Nancy Mitford Read Online Free PDF

I was so sick in the French train after an excellent Table d’hôte lunch, I am sure I shall be terribly ill all the time. The hotel is so hot I slept in a thin nightie and only one blanket and then I lay half out of bed and was boiled. We had two huge French windows wide open too!’
    ‘… Jean is very nice and very Canadian. Both she and Marjorie powder their noses the whole time. I wish I could, I’m sure for travelling one ought to.’
    ‘There is one hall boy we call the Cherub. Miss S. wouldn’t let us have an English brek (not that we wanted it, it is too hot to eat) and we had a very scrumptious “croissant” and coffee…’
    ‘We are going to lunch and dinner in restaurants today as Miss S. says only old fogeys eatat their hotel. Alas, I can’t feel hungry and all the food is so delicious, especially lemon squash with straws… I find you have to tip everyone although Miss S. really does that, I do it too. I can’t bear not to.’
    ‘Oh! such fun. I have never been so excited and Miss S. is so good. She quite understands that we want to do other things besides sight-seeing… I expect one of us must be run over. I escaped certain death by very little several times yesterday.’
    ‘How I loved the Louvre. One could spend weeks there and never get tired of it. We saw mostly Italian pictures, Titian, Giotto, Cimabue, and all of those to prepare us for Florence.’
    ‘We are all tired as we have walked without stopping since 10 this morning, but it was well worth it. I got postcards of all my favourite pictures. Mona Lisa is wonderful. Miss S. says men still fall in love with her—one man fell in love with her and stole her for several years.’
    From Florence (12th April, 1922): ‘I think I will pass over the journey in sad silence. I was only kept alive by a huge dose of brandy administered by Miss S. I was on the point of fainting (not an exag) as we were walking along for brek. Pisa was too heavenly. The 4 lovely buildings (Duomo, the Tower, Campo Santo and Baptistry). We spent half an hour with them—quite beyond description. Too too too heavenly.
    ‘Being here is lovely too, although there is no building (except the Duomo) to touch Pisa. The buildings there are in a much better position, so white and in the middle of such green grass. Everything here is so brightly coloured, it must be the sun… I feel as though I have seen originals of every statue and picture I ever heard of…’
    ‘I am quite good at Italian already, as good as Miss S. and better than anyone else. I get along famously. I do all the bargaining for the others and always get things reduced. I talk as though I had been here a month and indeed I feel like it.’
    ‘As for the hotel the less said the better and I shall say nothing except we have used Keating’s freely with but little effect (I have just caught one on my neck).’
    ‘Next day… Last night we went for a walk on the river and a man with a guitar and a girl with a heavenly voice serenaded us. I gave them two lira and they were overcome and went on for hours. It was too delicious… I found some lovely corals, small but down to my waist, 2 strings for
£
2. Most exciting bargaining is going on. They are really 180 lira and I am determined to have them for 160. In vain the woman weeps and wrings her hands, inexorable as fate I pursue my ends. Luckily she weeps in English as my limited Italian gives out now and then. I converse with the lift boy who corrects me with a cherubic smile.
Disgraziatamente
(unfortunately) our cameriera (chamber maid) speaks French, so we get no practice there. We always have brek in bed at 8.30. It is a meal not worth getting up for. The first morning we ordered toast and marmalade —absolute failure.’
    More details about purchases follow: ‘Do commission me to buy you some pictures, you will never have such a chance again!… I went to fetch my corals today, I had them strung differently . They reach down to my waist in 0—or to my