Nancy Mitford (8 page)

Peter was as much in his element at Perpignan as Basil Seal at the Ministry of Modernization in Azania. He was too concerned with the problems of refugees to pay much attention to Nancy, who for all her kindness of heart was absurdly miscast in the role of social worker. Like Linda in the novel she ‘went to the camps every day, and they filled her soul with despair. As she could not help very much in the office owing to her lack of Spanish, nor with the children, since she knew nothing about calories, she was employed as a driver, and was always on the road in a Ford van full of supplies, or of refugees, or just taking messages to and from the camps. Often she had to sit and wait for hours on end while a certain man was found and his case dealt with… the sight of these thousands of human beings, young and healthy, herded behind wire away from their womenfolk, with nothing on earth to do day after dismal day, was a recurring torture to Linda. She began to think that Uncle Matthew had been right—that abroad, where such things could happen, was indeed unutterably bloody, and that foreigners, who could inflict them upon each other, must be fiends.’

From Perpignan Nancy wrote to her mother (16th May, 1939): ‘I never saw anybody work
the way these people do [Peter and his associates], I haven’t had a single word with Peter although I’ve been here two days. They are getting a boat off to Mexico next week with 600 families on board and you can suppose this is a job, reuniting these families.’

‘The men are in camps, the women are living in a sort of gymnasium in the town, and the children scattered all over France. Peter said yesterday one woman was really too greedy, she already has four children and she wants three more. I thought of you! These people will all meet on the quayside for the first time since the retreat. Peter sees to everything… I believe he will be here for life, refugees are still pouring out of Spain where it seems the situation is
impossible
for ex-Government supporters and their families. Over 100 a day come out.’

‘There is the original General Murgatroyd here, oh goodness he is funny. He has been sent by the Government to help with the embarkation, speaks no French or Spanish but bursts into fluent Hindustani at the sight of a foreigner and wastes poor Peter’s time in every possible way. All the same he is a nice old fellow and very pro-refugee. Indeed no one who sees them could fail to be that, they are simply so wonderful. I haven’t yet been to one of the awful camps, just the women’s one in the town and to a hostel which Peter started at Narbonne, where people who are got out of camps can be cleaned up and rested before they go off to their destination. There are about 70 there and it is very nice indeed, with a garden which they have planted with vegetables. It is run by an English girl entirely on her own there, most of the present occupants are going in this ship to Mexico.’

‘Peter has two helpers, one called Donald Darling is a young man who owned a travel agency in Barcelona and is now of course ruined. He only thinks of the refugees although his own future is in as much of a mess as theirs. The other is Humphrey Hare, a writer who lives in the South of France, came over to see the camps and stayed on. They both, like Pete, work 14 hours a day for no pay and all three look absolutely done up. It is a most curious situation,
apparently
the préfet here said—“supposing there were refugee camps for Norwegians in England and three young Frenchmen went over and began telling the English how they should be run”—Actually however they have got the French quite fairly docile I can’t imagine how…’

And on 25th May Nancy continued: ‘If you could have a look, as I have, at some of the less agreeable results of fascism in a country I think you would be less anxious for the swastika to become a flag on which the sun never sets. And, whatever may be the
good
produced by that régime, that the first result is always a horde of unhappy refugees cannot be denied. Personally I would join hands with the devil himself to stop any further extension of the disease. As for
encirclement
, if a person goes mad he is encircled,
not out of any hatred for the person
, but for the safety of his neighbours, and the same applies to countries. Furthermore, I consider that if the Russian alliance does not go through we shall be at war in a fortnight, and as I have a husband of
fighting
age I am not particularly anxious for that eventuality. You began the argument so don’t be cross if I say what I think!’

‘Well, we got our ship off. There was a fearful hurricane and she couldn’t get into Port Vendres, so all the arrangements had to be altered and she was sent to Sète (150 miles from Port Vendres) and at three hours’ notice special trains had to be changed, etc, etc, the result was Peter
was up for two whole nights, never went to bed at all. However he is none the worse. I was up all yesterday night as the embarkation went on until 6 a.m. and the people on the quay had to be fed and the babies given their bottles. There were 200 babies under two and 12 women are to have babies on board. One poor shell-shocked man went mad and had to be given an
anaesthetic
and taken off, but apart from that all went smoothly if slowly. The women were on the quayside first and then the men arrived. None of them had seen each other since the retreat and I believe thought really that they wouldn’t find each other then, and when they did you never saw such scenes of hugging. The boat sailed at twelve yesterday, the pathetic little band on board played first God Save the King, for us, then the Marseillaise and the Spanish National Anthem. Then the poor things gave three Vivas for España which they will never see again. I don’t think there was a single person not crying—I have never cried so much in my life. They had all learnt to say Goodbye and thank you, and they crowded round us so that we could hardly get off the ship. Many of them are great friends of Peter, and I know a lot of them too by now as some have been working in our office, and it was really sad to see them go—to what? If all Mexicans are as great horrors as the delegate here, they will have a thin time I am afraid. Franco’s radio has announced that the ship will not be allowed to reach her destination and we all feel anxious until she has safely left Madeira.’

‘And now there still remain over 300,000 poor things to be dealt with, 500,000 counting the women, and more arriving all the time. The Red Cross are not much help, they issue shorts which Spaniards abominate, having a sense of dignity, and refuse to help with special diet for the many cases of colitis in the camps… I expect I shall come home soon as we can’t really afford for me to be here and keep [the house in] Blomfield Road going.’

Mr. Donald Darling, who appears as ‘Robert Parker’ in
The Pursuit of Love
, has kindly
corroborated
that ‘Linda’s’ experiences at Perpignan were those of Nancy at the time. ‘When she arrived,’ he told me, ‘there was not much she could do apart from chauffeuring and odd jobs. However, she cheered me up immensely by her humour and off-beat manner of describing
people
and events. I remember she used to wear a sort of Chinese hat, of straw and conical, which looked odd but was practical. One day she announced that Unity too, might arrive to help and this caused havoc among the Quakers and leftish do-gooders who had collected in that part of France. But Unity thought better of it and the scare was over… Nancy carried out many acts of kindness to individuals, which I saw myself. She also made some funny remarks about “how to be a refugee—wear a false rubber arm to take all the injections people will give you and carry a life-like baby doll in your arms—, etc…”’

‘Nancy was a great help to us in getting off the boatload of refugees… There were a lot of expectant mothers and also a cadre of Communists who had a portable printing press, with which to bore their fellow passengers during the journey. The ship was due to leave from Port Vendres but a few hours before sailing time the wretched wind came up and made it impossible for her to dock there. We had to transfer all the passengers, the expectant mothers and the Communist printing press to Sète by road, quite a long distance. Nancy drove loads of mothers, slowly round the curves of the Corniche near Port Vendres, and got one load safely there… I
always found Nancy the “soul of kindness” and conscious of the troubles of others…’

‘I should have mentioned the WIND, which is the curse of Perpignan, all the time, and which Nancy and I once decided we could stand no longer. We set out on a Sunday to get up into the Pyrenees, whence it came, and discovered a valley where there was hardly a breeze. Fleeing from the wind became important to us, in that it raised the dust and almost took off the roof of our makeshift office in the Avenue de la Gare and also put out the gas jet in the water heater. I remember one night going with Nancy and Prod
2
to a café in Port Vendres which had dancing outside. But the wind was so strong that the music could not be heard on the floor and only behind the building. I also recall they played a recording of “Violette” eternally and we became almost hysterical over it. We eventually left…’

‘Prod at Perpignan was very practical though his language and approach to French
dignitaries
horrified some of the Quakers and the Duchess of Atholl in particular. I remember one Sunday at Colliours when Prod, who had been carousing until the dawn, appeared at breakfast with a draft of a rude letter to the local Prefect, which he had just written. He then dived into the sea and went for a long swim.’

In whatever lurid or quixotic light Peter appeared to others Nancy was determined to see him as a hero. Reverting to her obsessive Captain Scott of the Antarctic in a letter to James Lees-Milne who knew Lady Kennet, Scott’s widow, Nancy wrote to him (5th March, 1942): ‘I think she is hard on Cherry [Cherry Garrard, who wrote
The Worst Journey in the World
, a moving account of Scott’s expedition], it’s not likely he could have lived nine months in such close
proximity
with the owner [of The Hut] and never spoken to him. Besides Dr. Bill [Wilson] chose him for that winter journey and spoke very well
of
his behaviour. And I don’t think Cherry
pretended
to know Scott at all well. Perhaps she feels bitter he didn’t go on and find them and
perhaps
a real hero (her Peter or my Peter) would have done so and now I come to think of it of course they would. Well I die to meet her. Personally I am glad to be a decadent as they get far the most fun out of life but I like to study and admire the others so long as they are real and not just low brow toughs. My Peter is the same up to a point but he would never do a thing without knowing exactly why and he has a great instinct for self-preservation. Also he minds discomfort so little that he has no need to arm himself against it.’

‘The Duke of Aosta was almost exactly like Scott—slept always on the floor without a
mattress
and if he cut himself would scrub it with a nailbrush and ammonia to teach himself to endure pain.’

Having admired Peter’s handling of the Spanish refugees at Perpignan, Nancy half-humorously regarded herself as a hedonist in comparison. Her heroes had to have brains as well as guts. Those of us who were less familiar with Peter thought him irresponsible: his
pendulum
might swing in unforeseen directions. In politics he and Nancy considered themselves Socialists.’

AS SOON AS the Second World War broke out Peter dashed off to do his bit and Nancy found herself alone in 12 Blomfield Road, W.9, whose patch of garden was her greatest solace. ‘Peter looks very pretty in his uniform and is spoiling to be off but doesn’t even leave London for another week,’ she wrote on 9th October, 1939. Early in September: ‘I am driving an ARP car every night from 8-8. So far have only had one go of it and feel more or less OK (it is
mostly
waiting about of course). Soon I hope they will have more drivers. There is only one other woman and she and the men in my lot (about 30) have had no sleep for four nights, and have to work in the day, they are all in and all going on again tonight.’

‘When I went to fetch my car from the garage which is lending it I immediately and in full view of the owners crashed into another car, wasn’t it awful. It is a large Ford. However, I have it under control now but driving in the dark is too devilish. All the other people are charming, they think I’m rather a joke, so obviously incompetent. I have signed on for a year…’

Before Christmas 1939 she had finished writing
Pigeon Pie
, an ingenious fantasy of the phoney war period. To Mark Ogilvie-Grant she described it (13th November, 1939): ‘Must tell you how the book is developing. Well you are called Mr. Ivor King the King of Song and your wigless head horribly battered is found on the Pagoda (headless wig, favourite, on Green) so you are presumed dead and there is a Catholic, because you are one, memorial service at which Yvonne appears as a French widow. Well as you were about to open a great world campaign of Song Propaganda for the BBC sabotage is suspected—UNTIL your dreadful old voice is heard in Germany doing anti-British propaganda and singing songs like

“Land of Dope you’re Gory”.’

‘Well both the English speaking and Catholic worlds are appalled and your wife the Papal Duchess, the only woman to be buried inside the Vatican grounds is quickly dug up and removed to the Via della Propaganda. Pope diplomatically explains this by saying that owing to petrol shortage some of the younger Cardinals are learning to bicycle and, unseemly for them, to continually fall over the Papal Duchess’s grave.’

‘Well of course in the end you have been a gallant old spy all along and you are made an English Bart and Papal Duke and covered with praise from all… Think up some wonderful old songs for me.’

Peter might have suggested the plot, and we glimpse him in the role of Rudolph Jocelyn who ‘had a shock of tow-coloured hair, spoke indistinctly, dressed badly, and was always in a great hurry’. The songster of Kew Green was, as I have said, suggested by Mark Ogilvie-Grant, who had a charming house there. Nancy herself ‘had a happy character and was amused by life; if she was slightly disillusioned she was by no means unhappy in her marriage’. The First Aid Post and many of the details are realistic, and she aired her prejudices as in her later novels against the wireless for instance. ‘When she turned it on, she thought of the women all over England in lonely little houses with their husbands gone to the war, sick with anxiety for the future. She saw them putting their children to bed, their hearts broken by the loneliness of the evening hours, and then, for company, turning on the wireless. What is the inspiration which flows to them from this, the fountainhead, as it must seem to them, of the Empire? London, with all its resources of genius, talent, wit, how does London help them through these difficult times? How are they made to feel that England is not only worth dying for but being poor for, being lonely and unhappy for? With great music, stirring words and sound common sense? With the glorious literature nobly spoken, of our ancestors? Not at all. With facetiousness and jazz.’ Otherwise the tone of
Pigeon Pie
is jubilant, and it should have been popular for its
entertainment
value when it was published on 6th May, 1940, but as Nancy stated in the second edition of 1952, ‘it was an early and unimportant casualty of the real war which was then beginning.’ Perhaps the reading public was indifferent to such light fiction with Bellona in the background. Nancy bore her disappointment with smiling fatalism.

After her experience as an ARP driver she was working ‘five hours a day but not on end, with evacuees—most of them are going to Canada soon—they need more settlers overseas and some will probably stay and the others come back very tough and healthy. I’m all for it.’ (Did Evelyn Waugh also borrow some of the characteristics of Nancy’s refugees for
Put out more Flags
?) Peter was still near London: ‘his regiment was in the end much less cut up than at first feared—about half lost at Boulogne and less than half in Flanders, where they were holding the rear guard all the time and did magnificently. The casualties in Flanders seem to have been
amazingly
small—the soldiers who are here never lost a man all through and keep saying what fun it all was.’

On 12th September, 1940, she wrote her mother from Blomfield Road: ‘We are catching it here all right as they are gunning for Paddington. On Tuesday Pete appeared with two babies of one of his soldiers (6 and 3) who had been blown up in Brixton and whose mother is dying of a miscarriage. We put them to bed in the kitchen—at 2 p.m. the house next door got an
incendiary
and caught fire so I (in my night dress) put the children into an eiderdown, got a taxi and put them to bed at Zella’s [her former governess]. Came back here, having been nearly blown out of the cab when Fitzjohns Avenue went, and shot at by the home guard on the way for not stopping. Then we had a rare pasting here—five houses in Portsdown Road just vanished into
smoke, two bombs in Warwick Avenue, one in Blomfield and three in the Harrow Road. Next morning at 9 I got a very sporting taximan who took the babies, Gladys [her maid], Milly [her pug], my fur coat and all my linen to Diana Worthington. I have gone to live with Zella for the present as I can’t very well be here quite alone at night. I don’t at all advise you to come to London, it is not very agreeable I assure you.’

On 30th September she wrote: ‘The nights are noisier than ever but I should say fewer bombs—two more of my best friends have lost their houses… It is obviously only a matter of time before we all do. Peter spent a night at Blomfield and had an incendiary, if he hadn’t been there to put it out that would have gone.’

Buoyantly Nancy returned to Blomfield Road with her stalwart maid Gladys and Milly the pug. Her little garden where she grew vegetables and kept hens, remained a pleasant diversion. ‘Words long forgotten like creosote and bran mash are never off my tongue,’ she wrote, ‘not to speak of droppings board and nest box.’ She took her gardening seriously and fed her old hens punctually. Gladys was compulsively addicted to the wireless and even listened to the news in Norwegian.

Nancy’s war work was interrupted by a difficult and delicate uterine operation in the University College Hospital which she could ill afford at the time. Characteristically she made light of it in a letter to James Lees-Milne (24th November, 1941): ‘I am not quite so
wonderfully
well as I was, running a little temperature. I suppose I am full of sponges and things like all the jokes about operations… I am reading
Mémoires d’outre tombe
and was madly enjoying it until a French person came to see me and said “Chateaubriand—assommant”, after which I began to wonder if it was. But it isn’t you know, actually, at all!’

A fresh chapter of Nancy’s life opened in March 1942 when she began to work for modest wages—but every penny counted—in Heywood Hill’s remarkable bookshop in Curzon Street. Nancy had always cherished books and there was a growing hunger for them during the war, when paper became scarce and there were few intellectual distractions. Heywood Hill’s was a shop with a relaxed individual flavour. Besides recent publications, rare first editions and old folios with handsome bindings, Heywood specialized in pretty early Victorian toys and
automata
, embroidered pictures and unusual prints, almanacs and children’s books of the Kate Greenaway period in mint condition. He had a flair for the decorative Victoriana which Robert Byron and I had collected at Oxford. The shop was graced by attractive feminine assistants, including his wife Lady Anne (until she expected a baby) and, for a short while, the languidly lovely Lady Bridget Parsons, who made customers shift for themselves (she told the King of Greece to climb a ladder to find a book on the top shelf) and Mrs. Frieze-Greene who was to marry Handasyde Buchanan, Heywood’s future partner. Heywood himself was called up for military service later in the year.

Evelyn Waugh described the shop at this time as ‘a centre for all that was left of fashionable
and intellectual London’. Nancy infused the atmosphere with impromptu comedy. All agree that she was delightful to work with: ‘she never let one down.’ She memorized the names of
publishers
and recent books and quoted the comments of prominent reviewers, and during the darkest years of the war her gaiety was contagious. A former shop assistant of Heywood Hill’s wrote to him after Nancy’s death: ‘Mrs. Rodd was such a lively person and didn’t deserve to
suffer
as she did. During the war she asked what I would do when my age group was called. I said I thought I would be a “Clippie” on a bus. Some weeks later a twangy pure cockney voice bawled through the shop “ALL FARES PLEASE—PASS ALONG THERE”. Mrs. Buchanan and myself were in fits of laughter at her. There was never a dull moment. She was so gay.’ A peculiar shop idiom was evolved: ‘a couch’ signified a pile of books on the floor waiting to be picked up by someone or put on the tables or in shelves, and ‘to couch’ meant to add things to piles and forget about them. ‘Govs’ usually referred to Americans, since they could be ‘rather like governesses’. Little did the casual customer suspect that he might be a target of mockery.

When Nancy was bored a glassy stare confronted the offender and her manner became frosty or vague. Publishers’ travellers and customers who appeared to be quick on the uptake were welcomed with radiant smiles and ‘dull ones had hell’. While she attracted many new
customers
she frightened some of the older ones away. One who was waiting to be served while Nancy was absorbed in a long telephone talk, remarked testily: ‘A little less “darling” and a little more attention please!’

Many used the pretext of seeking a book for the pleasure of seeing Nancy. A brief chat with her would brighten the rest of the day for them. Among the habitués were Evelyn Waugh, Lord Berners, Sir Osbert Sitwell and Raymond Mortimer, and the very books seemed to join in the laughter during their exchange of gossip. Nancy’s laughter rose above theirs in a carillon that was almost operatic, a specimen of coloratura. This must have reached the ears of the gallant Free French who began to frequent the shop, beguiled by Nancy and Mollie, the Merry Wives of Curzon Street. At that time Nancy’s French was of the
est-ce-que
variety with an unmistakably English pronunciation and just as we enjoy English spoken with a French accent, the French are titillated by the sound of their language with a languid English drawl. The effervescence of the Free French suited her temperament. At last she could dance with partners whose chatter amused her. Palewski, the most distinguished and high-spirited of these, was always spoken of as ‘the Colonel’, the faithful right-handman of General de Gaulle. Then and there he conquered her heart and her imagination. He was to exert an immense influence on her future, and in the meantime he heightened her zest for life.

Nancy’s amiability with the French differed from her cavalier treatment of the American
soldiers
who ambled in from their hostel next door. To them the shop was known as ‘The Ministry of Fear’.

Whatever the weather or state of emergency Nancy’s punctuality was exemplary. Nearly always she walked to and from the shop, many miles from her dwelling in Blomfield Road, regardless of blackouts, air raids and encounters with drunken soldiers. She walked briskly, for the sake of the exercise
faute de mieux
, even after a tiring day’s work or a night’s rest broken by
air raids. Taxis were sporadic luxuries, and Lady Anne Hill remembers waiting with her for hours in pouring rain while at least sixteen packed buses rumbled tantalizingly down Park Lane. During week-days they would lunch at a neighbouring canteen or at a British Restaurant where a vile three-course meal cost one shilling and ninepence. Perhaps Nancy was reminded of the seal flesh and pemmican which were the staple diet of her heroes in the Antarctic.

Fortunately she could often spend her Saturdays to Mondays at Faringdon with Lord Berners, a composer, painter and writer of whimsical originality who was also an epicure. In spite of the prevalent austerities he managed to conjure succulent meals for his guests. His sense of humour was akin to Nancy’s and they shared many an extravagant joke. He had a special
talent
for parody and pastiche: one recalls his ‘Red Roses and Red Noses’. Nancy was to introduce him as ‘Lord Merlin’ into
The Pursuit of Love
and I suspect she regarded him as her mentor,
consulting
him about her writings. His influence counterbalanced that of Evelyn Waugh. He made startling remarks in a quiet matter-of-fact tone, and this tone pervades his fanciful novels. His witty
Valses Bourgeoises
should be revived in piano concerts; it would be more difficult to revive the Berners-Diaghilev ballet of 1926,
The Triumph of Neptune
. The epitaph he composed for himself ran:

Likewise Nancy seldom was bored—except when she had to add up accounts in the shop. Lady Anne Hill remembers that ‘she used to look quite ill and peaked from the boredom of this’. When she felt overwhelmed she would delegate the chore to her mother who, she
maintained
, enjoyed the meticulous process of addition.