Nancy Mitford

by Selina Hastings

  Then, in the early summer of 1928, Nancy fell in love with the most shimmering and narcissistic of all the beautiful butterflies of that homosexual coterie. Hamish St Clair Erskine was the second son of the Earl of Rosslyn. His father was a womaniser and compulsive gambler, the original of ‘The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo’, a man of great character and charm, almost wholly lacking in a sense of familial responsibility. His son Hamish was small, dark and slender, with delicate features and studiedly winning ways. He had been awarded a scholarship to Eton which his father wouldn’t allow him to accept as he thought it common to be a ‘Tug’, and while there was taken up by the actress, Tallulah Bankhead, whom he had met through Freda Dudley Ward, a close friend of his mother’s. It was she who introduced him to that theatrical, night-club world of high camp and heavy drinking which Hamish found to be his element. He was amusing, he was silly and above all he was vain. He lived to be admired; and Nancy thought he was wonderful. She got to know him when he was in his first year at New College. In May he was invited to Swinbrook for a weekend, which was predictably disastrous. Nancy wrote excitedly to Tom, ‘Mark says Hamish is an absolute sink of iniquity and even knows about things Mark had never heard of!’ In August, she and Hamish and Mark went up to Scotland to stay with Nina, where the four of them giggled and shrieked and behaved in a manner they were happily convinced was perfectly outrageous.

  ‘Last night we had a midnight party in Nina’s sitting room, it was so awful because Nina & Mark went downstairs to get some drink leaving H & me alone & who should come in but Sparkie [Nina’s mother] Hamish just had time to get under the divan & I was left looking fearfully stupid while awful snorts & upheavals came from under the divan.

  ‘Tonight we’re going to have a real midnight feast in a temple near the sea … We spent all day to-day bathing & sun bathing on the beach, Mark made an awful figure in the sand with jelly fish breasts, you can’t simply imagine what it looked like Very lewd. Hamish & I have invented a new word, troll for a male trollop isn’t it fearfully good we invented it during an awful lunch party here today with old neighbours who kept on asking Hamish when he left Eton and who’s house he was at. It was fearfully funny.’

  The nursery behaviour continued.

  Dearest Old Bottom [Tom] … My dear this visit is being a perfect orgy, if only you were here you don’t know what you’ve missed We haven’t once been to bed before 2, pyjama parties every night in Nina’s sitting room which is like a gala night at the Florida. Last night we had a dress up dinner. Hamish & I draped our middles in calf-skin chiffon & wore vine leaves I had a wreath of red roses & I curled Hamishes hair with tongs, he looked more than lovely. Mark just came in a bathing dress & a wreath & Nina was a lady at the court of Herod. You should have seen the Troll [Hamish] & me standing in a bath together staining our bods with coffee!!! In the afternoon we all olive-oiled each other & lay in the sun in a minimum of bathing dresses in a pretty scene, I’m literally black now!

  Hamish is going to ask his mother if I can go & stay with them in Mull for a few days which I should awfully enjoy. He is such an angel isn’t he …

  Hamish Nina & I wrote the gossip for the next Vogue & put in lovely things about ourselves of course. I pray it will be published. I was “that vivid creature Miss Nancy M. She is a strikingly beautiful & witty girl” & Hamish was a brilliant conversationalist & exceptionally good shot. Oh the fun of it!

  Well so long pig-face be good N

  Back in London Nancy moved in to Rutland Gate, where she was able to entertain her friends without the risk of a savaging by Farve as soon as they walked in at the door. ‘It is nice to have this really lovely house to ask people to, such a change from old Swin where I really feel ashamed to have any guests and one simply couldn’t have anybody artistic to stay there lest they sicked in the front hall.’ She gave luncheon and small dinner parties, including one for her friend Evelyn Gardner, who had recently become engaged ‘to a man called Evelyn Waugh who writes, I believe very well, he wasn’t able to come’. She went to dances at the Savoy and suppers at the Ritz, and, one of the highlights of the Season, a fancy-dress pageant. ‘Nina & I & Patrick Balfour4 went to the Pageant of Hyde Park through the ages on Tuesday … Mark looked lovely in a white wig & knee breeches & Oliver Messel was too wonderful as Byron, I nearly fainted away when he came limping on to the stage, this proves that I must have been Caroline Lamb in a former incarnation He built up his face with putty & looked the living image of Byron. Stephen Tennant5 as Shelley was very beautiful Lord Furneaux was a modern “young-man-about-town” & Frank Packenham [sic] in a sailor suit rode on one of those enormous bicycles.’ The letter continues, ‘Yesterday I went to a cocktail party in Oliver’s studio which was greatest fun. He just had Nina Mark Johnny & me so we had a very amusing gossip over the fire. He’s got a lovely studio & oh Boysie he can paint … Did I tell you I met Harold Acton the other day, he’s fascinating I think.’

  But, although London undeniably had its attractions, during the University term Nancy for once in her life preferred to be at Swinbrook, in reach of Oxford and of Hamish. Being in love with Hamish was not easy. Both fathers, Rosslyn and Redesdale, disapproved of the association, and Hamish himself was an elusive figure – spoilt, volatile, difficult to pin down. ‘My life is dark & gloomy, full of reverses & set backs of every kind,’ Nancy wrote to Tom in October 1928. ‘This morning Hamish rang up & I arranged to lunch with him on Monday, no sooner done than Farve announces that he will be at the County Council on Mon & will give me lunch. Double hell. Triple damn. Buckets of blood. A virgins way is set about with sharp thorns & the eyes of the curious … I was quite cheered up at the idea of seeing Hamish who never fails to amuse, in fact he is the most amusing character I know, such a mass of affectation but au fond so very sweet. I think he is most amusing when he is posing as “I am such a darling little child do stroke my hair & tell me a story or shall we play at ogres” He is amusing, but less so, when he is being a very grown up man of about 40 who has been the greatest rake in every court in Europe. He’s simply killing when he’s being just an ordinary snob. In short I was looking forward to some entertainment on Monday & now piff-pouff oh la-la. So I hope you sympathise quite enormously. Also Mary & Middy are coming tomorrow & if theres one thing I don’t feel the need of at present it is girl-friends. I have just read Byrons Vision of Judgement it is stupendous. I think I shall die young. I think I shall burst into floods of tears, I think I had better stop depressing you so farewell bee in my bonnet bat in my belfry, beetle in my bloomers really I think its time I stopped Adieu N.’

  Four days later Tom was informed, ‘I did lunch with Hamish after all yesterday, I had the bright idea of asking him if Diana & Bryan [Guinness] could come too & telling the nesting ones [Farve and Muv, ‘the Birds’] that we were going to lunch in a cafe so all was well, & after lunch Hamish & I went off in one direction & the other two in another & it was all great fun H. seems to be having a riotous time as you would expect knowing the child but says there’s no one worth talking to in Oxford. He’s got a very nice room indeed I suggested he ought to have one or two aspidistras to which he replied with dignity “this room is going to be made nice, not funny” … Hamish wasn’t a sweet little baby once yesterday its too disappointing I’m sure Oxford will make him stop that, but he was very sweet all the same, I am fond of him.’

  But Tom, Nancy’s most trusted confidant, now let her down. He did not approve of the relationship, as he felt obliged to make clear. While at Eton Tom himself had had an affair with Hamish, and he knew him for what he was, a vain, shallow, silly little tart. As soon as he left school, Tom had turned with enthusiasm to women, but Hamish remained basically homosexual. In point of fact, what he responded to was admiration, and, like all good prostitutes, he was a chameleon, able to be all things to all men, or women. But one thing was clear: he was unlikely to marry. And, if Nancy believed that he was going to change in this respect, she would be made very unhappy.

&n
bsp; But Nancy did believe it, and she strongly resented Tom’s criticism. Hamish had a heart of gold, he was funny, he was clever, and she absolutely adored him. In place of Tom, she turned to Mark, a far more sympathetic recipient of her confidences. ‘Hamish was funny yesterday I do wish you’d been there to wink at, he had 5 glasses of brandy & creme de menthe (on top of sherry etc) & then began to analyse himself He said “The best of me is that I can talk Homer to Maurice [Bowra] as well as Noel Coward to you, in fact I am clever enough to amuse everybody” I was faintly peeved at being put in the Nowel Coward class! I do worship that child!’

  During the vacation, the two of them skipped about in London, playing the fool at parties and dashing off to nightclubs whenever either of them had a little money to spend. (Hamish was wildly extravagant, and kept very short by his father: any money Lord Rosslyn had not himself managed to gamble away, he certainly was not prepared to hand over to his son to do likewise.) ‘We went to the Café de Paris … Well then we found (when we’d got there) that after paying the bill we had 7½d between us We were panicking rather when the sallow & disapproving countenance of old Mit [Tom] was observed. He cut Hamish but lent me £1 & we went to the Bat. As we never pay there now we are treated as poor relations & put behind the band where we can neither see nor hear & we have the buttered eggs that the Mountbattens have spat into & left. All so homey & nice dont you think. Still I feel we lend a certain ton to the place. Hamish has been an angel lately, not drinking a thing, I really think bar all the good old jokes which no one enjoys more than I do, that he has literally the nicest nature of anyone I know.’

  In spite of his nice nature, it was inevitable that Hamish should cause Nancy a great deal of disquiet. He was for ever letting her down, cancelling arrangements at the last minute, telling her he didn’t know whether he loved her or not. A previously unsuspected maternal instinct led Nancy to try and cherish Hamish and protect him. She loved to indulge him, and her small earnings were often spent either on paying his racing debts or on buying him presents. For his twenty-first birthday in August 1930, Nancy paid more than she could afford for a pair of gold-backed hairbrushes. She wrote to Tom, ‘I’m shattered because I’ve got him some gold hair brushes for his birthday & he let fall yesterday that he hates gold hair brushes. Isn’t it awful for me, they are so expensive too & I can’t change them now as they’ve got initials.’ Nancy worried, too, about his drinking and his gambling and the debauched life he led at Oxford, and she was intensely jealous of the pretty, smartly dressed girls in whose company Hamish delighted: Romie (Rosemary) Hope-Vere was one (‘I loathe Romie H.V. but dont tell Hamish because he adores her & I have to pretend I do too’), Cecil Beaton’s sister Nancy was ‘another cross I have to bear … Will he ever grow out of liking all these painted dolls I wonder or will our house overflow with them always?’ Bravely, Nancy tried to convince herself that basically Hamish was sound, and that once they were married (and there was no doubt that one day they would marry) everything would be all right. Meanwhile there was a lot to put up with. ‘Oh dear how unhappy Hamish does make me sometimes,’ she wailed to Mark. ‘I’m so exactly the wrong person for him really that I simply can’t imagine how it all happened. Its all most peculiar. But sometimes I really wish I were dead which is odd for me as I have a cheerful disposition by nature. Im sorry to grumble like this. I really do honestly think everything would be all right if we were married.’ Marriage and children and a home of her own were what she longed for; and in Hamish she could not have picked a more unsuitable candidate to provide them for her. In his way, he was fond of her: she amused him, he liked having a partner to show off with at parties, and the fact that she thought herself in love with him was highly flattering. But he had no intention of getting married. ‘I love myself so much,’ he used to giggle. ‘I’d marry myself if I wasn’t so bad with myself in bed.’

  The agonising saga continued. ‘Oh Mark talk about getting to know each other or knowing ones own mind – if I had been married to Hamish for 5 painful years & born him 6 male children I couldn’t know him better & the curious thing is that I’m quite certain that I shall never never be so fond of anyone again.’ But everything was against her. Hamish refused to commit himself, and Farve had written yet again to Lord Rosslyn ‘complaining we see each other too much. Oh my life is too difficult between trying to manage Hamish & the family.’ As neither of them could meet under their parents’ roofs, Nancy depended very much on the hospitality of her friends, in particular on Helen Dashwood, newly married to Sir John Dashwood, owner of a large and beautiful house in Buckinghamshire, and the once hated Romie Hope-Vere, now married to Johnny Drury-Lowe (‘I like Romie now’) and with a little house in Camberley where both Nancy and Hamish were invited to stay.

  The most welcome asylum, however, was provided by Diana. At the end of 1928, and much against her parents’ wishes, Diana had become engaged to Bryan Guinness of the brewing family, a gentle, literary young man of great good looks and an immense fortune. Both Redesdales were against it: they thought Diana at eighteen much too young and Bryan much too rich. (Muv with her instinct for thrift did not like the idea that Diana, hardly out of the schoolroom, should have at her disposal one of the biggest fortunes in England.) Diana, however, was determined. She was fond of Bryan, and she was desperate to leave home. This was her way out. ‘The more I see of Bryan,’ Nancy shrewdly noted, ‘the more it surprises me that Diana should be in love with him, but I think he’s quite amazingly nice.’ Eventually her parents gave in, and Diana and Bryan were married on January 30, 1929, at the society wedding of the year. Nancy, in a huge crinoline of white tulle, was one of the ten bridesmaids.

  However much, privately, she may have minded that her sister, nearly six years younger than herself, should have married first and so spectacularly well, for Nancy, Diana’s translation from housebound adolescent to married lady could not have happened at a more opportune moment. Even less enchanted with family life in the country than her elder sister, longing even more passionately to escape, Diana over the previous couple of years had become an ally in the struggle against boredom at Swinbrook.

  (Their hours of tedium were later echoed by Fanny and Linda in The Pursuit of Love:

  ‘ “What’s the time, darling?”

  “Guess.”

  “A quarter to six?”

  “Better than that.”

  “Six?”

  “Not quite so good.”

  “Five to?”

  “Yes.” ’)

  Now she was married she could offer Nancy at her house in Buckingham Street not only a refuge from the family and a place to meet Hamish, but also a new and glamorous social life. The young Guinnesses quickly became one of the most fashionable couples in London (John Betjeman wrote a poem beginning, ‘I too could be arty, I too could get on/With Sickert, the Guinnesses, Gertler, and John’). In town as well as at Biddesden, their house in Wiltshire, Nancy met many of the most interesting members of the literary and artistic intelligentsia – Lytton Strachey and Carrington, Augustus John, the Sitwells, Henry and Pansy Lamb, and the novelist Henry Yorke, as well as old friends such as Robert Byron, Mark, Brian Howard and Evelyn Waugh.

  Nancy had come to know Evelyn well since his marriage to Evelyn (‘She-Evelyn’) Gardner. For a few months, she had lodged in the Waughs’ little house in Canonbury Square. When She-Evelyn ran off with another man Nancy’s sympathies were entirely with the deserted husband. They began to meet regularly for luncheon at the Ritz when Evelyn would advise on the conduct of her affair with Hamish. He encouraged her, too, with her writing.

  Nancy’s first attempts at journalism took the form of anonymous paragraphs of gossip in one or other of the society magazines. She had once managed to pay for her train-fare to Scotland to stay with Nina by photographing the party for Tatler: ‘Tom Driberg,’6 she wrote to Tom, ‘is in the same condition as us pecuniarely I mean it is such a satisfaction to think that others are isn’t it. His camera is in pawn so he’s going half
shares with mine for the Tatler’. From this she progressed to the occasional signed article for Vogue – ‘The Shooting Party: Some Hints for the Woman Guest. By the Hon. Nancy Mitford.’ In March 1929, she told Mark, ‘I’m making such a lot of money with articles – £22 since Christmas. I’m saving it up to be married but Evelyn says don’t save it, dress better & catch a better man. Evelyn is always so full of sound common sense.’ The following year, she was commissioned to write a weekly column for her grandfather Bowles’s journal, The Lady, at five guineas a week. ‘To celebrate this I went out today & bought myself a divine coral tiara,’ she reported to Mark. ‘I regard financial independence as almost the sum of human happiness don’t you.’ In character as ‘The Lady’ she attended the Chelsea Flower Show, the 4th of June at Eton, the Aldershot Tattoo and the Shakespeare birthday celebrations at Stratford-on-Avon. ‘The Lady’ is a rather disillusioned creature, frozen to the marrow at a point-to-point, exhausted after a Commemoration ball at Oxford and bored to death during a performance of Rheingold at Covent Garden (‘The Lady began to be worn out with the loudness and dulness of the music. She felt stiff and tired and thought longingly of her bed’). At a coming-out dance, for Lady Fulvia Pigge and Miss Myrtle Lumpe, The Lady eavesdrops on the conversation of some of the guests: ‘ “My dear, the floor! It’s a sort of morass. Have you noticed? Not just ordinarily sticky, but deep I mean, almost reaching to the ankles.”

  “Yes, and full of pot-holes, too.”