Love From Nancy
Nancy Mitford began planning her memoirs around the time she became ill, and subsequently died without writing them and instead her friend Harold Acton wrote a biography. Later, her sister Diana's daughter in law Charlotte edited a collection of her letters. She is also the editor behind all the Mitfords letters to each other and of Debo's correspondence with Paddy Leigh Fermor.
I guess the reason for this was that if anyone was going to make money out of the intense interest in the sisters well it may as well be the family themselves, and there's something fair about that I think; though an early footnote implies that this new development considerably annoyed Acton who withheld his letters and may not have had the same level of access as Charlotte.
Her foreword tells us that she removed sections from six letters on the basis that they could be considered libelous and that Debo, who was the executor of Nancy's estate, asked her to remove sections from a further six because they were excessively spiteful about persons still living and could cause embarrassment. Having read that it struck me that the 12 most interesting letters she ever wrote aren't really in it!
Nancy is a terrific snob and a bit of a bitch, reacting like the Dowager Countess of Grantham might when a LOWER CLASS man sits next to her in a restaurant. Her most interesting letters are to or about Evelyn Waugh who comes across as a very eccentric character with a great capacity to offend or become offended. Randolph Churchill and Duff Cooper also come across as great characters I would like to know more about. Randolph particularly seems thoroughly awful.
I've read two Waugh novels 'Brideshead Revisited' and 'A Handful Of Dust' and took to neither but this has persuaded me to keep trying.
In some ways Nancy's life was tragic. Her first engagement and then her marriage were both disasters, she was infertile, and she was in love with a philandering Colonel, Gaston Palewski who never fully committed to their relationship. In her letters to him, her unguarded desperation for him to love her the way she loved him comes across profusely. In that I empathised.
It was heartbreaking too, that whilst Diana and Debo lived quite long lives, both living into their 90s, Nancy died in her 60s but oddly lived to experience most of her best friends & contemporaries "going first" dropping like flies around her over a three year period, the death of Evelyn Waugh shaking her particularly. As they passed she crossed each out in her address book writing the date of their death next to the entry.
I enjoyed reading this but I think I would have enjoyed reading the responses she got mixed in among her letters more. I also found it strange that certain of the letters in this collection which she wrote to her sisters were missing from that bumper collection (Letters Between Six Sisters) in a way that I noticed; for example a letter to Nancy from Diana about Unity, and a query about a childhood memory from Decca are in that collection, but there's no response from Nancy. The response appears here, which seems like an odd thing to do.
Probably the most telling sequence of letters comes on the publication of Decca's autobiography, Nancy writes to tell her it is wonderful, if ' a cold wind to the heart' but writes to others including Mark Ogilvie Grant and Evelyn Waugh to slag it off, which I felt gave the clearest indication of her as a character. Witty, yet not to be trusted and highly insincere. Something her own sisters and friends all thought of her.
A good read 8/10
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Showing posts with label Letters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Letters. Show all posts
Monday, 27 October 2014
Sunday, 22 June 2014
Book #19 The Mitfords : Letters Between Six Sisters ed. Charlotte Mosley
The Mitfords : Letters Between Six Sisters
I will start by saying that I was utterly obsessed by and engrossed in this book. After I, for no apparent reason read the letters between Deborah, Duchess Of Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor, I had to know more about both Debo and her sisters.
Most people have very ordinary lives : school, job, house, car, marriage, children. The same cannot be said for the Mitfords who each had extraordinary lives.
Their letters are touching as they often write to each other using their childhood pet names 'Dear Boud', 'Dear Hen', 'Dearest Woman', 'Dear Honks' and so on, on some occasions the letters are mind blowing, particularly the pre-war ones written by Unity. Though later letters have neither the same energy nor the same level of bonkers they are still excellent from a historical perspective.
Why would anyone be interested in reading a book about 6 sisters you may not have heard of? I'll give a short biography on each, which may explain why this book enthralled me so much.
Nancy :
Though Nancy was a successful writer she was quite bitter and jealous of her younger siblings, largely of their romantic successes in comparison to her own. She had a fake engagement to a gay man, a short lived marriage to a man who only cared about her money and status and an ongoing affair with a Colonel she adored to whom she was merely one of many. She informed on her sister Diana to the British Government during the war, something Diana, who cared for her devotedly towards the end of her life never knew. Of her Debo says "When you take away the books, she had a miserable life really"
Pamela :
Known as Woman, Pamela seldom writes but through the letters of her sisters I built an image of a Miss Trunchbull type character who is large, strides about with dogs in tow, hates children and is obsessed with food.
Diana :
Diana married young to the heir of the Guinness fortune, but, feeling stifled, left him following an affair with Oswald Mosley the fascist, whom she later married (in Goebbels house!) Both massive Nazi sympathizers they were interred at Holloway for the duration of the war as threats to the British nation. Following this, they became pariahs and lived in Ireland and France.
Unity :
Unity and Diana bonded over their mutual affinity for fascism, and their letters to one another are by far the strangest and most alarming to read. Unity had what was tantamount to a schoolgirl crush on Hitler and her letters about him read like a teenager talking about a member of a boyband. "I heard he was in a cafe so I rushed straight there" When war breaks out Unity shoots herself in the head in Berlin, she doesn't die, but has the mental age of child and is prone to rages. The brunt of caring for her falls to her Mother and Debo whose letters reveal how terrible it was. There is a strong sense that no-one in the family besides Diana and their mother, ever took Unity remotely seriously and Debo comments that she hates how Unity is only ever associated to the 'Hitler thing'.
Jessica :
'Decca' was a Communist but was closest to Unity and never parted ways with Unity the way she did with Diana. There is a sense that this is not only due to what befell Unity but because Diana was the more sincere fascist and therefore the more dangerous. Decca eloped with her cousin and after various relatives were unable to persuade them home, married him. Decca was beset by tragedy, but became a civil rights activist, one photo shows her playing Boggle with Maya Angelou! Her Americanisation caused her to both distance herself and become distanced from her sisters who remained quite traditionally British Upper Class. Though unable to ever forgive Diana her far right views; and following upset caused over her autobiography, difficulties among all her family relationships, Jessica bonded with Nancy in later life over the shortcomings of their parents and their anger over never receiving a formal education.
Deborah :
Debo had the happiest childhood of all the sisters, but as the youngest was repeatedly impacted by their outlandish deeds, telling Decca in later life that her elopement was one of the worst things that ever happened to her. Their father once commented : "Whenever I hear of a peers daughter in a scandal I already know it's going to be one of you". She married Andrew Cavendish and when his brother died in the war they became Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. She often socialised with the great and the good, and now in her 90s still does. She was also related by marriage to both JFK and Harold Macmillan, all the Mitfords were also related to the Churchills. I read an article by Guy Walters regarding her memoir which heavily criticises her for not condemning either Diana or Unity for their politics. Having read two sets of Debo's letters, Debo both couldn't care less about politics and loved her sisters no matter what and is the most unilaterally loyal of all and to all of them. When asked by Princess Margaret why Oswald Mosley is in attendance at a soiree, Debo is alleged to have replied with : "Well, he IS my brother in law" As they all aged and passed away, Diana became Debo's last link to her childhood, hardly surprising she would not condemn her and hardly fair to ask her to.
Sometime during the Seventies, there is a resurgence of public interest in the sisters and this leads to a massive falling out, chronicled in letters over both a biography of the departed Unity and a missing scrapbook which Pamela has accused Jessica of stealing. From the Thirties onwards Jessica refused to speak to Diana as their politics drove them apart, in later years, due to rifts, Debo, the most well adjusted of the sisters becomes the hub, and it is sad to watch the letters peter out until only Diana and Debo are alive and then just Debo alone.
This is a fascinating chronicle of a group of women, from a historical perspective, a class perspective and a female perspective and if I haven't whetted your appetite here with my descriptions of them then there's something wrong with you.
Verdict : 10/10 - and the blog is likely to feature a host of Mitford related items over the next year, as I have become slightly obsessed with them. (Though I was dashed to find no mention of Debo's friend Sybil Cholmondeley anywhere)
I will start by saying that I was utterly obsessed by and engrossed in this book. After I, for no apparent reason read the letters between Deborah, Duchess Of Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor, I had to know more about both Debo and her sisters.
Most people have very ordinary lives : school, job, house, car, marriage, children. The same cannot be said for the Mitfords who each had extraordinary lives.
Their letters are touching as they often write to each other using their childhood pet names 'Dear Boud', 'Dear Hen', 'Dearest Woman', 'Dear Honks' and so on, on some occasions the letters are mind blowing, particularly the pre-war ones written by Unity. Though later letters have neither the same energy nor the same level of bonkers they are still excellent from a historical perspective.
Why would anyone be interested in reading a book about 6 sisters you may not have heard of? I'll give a short biography on each, which may explain why this book enthralled me so much.
Nancy :
Though Nancy was a successful writer she was quite bitter and jealous of her younger siblings, largely of their romantic successes in comparison to her own. She had a fake engagement to a gay man, a short lived marriage to a man who only cared about her money and status and an ongoing affair with a Colonel she adored to whom she was merely one of many. She informed on her sister Diana to the British Government during the war, something Diana, who cared for her devotedly towards the end of her life never knew. Of her Debo says "When you take away the books, she had a miserable life really"
Pamela :
Known as Woman, Pamela seldom writes but through the letters of her sisters I built an image of a Miss Trunchbull type character who is large, strides about with dogs in tow, hates children and is obsessed with food.
Diana :
Diana married young to the heir of the Guinness fortune, but, feeling stifled, left him following an affair with Oswald Mosley the fascist, whom she later married (in Goebbels house!) Both massive Nazi sympathizers they were interred at Holloway for the duration of the war as threats to the British nation. Following this, they became pariahs and lived in Ireland and France.
Unity :
Unity and Diana bonded over their mutual affinity for fascism, and their letters to one another are by far the strangest and most alarming to read. Unity had what was tantamount to a schoolgirl crush on Hitler and her letters about him read like a teenager talking about a member of a boyband. "I heard he was in a cafe so I rushed straight there" When war breaks out Unity shoots herself in the head in Berlin, she doesn't die, but has the mental age of child and is prone to rages. The brunt of caring for her falls to her Mother and Debo whose letters reveal how terrible it was. There is a strong sense that no-one in the family besides Diana and their mother, ever took Unity remotely seriously and Debo comments that she hates how Unity is only ever associated to the 'Hitler thing'.
Jessica :
'Decca' was a Communist but was closest to Unity and never parted ways with Unity the way she did with Diana. There is a sense that this is not only due to what befell Unity but because Diana was the more sincere fascist and therefore the more dangerous. Decca eloped with her cousin and after various relatives were unable to persuade them home, married him. Decca was beset by tragedy, but became a civil rights activist, one photo shows her playing Boggle with Maya Angelou! Her Americanisation caused her to both distance herself and become distanced from her sisters who remained quite traditionally British Upper Class. Though unable to ever forgive Diana her far right views; and following upset caused over her autobiography, difficulties among all her family relationships, Jessica bonded with Nancy in later life over the shortcomings of their parents and their anger over never receiving a formal education.
Deborah :
Debo had the happiest childhood of all the sisters, but as the youngest was repeatedly impacted by their outlandish deeds, telling Decca in later life that her elopement was one of the worst things that ever happened to her. Their father once commented : "Whenever I hear of a peers daughter in a scandal I already know it's going to be one of you". She married Andrew Cavendish and when his brother died in the war they became Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. She often socialised with the great and the good, and now in her 90s still does. She was also related by marriage to both JFK and Harold Macmillan, all the Mitfords were also related to the Churchills. I read an article by Guy Walters regarding her memoir which heavily criticises her for not condemning either Diana or Unity for their politics. Having read two sets of Debo's letters, Debo both couldn't care less about politics and loved her sisters no matter what and is the most unilaterally loyal of all and to all of them. When asked by Princess Margaret why Oswald Mosley is in attendance at a soiree, Debo is alleged to have replied with : "Well, he IS my brother in law" As they all aged and passed away, Diana became Debo's last link to her childhood, hardly surprising she would not condemn her and hardly fair to ask her to.
Sometime during the Seventies, there is a resurgence of public interest in the sisters and this leads to a massive falling out, chronicled in letters over both a biography of the departed Unity and a missing scrapbook which Pamela has accused Jessica of stealing. From the Thirties onwards Jessica refused to speak to Diana as their politics drove them apart, in later years, due to rifts, Debo, the most well adjusted of the sisters becomes the hub, and it is sad to watch the letters peter out until only Diana and Debo are alive and then just Debo alone.
This is a fascinating chronicle of a group of women, from a historical perspective, a class perspective and a female perspective and if I haven't whetted your appetite here with my descriptions of them then there's something wrong with you.
Verdict : 10/10 - and the blog is likely to feature a host of Mitford related items over the next year, as I have become slightly obsessed with them. (Though I was dashed to find no mention of Debo's friend Sybil Cholmondeley anywhere)
Sunday, 8 June 2014
Book #13 In Tearing Haste ed. by Charlotte Mosley
In Tearing Haste
Sitting here, about to write my review of In Tearing Haste, I am trying to figure out how I ended up buying it. I had certainly never heard of it before the day I did, and I bought it on Kindle so I downloaded it somehow without even actually searching for it, I think it came up as a recommended or something and I thought it sounded interesting.
Charting the lengthy correspondence of Deborah, Duchess Of Devonshire and the writer Patrick Leigh Fermor who first met in the 1940s, the letters between them run from 1954-2007, at the time In Tearing Haste went to press they were still corresponding but 'Dear Paddy' died aged 96 in 2011, Deborah, the last surviving of the famous Mitford sisters, still going strong in 2014 aged 94.
Patrick Leigh Fermor was a spy in World War Two, and went on to be a successful travel writer, but though his letters are the more erudite and lengthy, I did find myself less interested in his travelogues and such like then I was in the high society hilarity dashed off with no particular care by 'Darling Debo'
Debo's life is one to marvel at, really and truly. Her letters include reference to 'Dear Evie' and how he sent her a copy of his latest book which he 'felt sure' would not offend her this time. 'Dear Evie' was Evelyn Waugh, and the copy he sent her blank.
On another much later occasion she is at dinner with Jon Snow (Channel 4 News) and when he gets a phonecall at dinner they all 'presume Blair has gone and started another war'.
She attended JFK's inauguration, was devastated by his death, and travelled to his funeral on a private plane with the Prime Minister and 'the D of E'.
Quite early on in the correspondence she recounts being forced to chat to "Cake" and saying loudly "Oh Dear, now I'm stuck" - later she sits in pride of place at Cake's funeral and 'can't think why'.
Cake, for reasons which are never made clear is what the Mitford Sisters called The Queen Mother.
She refers to both her homes, one being Chatsworth, the other being Lismore Castle as 'the dump' without the merest hint of irony. She is quite consistently a hoot.
On the strength of Debo alone, and through the references she makes to her sisters, I've gone and downloaded, The Mitfords : Letters Between Six Sisters. Already, it is absolutely brilliant. Debo herself would probably be scandalized that I found her the star of this show and never quite took to PLF, but the little glimpses of bygone days are quite wonderful. We find out for example through Debo's potted biography that PLF was expelled from school. Why? Because he held hands with a greengrocer's daughter in public! SCANDALOUS!
I find all this fascinating and can't wait to read all the quaint historical moments of the lives of all sisters. Also I simply must know all there is to know about Sybil Cholmondeley who sounds like a proper ledge.
7/10
Sitting here, about to write my review of In Tearing Haste, I am trying to figure out how I ended up buying it. I had certainly never heard of it before the day I did, and I bought it on Kindle so I downloaded it somehow without even actually searching for it, I think it came up as a recommended or something and I thought it sounded interesting.
Charting the lengthy correspondence of Deborah, Duchess Of Devonshire and the writer Patrick Leigh Fermor who first met in the 1940s, the letters between them run from 1954-2007, at the time In Tearing Haste went to press they were still corresponding but 'Dear Paddy' died aged 96 in 2011, Deborah, the last surviving of the famous Mitford sisters, still going strong in 2014 aged 94.
Patrick Leigh Fermor was a spy in World War Two, and went on to be a successful travel writer, but though his letters are the more erudite and lengthy, I did find myself less interested in his travelogues and such like then I was in the high society hilarity dashed off with no particular care by 'Darling Debo'
Debo's life is one to marvel at, really and truly. Her letters include reference to 'Dear Evie' and how he sent her a copy of his latest book which he 'felt sure' would not offend her this time. 'Dear Evie' was Evelyn Waugh, and the copy he sent her blank.
On another much later occasion she is at dinner with Jon Snow (Channel 4 News) and when he gets a phonecall at dinner they all 'presume Blair has gone and started another war'.
She attended JFK's inauguration, was devastated by his death, and travelled to his funeral on a private plane with the Prime Minister and 'the D of E'.
Quite early on in the correspondence she recounts being forced to chat to "Cake" and saying loudly "Oh Dear, now I'm stuck" - later she sits in pride of place at Cake's funeral and 'can't think why'.
Cake, for reasons which are never made clear is what the Mitford Sisters called The Queen Mother.
She refers to both her homes, one being Chatsworth, the other being Lismore Castle as 'the dump' without the merest hint of irony. She is quite consistently a hoot.
On the strength of Debo alone, and through the references she makes to her sisters, I've gone and downloaded, The Mitfords : Letters Between Six Sisters. Already, it is absolutely brilliant. Debo herself would probably be scandalized that I found her the star of this show and never quite took to PLF, but the little glimpses of bygone days are quite wonderful. We find out for example through Debo's potted biography that PLF was expelled from school. Why? Because he held hands with a greengrocer's daughter in public! SCANDALOUS!
I find all this fascinating and can't wait to read all the quaint historical moments of the lives of all sisters. Also I simply must know all there is to know about Sybil Cholmondeley who sounds like a proper ledge.
7/10
Thursday, 10 May 2012
Book #44 My Dearest Jonah by Matthew Crow
My Dearest Jonah
My Dearest Jonah is the second novel from young Geordie author Matthew Crow. I bought this novel because of its endorsement from Jonathan Trigell on the cover, an author whose work I've come to admire over the last six months.
My Dearest Jonah is the story of penpals Verity and Jonah who were introduced via a scheme. At the beginning of the novel Verity is in trouble and the bulk of her letters recount for Jonah how she ended up in her current position. Jonah's letters are present tense illustrating his attempts at a new life in a small town, trying to leave the unpleasantness of his past behind him.
The strength of My Dearest Jonah is the richness and quality of the prose, it is very clear that Crow is gifted with words and has a better way with them than some far more experienced and prolific writers out there.
But bizarrely his writing credentials are what causes the novels greatest flaw: the voice of his characters. Verity is a waitress and stripper without much of an education, who has taken to writing to ex convict Jonah who, imprisoned at a young age doesn't have much of an education either. Yet, in Verity's letters she comes out with such things as :
"The ancients said love was a completely mystical force, completely separate from matters as lowly as those of the flesh. Perhaps that's us Jonah. We transcend the carnal."
"unperturbed by the triptych of languages"
Her letters simply are not believable as the letters of an uneducated small town stripper. The same goes for Jonah's. Though Crow's own authorial voice is a very erudite one, it is not realistic as the voice of his characters. Additionally, the letters from each character are far too similar in style, vocabulary and ultimately verbosity to be believable as two separate voices. Surely each character should have had a separate style of writing, as people do in real life?
As a reader, though the story was interesting, I had trouble forming an attachment to either character or initially getting "my teeth stuck in" to the book. Also, there is quite a glaring typo on the second to last page. Tut, tut, proofreader.
Despite this, Matthew Crow definitely shows talent and promise and his future looks bright and is worth keeping an eye on. 7/10
My Dearest Jonah is the second novel from young Geordie author Matthew Crow. I bought this novel because of its endorsement from Jonathan Trigell on the cover, an author whose work I've come to admire over the last six months.
My Dearest Jonah is the story of penpals Verity and Jonah who were introduced via a scheme. At the beginning of the novel Verity is in trouble and the bulk of her letters recount for Jonah how she ended up in her current position. Jonah's letters are present tense illustrating his attempts at a new life in a small town, trying to leave the unpleasantness of his past behind him.
The strength of My Dearest Jonah is the richness and quality of the prose, it is very clear that Crow is gifted with words and has a better way with them than some far more experienced and prolific writers out there.
But bizarrely his writing credentials are what causes the novels greatest flaw: the voice of his characters. Verity is a waitress and stripper without much of an education, who has taken to writing to ex convict Jonah who, imprisoned at a young age doesn't have much of an education either. Yet, in Verity's letters she comes out with such things as :
"The ancients said love was a completely mystical force, completely separate from matters as lowly as those of the flesh. Perhaps that's us Jonah. We transcend the carnal."
"unperturbed by the triptych of languages"
Her letters simply are not believable as the letters of an uneducated small town stripper. The same goes for Jonah's. Though Crow's own authorial voice is a very erudite one, it is not realistic as the voice of his characters. Additionally, the letters from each character are far too similar in style, vocabulary and ultimately verbosity to be believable as two separate voices. Surely each character should have had a separate style of writing, as people do in real life?
As a reader, though the story was interesting, I had trouble forming an attachment to either character or initially getting "my teeth stuck in" to the book. Also, there is quite a glaring typo on the second to last page. Tut, tut, proofreader.
Despite this, Matthew Crow definitely shows talent and promise and his future looks bright and is worth keeping an eye on. 7/10
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