The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

by Nancy Mitford

  ‘I’m not a maniac,’ said Paul angrily.

  ‘Aren’t you, darling? I think you are, though.’

  ‘Just because I happen to be a Buchanite –’

  ‘What’s that you’re saying?’ said Amabelle; ‘I never thought an old highbrow like you would admit to such a thing. I read them in trains myself when there’s nobody looking.’

  ‘I was not,’ said Paul with dignity, ‘referring to the novels of John Buchan, if that is what you mean. Of course I don’t read them. Buchanism is the name given to a religious sect founded by Mrs Elspeth Buchan, a Scotch and vastly superior prototype of Mrs Eddy and Mrs Besant. In fact, she started that fashion for the founding of religions by untitled married ladies which has since become almost universal. The last of her followers died in 1848, and I have constituted myself head of the N.B.M. (New Buchanite Movement). As her teachings died with her followers I am able to make up the rules as I go along, which is pleasant. When’s the christening, Sally?’

  ‘Well, if the poor little sweet is still with us then we thought next Tuesday week (suit you?), but she’s most awfully ill today, she keeps on making the sort of noises Walter does after a night out, you know.’

  ‘D’you think she’s likely to live or not?’ said Paul. ‘Because if there’s any doubt perhaps I could use your telephone, Amabelle, to call up the jewellers and see if I’m in time to stop them engraving that mug. It’s such an expensive sort, and I don’t want it spoilt for nothing, I must say.’

  ‘I believe she’s expected to pull through. But tell me, Paul, how could you have it engraved, we haven’t even decided what her name’s going to be ourselves. I want Henrietta Maria and Walter wants Dora Mildred, and we don’t seem to be able to strike anything we both like.’

  ‘It’s being engraved Elspeth (after Mrs Buchan) Paula (for obvious reasons) Monteath, from her loving godfather, Paul Frederick Fotheringay.’

  ‘Well, really, all the cheek! Walter, did you hear that?’

  ‘Yes, I did. I’ll offer you a double, Jerome. I think those names are O.K., don’t you? It saves trouble if someone settles them for us, because perhaps now we shan’t have to be quarrelling all day. Only I vote we use Paula, I’m not so wild about Buchanism myself.’

  ‘Thanks, old boy, a very delicate compliment, if I may say so.’

  ‘By the way,’ said Walter, ‘why Paula and not Pauline?’

  ‘Cheaper. The thing is, you pay for engraving by the letters. I say, I do hope she lives all right, Sally.’

  ‘So do I, you know. After all the trouble I’ve had, one way and another, it would be extraordinarily souring if she didn’t. However, Nanny and the charlady between them are battling for her life, as they say in the papers, like mad, so I expect she will. The charlady knows all about it, too, she has lost six herself.’

  ‘Sounds a bit of a Jonah to me, but I don’t want to depress you. Anyway, I hope you won’t be sparing expense in this matter. Remember that I didn’t over the mug.’

  ‘One of your own, I suppose, with the name taken out?’

  ‘Not my name, that’s left in, you see. I had “From his loving godmother, Eliza Stratford” (the Countess of Stratford, carriage folk) taken out. That came after my name, and they’re putting the words “Elspeth Paula Monteath from her loving godfather” in front of it. Such a brainwave, don’t you agree? And who thought it all out for me? Dear little Marcella, bless her heart.’

  ‘We saw Marcella last night with that man Chikkie. She’s a nasty piece of work, if you like. Walter finds her so repellent that he says he can only suppose he must really be in love with her.’

  ‘I expect he is, too. Did you ask her to be Paula’s godmother?’

  ‘No, I did not.’

  ‘That lends her a certain distinction, doesn’t it? She must be the first person in London you haven’t asked.’

  ‘How careless you Protestants are of your children’s souls,’ said Jerome looking up from his game. ‘That poor little wretch was born months ago, and there she is, still wallowing in original sin, without mentioning the horrid risk she would run if she should die before next Tuesday week – I call it a shame. Double you, Walter. What does it feel like to be a mother, Sally?’

  ‘Childbirth,’ said Sally, ‘is an unpleasing process. It must be quite awful for the father who, according to Walter, suffers even more than the mother. I don’t quite understand about that, but of course I take his word for it. To be honest, I should like the baby a good deal better if she wasn’t the split image of Walter’s Aunt Lucy; all the same I am getting quite attached to her in a sort of way, and Walter’s so impressed by being a father that he’s actually looking out for a job. You know, motherhood is an enormous financial asset in these days; to begin with you get pounds and pounds for publishing a photograph of a child twice or three times her age and saying she’s so well-grown because of Gatebury’s food, then you get more pounds for saying that no nursing mother would care to retire without her cup of Bovo, and finally I can now edit the Mothers’ and Kiddies’ Sunshine Page in the Daily Runner under my own name, so I get an extra pound a week for that. Oh, yes, the little dear is pulling her weight in the home and no mistake.’

  Later that evening Paul escorted Marcella to a party given by one of her Slade friends. For Marcella, like so many girls, studied Art in her odd moments.

  ‘It is to be a Russian party,’ she told him as their taxicab threaded the mazes of S.W.14, ‘in honour of Peter Dickinson, who has just come back from Moscow.’

  Paul thought that under the circumstances Mr Dickinson would most probably have preferred any other sort of party, but he refrained from saying so.

  ‘There is to be some interesting conversation,’ said Marcella.

  ‘I hope there’ll be something to drink,’ said Paul.

  They arrived at a basement flat decorated with tasteless frescoes. All Marcella’s arty friends lived in basement flats decorated with tasteless frescoes. There were hardly any chairs, but the floor was covered with the semi-recumbent forms of dirty young men in stained and spotted grey flannel trousers and dirty young women with long greasy hair. One of the young men, presumably Peter Dickinson, was holding forth when they arrived.

  ‘Yes, I went to see the timber camps; they are fine, wonderful, a triumph of organization. A clean, healthy outdoor life, think what that must mean to these city clerks, people accustomed only to the fetid air of offices. They are as happy as little children, and in everything that they do, their work, their play, they keep always before them their wonderful ideal of communism.’

  Paul thought that they sounded rather like Boy Scouts, and was unattracted by the idea. He soon wished he could go home. Marcella had disappeared almost at once accompanied by a tall young man with side-whiskers, and he saw nobody else that he knew. Although the party was by way of being Russian he could find neither vodka, caviare nor Russian cigarettes to cheer him; in fact, the only noticeable attribute of that great country was the atmosphere of dreariness and hopeless discomfort which prevailed. The chains of love, however, kept him there until past three in the morning, when Marcella appeared and announced that she was quite ready to go home. Paul felt too tired to make a scene about the young man with side-whiskers, and devoted his remaining supply of energy to finding a taxi. These are rare in S.W.14 at 3 a.m.

  ‘How all your friends do dislike me,’ said Marcella complacently as they bumped away in the ancient vehicle which he had eventually procured. ‘Those Monteaths were horrid to me last night. But perhaps she’s jealous, poor thing, of me being so young and pretty.’

  ‘Sally?’ said Paul. ‘Sally’s incapable of jealousy, I assure you. Besides, she quite honestly thinks you very plain and boring indeed,’ he added in an attempt at revenge for the terrible evening he had just undergone. This reply was so unexpected that Marcella was for once quite unable to defend herself, and was quiet and affectionate during the remaining part of
the drive to Gloucester Square where she lived. She snuggled as close to Paul as the patent leather covering to the springless seats would allow, and in the hall of her house she gave him a long, hot and sticky kiss, saying, ‘Anyhow, you think I’m beautiful, don’t you?’

  ‘The poor girl is admiration mad,’ thought Paul. ‘Apart from that she’s not a bad little thing, though heaven knows how I can be in love with her.’

  4

  The more Paul considered the idea of writing a biography, the more it seemed to offer him an ideal medium for self-expression, and one into which he could pour his heart and soul without risk of ill-timed mockery. Even the most hardened and callous critic could scarcely shake his sides over the description of a death-bed scene that had really taken place. He felt that in this branch of literature lay his opportunity to establish himself as a serious writer, and to shake off the humorous reputation which he had so unwillingly acquired. Once thus established he would surely be able to publish another novel with less danger of being misunderstood. The difficulty now before him was that of finding a suitable subject; one whose work should be thoroughly sympathetic to himself and whose outlook in life should be comprehensible to him.

  He considered this problem for several days, but with no result. Those people whose lives he would have enjoyed writing, notably Maria Edgeworth, Miss Austen, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Mrs Carlyle, seemed already to boast a formidable bibliography. Others that occurred to him, such as Dorothea Felicia Hemans, Mary Russell Mitford, and Mrs Livingstone (the mother of Dr Livingstone – I presume), presented almost insuperable difficulties in another direction, as little or nothing seemed to be known about them by anybody. It would be hard, in fact, to find exactly what he wanted, which was a woman of breeding, culture and some talent, living towards the last half of the nineteenth century, who was not already the subject of a ‘life’.

  At last, in despair of ever finding his ideal, he wandered into the London Library, where he began, in a desultory manner, to read through the opening pages of the Dictionary of National Biography. Unhelpful as it appeared to be, he waded on through the Adam brothers, Prince Adolphus Frederick, Aelfred Aethling, Anerium the Welsh poet, Bishop Baggs, Praisegod Barebones, Boate de Boot, and Bertulf. Having arrived by this weary pilgrimage of the mind as far as Beorhtric, King of the West Saxons, he was just going to abandon his search for the time being when, turning over two pages at once, his eye lit upon the name Bobbin, Lady Maria.

  Lady Maria Bobbin. The only wonder was that he had never thought of her before. Here, indeed, was a life worth writing, a sermon waiting to be preached. This woman, this poet, brought up amid the conventions and restrictions of the mid-Victorian era, wife of a country squire, mother of twelve children, who found time among her manifold duties to sing in noble, deathless verse such songs as ‘The Redbreast’s Lament’, ‘Prayer of a Grecian Warrior’ and ‘Wales in Captivity’, was surely the very heroine for whom he had been searching. There was not much information about her in the Dictionary of National Biography, only enough to whet Paul’s appetite for more, but there was an allusion to her vast correspondence and copious journals which led him to hope that these might still be extant at her home in Gloucestershire, Compton Bobbin.

  In the Dictionary of National Biography he discovered the following bare facts of her life:

  ‘Lady Maria Almanack, daughter of the eighth Earl of Leamington Spa, was born in 1818, and married in 1837 Sir Josiah Bobbin, M.F.H., of Compton Bobbin, Gloucestershire. From her earliest childhood she displayed an astonishing talent for writing verse, and in 1842 her parents were foolish enough to publish her “Poems” in a quarto volume. She soon recovered from the adverse criticism which these met with, and published in 1844 “Autumnal Tints”, a collection of short poems including the famous “Farewell to Mount Ida”. In 1845 she had her first real success with “Elegant Elegies, Tasteful Trifles and Maidenly Melodies”. The following year an epic poem, the well-known “Martyrdom in Mercia”, came from her pen, and after that date, in spite of her many duties as châtelaine of Compton Bobbin and mother of twelve children, she never failed to produce an annual volume, generally far from slim, of poems, ballads, sonnets, odes or romantic plays. She was, in fact, as prolific as she was gifted a writer, for, besides her published works, she found time to conduct a vast correspondence and to keep a journal which extended into 14 volumes. This treasure is now in the possession of her descendants at Compton Bobbin. During her lifetime her works enjoyed an almost world-wide popularity, and she was intimate with many of the most famous among her contemporaries, including Meredith, Carlyle, Lord Tennyson (who often spoke of the exquisite sensibility of her writing) and Queen Victoria herself. In 1896 she died from a chill which she caught at the christening of her fiftieth descendant.’

  At the end of this paragraph there was no bibliography, no hint as to how or where further information was to be sought. The mention of a journal, however, was enough to spur Paul on to further action. He returned to its shelf the Dictionary of National Biography and had recourse instead to Debrett’s Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage; from which he gathered that Compton Bobbin was now held by Lady Bobbin, M.F.H., J.P., in trust for her son, Sir Roderick, a minor, her husband, the late Sir Hudson Bobbin, having been drowned in the Lusitania disaster. Paul needed no more information. It only remained now for him to write to the present châtelaine of Compton Bobbin and ask that he might be allowed to read the journal and letters of her predecessor. In a state of excitement and enthusiasm he returned to his rooms, where he composed the following letter:

  155 Ebury Street, S.W.

  Dear Madam,

  I am most anxious to write a life of the late illustrious Lady Maria Bobbin, a task which, I understand, has never yet been attempted, and one which I would devote all my energy and my poor talent to completing in a manner worthy of its subject. To do this with any degree of accuracy would however be impossible without access to those of her private papers, notably the fourteen volumes of her journal, which I assume still to be in existence at Compton Bobbin. It would be most kind and gratifying to me if you would consider lending me the said volumes – or, should you very naturally object to the idea of parting, even for a space, with documents so invaluable, perhaps you would give permission for me to reside in the local hostelry that I may study them in your house, whose atmosphere must yet I feel be redolent of Her. I would naturally work at this life in entire collaboration with yourself, submitting all proofs to you before publication.

  If I trouble you, please forgive me and remember that I do so in the interests of Art and to the perpetuation of a memory which must ever be sacred to you, to me, and to all lovers of Verse.

  Yours sincerely,

  Paul Fotheringay.

  It was unfortunate that Paul, in writing this letter, had allowed himself to fall victim to the intoxication of his own style. Lady Bobbin, M.F.H., J.P., opened it together with several appeals for new hens from farmers whose old ones had been removed by Mr Reynard. She read it over twice, found herself unfamiliar with such words as hostelry, redolent and collaboration, and handed it to her secretary, saying, ‘The poor chap’s batty, I suppose?’ The secretary, who occasionally read book reviews, said that Paul Fotheringay was a comic writer, and would be a most unsuitable person to undertake a life of Lady Maria. She was then instructed to answer his request, as well as those of the farmers, in the negative.

  Meanwhile, Paul, never doubting the success of his letter, walked on air. His fingers itched to take pen in hand, to prove once and for all to those idiotic critics that he was a serious writer; and at the same time he looked forward greatly to the perusal of Lady Maria’s journal, feeling that it would provide the rarest intellectual treat. He went out and bought himself a collected edition of her works, so that he might re-read some of his favourites – ‘The Lament of Llywark Hen’, ‘Moorish Bridal Song’, ‘On the Death-bed of Wallace’
, ‘To my Brother’, etc., which he did with his usual appreciation of her genius. Altogether his outlook on life became far more cheerful and optimistic than it had been before he went to see Amabelle Fortescue.

  Alas, how dashed were his hopes when the letter for which he had been so eagerly waiting was found to contain the following abrupt refusal in the third person:

  Compton Bobbin,

  Compton on the Wold,

  Gloucestershire.

  Lady Bobbin regrets that she is unaware of the existence of any documents at Compton Bobbin which could interest Mr Fotheringay. She cannot enter into further correspondence on this subject.

  Paul was stunned by this blow.

  ‘And then,’ he said to Amabelle, to whom he had gone immediately for consolation, ‘it is so rude and horrid, I feel terribly snubbed.’

  ‘From what I’ve always heard of that woman I’m not in the least surprised,’ said Amabelle. ‘I don’t want to be governessy, darling, but I do think it was a mistake for you to write off in such a very violent hurry. It would have been more sensible to find out what sort of person she was first, and what was likely to be the best method of approach.’

  ‘Yes, I see that now. But I was so excited when I thought of the journal in fourteen volumes that my one idea was to get hold of it as soon as I possibly could.’

  ‘It’s a pity you didn’t consult me, you know. Little Bobby Bobbin (Sir Roderick) is a great buddy of mine, and I’m sure he could have fixed it for you easily. After all, the journal belongs to him, doesn’t it?’

  ‘You don’t think he could smuggle it out of the house for me?’

  ‘He’d never dare to now, it wouldn’t be safe. You see, Lady Bobbin is in a very strong position as far as he is concerned because she has every penny of the money, and he’s terrified of getting into her bad books. She was a great heiress, a Miss Swallowfield (tea), and if old Hudson Bobbin hadn’t married her the place would have gone long ago, I believe. But surely you know Bobby, don’t you? Why didn’t you ask him about it?’