Paige Young & Hon. Desmond Guinness in 1973. Diana Mitford and Oswald Mosley. Part #1
About two years into my research on the life of Paige Young, I subscribed to newspapers.com and quickly found this article by Jody Jacobs of the Los Angeles Times.
Ironically, this story involves another newspaper society columnist, Beverley Jackson, pictured with Mrs. Louis-Dreyfus. Jackson was a columnist for the Santa Barbara News-Press for 25 years.
After her News-Press job ended , Jackson developed more careers: author and speaker on Chinese art and fashion, and a curator for the Santa Barbara Art Museum.
She remembered Desmond, but not Paige.
Beverley Jackson volunteered without my prompting that, “Desmond was always very discreet in these matters.” She remembered him fondly and thought highly of him.
What you see above, is the only mention of Paige Young in this article besides her photo. This is the term I have consistently read or heard about Paige Young: “free spirit.” (See chapter 1969 Most Public Year.)
It was chilling when I discovered this article, and it still is: Paige had only 6 months remaining in her life when it appeared in October of 1973.
The rest of the Jody Jacobs article discusses the many Santa Barbara VIPs who attended a series of gatherings honoring Desmond Guinness.
After reading the article I thought, who is this Desmond Guinness, attending a party in his honor given by a Who’s Who of Santa Barbara?
I quickly learned his name is most often written as “the Hon. Desmond Guinness.”
But first, let me say his family has a long well known history.
This piece is just meant to be a brief overview.
Being a history buff, I was surprised at my lack of knowledge on most of these historic characters.
Desmond, as his last name indicates, is an heir to the famous Guinness brewery fortune. This is his father.
Bryan Guinness was also a poet, author and playwright. He was wealthy, titled, handsome, sensitive and romantic.
Desmond’s mother was the controversial Diana Mitford, from the equally controversial English society family with 6 eccentric, beautiful, intelligent, gracious, flawed, politically conscious, prone to scandal, outspoken sisters.
Two of them became captivated by Adolph Hitler and fascism.
There are several books on one or all of the Mitford Sisters.
My main source for this article: Diana Mosley: Mitford Beauty, British Fascist, Hitler’s Angel by Anne De Courcy.
Desmond and his brother didn’t grow up with their mother; she divorced their father when the boys were toddlers.
The reason: to devote her life to Sir Oswald Mosley.
I was the most surprised that I had never heard of Oswald Mosley and the part he played in 1930s and WW2 British history.
Sir Oswald Mosley was fascist, sympathetic to and pro-Mussolini and Hitler. An aristocrat, he was an ambitious politician and fiery orator who served in the British House of Commons from 1918–1931.
He was seen as a possible future Prime Minister.
Mosley won as a Conservative, an Independent and then Labour Party. He was finally defeated when he ran as a Socialist.
Mosley is notorious for his turn to open antisemitism, fascist politics and in his personal life, his brazen promiscuity.
After that political career, Oswald Mosley founded the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in 1932, after visiting with Mussolini. He admired the fascist Blackshirts of Italy and brought the movement tactics to England.
When Mosley and Diana met in 1932, they were both were married and had young children.
Mosley’s wife was the wealthy society woman Lady Cynthia Curzon, commonly known as “Cimmie.”
Mosley had affairs with both Cimmie’s sister and their stepmother. And dozens of Cimmie’s married friends.
Difficult as it is to believe, he was irresistible to women.
Mosley declared to Diana that he would not divorce Cimmie, yet Diana went ahead and filed for divorce from her husband Bryan, 2nd Lord Moyne, who adored her.
Diana asked for only for a moderate allowance from Bryan.
She returned the Guinness family jewels but kept the jewels Bryan had gifted her during their marriage.
Diana became Mosley’s mistress for awhile his wife Cimmie was still alive.
Diana did see her Guinness sons on a fairly regular basis and apparently was a decent enough mother when she was with them.
Cimmie Mosley was increasingly despondent because she felt threatened by Diana’s divorced (meaning unattached) status, and all the time Diana and her husband were spending together in public. He would insist to Cimmie that Diana was a platonic friend who could benefit his career.
“During the twelve years since his marriage to Cimmie..Mosley had had up to three dozen affairs. His libido and his…mind..played a part in the compulsion toward these conquests, as did his upbringing. His father had been a successful womaniser in the louche convention of the ‘fast’ Edwardian set whereby young unmarried girls were ‘out of bounds,’ but it was almost obligatory to pay attention to an attractive married woman if you found yourself alone with her.” de Courcy pg. 84.
Social gossip was not favorable to Diana, but sympathetic to Bryan and Cimmie. Everyone already knew about Mosley, his reputation always preceded him.
Concerned family members told Diana she would be discarded within months.
Many of Diana’s old friends, family members and social acquaintances shunned her, yet she maintained a circle of supporters including male admirers. The author Evelyn Waugh was one of these men.
Cimmie conveniently died in 1934 following a bout of peritonitis, allowing Diana and “Kit,” as she called Oswald, to marry, although they didn’t until near the end 1936.
Adolph Hitler attended the secret wedding of Mitford and Mosley and the reception took place at the home of Joseph Goebbels.
Within the Hitler circle, Diana hit it off in particular with Magda Goebbels, wife of Joseph.
Diana was not the only Mitford sister acquainted with Hitler. Unity Mitford had already met him.
Unity Mitford (left) was the sister of Diana and a follower of Hitler. Here the sisters are surrounded by Nazi admirers at a rally in the 1930s. Unity moved to Munich in 1934, learned German, and when she knew Hitler was in town, would hang out at a restaurant where he was known to frequent, the Osteria Bavaria…”with luck he strode in.” After Unity had achieved her goal, she became part of Hitler’s entourage. Eva Braun, #1 mistress of Hitler, viewed Unity as a serious rival.
Unity Mitford shot herself in the head when Britain declared war on Germany in 1939. She survived but had limited mental capacity until she died of meningitis in 1948.
A recently published biography by Lauren Young of Unity Mitford is titled Hitler’s Girl: The British Aristocracy and the Third Reich on the Eve of WW2.
During WW2, Mitford and Mosley were considered a threat and placed under British house arrest; 3 years in Holloway Prison followed by house arrest until 1949.
Because the Government gave itself new powers during wartime, Mosley and Diana were able to be arrested and placed under house arrest without a trial. Diana bitterly complained about that fact in an interview from the 1970s on ThamesTV youtube.
Desmond and Jonathan Guinness did visit their mother in prison.
Diana Mitford Guinness Mosley gave birth to 2 more sons, Max and Alexander, with 2nd husband Mosley.
The Mosley boys had financial struggles that the Guinness sons just did not. Mosley was tight fisted with money when it came to his sons with Diana.
Mosley’s children with Lady Curzon were covered by her inheritance.
Diana didn’t have much money independently of her husband. She did have some steady income she shared with Max and Alexander.
The couple lived out their years in France and Ireland after the war as they were highly disliked in England.
but Diana called her husband “Kit” because her beloved only brother who was cut down in his youth by war, was named Tom.
Tom Mitford was a Nazi sympathizer as well.
Part 2 of this entry, will be published soon. We’ll look at what happened to Desmond Guinness when he grew up and what he was doing around the time he was seen with Paige Young.
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