Authors: Diana Alexander
Those who married into the family were given nicknames, too. Nancy’s husband Peter Rodd became Prod and her lover, Gaston Palewski, was known as The Colonel or Col; Derek Jackson who married Pam was Horse; Oswald Mosley was Sir O, Sir Oz, Sir Ogre, the Leader or Kit, which was Diana’s pet name for him; Debo’s husband Andrew, Duke of Devonshire, was sometimes known as Claud on account of his receiving letters mistakenly addressed to Claud Hartington Esq., when his title, before he inherited his father’s, was Lord Hartington.
It is fortunate that the absolutely excellent
The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters
– correspondence between the Mitford Girls over a period of almost eighty years – was edited by Charlotte Mosley, a member of the family by marriage. At least she could refer to Debo, the last surviving sister, when sorting out this plethora of nicknames.
‘A
nother beautiful little girl, sir!’ said the midwife to the handsome man with the fair hair and piercing blue eyes, who stood by his wife’s bedside as she was safely delivered of their second child. The year was 1907 and the most unusual aspect of this birth was that the father was actually present, as he was at the births of all his seven children. Although he may have hoped for a boy to carry on the family name, he was not unduly perturbed. His wife was a healthy young woman; there would be more opportunities for a son.
Had he been able to look into the future, the Hon. David Freeman Mitford would have had much to worry about for he would have seen that he and his wife Sydney would produce four more girls and only one boy, Tom; and this son would be killed at the end of the second great conflict to engulf the century which had only just begun. Most of his girls would become famous or infamous during their lifetime: two would be well-known writers, two would become high-profile friends of Hitler and one would marry a duke. One of the writers would run away with her cousin to fight for the communists in Spain and one of the Nazi sympathisers would try to kill herself. Even if he had had a crystal ball and seen what was ahead for his large family, would he have believed it? In his case the truth was to be far stranger than fiction.
For the moment he need not have worried, for the child which he was shortly to hold in his arms was the one who would never cause trouble. If a fairy godmother was present at her birth, she endowed this baby, Pamela, not only with beauty – she had her father’s fair hair and bright blue eyes – but also with a nature so agreeable and courageous that she was able to weather the many storms of life which were to befall her and her exceptional family. Although she did not have his volatile temper, Pam, more so than her siblings, took after her father, in the sense that she never craved the bright lights of city life and was most at home in the heart of the English countryside. Often in conflict with his other daughters, except Deborah the youngest, he and Pam seldom disagreed and she avoided the brunt of his towering rages. The fairy godmother had done her work well – but she had reckoned without Pam’s elder sister, the dark-haired, green-eyed, sharp-witted Nancy.
Nancy famously remarked that the first three years of her life were perfect. ‘Then a terrible thing happened, my sister Pamela was born.’ She claimed that it put her into a permanent rage for about twenty years. What initially upset her most was that the nanny of the time immediately transferred her affections to the new baby and Nancy was heard by her mother to say: ‘Oh Ninny, how I wish you could still love me!’ When nanny was sent away as a result she became even more sad, since she realised, even at such a young age, that she was in some way responsible for the dismissal.
Ironically, Pam was the least likely of any of Nancy’s sisters to cause her pain or provide any sibling rivalry. The fact that she was not so quick-witted has often been blamed on a severe bout of polio which struck her down at the age of 3, but she was possibly also dyslexic – a condition not then recognised. Her kindness, which Nancy only acknowledged much later in life, was an inbuilt part of her nature.
In 1911 polio or infantile paralysis was a dreaded illness which, if it did not kill, could leave the sufferer severely paralysed for life. This posed a big problem for Pam’s mother Sydney, later Lady Redesdale, who had inherited from her father, Thomas Gibson Bowles, theories on the medical profession which were highly unconventional, especially a century ago.
She believed implicitly in the power of the Good Body to heal itself. She banned, as far as possible, all medicines and would call in a doctor only in the most dire emergency. Any medicine which he did provide was left untouched in a cupboard. None of the children were vaccinated, although vaccination was well on the way to becoming compulsory. Pam, however, was so ill that her mother was forced to call in six doctors, one after the other, all of whom told the same story – nothing could be done for the desperately sick little girl. She then contacted the only medical practitioner that she had ever trusted.
Dr Kellgren came from Sweden and specialised in osteopathy, a branch of medicine not to be recognised as mainstream for many decades. Massage and exercise, an early form of intense physiotherapy, were his prescriptions for a cure. And they worked. Pam’s recovery was so nearly complete (she was left with a slight weakness in her right leg for the rest of her life) that she was able to ride, swim, skate and even ski. Dr Kellgren’s methods were not unique but they were rare for the time and all her life Pam attributed this near miracle entirely to him.
Sydney then applied Dr Kellgren’s maxims to all injuries and Jessica, the second youngest of the sisters, in her book
Hons and Rebels
, tells of the time she broke her arm: after the doctor had set it and bound it up, her mother removed all the bandages and made Jessica do exercises to prevent the arm becoming stiff. This was the treatment Sydney herself had received for a broken ankle many years before and it had worked. It succeeded for Jessica too, although it left her somewhat double-jointed. Although some of Jessica’s accounts of her childhood must be taken with the proverbial pinch of salt, this one has a ring of truth about it.
In the short term, the illness left Pam in considerable pain and she was often tearful. With a gap of only three years, Nancy and Pam could have become good friends and playmates, but Pam couldn’t keep up with Nancy, either mentally or physically, and the problem was compounded by Nancy constantly being told: ‘You’ve got to be nice to Pam, she’s ill.’
This state of affairs had two results: Pam became the main butt of Nancy’s cruel teasing and she spent a lot of her childhood on her own or playing with the next two younger children, Tom and Diana. She and Diana had secret houses and played endless games together but there were times when Pam was alone and seemed rather left out. She was never self-pitying but would often go for walks by herself – possibly to get away from Nancy’s teasing. ‘When I was walking on my own today I found a penny. Wasn’t I lucky?’ she once said. That would appeal to the little girl who was to become something of a family joke for most of her life for her ‘careful’ attitude towards money. Due to her illness, as well as the three-year age gap, she was well behind Nancy when it came to learning so she was taught with Tom and Diana.
Pam went to dancing class with Tom, where their teacher was Miss Vacani who taught upper-class children their first dancing steps for more than thirty years. Tom, who danced in green shoes with silver buckles, was a great favourite of Miss Vacani, but poor Pam after having polio could not hop on her right leg. She was not able to dance the polka and was kept in the back row and largely disregarded. As ever, she seems to have taken no offence at this lack of attention. Maybe she was just getting used to it and developing a veneer of ‘not minding’ which was to serve her well in later life.
Like the other children Pam had a great love of animals, and for her – and later her youngest sister Debo – this lasted for her entire life. Jessica describes how Pam spent considerable time pretending to be a horse, pawing the ground, tossing her head and neighing in a most realistic manner – presumably having closely observed the ponies which all the children rode.
In
Hons and Rebels
Jessica remarks that Pam eventually gave up wanting to be a horse and did the next best thing by marrying a jockey. Pam’s husband, Derek Jackson, happened to be a very competent amateur jockey and rode several times in the Grand National. He was also a renowned physicist and a war hero who was decorated for his service as a bomber navigator in the RAF.
Pam’s love of animals and the countryside was undoubtedly a buffer against the teasing from her siblings, especially Nancy. Alone among the children, except for Debo, who was thirteen years her junior (the two became the closest of the sisters in later life), she was perfectly content with country life and never hankered for the endless socialising which obsessed Nancy, Diana and Jessica. Although as children all the sisters were mad about animals, the incident involving Brownie, the pony which their father bought at Harrods and transported to their London home in a hansom cab, gave Pam particular pleasure. Even more exciting was the journey back to High Wycombe where the family had rented a house. When the pony was not allowed to travel in the guard’s van, David refused to be thwarted and transferred the whole family from first to third class (in those days, as today, third-class carriages did not have a corridor) and parents, children, servants and pony travelled home together. The children were particularly thrilled to be able to travel third class – a novelty for upper-class children in those days.
Due to the weakness in her leg from her attack of polio, Pam could not go hunting because she could not get a good enough grip on the saddle to enable her to jump. But she loved riding and adored Charles Hooper the groom, who was in charge of the children’s riding activities. He was ‘sweet Hoops’ to Pam and ‘Choops’ to the others – and again it shows Pam’s kindly and optimistic disposition because sweet was something which Mr Hooper certainly was not. Somewhat grumpy in the first place, his nature had not been improved by the time he spent in the trenches in the Great War, where he suffered from shellshock, and his temper became such that he often exploded without warning. He judged everyone on their riding ability and on nothing else, but he must have realised how hard Pam had to work to ride properly because his temper was seldom vented on her. Nancy, who rode well and was also a favourite, based the character of Josh, the groom in
The Pursuit of Love
, on Hooper.
An extraordinary event happened when Hooper was delivering the eggs from Sydney’s chicken farm on 11 November 1927, nine years after the end of the Great War, memories of which were still very vivid in people’s minds. Then, as today, the two minutes’ silence was observed on the actual date of Armistice Day and Hooper, the old soldier, stopped the cart at 11 a.m. and climbed down to hold the horse’s head. The horse, a mare that had seen service with the army in France during the war, swayed in the shafts and fell down dead, probably from a heart attack. Her death, during the two minutes’ silence, made a great impression on the Mitford family and crusty old Hooper wept for her.
Yet although the Mitford girls loved their animals, and would weep copiously if they were hurt or in pain, their attitude did not extend to their beloved hens. Pam would often reminisce about Sunday lunch at Asthall or Swinbrook when the roast chicken appeared. ‘Is this Blackie or Whitey we’re eating today?’ one of the children would ask, but she did not remember anyone being put off their lunch when the meat was identified.
Even during her childhood Pam was honing the skills of gardening, animal husbandry and cooking which were partly responsible for her being nicknamed Woman by her siblings. It was also her serenity, her care for others and her capable kindness which made the name stick and which gave her a special place in this extraordinary family.
Pam had her own brand of humour which, though different from her siblings, was still extremely funny. In much later life, when living in the Cotswold village of Caudle Green, Pam and I were invited to supper with our great friend Mary Sager who also lived in the village. The purpose was to meet a newcomer, one Dr Ezra, who had just rented a nearby cottage. Dr Ezra, an American, was full of lengthy advice on most subjects. The first topic of the evening was education and the newcomer delivered a long and stern lecture on schools, many and various, both in England and across the pond. But even she had to stop eventually to draw breath and Pam, quick as a flash, leaned across the table and announced in her unmistakable ‘Mitford voice’: ‘I never went to school, you know.’ It was the last time education was mentioned that evening. In fact, in spite of Nancy’s descriptions of the Radlett family’s sketchy education in her novels, the Mitford children were soundly taught first by Sydney, and later by a series of governesses, Miss Mirams and Miss Hussey being the most competent.
Pam lagged behind her siblings in the classroom, but she was nobody’s fool, as is shown particularly by two incidents during her childhood. The first, when she did her best to avert disaster, happened during the Great War when the family was staying with Sydney’s father at his cottage on the Solent. At bedtime Pam declared that she could smell smoke but the nursery maid took no notice, thinking that she was making an excuse to stay up longer. David returned on leave two days later to discover that the building had been burnt to the ground. Luckily, no one was hurt and the family had decamped to the home of their neighbour Mr Marconi, the radio pioneer. The children regarded the fire as a great adventure as they sat on the lawn watching the blaze, the grown-ups hurrying backwards and forwards trying to save what they could. Six-year-old Tom, always known for his politeness, called out, ‘Good morning, Mr Caddick’ to the butler as he hurried past with a load of dining-room silver, and was surprised not to get an answer. Even at such a tender age, Pam had reason to indulge in feelings of self-righteousness.