True Pleasures by Lucinda Holdforth

Author:Lucinda Holdforth [Holdforth, Lucinda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: TRV009050
Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre
Published: 2005-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

In Nancy Mitford’s fictional world, the realization of every girl’s dreams lies in Paris. All her best heroines find their destinies there. There’s Linda of The Pursuit of Love and Grace of The Blessing. Even the prosaic Fanny ends up in Paris as wife to the British Ambassador in Don’t Tell Alfred. And here’s me, an Australian girl who has come to Paris. I’m not looking for love, however. I’m looking for Nancy Mitford.

I am wandering down Nancy Mitford’s street, rue Monsieur (which she variously referred to as rue Mr or Mr St) in the discreet 7th arrondissement, the noble Faubourg Saint-Germain. I stand outside the bland courtyard walls of number 7. I can see the Eiffel Tower over one shoulder and the glowing dome of Louis XIV’s Invalides over the other. The Musée Rodin is just down the road. The Pagoda, a Chinese-style cinema on the corner, strikes an eccentric note. The Faubourg Saint-Germain grew up in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as the aristocrats moved out of the Marais district to be nearer the road to Versailles and the Sun King, Louis XIV. This neighborhood’s high, discreet walls don’t invite tourists to linger. There are no bustling cafés or cozy bistros. At the apex of Parisian tradition, exclusion and discretion, this quartier is quiet and austere.

Except to me, because even this silent courtyard door speaks loudly of Nancy Mitford. Behind this door is an eighteenth-century pavilion. Nancy Mitford lived from 1947 to 1967 in the ground floor apartment leading onto the courtyard. I know from photographs and descriptions that the apartment was neither large nor grand, but furnished with a few fine screens, antiques and fresh flowers. Here Nancy Mitford wrote her books and letters, wearing her Dior dresses and a small string of pearls, slender and upright, holding a long pen and inscribing with a clear, square hand. She was a single working woman and, though she eschewed such a pretentious term, she was an artist. Sometimes the local children played loudly in the courtyard, breaking her concentration. Sometimes her eyes hurt and she had to put down her pen. And often her friends rang her up to gossip – they too were a distraction. As if to bring the past to life, the courtyard doors momentarily draw open, and a group of pretty French children spill onto the street, laughing and shouting. I glimpse the cobblestones and the white windows before the doors are drawn closed and the street falls silent again.

These courtyard gates opened to welcome an astonishing array of guests. Evelyn Waugh was a regular visitor. Anthony Eden, Clive Bell, Cecil Beaton, Noel Coward, sister Diana Mosley and numerous French aristocrats and intellectuals all came by. Nancy entertained with small dinner parties and lunches. But though she had a hectic social life, her letters make it clear that she also spent much of her time alone. If her maid, Marie, wasn’t there to cook for her, she didn’t eat a thing – she boasted that she couldn’t even boil an egg for herself.

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