03 Oct 2010 03:27:32
A pair of young mavericks — British aristocrats who saw themselves as committed communists — eloped to Spain in the midst of its civil war of 1936-1939.
Jessica Mitford, the 20-year-old daughter of Lord and Lady Redesdale, had considered assassinating Adolf Hitler. Two of her sisters were friends of the German dictator. At 15 she thought of pretending they had converted her. Then she would get them to introduce her to Hitler — hiding a pistol in her handbag.
When she was in her 70s, Mitford said she was sorry she had lacked the courage to try.
Esmond Romilly, nephew of Winston Churchill, had co-authored a book attacking upper-class British boys' schools. At 19, he had also fought by the side of communists, vainly defending Spain's republic against the revolt of Gen. Francisco Franco. Franco was backed byNazi Germany and Fascist Italy.
The couple considered Britain's Communist Party insufficiently leftist, so they went to America. It was an odd instance of the "special relationship" between the United States and Britain.
Leslie Brody's sympathetic and highly readable biography, "Irrepressible: The Life and Times of Jessica Mitford," doesn't explain what they had expected. Mitford recalled later that when they applied for American visas, she thought the communist-hunting House Committee on Un-American Activities must be a joke.
"Imagine a committee on un-English activities," she told an interviewer. "What's that? Not taking tea?"
World War II began the year after they reached New York. Keeping a promise to defend Britain, Romilly died in a plane that was lost after a raid on German forces. Mitford found a job in the New Deal's Office of Price Administration. It took her to the San Francisco area, where she found plenty of leftist company.
Over 15 years she worked for communist causes with her second husband, Robert Treuhaft, an American labor lawyer. She applied for citizenship at a time when the American Communist Party was refusing aliens. An immigration officer asked why she wanted to become an American.
"(S)he bit her tongue to avoid saying, 'So I can join the Communist Party,'" her biographer records.
She had her first muckraking success, a heretical one, while still a party member. It was a satirical pamphlet ridiculing communist jargon compared with ordinary speech. She obligingly added samples of abuse that party hard-liners could use against her: rotten liberalism, Philistinism, petty bourgeois cynicism.
Her California friends enjoyed the mockery and made her a delegate to a Communist Party Congress, held soon after Soviet forces crushed the Hungarian uprising of 1956. The next year she and her husband quietly resigned from the party.
She is best remembered for a later book, "The American Way of Death," a witty attack on the high-profit funeral business, including sensible shoes and bras for cadavers. She — and thousands of readers, apparently — got an ironical kick out of quotes like one from mortuary executive Howard C. Raether:
"Funerals are becoming more and more a part of the American way of life."
She also went after the prison system, unnecessary obstetric procedures and a dubious school for writers. Time magazine dubbed her "queen of muckrakers," and she acknowledged that she was happy to be queen of something. She was quoted as having said that she would have been glad to be a spy, but nobody had asked her.
Facing hostile investigators, she relied on the Fifth Amendment — she would not incriminate herself.
She had said jokingly that she would like an old-fashioned funeral, so her friends supplied one, with six magnificently plumed horses drawing an antique hearse, after her death in 1996.
It was preceded by a band playing "When the Saints Go Marching In," "Amazing Grace" and the Internationale. A professorial friend followed, playing the saxophone. Total cost: a reasonable $475
Jessica Mitford, the 20-year-old daughter of Lord and Lady Redesdale, had considered assassinating Adolf Hitler. Two of her sisters were friends of the German dictator. At 15 she thought of pretending they had converted her. Then she would get them to introduce her to Hitler — hiding a pistol in her handbag.
When she was in her 70s, Mitford said she was sorry she had lacked the courage to try.
Esmond Romilly, nephew of Winston Churchill, had co-authored a book attacking upper-class British boys' schools. At 19, he had also fought by the side of communists, vainly defending Spain's republic against the revolt of Gen. Francisco Franco. Franco was backed byNazi Germany and Fascist Italy.
The couple considered Britain's Communist Party insufficiently leftist, so they went to America. It was an odd instance of the "special relationship" between the United States and Britain.
Leslie Brody's sympathetic and highly readable biography, "Irrepressible: The Life and Times of Jessica Mitford," doesn't explain what they had expected. Mitford recalled later that when they applied for American visas, she thought the communist-hunting House Committee on Un-American Activities must be a joke.
"Imagine a committee on un-English activities," she told an interviewer. "What's that? Not taking tea?"
World War II began the year after they reached New York. Keeping a promise to defend Britain, Romilly died in a plane that was lost after a raid on German forces. Mitford found a job in the New Deal's Office of Price Administration. It took her to the San Francisco area, where she found plenty of leftist company.
Over 15 years she worked for communist causes with her second husband, Robert Treuhaft, an American labor lawyer. She applied for citizenship at a time when the American Communist Party was refusing aliens. An immigration officer asked why she wanted to become an American.
"(S)he bit her tongue to avoid saying, 'So I can join the Communist Party,'" her biographer records.
She had her first muckraking success, a heretical one, while still a party member. It was a satirical pamphlet ridiculing communist jargon compared with ordinary speech. She obligingly added samples of abuse that party hard-liners could use against her: rotten liberalism, Philistinism, petty bourgeois cynicism.
Her California friends enjoyed the mockery and made her a delegate to a Communist Party Congress, held soon after Soviet forces crushed the Hungarian uprising of 1956. The next year she and her husband quietly resigned from the party.
She is best remembered for a later book, "The American Way of Death," a witty attack on the high-profit funeral business, including sensible shoes and bras for cadavers. She — and thousands of readers, apparently — got an ironical kick out of quotes like one from mortuary executive Howard C. Raether:
"Funerals are becoming more and more a part of the American way of life."
She also went after the prison system, unnecessary obstetric procedures and a dubious school for writers. Time magazine dubbed her "queen of muckrakers," and she acknowledged that she was happy to be queen of something. She was quoted as having said that she would have been glad to be a spy, but nobody had asked her.
Facing hostile investigators, she relied on the Fifth Amendment — she would not incriminate herself.
She had said jokingly that she would like an old-fashioned funeral, so her friends supplied one, with six magnificently plumed horses drawing an antique hearse, after her death in 1996.
It was preceded by a band playing "When the Saints Go Marching In," "Amazing Grace" and the Internationale. A professorial friend followed, playing the saxophone. Total cost: a reasonable $475
