Nancy Mitford (19 page)

With her mother an exchange of letters was easier than conversation. They wrote to each other often and Lady Redesdale kept Nancy’s letters in separate envelopes. She must have enjoyed them, for it is obvious that Nancy took trouble to amuse her with descriptions of the people she was seeing and comments on what she was writing and reading as well as current events. They were the best substitutes for talk, and they read like talk: ‘Did I tell you about the lady who dis covered her maid had never been to a theatre and sent her off for a treat to one. “
Eh bien Madame—n’est ce pas—le rideau se lève et voilà des gens qui discutent leurs affaires de famille. Moi je suis partie
.” I told Mme Costa who said when she had a box at the opera she used always to take a seat for her valet de pied until he begged her to excuse him and let him wait outside with the others because he found it so
ennuyeux
!’

Mindful of her mother’s views on health and distrust of modern medicine, for ‘she did not really believe in illness’, Nancy fed her with tit-bits about doctors and medical fads: ‘Louis XIV’s doctor, who lived to be over a hundred, always said the reason fish live to be so old is that they are never exposed to
courants d’air
. He slept in a sort of leather envelope head and all so as to be quite away from them…’

‘
About doctors
. I heard a woman in the Ritz saying: “
on lui a fait des soins si terribles qu’il en est mort dans la nuit
.” I’ve just read a life of Louis XIII who was literally killed by doctors at the age of 42. Several times he seemed on his death bed and they gave up their “
soins
” upon which he always rallied. This was put down to the prayers of the Paris convents—nobody put two and two together. Richelieu who adored him urged the doctors to more and more
terrible soins and stood over him to see that he did all they said. You know he was married for 23 years before Louis XIV was born. At the beginning Anne of Austria had several miscarriages—then they became very much estranged. Finally the courtiers got them into the same bed by a trick and alerted all the convents within reach—the nuns prayed all night and Louis XIV was the result!…’

‘Momo [Marriott] just back from U.S., tells me that as well as a blood bank they now have a bone bank and you can ring up for a big toe joint or a new collar bone. I knew you’d enjoy that…

‘Have you heard of Gaylord Hauser. He’s an American who, like Uncle Geoff, lives on wheat germ and honey and, unlike Uncle Geoff, has made a fortune out of it. The menus are to make you cry, all the things ONE hates most, but I’ve no doubt there’s a lot in it. He’s having a wild success here in the American set—can’t believe the French would ever take it up. I do think it’s a shame Uncle Geoff didn’t cash in first.’

‘I’m told Americans now have blood transfusions for every thing, even after a late night. I’m sure it’s just what I need: horrors!’

When Lady Redesdale went to assist a pregnant neighbour in an emergency Nancy gave full rein to her fantasy: ‘I so screamed at the idea of you, dissembling your nervousness,
acting
as midwife to this poor lady. (Knowing your aversion to antiseptics I see she is
foredoomed
to death by septicaemia.) Then of course you must shake the child to make it breathe and if it is a
blue baby
send to Oban for an iron lung—if a
monster
(elephant head or three legs) it’s your duty to do away with it, if
quins
, your fortune will be made. Goodness! In any event I should think there will be a lot of unwelcome publicity. Coroner’s frank words to peeress, mother of seven. Were the instruments boiled? Unfortunately no provision for so-called mercy killing exists in the law of this land. Etc, etc. If I were you I should hurry her into a clinic
now
, before it’s too late.’

Presumably Nancy had sent her mother the Gide-Claudel letters, for she wrote: ‘I must admit the idea of your being entirely on Gide’s side is the funniest thing I ever heard in a long life. Well I have no moral feelings, specially, about all that, but I couldn’t help being on Claudel’s side for his strength, single-mindedness and the beautiful French he writes.’

‘The Marquise d’Harcourt was a hundred this month. She said to her daughter, “What are pederasts?” “Oh Mother I really can’t tell you.” “If you can’t tell me when I’m a hundred when can you tell me?” She was ordering a dress for the birthday party and said to the
dressmaker
, “I expect my clothes to last quite ten years”.’

Characteristically there were intermittent teases: ‘I did love the photograph (of self as child). What a furious face—of course everybody was so unkind to me it’s a wonder my
temper
wasn’t ruined for ever. When I think of modern children—how the voice must never be raised and how they are hurried to the psycho-analyst’s sofa for the least thing, I don’t know why I’m not raving in an asylum. You know how my childhood is hidden in a cloud (so
terribly
unhappy that Nature has mercifully caused me to forget it).’

But Nancy’s teasing could go too far in print, and Lady Redesdale was offended by the
references to herself in
Blor
, the portrait of Nancy’s Nanny which she considered one of her best writings. By way of apology Nancy wrote to her mother: ‘Oh
goodness
I thought it would make you laugh. I always feel one’s young self is like a completely different person one can view quite objectively and laugh at—in my case at least this is true. Of course one can’t very well write about a Nanny and leave out the mother and for the modern reader one must explain the complete difference between mothers and children in those far off days from now. If I did a portrait of you (which I won’t) you would come out quite different from the oblique view seen, as it were, across Nanny. In any case everybody knows you are Aunt Sadie [in
The Pursuit of Love
] who is a character in the round and is you in middle life exactly as you were… It’s one’s eccentricities people love one for.’

Did Nancy’s conscience prick her? She continued in a second letter: ‘I’ve read the piece again. Of course the trouble is that I see my childhood (in fact most of my life) as a
hilarious
joke.
But nobody
could take this seriously—bobby in the nursery—Titanic—and so on—all clearly a caricature, what’s called Meant to be Funny. If you seem to have been rather
frivolous
so was everybody at that time. Edwardian women are famous for having been
lighthearted
. The tone of the whole book is meant to be light, frivolous and satirical… Voltaire used to say
qui plume a, guerre a
, too true.’

Lady Redesdale was not instantly mollified, for Nancy wrote again: ‘Anything which now seems odd or unfortunate in my childhood wasn’t your fault it was that of the age we lived in. Children were not considered then—or at least girls weren’t. The Duc Decazes and my neighbour Bagneux (French equivalents of Farve)
loathe
Paris. They both live here, groaning, in order to educate their children. This could not have happened in the England of your (and my) young days. To state that it did not happen is not to reproach you but the whole social structure. I carefully said in the essay that the relationship of parents and children is quite different now.’

‘But the person who appears completely vile is
me
!!… No more efforts at autobiography. I’ve learnt my lesson.’

Examining Nancy’s references to her mother objectively, one can understand Lady Redesdale’s failure to be amused. Nancy’s humour could be lopsided on occasion. True, she often laughed at herself. ‘Somebody wrote (did I tell you?) Voltaire doesn’t love Nancy, Nancy go home, on the Embassy garden gate. Said to have been Ed Stanley. How I shrieked!’ (to Alvilde Lees-Milne, 6th November, 1957). She was not in the least offended by her
sister
Jessica’s remarks in
Hons and Rebels
. On the contrary, she liked the book though her
family
could not speak of it. Her instincts might be mischievous but not malicious. The
suppression
of a painting by Derek Hill is a case in point.

Derek had been so captivated by the refined bone-structure of Nancy’s bosom-friend Princess Dolly Radziwill that he longed to paint her portrait in spite of her reluctance to pose for him. Christian Bérard persuaded her to yield. Derek first produced a sketch in oil and then a larger portrait after two or three sittings. The latter, though unfinished, was
exhibited
at the Leicester Galleries in London, but the sketch was left in an ante-room for a
relative
to look at. At the private view Violet Trefusis trotted up to Derek and said, ‘I’ve bought a picture of yours.’ Derek naturally asked her which. ‘The sketch of Dolly.’ ‘But you can’t do that without Dolly’s permission,’ Derek protested. He was protesting to a blank wall. Violet insisted on clinging to her purchase which the model had never seen. ‘Give it to Dolly for Christmas,’ he proposed, ‘and I’ll give you any other picture you may choose in return.’

Violet duly sent the sketch to Princess Radziwill on Christ mas Day and the parcel was opened before her guests at luncheon. An awkward silence followed while the gift was inspected. Nancy spoke up: ‘It’s so unflattering that you’ll have to burn it.’ Whereupon it was consigned to the flames in the cheerful fireplace.

Derek was horrified to hear of the fate of a creation he cherished—‘perhaps not
flattering
but forceful, like a Goya’. The blame was divided between Violet and Nancy: in fact Violet had been the
agente provocatrice
and I have little doubt that she had bought the sketch with malice prepense. Baroness Alix de Rothschild took up the cudgels on Derek’s behalf. ‘Legally you can’t destroy a painting by a living artist,’ she told Nancy. ‘He has a right to sue you.’ ‘I wouldn’t mind if I’d published a book and the manuscript were destroyed,’ Nancy answered. ‘Do tell Derek I can’t wait for the
procès
. What fun we’ll all have!’

In the meantime Nancy sent Derek (Maître Hill as she dubbed him) a match with a Christmas card inscribed ‘love from Savonarola’.

There was no lawsuit but there was a sad sequel. Derek kept his word and presented Violet with a landscape view from L’Ombrellino, her Florentine villa. When he visited her in 1965 he decided to revarnish it. ‘Leave it at Doney’s’ (the fashionable tea-shop), she said, ‘and I’ll send my butler to collect it.’ Six months later Derek received a note from Violet: ‘Why did you see fit to steal the picture you gave me?’ ‘You asked me to leave it at Doney’s. I have done so,’ he replied. But the butler never called or Violet clean forgot, and the painting was washed away in the flood of 1966.

The unfinished portrait of Princess Radziwill was included in a retrospective exhibition of Derek Hill’s work and to compensate for her loss of the original sketch Violet bought it.

Some time later Nancy, unabashed, remarked to Derek: ‘Cher Maitre, I’ve done it again!’ But in this case the picture’s destruction was not complete. She had cut off the arms and legs of Norah Auric’s portrait of ‘the Colonel’ to fit the head into an oval frame. She had signed it, moreover, with the artist’s name spelt wrong. Consequently she was not popular with modern painters except Bérard and the more traditional Mogens Tvede, who has left a charming portrait of her in water colour. Tchelitchev said of her: ‘Her face is so small I couldn’t get it on to a postage stamp!’

As her books were her main source of revenue Nancy was sensitive to reviews, but she told Mrs. Hammersley: ‘Very good to have one or two blaming reviews among the praise, nothing better for sales.’ Though she preferred reasoned abuse to uncritical adulation she was nettled by Mr. A.J.P. Taylor’s review of her
Madame de Pompadour
in the
Manchester Guardian
. Mr. Taylor had written: ‘
Pursuit of Love
characters have appeared again, this time in fancy dress. They now claim to be leading figures in French literary history, revolving round
Louis XV and his famous mistress, Madame de Pompadour. In reality they still belong to that wonderful never-never land of Miss Mitford’s invention which can be called Versailles as easily as it used to be called Alconleigh… Once more we have the secret words, the
ritual
of society, and the blunders of the uninitiated… Certainly no historian could write a novel half as good as Miss Mitford’s work of history. Of course he might not try.’ Commenting on this to her friend Lady Harrod, Nancy wrote: ‘In a way it’s a compliment when the
historians
bother to say keep off the grass—which is really what it amounts to, as they can’t pretend my facts are wrong.’

She was gratified when Dr. Cobban included her
Pomp
in the bibliography of his ‘History of Modern France’, and delighted when Sir Lewis Namier congratulated her on her review of Dr. Gooch’s
Life of Louis XV
, which contains her trenchant remark: ‘Dr. Gooch also
furiously
takes him to task for loving women. Oddly enough, some men do.’

Naturally she was susceptible to praise. With regard to
Voltaire in Love
: ‘I hardly like to tell you that my book is a triumph in America—not one adverse word and the anti-English
Time
has given it what they call a “rave”.’ Again to Mrs. Ham she wrote: ‘A Swiss woman publisher has just been to see me about doing 10,000
Love in a Cold Climate
in a Swiss
edition
. She said, “I must tell you I have rarely seen anybody with an expression of such
pure goodness
as you have”. I said I would pay her fare to Isle of Wight if she would go and repeat these thoughts at Wilmington, Totland Bay.’ (Nancy told me that this best-selling novel was advertised in Cairo in a list of pornographic literature as ‘How to make love in the cold’.)

The Swiss publisher was not exaggerating, for Nancy did have an expression of pure goodness as even her photographs show. Her pranks were due to an innocent love of fun, unaware that their effect might be devastating. While she did not court publicity she was shrewd enough not to discourage it. Somerset Maugham had advised her to answer fan
letters
, of which she received bushels. Among these was one from ‘a woman saying she had seen a young girl sitting crying on a suitcase at Victoria, whereupon the passers-by began quoting to each other (all strangers) from
Pursuit of Love
.’ Another told her: ‘as soon as I’d read
Pursuit of Love I
rushed to Paris where I very soon married a Frenchman and we’ve got a daughter called, of course, Linda.’ Such letters were often exhilarating.