Highland Fling

by Nancy Mitford

  ‘AGED PEER DIES IN HARNESS

  LORD PRAGUE LIFELESS IN UPPER HOUSE

  NIGHT WATCHMAN’S STORY

  We regret to announce that Lord Prague, GCB, CVO, etc., was found dead late last night in the House of Lords. It is stated that his body was discovered just before midnight by Mr George Wilson, the night watchman.

  Mr Wilson, when interviewed by the Daily Runner, said:

  “I always go into the House at least once during the night to clear up any pieces of paper, orange peel, or empty bottles that happen to have been left underneath the seats. I had been tidying for some time last night when I noticed the figure of a man half-lying on one of the benches. This did not really surprise me, as the peers often sleep on late into the night after a debate. So I went up to him and said: ‘Twelve o’clock, m’lord. Can I get you a cup of tea?’ He took no notice and, thinking he was fast asleep, I was going to let him stay there till morning when something in his attitude made me pause and look at him more closely. I then realized that he was stone dead, so I went and fetched a policeman.”

  Mr Wilson was much shaken by his experience and says that although he has often known the peers to die in the corridors and refreshment rooms of the House he cannot recall one to have died in the House itself before.

  Dr McGregor, who was called in by the police, said that death, which was due to heart failure, had taken place some six or seven hours previously: therefore Lord Prague must have passed away in the middle of the debate on Subsidized Potatoes (which is reported on page 13).

  It was stated at an early hour this morning that Lady Prague is utterly prostrated with grief.

  Lord Rainford, a cousin of the late peer, said in an interview:

  “I saw Prague for a moment yesterday afternoon, and he seemed in his usual good form. It has been a terrible shock to all of us, and the loss to the nation will be irreparable.”

  DASHING MORE

  Absalom More, fourth Baron Prague, was born in 1838. Educated at Eton and Sandhurst, he first distinguished himself as a boy of eighteen in the Crimea, where he earned the soubriquet of Dashing More – true to his family motto, More to the Fore. When peace had been declared he was warmly applauded by Queen Victoria, with whom he was always a great favourite. In 1859 he succeeded to the title on the death of his father, and in 1860 he married one of the Queen’s Ladies-in-Waiting, Lady Anastasia Dalloch, daughter of the Earl of Craigdalloch; who died in 1909. In 1910 he married as his second wife, Florence, daughter of Mr Leonard Jackson of Dombey Hall, Leicestershire, who survives him. Both marriages are childless, and the peerage devolves upon a distant cousin, Mr Ivanhoe More, of Victoria Road, Kensington.

  The very deepest sympathy will go out to Lady Prague, but her sorrow must needs be tempered by the thought that Dashing More died as he would have wished to die – in harness.

  (Picture on the Back Page)’

  Jane was entranced by this piece of news and read the paragraph over and over again. She was just about to turn to the back page for the promised picture when her eye was caught by:

  ‘THE “BRIGHT YOUNG PEOPLE” GO TOO FAR

  MOCK FUNERAL IN LONDON NECROPOLIS

  NOT FUNNY – GENERAL MURGATROYD.

  It is felt that the Bright Young People have had their day and that their jokes, often in the worst possible taste, should come to an end. Yesterday afternoon a “Mock Funeral” was held in the London Necropolis at Brookwood, where a site had been purchased in the name of Mrs Bogus Bottom to hold the remains of Bogus Bottom, Esq. The funeral cortège, including six carriages full of weeping “mourners”, travelled for several miles through the London streets, often causing the traffic to be delayed while it passed, and finally boarded the special Necropolis train. At Brookwood the coffin was reverently conveyed to the graveside and was just going to be lowered carefully into the grave, when the lid opened, and Mr Julius Raynor stepped out of it, dressed as for tennis. The “mourners” then picked up the wreaths, which were numerous and costly, and fled to waiting motor-cars.

  (Pictures on the Back Page)

  HEARTLESS

  The Daily Runner, feeling that the only way to stop these heartless pranks is by means of public opinion, sent an interviewer to the following representative men and women, who have not scrupled to express their disapproval:

  Miss Martha Measles (well-known novelist):

  “I have never heard that it is either clever or amusing to jest with Death.…”

  Sir Holden Crane (sociologist):

  “If these young people would bear more children, they would hardly have the time for such foolishness.…”

  Bishop of Burford:

  “I think it most shameful, especially as I hear that many people doffed their hats to the cortège as it passed through London.…”

  Mr Southey Roberts (satirist):

  “Are these people either “Bright” or “Young”?…”

  General Murgatroyd:

  “It’s a damned nuisance, and not funny.…”

  It is understood that the authorities at Brookwood are taking action, and they are very anxious to know the address of Mrs Bogus Bottom.’

  Jane now turned to the back page and was rewarded by a photograph of Lord Prague in youth; and one of Julius Raynor, a ghastly figure dressed entirely in white, leaping from his coffin.

  She then casually glanced at the middle page, where her attention was rooted by a photograph of Albert and a paragraph headed:

  ‘AMAZING FEAT OF YOUNG ARTIST

  CRITICS ASTOUNDED BY NEW GENIUS PICTURE FOR THE NATION?

  Mr Albert Gates (herewith) has astounded the art critics and half social London with his exhibition of amazing pictures (now on view at the Chelsea Galleries). They are composed in many cases round real objects stuck to the canvas, such as, for instance, eyeglasses, buttons, hats, and even surgical limbs; and are of a brilliance and novelty impossible to describe, particularly No. 15, The Absinthe Drinker, which it is rumoured, has been bought for the Nation by Mr Isaac Manuel. Another interesting picture is entitled: Impression of Lady P – and is executed entirely in bits of tweed cut into small squares. This is framed in beige mackintosh.

  Mr Gates, who left Oxford four years ago, and has since been studying art in Paris, is a tall, good-looking young man of a modest disposition. When a Daily Runner representative called on him after the private view of his pictures yesterday, he seemed unaware of the sensation his work has caused in art circles. “I think it was quite a good party,” he said, referring to the private view.

  Mr Gates recently became engaged to Miss Jane Dacre, the beautiful daughter of Sir Hubert and Lady Dacre of Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire.’

  Jane, on reading this, became very thoughtful. She was not at all sure that she liked this sudden blaze of fame which had come so unexpectedly upon Albert. The picture which she had framed in her mind of their married life had been imagined without this new factor. She had thought of herself as being all in all to him: his one real friend, sticking to him through thick and thin, encouraging, praising and helping. Much as she admired, or thought she admired, Albert’s work herself, it had never occurred to her that he might have a real success with the critics; she had imagined that such revolutionary ideas would remain unnoticed for years, except by a few of the ultramoderns.

  The telephone-bell interrupted her train of thought. She put out her hand rather absentmindedly to take off the receiver, wondering who it could be so early. Albert’s voice, trembling with excitement, said:

  ‘Have you seen the papers, darling? Yes, they’re all the same. Buggins says he can’t remember any exhibition to have had such notices for years and years. And I’ve just been talking to Isaac Manuel. He’s buying The Absinthe Drinker for the Tate, my dear! and two still lifes for himself; and he’s commissioned me to fresco some rooms in his new house. What d’you think of that? So it looks as if we shall have to live in London for a bit, after all. Do you mind, darling one? Of course, I said I could do nothing until o
ur honeymoon is over, but we may have to cut it short by a week or two, I dare say. Isn’t it splendid, darling? Aren’t you pleased? I never for a moment thought the English critics had so much sense, did you? Where are you lunching today? Oh, yes, I’d forgotten. Well, meet me at the Chelsea, will you, at about one? You’re not feeling ill or anything, are you? Oh, I thought you sounded rather subdued, that’s all. Well, goodbye. I must go round to Manuel’s now.’

  As Jane hung up the receiver her eyes were full of tears.

  ‘I couldn’t feel more jealous,’ she thought miserably, ‘if it were another woman. It’s disgusting of me not to be pleased, but I can’t help it.’

  She began working herself up into a state of hysteria while she dressed. She saw all her dreams of Albert’s struggle for fame, with herself helping and encouraging, of a tiny house in Paris only visited by a few loyal friends, and of final success in about ten years’ time largely brought about by her own influence, falling to earth shattered.

  Albert, with his looks, talents and new-found fame, would soon, she thought, become the centre of that semiartistic social set which is so much to the fore in London. He would be courted and flattered, his opinions accepted, and his presence eagerly sought after: while she, instead of being his one real friend, the guiding star of his life, would become its rather dreary background. She imagined herself growing daily uglier and more boring. People would say: ‘Yes, poor boy, he married her before he had met any other women. He must be regretting it now that it’s too late.’

  Jane, who at all times was inclined to take an exaggerated view of things, and whose nerves had been very much on edge since the fire in Scotland, was now incapable of thinking calmly or she would have realized that a few press notices, however favourable, and a commission from Sir Isaac Manuel, although very flattering to a young artist, do not in themselves constitute fame. She had a sort of wild vision of Albert as the pivot of public attention, already too busy being flattered and adulated to speak to her for more than a minute on the telephone. She imagined herself arriving at the Chelsea Galleries for their luncheon appointment and finding that he had forgotten all about her and gone off with some art critic and his wife instead.

  At last Jane believed that all these things were quite true, and by the time she had finished dressing she was in a furious rage with Albert. Unable to contain herself, she wrote to him:

  ‘DARLING ALBERT,

  I have been thinking about you and me, and I can see now that we should never be happy together. You have your work, and now this tremendous success has come you won’t be wanting me as well, and I think it better from every point of view to break off our engagement, so goodbye, darling Albert, and please don’t try to see me any more as I couldn’t bear it.

  JANE.’

  Quickly, for fear she should change her mind, she gave this note to the chauffeur and told him to take it round at once to Mr Buggins’s house.

  She then went back to her bedroom and cried on the bed. She cried at first because her nerves were in a really bad state. After about half an hour she was crying for rage because Albert had not come round to see her or at least telephoned; but soon she was beyond tears, and her heart was broken.

  ‘If he loved me he wouldn’t let me go like that. This silence can only mean that he accepts: that the engagement is really broken off. Oh, God! how can I bear it? I can’t go on living! I shall have to kill myself.’

  The telephone-bell rang and Jane, with a beating heart, took off the receiver. ‘This must be he!’ It was her mother’s sister asking what she wanted for a wedding present.

  ‘China,’ said Jane feverishly, ‘china! china! china! Any sort of china! Thank you so much, Aunt Virginia.’

  After this she felt that she had reached depths of despair which she did not even know to exist before. She sat in a sort of coma, and when the telephone-bell rang again, she knew that it could not be Albert.

  But it was.

  ‘Darling, Jane, it’s a quarter-past one. Have I got to wait here for ever?’

  ‘Oh! is it really so late? Didn’t you get my note, Albert?’

  ‘No, what note? Can’t you come, then?’

  ‘Yes, in a moment. I wrote to say I should be late, but I won’t be long now.’

  ‘Well, hurry!’

  ‘Yes, sweetest. Oh, I do love you!’

  Jane rang up Mr Buggins.

  ‘If there’s a note from me to Albert will you be an angel and burn it? Thank you so much. Yes, isn’t it splendid! No. I’ve not seen him yet. We’re lunching together so I must fly.’

  Nancy Mitford

  Highland Fling

  Nancy Mitford, daughter of Lord and Lady Redesdale and the eldest of the six legendary Mitford sisters, was born in 1904 and educated at home on the family estate in Oxfordshire. She made her debut in London and soon became one of the bright young things of the 1920s, a close friend of Henry Green, Evelyn Waugh, John Betjeman, and their circle. A beauty and a wit, she began writing for magazines and writing novels while she was still in her twenties. In all, she wrote eight novels as well as biographies of Madame de Pompadour, Voltaire, Louis XIV, and Frederick the Great. She died in 1973. More information can be found at www.nancymitford.com.

  Julian Fellowes is a British actor, writer, director, and producer. His film script for Gosford Park won numerous awards, including an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. He has written two novels and is the creator of the television series Downton Abbey.

  Novels by Nancy Mitford available from Vintage Books

  Highland Fling (1931)

  Christmas Pudding and Pigeon Pie (1932 and 1940)

  Wigs on the Green (1935)

  The Pursuit of Love (1945)

  Love in a Cold Climate (1949)

  The Blessing (1951)

  Don’t Tell Alfred (1960)

  ALSO BY NANCY MITFORD

  THE BLESSING

  The Blessing is one of Nancy Mitford’s most personal books, a wickedly funny story that asks whether love can survive the clash of cultures. When Grace Allingham, a naïve young Englishwoman, goes to live in France with her dashingly aristocratic husband, Charles-Edouard, she finds herself overwhelmed by the bewilderingly foreign cuisine and the shockingly decadent manners and mores of the French. But it is the discovery of her husband’s French notion of marriage—which includes a permanent mistress and a string of casual affairs—that sends Grace packing back to London with the couple’s “blessing,” young Sigismond, in tow. While others urge the couple to reconcile, little Sigi—convinced that it will improve his chances of being spoiled—applies all his juvenile cunning to keeping his parents apart. Drawing on her own years in Paris and her long affair with a Frenchman, Mitford elevates cultural and romantic misunderstandings to the heights of comedy.

  Fiction/Literature

  DON’T TELL ALFRED

  In this delightful comedy, Fanny—the quietly observant narrator of Nancy Mitford’s two most famous novels—finally takes center stage. Fanny Wincham—last seen as a young woman in The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate—has lived contentedly for years as housewife to an absent-minded Oxford don, Alfred. But her life changes overnight when her beloved Alfred is appointed English Ambassador to Paris. Soon she finds herself mixing with royalty and Rothschilds while battling her hysterical predecessor, Lady Leone, who refuses to leave the premises. When Fanny’s tender-hearted secretary begins filling the embassy with rescued animals and her teenage sons run away from Eton and show up with a rock star in tow, things get entirely out of hand. Gleefully sending up the antics of midcentury high society, Don’t Tell Alfred is classic Mitford.

  Fiction/Literary

  LOVE IN A COLD CLIMATE

  One of Nancy Mitford’s most beloved novels, Love in a Cold Climate is a sparkling romantic comedy that vividly evokes the lost glamour of aristocratic life in England between the wars. Polly Hampton has long been groomed for the perfect marriage by her mother, the fearsome and ambitious Lady Montdore. But
Polly, with her stunning good looks and impeccable connections, is bored by the monotony of her glittering debut season in London. Having just come from India, where her father served as viceroy, she claims to have hoped that society in a colder climate would be less obsessed with love affairs. The apparently aloof and indifferent Polly has a long-held secret, however, one that leads to the shattering of her mother’s dreams and her own disinheritance. When an elderly duke begins pursuing the disgraced Polly and a callow potential heir curries favor with her parents, nothing goes as expected, but in the end all find happiness in their own unconventional ways.

  Fiction/Literature

  THE PURSUIT OF LOVE

  Nancy Mitford’s most enduringly popular novel, The Pursuit of Love is a classic comedy about growing up and falling in love among the privileged and eccentric. Mitford modeled her characters on her own famously unconventional family. We are introduced to the Radletts through the eyes of their cousin Fanny, who stays with them at Alconleigh, their Gloucestershire estate. Uncle Matthew is the blustering patriarch, known to hunt his children when foxes are scarce; Aunt Sadie is the vague but doting mother; and the seven Radlett children, despite the delights of their unusual childhood, are recklessly eager to grow up. The first of three novels featuring these characters, The Pursuit of Love follows the travails of Linda, the most beautiful and wayward Radlett daughter, who falls first for a stuffy Tory politician, then for an ardent Communist, and finally for a French duke named Fabrice.