In a parallel world, the aristocratic Mitford sisters might have set up a highly profitable decorating business. Exhibit A is the transformation of Chatsworth by the late Deborah Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, née Deborah Mitford, from a dark, unlived-in temporary school - the state rooms became dormitories during the Second World War - into one of the finest country houses in England, where simple clay pots of geraniums enlivened rooms furnished with antique treasures. Exhibit B was Emily Mortimer’s sumptuous BBC adaptation of Nancy Mitford’s 1945 novel The Pursuit of Love, with a line-up of stars including Lily James, Dominic West and Andrew Scott - and a wealth of covetable interiors, from a gilt-drenched, mirrored drawing room to a gold-tiled Art Deco bathroom.
In their own ways, both sisters immortalised and improved 'Country House Style', making it lighter and more comfortable while imbuing it with an inimitable élan; Deborah once used live chickens as a table centrepiece. There’s no doubt that their upbringing contributed, starting with their father’s passion for building and improving houses - fortunate given his inheritance in 1916 of a failing estate, along with the title of Baron Redesdale.
The first significant Mitford home was Asthall Manor in the Cotswolds, moved into in 1919 and expanded by converting an old tithe barn into an Arts and Crafts library and music room, linked to the main house with cloisters. “This large room, furnished with hundreds of old books, a grand piano and sofas, with high windows looking south and east, was all the world to my brother Tom and me... He played all day, Bach, Mozart, Brahms, and I lay on a sofa, reading,” wrote Diana in A Life of Contrasts. Nancy used Asthall as inspiration for Alconleigh, home of the Radletts in The Pursuit of Love, focusing on its more fascinatingly brutish aspects: “On the walls halberds and pikes and ancient muskets were arranged in crude patterns with the heads of beasts slaughtered in many lands.” Above the tea-table hung Uncle Matthew’s First World War entrenching tool, “still covered with blood and hairs.” The only warm room was the airing cupboard, famously the meeting place of the Hons.
MAY WE SUGGEST: The romantic vistas of Asthall Manor, the childhood home of the Mitford sisters
Nancy’s literary bias emphasises the contrast between Alconleigh and seemingly more luxurious abodes. There’s a Cheyne Walk ‘dolls’ house’ with Aubusson rugs and orchids, where “you could hardly tell where the real water reflections ended and the Renoir ones began.” And perhaps most importantly, there’s Merlinford, with “Angelica Kauffman ceilings, a Chippendale staircase, furniture by Sheraton and Hepplewhite; in the hall there hung two Watteaus.” It was based on Faringdon House, owned by Lord Berners (the inspiration for Lord Merlin), regularly visited by all the Mitfords, and eulogised by Nancy for this magazine as where she would have liked to be during the Blitz.
For, contrary to the story in The Pursuit of Love, the Mitford sisters did not spend the War at Asthall. In 1926, the family moved to Swinbrook, a house that Baron Redesdale built from scratch. It was reportedly loathed by all except Deborah on account of its institutional look, but a new Hons cupboard was found, and the design of the house included “many windows in the attic,” recounted Deborah. (It’s where the sisters illustrated their competing political ideologies, “Swastikas carved into the glass with a diamond ring, and for every swastika a carefully delineated hammer and sickle,” wrote Jessica in Hons and Rebels.)
Deborah sought no professional help with Chatsworth, saying “I can’t live with someone else’s ideas.” And neither sister feared the new, embracing it alongside the old for reasons both of purpose and wit. Deborah installed seventeen bathrooms, and insisted what could have felt like a museum worked as a family home; later, when as Dowager Duchess she moved into the Old Vicarage, Meissen porcelain was juxtaposed with cardboard cut-outs of Elvis. The Pursuit of Love features a flat in Paris “large and sunny, and decorated in the most expensive kind of modern taste,” which included a Gauguin, two Matisses, a Savonnerie carpet, and masses of glass.
The whole is a highly enviable ability to make a house look lovely, by dint of natural light, books, flowers, comfortable dog-occupied sofas, working fireplaces, good antiques and a certain attitude. Asthall Manor and Faringdon House have both been re-visited and photographed in recent years, while Chatsworth is a glorious destination in the spring and summer months. If you can't visit, why not glean your decorating tips from the television?
