I just finished another MITFORD book- Losing count, as there are so many and something to enlighten in each one. I know-some may say what? How many THE LETTERS OF ___________ MITFORD could there be or could you want to read? More, more, more. These are the sisters that keep on giving. Written by her great friend Harold Acton- Nancy Mitford A Memoir by Harold Acton- two years after Nancy Mitford's death, Acton fills the book with all the little idiosyncratic details I adore. Mitford was an enchanting woman, a flirt, a feminist-(to a point) & all with the the proper point on it. She was sharp. About her sitting with photographer Cecil Beaton early on in her career: 'I was photographed by Cecil Beaton this afternoon, a fantastic experience. How do you magage to be so skinny with such ruddy cheels?" Too easy I might haver replied, one has only to be crossed in love and adept at make-up...' One of the first Englishwomen to wear Dior, Nancy wrote ' I am now always torn between clothes and antiques but with me clothes are almost a matter of health you know..' & 'Evelyn is here, (Waugh): I was forced by his dreadful behaviour to enquire how he reconciles so much wickedness with being a Christian...'
happily- I snagged a first edition-but I love this cover.
Acton's brother, William, sketch of Nancy
Nancy Mitford had tripped through a lifetime of parties and costume balls by the time the legendary Beistegui Ball took place in Venice-1951. Nancy sat the Ball out and relied on her confidante's tales for entertainment, she wrote to Harold Acton, 'a lady who advertised for a dwarf to accompany her in the role of Spanish Infanta, arrived home to find her hall filled with rich dwarfs of her acquaintance who had not been invited... Nancy continued in her letter, with that sharp pen-her acerbic wit,... 'a yacht race round Italy ensued, since there is only one good mooring in Venice for a big Yacht. It is to be hoped that these ships will not suffer the fate of the Spanish Armada, as in that case the ball would be depived of its most splendid entrees...' Her friends drifted back, 'like survivors from a battle. Each has a tale of daring to recount, each gives ther impression that it was a damned close-run thing and would never have done without his or her particular entree.'
Pompadour by Baron Charles de Steuben
Cecil Beaton, 1933
(this may have been the photograph NM refers to in her letter)
(this may have been the photograph NM refers to in her letter)
Who might Nancy have made her own entree as? She would have been researching Madame de Pompadour-whom she adored? Her book about Louis the XIV (The Sun King) was 15 years to come. Her Frederick the Great-not until 1970. What would have inspired this British Francophile? Likely her Pomp-it would have been consuming her thoughts- but I like think of Nancy as young Frederick-daring, dashing, yet charmingly feminine and always with her wit in hand.
1st image from The Finest Houses of Paris -Jean Bernard Naudin(photographer) and Chrisiane de Nicolay-Mazery, at the Temple of Glory, home of Diana Mitford Mosley-Nancy's sister.
read Lucindaville for a Mitford-Acton post here
read Scala Regia here All about the Ball
read more about Nancy Mitford here
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