The Mitfords: Letters between Six Sisters. Charlotte Mosley
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to shout in chorus ‘Lieber Führer, wann kommst Du zu uns?’ and ‘Führer, wir schwören Dir aufs Neu, wir bleiben Dir auf ewig treu’.5 Henlein stood beside the Führer and it must have been his greatest day.
Well after that was over we went into the hotel & I went up to a room & lay down. The lade with me was in her element, as she is very pretty & very loud & coy with the Umgebung & Begleitung [staff] & calls them all ‘du’, from Sepp Dietrich6 to the chauffeurs. I was able to sleep till 3 & then we had to leave for a stadium outside the town where there were very wonderful demonstrations of Leibesubüngen, etc, including a dance by 5,000 women & club-swinging by 15,000. We had to leave early so as to get to the Flugplatz [airport] before the Führer, our planes left at 8, I didn’t go in the Führer’s because I was suddenly terrified I would give him my flu. We landed at Nürnberg & drove in Kolonne in ten huge cars to Bayreuth. After we arrived a car was sent round to take me to dinner but of course I felt like death & couldn’t go. Well ever since then I have been in bed, & have missed Siegfried and Götterdämmerung. Siegfried I would have missed anyhow as it was the day we started for Breslau.
On Monday night – the last night he was here – when the Führer heard I was ill, he sent me the most lovely huge bouquet of roses, & the next morning he sent round to enquire how I was. Then he left by plane for Berlin. It seems that when he left he told Frau Wagner7 I was ill & would she look after me a bit & send a doctor. Also, that he wanted all bills to be sent to him. Isn’t he really too sweet for words. Someone even came – I don’t know who – to say I was to be given back all the money I had spent on oranges etc. I am really so terribly grateful to him.
Well yesterday Frau Wagner came & brought the hugest & most lovely bouquet of garden flowers I ever saw, evidently picked by herself, & it makes my room smell like a garden. She was awfully nice & motherly, & said she would send a doctor.
A large bouquet arrived tied with two broad red satin ribbons with Hakenkreuzes [swastikas] on them – the sort of thing one puts on Horst Wessel’s grave – from the Lord Mayor of Bayreuth, whom so far as I know I have never met. All the flowers make one much more cheerful. Also Wollner came & brought a large bunch of gladioli.
Well this letter has got awfully long & may be frightfully dull but I do love writing to pass the time, now that I can sit up. My salvation has been A Passage to India8 which thank goodness I hadn’t read before, what a wonderful book, only much too short. I am so grateful to you for telling me about it. Alas I have finished it.
Please give my best love to the boys – did they get my postcards from Breslau? I hope so because they were quite special.
The Führer asked in the train how you were, I said I thought very well, I hope you are.
Well I will now close this weighty letter.
Best love & Heil Hitler! Bobo
The B[urden] of my S[ong] is I am awfully sorry you are ill. I always think to be ill abroad is most un-hochworthy. I hope there is an agreeable Gesellschaft [society] in the town to go and see you, anyway the Fem has gone now. I remember being ill in Napoli and a bearded Doctor laid his bearded face on my bosom which was his old world way of taking my temp. I thought luckily that it was only part of my delirium.
I am getting on well with my German. I know Herrschaft, Tisch and pfui; Pfennig, gemütlich and Rassenschande.2 Six words which would get one a long way if made good use of. Oh and mit mir [with me]. Did Muv enjoy her flight? She must be enchanted by the injections you describe. I fear modern science means 0 to her.
Well, head of bone, heart of stone – here is a little poem to show you what a lot of German I know.
Rassenschande is my joy
(Tisch Tisch and a merry go round)
Gemütlich is my hochgeboren [highborn] boy.
My hochgeboren love sits mit mir
(Tisch Tisch and a merry go round)
With all our Pfennigs we buy delicious beer.
And Rassenschande we do all day
(Tisch Tisch and a merry go round)
For my lover is a geboren Malay.
Pretty good, eh what?
P.S. I saw Bernstein3 who remembered sitting next to you at Emerald’s4 and saying, ‘I hate you, I don’t know why’ and you replied ‘But I know why’.
Darling Nard –
Your wonderful cheque arrived today from Pension Doering – you shouldn’t have sent me so much, it’s much too much, but you can imagine how thrilled I was to get it. You are so kind, thank you a million times.
This is the first letter I have been able to write but can’t sit up hence the scrawl. The doctors say I may not be able to go to the Parteitag, so you & I may be in the same boat – tho’ you get a lovely prize for it1 & I get nothing. I hope however that I may get well quicker than they think & be able to go. The old doctor2 the Führer sent me looks like the Aga Khan, he cured the Führer of indigestion. The Führer rang him up in the middle of the night & said he must leave for Bayreuth at once, so he arrived here at 3 A.M. & examined me at once & phoned the Führer. He had to leave several patients in Berlin including – who do you think? – your lover Joan Glover!3 The Führer rings up several times a day from the Berg & speaks to the doctor, & two days ago a phone was brought into my room & I spoke to him, wasn’t it heaven. He sent me a sweet telegram & masses of flowers for my birthday.
Oh dear I envy you all at Wootton, it is so dull here but thank goodness the Fem is here. She flew out, to Farve’s horror. Please give the boys my best love. I do hope I will see them soon.
Best love & Heil Hitler, Bobo
Darling:
How simply dreadful to have had pneumonia; we were so sorry about it. The Führer is the kindest man in the world isn’t he? I bet Joan is teased at his doctor being snatched away. He looks as if he might die any minute I must say. What is the matter with him? Do ask the Doc.
The boys have gone off to Biddesden, looking very well. Kit and I are here alone now. The day before the boys went we were all down by the lake, Kit was fishing, when all of a sudden Debo appeared! Kit had never seen her before. He stayed where he was and Debo and I walked back to the house, and hiding a few hundred yards away were two friends of Debo’s, Lord Andrew Cavendish1 and a troglodyte of sorts. They had been to some races. They stayed literally ten