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

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It was a schoolroom joke that Unity was a Nazi, and Jessica (Decca) a Communist - they had competing posters of Hitler and Lenin on their walls - but the joke went very sour once they left the schoolroom. Unity insisted on being 'finished' in Munich instead of in Paris like her sisters, and hung around the Osteria Bavaria until she caught Hitler's eye. Se nota mucho que la autora es periodista. Es una escritora increíblemente económica en cuanto a medios de expresarse, su estilo es claro, directo y conciso, no se permite nunca divagar o irse por las ramas. Al igual que con su hermana mayor encontramos una lectura sazonada de comentarios irónicos sobre el mundo en el que vivió y las personas que la rodeaban. Pero en el caso de Jessica la sátira es mucho más directa y concisa, menos elegante, no se anda con por las ramas a la hora de decir lo que piensa ni se esconde tras situaciones tan frívolas que pueden resultar absurdas o con personajes a los que es imposible tomar en serio, pero que esconden una carga histórica y social mucho más profunda de lo que puede parecer a simple vista. Como buena periodista hace una crónica nítida, detallada e inteligente de un mundo que está desapareciendo, de una sociedad cambiante por el contexto histórico y político, una acertada comparativa de dos sociedades; la estadounidense y la inglesa. Es sincera cuando la mayor parte del tiempo, y parcial el resto, en muchas ocasiones uno tiene la impresión de que lo que cuenta está ligeramente retocado para que parezca más interesante o lustroso. Pero incluso cuando camufla la verdad, está sigue visualizándose en el fondo de todo. Como puede verse en que muchos de sus comentarios y apreciaciones tienen un tinte frívolo y elitista, que demuestra que Jessica no pudo escapar del todo del tipo de vida y educación que había recibido en su casa. He incluso da la impresión de que ha llegado a un punto en su vida en que tampoco lo intenta.

Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford: 9781590171103

So it should be very exciting to read the story of her growing up. Jessica had a very large family, and her sisters were all just as notorious and exciting as she was in different ways. But not all of them were as smart about the world. Diana fell in love with Oswald Moseley, the English fascist, and was ostracized from polite society as a traitor for most of her life. Unity's fate was even more horrific, she fell in love with Adolph Hitler, became a fanatical "Jew-hater" (in her own words) and then tried to kill herself when England declared war on Nazi Germany. In a ghastly accident, the bullet lodged in her head and she became permanently brain-damaged, only to die several years later. 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.This book reads like a love letter to Esmond Romilly...seen through rose tinted glasses of the past and of a first love. Unity first learned about Hitler and fascism through her older sister Diana, the family beauty. Diana left her first husband in 1932 for Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, which both Diana and Unity happily embraced. Such was Unity’s fascination with Adolf Hitler that, in 1933, she traveled to Germany with the stated intention of learning German and meeting the then chancellor. Within six months, she accomplished both. (Her strategy, she wrote, was to go to the restaurant where she knew Hitler often ate and stare at him until he asked what her deal was.) Rapidly, Unity became part of Hitler’s inner circle. In 1939, when Britain declared war on Germany, she shot herself in the head. Although she survived, the bullet remained lodged in her brain, and her mental health would never recover. She died in 1948. What I was given I thoroughly enjoyed, but I really did want more, more about the years to come and more about why the couple chose to go to America and not Russia! To me it seemed that many of their actions were inspired more by adolescent rebellion, naivety and a young lovers’ attraction rather than deep political beliefs. T]he story of Jessica Mitford's struggles makes tumultous and rewarding reading, and I recommend it heartily. These two books are now considered Canonical Mitford, the works at the center of the Mitford industry. Nancy’s later novels would divide critics, her earlier novels are considered trifles, and the literary biographies she turned to in the 1950s were admired on publication but are now little remembered. But the Love duology is irresistible stuff, merciless to its characters but affectionate toward the absurd world in which they exist. “Aren’t these people absolute idiots?” the books seem to ask. “And isn’t their way of life really the only gracious and humane way to live?”

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No comparison to Nancy's fiction novels in any sense of literary style or value. But does hold some terrific insight. Jessica is accurate at her estimation of the family being champion haters which concludes this book. All, except Tom. Yup! Decca is my favourite Mitford and (I’m whispering here) I’m not at all fond of Debo – I think the truth about her will come out in the posthumous biographies that are surely now being prepared… I’ve borrowed this image from Karyn, who reviewed it here: http://tinyurl.com/qhpbmxc (Hope that’s ok, Karyn!)I fell in love with her right then and there. I felt the same way. Jesus, racism, and conservative politics made me nauseated, as they did my eldest sister. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2013-05-16 14:05:26 Bookplateleaf 0002 Boxid IA1161806 City London Donor I really enjoyed this book. One gets a different perspective of the Mitfords, a perspective from within. Jessica tells of her life and her family from her point of view. Events are told with immediacy, with a girlish gush of enthusiasm that feels thoroughly honest, genuine, youthful and engaging. 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. Sometimes we would barricade with chairs and stage pitched battles, throwing books and records until Nanny came to tell us to stop the noise.

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In the early 1980s I began working on my first book, a biography of Nancy Mitford. Four of the six Mitford sisters were then still living, Pamela in the Cotswolds, Diana in Paris with her second husband Sir Oswald Mosley, Debo, wife of the Duke of Devonshire, at Chatsworth, and Jessica, always known as ‘Decca’, with her family in California. Throughout my research Pam, Diana and Debo were immensely kind and helpful, all of them possessed of great charm and a slightly idiosyncratic sense of humour. They invited me to stay, gave me access to hundreds of letters, and mined for my benefit lucid memories of their early lives and of their family and friends.

We [...] were informed to our surprise that even in the middle of a civil war people under the age of [21] could not get married without their parents' consent. Some anarchists we met in a café offered the services of a priest they had taken prisoner ("We could find ways of making him do it," they said), but it would have meant a two-day journey and we weren't sure just how legal such a marriage would prove to be. 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. While all her elders were trooping off to Munich, Decca was languishing at home, but not for long. She heard that her cousin, Esmond Romilly, had run away from school to fight with the Communists in the Spanish Civil War and the next year, 1937, she eloped with him. She was 19, he 18, and the fact that he was Churchill's nephew made for gratifying headlines. There’s something about the Mitford family — that famous family of Nazis and communists, satirists and journalists who became the fascination of English society in the mid-20th century — that feels perfect for this moment. This section of the book I loved, even without the full line-up of Mitfords. We see, for instance, them being dragged around by the Conservative Party –‘Our car was decorated with Tory blue ribbons, and if we should pass a car flaunting the red badge of Socialism, we were allowed to lean out of the window and shout at the occupants: “Down with the horrible Counter-Honnish Labour Party!”.’ We get a child’s-eye-view of the various scandals Nancy causes. Mostly, we get a taste of Decca’s thirst for independence, particularly in her longing to go to school and her storing-up of a Running Away Fund.