Hons and Rebels

Summary (from the publisher): Jessica Mitford, the great muckraking journalist, was part of a legendary English aristocratic family. Her sisters included Nancy, doyenne of the 1920s London smart set and a noted novelist and biographer; Diana, wife to the English fascist chief Sir Oswald Mosley; Unity, who fell head over in heels in love with Hitler; and Deborah, later the Duchess of Devonshire. Jessica swung left and moved to America, where she took part in the civil rights movement and wrote her classic exposé of the undertaking business, The American Way of Death.

Hons and Rebels is the hugely entertaining tale of Mitford's upbringing, which was, as she dryly remarks, was not exactly conventional. . . Debo spent silent hours in the chicken house learning to do an exact imitation of the look of pained concentration that comes over a hen's face when it is laying an egg. . . . Unity and I made up a complete language called Boudledidge, unintelligible to any but ourselves, in which we translated various dirty songs (for safe singing in front of the grown-ups). But Mitford found her family's world as smothering as it was singular and, determined to escape it, she eloped with Esmond Romilly, Churchill's nephew, to go fight in the Spanish Civil War. The ensuing scandal, in which a British destroyer was dispatched to recover the two truants, inspires some of Mitford's funniest, and most pointed, pages.

A family portrait, a tale of youthful folly and high-spirited adventure, a study in social history, a love story, Hons and Rebels is a delightful contribution to the autobiographer's art.

 

Review: Jessica "Decca" Mitford is first and foremost famous for being one of the famous Mitford sisters and only later for her great muckraking journalism in the United States. Therefore it's ironic that in her autobiography, she describes in detail how stifling she found her infamous family and her great escape and elopement.

 

Decca comes across as completely unsentimental in her writing. Despite being part of a large family and being raised with only her siblings for companions, her sole preoccupation in childhood is devoted to her eventual escape and raising funds for her running away account. After reading this, I'm unsurprised to hear that she was criticized as portraying her parents in a negative light, since she is frank about her childhood opinions and how she views her parents as ignorant and stuffy, and depriving their daughters of an education. She describes her isolated childhood saying, "It was as though I were a figurine traveling inside one of those little glass spheres in which an artificial snowstorm arises when the sphere is shaken - and no matter where I was, in a train, a boat, a foreign hotel, there was no escape outside the glass" (52).

 

Rather than feeling guilty when she disappears and runs away without a word, she is annoyed with the fuss, even after her sister Nancy describes the turmoil over her disappearance as being "just like a funeral" (158). She treats her siblings in a similar manner, not bothering to keep track of all of them but dismissing sisters as casually as saying, "Pam [was] off doing something or other in the country" (95). However, I don't think Decca is being intentionally cruel; I think her personality is just naturally inclined to easily dismiss others and not concern herself with details of others' lives. For example, Decca describes her baby's death in this autobiography, but does so swiftly and with sparse details. Although the reader can imagine her pain, she doesn't dwell on the loss but quickly moves on.

 

In the same way, Decca doesn't remark on her family's obvious fame, but simply causally refers to the publicity surrounding her runaway stunt. "There had been a small flurry of publicity shortly after we arrived, when the New York papers briefly revived the story of our running away to Spain" (210). Similarly, she casually remarks on her sister Unity (called Boud by Decca)'s close relationship to Hitler, and his response to hearing how Decca had run off. Although I suppose for Decca, in her family being well-known and knowing well-known people was the usual.

 

I do love the Mitford sisters with their famous friends, shocking actions, notoriety, and generous helping of quirks. As Decca describes them, "As a lost tribe, separated from its fellow men, gradually develops distinctive characteristics of language, behavior, outlook, so we developed idiosyncrasies that would no doubt have made us seem a little eccentric to other children our age" (5). At times I wonder what I would have made of this book had I not previously read a comprehensive biography of all six of the Mitford sisters, The Sisters by Mary S. Lovell, as well as two of eldest sister Nancy Mitford's novels, which have numerous characters based on the family.

 

I found the first half of this autobiography, which focuses on Decca's young childhood the most captivating. After Decca runs away and marries Esmond, the story shifts to focus on their escapades and careless living, full of get-rich schemes, broken down cars, unpaid bills, and a frenetic social life. Yet for a very unsentimental lady, you can sense Decca's true love for Esmond and grief over his youthful death when she says, "he was my whole world, my rescuer, the translator of all my dreams into reality, the fascinating companion of my whole adult life - three years, already - and the center of all happiness" (279). Like all her famous sisters, Decca is fascinating and captivating, and her autobiography lays bare her unusual life.

 

Stars: 4