Nancy Mitford: a biography

National Review, March 27, 1987 by H.W. Crocker, III

Nancy Mitford: A Biography

by SelinaHastings (Dutton, 274 pp., $19.95)

I WAS GOING to say that this is "agem of a biography,' but Valerie Grove of the London Standard has already said that, so I won't. I also thought of calling it "a superfluous biography,' because anyone who has read The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford's two most famous (and highly autobiographical) novels, already knows about her extraordinary family and her unsatisfactory love affairs. But then again, that wouldn't be quite fair. One of the major joys of Selina Hastings's book is that she makes Nancy Mitford's life as entertaining as her novels.

The other great plus for this biographyis the portrait it draws of the supporting characters in Nancy Mitford's life. Her bellowing father--Uncle Matthew in the novels--is too well known to need much elucidation, although there are plenty of funny stories about him in this book. But almost as interesting is Nancy's first husband, Peter Rodd, the son of an eminent diplomatist, Lord Rennell. He grew up abroad, mastering most of the languages of Europe and imbibing a cosmopolitan education. At Oxford, he inspired his friends to pen the verse: "Mr. Peter Rodd-Is extraordinarily like God./He has the same indefinable air/ Of savoir-faire.'

His life did not become any less colorfulafter he finished University.

On leaving Oxford he was dispatched toBrazil where he worked in a bank, which he hated, spending most of his spare time getting drunk--and incidentally adding Russian and Portuguese to his linguistic repertoire. He was eventually arrested for being destitute, and Sir Rennell, as usual with the help of Francis [Peter's brother] (at that time usefully placed in the Foreign Office), was obliged to use his influence to get Peter repatriated as a distressed British subject. Back in England he managed to land a job in the City, was sacked from that, went as a journalist to Germany, was again sacked, and again rescued by Francis, who took him off on a two-year expedition in the Sahara, an undertaking far better suited to Peter's buccaneering spirit than a desk in the City or a newspaper office in Berlin.

When he married Nancy, Peter wasworking in an American bank. The trouble is that even after he was married, he continued to drink to excess, lose jobs, and travel around the world committing various infidelities and getting into sundry scrapes, including one adventure on the slopes of Etna in Sicily, where "he made the peasants dig channels for the lava as a result of which 3 extra villages were destroyed & he was obliged to flee by night.'

Another discovery is the dreamy impenetrabilityof Nancy Mitford's mother. Mother, who was rather taken by Hitler, once threw a party for 45 visiting Hitler Jugend, but found the experience rather disappointing. "Instead of the wonderful-looking boys of 17 & 18 I expected to see, a party of intensely dreary-booking and ugly young men of at least 30. I then realized how very sensible it is of H to put all Germans into uniforms as they have such terrible other clothes.'

When Mother was informed thatNancy had suffered a Fallopian pregnancy and had had to have both her ovaries removed, she remarked, "Both! But I thought one had hundreds, like caviar!'

Through it all, Mitfordian stoicismalways won out. Nancy, thwarted in love, denied children, and finally afflicted with a rare form of Hodgkin's disease, the pain of which "is known to be one of the two most severe a human being can suffer,' never let herself wallow in degrading self-pity.

Despite being a Francophile whofeigned a horrible distaste for her own country, she was, of course, one of the most thoroughly English women of her time, not only in documenting the fine points of U and non-U usage and class etiquette, but in facing everything with an appreciation of the necessity of keeping up appearances and not letting down one's friends.

For example, after the collapse ofher first intense romance she tried to commit suicide by gas: "It is a lovely sensation just like taking anaesthetic so I shan't be sorry any more for school-mistresses who are found dead in that way, but just in the middle I thought Romie who I was staying with might have a miscarriage which would be disappointing for her so I got back to bed & was sick.'

When it came to politics, Nancytried to hold a firm middle ground between her sister Unity's infatuation with Hitler, Diana's marriage to Oswald Mosley--leader of the British Union of Fascists--and Jessica's unspeakable Communism. Nancy called herself a socialist, but it was a socialism of a decidedly blue-blooded hue. She believed that Madame de Pompadour and Louis XV "were exactly like ONE. . . . Like me, the Marquise preferred . . . pretty things to ugly ones & rich people to poor people--she liked pink better than brown & ladies on swings better than women baking bread.' Nancy's idea of utopia consisted of "cottagers happy in their cottages while I am happy in the Big House,' and she believed that the produest title Britain could ever acquire "is that of "a nation of governesses.' We are the only adult nation and until the others come of age we must be their governesses, lecture them at all times, put iodine on their knees when they fall down and graze them; when we see them torturing a kitten we must slap them hard and take away the kitten.'