The Other Mitford Read Free Page B

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.

One
Not an Easy Childhood
    ‘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