THOSE SURPRISING MITFORD GIRLS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 71, 10 January 1947, Page 6

THOSE SURPRISING MITFORD GIRLS

FAMILY AT ODDS POLITICAL ENTHUSIASMS OF ALL DEGREES Unity Freeman-Mitford admired Hitler so much that she stayed in Germany even after war began. Her sister Diana was married in Germany to Sir Oswald Mosley, of the British Union of Fascists, Jessica Freeman-Mitford took the opposite road, and recently contributed £750 to the Communist Daily Worker. But there were six sisters and a brother in the family. This article from the Australian press tells their story; the story of a British aristocratic family torn apart by political beliefs.

Once upon a time there lived in England a lord and lady who might have been called the happiest parents in all the land. They were Lord and Lady Redesdale, surname Free-man-Mitford.

There were six beautiful daughters in the Mitford home, bearing six lovely names: Unit}', Jessica, Nancy, Pamela, Diana and Deborah. In addition there was one son, who might have been called a special blessing in this tranquil household.

Then, one day, politics crept down the chimney of this ideal home. Insidiously various “isms” pried into the sanctity of the household and took hold of the lives of the Mitfords. .

The only son, who had great stability, apparently escaped the clutches of new doctrines, but he later gave his life in the war. Unity, with the fanatic devotion she developed for Hitler, was the first noticeably political casualty. Eventually she got a disabling bullet in her .head. From that unhappy beginning, three of the glamorous British sisters seem to have run the gamut from Communism to Fascism.

Jessica has only recently rocked the home foundations by contributing £750 to the Daily Worker. Nancy, who is the wife of the Hon. Peter Rodd, son of Lord and Lady Rennel, and a prominent British Socialist, contributed her bit to the family eccentricity when she published a book lampooning the British aristocracy.

“Pursuit of Happiness” deals with a fictional family almost as impetuous as Nancy’s own turned out to be. Meanwhile, Pamela married the son of a baronet in 1928.

Deborah, the youngest, married Second Lieutenant Lord Andrew Cavendish of the Coldstream Guards and son of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, early in the war, and lives as quietly as a future Duchess.

Lunched With Hitler

It was Diana, Unity and Jessica who leaped out into the spotlight of politics, dragging their dignified father and their Victorian mother along with them. Unity started it, by lunching with Hitler in Munich one summer afternoon 15 years ago. Not long after, that Unity, whose middle name was Valkyrie, was seen everywhere with the Nazi bigwigs. Soon after, her elder sister Diana, who had been married to the son of Lord Moyne in as ornate a wedding as London’s Mayfair ever saw, but who divorced him later on grounds of infidelity, joined her in Berlin.

The two tall, beautiful, blonde sisters were the toast of Berlin, each wearing huge swastikas,' signed on the back by Hitler himself. They even persuaded their father and mother to attend the Nazi Congress at Nuremberg. Diana was married secretly in the home of Propaganda Minister Goebbels to Sir Oswald Mosley, of the British Union of Fascists.

Unity stayed in Germany with her ideal, Adolph. This sojourn in her beloved enemy’s country was cut short, however, by a bullet. Though denying all knowledge of it, the Nazis cared for her by Hitler’s direct command. The two warring governments soon afterwards made arrangements to get Unity home. Her father met the boat, took the muffled figure in charge, and sent her to an isolated community in' Scotland. Lord Redesdale, convinced of his mistake in following his daughter’s political ideas, returned to London in spite of the blitz. Daughter in America

That leaves Jessica. In 1937 she was the storm centre of three countries, as members of her family, the consular service, and reporters followed her trail. Jessica had eloped with Esmond Romilly who already had developed a reputation as a left-wing warrior and writer, and was on her way to war-torn Spain. The various entourages finally caught up with the lovers in Bayonne, France. There Jessica, in an old hat and brown suit, was mar-

ried to Romilly, in the British Consulate. The bride and groom took off right away for Dieppe where they honeymooned and Romilly wrote a book on Spain in two weeks. Later they went to America, where both got jobs, and lived happily and quietly until the war. Romilly immediately joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and was shot down over the North Sea. Jessica’s whereabouts was a secret to strangers until the recent bequest of money to the Communist paper was revealed. Then it was learned that she had married Robert Treuhaft, had lived in the Greenwich Village section of New York until two years ago, and had a son named after Marshal Tito.

Now they are living in San Francisco, where Jessica has been an OPA investigator. Treuhaft,. an attorney, is a member of a firm which represents unions of the Congress of Industrial Organisations) Both are active in the National Citizens Political Action Committee, which is somewhat more left than the ClO’s Political Action Committee.