Nancy Mitford

by Selina Hastings

  Now, however, she could afford to indulge herself. Good clothes were of immense importance to Nancy. ‘It’s terrible to love clothes as much as I do, & perfectly inexplicable because I’m not at all vain & Col who is the only person I care for doesn’t know sackcloth from ashes.’ Clothes were almost an essential part of life: she loved looking at them, she loved wearing them and she loved the whole business of having them made – the cutting of the toile, the lengthy fittings, the detailed discussions over the set of a shoulder or the placing of a dart. Her narrow English figure was much admired by the fitters and vendeuses: it was a pleasure to fit clothes on a figure such as Mme Rodd’s, ‘one in 100,’ they told her at Grès. But, even more than this, Nancy’s love of fashion was part of the shop-front, part of showing to the world an image of polished perfection, of immaculate chic. Nancy in her Paris clothes presented the very picture of elegance, but her boned bodice, padded hips and huge skirts lined in stiff buckram invited one to look, not to touch. She was one of the first to wear Dior’s New Look in London: the showing of his original collection in February 1947 acted on Nancy, as on most of the female population of Paris, as a magic potion. After years of short, skimped skirts and brutal, square-shouldered jackets, the softness and fluidity of Dior’s line, the rustling petticoats and wasp waists, the yards and yards of swirling stuff in his full skirts were frankly irresistible. ‘Dior, oh darling,’ she wrote to Diana, ‘made for you & me, absolute Anna Karenina clothes. The coats – to the ankle literally & mountains of loovely stoof. Oh me, my brain is in a whirl.’ But Dior was still just in the future. Nancy bought her first couture wardrobe from Mme Grès – a dress and coat, a suit with a sealskin collar, a pink wool dressing-gown, two hats (one a white satin boater with aigrette, the other a pair of birds, one pink and one green, perched on a base of black velvet) and, the pièce de résistance, a ball-dress in black velvet with a huge skirt and a wide band of black transparent chiffon round the midriff. ‘I wish to constater here & now,’ she wrote to Muv, ‘that I am not repeat not going to lend it to Miss Deborah under any circumstances Let there be no misunderstanding on this piont … You never saw such a dress – who was that friend of Farves who had £12 a year? Not for her.’

  Nancy first wore this wonderful dress at a ball, an event much looked forward to but which turned out something of a disappointment, as she explained in a letter to Evelyn. ‘I went to a ball at Princess de Bourbon-Parme’s, duly binged up as one is before balls with champagne, black coffee & so on. Well we hadn’t been there 2 minutes before the Colonel said we couldn’t stay on acc/ of the great cohorts of collaborators by whom we were surrounded, & firmly dumped me home. I perceive that I have made enemies for life of Pss Radziwill who took me & Pss B-P because there was only one entrance over which they were both hovering. I know you are pro-collaborators anyway & probably think the Col was being babyish. Anyway here I am wide-awake for hours.’ To this Evelyn unsympathetically replied, ‘Collaborationists my foot. Does it not occur to you, poor innocent, that the continental Colonel went back to the aristocratic ball and that while you lay sleepless with your fountain pen, he was in the arms of some well born gestapo moll?’

  Dazzling as was this Proustian world, the pinnacle of Nancy’s social life was not French but English – its focus the British Embassy, that large, beautiful, honey-coloured house on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Duff Cooper after leaving Algiers had come as Ambassador in September 1944, and his wife Diana had made the Embassy a centre for the most amusing society in Paris. She herself, with her great beauty, charm and originality, possessed a genius for creating an alluring atmosphere. With the help of Cecil Beaton she had brought a personal touch to the great state rooms, placing family photographs and favourite Victorian portraits among the grand Napoleonic furniture. Diana could not tolerate boredom, and she was accustomed to getting her own way: rules were for other people. If there was something Diana thought she should have, there was little to which she would not stoop to get it, with the result that the British Embassy was one of the few houses in Paris that was properly heated, and where the food (all bought on the black market) was plentiful and rich. Diana showed not the faintest interest in furthering British interests, and was far too special to concern herself with the ordinary, tedious duties of an ambassadress. Instead she directed her energies towards the entertainment of what she called her ‘bande’, a little group of habitual diners-out who were considered by Diana good-looking, amusing, or both. She did not much care for France nor for the French; she knew little about them, and spoke their language badly; the members of ‘la bande’ were either friends from England, such as Cecil Beaton, Peter Coats, Chips Channon, Evelyn Waugh and Raymond Mortimer, or English-speaking Anglophiles mainly from the world of the arts. She was supremely indifferent to questions of politics, and it mattered not at all to her whether she sat down to dinner with a hero of the Resistance or with an arch-collaborator, as long as he could pull his weight at table – an attitude which may have done little to foster the entente cordiale, but was terrific fun for ‘la bande’.

  Nancy was mesmerised by Diana, who now took her up and into her innermost circle. In the intimacy of the Salon Vert or at big parties in the Salon Jaune Nancy met many well-known faces: ‘Chips [Channon] & Petticoats [Peter Coats] are here. The pansy world has been in a ferment for this event, half longing to see Petti whose fame has preceded him & half terrified that the particular loved one will be bewitched by him!’. She met, too, some of the most fashionable French artists, writers and musicians of the day – Cocteau, Drian, the stage-designer Bébé Bérard, Edouard Bourdet director of the Comédie Française, Poulenc, the pianist Jacques Février and the composer Georges Auric and his painter wife Nora (‘exactly like Oliver Messel dressed as a woman’). Diana appointed Gaston, an old friend from his time in Algeria, to be her unofficial censor, her pilot-fish, to advise on whose war-time activities should debar them from swimming into her net. But the advice once given was usually ignored, and Gaston himself, so sensitive to any whiff of collaboration elsewhere, sat down without a murmur to eat his (excellent) dinner in the company of such as Marie-Laure de Noailles3 and Louise de Vilmorin4. To Nancy it was all perfect, the very height of civilisation. Diana’s rudeness couldn’t be funnier, her intolerance of bores even more ruthless than Nancy’s own.

  Gerald Berners (illustration 9 (a))

  Eddy Sackville-West (illustration 9 (b))

  Evelyn Waugh. Photo: Mark Gerson (illustration 9 (c))

  Hamish Hamilton (illustration 9 (d))

  Nancy

  Pam

  Diana

  Unity

  Decca

  Debo

  The six Mitford sisters drawn by William Acton

  From the collection of the Hon Desmond Guinness (illustration 10)

  Nancy with Anne Hill outside the shop (illustration 11 (a))

  Marc de Beauvau-Craon (illustration 11 (b))

  Gaston Palewski with the General in Algiers, 1942.

  Photo: Institut Charles de Gaulle (illustration 11 (c))

  Nancy (wearing the New Look) with Alvilde Chaplin in the courtyard of the British Embassy in Paris (illustration 12 (a))

  Duff and Diana Cooper (illustration 12 (b))

  A letter from Nancy to the Colonel showing him in pursuit of his favourite pastime (illustration 12 (c))

  Marie Renard, Nancy’s cook-housekeeper (illustration 12 (d))

  Portrait of Gaston Palewski, ‘Homme au Gant’, by Nora Auric. Nancy bought it, and in order to make it fit the frame cut several inches off the bottom of the canvas, including the glove of the title and the artist’s signature. She then made matters worse by painting in the signature herself, wrongly spelt, a desecration which caused Mme Auric considerable annoyance when she discovered it some years later (illustration 13)

  Mrs Hammersley at Chatsworth (illustration 14 (a))

  Muv on Inch Kenneth (illustration 14 (b))

  Nancy and Debo on the Venetian Lagoon (illustr
ation 14 (c))

  Nancy and Sir Oswald Mosley in the garden of his house, Le Temple de la Gloire, at Orsay (illustration 14 (d))

  Nancy at a party in London in 1959 (illustration 15 (a))

  Diana, Pam and Debo at Nancy’s funeral at Swinbrook on July 7, 1973.

  Photo: David Newell-Smith, the Observer (illustration 15 (b))

  It was a great blow when at the end of 1947 Duff Cooper was recalled by a Labour government to be replaced by Sir Oliver Harvey, a career diplomat who, after the charismatic Coopers, was bound to be a sad come-down, ‘utter ghastly drear personified’. Diana, suddenly realising, now she was on the point of departure, what she was leaving behind, discovered in herself a deep love of the city where she had reigned like a queen, and in a spirit of romantic gloom threw a great valedictory ball. Nancy, with her black velvet ball-gown updated for the occasion, was alight with excitement: ‘All the people beginning to arrive for the Ball, its so exciting, like a house party for a hunt ball when one was young & loved them only magnified a hundred times. Also made more strange by the streets – black out, search lights playing, huge mounds of refuse everywhere & armoured cars dashing through the serried ranks of limousines.’ It was a magnificent set-piece, the ‘Waterloo’ ball, with the Embassy lit entirely by candles, every piece of the historic gilt dinner-services gleaming on the tables. Diana, a beautiful tragedy-queen sweeping about in pale blue satin, made no attempt to conceal her sadness. ‘Le désespoir de Diana made itself felt,’ Nancy remarked. With the Coopers gone, Paris would not be the same.

  They were not gone long, however. Ignoring the convention that a departing Ambassador should keep away from his former post for at least a year to give his successor time to establish himself, the Coopers were back within weeks, settling into the pretty Château de Saint-Firmin at Chantilly. Resentful at being turned out of ‘her’ Embassy, Diana initiated a wonderful new tease called Being Beastly to the Harveys; and, like children in a playground following the bully’s lead, ‘la bande’, with Nancy to the fore, joined in with relish. The Coopers were fashionable, the Harveys were not; it was easy to sneer, and ‘we all proudly say we shan’t write our names in their book’. What could be more enjoyable than to gloat over Lady Harvey’s lumpy English clothes, the fact that her visiting cards were printed (horrors!), not engraved, and that their food was so bad that ‘Poor Prince Philip was poisoned … & his visit was one long session on the loo.’ To Sir Oliver Harvey, a skilled and experienced diplomat, holder of the Grand Cross of the Légion d’Honneur and deeply respected by the leaders of the Fourth Republic, all this mattered not a jot. But to Lady Harvey it was unmitigated pain. True to form, Nancy had only to dine with the new Ambassador and his wife a couple of times for her to turn from hunting with the hounds to running with the hare. Soon she was on the friendliest terms with Maudie Harvey while the peerless Diana began to appear in a less appealing light as her dislike of the French became more and more pronounced. This was the one thing guaranteed to lose Nancy’s sympathy. Conversation round the dinner-table at Chantilly, she complained to Evelyn, was like the chorus in Billy Budd: ‘They all sit round singing Don’t like the French, the damned Mounseers … I get more & more restless in her company owing to her vitriolic hatred & lack of comprehension of the French. I despise people who live here to escape taxes & who hate the French – the Windsors are another case.’

  At the end of this year, 1947, Nancy was at last able to rent an apartment of her own. Till then she had had always to be on the move, in and out of hotels of varying degrees of comfort depending on her financial situation; she had rented a flat in the rue Bonaparte, was lent another on the Quai Malaquais, but due to the acute housing shortage had been unable to find a permanent home – one which met the sole criterion on which she insisted, that it should be no more than a few minutes’ walk from the Colonel. Number 7, rue Monsieur was a pretty eighteenth-century house standing behind a high wall, between a paved courtyard and a large, leafy garden. Nancy had the ground floor, entered through a small hallway, with a large drawing-room, a dining-room, bedroom and bathroom, and a small room for a maid on the floor above. The maid came with the flat, Marie Renard, a sweet-faced peasant-woman from Normandy. ‘I’ve never liked any house I’ve lived in as much as this one or ever known such a treasure as Marie … She’s the servant of one’s dreams that’s all. I said which is your jour de repos … & she said I rather like to go off at about 4 on Sunday afternoon but of course not if you have people for dinner. She gives me Sunday luncheon & prepares my dinner.’ Not only that: Marie did all the shopping, all the cooking, all the housework, and washed, ironed and mended Nancy’s clothes. Nancy herself was quite helpless in these matters: she could not cook, barely knew how to boil a kettle, and had never learned to thread a needle – when Marie went on holiday, she had to leave several needles ready threaded in case a button fell off in her absence. Marie had the temperament of an angel and hard work was what she enjoyed. She was by nature frugal, knew exactly where to go to save a few centimes on butter or coffee, and was almost incapable of throwing away left-over food. (Nancy once came back from a month’s holiday to find in the refrigerator a jug containing a small cannon-ball of solidified milk which Marie had been unable to bring herself to pour down the sink when shutting up the flat four weeks earlier.) Having Marie, and being settled in a home of her own, made all the difference to Nancy. So much so that she was able to tell Evelyn on December 31, ‘My book has begun to go, isn’t it wonderful when they do that. Of course it’s simply a question of working whatever one may tell oneself.’

  It had been worrying Nancy for some time that she was unable to write. She wanted to work, as she explained to Evelyn: ‘I’m beginning to feel bored with nothing to do & not fond enough (never have been really) of social life for that to become a whole time job.’ More seriously, she needed to earn some money: Linda could not continue much longer to support her expensive Paris life. The trouble was that ‘having used up Farve & Fabrice I am utterly done for – all the rations have gone into one cake. Now what?’ She tried to make a start during the summer, but it would not come and she began to be afraid she had ‘lost the art’. ‘The Colonel keeps encouraging me saying I shall never write a good book which isn’t about him, & altogether – Still, I must plod on.’ But, with her changed circumstances, inspiration returned. The idea for the plot came from a true story, buffed up and embellished and submitted to Evelyn for advice on how to treat it. ‘The fact is I’ve begun to be appalled by the difficulties of technique, a thing which has never worried me at all.’ What she wanted to know was whether she could again use the device of first-person narrator. Muv was consulted on social practice (‘At a ball one never wore rings outside ones gloves (horrors) but what about bracelets?’); and Jamie Hamilton was asked, ‘Are pansies allowed in books? (I know you’re very strict but after all think of Proust) … No details of course.’

  But the actual writing of the novel, which had come so easily with The Pursuit of Love, this time was a struggle. Nancy was no longer writing her own story which meant that she was having to work much harder on the construction of plot and the development of character. She was further hampered by a constant series of interruptions. Having enjoyed a busy social life among people to whom work was not one of the necessities of existence, it was difficult to cut herself off from these people for the quiet she needed without causing offence. The telephone pealed all day with invitations to dinners and luncheons. ‘Counted the telephone calls this morning, 10 before 11 … One person went up to 40 rings I always count, that was the best so far.’ Then she was a sitting target for the stream of English visitors who from Easter on came over by the boatload expecting to be welcomed with open arms at the rue Monsieur. ‘I believe the English think,’ Nancy complained to Heywood, ‘that Paris is a social desert where nobody knows anybody else & sits waiting for the visitors to cheer them up. Like some little port in the Red Sea.’ Then there were members of the family who had to be put up and show
n round and taken out to parties. Muv came and was introduced to the Colonel, who ‘Rang up this morning & said there was a sort of unnatural quietness about her – I assured him that it is quite usual. “And what did she say about me?” “Nothing” I was obliged to reply.’ Next to come were Debo and Andrew, the prospect of whose arrival filled Nancy with alarm, ‘rather like the Royal visit to me I must say & almost as alarming since all my friends are so much too old & so much too clever’. In fact it was a success, marred only by an embarrassing moment at dinner with the Windsors when Nancy, from head to foot in tartan, all the rage with the couturiers that year, was met by the Duke dressed in exactly the same: ‘It seems I was togged up in royal Stuart tartan,’ she wailed, ‘how can one tell?’ And after they had gone Evelyn arrived and behaved abominably, studiedly rude to the distinguished cleric Nancy had invited to luncheon at Evelyn’s own request, and then, when she took him down to spend the night at Chantilly with the Coopers, deliberately picking a violent quarrel with Duff.

  In May Nancy had to break off again to go to England. Muv had been looking after Unity on Inch Kenneth when Bobo had suddenly fallen ill with meningitis. She was taken across to the mainland to hospital in Oban, and here she died. Her body was brought down by train to be buried at Swinbrook. Although never as fond of Bobo as she had been of her brother Tom, to Nancy her death was in some ways much sadder. Tom had had a happy life, whereas Unity’s had been so pathetic. ‘I have always found that one minds terribly when they are the ones of whom everybody else says far the best,’ she wrote to Jim Lees-Milne. ‘Lately she had been so very much better & had become quite thin & pretty again, & seemed to enjoy her life again. But her real happiness in life was over – she was a victim of the war as much as anybody wasn’t she.’