The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford Read Free Book Online Page A

extracted, I should say – and put into chicken food. As a result the human race is becoming enfeebled, while hens grow larger and stronger with every generation.’
    ‘So in the end,’ said Linda, listening all agog, unlike Aunt Sadie, who had retired into a cloud of boredom. ‘Hens will be Hons and Hons will be Hens. Oh, how I should love to live in a dear little Hon-house.’
    ‘You wouldn’t like your work,’ said Bob. ‘I once saw a hen laying an egg, and she had a most terrible expression on her race.’
    ‘Only about like going to the lav,’ said Linda.
    ‘Now, Linda,’ said Aunt Sadie, sharply, ‘that’s quite unnecessary. Get on with your supper and don’t talk so much.’
    Vague as she was, Aunt Sadie could not always be counted on to ignore everything that was happening around her.
    ‘What were you telling me, Captain Warbeck, something about germs?’
    ‘Oh, not germs – the germ –’
    At this point I became aware that, in the shadows at the other end of the table, Uncle Matthew and Aunt Emily were having one of their usual set-tos, and that it concerned me. Whenever Aunt Emily came to Alconleigh these tussles with Uncle Matthew would occur, but, all the same, one could see that he was fond of her. He always liked people who stood up tohim, and also he probably saw in her a reflection of Aunt Sadie, whom he adored. Aunt Emily was more positive than Aunt Sadie, she had more character and less beauty, and she was not worn out with childbirth, but they were very much sisters. My mother was utterly different in every respect, but then she, poor thing, was, as Linda would have said, obsessed with sex.
    Uncle Matthew and Aunt Emily were now engaged upon an argument we had all heard many times before. It concerned the education of females.
    Uncle Matthew: ‘I hope poor Fanny’s school (the word school pronounced in tones of withering scorn) is doing her all the good you think it is. Certainly she picks up some dreadful expressions there.’
    Aunt Emily, calmly, but on the defensive: ‘Very likely she does. She also picks up a good deal of education.’
    Uncle Matthew: ‘Education! I was always led to suppose that no educated person ever spoke of notepaper, and yet I hear poor Fanny asking Sadie for notepaper. What is this education? Fanny talks about mirrors and mantelpieces, handbags and perfume, she takes sugar in her coffee, has a tassel on her umbrella, and I have no doubt that, if she is ever fortunate enough to catch a husband, she will call his father and mother Father and Mother. Will the wonderful education she is getting make up to the unhappy brute for all these endless pinpricks? Fancy hearing one’s wife talk about notepaper – the irritation!’
    Aunt Emily: ‘A lot of men would find it more irritating to have a wife who had never heard of George III. (All the same, Fanny darling, it is called writing-paper you know – don’t let’s hear any more about the note, please.) That is where you and I come in, you see, Matthew, home influence is admitted to be a most important part of education.’
    Uncle Matthew: ‘There you are –’
    Aunt Emily: ‘A most important, but not by any means the most important.’
    Uncle Matthew: ‘You don’t have to go to some awful middle-class establishment to know who George III was. Anyway, who was he, Fanny?’
    Alas, I always failed to shine on these occasions. My witsscattered to the four winds by my terror of Uncle Matthew, I said, scarlet in my face:
    ‘He was king. He went mad.’
    ‘Most original, full of information,’ said Uncle Matthew, sarcastically. ‘Well worth losing every ounce of feminine charm to find that out, I must say. Legs like gateposts from playing hockey, and the worst seat on a horse of any woman I ever knew. Give a horse a sore back as soon as look at it. Linda, you’re uneducated, thank God, what have you got to say about George III?’
    ‘Well,’ said Linda, her mouth full, ‘he was the son of poor Fred and