Highland Fling (24 page)

The telephone-bell interrupted her train of thought. She put out her hand rather absentmindedly to take off the receiver, wondering who it could be so early. Albert’s voice, trembling with excitement, said:

‘Have you seen the papers, darling? Yes, they’re all the same. Buggins says he can’t remember any exhibition to have had such notices for years and years. And I’ve just been talking to Isaac Manuel. He’s buying
The Absinthe Drinker
for the
Tate
, my dear! and two still lifes for himself; and he’s commissioned me to fresco some rooms in his new house. What d’you think of that? So it looks as if we shall have to live in London for a bit, after all. Do you mind, darling one? Of course, I said I could do nothing until our honeymoon is over, but we may have to cut it short by a week or two, I dare say. Isn’t it splendid, darling? Aren’t you pleased? I never for a moment thought the English critics had so much sense, did you? Where are you lunching today? Oh, yes, I’d forgotten. Well, meet me at the Chelsea, will you, at about one? You’re not feeling ill or anything, are you? Oh, I thought you sounded rather subdued, that’s all. Well, goodbye. I must go round to Manuel’s now.’

As Jane hung up the receiver her eyes were full of tears.

‘I couldn’t feel more jealous,’ she thought miserably, ‘if it were another woman. It’s disgusting of me not to be pleased, but I can’t help it.’

She began working herself up into a state of hysteria while she dressed. She saw all her dreams of Albert’s struggle for fame, with herself helping and encouraging, of a tiny house in Paris
only visited by a few loyal friends, and of final success in about ten years’ time largely brought about by her own influence, falling to earth shattered.

Albert, with his looks, talents and new-found fame, would soon, she thought, become the centre of that semiartistic social set which is so much to the fore in London. He would be courted and flattered, his opinions accepted, and his presence eagerly sought after: while she, instead of being his one real friend, the guiding star of his life, would become its rather dreary background. She imagined herself growing daily uglier and more boring. People would say: ‘Yes, poor boy, he married her before he had met any other women. He must be regretting it now that it’s too late.’

Jane, who at all times was inclined to take an exaggerated view of things, and whose nerves had been very much on edge since the fire in Scotland, was now incapable of thinking calmly or she would have realized that a few press notices, however favourable, and a commission from Sir Isaac Manuel, although very flattering to a young artist, do not in themselves constitute fame. She had a sort of wild vision of Albert as the pivot of public attention, already too busy being flattered and adulated to speak to her for more than a minute on the telephone. She imagined herself arriving at the Chelsea Galleries for their luncheon appointment and finding that he had forgotten all about her and gone off with some art critic and his wife instead.

At last Jane believed that all these things were quite true, and by the time she had finished dressing she was in a furious rage with Albert. Unable to contain herself, she wrote to him:

Quickly, for fear she should change her mind, she gave this note to the chauffeur and told him to take it round at once to Mr Buggins’s house.

She then went back to her bedroom and cried on the bed. She cried at first because her nerves were in a really bad state. After about half an hour she was crying for rage because Albert had not come round to see her or at least telephoned; but soon she was beyond tears, and her heart was broken.

‘If he loved me he wouldn’t let me go like that. This silence can only mean that he accepts: that the engagement is really broken off. Oh, God! how can I bear it? I can’t go on living! I shall have to kill myself.’

The telephone-bell rang and Jane, with a beating heart, took off the receiver. ‘This must be he!’ It was her mother’s sister asking what she wanted for a wedding present.

‘China,’ said Jane feverishly, ‘china! china! china! Any sort of china! Thank you so much, Aunt Virginia.’

After this she felt that she had reached depths of despair which she did not even know to exist before. She sat in a sort of coma, and when the telephone-bell rang again, she knew that it could not be Albert.

But it was.

‘Darling, Jane, it’s a quarter-past one. Have I got to wait here for ever?’

‘Oh! is it really so late? Didn’t you get my note, Albert?’

‘No, what note? Can’t you come, then?’

‘Yes, in a moment. I wrote to say I should be late, but I won’t be long now.’

‘Well, hurry!’

‘Yes, sweetest. Oh, I do love you!’

Jane rang up Mr Buggins.

‘If there’s a note from me to Albert will you be an angel and burn it? Thank you so much. Yes, isn’t it splendid! No. I’ve not seen him yet. We’re lunching together so I must fly.’

Nancy Mitford
, daughter of Lord and Lady Redesdale and the eldest of the six legendary Mitford sisters, was born in 1904 and educated at home on the family estate in Oxfordshire. She made her debut in London and soon became one of the bright young things of the 1920s, a close friend of Henry Green, Evelyn Waugh, John Betjeman, and their circle. A beauty and a wit, she began writing for magazines and writing novels while she was still in her twenties. In all, she wrote eight novels as well as biographies of Madame de Pompadour, Voltaire, Louis XIV, and Frederick the Great. She died in 1973. More information can be found at
www.nancymitford.com
.

Julian Fellowes
is a British actor, writer, director, and producer. His film script for
Gosford Park
won numerous awards, including an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. He has written two novels and is the creator of the television series
Downton Abbey
.

Highland Fling
(1931)

Christmas Pudding
and
Pigeon Pie
(1932 and 1940)

Wigs on the Green
(1935)

The Pursuit of Love
(1945)

Love in a Cold Climate
(1949)

The Blessing
(1951)

Don’t Tell Alfred
(1960)

THE BLESSING

The Blessing
is one of Nancy Mitford’s most personal books, a wickedly funny story that asks whether love can survive the clash of cultures. When Grace Allingham, a naïve young Englishwoman, goes to live in France with her dashingly aristocratic husband, Charles-Edouard, she finds herself overwhelmed by the bewilderingly foreign cuisine and the shockingly decadent manners and mores of the French. But it is the discovery of her husband’s French notion of marriage—which includes a permanent mistress and a string of casual affairs—that sends Grace packing back to London with the couple’s “blessing,” young Sigismond, in tow. While others urge the couple to reconcile, little Sigi—convinced that it will improve his chances of being spoiled—applies all his juvenile cunning to keeping his parents apart. Drawing on her own years in Paris and her long affair with a Frenchman, Mitford elevates cultural and romantic misunderstandings to the heights of comedy.

Fiction/Literature

DON
’
T TELL ALFRED

In this delightful comedy, Fanny—the quietly observant narrator of Nancy Mitford’s two most famous novels—finally takes center stage. Fanny Wincham—last seen as a young woman in
The Pursuit of Love
and
Love in a Cold Climate
—has lived contentedly for years as housewife to an absent-minded Oxford don, Alfred. But her life changes overnight when her beloved Alfred is appointed English Ambassador to Paris. Soon she finds herself mixing with royalty and Rothschilds while battling her hysterical predecessor, Lady Leone, who refuses to leave the premises. When Fanny’s tender-hearted secretary begins filling the embassy with rescued animals and her teenage sons run away from Eton and show up with a rock star in tow, things get entirely out of hand. Gleefully sending up the antics of midcentury high society,
Don’t Tell Alfred
is classic Mitford.

Fiction/Literary

LOVE IN A COLD CLIMATE

One of Nancy Mitford’s most beloved novels,
Love in a Cold Climate
is a sparkling romantic comedy that vividly evokes the lost glamour of aristocratic life in England between the wars. Polly Hampton has long been groomed for the perfect marriage by her mother, the fearsome and ambitious Lady Montdore. But Polly, with her stunning good looks and impeccable connections, is bored by the monotony of her glittering debut season in London. Having just come from India, where her father served as viceroy, she claims to have hoped that society in a colder climate would be less obsessed with love affairs. The apparently aloof and indifferent Polly has a long-held secret, however, one that leads to the shattering of her mother’s dreams and her own disinheritance. When an elderly duke begins pursuing the disgraced Polly and a callow potential heir curries favor with her parents, nothing goes as expected, but in the end all find happiness in their own unconventional ways.

Fiction/Literature

THE PURSUIT OF LOVE

Nancy Mitford’s most enduringly popular novel,
The Pursuit of Love
is a classic comedy about growing up and falling in love among the privileged and eccentric. Mitford modeled her characters on her own famously unconventional family. We are introduced to the Radletts through the eyes of their cousin Fanny, who stays with them at Alconleigh, their Gloucestershire estate. Uncle Matthew is the blustering patriarch, known to hunt his children when foxes are scarce; Aunt Sadie is the vague but doting mother; and the seven Radlett children, despite the delights of their unusual childhood, are recklessly eager to grow up. The first of three novels featuring these characters,
The Pursuit of Love
follows the travails of Linda, the most beautiful and wayward Radlett daughter, who falls first for a stuffy Tory politician, then for an ardent Communist, and finally for a French duke named Fabrice.

Fiction/Literature

WIGS ON THE GREEN

Nancy Mitford’s most controversial novel, unavailable for decades, is a hilarious satirical send-up of the political enthusiasms of her notorious sisters, Unity and Diana. Written in 1934, early in Hitler’s rise,
Wigs on the Green
lightheartedly skewers the devoted followers of British fascism. The sheltered and unworldy Eugenia Malmain is one of the richest girls in England and an ardent supporter of General Jack and his Union Jackshirts. World-weary Noel Foster and his scheming friend Jasper Aspect are in search of wealthy heiresses to marry; Lady Marjorie, disguised as a commoner, is on the run from the duke she has just jilted at the altar; and her friend Poppy is considering whether to divorce her rich husband. When these characters converge with the colorful locals at a grandly misconceived costume pageant that turns into a brawl between Pacifists and Jackshirts, madcap farce ensues. Long suppressed by the author out of sensitivity to family feelings,
Wigs on the Green
can now be enjoyed by fans of Mitford’s superbly comic novels.

Fiction/Literature

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