The Pursuit of Love

Nancy Mitford

A few weeks ago, I posted a new story called ‘Coincidence and ‘The White Room’’, which involved a confluence of circumstances that brought this book into the forefront of my mind. I promised to write a review, but can’t say this piece is typical because we each approach our reading material from a very personal perspective. Anyway, here goes! (NB: some spoilers)

I was given a copy of ‘The Pursuit of Love’ by a school friend, along with two others – ‘Cold Comfort Farm’ by Stella Gibbons and ‘Three Men in a Boat’ by Jerome. K. Jerome. My friend explained that these were three of her favourite books and had been prompted to gift copies to me when she discovered I rarely read fiction. To say she was appalled, is an understatement. Liz lived in a house very different from mine, bohemian, with rooms lined with books. We had a small bookcase filled with the ‘classics’, mostly Dickens and the Bronte sisters which, as a precocious, early reader, I’d laboured through at an unsuitable age. Those experiences put a stop to my enthusiasm for novels from the age of about eight, until Liz bought me these books as a fifteen-year-old. As such, they hold a special place in my heart because they reignited my love of reading.

The ‘Pursuit of Love’ is told by Fanny, a cousin of the Radlett children who live at Alconleigh, with their parents, Matthew and Sadie. Fanny is the daughter of Sadie’s sister, ‘the bolter’, so named on account of her bolts from one relationships to another. Due to her real mother’s inability and disinterest in raising a child, she is brought up by Emily, a third sister. Fanny spends the holidays at Alconleigh with her aunt, uncle and cousins, is highly revered by the children for having ‘wicked parents’ and tells the story, primarily, of Linda, the second oldest Radlett girl from her teenage years through to adulthood.

The time period covers the late twenties through to the Second World War, a time of enormous social and political upheaval. It begins with frivolity, extravagance, and a group of eccentric characters. Uncle Matthew, for example, hunts his own children, a sport they fortunately enjoy, being sent off at dawn to outwit and outrun a pack of bloodhounds. Emily marries Davey, a hypochondriac and academic, who spends much of the book decrying the food and its effects on his bodily functions.  Fanny’s wicked parents rarely make an appearance but send her exotic, impractical gifts and Lord Merlin, devoted to Linda, enables her reckless behaviour with money and influence, yet rails against her choice in men. In his view, Linda needs and deserves attention and lots of it, having little in the way of education, skills or motivation to amuse and occupy herself.

Amongst it all, Fanny and Linda navigate their entry into society, their debut, both desperate to find love. Fanny finds it in the down-to-earth Alfred, whereas Linda, in her pursuit of a romantic ideal, makes two terrible choices before finding her Duke. With little sense of self, she is blinded by attributes which are not at all compatible with her character and personality, finding herself perplexed, dazed and baffled. 

It’s no secret that the Radlett family is an amalgam of Nancy’s own. The Radlett girls are composites of especially Diana, Jessica and Unity. Unity was a Nazi sympathiser who shot herself in the head at the outbreak of WWII, surviving with brain damage for many years; Diana left her first husband to marry British fascist, Oswald Mosley; and Jessica became a communist fighting in the Spanish Civil War. Linda’s first two husbands provide the author contemporary commentary (for the times) firstly, in Tony, on the new, monied middle class, followed by Linda’s brush with communism through Christian, a man totally absorbed by ideals.

As a teenager in the mid-seventies (around forty-five years ago. Forty-five years!!) I lapped up the story of Linda and the wild, upper-class world of the Radlett family. Though the children didn’t attend school there were hints of the same boarding school antics I’d enjoyed in comic strip pieces. I was fascinated by families who owned land and horses, employed housekeepers and gamekeepers and had houses big enough that an airing cupboard could provide space for multiple children to sit and discuss their longings and desires. Re-reading the book, in the past weeks, I found less amusement in the lives of these entitled women and their ability to wreak havoc, particularly in relation to their children. Fanny is very loved by Emily and Davey, as is Moira, Linda’s daughter, who is cared for by Tony’s family. Nevertheless, these girls are abandoned simply because they aren’t perceived to be sufficiently interesting to hold their mothers’ attention, being passed over for freedom and selfish, hedonistic pursuits. That many of the other characters treat these circumstances as ‘normal’ is truly shocking.

The book’s saving grace is the writing, wit and humour along with a cast of characters who, for all their faults, are simply unforgettable. My favourite is Uncle Matthew, the man with blue flashing eyes, a tremendous temper and a prized entrenching tool that sits above the fireplace replete with the blood and hair of German soldiers he killed during World War I. He is the man of ‘the thin end of the wedge,’ a process whereby his wife and children reinstate people, pets and property he has ejected from the estate in fits of furious rage. He’s an anachronism, a relic of a bygone era – rightfully so – yet his vigour and love for his family draws us in.

‘The Pursuit of Love’ is a novel of its time and needs to be read as such. As time marches on, it becomes increasingly impossible to conceive of the lives of these characters. Enjoy the riotous frivolity, the wit, the pathos and forgive them their flaws.

4 stars.