Authors: Diana Alexander
Shortly before the outbreak of war Derek and Pam went to America on a visit arranged through Derek’s boss, Professor Lindemann, on behalf of the Admiralty. This trip gave them the opportunity to visit Jessica and her husband Esmond, who had by now settled in the US. Pam often made surprise visits to her sisters as their letters to one another show and this was no exception. ‘I was amazed at Woman turning up here,’ Jessica wrote to her mother. The sisters were delighted to see one another but Derek and Esmond did not get on; also, Pam was very worried when Jessica told her that they hid their money between the pages of books. She was sure that they would forget where it was or leave it behind when they left.
Esmond, however, was fascinated when he learned that they planned to fly back to England. Since June 1939 the Americans had operated a transatlantic flying boat service which carried up to seventeen civilian passengers. On 4 August a British service began to operate and Derek booked them in on the second trip in a Caribou flying boat. Pam wrote to Jessica:
Our flying journey was wonderful, but rather frightening when we took off. The plane seemed far too small to battle across the Atlantic. We came down at Botwood in Newfoundland, and were able to go for a walk while the plane was being filled up with petrol. The next stop was at Foynes in Ireland. The whole journey only took 28 hours!
Her matter-of-fact description is another example of the quiet, largely unknown Mitford sister’s courage and spirit of adventure. She would probably have been one of the first 100 women to fly the Atlantic, but she took it entirely in her stride.
Unsurprisingly, the journey caused something of a stir and before they boarded the seaplane, journalists were waiting to question them about the purpose of their journey. ‘We are in rather a hurry to get home for our little dog’s birthday tomorrow,’ said Derek, in what must have been a particularly convincing fashion. However much they loved the dogs – during their stay in America they had a competition each morning to see who would wake first and sing good morning to the dachshunds back home – the truth was that Derek was carrying top-secret papers, which he refused to trust to the diplomatic bag in case they should fall into the hands of the Russians.
Horses, too, played a big part in their lives, both in the hunting and racing worlds. Pam had got to know Derek well while he was riding to hounds with the Heythrop Hunt with which he went out frequently; another of his passions was to ride as an amateur in National Hunt races where he enjoyed fair success. He kept most of his horses with trainer Bay Powell and Pam would often accompany him to Powell’s yard near Aldbourne when he went to ride them out on the downs. She also looked after those which were kept at Rignell and it is very obvious from his letters before and during the war that Derek entrusted them to her care. In August 1940 he wrote to say: ‘I am writing to Bay [Powell] to have all the horses sent home. They will have to stay out all winter – buy oats and hay.’ In February 1941 he was advising her to ‘have the two-year-olds back as soon as the weather seems to get warmer’, and when she told Derek about a colt with an injured leg, he said that it should only be led out enough to get the swelling down, and not turned out.
In their love letters Derek would often assume the character of a horse and at the end of one letter, written in January 1936, he drew a miserable-looking horse above the words, ‘the poor Derek horse is crying because you aren’t here to stroke it’. He would always sign himself Derek (H-D) for Horse of Dog, the pet name they used together, sending, of course, his love to the DDs (darling dogs) and later the dds (their puppies). In the years after their divorce, when they had become friends again, their letters continued to convey their shared love of horses and dogs (especially dachshunds), and at their last meeting, at the wedding of Debo’s daughter Sophy at Chatsworth in 1979, it seemed entirely natural that Pam should greet Derek with the words, ‘Hello Horse’.
As well as their love of horses and dogs, Pam proved to be a good wife to Derek because she had all the homely qualities that most of her sisters lacked. Nancy, perhaps now rather envious of the sister she had once treated so cruelly, wrote to family friend Mrs Hammersley (known as Mrs Ham): ‘Pam lives in a round of boring gaiety of the neighbourly description but even so I envy a country existence of almost any kind and feel certain I shall never achieve one.’ But Pam had her own worries, about food and petrol rationing and about blacking out the windows at Rignell. ‘We have had to make black curtains for
all
the windows. Even if a pinprick of light shows the police come rushing down on you!’ she wrote to Jessica at the end of September 1939. It was so typical of Pam to worry about domestic matters like blackout curtains while still being terribly anxious about Unity, who had disappeared after trying to take her life in Munich. Her whereabouts were not discovered until the beginning of October.
Always able to look on the bright side, Pam describes a visit to London, where ‘we saw barrage balloons for the first time. They are so very beautiful and make a wonderful decoration.’ Her greatest sadness was having to give up her herd of Aberdeen Angus cattle due to the lack of cattle feed. ‘It is very sad because I bred some really beautiful ones. However they will make good beef. The bull, Black Hussar, has already been sent to the butcher. Poor Black Hussar!’ she wrote to Jessica in June 1941.
She was also anxious about Derek’s determination to join the RAF, even though it was she who had made this possible; but once he was accepted she took on the role of a service wife with her usual equanimity, sending such essentials as boot polish, button polish, a pillow and warm clothes. At this time she managed to cook tasty meals from next to nothing and there was always a plenteous supply of eggs both at Rignell and also in Stanmore; Derek was stationed at Stanmore for a short time in 1942 where she joined him and brought with her some chickens. By strange coincidence, her sister Deborah and Andrew Cavendish, later to be the Duke of Devonshire, were also living in Stanmore (also with chickens), as was Pam’s lifelong friend Margaret Budd, whose husband George was in the same squadron as Derek.
Derek wrote to Pam at the end of the war to say how much he was looking forward to sampling smoke-cured bacon from a pig killed at Rignell, and which he could be sure Pam would cook to perfection. As hostilities were finally drawing to a close, Pam looked after a cow called Holly which Derek’s boss at the Clarendon Laboratory, Professor Lindemann (now Lord Cherwell), had acquired in order to have a constant supply of milk and cream. He had a bizarre diet of olive oil, dairy products and eggs (which came from the Rignell farm) and Derek would take the latter two into Oxford twice a week for him. Pam was very happy to keep the skim milk for the calves.
Her qualities of good housekeeping and parsimony in wartime are perhaps best summed up by her joyous remark to Diana when peace was finally declared: ‘Well, Nard, VE Day and the Bromo has lasted!’ Bromo was the finest lavatory paper, described by its manufacturers as being ‘unsurpassed in quality and purity because it has been cooked for hours until it is of the consistency necessary for toilet paper’. And Pam still had some left with which to start the austerity period …
F
or nearly a month the family in England had no news of Unity since communications between England and Germany were severed. Then in early October they received a letter from Teddy von Almasy, brother of Janos, who lived in neutral Budapest. He told them that Unity was ill in hospital but was recovering; he later cabled them to say that she was making good progress, but more than this they could not discover. Then in November they heard from the American Embassy that Unity was in hospital where she was recovering from a suicide attempt. The papers went wild with stories which were generally far from the mark, and finally, on Christmas Eve, David and Sydney had a telephone call from Janos; he was in Switzerland with Unity, who had been sent there by Hitler in a special ambulance carriage attached to a train. He handed the phone to Unity. ‘When are you coming to get me?’ she pleaded.
In spite of it being Christmas, David managed to get hold of the necessary travel documents and Sydney and Debo set off for Switzerland three days later. It was a freezing cold, miserable journey with no trains running on time. Sydney and Debo were appalled by Unity’s appearance. She was very thin and pale and her hair was matted around her head wound. Worse still, she had a vacant expression and she remembered some things but not others. ‘She was like someone who had had a stroke,’ Debo recalled. But she recognised them and was delighted to see them. It turned out that Hitler had paid for her hospital treatment.
Then began the traumatic task of getting Unity home. The journey was cold and took forever and Unity was so very ill. To make matters worse the press were waiting for them at Calais. ‘The Girl Who Loved Hitler’ was not going to escape them until they had heard her dramatic story. Sydney was offered £5,000 for the story which, of course, she declined. By now they had missed the boat and had to stay overnight in a Calais hotel and sail the following morning. David was waiting anxiously at Folkestone with an ambulance and as Unity appeared on a stretcher, he rushed up to embrace her, all differences forgotten.
They were not yet free of the press who besieged them again as they tried to leave the port. Then the ambulance broke down and they had to spend the night in a hotel, suspecting that the vehicle had been tampered with deliberately. Finally, they arrived home – in this case, High Wycombe – where Unity rested before being admitted to hospital in Oxford.
The doctors told Sydney that everything had been done for Unity in Germany and only time could improve her condition now. In fact, although she improved greatly, she never progressed further than the age of 12, she was prone to violent rages, was very clumsy and was incontinent at night. Sydney now made it her life’s work to look after her and a hard task it proved to be. Eventually she, Debo and Unity moved to Old Mill Cottage in Swinbrook where Unity knew her way around and was known and accepted by the local people. She would have liked to take her to the remote Scottish island of Inch Kenneth, which David had bought with some of the proceeds from the sale of Swinbrook, but the authorities would not allow people with the views of Sydney and Unity to live on an offshore island in wartime. Unity achieved a degree of independence and could travel to London alone, do her collage and re-taught herself to write, but the funny, eccentric, attractive Unity had gone forever.
The outbreak of war meant much unusual activity for Nancy. Prod joined the army which meant that they didn’t have to see too much of one another and she was left to her own devices; playing at being a married woman had lost much of its charm. At this time she wrote another book,
Pigeon Pie
, which was not a huge success but made her some much-needed money. She also began working for the Air Raid Precautions unit (ARP) in Praed Street, Paddington, and was later asked to broadcast a series of lectures on fire fighting. These were later discontinued because many of those who listened found the famous ‘Mitford voice’ so irritating that they wanted to put Nancy on the fire. Even so, a very different Nancy was emerging from the one who had told Pam in 1926, when they had run the canteen for strike-breakers, that she couldn’t manage anything to do with ovens – ‘one’s poor hands’.
So seriously did she take her role as a citizen in wartime England that she informed on Diana, telling Gladwyn Jebb at the Ministry of Economic Affairs that her sister was an extremely dangerous person who had made many visits to Germany shortly before the war (she did not know about the radio station negotiations). Mosley was already in Brixton prison for his British Union of Fascists activities and soon Diana was arrested and taken to Holloway, where she remained until 1943. Nancy later told the authorities that Pam and Derek were dangerous fascists, but this was never taken further as it was obvious that it was very wide of the mark, and probably the result of one of Derek’s teases.
Nancy did, however, stoically stay in London throughout the bombing and grew vegetables in her garden to supplement her rations. Later she ran a hostel for homeless Jewish women at the family home in Rutland Gate, much to the disgust of Sydney who was still pro-Hitler and anti-Semitic.
Nancy’s contact with the intelligence services led to her being asked to do some information-gathering at the Free French Officers’ Club, where she met and had an affair with an officer called Andre Roy. This resulted in an ectopic pregnancy, after which she was unable to bear children. Meanwhile, she got a job at Heywood Hill’s bookshop in Curzon Street which became a meeting place for her friends, who included Lord Berners, Lady Cunard, the Sitwells, Cecil Beaton, Evelyn Waugh and any of the Mitford family who happened to be in London at the time. She loved her time there even though it coincided with the V-1 bombings; it was also around this time that she met the man who was to become the great love of her life.
Colonel Gaston Palewski was General Charles de Gaulle’s right-hand man. He was wealthy, sophisticated and sexually, rather than physically, attractive. Nancy fell for him hook, line and sinker as Diana had for Mosley, Unity for Hitler, Jessica for Esmond and, in her much more understated way, Pam for Derek. Her lifelong passion for him was not returned, although after their initial relationship they remained close friends for the rest of Nancy’s life. Due to her deep feelings for him she was able to write, without the brittleness of her previous work, a novel which became an instant bestseller and secured her position as a literary figure and made her financially independent.
The Pursuit of Love
is semi-autobiographical. The Radlett family is loosely based on the Mitfords, with Uncle Matthew and Aunt Sadie having many of the same characteristics as David and Sydney. Linda is close to Nancy and Fabrice to the Colonel; like Jessica, Jassy hoards her running away money, and kind, sensible Fanny, the ‘I’ of the story, though supposed to be based on a cousin, Billa Harrod, has in my opinion many of the characteristics of Pam.
The Pursuit of Love
is a witty, tightly written novel which is very different from Nancy’s earlier offerings. The book and its sequel,
Love in a Cold Climate
, lightweight and frothy though they may seem, are literary masterpieces. Nancy richly deserved her success.