A fine companion book would be Daughters and Rebels (1960) aka Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford. It may no longer be in print but can be found I daresay in some libraries here and in NZ, which was part of the British Empire. I will draw on Decca's book when necessary, with due attribution of course.

Accounts of the Mitford family were also written by Jonathan Guiness, Diana's oldest son from her brief marriage to Brian Guinness; and Charlotte Mosley, the wife of Alexander Mosley, Diana's oldest son with Sir Oswald, has edited two volumes of Nancy's correspondence : one of these containing exclusively her letters to Evelyn Waugh.

BOBBIECEE - WELCOME !!!

It is a special pleasure indeed to have you join us here : I've discovered the Australian and NZ folders only recently and know you are among the correspondents there. Again, welcome !

As one childhood friend of the Sisters has said, their upbringing was not really different from that of their upper class contemporaries. It is our task to understand- or try to understand- why the Mitfords have held the imagination of an entire era and even now fascinate new and younger readers.

HELLO GINNY and WELCOME !!

Thank you for all your wonderful posts, and most especially for the links, MAL ! Setting links is NOT among the things I do well.

First let me list the six sisters and one brother by name and date of birth :

Nancy, 1904-1973

Pamela, 1907-1994

Thomas (Tom), 1909-1945

Diana, 1910-

Unity, 1914-1948

Jessica (Decca), 1917-1996

Deborah (Debo), 1920-

Diana and Debo are the surviving sisters. Diana lives in Paris and Debo is the Duchess of Devonshire, mistress of Chatsworth.

MAL, sorry, I didn't mean to jump to premature conclusions or refer to events described in later chapters.

I also want to reply to GLADYS. It is true that Nancy had a mean streak, and so did Decca. Nancy's "teasing" and the pranks had an undertone of cruelty; the sisters were afraid of her.

When Nancy was three and thoroughly spoiled, Pam was born. Nancy had jealous rages and alternately cried "Oh Ninny, I do wish you would still love me !" For once apparently concerned, Sidney hired a new nanny (pg. 22).

None of the girls were allowed to go to school. The father was not interested in the daughters' schooling, in fact he didn't think they needed it. And this, you recall, wasn't that unusual. Even in this country in the late 1880s it was thought that "education BAD for girls !"

But Sidney was equally rigid in that the girls be schooled AT HOME. And they were, by a succession of governesses with varying success and sometimes odd curricula and emphases. When Nancy was 16, Sidney sent her to nearby Hatherop School as a boarder to be "finished". The curriculum included French, piano lessons ad sports (tennis, netball and swimming). (pg. 52)

Diana on the other hand wanted nothing to do with school; Nancy could reduce her to tears by saying, offhandedly, "I heard Muv and Farve talking about sending you to school."

Unity attended a few schools briefly and was so "naughty" that Sidney was politely "invited" to withdraw her.

Decca was bored in the upstairs schoolroom and wanted to go to a regular school more than any of the others. When there was a consistent refusal, she became a rebellious, sullen teeenager intent on escaping, come what may. She saved the pennies the kids were given for tending the hens and collecting the eggs, and opened what she called her "running-away" account. At that time Unity and Decca developed an interest in politics. Decca rued the poverty she saw in the countryside; Unity had heard of Hitler. Decca developed a social conscience and became a communist, a card-carrying one in this country. Unity dreamed of going to Germany. And did (in chapter 7).

Special thanks, MAL, for the links to pictures that were NOT in any of the books I read.

Yes GLADYS, the environment has a great deal to do with how we grow up and how we think, until we go elsewhere and see other points of view.

And if the environment is "confined" so to speak, both in location and world views and behavior, as in the case of the Mitfords, where the girls could only walk in twos and needed a chaperone when in the city, is it any wonder that high-spirited girls would want to bolt ?

Diana accepted the first proposal she received after "coming out", exhilarated at being freed. In hindsight it is clear that she was not in love with him as much as he was with her. But it happens in life ! We will get to that part of the narrative in good time.

I'd like to follow up on my allusion to inconsistencies :

there are two errors in the jacket blurb, (1) Unity Valkyrie was CONCEIVED in Swastika but born in London, and Swastika was in CANADA, NOT Alaska. Even so, the name was an eery prophecy.

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MAL, the Mitfords were not really "rich". They had name, recognition, reputation and an estate when David succeeded his brother and inherited BATFORD. His mother discreetly moved elsewhere, as was the custom then, to make room for the family. But the house was huge, much of the upper floors was unused because the family could not afford the upkeep. Diana refers fondly to the five staircases and the adventures the children had in this mansion.

Then they moved to Asthall. Perhaps there is a way to bring in a link to Batford and Asthall.

Asthall was believed to be haunted but only Farve and Diana had any awareness of ghosts. Diana says in her biography that she was ok with them, but Farve was afraid and determined to build a new house on property he owned; it was called Swinbrook (Nancy called it Swinebrook). Everyone hated it and Farve was crushed.

As for the definition of rich :

Let me say quickly that in the second paragraph of Jeff Elliot's review, "... Decca and her six brothers and sisters ..." is not quite correct. There were six sisters and one brother, as we've seen. As a translator I am irked when details are not consistent, because everything should fall together seamlessly. Also, typos in published reviews such as Elliot's should have been avoided, I believe. And I wonder whether contributions to the net are subject to editing; I have come across some gross inaccuracies.

The issue of private versus public schools has been raised in earlier posts, and I have not referred to it, solely because the issue is moot as far as the Mitford sisters are concerned. But I do have my personal opinion on the subject, of course.

When my husband, my small daughter and I came to this country some fifty years ago, we had a difficult time : a different language (which I spoke but husband did not), a different history and, most importantly, a different educational system.

Those were the Eisenhower years, and I was stunned by the dismissive reference to "eggheads" and appalled by the ridicule heaped on the intellectual "élite".

It offered a rapid cure for intractable social ills, and the early successes of Mussolini and Hitler seemed to confirm that it was viable. It was a radical ideology, yet at that time an individual with a social conscience, discouraged by the lack of success of the conventional methods, could turn to fascism for radical solutions. While this realization may require an imaginative leap for post-war generations, it must be noted that the Holocaust, the unspeakable horror of the 20th century, had not yet happened.

Tom Mitford and his sisters Diana and Unity were Germanophiles, they spoke the language, they met and admired Hitler, and Unity became a member of his inner circle. The questions are : do political sympathies and admiration a priori constitute treason ? Tom and the sisters were members also of Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists. Does that make them traitors ? Was their allegiance to the BUF treacherous ?

There can be no simple, if any, answers to these questions. Fortunately we are not required to answer them either within the framework and context of this discussion.

Germans and Austrians speak the same language, the Austrians with dialectic inflections, but they were SEPARATE nations after WW I when Germany and other central European nations were "reconfigured" by the Treaty of Versailles. The "return" of Austria into the Reich was engineered by Hitler in 1938 and was called Anschluss = connection, celebrated with parades and a show of jubilation.

MONKEYHOUSE mentioned "Lord Haw-Haw" in an earlier post. Now there was a traitor for you. His name was William Joyce and he was in Mosley's circle, a good orator like Mosley himself. But he became an albatross for the BUF in the years to come because his lunatic anti-semitic ravings would attract to the party every crazy misfit and bigot more interested in hatred and violence than any real political aim.

Fearing that I would practice piano less diligently (which would never have occurred to me), my mother decreed that there should be no radio in the house. My father acquiesced. But it was mother who really missed a radio : she was mesmerized by Hitler and admired him unconditionally (a source of constant friction between us). When he held one of his speeches (which grew increasingly longer and more vehement, and ALL of them began with a long recitation of the unjust terms of the Versailles Traty), she dropped everything and rushed off to the house of friends who HAD a radio and shared my mother's blind, fanatical devotion. My father, much more 'neutral', went with her, and I was dragged along.

Eventually I got out of that by telling my mother that I would listen to the speech(es) at the house of my best friend from school, which was allowed. It was also untrue.

From the family tree shown in the book I gather that Winston Churchill and David Mitford were cousins . That is mentioned also in Jan Dalley's biography of Diana (can't find the page now).

However, I don't know the genealogical term used to define the familial link between Churchill and Diana..

~~~~~

In the last line of my post # 76 of Feb 2 I referred to "inconsistencies" in the book and said, erroneously, that it was "too late" to mention them. Obviously I meant to say that it was too early ; we had only just begun our discussion. Even so I should have caught the error and apologize.

Now it is no longer too early. In fact, the 'inconsistencies' were errors, to wit

1. The Herald Tribune was the rival of the NYT, NOT of the Washington Post.

2. It is KathArine Graham, not KathErine Graham.

3. Lord Berners could not have been working on the score of a ballet for Diaghilev in 1933, as stated on page 162 in Chapter 7, SLINGS AND ARROWS, because Diaghilev had died four years earlier= in 1929 .

~~~~~

As promised, here are more titles of books by and about the Mitfords :

The biography of Unity Mitford by David Pryce-Jones (1976)

House of Mitford : Portrait of a Family by Jonathan and Catherine Guinness (1985) (Jonathan is Diana's older son)

Mitford Family Album by Sophia Murphy (1986)

Over long, strenuous objections by her parents, Nancy persuaded them in 1928 to let her attend the Slade School of Art. She lasted less than a month. The director, brutally frank, told her she should learn how to cook because she had no talent as an artist.

It was the unfortunate, misguided, pathetic Unity who had the talent. (By the way, nobody in the family ever called her by that name; she had several nicknames, one of them was Bobo.) Even as a child she made whimsical drawings and collages and she continued as an adult.

But she never pursued it in earnest, did not aspire to anything more. The only thing that mattered to her was her obsession with Hitler and total belief in his ideologies, including his anti-semitism.

This evening I was pleased to receive an e-mail from a good friend who said she is glad I told her about SISTERS; she finds it a page-turner and is enjoying it. Her comments about the story are definitely worth sharing here. But I would like to have her permission to do so. Better yet, I'd like to see her post here herself. But she hasn't found us yet, so I repeated my directions.

GLADYS, I am looking for a reference concerning the miners and the General Strike of May 1926 to emphasize what you said before. When I find it, I'll post right away.

STEPHANIE, I recall the same info concerning PAM and will check it out.

As for Unity, I don't know how to answer your question whether she should have been jailed. If so, on what grounds ? And who is to decide whether a man or a woman can be imprisoned solely for being of a different persuasion ?

True, she was recovering, she regained some of her mobility, but she was never again her real self.

Chapter 19 in our book describes- among other things- Decca's first visit to the 'old country' since she eloped with Esmond. She and second husband Bob Treuhaft had applied for a passport for YEARS (pg. 434), and when passports were finally issued, off they went, Decca, Bob and Dinky, the Romilly daughter. Son Benjamin was too young and stayed in the care of California friends. I won't describe the visit, that's in the book.

In any event, Bob had to return to the U.S. earlier and then told Decca that he had been forced to surrender his passport on his return to New York. (I think we'll have to look into this aspect of things.)

In turn, Decca kept Bob informed of her and Dinky's doings, and mentioned this about Pam :

" Woman was here to lunch (second sight ...calling her Woman, since she's become a you-know-what-bian)...."

The quote is found on page 446 of our book and carries the source note 28. That in turn can be found on page 569 and reads :

" Decca believed Pam was a lesbian. It is true that Pam shared her home with another woman for a number of years but all the surviving written evidence points to this being a platonic rather than a sexual relationship." "

___________________________

Good news : My long-time AOL cyber friend, whom I mentioned yesterday and who is as passionate about books as I am, has given me permission to quote the text of her e-mail to me so that I can share it with you. Here it is.

"I'm so glad you told me about this book. I'm finding it a real page-turner. I don't seem to know how to find the "discussion" on the book site, but want to tell you anyway that I'm enjoying it. The early chapters of course were the most fun -- reading about their childhood in the fading days of the Edwardian era.

Trouble set in as they became teen-agers. The tragedy of their fates lay in their parents' unwillingness to let them go for higher education. From such a sheltered cocoon, they got out into "society" in the post-war '20's. They had the misfortune to come of age in the roiling furnace of pseudo-intellectualism. Already resentful of their parents' conservatism, they rebelled into the political hotbeds of their fascinating friends.

What a sad waste of beauty, intelligence, and (I'm sure) genuine concern for the plight of the underdogs ... English or German."

Thank you, dear cyber friend !

No doubt the Spanish Civil War was a "romantic" war. Not all those who flocked to aid were committed communists; they saw themselves fighting for freedom. Hemingway was one of them.

EmmaBarb, thank you for the interesting link to Paul-César Helleu and dry-point. Another artist who painted Diana was Augustus John,who was a member of the inner circle of the Guinnesses, as was Evelyn Waugh, the Aldous Huxleys, the historian Lytton Strachey and his lover, the painter Dora Carrington. Bryan commissioned Dora Carrington to paint a trompe l'oeil window in Biddesden, their country home, as a surprise for Diana who was in London for the birth of her second baby. Heady company for one so recently released from the home schoolroom in the "fortress" !

MAL, thank you for the link to the review of Jan Dalley's biography of Diana. The evaluation of Unity is more outspoken than others I have seen, including in our book. As for Diana, the review has sharper edges, I believe, than the biography; the latter is more objective.

I don't know how Unity came by her Anti-Semitism. It could hardly have been a family prejudice or it would have been reflected by the sisters closest to her in age, Decca and Debo. Decca's pendulum swung to the far left, and Debo had no political interests.

But there may be an antecedent : Bertie, their grandfather and first Lord Redesdale, may have been influenced (if that is indeed the right term here !) by the writing of Houston Stuart Chamberlain. Chamberlain was English by birth and German by choice; he took German nationality in 1916 (in the middle of World War !). He was educated in France and Germany, enamored of German culture, venerated Richard Wagner, and was to marry Wagner's daughter Eva.

When Bertie knew him early in the century, Chamberlain was living at the Haus Wahnfried in Bayreuth as friend and acolyte of Siegfried, Wagner's son. He had written books about Kant and Goethe and became well known with Life of Wagner .

In 1899 he published a massive tome of over a thousand words Grundlagen des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts = The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century. It was a hugh success. The author asked Bertie to write an introduction for the English edition, before the translation (by John Lees) was even finished (!) A highly complimentary introduction for the English edition was supplied by Bertie in January 1909. The book was published in Britain and in the U.S. in 1911.

Simply put, the book tries to prove the case that cultural achievement is determined by racial characteristics, which are inescapable and constant, and that the achievements of the Indo-European ("Aryan") language groups are demonstrably superior to those of other racial groups and that, furthermore, the Teutonic, or Germanic, people are markedly superior to all the rest.

These entrenched prejudices and arguments are dressed up with fancy intellectual ribbons in order to validate them. Chamberlain acknowledges the "greatness" of the Jews in their refusal to intermarry, then turns around and uses the Jewish people's insistence on their own racial and cultural purity as justification for Teutonic people to do the same. The book contains drawings of caricatured facial types absurdly named. It was this book that in its mixture of pseudo (seeming) intellectualism and emotionalism fed right into the Nazi creed and provided the basis for the theories Hitler expounded in "Mein Kampf".

Where did Bertie Mitford stand in this personally ? He had traveled the world and encountered widely different cultures which he respected. What made him write a glowing introduction to a book propounding such outrageous arguments ? Did he too believe that racial origins are definitive and determinative ?

The trip to Europe was not without problems, friction and disappointment. Toward the end of her visit, when Bob had already gone home, Sydney arranged a luncheon for the sisters but Decca declined, saying she would not share a table with "murderess". Sydney was appalled that Decca would refer to her sister Diana as a "murderess". Relations between the sisters remained contentious through the remaining years, with lingering resentment over political affiliations, but also over the books written by them and about them, and WHO among them had allegedly provided pictorial material and other information about the family printed in the respective books. Sydney tried valiantly to mediate between the fractious sisters, but Decca rebuffed every attempt at a reconciliation.

MAL, thank you very much for the link that gives us a view of the isolated island Inch Kenneth David bought and where Sydney lived later with Unity and then alone. It will be very interesting to discuss how Decca, cut out of her father's will, became the sole owner of the island ...

In 1994, after Pam's sudden death, Decca decided to give up drinking, cold turkey. In an interview with the author in Oakland, California, in 1999, her daughter Dinky Romilly told her, "She drank heavily for years and I do want to mention it because the way in which she gave it up shows the strength of Decca ... When she tripped on the hem of her skirt she had been drinking and had had too much. It wasn't unusual. She could be very mean when she'd had too much to drink. A different person altogether ... I never preached to my mother, but she suddenly realized what is was going to mean if she continued drinking as she got older, for example if her drinking caused another stroke ... ..."

Isn't is amazing how different the sisters were ! How do you feel about Nancy Mitford, I wonder ?

I too detest racism of any kind and was aghast that "colored" people, as they were then called, were still segregated and relegated to the farthest counter in the back of the drug store and elsewhere, although the anti-segretation law had been passed. The Washington Post had columns for "apartments for rent colored" and "jobs colored" or some such, and I had no idea what that meant. Nobody had prepared us. Well, we caught on.

One summer in the early years we drove to Virginia Beach in the southern part of Virginia, the child, my husband, our Shepherd (at my husband's insistence) and I. The dog barked all night; nobody had any sleep; we were embarrassed, husband and dog departed for home the next morning. I decided that the child and I would stay till the end of the rental and take the bus back.

We were early and sat in the waiting room. People stared. One lady eventually came over and said, gently, "This waiting room is for coloreds only". I was mortified and apologized profusely. I still had no idea !! The memory saddens me.

In connection with this book the question of antisemitism is unavoidable and has to be answered fearlessly and honestly, as we have proceeded to do.

CAROLYN, my sentiments exactly. Nancy was insecure from childhood, forever seeking attention, jealous of the siblings. Her head should have prevailed over her heart where the Colonel was concerned.He had no intention of ever marrying her though she never gave up hope. In fact, he had simultaneously and for some years an affair with another woman, who was then married and lived right around the corner from Nancy in Paris. It was this woman whom the Colonel married once she was free, and Nancy went to pieces. Her fatal illness, so long misdiagnosed or, rather, incorrectly identified, may have been latent = was already 'there' without symptoms. But doubtless the cruel blow of the Colonel marrying someone else affected Nancy's physical and mental condition.

No CAROLE, from the photos it is clear Gaston Palewski was anything but handsome. Still, Nancy fell for him, and she fell hard, like Diana, Unity and Decca, for a strong, powerful, influential man. But how could she have deluded herself for years and failed to realize that she was being used ? I find that terribly sad.

Much of what India Knight says in that review of Lovell's book in the GUARDIAN has already been covered here at some length in previous comments.

Let me say with due respect : time and again I have wondered just how painstakingly a reviewer has read a book he/she is discussing. I have come across reviews from which I have reluctantly concluded that the reviewer read only the initial paragraphs. I will refrain from quoting examples.

First an explanation about the moniker SEWERS bestowed by the ruggedly masculine father on Nancy's effete London friends, some of them homosexuals. Years later Sydney told Decca : "I daresay, you don't know that Sewer is really SOOR, or PIG in Tamil. It was all you children who turned it into Sewer and I think Farve was delighted at the idea. But which is worst, Pig or Sewer, is hard to say."

The word is usually spelled SUA and David remembered it from his stay in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, (pg. 70).

On page 5 of our book the author reports that she she was "fortunate enough to meet four of the sisters". She "contacted Debo and Diana first to research this book. I met Pam at a dinner party in Gloucestershire, in the eighties, where I was introduced to a pleasant woman by the name of Pamela Jackson, who was interested in my hunter, Flashman, and his breeding. During dinner a remark made about a television programme in which the Mitfords had (sic) featured made me suspect who she might be ...". The author asked the hostess, who confirmed it. The contact with Decca is described on page 6 of our book and need not be repeated here.

Allow me to say, with due respect, that Mary Lovell's book is enormously detailed, methodical, overlapping and, in some instances, repetitious. But that could not be entirely avoided, in my opinion, because of the approach chosen : the description of all the sisters, and the brother, within a chronological framework.

Forgive me, but to call the book "sucker-uppy" strikes me personally as a bit strong.

There is an error : The Englischer Garten where Unity shot herself is in Munich, NOT in Berlin.

Except for a brief period of time, possibly swayed by his son Tom, of whom he thought the world and who could do no wrong in the father's eyes, David Mitford was AGAINST Hitler and the "evil hun". Sydney, on the other hand, never wavered in her favorable opinion of Hitler "such good manners ...". It is that fundamental political difference that drove them part. One might go as far as to say politics destroyed the family.

As for all the jokes, the teases, the pranks - some people appreciated them then, some did not, and it is quite the same today. Some wonder whether they actually constitute humor. Surely sarcasm and cruelty do not. Incidentally, Nancy called Debo "nine", which she said constituted Debo's mental age, until she married, NOT throughout Debo's (or Nancy's) entire life.

Some modern-day readers may consider the different nicknames of the people involved funny, some may consider them an affectation. Be that as it may, it is but one detail in the life of the Mitfords.

Regarding Constancia Romilly's nickname. : "Esmond, solicitous that I might suffer unnecessarily if inaction should follow his departure (for Canada where he enlisted), arranged for me to accompany Virginia Durr (prominent friend, supporter, Washington hostess) on a motor trip to the Democratic Convention in Chicago, which was to take place shortly after he left. The baby, already uncomfortably making its presence felt, was promptly nicknamed the Donk, after the Democratic Donkey." From DAUGHTERS AND REBELS by Jessica Mitford, pg. 283.

That strike really woke up ('galvanized' is probably the word for it) the middle and upper classes, not only in the cities but in rural areas too. Well-to-do volunteers quickly came to meet the national emergency in an effort to break the strikers' resolve. They drove buses and trains, provided staff for essential services, even worked in factories. The strike lasted only a few days. Pam, as mentioned in our book, set up a canteen on the main road to Oxford for the volunteers who drove lorries. A smelly tramp came by one morning demanding a cup of tea and frightened Pam ... until the tramp burst out laughing. It was Nancy !

But Diana's conscience was struck by reports of the conditions under which the workers lived, especially the miners and their families. She hated the Coservative Party and the hypocrisy of the ruling class to which she herself belonged, for allowing such hunger and poverty to exist, and for crushing the miners' attempt to change the system. From then on she described herself as a Liberal and follower of Lloyd George.And when she came of voting age, she never voted Tory. Years later she desribed it as a 'defining moment'.

Now to get back to the subject at hand : The Goebbels speech I referred to in the unfinished post above was transmitted over the radio.

Hitler's speeches were altogether different. He always harked back to the Versailles Treaty, shouted angry exhortations until he was hoarse and went on for what seemed like an eternity to me.

The Versailles Treaty is "der Versailler Vertrag" in German, and Hitler, a man of limited education, MISprounced the word every single time (the two lls are silent, you see). Clearly nobody in his entourage dared to correct him : he was rumored to have a violent temper. Unity witnessed two outbursts (see Chapter 13, NO LAUGHING MATTER). In fact, questions about his sanity were raised by some.

Not much of Hitler's personal life was known, except that he had dabbled in landscape painting. I dimly recall examples in a book. The intelligentsia derisively (and secretly) referred to "the house painter", but at least ostensibly they fell in line. Those who did not were silenced and removed, like the eminent philosophy professor Karl Jaspers who taught in Heidelberg (before my time there). Or worse : Martin Niemöller, an officer in the German Marines in World War One, later a theologian and head of the Confessional Protestant Church, spent seven years in the concentration camp. It was enough to be overheard (by political spies who were everywhere) saying something like "I don't see how we can possibly win this war ...". A friend and fellow student of mine who said just that was never seen again.

Right around that time a group of officers led by Chief of Staff Colonel Claus Count von Stauffenberg attempted to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944. The attempt failed. The officers were executed.

I fled Germany for my life in January of 1945. I never saw my father alive again.

Nothing about Hitler's private life was officially known. I had never heard of Unity Mitford, or of Eva Braun. For the life of me I cannot imagine this ruthless, vengeful man, a mass murderer, as 'charming' or 'giggling' with Unity. The very idea is preposterous.

Yet, as described in some detail in Chapter 11, FAMILY AT ODDS, and Chapter 12, SLIDE TOWARDS CONFLICT, Esmond seems a bit of an opportunist. How they began life in America is described in Chapter 13, NO LAUGHING MATTER (this is where the author misspells Katharine Graham's name). I must confess it made me quite uncomfortable to read how (deliberately) the Romillys took advantage of the hospitality of their American hosts whom they effectively impressed ...

It is so hard, if not altogether impossible, to reconstruct a message in its original spontaneity after such an unexpected, unwelcome interruption - this one was not the first nor, I fear, will it be the last.

Why do we pay so much attention to what is perceived as 'weird', 'abnormal' and worse ? Why is there so much emphasis on dysfunctional families ?

The Mitfords certainly fit the bill even though the term was unknown at their time.

Is there really anything NEW about this phenomen, whatever it is called ? Haven't there always been dysfunctional families long, long before the term was coined ? Human nature being what it is, can anything be done about it ?

It was Billy Cavendish, Lord Hartington, the older brother of Andrew, who was expected to become Duke of Devonshire. He was twenty when he met Kathleen Kennedy, 18, daughter of Joseph Kennedy, U.S. Ambassador to Britain. They fell in love. Both sets of parents were fiercely opposed to the marriage - not so much because the Kennedy's represented "new money" but because of their different religion. Kathleen, 'Kick', as she was called, returned to Washington and started work at a newspaper. Billy became engaged to another young woman, a niece of Lord Mountbatten.

Convinced that Billy stilled loved her, Kick Kennedy quit her job at the paper and, over the objections of her family, joined a Red Cross program to help in the war effort. She returned to England on the HMS Queen Mary, which had been made into a troopship.

She had been right, Billy broke the engagement, and the two began meeting in secret. When Billy's parents saw that the couple cared deeply for each other, they withdrew their objections. Not so the Kennedys. Rose Kennedy remained firmly opposed. Kick was warned that she would be excommunicated from the Church, and that her only hope of salvation was for Lord Hartington to die first.

They finally settled on a private ceremony which took place at the Chelsea Register Office on May 6, 1944. Joseph Kennedy cabled his best wishes and provided a generous settlement so that she would never be financially dependent on the Cavendish family. The only member of the Kennedy family to attend the wedding was Kick's oldest brother Joe, who was serving with the U.S. Air Force and based in England. After the honeymoon Billy returned to his regiment to take part in preparations for D-Day.

On August 13 Kick learned that Joe Jr. had been killed the day before when his bomber exploded during a secret mission. Kick flew home on a military plane to attend his memorial service. She stayed with her mother in Boston where, on September 13, she received word that Billy had been killed in Belgium. By an arrangement made by Winston Churchill, Kick flew back to England on an RAF plane. The Cavendish family rallied around her.

She remained in England, made a new life for herself and fell in love again in 1947. The man was war hero Peter Fitzwilliam and married. His wife was an alcoholic, the marriage unhappy, but divorce was out of the question, his lawyers said.

On May 13, 1948, the couple chartered a twin-engine plane to fly to Cannes for the weekend. They ran into a storm and were advised to turn back. Fitzwilliam decided to go on, and the plane crashed into a mountain. There were no survivors.

Nancy on the other hand, told the authorities that Diana was "dangerous", she as much as informed on her, but what proof did she have of any misdoings ?

Who can tell whether Nancy's entreaties had any significance ? What bothered me is that Nancy never ever told Diana, when she visited her in prison, of what amounts to a betrayal of her sister. This much is known : Nancy envied Diana when she married into the fabulously wealthy Guinness family, and she despised Mosley. How much was envy and how much war hysteria ?

Decca comes across as similarly harsh, urging that the Mosleys be incarcerated forever. She herself was deluded by Communism for decades, oblivious of Stalin's purges (and VERY reluctant to acknowledge them when she FINALLY found out). Both Diana and Decca were misguided in their political beliefs, and I believe- now climbing out on my proverbial limb- that in their own way they were very every bit as fanatical as their pathetic sister Unity.

Of course the Mitfords were embarrassed by the notoriety of some of their daughters, any family would be -- except perhaps nowadays, when lots of money is offered by the tabloids to interested parties ...

We have only until next Friday and could hardly cover even the basic tenets of the Communist doctrine, let alone consider the mutations. We would certainly have to mention nihilism and anarchism and therefore give more than a passing glance to Nietzsche. Then there would have to be a comparison between Communism and Fascism (Italy) and National Socialism (Germany).

While this might be an interesting, worthwhile enterprise all its own, it would lead us, I believe, far afield from the discussion of this book as I, as discussion leader, have envisioned and framed it.

We cannot now know what possessed the politically active Mitford Sisters, Diana, Unity and Decca, to embrace these different ideologies so totally as to become permanently estranged. There is no question that Diana and Decca were aware of the miserable conditions of much of the people during the short-lived General Strike, and Decca somehow fell on to Communism with all the fervor of a crusading teenager. (What possessed Unity was less a political conviction than her obsession with Hitler, in my humble opinion.) In Decca's case, things didn't "gel" until she met Esmond Romilly who himself was none too clear at first about his own convictions (!) (pp. 170, 179-80). And Diana came to the idea of fascism through Mosley.

Decca became a hard-boiled communist who, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary and her own experiences when traveling behind the Iron Curtain, ignored and denied the excesses of the Soviet system.

As for "the immensely rich", haven't we always had them, don't we have them even now, blue-veined or not, though few monarchies are left in the world ? What about capitalism and the growing gap between the rich and the poor ? What about the disappearing middle class ?

One can imagine the embarrassment for the parents, Decca's elopment, Diana's divorce from Bryan Guinness, then her alliance with Mosley, Unity's wandering about Munich and being in Hitler's inner circle ... The notoriety not only in Britain but all over Europe, newspapers, newsreels ... It must have been agony.

While I read the book I often thought of my sister. She wasn't really my sister but a cousin. My aunt died when the baby was eight months, and in those days the family took the children in.

Thank you and JERILYN for your comments.

I agree with you both. After her mother's death Sydney grew up in the care of her father and adopted his views, including his conviction that the "good body" would heal itself, and that the advice of doctors could be waved aside. Her ideas about formal education for girls (not needed) dovetailed with those of her husband; in that and in matters of convention she was inflexible. She did the best she knew how, of that there can be no doubt.

Though she was undemonstrative with the children and her political views regrettable, she tried valiantly to hold them together when one blow after another landed on the family, not least the death of Tom, the only son, at the very end of the war. Who cannot imagine the pain she must have felt comparing the broken, incontinent Unity reduced to the mental state of an eleven-year old, with the spirited, beautiful albeit foolish young woman she had been ?

(BTW, the ABC evening news ended with a short, too short a, report about the Americas Cup Race, which I would not have understood without your comments elsewhere. I will make an effort to find out more.)

Yes, the second half of the 20th century has seen enormous societal changes, and changes in values, all over the world. Whether we like it or not, we have to adapt as best we can. All my life I have longed for peace and harmony, avoiding discord and envy like the plague. My family and friends are my most precious possessions. Yet I do take an active interest in what goes on in the world and do what I can to help wherever possible. Reluctantly I had to give up my job bringing Meals on Wheels to people whose only visitor I was on so many days.

Please don't think I was disregarding your and BOBBIE's recent posts about the increasing cost of health care. We are experiencing the rising costs of prescription drugs, for example, here too, on a daily basis. Plans for a radical overhaul of the social security system, as well as Medicare and Medicaid (affecting the elderly), have been drawn up, we are told in the press, but not yet formally presented by the administration. Oh my.

Incidentally, Decca wrote another eye-opening book titled The American Way of Birth which describes the role of money and politics in an industry every bit as lucrative as the funeral industry.

I found it rather interesting to read how Decca ended up owning Inch Kenneth.

David had bought the small, isolated island off the coast of Scotland in 1939. A large farm house was on it and cottages. A couple were hired to help with the house, the farm, and transportation for family and guests.

Travel from London was by overnight train, followed by a ferry ride of several hours to the closest island, Mull, then a fifteen-mile drive across Mull, finally a shorter boat trip to Inch Kenneth. In fine weather the last leg of the trip took thirty minutes but could be much longer and uncomfortable when the sea was choppy.

Sydney went to work on the farm and the vegetable garden; chickens, a few cows and sheep were added, and also a motorboat, called the Puffin and a row boat. A radio was the only means ofcommunication with the outside world.

David made the island over to Tom, who was killed in Burma late in the war without leaving a will. It was found that the deed of transfer of Inch Kenneth had been made under Scottish law, which meant the land and property passed to his sisters in equal shares. The parents inherited the chattel.

Five of the sisters handed their shares back, but Decca had a different plan : She gave power of attorney to a friend and instructed him to deed her share to the Communist Party of Great Britain "to undo some of the harm that our family has done, particularly the Mosleys, and Farve when he was in the house of Lords".

The intended beneficiars, the Communist Party of Greati Britain, indignantly turned down the bequest. Decca's friend quietly let the matter drop, and Decca revoked his power of attorney. the sisters offered to buy her share for the market value, but in the end Decca kept her one-sixth.

David was in physical decline and died in 1958. When his will was read, it was discovered that Decca had been left out. In every clause indicating assets to be shared by "my surviving children", he had added "except Jessica". It made headlines again, such as "Redesdale Will Cuts Out Madcap Jessica" and "Red Sheep Cut Out Of Will".

Nancy considered it unjust and signed her own share over to Jessica, who now owned two fifths of Inch Kenneth with Diana, Pam and Debo (Unity had died ten years earlier). Sydney considered selling the island after David's death, afraid she could no longer afford to live there. By that time Decca had come into a Romilly inheritance of over eleven thousand pounds and Dinky, her daughter, asked her to buy the island so that 'Granny Muv' could live there for the rest of her life.