Love in a Cold Climate, novel written by English author Nancy Mitford and published in 1949. Love in a Cold Climate, a comedy of manners, is set in roughly the same time and place as Mitford’s earlier novel The Pursuit of Love (1945) and delves into British aristocratic society between the two world wars.
Love in a Cold Climate tells the story of Polly Montdore, an heiress whose unconventional choice of husband not only shocks her own family, but also provides scandal enough to occupy all of her wealthy acquaintances. It is the second of three of Mitford’s novels that is narrated by Fanny, the sensible friend of Polly in this story. Polly and her parents, Lord and Lady Montdore, have arrived in London for the season, in which Polly is expected to make a good marriage. Polly is uninterested in any suitors, however, and she instead marries her lecherous uncle by marriage, who is also her mother’s lover, after he is widowed. Her parents disinherit her, and the couple move to Sicily. She is replaced in her parents’ affections by the next in line to inherit, who is Polly’s flamboyantly gay distant cousin Cedric. Eventually, Polly’s marriage fails, she marries someone more suitable, and Cedric, Polly’s former husband, and Polly’s mother find happiness together in France.
The title Love in a Cold Climate is a quotation from Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell.
Light and witty in tone, the novel seems to set out to describe an ordinary round of social engagements in a world in which the ordinary is a surprisingly rare phenomenon. Mitford’s characters often verge on the bizarre: “Uncle Matthew,” modeled on Mitford’s father, typifies the eccentric aristocrat, while the insufferable Lady Montdore, remains a cutting portrait of the domineering but gullible matriarch. The emphasis in not on the plot but rather on the machinations, drama, and behavior of the characters.
Though set in the 20th century, Mitford’s novels, like those of Jane Austen, focus on the small social maneuverings of an exclusive family and their “set”; like Austen, she uses fond but mocking satire to gently send up the family, even while encouraging the reader to care about its fortunes. Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love are widely considered the best of Mitford’s fiction.