CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Containing the Hideous Truth about Noel Coward

I should like to draw Noel Coward rather than to talk about him--to take up my pen and trace, with infinite subtlety, the rather bumpy forehead, the keen nose, the darting eyes--the mouth, especially the mouth, which seems constantly on the point of uttering delicious impudences.

But when I draw people, they are always Queen Victoria. They have invariably the same dejected eyelids, the same flaccid lips. Even the addition of a moustache fails to conceal the resemblance. And though Queen Victoria and Noel Coward have much in common--(e.g., an invincible determination, and a well-founded conviction that they are typical of their age)--I must content myself with words, and not with lines.

I first really began to know him one evening before the production of _London Calling_. It was a cold night, there had been a party, and, as far as I remember, a number of us found ourselves in a long, golden room, faintly fragrant with something of Coty’s. It was late, but nobody minded, for there was a feeling about the room which was neither of night nor of day, but of that exquisite indetermination which lulls the senses into a lazy oblivion. To complete the picture, you must add an immense couch, covered with green cushions and purple women, and one of those sleek, black pianos that simply demand to be played upon.

It was played upon, by Noel Coward. I wish I could recapture that scene--his curious, agile fingers, the husky voice in which he half sang, half spoke, his lyrics--rather insolently tossing us an occasional spark of wit, drifting with complete indifference, into a line of baroque poetry:

‘_Parisian pierrot, society’s hero_....’

And all the time, propped up against the piano, a languid French doll was regarding him with painted eyes, as though it were saying, ‘_You_ are the only person who understands me here.’

But it wasn’t. I think I understood him, too, rather better than the purple women. For he was outside this curious and typical scene, as a spectator, not as a participator. Even though he was the centre of attraction, he was, in a sense, hovering on the edge of it all, intensely interested, entirely detached. Somebody would say to him, ‘Isn’t that marvellous?’ And though he replied, ‘_too_ marvellous,’ with exactly the intonation that was required of him, there was a look in his eyes which suggested that he really meant, ‘It is not marvellous at all. And you, my dear, are an empty-headed fool for calling it so.’

‘_Parisian pierrot, society’s hero_....’

There is more in those four words than most of the amiable young ladies who play it in the wrong key would imagine. Something of a sneer, I believe. I have an imaginary picture in my mind which illustrates the phrase. The party is over, the last cigarette has burnt itself into an obscene mess in the ash tray, the roses have drooped their expensive and artificial heads in a despairing gesture. Only the doll remains alert, staring in front of it with the same painted eyes. This is the doll’s hour. And Noel goes up to it, smiling--(I should like to say ‘sardonically,’ but it sounds too like a tailor’s advertisement), and negligently twitches its hand, and fingers its ruff, and probably, as a final gesture of contempt, flicks his finger on its stumpy nose.

As a matter of fact, no such touching scene was enacted after this particular party, for we walked back to my flat together, and there, in an atmosphere devoid of dolls, in front of one of those gas fires which look like skulls roasting in hell, I learnt a great deal about Noel which I had never hitherto suspected.

I learnt, for example, that his first trip to the United States, which was announced with so harmonious a flourish of trumpets, had been accomplished on the sum of £50. ‘Nobody would put on any of my plays,’ he said. ‘There was nothing for me to do in England. So I sold some songs and went to America. I published a book which nobody read. I was a failure. But--oh--how successful I pretended to be.’

That was typical of Noel. His conceit he reserves only for his public. For himself and for his friends he has none at all. That bold and impudent mask with which he covers his real feelings when attacked by the Press is gently lowered as soon as the last reporter has vanished through the front door, and with a sigh he returns to the abnormal, weary of misrepresenting himself to mediocre minds. He is not in the least affected by the numerous women who powder their noses at his newly erected shrine. He demands criticism.

One picture of him will always remain in my mind. It was behind the stage at the Everyman Theatre after the first night of _The Vortex_. Noel was hunched up in a chair in front of a fire, on which a kettle was making pleasant domestic noises. His face was still haggard from the ghastly make-up which he wears in the third Act, and he flaunted a dressing-gown of flowered silk which I have never ceased to covet. We were in semi-darkness. As the firelight flickered, so did our conversation--staccato, a little taut and weary.

‘You’re terribly kind,’ he said. ‘And now please tell me the truth.’

‘I’ve told you nothing but the truth.’

‘The whole truth?’

I laughed. ‘Well--the last Act--the very last few minutes....’

The flowered silk rustled. He was sitting upright.

‘Yes.’

‘I thought it too indeterminate. You plunged us into that terrible swamp of emotion and you left us there, sticking. I wanted some sort of sign-post. I didn’t know whether I was going to sink or swim.’

‘I know. You’re absolutely right. I muddled that to-night.’

I thought to myself how infuriated I should have been if anybody in that triumphant moment had dared to suggest imperfections, especially if I had asked them to do so.

‘There _is_ a sign-post,’ he went on. ‘Just the words, “we’ll both try.” I meant to say them very clearly. I always shall in future.’

It is the habit among many dreary young men, whose failure in life may be measured by the faultless fit of their waistcoats, to croon to each other: ‘Noel, twenty-five? My dear, he’s at least thirty.’ One has the impression that their pockets are stuffed with the birth certificates of their enemies. It is not on the tedious evidence of a birth certificate that I should accept the evidence of Noel’s youth. There have been moments when I have felt, although we are about the same age, that I was old enough to be his grandfather.

One such moment was when we were lunching together and he suddenly said, ‘I’ve got a secretary!’ He said it with such gusto, such a ring of glee, that I felt exactly as though some pink and perfect child had approached me, saying, “Look what _I’ve_ got! And if you wind it up it will run right across to the fender.’ I am sure that Noel’s secretary does not need to be wound up.

On another occasion--(I do trust that I am not being impertinent. I am only trying to put before you the real Noel. If he wished to pose as a rich dilettante whose first epigrams had echoed under expensive and ancestral roofs, it would be different). On another occasion, I met him in the street, strangely enough, opposite a toy shop, and he said, in an awed whisper, ‘I almost bought a manor house the other day.’ There was something magnificent in that remark. I stood quite still, slightly pale at the thought, and looked fixedly at one of the most beautiful golliwogs I have ever seen. ‘I almost bought a manor house.’ That wasn’t the remark of a depraved, doped genius. ‘I almost bought a golliwog.’ Almost, you note. I knew, and he knew, in that rare and transient moment, that he could not really mean what he said. It was only bluff. It was a doll’s house that he was talking about.

That last paragraph is involved, but it is meant to convey to you the spirit for which nobody ever gives him any credit--the spirit of gay adventure which is perhaps the most attractive thing about him.

I wish I could be a Boswell, but I am quite sure that I couldn’t. I should always be writing down my own remarks instead of those of other people, which is probably what Boswell really did. And so, out of all the delicious flow of impudences which has sparkled through Noel’s lips, I can gather up not one single drop.

But at least one thing I must say--that if Noel Coward could fall in love, he would certainly write a greater play than _The Vortex_, in the truest sense of that much-abused word. It may sound foolish, but I should imagine that he found it exceedingly difficult to fall in love. Love, in the accepted sense of the word, demands quite a great deal of stupidity on the part of both concerned. Most of us have it. Noel hasn’t. In the firm contours of his mind there appear none of those unsuspected cracks through which occasionally the divine foolishness may escape. It is as though his brain were like a perfect emerald without a flaw in it, which is a paradox, for as Monsieur Cartier will tell you, no emerald which does not possess a flaw is perfect. One day, I believe, he _will_ fall in love, and the prospect is so intriguing that I could close my eyes and allow my pen to scrawl ahead indefinitely at the delicious prospect of Noel singing lyrics (‘as clean as a whistle’) in the scented darkness outside many magic casements.

And when he does, something amazing is going to happen. For he writes as a bird flies, swiftly, without looking back. With a bird’s-eye view, too, of the theatre, which seems to give to his work a poise and a dexterity which is almost uncanny. He showed me once the original manuscript of _The Vortex_. The words, lightly written in pencil, darted down the pages like a flight of swallows. They were eloquent of the ordered frenzy which produced them.

Finally, when anybody tells me that Noel Coward is ‘decadent,’ I feel like hitting them across the mouth. Do you realize, you outraged mothers and fathers of England, who sit back in your stalls deploring the depravity of the author of _Fallen Angels_, that you are watching a young man who for sheer pluck can give you all the points in the game? Is it decadent to go on the stage as a little boy, and fight, and fight, and fight, when your own sons are learning to be fools in the numerous academies for English gentlemen which still mysteriously flourish in our midst?

Is it decadent to go on writing, without money, without encouragement, with very few friends, always in the dim hope that one day, perhaps, a play may be produced? And when that play is produced, to see it a commercial failure--and the next play too? And when success comes, at the age of twenty-five, to work harder than ever, to stand up to the critics and to say, ‘I don’t care a damn’? Is that decadent? Or are you merely being slightly more silly than usual?