DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, professor of television studies at Rowan University. Jessica Mitford was famous for several reasons. One reason was her investigative books, including her best-known one, "The American Way Of Death," published in 1963. It revealed how the funeral industry was financially taking advantage of grief-stricken Americans. It was a bestseller and led to congressional hearings on the industry. Another reason Mitford was famous was that she was committed to radical causes throughout her life. In the 1950s, as a former member of the Communist Party, she refused to give any information to the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Mitford grew up in the English countryside, the daughter of a lord, which gets to yet another source of her notoriety. She was one of England's most unusual groups of sisters. There were six Mitford girls, including Unity, who briefly was romantically involved with Hitler, Diana, who married Oswald Mosley, the head of Britain's Union of Fascists, and Nancy, who became a popular novelist. The sisters are now the subject of a new BritBox drama series titled "Outrageous." In my recent review of the TV show, I called it and the Mitford sisters fascinating. Jessica Mitford died in 1996. Terry Gross spoke with her seven years earlier in 1989.
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TERRY GROSS: Jessica Mitford, welcome to FRESH AIR.
JESSICA MITFORD: Thanks.
GROSS: There's so much I want to talk with you about your life. Let's start kind of way back (laughter)...
MITFORD: How far?
GROSS: ...In your childhood. When you were a young girl from a prosperous family growing up in the English countryside, reading pacifist and leftist literature and getting very excited about it, what was the initial appeal to you of it?
MITFORD: Well, you know, I've thought this over since. I believe, actually, that one is very much the product of one's own time. I mean, the '60s people were a product of their time, weren't they? Now, I was a '30s person. In other words, I was born in 1917. So by 1930, I was about 13 years old, reading everything I could lay hands on, like most children, and sort of fascinated with the growing politics all around me. It was the Depression in England - tremendous poverty, huge areas called, you know, unemployable areas - and then there was fascism rising abroad. So these things made me think.
GROSS: You're talking about how you think of yourself as being a product of your time. But it's fascinating how, as a product of your time, you became a leftist, yet two of your sisters became fascists. And it's really so hard to imagine sisters in the same family growing up so different. Do you have any explanation for it?
MITFORD: I never have been able to figure it out myself, frankly. I've been asked that a lot, lots of times.
GROSS: I'm sure you have.
MITFORD: Yeah. But, I mean, the thing is, though, that some say it's sibling rivalry, which I don't believe really. I really don't think so. I don't think we were jealous of each other. It was just that I happened to see things differently from the beginning.
GROSS: Did you - because you were so opposed to fascism, did you find yourself hating your sisters when they became fascists?
MITFORD: Not really. That's the odd thing. I was always deeply fond of my sister Unity. I mean, she was one of my very favorite people in the world. And what I did realize was that our divergent views politically were going to inevitably lead to a huge, well, end of friendship, in fact, which in fact they did.
GROSS: You kept a running-away account when you were young...
MITFORD: Yeah.
GROSS: ...Money so that you could run away from home. But what you ended up using your running-away account for was to try to go to Spain...
MITFORD: Right.
GROSS: ...With the man who you later married.
MITFORD: That's it, yeah. And there was just the right amount, 50 pounds.
GROSS: And this was during the Spanish Civil War.
MITFORD: Yeah.
GROSS: And you already knew which side (laughter)...
MITFORD: Oh, yeah.
GROSS: ...You were on. You kind of went from this quiet, rural country life, the daughter of a lord, to suddenly being a political radical, involved in a revolution, a young married woman married to someone who was also from a wealthy background. Your husband was the nephew of Winston Churchill.
MITFORD: Right. Yes.
GROSS: I wonder if you started to see your own families as the opposition.
MITFORD: Whether I ever saw them?
GROSS: If you saw them as the opposition...
MITFORD: Oh, if I saw them as the opposition.
GROSS: ...In the political...
MITFORD: Oh.
GROSS: ...Battles you were waging.
MITFORD: Absolutely. Yeah. See, both my parents went completely on the side of Hitler, which was very surprising. You know, we were brought up in the shadow of the first world war, in a way. And in those days, you see, the Huns, they were the filthy Huns who had killed uncle Clem (ph) and numerous other relations in the first world war - people, of course, that I never knew 'cause I was just born during that time. And then all of a sudden, that - Hitler became a tremendous star. He did away with the labor unions, with the Communist Party. He was doing away with the Jews. And you can't discount the amount of antisemitism that goes on in the English upper class.
GROSS: Jessica Mitford is my guest. You lost your first husband in action in 1941...
MITFORD: Right. Yeah.
GROSS: ...During the war. He was 23 years old. You, just before that, lost your baby who...
MITFORD: Yes.
GROSS: ...Died of measles, I read it was.
MITFORD: The one that - born in Rotherhithe Street. Right.
GROSS: You were young. You were in your 20s. Did you despair at that point that your life was over? I think it must've been so hard to suffer those two losses at such a young age.
MITFORD: Well, also, by then, I had another baby born in 1941, Dinky - Constancia Romilly - who now lives in Atlanta. She's a nurse there, in fact. And, I mean, that was ages ago. She's now 48, absolutely ancient. I can't believe it. But anyhow - so she was my great standby and steadfast friend. And anyhow, you know, when you're young, I suppose life goes on, and especially if you've got a baby to look after and support. And so I got various jobs with the government and other places, you know.
GROSS: Let's move ahead a little bit.
MITFORD: Yeah.
GROSS: You wrote about your membership in the Communist Party in your book, "A Fine Old Conflict." What got you to join when you did?
MITFORD: Well, you see, in the first place, I'd always been a terrific supporter of the Communist Party in England ever since I was about 15 because if you sort of studied the times, in those days, you know, well, the Communists were in the forefront of the fight for the rights of unemployed, I mean, and an end to things like the means test, which was a rotten sort of Tory ploy to prevent the unemployed from collecting unemployed insurance or welfare. And then they were also in the forefront of the fight against fascism, both in Germany and Italy, but in Spain above all. It was the Communists who recruited all the young people who went - who flocked from all over the world into the International Brigade, of which Esmond Romilly was one, and that's how I met him. And then we sort of ran off to Spain together, you know. So that was sort of the progression of that.
And then - but we never actually joined the party, Esmond and I, in those days. After Esmond was killed, I stayed in Washington with my baby, Dinky - Constancia Romilly. So then I remarried, in 1943, Bob Treuhaft, a lawyer who I met in the OPA, where I was working. And that was in San Francisco. We moved out to San Francisco. And there, again, the Communist Party, in those years, seemed to me the absolute sort of loadstar or the kind of backbone really, if you like, of all progressive left-wing movements, the ones - the steadfast supporters of rights of Black people, that kind of thing. And this is what made us determined to join. So we did join in 1943 and remained members, in fact, until '58, which was quite a longish time.
GROSS: What got you to leave in 1958?
MITFORD: Well, by 1958, in the first place, the Khrushchev report about the crimes of Stalin had come out, and as a consequence of that, an awful lot of people flocked out of the CP. Not - I didn't at the time. That was in 1956, in fact. And then came the invasion of Hungary, and then came Czechoslovakia and so on, and more and more people flocked out. It was getting to be a waste of time. I'd be better off working with people in the main - in the movements on campuses, for instance, in the '60s and in the Black community.
GROSS: So many people were harassed during the McCarthy period, and so many lives were ruined. I'm thinking that it must've been hard to harass someone like you, someone who had been outspoken all of her life and who had already, like, a reputation for eccentricity because of her family. I mean, did you feel like, what can you do to hurt me?
MITFORD: Well, I did it a little bit. Yeah. I'll tell you what I really felt, which is that the hell with them sort of thing. I mean, we were subpoenaed. Bob Treuhaft, my husband...
GROSS: Your husband, yeah.
MITFORD: ...And I were both subpoenaed. And I was subpoenaed by not only the main House Committee on Un-American Activities, but also the local version of the same, the California committee and so on. And, well, I mean, what could you do? Actually, I - when I went, when I was subpoenaed by the main House committee, I was among a hundred people. There were sort of huge headlines in the Chronicle and other papers - 100 Bay Reds subpoenaed. Well, of course, if I hadn't been one of those, I'd have been rather miffed.
GROSS: (Laughter).
MITFORD: Do you know the feeling? Sort of rather annoyed. But anyhow, I was one, but they never finally called me. But what I found out was that they were bound to pay per diem - or was it? No. It wasn't per diem. It was travel allowance, so much a mile. And since we lived in Oakland, I put in for $40 for travel allowance for the week that I was forced to be there and then turned over the check to the Communist Party. I hoped to annoy them somehow, you know.
BIANCULLI: Jessica Mitford speaking to Terry Gross in 1989. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
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BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 1989 interview with author and activist Jessica Mitford. She and her aristocratic sisters are the subjects of the new BritBox drama series titled "Outrageous."
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GROSS: In your memoir about your coming-of-age...
MITFORD: Yeah.
GROSS: ...called "Daughters And Rebels," you wrote that you - you confessed that you were guiltily looking forward to being a debutante.
MITFORD: Yeah.
GROSS: Now, I don't know if you ever had that experience or not, but certainly you became a very well-known leftist and left that society world. Your father wrote you out of his will...
MITFORD: Yeah.
GROSS: ...I think because you had named one of your children after Lenin. You called him Nicholas.
MITFORD: (Laughter) Yeah.
GROSS: Do you ever have any regrets about leaving wealth and privilege?
MITFORD: No. In fact, you know, when that happened, which is in '58, I happened to be in Mexico at the time, and to the horror of the landlady where I was staying, 'cause she somehow thought she was going to have to pay for the calls. There were phone calls from everywhere - from the London Evening Standard, from Canada, from all over the United States. What is your reaction to being cut out of your father's will? And I said, I have no reaction. I think people have every right to leave their money as they wish. And I wasn't expecting any, you know? And the sort of - the deflated journalists - you know how they hate that kind of bland answer. Anyhow...
GROSS: This could have been, I guess, a big thing if you...
MITFORD: If I was like, bah, you know, it's all screamed away or something, you know.
GROSS: But you had just assumed that you would...
MITFORD: Oh, of course. So I never expected it.
GROSS: And that when you make the decision to live your life as you do...
MITFORD: Yeah.
GROSS: ...You can't have it both ways.
MITFORD: Right.
GROSS: That was the effective...
MITFORD: Of course. Exactly. You said it.
GROSS: Jessica Mitford, let's talk a little bit about your writing. You're best known for the book "The American Way Of Death," your expose of the funeral industry. What led you to want to expose the horrors of the funeral industry and how they would get people when they were weak and take them for whatever they could.
MITFORD: Well, it is rather weird, I admit. You know, it's an odd subject, indeed. I think the thing is that Bob Treuhaft, my husband - who was a lawyer in Oakland - was representing numerous trade unions. And along about the middle 1950s, he began to notice, to his fury, that every time a union member died - the breadwinner of a family - the hard-fought-for union benefits meant to go to the widow and children would wind up being the price of the funeral. So he started organizing the Bay Area Funeral Society, a nonprofit thing, which I thought was rather boring, frankly. I mean, I said, well, look, we're robbed every day in the supermarkets...
GROSS: (Laughter).
MITFORD: ...And by the landlords and things. So why pick on the wretched undertakers - until I began reading the trade magazines.
GROSS: Oh, what did you see in there?
MITFORD: Oh, God. Well, the titles would lead you on - Mortuary Management, Casket And Sunnyside - one - Casket And Sunnyside - and my favorite title of all, you know, which really makes you think - Concept: The Journal Of Creative Ideas For Cemeteries. Well, I mean, you know, if you saw those, wouldn't you be reading them like mad? I did. And I found therein a whole wonder world of the mortuary that I'd never known existed. You know, I hadn't known, for instance, that you could have a choice of foam rubber or whatchamacallit - inner spring mattress for your eternal sealer casket and that kind of thing. I started sending away for samples, and it was all so delightful. So then I started writing that book.
GROSS: Did you go undercover and pose as someone who had a deceased loved one so that you could shop for funeral arrangements...
MITFORD: Yeah, I did.
GROSS: ...To see what it was like?
MITFORD: I did quite a bit of that. That was one of the best parts of it, especially Forest Lawn in Los Angeles. That was tremendous fun.
GROSS: What was the experience there like?
MITFORD: Well, I mean, I went there. Actually, I went with a young man who is an American fellow who was teaching English history or something in one of the colleges there in Los Angeles. And so we made up that he was my nephew, and I was his English aunt, and my sister was dying or something, you see. And we wanted to make preneed arrangements. So I said we wanted to see everything. But in those days, by the way, Forest Lawn was - there was a price war on. a\And Forest Lawn was advertising on billboards, funerals from $145, you see, which sounded very reasonable. So I said to the grief therapist - they're not salesmen, you know. They're grief therapists. I said to the grief therapist, well, we want to see everything and the nature of all the coffins and I can choose the best - most appropriate.
So the first one we came to was $16,500. Now, you have to realize we're talking in the late 19 - no, the early 1960s. So you can double that or triple it or whatever for the inflation, what it - and I must say, it was rather magnificent, you know. And I looked at it longingly. And then I said, well, could we see the $145 one? And so, you know, he took ages finding it. It was all hidden away somewhere. And, my dear, it was purple. It had a purple...
GROSS: (Laughter).
MITFORD: ...Really hideous. And I said - I looked at it, and I said, my sister wouldn't be caught dead in that sort of thing, you know?
GROSS: (Laughter).
MITFORD: And so, then we kind of went along and saw all the different plots and blah, blah. And it was great fun.
GROSS: After writing "The American Way Of Death," did you find yourself in the position of having to genuinely prepare somebody's funeral and having to shop for real in the funeral industry?
MITFORD: I have, once or twice. But my favorite thing in that line, there was a man called Howard Gossage - extremely well known in San Francisco - but he died many years ago. He was a wonderful - he was an ad man, advertising writer. And when he was - oh, he did all those marvelous things in The New Yorker about the getaway car. I mean, it's all years old. I don't know if people remember it. But he was much more than that. He was a brilliant and funny fellow in all ways. So he was dying of leukemia, and we knew he was dying and not expected to live.
So one morning about 4, 5 a.m., his brother-in-law rang up and - who I hadn't met. And he said, Howard died in the middle of the night. And his last words to me was, when I go - and I think it'll be very soon now - be sure to get hold of Jessica because she knows how to nose out the cheapest coffin in this whole town.
GROSS: (Laughter).
MITFORD: So you know how when somebody dies, and the survivors, you know - you always sort of say - or people say, well, what can I - can I do anything? And the answer is no, obviously. But in this case, yes was the answer. So I went and collected the widow, who was a beautiful young actress. And together, we went - and my God, I got one for $150 all in, you know? And he was a rich man. And he would have been considered a super prize for the undertakers.
GROSS: Now, there was a casket named after you after your book came out, right?
MITFORD: Yeah (laughter).
GROSS: A kind of bargain basement, budget kind of casket.
MITFORD: Well, I know. It was such a marvelous idea, sort of industrialist in the Middle West had plans and specifications for the Jessica Mitford casket, which was going to be sort of made of plastic, I think, or something like that.
GROSS: Did they really make it?
MITFORD: I'm not sure. I never actually saw one. My sister Nancy said, oh, well, we all know that you get 10% royalties on those Mitfords.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: Jessica Mitford, it's been such a pleasure to have you here. I thank you very, very much for joining me.
MITFORD: Well, thank you. I've loved every minute.
BIANCULLI: Jessica Mitford speaking to Terry Gross in 1989. Jessica Mitford and her sisters are the subject of the new BritBox drama series titled "Outrageous." She died in 1996 at age 78. Coming up, I review "Dexter: Resurrection," the newest entry in the "Dexter" TV series, about a serial killer who hunts and kills other serial killers. This is FRESH AIR. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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