THE INHERITANCE MITFORD had received from Earl Redesdale was immense. As Satow put it, ‘there was plenty of money there at the outset. But he never denied himself anything that took his fancy.’ If he was generous with himself, he was also generous to others. He built the imposing Redesdale Hall in the centre of Moreton-in-Marsh as a memorial to Earl Redesdale, a building that is still much in use there – if you want to play badminton, have a wedding reception, do TaeKwonDo or go ballroom dancing in the town, Redesdale Hall is the place to do it. He was also a generous landlord; one example of this was in 1891, his telling the poorer families on his estate that he would refund them any money they paid out for their children's education.

His money diminished to such an extent that in 1910 he had to leave Batsford and rent it out. Mitford's daughter-in-law Sydney maintained that this state of affairs was down to the simple fact that the cost of the house and garden improvements were more than he could afford, but Satow reports Mitford telling him he had been ‘greatly robbed’ and his great-grandson writes of a family story that he had been embezzled by a trusted employee, but that this was hushed up.

He moved to a large house on the corner of Kensington Court and Kensington High Street in London. The loss of Batsford was devastating to him, but to ordinary eyes, the new place does not look too bad: a grand building overlooking Kensington Gardens, a stone's throw from Kensington Palace, which is now part of a luxury hotel.

The deafness cruelly crept up on him at the same time, curtailing his social life. He filled his days with writing, publishing his immense two-volume memoir, Memories in 1915. This was his most successful work since Tales of Old Japan; Edmund Gosse, always his most generous critic, told him, ‘I firmly believe you have added a permanent work to English literature.’