sanitary or reliable practitioner, because, as it turns out, he didn’t know a thing about it until the procedure was all over and done. Decca made this decision on her own. She may have thought that it was too soon, that they needed to be lighter on their feet, that the world was too vicious a place on principle, or that Esmond would have made these arguments had she asked. Years later, when her oldest living daughter was grown, Decca remembered thinking that Esmond wouldn’t have wanted a baby.
When Decca finally told Esmond about her abortion, “he was absolutely furious.” She argued that he had taken plenty of dangerous risks in his life. Whom had he consulted before enlisting to fight in Spain? That had been his decision, and this had been hers. It had been horrible, she conceded, but she did what she thought she had to do, and it was long since over; they would have to move on.
CHAPTER 5
E SMOND AND DECCA cast their thoughts westward. Earlier, they had considered emigrating to Mexico, but now their shared dream was to reach distant, isolationist, jazzy New York. With the one-hundred-pound inheritance Decca received on her twenty-first birthday, they bought a second-class stateroom on the Canadian SS Aurania and planned to stay at the Shelton Hotel in New York City for $3.50 a night. Esmond said that he would return and fight when England “was drawn into a war,” but when that war would begin, and even how the allies and enemies would line up, was still unclear. As they embarked in Southampton, England, in February 1939, Unity was busy in Germany, a member of Hitler’s social circle. In conversation with the British consul in Munich, Decca’s sister “mentioned that Herr Hitler believed that he had been sent by God and that when one heard him say that one believed it too.” Of family and friends only Philip Toynbee, Tom Mitford, and Nanny Blor waved bon voyage.
Decca and Esmond held much in common with many others traveling from Europe that February: their age, energy, haphazard education, and eagerness to escape the old country. But in other ways, they were two rare immigrants. Esmond was something of a literary prodigy; as every tabloid headline regarding him trumpeted, he was also Winston Churchill’s nephew, the son of the powerful Conservative leader’s sister-in-law. Decca, the red debutante, was herself twice famous—for opposing her family’s public attachment to fascism and now for being the Mitford girl who got away. The couple’s arrival in New York generated a few gossip column items and several welcoming invitations to dine and visit, but nothing that might immediately be translated to real income, which was what they desperately needed.
They came to the United States armed with extraordinary letters of introduction collected in the months before their departure. Decca said that on their very first night in town, they sat in the Shelton Hotel bar and agonized over the best wording for the letters they composed to introduce themselves. “We sat in a dim, plushly upholstered corner ordering dry martinis, absorbing the amazing un-Englishness of it all.” They must have felt giddy to have made their escape from London, where they and their friends had come to feel so discouraged. From the other side, America had shone like the big rock-candy mountain, sunshine and peppermints.
They considered their precious list of contacts a lifeline of favors to call in. These were family acquaintances and friends of friends, as well as artists, writers, and even Hollywood moguls, anyone who might know someone who might give them a break. For instance, a letter from their friend Roger Roughton provided the names and thumbnail descriptions of New York residents e. e. Cummings “an amusing and sometimes very good writer, he’s an authority on burlesque; politically he’s pretty cynical” and James Thurber, who was “exactly as you would imagine him and very kind,” as well as Carl Sandburg in
When Decca finally told Esmond about her abortion, “he was absolutely furious.” She argued that he had taken plenty of dangerous risks in his life. Whom had he consulted before enlisting to fight in Spain? That had been his decision, and this had been hers. It had been horrible, she conceded, but she did what she thought she had to do, and it was long since over; they would have to move on.
CHAPTER 5
E SMOND AND DECCA cast their thoughts westward. Earlier, they had considered emigrating to Mexico, but now their shared dream was to reach distant, isolationist, jazzy New York. With the one-hundred-pound inheritance Decca received on her twenty-first birthday, they bought a second-class stateroom on the Canadian SS Aurania and planned to stay at the Shelton Hotel in New York City for $3.50 a night. Esmond said that he would return and fight when England “was drawn into a war,” but when that war would begin, and even how the allies and enemies would line up, was still unclear. As they embarked in Southampton, England, in February 1939, Unity was busy in Germany, a member of Hitler’s social circle. In conversation with the British consul in Munich, Decca’s sister “mentioned that Herr Hitler believed that he had been sent by God and that when one heard him say that one believed it too.” Of family and friends only Philip Toynbee, Tom Mitford, and Nanny Blor waved bon voyage.
Decca and Esmond held much in common with many others traveling from Europe that February: their age, energy, haphazard education, and eagerness to escape the old country. But in other ways, they were two rare immigrants. Esmond was something of a literary prodigy; as every tabloid headline regarding him trumpeted, he was also Winston Churchill’s nephew, the son of the powerful Conservative leader’s sister-in-law. Decca, the red debutante, was herself twice famous—for opposing her family’s public attachment to fascism and now for being the Mitford girl who got away. The couple’s arrival in New York generated a few gossip column items and several welcoming invitations to dine and visit, but nothing that might immediately be translated to real income, which was what they desperately needed.
They came to the United States armed with extraordinary letters of introduction collected in the months before their departure. Decca said that on their very first night in town, they sat in the Shelton Hotel bar and agonized over the best wording for the letters they composed to introduce themselves. “We sat in a dim, plushly upholstered corner ordering dry martinis, absorbing the amazing un-Englishness of it all.” They must have felt giddy to have made their escape from London, where they and their friends had come to feel so discouraged. From the other side, America had shone like the big rock-candy mountain, sunshine and peppermints.
They considered their precious list of contacts a lifeline of favors to call in. These were family acquaintances and friends of friends, as well as artists, writers, and even Hollywood moguls, anyone who might know someone who might give them a break. For instance, a letter from their friend Roger Roughton provided the names and thumbnail descriptions of New York residents e. e. Cummings “an amusing and sometimes very good writer, he’s an authority on burlesque; politically he’s pretty cynical” and James Thurber, who was “exactly as you would imagine him and very kind,” as well as Carl Sandburg in
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