Michael Dirda

"The wedding was preceded by innumerable lunches, evening parties with Ladies Home Journal type food (croquettes, creamed asparagus, ice cream in shape of bridal shoes, jellied salads, etc. etc.) where the conversation tended to run in similar channels: 'My, you look lovely.' 'I deaclare [ sic] I never did see a prettier bride than Lucy.' 'Well Tilla will be the next one now,' and similar gems of wisdom and erudition. . . . I had an interesting conversation with Lucy's father-in-law. He is a leading light from Birmingham, on the school board etc. We were deploring the state of education all over, lack of provision for bright kids, etc. He asked me what was being done for them in Calif, so I told him about the special group at Washington Grammar School for children with IQ of over 150, and let drop the information that in the group are 1 white child, two orientals, 1 Negro. He said, in genuine amazement, 'It don't seem possible that no Nigra would have no IQ of no 150, do it now?' I answered politely, 'Well, I think it do seem possible, I don't think no race has nothing to do with no IQ.' "

A few years later, Decca found herself back in Montgomery -- locked in a church with Martin Luther King Jr. and other supporters of the Freedom Rides while a mob outside set fire to her borrowed car.

In the early 1960s, Decca started to investigate the gruesome subject of funeral arrangements, which she found bizarre, exorbitantly expensive and emotionally exploitative. The result was her 1963 bestseller The American Way of Death. When the book appeared in England, Evelyn Waugh -- whose novels included The Loved One, about Forest Lawn Cemetery -- reviewed it positively, but, as Decca wrote to Debo, he "said I don't have a 'plainly, stated attitude to death.' So if you see him, tell him of course I'm against it."

For the rest of her life, Decca was widely known as the "Queen of the Muckrakers," publishing a subsequent book about prisons ( Cruel and Usual Punishment), a retrospective account of her years as a communist ( A Fine Old Conflict) and much else, even a magazine exposé of the Famous Writers School. She wrote to Betty Friedan about women's issues and to Merle Miller about "coming out," to the Black Panther George Jackson in Soledad Prison and to Carl Bernstein about being a "red diaper" baby. Her American "sisters" included both Maya Angelou and the novelist Kay Boyle, but she had friends everywhere. When a restaurant refused her check, she phoned New York Times food critic Craig Claiborne. Vanessa Redgrave inquired into the possibility of a movie about her life. Julie Andrews became a pen-pal, as did her now celebrated editor Robert Gottlieb, and she gradually renewed contact with Katharine Graham. In one note to the San Francisco columnist Herb Caen, she even mentioned doing a piece for Nina King, "the v. nice book editor at Newsday." (Mitford later wrote for King again after the latter became editor of Book World.)

Decca's activism naturally passed on to her daughter Constancia (by Romilly), who joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and became the partner of its leader, James Forman, by whom she eventually had two sons. Decca adored the boys, though the couple seemed uninterested in actually getting married. Still, as Decca explained to Nancy, now when a racist asks if she'd want her daughter to marry a Negro, she can answer, " Rather."

Jessica Mitford was once pressed about what kind of funeral she would like, and the author of The American Way of Death replied, with tongue firmly in cheek, "six black horses with plumes and one of those marvelous jobs of embalming that take 20 years off," adding that she also wanted "streets to be blocked off, dignitaries to declaim sobbingly over the flower-smothered bier, proclamations to be issued -- that sort of thing." As it happens, after her cremation, Decca's good friends in San Francisco obliged with just that sort of thing, including the horses, an antique hearse and the 12-piece Green Street Mortuary Band playing "When the Saints Come Marching In."

This is a superb collection of letters, and editor Peter Y. Sussman deserves the greatest possible praise and gratitude. His introduction, connecting essays and extensive notes supply all the biographical and historical information a reader needs. Being witty as well as scholarly, he is precisely the right guide through this life in letters of the most astonishing of the astonishing Mitford girls. ·

Michael Dirda's e-mail address is mdirda@gmail.com. He conducts a weekly book discussion on Wednesdays at 2 p.m. at washingtonpost.com