Nancy Mitford

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Image:Nancy Mitford.jpg The Hon. Nancy Freeman-Mitford, CBE (28 November 1904–30 June 1973), novelist and biographer.

She was born in London, the eldest daughter of David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale. She is best known for her series of novels about upper-class life in England and France, particularly the four published since 1945, but she also wrote four well-received popular biographies. She is one of the noted Mitford sisters and the first to publicise the extraordinary family life of her very English and very eccentric family, giving rise to a "Mitford industry" which continues to roll on.

She was an essayist in Noblesse Oblige (1956), which famously helped to popularise the famous 'U', or upper-class, and 'non-U' classification of linguistic usage and behaviour (see U and non-U English) — although this is something she saw as a bit of a tease and she certainly never took the matter seriously. She is credited as editor of the book but in fact the organisation of the project was done by the publishers. One of her novels had been used by Professor David Ross, the inventor of the phrase, as an example of upper-class linguistic usage.

Nancy Mitford's gift as a comic writer and her humour are evident throughout her novels and also in the articles which she wrote for the London Sunday Times. She was a noted letter-writer and her correspondence has been published in Love from Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford (1993) and in The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh (1996). Her letters are notable for their humour, irony and cultural and social breadth.

In 1933, after a going-nowhere romance with homosexual Scottish aristocrat Hamish St Clair-Erskine, she married The Hon. Peter Rodd, the youngest son of the 1st Baron Rennell. (Lord Rennell was a British Ambassador to Italy, a former poet, and possibly a one-time lover of Oscar Wilde according to historian Neil McKenna.) The marriage was a failure, her husband was unfaithful and couldn't keep a job; in time Nancy took over the family finances, working in a bookshop, and was unfaithful in her turn. The Rodds, who had lived separated since 1939, continued to see one another on a purely friendly basis and Rodd used her Paris flat as an occasional base. She also gave him financial assistance from time to time. They were divorced in 1958 (although Nancy's surname appears as Rodd on her headstone).

The turning-point in Nancy's hitherto very English existence was her meeting with French soldier and politician Colonel Gaston Palewski (Charles de Gaulle's Chief of Staff), whom she always called 'Colonel' and with whom she had a relationship in London during the war. At the end of the Second World War she moved to Paris, to be near him. The largely one-sided affair, which inspired the romance between Linda Kroesig and Fabrice de Sauveterre in Mitford's novel The Pursuit of Love, lasted fitfully until Palewski's affair with and eventual 1969 marriage to Violette de Talleyrand-Périgord, Duchess of Sagan (1915-2003), a beautiful socialite who was the former wife of Count James de Pourtalés and a granddaughter of American railroad magnate Jay Gould.

Based in Paris at 7 Rue Monsieur, Mitford had a busy social and literary life and received countless guests visiting the city. She had a huge number of friends and acquaintances in the English, French and Italian aristocracies, as well as in the international set in Paris. She travelled frequently and established a pattern of visits to country houses in England, Ireland and France as well as annual visits to Venice. Although much of her life was spent in France, she remained English to the core in her beliefs and attitudes.

Nancy Mitford's public persona was remarkable: she was invariably elegantly dressed (often by Dior or Lanvin), she lived a hectic social life, and was a well-known public personality in the United Kingdom even though she lived in Paris. She had a particular "Mitford" brand of humour which became very well known through her novels and newspaper articles and attracted a cult following. Her "teases" were famous, including a description in a Sunday Times article of Rome as a village centred on the vicarage. The posthumous publication of her letters has enhanced her reputation.

Her novels, articles and biographies gave her a long-sought financial independence. Financial concerns, and in particular the need to provide for her old age were a constant worry. They probably explain her move from Paris to Versailles where she bought a house but which isolated her from the life she had established in Paris.

Nancy Mitford was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and a Knight in the Legion of Honour in 1972; it was Palewski who formally invested her, presenting her with the decoration when she was already dying.

She is the subject of two biographies: Nancy Mitford: a Memoir by Harold Acton (1976) and Nancy Mitford: A Biography by Selena Hastings (1986).

After a long and painfull illness Nancy Mitford died of Hodgkin's Disease on 30 June 1973 in Versailles. Palewski was with her on the day of her death. Her remains were brought home to England and are interred in the Swinbrook Churchyard in Oxfordshire with those of her younger sisters, Unity Mitford (1914-1948), Diana, Lady Mosley (1910-2003) and Jessica (1917-1996).

She was the author of:

[edit] Trivia

In the Angel television series' episode "She", a reference is made about a flower called "Nancy's Petticoat" and how it was named after Nancy Mitford. In reality, there is no flower named after Mitford.[1]