Nancy Mitford by Nancy Mitford Read Free Book Online Page B

sparkled in this unconventional environment.
Highland Fling
was about to be published and she was producing topical articles for
Vogue
, embellished by Mark Ogilvie-Grant’s illustrations.
    Everything here seemed favourable to a budding novelist of slender means. She enjoyed the simple life spiced with jokes and spontaneous fantasy: it seemed idyllic. But it was too good to last. In July a thunderbolt fell. Mrs. Waugh confessed to Nancy that she had only married Evelyn to escape from her stifling family. In the meantime she had fallen in love with John Heygate, the ebullient author of
Decent Fellows
, a naughty novel about Eton. While Nancy could sympathizewith her motives she could not approve of her method. Apart from her admiration for Evelyn’s brilliance, she appreciated his human qualities. He inspired affection in his intimate friends, who readily forgave his peccadilloes. He was too young and too fond to tolerate infidelity and it was not in his nature to laugh it off like those contemporaries he satirized in
Vile Bodies
. The shock of disappointment had lasting repercussions. Only his conversion to Catholicism could heal the wound, whose traces are distinct in A
Handful of Dust
. Nancy packed her bags and departed from Canonbury Square. Her sympathies were with the he-Evelyn and they remained lifelong friends.
    Nancy had written
Highland Fling to
amuse herself before amusing others. It was a frolicsome performance of which later she became unreasonably ashamed, but in a Christmas cracker way it was effective. If, as she maintained, she wished to emulate P.G. Wodehouse, she had chosen the wrong model and Evelyn Waugh’s influence was not yet apparent. Family pride in the sprightly relation who startled her uncles and aunts with her all-too-recognizable caricatures must have gratified and encouraged her to stick to her guns. To her friend James Lees-Milne, who had expressed his enjoyment, she replied: ‘such letters are far more encouraging than reviews in newspapers. The book is going fairly well, it went into a second impression three days after it came out but won’t I fear be a best-seller or anything like that. The publishers however are pleased and surprised at the amount sold… By the same post as yours I had a letter from an aged friend of mama’s saying that the silliness of my young people is only equalled by their vulgarity and that if by writing this I intend to
devastate
and lay
waste
to such society I am undoubtedly performing a service to mankind. And a great deal more. I fear now that I shall never be mentioned in her will…’
    Already a faint whiff of the professional author may be detected.
    In the meantime I set forth on my wanderings and eventually settled in Peking, so there is a considerable blank in my vision of Nancy, a gap of nearly nine years. On the last few occasions I saw her before sailing from Europe she was invariably escorted by Hamish Erskine, an elegant and amiable young social butterfly who was also a ‘Hon’, and for a long time it was rumoured that they were about to marry. In fact they were blithe companions floating on a frivolous tide, playing a charade of Pierrot and Columbine and sharing endless jokes to compensate for lack of lucre. Mutual friends who enjoyed them separately became as exasperated as Nancy’s parents by this indefinite flirtation. Hamish, who could seldom face crude reality before midday, was to distinguish himself for his courage in Italy during the war. Maybe Nancy had divined the pluck which was one of his attractions.
    The infatuation was stronger on Nancy’s side for Hamish was an overt narcissist, and he must have been flattered by her
béguin
for him. Nancy’s letters to Hamish have been destroyed but through her intimate correspondence with Mark Ogilvie-Grant we may follow the wavering graph of her emotions. Mark was in Cairo at the time and Hamish was still up at Oxford. While in London he dragged her to the night-clubs and parties