Sisters who definitely did it for themselves
New romantic comedy drama The Pursuit Of Love is proving a TV hit. MARION MCMULLEN looks at how writer Nancy Miford and her sisters left their mark on high society
TRUTH is stranger than fiction when it comes to The Pursuit Of Love writer Nancy Mitford and her sisters. The six aristocratic daughters – and one son – of the eccentric Baron Redesdale and his wife Sydney were the definition of posh society, but money was always in short supply.
Lady Redesdale’s attempts at cost-cutting included ditching linen napkins at meals for her large brood in an effort to save on laundry bills, although paper napkins were deemed simply too common to use as an alternative.
Meanwhile, her husband liked to point out that he had only ever read one book in his entire life, White Fang, and found it so good he had never felt the need to read another. However, he did later read the books written by his own children.
All of them were home schooled at the family pile of Asthall Manor in Oxfordshire but they were generally left to their own devices and spent a lot of time huddled together in the warmest part of the house, the airing cupboard. It was dubbed the Hons’ Cupboard because as children of a peer they held the title of “the honourable”.
Their mother and father were always known to their children as Farve and Muv and Nancy, born in 1904, and was the oldest Mitford. Her unique childhood and family provided lots of material for her future novels that included Love In A Cold Climate and The Pursuit Of Love and the witty writer once noted: “The greatest advantage of living in a large family is that early lesson of life’s essential unfairness.”
The Mitfords could never be accused of being boring. Sister Diana left her aristocratic husband Bryan Guinness, heir to part of the Guinness family brewing fortune, for British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley. Hitler was a guest when she and Mosley later married in Nazi propaganda chief Goebbel’s drawing room. She and Mosley were sent to Holloway Prison during the war because they were deemed to be a danger to the realm.
Unity Valkyrie was conceived in a Canadian town called Swastika and was a self-confessed admirer of Adolf Hitler. She lived in Germany before the outbreak of the Second World War and her admiration for Hitler led her to wait for him at the Osteria Bavarian restaurant in Munich. One day he noticed her and asked her to sit at his table. From that day onwards Unity was a regular among Hitler’s camp.
Unity, known to her family as Bobo, tried to shoot herself in the head when war broke out, but survived the attempt and Hitler himself gave her special permission to return to England – the bullet still lodged in her head.
Jessica, nicknamed Decca, by contrast was a committed communist and eloped with Winston Churchill’s nephew Esmond Romilly to the Spanish Civil War when she was just 19. She ended up moving to America after his death and also made her mark as a campaigning journalist and writer of such bestselling books as The American Way Of Death. “You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty,” she said.
Country-loving and self-taught poultry expert Pamela preferred to lead a quite life and lived in Ireland after she married bisexual millionaire physicist Derek Jackson. They later divorced in 1951.
Deborah was the last of the celebrated sisters and also wrote. She married the Duke Of Devonshire and they made Chatsworth House one of the best-known stately homes.
The only boy in the family, Tom, was killed in action during the Second World War while stationed in Burma but it was the sisters who each made their mark on society.
They moved in the same circles as Winston Churchill, John F Kennedy, Hitler and Evelyn Waugh and epitomised a privileged and glamorous aristocratic life that no longer exists. Nancy once wrote: “I am sometimes bored by people but never by life.”
She fell in love with Free French officer Gaston Palewski after the war and moved to France, remaining there until her death in 1973. Her semi-autobiographical novel, The Pursuit Of Love, about two cousins hunting for the ideal husband, became an immediate bestseller when it was published in 1945.
Emily Mortimer, who adapted, directed and appears in the BBC’S new Sunday night adaptation of the book, says of it: “It’s still quite shocking and brave to read.
“There’s a searing honesty in the way Nancy Mitford writes and a lack of earnestness. It continues to feel like it has a bit of a punk rock soul.”