Peer's daughter

I am chuckling along to the lively, funny, characterful writing of Jessica Mitford every evening. When I'm too tired to read anything requiring more effort, I know I can drop into Decca (her collected letters) for a taste of her wit and her generous good nature and come out feeling the better for it.

She describes a scene in Bloomingdale's department store where she goes to buy a nightdress for her mother, who is getting on in years, and where the assistant is trying to make her take a short one. Asst.: "You get her a long one, she is likely to trip on it and break her neck. Shorties are much cooler. They're the thing of the future." Decca: "Yes, but my mother is a thing of the PAST!" Then she writes to 'Muv' about her purchase and says "be careful not to trip and break your neck, or the sales lady will say 'I told you so'".

I have reached the part where her letters are an account of a visit home to Britain from America, and of the sale of her first book, which was the launch of a rare talent. Hons and Rebels is the first volume of her autobiography and struck the tone for her later work. She sets the scene for this memoir by describing her mother's voluminous scrapbooks, one of which was devoted entirely to newspaper cuttings about the family and the remarkable lives they led. "'Whenever I see the words "Peer's Daughter" in a headline', [her mother] once commented sadly, 'I know it's going to be something about one of you children.'"

Though Decca's life was not without its tragedies, somehow she managed to transcend awful events and come out intact. It is this spirit which comes across so strongly in her writing.

Comments

[Peg]

I am more happy than ever about the fact that I have my name on the list at my library for Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford. It will give me those wonderful pauses that I spoke about in my blog. I love books that make you smile, both inward and outward.

[Nan]

I don't think I can wait much longer to get this book. :<) I think one could spend a year or more just reading about those girls, and reading their own books. Amazing. Will we ever see such as them again?