“Mummy” (Vita Sackville-West)
Another excerpt from The Harold Nicolson Diaries, this time a little piece of fatherly advice, written in July 1926 to Nigel Nicolson (age nine):
I do hope you won’t make Mummy nervous by being too wild. Of course men must work and women must weep, but all the same I do hope that you will remember that Mummy is a frightful coward and does fuss dreadfully about you. It is a good rule always to ask before you do anything awfully dangerous. Thus if you say, “Mummy, may I try and walk on the roof of the green-house on my stilts?”, she will probably say, “Of course, darling”, since she is not in any way a narrow-minded woman. And if you say, “Mummy, may I light a little fire in my bed?”, she will again say, “Certainly, Niggs”. It is only that she likes being asked about these things beforehand.
The Captive Reader 
I may be in love with this family. Keep these delicious excerpts coming, Claire!
Read that passage three times, Claire. Delightful!
Don’t you think that Adam Nicolson looks remarkably like his grandmother, Vita? And if you like Harold and Vita’s writings, you would enjoy Adam’s as well. I have particularly enjoyed The Smell of Summer Grass.
And, by way of a very loose connection, I have ordered my spring tulip bulbs from Sarah Raven, who has the most wonderful selections (Sarah, of course, being the wife of Adam.)
[…] approval for the kind of dangerous adventures that are the stuff of every mother’s nightmares (“she is not in any way a narrow-minded woman”), he is perfection. The book covers his life from 1907 (when he was just twenty) to 1964 and […]
[…] the father who was the more affectionate, involved parent. Harold was certainly one such father (as his affectionate letters to his children show) and was a delightful playmate for his grandchildren when they […]