Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford Review

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Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford ReviewJessica Mitford was the epitome of paradox. Daughter of a British Lord, she was brought up at a level of privilege few can imagine today. As a teenager she outrebelled everyone in her highly talented and eccentric family by becoming a dedicated Communist. She then ran away from home with her second cousin and fellow left winger, married him in the middle of the Spanish Civil War, and eventually wound up in the United States in the middle of World War II, widowed with a young daughter. She married again, this time to a leftwing California lawyer, and spent the remainder of her long life as a scourge of Fascism, Conservatism, and anything petty, mean, or small minded. Eventually she abandoned the Communist Party as ineffectual, and she is probably better known today for her muckraking exposes of abuses in everything from funerals to prisons to Elizabeth Arden salons and (ironically) for being a member of the fabulous Mitford family, sister to Nancy the novelist, Pam the farmer, Deborah the Duchess, and Diana and Unity the unrepentant Nazis.
Jessica, or Decca as she was known to friends and family, had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances (many well known today), and she communicated with them in hundreds of fascinating letters which have now been collected here. Those who have read her memoirs Daughters and Rebels and A Fine Old Conflict, or her many muckraking works like The American Way of Death know that her wit was sharp and her insights remarkable. These letters are as screamingly funny and profoundly moving as any of her other writings.
Peter Sussman, the editor of the letters, had an enormously difficult task since Decca and her family and friends customarily used a vast array of nicknames and throwaway references in their correspondence. To make things even worse, Decca and her sisters had their own private language: Boudledidge, which was often interspersed with English freely through their letters to each other. Sussman has done a magnificent job of deciphering and interpreting these Mitfordisms and other obscurities. Nearly every page has footnotes providing insights and definitions. These do not distract the reader but rather amplify the enjoyment.
I have read and enjoyed nearly everything Jessica Mitford wrote, and she is one of the people I would most dearly love to have met. Although I can't have that pleasure in this lifetime, I can read these letters and hear her still (after more than fifty years residence in America) elegant upper class British voice rippling with laughter as she identifies and mocks yet another absurdity.Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford Overview

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