The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family (58 page)

As compensation, in 1957 Decca learned that she had inherited a large sum (‘it’s between £8,000 and £10,000’)
³⁵
from the estate of Esmond’s mother, but there were problems: it was eighteen months before probate was granted, and the English banks were unable to transfer the money to America because of the still-trenchant currency restrictions. Meanwhile Decca could not go to England because she had no passport so she appealed to the Bank of England on grounds of domestic need. ‘Please don’t bother to intercede for me,’ she wrote to Sydney hastily, ‘because I know you’ll tell them I’m giving it to the Communist Party and I won’t be able to get it . . .’ Two years later, when a Supreme Court ruling restored their passports, Bob and Decca immediately set off to England, with Benjamin. Decca also took the manuscript, thinking it might get a better reception in England. If not, she thought, she would forget about writing as a potential career.

Nancy’s career had been well established internationally since publication of her two Radlett novels,
The Pursuit of Love
and
Love in a Cold Climate
. Consequently,
Pigeon Pie
, which had attracted only limited sales when first published in 1940, became an ‘overnight’ success when republished in 1951: ‘
Pigeon Pie
has had better notices in America than any of my books, isn’t it unaccountable,’ she wrote to Sydney. ‘When I
think
how poor I was when it came out, almost starving (literally . . .) I feel quite cross though it’s nice at all times to have a little extra money.’
³⁶

Three years later she published her first biography,
Madame de Pompadour,
and the reviews again were good. ‘Miss Mitford . . . admires money and birth and romantic love,’ her friend Cyril Connolly wrote, ‘. . . good food, fine clothes, “telling jokes”, courage and loyalty, and has no time for intellectual problems or the lingering horrors of life.’
³⁷
The eminent historian A.J.P. Taylor wrote that everyone who had enjoyed
The Pursuit of Love
would be delighted that its characters had reappeared, ‘this time in fancy dress. They now claim to be leading figures in French history. 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. Certainly no historian could write a novel half as good as Miss Mitford’s work of history.’
³⁸
Another friend, Raymond Mortimer, described the book as ‘extremely unorthodox . . . it reads as if an enchantingly clever woman were telling the story over the telephone’. Nancy did not know whether to feel complimented or not. ‘I was rather taken aback,’ she wrote to Evelyn Waugh. ‘I had seen the book as Miss Mitford’s sober and scholarly work . . . he obviously enjoyed it though he says the whole enterprise is questionable.’
³⁹
The book was apparently banned in Ireland as being a potential threat to happy marriage. Nancy said she was prepared to edit it but on asking for a list of the offending material was advised that there was nothing in the text that had irritated the censors. ‘Then why is it banned?’ ‘Well, it’s the title,’ she was told.

Perhaps even more responsible for Nancy’s remarkable literary success was a small book that she produced almost as a joke. It was called
Noblesse Oblige – an enquiry into the identifiable characteristics of the English aristocracy
, and was a compilation of essays by various writers such as Evelyn Waugh and John Betjeman, taking an ironic look at fashionable mores and manners. Nancy edited the book and included an article she had previously published in
Encounter
on the aristocracy, which had appeared with an article on upper-class speech by Alan S.C. Ross.

Professor Ross was a sort of latter-day version of Eliza Doolittle’s Professor Higgins, a learned if somewhat eccentric philologist working at Birmingham University. He was introduced to Nancy at a luncheon given by a mutual friend: her exaggerated drawl to him was what Eliza’s Cockney was to Higgins; a prime subject for study. He told her that he had written an article on sociological linguistics for the Finnish magazine
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen
, in which he had quoted
The Pursuit of Love
as a source for indicators of upper-class speech. Nancy was captivated and having learned that it was written in English begged for a copy. It was entitled ‘Linguistic Class Indicators in Present Day English’, and she found its serious presentation killingly funny. ‘It has sentences like, “The ideal U-address (U stands for upper class) is P.Q.R. where P is a place, Q is a describer (manor, court, house etc) and R the name of the County, But today few gentlemen can maintain this standard and they often live in houses with non-U names such as Fairfields or El Nido,”’ she wrote, chortling, to Heywood Hill. ‘To me it seems a natural for the Xmas market illustrated by O[sbert] Lancaster and entitled “Are you U?”’

Her lively confidence in this proposal owed much to reaction to her article in
Encounter
(September 1955), which had sparked furious debate about the half-teasing theory that one could identify true members of the upper classes by manners, words and expressions; those who used fish knives and poured milk into a cup before the tea (MIF = milk in first), and who referred to ‘note-paper’, ‘mirror’, settee’, ‘serviette’ and ‘toilet paper’ betrayed their lower-class origins. Those properly taught by Nanny spoke of writing-paper, a looking-glass, a sofa, napkins and lavatory paper. There was a lot more nonsense in this vein and the great British public took it seriously. As a result, Nancy said, she had practically to rewrite
Pigeon Pie
, which was about to be republished. It was, she explained to Evelyn Waugh, ‘
full
of mirrors, mantelpieces and handbags, etc. Don’t tell my public or I’m done for.’
⁴⁰
Waugh provided a piece for the book: ‘An open letter to the Honble Mrs Peter Rodd (Nancy Mitford) on a very serious subject.’ John Betjeman wrote a poem called ‘How to Get on in Society’.
⁴¹
Professor Ross rewrote his original article.

But even Nancy was surprised at the book’s success. It was a worldwide smash hit and no one could quite work out why. Surely, with the new emphasis on socialism, she reasoned, few people were interested in the aristocracy and old-fashioned manners. But the correspondence columns of national newspapers, even the weightiest, were full of letters on the correct or incorrectness of the word ‘lounge’ as opposed to ‘sitting room’, and the social implication of calling pudding ‘a sweet’. Bookshops could not keep
Noblesse Oblige
on the shelves: ‘U and non-U’ was the buzz phrase of the day. Decca wrote in bewilderment to Sydney that the
New York Times
had reported that ten thousand copies had sold there in a week. ‘What’s that about?’ she asked. In fact, Nancy’s comments, never intended by her to be taken seriously, made her the arbiter of good manners for several generations. Professor Ross, however, resented her making fun of his serious academic thesis. Nancy found it all hilarious, and told the Colonel that her favourite joke was the new lyric to the old song: ‘I’m dancing with tears in my eyes, ’Cos the girl in my arms isn’t U’. Diana found the book rather distasteful and vulgar. Prod called it ‘decaying tripe’ in a letter to the editor of the
Daily Telegraph
. But, like it or not,
Noblesse Oblige
made Nancy a cult figure.

There was another biography in 1957,
Voltaire in Love
, followed by
Don’t Tell Alfred
, a Society romp through the diplomatic salons of Paris with Fanny (the narrator of
Pursuit of Love
and
Love in a Cold Climate
) as the main character. Uncle Matthew is revived, Diana Cooper puts in an appearance as Lady Leone, and characters from
The Blessing
otherwise populate the pages. Friends loved it – and members of Nancy’s inner circle were best placed to appreciate the in-jokes. For example, when Nancy wrote of Fanny’s mother, always known as ‘the Bolter’, those in the know were particularly tickled: ‘The bolter’, based on the delightful and much-married Angela ‘Trixie’ Culme-Seymour, had appeared in the previous novels, but since then Trixie had eloped with the husband of her half-sister – who just happened to be Nancy’s former brother-in-law, Derek Jackson. It was all
too delicious
. Between producing her own books Nancy had also done several translations,
The Princesse de Cleves
(1950) and
The Little Hut
(1951), for which she was also involved in writing the screenplay for the film. In 1954, after endless trouble trying to get a visa, she made a trip to Russia. Decca was putrid with jealousy – ‘It’s not
fair
,’ she wailed in a letter to Sydney.

Except in her relationship with the Colonel, and her lack of children, Nancy had everything she had ever wanted. In 1955 Palewski was offered a ministerial post in Fauré’s government, which meant that he had even less time for Nancy. She compensated by spending her summers in Venice with an Italian friend, a contessa who owned one of the old palazzos and could offer the sybaritic life Nancy loved. In the quiet early mornings she could do a few hours’ work on her biography of Voltaire (‘Not a life of Voltaire,’ she wrote to a friend. ‘Just a Kinsey report of his romps with Mme de Châtelet and her romps with Saint-Lambert and his romps with Mme de Boufflers and her romps with Panpan and his romps with Mme de Grafigny. I could go on for pages . . .’).
⁴²
At eleven o’clock she would board the Contessa’s sleek motor launch bound for the Lido to swim, sunbathe and gossip with friends, then eat a late luncheon served by the Contessa’s white-gloved footmen. In the afternoons there was time for a siesta with the windows thrown wide open to passing breezes. In the evenings there were dinner parties at palazzos, or in the cafés and restaurants around St Mark’s Square where, dressed in couturier creations, she met old friends and members of the international set. It was an idyllic existence.

In the summer of 1957 she heard from the Colonel that he had been offered, with the influence of General de Gaulle, the post of ambassador in Rome. It was said to be the only personal favour that de Gaulle ever requested of the French government in his time out of office. At the time Paris was hot, and seemed a little small to Palewski, for he was involved in a passionate affair with a married woman who lived just round the corner from Nancy. From this date Nancy and he saw each other far less frequently, although she remained convinced that he could not manage without her and all would come right in the end.

When Debo gave birth to a healthy daughter, Sophia,
⁴³
after a series of miscarriages, everyone was thrilled for her, but then, six months later, in the spring of 1958, David died at Redesdale Cottage. Diana had woken one morning with a strong presentiment that she must join Sydney and Debo, who were going up to Redesdale to visit David for his eightieth birthday, which was just a few days away. David and Sydney were in constant touch by letter and they all knew he had been unwell. ‘I shall never forget the expression on Farve’s face when Muv appeared at his bedside, and his smile of pure delight,’ Diana wrote. ‘All their differences forgotten, they seemed to have gone back twenty years to happy days before the tragedies. She sat with him for hours, Debo and I going in and out. After a couple of days Muv and Debo travelled on to Scotland and I returned to London . . . A few days later he died.’
⁴⁴

‘My darling Little D,’ Sydney wrote to Decca, ‘Farve died peacefully two days ago . . . Diana and Debo and I had been up to see him on his 80th birthday and he died 3 days later, we did so wish we had stayed. He was pleased to see us, dear old boy, and we were able to have a little conversation, but he was terribly deaf. He was in bed, and obviously very weak . . .’ But he had been quite like the old David and said such characteristic things that they were all kept laughing. The last thing David said to Sydney was ‘Are you going to the Oban Hotel?’ She replied that she was. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘remember me to the hall porter.’ Sydney left for Inch Kenneth and had just arrived when the news of his death reached her. ‘I turned right round and came back,’ she wrote to Decca.
⁴⁵

He was cremated at Redesdale, and a funeral service took place at Swinbrook. Nancy wrote to Decca that they were both ‘tear-jerkers’, with all his old favourite hymns: ‘Holy, Holy, Holy . . . I was in fountains each time. Then the ashes were done up in the sort of parcel he used to bring back from London, rich thick brown paper and incredibly neat knots. Woman and Aunt Iris took it down to Burford and it was buried at Swinbrook. Alas one’s life.’
⁴⁶
Diana mourned the Farve of long ago, the huge towering man with tempers like an inferno, humour that often made family mealtimes like a scene from a farce, and eccentricities such as chub-fuddling, which somehow made him more endearing in retrospect. Once, when she had been the subject of one of her father’s rages, Tom had consoled her with the sage remark that Farve would mellow as he got older. He had been right, but Diana found that with hindsight she preferred the unmellowed version.

The last time Decca had seen David was when she had set off for Paris to elope with Esmond. She might easily have effected a reconciliation. David had written several times to her, brief kind letters on the birth of Benjamin and the death of Nicholas, and she might have gone to see him in Redesdale, but she took umbrage at Sydney’s comment, ‘Since you have imposed conditions it would be better not to see Farve . . .’ When his will was read it was found that she had been cut out in a marked manner: he had never recovered from her attempt to hand over part of Inch Kenneth to ‘the Bolshies’ and was fearful that anything he left her would be given away. In every clause where he left assets to be shared between ‘my surviving children’, he had added the words ‘except Jessica’.