Love in a Cold Climate
Polly Hampton has long been groomed for the perfect marriage by her mother, the fearsome and ambitious Lady Montdore. But Polly, with her stunning good looks and impeccable connections, is bored by the monotony of her glittering debut season in London. Having just come from India, where her father served as Viceroy, she claims to have hoped that society in a colder climate would be less obsessed with love affairs. The apparently aloof and indifferent Polly has a long-held secret, however, one that leads to the shattering of her mother’s dreams and her own disinheritance. When an elderly duke begins pursuing the disgraced Polly and a callow potential heir curries favor with her parents, nothing goes as expected, but in the end all find happiness in their own unconventional ways.
Review: Love in a Cold Climate is the second in the trilogy begun with The Pursuit of Love. Although Fanny remains the narrator in this novel, the focus shifts from the Radletts to the Montdores, a neighboring family whose beautiful daughter Polly is expected to make a glorious marriage. Yet Polly has plans of her own, leading to an uproar among her family. However, in the end everyone finds happiness, albeit in a very different manner than originally intended.
I did not enjoy the opening chapters of this novel. It seems as if The Pursuit of Love had concluded Fanny's story, until Mitford belatedly decided to return to the same narrator. It seems as if this story spends some time backpedaling from the conclusion of the first novel. This novel does not follow the first chronologically. This novel goes back in time some years to the period before Fanny's engagement and early years of marriage. For example, she only has one child and a second pregnancy in this novel but has several children by the conclusion of The Pursuit of Love. This jump in time bothered me somewhat.
Additionally, this novel is not heavily based on Mitford's own family who appear in their fictional form as the Radletts. Although the Radletts are present, they are minor characters, with the Montdores now being the focus. I struggled with this in the first half of the novel, since for me, a large part of my enjoyment of The Pursuit of Love is the fictional re-imagining of the Mitfords. Additionally, Fanny as a character beyond simply the narrator is more evident in this novel. I did enjoy getting to learn more about Fanny in this book.
I did find this novel more comical than the first, possibly because Mitford had a bit more distance from the characters since many of them in this are not based on family members. In particular, characters Davey Warbeck and Lady Montdore were comical relief throughout. Davey is an incurable hypochondriac; "I know all this because my uncle Davey Warbeck has told me. Having himself for many years suffered, or enjoyed, most of the distempers in the medical dictionary he is very well up in nursing-home gossip" (14). And Lady Montdore is a self-absorbed and self-important aristocrat who is incapable of seeing her own flaws or self-indulgences. For example, on the subject of her daughter's lack of interest in suitors she says, "She takes no notice of the young men I provide for her and they take no notice of her. They worship me, of course, but what is the good of that?" (57). In addition, she "loved anybody royal. It was a genuine emotion, quite disinterested, since she loved them as much in exile as in power, and the act of curtsying was the consummation of this love. Her curtsies, owing to the solid quality of her frame, did not recall the graceful movement of wheat before the wind. She scrambled down like a camel, rising again backside foremost like a cow, a strange performance, painful it might be supposed to the performer, the expression on whose face, however, belied this thought. Her knees cracked like revolver shots but her smile was heavenly" (80).
Comedy is also provided in the form of the effeminate and charming heir to the Montdores, Cedric, whose prancing and flattery captivates everyone is his path. Additionally, the younger Radlett girls are still up to the same antics as the first novel, bemoaning their fate and exclaiming at the wonders of everyone's lives but their own.
A side note - I can definitely see where some family members would be displeased by Mitford's fictional versions of themselves, especially her mother Sydney who appears as Aunt Sadie. Aunt Sadie is described saying, "She was more human and natural with her younger children than she had ever been with the elder ones. [...] She was still quite as vague, but never very severe, and far more companionable" (118-119).
All in all this was an entertaining read that gives an excellent insight into the world of the landed aristocracy in England in between the two world wars. Although traditionally considered not much more than light fiction, Mitford is much more to me, providing social commentary of a particular class and time period, as well as excellent delivery of comedic dialogue and characterization.
Stars: 4
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