[Vwoolf] Woolf / Mitford

Sat May 15 11:46:40 EDT 2021

A friend gave me “Christmas Pudding” (1932) recently, and there are plums on almost every page.

“In time, of course, she intended to marry some rich and colourless man so that she could settle down in Chelsea – a hostess”.  Remind you of Lady Colefax?

And here’s one for some of us in Lockdown:

“Philadelphia found herself once more without any occupation or interests, and for the rest of that day she sat before the fire in an arm-chair, assailed by the ghastly boredom only known to those who live in the country but have no love for country pursuits, and no intellectual resources on which they can fall back.”

This means I’ve now read 7 of the 8 (“Highland Fling” years ago – I remember nothing, except that when they had they fire all the dreadful old Victoriana was saved), but “Pigeon Pie” has escaped me.

Stuart
(Memo: avoid double-negatives in future)

From: Erica Delsandro 
Sent: Saturday, May 15, 2021 4:08 PM
To: Stuart N. Clarke 
Cc: Vwoolf at lists.osu.edu 
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Woolf / Mitford

Hi All!

I love that Nancy Mitford has made her way onto the Woolf email list!  I only have one bit to add to Sarah and Stuart's comments: if you haven't read Mitford, READ MITFORD!  She is hilarious and complicated.  Her 30s novels are too often overlooked.  And her family!  Every biography of her and her sisters is not only fascinating, funny, and full of cringes (some Mitfords are squarely on the wrong side of history), but also a snapshot of the first half of the 20th century in all its messiness.

And if anyone has a Mitford project in mind, I'd love to contribute!

Happy weekend to all!

On Sat, May 15, 2021 at 8:50 AM Stuart N. Clarke via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu> wrote:

  Which reminds me: many (at least 20) years ago, we on this list were encouraged by the IVWS to submit “Passing Glances”: “References to Woolf, or her characters, are likely to show up in the most unlikely places”.  I submitted this very passage, and you can find it here:
  https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.ibiblio.org/sally/passing_glances.html__;!!KGKeukY!g57ynS5dlbo3Q8zFupKdL09ecNln8ygijXL45AFkRGvRJJZb4Eqin3BHDGFxISiq-co$ 

  The Delasandro article is concerned with "Wigs on the Green" (1935) – which, accordingly, I then read.

  Here’s another “unlikely place”: Philip J. Davis, "The Mathematics of Matrices: A First Book of Matrix Theory and Linear Algebra" (Ginn and Company, 2nd edn, 1965), "Frontispiece" ("we have made oblongs and stood them upon squares. This is our triumph; this is our consolation.")

  Stuart
  (Ay, it’s truly said, the nearer you are to the kirk, the later you are for the service.)

  From: Sarah M. Hall via Vwoolf 
  Sent: Saturday, May 15, 2021 12:58 PM
  To: Vwoolf at lists.osu.edu 
  Subject: [Vwoolf] Woolf / Mitford

  There’s lots of talk in the UK about the new TV adaptation of Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love. I posted about it on the VWSGB Facebook page because the first episode featured a character reading Orlando (from which she quoted a line to her dissolute friend), then later Mrs Dalloway. Cover images were cobbled together from Bell’s illustrations for Woolf books.

  Philip Ward of The Mitford Society has posted this message underneath my post:

  There’s a reference to Woolf in Love in a Cold Climate, the sequel to The Pursuit of Love. Lady Montdore asks Fanny who is this Virginia Woolf she’s heard about from Lord Merlin. Fanny tells her she’s a novelist. Lady M: “As she’s so intellectual, no doubt she writes about nothing but station-masters ... I prefer books about society people”. Whereupon Fanny recommends Mrs Dalloway, “a fascinating book about a society person”.

  The Woolf / Mitford link has not gone unnoticed elsewhere. If anyone possesses this book: Virginia Woolf and the Common(wealth) Reader, ed. Helen Wussow and Mary Ann Gillies (Liverpool UP, 2014), you can find the article ‘ “Drawn from Our Island History”: Virginia Woolf, Nancy Mitford, and the Politics of Pageantry’, by Erica Delsandro.

  Sarah M. Hall
  Virginia Woolf Society GB

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EGD

she/her/hers

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