The Other Mitford Read Free

height. ‘Poor Unity, she is rather huge,’ said Lady Redesdale when Unity was fitted for her bridesmaid’s dress for Diana’s wedding. But it was her physical appearance which first brought her to Hitler’s notice, leading to an extraordinary friendship between the daughter of an English country gentleman and the German Führer. Unity’s strong opinions led her to attempt suicide in 1939, which left her brain-damaged.
    In the family, in spite of the fact that she could be moody and sulky, Unity was loved for her originality, the laughter she generated and the tricks she got up to. Relationships among the sisters fluctuated depending on what stage they had reached or what cause they were supporting at the time, but the close ties between Unity and Jessica never wavered until the outbreak of war and Unity’s suicide attempt, which separated them forever. In spite of their totally opposing views, for Jessica espoused the communist cause, they remained firm friends and missed each other badly when those beliefs finally drove them apart. Unity died after an attack of meningitis in 1948.
    Even more than Unity, Jessica was a discontented teenager who longed to get away from home and go to boarding school. She ran away to Spain with her cousin Esmond Romilly, who supported the communists in the Spanish Civil War, and later married him. After moving to America, Esmond joined the Royal Canadian Air Force on the outbreak of war but was lost on a mission over the North Sea. Jessica later married Bob Treuhaft and became a member of the Communist Party and a campaigner for civil rights. After the success of her autobiographical book Hons and Rebels , she was able to make a career out of writing. Always the rebel, she remained almost permanently at odds with the rest of her family, yet she kept in touch with all her sisters, except Diana. She died of cancer in 1996.
    Deborah (or Debo) never gave her family cause for anxiety. She was a happy child who openly loved her parents but her birth was not greeted with great joy since her parents were still hoping for another boy. She eventually wrote several books, mainly about Chatsworth House, which became her home, culminating in her acclaimed biography Wait for Me .
    Debo married Lord Andrew Cavendish, who succeeded as Duke of Devonshire when his elder brother was killed in the war, and they inherited Chatsworth – and a lot of death duties. That these were paid off and that Chatsworth is now probably the leading privately owned stately home open to the public is in huge measure down to Debo’s enormous energy and imagination.
    In spite of her optimistic and equable nature, she, too, endured tragedy since she had three stillborn babies and another that died shortly after birth; she did, however, produce Peregrine, the present Duke of Devonshire, Emma and Sophia. In later life she became the family peacemaker, which was not an easy task.
    The sisters’ high-profile lifestyles were further enhanced by their equally high-profile family and friends. They were cousins of the Churchills, related to former prime minister Harold Macmillan and numbered most of the literary figures of their generation among their friends. Diana was probably the only person in the world to be friendly with both Churchill and Hitler, and she and Unity knew most of the German High Command. Debo’s friends included Ali Khan, the Kennedy family, Prince Charles and the late Queen Mother.
    Since there were sixteen years between Nancy and Debo, the sisters spanned an unusual and changing swathe of history: the eldest three were born as the long, easy-going Edwardian afternoon was drawing to a close and when Britain still ruled over a vast empire on which it seemed the sun would never set; Unity when the lights were going out all over Europe; Jessica when the ‘war to end all wars’ was in its final stages; and Debo at the beginning of the roaring twenties. They witnessed changes of the sort that had never been seen