Monday, November 14, 2011

A title

Reading on my Kindle: Wait for Me! -- a memoir by Deborah Vivien Freeman-Mitford Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, the youngest sister of novelist Nancy Mitford, and the 10th Duchess of Devonshire.



I love Nancy Mitford's novels The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate.



Every one of the daughters in the Mitford family was unusual in some way. The oldest, Nancy, was a talented novelist and biographer; the next, Diana, married Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists; Pamela farmed and cooked and had a blue Aga stove to match her eyes; Unity Mitford idolized Hitler and tried to kill herself when England and Germany went to war, but only succeeded in inflicting brain damage on herself; Jessica Mitford went left where her sisters went right, married and became a true communist and wrote The American Way of Death; and Deborah, the youngest, married a duke's younger son, became a duchess, and helped preserve a great estate.

I've read a good biography of them, The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family, but you would have to be quite interested in the Mitfords to read it. (I was.)

No comments: