Nancy Mitford

by Selina Hastings

  The Slade was then under the directorship of the great Professor Tonks, a tall, thin, hawk-eyed cynic with little patience for the untalented, among whom, it has to be said, Nancy must unfortunately be counted. The two masters, nicknamed by Nancy the Bullies, were so awful to her, she wailed to Tom: ‘They come up & say What a very depressing drawing I wonder how you manage to draw so foully, have you never had a pencil in your hand before … I now burst into loud sobs the moment one comes into the room, hoping to soften them.’ She didn’t stick it for long: the lack of encouragement was too depressing, and there was little time for fun as she had to leave Rutland Gate soon after nine and did not return home till the late afternoon. At lunchtime she usually managed to persuade Middy, or a loyal sister with time on her hands, to join her for a snack in Heal’s or a sixpenny plate of what they contemptuously referred to as ‘decaying vegetation’ at Shearn’s vegetarian restaurant. Every evening she went out, boasting to Diana dying of boredom in the country, ‘I’m having a wonderful time, dances nearly every night especially before Lent, one week I danced five nights running & a play the 6th night & again Monday Tuesday Wednesday of the next week.’ When nothing better was offered she went to the cinema with Middy, and those two (in their own eyes) sophisticated young women would reduce each other to fits of laughter by loudly pretending to be Germans. ‘Every time someone came in we said Der ess Franz or Gert or Wilhelm & waved at them with our hankies We also quarrelled in guttural tones about whether we hated England or France most, & ate chocolates noisily. At last John Child, who was with us, was so shamed that he went. It really was fun & we laughed quite a lot.’

  When at weekends Nancy came home, it was to the new house, Swinbrook. Farve had promised great things of Swinbrook. Originally a Georgian farmhouse, it had been extensively rebuilt to his exacting specifications. There was to be a squash court and tennis court, and each daughter for the first time was to have a room of her own. But, until the actual move, no one had seen it. The family had been in Paris, then Muv on her return had been too busy supervising the move into Rutland Gate to spare the time to look at what was going on – an oversight for which she now deeply blamed herself. For Swinbrook was a disaster. The situation, it is true, was beautiful, up on the hill a mile outside the village and overlooking the green and gentle Windrush valley. But the house itself was hideous, a great, grim stone barracks entirely without grace or charm, in appearance closer to an institution than a family home. Inside the look was crudely rustic with rough-hewn stone fireplaces, heavy oak beams and doors made of unseasoned elm which warped and let through the draughts. It was a cold house and coldest of all were the children’s bedrooms on the top floor where fires were not allowed; in the winter the girls often woke to find their sponges solid with ice. The younger ones spent many winter afternoons giggling and whispering in the linen cupboard, a warm, cosy little room with a window, lined with hot-water pipes2. There was no privacy, no quiet library where Tom could play the piano and Nancy lie curled up on the sofa reading. Tom never played now as the piano was in the drawing-room, a busy communal centre where people were always dashing in and out and banging the door; and the books had been put in Farve’s business-room where visitors were not encouraged. ‘Deep depression has the Mitford family in its clutches,’ Nancy wrote to Tom soon after they moved in. ‘The birds never speak save to curse or groan & the rest of us are overcome with gloom Really this house is too hideous for words & its rather pathetic attempt at aesthetic purity makes it in my opinion worse. I mean I would rather it were frankly hideous Victorian because then it would at least have atmosphere whereas at present it is like a barn rather badly converted into a temporary dwelling place & filled with extremely beautiful & quite inappropriate furniture …

  ‘However we have much to be thankful for having a roof over our head I always have said.’

  Farve was hurt by the family’s lack of appreciation, and roared as though in pain at Nancy’s barbed remarks about ‘The Buildings’ or ‘Swine Brook’, as she called the house. (Her letters to her father were now addressed to Builder Redesdale, The Buildings, South Lawn – the original name of the house.) He gave up his beloved fishing altogether and was away from home much more often, in winter in London, taking refuge in the House of Lords and in his club, and in summer going up to Scotland to shoot.

  Once the season was over at the end of July, Nancy herself went north for a round of house-parties. It was something to do, although she had little in common with the hearty, sporting couples, all tweeds and twin-sets, who spent August north of the Border, the husbands damning and blasting their way across the grouse-moors while their wives spent the day embroidering chair-covers and discussing the servant-problem. The servant-problem was of small interest to Nancy, nor did she much care for following the guns and having to sit in the butts for hours at a time in total silence and frozen to the marrow. As she did when at home, she read and read (Byron, Edith Sitwell, Oscar Wilde) and wrote long letters to her brother. ‘I’m going to write a stirring poem against hearties. Aren’t they too loathesome. Most of them. Lets have an anti-sport league. Lets go quite soon to Kr [their imaginary country] … Let’s go abroad for two years together, we could buy a small palace in Venice by way of a pied-à-terre & a very tiny but luxurious flat in Paris. Then we could take the Rolls & go all over the place, in fact I can’t see why we should ever return to England at all, unless to attend to the publication of our poems & even that we could easily do by letter, Byron did. Then we can search all Europe for a suitable site for Kr & then while its being built we’ll go to Ethiopia to get a good cheap Ethiopian & after that we shall be quite rangé.’

  But meanwhile she was in Scotland, staying at Aden, the Milnes-Gaskells’ house, where she was saved from complete despair by the presence of Archer Clive, a handsome young Grenadier Guards officer from Herefordshire, who with his sister Mary were allies in the war between aesthete and hearty. Both were lively and agreeable, occasionally read books, and Archer’s half-flirtatious banter Nancy found immensely exhilarating. ‘Archer is being too beastly,’ she wrote delightedly to Tom. ‘He never spoke to me yesterday except to say he’d like to bang my head on the floor & the day before he said among other acid remarks that if it weren’t for my extraordinary ideas and my men friends I should be quite nice. Is this behaving like an officer & gentleman?’ Unfortunately, after a few days the Clives left, to be replaced by ‘Two perfectly dire people … by name of Meynell … The boy is nul – they both are. Most objectionable I call them. Mary & I are going to try & shock them by pretending we drug. Margaret Leicester Warren (whom I can’t stand) is also here & I am miserable because the Clives (who I adore really) have gone … If Mary weren’t here I’d commit suicide. I think perhaps Margaret L W is the worst because she’s by way of being intellectual & wrote a brochure on Reynolds!!!!!!!! I sigh for Archer because he is at any rate a very alive person with extremely sound if unoriginal ideas & I like arguing with him. All these people are like half dead flies. Blast them. However Mary says they are very frightened of me which cheers me enormously.’

  Farve joined her at Aden and they went on to stay with Great-Aunt Mabell Airlie3 at Airlie Castle. Aunt Mabell, although formidable in appearance with her stately deportment and high pompadour of white hair – she was Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Mary whom in style she rather resembled – was fond of young people and easy to get on with, full of jokes and pleasant pastimes (‘Aunt Mabel told our fortunes last night & Farve is going to prison for 7 years!!!!’). Here Nancy found a life of Byron, for whom she had developed a romantic passion. ‘I have to read it in private though because I’m sure Aunt M wouldn’t think it pure – it isn’t at all. The wardrobe in my room belonged to Melbourne’s sister Lady Cowper so I like to think that the lovely Caroline Lamb probably gazed at herself in the mirror of it … Darling angel Byron theres no one alas like that now. What a dull age we do live in to be sure, imagine living in 1812 sort of date with Napoleon Byron Shelley Keats Lady Hami
lton Caroline Lamb & all sorts of other fascinating people alive. Of course Mrs. Hemans lived then too which is rather a come down & we have got the Sitwells & Brian [Howard]!!!!!’ Archer was still very much on her mind. His sister Mary had been writing to Nancy encouraging her to read Kipling, but Nancy couldn’t take to Kipling’s ‘awful poems’: it was Mary’s brother she wanted to hear about, not her taste in poetry. ‘Sometimes do lets invent a code, there is something I want to say now but Muv’s awful theory that one should never write down anything that couldn’t be read in court puts me off somewhat … I shall probably marry quite soon & then I shall be so taken up with having babies & things that you’ll never see me & certainly never hear from me from years end to years end. Boo what a truly pleasing prospect. If only I had any real talent I would so much rather remain single like Edith Sitwell. No I think it would probably be nicer to be married really or shall I become a celebrated demi mondaine one of the really snappy ones. I’m afraid my face is too round you need a long & somewhat haggard one for that.’

  After leaving Airlie, she and Farve parted company, Nancy to go on to Cullen to stay with a new friend, Nina Seafield, a cousin of Mark Ogilvie-Grant. Nina was a peeress in her own right, having inherited her title, Countess of Seafield, at the age of nine. At the age of nine, she inherited, too, vast estates in Scotland and an immense fortune. That such a young girl – two years younger than Nancy – should be in possession of such enormous wealth seemed to Muv not at all a Good Thing: she was afraid that Nina would be wild and have a bad influence on Nancy. For this reason she did what she could, without actually forbidding it, to discourage the friendship. ‘I had a terrific fight with Muv about staying with Nina & she said at last go if you like but I’d rather you didn’t which is always so unsatisfactory so I said I’d go … I think at 22 one is old enough to choose ones own friends dont you, especially as I’m to pay for it myself.’ But Nina wasn’t really wild: Muv need not have worried. A merry, dumpy little thing with red hair, white skin and an unmistakable resemblance to Queen Victoria, Nina was rather shy. The company she most enjoyed was that of her cousin Mark and his aesthete friends, such as Harold Acton, Oliver Messel and Brian Howard, the sort of young man in fact with whom Nancy was happiest. But on this occasion there was no party at Cullen. ‘All those young men have gone off to Mount Athos to stay in the monastery there doesn’t it sound divine.’ Nancy revelled in the luxury of Cullen, a great, gaunt, baronial pile like a Victorian setting for Hamlet. She could lie in bed as late as she pleased, read all the latest books and magazines, gossip and giggle with Nina, and like a naughty schoolgirl experiment with drink. ‘I am very drunk on one of Nina’s cocktails,’ she wrote to Tom. ‘Gosh I am feeling funny all dizzy do you know. Nina’s cocktails are pure gin & vermouth as far as I can make out & one drinks ’em out of enormous wine glasses. I really must give up this pernicious habit or my young health will be ruined & I shall rush round at Swinbrook having d.t.s. a dreadful fate for so young a virgin & so shaming for my family. There its dinner time I must sway downstairs with a hiccough so will finish later.’

  In October Nancy was back in London. As the house in Rutland Gate was let, it was arranged that she should board with Middy O’Neill who was living with her grandmother in Queen’s Gate. Lady O’Neill was even more of a disciplinarian than Farve and the two girls were constantly in trouble, their most innocent pastimes construed as ‘wanton depravity’. The worst row was the consequence of an afternoon party for which Nancy, in a dashing attempt to emulate the ‘theme parties’ of the Bright Young Things, hired a Punch and Judy show from Harrods. She and Middy invited about twenty friends, including her Uncles Rupert and Jack, and the fun had, it is true, got a little out of hand – ‘[It] was a huge success & everyone got so worked up & rowdy that finally Pat [Cameron] was rolled up in a dust sheet & carried to the bath room where the more fervent spirits were with difficulty dissuaded from plunging him in the bath!’ This was more than enough for Lady O’Neill: the girls were accused of holding an orgy and Nancy was sent home in disgrace.

  Although Nancy never came to like Swinbrook, ‘the horror of the Buildings is greatly mitigated for me as I have been given a room for studio,’ she wrote to Tom. ‘I literally live in it all the time, just seeing the birds at meal times. I am writing in it now. You can imagine what a difference this makes, living in that communal room surrounded by shrieking babies was no joke.’ She filled in the time by learning to drive, learning to ride astride, taking a course in Burford on the Romantic poets (‘Tom how can you read philosophical meaning into Keat’s [sic] odes?’), and guitar lessons from a truly sweet little man in Oxford. ‘My piece is called Rock Waltze & I play about a note a minute & Middy said in rather a tired voice as I played the same bar for the 50th time “we shall all be dancing to it soon” …’

  All this was perfectly agreeable and came well within the definitions of suitable behaviour for an unmarried daughter. What was not considered suitable, however, were the friends she chose to invite to the house. To Nancy’s girl-friends Farve had no objection, indeed often went out of his way to be charming; but her men friends he could not abide. Muv, too, disapproved of them – ‘What a set!’ she would exclaim in disgust – but at least while they were in the house she kept her feelings to herself. Farve, on the other hand, could be frighteningly rude. He despised and disliked these effeminate young men who didn’t know one end of a gun from the other, and he made no effort to conceal his dislike. ‘Sewer’ was his favourite epithet when referring to them: ‘Damned sewers!’ One young man was thrown out of the house when Farve caught sight of a comb peeping out of his breast-pocket; another was threatened with a horse-whipping for putting his feet on the sofa; the shy and diffident Peter Watson was referred to, in his hearing, as ‘that hog Watson’; and Jim Lees-Milne, a quiet boy who had been at Eton with Tom, provoked a terrifying explosion at dinner by venturing the opinion that it was long enough after the end of the war for anti-German propaganda to stop. ‘You damned young puppy!’ Farve shouted, white with rage, and, getting up from the table, stalked out of the room. It was behaviour which left Nancy very nearly as angry as her father. ‘I sometimes think that parties here are more misery than pleasure … I haven’t been in such a ghastly temper for years & for once wasn’t at all put about by Farve’s furious shouting & would gladly have been very rude to him … Really parties here are impossible The truth is that the poor old man having no building left to do is in a very bad temper.’

  Intolerable though this was, it must be said in Farve’s defence that Nancy’s young men might have been expressly designed to annoy him. Frivolous and effeminate, they lolled about the drawing-room shrieking with laughter and repeating outrageous stories about each other, retailed in the exaggerated idiom of the period – ‘utterly divine!’, ‘too too sick-making!’ The sight of them in their Charvet ties, polo-necked sweaters and Oxford bags drove Farve, of the canvas gaiters and sensible moleskin waistcoat, into a frenzy. Just occasionally he would inexplicably take a liking to one of them. Mark, for instance, became a great favourite, a position almost as difficult to endure as that of sewer, for Farve liked the company of his favourites, particularly at meals. Mark was expected to be down for breakfast punctually at eight to be greeted by Farve’s roar of welcome as he lifted the lid of the silver chafing-dish, ‘Brains for breakfast, Mark!’ The two youngest girls, Decca and Debo, made up a tiresome ditty with which they dogged Mark’s every appearance: ‘Brains for breakfast, Mark! Brains for breakfast, Mark! Oh, the damn sewer! Oh, the damn sewer!’

  Another exception was Robert Byron. Like Nina, he bore an uncanny resemblance to Queen Victoria, a quality which, late at night and after too much to drink, he was given to exploiting, pulling down his eyes and placing a napkin on his head. At Oxford he was one of the first to start the cult for Victoriana, filling his rooms at Merton with Berlin-work pictures and shell flowers under glass domes. He specialised in professing unconventional opinions which he defended with passion
, at the same time pouring scorn on the more traditional tastes of his friends. Trash! Muck! Rubbish! he would shout when the conversation turned to the works of Shakespeare or the sculpture of classical Greece. Nancy found him entrancing. ‘Isn’t Robert simply killing,’ she wrote to Tom. ‘I love it when he talks about poetry & books, he seems to hate everything which ordinary people like!’ Greatly daring, she invited him to Swinbrook. But, ‘Would you believe it, the family really liked Robert! We had a perfectly wild weekend … Honestly I’ve never laughed so much. We got up a terrible hate for Princess Elizabeth … We are spreading the rumour that she has webbed feet … Altogether I’ve never enjoyed a party in this house so much before.’

  There were moments when Nancy half understood that there was something missing from her life. She told Tom that she worried about being ‘two-dimensional’. ‘How is one to find the perfect young man, either they seem to be half-witted or half baked or absolute sinks of iniquity or else actively dirty like John Strachey. All very difficult!’ There had been a couple of nearly perfect men, the very handsome Archer Clive and the very handsome Henry Weymouth; but Weymouth was in love with another girl, whom he shortly afterwards married, and Archer had been kept at a distance by the sharpness of Nancy’s tongue. What she failed to realise was how wounding her mockery could be. But, with her pretty young men, she was on terms of equality: they were the ideal companions for all the silliness of her long-delayed childhood; and they in turn found her teasing and high spirits delightful. She was never moody, and there was no danger of any emotional or sexual entanglement. It was all very harmless, very childish, and the greatest possible fun.