Love in a Cold Climate

Love in a Cold Climate is an odd book.  It’s a good book.  But odd.  It’s Nancy Mitford’s sort of sequel to The Pursuit of Love and, like the first book, it’s narrated by Fanny Logan and concerned, primarily on the love lives of everyone but her.  I can’t say I blame Mitford for brushing over her narrator’s romances; they’re as dull as dishwater.  She marries young and stays married, popping out the odd child as and when it becomes appropriate.  The rest of her family and social circles, however, seem far less set on settling down or being appropriate.  This time it’s the turn of Lady Polly Hampton, her straight lace mother, Lady Montdore, and their shared lover, Polly’s uncle, Boy Dougdale.  At this point, I do need to clarify that Polly’s uncle and mother are not brother and sister.  Sexually inappropriate (and shocking for the time) as it is; there’s no incest.

Anyway, back to the oddness.  The book is split into two distinct sections: the Polly Years and the Cedric Years.  These are not official titles of the parts, but they’re pretty apt.  Fanny grows up with Polly and a lot of it takes place at the same time as The Pursuit of Love- that book’s main character is absent largely because she is not deemed a suitable companion for Polly by her mother.  The early chapters do have a sense of Mitford ret-conning her earlier work.  I don’t have The Pursuit of Love available to check in any great detail, but I don’t remember too many mentions of Polly Hampton in that book.  Polly is beautiful and rich and indifferent to men.  She is a difficult character to identify with because she is so ethereal.  At times she seems to be only façade.  Even when she elopes with her lecherous uncle Boy, there’s a sense disconnect there.  Yes, we’re told of events through Fanny and it’s all parsed through her shock but the marriage seems like an act of parental defiance first and an emulation of love secondly.  As such, when it all goes wrong, the reader is left with a sense of inevitability rather than pity.

The Cedric Years too are strange.  Once Polly marries her uncle she is written out of the will and the inheritance passes to an obscure Canadian relative, Cedric Hampton.  Rather than getting anything like the Hound of the Baskervilles or Remains of the Day fish out of water, slightly quirky new Lord scenario that I was expecting, Cedric is a screamingly camp gold digger who himself seduces Boy (spoiler).  Considering the book was published in 1949, you can see what I mean about it being shocking and delightfully ahead of its time.  Cedric’s pretty hilarious.  Somehow he seems to have no guile but is full of charm.  I want to write all his actions of as a pursuit of wealth, but can’t- there’s part of me that believes his motives could be pure despite it all.  And even if they’re not, he makes people happy.

The other reason the book is odd is mostly a case of times and attitudes changing.  Boy Dougdale is the family joke because of his lecherous tendencies and his interest in young girls.  At one point in the novel, Polly’s mentioned that she has loved him since she was 14.  There are recollections of dubious games of sardines when the girls are young and a fairly open acknowledgement amongst Fanny’s family that Boy is a paedophile.  Their whole romance, seen through modern eyes, appears to be one of an older man grooming a teenager until she believes herself in love with him.  Rather than it being a crime, it’s written off as a bit of a shame.  Added to the fact that Polly always seems a bit ambivalent to love and sex, it can be seen in a fairly disturbing way and, at times, the humour is lost.

There are a thousand things more I could write about Love in a Cold Climate.  I’m again left with the feeling that I’ve barely even scratched the surface.  Lady Montdore herself deserves to have essays devoted to her; she’s such a wonderful character.  Again, I enjoyed this book immensely.  It doesn’t have quite the same feel to it as The Pursuit of Love and I’m glad that the third book in the trilogy, Don’t Tell Alfred isn’t on the list.  I don’t think it would be bad, not by a long shot, but by the end of this book, Fanny is a mother and a wife and a proper adult and part of me just wants her to grow up and stop sticking her nose into other peoples’ affairs.

The next book up is HG Wells’s The Time Machine.  At 90 pages, it’s more of a novella really.