Nancy Mitford (27 page)

‘I’m frantically busy,’ she informed Alvilde Lees-Milne in September 1967, ‘having taken on a long essay on Carlyle and Frederick the Great which of course amuses me to death—one screams out loud as with P. G. Wodehouse—but now Rainbird is to re-issue
Pompadour
as a
companion
volume to
Sun King
. Painless childbirth, yes, but I want to do a lot of revision and have only got until end of November. So I feel that drowning in work which always upsets me. I’m too stupid to do two things at once and Frederick goes slowly because the eight volumes are like a huge plum cake; one can’t digest much at a time.’

‘My garden has been taken over by a fragile white morning glory very different from the ghastly Eton and Harrow sort. Through it smile the roses—the whole effect is ravishing.’

Apropos of her revision of ‘Pomp’ Nancy had told Sir Hugh Jackson that for
eighteenth
-century information the costly new edition of Voltaire’s letters proved invaluable. ‘I find for instance that it was
entirely
Louis XV who, informed of course by Voltaire, got the Calas judgement quashed. Then Voltaire, though a great friend of Choiseul’s, was on the King’s side over his dismissal when everybody else was making such a song and dance. Nobody ever
mentions
these things owing to stupid prejudice… but the letters speak for themselves. Choiseul’s dismissal of course is after Pomp’s death but I have done a bit about Calas over which she was most helpful… Yes, nobody has heard of Tam. but I am taking the line that Tom was always pronounced Tam in Scotland because I can’t resist calling my essay Tam and Fritz! There is one small piece of evidence in the text. Carlyle mentions Thomson’s
Seasons
and then in his mad way he adds, “Jamie Tamson, Jamie Tamson, oh!”’

‘Can’t remember if I told you,’ she confided to Sir Hugh in March 1968, ‘but I have
definitely
embarked on Frederick the Great. It is difficult because of the length of his life—I’m greatly enjoying it however. All new to me I know very little German history… In August I go to Germany to see the places relevant to the new book.’

With macabre humour—somewhat sinister in retrospect—Nancy wrote to her sister Debo about her tomb and burial (1st March, 1968): ‘Colonel and I were in the local marble shop—they’ve got a spiffing urn there. I said I think I’ll buy that for my tomb. He said you can’t have satyrs all over your tomb. I said, but as I’m sure to be killed by the satyr? (There is somebody called Le Satyr de la Banlieue who
does
young ladies and strangles old ones.) And so the world wags on…’

‘As for plantage—just wherever I drop, with unforgettable tomb and a great deal of Pompes Funèbres which Marie will enjoy. There seems to be an English church here where a few
hurried
prayers and Holy Holy Holy (to make Honks cry) can be muttered. Rope in the Colonel or the Duchess-loving van der Kemp or Mogens—people like to be asked.’

‘My neighbours are so nice. I went to tea yesterday (two English sisters very young with thousands of children). They had seen Woman [her sister Pam, the Hon. Mrs. Derek Jackson] and asked if she was my only sister which I found most refreshing. The elder neighbour bought this (my) house about 14 years ago for
£
2000—sold it for
£
18,000 and I paid
£
40,000. Makes you think. And now I would get, I am told,
£
60,000. It was clever of the eldest neighbour because the French regard this district as frightfully dowdy and the house, then, was a laundry.’

Her jealous friend Violet Trefusis was itching to verify the least flattering reports about Nancy’s new abode but Nancy was firm with her. To Alvilde (22nd April, 1968): ‘Following exchange with Aunty. She telephones: Can she come to tea?

N. Violet, I shan’t be here.

V. Can I come tomorrow?

N. I say, it’s now two years since you wrote to say how vile I am and how everybody hates me. What is all this telephoning all of a sudden?

V. I’m sorry if I gave offence.

N. You didn’t give offence but you did give me an excuse. Goodbye.’

‘I didn’t add that everybody… says that Violet is déchainée against me… My anti-garden is a dream of beauty and my hedgehogs have had children. But I
die
for Germany. I get letters from old Grafs saying they will tell all about their ancestors and Fritz if I’ll go and see them, which I can’t wait to do. I’ll be shown a lock of the—fair and smooth—hair of Lieu tenant Katte. Alphy [Prince Clary] of course is hopping with excitement and loathing of my dear Frederick and says six weeks in Venice won’t be long enough for all he wants to tell me…’

Violet Trefusis was nothing if not persistent and she was accustomed to having her way. In November, ‘Oh the old creature got people to tell me she was dying, then rang up in a dying voice to say could she come down. I can’t really keep things up, I mean hates, so I said yes and she arrived one and a half hours late so that the afternoon was wasted. She was rather thin but just as horrid. However that’s that and I shan’t have to see her again. Geoffrey [Gilmour] said
she couldn’t bear it when people talked (why do they talk?) about rue d’Artois and she hadn’t seen it. She told L. who passed it on at once that she thought it all very
moche
. Then she tried to draw me into a row with the Brandos [Conte and Contessa Brandolini] and you can imagine how far that went!’

Of the Communist and student riots in Paris which did not affect Versailles, Nancy wrote an account in the
Spectator
. ‘As I telephoned the copy to them (it took one and a half hours each time and nearly killed me) I know it will be full of boring misprints… all the same I think it gives an idea of what life was like down here. I would have loved to have seen the riots but couldn’t move from here as all transport was at a standstill and I haven’t got a motor. There seems to have been much more shouting than fighting and the police were simply wonderful, so patient and good. Luckily we have got a first-class préfet de police. I can tell you, it’s very alarming to live through an attempted Communist take-over. The workers were terrorized by faceless Communist agents THEY. The whole thing had been organised down to the smallest detail and when THEY decreed the strike, the workers, who knew that whereas, if they obeyed, the General would do nothing to them if he won, THEY, if they did not obey, would have some horrid revenge, so felt they had no choice. “Some men from St Cyr came and told me I must stop work.” The General’s timing was perfect; he had the courage to let the thing go from bad to worse until everybody could see for themselves the truth of the situation and then, at
exactly
the right moment he put a stop to it. If he had acted sooner, we should have been told there never was any plot, all invented by him. Now I think everything will be all right except that the economy has had a nasty jolt. They say it will take eighteen months to recover but I’ve noticed that French economy is resilient…’

‘I’m off for my summer travels, Greece, Venice, and Potsdam. It seems that the Germans were much better informed than our own police here and had sent two warnings to the Government which they simply did not believe.’ (26th June, 1968, to Sir Hugh Jackson).

To Alvilde Lees-Milne she wrote in a more euphoric strain on 3rd July: for the time being General de Gaulle had eclipsed Frederick the Great in her imagination. ‘The revolution was thrilling except that I never got to a riot on account of the train strike. But one could listen to them on the wireless all night, and as there was much more shouting than fighting that was the best of it, and then in the morning people rang up and told. The telephone and electricity worked throughout so there was no discomfort… Versailles is very
bien-pensant
and my neighbours were all perfect, popping in from time to time and telling what they had gleaned. Oh how I love it when things happen. The General as per simply too brilliant, and when everybody had seen for themselves Mendés-France marching with the Commies and Mitterrand egging them all on, he packed up his archives and went off to Colombey whereupon they started illegally to seize the pouvoir whereupon he came back and said stop like a red traffic light and it stopped…’

‘Masses more has been done at Versailles this summer—the Dauphin’s rooms are furnished and so on—it’s a marvel now…’

‘My poppies are in full fig I can’t stop gazing at them, but next year I think I must have a potager. It’s really too silly to buy faded old veges when one has got a big garden.’

Only last year she had written to Mark Ogilvie-Grant: ‘I’ve always wanted to have poppies and cornflowers since seeing them at Fontaines and also in my favourite Impressionist picture “le chemin des coquelicots”. But these ideas are in the air. Vilmorin’s (the French Sutton’s) sell a packet of seeds called le champ fleuri—as I also discovered the other day, and a famous garden in Portugal has had poppies under lemon trees for many years. The Duc d’Harcourt also goes in for weeds in a big way… I’ve now got another very successful wheeze: huge sunflowers round my
perron
, also taken from a picture I saw years ago.’

Ever since the ‘angel called Contessa Cicogna’ had taken Nancy in charge, Venice had been a second home. She no longer went to Fontaines, since Mme Costa had followed dear Mrs. Ham to the grave and the château was occupied by a louder and less pious generation. In Venice she could work as well as bake blithely on the Lido with a group of laughter-loving Italians though she greatly missed Victor Cunard. From there she wrote to Sir Hugh Jackson, 20th July, 1968: ‘I think the English are so spiteful about the French who, blessed with a huge feeling of
superiority
, never seem to notice the fact. Thank goodness for me, since I live in France. I enclose the General’s beautiful speech, on the Marne battlefield where he lunched with 400 poilus—I should have been in tears throughout!’

‘I sat next to an American at dinner last night who thinks Venice ought to be bulldozed, the pictures torn from the churches and put in a museum in New York; a few monuments, he
kindly
said, can be left to show what Venice used to be. I’m very glad not to be young and hope I won’t live to see these abominations. Meanwhile Venice seems very solid and very prosperous—it stood up to quite a severe earth tremor the other day (which incidentally rattled me about in my bed in Greece). I always tell the Venetians that Lord Byron used to urge his friends to come, saying in another ten years it will be in the sea.’

‘I’ve now got to answer about 100 letters from animal lovers. I was unwise enough to utter some rather mild strictures on the horrible cruelty that goes on. The article was reprinted in the
Vancouver Sun
and every animal lover in Canada seems to have sent me her views with revolting descriptions which of course I skip. There’s no more boring category in the world than the
animal
and especially the
cat
lover, unfortunately.’

Peter Rodd, from whom she had been separated for the last ten years, had died recently, and while she expressed regret and even remorse to her sister Debo (though she had no cause
whatever
for the latter) she added candidly: ‘But I couldn’t live with him. I don’t believe a saint could have without going mad.’ As for her first fiancé Hamish Erskine, whom she saw occasion ally for old sake’s sake, she was intensely relieved that she had not married him. He had aged without any evidence of intellectual development, a faded butterfly flapping feeble wings on the
periphery
of café society—when they were not folded in heavy slumber. Of café society in general Nancy remarked, ‘What will they be like in twenty years’ time, I worry rather. Old cold coffee with skin on the milk and no sugar is so horrid.’

Her greatest and enduring love remained in Paris, and if she was wounded by his eventual marriage, she accepted it philosophically, realizing that she valued his friendship above all else. Even with close friends she maintained a strict reserve about her deepest emotions. Her most
intimate and amusing letters were written to her sister Debo, and during the previous February she wrote to her: ‘Mrs G., of the
Observer
telephones. Will I write an article on Love? No. Can Mrs. G. of the
Observer
come and interview me about Love? All right. Mrs G. came yesterday, apparently aged 14… incredibly sweet. Well it seems all the young people in England are
in despair
about Love and Mrs G. described this despair so vividly and with such a wealth of detail that I soon saw she too was in despair. She says they all talk non-stop about
what went wrong
? For hours and hours about W W W? I said, but how do they have time—I thought they all had jobs? It seems jobs don’t take one’s mind off W W W one scrap. She said when you’re old do you stop falling in love? I said certainly not and pointed to Emerald [Cunard], Princess Mathilde, Mme du Deffand, all rising 90 and suffering martyrdoms. At this she literally welled. Oh dear. She was so nice. I don’t believe French people go in for all this weltering emotion but I may be wrong. Mme du Deffand never fell in love at all until over 60 and blind—Princess Mathilde certainly had a steady most of her life but the fuss began when she was past 70. We talked for hours—what will the result be!… I greatly recommend Mrs. G. though I fear suicide may claim her before one’s friendship can ripen.’

For the present Nancy was chiefly absorbed by Frederick and everything that concerned him, including that rare disease about which she had procured a pamphlet entitled
Porphyria, a Royal Malady
, published by the Royal Medical Society. ‘I love Frederick,’ she told Sir Hugh Jackson, ‘he is everything I like, brave, funny, no nonsense, marvellous taste, common sense, interested in everything. He had a sad life because by the time he was fifty all the people he loved had died and also he knew quite well that his nephew was no good. Have you heard of a disease oddly named porphyria? Mary Queen of Scots had it and transmitted it to many of her
descendants
, among others Frederick. The symptoms are unbearable and unexplainable pains. His father had it even worse than he did…’ The pamphlet, she noted, failed to mention any cure. ‘The pain comes and goes… when it has gone the person’s real nature reappears until the next attack.’ Alas, Nancy herself was soon to experience pains as unbearable and inexplicable.