Her recurrent itch to tease found vent in a flippant article about Rome which was published in the Sunday Times. Other tart impressions of the foreign places she visited were to follow periodically. The tease invariably succeeded. Because she com pared the Eternal City to a village ‘with its one post office, one railway station and life centred round the vicarage’, many Romans were furious. Nor were they pleased by her remark that St. Peter’s, ‘seen from the colonnade, is very much like a lesser country house’. The Duchess of Sermoneta read the article out loud at a luncheon and destroyed it. What she minded, according to Nancy, was the statement that most of the palaces were for sale. ‘Trod despises the social life there,’ she told her mother, ‘and so would I if I lived there, literal vacuum in the upper storey of all and sundry, but for a short time it was highly agreeable, specially as they made such a fuss of me. I’ve done a spiffing S. Times article about it all.’
In January 1952 she told Heywood Hill: ‘I’ve made £10,000 last year, not bad is it, but I need more so that I can go out hunting, it’s all I think of now…’ She meant hunting for antiques. Though badgered for interviews and articles, she was thoroughly savouring the sweets of success and her enjoyment was free from self-conceit. It was all such a breathless surprise.
Disregarding Hector Dexter, some American dames gave a luncheon in her honour. ‘Have I boasted about the 200 Gov women (“all keen Mitford fans”) who are giving a luncheon for me next Monday? I only hope it’s not to beat me up as every one is the wife of a Dexter. Evangeline Bruce the ambassadress is very giggly about it I note…’
Particularly she enjoyed contributing a sketch in French to a charity revue. ‘Here,’ she wrote to me in April, ‘we are all busy with our sketches for the charity revue in June. Mine is too lovely; the daughter of un vieux duc who becomes a man and wins the Tour de France. The duc doesn’t turn a hair, “nous avons déjà eu la tante Éon dans la famille”. The Tour de France is in Racinian language and modern journalese—“les anciens rois de la route sont corroucés par les exploits de ce coureur mysterieux, ce Machiavel de la pédale, ce super-crack…”’
‘Violet [Trefusis] has retired to Florence to write hers, in the company of two professional dramaturges, this is thought most unfair!’
As with nearly all amateur productions there were hitches. ‘I think I shall have to withdraw my sketch,’ she wrote in May. ‘They want to take out every joke, terrified of offending people, and the compère, on whom all depends, has now chucked the whole thing (not just me). How far they have gone since the Chien Andalou. I find it very odd (prudery I mean). I’m saying take it or leave it. Violet too is in trouble and Marcel Achard not allowed to have people in bathing dresses!!!’
Nancy’s sketch, however, was not withdrawn, and she took infinite pains over rehearsals. On 27th June she wrote to Heywood: ‘Well, it went off all right I think. But how can one know with the dear French? I received exaggerated adulation from all. If I’d written Macbeth it could not have been more, but then so no doubt did Violet and you should only HEAR what they say to each other about her sketch. I think it’s a good system, it keeps the morale at boiling point, but of course, it’s hard for ONE to know the truth. What I can say is all my actors were perfection, it never went half as well at any rehearsal, so I got an agreeable surprise… The whole affair was masterly. Only two thoroughly bad sketches, only one pause and it only went on half an hour too long. The good sketches and all the tableaux vivants and ballets were perfection and there was a tango which made me ill with laughing. So everybody is feeling pleased and monumental sums were taken for charity. Every inch of space crammed and Marie in the poulaille was surrounded by duchesses and most impressed because the ones she didn’t know were shown her by another femme de chambre, also M. Dior. I’ve never seen the tout Paris turn out in such force ever since I’ve lived here…’
Unfortunately the jokes evaporate in translation for as Nancy had to admit, ‘the Tour de France means literally 0 to the English’. The sketch had to be altered ‘because nobody would act in it if Cyclamen (the cyclist heroine) became a man for fear that one day the Duke of Windsor give a ball and not ask them as a revenge. They couldn’t risk it…’
A faded typescript of it lies before me. The scene is set in the large drawing-room of a château, empty except for a chair and a table. Patches on the walls where pictures used to hang, two or three empty pedestals or niches.
The impoverished Duke and Duchess D’Espasse discuss their daughter Cyclamen, who instead of angling for a rich husband can only think of cycling—‘all due to the grotesque name you saddled her with’, the Duke complains. In the meantime three tourists who have paid 100 francs to visit the château are dis gusted to find none of the treasures described glowingly in the guide book and want their money to be returned. Cyclamen enters with a racing bicycle and announces that she will retrieve the family fortune by winning the Tour de France under a male pseudonym: ‘From today I am Cyclamen, Dauphiness of the Road!’ ‘She should have been a boy,’ sighs the Duke, dreading the vexations in store for him at the Jockey Club on her account.
The angry tourists are refunded, and the steward-caretaker (who is also the local mayor) lends the Duke and Duchess his television set, so that they may watch the race. The screen lights up and the excited Duchess exhorts her daughter to win: ‘Remember our family motto: “I surpass” Courage, Cyclamen! Excelsior!’
The whole scene is mimed except Cyclamen’s comments at the microphone and the radio reporter’s text. The latter introduces ‘this new, mysterious star of the road whose pluck and audacity are astounding,’ as Mr. Cyclamen forges ahead of all the super-champions. At every winning post ‘he is greeted by a genial American playboy named Homer on whom he flashes his first victorious smile.’ Now and then the reporter passes the microphone to Cyclamen, whose incomprehensible remarks about regilding the family coat of arms are interpreted as due to fatigue.
Eventually Cyclamen wins the coveted trophy; is embraced by Homer; and recognized as a woman. Back at the château there is a long queue of tourists waiting to see the room where the new ace was born. ‘But she was born at Neuilly,’ exclaims the Duchess. ‘Mum’s the word!’ says the steward. ‘Already 50,000 francs worth of tickets have been sold at the entrance. There’s even a gentleman who wants to buy all the champion’s belongings as precious relics.’ Cyclamen and Homer arrive and insist on being married immediately.
The Duchess protests but the Duke tells her: ‘We must keep abreast of the times, dear.’ The marriage contract is produced and the jubilant couple are married by the mayor. The Duchess, overcome with emotion, implores them to have ‘lots of baby bicycles’, and they pedal off to embark on the tour of America.
Evanescently frivolous, no doubt, this ephemeral trifle, a script for marionettes. What is noteworthy about the original is the giant strides Nancy had made in the French idiom. Her parody of the rhetorical clichés of French radio reporters is close to actuality. The impoverished Duke and Duchess in the empty château and the disgruntled tourists are obvious figures of fun.
I was unable to attend the revue but I was in Paris in July and Nancy gave a party for me. Never had I seen her look prettier; a rose in full bloom. She, too, might have won the Tour de France. Pigeon Pie had been republished and Nancy told Mark Ogilvie-Grant (7th June, 1952): ‘10,000 copies have been sold, so at least 30,000 people now must know all about Vocal Lodge and the butter coloured wig and the wigless pig… My American agent writes that she has a film offer for Pigeon Pie, shall I say: yes on condition that the King of Song [Mark] acts his own part in it?’… ‘Noël [Coward] is here. I got a very garlicky kiss (English people here always stink of it I note) and—“Darling I’ve got such fan messages for you Pigeoners”.’
Now the novel which had fallen flat on its original publication in 1940 received better notices in America than her other books. ‘It’s selling madly,’ she told her mother. ‘When I think how poor I was when it came out, almost starving (l
iterally really—I used to lunch at Sibyl’s awful canteen for 1s and I can still remember the pain I used to have after it) I feel quite cross, though it’s nice at all times to have a little extra money.’ To Heywood Hill she wrote in August: ‘Fancy, since I left you I’ve made considerably over £50,000. Do be impressed. Local girl makes good…’ Bertrand Russell had become one of her recent fans and she was greatly flattered when he told her that he went regularly to The Little Hut. ‘I have always wondered who it is that goes regularly and now we know. Old philosophers.’ In November she wrote again: ‘I’ve been asked to send a short autobiographical sketch of myself to a Gov literary Who’s Who. They send a sample: “It was during the years of bitter poverty in the hut of old Jabez the Trapper that the poet in me was born”. I’ve said that I was born in the slums of London because my father was a second son and in England second sons are always poor. I suggest that it was during the bitter years before he succeeded that the poet in ME was born. Do tell Osbert [Sitwell].’
Though Nancy had won fame as a novelist she seldom read contemporary novels. ‘How I wish I could get on with Miss Compton-Burnett but it’s my blind spot,’ she confessed. ‘So I plod on with Saint-Simon, such a nice readable edition, and the Racine, which on account of the notes is as good as Punch.’ With her serious addiction to history, above all eighteenth-century history, she was easily diverted from fiction to biography. No adequate biography of Madame de Pompadour had appeared in English—another incentive to embark on such a venture. ‘I’m really starting from scratch,’ she said. ‘I know more about Louis XIV than Louis XV.’
‘I’m doing Pomp, very much enjoying it myself though nobody else may,’ she told Christopher Sykes (16th January, 1953). ‘I’ve finished an account of what I think the battle of Fontenoy was like, trying to pretend that I hope the English are going to win. (As both the generals were huns and most of the French troops Irish there can’t be any very strong national feelings over it.) I’m rather nervous, never having done such a thing before, and with the fearful example of my poor friend Polnay’s book on Charles Edward, so good yet so badly received, before me.’
From ‘Mr. Street’ she wrote to Mrs. Hammersley: ‘On 7th April (1953) I retire to a heavenly pension at Versailles to get on with Pomp. Impossible here—friends are pouring over, brought out by the fine weather and buzzing like bees on my telephone. I think Versailles is just the locale, don’t you? (in fact a very important part of the book depends on the geography of the château, which I shall get to understand I hope).’ And from Versailles: ‘I really am working—two or three hours in the library here and until midnight in my bed, and most of the day’s seven or eight hours. Evelyn [Waugh] who came to see me, says it’s too much, one shouldn’t do more than four, but it suits me. Everybody has their own system. The library is bliss, they have of course everything and all hop round ONE, very different from British Museum or Nationale…’
‘I’ve got a letter from Binkie Beaumont saying I must go to New York, everything paid, with the Hut. Goodness! He speaks as if it would make all the difference if I went—how queer as I said Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde don’t go and yet their plays run. I don’t think I can ginger myself up to it, really, all alone like that. What do you advise. It’s not till October…’
‘One could do worse than to come and live here, only not in winter, I doubt if it would be warm enough for ONE, Also at the moment it is too full… The other guests are nearly all American soldiers who are perfectly unbearable but are out all of every day except Sunday. Then there is an ill old mad French man with his nurse who says sententiously to the company in general “il faut les aimer!” and clinks bottles in a very sinister way. Yesterday the Americans never got up at all—trays of chicken, champagne, vitamin foods and Danish butter (why?) went to them at intervals and they came down to dinner in their pyjamas. I work of course every working hour as there is nothing else to do.’
Nancy’s eyesight troubled her and she had spasmodic misgivings during the course of composition. ‘Getting on famously,’ she wrote to Heywood Hill (15th April, 1953) ‘except that I am tortured by my eyes which is a bore because if I can’t write all day, or read, there’s nothing I can do except sit with them shut and that is so dull when one is dying to be AT IT.’ And to me from Versailles (27th May): ‘I should never have taken it on. I haven’t the education—I feel very low about it. However too late now, as in childbirth to STOP.’ On 22nd June from Paris: ‘I’m still shut up and working very hard and going to no parties… I don’t want to stir up the telephones. The book is good—best I’ve done I think, but the public won’t like it, reviewers are always beastly about the biography of a novelist.’
The book finished, again she wrote to Heywood (18th July): ‘I gave Pomp to Hamishham (who came specially) in the afternoon and met him for dinner and DIED on the way there. “I’m sure you’ll find another publisher” was what I envisaged, and only saying it after dinner when I felt stronger. However, one look at his face and I could see all was well. The relief was great…’
After ‘a terrible month of August, sitting for hours every day in the Lyric Theatre during a “heatwave” (i.e. rather warm, muggy and cloudy)’ because The Little Hut was being rehearsed for America, Nancy fled to Hyères where she stayed with the affable Chilean Tony Gandarillas. Tony could not exist without opium, thanks to which he was very spry and continued to beguile his friends with cosmopolitan gossip in ripe old age, but I am sure he never persuaded Nancy to share a pipe with him, though she was on tenterhooks about her first biography. ‘The book, read by a few souls when I was in London, had a mixed reception,’ she informed me in September. ‘Cecil Beaton, who read it because he was doing the dust cover, thinks it very bad indeed. However Raymond [Mortimer], on the whole, gave it his blessing. So did Dr. Cobban, the greatest living expert on French history, who very kindly consented to have a look and take out some of the grosser errors.’
Nancy had a tendency to identify herself with the characters she delineated, and it gave her peculiar satisfaction to write about a period she appreciated thoroughly. Madame de Pompadour seemed to have been chosen by destiny to become Louis XVs mistress and she was already a queen of fashion when she captivated him. For the next twenty years, until she died at the age of forty-two, she swayed politics at home and abroad, played the role of a female Maecenas, and remained indispensable to the restless and blasé monarch. Undoubtedly Nancy was biased in favour of Madame de Pompadour and Louis XV but this added vivacity to her narrative. She also had a talent for simplification: her language, sometimes verging on schoolroom slang, was far from that of the scholastic historian. The result was a gain in readability, though here and there we may smile at certain colloquialisms.
Madame de Pompadour led Nancy on to Voltaire and Frederick the Great with a backward inspection of the Sun King in between. She had found a subject after her own heart into which she could infuse her delight in the Ile de France, and her book is a prose paean to pleasure—the douceur de vivre before the French Revolution. One of the chapters is entitled Pleasure. Aware that this was still frowned upon, Nancy wrote: ‘People in those days approved of pleasure. When the Duc de Nivernais left on his very serious and tricky mission to London after the Seven Years War, he was described as going “like Anacreon, crowned with roses and singing of pleasure.” This was by way of being high praise.’ Furthermore, she explained that ‘the act of love was not yet regarded with an almost mystical awe, it had but a limited importance. Like eating, drinking, fighting, hunting and praying it was part of a man’s life, but not the very most important part of all. If Madame de Pompadour were not physically in love with the King, being constitutionally in capable of passion, it would not be too much to say that she worshipped him; he was her God. She had other interests and affections, but she made them all revolve round him; rarely can a beautiful woman have loved so single-mindedly.’
Before the book’s publication in 1954 Nancy admitted to Heywood Hill: ‘I must say these m
onths of waiting are very bad for an author’s nerves!… The worst of living alone (a state which I personally prefer) is that there is nobody to say “oh well, not so bad this and this is rather nice—when one begins to see things en noir. I quite see it wouldn’t do at all for a pessimistic character. As you know life generally appears to me in a rosy light…’
Later she was to become impervious to the arrows of reviewers, but having put so much of herself into Madame de Pompadour she was unduly sensitive. On 13th March she wrote to Heywood: ‘I’ve got a letter from Dr. Cobban saying he’ll bet my reviewers have never read an original 18th century document, or any secondary stuff since Carlyle. Wouldn’t they be furious at this news! But far the most beastly doesn’t come under this category, it is A.J.P. Taylor in the Manchester Guardian. In a way I think his review holds more water than Harold Nicolson’s and Cyril’s—he doesn’t object to the history or indeed deign to mention it at all—but the fact that somebody like me should poach on the sacred preserves. He obviously couldn’t bear the book. I don’t know much about him, do you? Gooch is easily my favourite so far, though I did love Cyril’s [Connolly’s] for being so funny… A few more reviews. Don’t say I said this but the fact is none of them know their subject and that is why they seem so confused and contradictory…’
Again Nancy had achieved a prodigious success. I remember numerous passengers on the Channel steamer to Calais hugging their copies of Madame de Pompadour, as if in preparation for the fleshpots of Gay Paree. Nancy was the recipient of even more fan-letters. ‘Oh the horror of fan-letters,’ she exclaimed to her friend Alvilde Lees-Milne. ‘It’s so odd why they should think one should want to know their boring reactions to one’s work. Like a breath of fresh air was one I got yesterday. “My grand mother was born Mitford, she married a farm labourer called Potts. In spite of the opprobrium attaching to the name I persist in calling myself Mitford-Potts… I live alone in a bungalow and shall soon no doubt be murdered by one of the many people who think all Mitfords better dead. Yours sincerely, Mavis Mitford-Potts. P.S. Please don’t think I admire your idiotic books”.’
Nancy Mitford Page 12
