Decca, p.41
Decca, page 41
On October 15, two months after the book’s publication, the Congressional Record reported that Congressman James B. Utt of California announced to Congress that “Jessica Mitford, also known as Jessica Mitford Romilly Treuhaft, author of a recent book entitled ‘The American Way of Death,’” was “the wife of Robert Treuhaft, twice identified as a Communist in the Seventh Report of the Un-American Activities Committee of the California State Senate for 1953” and that she too had taken the Fifth Amendment before the committee “to avoid incriminating herself when her associations were documented.” He went on to detail some of her “associations” and suggested that Central Intelligence Agency director Allen Dulles and United Nations ambassador Adlai Stevenson, who were to appear at a luncheon with Decca, “have been made dupes to attract a large audience for Jessica Mitford to plug her new book. While hiding behind the commercial aspects of the mortician and the cemeteries and mausoleums where our dear departed friends and relatives are commemorated, she is really striking another blow at the Christian religion…. [Her] tirade against morticians is simply the vehicle to carry out her anti-Christ attack.”
Speaking personally, Utt said, “I would rather place my mortal remains, alive or dead, in the hands of any American mortician than to set foot on the soil of any Communist nation,” a statement that Decca footnoted thus in A Fine Old Conflict: “In 1970 Mr. Utt exercised that option. His obituary in The New York Times … records that during his ten years in Congress, ‘his most newsworthy action came when he called Jessica Mitford a “pro-Communist anti-American.”
“Decca parried all the attacks, often with humor—in one Associated Press story, she is quoted as calling the Communism charges “a red herring”—but sometimes the menace was palpable. There was a bomb threat in Boston, and Decca wrote her friend Barbara Kahn from Dallas, “So far, no bombs in these parts; only the feeling one is just a step ahead of them, accomplished by scramming out of town as soon as one has had one’s say.” It is chilling to note that that letter was dated nine days before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in the same city.
Nevertheless, Americans in general, with strong press support, shrugged off the Communist charges and innuendo, laughed along with Decca … and kept buying the book. If anything, the controversy boosted sales. Within a couple of years, more than 100,000 copies had been sold in hardback and half a million in paperback.
Decca had become respectable. “Ironically,” she observed later, “to my extreme pleasure after the book was published, the same editors who had rejected [her article] ‘St. Peter’ were after me to write follow-up articles on the very subject they had found so distasteful” five years earlier, when only Frontier magazine would publish it. Among those who solicited stories, she wrote, were “such Middle America magazines as Good Housekeeping and Saturday Evening Post—an enemy invasion of the undertakers’ own turf, so to speak.”
With all the publicity on their misguided rhetoric, “One might have thought,” Decca wrote, that “the funeral industry spokesmen would have learned to keep their mouths shut, or at least to moderate their rhetoric; not a bit of it, their counterattack provided colorful material for any number of follow-up articles.”
She also received widespread support from the clergy, prompting her to observe in her book Poison Penmanship, “[I]t seemed that for once in my life I was literally on the side of the angels, or at least their temporal representatives. I think that only those who have been, as I was, a target of the Truman-McCarthy-era assault on radicals can appreciate the feeling of decompression on having one’s work accepted at its face value, no longer subject to the ad hominem (or should it be feminem?) attack that was such a depressing feature of those years.”
Decca was not reluctant to wield the influence that popular acceptance placed at her disposal. She told one reporter that her new national prominence “enabled me to at last give full rein to my subversive nature in a way that would not have been possible (before) …reaching millions instead of dozens with a frontal attack on one of the seamier manifestations of American capitalism.”
More than two years after publication, The American Way of Death was still a subject for attention in the news media. Funeral societies were proliferating, and Americans’ burial arrangements were changing. A writer for The Times of London was prompted to gush, “From the extent of the brouhaha it is clear that Miss Mitford’s impact on the transatlantic scene is only slightly less than the Beatles’, and may be a good deal more lasting.”
The life-changing drama of those hectic years begins here with the letter Decca wrote to her agent, pitching the idea for her new book.
To Candida Donadio
Oakland
July 7, 1961
Dear Candida,
Did you see the enclosed article in the Satevepost?1 Believe it or not, on a very lively subject. Well, life here has been a madhouse since it appeared. I have personally received over 100 letters (addressed only, “Jessica Treuhaft, Oakland” the post office phoned us about it and made special arrangements to deliver the letters) and the Bay Area Funeral Society has received over 2,000. Most of the letters are long, interesting and very intelligent.
As a result of the really astonishing response to the article, Bob and I have conceived the idea of collaborating on a short, or medium length, book—a practical guide and handbook about how to beat the funeral racket.
Bob, as you know, was one of the founders of the Bay Area Funeral Society (has been their lawyer for a number of years) and I have made excursions into that territory—I wrote the enclosed piece for Frontier several years ago, since reprinted and used for promotion by several of the societies. Through the Bay Area Funeral Society, we have access to material that would otherwise require considerable research. In fact we supplied the Post writer with most of the material he used. So, we would be in a good position to write such a book.
Our idea is that it should be a cheap paper book, possibly Ballantines or one of those. I realize that my contract with Houghton Mifflin requires offering it to them first, but I doubt if they would be interested.
We have prepared an outline indicating the subjects to be covered and the general scope of the book. If necessary, we could prepare a chapter, but would much prefer not to until you have sounded out the possibilities for acceptance. I was hoping the Frontier piece could serve as an example of writing on the subject.
Bob’s vacation is coming up soon, and if we had a definite agreement with a publisher he would devote a few weeks to working on the book. Thereafter, I would do the bulk of the writing with his help on weekends, etc. The whole thing shouldn’t take very long to write.
There is only one book we know of bearing on this subject—a scholarly tome called The American Funeral, by LeRoy Bowman, published by American Affairs Press in 1959. It’s rather extraordinary that, in view of the tremendous interest in the subject, there’s no popular book on the market which deals with it.
Hope to hear from you soon. I am working on my other stuff.
Love from Decca
To Lady Redesdale
Oakland
October 19, 1961
Darling Muv,
Thanks for the cutting.2 Every time I see the words, “Hon’s Mother” in a headline, I know it’s going to be something about you.3 loved the photo of you striding, also the one of the house was good.
To my delight I just this minute got a t.gram saying that my article for Esquire is accepted…
Meanwhile, Bob and I are engaged in the most extraorder thing—a book on The American Way of Death. Describing the funeral industry, trade mags. etc., and consumer movements for cheap ordinary funerals. Bob is going to take off time from his law practice to help. We wrote a sample chapter and outline, sent it to me publisher (Houghton Mifflin) and they sent a contract with lovely huge advance.4 The only rather sad thing is I don’t suppose we will be able to get it taken in England, as it would hardly be of interest there. It’s supposed to be finished in a little less than a year, although I am hoping it won’t take anything like that long. We may have to do it a bit up at the Isle if not completed by next summer. In a way, I am rather loving doing it, it’s sort of like having a job again rather than the usual writing I’ve done…
Do give my love to my old Hen and Nancy when you write to them. I’ve rather lost touch, my fault because I can never think of anything to write to them about from so far away.
Lots of love, Decca
To Kathleen Kahn5 Oakland
November 24, 1961
My Dear Madame de Stael (as I now think ofyou, having been permitted to read some of the letters to sainted P’s, and I can see you are actually planning to be a great lettriste (although you haven’t written one to me for ages, which makes me triste), a noble career in these uncertain days I must say. Yes I know there are supposed to be 2 dots over the e (or is it the a?) but you know how these modrenm typewriters don’t hardly have any accents or things to them. How’s this, by the way, for a fair parody of the ineffable style of Lettriste K. Kahn?) Paren. a bit off, maybe, but there’s many an honored precedent for that in Lit, as you know—
How are you. We are fine. Or, as me dear old Nanny would have said, “we can’t complain.” Unlike you, judging by aforementioned lettres.
What can I think of to cheer you up. Last week I was in L.A. for a week, most of the time digging Forest Lawn (as you teen-agers say), making pre-need arrangements etc.6 The pre-needery was rather bliss. I was accompanied by a Forest Lawn aficionado, head of the English Dept of the Immaculate Heart (Catholic girls) College. Our story: his mother, my sister (for I was his aunt for the nonce) was dying of the usual. Cancer. We had to go through all this because I was dying to see the Slumber Rooms, Casket Display Room and all. So, through them we went. After much consideration, we turned from the $145 casket (honestly it was a bit frightful looking) and our choice was between one at $675 and another at $995. We decided on the $675 one—I suggesting that it would suit Mother’s complexion better (it was a dull beige). After we finally got out, my companion, a bit green about the gills, made a dive for the nearest phone booth, muttering to me: “Excuse me, I just want to call Mother to make sure she’s feeling OK.” That’s what I like to see, someone who can really identify in a dramatic role. I did wish you were there. You’d have loved the slumber rooms, especially. I almost took a nap there myself…
Oh yes another nice thing about F. Lawn. Among the multiplicity of final resting places (all named things like Brotherly Love, Garden of Memories, etc) is one called Patriots’ Hall. I asked the man if one had to be a citizen to finally rest there, he said oh no, not a bit necessary. (I mean the Final Resting Place salesman said all this.) So I said, Well, I should think you’d at least ask for some sort of loyalty oath, after all it’s supposed to be for Patriots? He said absolutely not, as long as you’ve got the money to pay for the site, all would be OK. Don’t you think that’s really pretty crumby? Who should we protest to?
I brought your parents back a very nice present. It is a tin ashtray in the shape of twin hearts, joined by a vermillion arrow. One side (heart) has a bright bronze and blue raised pic of the Great Gates to Forest Lawn. The other has a bronze, scarlet and green pic of the Great Mausoleum. It cost 490. The lady in the F.L. gift shop where I bought it said it would make a lovely wall plaque in any home (when not in use as ashtray) so this being the pre-Xmas season I got several for gifts. On top of the twin hearts are various scrolls and leaves, and crowning all, the words JAMAIS ARRIERE. We think that means, translated, NEVER IN ARREARS. Please ask your Fr. teacher.
Your sainted P’s are moping because you sound so miserable. I, being a reader between the lines, have suggested to them that a) you are rather loving being miserable, and that it certainly suits your literary style—although I do not approve of letters without a salutation at the beginning because it makes one feel that you have carelessly flushed the first page down the john, or that b) you really are miserable, but then who isn’t at your age? or even that c) why shouldn’t anyone be miserable with the very drear prospect of the non-future in case of war. Which has rather understandably been bugging everyone lately, even the Sainteds and us. Specially us, because it is so very tiresome to be spending hours writing a book advocating speedy cremation and simple disposal of the remains, only to find one’s complete idea being cribbed by the K.7 administration. I mean think what it will do to sales.
Do write. Shall you be there next Spring, when we come? We’ll hopefully telephone to see when we get back East.
Lots of love, Your Fond Godmother
To Constancia Romilly
Oakland
January IO, 1962
Darling Dinkdonk,
…I got a screamingly funny Va. letter about your time together. She adores you. She raved on about how well you look, slimmed down and beautiful etc etc; then, she said “I suppose by now you know about my terrible goof in speaking to her about her father.” Then she went into that old story (made up by Virginia in the first place) about how probably Esmond was Winston’s illegit. son all along. And oh dear she did hope you weren’t really upset by hearing it, she tried to tell you it was just an unproved rumour etc …So I couldn’t help writing back to remind her that she is the main source of this unproved rumour!8 …
Life at home: Up at 6, or 6:30, or even once or twice at 5, as I am just about as stuck as you are, my old problem of organization. As for Bob, he finally got down to some actual writing (after spending several days at the embalming school).9 Gave it to me to type, and it turned out to be 3/4 page of typing. I teased him about it a bit; now he’s doing a whole chapter on embalming. Yester day, he hopefully suggested going to play tennis with Mimmy;10 I said, “You’re not to go out and play before you finish your chapter. First things first.” Shades of Bob telling Benj the same! …
I must be at my book. Goodbye dear. Do write by return, it is such a joy to hear from you…
Your loving Dec
Dear it made me cry when you said, “I know I am not meant to succumb to moods.” You are supposed to. I can see now we’ve been beastly to you (specially wicked Papa), not letting you be moody or daydream.
To Constancia Romilly
Oakland
January 16, 1962
Darling Dinkydonk,
… I’m in the stage where I worry about the book night and day, and it is going all too slowly. We’ve done a little over 100 pages (about 9 chapters) which I hope is about 1/3 of all. Somehow, this week we’ve hardly got anything done. The days slip away, and we are always behind. Some of it is because of interviews (like yesterday, we spent all morning with a mortician, most of the afternoon with some economists who are helping) and the pile of papers doesn’t seem to grow anything like fast enough. Sometimes I measure them, dear; 1 inch if just left plain, or ¼ inch if pressed down (thick, you know). I guess you know the behindhand feeling all too well.
Dear shall we do as Muv suggested and give up all this slaving? But the trouble with me is I don’t like not doing anything, either. For instance I should loathe the life of Barbara Kahn, nothing but a lot of boring community work like PTA and Planned Parenthood.
Well, Beer,11 back to work.
Your loving Ma
To Kathleen Kahn
Oakland
February 2, 1962
Dearest Goddity,12
… Thanks v. much for your letter, the more appreciated because I can imagine how busy you must be and bored of thought of writing poor old Godmothers.
Did you know one can get a thing called “new Bra-Form, Post Mortem Form Restoration, Accomplishes so Much for So Little?”; They only cost $11 for a package of 50. Shall I send some? Barb is longing to try them.
One foot in the grave hereabouts, as you can see. We are working like mad and I think are almost at the half-way mark. …
We are going to Chicago for a bit at the end of Feb, on the blissful train.… I bet you didn’t know that Chi. is a main funeral center in this country, National Headquarters of Selected Morticians of America, and site of the famous Foundation of Funeral Service?13 See, they never teach the important things in our schools these days. Anyway, that’s why we are going.
We’ve finished our Embalming chapter. It’s rather blissful in spots. For instance, I ran across an ad. for Tru-Lanol Arterial Fluid, in the form of a testimonial letter from a satisfied customer. He describes a very difficult case (69-year-old woman, was 40 hours in heated apartment before being discovered) and how after 4 days of Tru-Lanol treatment, all was OK. He adds wistfully, “I wish I could have kept her for four more days.” Don’t you think that’s rather a poignant thought? They do so love their work, and so understandably hate to part with it…
Lots of love, Decca.
To the Duchess of Devonshire
Oakland
February 15, 1962
Dearest Henny,
Glad you liked the Prac. Bur. Foot.14 Yes, there are some other fascinators: such as … The Final Touch That Means So Much, it’s mood-setting casket hardware…
Hen do you prefer a gentle Tissue-Tint in yr. arterial? It helps regain the Natural Undertones. It’s made specially for those who prefer a fast Firming Action of medium-to-rigid degree…
