More Mitfords

I started writing this on December 26, 2022, which was a holiday, but only because Christmas was on a Sunday. So we Americans got the Boxing Day holiday, just this one time.

I’m not really an Anglophile (well maybe a little bit), but I do think that the British get some things right, and Christmas is one of those things. Or at least it used to be. Maybe they don’t get any more time off than Americans any more. Down time is not profitable. It’s not efficient. It’s not hard core. The UK is just as capitalist as the US is now. Mrs. Thatcher made her mark. 

But since I was lucky enough to be on vacation at the end of the year, I had time to read, and to write about it, and Mary S. Lovell’s The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family was probably the most British thing I could have been reading on December 26, the most British of days, at least to an American. 

Last year, I read The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters (edited by Charlotte Mosley, Diana’s daughter-in-law). The sisters documented their lives very thoroughly in their letters, so I was already familiar with the events detailed in the book, but I wanted to read about the family from a more detached perspective. But Ms. Lovell, though somewhat impartial, is far from detached. She generally avoids taking sides in the well-known disputes between and among the sisters, though she does seem to favor Jessica a bit. But she also repeatedly makes excuses for Diana, who was by all accounts beautiful and brilliant and generous but also an unrepentant Nazi and so clearly indefensible. Unity was an even more committed Nazi than Diana and far more overtly anti-Semitic and although she was obviously mentally unstable even before she shot herself, she knew right from wrong and still chose to follow Hitler and embrace Nazism. Nevertheless, the author defends both Diana and Unity. To be fair, though, she’s certainly not the only Diana and Unity apologist among Mitford fans and scholars. You’d think that the “Nazis are bad, period” school of thought would be the dominant one but this does not seem to be the case. 

But maybe it’s not fair to call Lovell an apologist. I can’t point to any specific example where she outright defends the sisters’ politics. However, as she points out the inconsistency of Decca's willingness to forgive Unity but not Diana, she also seems not to understand why anyone would really condemn either of them. Late in the book, Lovell acknowledges that Decca is right to criticize Diana for complaining about the miserable conditions at Holloway during her imprisonment, while failing to consider the far worse conditions in Hitler's concentration camps. However, during the passages that detail the Mosleys' detention, Lovell makes the very same error, asserting that prison conditions for the political prisoners at Holloway were unduly and gratuitously harsh, while failing to note that entirely innocent prisoners in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen suffered much worse punishment. 

Try as she does to come across as scholarly and reserved, Lovell is really just a Mitford fan girl. She loves the whole Mitford family, including the often-maligned Sydney (“Muv”) and David (“Farve’) also known as Lord and Lady Redesdale. She loves them personally and particularly, and she loves the English class system that produced them. And she expects that her readers share her understanding and admiration of that system. We’re meant to laugh along with the author when she shakes her head at Hitler’s ignorance of English titles (hearing Unity mention her father, “Lord Redesdale” Hitler seemed to mistakenly assume that Unity, with a different surname than her father, must be illegitimate, and he pities her). That Hitler - such a bumpkin! So provincial! So non-U!

*****

It was December 28 and I was on an airplane heading to Florida. This was unusual for us. We always go to Philadelphia for a few days at Christmas (and we did that, too) but we really never take a bona fide winter vacation. I felt like a jetsetter, sitting on that plane. I felt like a Mitford sister. 

My sisters and I had been texting each other the previous day.  My youngest sister sent us a link to the website for a place called Gatorland. She suggested that my middle sister, who was also going to Florida, and I should visit Gatorland. But then she told us not to even think about going to Gatorland without her. There was trash talk. There were funny gifs. The Florida-bound sisters sent cartoons and gifs of silly alligators. "Gatorland here we come!" The youngest sister sent angry faces and a gif of a lady maniacally waving both middle fingers. "Don't you fucking dare!"

I don't know if any of the Mitford sisters would have tossed around the F word as often as my sisters and I do, especially when we're texting. Maybe Decca would have, just to try to shock Diana. On the other hand, Diana spent almost two years in prison so I'm sure she was familiar with that word, and probably unshockable in general. 

*****

I wrote most of this and then I set it aside to work on something else and to think about why I keep reading about the Mitfords. Part of the answer to that question comes from Simon Pegg, an unlikely source. In a video that is making the social media rounds, Simon Pegg rants about Richi Sunak and his government. “Fuck the Tories,” he says, shaking his head in disgust. 

Fuck the Tories indeed. I don't like the Tories either (and I do hope that Mr. Sunak and his henchpeople lose their seats in Parliament assuming they ever allow a general election), and I don’t wish for a return of the early 20th century British class system that produced the Mitford sisters. But if it weren’t for the Tories and the aristocrats, there wouldn’t be a Labor party. There wouldn’t be punk rock or working class solidarity or Simon Pegg waving his middle finger at a video camera. Rebellion isn’t possible unless you have something to rebel against. 

I have lots of other books in my queue right now and it will be a while before I return to the Mitfords. But I will return eventually. Appalling politics aside, the sisters were endlessly interesting. They always make good reading, and good company.