I once asked him what his idea of hell was. (Live, as in cluck-cluck and pecking your toes.) And the famous Mitford sense of the absurd is certainly present in Wait for Me! Describing her father, she says, “He had a horror of anything sticky. She could almost make you like chickens, for instance. She has a nice way with words and a real gift of enthusiasm. This characteristic has worked in her favor in essays and in her writing about Chatsworth. The fundamental flaw of the book is possibly a strength of the author’s: she does not seem to find herself all that interesting. And the way I know I’m a completist is that, even though it’s not her best work, I’m glad I read it. This is the full-scale memoir by Debo, here credited as Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire. So there was no way I was going to let Wait for Me! pass me by. I think it’s time to admit that I am a Debo completist.(Don’t you love that term?) Possibly even a Mitford enthusiast: after all, I did read Wigs on the Green.
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