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Mitford Mania

© Viola Ashford

"Born: England, 1917. Education: Nil." This is how Decca (Jessica Mitford), perhaps the most interesting of the Mitford children, described her early years on her resume.1 In spite of this (although it has to be admitted that she was exaggerating) Jessica became a famous writer and journalist, especially renowned for her brilliant exposes, such as The American Way of Death which revealed the tricks of the American funeral industry.

There were seven Mitford children in this fascinating family of English "eccentrics" - Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Tom, Unity, Tom and Deborah. Surprisingly, these clever and unusual children had rather conventional parents - David, Lord Redesdale, who enjoyed typical aristocratic pusuits of hunting, fishing and shooting, and Sydney, distant but affectionate.

The children inherited their mainly unconventional characters from their two unusual grandparents - Bertram Mitford, a diplomat, gardener, courtier and writer, who lived in Japan when that country was hardly heard of, and Thomas Bowles, who founded Vanity Fair and The Lady. As a young journalist in 1871, Thomas sent reports by balloon from besieged Paris to his editors in London.

The children were raised in the typical English aristocratic way - in a household of servants, with nannies and governesses to care for them. The girls usually hated the governesses who taught them and resentfully watched their brother Tom be educated at boarding school, then Oxford and be prepared for a career. (Tom was called to the Bar.) Girls were supposed to pursue a London season as a debutante, have a big white wedding and many children.

Decca grew very tired of this oppressive way of life very quickly - she decribes the house as a "fortress" in her autobiography Daughters and Rebels, ruled over by her exceedingly strict father with his fierce rages. As soon as she could she began saving her "running-away" money, and rebelliously turned to socialism, eloping to Spain with young reporter Esmond Romilly, a nephew of Winston Churchill, to help support the Republican cause.

Lord Redesdale sent a British destroyer after her to no avail, then cut her off from the family fortune completely.

Jessica and Esmond settled in America in 1939 where Esmond became a political journalist. Sadly he was killed in the Second World War. Decca soon married again, Bob Trouhaft, a lawyer. Together they joined the Communist party (leaving in 1958 finding it "ineffectual and stagnant"2) and pursued civil rights causes. Jessica later wrote investigative stories for magazines.

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