My intro to Mitfordiana

I recently finished reading The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford, a slim and fast-paced little novel. In her 2010 introduction, Zoe Heller claims that people either love or hate Mitford’s novels, but I’ve been ruminating for over a week now, and I don’t think I fall into either of those categories. I definitely don’t hate it, and while I might end up loving it if I were to read it again and then again after that (as Heller says she has), I’m not quite there yet. Right now, I admire Mitford, and appreciate her novel for what it for what it is. Generally, I just like it. As I just wrote those last two sentences, I can already tell that once I’ve finished writing this post I might realize that I actually do already love it, but we’ll both just have to get to the end to find out.

To begin, Nancy Mitford is an interesting historical figure - one of six Mitford sisters who captured a good deal of public attention when they were alive, and continue to do so after death. I had never heard of the Mitford sisters prior to randomly picking up this book because I liked the cover and the title. The back blurb (which I generally prefer not to read, but sometimes do) says, “Mitford modeled her characters on her own famously unconventional family,” which piqued my interest. There are several different books aside from Nancy’s novels - biographies and auto-biographies, in addition to documentaries, television adaptations, and a miniseries - general “Mitfordiana” as Jessica Mitford calls it in her 1981 foreword. The reason for the fascination seems to be twofold. First: One of the sisters was a Nazi (literally), one was a fascist, one a communist, one a Duchess, one was apparently pretty boring and the other was Nancy, the novelist. That’s quite a range for one family. The second reason I believe the Mitfords were, and are, so captivating is because they provide a glimpse into the eccentricities and oddities of life in a titled family in England during a time when the old way of life for a titled family in England was on the way out.

With all that in mind, we enter the world of The Pursuit of Love, populated by the Radlett family, closely based on the Mitford family. The first thing I noticed about the book, and so the first thing I’ll mention, is how truly hilarious it is. Our narrator Fanny, first cousin to the Radlett children, has a sparkling voice. There’s the way she portrays the cycles of childhood obsession: childbirth, sin (i.e. Oscar Wilde), and true love, in that order, to hilarious descriptions of Uncle Matthew (our Radlett patriarch), terrorizing the house staff. Then, as far as characterizations go, there’s everything about Lord Merlin and his various teases, and Davey’s perpetual preoccupation with his health (see: one particularly delicious metaphor on page 94 comparing Davey to a farmer and his health to a runty pig). And of course, there’s the dialogue, like this absolute gem from our main character Linda on her older sister’s choice of husband: “‘Poor old thing I suppose she likes him, but, I must say, if he was one’s dog one would have him put down.’ Lord Fort William was thirty-nine” (Mitford 53). I could go on and on - Fanny’s casual and pithy humor carries the reader through.

Which brings us around to the voice that Mitford is able to create through Fanny. It is effortless and conversational - almost as if Fanny has called you up on the phone to tell you a story. This, in combination with the fact that the book is based on Mitford’s own life, makes it easy to forget that Fanny’s voice is not just Mitford’s voice transferred over to one of her characters. It is in fact, highly stylized. The word choice, and the syntax, and the funny expressions are all characteristic of the way that Nancy Mitford, and others in her milieu, would have spoken, yes. But to perfectly imitate and maintain that exact voice for an entire novel is not artless - it is formulaic. More broadly speaking, because of the element of humor and the largely informal tone, I can see how people mistake this novel for a simple comedy. If you read the reviews, they describe “The deliriously foolish story of an inane but charming girl and her outrageously eccentric family,” (New York Times), or “Utter, utter bliss,” (Daily Mail), so it’s clearly a common mistake, but a mistake it is. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it is possible to say serious things through stories, and characters and language that do not seem at all serious.

In my opinion, Mitford does exactly that. I will quickly mention that there are several significant issues, political, social and otherwise, that are treated with extreme levity in this novel. The gravity that is there lies beneath the surface, in the well-concealed pain and unspoken disappointments, which can be detected in almost all of the characters if one pays close enough attention. This pain, and subsequent suffering may seem minor in comparison to the pain and suffering endured by many in the same moment of history. I acknowledge that, but I must also say that I think it’s okay that Mitford doesn’t deal in rigorous sociopolitical commentary. In my opinion, the stuff that she does deal in - love yearned for, love mistaken, love lost, and then yearned for all over again, is as powerful a topic as any other.

And so, at the beginning of our novel, Fanny and Linda, like many young girls, not only dream of love, but actually feel love for ridiculously unattainable figures. I will include here, for the sake of fun, that this happened to me with Edward Cullen of Twilight fame. I read the books and literally, actually, at least to me, at the time, was IN love with a fictional character. Same with these little ladies - Linda loves the Prince of Wales, and Fanny loves a “fat, red-faced, middle-aged farmer” in the neighborhood (Mitford 40). Their subsequent love lives feel like echoes of these early fantasies.

Linda is doomed from the start - she wants a particular sweep-you-off-your-feet version of love that, while perhaps not unattainable, is very difficult to achieve when one is thinking about it too much. We see this played out as Linda mistakes infatuation for love not once, but twice, before striking upon something different, and closer to her childhood idea of what love should be. Fanny doesn’t say much about her own romantic endeavors, or rather endeavor, but what we do get lines up with her childhood fantasy as well. In what I see as one of the most romantic sentences of the novel, Fanny says that in her marriage, she found “that refuge from the storms and puzzles of life which [she] had always wanted” (Mitford 91). Although Fanny reveals nothing about her courtship and very little about her marriage aside from a few scattered anecdotes, it is clear that she has made a happy life for herself.

In an effort not to spoil anything, I won’t go into much more detail, but I do want to mention one more thing, which I view as the crux of the story. Fanny is the narrator, and she has a specific perspective on love that is based upon her unique experiences. However, Fanny spends the majority of the novel telling Linda’s story, which is a love story entirely different from her own. One is a love of constancy and reliability and the other is a tumultuous tale leading up to the ultimate flash in the pan. This is where the undercurrent of pain, disappointment and perhaps a little jealousy, shines through Fanny’s narration. As is the case with the various characters she describes, we are not granted much of a glimpse into the inner workings of Fanny’s mind. There are, however, hints that she finds something lacking in her even-keeled love when compared to Linda’s whirlwind romance, which is an excellent example of the deeper undercurrents running through the novel - detectable if you're paying attention.

I, for one, would choose consistent, long-term happiness, over a short burst of blinding, furious joy. I don’t know how much of a conscious choice it really is, but I suppose there have to be people who “choose” the short bursts like Linda, otherwise the Fannys of the world would have nothing to talk about, write about, make art about. Maybe the best lives are lived by the Fannys, but the most interesting lives are lived by the Lindas.

Also, I have decided that I love it, and I can’t wait to read it again! I will also be reading more about the Mitford sisters, so stay tuned for that.