Life, she thought, is sometimes sad and often dull, but there are currants in the cake and here is one of them.The early morning sun shone past her window on to the river, her ceiling danced with water-reflections. The Sunday silence was broken by two swans winging slowly upstream, and then by the chugging of a little barge, while she waited for that other sound, a sound more intimately connected with the urban love affair than any except the telephone bell, that of a stopping taxicab. Sun, silence, and happiness. Presently she heard it in the street, slowly, slower, it stopped, the flag went up with a ring, the door slammed, voices, clinking coins, footsteps. She rushed downstairs. Linda Radlett apparently has it all : a noble ancestry, wealth, beauty, wit, friends. The only thing missing, the elusive dream she always chases is love. We first meet Linda as a child of ten, seen through the eyes of her cousin Fanny, the narrator of the story. They are the same age, and together they will navigate the turbulent waters of Victorian social conventions in the years after the first World War in search of the safe harbour of the perfect marriage, the perfect husband and the perfect love story.I picked up the book expecting the kind of funny and laidback summer entertainment that I get from P G Wodehouse and from the pre-War Hollywood screwball comedies : rich people in sumptuous mansions flirting endlessly while the reality of hunger and strife and violence seems to belong to a different planet. In the beginning, that was exactly what I got as the Radlett family is introduced in all its irreverent and disruptive glory: Uncle Matthew who keeps above the mantelpiece the bloody entrenching tool that he used to gore eight Germans in the mud of the Somme, who hunts his own children with bloodhounds when he runs out of game and who terrorizes the housemaids every morning as they go about their duties, his absent minded wife Sadie, her sister 'The Bolter' who abandoned daughter Fanny to be raised like a cuckoo among relatives and who is now changing husbands on the continent more often than mink coats, the children who run feral on the estate sabotaging their father's animal traps, the Alconleigh Castle itself with its always cold rooms and dusty mementoes of family history. The great advantage of living in a large family is that early lesson of life's essential unfairness. It is soon evident that Nancy Mitford is not interested in the escapism value of the story. Given the clear autobiographical origin for the Radlett family antics (a case where life beats fiction in the Mitford scandal ridden legacy), I believe the author tried not only to preserve the spirit of her childhood memories, but also to exorcise the demons that have haunted her own search for love and happiness. Not only through the eyes of Fanny, but through all the Radlett siblings we see how the late Victorian rigid code has been shackling women and limited their options in life to the sole role of housewife. Lord Matthew refuses to let his daughters attend any form of school, as he firmly believes that piano, French and riding lessons are the only education they need in order to ensnare a husband. Louisa marries an elderly friend of her father in her very first year of coming out in society, Matt the only boy runs away from school to fight in the Spanish Civil War, Jassy saves all her petty money for the day when she will run away from home. And Linda herself dreams of marrying the Prince of Wales, when she's not scaring her siblings with lurid descriptions of the physical act of love. Even Fanny, whose clear eyed Aunt Emily has forced to attend school, is not exempt from the lure of fantasies about men and marriage. One of my favorite scenes early in the book is of the two now teenage girls getting ready for their first unchaperoned and illicit date( they were forbidden make-up, as Uncle Matthew firmly believed a woman's compexion is best au-naturel): - I once read in a book that you can use geranium juice for rouge.- Geraniums aren't out at this time of year, silly.- We can blue our eyelids out of Jassy's paint-box.- And sleep in curlers.- I'll get the verbena soap out of Mummy's bathroom. If we let it melt in the bath, and soak for hours in it, we shall smell delicious. As unfit to cope with the real world as a nun raised in a convent, Linda falls under the spell of Tony, the first handsome young man that pays hommage to her beauty, and marries him despite her family reservations. The Kroesigs are a rich family of bankers in the City, and their Junker inspired obsession with profits and respectability soon feel like shackles to the free spirit and unconventional Linda. Even passion is not strong enough to overcome boredom: She simply could not understand how somebody who already had plenty of money could go and shut himself away from God's fresh air and blue skies, from the spring, the summer, the autumn, the winter, letting them merge into each other unaware that they were passing, simply in order to make more. [...] The young man she had fallen in love with, handsome, gay, intellectual and domineering, melted away upon closer acquaintance, and proved to have been a chimera, never to have existed outside of her imagination. Linda did not commit the usual fault of blaming Tony for what was entirely her own mistake, she merely turned from him in absolute indifference. Still unable to learn from past mistakes, Linda lets herself fall under the spell of another man, the exact opposite of the right wing, conservative Kroesigs. She runs away from home to be with her Communist lover and gives up wealth and her social life to marry Christian, as good looking as he is consummed by his political activism. Not used to playing second fiddle in her husbands attentions and unable to cope with household chores on her own, Linda is ripe for another elopement.Third time lucky? Enters Fabrice, a smooth French Duke who literally sweeps her off her feet and installs her in a Parisian apartment, introduces her to haute-couture, haute cuisine and last but not least, French expertise between the sheets. I couldn't help myself. With a name like Fabrice and with his French Conversation, The only thing I could picture and hear was Pepe le Pew. Fabrice is an aristocrat advocating a social elitism that seems hard to achieve if you are not born into the right class : Everybody is getting more serious, that's the way things are going. but, whatever one may be in politics, right, left, Fascist, Communist, les gens du monde are the only possible ones for friends. You see, they have made a fine art of personal relationships and of all that pertains to them - manners, clothes, beautiful houses, good food, everything that makes life agreeable. It would be silly not to take advantage of that. Friendship is something to be built up carefully, by people of leisure, it is an art, nature does not come into it. You should never despise social life - de la haute societe - I mean, it can be a very satisfying one, entirely artificial of course, but absorbing. Apart from the life of the intellect and the contemplative religious life, which few people are qualified to enjoy, what else is there to distinguish man from the animals but his social life? Some of the effervescent wit and zest for life from the beginning of the novel resurfaces in Linda's life, but the year is 1939 and a rude awakening is just around the corner for the two lovers. Despite his profession of epicurean nonchalance, Fabrice joins the French Army to fight the German threat, and Linda is sent back to London to await the end of hostilities. In London, Linda gets reunited with Fanny, by now happily married with an Oxford Don, and they compare notes on the success of their quest for happiness: Alfred and I are Happy, as happy as married people can be. We are in love, we are intellectually and physically suited in every possible way, we rejoice in each other's company, we have no money troubles and three delightful children. And yet, when I consider my life, day by day, hour by hour, it seems to be composed of a series of pinpricks. Nannies, cooks, the endless drudgery of housekeeping, the nerve-racking noise and boring repetitive conversation of small children (boring in the sense that it bores into one's very brain), their absolute incapacity to amuse themselves, their sudden and terrifying illnesses, alfred's not infrequent bouts of moodiness, his invariable complaints at meals about the pudding, the way he will always use my tooth-paste and will always squeeze the tube in the middle. These are the components of marriage, the wholemeal bread of life, rough, ordinary, but sustaining; Linda has been feeding upon honey-dew, and that is an incomparable diet. The bittersweet ending of the novel is one more confirmation for me of how much more than a funny escapist story this journey turned out to be. Many novels are famous for their opening lines, but The Pursuit of Love will stay with me for its closing remarks, as The Bolter explains hers and Linda's inconstancy of the heart: - He was the great love of her life, you know.- Oh, darling, said my mother sadly. One always thinks that. Every, every time.
“Always either on a peak of happiness or drowning in black waters of despair they loved or they loathed, they lived in a world of superlatives.” Nancy Mitford, unlucky in love, like many of her heroines.Nancy Mitford had five sisters and one brother and when you look her up on wikipedia all of her siblings are in blue which of course means that wikipedia has a worthy entry for each one of them. They were certainly a talented, artistic family, and if this book is any indication also quick with the witty dialogue. Mitford draws heavily on her family’s personal history to write these novels. I have a feeling that after each book she probably received a fair share of bristling letters from her extended family as they take exception to one caricature or another or maybe they just all had a laugh knowing that everyone was going to get “got” at some point in time. The Mitford SistersFanny is the narrator and is reminded all the time how fortunate she is.”Oh, you are so lucky, to have wicked parents.” Her mother is referred to throughout most of the book as “The Bolter” as she runs through marriages like a crazed colt intent on escaping any form of stanchion. This means that Fanny spends most of her time at Alconleigh with her Aunt Sadie “Vague as she was, Aunt Sadie could not always be counted on to ignore everything that was happening around her.” and Uncle Matthew “Over the chimney-piece...hangs an entrenching tool, with which, in 1915 Uncle Matthew had whacked to death eight Germans one by one as they crawled out of a dugout. It is still covered with blood and hairs, an object of fascination to us as children.”. Fanny is best friends with her cousin Linda, a great beauty in a family of beautiful people. ”Isn’t it lovely to be lovely me?” This story is about Linda and from time to time as Fanny starts talking about herself too much she will remind herself and her reader, firmly, that this book is about Linda. Linda marries a Conservative prig named Tony. He had been molded and shaped carefully by his family and they had reservations about Linda. ”Linda took no interest in politics, but she was instinctively and unreasonably English. She knew that one Englishman was worth a hundred foreigners, whereas Tony thought that one capitalist was worth a hundred workers. Their outlook upon this, as upon most subjects, differed fundamentally.”She had one odious, boring child with him named Moira who has all the attributes that will make her a quality member of her father’s parents. The issues the family has with Linda become more magnified as time goes on partly due to the way they treat her and refer to her. We do become what we are told we are if we are told it enough times. She bolts. She marries a Communist. He takes her to Spain to help with the Civil War. He falls in love with a friend of Linda’s, not a friend really but one of those friends that sometimes we are shackled with due to geography or family connections, named Lavender Davis. Linda is naturally affronted that he would find this shovel faced girl more attractive than himself, but then Lavender was more fanatical with the cause while Linda is, though proved to be more helpful than I would have thought, really just along for the ride. She bolts.She ends up being found at the train station in Paris, weeping over her luggage, by a well dressed (Is there any other kind?) Frenchman named Fabrice who turns out to be a wealthy Duke. He has just put his ex-girlfriend on the train and low and behold as if provided to him by a higher power is a beautiful young woman in need of assistance. A woman who needs his help in so many things. ”Now go on telling me about your husbands.”“Only two. My first was a Conservative, and my second is a communist.”“Just as I guessed, your first is rich, your second is poor. I could see you once had a rich husband, the dressing-case and the fur coat, though it is a hideous colour, and no doubt, as far as one could see, with it unbundled over your arm, a hideous shape. Still, vision usually betokens a rich husband somewhere. Then this dreadful linen suit you are wearing has ready-made written all over it.”‘You are rude, it’s a very pretty suit.”“And last year’s. Jackets are getting longer you will find. I’ll get you some clothes--if you were well dressed you would be quite good-looking, though it’s true your eyes are small. Blue, a good colour, but small.”“In England,” said Linda, “I am considered a beauty.”“Well, you have points.” Gaston Palewski, the inspiration for the Fabrice character and the great love of Mitford’s life. He was incapable of fidelity, but he was with Mitford when she died despite being married to someone else.Linda falls in love with her Duke. Germany is on the march and soon she will have to bolt back to England, but for once she does not want to go. She is visited by a contingent of concerned relatives and friends who give her some insight into her Frenchman. ”Who is he?” said Lord Merlin.“He’s called the Duke of Sauveterre.”A look of great surprise, mingled with horrified amusement, passed between Davey and Lord Merlin.“Fabrice de Sauveterre?”“Yes. Do you know him?”“Darling Linda, one always forgets, under that look of great sophistication, what a little provincial you really are. Of course we know him, and all about him, and, what’s more, so does everyone except you.”“Fabrice,” said Lord Merlin with emphasis, “is undoubtedly one of the wickedest men in Europe, as far as women are concerned. But I must admit that he’s an extremely agreeable companion.”Fabrice might be wicked, but he also has a different idea about sin. ”I’ve just been to church.”“Fabrice, how can you go to church when there’s me?”“Of course I am. What do you suppose? Do you think I look like a Calvinist?”“But then aren’t you living in mortal sin? So what about when you confess?”“On ne precise pas,” said Fabrice, carelessly, “and in any case, these little sins of the body are quite unimportant.”Linda had hoped that she was more than just “a little sin of the body” to Fabrice. Drawing of Fabrice and Linda from the Folio Edition that I read.This book sparkles with wit and charm. Everything is told in such a breezy and light matter that even when great tragedy strikes Mitford does not alter her tone as if to say “it is what it is”. The dialogue is snappy and gives us a good idea of what conversations must have been like among the Mitford clan. I ended up reading passages out loud to my wife and she chortled along with me. I had to restrain myself from not relating more of the dialogue in this review. This book is laugh out loud funny and full of eccentric behavior from pastel dyed doves to bejewelled dogs to a revered blood encrusted trenching tool over the mantelpiece. I will most assuredly be reading book two in the series Love in a Cold Climate.My GR friend Michael Edwards shared a great story about Queen of England choosing this Mitford for reading. The quote is from Bennett's The Uncommon Readerand it is just too good not to add to this reviewThe Pursuit of Love turned out to be a fortunate choice and in its way a momentous one. Has Her Majesty gone for another duff read, an early George Eliot, say, or a late Henry James, novice reader that she was she might have been put off reading for good and there would be no story to tell. Books, she would have thought, were work.As it was, with this one she soon became engrossed, and passing her bedroom that night clutching his hot-water bottle, the duke heard her laugh out loud. He put his head around the door. 'All right, old girl?''Of course, I'm reading.'
What do You think about The Pursuit Of Love (1999)?
This a very enjoyable read, about the English (and a few French) before WWII. I loved certain characters, such as Unlce Matthew who roared around the home and hunted incessently, but cried throughout Romeo and Juliet and blamed the tragedy on the priest ("Damn RCs"). It must have been a brave new world for women in that time, because they did leave their husbands and divorce and remarry and divorce again. Not that bodes for a steady, happy life, but it freer that their lot before (not that I really know much about the topic but I can make these assertions (which may be true)). Our herioine, Linda, had a happily married mother who was perfectly content with the English country life and her roaring husband but Linda just can't do love right with the English, and only ever finds satisfaction with French master of the art. Our narrator, the steady cousin of Linda is quite the opposite--she is happliy married to an Engish don but had a flightly mother (nicknamed the Bolter for her abrupt departures from men) who never stayed long in a relationship but also never spent time with her daughter I can't say it is a great book, becuase it seems to stay just above the deepest of emotions and sentiments that it portrays, but they are there in the open and not hidden--just not really delved into. I suppose that is very 1930's England, which is exactly why I enjoyed this book. There is a great deal that is funny, even when maybe it shouldn't be. And make sure you read sisteR Jessica Mitford's two page introduction--just delightful.
—Barksdale Penick
This book , although at times hysterically funny, is actually a book about loss and love, and the memories and consequent unconscious ( conscious??) editing of those memories needed to sustain both. The book's opening sentence makes it clear that this is a book in which some of the major players are no longer in 'existence', and we do not learn the fate of many. Ostensibly about the passionate Linda and her search for a romantic odyessy that will consume her, it gives a vivid and compelling portrait of what life was like for a certain class of women between the wars in Britain. Delicious snobbery abounds, but so does genuine affection, and love for a family so utterly bizarre that is is impossible for Mitford to have wholly invented them, which of course she didn't. What strikes the contemporary reader is the modern acceptance of non-conformative sexualities and life choices. From Davey and Emily's lavender liason of a marraige of two people who love each other but certainly not in the biblical sense, to Fanny's mother the Bolter, forever looking for a love that she sadly believes is real 'every single time'. Lord Merlin and his dyed pigeons and bedazzled greyhounds illustrate that tolerance( and intolerance :a reliably hilarious Uncle Matthew) are not new or modern inventions - that humans have been capable of understanding different types of love for much longer than we give them credit for. Mitford is always dismissed as a light frivolous writer, and indeed one can enjoy her novels with satisfaction in this manner. However her ability to casually break your heart in one paragraph, with no explaination or justification, for after all, death is as inevitable as love for each of us, 'every single time', is severely underated. Above all this is a tribute, a beautiful portarai of words of a time gone now forever, much imitated in series such as 'Downtown Abbey" for millions, but never I think, captured quite so beautifully as Mitford does both here and in its companion novel "Love in a Cold Climate'. Her good friend Evelyn Waugh's books provide good parallel reading choices. But for me Mitford captures an England that lives on in an imagined history - an immagined community in the true sense of the word - in the minds of many, and one that provides comfort and cheer if ever you miss the real thing.
—Charlotte Allen
I came to this because a) never read mitfords, b) love the whole daft-country-manor-in-the-thirties genre, c) mother of narrator here is real-life Lady Idina Sackville http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... and, d) it was recommended.Truth is that at first I didn't know if I could sit thru the cutely-brit + twee aspects of the girls interacting, but soon enough the wickedly funny emerged and I was completely on board. (Uncle Matthew, lord of the manor, a colonel-blimp who gnashes his way thru a couple sets of dentures a year --- has set up an excercise called the 'Child Hunt' on the estate, to air the horses, run the dogs, and keep the children in line. They don't actually shoot at the game, which after all is the children, they just "run them to ground". Good show.)Overall a simple coming-of-age story, but complete with manor-house, acreage, staff, stables, dreary weather, beastly, titled adults, and wildly inappropriate children. In short, what would become the central nervous system of a thousand screwball comedies, whether in books, movies or the imaginations of generations to come. A hybrid-family narrative of Nancy Mitford, a disorganized rave through all that was 'proper' and 'done' by all the best people; a puncturing pin on the lookout for any or all sacred cows caught wandering the heaths or Grand Halls of jolly-old englishland.What begins as a straightforward romp begins to wobble dangerously in the middle going, though, and we sense that the author has more than irreverent asides and witty retorts on her mind. As the merry chase begins to collide with agonizing realities, the collection of unrelated misadventures turns serious, and Life catches up with the pretty young things. (This shift is done nicely, and right at the moment where the onset of ennui has begun to consume the little dears..)Wish that I could report that a weighty Part Two of this novel goes on to examine all that, but we are brought up short (and wanting more) by an abrupt end that leads toward the next act, Love In A Cold Climate. This one sets the tone, though, and flies along at the speed of gossip, or growing up, or a wet afternoon out on the moor, giving the hounds some air whilst galloping after the heirs.
—J.
