when she first arrived in America, Jessica was anxious to preserve her new-found anonymity in San Francisco. She wanted to be considered on her own merits and not merely as one of the Mitford girls. In 1944, she forfeited her British citizenship in order to join the American Communist Party and threw herself into tireless fund-raising and recruiting on its behalf. Although Lady Redesdale wrote to her regularly, keeping her informed of family news, Jessica’s contact with her sisters was sporadic. She had made a conscious effort to break away and was carving out a life for herself in deliberate opposition to the world of privilege and prejudice she felt her family represented. Her deep well of feelings for her sisters remained intact, but mistrust had entered their relations and behind the long-standing jokes and teases was a wariness that was never dispelled.
Pamela spent the war years at Rignell where – like Lady Redesdale who in Unity’s little book of questions All About Everybody had put as her favourite occupation ‘woman at the till’ – she kept a close eye on expenditure. Her housekeeping and farming skills came in useful when coping with wartime rationing and labour shortages. In the bitterly cold winter of 1942 when the water tanks for her cattle froze, the youth who had replaced her cowman told her that there was no need to fetch fresh water for the cows since they could eat the snow. Pamela’s experience of running the Biddesden dairy farm had taught her otherwise. ‘How do you know what they want?’ she scolded. ‘You’ve never been an in-calf heifer’. As a leading scientist, Derek would have been exempt from active service but he was determined to join up and volunteered for the Royal Air Force. He went into action in 1941 in a night-fighter squadron and finished the war as a heavily decorated wing commander. When the Mosleys were released in 1943 and had nowhere to live – the lease on Wootton had been surrendered in 1940 – Pamela and Derek immediately offered to take them in, just as they had taken in their two boys at the beginning of the war. Diana never forgot Derek and Pamela’s loyalty, and it brought her closer to her sister than she had been since Biddesden days.
The beginning of the war was a particularly miserable time for nineteen-year-old Deborah. She had travelled with her mother to Switzerland to collect Unity after her suicide attempt and suffered the shock of finding her a completely changed person. She was witness to the increasingly bitter political arguments between the Redesdales and their decision to separate. When Unity came out of hospital, Deborah, except for a few months when she worked in the forces canteen at St Pancras Station, was cooped up with her sister and mother in the small cottage at Swinbrook, or stayed at Inch Kenneth with her grim and physically diminished father. In April 1941, Andrew Cavendish, to whom she had considered herself unofficially engaged for some time, formally proposed and they were married the following month, both aged just twenty-one. Deborah spent the first two years of her marriage following Andrew, who was in the Coldstream Guards, to his different training grounds across the country, living in small pubs and, occasionally, rented houses. She bore three children during the war, two of whom survived: a daughter, Emma, and a son, Peregrine. In 1943, while Andrew was fighting with his battalion in Italy, she moved to The Rookery, a house on the Derbyshire estate of her parents-in-law, where she spent the rest of the war.
Dear Deb Dahlia
Haven’t had a letter from you for ages, what has happened? How are the P[arent Bird]’s – everyone I see asks if they are interned & poor Ld Londonderry has had to deny publicly that he is.
Tell Muv I have written to the Duchess of Aosta & asked her to find out from the wop consul in Munich how & where Boud is. This is very round about & will take time but it should work.
I suppose they are pleased about having the Russians on their side1 – do note the reactions. Dear me how I regret not having taught you how to write. And what about Hitler’s weapon, is it the Russian air force or some awful gas or bomb? Do they know?
Now be tactful & don’t tell the P’s I asked the trend but I do simply so die to know.
Where is Squalor? Coming home or not or what. I long to write to her & don’t know where.
I am learning to shoot with Rodd’s revolver so that I can be like the Polish grandmothers when the Germo-Russians turn up here which I suppose they will do soon.
Give my love to Blor & mind you write soon.
Love from NR
P.S. Everybody here is being inoculated for all the diseases they can remember as they think H’s policy is bacteriological warfare. I have quite refused as it always makes me so ill.
What is your policy? Now TACT Dahlia & tear this letter up for laud’s sake.
Darling Susan
Here I sit in this awful dark cellar all day from 11–7 & no day off not even Sunday & this is the sixteenth day I’ve been here & I feel as if it were seven years already. It is gas &, therefore, air proof & one has a racking headache after the 1st half hour. I hope you are harrowed.
Susan Stalin how could you let him. Honestly Soo I had such an awful dream, that I was in Harrods & I saw a big crowd so I thought it was the Queen & Q. Mary & when I went to look it was Adolf & Uncle Joe. I woke up yelling.
Peter has a commission in the Welsh Guards. He was offered a job in propaganda but says he must kill Germans. Luckily he won’t go abroad for two months at least. Tud is quartered quite near here & he & Nigel [Birch] come to dinner quite often.
Susan the P’s. The day war broke out I was leaving the Island1 & Muv was taking me to the station & I said something only fairly rude about Hitler & she said ‘get out of this car & walk to the station then’, so after that I had to be honey about Adolf. Then later I said Peter had joined up so she said ‘I expect he’ll be shot soon’, which I thought fairly tactless of her.
Altogether she is acting very queer. Farve has recanted in the Daily Mirror like Latimer.
Poor Boud I do wonder. Fleet St says she has been put on a farm for Czech women – we have written to the Duchess of Aosta to find out what has really happened to her & if she is awfully miserable she could perhaps go to Italy. Probably she is on top of the world though.
Susan Hitler’s secret. Well if he wipes us all out with it PROMISE you’ll take a dose over there in revenge. I absolutely trust you to.
Do write & tell the American form. I imagine they just don’t want to think about the war like us & the Abyssinians & heavens I don’t blame them.
RSVP
Love from NR
Dear Miss
I see you have learnt to write in a single night.
Really, the Fem! She always thinks anybody who isn’t a hidebound Tory is a communist – if she knew the trouble I have with the C[ommunist] P[arty], & that the Labour Party have always hated them worse than anything – but these little niceties seem to have escaped her! Actually, I have always said that there wasn’t a pin to put between Bolshies & Nazis except that the latter, being better organized, are probably more dangerous. It’s the Fem herself who was always writing articles trying to point out the (invisible) differences.
Rodd has got his commission & goes off on Friday & we are having a GRAND BALL on Thursday, white ties & ball dresses & dinner for 30 people at Blomfield. Ambitious?
Write again soon. I wish I was on the Island. I too have been digging up my lawn, oh the hard work. I am going to keep recs.1