Love in a Cold Climate (1949) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit

Write a ridiculously simplified synopsis.

Characters/People edit see section history

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• Polly Hampton: The adored and beautiful child of Lord and Lady Montdore.
• Boy Dougdale: The Lecherous Lecturer
• Lady Montdore: Also known as Sonia
• Cedric Hampton: The Canadian male heir to Hampton. Fashionable and knowledgeable about French art and many other things.
• Lord Montdore: Former viceroy to India.
• Fanny: The Bolter's daughter
• Davey: Emily's husband, Fanny's uncle. A hypochondriac.
• Aunt Sadie: Always dreaming mother of the Radletts.
• Uncle Matthew: Lord Alconleigh. A caricature of Nancy Mitford's father; an eccentric man with a mean-streak, but loving of his family.
• Jassy Radlett: Add a description of this character.
• Victoria Radlett: Has no tact.
• Norma Cozens
• Aunt Emily: Fanny's mother figure
• Lady Patricia: Boy Dougdale's older first wife.
• Linda Radlett: Fanny's engaged cousin
• Fabrice, Duc de Sauveterre
• The Bolter: Fanny's infamous mother
• Louisa Radlett: Fanny's married cousin
• Lord Merlin: Eccentric neighbor of the Radlett family.
• Alfred: Fanny's Oxford junior don husband who doesn't factor in much of the story as he's not very much concerned with people outside of his immediate family.

Quotes edit see section history

• “It is unfair, nobody ever tells. Sadie doesn't even know, that's quite obvious, and Louisa is an old prig, but we did think we could count on Linda and you. Very well then, we shall go to our marriage beds in ignorance, like Victorian ladies, and in the morning we shall be found stark, staring mad with horror, and live sixty more years in an expensive bin, and then perhaps you'll wish you had been more helpful.”

  Jassy Radlett

• “Oh, but I love reading the labels of medicine bottles. They're madly enjoyable, you know.”

  Uncle Davey

• “The safes, nevertheless, were full of treasures, if not of valuables, for Uncle Matthew's treasures were objects of esoteric worth, such as a stone quarried on the estate and said to have imprisoned for two thousand years a living toad; Linda's first shoe; the skeleton of a mouse regurgitated by an owl; a tiny gun for shooting bluebottles; the hair of all his children made into a bracelet; a silhouette of Aunt Sadie done at a fair; a carved nut; a ship in a bottle; altogether a strange mixture of sentiment, natural history and little objects which from time to time had taken his fancy.”

  Fanny

• “Callers were unknown at Alconleigh. Anybody rash enough to try that experiment would see no sign of Aunt Sadie or the children, who would all be flat on the floor out of sight, though Uncle Matthew, glaring most embarrassingly, would stand at a window, in full view, while they were being told 'not at home.'”

  Fanny

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• The success or failure of all human relationships lies in the atmosphere each person is aware of creating for the other.

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• his intellect was probably worth very little, but his love of beauty was genuine.

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• Her curtseys, 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.

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• The Radletts had the exactly opposite effect, and always made me feel wonderful, owing to a habit known in the family as “exclaiming.”

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• Oxford is a place where social life, contrary to what I had imagined, is designed exclusively for celibate men;

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• “Always be civil to the girls, you never know who they may marry,” is an aphorism which has saved many an English spinster from being treated like an Indian widow.

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• Cedric was evasive, however. He was better than anybody I have ever known at not answering questions if he did not want to.

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• Quite useless to discuss questions of age with old people, they have such peculiar ideas on the subject. “Not really old at all, only seventy,” you hear them saying, or “Quite young, younger than me, not much more than forty.”

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• Cedric could talk intelligently to Lord Montdore about the objects of art at Hampton. He knew an enormous amount about such things, though in the ordinary sense of the word he was uneducated, ill-read, incapable of the simplest calculation, and curiously ignorant of many quite elementary subjects.

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• He was kind and thoughtful and affectionate, like a charming woman friend, better, because our friendship was marred by no tinge of jealousy.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• England
• London
• Alconleigh: Home to the Radletts.
• India: Lord and Lady Montdore and Polly have returned from here where Lord Montdore was viceroy.
• Hampton: Home to Lord and Lady Montdore and what will pass on to the next male heir, Cedric.
• Oxford: Where Fanny lives with her junior don husband.
• Nova Scotia: Where Cedric hails from.
• Paris
• Silkin: Boy Dougdale's manor.
• France
• Montdore House: London townhouse of the Montdores.
• Canada
• Sicily
• Spain

First Sentence edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• chubb fuddler: Describe this term.
• slut: some sort of servant for nouveau-riche tacky families.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Nancy Mitford (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 813

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary

More Books Like This edit see section history