skygiants: Lauren Bacall on a red couch (lauren bacall says o rly)
I have recently rediscovered a fascination with the Mitford sisters - I think it started when I read Ha'Penny, actually, and recognized a set of pseudo-Mitfords in it. For those who do not know, the Mitfords were English aristocrats that produced one boring son and six scandalous daughters, comprised of: one famous novelist, two ardent fascists, one ardent communist, one Important Society Duchess, and one who eloped with an Italian horsewoman. Jessica "The Communist" Mitford's memoir Hons and Rebels talks about her childhood in that household and her early adulthood after she eloped with her uber-radical second cousin - to Spain at first, and then to America, basically to kill time until England figured out what they were doing in WWII.

The really interesting parts of the book (and, probably, why I'm interested in the Mitfords in general) are when Jessica talks about her difficulty reconciling the ties she feels to her family with the lifestyle and ideals that they embrace, especially in the case of her sisters who support Hitler. There's a very clear sense that it starts out all a game to the girls; they plaster up the symbols of their respective political parties around the house, and there's a part where Jessica remembers having solemn teenaged late-night talks about what would happen if one of them had to execute another one. Obviously, as World War II approaches, the situation becomes significantly more tense.

Once Jessica's husband Esmond Romilly appears on the scene, he kind of unfortunately dominates the book, and the narrative becomes much more of an idealistic-teen-runaways-bop-around-and-have-adventures tale, which is fun but less fascinating. It did, however, make me very wistful that I don't live in a time when you could round up a handful of contacts and a hundred dollars and be TOTALLY OKAY moving to New York.

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