So much has been written about the Mitford “girls” that even the most devoted fan might feel there’s nothing left to say; the nonfans, for whom the poshness is insurmountably problematic, will roll their eyes at the prospect of yet another giant tome (though it’s an odd complaint – you never hear anyone say, “I hate X’s writing, it’s so hideously working class”). We know them all, surely: the communist, the fascist, the Nazi, the novelist, the duchess, the mysterious one who never featured much; aka good Jessica, sinister Diana, evil Unity, brittle Nancy, sweet Deborah, blank Pamela. We know about the “teases”, the “shrieks”, the jokes, the argot, the nicknames (Nancy wrote to Deborah as “Dear 9”, claiming this was her mental age), the bonkers childhoods, the extreme political opinions, the privilege (relative – the Mitford parents felt girls weren’t worth educating properly, which still rankled with at least two of the sisters when they were old ladies). The proliferation of Mitford books has had the unfortunate side-effect of reducing these remarkable women to cartoon versions of themselves.

Charlotte Mosley’s vast, brilliantly edited and annotated collection of the six sisters’ letters to each other changes that: we didn’t really know them especially well, it turns out. Jessica was not that good; Diana briefly sinister but also clever, kind, fatally loyal to her Blackshirt husband, Oswald Mosley, and so on. Here, for the first time, are the six women’s own voices booming out from the tomb and across the decades from 1925 to 2003, reclaiming their name and their affairs, and telling their extraordinary stories, which, given their address books – walk-on parts include Hitler, Churchill, JFK, Evelyn Waugh, the Queen, Lucian Freud (“dear little Lucy”), Goebbels and Givenchy, and that’s the tip of quite an iceberg – is also the story of the 20th century, told from the front row.

Diana, Nancy and Jessica all wrote about themselves and their family, but of course they left out what they wanted: Jessica mentioned the death of her child as a footnote in Hons and Rebels (another one died later); Nancy’s impeccably breezy facade never hinted at her unhappiness, or at the anger she felt about her childhood. Five out of the six sisters are now dead, and thus unembarrassable, hence the publication of this book which makes all existing biographies feel redundant. Only the effortlessly funny Dowager Duchess of Devonshire (“we’ve had tea with Hitler and seen all the other sights”) remains, and it’s terribly sad to think of her deprived of her sister-correspondents.

Here is Pamela, the blank whom John Betjeman once wished to marry, hilarious (not always intentionally), with perfect recall when it comes to food, quasi-saintly, and possibly part of a Sapphic ménage in Switzerland, of all places. Here is Unity, mad about Hitler and, following her suicide attempt (she shot herself when Britain declared war on Germany), mad about God. We have long known she was never the same again – she returned home with the mental age of a 12-year-old – but there was always the possibility that she had been loopy from the onset. The letters show that she was unusually obsessive – she stalked Hitler until he noticed her (“I have seen the Führer a lot lately, which has been heaven”) – but was perfectly compos initially. Her childlike letters following her suicide attempt are pitiful. Jessica and Unity never lost touch, but Jessica refused to speak to Diana again until they were briefly reunited at Nancy’s deathbed: aside from anything else, the letters are fascinating on sibling relationships.

But there is so much else. Nancy never tires of teasing: here she is to Jessica, the card-carrying communist, after she (Nancy) had returned from Russia: “The Russians are very governessy, especially the women... [They] give you a cold blue look out of their little pig eyes which is quite terrifying. One of them asked me if I’d like to see a workman’s flat & I said no not a bit, it’s the kind of thing I loathe, I want to see old silver and fine morocco bindings.” But nothing is ever quite as it seems: despite the incessant jokes, Nancy was the one who denounced Diana as a danger to national security and was responsible for her incarceration in Holloway prison during the war. Here is Jessica, not entirely overjoyed by the fact that her first grandson is half black. Here is Diana on lunching with the Duchess of Windsor: “Pathos personified, about nine people including a nurse (in a green silk dress) & she (Duchess) tried to get the ball rolling by saying how nowadays people are only interested in SEX, well as we were all well on the way to the grave the ball refused to roll.”

What is more surprising is the abundant pathos. The prewar exchanges between Unity and Diana are both chilling and gruesomely fascinating, but the aftermath of Unity’s attempted suicide is, for all, heartbreaking. Deborah’s apparently charmed life includes a series of miscarriages, the loss of a newborn, and the unexpected inheritance of a giant crumbling pile and monstrous death duties. Jessica’s spirited, jaunty trajectory included two dead children and alcoholism. Nancy spent the better part of her life in love with a man who was not in love with her, nor faithful (he used to follow women round rooms murmuring “ J’ai envie de vous” and eventually married someone else). Diana sacrificed much at the altar of Oswald Mosley. It is ironic that women who are by and large known for either their comic eccentricity or their cartoonish “badness” should have all lived complex lives richly touched by tragedy, and made the kind of uncomplaining personal sacrifices that would have most of us running for the hills. The Mitfords were, of course, unusually funny and unusually verbally dextrous, as well as unusually well connected. But it wasn’t all fun and games, and what this book does so well is show the grit beneath the lustre.

The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters edited by Charlotte Mosley
Fourth Estate £25 pp834
Buy the book here at the offer price of £22.50 (inc p&p)

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