264. Jessica Mitford — The American Way of Death with Mimi Pond

Episode 264: Jessica Mitford (The American Way of Death) with Mimi Pond

AMY: For access to all of our bonus episodes and to help support the cause of recovering forgotten women writers join our Patreon community. Visit lost ladies of lit.com and click “Become a Patron” to find out more. Welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to forgotten or overlooked women writers. I'm Amy Helmes here with my co-host Kim Askew, and listeners, we have an upcoming public appearance we wanted to let you know about. Kim and I will be at Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore in Berkeley, California on Tuesday, October 14th at 7:00 PM for a Litquake event. We'll be on a group panel discussing women writers whose work has been erased from history, and we're gonna be joined in that discussion by several previous guests on this show, including today's guest, Mimi Pond. So if you're in the Bay Area, come on out and say hi to us all and enjoy our talk. We'd love to see you there.

KIM: Yes, absolutely. It's gonna be so fun. Getting back to today's episode though, Amy, it seems like the talent for writing can sometimes run in families. Um, thinking of our few sister acts we've had on this show already, we've had the Porter Sisters, Jane and Maria, the Findlater sisters, Jane and Mary, the Eaton sisters, Edith Maude (also known as Sui Sin Far) and Winifred Eaton.

AMY: And since Nancy Mitford, whom we've covered back in 2021 is our most popular, most downloaded episode of all time (that's episode No 39), we figured the time was ripe to circle back to her sister, Jessica. She was also a bestselling author of her day, as well as a feisty muckraking journalist.

KIM: You had me at Mitford Amy. I have a copy of Decca: The letters of Jessica Mitfordthat I dip into from time to time. So obviously, um, there's no such thing as too much Mitford in my book. 

AMY: Hell no. I'm obsessed with that whole family, uh, to the point of tracking down some of their graves and two of the different homes on a trip to England last year. So anyway, I'm sure we're gonna be touching on all the sisters a little bit today, but Jessica or “Decca,” as she was more casually known by her family, has always been particularly intriguing to me. I had read her memoir, Hons and Rebels (the American title of that is Daughters and Rebels). I absolutely loved that book and I knew she had also written this non-fiction book about the funeral industry, which to me kind of seemed like it would be odd and … boring, maybe? So I had never read that until we set out to do this episode. But side note: While I was prepping for the show, I learned that David Bowie actually listed this book, The American Way of Death, as one of his top 100 books of all time.

KIM: Oh, that's amazing. I love that. It seems maybe a little off-brand for one of England's “bright young things” to write about funeral homes … or does it? Anyway, I think we can find out more. 

AMY: Let's do, darling! I happen to have a neighbor who is even more obsessed with the Mitfords than I am, so much so that she spent the last six years creating a 450-page, charmingly-illustrated, meticulously-researched biography of the Mitford clan. It's out this month. It's amazing, and I can't wait to talk about it with her. I'm confident she's going to have some interesting insights into Jessica Mitford, in particular, and her writing.

KIM: Oh my gosh, this sounds more fun than an afternoon of chub-fuddling. That's a rather peculiar Mitford family activity. if you know, you know, basically. So let's raid the stacks and get started!

[intro music plays]

KIM: Our guest today, Mimi Pond, originally joined us on the show back in 2021 to discuss the writer Lucia Berlin, whom she knew personally. (And I love that episode. It's one of my favorites). Mimi is an author and illustrator with two critically-acclaimed memoirs from her time waitressing at an Oakland diner: Over-easy, and The Customer is Always Wrong. 

AMY: Today, Mimi lives in LA within shouting distance from me, actually. And we occasionally trade books with one another, but the book I wanna talk about is her latest, newly published by Drawn and Quarterly. It's called Do Admit: the Mitford Sisters and Me. This book is funny, it's sarcastic, it's poignant at times. The illustrations are endearing and clever. In short, it's such a fitting tribute to its subjects. Mimi, congratulations on the publication of Do Admit, and thanks for coming back on the show to talk to us about it.

MIMI: Oh, thanks. Well, I'm always happy to be here. 

KIM: One of the things I love about your book, Mimi, is that it's so personal. You incorporate throughout some of your own history and how you discovered the Mitford family. I remember when we did our episode with Nancy Mitford's biographer Laura Thompson, she wondered why Americans would be so fascinated by this very British family. Can you talk a little bit about the draw for you, Mimi?

MIMI: Well, for me it was just such an entirely different world. I grew up in suburban San Diego, in the Sixties and Seventies and, you know, rural Oxfordshire was like the most farflung place you could possibly imagine. And I was fascinated with everything British as a child, starting with the Beatles, but then, you know, the royal family and the aristocracy, it was like, so “bizarro world” to me.

AMY: And you also talk about the fact that you didn't have any sisters yourself, and you and I have that in common. So we kind of missed out as children on that sisterly dynamic, and there's also a draw to that.

MIMI: Yeah, exactly. I mean the title, Do Admit, is something that the sisters would say to each other to try to garner sympathy. Like, “You've gotta admit I'm right about this.” And I had two brothers who would never admit I was right about anything. Ever!

AMY: I should say that I typically don't read much graphic literature and I really wasn't sure what to expect when you had mentioned a few years ago that you were working on this project. In fact, I don't even know what to call it, because it's not a graphic novel. What do you call it? Graphic. nonfiction?

MIMI: Graphic biography. I mean, there's a lot of graphic biographies out there.

AMY: Okay. Well, it's not my typical delivery device for literature. But now having read your book I can see how much skill actually goes into incorporating the art and the words together because there's a real trick to making sure the person's eye can follow everything and take it all in, and you really, with your illustrations, you take the reader in hand and you guide them on this wonderful journey.

MIMI: Well, thanks. A lot of graphic biographies tend to go towards panel after panel of talking heads. And that was the thing I wanted to avoid the most. And the other thing that is absolutely no good for comics in general is to have too many hand-lettered words on a page. You know, like your eyes just roll back in your head and you're like, I can't. So you have to be really judicious in your use of hand-lettered text, and to pull the reader in I was trying every device I could think of. 

KIM: You did an amazing job.

AMY: It's almost like Twitter, where you have to say it as succinctly as possible, but also as humorously and entertainingly as possible. It’s a real skill.

KIM: Yes, incredibly so. I felt the same, because I hadn't read a lot of graphic literature either, but every page on this moved at a really fun, brisk clip. I was completely drawn in just as if I were reading a novel, which I didn't expect. And you have these quips and sides that are your own, but also Mitford-esque in terms of snark level, I'd say. It's really succinctly and cleverly done. I'm so impressed. But I'm wondering what was your biggest challenge? Because you had so much material to work with. 

MIMI: Well, it was a challenge to winnow it down to, you know, the essentials. Because there's six sisters, there's so much drama, there's so much humor. There's so many world events. Yeah, some things just got cast aside, but I just wanted to hit all the major notes of the way that they really defined, through their actions and deeds and words, the entire scope of the 20th century. I mean, I went to art school, so you know, my history was somewhat sketchy, and I feel like I had a crash course on the entire history of the 20th century through these sisters. It was like I backed my ass into the fan of history.

KIM: Yeah, I feel like that's how they should teach it, because it makes it much more memorable when you have real, interesting people to connect it to.

MIMI: I mean, for me it's all about the personalities. For example, who knew that Charles de Gaulle’s nickname as a teenager was “the asparagus?”

AMY: Well, that's what I love about this book because I've done so much reading on the Mitford and I thought, “I know this all. I know every inch of this.” And yet you include little tidbits that I had no idea about. I didn't know about Diana living in the Medieval Inn after she got out of prison. I didn't know about Decca sneaking food from the cafeteria at work, because she was so poor. Like, there's a lot of anecdotes that were totally new to me in your book and I was super delighted by that.

KIM: So let's back up a little bit and talk about the Mitford family. We did discuss it in more detail in our episode on Nancy, but we just wanna give a quick recap. So they were an upper-class British family Lord and Lady Redesdale, their six daughters and one son. Tom, the son, he was often away at private school and he later died in World War II. But it's these six beautiful sisters who became wildly famous starting in the 1930s. You could think of them as the Kardashians of their day.

MIMI: Actually really before that, in the Twenties when they were debutantes, it's like debutantes were the celebrities of their day in Britain. Um, aristocrats were the celebrities of their day. And I would really like to avoid comparing them to the Kardashians because, unlike the Kardashians, they didn't give a flying f what anyone thought of them.

KIM: They sure didn't. They sure didn't. Absolutely, that's a great point. 

AMY: Yeah, and each sister was unique and I guess we sort of have like shortcut terminology to classify them today. Um, so in brief, there was Nancy, the novelist and the Francophile. There was Pam, the quiet one who loved country life. Diana, the beautiful fascist. Unity, the Nazi-lover who shot herself in a failed suicide attempt. Jessica or Decca, the Communist, and then Deborah, the baby of the family who became a Duchess by marriage.

KIM: Yeah, and those descriptors alone are pretty intriguing. But then of course you dig in and realize they're actually far more fascinating than any characters you could make up in fiction. 

AMY: What was the process for you of, you know, maybe like the most surprising things you learned about them or the strangest rabbit hole you went down while researching this? Did you actually go over there at all to visit any of the places?

MIMI: Uh, I was fortunate in 2019 I went to England with a friend and I had befriended Jessica Milford's son, Benjamin Treuhaft (Benji). He met us in Coventry and we took the train up to Chatsworth and we had a whirlwind tour of Chatsworth House and then took the train back to Coventry and he drove us down to Swinbrook, where we spent the night at the Swan Inn, my friend and I. And then, um, the next morning we got up and in typical British, style the directions from the Swan Inn, owned by the Cavendish family now…

AMY: So Deborah's family… 

MIMI: Deborah's family, yeah. Um, gave directions on how to get to Asthall Manor. And it was like: “Head through this meadow, turn left at the second sheep,” and we're just wandering aimlessly, trying to figure out where we're going. We're walking down this country road that looks like it's out of The Wind in the Willows. And we look over and then like there's, there's a driveway and a house and it's like, “Ahhhhhhhhh!!!!!” Asthall Manor. And I just was like, shaking. And there was a woman in the driveway puttering around with a trowel and she got up and came over and talked to us. She's the owner, and she didn't show us the whole house, but she showed us Nancy's and Tom's studio that their father kind of built for them. And since then we've become friends and she's offered to have a book event for me there, which is very exciting if my British publisher will actually bring me over, that would be great. So yeah, I did see Asthall Manor and Chatsworth House. And, um, I, you know, I'd, I'd love to see more,

AMY: Yeah, I had the same experience. I was there in Swinbrook, I guess is a little town, um, last year, and yeah, it's like a fake village 

MIMI: It's almost like a Thomas Kincaid painting.

AMY: Yes, exactly, there's little ponds…

MIMI: As Americans, you're like, oh, come on now.

KIM: This can't be real.

AMY: It's not fair. It's not fair. 

KIM: So your book really brings the Mitfords to life. There's their wit, their idiosyncrasies, their genius, their faults, all of it, as the case may be. So now I'm gonna ask you a question that I'm sure you are already sick of answering, but I'm gonna ask it anyway. Do you have a favorite Mitford after all this?

MIMI: Oh, I still adore Jessica because Jessica was thinking so far outside the box beyond anything her sisters could imagine. She was prescient and she understood, you know, that equality was something important and that everyone should have access to the same things. And she battled injustice her whole life. She came to America, she embraced America, she became an American and just loved everything about the American process. And, just had this spectacular sense of humor where she could see the humor in anything, even funerals.

AMY: Yes. Which we'll get into. But before she came to America, she was involved in an incident of international intrigue, and I'm wondering if you can tell listeners about that because it's sort of the thing she's most famous for in terms of her early life.

MIMI: Well, Jessica had been telling her family since she was a child that she was getting the hell out of there. I mean, they were all planning their exit strategies, but she set up a “running away fund” with the bank. She set her money 

AMY: She was quite young, right? Like, six or seven? 

MIMI: Yeah. And she found out that her cousin Esmond Romilly was in Spain, fighting in the Spanish Civil War. Now Esmond was Winston Churchill's nephew. And he had been like this teenage rabble-rousing guy who basically started an underground newspaper for English private schools while he was still in high school. 

KIM: He’s so cool, by the way. 

MIMI: Yeah.

KIM: I mean, come on.

AMY: Teenage heartthrob.

KIM: Yeah.

MIMI: Yeah, absolutely. and she was following him in the press and her family was like, “Oh, that bad boy!” And she actually met him at another cousin's weekend house party and she said, “Are you going back to Spain and can I come with you? I've got money.” (She'd had her running away fund.) And so together they ran away. They went back to Spain, and she had told her parents that she was going on vacation with the Paget twins who were debutantes. It was all a rouse. And when they found out that she wasn't with the Paget twins, they were out of their minds with worry and they finally tracked her down. And they had pull with the government and basically the British Embassy in Spain told her, “You've got to come home.” And she says like, you know “The hell I will!” And, they said, “Well, you know, we've got this ship here and it's got, Spanish refugees on it that are going to France, but if you don't get on this boat with them, we’re not gonna take 'em.”

AMY: Oh, appealing to her bleeding heart!

MIMI: Yeah. So she and Esmond got on the ship and went back to France and, by then she was pregnant. And so they got married and went back to London where they lived for a time. Um, but yeah, it was, “the battleship incident.”

AMY: Yeah. It was headlines in all the newspapers. 

MIMI: Oh, yeah. The British news tabloids have these posters that they put up at newsstands, trumpeting headlines like, “Mitford Debutante Lost in Pyrenees!” Things like that. And Nancy wrote to her and said, “Unity's jealous that you got on posters.”

KIM: Yeah. that family. Oh my God. 

AMY: Also, we should mention, uh, since you brought up the Paget sisters, there's actually a new book out from McNally Editions called The Dazzling Paget Sisters by Ariane Bankes, who is Celia Paget's daughter. So if you're interested in learning more about them, you can check that out.

KIM: And you can get their side of the story of being alibi for Jessica's trip to Spain. I always think of Nancy first as the writer, but let's talk about how Jessica started to forge her career path as a writer.

MIMI: Well, um, she came to America, with Esmond. Esmond joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and was shot down over Europe, and Jessica was living in Washington DC at the time. She remarried an American Jewish lawyer. Together they moved to Oakland, California where they were proud members of the Communist Party. But she saw the humor in the Communist Party and she wrote a little humorous booklet about Communist language, called Lifeitselfmanship. She self-published it. She sold lots of copies. She donated the money to the party. She went to a Communist convention in New York, and they're like, “Oh my God, you wrote Lifeitselfmanship.” And she knew she was onto something. I mean, she was still writing other pieces, but her husband, Bob Treuhaft, was a lawyer who specialized in civil rights and union rights activism. And he was discovering that the death benefits paid out by unions just got sucked up immediately, no matter how much it was. Funeral homes took every bit of it, and he was like, “There's something going on with this.” And, uh, he asked her to look into it and they started sending away for funeral industry brochures, which were screamingly funny. And he said, “This has got your name all over it.” And she started investigating it and found out that there was no oversight of funeral industries in America and they were just taking advantage of people at their absolutely most vulnerable. And she wrote an entire book exposing the funeral industry. Before that she wrote her memoir, Hons and Rebels. And that did very well. But then The American Way of Death came out in 1963, which is when my parents read it and just embraced it. And my parents are like, you know, the tightwads of the century. And they were like, you know, all about that. “That's how they get you!” And they joined a funeral society, and as a result, my mother saved 90% on the cost of her own cremation, which would've thrilled [Jessica] to no end. 

AMY: Groupon. The Groupon for funerals. 

MIMI: Yeah. 

AMY: Oh my gosh. Well, it's not surprising, you know, we said that it seems weird in some ways that a Mitford would write about funerals, but also not really because they all have such gallows humor, right?  I mean, it totally makes sense and there are so many funny moments throughout this book. It reminded me a lot. I don't know, Mimi, if you're familiar with the nonfiction author, Mary Roach, who does a lot of kind of science-based books?

MIMI: Oh, yeah.

AMY: She has that kind of similar deadpan approach to it, but it's also meticulously researched. I wanna read a little section that I highlighted from this book that made me laugh. There are lots of parts where you're laughing and there's also also a lot of parts that are quite serious, you know? But, um, this one, uh, she's talking about some literature from the funeral industry about the timing of doing the embalming and how it's important, you know, the quicker you can get it done, the better. And the things she's reading says, We must conclude that the best results are to be obtained if the subject is embalmed before life is completely extinct, that is before cellular death has occurred. In the average case, this would mean within an hour after somatic death. So Mitford says to that: For those who feel there is something a little rudimentary not to say haphazard about this advice, a comforting thought is offered by another writer. Speaking of fears entertained in early days of premature burial, he points out one of the effects of embalming by chemical injection, however, has been to dispel fears of live burial.

Then Mitford says: How true. Once the blood is removed, chances of live burial are indeed remote. 

KIM: Silver lining! 

AMY: She's got that snarky commentary throughout, which is just amazing.

KIM: I love the writing.

AMY: Yeah. And you're also, you really do come to a conclusion about what you want for yourself, I think, after reading this book, because she goes into everything pretty, um, clearly, and it's a little horrific at times. it reminds me also of an anecdote. When I was in Girl Scouts in like the seventh grade, we got taken on a field trip to a funeral home to see how they operate in the middle of the night. So like 2:00 AM… 

MIMI: Crazy!

AMY: I know. Going down into this basement where the embalming and everything takes place. There were no dead bodies at the time. 'cause obviously we were children. 

KIM: This is unbelievable. It's so weird!

AMY: I know it's a story you don't know about me, Kim. But yeah. It was so creepy and weird. And yet that memory was sparked by reading this book. 

KIM: I’m imagining the badge for that. 

MIMI: Yeah. What's the badge for that? 

AMY: It did have a badge!

KIM: Oh my god. Okay. Okay. So, um, Mimi, how was the book received by readers and maybe more explosively by the funeral industry itself?

MIMI: It was an instant bestseller. People just went crazy for it. Uh, the funeral industry was infuriated. I mean, they had congressional hearings, which thrilled her to no end. Um, but it actually directly affected the Kennedy assassination, which is a crazy story. Essentially. Robert Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy and JFK, probably their whole cabinet had read this book. It had just come out in June of 1963. And after Kennedy was assassinated, Jackie gets on the horn with Bobby, and they agree. They don't want a funeral home involved because they've read this book.

KIM: Oh my gosh. 

MIMI: Meanwhile, a local funeral home thinks he's gonna handle the body. The local coroner says, this is my jurisdiction. There's a literal tug of war over the body, between the president's people, and the local jurisdiction about who gets the body. And finally they just say, send us over your best casket. So, um, the funeral director gets there, they wrap the body in like layers and layers of plastic to protect it from the interior of the coffin. And they put it in the hearse. And secret service gets behind the wheel and the funeral home director says, you want directions to the funeral home? He's like, oh no, we're going to the airport. And they have this incredible struggle getting this thousand pound casket up the tiny airport stairs into Air Force One, which has had seats removed so they can get it in there. I mean, it's just a nightmare. They think they're gonna take it back to Bethesda Naval Hospital and that they'll embalm the body and they get back there and like the people at Bethesda say, “Well, we can't do that. We don't know how to do that.” So it wound up getting taken to the funeral home in DC that had been doing presidents, you know, since the 19th century. And then, you know, Jackie was saying, “I don't want an open casket.” And Bobby says, “Oh, come on. This man belongs to the nation. The nation needs to see its president.” She's like, “Nope.” They go back and forth. She says, “Okay. You decide.” He takes one look. It's like, “Closed casket!”

AMY: But that's the whole thing is like, it's so hard to trust the people in this industry. I mean, you understand why they're like, “Get your hands off this guy.” Because they've read this book and were like, “Nope!”

KIM: And once again, a Mitford is involved in a global political situation.

MIMI: I know. I talk about like degrees of Mitford separation.

KIM: Exactly. Exactly. 

AMY: I love in your book, Mimi, that you point out that, um, Time Magazine at one point named Jessica “The Queen of the Muckrakers,” and her response was: “As long as it's queen.” That’s such a Mitford answer!

KIM: Yes. Interestingly, and not surprisingly, Decca was also good friends with the writer Kay Boyle. We did a previous episode on her last year. Both Jessica and Kay were targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Both also lived in the Oakland area. I really love the idea of these two having a friendship. Do you know anything about that? Mimi?

MIMI: Oh, I don't know anything about Kay Boyle. Um, The Collected Letters of Jessica Mitford, though, are just such a delightful rabbit hole to fall down into because she corresponded with everyone. She was also very close friends with Maya Angelou. And they just laughed and laughed together. I highly recommend that collection of letters if you're Jessica Mitford fan.

KIM: It’s wonderful. 

AMY: I do know that Kay Boyle dedicated a poem, to Jessica Mitford. I'd need to go back and see if I could find it to share in our show notes. 

KIM: Talking about her activism in journalism, um, what else do you think stands out about her career, Mimi?

MIMI: I mean, starting with in the 1950s (or maybe it was early Sixties) she traveled to Laurel, Mississippi with three other women to go door to door to beg the residents of Laurel, Mississippi to protest the execution of a black man wrongly accused of rape. And it was a horrible, horrible case. Um, they were unable to convince anyone to change their minds. This poor man was executed with a traveling electric chair, operated by a former Carney, by the way. And she even went and spoke to William Faulkner, and his response, which you can read about in the book, was also really strange. Later, she went to Montgomery, and was in a black church that was surrounded outside by rioting white people who threatened to burn down the church. And they were in the church all night, in the basement on the phone to Bobby Kennedy saying, “You've gotta help us!” And finally, the local police were sent out to disperse the crowd. But when she emerged and was escorted back to the car that she had borrowed from her friends that she was staying with, she found the car was a burned-out shell.

KIM: I mean, she couldn't be more opposite from her family.

MIMI: Yeah. I mean, she was really, utterly so different and they were really very mean to her about it. They just didn't quite understand, you know. It was just a gap that was never gonna be bridged. 

AMY: That takes us back to her memoir, Hons and Rebels, because first of all, it's got a lot of similarities to The Pursuit of Love, Nancy's book, which is fiction, but, you know, drawing from real life. But I was interested to learn from your book that it was really a lot of Decca and Deborah's memories from their childhood that Nancy was incorporating. Like the cupboard, the Hons and Rebels thing itself. Nancy and Diana weren't really doing that. She used it. 

MIMI: Yeah, because they were so much older.

AMY: Yeah. It was Jessica's thing. So then when she told her version of the story though, the rest of the family were pretty pissed.

MIMI: Yeah, well, frankly, she had drawn on Nancy's writing and included a lot of the details, sort of subconsciously had sort of, you know, enmeshed them with her own. And it wasn't until years later that she was able to admit that. But at the same time, it's a telling portrait. 

AMY: And it also just speaks to how subjective memory is, too. Everyone has their own recollection of how it was. But Nancy called it cold. A cold portrayal of the family. But she's one to speak, right? 

MIMI: Yeah, I mean, their mother had described Nancy's, personality as saying like, there's this sparkling wit, but it feels like a glittering fishing lore that's got a hook buried in it.

KIM: Mm. Yeah. Okay. We can't not talk about Decca and the Dectones. This is wild. So tell our listeners about this, Mimi.

MIMI: I wish I could remember more about it. Jessica was still living in Oakland in the Eighties when she was approached by a young woman who encouraged her to have a band with her called Decca and the Dectones. And they recorded, uh, some songs together, which are on YouTube. 

KIM: Okay, 

AMY: Hilarious. I mean, didn't she play an instrument like the harmonica or something? I can't remember.

MIMI: I think kazoos were involved. 

AMY: That's it. Kazoos. Oh my gosh. And Maya Angelou actually remembered this. 

MIMI: Yeah, she had a great quote about it. Decca recorded a version of the Beatles song, “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” with Decca and the Dectones. And she performed it at a benefit for The Nation magazine held at New York's Town Hall. And Maya Angelou was quoted as saying, “Decca doesn't have a lot of musical acumen, but she does have the courage, the concentration of someone about to be executed in the next half hour.” 

KIM: Oh my God.

AMY: Jessica just seems like she would have been a blast to have hung out with. I mean, any of them really. Well, any of them, probably, except for Unity and maybe Pam. 

MIMI: You know. what though? Here's the thing about Unity and Pam. (And by the way, unity was Jessica's favorite sister, despite everything.)

AMY: Okay.

MII: Um, and, Benji Treuhaft had told me he met Pam and that she was just fantastically funny. And I think the two of them had a kind of quality about them that was so ineffable, so far beyond even the articulation of these fabulous sisters to describe what it was about them that was just so funny. But they were, uh, and it's unfortunate we don't have more information about it. But I feel strongly that they had their own charm. I mean, Unity charmed Adolf Hitler!

AMY: Unity was clearly a funny little kid. She was probably the funniest of the girls in childhood, like just the dripping off the table at dinnertime when she would languish.

KIM: Yeah, 

MIMI: Although, you know, there's an Asperger's-y, “spectrum-y” thing about all that. 

AMY: Yeah, it's true. It's true. I do think Pam always gets a bad rap as being the boring one. So I always kind of feel bad for Pam, but she seems like she was happy. 

MIMI: I think she had a very dry sense of humor. And in terms of her late in life, becoming a lesbian… this is just my speculation, she was married to Derek Jackson, who was a vigorous bisexual and was very open about it. You know, he was an astrophysicist. He was an aristocrat. He was the heir to the News of the World. He didn't give a fuck all about, (Sorry.)

KIM: You can say it. 

MIMI: He didn't give a flying fuck about what anyone thought. And, you know, I think in terms of sexual fluidity, she may have taken, you know, some lessons from him about what you can do. So, you know, her decision to live with an Italian horse woman for 20 years was like, it's nobody's business but my own. Even if Jessica did mention to someone that “I think Pam has become a you-know-what-bian.”

KIM: “You-know-what-bian.” Okay.

AMY: So your book comes out conveniently enough on the heels of this British historical TV drama about the Mitford sisters, “Outrageous.” Um, I know you weighed in with your thoughts on the show for The New Yorker earlier this summer, but Kim and I haven't watched yet, and I, I'm sure some of our listeners have not. So, what's your verdict? I'm always wary. 

MIMI: Well, you know, when you're watching a period series, like for example, “Downton Abbey,” it's basically what I like to call middle-aged lady porn. You know, you got your fabulous setting. You got your beautiful interiors, you got your period clothing, your period hairstyles. And you're kind of engulfed in this fantasy of like, “Oh, I wish someone would bring me breakfast in bed with the tea and the toast and the little racks and the ironed newspaper and all that stuff.” And you know, if it's like done with a high quality, like, I I wanna say that, Merchant Ivory kind of set the bar really high for your middle-aged lady porn.

AMY: I love that phrase. Oh my God, I'm gonna steal that.

MIMI: Honestly, “Outrageous,” it looks cheap, number one. And, the hair is like… there's not a Marcel in sight. You know, you want the Marcel waves for God's sake. The clothing is just sort of not that interesting. Nancy and her gay friends keep going back to the same nightclub set which looks cheap. It just feels shoddy. I mean, the acting, I guess, was okay though. The woman who plays Nancy is Imelda Staunton’s daughter. Um, she’s also daughter of the butler from “Downton Abbey.” And she actually does look like Nancy, it's just the scripts were awful. And bottom line, nothing funny about them all. Drama, sibling rivalry, you know, like, yeah, no wit.

AMY: Noooo!

MIMI: No charm. 

KIM: I don't have time for that. 

AMY: That's my problem with so much period stuff that's getting put out by quote unquote Hollywood today. The budget is so bad. I want Cecil Beaton images on my screen, basically. If you’re going to do the Mitfords it had better look gorgeous. 

MIMI: Yeah. 

AMY: oh, that's too bad. But yeah, I just think they are very hard to translate into any kind of project like that. 

KIM: You need a brilliant director.

AMY: They're larger than life and it doesn't work. But I do hear that, uh, you are selling some Mitford sister merch?

MIMI: I am, I'm selling, a set of six Mitford sister enamel pins. You can buy one, you can buy them all. You can collect them, trade 'em, swap 'em with your friends. At my website mimipond.com. and I soon hope to have in stock a Mitford sisters tea towel, which I have on order. And, I should be getting my shipment of Mitford sisters coasters, too. Because like, they're just crying out for Mitford merch! People need to own this stuff. The family put out a set of coasters, like probably in the Seventies or Eighties that I have a set of. They're okay, but mine are just so much better. Let's face it.

AMY: And also we mentioned in our Nancy Mitford episode that I think once you meet somebody and you learn that they're a Mitford freak, it's like a litmus test. I'm going to like this person. You instantly know it. So I feel like having a little Mitford pin on the lapel of your jacket or on your bag or whatever, It's gonna get somebody's notice. 

KIM: A little tell. Yep.

AMY: And also, your book is a piece of art that you would wanna set out. It's substantial, right? I mean, it, it's a substantial book that I think of more as like a coffee table book.

MIMI: It's like a three-pound book. Yeah. 

KIM: So cool.

AMY: So I feel like if you walk into somebody's house and see on their table Do Admit by Mimi Pond, it's gonna suddenly be like, “Oh yeah, that person's in the know.” 

MIMI: Speaking of pins, someone told me a story about… now this is, you know, hearsay, but it's a good story. Um, someone knew a young man who befriended Diana towards the end of her life and was corresponding with her when she lived in Paris. And they finally agreed to meet for lunch, and she leaned in and flipped over her lapel to reveal her diamond-studded swastika 

AMY: No!

MIMI: Yeah, 

AMY: She never learned a thing. She never regretted it! 

MIMI: She went on Desert Island Discs and the interviewer, you know, confronted her and, she, well, first of all, she said, You know, well, you couldn't help but admire Hitler. You know, I really liked him. And the Holocaust… I can't believe that it was really 6 million. 

AMY: God.

KIM: Gross. 

MIMI: In that accent that is like so beyond, beyond, beyond that, it makes the queen sound like DollyParton. 

AMY: And she was even so gorgeous late in life. 

KIM: So elegant looking and everything. 

MIMI: Just stunningly gorgeous. Ridiculous. 

AMY: You do understand why the sisters were kind of fractured by the end of their lives. 

MIMI: Oh, yeah. You know, and Deborah, as the youngest, was like, trying to sort of hold everyone together and yet the deck was always stacked against Decca. 

AMY: Well, it's just like any big family. There's just always drama. 

KIM: Totally. 

MIMI: I know. I mean, actually, if I learned anything, it's like that having sisters is no guarantee.

AMY: Yeah. We were kind of jealous of it, but then it's like, no, maybe we escaped some high melodrama there. 

KIM: No comment. I have a sister. 

AMY: I also feel like Decca was always American at heart.

MIMI: Yeah. She really became an American. But she could, turn on the British bullshit to charm people. In fact, another great thing she did in terms of activism in the 1950s, she would front for Black families who were trying to buy homes in white neighborhoods in Oakland. And she did this at least a dozen times, where she would appear to be the buyer and would come to the open house and would completely charm the owner. This, like, middle-aged, eccentric English aunt who's like, “Oh, you know, the old house is so wonderful!” All that stuff. And they would fall for it and then moving day would come. Here's comes this Black family moving in and the neighbors are losing their minds. Uh, and, uh, Jessica's daughter, Dinky Romilly told me that she went to her high school reunion at Oakland Technical High School, and this classmate of hers that she had no memory of came up to her and had said, “Your mother changed my life.” His family was one of the families that Jessica had fronted for. And you know, as a result they moved into a beautiful home in a nice neighborhood and their life improved dramatically. Little acts of heroism like that are just wonderful to hear. 

AMY: And it combines her like social justice sensabilities with sort of that Mitford, cheeky… 

KIM: Yeah. “We're gonna do what we wanna do.” Yeah. 

AMY: I mean, it's amazing because I think we could sit here for five hours and just not run out of topics on these ladies. But this is all the time we've got for today, so I'm gonna encourage everybody to run out and get Mimi's book. It's so fun to read. I mean, really laugh-out-loud terrific. And I love how you've incorporated your own personal stories into it. Um, thanks for joining us. I know you're scheduled today, you are moving on to a New York Times reporter, so we are so happy that we had a little bit of time for you too,

MIMI: Well, it's uh, it's a pleasure, anytime, to talk about the sisters. I could literally go on forever. 

AMY: Literally, I know. But anyway, we will see you in Berkeley, Mimi, at our Litquake event. So, um, yeah, once again, listeners, if anybody's in that area, come join us!

MIMI: Thanks, and mimipond.com. Get your mitford merch! 

AMY: Yes. 

KIM: Get your merch, and get your book.

AMY: So that's all for today's episode. If you're enjoying this podcast, don't forget to leave us a rating and review wherever you listen. It really helps us. Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone, and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Kim Askew and Amy Helmes.