Irrepressible (9 page)

“What a contrast to New York!” Esmond wrote from Washington to his friend Peter Nevile in London. “Instead of the rather wearing kind of sophistication of endless radioish repartee, etc. You get a lot of people sitting around talking about a ‘social program.’” A young labor lawyer newly arrived in Washington by the name of Robert Treuhaft noted the capital’s “very powerful anti-fascist, anti-Hitler spirit.” To Decca it seemed the best place to find a job and companions while Esmond was away. She was impressed by the way so many young supporters of President Roosevelt “lived and worked with a crusading enthusiasm.” Many of the staff workers in Washington identified themselves as New Dealers (after Roosevelt’s policies to revive the economy in the wake of the Great Depression). Decca shared their idealism, collected their literature, and soon employed the local bureaucratic lexicon of
aid schemes
and
benefit packages
and
farm subsidies
.

She and Esmond made the rounds of cause parties and benefits. She was the aristo-renegade who had publically denounced her family’s connection to fascism. He was the veteran who had fought in Spain. At the end of May, Decca’s brother-in-law, Diana’s husband Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, was arrested and imprisoned for activities threatening the defense of the realm. In July, Diana was also arrested for being a security risk. Nancy Mitford, among others, had secretly informed on Diana. “Not very sisterly,” Nancy admitted, but it was the thing to do.

In Washington, among the socialites and smart-setters who tended to lean left, Decca and Esmond found a few new friends. Kay Meyer (later
Katharine Graham, publisher of the
Washington Post
) and Decca found they had a great deal in common. Both had been born in 1917 and brought up in homes patrolled by nannies and maids. As unenthusiastic debutantes, both had veered off the beaten path for girls of wealth and well-positioned families. While Decca had escaped to Spain, Kay went to college, where she became a dedicated New Dealer. Both had fathers who had powerful personalities and extravagant résumés that included dabbling in gold mines (Eugene Meyer’s investments had struck it rich, while Farve Mitford’s financial experiments had gone bust). Both women had eccentric mothers whose comparative quirks must have supplied long nights of conversation lubricated by that season’s fashionable cocktails: Gin Rickeys, Pink Ladies, and Tom Collinses.

Decca had grown up in a house of girls. It had been liberating to escape being next-to-youngest and all the intense scrutiny, sniping, power struggles, and alliances of their sorority. Decca must have felt great relief finding a friend like Kay, a responsive and discerning companion so unlike her sisters. Over the previous few months, Decca had spent a lot of time alone with Esmond, and she adored him, but there was no denying he was a handful. The days were long gone when he had dominated every conversation, but she still often had to fight for an inch, he was so full of opinions. He was quick to take offense when criticized and, at the same time, a harsh critic of others. He wasn’t a snob, but he held high standards about the quality of literature a person should read and how to interpret almost everything. In Kay, Decca found an adviser she trusted and a girlfriend in whose company she could relax.

Watching the war arrive and the news in Europe from her crazy Floridian perch had wrung her out. Esmond’s resistance to any discussion of her family had made her doubt herself. She knew it wasn’t wrong to wonder, to inquire, even to have some sympathy for Unity. To Kay, Decca confessed her fears, scorned fascist Diana and all her works, and described the amazing and contradictory Nancy. (Kay also had an older, accomplished sister who meant the world to her.) All those surface similarities would
have meant little if Decca and Kay hadn’t clicked as optimistic outsiders, sympathetic to one another’s ambition to eschew convention and have brilliant careers as journalists. Kay had recently returned from a stint as a junior reporter on the
San Francisco Chronicle
; Decca admired her experience and education and dreamed of taking journalism classes once she found a job. They shared political convictions—starting with a mutual admiration for Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. Kay had (like Decca) visited Paris in 1936, where each attended a demonstration organized by the antifascist alliance the Popular Front, an experience that Kay said produced “the most impressive feeling of communal strength I had ever had.”

That the Romillys were glamorous, attractive, and temporarily without visible means of support meant they would have to spend their last dime on a hotel or fall back on society contacts (Lord Lothian, the British ambassador, was one). It was a great relief when Michael and Binnie Straight, a wealthy young couple and benefactors of the Spanish antifascist committee, invited them to share their Washington home. Michael was a sleek, Cambridge-educated cosmopolite who worked for the family firm,
New Republic
magazine, which he would eventually direct as publisher. Esmond was more liable to view a trust-fund baby as a prospective meal ticket than a buddy, but Straight’s politics provided a partial dispensation. Esmond had the ability to talk people into gambles and risks and outrageous schemes that sounded just plausible, like starting a cattle ranch in Arizona (investment prospectus upon request) or betting the house on Peccadillo in the fourth race at the track. Straight considered Esmond “brilliant, colorful, often hysterically funny, sometimes unspeakably cruel.”

Decca treated Binnie, a sagacious nineteen-year-old (whom her friends agreed looked like Alice in Wonderland) like a younger sister. She alternately teased and counseled Binnie, particularly regarding the subject of money. Decca was careful to preserve every dime of her own savings (a necessity, thrift was now also a game at which she excelled), but she had countless opinions about causes to which Binnie might tithe her fortune. Both Straights agreed that Decca had quite a “fine satirical mind.” Binnie
admired her new friend’s independence, nonchalance, and ambition to become a journalist. The younger woman was intrigued by the way Decca coped with her unpredictable husband—this took another kind of bravery. He could be sweet and flirtatious when he turned on the charm, but he would sometimes stomp around the house disturbing the help (whom he nonetheless always wished to befriend). It was maddening to have the Romillys for houseguests. They were sloppy and disrespectful of people’s things but if they broke an ornament or tore a curtain, they would fall all over themselves to apologize, promising to repair or replace whatever it was. Even Esmond—no matter how he scowled or snarled—couldn’t suppress a certain imprinted courtesy. He was unquestionably gallant, and Decca was marvelously sympathetic.

It was at one cause party that they met Virginia and Clifford Durr, who in 1933 moved from Alabama, following Virginia’s sister Josephine (called “Sister” in the Southern style) and her husband, Hugo Black (then a senator from Alabama and soon to become a Supreme Court justice), into the heart of the Roosevelt administration. Cliff was chief counsel for the Reconstruction Finance Commission. Virginia was active in the Women’s Division of the National Democratic Committee and was devoted to overthrowing the poll tax: a prohibitive fee imposed at various locations across the South to keep nonwhites and white women from exercising their right to vote. The poll tax, an entirely unconstitutional custom sustained by segregationists and male supremacists, was maintained through threats and intimidation.

The Durrs’ home in the graceful suburb of Alexandria, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington, was one of the unofficial New Deal salons. An invitation to an evening there might include sharing a home-cooked Southern meal with government workers, labor activists, and musicologists. At their first encounter, Decca had felt “outnumbered” by Virginia’s conversational style and wasn’t eager to repeat the experience. Nevertheless, at Virginia’s invitation, the Romillys and Straights arrived for a dinner date, the women dressed in hats and heels.

Virginia ushered them in. “Why, I’m so absolutely delighted that you-all could come!” she cooed. Her house was in a state of controlled chaos, the drawing room occupied by a “tangled mass of small children.” Virginia, an irresistible hostess and raconteur extraordinaire, launched at once into a set of stories to enthrall her new audience. Cliff, ever the gracious host, poured drinks amid the persistent din.

Between those colossi Esmond and Virginia, it wouldn’t have been easy to get a word in edgewise. Virginia had a loud voice, but she was always perfectly polite, correct, and hospitable. She was big-boned with quick reactions. Though sometimes brash, Virginia also had an open and vulnerable side—an appealing way of suddenly cracking a smile. If Decca had been any less confident, she might have felt jealous.

Virginia and Esmond almost instantly developed a strong rapport. Before her acquaintance with the Romillys, Virginia had never met an English person. She was “very much engrossed with him.” His impressions of American politics seemed exotic, an “aristocratic . . . upperclass . . . point-of-view.” But his assessment of the unsophisticated and his contempt for American politicians (though not Roosevelt) made her laugh. Esmond had a
realpolitik
view of the Hitler-Stalin pact. He “knew it wasn’t a real pact, just buying time” for the Russians to build an army to fight the Nazis. To Virginia, “he was a man, not a boy.” He felt a similar attraction of like minds. Her age, experience, and breadth of interest gave him the confidence to take a wild gamble. He’d have to leave for Ontario, Canada, in a matter of days, and he was sure Virginia would be the best person to protect Decca in his absence.

He went to be alone with Virginia in the kitchen, where she was cooking dinner. A few comments were made on the savory fragrance, the comfortable feel of home. He had already given her the nickname “Old Virginny” (after the song starting “Carry Me Back to . . .”). Then, as Virginia Durr recollected later, he asked her to look after his wife. “Don’t you think you could keep dear Decca while I’m gone? You know the Straights are going up to New York for the weekend and she will be all alone. I’m sure that she
will be so lonely. If you will just keep her for the weekend, I can’t tell you how much I would appreciate it.”

That was what he had wanted? If Virginia had thought his advances were intended otherwise, she quickly recovered. She told him, in case he hadn’t heard, that the Durrs had already agreed to house some English refugees, a mother and child who would be arriving soon. The house would be full with the Durrs, their four children, and Virginia’s mother living with them: “We’re already cramped.”

That didn’t faze Esmond. “Just keep her until your refugees arrive,” he replied. Anything might happen—their transport ship might be bombed, for instance.

Virginia didn’t know Decca and didn’t want her, but the American hostess could not say this to her guest. He was a very appealing young soldier, but Virginia was no pushover. She had years of hard-earned experience in saying no gracefully. “Well, Esmond,” she said. She would have to make this very clear. “I’m terribly sorry, but I’m going to the Democratic Convention in Chicago. I’m leaving almost immediately.”

“That will be wonderful. Just take Decca with you,” he said.

ESMOND DROVE OFF to Canada, leaving Virginia and Decca just a few days to take one another’s measure before they set forth together to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Virginia had impressive energy, stamina, concentration, and curiosity, but she was not happy about the added work Decca’s company entailed: “I didn’t want to take her a bit.” Why, she wondered, would Decca even want to attend this inimitably American event? People wore funny hats, drank themselves silly, and took every public opportunity to swell up and boast about their wonderful states, counties, and towns. Virginia didn’t plan to be a tour guide; she had a mission, the abolition of the poll tax.

She was planning to drive out with two young New Dealers, a man and a woman. With all their luggage and a two-day drive ahead, Decca would crowd the car. But Virginia couldn’t in the end deny a hero of the Spanish Civil War his request, especially not after he had recapped Decca’s last year. He told Virginia they had “come to the U.S. to get Decca out of the sorrow she was in over the loss of the dead baby.” Since then, her favorite sister—infatuated with Hitler—had tried to commit suicide; another sister had been imprisoned by Britain for Nazi sympathies; another had married in her absence (so she was missing the good things, too); her father had declared he wouldn’t see her again; her brother-in-law had been captured by Nazis; her father-in-law had just died of cancer; and her brother was a British officer somewhere in Africa. Now her husband was on his way to become a pilot in the Canadian Air Force, and neither he nor she had ever been to Canada. Virginia agreed. How could she not? That didn’t mean she was happy with the situation.

Decca, meanwhile, was just barreling forward. Nobody could say she didn’t have grit. She hadn’t yet figured out Virginia, whose personal intensity approached Esmond’s on the tectonic scale, but she proceeded apace as she had early on with her husband by watching, listening, making herself useful, and being amusing. Traveling to the Democratic Convention sounded like fun—she would hear Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt give speeches, and she would get to go west, which she and Esmond had often discussed doing together. When she returned to Washington, she might go stay with the Straights or the Meyers, whoever would have her until she got on her feet. She’d find a job. One more factor to add to the mix—she was about three months pregnant. This was the real reason Esmond was determined to see her settled.