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So why did Sydney - a pretty girl, whose greatest enjoyments in life were sailing, visiting France and ice-skating, and who loved the parties and dancing she attended as a debutante - marry David, who was a countryman at heart, actively disliked meeting new people and regarded 'abroad' with suspicion and horror? There can be no other reason but that she fell in love with him. He was a kind man and he was very funny. He made her laugh and un..
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Mary S. Lovell |
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David was one of nine children, and Sydney was one of four. Their respective siblings produced, between 1910 and 1927, twenty-one children with the surnames Mitford, Farrer, Kearsey, Bowyer, Bowles and Bailey, and many of these first cousins were to play major parts in the lives of the Mitford children as they grew up and visited each other's homes. But the network of kinsmen who were to people the lives of the Mitford children were rooted ..
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Mary S. Lovell |
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the Isle of Wight, with occasional visits to
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Mary S. Lovell |
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In a televised version of one of Nancy's books, these child hunts were given a more sinister connotation with the children running terrified through woods while their father, on horseback, thundered after them with a pack of hounds baying. In fact the children loved it - they thought the hound was 'so clever'.29 In her novel Nancy had referred to 'four great hounds in full cry after two little girls' and 'Uncle Matthew and the rest would fo..
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Mary S. Lovell |
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Several letters, written by Nancy to her father in France, survive. She had been learning French after David's mother told Sydney, 'There is nothing so inferior as a gentlewoman who has no French.' In her first attempt at writing to him in French, in April 1916, Nancy tells him of a robin's nest in their garden, that she had heard a cuckoo, and about her pet goat: David's delightful response is in verse: His letters to his children, writt..
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Mary S. Lovell |
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Sydney enjoyed living in the country, though she took no direct part in field sports. After her marriage, there is no record of her shooting or hunting, though as a girl she rode well and often, and when she accompanied her father to Scotland in 1898 she was regarded as 'a brilliant shot'.33 As they grew up she encouraged her children to follow the hounds of the Heythrop Hunt and join their father when he fished and shot, but if they were n..
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Mary S. Lovell |
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At about this time David hit on a scheme to end their financial problems. With his growing family, their limited income must have been the cause of constant worry to him. Stories of the rich strikes in the Klondike a decade earlier, perhaps bolstered by his spell of active service in South Africa, seem to have persuaded him that gold-mining might be the answer. On hearing that a new goldfield had been discovered in Ontario, he staked severa..
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Mary S. Lovell |
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There was talk of Sydney going to Girton, the women's college at Cambridge, and she went to view the college, but for some unknown reason the idea was dropped. Only a handful of women attended university at the end of the nineteenth century; perhaps Sydney did not wish to be regarded as a 'blue-stocking'. With her tall, slender figure, a cloud of light brown hair, generous sulky mouth, and large blue eyes she was pronounced beautiful, and s..
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Mary S. Lovell |
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It seems such an ordinary story, this handsome but otherwise unremarkable young couple settling down to a quietly happy marriage, looking forward to further children. Though they had no great prospects they were content with their lot in life. There was absolutely no indication that their children - there would be seven in all - would be so extraordinary that they would make the family a household name.
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Mary S. Lovell |