Hons and Rebels: The Mitford Family Memoir (W&N Essentials)

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Leni Riefenstahl claims that Hitler told her he could never have an intimate relationship with a foreigner. But he was obviously very fond of Unity; he called her 'Kind' (child) and took her to Bayreuth. Moreover, he was happy to meet the various members of her family who came on visits; they were all duly charmed, except Farve, who persisted in referring to Nazis as 'a murderous gang of pests'. Diana, of course, had her own reasons for cultivating Hitler - he was guest of honour at her wedding to Oswald Mosley in 1936 - but these will have to wait for a posthumous historian. Si hay algo que me ha resultado conmovedor es su manera de pasar de puntillas sobre los momentos más dolorosos para ella. Y es en esa falta de detalles y de explicaciones donde el lector puede percibir hasta qué punto sufrió la autora a lo largo de su vida, como las ausencias que tuvo que soportar a lo largo de su vida dejaron en ella una huella profunda. Puede explayarse en tratar como le afecto la separación de su hermana favorita, Unity Valkirie (nombre profético donde los haya, pero conocida familiarmente como Gorgo) cuando esta abrazó sin ambages la doctrina del nazismo y se convirtió en miembro del circulo más intimo de Hitler, Intentando suicidarse cuando Alemania en Inglaterra se declararon la guerra. Pero, en cambio, pasa rápidamente por el episodio de la muerte de su primera hija. Y trata de forma abrupta y rápida las últimas páginas de su biografía, donde habla de la despedida a con su esposo cuando este se marcha a luchar al frente, centrándose más en una suerte de estudio antropológico social para explicar la naturaleza de las acciones de ambos a lo largo de su relación. Tampoco lo dice abiertamente, pero nunca deja dudas al lector sobre lo profundo que fue el vínculo con Esmond y lo mucho que se querían. Hay en todo esto un practismo moral increíblemente fuerte que tiene algo de supervivencia mental. El desenlace del libro es áridamente abrupto, pero que de alguna manera encaja porque tiene sentido. En las últimas páginas hay una sensación de fatalidad que lo envuelve todo totalmente, aunque hay que reconocer que eso en eso tiene mucho que ver el hecho de que se esté contando ya una situación que se conoce de antemano, que ya se sabe cómo va acabar. Y el párrafo final, aunque al igual que el resto de la obra es simple y conciso, tiene una gran carga emotiva que es imposible que pase desapercibida para nadie, y que hace que sea impactante por ese mismo motivo. De esa forma brillante y simple la autora expresa mucho más que lo que dice en sus palabras. Pese a que por sí misma la obra me ha parecido muy interesante, ha sido inevitable no poder compararla con las novelas y el estilo de Nancy. Son muy parecidos, pero a la vez muy diferentes. La forma de escribir de Nancy es como si pegases un mordisquito a alguna fruta que ya estuviera madura y prácticamente, pero no del todo, su sabor sigue siendo bastante ácido, y eso es lo que perdura en tu recuerdo, más que la dulzura que pueda tener el fruto en su mayor parte. En cambio con Jessica es como si pegases un mordisco gigantesco a un limón directamente. Pero la sátira acida en ambos casos es una parte esencial de sus trabajos. Aprovecho para animaros a que si no conocéis la biografía de estas seis hermanas, por favor la busquéis. Merece la pena mucho leer sobre ellas.

Hons and Rebels | The Society of Hons Jessica Mitford | Hons and Rebels | The Society of Hons

Shouldn’t think of it. I hate the beastly Fascists. If you’re going to be one, I’m going to be a Communist, so there.” On the day war was declared, Unity went to the Englischer Garten in Munich and shot herself. She survived, but was left with permanent brain damage. Hitler arranged for her to be moved to a hospital in Switzerland, whence her parents collected her. Muv nursed her devotedly, but Farve was so upset he went off with the parlour maid and in effect ended the marriage. The Mosleys were, meanwhile, imprisoned for most of the war, with Decca warmly urging Churchill not to release them. Tom was killed in Burma; Unity died of meningitis in 1948. Sometimes we would barricade with chairs and stage pitched battles, throwing books and records until Nanny came to tell us to stop the noise.T]he story of Jessica Mitford's struggles makes tumultous and rewarding reading, and I recommend it heartily.

Rereading: Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford review — a

I was expecting a biography of the eccentric Mitford childhood we (mostly) all know well. The sort of thing we found in Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love– with the hons in the cupboard, the father hunting the children, and the various codes. Spoilers: it is not. We do see some of Decca’s childhood – but by the time she was around in the nursery, her older siblings were more or less adults. Just Unity, Debo, and Decca were left around – and it is the three of them who formed various bonds and antipathies. Occasionally Unity and I joined in the forbidden sport of ‘teasing Debo’. The teasing had to be done well out of earshot of my father, as Debo was his prime favourite, and fearful consequences could follow if we made her cry. She was an extraordinarily softhearted child, and it was easy to make her huge blue eyes brim with tears – known as ‘welling’ in family circles. The past decade of political polarization shows no sign of abating, and it continues to turn not just countries but families against each other. Once-in-a-lifetime natural disasters are becoming once-a-decade disasters in the wake of catastrophic climate change. The world is fundamentally reorganizing itself before our eyes, and in such a destabilizing moment, there is something useful in looking at a family who found its world, too, shifting and changing in ways none of them could have predicted. And who exemplifies that situation better than the Mitfords? I tried reading this book once before, but struggled to get past the sheer selfishness of both Decca and Esmond. When I first read this book I disliked both intensely, despising Esmond for driving a wedge between Decca and her family, and Decca for being so complacent.Hons and Rebels is a tale of two halves. Its first part describes Jessica’s upbringing at Swinbrook in the Cotswolds, territory familiar to Mitford-lovers from her older sister Nancy’s The Pursuit of Love. All the crucial ingredients of Mitford-lore are present: the vacant mother and booming father, the sisterly teases and the sisters themselves: sharp Nancy, fascist Diana, Nazi Unity, domesticated Pamela, Communist Jessica and country-loving Debo. Wigs on the Green is still a satire of Nancy’s social set, but since that social set had come to include avowed Nazis and avowed communists, so does the novel: It skewers Diana’s courtship with the fascist Mosley, and Unity’s budding fascism. (Diana eventually forgave Nancy for the book, but Unity never did.) By the time she released Pigeon Pie in 1940, Nancy was writing light social satire about the war. The heroine of Pigeon Pie is an English aristocrat who transforms herself into a Beautiful Female Spy to fight the fascists. Tom, our only brother, occupied a rather special place in family life. We called him Tuddemy, partly because it was the Boudledidge translation of Tom, partly because we thought it rhymed with ‘adultery’. ‘Only one brother and six sisters! How you must love him. How spoilt he must be,’ strangers would say. ‘Love him! You mean loathe him,’ was the standard Honnish answer. Debo, asked by a census-taker what her fam­ily consisted of, replied furiously, ‘Three Giants, three Dwarfs and one Brute.’ The Giants were Nancy, Diana and Unity, all exceptionally tall; the Dwarfs Pam, Debo and me; the Brute, poor Tuddemy. My mother has to this day a cardboard badge on which is carefully lettered: ‘League against Tom. Head: Nancy.’ I’ve borrowed this image from Karyn, who reviewed it here: http://tinyurl.com/qhpbmxc (Hope that’s ok, Karyn!) It was as though I were a figurine travelling inside one of those little glass spheres in which an artificial snowstorm arises when the sphere is shaken — and no matter where I was, in a train, a boat, a foreign hotel, there was no escape outside the glass. Invisible boundaries kept me boxed in from the real life of other people going on all around…

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In actual fact, Jessica (or Decca, as she was known) comes across very sympathetically. Partly this is because of my political leanings, I daresay. I don’t fall as far left as Decca, but I’m pretty much a lefty – and we can all agree to band against the Fascist and Nazi beliefs of Diana and Unity Mitford. There are some pretty extraordinary descriptions of Decca and Unity setting up their shared bedroom into a Fascist and Communist split, with posters advocating their own politics on either side. It would be amusing if Unity’s views were not so extreme. Si hay algo que me ha resultado conmovedor es su manera de pasar de puntillas sobre los momentos más dolorosos para ella. Y es en esa falta de detalles y de explica Odd pursuits, indeed, and little wonder that my mother’s continual refrain was, ‘You’re very silly children.’ In fact, the anti-Tuddemy campaign, which raged through­out childhood, was merely the curious Honnish mirror-world expression of our devotion to him. For years, he was the only member of the family to be ‘on speakers’ with all the others. In spite of frequent alliances of brief duration for Boudledidge or Honnish pursuits, or for the purpose of defeating some common enemy – generally a governess – relations between Unity, Debo and me were uneasy, tinged with mutual resent­ment. We were like ill-assorted animals tied to a common tethering post.I am so glad that I finally read this book that's as old as I am, being published in 1960. (My copy isn't that old, it dates from 1962.) It's very instructive to be reminded that youth isn't necessarily wasted on the young. I have to say that my favourite parts of the book were describing her childhood, to me that was where she sparkled the most. Although I did feel that if she had not acted like a petulant child and taught herself-if she had wanted to learn about things and study further she could have taught herself, my grandmother did that-I also think she would have enjoyed herself more...but I digress this is not a space for me to criticize her childhood. By the time of her first London season in 1935, Decca was smouldering: she hated the world into which she had been born and now longed to leave. A committed socialist, her mind was firmly focused on running away, and an irresistible opportunity presented itself the following year with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. The war profoundly divided the Mitfords, Unity and Diana passionately proFranco, while Decca immediately became a committed Loyalist, determined somehow to leave England and join the fight in Spain. ‘Fortress aspects of life at home now came to the forefront with a vengeance,’ she recalled. ‘I was in headlong opposition to everything the family stood for.’ Si tengo que ser totalmente sincera, más que por interés real por lo que cuenta, escogí este libro para poder comparar la forma de escribir de Jessica Mitord con la de su hermana Nancy, una autora que me encanta cómo escribe y cuyas novelas disfruto totalmente. Y, para que mentir, por la curiosidad de leer sobre las estrafalarias hermanas Mitford y sus polémicas vidas. Pero al final eso no ha sido lo decisivo para que esta lectura me haya agradado tanto. La historia de Jessica es realmente apasionante y adictiva. Fue una mujer increíblemente valiente; ejemplo claro de lo que es hacerse a uno mismo con todas sus consecuencias, sean buenas o malas. Publicado en 1960, “Nobles y Rebeldes” , es la biografía de Jessica Mitford, quinta de las seis hijas de una familia de la aristocracia inglesa, las cuales han pasado a la historia por sus complejas y escandalosas vidas sentimentales y políticas. Los nombres de las mayorías de ellas se relacionan con el fascismo, siendo Jessica la excepción, pues ella militó en el Partido Comunista y no dudo en escaparse de su casa para acudir a la Guerra Civil Española con quien poco después sería su esposo, Esmond Romilly, sobrino del mismísimo Winston Churchill. La biografía puede dividirse en tres partes: en la primera Jessica nos habla de cómo era su vida familiar y de sus relaciones con sus padres y sus hermanos, hablando también sobre que pasaba en las existencias de la mayoría de sus hermanas. En esta primera parte conocemos como empezaron las inquietudes políticas y sociales de Jessica, como su vida de niña bien en la campiña inglesa termino por resultarle tediosa y aburrida, sintiendo la necesidad de hacer algo más con su vida. En la segunda parte, el foco se centrará más en la Guerra Civil española y lo que Jessica y Esmond vivieron en el frente vasco, además del escándalo que supuso su fuga y los intentos del gobierno inglés y sus familias por hacerles regresar a su patria. La última parte se centrará en la vida de la pareja como casados, hablando de sus problemas económicos en Inglaterra y de su posterior periplo por los Estados Unidos. La biografía terminará con la partida de Esmond al frente para luchar en la Segunda Guerra Mundial.

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Nancy Mitford in her Paris apartment, 1956. Thurston Hopkins/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Diana, too, was devoted to Nazism. She married Mosley in 1936 in Joseph Goebbels’s living room, with Hitler a guest of honor. In 1940, after the war broke out, she was arrested for her ties to Hitler and would spend three years in prison, then remain under house arrest until the end of the war.Personally, I never noticed they'd gone away. I thought there was a perpetual industry devoted to producing books, plays, musicals and television series about the Mitfords. But no, Mary S Lovell assures us, there is a whole generation of younger readers who haven't even heard of them.