Nancy Mitford (22 page)

In April 1962 she wrote to Mark: ‘Stoker’s [her nephew Peregrine Hartington’s] reports from Eton… say he seems to think he is a character in one of his aunt’s old world books [
Don’t Tell Alfred
]. Debo couldn’t think who this aunt was. I go to Lismore on 27th and oh would that ye were there.’

‘Have you read Isherwood [
Down There on a Visit
]? Now at last we know what goes on in Greece. Unworthy, to say the least… I’m muddled about plans. I dined with Turkish Fred—got a cab to go home—said allez à la rue Monsieur, to which the cabby said numéro 7 et vous êtes la célèbre Nancy Quelquechose. It’s all right—old Tony had once taken me back in that cab and done a bit of boasting on the way home. Are you shrieking?’

‘Colonel is back in the Government goody gum trees as Ole Nole [Coward] would say. I went to a farewell for your large handsome café society friend whose name I have never
understood
. Too late now. Busy with my book (thoughts on Greece etc.) so adieu.’ The little book of great thoughts, as she described it, was being ‘cooked up’ for the autumn.

In May she wrote again from Derreen in Killarney: ‘Have you ever been here it is
beautiful
beyond compare. A thousand trees lost in the gale seem to have made no impression
whatever
—the ones which haven’t been cleared away have got rhododendrons and ferns growing out of their trunks. What a climate!… Went to a shopping centre and purchased a china plaque
with in Irish lettering—Everybody’s Queer but Thee and Me—. Now who can I give it to? Takes a bit of thought.’

To Mark again, from Paris, 27th. June: ‘Busy correcting Homer Thompson proofs which can’t fail I think to annoy that wretched old Philistine. I go to Venice tomorrow till end of July… I’ll be here I hope all August when Decca comes.’

As usual ‘Venice was divine, only the time whizzed at a terrifying speed and I seemed only just to have arrived when five weeks had gone and it was time to come back.’ Paris in August was ‘heavenly, hot and empty though not quite as empty as it used to be, people are getting wise to the niceness unfortunately.’

From Fontaines she wrote to Alvilde Lees-Milne on 20th October: ‘So heavenly here, I’m still in a cotton dress can you beat it! Mrs Ham is here and all the usuals—the Jockey Clubites arrive this evening with news from the great world. All madly anti the General and simply
furious
because he threatens to go. They say it’s his duty to stay—how does this fit in with Gallic logic I don’t dare ask them. I sit rigolering intérieurement… Did you know that Marie Stuart was the same height as General de Gaulle? Nobody ever says this as one is never told that Charles I was a dwarf but I think it’s so interesting.’ 26th October: ‘For about two days the wireless tried to make one’s flesh creep and I spent my time preventing the old ladies from hearing the word Cuba. Quite easy as all they care about is the Concile. [Vatican Council]. Then Holy Dad blew the gaff by broadcasting an appeal for peace.’

‘Do you know what young people here call anybody over forty? E.L. Stands for
Encore Là
[Still There].’

‘I went to a circus last night and noted that, whatever any body may say, the lions and tigers simply
love
it! So that’s a weight off one’s mind.’

At about this time a Cambridge don rang up Sir Malcom Bullock and said: ‘You know France, does General de Gaulle write his own speeches?’ ‘No,’ said Sir Malcolm, ‘Miss Nancy Mitford writes them for him.’

The ‘little book of great thoughts’ was christened
The Water Beetle
and embellished with jocose illustrations by Osbert Lancaster. Beginning with the bravura portrait of her nanny Blor and ending with her conversation piece about Fontaines les Nonnes, it is the nearest Nancy floated towards an auto biography.
Inter alia
it contains a moving tribute to her hero Captain Scott of the Antarctic, the diary of her visit to Russia in 1954, her defence of Louis XV (with whom one suspects she identified the Colonel) and her candid admission: ‘I like fact better than fiction and I like almost anything that makes me laugh. But my favourite book falls into neither of these categories: it is
La Princesse de Clèves
’. Apart from her inclusion of Byron among the supreme entertainers there is no mention of any poet. Here we have the essence of Nancy within a small compass, ‘gliding on the water’s face/Assigning each to each its place’. It is a highly individual bouquet, and it still reads as if the flowers were freshly picked with diamonds of dew on their petals.

In a post-script to her account of Fontaines, disguised as ‘Sainte Foy’, Nancy added that she showed it to a French friend who said, ‘My dear, if the English think we all live like this,
they will never join the Common Market.’ I said, ‘Don’t worry at all, the English don’t believe a word I tell them; they regard me as their chief purveyor of fairy tales.’

True, her commentaries on the Parisian scene had much of the charm and fantasy of fairy tales and as soon as you read them you longed to cross the Channel. She dwelt fondly on the apparent lack of change: ‘The
bouquinistes
by the river; the donkeys in the Tuileries gardens; the lace blouses, in the shop on the corner of the rue Duphot, which I coveted as a child and still covet now, but which have a curious remoteness like blouses in a dream; the falling cadence of the glazier’s cry as he walks the streets with a huge pane of glass on his back; Madame Bousquet’s salon on Thursdays; the pink electric light bulbs at Larue, rapidly diminishing, alas, as they can no longer be replaced; the flock of goats milked in the street… George of the Ritz bar; the outside platforms of the buses; the insides of the taxis which must, one feels, be the very same that took the troops up to the Battle of the Marne…’ But the cost of every thing has soared since her description of wines in the 1950 catalogue of Etablissement Nicolas where a Pouilly Fumé 1929 was advertised for 10s. a bottle and a Porto Imperial 1848 cost
£
2 10s, and one doubts if everybody in Paris still has some connection with the
haute couture
which always fascinated Nancy.

The houses she visited ‘glittered like a miniature Wallace Collection’ and the women were generally ‘glittering with jewels’. There was ball after ball, with champagne flowing from 14
buffets
and women in huge romantic crinolines. Her letters after settling in Paris are full of them. To Mark Ogilvie-Grant: ‘Marie-Laure is having a Scotch ball—real bagpipes, Strip the Willow, all the cissies are off to Scotch House for their kilts. We want somebody to teach us the reels—why don’t you come in that capacity?’ And to her mother: ‘I’m just off to a fancy dress ball in black tights, little velvet jacket and beret and
a dear
little black beard. Nobody has talked of
anything
but this ball since Xmas so of course excitement is at fever pitch! The Colonel keeps
ringing
up to say he is against the beard, but I am firm! Dolly Radziwill is my wife in black and white and her wonderful jewels and we are King Sigismund and Queen Barbara. Bébé [Bérard] is Henry VIII surrounded by his eight wives, nobody likes to tell him there were only six.’ Again, in January 1951: ‘We are all entirely concentrated on Marie-Laure’s Fête de Village ball. Momo [Lady Marriott] arrived off the Queen Mary last night and I said I’ve got the most
vitally
important things to tell you (i.e. how she must come in our group) and she screamed with laughter, saying in New York they think it’s dangerous to go to Paris now, and wonderful to be greeted like this. Diana Coo wanted me to go with her as a tall ridiculous English woman with everything just wrong, so I’m going in the village school with Cora Caetani, as the school negress. Violet [Trefusis] is to be la veuve du village, followed by the ghost of the husband she had murdered (Antonin de Mun). I’m sure they’ll be wonderful. Then all the musicians are to do a music hall which will certainly be divinely funny as they are all clowns at heart. Isn’t Marie-Laure a good old girl to give this lovely party and such a sensible idea as no outlay for dresses required. We have all got pale blue overalls with white collars, awfully pretty, and sailor hats—
£
2 the lot.’

After a while Nancy became surfeited with such entertainments and preferred reports to
the reality of Carlos de Beistegui’s ball in Venice which gave rise to so many legends. It was even announced on the French radio that the
entrée
of M. Lopez would cost
£
50,000 and include two elephants. ‘The
£
50,000 may well be true,’ she wrote, ‘since M. Lopez and his suite of twenty are to represent the Chinese Embassy to Venice in the eighteenth century and will sparkle with specially woven material covered with real jewels. But the elephants are a legend.’ A young couple who, for fear of Communism, had sold their estates with the intention of
emigrating
, were said to have spent all the proceeds on their
entrée
at the ball, and ‘a lady who
advertised
for a dwarf to accompany her in the role of Spanish Infanta, arrived home to find her hall filled with rich dwarfs of her acquaintance who had not been invited… No society
people
left Paris before the middle of August, they were too busy trying on their dresses. When finally they got away a yacht race round Italy ensued, since there is only one good mooring in Venice for a big yacht. It is to be hoped that these ships will not suffer the fate of the Spanish Armada, as in that case the ball would be deprived of its most splendid
entrées
.’ The guests of the great ball trickled back to Paris ‘like survivors from a battle. Each has a tale of daring to recount, each gives the impression that it was a damned close-run thing and would never have done without his or her particular
entrée
.’

By contrast with such elaborate festivities Nancy wrote from Fontaines les Nonnes: ‘Yesterday we visited a convent full of old Marquises whose husbands had told them to take orders when widowed. I couldn’t help thinking how it wouldn’t suit English Marchionesses! Oh how different we are, it’s really extraordinary.’

‘An old man I know said to his girl the other day, “I’ve an offer of marriage for you.” “Mais Papa, you know I don’t want to marry.” “Well, in any case I wouldn’t have advised you to accept, as the young man is blind.” “But that makes a great difference. If he’s blind I can lead a life of sacrifice—I accept, and now they are married. She’d never even seen him!’

But for a dash of Ouida I do not think it too far-fetched to find a parallel,
mutatis mutandis
, between Nancy’s descriptions of the Parisian scene and Mary Russell Mitford’s of
Our Village
. She had the same constitutional buoyancy of spirits, the will to be happy, and ‘a tendency to body forth images of gladness’ which Anne Thackeray Ritchie noticed in the early Victorian Miss Mitford. And as Lady Ritchie observed in her introduction to
Our Village
, ‘There is one penalty people pay for being authors, which is that from cultivating vivid impressions and
mental
pictures they are apt to take fancies too seriously and to mistake them for reality.’

Among Nancy’s steady correspondents was an old gentleman whom she did not meet
personally
but who remained a faithful pen-pal until she could write no more. Sir Hugh Jackson had known Paris intimately in the serener days before the First World War; he had a specialist’s knowledge of French history and he shared Nancy’s sympathies and antipathies to an
unusual
degree. He had offered to look up historical sources for her out of the blue and from the many letters she wrote to him it is obvious that she valued his opinions and advice. She was an avid collector of early twentieth-century French postcards and she exchanged several of these with Sir Hugh Jackson who had a similar collection.

‘How I love the cards you send me of old Paris,’ she wrote him. ‘So amusing that the
original 
colour of the stone has been restored so that the buildings look now as they did then. But the great difference is the emptiness of those days—now you can’t either drive or even walk up the Boulevard des Italiens for the milling mob. I do wonder why there are suddenly so many people?’ Again: ‘I love your cards much more because they are real. The Madeleine is that colour again instead of the black mass which I knew… Thanks awfully for the lovely coloured one… Can’t now remember which you have had. Splendid Restaurant (outside Gare St. Lazare)? And the lady catching the bus? They are getting less nice and one never sees the
heavenly
one départ pour la chasse any more…’

Among the cards was one of a strange machine entitled
Distribution automatique
. What was it distributing? she queried. The heavily clad ladies in front of it offered no clue. Horse drawn omnibuses, women in enormous hats, bemedalled and moustachio’d officers, ‘lovely and solid’, as she said, reminiscent of the Marquis de Soveral; the
mairie
of Marcilly like a painting by Utrillo (‘Isn’t this France all over? Built in 1904?’) Behind one of the Chambre des Députés she wrote: ‘Anyway it’s a nice card, of the sort we like, and shows how few people there used to be so short a time ago. This place now is an immovable jam and the pavements black with people. What a bad idea it was to reduce infant mortality.’ Of the Place de l’Opéra she wrote: ‘I bought this ages ago to show you the Opéra now it’s clean. The cab drivers all think it’s the most beautiful building in Paris!’ Apropos of which on 1st April, 1962: ‘The French wire less gave out that Malraux is to pull down the Opéra and put up a palace of modern music, designed by Le Corbusier. They gave an infinity of dreadful details. I boiled. It went on all day at the times of the news until finally they said Poisson d’Avril (April fool)! You can’t imagine how clever and funny it was. It seems they were besieged with furious telephone calls.’

The postcards exchanged with Sir Hugh Jackson evoked the world of Marcel Proust, whose biography by Mr. George Painter enthralled Nancy: ‘He has a way of writing about
people
we have all known as if they had been dead 1,000 years which is very whimsical! But on the whole he hits them off pretty well.’