The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family (72 page)

29
Mosley, Diana,
A Life of Contrasts
(Hamish Hamilton, 1977), p. 142.

30
Julius Schaub, Hitler’s adjutant and personal assistant.

31
She made visits in January, April, September, and in October for her wedding.

32
Loved Ones
, p. 172

33
Diana Mosley
, p. 213.

34
A Life of Contrasts
, p. 142.

35
FO371/184721.

36
A Life of Contrasts
, p. 143.

37
The House of Mitford
, p. 384.

38
Beyond the Pale
, p. 390.

39
Loved Ones
, p. 168.

40
For most of the details on Derek Jackson I am indebted to
Loved Ones
and the
Dictionary of National Biography
, 1981–5, p. 207.

41
Railway station roughly halfway between Oxford and Cambridge.

42
He won a first-class degree in the natural sciences tripos, part I, in 1926, and a second, in part II, a year later. Leading from this, his work enabled more accurate measurement of hyperfine structures and isotope shifts.

43
The result of Jackson’s work, on the hyperfine structure of caesium, was published by the Royal Society in
Proceedings
, 1928.

44
OSU/1709, JM to NM, 13 October 1971.

45
Prophesying Peace
, p. 444.

46
Loved Ones
, p. 78.

Chapter 10: Elopement, 1937

1
OSU/1031, ER to JM, 27 June 1940.

2
Unless otherwise cited, I have used Jessica Mitford’s
Hons and Rebels
(Victor Gollancz, 1960), chapter 14, for information on her elopement.

3
OSU/155.

4
Toynbee, Philip,
Friends Apart
(MacGibbon and Kee, 1954), p. 92.

5
CHP, JM papers, 1 February 1937.

6
Ibid
., 9 February 1937.

7
Hons and Rebels
, pp. 116–17.

8
CHP, February 1937, and OSU, Esmond Romilly letters.

9
OSU/1697, SR to JM, 23 February 1937.

10
CHP and OSU, NR to SR, 23 February 1937.

11
Duchess of Devonshire,
My Early Childhood
(privately published, 1995), p. 15

12
News Chronicle
, 13 February 1937.

13
CHP and OSU, JM to SR, 5 March 1937

14
OSU/1674, UM to JM, 3 April 1937.

15
CHP, cable in JM papers, 1 March 1937.

16
Daily Express
, 1 March 1937.

17
OSU/1697, SR to JM, 3 March 1937.

18
OSU/1674, UM to JM, 3 April 1937.

19
Ibid
., Joan Farrer Rodzianko to JM, 4 April 1937.

20
Ibid
., Ann Farrer Horne to JM, c. 4 April 1937, and 23 April 1937.

21
DD, interview with the author, Chatsworth, May 2000; also Lees-Milne, James,
Ancient as the Hills
(John Murray, 1997), pp. 173–4.

22
OSU, JM to DD, 26 October 1976: ‘When you said that my running away . . . was the worst thing in your life I was v. astonished . . . As I remember us in those days we weren’t all that adoring . . . I was probably v. jealous of you for being much prettier, and it was far more Boud and me [who were close] . . . Then you also admitted in 1974 when we went over all this that if I had told you about running away you’d have told Muv and Farve, so do admit my instinct . . . was right.’

23
Arthur Pack is a previous subject of the author. See
Cast No Shadow
(Pantheon Books, 1992).

24
OSU/1709, Nancy Mitford file, JM to NM, undated, c. 29 May 1937.

25
Ibid
. Also NM to JM, 14 March 1937.

26
Ingram, Kevin,
Rebel
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985), p. 151.

27
Now 45 pence, but probably worth the equivalent of £15 in today’s terms.

28
OSU, UM to JM, 11 April 1937.

29
Romilly, Esmond,
Boadilla
(Hamish Hamilton, 1937), p. 196.

30
Rebel, p. 158.

31
OSU/1674, UM to DM, 16 May 1937.

32
OSU/1709, JM to NM, c. early June 1937.

33
OSU/1559, DD to JM, 7 July 1937.

Chapter 11: Family at Odds, 1937–8

1
OSU/1559, DM to JM, 21 May 1937.

2
Gilbert, Martin,
Prophet of Truth
(Heinemann, 1976), p. 911.

3
OSU/1700, SR to JM, 12 June 1937.

4
OSU/1700, SR to JM, 27 March 1960.

5
OSU/1559, combined: DD to JM, 13 June 1937 and 20 June 1937.

6
Guinness, Jonathan and Catherine,
The House of Mitford
(Hutc hinson, 1984), p. 410.

7
CHP, SR to JM, 17 June 1937.

8
Ibid
.

9
Ibid
., JM to NM, c. early June 1937.

10
OSU/1697, SR to JM, 12 July 1937.

11
OSU/1559, DD to JM, 20 June 1937.

12
Ibid
., DD to JM, 30 June 1937

13
OSU/1697, SR to JM, 3 July 1937.

14
OSU/1674, UM to JM, 10 August 1937.

15
The House of Mitford
, p. 415.

16
Ibid
., p. 386.

17
Speer, Albert,
Inside the Third Reich
(Sphere Books, 1960), p. 77.

18
FO371/211(97), 27 September 1937.

19
DM, interview with the author, 15 January 2000.

20
Riefenstahl, Leni,
The Sieve of Time
(Quartet Books, 1992), pp. 228–9.

21
Hanfstaengl, Ernst,
Hitler, The Missing Years
(Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1957), p. 224.

22
Ibid
., p. 285.

23
The House of Mitford
, p. 387.

24
DM to the author, January 2001. ‘Putzi had in fact become rather disloyal. He never stopped telling foreign press chiefs how terrible things were “at the top”. E.g. how much Goering and Goebbels disliked each other, and how much both disliked Streicher. He [Putzi] was an inveterate gossip and just the sort of man one doesn’t want set loose on hostile foreign journalists. Putzi should have been dropped years before but Hitler kept him on for old times’ sake . . . he was a bit of a joke.’

25
Hitler, the Missing Years, p. 286.

26
Ibid
., p. 289.

27
Mosley, Diana,
A Life of Contrasts
(Hamish Hamilton, 1977), pp. 140ff.

28
Mosley, Nicholas,
Beyond the Pale
(Secker & Warburg, 1983), p. 400.

29
Ibid
., p. 399.

30
DM to the author, February 2001.

31
The Acton drawings are now owned by Desmond Guinness and kept at Leixslip Castle in Ireland.

32
Toynbee, Philip,
Friends Apart
(MacGibbon & Kee, 1954), p. 106.

33
Ibid
., p. 107.

34
In his diary he says she asked this of a car-park attendant. See Mitford, Jessica,
Faces of Philip
(Heinemann, 1984), p. 32

35
Ibid
., p. 112.

36
Ingram, Kevin,
Rebel
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985), p. 168.

37
OSU, MS by Bryan Guinness, ‘Dichtung und Warheit among the Mitfords’, c. 1959.

38
OSU/1678, JM to NM, 30 November 1968.

39
Later Dame Christian Howard.

40
OSU/1738, JM to Emma Tennant (and others), 3 September 1993.

41
PRO, birth certificate.

42
CHP, JM to DD, 31 May 1937.

43
Mitford, Jessica,
Hons and Rebels
(Victor Gollancz, 1960), p. 148.

44
DM, interview with the author, Paris, 2000.

45
Hons and Rebels
, p. 149.

46
Friends Apart
, pp. 115–16

47
DD, interview with the author, Chatsworth, 4 February 2000.

48
Widow of the late Clement Mitford (David’s elder brother).

49
OSU/1559, DD to JM, 7 July 1937.

Chapter 12: Slide towards Conflict, 1938

1
Speech by Hitler at Nuremberg, 12 September 1938.

2
A study of statistics available in the Public Record Office shows that prior to 1938 the number of political and criminal prisoners in German concentration camps was approximately 25,000. This was similar to the number of convicted prisoners in modern Germany in 1977. The number confined in 1938 was a marked decrease from that of 1933–4. But even the figure of 25,000 was minute in comparison to the millions confined in Soviet slave-labour camps under Stalin, according to a letter in the New Statesman (22 April 1977). This only came to public knowledge two decades later.

3
See Bibliography.

4
Mitford, Jessica,
Hons and Rebels
(Victor Gollancz, 1960), pp. 145–6.

5
Interview notes, Paris, 2000.

6
DM to the author, 16 January 2001