Book Reviews: Biographies

Century Baby

The Found Generation

The Mitford Girls
Mary S. Lovell
Little, Brown and Company
ISBN 0 316 85868 4

The Viceroy's Daughters
Anne de Courcy
Phoenix
ISBN 0 75381 255 X

Both these biographies are excellent, and both are about groups of sisters whose heyday was in the period between the First and Second World Wars. Several of the Mitford sisters, in particular, are interesting as individuals, and each would make a good subject for a biography in her own right (individual biographies of three of them have been written.). The Curzons are less famous (or perhaps infamous), but interesting nonetheless, and had contact with many of the major figures of the period. And, of course, the two groups overlap, and not simply because they moved in the same very small upper-class social circle. Diana Guinness (nee Mitford), the outstanding beauty of her generation, was mistress and then second wife to Oswald "Tom" Mosely, whose first wife was Cimmie Curzon.

It is easy to love the Mitfords as they are depicted in The Mitford Girls. Their freshness and exuberance leaps off the page at the reader. Diana and Unity are two of the most intriguing, and Lovell does a good job of portraying the human side of two women whose political leanings are seen today as being misguided at best, and evil at worst. Unity became obsessed with Hitler and shot herself when the Second World War broke out, and it would be easy to reduce her to a caricature, yet she emerges as a strange, but real, person who perhaps would have been happier and less extremist if she'd had more of a sense of her own worth and hadn't felt that shocking people was the way to be noticed. Jessica ('Decca') and Nancy need less introduction, being known for their writing. Yet their passions and wit shine through. Despite being political opposites - Decca was a communist - Decca and Unity kept in touch with each other. Pam, the quiet sister (who had her Aga enamelled to match her own startling blue eyes), and Debo, who became a Duchess, round out the sextet.

The three Curzon sisters were less eccentric than the Mitfords, but the depiction of them in The Viceroy's Daughters makes them seem sadder than the other girls, too. You get a sense that the Mitfords followed their passions for men, politics and life and accepted the consequences, whereas the Curzons tried to do what society expected of well-bred young women but never quite achieved real happiness. Irene's relationships with men who would not marry her, and her refusal to marry men she did not love, left her childless. Despite her valuable charity work and her love and care for Tom and Cimmie's children after the latter's early death, this feeling of lack of fulfilment remains. Cimmie was an heiress, MP and devoted mother, yet her later years seem to have been wretched, supporting Tom in his political shiftings and trying desperately to ignore his affairs, particularly with Diana Guinness. Baba was possibly the happiest of the three, but even so, de Courcy makes the reader feel that things were never truly happy for her, particularly in her marriage.

Perhaps the optimistic feel of The Mitford Girls and pessimistic feel of The Viceroy's Daughters is as much to do with the handling of the biographical material by the respective biographers. Lovell points out repeatedly that, despite Decca's later assertions that she had a thoroughly miserable adolescence, there is very little evidence of this in Decca's letters at that time, and people who knew her did not think she had been unhappy then. As she has twice the number of people to write about, she is sketchier about Diana's emotions during her divorce from Bryan Guiness and life with Moseley that de Courcy is about Cimmie, Baba and Irene's thoughts and actions at the same time. And Lovell does pay a good deal of attention to the Mitfords' rural childhood, whereas de Courcy focusses mainly on the lives of the Curzon sisters after they left home.

Over the course of the two biographies, the first part of the 20th Century really comes to life. The Viceroy's Daughters pays more attention to national politics than The Mitford Girls - the changes in governments during the 1920s, and the prevailing political mood of the nation. There's some 1920s and early 1930s background political information in The Mitford Girls (given Diana and Unity's lives, it could scarce be avoided) but it is written about in rather less detail. As Baba's husband 'Fruity' Metcalfe was close to the then Prince of Wales, there are also comments on the Prince before he became King and after his abdication. The lives of the Curzons were more glamorous, in their way, than the Mitfords' - they would spend weekends at Clivedon with the Astors, holidays in France, and had elaborate coming-out dances which are well described. The Curzons were extremely wealthy, but the Mitfords were not. Affluent by the overall standards of their day, they were nonetheless nowhere near the level of the Curzons, and The Mitford Girls shows a far more rural side of upper-class life.

Taken together, the two books give a good picture of upper-class life in the period between the wars, and during the Second World War. Both biographers follow their subjects after this period, but it was in the inter-war and war years that the Mitfords and Curzons did most of the things that have made them famous. Lovell's style is faster and sketchier than de Courcy's detailed study, but If I had to pick one book out as my favourite, it would be The Mitford Girls as it's far easier to sit down and read. The Viceroy's Daughters is a more studious book. Both volumes, however, are enjoyable and informative.