Christmas Pudding - Nancy Mitford

This was a Christmas present and completes my Mitford collection (though I still hanker after the complete Penguin edition) and is the last of my Christmas-y reading for a while. It's almost a month since I actually read this book (whilst on holiday) when I took copious notes of my opinions and doubtless brilliant insights. Unfortunately I've no idea what happened to my notebook. I had it a week or two back but there have been guests and entertaining since then and in a mismanaged attempt to look tidy and organised I've lost god knows what useful things (the hot water bottle stopper with a working seal has also disappeared and it's quite likely that I won't be able to put my hand to my cheque book for a while). I'm sure it'll turn up one day (hopefully with a missing necklace and my scattered wits).

Meanwhile it seemed like a good idea to write about this book before I forgot all about it. 'Christmas Pudding' was a bit of a revelation at a point where I'd begun to think of Mitford as decidedly over rated and over exposed. It's not that I particularly disapprove of the Mitford industry - we all have to make a living and they're an interesting family albeit mostly in terms of the people they knew - but Nancy wasn't really a prolific writer of books (8 fiction, 4 non fiction?) and her legacy is one of decidedly mixed quality. 'Highland Fling' is never better than average (although still amusing and it was her first novel so allowances can be made) 'Wigs on The Green' is mostly a curiosity, well worth reading, but butchered by Nancy in a failed attempt to placate her fascist sisters. Seeing as that didn't work it's a shame she never let rip with all her original intentions - that would have been a book to seek out. 'Pigeon Pie' is another curiosity with lots to enjoy in it but again - distinctly average.

'Christmas Pudding' is in another class, it was Nancy's second book and has a touch of magic to it. The story is a romp with romance shot through with a hint of bitterness - nobody makes bitter as funny as Nancy can. She's also talking about a world she knew; bright young things in London, and the landed gentry in the Cotswold's. The existence she describes is terrifying; the central characters -Sally and Walter Monteath have just produced a daughter (which seems somewhat feckless as they have not a bean to live on) fortunately baby Elspeth's christening gifts ought to bring in a few bob once they're hocked. They live hand to mouth cadging off richer friends with seemingly no thought for the future - the embodiment of the bright young thing - but Mitford throws in an odd little New Year's day scene where everyone sits around hungover to the eyeballs and looking every minute of there age, she's well aware that the party will end. 

There are other wonderful creations; Paul Fotheringay the misunderstood writer whose tragic masterpiece has been hailed as the comic tour de force of the season and Bobby Bobbin - the boy. The boy is a creature, or perhaps a force of nature that has all but vanished (I hope he still exists within the enclosure of a few select private schools) teenagers are not the same at all. Bobby is wonderfully unlikely to the modern eye but is such a popular type in fiction that he must have existed...

This isn't quite Mitford at her mature best - not much Mitford is - but it's really very enjoyable and I highly recommend it. It's a good thing that Capuchin and Penguin have done re releasing these titles .

The Unbearable Bassington – “Saki” (H. H. Munro)

I’ve enjoyed the short stories of Saki for a long time without really knowing much about him beyond the Wikipedia basics and I hadn’t really associated him with novels until I saw Capuchin Classics were publishing ‘The Unbearable Bassington’ last year. As luck would have it (but not perhaps for Capuchin’s coffers) I found this penguin edition at exactly the same time but it’s taken until now for me to read it.

I have no shortage of unread books to hand but it’s been a struggle to find something to suit my mood for the last week or two so the reason I picked this up was because it was short. It turned out to be an excellent choice, Saki has the gift of being both very funny and almost unbearably sad at the same time (the ending had me in bits) although now I want more of the same which might be a problem.

‘The Unbearable Bassington’ in question is (presumably) a youth called Comus who is more force of nature than boy, a fated lord of misrule who sails through his school days care of good looks, undeniable charm, and sufficient sporting prowess. Post school and the world isn’t quite so kind to Comus; there are no shortage of charming young men on the town and neither he or his long suffering mother have any money, Comus needs to contract a decent marriage as the chances of him making any sort of hand at a career are slim. Unfortunately he blows it in the marriage stakes through sheer perversity which leaves him with but one option – he’s exported to West Africa in the traditional manner of black sheep in the age of empire.

The other Bassington is Francesca a woman who is commonly held to have no soul – instead she has a drawing room – an ordered peaceful place where all her household gods are laid out. The affection between Francesca and her son is real, neither is much given to loving others but both care deeply for each other despite the barrier that’s grown up between them. This coldness is due almost entirely to the nature that Comus can’t help but have: “Fate played him with loaded dice; he would lose always.”

‘The Unbearable Bassington” was first published in 1912 and reads as both an attack on and an elegy for the society it portrays. Saki must I think have known war was coming (He wrote ‘When William Came’ – an imagining of London occupied by the Germans a year later) with hindsight it certainly reads as if he realises that this particular society is all but done with. There are constant pokes both at the vapid nature of society gossip and the patronising futility of good works (my favourite being this: “No one has ever said it,’ observed Lady Caroline ‘but how painfully true it is that the poor have us always with them.”). Perhaps there is a sense of frustration too at a society that produces boys like Comus who have no conceivable use in the world (except they are destined to become cannon fodder very soon) and no means to live on.

If the plot is a little depressing the one liner’s that litter every page are perfectly polished gems sparkling like nobody’s business making the book a joy to read. Capuchin have done us all a favour bringing this back into print, it’s a remarkable little book that deserves to be rescued from obscurity.

The Water Beetle – Nancy Mitford

Nancy Mitford fascinates me, (and a whole lot of other people obviously) at her best she (and her sisters) cast a spell of glamour, wit, and scandal which pretty much reduces me to a schoolgirl crush. At her worst she seems a ridiculous snob but I’m not sure that that doesn’t add to the glamour as well. In real life I don’t care for nicknames and find myself struggling to use them, I avoid wherever possible social circles as incestuously involved as Mitford’s clearly was, yet she makes it sound sophisticated and possibly even fun which is quite a gift. All of which is why I’ll pick up any Mitford thing that comes my way and at least give it a once over.

So it was with ‘The Water Beetle’ which I picked up for the princely sum of a £1.50 and which I thought would make a good stop gap whilst I wait for Capuchin’s reissue of ‘Highland Fling’ to appear. Getting ‘Highland Fling’ is proving to be a bit of a trial, amazon are currently sold out and neither local Waterstones has a copy (which is more especially annoying as the larger of the two branches in town is getting back to its bookselling routes by pitching about 15% of its floor space over to Paperchase. I like stationary but I prefer books, my stationary buying needs are well catered for in Leicester, my book buying needs aren’t and I fail to see how less book selling space is going to improve a bookshop. And it occurs to me that this is part the reason I called myself desperate reader. Hmmph.)

Slightly distracted from my point now but I’ll get back to it yet... so here I am patiently (ish) awaiting a means of purchasing a long anticipated book and looking for ways to while away the time, both factors which pushed me towards ‘The Water Beetle’ an assortment of Mitford essays which with one or two exceptions have aged remarkably badly. She gives a fascinating account of a visit to Russia in the 50’s and what Mitford fan could fail to be excited by ‘Reading for Pleasure’ an account of Nancy’s reading tastes, but the rest of the collection is Nancy as a woman of a her class and time – a Francophile to boot, I’m not so very pro French - the result of years in the wine trade rendered hideous by customers who don’t know what they’re talking about (no reason why they should) but who refuse to believe that I do. (People I’ve wasted the best years of my life on learning this stuff, I’m not just making it up, and if you persist in doubting me one day I’ll snap and use the ‘Oxford Companion to Wine’ in a way Jancis Robinson could hardly approve.)

Again – where was I? Ah yes, Nancy Mitford reading like a parody of Prince Philip – and this is the thing, I can’t warm to the woman in these pages, she put my back up more often than not, yet still I can’t resist her because even when she’s repellent she manages to be fascinating. I could only recommend ‘The Water Beetle’ to hard core enthusiasts but I would still recommend it. I plan to keep my copy with the various collections of Mitford letters I’ve amassed as a reminder of the other side of the women so carefully edited and presented in these anthologies, I rather think it’ll help me read more between the lines.

Finally has anyone read ‘Highland Fling’ yet – and if so what’s the verdict?

The Knot of Vipers – Francois Mauriac

Very kindly sent to me by Capuchin, I blew hot and cold on this book - until I started reading it from which point onwards I stayed hot (if that doesn’t sound wrong). The thing that first drew me to Mauriac was his Catholicism specifically the idea of him being a catholic writer. The combined forces of Alice Thomas Ellis and Muriel Spark have converted me, if not to the church, at least to the possibilities of its literature, and Mauriac has not let them (or me) down.

The quality they all have in common, and which I find so appealing, is that all of these authors are prepared to make their narrator if not actually downright unpleasant, at least realistically humanly unpleasant. I find it reassuring to read, not about evil, but about weakness, paranoia, less charitable thoughts – all the things we think but don’t always want to give voice to. You normally have to know someone very well to know these kinds of flaws in them, so the effect of meeting it on the page can be very disarming.

Monsieur Louis, the narrator and hero of ‘The Knot of Vipers’ is an unloved, unloving, and nearly unlovable man. He’s cut off from his family by a web of suspicion and antipathy. They are determined to get their inheritance; he is equally intent on disinheriting them. Louis is convinced that he is at the base of it an unpleasant even hateful man, he’s put everything into building a fortune, and into trying to enact emotional retribution from those he feels have hurt him – mostly his wife.

The book takes the form first of a letter and then of a confession, Monsieur Louis goes over his life from disappointment to disappointment never withholding his own misdeeds. There is also no doubt that this is a biased account seen from a single perspective, which I also think is where the story is at its strongest. As a young man Louis finds himself marrying a girl far above his social sphere – as he tells it he becomes engaged by accident and without actually meaning to, but initially it’s a happy union; that is until his wife confesses to a previous affair one night. It brings all Louis’ insecurities to the fore – including the belief that Isa married him only for his money. The marriage falls apart from that moment, and the next forty years are a slow burning war of attrition between the couple. Isa annexes the children, Louis engages in a series of sordid liaisons, and ostentatiously turns his back on Isa’s beloved church, losing no opportunity to expose the religious hypocrisy he sees around him.

The other half of the book deals with the battle for Louis’ soul. Is he redeemable? Can he let go of the hatred and desire for vengeance, of the knot of vipers that has taken the place of his heart. Well I’ll leave you to guess the ending for yourselves, but will say that there’s a heartbreaking moment when he realises that he might have misjudged his wife.

To my modern and atheist eye the spiritual message feels a little clumsy, and something’s feel like a coincidence to far, but there’s a lot to be said for the reminder that we are the sum of what we do and not what we pay lip service too, and everything else about the story telling is terrific. The Bordeaux countryside is bought vividly to life, the slow unravelling of a life is equally moving and gripping, and however imperfect Louis is I could not help but sympathise with him. I can confirm that this is indeed a classic to keep alive!

Do by the way check out Capuchin's website. They're having a launch party for Nancy Mitford's Highland fling at Heywood Hill's bookshop on the 15th of July and it looks like tickets can be applied for...

Capuchin Classics

I’ve sort of followed Capuchin Classics since they started up in spring 2008 but somehow they have stayed on the periphery of my buying and reading habits (this has more to do with my limited means than Capuchin’s list) but amazon keeps reminding me that Nancy Mitford’s ‘Highland Fling’ is out in a few months. Okay so I don’t actually need reminding – I’ve been waiting for this for the last eighteen months with virtually bated breath – thanks to the imminent release of ‘Wigs on the Green’ from penguin and ‘Highland Fling’ from Capuchin this is going to be quite the year for Mitford fans.

Whilst I was ordering my missing E.F. Benson’s amazon was trying it’s best to make me pre order Mitford’s with the end result that I went straight to Capuchin for a good old browse. I warn you now I’m about to be unashamedly enthusiastic. I called Capuchin (to shamelessly beg for a book) and spoke to a very nice man who was exceptionally helpful - generally and not just regarding my begging – so all in all it’s left me with an excellent impression. I like their blog as well, and not just because it mentions me!

It was intriguing talking to a man; previously I’ve only ever spoken to women in publicity departments but it seems fitting with Capuchin. If Virago books are broadly feminist and Persephone books are feminine I’ve always had a sense that Capuchin are somehow more masculine – they make me think of well made leather shoes, trilby hats, and trench coats; maybe even a hint of cigar smoke about some of the titles. I’m hoping that doesn’t all sound to deliberately whimsical; I’ve put a bit of thought into it and still haven’t hit on a better way to express what I mean. Either way it’s what I seem to be in the mood for after a good eighteen months to two years of reading books almost exclusively by and about women.

My browse turned up a few things I’m interested in – A A Milne’s ‘Two People’ and Eric Linklater’s ‘Juan in America’ have jumped to the top of my wish list. If I ever read (and turn out to enjoy) the Storm Jameson books I already have I’m also intrigued by ‘Love in Winter’. They have a Saki coming out ‘The Unbearable Bassington’ (there cannot be enough Saki on the bookshelves) and then there’s ‘Scenes From the Latin Quarter’ (Henri Murger), ‘South Wind’ (Norman Douglas), and ‘The Undiscovered Country’ (Julian Mitchell) – all very tempting and just a slight departure from what I have been reading, so fingers crossed for a good bonus and a huge splurge on books.

Even more interesting is the invitation to suggest titles for publication – if you propose one that gets taken up Capuchin will provide a whole year’s worth of books – I tried to think of something but sadly my mind went blank – worth checking out by anybody with a book to champion though...