Nancy Mitford

by Nancy Mitford

  Mindful of the annoyance caused by Jessica’s Hons and Rebels, she wrote to her sister Debo (29th October, 1971): ‘I repeat and can’t repeat too often that all sisters will receive copies of the book and will have the right of veto. If one writes an auto biography it’s not enough, as so many people seem to suppose, to tell how many housemaids one’s father employed—one must unmask oneself. Roughly speaking I shall say what an unsatisfactory relationship I had with Muv to explain my love for old ladies: Aunt Vi (Peter’s), Mrs Ham, Mme Costa, and others. I would like vaguely to try and find out if this relationship, shared with Decca and Honks [Diana] but not with you and Tom, was one’s fault or hers. The others loved her in old age. I deeply respected her and liked her company and jokes but never loved her. Owing to your right of veto I shan’t mind asking questions—shan’t leave things out for fear of annoying which might not annoy at all. That was Decca’s great mistake in my view. I might make each of you write a review of Decca’s book. Incidentally my book will begin in 1945 when I came here with flashbacks at the death of Bowd [Unity], Muv and Farve. I won’t bore the public again with our childhood to the extent of more than a few pages. Never thought of Muv as bossy, far too vague.’

  Nancy’s reticence was too deeply ingrained to enable her to unmask herself. She could skate on the thinnest of ice but that is a different matter. We may be sure that she would have skated most gracefully in her memoirs. While she avoided probing surfaces and considered that religion, for instance, was a private concern, she respected Roman Catholicism. As Mme Costa’s guest at Fontaines she was surrounded by conservative Catholics whose company she enjoyed, but she smiled sceptically at some of the dogmas professed by Evelyn Waugh. In a letter to Raymond Mortimer (27th March, 1972) she stated candidly: ‘The longer I live the more Christian I become—Christian civilisation with all its faults has been by far the best in historical times, do admit.’ And again: ‘Given the evil of human nature and the horrors of the Ancient World it seems to me there was a slow, very slow improvement—chivalry, Sir Philip Sydney, St Louis (don’t tease about the Crusades please), some humble little saints like Sainte-Beuve who was just like Marie…’

  Presumably Mortimer was an agnostic, for she expostulated with him: ‘How can you say we know literally nothing of somebody among whose works we live? And certainly He has always been an interesting topic—you can’t deny that. Do you know Fulco’s [Duke of Verdura’s] story—St Peter to the assembled throng: “You are about to see God and there are one or two things I want to tell you—in the first place She’s black.”’

  ‘Oh the jazzy Mass I saw on the télé The Catholics here say the true religion will come back to us from the East…’

  Nearest to religion, almost confused with it, was Nancy’s attachment to her sisters. What she considered her mother’s vagueness was probably the veneer of a reticence stronger than her own, which prevented her from communicating the real warmth of her affection. And Nancy longed for this warmth. Mme Costa was French, Mrs. Hammersley half French; they and her Italian friends could express their love in so many ways without that embarrassing self-consciousness which is peculiarly English. The constant muzzling of emotion tends to freeze the heart. With her sisters she could share her most intimate feelings; they were united by their extraordinary childhood under Lord Redesdale’s patriarchal domination.

  In September 1968 Nancy had told Mark Ogilvie-Grant: ‘Debo came for two days, and she and Diana and I have got a great craving for Farve so we’re going to get a medium and call up the old boy. Rosamond [Lehmann] who talks to her little girl got the Wid the other day. She said it’s better here than I’d imagined. This is so unlike her that we are rather shaken, but as Diana says they won’t be able to pull the wool over our heads over Farve,’ And later: ‘Don Antonio [our Chilean friend Gandarillas] says he is a first-class medium and will get Farve for us in no time. Woman writes to say she’ll come as she’s sure he would be easy “to contact”. I fear he might start using bad language at Tony who is not the kind of person he really likes. There might be references to nuts—better a stranger…’

  Though Nancy might not have ‘unmasked’ herself in memoirs it is probable that she held many a rich surprise in store. We may be certain of a passionate tribute to France. As she told Raymond Mortimer (12th July 1972): ‘There’s at last a literary agent here who seems clever and has forced Pompadour down the throats of the Yugoslavs. He’s called Ulmann. Came to see me and began wailing (c’est de sa race) about Paris. I said “You ought to see London”. One must never compare anything French with other countries, only with perfection. Exactly what I feel.’

  When I begged her to persevere and make notes Nancy replied (8th December, 197l): ‘It’s sometimes difficult for me to write owing to the muzziness induced by very strong pain killers—then of course when I can write it has to be to the bank and so on. What will happen to my Souvenirs?’

  ‘Mrs Law, who gets the pictures for my books, thought she’d make a spot of cash by bringing out a book called The Making of a Book which would be her and my letters on the subject. So she had mine typed at great expense and found there was at least one major libel suit in each as well as one or two suicides. I’m glad to say it is doctors and publishers who come under fire, not one’s friends. Well, they are pathetic, so bad at their work. In my Souvenirs the people are nearly always dead. Diana went to a concert for Sauguet—somebody remarked there are very few gens de connaissance here. Diana said All dead and the word went round all dead all dead.’

  Six months later she wrote to Raymond Mortimer: ‘If I could get better and write my memoirs I promise they would amuse and not embarrass you, but I feel I never will. I can’t help slightly wishing to be dead, my life has become such a bore.’

  If she could get better… She had been told that she was suffering from an inflammation of a nerve root for which there was no remedy; that it generally lasted a few years when the nerve would wear itself out. It had lasted three years when she wrote to Raymond Mortimer: ‘That is a huge relief as everything so far has made me worse. He (the soi-disant best neurologist in Europe) gave me an injectable pain killer to be used if I feel I must… My great mistake was going to London, allowing all those treatments which lowered my general health and left me £3000 poorer—quite serious as I can’t work. However, I got that for my beautiful Chinese screens which have gone, not to some hateful museum but to a young man who adores them and has arranged a special room for them.’

  ‘I have joined you as a Legionary of Honour. I’m most excessively pleased. But nobody will ever know as the Figaro, didn’t say a word—only mentioned a historian of intense vulgarity called Decaux (television programmes about, for instance, les amours de Fersen).’

  The Légion d’Honneur was, she said, the only honour she had ever wanted and she looked forward to sewing the red ribbon on her dresses, but she was glued to her bed ‘crunching pain killers which really and truly don’t do much.’ She could only see her garden, ‘incredibly pretty in a Beatrix Potterish way’, from the bedroom window.

  There was a repetition of blackbird drama: ‘two huge cats fell on my half tame hen blackbird. Hassan heard her screams and rescued her but she has got a wing down and can’t fly. I put her loose in my bathroom but she wouldn’t eat so I had the choice between seeing her die of starvation every time I went to the loo or putting her out again to almost certain death in the garden. I’ve done the latter… The birdie had a good rest, nearly two days, and that’s all one can do for her. Forcible feeding? I didn’t want to upset her any more. I’ve got a wing down myself and know what it’s like.’

  She read so rapidly that she clamoured for more books, most of which were sent to her by Handy Buchanan, her former partner at Heywood Hill’s. ‘Evelyn and the bookshop are greatly missed by me as you guessed,’ she told him (25th April, 1972). ‘In the case of Evelyn it’s the teasing one misses, as with Osbert, Victor, Mark Ogilvie-Grant and others…’ [Sentence unfinished.] Next day. ‘I leave th
is to show the kind of dottiness that overcomes me owing to the dope I must take. It is the answer to those who say I ought to make an effort and write a book! Your kind letter. A neighbour has counted up about seven books which I ought to have read and will enjoy so I’m no longer desperate. I wake up at six and lie waiting for the pain to begin which it does at about nine, so you see it is essential to have something to read… Trollope. Yes, I know all the Ducal novels. I had thought the clergymen would bore me but I note that Barchester Towers is his very best, or at least the first two thirds of it… I think please I had better have the Gibbon as an insurance—I love Oxford Classics and Penguins because I can read them flat on my back. But now those silly Penguins are bringing out Frederick large, floppy and unreadable, having asked and then not taken my advice! All the same Handy try to sell it because I can’t work at present as you see—I utterly depend on my old books for a spot of nourishment. P.S. About Trollope. Don’t feel drawn to the one before Barch: but would like the next two chosen by you. Have read The Small House.’

  To me Nancy wrote at the same time: ‘Thrillers fail to thrill me except Simenon. But I did absolutely love that book about trying to kill the Général: The Day of the Jackal. So did the Colonel, who found few mistakes which must be a good sign. I’ve just been reading a book by the Hayters’ daughter called Hayter of the Bourgeoisie. It’s about the coming revolution (How I hate being called a Bourgeois, don’t you?). The book is incredibly naif and one simply longs to argue. For instance she says millionaires—all fairly well off people are called millionaires—will have to give up holidays on the Mediterranean. But they have, ages ago, driven away by the workers. The great comfort is how much the workers are going to loathe the rules laid down by Miss H. No cosmetics to be allowed—all motor cars to be pooled and only used for an emergency—holidays to be taken in turns. Then we’ve got to be good and give up our possessions. But why should a black man have my Longhi rather than me? The blacks are the only people good and disinterested enough to govern us. It’s a very funny book if it were not so terrifying. Of course I know all the stuff from Sister Decca. Both ladies seem to think we are in mid-nineteenth century.’

  ‘I’m now reading The Miserables—one is struck on every page by the amazing improvements there have been in 150 years.’

  ‘What a dull letter. I’ll try and do better in a few days. I wanted to make a sign of life.’

  Again; ‘Gladwyn’s memoirs are dazzling, the best political memoirs I’ve read for years. What a terrifying world we do live in!’

  After receiving the Légion d’Honneur Nancy was awarded the C.B.E. ‘I’d never heard of the C.B.E. but of course I’m delighted to have it now that I know Raymond [Mortimer] and Rose Macaulay have,’ she told Roger Machell. ‘I hear it ranks above a knight’s widow, oh good. There is no more B.E. so at first I thought it was a joke until I remembered there was no real Golden Fleece or Holy Ghost, all have been shadowy knightly dreams. I think it was so brilliant of Napoleon to have the same order for everybody.’ To Robin McDouall she wrote (19th May, 1972): ‘I don’t live in the world of honours and had to look up to see what C.B.E. is. I suppose it’s what Evelyn [Waugh] said was an insult and refused. But I accepted with pleasure as a mark that it is not thought unpatriotic for me to live abroad… About being called Mitford, a man came from the Embassy with all the forms etc and I had to decide. I asked his advice, which was for M. on the grounds that I am being rewarded for what I have signed M. Had I not already written some (very poor) books before marriage I would have certainly called myself Mrs Rodd but as I didn’t I think it is more sensible to be M. for the medal. Anyway it’s done now.’

  Enclosing a printed card in a letter to me: ‘Miss Nancy Mitford is unable to do as you ask’, she added, ‘This is what you need. You’ll find it serves every purpose in an amazing way. I only use it on Americans as one doesn’t want to hurt people’s feelings and they haven’t got any.’ Reminding her that I was half American and interspersing my letters with Mark Twainish Americanisms was one of my teases, but she insisted that I was a European pukka sahib malgré moi. I treated her ‘Angry-Saxon’ attitude as just another tease.

  On 21st July she wrote to Raymond Mortimer: ‘I have nothing but misfortunes to recount… Leaning slightly to pick up a book I had a pain like the end of the world… Everything is torment… Perhaps I’ll get better but it’s now ten days since the worst occurred and I can’t put my hand out for a glass of water without pain all over my body… Evangeline [Bruce] is very kind to me—she rings up for a little chat, having found out the hour when I am most human, and sends Bath Oliver biscuits for which I have a craving as of a pregnant woman… A nice man from the BBC télé came to see me. He plans a sort of Forsyte Saga from my books. At present he is doing Clochemerle. I became quite excited until I heard it will take four years…’ (In parenthesis Evangeline Bruce was the American wife of the American Ambassador.)

  Hitherto Nancy had found temporary relief in books, but in August she wrote to me (and one marvelled that she could still write so neatly and clearly): ‘I literally can’t read, it’s a new horror because until now I’ve been saved by reading. I can’t concentrate, it’s the pain killers I’m obliged to take… When I feel that I can read something I take half a page of Gibbon, so interesting and so marvellously written it gives one a taste for life.’

  Nancy’s rare disease continued to baffle the physicians though they could not fail to realize its gravity. Her general condition deteriorated. So intense was the pain that she was prevailed upon to return to the Nuffield Hospital in London, whence she wrote to me on 17th December that according to the doctors she had been ‘within inches of an agonizing death (and with the agony so that I begged to die)… I still see nobody but quiet women friends who bring soup. I am completely exhausted after four years of torment—well, think of it, a cancer inside a vertebra bursting its way out. The crack is mending now that my truly wonderful young doctors have got to work on me. I daresay the fatigue is actually worse than when I was iller. I feel quite done up…’

  29th December: ‘I suppose the truth is that I shall have to lead a sort of half life in my nice little house with pain killers at hand. Can’t complain. Dr Powell Brett says I would have been dead in three weeks when Cynthia [Lady Gladwyn] gathered me up and brought me here. I suppose I’m pleased that she did but the struggle up the slope is tedious. P-B asked me yesterday if I thought it worth while and I said 50/50 but luckily these things are not arranged by us. He is a very go-ahead young man and thinks as I do that the doctors who let thalidomide babies live were literal criminals.’

  On 26th January, 1973, Nancy believed she was cured: ‘I go home on Tuesday by night ferry… I’ve had five months here (and a nasty letter from the Treasury)—such a dull way of spending one’s pathetic savings. However, I’m released from my pain which was terrible at worst and never otherwise than vile.’

  The magical release did not last long after her return to Versailles. She endured another six months of agony and weakness, and she continued to write poignant letters to her friends. ‘I’ve got a nurse,’ she told me on 30th March, ‘a real infirmière de luxe who toddles about on high heels and waters my flowers while a good French peasant washes ME. Nursey not very kind. She says she found me crying with pain in my sleep—when I woke up the tears turned to screams but she didn’t seem to mind very much! I said can’t I have an injection but she administered a huge pill which I must say did the trick. Now I’m all right for a while. I like writing letters you know.’ ‘I like your letters the best, do keep on—at present I can’t,’ she wrote again on 7th April.

  My problem was to know what to say, but I wrote whatever I imagined might amuse her and sent her light holiday novels, such as Vestal Fires.

  The squalid excerpts from Evelyn Waugh’s diary recently published, so difficult to associate with the author we both admired, disconcerted her but as she remarked to Christopher Sykes, who was engaged on his biography: ‘Your task becomes
more interesting than it seemed at first.’

  I suspected that Evelyn’s diary was no more than an aide-mémoire not intended for publication. With Evelyn (as occasionally with Nancy) one was impressed by the truth of Logan Pearsall Smith’s aphorism: ‘Hearts that are delicate and kind and tongues that are neither—these make the finest company in the world.’

  What posthumous teases and shocks were still in store for Evelyn’s friends? His marginal notes to Cyril Connolly’s Unquiet Grave had caused Nancy to exclaim: ‘Wasn’t Evelyn a monster—oh how I miss him!’ At the time of the anti-death penalty bill he had written to Nancy saying: ‘Smartyboots [his nickname for Connolly] is in a fearful state over this bill—like all Irishmen he has a healthy terror of the gallows.’

  Cyril Connolly had attended the last luncheon party given by Nancy in the rue d’Artois, which she described to Raymond Mortimer. ‘Cyril did that thing I call rude of, as if one’s entrée were sure to be uneatable, bringing plover’s eggs from Hédiard. They were raw. So the first ones went over every body’s clothes and the second lot were hot… I am told that plover’s eggs are sold raw here and in Holland because they are thought to be better when freshly cooked. Another joke (black) of that awful meal was that P. had never heard of eating them so he wasn’t a bit impressed by le don Connolly… His [Cyril’s] wife was quite amiable but how I pitied her. Diana thinks those eggs are £3 each and I dare say they are not very rich…’