Decca, p.107
Decca, page 107
Enclosed you will find the statement of funeral goods and services selected. I’m sure you will appreciate her frugality. I think you will particularly like the price of $15.45 for the cremation container. While looking through SCI’s price lists while we were in Texas, we couldn’t find a cremation container for under a couple of hundred! Think of what it would have cost you if she had dropped in Houston!
My Condolences, Karen J. Leonard
* See May 26, 1981, letter to Robert Gottlieb.
* See July 6, 1996, letter to the Duchess of Devonshire.
CORRESPONDENTS
Virginia Durr
Philip Toynbee
Doris Brin “Dobby” Walker
Polly Toynbee
Kay Boyle
Ephraim and Barbara Kahn
Marge Frantz
Pele de Lappe
Robert Gottlieb
Katharine Graham
Acknowledgments
Decca’s husband, the late Bob Treuhaft, inspired this book and offered me the opportunity to edit it. I’m very grateful to him for that and for his unstinting patience with my barrage of e-mails and phone calls seeking dates, relationships, explanations, context, and the myriad other details that go into making personal correspondence accessible to the public. Bob also deserves my unending gratitude for encouraging me to follow my own editorial instincts, no matter how intrusive they might seem to be. I’m sorry he didn’t live to see in print the book he helped launch.
Decca and Bob’s children, Dinky Romilly and Ben Treuhaft, and son-in-law, Terry Weber, were similarly helpful and patient as I badgered them mercilessly for background information. All the family, including Decca’s beloved “oys” James and Chaka Forman and “step-oy” Ben Weber, were unfailingly tolerant as I tramped around in their family history. It’s not easy to countenance a third party’s candid portrayal of one’s personal relationships, and the courage of Decca’s family in doing so awes me.
Many of Decca’s letters are maintained in “max. arch. cond.” (maximum archival conditions), as Decca liked to joke, by her sister Deborah Devonshire, now the dowager Duchess of Devonshire. Not only did the duchess put at my disposal the incomparable collection of papers at her Chatsworth archive, but she was most hospitable and attentive to my needs and questions during the time I worked there (and throughout this project). She made certain that her entire staff—especially the super-efficient Helen Marchant—furnished me with every conceivable aid; they are a truly dedicated group of people.
Two other libraries have major collections of Decca’s papers. The largest is in the Rare Books and Manuscripts archive at Ohio State University, whose staff went well beyond what any researcher has a right to expect. Geoffrey Smith and Elva Griffith were uncommonly responsive, generous, and helpful. Above all, Michael Waite, who catalogued the collection for the archive and later became my on-the-scene personal research assistant, was simply indispensable. His e-mail inbox overflowed with my inquiries, and he fielded them all expertly and thoroughly.
Some of Decca’s papers are also housed at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas in Austin, where Cliff Farrington also doubled as a library employee and my personal assistant. I’m grateful to him and, later, to Victoria Gold for their assistance at the archive. Various staff members, including Tara Wenger, were also helpful.
The towering achievements of people like Decca are not possible without the assistance of a few thoroughly knowledgeable and superbly organized assistants who can never receive sufficient recognition for their work. I received invaluable help and insight from Decca’s longtime aide Catherine Edwards, whom Decca aptly called “my smashing assistant Katie.” Ev Small, caretaker of Katharine Graham’s papers, is another such treasure, and she generously helped me to document and understand the decades-long correspondence between Graham and Decca.
Providing expert research on issues that needed further investigation in England were Mary Crisp and Steve Hopkins.
So many of Decca’s friends and correspondents ransacked their attics and basements for Decca’s letters and assisted me in other ways that it’s not possible to list them all. Among the most helpful of this battalion of supportive friends and relatives were her four longtime local chums, Marge Frantz, Doris Brin Walker, Pele de Lappe, and the late Barbara Kahn. I pestered them often for background information, which they patiently supplied, along with the memories and anecdotes that fleshed out my understanding. Others who generously fielded multiple inquiries were Kathy Kahn, Mary Clemmey, and Karen Leonard.
I’m also indebted for their time and memories to Leah and Jerry Garchik, Michael Barnes and Clare Douglas, Bettina Aptheker, Barbara Quick, Charles Darden, Kathi Kamen Goldmark, Patrick Allitt, Helen Benedict, Michael Tigar, Robert Byrne, Michael Ferber, James Dean Walker, the late Shana Alexander, Eleanor Furman, Dorothy Bryant, Barbara Blakemore, Wendy Cadden, Joan Cadden, Inese Civkulis, Linda Donovan, Kim Jungmin, Jared Dreyfus, Joan Mellen, Camelia Chun Martin, Monique Mendelson, Lisa Pollard, Bill Powell, Di Trevis, Rosemarie Scherman, Douglas Foster, Anne Weills, Dugald Stermer, Bob Stein, Doug Smith, Anthea Fursland, Ann Lyon, Virginia (Tilla) Durr, Peter Stansky, Eve Pell, Kevin Ingram, Erna Smith, Corinne Rafferty, Margot Smith, John Hopkins, Peggy Stinnett, Linda Chase Broda, Sir Martin Gilbert, Christopher Hitchens, Palash Dave, Stephen Crosher, Mark Gravil, John Irwin, Polly Toynbee, Steve Elias, and Cheryl Chapman. I talked and corresponded with numerous other Decca friends and acquaintances in what was, in a sense, a collaborative project. Many of their specific contributions ended up on the cutting-room floor as this book was trimmed to more manageable size, but their assistance was invaluable nevertheless in helping me to understand and convey the nuances of Decca’s life and work. My thanks to them all.
Patricia Sullivan, editor of Freedom Writer, a splendid book of the civilrightsera letters of Decca’s dear friend Virginia Durr, was a very helpful longdistance colleague, and her book provided important background material. I have also benefited from trading perceptions with another thoughtful writer, Leslie Brody, who is preparing an interpretive book on Decca.
Mary Lovell, author of The Sisters, the collective biography of the Mitfords, was most helpful in sharing insights and information and was also hospitable during a research trip to England. I relied on her book for some of the background details that appear in footnotes and help clarify the letters. I also relied heavily for background material on biographies and memoirs by Kevin Ingram, Virginia Durr, Katharine Graham, David Pryce-Jones, and Philip Toynbee. Trusted deskside references included Charlotte Mosley’s Love from Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford and, of course, Decca’s own fine memoirs. Despite the (to me) distasteful political and racial slants that color its commentary, I got several useful biographical details from The House of Mitford, written by Decca’s nephew Jonathan Guinness and his daughter Catherine Guinness.
Two television documentaries on Decca’s life, both of them made decades ago, have been important sources of biographical details and observations from their interviewees, many of whom are no longer living. I was fortunate enough to have access to—and I have quoted from—tapes of unaired interviews for Portrait of a Muckraker, made by University of California journalism students Stephen Evans, Ida Landauer, and James Morgan and aired on the Public Broadcasting System in 1987. I also found useful The Honourable Rebel, which was produced for the BBC in 1977 by Michael Barnes and subsequently figured in Decca’s disputes with her sisters.
Still another helpful biographical resource was Jeff Elliott, a colleague of Decca’s who maintains valuable reference materials at the website of his online newspaper, the Albion Monitor.
I relied on scores of other institutions and individuals for explanations of obscure references in letters. Institutional assistance came from the dedicated people at a number of archives and reference libraries, including the general and children’s reference desks at the Berkeley, California, Public Library, the ILWU library in San Francisco, the National Funeral Directors Association’s Howard C. Raether Library, the Tamiment Institute Library at New York University, the Oakland Public Library History Room, the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University, the California State Archives, the Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College (Cambridge University), the San Francisco History Center at the San Francisco Public Library, the San Francisco Chronicle, Montgomery Advertiser, and Marin Independent Journal libraries, the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming, the Special Collections section of the University of Delaware Library, the Special Collections branch of the Southern Illinois University Library, and the Worcester, Massachusetts, Public Library. These institutions and the people who staff them could never get the thanks they deserve. I couldn’t close such a list these days without acknowledging my debt for research assistance to Google, on whose Web site I spent many hours tracking down background information that might otherwise not have been available.
The word “patient” comes up a lot in acknowledging those who supported a project as complex and prolonged as this one. No one was more patient than my editor, Bob Gottlieb. His support made this book possible, and after working with him, I fully appreciate Decca’s frequent praise for his judgment and sensitivity, which were all the more difficult to maintain in editing a book whose subject was his longtime friend and colleague. His assistant, Diana Tejerina, was my expert and unfailingly good-humored guide through the publishing process. Her successor, Alena Graedon, responded with similar good humor to the many bumps on the road to publication.
Also giving me more than my share of patience were my wife, Pat; my mother, Ann Rosenberg; my daughters, Deborah, Katherine, and Stephanie; my sons-in-law and grandchildren (most of whom are young enough that patience and competition for Daddo’s attention do not come easily), and my many tolerant friends. I thank them all for walking down this long road with me.
I’m also grateful to my agent, Fred Hill, who was Bob Treuhaft’s co-conspirator in placing this wonderful project in my lap.
Finally, of course, I will be forever indebted to Decca herself, not only for providing such wonderful material for this book but for her always stimulating friendship and the generous encouragement she gave me and countless other younger people over the years. Her published works are an inadequate measure of her accomplishments. As testimony from even the most peripheral of her circle attests, Decca helped to further the careers and worthy projects of many other people. As I sought letters and background information from her friends and acquaintances, they often told me gratefully of her long-ago favors and solicitude; there was usually a chuckle in their voices as they recounted these old stories. I was the beneficiary of the debt of gratitude they, too, owe Decca.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2006 by Constancia Romilly and Benjamin Treuhaft
Editing, commentary, and introduction copyright © 2006 by Peter Y. Sussman
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published and unpublished material:
Arkansas Gazette: Excerpt from the essay, “James Dean Walker: The California Connection,” by Doug Smith (Arkansas Gazette, March 28, 1981). Reprinted by permission of Arkansas Gazette.
The Bouverie Preserve of Audubon Canyon Ranch: Excerpts from June 12, 1973, letter by David Pleydell-Bouverie. Reprinted by permission of The Bouverie Preserve of Audubon Canyon Ranch, www.egret.org.
Wendy Cadden: Excerpts from February 17, 1970, letter by Vivian Cadden. Reprinted by permission of Wendy Cadden, on behalf of the children of Vivian Cadden.
The photographs in this book are reproduced with permission and courtesy of the following:
© Anne Hall: photograph of Robert Gottlieb
© Katharine Graham Collection: photograph of Katharine Graham.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mitford, Jessica, 1917–1996.
Decca: the letters of Jessica Mitford / edited by Peter Y. Sussman. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-56566-2
1. Mitford, Jessica, 1917–1996—Correspondence. 2. Women communists—United States—Correspondence. 3. Women journalists—United States—Correspondence. 4. Women radicals—United States—Correspondence. 5. Women civil rights workers—United States—Correspondence. 6. British Americans—Correspondence. I. Title: Letters of Jessica Mitford. II. Sussman, Peter Y. III. Title.
HX84.M55A34 2006
[B]335.43092—dc22 2006041035
v3.0
Jessica Mitford, Decca
