Nancy Mitford

by Nancy Mitford

  Of Elizabeth Longford Nancy wrote with admiration: ‘She was that rare bird when I was young an undergraduette at Oxford (now one would say student I suppose). She was as beautiful and merry as she was brilliant—everybody courted her and lucky Frank Pakenham got her. (I was frantically jealous of her.) They had eight children, now mostly grown up, and became R.C’s. We never meet but the friendship endures—I love Pakenhams anyway. Frank is a goose but a great dear. He worries about the dull lives of those people who tortured little girls to death on moors—I can’t say I do but it shows a Christian nature.’

  Assuring Sir Hugh Jackson that he would enjoy Elizabeth Longford’s book on Wellington, she wrote (23rd March 1970): ‘One always likes reading about what one knows already, if well done… My only criticism would be that she doesn’t see either the genius or the glamour of Napoleon so that, for instance, the hundred days, the return and all that become rather incomprehensible. During Waterloo there is not quite enough about what happened on the French side. The fog of war and the poor intelligence must have made battles chancy no doubt. Frederick used to say that all battles are a lottery.’

  ‘I suppose the death of Berthier was decisive. Elizabeth merely says he fell out of a window without relating the pathetic facts. One really hates Soult for the muddles.’

  ‘About the horses—she says the French cavalrymen slept on their horses during that night of terrible rain so of course the poor things were tired the next day. I loved the Brunswickers going into battle looking like a hearse (all in black for their duke killed at Jena). How fascinating what you say about the roads being blocked. Do you remember when, in ‘68, we expected the parachutists here from Algiers and Malraux made the population block the road from Orly with their motors? Good idea.’

  ‘Frederick will appear in October. I do hope you will approve. I’m reading Martet’s Conversations with Clemenceau, very highly enjoyable. In 1928 he knew what would happen in 1939 and never stopped warning people. He had an operation in the lovely clinic where I was last year—like me he was in love with the nuns, like me he handed out his last book to them. How unchanging Paris is, thank goodness.’

  ‘Have you read Wellington?’ she wrote again to Sir Hugh. ‘It is masterly. I read Waterloo four times, what a lovely battle. Wellington and Frederick the Great have an amazing amount in common and of course there is so little time between them that the very campaigns have certain similarities. They are both the no-nonsense type of general, incapable of putting on charm, showing off and so on—the opposite of Monty and Nelson. The funny thing is that both sorts succeed about equally with the men. Of course Frederick’s battles against fearful odds were far more desperate and he quite often lost them, as Wellington never did, but then Frederick didn’t have dithering politicians to cope with, surely a huge advantage. I suppose almost any Parliament would have sued for peace long before the end of the Seven Years War as it seemed hopeless from the very start, for the Prussians.

  ‘I think of writing about Clemenceau. What would you say to that?’

  ‘The publishers [of Frederick the Great] took it upon them to change many colloquialisms as I know they do in America and Russia—hadn’t realized that the habit has taken on here. “They had a good gossip” became “they reminisced” and so on. La moutarde m’est montée au nez and I brought up big guns—made a fearful fuss and got my own way. All this, if you please, on the proofs, so changing back will I hope cost them a fortune! No wonder American books read so dull and flat—I’m told every publisher employs several re-writers. It was really super-cheek on the part of mine because Raymond Mortimer, a master of English, had been over the typescript and removed many horrors as I’m the first to admit—I naturally accepted all his changes but then the high school girls at Rainbird’s took over. Oh No. Luckily I bring them in money and they don’t really want to kill the goose.’

  To Mr. Brian Pearce, whose translation of Professor A.D. Lublinskaya’s French Absolutism had fascinated her—‘it inspires total confidence which is the first necessary merit of a history book and rather rare!’—and who had had to revise another translation from scratch, though only paid on a ‘revision’ basis, Nancy wrote feelingly: ‘Publishers are the limit and usually only saved by some bright girl in the office who, as soon as one gets used to her, immediately marries. Somebody said, when I was in Greece, this country is entirely run by boys of 14; when they are 15 they take to love and become useless. Like publishers’ young ladies.’

  Nancy dreaded the prospect of entering a hospital in March but in the meantime Hassan was a comfort. ‘All is so easy with Hassan, thank Allah for him. Only, not at week-end as he rushes to the arms of his mistress and I live on porridge, all I know how to make. Saturday afternoon until Monday brekker which is now my favourite meal of the week, I am starving for it… I was examined by about twenty doctors this morning—the terror!’ Hassan like all very young people thinks pain rather funny and that’s good for me, stops me moaning and groaning. But he is truly kind and seems to like me and to like it here, thank Allah.’

  From the Hôpital Rothschild Nancy wrote to her ‘unique and indispensable’ friend Raymond Mortimer (8th April, 1970): ‘Have you ever been in a hospital? You can’t conceive the horror, at least to somebody who, like me, is thoroughly spoilt. On this étage all the patients have got skin diseases and one queues up for the loo with people like that picture of Napoleon at Aleppo—male and female—who have not been trained in use of same by English nannies. I’ve got an old Romanian who is the double of Abdul Hamid—she has red things all over her poor face and is in agonies. Day and night she groans—all penetrate my boules quies. But she won’t allow the window to be opened. The heat is like in Venice when the servants say it is infernale—if we were in summer I’m sure she would complain bitterly of it—it’s not that I mind, but the stuffiness.’

  ‘By far the worst, they can’t find anything wrong with me so I suppose I am condemned to this horrible pain for life—also to never again going for walks. I feel in deep despair. Don’t know when they will let me out. I can’t crawl out on all fours, my clothes in my teeth, as that would look so ungrateful. The people, of course, except Abdul Hamid, are completely heavenly one and all, as French people always are to me, from the great Panjandrum Himself who swaggers in with a quartier général of young men looking like Austrian officers, down to the smallest little housemaid.’

  ‘Abdul asks questions non-stop. “Where is your husband?” “Dead.” “Never marry again.” “You’re telling me—once bitten twice shy.” Rather disobliging of her as her poor old husband comes every day with little gifts… One thing about Abdul, she has neither wireless nor TV. I vastly prefer her groans. Well, you see, I suffer. Don’t know for how long…’

  Nancy’s English friends suspected that the French doctors were mistakenly opposed to the use of pain killers. Nancy wrote again on the subject to Raymond Mortimer (18th April, 1970): ‘You mustn’t blame the French doctors anent (as Sir Hugh Jackson always says) pain killers. For months they have begged and implored me, sometimes in tears, to take them. My philosophy is this (A) If we are sent a pain in the leg it must be for some reason unknown to us—if we dodge it the result might be bad in other ways. (B) I have got a little spot of grey matter and I don’t want to spoil it with drugs or drink or anything else. My horror of drugs is the greatest of all my many prejudices.’

  ‘The last week at the hospital (I came back yesterday in an ambulance) was the most devilish I have ever known. I was cast on my back, no pillow, unable to write and almost unable to read, with, as fellow, the wife of a vigneron from Champagne—and I don’t mean Odette Pol-Roger! She refused a chink of window and indeed had to have heavy linoleum curtains drawn over it and DID, all night, into a pot between our beds, never emptied or covered…’ Then all the things they did to me, wheeling me on a stretcher to a torture chambre dans le sous-sol, hurt fearfully… Meanwhile I have collapsed as regards pain killers in spite of my brave words above.’

>   ‘As I lay there I held over my head whenever I could Mauriac’s Vie Intérieure. Never again will a group of intellectuals have so much fun as he, Jammes, du Bos, Maritain, Bernanos and the others had over Gide, Mme Gide and God. Say what you like, God is really more interesting than human beings are and Mauriac more interesting than Robbe-Grillet.’

  ‘My garden is a paradise. Having been mocked for long grass and weeds I am now praised by professional gardeners for the prettiness. Then, Hassan has practically repainted the whole house while I was away—he is a good boy, the best thing that has happened for ages.’

  Even out of the hospital she had to submit to more tests: ‘a liver test (what for? my liver has always been pristine) and it has tickled me up properly and I’m in that state no pain killer can cope with…. But it will all calm down,’ she added optimistically.

  In the meantime she told Sir Hugh: ‘I’ve asked for two lots of page proofs [of Frederick]—I’m so anxious for your verdict. I only pray the printers will have attended to the work I did on the galleys. Isn’t the misprinting horrible nowadays? The papers often read like a joke—nobody cares a bit. You never see a misprint in old books and we know Balzac wrote his novels on the proofs. Now they charge you pounds for the tiniest alteration and telephone from London begging you to think again on account of their wretched time table! Oh how I hope I shall go to a different kind of world next time—I would like to be a pretty young general and gallop over Europe with Frederick the Great and never have another ache or pain. All very well, Frederick himself was never without one and Maréchal de Belleisle had to give up soldiering because of his sciatica. One can’t escape I suppose in any century.’

  Though she confessed that she could hardly enjoy seeing people she decided to go to Venice in July: ‘I put cards on the table to Anna Maria [Cicogna]—how often I have to stay in bed, etc., and asked if she really wanted me. She says all will turn themselves into nannies to look after me—she is a good friend. So I’ll risk it… I’ve been looking at old letters. G.M. Young used to write “My Dearest Creature”, how too funny—it all seems and indeed is another world.’

  On 21st May: ‘I’m off, full of hopes, to the doctor I’ve always wanted but who wouldn’t take me on until I’d been to do all the tests. Now the other doctors have given him the green light. Meanwhile X has put my blood in a box which is going to cure me—so let’s hope. I’ve had a perfectly horrible time of late…’

  ‘I’ve also seen Jamie [Hamilton] and A.D. Peters [Nancy’s agent] who both came between aeroplanes. I think they want to make sure that the goose who lays the golden eggs isn’t on her way out. They are printing 60,000 more Pompadours, even I am impressed. I also had the good Joy [Law] and her hubby to work on the proofs of Frederick, so I’ve been pretty busy… I go to Venice l0th July if Italy is still on the map, it sounds very groggy.’

  ‘Now send for a whacking brekker,’ she wrote Sir Hugh (24th May): ‘I am much better. I’ve got a new doctor who very gently, with a trembling motion, is putting my back into place—I’m so much better already that I believe he may cure me altogether. You ARE kind to be interested.’

  ‘I’ve been doing my proofs, my goodness the modern printer, I’ve never in a long life seen such a mess! I thought people were educated nowadays. However, the publisher assures me that all may yet be well.’

  ‘There’s a new book on the Poisons (Louis XIV) which strictly between you and me because it sounds rather swanky to say so, is the Sun King very slightly rewritten. I hardly could believe my eyes as I read it. It’s scissors and paste in style, a long quotation in almost every paragraph. I found this so irritating that I began to wonder if I’ve done the same thing too much in Frederick. I thought that the sound of his voice would help to bring him alive and I have continually quoted from his writings. Oh dear, now I have doubts. What do the great biographers do about that? (The greatest of all, Boswell, never stops of course). I began it in Voltaire in Love and am now wondering if it’s not a boring technique. I think the fact is this book is awfully bad apart from the style.’

  ‘The angelic Anna Maria won’t mind if I can’t always put in an appearance,’ she told Raymond Mortimer at the same time. ‘I’ve been asked to write about a forgotten masterpiece for an American mag (1000 dollars). The forgotten master pieces already bagged are: Wuthering Heights; À la Recherche, etc, Paradise Lost and two others equally obscure… I’ve just read Elena Vlachov’s book she sent me. Very evocative of Athens where I shall never go again now that Mark is dead—including a sort of pervading silliness which I fear is a trait of the no doubt noble Greeks. We used to see quite a lot of her—she is the Anna Maria of Athens with a lovely beach where we used to swim. I can’t make out what has happened to her husband, it looks in the book as if he is quietly starving to death in her flat.’

  ‘David Pryce-Jones says… that the eight to fourteen-year-olds hate and despise the hippies, isn’t it too funny to think of them already overtaken by the still younger generation. Liliane [de Rothschild] has had her porte cochère blown in by a bomb and has a police guard. Debo, in Ireland, had to have a policeman whenever she left the house. What a world! Andrew [Duke of Devonshire] was rung up and asked how the Sinn Feiners got into Lismore? “By the door I should imagine.” They, the Devs, had left or one envisages Debo as Marie-Antoinette with the mob in her bedroom.’

  Experience had attenuated and finally extinguished Nancy’s Socialist sympathies. Under the Labour government she feared that ‘the old land is running down like an old grandfather clock,’ and to Raymond Mortimer she declared (31st May, 1970): ‘I am an old fashioned Liberal and I strongly feel that if blacks want to play cricket (strikes me as odd but let that pass) they ought to be allowed to. But if people must demonstrate I suppose it is cheaper, and nicer, for the police to stop the ‘ole thing. Since living—well, not actually living, co-existing—with Hassan, now known as the Beamish Boy, my view of le tiers monde is greatly modified. He is a dear soul but the thought of giving him a vote makes me shriek. My considered opinion is that the world has been wretched ever since the abolition of slavery. À bas Wilberforce. Beamish is a slave (he knelt to his former owner to thank for being given to me) and look how happy we both are. Look I mean come and look.’

  ‘It was Gold Cup day at the rue d’Artois yesterday, many new rooms have been opened at the Château so the invités more dead than alive came here to be refreshed. I had a steady stream from 12.30 onwards. Unfortunately I had an awful pain—it has begun again, oh what can it be? I’m keeping the only pill which holds it off without, so far as I can see, demolishing me in other ways, for Venice because it is only magic for about a fortnight at a time.’

  Nancy’s garden remained her greatest solace. To Alvilde Lees-Milne, who shared her love of nature, she wrote in early June: ‘Fearful drama going on about the blackbirds’ nest which has been half blown down while two vile cats sit gazing at it. Hassan being so good about it, he must think one is a bit mad. But he has tied it up as if it were the treasure of the Incas. Do send the name of the anti-cat stuff or better still to save time tell Harrods to send it here on my account. There are still only eggs so it will be a fortnight before the birdies fly… I wish you could see the garden now there is the annual explosion of roses, really wonderful because of the mixture of colours, one forgets how divine it is. No credit to me, I found these wonderful roses.’

  ‘I think I am better. The morning is horrid but the pain doesn’t last so long and for several days has not come back after my bath. Touch wood. The doctor does a little more each time but won’t see me more than once a week.’ Ten days later, ‘Hassan put his curly head among the roses and announced three half-fledged babies (blackbirds) but I dread the day when they fly.’

  14

  NANCY’S NEXT AND last visit to Venice, like the next and last years of her life, was a losing battle with bouts of agony. Venice itself, where Wagner and Diaghilev and the hero of Thomas Mann’s famous story had died, always meant abundance o
f life and health to Nancy, and in her heart she may still have expected a miraculous cure there. Her life wish exceeded any death wish she felt in time of torment. Her hostess Anna Maria Cicogna provided her with the society she most enjoyed, and Prince Clary, whom she called ‘Alph the Sacred River’, a perambulating Almanac de Gotha, was an endless source of the recondite information she hankered after. Other Venetian friends led the same sort of existence as their ancestors in the eighteenth century, except that sea and sun-bathing on the Lido had replaced card-playing on the Brenta. The gossip was lively, frivolous, and sprinkled with salty jokes. And there was the vaudeville of the English, who behaved so oddly near the Adriatic, whether ‘draped round Cipriani’s pool’ or ‘undressing to stark in the cabin with curtains wide open—a wondrous sight’—in the case of a buxom duchess.

  ‘Life ticks on most agreeably here,’ she wrote. But for once her supreme effort to carry on normally was defeated. The zigzags of her ‘upping and downing’ were as acute as they were sudden. To Alvilde Lees-Milne she wrote on 23rd July: ‘I’ve spent half my time on an electric blanket, fearfully lame and hardly able to hobble. However, yesterday Anna Maria anted up a doctor who rather frightened me with some rough stuff (manipulation) but who has considerably relieved me for the moment. Time will show. If it could be a cure my life would be transformed—I was beginning to have serious thoughts of suicide because how can one enjoy anything in such a state? Cecil [Beaton] says there is a £400 pill which kills at once. Who sells this lovely stuff?’