Nancy Mitford (18 page)

‘Though I suppose Venice is less spoilt than almost any where in the world, horrors assail one on every hand,’ Nancy wrote to Sir Hugh Jackson in 1962. ‘The silence broken by
splashing
noises is replaced by the engines of motor boats which stink of petrol, and then no young Italian would think of walking about without a small wireless in his pocket bellowing jazz at full blast. Oh dear, I do think that when we die we shan’t have nearly so many regrets as
somebody
like Mazarin, the world is becoming so vile. There is no English colony left here, rather sad, I should think almost the first time in history. There are some delightful Russians and Austrians washed up here after the wars and a very agreeable small society…’ The society, she told Alvilde Lees-Milne, ‘is a hard nut to crack, as everybody is rich enough not to be impressed by good cooks and so on. At the same time they simply love a new face if it
pleases
them…’

She was alarmed by prevalent rumours of a motor road along the Zattere and
skyscrapers
between the Carmine and Piazzale Roma. ‘They say it’s almost certain now. I think Unesco ought to do something, but of course they would only get excited if the works of Henry Moore were threatened. Alphy [Clary] says the more foreigners protest the more the Itis say
we are not a fusty old museum, we are a great wonderful modern country like America. Oh the brutes.’ And in another letter (17th April, 1961): ‘While the English mourn over thirsty doggies Venice is doomed. Bauer, pushed by Colonel (pushed I like to think by me) has been conducting a resounding campaign in the Figaro. Alphy is very pessimistic, but perhaps the circumstances of his life make him so. The motor road will run under his nose…’

Nancy also visited Contessa Cicogna in Tripoli, where she reigned over a ravishing little oasis from which she has been ousted by the present régime. ‘The house and garden are a sort of Paradise, and the garden the only one I have ever fully approved of—about three acres I suppose of brilliant flowers in squares, like a Persian carpet or a patchwork. But I was
awfully
ill there as a result of vaccination and the Arabs gave me the creeps… We were always about fourteen and when I wasn’t languishing—seven days of high fever and I’m still very thin—I adored it.’

‘But the high spot was the Bosphorus where I went from there and spent a week with my great new friend Ostrorog. He has got a pink wooden palace with its feet in the sea, a cross between Venice and Russia, and he showed me Constantinople which I suppose nobody alive knows as he does since he has lived there all his life. I can safely say I’ve never enjoyed a visit more. He is on the Asiatic side, next village to Scutari (which is utterly unchanged since the Lady of the Lamp) and you go everywhere by boat and the Bosphorus is unspoilt—nothing but large villas and palaces in parks and little wooden villages on the sea. Such pretty boats, never a speed boat. Then there is such a charming life there, all based on French civilization—servants, the lingère from Scutari who looked after me (he has only men in the house) all brought up by
les bonnes soeurs
. The neighbours sit about like in Russian plays, languidly
reading
the
Figaro
… As much as I detested the Arabs I loved the Turks.

‘Then I had a nice week in Athens though a bit too mondaine. Lovely bathing. Now the grindstone and I don’t move again until I’ve handed in the m.s.—around Christmas I guess… Saw Auntie [Violet Trefusis] yesterday… As she always has to go one better she said she once had a burning affair with Ostrorog and got in the family way. I said goodness Violet, where is it? She muttered something about a bumpy taxi.’ (26th June, 1964, to Alvilde Lees-Milne).

Peter Rodd had faded into the background of Nancy’s existence. He had followed many a
circuitous
trail in directions ever more remote from Nancy’s and they no longer had more than mixed memories in common, bitter rather than sweet. ‘To enable old Prod to get married, which he seems to want,’ Nancy was willing to divorce him as secretly as possible ‘in the hopes of avoiding much publicity’. Her marriage was dissolved without regret, probably with relief, in 1958. All her love had been lavished on ‘the Colonel’, since their meeting in London
during
the war. Absent or present, and he was often absent on behalf of General de Gaulle, he remained the centre of her life until she died. He admired Nancy and was deeply attached to her, but he had always been candid about not falling in love with her. He was a devoted
comrade
on whose sympathy, advice and intellectual refreshment she could steadfastly rely. Theirs was a very special and happy liaison—so happy that the thought of marriage did not enter into it except, perhaps, in dreams. For Nancy, in her heart of hearts, was also a bachelor in spite of her marriage. She often repeated that she preferred to live alone and I think she was sincere.’ I suspect that she would have subscribed to La Rochefoucauld’s maxim: ‘
Il’y a de bons mariages, mais il n’y en a point de délicieux
.’

NANCY PAID ANNUAL visits to her parents who had chosen to live apart in their old age—Lord Redesdale in a cottage at Otterburn, Northumberland, and Lady Redesdale at lonely Inch Kenneth off the Isle of Mull in Scotland. True to form, her father had borne his misfortunes stoically. The loss of his only son Tom, the sad end of his daughter Unity, the break with Jessica, and the disintegration of the British Empire, were sorrows that had left their scars on this rugged old soldier. Besides he had grown very deaf. But he was proud of Nancy’s meteoric success. He enjoyed her jokes even wryly at his expense, as she enjoyed his eccentricities, though she said she felt like Captain Scott of the Antarctic when she crossed the Channel to visit him. She could still laugh at his ‘Uncle Matthew’ mannerisms. ‘Have you read the Queensberry book on Oscar Wilde?’ she asked her mother (9th January, 1950). ‘It’s the best of any I think and would amuse you as old Lord Queensberry is so
exactly
like Farve, or what he would have been under those circumstances.’ ‘My old father-in-law [Lord Rennell]’, she added, ‘a terrible prig, knew Wilde well (and pretended that he knew nothing of
les moeurs
which I don’t believe) but said nobody has ever been so brilliant in the world.’

Already in May 1949 she had written Lady Redesdale: ‘I had a letter from Farve saying he is waiting for the end in great comfort, well I suppose we all are, in a sense, waiting for the end, but I was so impressed that I wrote and offered to go, but he says don’t. I wonder if I ought to really as he seems to have quarrelled with everybody else almost and is lonely I suppose.’

In September she decided to fly to Redesdale Cottage, whence she wrote: ‘Farve has become a good time boy—nothing but cocktail parties. One was given for me here last night—ten neighbours—can you beat it. More in character: “I was showing a blasted woman over the garden”—pause—“I thought it was Lady N”—long pause—“Well it was Lady N. She rang about twenty times—at last I went to see what it was and I said oh I thought you were a van.” However she didn’t come to the party.’

In June next year he returned her visit and she gave a party for him in ‘Mr. Street’—‘a
cocktail
party which Farve absolutely adores. It went on from five to eight solidly, but he was
spryer
than ever at the end. Old M. de Lasteyrie came. I said are you pleased about the elections. “Oh! you know when it isn’t the scaffold I’m always pleased.” He then told Farve about his two grandmothers being beheaded. Farve said “I rather liked that relation of Joan of Arc”.’

Somebody having asked her if Lord Redesdale were connected with the Parisian Baron de Rede, this became a standard joke. ‘Barons Rede and Redesdale have but little in common,’ she told her mother. The former ‘lives but for luxury, beauty and social life—a less lively Cedric. He looks like a tie-pin, thin, stiff and correct with a weeny immovable head on a long stiff neck.’ Whereas Baron de Rede collected works of art her father was inclined to sell them. ‘I went last week to see one of the grandest collections of furniture, etc. here, belonging to Comte Niel,’ she wrote (18th May, 1951). ‘He showed me two celadon carp mounted for Mme de Pompadour (Mlle Poisson) and said “we’d give anything to know where the other two are.” “Sold by my father in 1919,” I said sadly. “How could Monsieur votre père have borne to sell them?” How indeed! I suppose you don’t remember who bought them?’ Nancy imagined that her father would have been far happier living in Canada than in the Cotswolds. ‘But how ghastly it would have been for us!’ she exclaimed. Farve writes every Xmas and every
birthday
saying how I wish I could give you a present but of course it’s impossible. Why?’

Half in jest she had adopted many of his verbal expressions, as when she summarized Venetian life in August: ‘super-sewerage and a ball every night.’ Her affection for him was tinged with nostalgia and muffled in laughter: ‘I’ve found an old postcard from Farve addressed to Miss Blob M. e.g. Blob-Nose which he always called me. Reminds one of
something
?’

When he died in March 1958 she wrote to Mrs. Hammersley: ‘I feel rather sad and mooney about the past, though I don’t think he enjoyed life very much latterly.’ And from Redesdale Cottage, Otterburn, 22nd March: ‘The cremation this after noon—by no means such a gruesome ceremony as I had imagined—the coffin goes down in a sort of food lift. Beautiful service, beautifully read in a real not parsonic voice by a canon something. It took twenty minutes. But everybody is rather cross now—I’ve got Carlyle’s
French Revolution
mercifully
and retire into that… The will is quite dotty, but nothing much to leave…’

Earlier in the year she had enjoyed what she described as her ‘visits to the major
novelists
’—L. P. Hartley, Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Powell. ‘The food of all three about equal (not good). Leslie had the warmest house and warmest heart. Evelyn by far the coldest house and Tony Powell the coldest heart but the most fascinating chats and a pâté de foie gras. He raked up some old characters from my past… that was all very interesting. I find all these writers take themselves very seriously and Tony Powell speaks of
Punch
, of which he is
literary
editor, as though it were an important vehicle of intellectual opinion…’ Nancy had not seen an adverse criticism in
Punch
. ‘When I went to stay with Tony he began by saying he was so relieved I’d suggested coming because afraid I might have minded the article. So I read it under his nose and of course shrieked—so he was relieved again. I love that sort of furious
criticism showing that somebody is in a real temper. The Americans aren’t nearly so
amusing
, but intensely serious and favourable.’ Apropos of the latter, ‘I was asked to appear on American TV everything paid
and
500 dollars and my publisher begged, for the sake of the book. No fear. I’m writing an article for
Harper’s Magazine
(not
Bazaar
) on Why I hate America. Their title. Enjoying it terribly, venom pours from pen.’

Never having seen America, Nancy’s venom poured from blind prejudice. In this respect she was a chip off the old block: Lord Redesdale’s hatred of Germans had vanished as soon as he visited their country. Fortunately the Americans were more entertained than angered by her diatribe, which did not affect the sale of her books in the States. Nor did it affect her friend ships with several Americans, each of whom she insisted was a phenomenal exception. In April 1949 she wrote: ‘The beautiful, gay and charming Evangeline Bruce is to be American ambassadress here, we are all enchanted. I think she’ll make an Embassy rather like Diana’s was, a thing which is badly needed here.’

The Gladwyn Jebbs (Lord and Lady Gladwyn) who in Nancy’s opinion transformed the British Embassy in Paris, did not arrive till later. Nancy informed Mrs. Hammersley on 4th July, 1954: ‘The Jebbs are a success
beyond all hope
. I’ve never heard the French—the monde, the intellectuals, the politicians, and the man in the street so united in praise of anybody. They can’t do wrong. You don’t know the pleasure this is to me, apart from the fact that the Embassy is fast becoming the centre of all fun. Under the Coopers it was brilliant, but
fearfully
criticized too, whereas the Jebbs seem to have the knack of pleasing everybody. Cynthia has developed in an extraordinary way you know. I’ve seen a lot of her alone she is so good and at the same time surprisingly worldly wise. Really she and Iris Hayter are something to be proud of. I see your eye glazing with boredom as you read this.’

While in Paris Nancy did not consort with many French writers. A few she met now and then at social gatherings: Jean Cocteau was the most ubiquitous of these. She sat next to him at embassy dinners but never became intimate with him. Prodigal of poetic images in
iridescent
flights of conversation as well as in ballets, films and dramas, it was remarkable how long this verbal magician had woven his spells in the Parisian limelight. While he seldom failed to scintillate, embassy dinners must have been to him what pub-crawling would have been to Nancy, who could only see his funny side, a fraction of the real Cocteau: ‘he told me he has a godson and at Christmas he felt rather guilty about this child to whom he had never sent a present, so he went off and bought a beautiful big pink mechanical rabbit. He received a very cold letter—
il parait que mon filleul est colonel
.’ She saw more of Philippe Jullian, the talented Anglophile writer and illustrator who designed modish covers for her books, and Philippe’s rarefied circle of dilettanti. When she spoke of ‘the monde, the intellectuals, the politicians’, it was chiefly of ‘the Colonel’ she was thinking.

Did English writers take themselves more seriously than their colleagues across the Channel? The first thing that always strikes me about France, even in railway stations, is that literature is taken far more seriously there than in England: you need only glance at the
publications
on display. Most French writers even subconsciously aspire to become members of
their classical Academy. Their social behaviour may be flippant but when they speak of their
métier
they become earnest, with a profound respect for the precise values of words and shades of meaning. Their conversation is usually more sparkling than that of English
writers
but they are unlikely to ‘talk shop’ at embassy dinners.

How seriously did Nancy take her own writings? Despite her distaste for solemnity she devoted immense patience, care and industry to the composition of her books. Her innate modesty should not deceive us. In the brief articles she wrote for news papers she remained an expert agitator: she stung if she did not draw blood. This was just what editors wanted, but readers have developed thicker skins in the last decade.

We happened to share an exceptional interest in the Bourbon family, of whom she wrote with perspicacity: ‘Licentious or bigoted, noble or ignoble, there has seldom been a dull Bourbon. They were nearly all odd, original men of strong passions, unaccountable in their behaviour… Bourbons steal the picture whenever they are in it.’

She had been engaged on a bracing introduction to Miss Lucy Norton’s selection and translation of the Duc de Saint Simon’s Memoirs when she was overjoyed by General de Gaulle’s return to power. Her letters to Mrs. Hammersley bubbled over with excitement: ‘We cried with happiness after so long it seems unbelievable…’ 12th June, 1958: ‘I dined in the company of La Tour du Pin who smuggled Soustelle out of Paris. His line of talk made my hair stand on end. “We are all going into the Maquis against the General”. It’s the old story—no human beings are so idiotic as the French
right
. I dined with the Bourbon-Bussets last night, all the gilded youth (never have I seen such diamonds) all strongly for the General and I think underestimating the fascist danger. I know something about fascists and feel
exceedingly
nervous. The next few months are going to be tricky.

‘They say Chevigny wanted to go to Colombey and arrest the General. The army told him don’t count on us, the police the same, the garde républicain the same, and finally the local gendarmerie. They say, like Ney bringing Napoleon in an iron cage. It has all been very much like the retour d’Elbe—the enormous shadow looming—everybody saying no no and then crumbling at the sight of the man.’

18th June: ‘I thought of you, Mme Costa and the Maison Dior during La Tour du Pin’s récit of how he smuggled Soustelle out of Paris. A young Mme du Four, living in the same immeuble as Soustelle, was induced to hide him in the back of her motor and drive him out. She goes in and out many times a day and the police knew her by sight. So when all was fixed she said (so French) “what shall I wear? My tailleur from Dior hasn’t come yet!” However, it did come, in time to figure. When they’d got him out they made one of the chaps in the plot take her to a film so that for at least two hours she wouldn’t be able to tell her friends!’

20th June: ‘J. telephoned, “
Vous êtes contente des êvênements—comme nous tous?
” Do you remember the face she used to make if one mentioned the General? “
Surtout pas
” and so on? And always cracking up le Maréchal? Oh do admit. Now she pretends they’ve all longed for de Gaulle with an aching passion ever since the war. I said O but I did feel rather furious! Colonel is here for the 18th June of course. He looks so well and happy. I went to the
Champs Elysées—an immense crowd crying “
Merci
” as the General passed. The Colonel says “he is amusing himself”. Malraux said to Cocteau: “
il est devenu si rusé
[cunning]” But Colonel says nonsense, he always has been
rusé
…’

Nancy’s aged friend Mme Costa was a firm Gaullist, but this was ‘most unusual in her world, Catholic, royalist,
bien pensant
, Action Française… The cry generally goes up: “I vote for the General with both my hands so as to avoid shaking his”. They vote for him because “who else is there?” But they hate.’ Nancy concluded ‘it’s not the jeunesse dorée who are against the General but sort of forty-year-old ultra-Conservatives.’ This was probably true of her fellow guests at Fontaines.

After July in Venice and Rome, where the temperature rose to 101 degrees and Nancy saw two women carried out of the Vatican, ‘evidently dead’, she confessed: ‘I sigh for the land of the cypress and myrtle—I loathe the oak and the ash.’ In August she visited her mother at Inch Kenneth, Isle of Mull, where she ‘caught a powerful Scotch germ which
simply
floored me and drove away the health so expensively acquired in Venice. I must say northern climes do not suit me.’ To Mrs. Hammersley she confided: ‘Muv says she lives here because there are no tourists. But her eye is glued to a telescope and as soon as a tent appears on Mull she sends a boat and the amazed occupants are press-ganged over and given a vast tea. Yesterday two jolly Lesbians in trousers were the bag… The deaf aid has been
discarded
for good and so it is yelling and even then hardly being heard. But anyhow she never used to listen to one, so not much change.’