THOSE SURPRISING MITFORD GIRLS

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5296, 8 January 1947, Page 3

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 Qswald Mcsley, 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 brcther in the family. This article from the Australian press tells their story; the story cf a British aristocratic family torn apart by political beliefs. Once upon a time there lived in Eng-land a lord and lady who might have been called the happiest parents in all the land. They were Lord and Lady Redesdale, surname FreemanMitford. There were six heautiful daughters in the Mitford home, bearing- six lovely names: Unity, 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 nevv doctrines, but he later gave his life in the war. Unity, Avith the fanatic devotion she developed for Hitler, was the first noticeably palitical casualtj'. 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 Facism. 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 eecentricity when she published a hook lampooning the British aristoeracy. "Pursuit of Happiness" deals with a f.ctional family almost as impetuous as Nancy's own turned. out to be. Meanwhle, Pamela married the son of a baronet in 1928. Deborah, the youngest, married Second Lieutenar t Lord Andrew Cavendish of the Coldstream Gnards, and son of the Duke and Duches's 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, whosc 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, joincd her in Berlin. The twTo ta.ll, beautiful, blonde sisters were the toast cf Berlin, each wearing huge swastikas, signed on the back by Hitler himself. They even persuaded their father and mother to attend the Nazi Congresr at Nureniberg. Diana was married secretly in the home of Bropaganda Minister Goebbels to Sir Oswald Mosley, of the British Ur.ion of Fascists. Unity stayed in Germany with her ideal, Adolph. This sojourn in her beloved enemy's country was •cut short, however, by a mysterious bullet. Though denying all knowledge of it, the Nazis cared for her by Hitler's direct command. The two warring governments soon aftei'wards made arrangements to get Unity home. Her father met the Jboat^ took the muffled Ligure 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 Lon'don 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 traiil. Jessica had eloped with Esmond1 Romilly who already had developed a reputation as a leftwing 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 married to Romilly, in the British Consulate. The bride and groom took -off right away for Dieppe where they honeymooned and Romilly wrote a boolc on Spain in two weeks. Later ^hey went to America, where both got jobs, and' lived happily and quietly until the war. Romilly immediately joined the Royal Chnadian Air Force and was shot down over the North Sea. Jessica's whereabouts were 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 av son named after Marshal Tito. Now they are living- in San Francisco, where Jessica has been an OPA investigator. Treuhaft, an attorney, is a menrher of a Lirm which represents unions of the Congress of Industrial Organisations. Both are active in the National Citizens Political ' Action. Committee, which is some- , what more left than the CIO's Polij tical Action Committee.