The Blessing

I found this omnibus edition of three of Nancy Mitford's novels in a secondhand book shop. I already own a very well-thumbed copy of The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate so I just bought this for The Blessing, which oddly I have never owned and I don't think I've read it since high school (a long time, anyway!)

The Blessing, while not reaching the comedic heights and poignant depths of the other two novels, stood up very well, though I expect I would have got more out of it if I knew more about French high society in the 1950s. Womanising Charles-Edouard is of course yet another portrait of Gaston Palewski, this time elevated to a dukedom and terrifically handsome. Despite being married to beautiful, languid, easy-going Englishwoman Grace, he can't keep his eyes or hands off other women; the central cultural conflict of the novel lies between the worldly, sophisticated French attitude to these affairs, and the uptight priggish English intolerance of such behaviour.

All through the story, Grace is urged to adopt a kind of radical acceptance of Charles-Edouard's roving eye, even when she catches him in flagrante. It occurs to me that Charles-Edouard could equally have exercised some radical self-control, but hey. The real villain of the piece is the couple's young son Sigi, who shamelessly manipulates them both to keep them apart and enjoy the fruits of their undivided attention. I have no idea what the contemporary attitude to extra-martial affairs is in France these days, but I suspect it might be a little less forgiving that it was in 1951.