Sister Act
The Mitford girls have long interested many of us to the point of obsession, and nothing is better than reading them in their own words. Alistair Duncan meets Charlotte Mosley who has edited a highly acclaimed book of their letters
Above: Charlotte Mosley
The thing about the Mitford sisters was that when they walked into the room, there would be an incredible sense of fun,’ says Charlotte Mosley, ‘Whatever you’d be doing, they were absolutely switched on and interested in it. They were real life-enhancers. And they didn’t give a damn what other people thought. They had real star quality.’
Charlotte Mosley may not be a Mitford by blood, but there are few who know this most pored-over family better. As Diana Mosley’s daughter-in-law, Charlotte met and knew the sisters personally, but she is also the editor of an acclaimed collection of correspondence between the six sisters that has just been published in paperback.
The Mitford sisters were a force to be reckoned with, a kaleidoscopic clan who continue to inspire biographies and sustain our interest today. They were six wildly different and colourful characters, whose extraordinary lives led them to cross paths with some of the greatest characters of 20th century history…
There was Nancy, the acclaimed and bestselling author; Diana, the great beauty who fell for fascism and Oswald Mosley; Unity who became obsessed with Hitler and became part of his inner circle; Jessica (Decca) the communist who ran away to the Spanish Civil War before becoming a campaining journalist in America; Pamela the home-lover; and Deborah who became Duchess of Devonshire and châtelaine of Chatsworth House.
What is less well known is what great correspondents the sisters were. One of the reasons we remain so interested in them today is that, in their own voices, they were funny and original and, in Nancy’s case at least, they were superb writers. The sisters, of whom only Deborah ‘Debo’ Devonshire is still alive, were avid letter writers all their life. Some 12,000 letters remain from their criss-crossing correspondences with each other, spanning eighty years (just five per cent of these letters are included in the book). Former journalist Mosley, who married Alexander, son of Diana and Oswald, in 1975, spent over a year sifting through this Alpine heap of epistolary paperwork, photocopying each letter individually, then editing them into a coherent narrative.
‘There were moments when I thought I’d never get to the end of them,’ admits Mosley, leaning back on a cushion in her eyrie-like, fourth-storey flat in Notting Hill, a pashmina snaking round her neck. ‘But I did have some help. The main thing is that for objectivity, an outsider was required to edit these letters.’
Mosley has at one stage met all the sisters, except Unity who died in 1948. I ask her which Mitford she would have liked to have known better and she quickly bats back the name of Nancy, whom she met in hospital towards the end of her life.
‘I met Nancy when she was bedridden, but still very sharp,’ says Mosley. ‘It was 1973, the height of the craze for platform shoes. I had a brown and orange pair. I was taken to the hospital by my mother-in-law. Diana said to Nancy: “do look at Charlotte’s shoes”. She raised her head, then fell back with absolute scorn. It was an eye-opening moment for me. I realised that my shoes were, in fact, hideous. They looked like orthopaedic clogs.’
Mosley, who has previously edited the letters and journalistic writing of Nancy Mitford,says that in the end what surprised her most about the sisters’ often very witty notes to each other was the mutual strength of feeling they all fostered.
‘I’d underestimated just how much they meant to each other,’ she says. ‘That’s what the correspondence brought out. The Diana and Jessica split was so definitive because they had meant so much to each other when they were children. They couldn’t just pick up and be friends again afterwards.’
In the 1930s, communist Jessica and fascism-flirting Diana severed all contact with one another owing to their gaping political differences (although, curiously, Jessica always kept in contact with Unity). Mosley tells me that she finds extreme political views of any sort shocking (‘by their very nature, they’re automatically excluding the rest of the world in what they believe’), but agrees with me that it is in the letters of young, naïve, Führer-worshipping Unity that the most jaw-dropping remarks are to be found.
‘It’s always shocking to see in print “what a kind man Hitler is”,’ says Mosley. ‘But then again, it’s also very hard to put yourself back to 1935, to try and make that leap, before the WWII, before the Holocaust, before everything that we know now.’
What does she think Hitler saw in Unity Mitford?
‘Hitler probably approved of the way she looked,’ suggests Mosley. ‘After all, she conformed to the model of what an Aryan woman should look like. But it’s questionable whether he took anything she said very seriously. I rather doubt it. Apparently, she was good company. Unity was apparently one of the few people who, in Hitler’s company, could speak out and say what she thought. I think she was rather like the court jester.’
Unity’s tale is perhaps the most tragic of them all (as Britain declared war on Germany, the young, Nazi-loving ingénue shot herself in the head, only to inflict irreversible brain damage on herself). Which of the sisters enjoyed the most fulfilled life, in the end?
‘Nancy’s life was very fulfilled as a writer, but not emotionally,’ says Mosley. (Nancy had a romance with a homosexual Scottish aristocrat and fell in love with a Free French officer who never fully reciprocated her feelings.) ‘And Jessica had a very fulfilled life as a journalist.
The expectation with Debo wasn’t as great but she’s surprised everyone. Pamela was probably the most content. She wasn’t driven, but she loved her cooking, her dogs, her garden, her home life.’
Diana was still alive when Charlotte began the process of writing this book, though she died in August 2003, and Debo is still alive at 88. What was their reaction to it?
‘I asked Diana wasn’t it strange to see her life played out again. She said that it was so long ago, so much of it was in the past. But I think both she and Debo were happy to see their point of view put when they wrote it.’The tale of the Mitford sisters continues to amaze and enthral, after all these years.
There’s even interest in this most recent of Mitford books from the movie world, reveals Mosley, who has just finished editing the correspondence between Deborah Mitford and the travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor.
‘There is interest in a feature film based on the letters,’ says Mosley, barely concealing her glee. ‘There are no big stars attached to the project at the moment, but there are a lot of good English actresses who could play them. I think Kate Winslet would make a great Nancy!’
A feature film on the Mitfords is overdue – and if it does get made, then the continued fame of this fascinating sextet of siblings is assured.
The Mitfords, Letters Between Six Sisters, edited by Charlotte Mosley, HarperCollins, £10.99