Nancy Mitford (33 page)

The Légion d’Honneur was, she said, the only honour she had ever wanted and she looked forward to sewing the red ribbon on her dresses, but she was glued to her bed ‘crunching pain killers which really and truly don’t do much.’ She could only see her garden, ‘incredibly pretty in a Beatrix Potterish way’, from the bedroom window.

There was a repetition of blackbird drama: ‘two huge cats fell on my half tame hen
blackbird
. Hassan heard her screams and rescued her but she has got a wing down and can’t fly. I put her loose in my bathroom but she wouldn’t eat so I had the choice between seeing her die of starvation every time I went to the loo or putting her out again to almost certain death in the garden. I’ve done the latter… The birdie had a good rest, nearly two days, and that’s all one can do for her. Forcible feeding? I didn’t want to upset her any more. I’ve got a wing down myself and know what it’s like.’

She read so rapidly that she clamoured for more books, most of which were sent to her by Handy Buchanan, her former partner at Heywood Hill’s. ‘Evelyn and the bookshop are greatly missed by me as you guessed,’ she told him (25th April, 1972). ‘In the case of Evelyn it’s the teasing one misses, as with Osbert, Victor, Mark Ogilvie-Grant and others…’ [Sentence
unfinished
.] Next day. ‘I leave this to show the kind of dottiness that overcomes me owing to the dope I must take. It is the answer to those who say I ought to make an effort and write a book! Your kind letter. A neighbour has counted up about seven books which I ought to have read and will enjoy so I’m no longer desperate. I wake up at six and lie waiting for the pain to begin
which it does at about nine, so you see it is essential to have something to read… Trollope. Yes, I know all the Ducal novels. I had thought the clergymen would bore me but I note that
Barchester Towers
is his very best, or at least the first two thirds of it… I think please I had better have the Gibbon as an insurance—I love Oxford Classics and Penguins because I can read them flat on my back. But now those silly Penguins are bringing out Frederick large, floppy and unreadable, having asked and then not taken my advice! All the same Handy try to sell it because I can’t work at present as you see—I utterly depend on my old books for a spot of
nourishment
. P.S. About Trollope. Don’t feel drawn to the one before Barch: but would like the next two chosen by you. Have read
The Small House
.’

To me Nancy wrote at the same time: ‘Thrillers fail to thrill me except Simenon. But I did absolutely love that book about trying to kill the Général:
The Day of the Jackal
. So did the Colonel, who found few mistakes which must be a good sign. I’ve just been reading a book by the Hayters’ daughter called
Hayter of the Bourgeoisie
. It’s about the coming revolution (How I hate being called a Bourgeois, don’t you?). The book is incredibly naif and one simply longs to argue. For instance she says millionaires—all fairly well off people are called millionaires—will have to give up holidays on the Mediterranean. But they
have
, ages ago, driven away by the workers. The great comfort is how much the workers are going to loathe the rules laid down by Miss H. No cosmetics to be allowed—all motor cars to be pooled and only used for an emergency—
holidays
to be taken in turns. Then we’ve got to be good and give up our possessions. But why should a black man have my Longhi rather than me? The blacks are the only people good and disinterested enough to govern us. It’s a very funny book if it were not so terrifying. Of course I know all the stuff from Sister Decca. Both ladies seem to think we are in mid-nineteenth
century
.’

‘I’m now reading
The Miserables
—one is struck on every page by the amazing improvements there have been in 150 years.’

‘What a dull letter. I’ll try and do better in a few days. I wanted to make a sign of life.’

Again; ‘Gladwyn’s memoirs are dazzling, the best political memoirs I’ve read for years. What a terrifying world we do live in!’

After receiving the Légion d’Honneur Nancy was awarded the C.B.E. ‘I’d never heard of the C.B.E. but of course I’m delighted to have it now that I know Raymond [Mortimer] and Rose Macaulay have,’ she told Roger Machell. ‘I hear it ranks above a knight’s widow, oh good. There is no more B.E. so at first I thought it was a joke until I remembered there was no real Golden Fleece or Holy Ghost, all have been shadowy knightly dreams. I think it was so brilliant of Napoleon to have the same order for everybody.’ To Robin McDouall she wrote (19th May, 1972): ‘I don’t live in the world of honours and had to look up to see what C.B.E. is. I suppose it’s what Evelyn [Waugh] said was an insult and refused. But I accepted with pleasure as a mark that it is not thought unpatriotic for me to live abroad… About being called Mitford, a man came from the Embassy with all the forms etc and I had to decide. I asked his advice, which was for M. on the grounds that I am being rewarded for what I have signed M. Had I not already written some (very poor) books before marriage I would have certainly called myself Mrs Rodd
but as I didn’t I think it is more sensible to be M. for the medal. Anyway it’s done now.’

Enclosing a printed card in a letter to me: ‘Miss Nancy Mitford is unable to do as you ask’, she added, ‘This is what you need. You’ll find it serves every purpose in an amazing way. I only use it on Americans as one doesn’t want to hurt people’s feelings and they haven’t got any.’ Reminding her that I was half American and interspersing my letters with Mark Twainish Americanisms was one of my teases, but she insisted that I was a European pukka sahib
malgré
moi. I treated her ‘Angry-Saxon’ attitude as just another tease.

On 21st July she wrote to Raymond Mortimer: ‘I have nothing but misfortunes to recount… Leaning slightly to pick up a book I had a pain like the end of the world… Everything is torment… Perhaps I’ll get better but it’s now ten days since the worst occurred and I can’t put my hand out for a glass of water without pain all over my body… Evangeline [Bruce] is very kind to me—she rings up for a little chat, having found out the hour when I am most human, and sends Bath Oliver biscuits for which I have a craving as of a pregnant woman… A nice man from the BBC télé came to see me. He plans a sort of Forsyte Saga from my books. At present he is doing
Clochemerle
. I became quite excited until I heard it will take four years…’ (In parenthesis Evangeline Bruce was the American wife of the American Ambassador.)

Hitherto Nancy had found temporary relief in books, but in August she wrote to me (and one marvelled that she could still write so neatly and clearly): ‘I literally can’t read, it’s a new
horror
because until now I’ve been saved by reading. I can’t concentrate, it’s the pain killers I’m obliged to take… When I feel that I can read something I take half a page of Gibbon, so
interesting
and so marvellously written it gives one a taste for life.’

Nancy’s rare disease continued to baffle the physicians though they could not fail to realize its gravity. Her general condition deteriorated. So intense was the pain that she was prevailed upon to return to the Nuffield Hospital in London, whence she wrote to me on 17th December that according to the doctors she had been ‘within inches of an agonizing death (and
with
the agony so that I begged to die)… I still see nobody but quiet women friends who bring soup. I am
completely
exhausted after four years of torment—well, think of it, a cancer inside a vertebra
bursting
its way out. The crack is mending now that my truly wonderful young doctors have got to work on me. I daresay the fatigue is actually worse than when I was iller. I feel quite done up…’

29th December: ‘I suppose the truth is that I shall have to lead a sort of half life in my nice little house with pain killers at hand. Can’t complain. Dr Powell Brett says I would have been dead in three weeks when Cynthia [Lady Gladwyn] gathered me up and brought me here. I
suppose
I’m pleased that she did but the struggle up the slope is tedious. P-B asked me yesterday if I thought it worth while and I said 50/50 but luckily these things are not arranged by us. He is a very go-ahead young man and thinks as I do that the doctors who let thalidomide babies live were literal criminals.’

On 26th January, 1973, Nancy believed she was cured: ‘I go home on Tuesday by night ferry… I’ve had five months here (and a nasty letter from the Treasury)—such a dull way of spending one’s pathetic savings. However, I’m released from my pain which was terrible at worst
and never otherwise than vile.’

The magical release did not last long after her return to Versailles. She endured another six months of agony and weakness, and she continued to write poignant letters to her friends. ‘I’ve got a nurse,’ she told me on 30th March, ‘a real
infirmière de luxe
who toddles about on high heels and waters my flowers while a good French peasant washes ME. Nursey not very kind. She says she found me crying with pain in my sleep—when I woke up the tears turned to screams but she didn’t seem to mind very much! I said can’t I have an injection but she administered a huge pill which I must say did the trick. Now I’m all right for a while. I like writing letters you know.’ ‘I like your letters the best, do keep on—at present I can’t,’ she wrote again on 7th April.

My problem was to know what to say, but I wrote whatever I imagined might amuse her and sent her light holiday novels, such as
Vestal Fires
.

The squalid excerpts from Evelyn Waugh’s diary recently published, so difficult to associate with the author we both admired, disconcerted her but as she remarked to Christopher Sykes, who was engaged on his biography: ‘Your task becomes more interesting than it seemed at first.’

I suspected that Evelyn’s diary was no more than an aide-mémoire not intended for
publication
. With Evelyn (as occasionally with Nancy) one was impressed by the truth of Logan Pearsall Smith’s aphorism: ‘Hearts that are delicate and kind and tongues that are neither—these make the finest company in the world.’

What posthumous teases and shocks were still in store for Evelyn’s friends? His marginal notes to Cyril Connolly’s
Unquiet Grave
had caused Nancy to exclaim: ‘Wasn’t Evelyn a monster—oh how I miss him!’ At the time of the anti-death penalty bill he had written to Nancy saying: ‘Smartyboots [his nickname for Connolly] is in a fearful state over this bill—like all Irishmen he has a healthy
terror
of the gallows.’

Cyril Connolly had attended the last luncheon party given by Nancy in the rue d’Artois, which she described to Raymond Mortimer. ‘Cyril did that thing I call rude of, as if one’s entrée were sure to be uneatable, bringing plover’s eggs from Hédiard. They were raw. So the first ones went over every body’s clothes and the second lot were hot… I am told that plover’s eggs are sold raw here and in Holland because they are thought to be better when freshly cooked. Another joke (black) of that awful meal was that P. had never heard of eating them so he
wasn’t
a bit impressed by le don Connolly… His [Cyril’s] wife was quite amiable but how I pitied her. Diana thinks those eggs are
£
3 each and I dare say they are not very rich…’

To faithful Alvilde Lees-Milne who offered to visit her she replied: ‘No, don’t come, it’s five to one I shouldn’t be able to see you, much as I’d love it… I ought to kill myself but truly don’t know how. One doesn’t want to wake up with a damaged brain and odd as it may seem I get a lot of happiness, notably when the pain stops! The garden is already very nice.’

‘Then there is Gibbon, not a great English classic for nothing, simply not to be put down… Then there are the jokes of Mme Guimont and the goodness of Hassan (and of Hassan’s food). So you see, but when the pain is awful nothing seems worth it. It’s been so long my nerves are no longer very good but this, shut up with Mother Gamp, is far the worst.’

And to her sister Debo she confided on 15th April: ‘The awful thing about my situation is
I can’t live or, as I long to, die. What is to kill and what is to cure me?’

To her lifelong friend James Lees-Milne, alias ‘Grumpy’, ‘Old Furious’, or ‘Grumpikins’, she sent one of her last long letters (8th May, 1973): ‘When not asleep (morphia) I like writing
letters
. Oh dear… I am one of the few people on whom morphia has a very limited effect, so like
one’s
luck. When I complained to the doctor he said any doctor on earth would tell you you are under morphia now. Then why does it not take the pain away? I don’t believe doctors mind about pain a bit, only life and death. Curious race… About books. They are for reading in the night so must be either Penguins or Oxford or World… Gibbon kept me going until they got to Constantinople when I bogged down as I got weaker and sadder and in much more pain. I now require nursery food—it’s the morphia I suppose and one of the reasons why they quite rightly refuse to let one have it. Indeed they say so.’

‘They say my garden is dazzling, indeed if the flowers they bring are anything to go by it must be, so the torment of being unable to see it is very great. I can’t move further than my arm can reach because I’m all swollen up like Louis XVIII, oh what a fate. Then there is some sort of
crise
not understood by me among the servants. Let’s hope it won’t
faire tache d’huile
, that side has hitherto been so perfect. Mme Costa used to say, when
mes serviteurs
fall out I never listen, I just sack them all. Yes, but then she used to send her old coachman Charles into Meaux to come back with the required substitutes. I doubt if that would work in these days.’

‘Many thanks for your good offer of books. You do see that the sort I write are not really wanted, could not in fact be faced, but something far more humble—How sad Kurtz (Harold Kurtz, author of
The Empress Eugénie
and
The Trial of Marshal Ney
, had just died) couldn’t finish his Kaiser Bill. I was longing for that.’