“Oh, the ghastliness of that band! Do let’s go on somewhere else, shall we?”
“Of course, this hock-cup simply tastes like bad sweets melted in tooth water – that’s all.”
“Who are all these revolting people?”
“The entire population of Wormwood Scrubs, I should think, if you ask me.”
“Do let’s get out of this soon.” ’
With the incentive of earning money always before her, and with those days and weeks at Swinbrook when the London season was over and there was nothing to do, Nancy started work on her first novel. Highland Fling had its origins in the war between the generations, the war between aesthete and hearty epitomised in those holidays spent tramping the grouse-moors in Scotland, those long hours dying of cold and boredom in the butts while some red-faced old fool blazed away at the birds. Most of the action takes place in a Scottish castle, among a comically ill-matched house-party of fierce old philistines and frivolous, fashionable Bright Young Things. The love interest is provided by Jane Dacre and a camp young painter called Albert Memorial Gates, who delights in annoying his elders by his outrageous clothes and his (in those days eccentric) passion for Victoriana.
Nancy was always an intensely autobiographical writer, as she was the first to point out, and this, her first novel, written in much the same chatty style as her letters and journalism, is full of personal opinions and feelings, full of familiar faces, of private jokes and references. She herself is clearly visible in her heroine Jane (a charming, intelligent girl with a quick sense of humour, ‘and except for a certain bitterness with which, for no apparent reason, she regarded her mother and father, the temperament of an angel’), while both Robert Byron and Hamish contributed to Albert’s flamboyant personality. Leading the philistine forces is General Murgatroyd, in whom, faint but discernible, can be traced the first shadowy outlines of the character, based on Farve, that fifteen years later was to appear in full and terrifying glory as Uncle Matthew: ‘ “I heard him say that before the War the things he hated most were Roman Catholics and Negroes, but now, he said, banging on the table, now it’s Germans.” ’
Highland Fling was published by Thornton Butterworth on March 12, 1931. It attracted little attention in the press, but Nancy earned £90, and the lending-library in Burford arranged a special display in its window with a hand-lettered sign reading, ‘Nancy Mitford, Local Authoress.’
Almost as soon as her first novel was finished, Nancy started work on her second, Christmas Pudding, or, as she jokingly told Mark it was to be called, ‘L’amour qui n’ose pas dire son nom.’ ‘My new book is jolly good,’ she reported, ‘all about Hamish at Eton … Betjeman is co-hero.’ Christmas Pudding is very much in the same style as its predecessor – love and larks among the Bright Young Things. Paul, an impoverished young writer (John Betjeman’s influence can be detected in Paul’s air of bewildered naïvety and his love of Victorian literature), takes a job as holiday tutor to Bobby Bobbin, son of the widowed Lady Bobbin, a horrible old Master of Foxhounds, determined that her decadent son should be toughened up in preparation for a career in the army. Paul and Bobby conspire to deceive Lady Bobbin so that Paul can get on with his own work and Bobby can pursue his favourite occupations of bridge, parties and gossip. The two of them escape daily to neighbouring Mulberrie Farm rented for the winter by that one-time leader of the demi-monde, Amabelle Fortescue. As in Highland Fling, the plot largely depends on the clash between the fashionable young and the dowdy older generation, represented by Lady Bobbin and her friends and relations. The youthful company at Mulberrie Farm are usually to be found lying palely in front of the fire, sipping cocktails to help their hangovers after the party of the night before. Amabelle paints her eyelashes with navy-blue which interestingly matches the colour of the shadows under her eyes. They talk in up-to-the-minute slang – ‘My sweetie-bo’, ‘What a poodle-pie’ and ‘I couldn’t be more amused’ – and they have no interest whatsoever in horses or dogs.
Bobby Bobbin is Hamish to the life. We meet him first at Eton where his room is described in telling detail: ‘A guitar, that he could not play (lying beside a red leather gramophone that he could and did), a tasteful edition of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, the complete works of Messrs. Ronald Firbank and Aldous Huxley, together with reproductions of two of Picasso’s better-known aquarelles, bore testimony to the fact that young Sir Roderick [Bobby] liked to associate himself with modern culture. The possessor of keen eyes, however, observing some well used bridge markers, the masterpieces of Wallace, and a positive heap of society weekly journals, might suspect that the child was in no real danger at present of overtaxing his mind.’ When Amabelle first suggests the plan of Paul coming as tutor, Hamish-as-Bobby goes into one of his most familiar routines: ‘ “How marvellous you are to think of it, darling. Oh, what heavenly fun it will be!” and Bobby vaulted over some fairly low railings and back, casting off for a moment his mask of elderly roué and slipping on that of a tiny-child-at-its-first-pantomime, another role greatly favoured by this unnatural boy.’
When Christmas Pudding was published in November 1932, Nancy was more than a little anxious about Hamish’s reaction to this not entirely flattering portrait. But she need not have worried: he loved it, and took to signing his letters to her ‘Bobby’.
The affair with Hamish had been continuing on its unsatisfactory course of nursery romps punctuated by quarrels (usually provoked by Hamish’s heavy drinking and Nancy’s desire to reform him) and a series of on-off engagements, when Hamish would play at seriously considering marriage, then feel ‘trapped’ and break the engagement off. At the end of the Michaelmas term of 1930, the University had finally lost patience with his dissipated ways and Hamish was sent down. Lord Rosslyn, knowing better than to let his son float loose in London, quickly dispatched him to America and a job in New York. The news of his departure came as a frightful shock to Nancy, already in a depressed frame of mind. She wrote to Mark, ‘Hamish’s family, behaving with their usual caddery have taken him away for ever to America. I’ve broken off the engagement. So there you have the situation in a nutshell.’
She was staying at the time in the Drury-Lowes’ new house in Gloucester Place. Romie was expecting a baby, but until it arrived had let the top floor, intended as a nursery, to Nancy. Her letter to Mark continues:
I tried to commit suicide by gas, it is a lovely sensation just like taking anaesthetic so I shan’t be sorry any more for schoolmistresses who are found dead in that way, but just in the middle I thought that Romie who I was staying with might have a miscarriage which would be disappointing for her so I got back to bed & was sick … I am really very unhappy because there is no one to tell the funny things that happen to one & that is half the fun in life dont you agree … Im in the state in which I can’t be alone but the moment I’m with other people I want to get away from them. It will be fun when my book is out [Christmas Pudding] … How can I possibly write a funny book in the next 6 months which my publisher says I must do. How can I when Ive got practically a pain from being miserable & cry in buses quite continually?
Im sorry to inflict this dreary letter on you, as a matter of fact everyone here thinks I dont mind at all – rather a strain but I think the only attitude dont you agree.
Then Hamish, without a word to anyone, suddenly threw up his job and returned to England. ‘Hamish has come back and it is all too frightful, we met at a party and of course it all began over again Heaven knows what will happen in the end, he seems at present to be busy drinking himself to death saying “my bulwarks (thats me) have gone” We arent seeing each other at all. I suppose it will have to be the gas oven in the end, one cant bear more than a certain amount of unhappiness.’
In a desperate attempt to stave off despair, Nancy threw herself into a febrile social life. ‘I’m having a perfectly divine time, it is certainly more fun not being engaged – I’ve been here [Rutland Gate] a fortnight & haven’t been in any night so far … London is heaven just
now, the Ritz before lunch is a party where you see everybody you’ve ever known & there are no deb dances because people are too poor to give them. In fact a perfect season … Lord Kylsant7 going to prison, a Russian ballet of unexampled awfulness acclaimed by the highbrows as an intellectual treat, Mary Erskine [Hamish’s sister] nearly killed at the Cafe de Paris by a roller skater who swung her round his head … Meanwhile I have broken all records (for me) by having been up really late every night for 3 weeks & here I am now, in bed with a poached egg & a long long sleep at least I hope so.’ For once, she even had some money: a couple of hundred pounds from the novels, as well as ‘£30.30 [i.e. thirty guineas] from Harpers for a tiny short story, isn’t it heaven, I’m just so rich I go 1st class everywhere & take taxis, & even refused £10 a week to write gossip for the Tatler’. She bought some new clothes and, although thin, was looking elegant and pretty. ‘I was photographed by Cecil [Beaton], this afternoon,’ she told Mark. ‘Fantastic experience “how do you manage to be skinny with such ruddy cheeks?” Too easy I might have replied one has only to be crossed in love & an adept at make up.’
Except in her letters to Mark, Nancy never gave way to her misery: in company she was as high-spirited as ever, and there was no shortage of young men ready to take the place of Hamish. One of her most persistent admirers was Sir Hugh Smiley, a handsome Grenadier Guards officer with fair hair and, it was said, £5,000 a year. Sir Hugh wanted to marry her, but nice, suitable young men were of little interest to Nancy.
‘Sir Hugh laid his ginger bread mansion at my feet last Monday & incapable as ever of giving a plain answer to a plain question I said I couldn’t hear of it anyhow until my book is finished. So now I get letters by every post saying hurry up with the book, it is rather awful, I didn’t do it from the usual feminine motives of liking rides in his car etc but believe me from sheer weakness. However its all right, I shall wriggle out somehow & anyway the book can’t be finished for months … But it is awful how easily one could be entrapped into matrimony with someone like that because it would be nice to be rich. I’m not surprised girls do that sort of thing. Besides the old boy is really awfully nice & kind in his own way. But think of having blond & stupid children. But then one could be so jolly well dressed & take lovers. Romie thinks I’m mad & so do the babies [Decca and Debo] who go on at me like a pair of matchmaking mothers. But it is better to retain ones self respect in decent poverty isn’t it? My life is a bore, I would so much rather be dead.’
Sir Hugh continued to propose and Nancy continued to evade him, unable to bring herself either to accept him or definitely refuse. At one point she did accept, only to change her mind again almost at once. ‘Its all right its all right I’ve burned my boats so isn’t that a relief,’ she asked Mark. ‘At least I never really considered it only I was so bored down here and Muv went on at me about it and said you’ll die an old maid and I hadn’t seen Hamish for months and months so I toyed with the idea for 5 minutes during which time I suppose I wrote to you … But I shall never marry anybody except Hamish really you know.’
The final offer came in April: ‘I had another proposal from Sir Hugh, in great style orchids etc at the C de Paris with Hamish giggling at the next table & I gave him the final raspberry. He was very cross & said I should be left on the shelf (impertinence) so I went off with Hamish to the Slippin (new & horrible night club) which made him still crosser. Lousy young man, I don’t answer any of his letters now even.’
Having successfully escaped marriage with a good, well-meaning man who loved her, Nancy turned back with relief to Hamish and playing bridge and fancy-dress parties (‘Quelles frivolités! Here is the gorgeous & divine velvet of your fancy dress breeches. I send it so that you may procure white satin shoes with velvet rosettes matching this. Your tunic is of eau de nil velvet, with pink muslin ruff & cuffs’), back to suppers at the Ritz and dancing at the Bat, and anything else that was fashionable and fun. ‘I was sitting at Quaglino’s the other day,’ she relayed to Mark, ‘& Harry [Lord Rosslyn] came up & said I know you keep my son & gave me £1. Don’t you think that’s a funny story. Hamish grabbed it too before you could say knife. Then the old boy said “If you can earn £1000 a year you may marry him” & went away, reeling among the astonished diners. So Hamish & I had a huge dinner instead of one rissole & sent him the bill.’
But however much she thought she loved him, however much fun they had together, it was impossible to pretend, even for Nancy, that the future looked promising. The engagement was broken off again, and again resumed; Hamish was to go back to America but changed his mind at the last moment, and got a job instead in a stockbroker’s office in the City.
Then, in November 1932, this miserable affair was dramatically overshadowed by a family scandal: Diana had walked out on her husband, Bryan Guinness, publicly acknowledging that she was in love with another man, the prominent politician, Sir Oswald Mosley. Sir Oswald was married and there was no question of his leaving his wife; but he and Diana had committed themselves to each other. Diana knew that here was the man to whom she wanted to dedicate the rest of her life. She must leave Bryan, ‘nail her colours to the mast’, as she put it, and keep herself free to see Mosley whenever he could spare the time from his family and from the increasing demands of his political career.
The Redesdales were beside themselves with shock and dismay. It was unthinkable that a daughter of theirs, only twenty-two, the mother of two boys, should walk out of an apparently perfect marriage to be the mistress of a much older man, a notorious womaniser, with a wife and three children of his own. Farve, with Bryan’s father, Lord Moyne, went round to see Mosley at his flat in Ebury Street to try and talk him out of it, but Mosley was inflexible. Diana, too, was deaf to argument: she had made up her mind, and the opinion of the world and of her family was a matter of indifference. Nancy, always on the side of love, was sympathetic, but at the same time tried to warn her sister of the consequences of her scandalous behaviour. ‘Your social position will be nil if you do this. Darling I do hope you are making a right decision. You are so young to begin getting in wrong with the world, if thats what is going to happen. However it is all your own affair & whatever happens I shall always be on your side as you know & so will anybody who cares for you & perhaps the rest really dont matter.’ Diana was grateful for Nancy’s support but so happy that she was almost indifferent to what was going on around her. In January she moved into a little house in Eaton Square, where Muv absolutely forbade the two youngest girls to go; had she been able, she would have prevented the family having any contact with her at all. Nancy saw Diana almost daily, keeping her in touch with events in the enemy camp. ‘Saw Bryan yesterday, he was pretty spiky I thought, keeps saying of course I suppose its my duty to take her back & balls of that sort … I may say that the Lambs seem to have turned nasty, apparently they told B they were nearly certain you had an affair with Randolph in the spring.’
Meanwhile Nancy’s own love-affair was going from bad to worse. She and Hamish were continually quarrelling – over his drinking, his gambling, over his irresponsible attitude towards their future. He had never been demonstrative, never showed her the affection she craved, but now there was cruelty in his tone. The two of them were caught in a vicious circle: the more possessive Nancy became, the more Hamish fought to get away; as she saw him eluding her, the more possessive she became. In fact Hamish was growing desperate. He knew he had to escape from Nancy, that he was trapped into a fictitious character which Nancy had invented – that of a man basically heterosexual, sowing his wild oats, but soon to settle down to marriage and a family. Then suddenly his chance came: his sister Mary announced her engagement to Philip Dunn, the son of the banker Sir James Dunn, and, the very same day, Hamish announced his engagement to Philip’s sister, Kit, a wildly eccentric character in every way the antithesis of Nancy. It was a brutal thing to do but Hamish saw it as his only way out. His behaviour was unforgivable, and it was essential that it should be: he did not want Nancy to f
orgive him.
It was June 14, the day before Diana’s divorce proceedings, and Nancy, Pam and Unity had gathered at Eaton Square to provide moral support. The butler came into the room to say that Mr St Clair Erskine wished to speak to Mrs Guinness on the telephone. Without any suspicion of what was to come, Nancy said that, as she wanted to talk to Hamish, she would take the call. She came back into the room a few minutes later, her face white. Shortly afterwards, Hamish himself arrived and there was a terrible scene. As soon as he left, Nancy sat down to write him a letter.
Darling Hamish I can’t sleep without writing to say I am so sorry & miserable that I was unkind to you just now. I shan’t send this straight away, perhaps never but I must write it, for my own sake.
Because I must explain to you that if you had told me you were engaged to Tanis, or Sheila Berry, I could never never have made that dreadful scene. Please believe me. I should have been unhappy for myself certainly but happy for you & as I love you better than myself I would have overcome my own feelings for your sake.
But darling you come & tell me that you are going to share your life with Kit Dunn. You, whom I have always thought so sensible & so idealistic about marriage, you who will love your own little babies so very very much, it is a hard thing for me to bear that you should prefer her to me.
You see, I knew you weren’t in love with me, but you are in love so often & for such tiny spaces of time. I thought that in your soul you loved me & that in the end we should have children & look back on life together when we are old. I thought our relationship was a valuable thing to you & that if you ever broke it you would only do so in order to replace it with another equally valuable. But that isn’t so, & that is what I find intolerable.
Please understand me. Please think of me with affection always & never never blame me for what I may become without you. Don’t think of me as a selfish & hysterical woman even if I appeared so tonight.
Nancy Mitford Page 9
