Debo

I have been reading Wait For Me! by Deborah Devonshire for (approximately) forever. I started it the day it arrived, back in September, but a combination of it being too heavy for my bag, and not being able to cope with the idea of finishing it – not to mention that somewhere towards the middle of each month I realise that I’ve not read the books for either of my book groups, and have six days to do so – mean I only turned the last page earlier this month.

For those of you who won’t get to the end of this post – and it will involve whatever the written equivalent of squawking is – I shall mention now that I have a copy to give away. Tell me your favourite autobiography, in the comments, for a chance of winning. This is open worldwide, so pop your name in. For many reasons to do so, dear reader, read on…

The Mitfords have been of great interest to many from their childhood onwards. They skirted around the outside of my consciousness, with Nancy taking occasional leaps forward, until I read the collection of their letters, expertly edited by Charlotte Mosley. Now – and I suspect most of you know this – I am rather besotted by some of the sisters. Unity and Jessica remain outside my affection, but I rather love the rest, and am devoted to Debo. So much so, that I am going to be hugely unprofessional and refer to her as ‘Debo’ throughout this review.

So, of course, I was delighted when she published her autobiography. Earlier works include collections of articles and musings (Counting My Chickens and Home to Roost) as well as lots of books about her home, Chatsworth, which I haven’t read. Those collections I have read, whilst entertaining and joyous, did little to suggest that Debo would be able to sustain a full-length autobiography. How wrong I was to worry.

Perhaps there isn’t much that will surprise in Wait For Me! Anybody who has read about the sisters before will find they know many of the anecdotes and stories already. What this book brings to the table is Debo’s perspective, and her wonderfully calm way with words. I hadn’t noted down any quotations to share, but having just flicked the book open at random, I came across a paragraph beginning thus:
Unity was always the odd one out. She arrived in this world in August 1914 to the sound of troops marching to war and departed it thirty-four years later in tragic circumstances. Larger than life in every way, she could have been model for a ship’s figurehead or Boadicea, with her huge navy-blue eyes, perfectly straight nose and fair hair worn in two long plaits. Perhaps because of her teenage diet of mashed potatoes, her teeth were her only bad feature.Debo hasn’t allowed familial closeness to cloud her judgement or provoke over-sentimentality; yet, who but a sister would choose those images and those details? Unity, who later befriended Hitler, and tried to kill herself on the outbreak of WW2, comes alive with these much more prosaic details. It is Debo’s complete unflappability which charms me through the account. Nowhere – except, of course, the title – would Debo dream of using an exclamation mark. It would be poor manners to get over-excited about something.

I was worried that Wait For Me! would pall once Debo had left home, and once the sisters were no longer centre stage – but I was wrong. Some of the most moving pages come when Debo describes her husband’s alcoholism, or their miscarriages and stillborn children. This isn’t done remotely gratuitously, or like those ghastly misery memoirs, but truthfully and unsensationally. And it is evident that Debo is far more interested in the businesslike running of Chatsworth than she in the doings of her sisters in their youths – her enthusiasm is contagious.

Don’t worry for my sanity. I am under no delusion that Debo and I could really be friends. My vegetarianism might put paid to that, for a start, let alone our fairly divergent views on hunting. Debo is occasionally unconsciously hilarious – like when, after a chapter devoted to the joys of hunting parties, she writes that ‘a fox came in daylight and murdered [chickens] for fun, as these serial destroyers do.’ Takes a beetle to know a beetle, Debo, m’dear.

But none of this really seems to matter, and it certainly doesn’t stop me adoring Debo and loving her book. Along with the spectacular collection of letters edited by Charlotte Mosley, Wait For Me! is a unique piece of social history, as well as an honest and entertaining personal memoir. The Mitfords are not everyone’s cup of tea (my own dear brother has a violent prejudice against them, based not on their Fascism or Communism, but rather Nancy’s refusal to use air-mail and their nicknaming of the Queen Mother as ‘Cake’) – but Debo’s book confirms that they are very definitely mine. In a china cup and saucer, naturally, with ginger cake on the side.

Thank you for all your message on the post from Sunday, they’re appreciated.

Now my Masters has finished (gulp) I should have more time for blogging, and maybe even sketching too. If you were wondering about my future, by the way, then so am I. I have a place to study for a doctorate, at Magdalen again, but I haven’t got funding yet. So we’ll see…

Right. Back to books. I wrote about Deborah Devonshire’s Counting My Chickens over a year ago. Better know to most of us as Debo Mitford, I read her collection of thoughts off the back of loving the Mitford letters, and Debo could do no wrong in my eyes. Home to Roost and other peckings is more or less in the same line – some new articles and vignettes, but mostly the bits and pieces which weren’t included in her earlier book. She’s even wearing the same coat on the cover. But, on the whole, I found the book a little disappointing…

Alan Bennett writes the introduction, and says ‘Deborah Devonshire is not someone to whom one can say “Joking apart…” Joking never is apart: with her it’s of the essence even of the most serious and indeed saddest moments.’ Well, sadly he is completely wrong – Home to Roost seems utterly devoid of the humour I’d come to love in Debo. Even the cover shows her snarling, in contrast to the smile on the front of Counting My Chickens. Too often the articles are simply catalogues of complaints, snarking at anti-hunting people, townfolk, American vocabulary, the government – anything any grumpy old lady might moan about. I’m sorry to sound a bit cruel, but there is no fury like a booklover scorned. Some of the essays had the sparks of humour I’d hoped for – when she is writing about tiaras, for example, and book signing. And none of the collection is unreadable – it’s just the tone is consistently grumpy and demonstrating an inability to see the world from anyone else’s perspective. Exactly the traits she *didn’t* have, when compared to her uber-political sisters Jessica, Diana and Unity.

I’m sad that I can’t write a more positive review of Home to Roost, and perhaps it was simply the wrong time for me to read it, but I suggest sticking to Counting My Chickens – or, even better, the letters Debo and her sisters wrote so entertainingly.

I couldn’t leave it just at the Mitford letters, now, could I?

Having fallen down before Deborah in a frenzy of adulation, I had to seek out Counting My Chickens… and other home thoughts by Debo, or the Duchess of Devonshire as such as I should call her. It’s a collection of all sorts of writings Deborah has published in newspapers and periodicals over the years (most notably the British Goat Society Yearbook 1972); lots of short articles and thoughts, something to dip in and out of.

Deborah isn’t a natural prose writer, not in the way Nancy was. She frequently claims not to be able to read, let alone write (though Charlotte Mosley notes in The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters ‘Diana believed that unlike most people who pretend to have read books that they have not, Deborah pretended not to have read books that she had’.) Counting My Chickens, accordingly, is no sweeping grand narrative – but in the vignettesque pieces, Deborah demonstrates a gently witty and loveable nature. Who can fail to adore her when, asked to choose her ten books for a Trans Siberian Railway (!), she writes ‘My third book is Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Between the Woods and the Water. I am sorry to say I have not read it…’

Most of Counting My Chickens is little thoughts, connected to Chatsworth or the countryside – her opinions are sometimes applaudable, sometimes baffling (why doesn’t she like female weather forecasters?), but always entertaining or interesting. She has a habit of writing a statement, and simply putting ‘Good.’ as the next sentence. What a flood of ink could be saved if other authors used rhetoric so simple!

To be honest, Deborah Mitford could have written her views concerning the telephone directory, or a list of her favourite three digit numbers, and I’d have lapped it up. She is, after all, more or less like a sister to me now. A somewhat older sister, it must be said, but a sister nonetheless. I wonder what on earth she’d make of that – seeing as I am vegetarian, never milked a cow, and have been known to say ‘talking with’ when I mean ‘talking to’…

My next Mitford read will be Hons and Rebels by Jessica – a few of you rightly said that I should read more by or about Decca before judging her, so I shall give her the benefit of the doubt…!

By the way, I’m keeping a list of the Alphabet Meme as it goes on through the blogs, so if you’ve done one, just let me know…