{"id":1692,"date":"2020-03-02T05:14:15","date_gmt":"2020-03-02T05:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/?p=1692"},"modified":"2020-03-02T05:14:19","modified_gmt":"2020-03-02T05:14:19","slug":"the-mitford-sisters-transnational-aristocracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/2020\/03\/02\/the-mitford-sisters-transnational-aristocracy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mitford Sisters: transnational aristocracy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The last of the Mitford Sisters died in 2014. Deborah Cavendish,\nknown to the world as Debo the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, was a well liked\nEnglish eccentric of the sort the aristocracy can be relied on to produce. She\nfamously decided at a young age that she would marry a Duke, and sang to\nherself a version of \u201cThe Man I\u2019d Like to Marry\u201d, with the word \u201cMan\u201d replaced\nwith \u201cDuke\u201d. However, all her eccentricities were not what set her apart from\nthe rest of her sisters. The reason for that is her dogged refusal to leave\nEngland, or even Devonshire. Not so the other Mitfords, whose transnational\nlives are a worthy subject of conversation, as examples of the many and varied\npaths of the lower rungs of the aristocracy in the 20<sup>th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>First to be discussed should be the Mitford who did the most\nto establish and maintain the families name in the public eye. Nancy Mitford\nwas a novelist and socialite most famous for two semi-autobiographical works, <em>The\nPursuit of Love<\/em>, and <em>Love in a Cold Climate<\/em>. These novels were\nheavily based on her life and the lives of her sisters, with Jessica Mitford being\none of the models for the protagonist of <em>The Pursuit of Love<\/em>, for\ninstance. Nancy is an example of the transnational socialite class. One of the \u201cBright\nYoung People\u201d of inter-war Europe, she was a frequent international traveller.\nEventually falling in love with a former Free French resistance fighter (while\nmarried to another man) she settled down in Paris as so many writers of the\ntime did. She is in this way a model of the transnational bohemian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Next, Jessica Mitford should not go without discussion. Like\nNancy she had left wing politics, however Jessica\u2019s were far more extreme.\nAlong with her husband, Jessica went to Spain to fight in the Spanish Civil\nWar, alongside many from the worldwide communist movement. It is hard to think\nof a more transnational armed body than the International Brigades. After the\nend of the civil war Jessica returned to England, where she engaged in the\nbattle with the Blackshirts, before travelling to America. There, like many\ncommunists, she became highly involved in the struggle for civil rights, which led\nto her being called in front of HUAC. However she like many others left the\ncommunist party in \u201958, after Khrushchev\u2019s Secret Speech. It is also in America\nwhere Jessica wrote her most well-known book, <em>The American Way of Death<\/em>,\nan expose on the abuses of the funeral industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally, we come to the most sordid of the Mitfords, Unity\nand Diana, the fascists. Diana married Sir Oswald Moseley, the leader of the\nBritish Union of Fascists, in 1936. The wedding took place in the house of\nJoseph Goebbels, the Third Reich\u2019s Propaganda Minister. For her involvement with\ninternational fascism she was interned for three years during World War Two,\nalong with her husband. She remained with him for his entire life and was an\nunrepentant fascist to the end. This did not stop her being a member of high society,\nor from contributing to several high-profile papers including the Independent.\nHowever, her fascism, while a part of the international current, was a largely\nEnglish phenomenon. It is her sister, Unity, who truly embodied the\ntransnational nature of inter-war fascism. A convert to the cause, just like\nher sister, Unity travelled to Germany in 1934 due to her obsession with Adolf\nHitler. Her familial connections with Hitler\u2019s beloved Wagner granted her\naccess to his inner circle of friends. When Hitler announced the Anschluss with\nAustria, it was Unity who stood next to him on the balcony. She was a\npassionate supporter of an Anglo-German alliance against Judaism, and\nfrequently pleaded with Hitler to this effect. When Britain declared war on\nGermany, she was so distraught that she shot herself in the head in the English\nGarden in Munich. While she lived for several years after, she never recovered\nmentally, and died in 1948.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is clear that these four women, the bohemian, the\ncommunist, and the fascists, represent different strands of development for the\nlower-ranks of the aristocracy following the first world war. With the old\nworld dying, they had to find places in the new one. Clearly this turned out\nbetter for some than for others, but it is clear that all four embarked on\nclearly transnational paths.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The last of the Mitford Sisters died in 2014. Deborah Cavendish, known to the world as Debo the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, was a well liked English eccentric of the sort the aristocracy can be relied on to produce. She<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5wNtZ-ri","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1692"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1693,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1692\/revisions\/1693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}