Nancy Mitford (20 page)

She valued the critical opinions of her friends, some of whom, like Raymond Mortimer and Cyril Connolly, also happened to be book reviewers, but she considered that few of them were qualified to deal with French subjects. ‘The English ignorance on French matters never ceases to astound.’ she wrote to Mrs. Ham. ‘Betty Chetwynd said the other day that when one has lived here a few years one sees that even the pundits like Harold Nicolson and Cyril [Connolly] don’t really know as much as they pretend to. Raymond [Mortimer] is
another
matter, he
really does
know.’ After Evelyn Waugh, Raymond Mortimer became her chief
literary
mentor, who patiently read her proofs and corrected errors.

Since her research on Madame de Pompadour Nancy had a hankering after a house of her own at Versailles. In January 1959 she heard that the house she coveted had suddenly come on the market. ‘There are such pros and such cons,’ she told Mrs. Ham. ‘But I’m in
favour of letting fate carry one along up to a point. The Rue Mr can never be mine and I long for something that is.’ In February, ‘the Versailles house hangs in the balance and I desire it more and more. Perhaps I shall get it but it will take most of my savings if I do.’ The house hung in the balance for another seven years. Remembering the days of her
poverty
, she confided to Lady Harrod: ‘The Colonel roars with laughter when I save up for my old age and says—when you were earning
£
6 a week in the bookshop I never heard about your old age—which is rather true, but there was nothing much I could do about it then, except hope! Violet [Trefusis] tells them all here that I’m an appalling miser—all very well for her with a huge capital sum in Canadian dollars! If one could count on the Bomb it would be different.’

The delightful apartment in Rue Monsieur suited her exactly. ‘I do love pretty little things that lie about doing nothing in a room,’ she remarked, and she had filled her rooms discreetly with pretty objects. The only drawback was the vicinity of noisy children. As she complained to Mrs. Ham (19th March, 1959): ‘When I see
Fillette dans le coma depuis 4 jours
I do so wish it could be all the children in this courtyard who literally drive me mad. Talking on this subject with my late hostess Mme Lambert, she said, “Take Anne de G. (a lovely heavenly creature aged 25 with three babies), if she couldn’t have a large family she would feel there was nothing in life for her”. No doubt there are such women—how could they be ordered to limit their families? Of course in the end every thing will work out as it always does…’

‘I’m more than thankful to have no children, much as I minded at the time.’

Yet Nancy enjoyed the society of the young. When young Henry Harrod and two Eton friends went to Paris on their own she gave them ‘a marvellous luncheon with champagne’ although she had intended to see nobody. ‘They all came to luncheon yesterday,’ she told Lady Harrod, ‘so sweet and funny and hungry. As I’m not answering the telephone they
came
and of course I couldn’t resist their dear Woodley faces seen through a curtain. Absolutely loved them.’ And she was vastly diverted by her nephews who gave her fresh ideas for her next novel.

Intensely loyal to her old friends, Nancy had to admit that she had outgrown many chums of her girlhood. Mark Ogilvie-Grant was the closest of these: him she had never
outgrown
. Each of them recovered their youth when they wrote to each other, long intimate letters full of private jokes and whimsical affection. But Nancy felt about many others as she felt about Mark’s cousin Nina Seafield, who announced that she was coming to live in Paris: ‘I love seeing her once a year but as a neighbour NO.’ And Hamish Erskine, with whom she had wavered on the verge of matrimony in her twenties, what a gulf had widened between them since the period of
Highland Fling
(dedicated to Hamish)! She wrote to Mark (6th December, 1959): ‘Poor sweet passed by on his way to Elizabeth Chavchavadze. She says he’s been asleep ever since he got there. He has written a piece for some book on snobbishness! and is furious because they only gave him
£
5. I suppose he thinks, like all amateurs, that
writing
is well paid. It is, if you scoop the jackpot, but otherwise sweeping crossings pays better. I got a letter from a poor fellow (unknown to me) who has published two novels and lives
in Spain. He says he can only eat once a day “which sounds more amusing than it is”. Ay di me. He wants to come and live here, I’ve begged not. It would be once every two days, and less amusing than ever. Golly life here is expensive.’

‘To go back to poor sweet, one does wonder what he uses for cash. Then he is so silly. He was sitting here—I said now I advise you to go and catch the train. Oh no, it would mean waiting at the station. So he misses the train. Two expensive taxis, a telephone call to Bourgogne, and another night in an hotel, and another taxi in the morning. Made me cross. Quite a fiver I guess.’ For a season Daisy Fellowes (the Hon. Mrs. Reginald, formerly Princess de Broglie) had offered Hamish a sinecure as social secretary but his insouciance had
exasperated
her until she dismissed him with, ‘Good-bye, Hamish, we shall meet next summer.’

Nancy often visited Mark in Greece as she had formerly at Kew Green, usually in June before proceeding to Venice. Her article ‘Wicked thoughts on Greece’, in which she attacked the American School of Classical Studies and the Stoa, ‘said to be “of Attalos”, but really of Mr. Homer A. Thompson,’ was the fruit of one of these visits. In compensation she admired the excavations at Olympia and at Delphi, where ‘the ruins lie in their own
wonderful
background and tell their own wonderful story’. Above all she admired Hosios Loukas, ‘the Byzantine church in its almond grove on a mountainside,’ hoping that ‘Mr. Homer A. Thompson will never get there’. This led to a heated exchange with Mr. Thompson in which Nancy had the last word. She returned to the charge in an essay on tourists, who were harmless on the whole with one exception: ‘Some Americans, who had probably seen the Victor Emmanuel monument on their way through Rome, generously decided to present the Athenians with its equivalent which they call the Stoa of Attalos. It is ghastly, but does not matter much, since Athens is past praying for.’ As the genial painter Peter Mitchell, a ‘good American’ friend of Nancy’s, remarked: ‘However correct the
excavations
and restorations were, they hardly added up to a Hubert Robert.’ Nancy wanted to see ruins with the eyes of Hubert Robert, forgetting that they had originally been painted in bright colours.

While Mark was Nancy’s Athenian guide Patrick and Joan Leigh Fermor showed her the islands beloved of Lord Byron, opening her eyes to their unspoiled scenery, and to an
existence
relatively primitive and serene. Professor Alan Ross’s pamphlet on ‘Upper Class English Usage’, read aloud while Nancy was visiting the Leigh Fermors at Hydra, seemed even more comical in such surroundings. Patrick, who has written so vividly about his Grecian adventures, should also record his conversations with Nancy. He and Joan were living in the house of Niko Ghika the painter during one of Nancy’s visits. He tells me that they were looking after a neighbour’s dog called Spot, ‘who barked incessantly at some
visitors
, and accepted others in silence. During a maddening call by some people we hardly knew the wretch never stopped barking for a second. “Out, damned Spot!” I can hear Nancy
wailing
to herself with eyes rolled up dolorously, and when they left she said: “I’m afraid old Spot is an unerring Non-U indicator.”’

‘Bidden to some feast at Spetsai, we caught the steamer with Niko. He was praising Le
Corbusier, and Nancy said, “But I can’t
bear
him!” All the time the steamer’s gramophone was playing a deafening non-stop tune, rather like a roundabout at a fair, which, to tease Niko, gave rise to an improvised song which we both sang mercilessly:

Lots of verses. For years, the phrase “
tout est si propre et si gai
!” surfaced whenever a
particularly
squalid or mournful scene came in sight. She couldn’t bear the lateness of meals—
nearly
as bad as Spain! It’s all right for you, reeling drunk all of you, but what about poor abstemious
me
? Well, inner resources I suppose. I’ll just think about Voltaire, or Madame de Boigne, till a crust appears…—’

‘After Mark (“Old Gent”), her favourite Anglo-Athenian was certainly Roger Hinks, then head of the British Council there, though he suffered bitterly from anti-us emotions during the Cyprus troubles. One day he said: “I’m off to Italy to see some proper painting, and by
painting
I don’t mean the daubed planks that masquerade under the name here! They haven’t an inkling of
chiaroscuro
or
morbidezza
.” (This occasioned a song by Paddy to the tune of
Giovinezza
, which began: “
Morbidezza
!
Morbidezza
!
Chiaroscuro! che bellezza
!”)’ Nancy’s nickname for Hinks was the Old Turkish Lady. Eddy Gathorne-Hardy was another congenial spirit.

Paddy describes a later visit when, ‘we were living in a rather wretched house at Limni on the west coast of Euboea, with an amazing view over the sea to the snows of Parnassus. There was no room for a guest that you could call a room, so Mark brought her to stay with our neighbour, Aymer Maxwell, a delightful Galloway laird, very civilized, rather eccentric, very amusing, an angel in fact, always in a bit of a stew about what he gravely called “my staff” rightly, I must admit. It was an immediate click—“I adore Sir Aymer, and I love Bleak House!” (the house had belonged to the English overseer of a magnesite mine, now abandoned; it had a certain charm with a touch of the dak
bungalow
about it, only bigger and more rambling, lit by petrol lamps and candles). There are several other English residents, revelling as usual in minor feuds and gossip, not to
mention
labyrinthine complications, slander and conspiracy among the local Limniots, and subtle playing of one foreigner against the others, then
vice versa
in every possible
permutation
. Nancy was fascinated: “I quite see. A Euboean Cranford…”’

‘We had most of our meals in an out-door taverna among the trees, which is full of
shaggy
resin-gatherers from the mountains in summer, pals of Aymer’s and of ours, and often tight. There is a great deal of unsteady dancing in the evening, lurching and retsina-spilling and not very tuneful song. At one moment when a stumble had brought down a whole Indian file of dancers in a sottish and Breughelesque heap, Nancy murmured “
Arcady
”,
heaving
a sigh of mock rapture, followed by a round-eyed pitying look, then a bell-like peal.’

‘Aymer took us for idyllic sails in a charming yacht he has called
Dirk Hatterick
(after the Galloway pirate in
Guy Mannering
)… to the Boeotian shore, up the coast towards Mount Pelion and the Gulf of Volo, to a small island with a tumbling monastery that he thought of buying, dropping anchor in deserted and brilliant blue-green bays, bosky to the water’s edge with cistus, rosemary, lentisk and thyme under reflected emerald green pines and the tall spurs of Mount Canodilli; always with Parnassus afloat and glimmering in the west. She loved it. They were very happy days. But once, on a short outing when we were due back for luncheon on shore for some reason, instead of on cushions on the deck, it grew later and later… Nancy closed her eyes with a sad sigh and made the French sawing gesture across her tummy with the edge of her hand. “Nancy, you think of nothing but meals.” “Try to be nice.” Then: “Early and light, early and light, are the luncheons the Limniots love.”’

‘She came down here (to Messenia) with Mark soon after we had finished building the house… I can’t remember any separate fragments of chat, only endless talk on the pebbles in the bay below, and lying on the terrace; and a journey down to Mani to look at the San Gimignano-like towers, and a picnic on a flower-covered ledge in the masonry of the Arcadian Gate in the ancient ramparts of Messene, which undulate across the valleys like the Great Wall of China. Sleep under the branches was broken by voices: a carload of Germans looking at the titanic fallen lintel that half bars the great portal. We watched them unseen in our eyrie, and unspeaking till they drove away. A wild and marvellous spot.’

Perhaps there were moments when Nancy remembered that she was directly descended from William Mitford, the historian of Greece.

‘I’VE BEGUN A novel—still at the sticky stage but I think it has possibilities,’ she told Mark in August, 1959. The novel was
Don’t Tell Alfred
, wherein the professor of Pastoral Theology at Oxford is suddenly appointed Ambassador to Paris. This gave Nancy yet another
opportunity
to hold her mirror to the corner of the world she loved: Paris and life at the British Embassy.

‘Uncle Matthew’ reappears, now grown old, ‘stiff and slow in his movements; wearing spectacles; decidedly deaf;’ and the tale is unfolded by Fanny, daughter of ‘the Bolter’ and wife of the professorial Ambassador. The Valhuberts and other Mitfordian figures are introduced and the narrative is interspersed with her private reflections on various aspects of French life and dialogue apparently transcribed verbatim. Lady Leone, the bewitching former Ambassadress, creates some preliminary confusion by digging herself into the entresol flat of the Embassy and refusing to leave. Further confusion is caused by an influx of the Ambassador’s progeny: his bearded elder son David with a pregnant wife and adopted Chinese infant, on their way to cultivate Zen Buddhism in the Far East; and young Basil, a ruthless exploiter of the package holiday industry which has recently become so notorious.

David informs his mother that he can’t approve of her way of life. ‘I hate the bourgeoisie. In Zen I find the antithesis of what you and Father have always stood for. So I embrace Zen with all my heart.’ The adopted infant was ‘named after the great Zen Master Po Chang. We dropped the Po… It was Po Chang who placed a pitcher before his followers and asked them “What is this object?” They made various suggestions. Then one of the followers went up to it and kicked it over. Him Po Chang appointed to be his successor.’ The more practical Basil regards ‘carting out the rubbish’ in the role of package tour operator as his ‘career, his work, his future’. He assures his bemused mother that ‘the Foreign Office has had its day—enjoyable while it lasted no doubt, but over now. The privileged being of the future is the travel agent.’ Nancy’s Basil seems destined to develop along the lines of Evelyn Waugh’s Basil Seal.

The outrageous offspring of poor Sir Alfred and Fanny Wincham steal the show, but they
also strain the plot and one’s powers of credulity though Nancy took pains to record the
barbarous
idiom of the juvenile. After Lady Leone vanishes from the scene fantasy whirls off into farce as in Nancy’s earliest novels. However, her roseate vision of Gay Paree is undimmed: she has not become cloyed. ‘A Paris dinner party, both from a material point of view and as regards conversation, is certainly the most civilized gathering that our age can produce, and while it may not be as brilliant as in the great days of the salons, it is unrivalled in the modern world… I am always struck by how easily a French party slides down the slipway and floats off into the open sea. People arrive determined to enjoy themselves instead of, as at Oxford, determined (
apparently
) to be awkward. There are no pools of silence, all the guests find congenial souls, or at least somebody with whom to argue.’ She concedes that diplomatic hostesses are boring: ‘They might have to deal with unexpected dialogue and that would never do. The conversation must run on familiar lines, according to some well-worn old formula’. But the diplomatic hostesses belonged to other nationalities.

Even if we don’t happen to be hungry our appetite is whetted by the description of
lunching
with the Duchesse de Sauveterre in her country house. ‘We began with brochet. Why is brochet so good and pike so nasty, since the dictionary affirms that they are one and the same? Then partridges, followed by thick juicy French cutlets quite unlike the penny on the end of a brittle bone which is the English butcher’s presentation of that piece of meat. They were burnt on the outside, inside almost raw. Boiled eggs suddenly appeared, with fingers of buttered toast, in case any body should still be famished. Then a whole brie on bed of straw; then chocolate profiterolles.’

(It is amusing to compare this with the genteel English repast described in her early novel
Christmas Pudding
: ‘Presently Lady Joan (or Miss Felicity) would appear, and several pretty, fluffy girls in printed crêpe de chine, and they would all go downstairs to a meal consisting of egg rissole with tomato sauce, cutlets with paper frills round the bone, hard round peas and new potatoes, followed by a pinkish jelly served in glasses with a tiny blob of cream on the top of each portion.’)

As for Americans in Paris, ‘they are dreadfully unhappy: they huddle together in a sort of ghetto—terrified of losing their American accent.’ Surely such Americans as Natalie Barney, Julien Green (de l’Académie française), Stuart Merrill, were almost as French as the French: they thought and wrote in that language. But Nancy must be forgiven her pet prejudice.

To her old crony and ex-partner Handasyde Buchanan, an astute critic as well as a brilliant bookseller who sold hundreds of her books, she wrote nervously on 1st September, 1960: ‘The new Mitford runaway (we hope) comes out in November. Raymond [Mortimer] has just helped with the proofs and he likes it. I was beginning to wonder if it isn’t awfully bad as the few who have read it have hardly commented. Anyway Cecil’s [Beaton’s] jacket is lovely… Do tell me when you read
Alfred
(I suppose you’ll get a proof) what you think.’

Handy’s verdict must have been reassuring for she wrote again on 7th September: ‘You were a duck to write—one so thirsts for opinions at this stage and I feel yours is honest. I think Lady Leone’s bit is less successful because it’s at the beginning, before I’ve really established the
characters. At the same time it gives me a chance to do so and to say a few things about embassies and
the
embassy and the life there. Of course I couldn’t really let myself go about Lady Leone who has been so good to me.’

‘Raymond liked the children best, which rather consoles me for you liking them least… I got all the tourist horrors from our consul in Venice, Mr. Lane, who says he spends most of his time hanging about death beds. The rest of the bus-load goes inevitably on and he has to cope with dead and dying tourist. S he loathes it. All old folks are called
Son et Lumière
here. I’ve simply bagged the joke.’

‘Who’s who. Except for the obvious ones, most of the characters are mixtures. Northey is Cristiana Brandolin talking like Debo. Basil is my Diana’s Ali. Philip is quite made up and so is David. Bouche-Bontemps (I got the name off a tombstone, and the name Jungfleisch too) is any French politician over about fifty. The young ones are thin, priggish and Protestant. Grace is more or less me. Katie and Mrs Trott are real, at the Embassy, I think that’s all?’

‘Raymond says he has done a lot of house-maiding to the proofs… I long for Debo to read it and have asked if Hamish Hamilton could send her a copy—if not she might have yours when you’ve all done? Perhaps you could angelically ask Hamil ton if he has sent one? And my mother, if at all possible. Really she should have it first. P.S. Les Iles Minquiers are
boiling
up again—one of the evening papers has had headlines two days about them and how unfairly we got them, etc. Gladwyn says I may have been prophetic and the new ambassador may have to cope again!’ In an undated note to Handy Nancy added as an afterthought: ‘Robert Byron used to say I had a tendency to farce which must be checked. I’ve always tried to do so… I suppose
Alfred
had a farcical side, one might say though there was nothing in it that doesn’t happen in the papers almost daily.’

To Christopher Sykes, who was repelled by the character of Northey, Nancy replied: ‘How too funny about your hating Northey. I couldn’t make up my mind about her. The first ending of the book was Northey telling Fanny that she had been to bed with all the followers. “Not Bouche-Bontemps.” “Oh yes.” “And Mockbar?” etc, etc, yes to all. “Well, darling, don’t tell Alfred” “Oh but Alfred as well” Then I thought it wasn’t in character so I altered it. I was rather shaken by the all-in-wrestling, which she announced with a cruel gleam which I suppressed. I suppose she has so much sex appeal that
one is
rather in love with her even and wants to
present
her in a favourable light. Perhaps as you so cleverly suggest, a sequel had better show her up as entirely evil. Oh how I wish I were good at plots. P.T.O. I’m sure my best novel is
Love in a Cold Climate
—(I think
Voltaire
is the best book)…’

Within a year she was telling Mark Ogilvie-Grant: ‘
Alfred
has sold hard on 50,000 which is a relief because he had a very bad press. It shows, what one knew really, that that doesn’t
matter
at all.’ And to Mrs. Ham she wrote (3rd July, 196l): ‘I’ve sold
Alf
for a film, greatly to my surprise. I expect you will jump for joy on hearing this news. So I’ve got a little money to see me through the impending war. Where should we go for it? Isle of Wight perhaps?’

This was Nancy’s last novel, and its popularity proved that stories of high life, or life in high places, were still in favour with that Anglo-American reading public which is reputed to be
puritanical and egalitarian. Like Proust, but for more romantic reasons, she continued to believe in the social supremacy of the Faubourg St. Germain. She deliberately shut her eyes to the seamier side, the frequent banality, stupidity and shallowness of the fashionable society she glowingly described. I have en countered denizens of the jockey Club quite as tedious as Nancy’s American puppets. The ‘gentle game of pat-ball’ of diplomatic hostesses may have caused her swerve from fiction to history, from the Ouida-ish dukes of her day-dreams to the genuine dukes of Saint-Simon, more interesting and far more fantastic than their Proustian descendants. To Saint-Simon she turned as a catalyst with evident relief.

Though she was shy of appearing on television, Nancy braved it to promote the sale of her novel and described the ordeal to Mrs. Hammersley (3rd November, 1960): ‘I was very much put out by them dragging in my poor sisters—didn’t know they were gossipy like that. Then the questions—why do you live in Paris? One can’t very well say because it’s twenty times more agreeable than living in London. The odd thing is, however feeble you are, it sends the sales whizzing. I sold half as many again last week. I think the public feels that you are in some way sanctified if you’ve
been on telly
. Also I didn’t ask for a first class to go back as it wasn’t at mealtime, but as soon as I showed my nose at London Airport they transferred me into first class for nothing! I’ve never been so amazed. But can you tell me why anybody watches? It seemed so deadly dull—a woman with a lot of dogs—a young man cross with the critics and pontificating about his play. Too mysterious.’

The sound of her own voice reminded her of ‘all her aunts rolled into one’, so she
suggested
that Mrs. Ham might act as a substitute: ‘I offered you up as a human sacrifice to one who wished to record my voice in order to have a document illustrating upper class usage, fast dying out. My voice when recorded sounds merely irritating. I told him that you have a pretty speaking voice and he’d better ask you. Osbert [Sitwell] whom I saw in London fully agreed. Do co-operate, I think it’s such a good idea.’

Melodious, cooing with a hint of mockery, girlishly giggling, Nancy’s voice remained that of a well-bred debutante who had not aged since the nineteen-twenties. One could not
imagine
that she was already in her fifties. But the deaths of many old friends in rapid succession depressed her. ‘How fast’—to para phrase Cavafy—‘the snuffed out candles were multiplying.’ In her ‘horror-comic’ vein she wrote to Mrs. Hammersley, who had offered to bequeath her a bronze bust of herself. ‘I’d rather have your diamond brooch (than bronze bust). Do let’s always be truthful. Your image in my heart but your brilliants on my breast… Simple souls see God before we do, you must console yourself with this thought… Don’t forget BROOCH please (in will)… All my friends seem to be dying in middle age.’

Her cherished Victor Cunard was dying at Asolo: ‘I go up there every other day, missing the beach, three hours altogether in broiler buses… I think it was partly brought on by the madness of Nancy Cunard [his cousin]—I mean by her going mad. She went to an hotel at 5 a.m. and when the night porter aged ninety showed her her room she ordered him to sleep with her. She then set fire to a policeman. She is now in a bin where she writes heartrending letters to poor Vic. Do write to the old boy.’ ‘It’s a great worry and also not much fun panting
up there,’ she confessed to Mark, ‘because he’s in such a bad temper. I always thought people on their death-beds lay with angelic smiles saying I forgive you—not old Vic who has cooked up every grievance, over a friendship of 25 years to fling at my head.’

The loss of other friends in the same year, ‘all in different ways irreplaceable,’ made her gloomy and she wondered if she could bear to return to a Venice without Victor, whose
brother
Sir Edward had long been an invalid. In August 1961 Nancy wrote: ‘I’ve just done my good deed for the year—went to the Gare de Lyon at 9.20 a.m., met Edward Cunard and brought him back here until his next train went at two. He’s on his way home to Barbados by ship but will he survive the journey? He is a dying man.’

In the meantime he had done an unpardonable thing from any biographer’s point of view. He informed Nancy, as if the news would console her: ‘Victor kept all your letters from the 1930s I spent the whole afternoon tearing them up.’ Nancy confessed to Mrs. Hammersley that ‘it was a blow, as I’ve never kept a diary and they would have been so useful’, which proves that she had a book of memoirs at the back of her mind. To me she said that her letters to Victor were the best she had written: they were probably the most revealing, though I doubt if she unburdened her heart to him as to Mark Ogilvie-Grant. Nancy mentioned that she had bought an exquisite Louis XVI meuble with drawers to keep her letters in. To sort these out will be the task of her future biographers. I dread the survival of mine, which were never intended for publication.