Nancy Mitford

Read Nancy Mitford for Free Online

Book: Read Nancy Mitford for Free Online
Authors: Nancy Mitford
by Tintoretto. It is awful, represents Paradise, and is merely a sea of faces.’
    ‘I would much rather have a villa in Florence than here because of the lovely scenery. Here of course there is none, no trees, no grass. However this is lovely too, quite heavenly.’
    On 21st April Nancy confessed: ‘I did a most rash thing yesterday, spent nearly all my worldly on a Spanish comb, knowing full well that you won’t let me wear it, although Marjorie says all girls do. It is so nice, not carved, and looks rather like a shoe horn… Real shell of course. I do look so nice in it (ahem!) and wore it yesterday evening for dinner. It looks most habillé. Now I am absolutely broke, having just over 170 left, and still several presents to get…’
    ‘A dreadful thing happened last night. Turnip jumped very hard on Marigold’s bed and burst her hot bottle. Such a mess! We “ragged in the dorm” violently after that and an old lady came along and said that she thought someone must be ill. That rather shut us up!’
    ‘… I hope you will let me wear that comb, it grows on me (this is not to be interpreted literally). I really look quite old in it, a femme du monde you know, especially when I wear a fur. I really am a femme du monde now. Living in an hotel is so lovely. Why does anyone live anywhere else. There is an atmosphere of excitement, of latent danger in an hotel which is not created by the home. Locking my door at night is a never-failing joy, as is going in the lift (I can work it myself now). Then the feeling that when you are out all your things may (according to Miss S. most probably will) be stolen causes pleasant thrills to frequent the marrow . One of the women here was walking today in a calle when a man snatched her bag. With true Anglo-Saxon doggedness she hung on to it, the man let go and ran away. And this might happen to one any day. How romantic! When I see anyone glance at my corals I give an invisible snarl and put them under my pillow at night.’
    St. Mark’s on St. Mark’s Day: ‘The golden altar completely unveiled, all the jewels sparkling in the candle light,’ the gorgeous procession (‘first choir boys, then priests, then 50 bishops, 20 archbishops and 15 cardinals, the bishops in Mitres (capital M) and priests with banners’), St. Luke’s picture of the Madonna, the glowing mosaics, the Doge’s palace, the Bridge of Sighs—Nancy described these enthusiastically to her mother as well as her various purchases : ‘Corals for N.M. Comb for N.M. Frame and several pictures for N.M. A Leonardo print for Tom. Corals for Bobo. Crystals for Di. Crystals for Deb. Box for Nanny. Little bronze lizard for Pam. Photograph and countless p.c’s for N.M. I haven’t got Decca’s [Jessica’s] yet…’
    As a child Nancy was a precocious reader who ‘lived in books’. Even so it is surprising that she had read the works of Ruskin without visiting the National Gallery by the age of seventeen , though Ruskin’s championship of Turner might account for her visit to the Tate. Apparently her spring tour with the girls of the finishing school was her first introduction to the figurative arts at close range. To Venice she returned frequently in later years, always with renewed enchantment.
    Reading was tolerated but not encouraged by her father, who thought it a peculiar pastime . ‘If you’ve got nothing to do,’ he would say, finding Nancy with a book, ‘run down tothe village and tell Hooper…’ Himself no reader, he had no objection to her browsing in the well-stocked library inherited from her grandfather, and she browsed to her heart’s content. Her taste for literature was moulded there, and she retained a lifelong preference for biography , memoirs and letters. Carlyle and Macaulay made the deepest impression on her.
    This passion for reading set her apart from her sisters though she shared their esoteric jokes and games. ‘My vile behaviour to the others,’ she confessed later, ‘was

Similar Books

Sweet Perdition

Cynthia Rayne

Exiles

Elliot Krieger

Radium Halos

W.J. May