The Bookshop at 10 Curzon Street

Letters between Nancy Mitford and Heywood Hill 1952-73

John Saumarez Smith

• Publisher: Frances Lincoln
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9780711225664
• eBook ISBN: 9781781011638
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Letters
• Index: Literature

Nancy Mitford was a brilliant personality, a remarkable novelist and a legendary letter writer. It is not widely known that she was also a bookseller. From 1942 to 1946 she worked in Heywood Hill's famous shop in Curzon Street, and effectively ran it when the male staff were called up for war service. After the war she left to live in France, but she maintained an abiding interest in the shop, its stock, and the many and varied customers who themselves form a cavalcade of the literary stars of post-war Britain. Her letters to Heywood Hill advise on recent French titles that might appeal to him and his customers, gossip engagingly about life in Paris, and enquire anxiously about the reception of her own books, while seeking advice about new titles to read. In return Heywood kept her up to date with customers and their foibles, and with aspects of literary and bookish life in London. Charming, witty, utterly irresistible, the correspondence gives brilliant insights into a world that has almost disappeared.

1952

N.M. 9/1/52

7 rue Monsieur, Paris.

… I jotted down particulars of a very pretty book in green morocco & apparently perfect state.

R.P. Lesson Hist: Nat: des Oiseaux Mouches 1829. 85 very very pretty plates, life size, 8vo green morocco, 15,000 francs. Just in case. I could bring it if you like.

… Have I boasted about the 200 Gov: women (“all keen Mitford fans”) who are giving a luncheon for me next Monday? I only hope it’s not to beat me up. Evangeline Bruce⁶ the ambassadress is very giggly about it, I note.…

N.M. 22/1/52

My life has been terrible – trop de dîners en ville – & I’m cross, fractious, haven’t read a word even N[ew] S[tatesman] for days & in short it doesn’t suit me. This week I’ve chucked everything & life is beginning to be possible once more.… 200 Gov: ladies gave a luncheon for me & I was introduced as “one of Doctor Redesdale’s 6 daughters”. Luckily there was no eye to catch.…

I’ve made £10,000 last year; not bad is it, but I need more so that I can go out hunting, it’s all I think of now …

N.M. 1/2/52

… I went to a terrible dinner to meet Mlle Yourcenaar.⁷ All but me were drugged to the eyes & clearly orgies were about to take place – prim & English, I fled …

Can I have please

Ch. Oman: English Silver from Charles II pub. Connoissueur 3/6 if not a bore.

In a letter that has disappeared N.M. suggested that an impoverished friend of hers, Jacques Brousse, might come to London a few weeks later to translate Look Down in Mercy by Walter Baxter (1951) and stay for a few days as a paying guest with the Hills in Maida Vale. Heywood agreed, in a letter that has also vanished, and referred to Brousse as Hysterico.

N.M. 19/2/52

… Hysterico PERFECT only it must be at least £1 otherwise you’ll lose. He won’t stay more than 4 or 5 days I’m sure. I think he’s more piercingly hysterical with me because of slight love – always so tiresome when women say that, but I think so. Tho’ he may be queer I wouldn’t be sure.… I’ll tell Hysterico you’ve offered – really it is kind.

N.M. 3/3/52

… Oh I did have a lovely gossip with H[amish] H[amilton]’s sales manager. I made poor Jamie [Hamilton] send him by complaining once a week that nobody can get my books here. Jamie’s reply always was the booksellers must be telling lies, but finally the mystery is unravelled – hundreds of Blessings are lying at the Customs.…

H.H. 7/3/52

… I had a good laugh about your lèse-majesté, treason and irreverence. The whole thing was of course immensely overdone in the Press. [King George VI had died in February.] And then, in a subtle way, the mourning business has become a sort of snob and class thing. You know I suppose that the right people are wearing black until May (and if you are VERY right, a fur coat doesn’t count). The row of pearls and regimental brooch show up splendidly. Anne & I have been immensely irreverent and we haven’t been able to be right people as we haven’t any black & will not go and dye ourselves. There’s a huge lot of humbug and suburban shintoism which swamps the original sad fact. People were genuinely shocked at first but surely they cannot still be.…

N.M. 9/3/52

Hysterico in a great state because somebody NOT ME has told him that if you allow food to pass your lips in London you die poisoned. So he wants to be allowed to boil potatoes (which he will take with him) in Anne’s kitchen!! I was most discouraging & if you can’t face it all I will get you out of it in a jiffy. I must say that I laughed so terribly that I don’t think he saw how much put out I was … He keeps saying he can’t afford food poisoning & yet must eat something, if he is to go round seeing the sights, to keep up his strength. He asked if you were lettré – he expects all the English to be hopelessly uncultured like me (he can’t even get over the horror of my barbaric ignorance – I think being a schoolmaster has had an effect on his outlook). When I said you were, very, he looked greatly relieved.…

Talking of difficult, Evelyn [Waugh] has eaten up my week. He says you & he love each other now. I must admit he was most unexpectedly nice & jolly with my great new friend John Russell,⁸ who told us some lovely things about the Captain [Cyril Connolly]. Do you, by the way, think that the Captain is cross with me & should I send him a small peace offering? What do you advise? I suddenly remembered how much, really, I love him, on hearing things like his favourite daydream which is that he is a great pianist & if people hear him playing as they walk in the street (by chance) they look at each other & say “that can only be Connolly”.…

I thought of coming [to London] for a day or 2 in April but as I’ve nothing black or even brown (all red & blue) I suppose I should be lynched. What rubbish – I didn’t wear black for Tom or Bobo.⁹

H.H. 12/3/52

Anne & I were so armoured by your first description of Hysterico that his first request to Anne if she “would not mind me to cook rice and potatoes in her kitchen every day, I know I could manage well enough with what I could bring from here to be able to visit London a little” seemed nothing at all. Though I must say that I had to have three drinks before “approaching” Mary the cook who is the person who matters of course. I read her the letter & it made her laugh too and all was well and she said she was sure she would rather that Mr. Brush should cook for himself than she should cook for him.… You mustn’t get nervo-hysterico yourself about it all or think that it is going to be like one of those avalanches of mud and horror (rice and potatoes) which one is inclined to start by pushing a pea. Anne & I can take, and have taken, a great deal, and shall be expecting piles of burnt-out saucepans and rice splashed all over the kitchen floor.

I am only rather appalled that you have told him that I am very lettré. I don’t consider myself any more lettré than you. Much better to let him go on thinking that we are all fearful savages and then he might sometimes have a tiny surprise.

Handy has been laughing at me because Madame Romain Gary (L. Blanch)¹⁰ wrote & asked me for an animal print she had seen here. She described it as a picture of “some beavers tusking away at a dam”. I thought a dam must mean a woman beaver and was vaguely surprised at Mme. Gary’s unusual frankness – but of course, she only meant a water dam.

N.M. 13/3/52

Oh I’m dead to the world after taking Mr. Brush to Dior, a long promised treat (for him). He arrived in a scream of “I am saved. A friend has just come from London & tells me that boiled vegetables & even my dear boiled fish are quite easy to get there.” … When you go away he is going to find himself a cheap room in the quartier Latin.… Then his friend has told him you can quite easily get bread. “But my dear how could I have guessed that – I know you don’t grow wheat in England.” … Goodness he is tiring. I feel as if I’d been put through a sieve & the maddening thing is he knows it himself & yet takes no steps such as going away after one has had him rushing around (quite chastely like Leslie [Hartley]¹¹) for 7 hours or so.

N.M. 21/3/52

Oh I begin to feel worried. I’m so afraid he will wear you out. Only, as he is very delicate I’m in hopes that London will wear him out first. You must defend yourself tooth & nail.

N.M. 27/3/52

I feel in a fever – shan’t really know another peaceful moment until THE VISIT is over. But as you say you can take refuge in work. Luckily I know you like oddities as I do & know in a way he’ll amuse you. I only fear the whole thing will be too intensive.

I’ve now very mischievously written to him “remember Heywood’s wife is Lady Anne – you may call her Madame but the word Mrs. must never cross your lips. This I think will cause brain fever, because like all Frenchmen he is a monumental snob (He informed me the other day that he is descended from Robert the Bruce – but I’m afraid it’s really the spider).…

Hysterico, who loves to take one down a few pegs, pronounced last time I saw him that the novels of my 2 friends L. P. Hartley & T. Powell are “exécrables”.¹²

I count on you to tell me every penny of expenses – taxis, theatre, boiled fish & all the works. That will help to pacify my conscience a bit.

H.H. 30/3/52

Mrs Hammersley¹³ came in this week in wonderfully sly & wicked form. There seemed to be more and thicker black net than ever hangin’ all around. Why does she not carry a triton? She said that you had said she could have a book, and did I think Hugh Walpole too expensive (25/-)? I said NO & we both gave devilish chuckles. Then her eye fell on Dolly Wilde and, looking at me with that very sidelong look and her voice sinking even deeper, she said “would it, could it be possible that you would give her that too?” When I said yes we lowered our heads in enjoyable shame & knew that we were linked in treacherous complicity.

Another letter from Hysterico yesterday saying I shall recognise him because he will be waving the newspaper “Le Monde”. Perhaps I’d better bring a stirrup-pump to calm him down. He says that he feels the same about his visit as the hero of “Look Down” when he had to cross Burma on foot pursued by the Japanese. I’m writing to tell him that it’s far more like Siberia now and that he must bring some wraps. Snow is thick and there are blizzards.…

Have you ever heard of a French caricaturist of the eighties or nineties called “Bob”? I got the other day through the Clique¹⁴ a book by Gyp which was illustrated by him and I was bowled over by it. Funnier than Thurber, Lancaster or anyone …

N.M. 1/4/52

I forgive you. I have seen her doing the dance of the 7 veils to the butcher in T[otland] Bay as a result of which fatted calves lowed into her kitchen – none can resist her wiles.

Gaston¹⁵ & I once took a train to the country in search of antiques. The antiquaire said his gardener would be at the station holding the Figaro & when we arrived we saw a man waving a fully opened Figaro up & down like a flag. We had such terrible giggles we had to get back in the train. But Hysterico will have lost Le Monde for sure & certain. You will know him by his terribly ill look, his wild hunted movements & a dark grey top coat, much too big for him, specially made for the Duke of Windsor’s cocktail party.

H.H. 8/4/52

The train was one & a quarter hours late owing to the rough seas and the boat having to circle outside the harbour before it dared come into it. I was almost fainting with apprehension by the time the train did arrive & stood there in a brown tweed cap (which I said I would be recognised by) waiting to be assaulted by some gibbering gesticulating creature smelling of sick. There was nothing like that in view – not a sign of anyone jerking a newssheet up and down – and I was just resigning myself to another hour’s wait when I heard a tiny voice say “Is it Mr. Hill?” Relief was enormous when he appeared to be more human than animal because I was really expecting some screaming monster freak; perhaps I felt also the tinie...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Note to The Reader
• 1942–1951
• The Letters, 1952–1973
• Epilogue
• Writings by Nancy Mitford
• Acknowledgements
• Biographical Index
• Index
• Photoinsert
• Copyright