As to why Nancy, impossible Fritz opinions notwithstanding, is actually worth reading in other regards, there's the earlier mentioned correspondance with Evelyn Waugh.
NM: Darling Evelyn, Brideshead has come (...) - there are one or 2 things I long to know. Are you, or not, on Lady Marchmain's side? I couldn't make out. I suppose Charles ends by being more in love than ever before with Cordelia - so true to life being in love with a whole family (it has happened in mine tho' not lately). (...) I think Charles might have had a little more glamour - I can't explain why but he seemed to me a tiny bit dim & that is the only criticsim have to make because I'm literally dazzled with admiration.
EW: Dearest Nancy, Yes I know what you mean; he is dim, but then he is telling the story and it is not his story. It is all right for Benevunto Cellini to be undim but he is telling his own story and no one else's. I think the crucial question is: does Julia's love for him seem real or is he so dim that it falls flat; if the latter the book fails plainly. (...) Lady Marchmain, no I m not on her side; but God is, who suffers fools gladly; and the book is about God. Does that answer it?
NM: I quite see how the person who tells it is dim but then would Julia and her brother and her sister all be in love with him if he was? Well lov eis like that & one never can tell. What I can't understand is about God. Now I believe in God & I talk to him a very great deal & often tell him jokes but the God I believe in simply hates fools more than anything & he also likes people to be happy & people who love each other to live together - so long as nobody else's life is upset (& then he's not sure).
EW: There is no doubt that God does like dunces repugnant as it is. I think it is like the lower classes - everyone loves the simple gaffer until he starts telling us what he heard on The Brains Trust the evening before. We are all very lower class to God and our cleverness & second-hand scholarship bore him hideously.
Nancy Mitford tried to avoid theological subjects - but that was hard to do with Evelyn Waugh, who had all the fervour of a convert and seems to have regarded tolerance is one of the lethal sins. Occasionally they came up, which led to exchanges such as this:
EW: My dear Nancy, Would it not be best always to avoid any references of the Church or to your Creator? Your intrusions into this strange world are always fatuous.
NM: Don't start My Dear Nancy I don't like it. I can't agree that I must be debarred from ever mentioning anything to do with your creator. Try & remember that he also created me.
Their exchanges were quite often in this Punch and Judy style. See also:
NM: I hear your daughter Teresa is beautiful & fascinating how lucky for you.
EW: My daughter Teresa is squat, pasty-faced, slatternly with a most disagreeable voice - but it is true that she talks quite brightly. She has cost me the best part of 1500 pounds in the last year & afforded no corresponding pleasure.
He must have been horrid as a father; these kind of remarks about his children are quite the rule. Though as he grew older, he democratically disliked everybody. With the French (Nancy lived in France) getting special bile and Americans special condescension:
EW: You see Americans have discovered about homosexuality from a book called Kinsey Report (unreadable) & they take it very seriously. All popular plays in New York are about buggers but they all commit suicide. The idea of a happy pansy is inconceivable to them.
Nancy MItford II
NM: Darling Evelyn, Brideshead has come (...) - there are one or 2 things I long to know. Are you, or not, on Lady Marchmain's side? I couldn't make out. I suppose Charles ends by being more in love than ever before with Cordelia - so true to life being in love with a whole family (it has happened in mine tho' not lately). (...) I think Charles might have had a little more glamour - I can't explain why but he seemed to me a tiny bit dim & that is the only criticsim have to make because I'm literally dazzled with admiration.
EW: Dearest Nancy, Yes I know what you mean; he is dim, but then he is telling the story and it is not his story. It is all right for Benevunto Cellini to be undim but he is telling his own story and no one else's. I think the crucial question is: does Julia's love for him seem real or is he so dim that it falls flat; if the latter the book fails plainly. (...) Lady Marchmain, no I m not on her side; but God is, who suffers fools gladly; and the book is about God. Does that answer it?
NM: I quite see how the person who tells it is dim but then would Julia and her brother and her sister all be in love with him if he was? Well lov eis like that & one never can tell. What I can't understand is about God. Now I believe in God & I talk to him a very great deal & often tell him jokes but the God I believe in simply hates fools more than anything & he also likes people to be happy & people who love each other to live together - so long as nobody else's life is upset (& then he's not sure).
EW: There is no doubt that God does like dunces repugnant as it is. I think it is like the lower classes - everyone loves the simple gaffer until he starts telling us what he heard on The Brains Trust the evening before. We are all very lower class to God and our cleverness & second-hand scholarship bore him hideously.
Nancy Mitford tried to avoid theological subjects - but that was hard to do with Evelyn Waugh, who had all the fervour of a convert and seems to have regarded tolerance is one of the lethal sins. Occasionally they came up, which led to exchanges such as this:
EW: My dear Nancy, Would it not be best always to avoid any references of the Church or to your Creator? Your intrusions into this strange world are always fatuous.
NM: Don't start My Dear Nancy I don't like it. I can't agree that I must be debarred from ever mentioning anything to do with your creator. Try & remember that he also created me.
Their exchanges were quite often in this Punch and Judy style. See also:
NM: I hear your daughter Teresa is beautiful & fascinating how lucky for you.
EW: My daughter Teresa is squat, pasty-faced, slatternly with a most disagreeable voice - but it is true that she talks quite brightly. She has cost me the best part of 1500 pounds in the last year & afforded no corresponding pleasure.
He must have been horrid as a father; these kind of remarks about his children are quite the rule. Though as he grew older, he democratically disliked everybody. With the French (Nancy lived in France) getting special bile and Americans special condescension:
EW: You see Americans have discovered about homosexuality from a book called Kinsey Report (unreadable) & they take it very seriously. All popular plays in New York are about buggers but they all commit suicide. The idea of a happy pansy is inconceivable to them.