Nancy Mitford: Lessons for Historians from a Best-Selling Author

Zinsser, Judith P.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-77568-5_13

Nancy Mitford: Lessons for Historians from a Best-Selling Author

Judith P. Zinsser³

Chapter
First Online: 12 July 2018

183 Accesses

Abstract

Few eighteenth-century scholars have heard of Nancy Mitford, the English writer and socialite. Yet, in the 1950s and 1960s she wrote two best-selling biographies: the first, about Madame de Pompadour (1954); and the second, about the philosophe Emilie Du Châtelet, also famous as Voltaire’s companion (thus, Mitford’s title, Voltaire in Love, 1957). This essay describes how this self-educated, lively novelist turned to biography, and offers lessons for scholars in the tone, pace, and humor characteristic of her writing. The essay concludes with discussion of the lingering appeal of Mitford’s portrayal of Du Châtelet as “always something of the whore.” Tragically, Mitford, a woman with an exciting, incisive mind, thus perpetuated this common historical trope, denigrating women of intellect.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter: USD 29.95; Price excludes VAT (USA)

eBook: USD 69.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Softcover Book: USD 89.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Hardcover Book: USD 119.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

1.
The Sun King: Louis XIV at Versailles (New York: Harper & Row, 1966) and Frederick the Great (New York: Harper & Row, 1970).
2.
See Judith P. Zinsser, Emilie Du Châtelet: Daring Genius of the Enlightenment (New York: Viking/Penguin, 2006) for the latest critical biography of the philosophe.stet
3.
Quote “On This Day,” July 1973, Obituary, New York Times. Accessed August, 28, 2016.
4.
For a sampling of quotations from reviews of her Madame de Pompadour, see: Selina Hastings, Nancy Mitford: A Biography (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1985), 220; Love from Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford, ed. Charlotte Mosley (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1993) nn. 1–4, 319–321; The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, ed. Charlotte Mosley (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1996), Mitford to Waugh, January 9, 1958, 408. For another collection of letters, see: The Mitfords: Letters between Six Sisters, ed. Charlotte Mosley (New York: Harper Perennial, 2007) and for her life, see also Mary S. Lovell, The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002) and Laura Thompson, The Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2016).
5.
Mitford to Waugh, February 24, 1953, Letters, 306.
6.
Nancy Mitford, Voltaire in Love (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), 252.
7.
On the historiography, see Judith P. Zinsser, “Betrayals: An Eighteenth-Century Philosophe and Her Biographers,” French Historical Studies, 39/1 (February 2016): 3–33. For Du Châtelet’s writings, see for example: Emilie Du Châtelet , Selected Philosophical and Scientific Writings, ed. Judith P. Zinsser, trans. Isabelle Bour and Judith P. Zinsser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).
8.
Le Journal universel, vol. X (August 1746): 411–21; Le Journal encyclopédique, vol. VI, part 3 (September 1759): 3–17.
9.
“Newtonisme,” Encyclopédie des Arts et Métiers (Lausanne: Les Sociétés typographiques, 1778–82 edn.), vol. XXII, 414.
10.
Mitford, Voltaire in Love, 19.
11.
Two sisters wrote their memoirs: Jessica Mitford, Daughters and Rebels: The Autobiography of Jessica Mitford (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960); Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire, Wait for Me (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010). Both also wrote for a living.
12.
Other novels and projects in this period: Wigs on the Green (1935) and Pigeon Pie (1940); two edited volumes of family papers: Ladies of Alderley (1933), Stanley of Alderley (1938).
13.
Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love in Love in a Cold Climate and Other Novels (New York: Penguin, 2000 edn.), 15. Mitford openly admitted the use of her experiences, her family, and her friends in her novels. For examples see: Hastings, Nancy Mitford, 29–36, 166–167, 187–189, 199, 202–203; Harold Acton, Nancy Mitford: A Memoir (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1975), 21, 53–54, 61, 74–75, 77.
14.
Mitford, Pursuit of Love , 46.
15.
Mitford, Pursuit of Love, 210, 126.
16.
Nancy Mitford, The Blessing in Love in a Cold Climate and Other Novels (New York: Penguin, 2000), 436.
17.
Mitford, Pursuit of Love , 107.
18.
See, for example, Philip Hensher, intro, Love in a Cold Climate and Other Novels (New York: Penguin, 2000), xi.
19.
Hensher, intro, ix.
20.
Mitford, Pursuit of Love, 259.
21.
Mitford, Love in a Cold Climate, 204.
22.
Mitford, Love in a Cold Climate, 215.
23.
As quoted in Acton, Nancy Mitford, 106.
24.
Mitford to Lady Pamela Berry, November 12, 1952, Letters, 303.
25.
Mitford, Pursuit of Love, 30.
26.
Mitford, Voltaire in Love, 13.
27.
Mitford to Lady Redesdale, April 15, 1957, Letters, 362.
28.
Mitford to Diana Mosley, March 10, 1957, Letters, 361.
29.
Mitford to Hugh Thomas, March 15, 1956, Letters, 348–349.
30.
Mitford to Joy Law, November 29, 1965, Letters, 443.
31.
Mitford to Raymond Mortimer, April 16, 1956, Letters, 352.
32.
Mitford to Diana Mosley, June 25, 1956, Letters, 354.
33.
Letters [Mosley as editor], 243.
34.
As quoted in Hastings, Nancy Mitford, 218.
35.
Mitford, Pursuit of Love , 82.
36.
Mitford, Pursuit of Love , 107.
37.
Mitford, The Blessing , 360.
38.
The seventeenth-century Jesuit advisor to Louis XIII’s principal minister. For the “Colonel” see Jacques Bernot, Gaston Palewski: Premier Baron du gaullisme (Paris: Edition François-Xavier de Guibert, 2010) and two memoirs: Gaston Palewski, Mémoires d’action: 1924–1974, ed. Eric Roussel, and Hier et aujourd’hui: 1974 (Paris: Plon, 1975). The biography mentions Nancy Mitford, and the two memoirs, only in passing. See also Lisa Hilton, The Horror of Love: Nancy Mitford and Gaston Palewski in Paris and London (New York: Pegasus, 2011).
39.
Mitford, The Blessing , 395, 410–411.
40.
Mitford, The Blessing , 367.
41.
Hastings, Nancy Mitford, on Albertine Marel from The Blessing , 199.
42.
Nancy Mitford, Madame de Pompadour (New York: Harper & Row, 1954), 308.
43.
Mitford to Evelyn Waugh, October 19, 1956, Letters, 357.
44.
Mitford, Voltaire in Love , 33.
45.
Mitford, Love in a Cold Climate, 260.
46.
Mitford, Love in a Cold Climate, 258, 259, 263.
47.
As quoted in Acton, Nancy Mitford, 100.
48.
Mitford, The Blessing , 437.
49.
Quote in Hastings, Nancy Mitford, 224.
50.
See Mitford to Waugh February 24, 1953, Letters, 306.
51.
Mitford to Pamela Berry, April 9, 1951, Letters, 276.
52.
Mitford, Voltaire in Love, 192.
53.
Mitford to Mosley, June 25, 1956, Letters, 354.
54.
Mitford, Voltaire in Love, 180–181.
55.
Mitford, Voltaire in Love, 163.
56.
Mitford rejected his more facetious suggestions like Brain & Heart, Sense & Sentiment, and “Emily’s thorny bed.” Besterman had suggested Love & Genius. See Waugh to Mitford, October 23, [1956], Letters of Mitford and Waugh, 399; Mitford to Waugh, October 19, 1956, 398.
57.
For a description of Du Châtelet’s affair with Saint-Lambert, see Zinsser, Emilie Du Châtelet, chapter 6.
58.
Mitford, Pursuit of Love , 126.
59.
Mitford, Voltaire in Love, 27; see also 58, 184.
60.
Mitford, Voltaire in Love, 28.
61.
Mitford, Pursuit of Love , 71, 72.
62.
Phrase from Mitford, Pursuit of Love , 110.
63.
Mitford, Pursuit of Love, 122; see also Acton, Nancy Mitford, on this attitude, 190.
64.
See Hastings, Nancy Mitford, 173, 203.
65.
Mitford to Palewski, September 1954, Letters, 330.
66.
Mitford, Voltaire in Love, 132.
67.
Mitford, Voltaire in Love, 207.
68.
Mitford, Voltaire in Love, 263.
69.
Mitford, Voltaire in Love, 261.
70.
Mitford, Voltaire in Love, 287.
71.
Mitford to Palwewski, May 1943, as quoted in Bernot, Gaston Palewski, 125; Mitford to Palewski, Letters: August 15, 1950, 261; October 1955, 345.
72.
Mitford, Love in a Cold Climate, 225.
73.
Mitford, Pursuit of Love , 147.
74.
As quoted in Hastings, Nancy Mitford, 219.
75.
Mitford, The Blessing , 341.
76.
Mitford, Pursuit of Love , 106.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Miami University, Oxford, OH, USA
Judith P. Zinsser

Authors

Judith P. Zinsser
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Judith P. Zinsser .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA
Hilda L. Smith
Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA
Melinda S. Zook

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Zinsser, J.P. (2018). Nancy Mitford: Lessons for Historians from a Best-Selling Author. In: Smith, H., Zook, M. (eds) Generations of Women Historians. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77568-5_13

Download citation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77568-5_13
Published: 12 July 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-77567-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-77568-5
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics