From Nancy Mitford (1985), by Selina Hastings:
“For the Mitfords, 1936 was a year of general upheaval…
…Nancy and Peter, enjoying a brief period of comparative prosperity, left Rose Cottage for a house in town.
12 Blomfield Road (demolished after the war) was small and elegant, one in a shady, tree-lined street of early nineteenth-century houses, each with its own garden, running alongside the Grand Union Canal in Maida Vale (now the fashionable area known as Little Venice). As at Strand on the Green Nancy’s outlook was one of trees and water, the wide reach of the Thames giving place to the narrow banks of a sooty urban waterway…
…The Spanish Civil War had broken out in 1936; by January 1939 General Franco’s rebel army was moving north through Valencia and Tarragona, driving before it half a million Republicans from Catalonia who were fleeing over the Pyrenees into the Roussillon, an impoverished region of France with no resources to spare and no provision made for the feeding and sheltering of thousands of refugees…
…Then at the beginning of October came the news of one of the first casualties of the war: a friend of Tom’s in Budapest sent word that Unity had been taken seriously ill and was in hospital in Munich. Nobody seemed to know exactly what was the matter.
The next bulletin, retailed by Nancy to Mrs Hammersley with a detectable lack of sisterly sympathy, revealed that Bobo was ‘in a concentration camp for Czech women which much as I deplore it has a sort of poetic justice. Peter is going to make the Aostas (Duke of Aosta, member of the Italian royal family and a friend, of course, of Lord Rennell’s) get her out in a month or two when she has had a sufficient dose to wish to go.’ The truth finally came out when the story broke in the Daily Express: on the day war was declared Unity had shot herself. Badly but not fatally wounded, she had been taken to a clinic where it was found that the bullet had lodged at the back of her skull and would be impossible to extract. As soon as she was well enough to travel, Hitler had arranged for her to go to neutral Berne, where, at the end of December, Muv accompanied by Debo went to fetch her home. In a blaze of press publicity they arrived back at Folkestone on January 3…
…and the next day were at the Old Mill Cottage in High Wycombe, where Nancy was waiting for them. She described to Mrs Hammersley her sister’s pathetic state: ‘The whole thing is most poignant. She is like a child in many ways & has very much lost her memory (a mercy I expect) does not know why she was ill but seems to think the doctor made a hole in her head… She is very happy to be back, keeps on saying “I thought you all hated me but I don’t remember why.” She said to me You are not one of those who would be cruel to somebody are you? So I said I was very much against that.
‘She saw Mr X continually the last time 2 days before she left. Don’t tell this. She was unconscious for 2 months.
‘I think that is all of interest, such a scribble but you do understand. They were literally hunted by the press… Of course M & F were not clever -!’
After a few days, Nancy returned to London, as Peter, looking glamorous in his Welsh Guards uniform – ‘masses of gold on his hat & a wonderful coat lined with scarlet satin which cost £25′ – had been called to join his regiment in Colchester. Nancy was left to do what she could to make ends meet at Blomfield Road…
…the Redesdales’ situation was wretchedly unhappy. Unity was in a pathetic state, confused, bad-tempered and physically incontinent…”
Julia Upton 