Free Nancy Mitford by Nancy Mitford

having wagered
£
50 on some losing horse, of course
£
20 of my hard-earned savings have been despatched by wire with promises of more… What is rather galling is that he always grumbles at me being so inexpensively dressed and
£
50 would have been quite a little help when ordering the summer ermine cape from Nurse Furrier… However I intend to make him promise never to bet again except in cash as long as he lives don’t you agree.’
    ‘I had another proposal from X. in great style, orchids, etc, at the Café de Paris with Hamish giggling at the next table and I gave him the final raspberry. He was very cross and said I should be left on the shelf (impertinence) so I went off with Hamish to the Slipspin (new and horrible night club) which made him still crosser. Lousy young man, I don’t answer any of his letters now even.’
    ‘The book [
Christmas Pudding
] is rather good you know if only I can ever finish it.’
    From Castle Grant, Strathspey, 27th May: ‘Hamish came last week, he has been so beastly to me over bridge that I really can’t bear much more, it seems such a silly and unimportant thing whether one leads a club or a heart but to him it is sufficiently vital to make him forget all the elements of good manners and decency. Really sometimes I could kill him… Hamish may get a job in Shell at
£
600 a year, wouldn’t it be lovely. It means three years in India but even so it is a wonderful opening… Hamish is really being very sweet, only I am furious with him at the moment if you understand what I mean. He is sulking in his bedroom at present.’
    From 31 Tite Street, S.W. 3, 20th June: ‘Hamish is going to America on the 2nd to seek our fortunes. This is in the well known Mitford wail. I am frightfully unhappy but slightly hopeful at the same time. After all, better that than this awful waiting about in England. Hamish’s character is so much improved, we travelled from Scotland in a 3rd class sleeper with two commercial travellers overhead and he never murmured once! He is a sweet angel isn’t he?… P.S. Poor Muv always says I never write in a letter what you wouldn’t like read out in a “Court of Law”.’ On the top of the envelope Nancy had written: ‘From the paralyzed wives of noblemen’s association ,’ and at the back, with a sketch of a woman in a wheel chair, ‘under royal patronage… these poor good old women, too often with no where to go…’
    27th June: ‘Hamish is not now going to America… Comforting, only he poor duck is disappointed … My book has to be finished by the end of August. After that I shall be free to contemplate life on the ocean wave with you. It is a rotten book and needs at least six weeks of very hard work to make it remotely readable… Randolph [Churchill] has announced that he intends to install me as his maitresse en titre. Thank you… I have just written a piece of my mind to Hamish so I suppose we are having a row. But if I don’t lecture him sometimes nobody else will. Oh dear, I wish it was all over one way or the other, it’s such a tiring struggle.’
    10th July: ‘John [Sutro] the angel, is sending Hamish to Munich to learn all about films, it sounds very much the old boy’s cup of tea don’t you think. So perhaps he’ll end up as a film producer of the most opulent type which would be nice.’
    From Swinbrook, 11th November: ‘I’ve got a new idea for a book, a sort of half sham memoir called Childhood and Girlhood, pretending I was born about 1870 of rich and noble parents, and with lots of bogus photographs, all of Bobo [Unity] dressed up and called My Mother, My Uncle Charles, Grandpapa, etc. But I have bagged being beautiful Sister Effie who died young and Bobo is so cross she has gone to bed, hence this letter. Life here is hellishly boring .’
    When the news of Nancy’s marriage in November 1933 to a very different person reached me I was less surprised than if she had married Hamish. Even so it seemed a gamble. Peter,