- English Social History
- >
- Mercury Presides, Signed Letters Laid In
Mercury Presides, Signed Letters Laid In
[Signed] Fielding, Daphne. Mercury Presides. First Edition. 1954. Book is in very good condition; dust jacket is in good plus condition—jacket shows fading, mild soiling, and chipping to the spine. Laid in are two handwritten notes by Fielding: one a two-page letter and the other a Christmas post card.
The New York Times review was correct in its assertion that this memoir from the former Marchioness of Bath could inspire any number of novels by Evelyn Waugh or Nancy Mitford. In fact, Fielding was an intimate friend of Waugh's. He read and enjoyed her memoir but declared it was “marred by discretion and good taste.” Even so, Fielding’s eccentricity shines through, and the book is one of the more frank and delightful recollections of the 1920s and 1930s English social scene.
“I have been told by people who knew my father and mother when they were first married that their quarrels were so violent that, after exhausting every throwable object in the room, they would use the baby as a missile. I was the baby.”
--Daphne Fielding