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The Marvelous Nancy Mitford
Jan. 6th, 2019 03:51 pmMy weekend reading has been courtesy of Nancy Mitford, a 20th century author and Bright Young Thing from an aristocratic family with probably the most awkward Christmas dinners ever, seeing as how one sister was an active member of the Communist Party, another one married the leader of the British Union of Fascists, and I think Winston Churchill was their cousin? I borrowed two of her books from the local library at semi-random, based on the first line of their back-cover descriptions as her "most popular" work (The Pursuit of Love) and a "biting satire" (Wigs on the Green). This turned out to be a method with mixed results.
The Pursuit of Love was enjoyable, very classically 1940s nostalgia for the pre-war English aristocracy, which is a slightly guilty pleasure of mine. (She was, coincidentally, good friends with Evelyn Waugh.) It follows the narrator's charming, beautiful, daring, etc. cousin through their shared childhood with her wealthy, eccentric family – i.e. the Mitfords, with the serial numbers barely filed off – to the cousin's scandalous romantic exploits, with the amusing (to me, anyway) twist that Nancy’s self-insert was not the narrator but the beautiful cousin. More accurately, the beautiful cousin was a mix of Nancy and two of her sisters in both personality and experience— in the forward to the novel, one of the other Mitford sisters (the communist and other author in the family, Jessica) describes reading the book and immediately writing to Nancy along the lines of "I see you’re currently having an affair with a Free French officer, huh?"
The other, Wigs on the Green, is a bewildering mix of The Importance of Being Earnest, Wodehousian antics, and satire about British fascism that, uh, did not age well. Speaking of Wodehouse, Mitford's book pre-dates his introduction of Roderick Spode, who was also modeled on Mitford's brother-in-law (and fascist dickhead) Oswald Mosley, but I think Wodehouse's was a much more effective take-down of the British Fascist movement. Apparently Mitford actually edited out a few chapters specifically mocking her Mosley caricature because her sister took offense, so her main target was a teenage girl who, she implied, would have gone full zealot about any other political movement if she had discovered it first, which is kind of... hm. I feel like it shifted the message away from Fascism Is Bad, and towards Haha Isn't It Funny That People Get So Worked Up About Politics?, which like I said is not a take that has aged fantastically well.
The Pursuit of Love was enjoyable, very classically 1940s nostalgia for the pre-war English aristocracy, which is a slightly guilty pleasure of mine. (She was, coincidentally, good friends with Evelyn Waugh.) It follows the narrator's charming, beautiful, daring, etc. cousin through their shared childhood with her wealthy, eccentric family – i.e. the Mitfords, with the serial numbers barely filed off – to the cousin's scandalous romantic exploits, with the amusing (to me, anyway) twist that Nancy’s self-insert was not the narrator but the beautiful cousin. More accurately, the beautiful cousin was a mix of Nancy and two of her sisters in both personality and experience— in the forward to the novel, one of the other Mitford sisters (the communist and other author in the family, Jessica) describes reading the book and immediately writing to Nancy along the lines of "I see you’re currently having an affair with a Free French officer, huh?"
The other, Wigs on the Green, is a bewildering mix of The Importance of Being Earnest, Wodehousian antics, and satire about British fascism that, uh, did not age well. Speaking of Wodehouse, Mitford's book pre-dates his introduction of Roderick Spode, who was also modeled on Mitford's brother-in-law (and fascist dickhead) Oswald Mosley, but I think Wodehouse's was a much more effective take-down of the British Fascist movement. Apparently Mitford actually edited out a few chapters specifically mocking her Mosley caricature because her sister took offense, so her main target was a teenage girl who, she implied, would have gone full zealot about any other political movement if she had discovered it first, which is kind of... hm. I feel like it shifted the message away from Fascism Is Bad, and towards Haha Isn't It Funny That People Get So Worked Up About Politics?, which like I said is not a take that has aged fantastically well.
