Nancy Mitford by Nancy Mitford

Author:Nancy Mitford
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781906142575
Publisher: Gibson Square
Published: 2012-10-16T21:00:00+00:00

9

NANCY PAID ANNUAL visits to her parents who had chosen to live apart in their old age—Lord Redesdale in a cottage at Otterburn, Northumberland, and Lady Redesdale at lonely Inch Kenneth off the Isle of Mull in Scotland. True to form, her father had borne his misfortunes stoically. The loss of his only son Tom, the sad end of his daughter Unity, the break with Jessica, and the disintegration of the British Empire, were sorrows that had left their scars on this rugged old soldier. Besides he had grown very deaf. But he was proud of Nancy’s meteoric success. He enjoyed her jokes even wryly at his expense, as she enjoyed his eccentricities, though she said she felt like Captain Scott of the Antarctic when she crossed the Channel to visit him. She could still laugh at his ‘Uncle Matthew’ mannerisms. ‘Have you read the Queensberry book on Oscar Wilde?’ she asked her mother (9th January, 1950). ‘It’s the best of any I think and would amuse you as old Lord Queensberry is so exactly like Farve, or what he would have been under those circumstances.’ ‘My old father-in-law [Lord Rennell]’, she added, ‘a terrible prig, knew Wilde well (and pretended that he knew nothing of les moeurs which I don’t believe) but said nobody has ever been so brilliant in the world.’

Already in May 1949 she had written Lady Redesdale: ‘I had a letter from Farve saying he is waiting for the end in great comfort, well I suppose we all are, in a sense, waiting for the end, but I was so impressed that I wrote and offered to go, but he says don’t. I wonder if I ought to really as he seems to have quarrelled with everybody else almost and is lonely I suppose.’

In September she decided to fly to Redesdale Cottage, whence she wrote: ‘Farve has become a good time boy—nothing but cocktail parties. One was given for me here last night—ten neighbours—can you beat it. More in character: “I was showing a blasted woman over the garden”—pause—“I thought it was Lady N”—long pause—“Well it was Lady N. She rang about twenty times—at last I went to see what it was and I said oh I thought you were a van.” However she didn’t come to the party.’

In June next year he returned her visit and she gave a party for him in ‘Mr. Street’—‘a cocktail party which Farve absolutely adores. It went on from five to eight solidly, but he was spryer than ever at the end. Old M. de Lasteyrie came. I said are you pleased about the elections. “Oh! you know when it isn’t the scaffold I’m always pleased.” He then told Farve about his two grandmothers being beheaded. Farve said “I rather liked that relation of Joan of Arc”.’

Somebody having asked her if Lord Redesdale were connected with the Parisian Baron de Rede, this became a standard joke. ‘Barons Rede and Redesdale have but little in common,’ she told her mother. The former ‘lives but for luxury, beauty and social life—a less lively Cedric.

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