Nancy Mitford

by Selina Hastings

  But more distressing to Nancy than her sister’s death was a crisis involving the Colonel. The French edition of La Poursuite d’Amour had now come out, and as Gaston had feared the left-wing press immediately jumped on the dedication. Horrified, Nancy wrote to Diana, ‘a hateful weekly paper here has come out with enormous headlines “Hitler’s mistress’s sister dedicates daring book to M. Palewski” … He is in a great to do about it … You see he is such an ambitious man & you know how the one thing that can’t be forgiven is getting in their way politically – Of course it was madness, the dedication, & what I can’t tease him with now it was entirely his own doing. I said shall I put To the Colonel – G.P. & so on & he absolutely insisted on having his whole name. At the time I suppose he was powerful enough for it not to matter. Now with everything in the balance the Communists have pounced. He says the General will be furious.’

  There was no alternative but for Nancy to leave Paris at once and wait till the fuss died down. Fortunately she had been offered some film-work at Ealing Studios5 which gave her a publicly acceptable excuse to go; after that she could join Peter in Spain where he was putting the finishing touches to his film, ‘ “For Whom the Gate Tolls”, he admits himself it is a tollgate to end all TGs, the commentary is delivered by himself!’ Nancy hated having to leave Gaston, hated having to go to England – ‘one can only call it Blighty’ – but she would do anything rather than risk the Colonel’s displeasure, even at the cost of three months’ exile from her cité du bonheur parfait. She went first to London, from where she wrote to Colonel, ‘I do miss you so much … I see now how dreadful one’s life can become at a moment’s notice’; from there she moved on to stay with the Mosleys at their house in Wiltshire (‘I miss you’), and to Muv at High Wycombe (‘Oh the days do seem long in the country I thought today would never come to an end … Je regarde le vieux moulin solitaire et glacé à travers la fenêtre et je suis dans le malheur’), before joining Peter in Madrid: ‘Next time that, like the Archangel Gabriel, you chase me away from heavenly Paris, do let it be to somewhere warmer. I’m so cold that, as you see, I can hardly hold a pen. France was white with blossom, the plain round Madrid white with snow. I never want to leave France.’ When she finally returned in June Paris was looking more beautiful than ever, the ‘dear old military gentleman’, to her enormous relief, had got over his panic and was even quite pleased to welcome her back, and she was able to return to work with a free mind.

  Love in a Cold Climate, or Diversion, as it was first called, was finished in September 1948. As in The Pursuit of Love the narrator is Fanny, who during the course of the book marries a don with whom she goes to live in Oxford. Uncle Matthew and the Radletts are still very much in evidence; the plot, however, belongs not to them but to their immensely rich and grand neighbours, Lord and Lady Montdore. The Montdores have one child, a daughter, heir to their enormous wealth and the centre of their lives. Polly is a beauty and her ambitious mother has great plans for her, a duke at least, or even higher – ‘an abbey, an altar, an Archbishop, a voice saying “I, Albert Edward Christian George Andrew Patrick David take thee, Leopoldina” ’. But Polly, as ruthless in her way as her mother, shatters these hopes by marrying her Uncle Boy – no money, years older, and worst of all Lady Montdore’s bosom friend (some say more than a friend) and companion.

  In their rage and disappointment the Montdores disinherit Polly, and send for the next in line, an unknown Canadian last heard of living in Nova Scotia, no doubt some kind of half-civilised lumberjack.

  The heir, Cedric, eventually tracked down living in Paris, is invited to Hampton. No lumberjack he: ‘A glitter of blue and gold crossed the parquet, and a human dragon-fly was kneeling on the fur rug in front of the Montdores, one long white hand extended towards each. He was a tall, thin young man, supple as a girl, dressed in a rather a bright blue suit; his hair was the gold of a brass bed-knob … He was flashing a smile of unearthly perfection.’ Cedric, outrageous, flamboyant and unashamedly narcissistic, transforms the lives of his newly discovered relations, in particular that of Lady Montdore whom he turns from a stout old woman, impervious to fashion, to a lithe, bird-like creature with blue curls and a brilliant, flashing smile. ‘I make her say “brush” before she comes into the room,’ Cedric explains. ‘It fixes at once this very gay smile on one’s face.’ So absorbing is this new way of life – facial massage, punishing diets, up and down to London for parties – that Polly is forgotten until she and Boy turn up from a prolonged honeymoon on the Continent, both of them sick to death of each other. Polly soon abandons her husband for a neighbouring duke, while Boy, Cedric and Lady Montdore roll off in the Daimler to France, leaving Lord Montdore in possession of Hampton and a peaceful old age.

  The book is dominated by two great comic characters, Cedric and Lady Montdore (both loathed by the greatest comic character of all, Uncle Matthew. ‘The hell-hag,’ he says of the latter, ‘drown her if I were Montdore’, while as to Cedric, ‘Uncle Matthew, after one look, found that the word sewer had become obsolete and inadequate’). Lady Montdore, magnificent in her rudeness, magnificent in her grandeur (‘I think I may say we put India on the map. Hardly any of one’s friends in England had never even heard of India before we went there, you know’), is a composite of Helen Dashwood and of Nancy’s mother-in-law Lady Rennell, two ladies well known for a lofty view of themselves and their belief in uncompromising candour. Like Uncle Matthew, Lady Montdore has a lovable side, a vulnerability and innocence which make it impossible to regard her as wholly monstrous. Lord Montdore, with his cardboard qualities, his wonderful old handsomeness and elaborate courtesy, is Lord Rennell to the life. Colonel makes a brief appearance as Fabrice (this is before he has met Linda). Cedric is drawn from Stephen Tennant, epitomising everything in which Nancy most delighted in her numerous homosexual acquaintance – the frivolity, the theatrical showing-off, the sharp-tongued, very feminine funniness.

  And as always there are the private jokes – like the dear old man who comes to lecture on the toll-gates of England and Wales; and Cedric’s complaint to Fanny that one has to drive so slowly in England because the roads are full of tweeded colonels going for walks. Don’t French colonels go for walks, too, asks Fanny? Certainly not, Cedric replies, ‘ “though I do know a colonel, in Paris, who walks to the antique shops sometimes.”

  ‘ “How do they take their exercise?” I asked.

  ‘ “Quite another way, darling.” ’

  Love in a Cold Climate was published in July 1949 to even greater acclaim than its predecessor. The critics extolled it; it was the first novel ever to be chosen simultaneously as Book of the Month by the Book Society, the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard; and the catchy title was on everybody’s lips. (‘The Queen had to act Love in a CC in a charade – she kissed the King & shivered & everybody guessed at once!!’) It shot up to the top of the best-seller lists on both sides of the Atlantic, this despite reviews in America that were ‘positively insulting’, condemning the book for its lack of ‘message’ and the moral character of Cedric as ‘loathesome’. But as Nancy said, ‘Either praise or blame from govs [Americans] leaves ONE cold’. Of her friends in England only Evelyn was not entirely congratulatory: having read the book in manuscript, he was disappointed that Nancy had not only ignored many of his suggestions, but had refused point-blank to obey his instruction to rewrite from beginning to end. ‘Evelyn said it could have been a work of art – yes but I’m afraid it’s here & now & the Colonel I care for.’

  The Colonel, more than ever, was the pivot of her existence. The books must be written to earn the money to pay for the life that Nancy wanted: Paris and the Colonel. Her happiness was entirely dependent on him, and how generous a ration of his time and attention he allowed her. During those rare periods of political inactivity, when he had little to do and welcomed Nancy running round at all hours to entertain him, she was blissfully happy; when she could not see him – because he or she was away from Paris, or because he was si
mply too busy – her misery was great. ‘I long for you Colonel’ was always the refrain when she was away … ‘I long for the rue Monsieur & my happy Paris life.’ ‘Dear darling Colonel how are you?’ she wrote to him on one of her compulsory visits to England. ‘I wish I were sitting on your doorstep like a faithful dog waiting for you to wake up you dear darling Col … Do miss me. Do miss saying “I’ve got a heavy political day – LET ME SEE? can you come at 2 minutes to 6?” … Darling colonel good bye NR I know ones not allowed to say it but I love you.’ From the beginning of 1947 the Colonel started being frantically busy again, with the plans for the General’s return to power and the organisation of the RPF6, engaged in what the newspapers described as ‘fébrile activité politique’. This immediately resulted in a sharp swing down on Nancy’s emotional barometer. ‘You darling colonel my telephone is bust … If the MRP7 can bear to let you out of their sight for an instant you might pay a visit to your poor neighbour later in the day … I suppose you are being fébrile … Ma petite main est gêlée so I will stop. What does one do about the telephone – I have paid the bill & got the receipt, oh Colonel I am so crying. I held it upside down mais cela n’a rien donné.’

  But a far more serious threat to her relationship with the Colonel was his longing for marriage and for children. She knew that he would never marry her, his excuse being when it was discussed between them that it would ruin him politically to marry a divorcée, and this she had schooled herself to accept: ‘I’m beginning to really wish I could marry the Col,’ she confessed to Diana, ‘but for a hundred reasons it isn’t possible, so no use thinking of it.’ She had even forced herself to come to terms with his obsessive womanising. For someone of Nancy’s temperament, romantic and intensely private, this was achieved at prodigious cost. Being in love with a man who not only failed to return that love, but who incessantly and publicly paid court to other women was a humiliation painfully endured. Many people, particularly those who saw him only socially, found ‘Don Juan’ Palewski a figure of fun, with his rotund figure and slicked-back hair, to be seen at every party pursuing the pretty women like a Frenchman in a farce. To his English acquaintance, it was a ludicrous way for a man of his standing to behave. Regular guests at the British Embassy used to watch with amusement as Gaston selected his prey, pressing close to her on one of the huge sofas in the Salon Jaune, bouncing up and down on the cushions while urgently hissing in her ear, ‘J’ai envie de toi! J’ai envie de toi!’ To Gaston himself their opinions were a matter of indifference; he wanted to make love to as many women as he could persuade into bed, and what people thought, or who these women were, was irrelevant. He tried them all: the wives of friends, the friends of friends, and Nancy knew that not even her own sisters would be left unattempted.

  The only thing to do was to treat the whole thing as a tremendous joke and wherever possible affect not to notice. But Nancy was acutely jealous of Gaston’s attentions to other women. She could not help noticing, and it was too wounding always to be laughed off. On several occasions when he was publicly laying siege, she broke down completely and made a scene. This was the one area where the shop-front could not be kept up. She could not pretend with Gaston, or play games with him; perhaps it would have been better if she had. But every time she confronted him he reassured her, rather impatiently, that whoever it was meant nothing to him. After a time she came to accept his compulsive flirtatiousness, his hundreds of little love-affairs, as a necessary but unimportant part of his life, a life in which she as his confidante (very much, she told herself, like Madame de Pompadour with Louis XV) had by far the larger rôle. It was not always easy to keep faith, particularly when she herself was so often treated not as the maîtresse en titre, the adored Marquise, but as one of the many birds of passage hastily to be pushed out of the back door at the first sound of someone approaching. ‘When I go round to the Colonel’s flat it is like some dreadful spy film,’ she told Diana. ‘I end by being shut up in a cupboard or hiding on the escalier de service & being found by the concierge – so undignified I nearly die of it – apart from the fact that the whole of the time is taken up by these antics & I get about 5 restless minutes of his company!’

  But these humiliations were nothing compared to the very real fear that one day the Colonel might marry and she would lose him altogether and for good. It was always at the back of her mind, and she had had one or two bad frights – there was a Resistance heroine, for instance, who had been in love with Gaston for years whom for a time Nancy was convinced he was planning to marry. But nothing happened and their friendship continued as before. ‘Oh the horror of love,’ she wrote to Diana. ‘The fact is I couldn’t live through it if he married & what is so dreadful is I know I can stop him – or at least I think so – & that condemns him to the great domestic discomfort in which he lives, to loneliness & having no children.’ Unsatisfactory although this was, it was preferable to the alternative, and Nancy lost no opportunity to impress on Gaston the suffering of married life. There was many a spiked reference to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, (‘he a balloon, she like the skeleton of some tiny bird, hopping in her hobble skirt … They both look ravaged with misery – she said to the Col “you ought to marry, look at us” ’), many a meaningful nod towards the Parc Monceau, that dreary area of Paris loved by nannies with perambulators where couples with young children liked to settle. And in case this left any doubt in the Colonel’s mind he was given a glimpse of what the Palewski ménage would be like.

  So did you go to the Palewskis last night? Yes, poor people I did feel sorry for them – all ruined by that thunder storm. Gaston had spent the whole afternoon hanging up Japanese lanterns you can’t think how sad & sopping they looked. Then we were packed into those downstairs rooms like sardines, you know how hot it was – with the band on the staircase, you couldn’t hear your self speak. Goodness she has got a lot of relations hasn’t she.

  I know – whenever one goes there, all those deadly in laws. Poor Gaston, he is really very patient but you can see what he feels

  What happened to all those nice pictures he used to have in the rue Bonaparte?

  She doesn’t like old things – except of course Antoine Bibesco.

  I rather like their glass furniture, you know. Did you see the little girl last night?

  Oh yes. Gaston kept telling her to go to bed, but she only said ‘oh fa-la’ & took no notice.

  Whether it was due to Nancy’s efforts or not, the Colonel continued in his single state. He talked about marrying, he admitted to a wish for children, but his bachelor existence was extremely agreeable. Eventually, although she remained watchful, Nancy began to relax.

  Apart from her periodic anxieties about Gaston, her life now was immensely enjoyable. She was famous, well-off, surrounded by a large circle of friends and living in the centre of the most civilised city on earth. ‘How nice it is to be happy in middle age after a wretched youth instead of the other way round,’ she remarked contentedly to Diana. There was nothing she regretted in leaving England behind her. Most of her English friends came over to Paris at one time or another, and those who did not she saw on her grudging but regular visits to England. As well as sisters and her parents, there were a number of friends with whom at least once every couple of years she made a point of spending a few days: Gerald Berners at Faringdon, Raymond Mortimer at Crichel, Eddy Sackville-West at Cooleville in Ireland and Gerry Wellington (that ‘lovely mixture of pomp & pornography’) at Stratfield Saye. Then there were her ‘visits to the major novelists’, Leslie Hartley, Evelyn, and Anthony Powell: ‘The food of all three about equal (not good). Leslie had the warmest house & warmest heart. Evelyn by far the coldest house8 & Tony Powell the coldest heart but the most fascinating chats & a pâté de foie gras.’ The greatest pleasure of these visits was of course the return to France, when, with mysterious inevitability, it was ‘Fog in Kent, fog-horns all the way over the Channel, fog in the Pas de Calais – blazing sunshine here & the chestnuts out’.

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nbsp; With two best-sellers in the space of four years, Nancy was much in demand. The Sunday Times had commissioned her to write a weekly letter from Paris, in which she gave an insider’s views of the fashionable and intellectual life of the capital, aired some of her favourite fantasies about the French, and worked in discreet references to ‘a friend of mine who collects fine furniture’, ‘a député of my acquaintance’. She had also started to try her hand at translating, something quite new to her, and after the hard labour of writing a novel, the kind of work that came easily, ‘the pure pleasure of writing without the misery of inventing’. The Mosleys had recently set up their own publishing house, Euphorion Books, and the original suggestion was that Nancy should translate extracts from the Memoirs of Saint-Simon, an idea which she rejected on the grounds that English readers would never ‘be made to accept the fact that a beautiful rich highly born young woman insists on marrying an old man of 90 qui fit partout dans le lit the 1st night & thinks it all simply perfect because of the tabouret. Even Debo would hardly believe that!’ Instead she and Diana decided on Mme de la Fayette’s novel, La Princesse de Clèves.