Nancy Mitford

by Nancy Mitford

  ‘She came down here (to Messenia) with Mark soon after we had finished building the house… I can’t remember any separate fragments of chat, only endless talk on the pebbles in the bay below, and lying on the terrace; and a journey down to Mani to look at the San Gimignano-like towers, and a picnic on a flower-covered ledge in the masonry of the Arcadian Gate in the ancient ramparts of Messene, which undulate across the valleys like the Great Wall of China. Sleep under the branches was broken by voices: a carload of Germans looking at the titanic fallen lintel that half bars the great portal. We watched them unseen in our eyrie, and unspeaking till they drove away. A wild and marvellous spot.’

  Perhaps there were moments when Nancy remembered that she was directly descended from William Mitford, the historian of Greece.

  10

  ‘I’VE BEGUN A novel—still at the sticky stage but I think it has possibilities,’ she told Mark in August, 1959. The novel was Don’t Tell Alfred, wherein the professor of Pastoral Theology at Oxford is suddenly appointed Ambassador to Paris. This gave Nancy yet another opportunity to hold her mirror to the corner of the world she loved: Paris and life at the British Embassy.

  ‘Uncle Matthew’ reappears, now grown old, ‘stiff and slow in his movements; wearing spectacles; decidedly deaf;’ and the tale is unfolded by Fanny, daughter of ‘the Bolter’ and wife of the professorial Ambassador. The Valhuberts and other Mitfordian figures are introduced and the narrative is interspersed with her private reflections on various aspects of French life and dialogue apparently transcribed verbatim. Lady Leone, the bewitching former Ambassadress, creates some preliminary confusion by digging herself into the entresol flat of the Embassy and refusing to leave. Further confusion is caused by an influx of the Ambassador’s progeny: his bearded elder son David with a pregnant wife and adopted Chinese infant, on their way to cultivate Zen Buddhism in the Far East; and young Basil, a ruthless exploiter of the package holiday industry which has recently become so notorious.

  David informs his mother that he can’t approve of her way of life. ‘I hate the bourgeoisie. In Zen I find the antithesis of what you and Father have always stood for. So I embrace Zen with all my heart.’ The adopted infant was ‘named after the great Zen Master Po Chang. We dropped the Po… It was Po Chang who placed a pitcher before his followers and asked them “What is this object?” They made various suggestions. Then one of the followers went up to it and kicked it over. Him Po Chang appointed to be his successor.’ The more practical Basil regards ‘carting out the rubbish’ in the role of package tour operator as his ‘career, his work, his future’. He assures his bemused mother that ‘the Foreign Office has had its day—enjoyable while it lasted no doubt, but over now. The privileged being of the future is the travel agent.’ Nancy’s Basil seems destined to develop along the lines of Evelyn Waugh’s Basil Seal.

  The outrageous offspring of poor Sir Alfred and Fanny Wincham steal the show, but they also strain the plot and one’s powers of credulity though Nancy took pains to record the barbarous idiom of the juvenile. After Lady Leone vanishes from the scene fantasy whirls off into farce as in Nancy’s earliest novels. However, her roseate vision of Gay Paree is undimmed: she has not become cloyed. ‘A Paris dinner party, both from a material point of view and as regards conversation, is certainly the most civilized gathering that our age can produce, and while it may not be as brilliant as in the great days of the salons, it is unrivalled in the modern world… I am always struck by how easily a French party slides down the slipway and floats off into the open sea. People arrive determined to enjoy themselves instead of, as at Oxford, determined (apparently) to be awkward. There are no pools of silence, all the guests find congenial souls, or at least somebody with whom to argue.’ She concedes that diplomatic hostesses are boring: ‘They might have to deal with unexpected dialogue and that would never do. The conversation must run on familiar lines, according to some well-worn old formula’. But the diplomatic hostesses belonged to other nationalities.

  Even if we don’t happen to be hungry our appetite is whetted by the description of lunching with the Duchesse de Sauveterre in her country house. ‘We began with brochet. Why is brochet so good and pike so nasty, since the dictionary affirms that they are one and the same? Then partridges, followed by thick juicy French cutlets quite unlike the penny on the end of a brittle bone which is the English butcher’s presentation of that piece of meat. They were burnt on the outside, inside almost raw. Boiled eggs suddenly appeared, with fingers of buttered toast, in case any body should still be famished. Then a whole brie on bed of straw; then chocolate profiterolles.’

  (It is amusing to compare this with the genteel English repast described in her early novel Christmas Pudding: ‘Presently Lady Joan (or Miss Felicity) would appear, and several pretty, fluffy girls in printed crêpe de chine, and they would all go downstairs to a meal consisting of egg rissole with tomato sauce, cutlets with paper frills round the bone, hard round peas and new potatoes, followed by a pinkish jelly served in glasses with a tiny blob of cream on the top of each portion.’)

  As for Americans in Paris, ‘they are dreadfully unhappy: they huddle together in a sort of ghetto—terrified of losing their American accent.’ Surely such Americans as Natalie Barney, Julien Green (de l’Académie française), Stuart Merrill, were almost as French as the French: they thought and wrote in that language. But Nancy must be forgiven her pet prejudice.

  To her old crony and ex-partner Handasyde Buchanan, an astute critic as well as a brilliant bookseller who sold hundreds of her books, she wrote nervously on 1st September, 1960: ‘The new Mitford runaway (we hope) comes out in November. Raymond [Mortimer] has just helped with the proofs and he likes it. I was beginning to wonder if it isn’t awfully bad as the few who have read it have hardly commented. Anyway Cecil’s [Beaton’s] jacket is lovely… Do tell me when you read Alfred (I suppose you’ll get a proof) what you think.’

  Handy’s verdict must have been reassuring for she wrote again on 7th September: ‘You were a duck to write—one so thirsts for opinions at this stage and I feel yours is honest. I think Lady Leone’s bit is less successful because it’s at the beginning, before I’ve really established the characters. At the same time it gives me a chance to do so and to say a few things about embassies and the embassy and the life there. Of course I couldn’t really let myself go about Lady Leone who has been so good to me.’

  ‘Raymond liked the children best, which rather consoles me for you liking them least… I got all the tourist horrors from our consul in Venice, Mr. Lane, who says he spends most of his time hanging about death beds. The rest of the bus-load goes inevitably on and he has to cope with dead and dying tourist. S he loathes it. All old folks are called Son et Lumière here. I’ve simply bagged the joke.’

  ‘Who’s who. Except for the obvious ones, most of the characters are mixtures. Northey is Cristiana Brandolin talking like Debo. Basil is my Diana’s Ali. Philip is quite made up and so is David. Bouche-Bontemps (I got the name off a tombstone, and the name Jungfleisch too) is any French politician over about fifty. The young ones are thin, priggish and Protestant. Grace is more or less me. Katie and Mrs Trott are real, at the Embassy, I think that’s all?’

  ‘Raymond says he has done a lot of house-maiding to the proofs… I long for Debo to read it and have asked if Hamish Hamilton could send her a copy—if not she might have yours when you’ve all done? Perhaps you could angelically ask Hamil ton if he has sent one? And my mother, if at all possible. Really she should have it first. P.S. Les Iles Minquiers are boiling up again—one of the evening papers has had headlines two days about them and how unfairly we got them, etc. Gladwyn says I may have been prophetic and the new ambassador may have to cope again!’ In an undated note to Handy Nancy added as an afterthought: ‘Robert Byron used to say I had a tendency to farce which must be checked. I’ve always tried to do so… I suppose Alfred had a farcical side, one might say though there was nothing in it that doesn’t happen in the pape
rs almost daily.’

  To Christopher Sykes, who was repelled by the character of Northey, Nancy replied: ‘How too funny about your hating Northey. I couldn’t make up my mind about her. The first ending of the book was Northey telling Fanny that she had been to bed with all the followers. “Not Bouche-Bontemps.” “Oh yes.” “And Mockbar?” etc, etc, yes to all. “Well, darling, don’t tell Alfred” “Oh but Alfred as well” Then I thought it wasn’t in character so I altered it. I was rather shaken by the all-in-wrestling, which she announced with a cruel gleam which I suppressed. I suppose she has so much sex appeal that one is rather in love with her even and wants to present her in a favourable light. Perhaps as you so cleverly suggest, a sequel had better show her up as entirely evil. Oh how I wish I were good at plots. P.T.O. I’m sure my best novel is Love in a Cold Climate—(I think Voltaire is the best book)…’

  Within a year she was telling Mark Ogilvie-Grant: ‘Alfred has sold hard on 50,000 which is a relief because he had a very bad press. It shows, what one knew really, that that doesn’t matter at all.’ And to Mrs. Ham she wrote (3rd July, 196l): ‘I’ve sold Alf for a film, greatly to my surprise. I expect you will jump for joy on hearing this news. So I’ve got a little money to see me through the impending war. Where should we go for it? Isle of Wight perhaps?’

  This was Nancy’s last novel, and its popularity proved that stories of high life, or life in high places, were still in favour with that Anglo-American reading public which is reputed to be puritanical and egalitarian. Like Proust, but for more romantic reasons, she continued to believe in the social supremacy of the Faubourg St. Germain. She deliberately shut her eyes to the seamier side, the frequent banality, stupidity and shallowness of the fashionable society she glowingly described. I have en countered denizens of the jockey Club quite as tedious as Nancy’s American puppets. The ‘gentle game of pat-ball’ of diplomatic hostesses may have caused her swerve from fiction to history, from the Ouida-ish dukes of her day-dreams to the genuine dukes of Saint-Simon, more interesting and far more fantastic than their Proustian descendants. To Saint-Simon she turned as a catalyst with evident relief.

  Though she was shy of appearing on television, Nancy braved it to promote the sale of her novel and described the ordeal to Mrs. Hammersley (3rd November, 1960): ‘I was very much put out by them dragging in my poor sisters—didn’t know they were gossipy like that. Then the questions—why do you live in Paris? One can’t very well say because it’s twenty times more agreeable than living in London. The odd thing is, however feeble you are, it sends the sales whizzing. I sold half as many again last week. I think the public feels that you are in some way sanctified if you’ve been on telly. Also I didn’t ask for a first class to go back as it wasn’t at mealtime, but as soon as I showed my nose at London Airport they transferred me into first class for nothing! I’ve never been so amazed. But can you tell me why anybody watches? It seemed so deadly dull—a woman with a lot of dogs—a young man cross with the critics and pontificating about his play. Too mysterious.’

  The sound of her own voice reminded her of ‘all her aunts rolled into one’, so she suggested that Mrs. Ham might act as a substitute: ‘I offered you up as a human sacrifice to one who wished to record my voice in order to have a document illustrating upper class usage, fast dying out. My voice when recorded sounds merely irritating. I told him that you have a pretty speaking voice and he’d better ask you. Osbert [Sitwell] whom I saw in London fully agreed. Do co-operate, I think it’s such a good idea.’

  Melodious, cooing with a hint of mockery, girlishly giggling, Nancy’s voice remained that of a well-bred debutante who had not aged since the nineteen-twenties. One could not imagine that she was already in her fifties. But the deaths of many old friends in rapid succession depressed her. ‘How fast’—to para phrase Cavafy—‘the snuffed out candles were multiplying.’ In her ‘horror-comic’ vein she wrote to Mrs. Hammersley, who had offered to bequeath her a bronze bust of herself. ‘I’d rather have your diamond brooch (than bronze bust). Do let’s always be truthful. Your image in my heart but your brilliants on my breast… Simple souls see God before we do, you must console yourself with this thought… Don’t forget BROOCH please (in will)… All my friends seem to be dying in middle age.’

  Her cherished Victor Cunard was dying at Asolo: ‘I go up there every other day, missing the beach, three hours altogether in broiler buses… I think it was partly brought on by the madness of Nancy Cunard [his cousin]—I mean by her going mad. She went to an hotel at 5 a.m. and when the night porter aged ninety showed her her room she ordered him to sleep with her. She then set fire to a policeman. She is now in a bin where she writes heartrending letters to poor Vic. Do write to the old boy.’ ‘It’s a great worry and also not much fun panting up there,’ she confessed to Mark, ‘because he’s in such a bad temper. I always thought people on their death-beds lay with angelic smiles saying I forgive you—not old Vic who has cooked up every grievance, over a friendship of 25 years to fling at my head.’

  The loss of other friends in the same year, ‘all in different ways irreplaceable,’ made her gloomy and she wondered if she could bear to return to a Venice without Victor, whose brother Sir Edward had long been an invalid. In August 1961 Nancy wrote: ‘I’ve just done my good deed for the year—went to the Gare de Lyon at 9.20 a.m., met Edward Cunard and brought him back here until his next train went at two. He’s on his way home to Barbados by ship but will he survive the journey? He is a dying man.’

  In the meantime he had done an unpardonable thing from any biographer’s point of view. He informed Nancy, as if the news would console her: ‘Victor kept all your letters from the 1930s I spent the whole afternoon tearing them up.’ Nancy confessed to Mrs. Hammersley that ‘it was a blow, as I’ve never kept a diary and they would have been so useful’, which proves that she had a book of memoirs at the back of her mind. To me she said that her letters to Victor were the best she had written: they were probably the most revealing, though I doubt if she unburdened her heart to him as to Mark Ogilvie-Grant. Nancy mentioned that she had bought an exquisite Louis XVI meuble with drawers to keep her letters in. To sort these out will be the task of her future biographers. I dread the survival of mine, which were never intended for publication.

  Another good deed for 1961 was when, as she told Mrs. Ham, ‘I went to talk to 150 girls of twenty doing advanced studies are you impressed? For some reason I wasn’t really frightened and it was very enjoyable. The Professor who took me said “voilà—je leur ai donné un bon petit Noêl!”’

  Like me, Nancy received innumerable questionnaires about our friend Evelyn Waugh. In October 1960: ‘An American who is writing a book about Evelyn uses me as principal adviser. Such questions as, is Freddy Furneaux-Smith (sic) Sebastian? Why didn’t you and Diana Cooper become Catholics? Did Tony Last go abroad to read Dickens because he couldn’t visualize life with Diana Cooper? simply pour in. Without telling actual lies I don’t discourage his notions. “We are to visit Garsington which will be great for us. All those places where the bright young set used to have fun!”…’

  ‘I said to the Wid (Mrs. Hammersley) “Look, the swallows are going.” “I can’t imagine why they ever come.” Oh dear, nor can I. Luckily I got boiled in Venice before the weather turned there.’

  Luckily, too, while so many friends were failing her aged hostess Mme Costa was still going strong. From Fontaines Nancy wrote to Mark, 16th January, 1961: ‘I was ordered down here by Mme Costa and gladly came—after about a month in Paris I stifle. It’s funny—ten years ago I used to think they were the oldest people in the world here. Now Mme Costa is 86, and M. de Rohan Chabot 94. He still says—enfin sole—when it appears, on Friday. The maid, Thérèse, is 93 and Jeanne Rödel’s mother 95. The two latter keep nearly dying and then coming to again. One is lapped in luxury and for some reason never bored at all…’

  ‘How I wish I had a farm—I always do when I’m down here in this rich beautiful country… I think
country life is preferable to town life only if one can have a big house like this and unlimited servants (here there are eight and a wonderful daily). Otherwise one might get lonely. The alternative would be to farm oneself, but I don’t think these farms ever come on the market. The farmers round here are immensely prosperous and collect incunables in their spare time! Most awfully nice people. No doubt we shall both end up in towns despite all these day dreams!’ (To Alvilde Lees-Milne).

  At all seasons she rhapsodized about existence at Fontaines: ‘If this place is ideal in the autumn, it is fairyland in the spring… I never heard such a dawn chorus—the cuckoo is here though not yet the nightingale—nests everywhere, and the larks! On our moulin walk they are literally deafening: seen from the moulin the house is buried in blossom. Oh how I crave to live in the country—but where?’

  ‘The Sunday Times have offered me £500 (most I’ve ever had) for a piece on French country life. I propose to describe Fontaines exactly, only all names disguised. I don’t think Mme Costa would mind, do you? If I ask her beforehand it makes such a thing of it. After all people are for ever describing their friends, en clair, in mémoires. Of course you (Mrs. Ham) will figure largely—Suez, etc—Mrs. H I thought. Please comment. I’ll let you read it first if you like.’

  The resulting Portrait of a French Country House was reprinted in her most personal book of essays The Water Beetle, dedicated to Mrs. Hammersley. ‘I do hope we shall all meet in the next world,’ she told her, ‘though Evelyn predicts Limbo for me.’