As a girl I wasn’t mad about boys or ponies. I was mad about the Mitfords. I read everything I could lay my hands on – from Nancy’s novels to Decca’s letters and even a whole biography of the Nazi sister, Unity. My favourite was Debo, the most charming of the litter, who had the advantage of being the last, and therefore alive, when I was made ninth editor of The Lady magazine.
Being addicted to the Mitfords, this was like a dose of crack to a junkie: the Mitford sisters’ grandfather founded the title. Debo was in her 90s, but I saw the signing of the century in prospect. I lost no time in proposing a column for Debo by telephone and travelled north to Chesterfield to persuade her on board the Ladyship in person.
I felt sick with nerves on the train as – along with Jilly Cooper and the Queen – to me Debo was the greatest living Englishwoman. I had stupidly bought a bouquet – coals to Newcastle – and to her credit Her Grace’s face didn’t fall as she welcomed me into the flower-filled hall, painted billiard-table bright green, dotted about with Elvis memorabilia.
After nose-powdering and pleasantries, we repaired to a dining room where a small table had been laid for two and to my great surprise the Dowager Duchess put away three courses – the pudding was a tangy blackcurrant crumble – and then Henry, her devoted butler, brought in cheese. When I declined the cheese board Debo looked as if I’d failed a vital test.
Conversation ranged over family, books, Chatsworth, The Lady, her other family “title”. Though ancient and almost blind (she told me: “Your face to me is a sponge”), she ran rings round me. She was dry, beautiful, elegant, unsnobbish, unwearied – the living and breathing opposite of dull.
We moved to sit by a crackling fire in the drawing room and there I popped the question. Would she be The Lady’s agony aunt? Her eyes flickered. “The Mitfords have had so much agony in the world,” she replied.
As a diversion, she asked me if I would like to see the hens. She put on a hi-vis jacket and cheap wellies and we wandered out on to the sunlit grass holding buckets of grain and I had one of those moments: here I was, feeding the hens with Deborah, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire. I felt I could die happy.
But it turned out that she saved the best until last. Before I left, she asked me if I wanted to use her own bathroom upstairs, a light-filled room where the toiletries were covered with monogrammed napkins.
What can I say? The last of the Mitford sisters is now dead. It was a privilege beyond words to have met her – and to have used her own private boudoir. She never did submit to becoming my agony aunt – but I admire her for that, too.
Rachel Johnson is a panellist on The Pledge, Sky News’s weekly discussion show
