"For those who are anticipating the tender malice of her novels- there is none here- her sympathies are wholly engaged, and her native appreciation of grace and elegance is a happy complement."
Nancy Mitford, who has already placed a personal cachet on the French aristocracy in its contemporary survival, returns to the age- and the personages who saw its fullest if final effulgence, and the brilliance of court life under Louis XV provides a splendid spectacle to which she brings an indulgent affection.
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Twenty years (1946-66) of reciprocal, unconditional support between the twin sensibilities and manifestly unlike personalities of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, expressed in a private shorthand of shared history and coined language.
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"Still, at her best, which she is in some of these essays, Mitford is amusing indeed."
The supersnob Brit for the ages in some sparkling journalism, most of which has already appeared in other books long out of print.
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"However, with 48 pages of color plates, 130 halftones, this will probably shadow the Sun King's path."
Somehow the powdered entrees and escritoire intrigue of the Sun King's court in Miss Mitford's (1966) presentation tire easier and jollier to trace than the drearier finagling which accompanied Frederick the Great's several military/political endeavors.
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"A lovely book—for gift, history and art shelves."
Among the potted orange trees of Versailles, the incredible abundance of architectural invention, the glowing richness of the decorative arts originating in the reign of Louis XIV of France, Miss Mitford has discovered a turbulence of personalities — warring to playful mistresses; competent to anxious ministers; a variegated royal family; a likeable gardener; a core of career courtiers; doctors faithfully bleeding and excising royal patients; and the king himself, vigorous, brilliant in aspect, courageous, ruthless, assured of his semi-divinity.
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"The pleasure of her company continues and few can fail to enjoy Miss Mitford's elegant apercus and considerable charm."
These short pieces, some of which have had English newspaper and American magazine appearance, provide fastidious, casual, and altogether agreeable random reading.
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Fanny and Alfred (of Love in a Cold Climate — 1949) shake off their Oxford seclusion when Alfred is called from his chair of Pastoral Theology to become, as Sir Wincham, the British Ambassador in Paris.
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"If Miss Mitford keeps her distance- and the reader's- from those engaged in all this fond, foolish philandering- she is always a civilized commentator and adds polish and irony to this age of reason."
A portrait of Voltaire, from late youth to his middle years-and not as a "toothless old man in a rage", is based on some new, revealing correspondence, and shaped- as one might expect- by Miss Mitford's taste for an era of intellectual distinction and worldly elegance.
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"Those who liked the Stephen Potter books and Russell Lynes' Snobs, will certainly enjoy this."
A transatlantic import consists of six pieces, along with an introduction by Russell Lynes, and primarily Nancy Mitford's article The English A which had an aroused and/or amused response, led to more than one tempest in and over the tea cups, and even provoked the cover on Punch with the device Snoblesse Oblige.
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"A profitable pleasure to sell- which the Book the Month selection will stimulate."
An expert entertainment which applies a gentle goad of social satire, proceeds wit and elegance through the domestic drama of Charles-Edouard de Valhubert and his tish bride, Grace, and also airs some antipodal national attitudes as the flexible ity of the French meets a cold rebuff across the Channel.
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"A portrait of an era, a class, a tradition which is always amusing and accomplished- but which lacks the engaging, endearing (presumably more popular) qualities of the first."
With less of the charm and debonair gaiety of Pursuit of Love, this approximates more closely social satire and is a delicately devastating portrait of the British aristocracy.
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