’ she said, ‘but I fear I have the superstitious feeling of an old horse passing a knacker’s yard.’
⁴⁴

Bob also shared the writing process, and the couple had tremendous fun choosing the title, oscillating between such gems as ‘The High Cost of Leaving’, ‘Remains to be Seen’ and ‘A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Mausoleum’. Eventually they settled on the harder-hitting
The American Way of Death
, and despite its subject the book soared effortlessly to number one in the bestseller charts, as Decca’s savage yet hilarious analysis of the practices of America’s funeral industry both shocked and struck chords with the public. Decca dedicated the book to Bob, ‘with much gratitude for his untiring collaboration’, and it earned her a place in a publication called
Women Who Shook the World
.

The American Way of Death
was a publishing phenomenon, holding the number-one position in the bestseller charts for months. The publishers were amazed, and so were Decca and Bob. But it was not simply a well-written and interesting read: it made a genuine impact on the way in which Americans regarded funerals. So much so that when President Kennedy was assassinated in November that year, Robert Kennedy chose the least expensive classically designed coffin on offer for his brother’s funeral because he had read
The American Way of Death
and had been impressed by what Decca had to say.
⁴⁵
‘Of all my writings,’ Decca once said in interview, ‘I’m most proud of
The American Way of Death
.’

Within the first year the book had netted over a hundred thousand dollars in royalties. From now on, like Nancy, Jessica Mitford was a media personality. That is not to say she was popular with everyone: America’s funeral industry regarded her as a sort of Lucifer sent to torment them, and they paid her the compliment of referring to her simply as ‘Jessica’ in their trade papers. They made strenuous attempts to damage her credibility by dredging up her political affiliations, intimating that by damaging the funeral industry she was helping to destroy the American way of life, that she was trying to substitute the American funeral service ‘with that practised in Communist countries such as the Soviet Union’. But too many people had been stung and there was enormous support for her demand that some federal controls be instigated to protect vulnerable people. To her amusement Decca found that clergymen were among her staunchest supporters in this.
⁴⁶

In the years that followed Decca took on other crusades, such as the Famous Writer School, which advertised for new members with the slogan, ‘Would you like to become a writer?’ and asked large up-front fees for tuition by mail. Although this was a publicly traded company Decca soon saw off the organization, pointing out in articles, interviews and lectures that so far it had pulled in millions of dollars from students without creating one famous writer. A chic Manhattan restaurant, which added a service charge to a bill she considered already inflated, was demolished in one of her articles. When she investigated pornography she described at a lecture a film she and Bob had watched during research: ‘There was a man with an enormous penis perched on a motorbike with a woman. I said to Bob, “That looks dangerous.”’ A follow-up book, The American Way of Birth, spotlighted the huge cost of giving birth. Her signal failure, she thought, was a book about the American prison service: Kind and Usual Punishment. She felt strongly about the many injustices she had discovered during this research and, indeed, she made some progress in restricting the use of convicts by drug companies for experimental research. But the book did not sell in huge numbers, perhaps because the book-buying public did not personally associate with the subject as they had with death and birth. But Decca loved taking on controversial topics that no one else would touch and there was no matter into which she would not delve, from racism to venereal disease to the ‘sale’ of honorary college degrees.

In
Poison Penmanship – The Gentle Art of Muck-raking
, she wrote that in her repertoire she had something to offend everyone. The title was chosen after she was told by a television interviewer that an opponent had referred to her as ‘the Queen of Muck-rakers’. She replied, ‘If you’re going to be a muck-raker it’s best to be a queen, don’t you think? . . . Of course, the whole point of muck-raking, apart from all the jokes, is to try to do something about what you’ve been writing about. You may not be able to change the world but at least you can embarrass the guilty.’ Afterwards she rushed to the library to look up ‘muck-raker’ in the
Oxford English Dictionary
. It said ‘often made to refer generally to a depraved interest in what is morally “unsavoury” or scandalous’, and Decca concluded comfortably, ‘Yes, I fear that does rather describe me.’
⁴⁷

21
Views and Reviews
(1966–80)

Decca and Bob visited Europe regularly throughout the sixties and seventies, Decca travelling over at least once a year, either with Bob or on more extended trips without him. Before Benjamin left school he often accompanied her on tours of Italy, Spain and France, the pair making an eclectic set of new friends as they travelled. By the end of the decade Benjamin had grown up and started work as a piano tuner. Dinky, who spent the 1960s and 1970s working for the civil-rights movement, parted from the Black Power leader James Forman, by whom she had two sons, and became an emergency nurse working in hospitals in Detroit, New York and Atlanta. To Decca’s satisfaction Dinky was to remarry very happily.
¹
There was no time in her busy life for her to accompany her mother, so Decca often travelled to Europe alone, but was seldom lonely.

In Paris Nancy took her to Society parties where she revived old friendships with Derek Jackson and others, including, to her amusement, Mr Whitfield, the former consul at Bayonne who had attended her and Esmond’s wedding, and in London among leftist literary circles she made new contacts such as Sonia Orwell, widow of George, who became an important friend to her over the next two decades. Nancy insisted on taking Decca to Dior where she introduced her to the
vendeuse
as her ‘very rich sister’. For years Decca had quipped that Nancy was dressed by Dior while she was dressed by J.C. Penney, but on this occasion ‘I ended up with a dress that cost seven hundred dollars,’ she said. Twenty years later she was still wearing it. Occasionally she saw Pam, who made her laugh by threatening to write a book based on the papers she had saved from her years with Derek, since she noted that Decca and Nancy had become ‘so rich’ by cashing in their memories. Sometimes she stayed with Debo in Ireland or at Chatsworth, or with Desmond, Diana’s second son, of whom she and Bob became very fond. Still, she could never bring herself to see Diana and would go out for the day if Diana happened to be calling wherever she was staying. Nancy teased her by telling her that Diana habitually wore a baroque brooch that Decca had given her before eloping with Esmond. ‘She says it is her great treasure . . . I hope your hard heart is touched! Sisters, Susan, Ah Soo!?!
²
(Confusingly Nancy and Decca always called each other Susan in their correspondence. No one can remember why.)

The downside of these enjoyable trips for Decca was being parted from Bob. She missed the laughter she shared with him, and he was equally affected by their partings. ‘Never, never will I let you leave again,’ he wrote typically. ‘The days drag on and on and it’s not even June. Oh Dec I miss you . . .’
³

In 1966 Bob ran for the office of District Attorney in Alameda County. He knew from the start that he would not be elected, no one with a past rooted in Communism could be, and he was also the first person to challenge the incumbent for fourteen years (‘Clear the way with a new DA’). But he received a creditable share of the vote, which was a tribute to his personal local popularity.

As their lives became busier the Treuhafts decided that they had no time to use or look after the island, and put it on the market. Before they sold it, however, they spent a month there, celebrating Bob’s fiftieth birthday with a day-long party attended by scores of visitors, including Sydney’s old neighbours from Gribun, and Philip Toynbee and Rudbin. The crew of a yacht who put in to get fresh water were bemused to find numbers of jolly people in party clothes (and some in their cups) wandering around the tiny island. Philip Toynbee greeted them: ‘If you decided to kill your children because of nuclear attack how would you do it?’ he asked, with the careful enunciation of one who had imbibed generously.
⁴
In the evening there were Highland dancing and parlour games, such as Scrabble, until guests reeled off to bed in the small hours. Two of them decided to swap partners but were discovered in
flagrante
. ‘Next morning there was a bit of a frost,’ Decca reported to a friend in California. ‘Only the innocent really enjoyed the usual kipper.’

The island was finally sold in 1966, and Decca visited for ‘one last look’ in the following summer. While in London she was introduced to Maya Angelou at a party at Sonia Orwell’s home. Maya had just finished writing her bestselling memoir
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
, and in the following days she brought sections of the manuscript for Decca to read. The two women were to become the closest of friends, and Bob stated that one of the greatest moments in Decca’s life came when Maya began calling her ‘Sister’. Decca knew a thing or two about sisters. At about this time she was contacted by a friend of mine,
Sunday Times
journalist Brigid Keenan, who was writing a piece on Nancy and wanted Decca to comment on Nancy’s statement that ‘Sisters are a shield against life’s cruel adversity.’ Decca replied, ‘But sisters are life’s cruel adversity!’
⁵
Her relationship with Maya, however, was supremely important to her. ‘It was as close – or closer – than a blood relationship . . . As sisters they went through many good and bad times together,’ Bob said, ‘and I was sometimes lucky enough to join in.’

While Decca’s career was taking off during the last half of the 1960s, Nancy’s life was also changing. Fretful in Paris, now that she saw so little of the Colonel, she decided to move from rue Monsieur. She found a house in Versailles, at 4 rue d’Artois, which suited. It was small but it had half an acre of garden, which enchanted her; she thought it was like living in the country. She hated the idea of a lawn and wanted only roses and wild flowers – poppies, valerian, irises, orchids, buttercups, marsh marrow, daisies and harebells. The effect she wished to create was a ‘
champ fleuri
’ and, indeed, in the spring it resembled a country bower: ‘My garden looks as though 1,000 Edwardian hats had fallen into it (roses).’ By midsummer, however, it was more like an overgrown hayfield. She had as pets a cat, a hen bought for market who won her affection, and a tortoise who crawled out from under the shrubbery in the spring. She spent a lot of time in the garden watching hedgehogs and birds, bees and butterflies. The Colonel visited her sometimes, always her happiest days.

It was on a day in March 1969 that Nancy’s world came apart. When the Colonel called to see her he gave her the worst possible news. Knowing how upset she would be, Palewski had found it difficult to tell her he was getting married – indeed, he had called twice and left without broaching the subject because she was feeling unwell. But at last he had to tell her: for on the following day the marriage was to be announced in
Figaro
. Nancy knew his bride quite well: she was rich and titled, and Palewski had been in love with her for many years but her husband had refused to give her a divorce. That alone was a deep wound; for one of the most frequent excuses Palewski had used when Nancy had asked him about marriage was that he could not afford to marry a divorcée without ruining his career. Now he had retired from politics, and he had chosen a divorcée after all, but not Nancy. The newly-weds were to live in the bride’s chateau, Le Marais, forty kilometres outside Paris and regarded by many as one of the most beautiful chateaux in France. To her friends Nancy was matter-of-fact in announcing the news (‘The Colonel (married) has just been. He makes that face – “it’s all too silly” . . .’),
⁶
as though she had known about it all along and was pleased for him, but the hurt was like a knife.

Shortly afterwards she became seriously ill. Later, she made the link between the terrible shock of learning about the Colonel’s marriage and the real onset of her illness, although it is clear that she was unwell weeks before Palewski broke his news. It began with obscure back pains that were written off as lumbago. When the discomfort persisted for two months, doctors investigated and found a lump in her liver. A tumour the size of a grapefruit was removed, and doctors advised Debo and Diana that it was malignant. Nancy was not told of this, as everyone thought it would be too much for her to bear, although when Decca heard, she strongly disagreed. ‘I feel it is verging on wicked not to tell Nancy,’ she wrote, ‘because don’t you see, it’s awful enough to get such news when one is feeling fairly OK & strong; but if delivered very late in the thing and in much pain, harder to bear I think.’
⁷
She wrote immediately to Nancy offering to fly to Paris as soon as she could get a flight, and received an enthusiastic reply dated 9 May, which said, ‘Oh yes, do come.’ Decca postponed a planned holiday with Bob in the South and booked her flight. Next day a letter, dated 10 May, arrived in which Nancy said, ‘I’m afraid it will be so dull for you as I want to work.’ The following day, a further letter, dated 11 May, said point-blank that Decca should not bother: ‘My maid is too tired to cope with visitors and I want to work . . . and please don’t offer to help [with the housework] as there’s no point.’
⁸
Decca was not only hurt by the apparent rejection but did not know what to do. Then it occurred to her that Nancy’s indecision might be related to Diana, who called in on her each day: perhaps the problem of how to keep them apart was worrying her, or perhaps fear about the fall-out when these two estranged sisters met again – as Decca recognized was inevitable.

She consulted Debo, who advised her to go a little later in the year, and Decca did so, after writing that she would be careful to avoid any friction with Diana and hoped Diana would agree. Diana, of course, as mentioned earlier, had made several attempts over the years to reconcile with Decca, all rejected. Decca stayed at a small hotel round the corner from Nancy’s house and spent her days sitting with Nancy, trying to entertain her when she was awake. When Diana called in, Decca usually went off to do the daily shopping or performed small tasks to keep out of the way. She spent hours ‘removing whole continents of clover from the beds of parsley and lettuce, or anything Nancy asks. Thus I feel useful, in fact indispensable,’ she wrote to Bob. There were times, though, when she and Diana were alone together when Nancy was sleeping after an injection. And Decca was usually scrupulous to be well behaved, as she had promised, for Nancy’s sake. It was curious, meeting Diana again after thirty-four years: ‘She looks like a beautiful bit of aging sculpture (is fifty-nine), they don’t have this thing of wanting to look young here, her hair is almost white, no makeup, marvellous figure, same large, perfect face and huge eyes,’ she wrote to Pele de Lappe. ‘We don’t of course talk about anything but the parsley weeding and Nancy’s illness. God, it’s odd. I thought it must have given her a nasty turn to see me, [I was] aged 18 when last seen by her. But she told Nancy I hadn’t changed except for my voice.’
⁹
Diana’s recollection is that they stayed off the subject of politics but often sat on the sofa together, laughing and chatting about the old days quite normally. However, one day while Diana was visiting Decca asked Nancy if there was some little job that needed doing. Nancy asked her to weed a clump of iris and she went off meekly to do so, returning to say mischievously, ‘I’ve given them
Lebensraum
.’
* The bitter little joke, at which Nancy choked, would not have been lost on Diana, but she did not react and the matter passed quietly.
¹⁰

For a while the worst symptoms retreated and, although it was merely a remission, Nancy thought she had recovered and began work on what was to be another bestselling biography,
Frederick the Great
. The research took her to East Berlin, accompanied by Pam who spoke German, which Nancy did not. There, Nancy had a similar experience to that of Bob and Decca in Hungary: she was approached by a personable young man who told her of his desperate longing for freedom to travel. ‘You know, how can Decca go on believing in it all?’ Nancy wrote to Debo. ‘I shall tell her it’s all right being a commy in our countries but wait until you are nabbed by the real thing! For ten days we haven’t moved without a policeman. I must say it suited me because I loved being looked after . . . still, it’s a funny feeling . . . Checkpoint Charlie is
gruesome
.’
¹¹

Decca was not the only sister to feel concern that Nancy had not been told the truth about her condition: Diana also felt pangs of guilt. ‘N. says she has got on so well with the book [
Frederick the Great
] that there is absolutely no hurry . . . this kills one with guilt, in case she reproaches & says I
could
have gone quicker & finished if I’d known.’ Her solution was to confide in Nancy’s publisher and ask them to press for an earlier delivery date, which worked as Diana had hoped. After the biography Nancy planned to write her autobiography, but the illness overtook her again. For a further three years she suffered increasingly agonizing bouts of illness and pain, offset by shorter and shorter periods of remission. She spent periods in hospital in France and England while her symptoms were investigated until even she suspected cancer, yet despite the malignant tumour the doctors were unable to diagnose the exact nature of her illness so she always had the hope that they would discover the cause and she would be cured. Meanwhile, with each session of illness, the pain grew relentlessly worse. By the time she took up her autobiography it was too severe to allow her to concentrate on writing and she got no further than mentioning it in a few letters to friends and family.

Towards the end she could hardly bear visitors except her sisters, and a few very close friends. Decca went to be with her three times, on each occasion for about a week. Debo and Pam stayed as often as they could, and Diana called almost daily. A few very close friends who could amuse Nancy were allowed to visit, and of course her beloved Colonel. On better days she continued to write her wonderful letters, usually managing to find a joke despite expressions of fearful pain. To her great joy she was awarded the Légion d’Honneur, which was conferred in person by the Colonel. And then, shortly afterwards, she wrote to Decca cheerily: