The quest for Mr Right…

Last week you may have seen my post about ephemera (here) reporting my finding of some marginalia in an old book – well it made me want to read said book instantly – so I did!

The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford

Published in 1945, The Pursuit of Love is the companion piece to Mitford’s later novel Love in a Cold Climate (1949) (which I reviewed here previously). Both are narrated by Fanny, somewhat of an outsider to the central families of each novel, but otherwise they are standalone, so reading them in the wrong order doesn’t matter. I was delighted to find that I enjoyed The Pursuit of Love a lot more than the later book – it was funnier and more frothy.

The comedy is evident tight from page one, where Fanny describes her eccentric and irrascible Uncle Matthew’s prowess in WWI with an entrenching tool. Fanny always stays with the Radlett family at Christmas – and it can be a stressful time:

There was the unforgettable holiday when Uncle Matthew and Aunt Sadie went to Canada. The Radlett children would rush for the newspapers every day hoping to see that their parents’ ship had gone down with all aboard; they yearned to be total orphans – especially Linda, who saw herself as Katie in What Katy Did, the reins of the household gathered into small but capable hands. The ship met with no iceberg and weathered the Atlantic storms, but meanwhile we had a wonderful holiday, free from rules.

Fanny lives with her Aunt Emily, Sadie’s sister, her mother, known as the Bolter, having abandoned her when she was just one month old, and her father now being on his fifth wife! The story starts when Fanny and Linda, one of Sadie’s daughters and Fanny’s best friend, are both fourteen – at this age they are both ‘very much preoccupied with sin’, finding out about sex and looking forward to their coming out in the future.

Despite frequently falling foul of Uncle Matthew’s bad temper, the children have the most marvellous time with minimal education, loads of riding and outdoor pursuits, together with closeting themselves away in their hiding hole ‘Hons’ cupboard – where people they like are declared ‘Hons’ and those they don’t – Counter-Hons.

The girls reach their coming out ball, and no-one except Fanny could have imagined that Linda would fall for the first boy to look at her. Tony is the son of the Governor of the Bank of England, in his last year at Oxford, in the Bullingdon(!).  ‘Tony is Bottom to Linda, isn’t he?’ says Fanny sadly. The marriage isn’t to last, after nine years, leaving her daughter, Linda takes after her aunt and does a bolt – falling for Christian, a communist whom she will follow out to Perpingnan on the Franco-Spanish border, only to find out that she’s not what he wants at all.

It’s not until Linda escapes again ending up in Paris, that she meets the love of her life. Fabrice is older, extremely rich (he’s a Count), wordly, a serious and serial lover of many women. I now know, thanks to my mum’s marginalia, that the character of Fabrice was based upon Mitford’s lover Gaston Palewski to whom the novel is dedicated.  Fabrice is the great love of Linda’s life, only for them to be separated by WWII. Back in London, Linda and Fanny catch up:

Oh, don’t pity me. I’ve had eleven months of perfect and unalloyed happiness, very few people can say that, in the course of long long lives, I imagine.

It’s notable that these privileged young women seem totally immune to scandal – all this bolting from one love to the next would be completely frowned upon by the working classes. This freedom lets them be giddy and frothy and have so much fun. What is refreshing is that Linda, for all her excesses and lack of formal education, except for schoolgirl French and riding it seems, is a game girl in her pursuit of romance, and we can’t dislike her for it. Fanny our narrator may be terribly witty but, with her own happy marriage and children, she comes over as a bit staid in comparison.

As Fanny says though, this is Linda’s story – and it’s funny and sweet and touching – I loved it. (9/10)

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Source: Own copy. To explore further on Amazon, please click below:
The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford, Penguin paperback.
Love in a Cold Climate and other novels (Penguin Modern Classics)omnibus edition includes The Pursuit of Love, Love in a Cold Climate and The Blessing.

8 thoughts on “The quest for Mr Right…

  1. kaggsysbookishramblings says:

    Lovely review Annabel. As you say, only the privileged could get away with that kind of behaviour, but if you suspend socialist principles it makes for a fun read! :)) I confess I found the read-life book “The Bolter” a bit difficult to take, though.

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