Degrees of separation - getting closer to the Mitfords

[oursin]

At the moment I am reading Decca's recently published letters - shrieking! roaring! do admit! (now, there was someone who Used Her Super-Powers of Tease for Good.)

And today had lunch with elderly lady who not only knew Decca, but stayed with her on Inch Kenneth! (island that was in the family, she bought out her sisters' shares with money that

Comments

[sartorias]

What did she say about any of them? I'm still trying to figure out if Esmond was a beast or an angel.

Will definitelty be on the lookout for Decca's letters.

[oursin]

Said Decca was great fun, v witty, and v intelligent in spite of lack of formal education. Would have known her in later years so couldn't have known Esmond, I think, though Philip Toynbee was a neighbour of hers.

[oursin]

Esmond was still so young when he died - could have ended up either way. Giles (his brother) seems to have turned out a bit of a monster.

[sartorias]

Yeah . . . some of Esmond's escapades at Eton, etc, seem the actions of a teen who likes destruction, chaos and trouble. What I could never figure was if he went down to Spain at the prospect of some tasty fighting (like a bunch apparently did, thinking it would be a war game with real bullets) or if he had Decca's idealism. She was of course utterly smitten as well as very young, so her view might not be trustworthy.

[janetmk]

Michael Dirda wrote a review of Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford in last Sunday's Washington Post. He ends it:

"This is a superb collection of letters, and editor Peter Y. Sussman deserves the greatest possible praise and gratitude. His introduction, connecting essays and extensive notes supply all the biographical and historical information a reader needs. Being witty as well as scholarly, he is precisely the right guide through this life in letters of the most astonishing of the astonishing Mitford girls."

[oursin]

They are absolutely addictive reading - I meant just to dip in (as I had other books half-read): but I just can't put the book down.

[wild_irises]

My parents knew Decca slightly, and her husband Bob Treuhaft somewhat less slightly, during WWII in San Francisco. And when she died, she was living three houses away from n6tqs and he watched Molly Ivins and Maya Angelou having a conversation on the sidewalk near his house.

But I never met her, and I wish I had.

The letters are on my wishlist, which means I'll buy them for myself relatively soon.

[wordweaverlynn]

I hope "relatively soon" means "if I don't get them over the holidays."

[wordweaverlynn]

Those letters are very high on my wishlist. She was such an astonishing character.

[richenda]

I heard some of them read on Radio 4 - enthralling.