Nancy Mitford

by Nancy Mitford

The sizzling repercussions of Noblesse Oblige led to further interviews that were not altogether distasteful. Nancy was informed that ‘it has now reached the large non U public and the orders from provincial booksellers are beating all records.’ Christopher [Sykes] has made a very good joke—he says the great interest taken in the Titanic was ‘because she was a U-boat.’

  To Heywood Hill she wrote (12th April, 1956): ‘Now for the U book. An absolutely blissful person flew over to interview me about it called Scott James? Fitz James? Sunday Express. Terribly beautiful and elegant. Evelyn says those nice ones are always the worst…’ And later in the year, to Alvilde Lees-Milne: ‘A sort of red-brick young man came to see me last night, by appointment, to get stuff for a profile for some American paper. He is English. He was ready to kill me, I could see, and was primed with hundreds of disobliging questions, why are you such a snob and so on. In the end he became slightly tamer and was forced to admit that Evelyn is nastier than I am. He says people HATE my books so terribly, he had poked about in them and found a great many deplorable passages which he produced in triumph. Stayed two hours—I was a jelly.’ A banner headline appeared in a newspaper DOWN WITH U! and John Sutro flourished it with mock pomposity in Nancy’s courtyard. A long article in a Dutch paper described her as Nancy Mitford schrijfster, femme du monde, enfant terrible. ‘Gracious, what is schrijfster, one asks oneself.1 The Dutchman who sends it writes to me describing a visit to London. “I liked best an afternoon in some club where Stephen Spender and 25 other poets recited their poetry” What club? Not White’s, I’ll bet…’

  In the meantime ‘Pomp’, as Nancy nicknamed her maiden biography (which Gaston Palewski said should be called Pursuit of Kings) had appeared in a French translation and received a flattering ovation. One of the articles about Nancy described Heywood Hill’s bookshop as ‘une librairie de Mayfair où les fils de Lords donnaient des rendez-vous clandestins à la Bohème de Chelsea.’ Apropos of which Nancy remarked to Heywood, ‘Quite a good idea for the basement—no?’ The basement of 10 Curzon Street was then reserved for children’s books. And the Dutch translator of The Pursuit of Love asked whether he could call ‘Hun’s [sic] cupboard the cave of the nobles.’

  1 I.e ‘author.’

  8

  MADAME DE POMPADOUR had launched Nancy into the midst of eighteenth-century France before the Revolution and even while she was ‘thinking up a few teases for Encounter’ she wrote to Heywood Hill (21st March, 1955): ‘I’ve at last got a vague idea for a book. Voltaire’s love affair with Madame du Châtelet. I must say it’s a shriek from beginning to end—especially the end, and I think I could make something short but amusing of it…’

  A reluctant excursion into the film world intervened. She informed Patrick Leigh Fermor (15th August, 1955): ‘I was offered, I must say enough money to live on for a year, to translate a film on Marie-Antoinette. Quite all right until you realize that every gesture has to be written down—“she is about to pick her nose but changes her mind and scratches her leg instead.” So the labour is endless. It amuses me to do the dialogue but there are pages of directions to every sentence of dialogue. The film itself, written by two nice clever Frenchmen, Delannoy and Zimmer, is first class, but they are having a terrible time with the star, a horrible little man like a jockey. He is Fersen, and considers the part is not strong enough, and he wants Lafayette’s lines as well as his own. I said, at one of the endless, stuffy meetings we have every two or three days, “whatever you do and whoever acts in it the person who will steal any film on Marie-Antoinette is Louis XVI because he is the only interesting character in the story.” Very ill received. How I loathe all actors—it’s a lesson really never to work for films or stage. Then the great panjandrum is a Scotch peasant called Clark, one of the romances of industry, who seems to own the British Isles. He came for a lightning visit and said to me all in one breath, “After this I’m going to sign you on to write a film, like Cavalcade, on the British in India, and then on the ordinary little people of France and Britain and then one on the dying crofters of Mull.” All very ME, I must say. He said I can consider myself booked up for the next three years. He then buggered off to a meeting to discuss building tourist hotels in Russia—leaving me to receive general felicitations. “He liked you—!!” My present contract comes to an end in October, thank heavens!’

  ‘So you see no jokes. I sit alone in a lovely empty Paris—so empty you’d think there had been myxamitosis, and work really all day. I have to do ten pages a day and it’s a lot.’

  In January 1956 she started, ‘in a very desultory way,’ on Voltaire in Love, which in my opinion is the best of her historical productions. In February she informed Mrs. Hammersley: ‘I’ve really begun a book at last, rather a relief to have taken the plunge. Voltaire and Madame du Châtelet—it’s been simmering for some time as you know. I’d rather do a novel, but not unless really inspired. Colonel on my side—he says how many novelists have written more than three or four good ones? Very few. I am quite pleased with my last three no use writing dreary pot-boilers and lowering the level, do you agree?… I worked out of doors for hours today.’ During its composition she was lucky to secure the sympathetic sup port of Mr. Theodore Besterman, the editor of Voltaire’s letters including those to his niece Madame Denis, hitherto unpublished, proving that he became her lover five years before the death of Madame du Châtelet, his acknowledged mistress.

  In one of her teasing letters to Mrs. Ham (26th March, 1956) ending with ‘Some fiendish love, Horror’, Nancy mentioned that she was also collaborating with Miss Lucy Norton on a translation of Saint-Simon—‘she to do the work and I’m to write a sort of running commentary. She’s quite first class I think (a real translator, not one of those who sits up in bed scribbling away with no reference to the text. Not one of those Isle of Wighters if you know what I mean). We expect to make thousands (horror touch of sheer genius).’

  Evelyn Waugh arrived in April, ‘which means downing tools again.’ As she could not get on with her work in Paris her old crony Victor Cunard suggested that she come to Venice.

  But even Venice was too social; the neighbouring island of Torcello offered her the right combination of ‘heat and quietness’ she longed for. From Torcello, chez Cipriani, she wrote to Mrs. Ham on the Isle of Wight (2nd June) that it was ‘the most perfect place for work I ever was in (except of course the other Isle)… The waiters here are sweet. They are like wonderful nannies, think I don’t eat enough and try to stuff me with food. The result is I’ve only just escaped a first class liver attack.’

  Recalling Ruskin’s purple passage about Torcello in The Stones of Venice (‘Mother and daughter, you behold them both in their widowhood—Torcello and Venice…’) and the very ancient history of its Cathedral, Campanile and Baptistry (visited briefly by hurried flocks of tourists) it was incongruous to visualize Nancy there ‘working terrifically’ on the seventeen-year liaison of the cynical and worldly Voltaire. ‘I’ve come to a sort of half way house with my book,’ she told Heywood Hill (7th July). ‘It’s better than I thought. Uphill work though, compared with Pomp. It is… one long succession of rows which are almost impossible to disentangle or render amusing.’

  ‘I’ve got an idea for you,’ she wrote to Mrs. Ham. ‘Why not translate Voltaire’s Lettres Philosophiques—sometimes called Lettres Anglaises—which he wrote when he got back from England. They aren’t letters but short essays on Quakers, Parliament, the drama (Shakespeare n’a pas une étincelle de goût) and so on—screamingly funny and not a long book. If my book did well it would give them a fillip…’

  Though Nancy resisted social blandishments in Venice and the Lido on this occasion, Victor Cunard had unwittingly set a new pattern for Nancy’s existence: henceforth she went to Venice during part of every summer and it became as much of an annual treat as Fontaines les Nonnes, to which she looked forward in September. As she wrote to Mrs. Ham: ‘I found a postcard from you written a year ago saying “everything looks very bad.”
It looks a good deal worse now doesn’t it! But I pin all my hopes to Fontaines, ses eaux, ses agriments, ses jeux, son clair de lune, etc. etc.’

  Back in Paris—‘lovely and hot again so my spirits, which move with the thermometer, are up’—Nancy went on a sight seeing tour of all Voltaire’s houses. Mr. Besterman’s edition of his letters was a constant stimulus. But in Paris interruptions were inevitable. ‘Book goes slow but smashing, or at least I think so but then I always do. Violet [Trefusis] telephoned. As she can write books without working she doesn’t understand the necessity, for those less gifted, of doing so.’ And again (to Alvilde Lees-Milne): ‘Sacrée Violette! She rang up and said you must give a luncheon party for me, so I weakmindedly did. It went very badly, with Denys Cochin saying Cocteau is a blague and Picasso se fiche du monde and silly old Vi pretending to be shocked and wounded. Very funny that it is now the young generation who says all that. Well afterwards she said that she is going to show you Spain—strongly hinting that she has a lover there in the bull-fighting trade. Carmen Trefusis…’

  The telephone, although disturbing, had some humorous compensations. ‘So funny, a friend who had better be nameless, rang up and asked if I could find out from the Jebbs [Lord and Lady Gladwyn] anything about le petit Y, with whom her daughter is in love. So I had ages with Cynthia [Lady Gladwyn] who had nothing but good to say—then rang up Mme X who listened rather impatiently and then said Yes, but has he ever had a woman? Oh how I screamed—so typically French! I said really I can’t ask the British ambassadress that. Or can I?’

  From Fontaines she wrote in October: ‘I seem to have moved in here for life—Mme Costa turns a deaf ear when I speak of going away and as I am perfectly happy I stay until Colonel’s return…. The Chabots, Yolande and Jeanne are here. After meals we do nothing but talk about the pictures of les petits. “Moi je préfère la p’tite.” “Eh bien non, pour moi le p’tit est plus ressemblant”.’ Some of us would have thought this rather dull but it suited Nancy who saw it all through rose-coloured spectacles as usual. In the evenings she played bridge, which she considered ‘a vital element of country life because one can’t chat all and every day’. About bridge she wrote: ‘It’s only the English who get cross and, as a rule, only those who can’t play for nuts. I play a certain amount here and never see crossness. I believe it’s generally because the person is cross with herself but won’t admit it. I’ve noticed in life there are three things nobody will admit they do badly, playing bridge, talking French, and driving a car… Riding used to be another.’

  She was still working hard, though she dare not mention the subject to her pious hostess who spent most of her time on her knees in church. Her private thoughts revolved round Voltaire who, as she twitted Mrs. Ham, compared translations to servants who are sent to deliver a message and say the opposite of what they were told to say. ‘Three Abbés and one Bishop was the bag on Monday. Not bad?’ They would have been shocked, however, had they been aware of Nancy’s literary preoccupations.

  ‘The complete works of the devil, Voltaire, are hidden under the back stairs and I smuggle the volumes up to my bedroom like a schoolgirl with The Green Hat,’ she told me. ‘Haven’t dared confess I am writing about him! Everybody here is between 80 and 100 so they regard me as young and beautiful and rather dashing—it is very nice.’

  With her partiality for military heroes which was to lead to her last book on Frederick the Great, Nancy was charmed by ‘dear Monty’—Field-Marshal Lord Montgomery. As Lord Gladwyn relates in his Memoirs: ‘One of our social triumphs was to effect a conjunction between Nancy Mitford and Field Marshal Montgomery. Monty had started the ball rolling by saying to me one morning out of the blue: “Read a novel the other day. Hardly ever do. By a woman, too. You wouldn’t know it, I expect. It’s called The Pursuit of Love, by Nancy Mitford…” “Monty”, I said, “Nancy is one of our oldest and dearest friends. You must meet her!” “Well, haven’t much time. But if you like. Short lunch.” Nancy, suitably approached, had said “But, darling, he’s divine. So Roman and Shakespearian. Of course I should be charmed.” So they were next to each other at our narrow table and, needless to say, both being of great intelligence, they got on like a house on fire. After wards, when I was Ambassador, we usually had, at the end of each summer season, a jolly lunch à quatre under the big marronnier in the Embassy garden (now dead). And, always, it was the greatest fun.’ After one of these occasions Nancy reported: ‘He said the French haven’t fought since Napoleon. I said what about 1914? Yes, but they cracked up in 1918. Well the Germans cracked up worse. The only time I’ve seen him without an answer. So I said in a buttering voice, But all depends on the leader, as YOU know. He beamed again. He is a baby…’

  Nancy devoured the biographies of generals with gusto. ‘You must read Sir Philip Magnus’s Kitchener,’ she told Mrs. Hammersley. ‘It’s one of the funniest books I’ve read for years. He was an absolute brute and a fearfully incompetent general so why was he the idol of our race and nation? But funnily enough one gets rather fond of him towards the end. Certain things in common with Monty it must be said… Do tell anything you know about Kitchener. Did you ever see him? I can think of nothing else now. What a good writer, Sir Philip Magnus.’

  Much as she enjoyed visiting friends and relations in England, she wrote to Alvilde Lees-Milne in a despondent mood (5th December, 1956): ‘I shall never be able to leave these walls again. The nervous strain of finding not only no cabs on the rank but none in the streets even occupied ones. (All gone it seems to get labels to stick on their wind screens, what sort of labels?) The nervous strain I continue has aged me by 95 years. I stood crying by the gentlemen’s and a very grumpy cabby, on his way to relieve himself, said I could sit and wait in his cab. He was clearly very constipated indeed and took hours. Finally I arrived ten minutes late and was the last passenger—it didn’t matter but it was the torture of not seeing any taxis at all. My cabby said he’d been a Communist ever since Lord Fisher had kicked him off a pavement when he was seven saying go back to the gutter. I was half fascinated and half in such a state of worry that I couldn’t make him go on and tell more—’

  ‘Faithful Air France the only fliers—BEA passengers were being herded to Victoria to catch a train poor brutes. I was back here by 3—got a taxi at Orly who told me all is absolutely normal for the moment… Heavenly present from Dior as usual. I’m still pondering over that film [the film on Marie-Antoinette]. P.S. Two Frenchmen in the plane were discussing the prodigious avarice of les anglais. I shrieked.’

  During the last war Nancy had smiled bravely through danger, discomfort and inconvenience, but ten years later in time of peace her nerves were more easily frayed. She still looked so young and slender that I could never realize we were born in the same year: we were both in fact middle-aged and Nancy complained of the low stamina which forced her to husband her energies. She reserved her vitality for her work, her gaiety for her friends. When Marie-Laure de Noailles gave her spectacular costume ball on Mardi Gras, 1956, Nancy confessed to me: ‘I can’t face it. You see fancy dress balls (or any balls however memorable) are no good to me because at 11. 30 I drop off my perch. A sort of natural Cinderella. So I’m lending my pretty fur hat to Jean de Baglion to be Baglione in and fleeing to Roquebrune… Malcolm Bullock said to Violet, what are you going as [to the ball]. She said Lady Hester Stanhope. He said, pretending to have heard Esterhazy—“what, the Esterhazy of the Dreyfus Case?” How I shrieked! Tony Pawson goes as Byron (!) Diana Coo Mrs. Siddons (very good). Then all London is trying to get asked and it will be interesting to see what happens as Marie-Laure is not one to be put upon is she! Paul-Louis Weiller as François I by the way…’

  Nancy’s Encounter mail continued to harp on the same string. ‘Furious Scotchmen, furious Baronets, furious friends saying how vulgar I am. Willie Maugham always says toilet paper, so realizes HE is not U, etc…’ But Nancy also received ‘perfectly serious letters from people saying things like, “I am descended from A
lfred the Great’s sister and I would like to congratulate you on your splendid stand for people of our sort”.’

  To Mrs. Hammersley she wrote: ‘As for U everybody I see says how tired they are of it, etc, to which I reply then leave it alone. But they can’t. It’s really too extraordinary.’ ‘No,’ she declared, ‘I’m not got down by U, only the cuttings which have got out of control since every sort of local or trade paper speaks of U and me on any and every pretext.’ It was a relief to turn to Voltaire and Madame du Châtelet.

  Between ‘working like a maniac’ and getting to grips with Monsieur de Voltaire, Nancy was also being televised in January 1957: ‘I’m having such a time with the television people. They’ve already spent two whole afternoons here, and the French Eurovision two more and coming again today (cables and so on). It’s to last half an hour, did you ever hear such a thing? I’m dying of fear. The men are very nice to you, rather I suppose as the warders who hang you are nice, and they may have to drag me in the end like Mrs. Thompson. One of them said, “My father sends his love.” “Who is your father?” “The Archbishop of Canterbury”. Colonel says he’d better say nephew, in France!… Oh the TX. What to wear is such a problem. No black or white allowed and nearly all colours look black except sky blue, which of course I haven’t got.’

  Nancy was titillated willy nilly by the parerga of her profession. To her mother she confessed: ‘I really don’t think I’ve ever been so frightened—the preparations were simply terrific. Nobody allowed to park at this end of the street from mid night the day before, police in the street for 24 hours, twenty men in the flat and courtyard all day from 9 a.m., a sort of railway from the street (I had to send flowers to all the neighbours). A huge crowd in the street all day, Mme Brand [the concierge] dans tous ses états explaining what it was for (I wish I’d heard her). I had a terrific tummy upset and couldn’t eat anything all day. But once it had begun I didn’t mind in the least! What was very unnerving, all the people concerned, interviewer, producer and so on were at least as nervous as I was and showed it more. Somebody said the life of one of them is about that of a bomber pilot—after four years they can’t do any more, the strain is too great. It is supposed to be a technical triumph to get it over from France… Ouf! Thank goodness it’s done.’