Pen friends

 

Nancy Mitford was an inveterate letter-writer and as such must have been a much-loved correspondent for the many friends with whom she kept in touch, as her hallmarks were the funny, charming, thoughtful and sharply observant. While her personality is stamped on her novels, her letters define her even more crisply, and they make for wonderfully entertaining reading; of a certain era and class, perhaps, but that is not to diminish her brilliance.

The collected letters edited by Charlotte Mosley and titled "Love from Nancy" include much of the correspondence between Nancy and her one-time employer, Heywood Hill, but now John Saumarez Smith has edited the Mitford/Hill letters in "The Bookshop at 10, Curzon Street" and we are treated not only to NM's 'shrieks' but to HH's great wit as well.

Heywood writes of friends who were expecting a visit from a royal personage and who were thus "up all night ironing doilies", and discussing a customer's suggestion about suitable material for a window display "I don't quite know what the shop line is. Torn between bolsh and tweed I suppose age tends to tweed."

Nancy, on being asked to write an article entitled "My Utopia" tells Heywood "my Utopia consists of cottagers, happy in their cottages while I am being happy in the Big House. So I'm afraid it would make everybody furious with me." While staying in Venice she instructs Heywood to send books she has chosen specially for the young waiters at her hotel and for a five year old street vendor, but to send them "after I've gone as giving makes me shy."

From chat and gossip to advice, insights and great sympathy, fans of Nancy's will find much to enjoy. (And wasn't Heywood Hill handsome?)

Comments

[SUSAN HILL]

I knew him slightly in later life and he was still handsome .. his wife, Lady Anne, died a couple of weeks ago, well into her 90s and longing to leave the world from which all her friends had vanished but wonderfully looked after by her daughter Harriet. To go to their house near Aldeburgh, Snape Priory, was one of life`s greater pleasures.

[Cristina]

"How I shrieked!" with delight to read that there's more NM to enjoy. Thanks for this review, Karen.