Volume 33, Number 13 · August 14, 1986
Goodness, How Sad
By Gabriele Annan
Nancy Mitford: A Biography
by Selina Hastings
Dutton, 274 pp., $19.95
Noblesse Oblige: An enquiry into the identifiable characteristics of the English aristocracy
edited by Nancy Mitford, introduction by Russell Lynes
Atheneum, 156 pp., $6.95 (paper)
The Water Beetle
by Nancy Mitford
Atheneum, 150 pp., $6.95 (paper)
In one of Evelyn Waugh's short stories there is a debutante whose comment on almost everything that happens is: 'Goodness how sad.' The exclamation would make an excellent title for Selina Hastings's book: 'Goodness How Sad: A Life of Nancy Mitford.' At any rate, that is how her biographer seems to see her. From the birth of her sister Pam, she explains, when Nancy was three and Nanny transferred her affections to the new baby, Nancy 'came first with nobody.' And right at the end, when she is dying horribly slowly of leukemia, Selina Hastings quotes the third sister (Lady Mosley): 'The awful thing is, she doesn't come first with anybody.'
Review, 3050 words
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