Darling,
You can imagine if I’m in a terrible fuss over the foreign travel thing because do you think they can make me go home? I’ve enough dollars to last me nearly two years but then what will I do – & another thing, can they force me to give up my dollars even in spite of being a foreign resident? It seems they can do anything. I feel like a rat in a trap.1
Do say what you think – will they drag me home? I shan’t dare put my head in the lion’s mouth now in September. Of course everybody thinks I’m too awful not to want to live in England but you know it’s only the Col – although evidently life is more agreeable here, people are nicer to one. Still that is all offset by no relations etc. But I can’t live without that military gentleman. ‘Are you under my thumb?’ he always says, & of course I am. If only he were rich I could borrow indefinitely from him but he’s an utter church mouse, it is unlucky.
Oh dear I’m sorry to inflict this wail on you but you do see – I can think of o else. Do ask Kit how long it’s all going to last & if he thinks it’s real or just the Tory papers’ tease? I am being selfish – only just seen about petrol, is that death to you?
Best love, NR
Darling,
Yesterday I stood at Dior for two hours while they moulded me with great wadges of cotton wool & built a coat over the result. I look exactly like Queen Mary – think how warm though! I see that for customers they don’t make them quite to the ankle. Ad1 says all the English papers are on to the long skirts, & sneer. They may, but all I think of is now one will be able to have knickers over the knee. Now I’m nearly fifty I’ve decided to choose a style & stick to it, & I choose Dior’s present collection.2 Simply, to my mind, perfect.
Fancy I nearly sent Woman some rice – it would have been waste. I only sent to people who I know have good cooks otherwise pointless.
Snooty letter from Aunt Iris about deserting the old country & saying do I not wish to share in the austerity. Well it seems exaggerated actually to wish such a thing – & as I pointed out somebody else can have my lovely rations & live in my house if I’m not there. I do feel it would be different if I could go to the coal face or something, but just sharing austerity seems pointless.
I’m like a cat wanting to have kittens with my book3 – can’t wait to get settled & begin. I only wish I could talk it over with you – there’s to be a chapter of Sheila-Poppy-Molly-Sonia etc, you know at a house party, which I hope will greatly tease.
Some French paper has said that Queen Mary’s dress for THE wedding4 is to have a huge pocket over the stomach – what can she be going to put there. Diana [Cooper] says a baby kangaroo. By the way I hope you’ll have seen my darling old Marie-Louise [Bousquet], (at Daisy’s). I long to know what you think of her.
Went to the opening of the Louvre – oh the beauty. Instead of rust & choc the huge gallery is pink & white & grey & gold. Would you’d been here – oh & tomorrow for Gen de G. I never can find shriekers to do things with now the Col is so taken up, it is such a bore – I’ve been asked to a reception before the speech & can’t go alone, what I need is Brian Howard5 really. (Think of the Col’s face!) I’ve been reading about the Régent – he’s so like the Col & his last words, to a pretty Duchess, were ‘Alors racontez’6 & fell dead. The Col persecutes me with racontez & I have to take all your letters to read to him to try & keep him amused – he’s an utter slave driver.
Do tell every detail of the wedding I can’t have enough. I hope your house is on the route – or is there an 18B stand? Remember I never see an English paper – once a week perhaps.
V best love, NR
Darling Nancy
I LOVE your gift. Just the right colour. Thank you.
Well, Nancy, I’m working at last! In the Hospital. 2 till 5, but DON’T laugh – washing up & serving tea! The first day I thought I should die. Now, I enjoy it.
Do write to me.
V best love, Bobo
Darling,
I’m so excited about my flat.1 I’ve just spent two hours with the owner & the sweet Marie,2 an utter love. I said if you could leave enough linen for two beds? ‘Well there is three dozen of everything. This is the silver – I suppose you won’t be more than fourteen at dinner?’! It is an 18th-century pavilion exactly the same both sides.
One faces into a garden & the other the prettiest cour you ever saw – I have the ground floor. The furniture is an odd jumble, hideous at first sight, of utter horrors & pieces from the Petit Trianon. I think with a little rearrangement it will be terribly nice. All for £25 a month – aren’t I lucky. In the rue Monsieur. If Audrey3 allows I move in before Xmas but I must consider her as she has been so kind. I shall be glad to leave this flat & spoilt millionaire’s servants – it simply eats money & very little to show for it – not even very warm. A simply rotten cook, I daren’t invite people.
No more news as I wrote this morning.
All love, NR
P.S. Just come from the Embassy – all the people beginning to arrive for the Ball4 – it’s so exciting, like a house party for a hunt ball when one was young & loved them only magnified a hundred times. Also made more strange by the streets – blackout, search lights playing, huge mounds of refuse everywhere & armoured cars dashing through the serried ranks of limousines.5 The idea of coming home when all this is going on – you seriously see, don’t you? Dined with Derek Hill – I think the ball will be literally nothing but pansies.
Darling Susan
No wonder I never write because you always seem to be staying in hotels so I don’t know what your address is. This probably won’t reach you.
I told Constancia about your being her Madame but she doesn’t want to go, probably she has you mixed up with wicked Aunt Diana who would melt us all down for soap if she could catch us, most likely. I bet she would, too.
We have another Baby, born Oct 18th, called Benjamin. He weighed 9lbs 3oz & I didn’t have any anaesthetic, it was terrific. He is very sweet & looks like Nicholas Tito.
Are you going to Hollywood for the films? If so it is quite near here. I wish you would.
Tim [Bailey] is coming next wknd he’ll be the first relation I’ve seen in about six years or more.
Goodbye Susan. Don’t be weak-minded about Diana or I shall have to be off writers again for several years.
Love from Decca
P.S. Do you have a Fr. lover like the girl in Pursuit of? Do tell about him, if so.
Darling,
Oh don’t be depressed count your blessings, you must, though of course without a hot bath it’s more difficult I do see.1 Also a depressing house is dreadful, this one, though so rich, so cosy, & so near the Col, is positively on my nerves – he can’t understand why but it’s inexplicable & true.
A letter from Decca saying that when the new baby was born Tito went about saying ‘now I’m a father’ – oh how funny. I think she hates me though at heart, we’ve become sort of bogy-men to her. What a bore – in a way, though really less boring than cheerful American goodwill towards all.
I don’t suppose you remember how Johnny L.2 talks exactly like Harold [Acton]. We went to a screamingly funny ballet called Sylvia (Delibes) & there is a statue which comes to life, so he said ‘Heow could that mann have remained oall that while – motionless7.’ He thought the ballet less funny I think than I did, I literally gasped with giggles – there is a seduction scene with a drunken caveman & Sylvia, all roses in a cavern which must be meant to be funny, he (the image of Hog Watson) leaps after her with a hatchet & she archly plies him from a goblet. Oh heavens. Not one soul laughed except me – it’s even funnier than Lakmé & that’s saying something. How awful it will be when the modern world finally does away with the genre opéra comique – happily it is packed every night so it won’t be just yet awhile.
The Col’s mother out of danger thank goodness. If I come over in Jan. shall you be at Crowood or up & down to London? When would be the best time to come? I suppose I could go to the mews for a few days. I just want to see you & Muv & Ge
rald & I suppose ought to go to Redesdale, he writes rather pathetically. Once I’m settled in my new house I can come any time.
V. best love, NR
Darling
Colonel was cinema’d yesterday for March of Time1 so perhaps you’ll see him one day. Noël C[oward] who is here said, ‘Now you are a vedette [star] Gaston, always remember that whether an audience claps or boos it always makes the same noise. Terrifying.’
I was so glad to get your letter on Xmas Eve – I always think I don’t care about Xmas & then the first chords of ‘Stille Nacht’ & I am in floods!! I went to Alvilde for the actual day. I’m getting up a tremendous hate against her, really I mustn’t as she’s my only English buddy here – she’s very like Helen Dashwood, greedy & possessive, fond of one & yet never stops denigrating, hinting that the Col is treating me badly & so on. You know, perpetual pricks. Such a bore.
My book is getting on again which is a comfort,2 it’s having a more settled establishment of course.
Write soon, all love, NR
Darling,
Great to-do over the wedding of Marie’s nephew. Marie (who is only 53 but looks 73) said she couldn’t go as she had no New Look clothes. So I gave her a black dress which made new look on her, being tiny. Then she has six sisters all with vast families – darling, only one from each family could go because they could only afford one N.L. dress in each. Marie said ‘Je vous assure Madame que la mode actuelle empêche les gens de sortir’.1 Stuff is such a terrible price, when you think Marie earns 6,000 a month & even cotton is 1,200 a metre.
I heard the following blissful remark – one old count to another old count about a third: ‘Mon cher, très à gauche, il est Orléaniste’!2 And the same ones about the Dsse de Vendôme whose death has plunged the Faubourg into widows’ weeds, ‘Well she must be in heaven by now’ as if she had caught a tram. Oh how funny they are.
Dined with Sauguet3 two nights ago but all was spoilt by a dreadful Reventlow4 (Hutton husband) being there & S never got going properly.
V best love darling, NR
Darling
Yesterday was May Day & Kit had a meeting in the E. End1 it wasn’t a great success because the police (Cossacks) kept everyone away friend & foe alike, they rode me & Alexander down several times, at last a man got us through. Then as they have banned marches in E. End we all went to the edge of the banned area to watch the march but of course missed the way & I found myself accompanied by three not very tough men (one of them was Nicky [Mosley]) and Alexander & several old women (Londoners who knew the way) and we always seemed to be almost in a terrifying procession of young & very strong looking Jews who were chanting ‘Down with Mosley’. As Alexander had been very conspicuous at the meeting shouting ‘Bravo’ and saluting with an outstretched hand on which he wears a ring (so unlikely for him somehow) I kept fearing we might be recognized & overwhelmed. However all ended well, outside Holloway prison, and a good time was had by all except me. I believe we must have walked at least six miles. It was just like Scotland as we were soaked to the skin & then walked so long that we got bone dry again.
Muv is back,2 I rushed round. She was suffering rather from Birdie who had spent a guinea on some dead roses for her & then was taking it out of her like mad by saying she had a temp of 103, awfully tiring for Muv after her long flight. She gives a good account of Decca & says Mr T is a good husband & father and not such a rabid red as Decca is! Mustn’t he be surprised when he thinks over his fate.
All love darling, D
Darling,
Thank goodness Muv is back – I was so worried by all that sickness as it sounded so like her heart not standing up to the journey. Then of course one knows communists can never pull any strings & whereas any of us would have got her onto the Queen E. they clearly never could. However all is well & she seems to have enjoyed it enormously.
Now darling are you going to the Island at all? Because I must go away for a month, Marie’s hols, & think I had better kill two birds or even three, seeing Muv & finishing my book in peace. If you were going to be there it would be absolute heaven of course. Otherwise perhaps I could go to dull old [Crowood] on the way. I thought last fortnight July & first in Aug. It’s nice for my Col when I’m here in August as nobody else is. My Colonial life very much complicated by the return, apparently for good, of Peter whom the Col refuses to see. A great worry because coming here is a little rest for him & it’s not at all the same when I go to his flat, full of secretaries & callers. I’m beginning really to wish I could marry the Col, for the first time, but I suppose it always comes to that. But for a hundred reasons it isn’t possible so no use thinking of it.
Harold’s book.1 Of course I shrieked the whole way through – wasn’t it lovely having the whiff – but I find everybody else including I hear Emerald thinks it dull. How can they? Of course he doesn’t know English really & it reads like a translation but that makes it, anyhow if you know Harold, so extra funny & nice.
Tell me when you move to Chapel St as I’ve got a little present for you for Peter to take when he goes over.
All love darling, NR
Darling,
The Colonel (whose speeches are given more & more space every day in the press here) says that he & Debo are the two Mitfords who are doing best at the moment!
Oh my life with Prod – he is so vague – invites people & forgets all about it, fills the house with terrible drinkers who spend their time telephoning & going to my loo. You know. The trouble is I have become old maidish. However I’m rubbing well in the horrors of married life to the Col so it’s not all in vain. I tell all about the broken glasses & so on & he trembles for his china. Daisy asked him on Sunday too but he has a meeting, how sad. He says it’s always heaven there.
Do tell what Cairns said, I’m so anxious to hear.1
Great interruptions. I’ll write again soon.
V. best love, NR
Darling,
After Monday I shall be at Château de Saint Firmin, Chantilly, Oise. Better put aux bons soins1 of the Coopers2 as I’m not certain if that’s quite correct but c/o them will find it.
A letter from Wid complaining that you are utterly unchanged & unbowed by misfortune. How she hates happiness – & doesn’t mind saying so what’s more.
The horror of the weather – I’ve got a ravishing grey spotted cotton dress & haven’t worn it once – & I feel that next year it will be utterly out of fashion.
Oh yes the Wid. Went to see Gerald [Berners] ‘& we had a long talk about breakdowns, Sanatogen3 & the like’. Jolly it sounds. I’m very doubtful about Prod’s pills4 tell Gerald. Diana C who knows quite a lot about nursing says it’s such a tiny dose it wouldn’t kill a mouse – furthermore that morphia is a tricky way of doing it as people are so often sick – & also it goes off as in the case of poor old Laval.5 I’m sure the only thing is strychnine. But I don’t see what there is to worry about in England – the Russians can’t get over the water surely, if even the Germans couldn’t & they had a navy. Reading Mme de Dino in 1848 – she says ‘what between war in the East & communism in the West we are crushed between two colossi – all one can hope for is to die in one’s bed et encore cela paraît beaucoup exiger’.6 She also says there isn’t a corner of the world where one could hide & be safe – rather comforting you must say.
I’ve laid in ten tons of wood at a cost of £50, I simply dread this winter remembering what the last one was like after a cold summer.
Went to Versailles for the Grandes Eaux, it is a fairy story – I’d no idea it was so wonderful. The terrific crowds seem to make it even prettier somehow. Ran into Margaret [Wright] there (!) who said ‘Oh I would like to have been somebody’s mistress in those days’ which I thought disingenuous. She has had a wow of a time. Farve rings up, I gather, & writes every day. I can’t help thinking it is wonderful the old boy is fixed up with somebody he really likes but then I am always pour [for] love, & one can’t say there was ever much of that from Muv who really didn’t even lik
e him particularly – not that I blame her.
A David exhibition.7 I see him to have been a really terrible painter – isn’t it funny how one sees so much better the moment they are all together. But the details – furniture, clothes & so on very amusing.
All love darling, do write, NR
Where is Muv? Not one word since I got back, but I suppose she is still engulfed in Bobo letters.
Oh darling your boat invitation1 – I do die for it but now I must finish the book. I think another break would be fatal, you see each time I leave off I terribly lose interest & now it is swimming along – seven hours a day. Diana is wonderful, just like Gerald used to be, & shoos me back. She said once what is your favourite colour & of course I said pink & she has had a little room in an out house done up pink for me to work in. You must say.
Also I don’t want to go too far from Paris. I’m in a great fuss about the Colonel – he had a sort of attack very like Gerald, fainted & was sick, & for two days he stayed in bed very weak & I took him all his meals – on the third day he got up, had a fourteen-hour day journey to Tarbes to address a meeting where they half killed the chairman & he only escaped by a miracle. Now he is speaking every day in a different place, returns to Paris on Sunday.
Oh politics, do I loathe them!
Although I hardly see him he likes the idea of me being in or near Paris & complains bitterly if I go away.
I’ve got masses to tell only the book stops letter writing – but I must ‘take’ Mrs Kliot, Decca’s mother-in-law.2 Well she arrived the day I was to leave for here so very nobly I put off coming & spent all day with her, luncheon & dinner, went round the hat shops, changed her dollars, I don’t know what else – rather wonderful of me? She is Madame Rita,3 the image, & she never stopped groaning about Decca. ‘Why can’t she dress like you – why is she such a slattern – what will happen to the children – she & Bob are sure to go to gaol. My Bob never thought of being a communist till he met her, & then he was doing so well, but now he only works for coloured people who can’t pay. You never go there but they’ve got coloured people as house guests’ & so on. I saw her point vividly. She said when she first saw Decca she cried for a week – so dirty. She had had a letter from them, saying ‘Tito will be known as Nicholas until the situation is clarified’!! So I wrote to Decca & said ‘I hear Tito has changed his name by deed of poll to Dimitrov’.4
The Mitfords Page 24