by Noel Coward
Linda [Porter] has arrived and we're all having grand fun. We went to see Lynn Fontanne play Pygmalion the other night—she's perfectly wonderful, much better than Mrs. Pat ever was. We spent Sunday in the country with Jeanne [Eagels] who sent you lots of love. The [Clifton] Webbs clamour for you. You needn't be afraid I shall stay away too long, because I couldn't possibly! Next year I shall probably play here and we'll have an apartment.
I met Jack's complete family and Mama is writing to you to tell you how well I look—I haven't had a day's illness since I left England except for my usual frightful heart attacks and my lumbago, varicose veins and that dreadful hacking cough that never stops but everyone is very kind and my eyesight is slowly returning!
All love, darling
Snoop
But Noël's bubble was about to burst:
November 25 th
Shadowstone, Lawrenceville, New Jersey
Darling,
This is Thanksgiving Day and I'm spending it in the Wilson home en route for White Sulphur Springs.
The play, dear, has all the earmarks of being a failure! Gladys and Jack and I sat grandly in a box on the First Night and watched it falling flatter and flatter. And I must admit we got bad giggles! They were all expecting something very dirty indeed after the English Censor banning it and they were bitterly disappointed.
Francine Larrimore was very good and A. E. Matthews, too, tho’ he forgot most of his lines. [Matthews later wrote to Noël and apologized—“ I talked all your lines upside down.”] Nigel Bruce who has never understood what it was all about from the first was all right but extremely dull and Auriol [Lee] was good but also dull— for some unknown reason they played it so slowly that there was time to go round the corner and have an ice cream soda between every line. We suffered a little during the first Act but gave up suffering after that and rather enjoyed it. I find on close reflection that I am as unmoved by failure as I am by success which is a great comfort. Perhaps Fallen Angels will go better and if it doesn't I don't really mind. I like writing the plays anyhow and if people don't like them that's their loss. I hope you won't be depressed about it because I'm really as bright as a button. I always get bored anyhow if everything isn't a smashing success immediately!
I've just started a play for Marie Tempest but as there are several illegitimate children in it I doubt if Lord Cromer [the lord chamberlain] will care very deeply for it. I shall finish it at White Sulphur and do it in the Spring in London.
…Oh dear, I've made it up with Osbert Sitwell and it's all very funny—I wrote him a note saying that as we were both in a Foreign Country we ought to put an end to the Feud, then he came round and suggested quite pleasantly that I should apologise to Edith in all the papers! I gave him an old-fashioned look and explained gently that he was very silly indeed, which he seemed to understand perfectly and we parted very amicably. It really was becoming a bore because he wasn't being asked anywhere, poor dear, owing to my popularity being the greater! So that's that.
The Queen of Roumania [Marie] with son and daughter came to the party after the First Night so we were all very grand. [Max] Rein-hardt arrives in December and is very anxious to do Semi-Monde, which would be one in the eye for everyone and place me on such an intellectual plane that I doubt if I should ever come down! I have just eaten the most enormous Thanksgiving Dinner Turkey and plum pudding and I'm blown out like a football but look very sweet….
All love, my dearest darling, your unwanted unappreciated unabashed uncared for and untidy son. Snoopie.
I do hope you won't think I'm smiling through my tears!
Greenbrier
December 8th
Darling,
I'm sending this cheque early so as to get you in good time for Christmas. Will you divide it up among the family? £5 for Poppa, £5 for Baby Erik, £5 for Vivacious Vida, £2 for May, £1 for Victor and £7 for yourself? And don't spend it all on sweets!
We are leaving here tonight for New York. I'm feeling wonderfully well—the holiday has done me a tremendous amount of good. I've finished the comedy for Marie Tempest. It's the eighteenth century one I told you about called The Marquise and is very good, I think. I'll send you a script as soon as it is typed but you mustn't mention this to a soul, as they all seem so down on me in England that I may have to send it to the Censor under another name! So keep your trap shut! I shall do it about April, I should think.
This Was a Man is drifting along…Some of the Critics (the Principal ones) have said very good things about it but I fear too late to save it. I give it two or three more weeks. Jack is not coming to California with me as there is a good deal of business to be done in New York. We are going to Chicago for three days after Christmas to stay with Syrie [Maugham] and I go on from there to San Francisco to join Diana [Cooper] and Iris [Tree] and then Hollywood for a week or two … I get very homesick at moments and miss you terribly.
I am more or less giving up Fallen Angels for this season but firm plans have to be laid for next Autumn. I shall play here myself then and fling plays on like confetti!
There's no more news now, darling, so good bye—I'll write every Wednesday as usual, rain or shine—all love and several wet kisses.
Snoopie
His next letter explains the real situation:
Gladstone
December 14th Dearest
Darling,
My cable will probably have surprised you considerably. [He then strikes the line out and scribbles at the top of the letter—“ I haven't sent a cable because the letter explains better” and continues] I will now proceed to explain all!
Just before I went to White Sulphur I began to feel very nervy and ill…So three days ago I called in a specialist who examined me thoroughly. You will be relieved to hear that organically I am completely healthy,…but I am in a bad way as far as nerves are concerned—he said that I have been living on nervous energy for years and now it has given out and that I must go away at once …. He said a long sea voyage was the thing and a complete break with my present interests for at least two months. I know he's right so I'm going to Sarawak … I sail from San Francisco on Christmas Day and go to…Hong Kong, where I change boats and go on to Singapore where the Rajah's [of Sarawak] yacht is sent for me. I shall stay at Sarawak for ten days….
I really feel the trip will do me a tremendous lot of good—I feel I must get away from all the people I know for a while, not only from the point of view of health but for my work as well. From now onwards I'm not going to work so hard anyhow … It will be heavenly to be stuck on a boat with nothing to do and I shall probably be bored stiff at first but there will be lovely places to see and I'm a keen traveller….
Nerves are extraordinary things—I sleep for eleven hours and wake up dead tired with my legs aching as though I'd walked ten miles! It's not serious yet as I haven't had a break down but the Doctor says I'm on the verge of one … I expect your vivid imagination is now at work conjuring up pictures of your beloved son gibbering like a maniac and telling everyone he's the Empress Eugenie, but as a matter of fact I'm not the Empress Eugenie, I'm Napoleon….
I'm allowed to go out at night as long as I'm in bed by Twelve, so you see I'm not dying.
I know I shall be dreadfully lonely and bored on that dreary boat but the Doctor says the more bored I am the better and it will be nice staying with the Sarawaks and seeing the dawn come up like Thunder out of China ‘cross the bay! Wouldn't it be awful if I became a second Rudyard Kipling….
Oh darling, I do hope you won't cry much at the thought of two more months without me—but you do see, don't you? If I came back to England now I'd be embroiled with Marie Tempest and Basil and Films, however much I tried to avoid them and I should rush over to Paris and back and go to First Nights and do myself in!
I'll cable you the name of the boat and everything—and cable me on Christmas Day to San Francisco. I know I shall be terribly Moth-ersick. Oh Dear, Oh Dear.
All my love, my dear darling
Your Wandering boy
Robinson Crusoe
Fairmont Hotel
San Francisco
Christmas Eve
Darling,
Here I am in California at last! I expect you have got my letter by now explaining about my trip and everything. I'm feeling very much better already but I'm more and more convinced that this is the only sensible thing to do. Jack is here with me and he goes back to New York tomorrow after I sail….
I get tired far too quickly and the sooner I get well away from everybody the better. I shall cable you from every port I stop at but I'm afraid it's no use writing any more after this because the letters will never reach you before I do!
My first stop is Honolulu New Year's Eve and ten days later Yokohama, after that I stop every day or two…The boat is quite large and I have a comfortable cabin to myself… I feel rather scarified going off all by myself but I know it's the only really wise plan. I've been with people much too much during these last years and a little solitude will do me good. I shall be home about the 8th of March…Have my little white bed at the cottage ready, as I shall probably wire you to meet me at Dover in Lulu [Violet's car] and I'll go straight to Aldington. I'm looking forward to coming home with wild excitement and my one comfort over this trip is that it's all on the way once I start!….
What a God-send that cottage was—it's the greatest comfort to me to feel you're away from Ebury Street and have a nice peaceful place to wait for your Wandering Boy!
Christmas Day
I'm finishing off this letter today. I've just got all the family cables which I loved…San Francisco is really divine.
We motored out to Burlinghame to lunch, everything green and fresh and roses out! The streets are steep like Edinburgh and Chinatown right in the middle of everything. There's a Rock just outside the town by the Golden Gate covered with seals! They're so sweet. I sail at four o'clock this afternoon. It's now 9:00 a.m. which means about 5 p.m. in England if you've had your Christmas dinner I expect you're all lying about stuffed. Diana and Iris send their love, they're on the same floor as we are, we had a grand party last night with Reinhardt. [They were appearing in The Miracle, directed by Reinhardt.] When you cable just put Well—Love because it will be expensive. I'll do the same from every port. Good bye now my darling—Give my dear love to Daddy, Vida and Erik and all. Be a good Snig and don't have too many nightmares about shipwrecks, this is not the Typhoon season!
Hugs and kisses, Snoop
At intervals for the rest of his life Noël would suffer from what were almost certainly psychosomatic conditions that, nonetheless, resulted in genuinely debilitating physical symptoms. His army experience had been one, but this time he was genuinely concerned, as indicated by the way he repeatedly justifies his decision to travel—to himself as much as Violet.
On the afternoon of that Christmas Day he waved goodbye to Jack and walked up the gangplank of the SS President Pierce and into another chapter of his overcrowded life.
CHAPTER 6
“I'M WORLD WEARY, WORLD WEARY”
(1927)
I'm world weary, world weary,
Living in a great big town,
I find it so dreary, so dreary.
Everything is grey or brown….
I can hardly wait
Till I see the great
Open spaces,
My loving friends will not be there,
I'm so sick of their
God-damned faces,
Because I'm world weary, world weary,
Tired of all these jumping jacks,
I want to get right back to nature and relax.
“WORLD WEARY,” FROM THIS YEAR OF GRACE (1928)
ON JANUARY 1, 1927, Noël cabled Violet from Honolulu:
WORLD TRIP SO FAR STAYING HERE FEW WEEKS DIVINE HERE
ADDRESS MOANA HOTEL STOP LOVE SNOOP.
But those few words did not tell the whole story.
By the time the boat docked and Noël had been escorted to the home of his local hosts, Walter and Louise Dillingham, he was running a high fever. He made his excuses and returned to the President Pierce, where he packed his bags and then checked into the Moana Hotel. From there he wrote to Violet:
Moana Hotel
Honolulu
January 4th 1927
Darling,
I got off the boat here on Friday feeling awful—six days of really bad sea. I wasn't sea sick at all but it made my nerves worse than ever. I had a temperature of 103! I realized that to make a long world trip one must feel really well and so I think I was wise to get off—I was met by friends of Florence Magee called the Dillinghams who are very rich and very nice and are virtually king and queen of Honolulu. They were very kind and sent me a charming doctor who put me to bed and has kept me there ever since until yesterday, when he took me for a drive—he says I ought to stay a month and get a real rest— you can imagine how lonely and miserable I felt being ill in a strange place but I feel grand now and I'm having tea with the Dillinghams this afternoon. I think I'm going out to their country ranch, which is divine—at the foot of the highest mountain here. It's about 30 miles by car—mostly sugar cane and banana plantations. The island is exquisite—never too hot and never anything approaching cold— flowers in masses all the year round, particularly camellias and hibiscus and roses all wild! The bathing is wonderful. There's a coral reef a mile out and the big rollers hit it and send smaller ones into the lagoons and you ride in canoes in bather dresses and are deposited high up on the beach—there are no sharks inside the reef! So you needn't worry. There are a few octopuses but they love them and eat them! I don't think I shall. The colouring, of course, is beyond belief, just like Robinson Crusoe—deep blue ocean—bright green lagoon— dazzling yellow sand—enormous cocoa palms and scarlet hibiscus everywhere. I feel so rested already. I'm sure this is the right thing to do—God knows when you'll get this.
Good by, darling Snig. I'll cable every week—your photograph is a great success in a small leather frame.
SNOOP
He was putting on a brave face for her sake. Inwardly he had a suspicion that “too much had happened to me in too short a time. I had written too much, acted too much and lived far too strenuously. This was the pay-off, possibly, I thought.”
He cabled faithfully.
JANUARY 9TH
HAVING LOVELY REST PALM TREES AND BLUE SEA VERY
SUNBURNT HOME END OF FEBRUARY. BE GOOD MY DARLING
LOVE TO ALL
sc.snoop
After a few days the Dillinghams took him to their “ranch” at Moku-leia and left him mercifully alone to rest and recuperate. During the several weeks he stayed there he had time to take stock of who and what he was.
People, I decided, were the danger. People were greedy and predatory, and if you gave them the chance, they would steal unscrupulously the heart and soul out of you without really wanting to or even meaning to. A little extra personality; a publicized name; a little entertainment value above the average; and there they were, snatching and grabbing, clamorous in their demands, draining your strength to add a little fuel to their social bonfires. Then when the time came when you were tired, no longer quite so resilient, you were pushed back into the shadows, consigned to the dust and left to moulder in the box-room like a once smart hat that is no longer fashionable.
At the end of a month of determined inactivity the siren call of civilization became insistent, and Noël embarked on the SS Wilhelmina to return to New York.
•
THE YEAR 1927 was not destined to be an annus mirabilis for Noël, either, even though it started our promisingly. He did indeed get back to London in time to see Marie Tempest play in The Marquise. As the Marquise de Kestournel, she was “everything I had envisaged; the tricorne hat, the twinkle in the eye, the swift precision of movement.” For Noël, the part was a personal tribute to an actress he had adored from the first time he saw her at the age of twelve in a play called At the Barn.
I was aware of her blue and mauve taffeta dress, with panniers and one of her usual crisp little hats … I also remember two minutes of silent acting at the end of the first act which, even at the tender age of twelve, I was bright enough to brand into my memory, where it has remained clear and unexcelled by anything I have since seen in the theatre. Marie Tempest sat alone at a tea table with a handkerchief in her right hand and a sandwich in her left, deciding in her troubled mind whether to eat or to weep. Finally, the tears won, and the sandwich went back on to the plate, and the handkerchief to her eyes…Into those brief two minutes was distilled the very essence of acting.
After Hay Fever Marie Tempest had formed her own positive opinion of her playwright:
Dame Marie Tempest (1864—1942) turned down Hay Fever as being too trivial, but after the success of The Vortex, she had a sudden change of heart (1933).
Noël is the enfant gate oi the theatre. At his birth two godmothers sat over his cradle, the benevolent one who gave him his superb gift, and the malignant crone who tossed in a handful of gifts, almost as good. She disappeared with a cackling laugh. Noël is aware of these gifts and he feels he must exploit them all. That is the trap which was laid by the malignant godmother.
This pompous parable is just my Victorian way of saying that I do not think he will ever quite fulfil his great promise if he does not curb his versatility. He is spending his gifts too lavishly…He is the most stimulating and exciting personality that has come into my life in the last ten years. I value his friendship more than I can say.
Before the play opened she wrote to Noël:
3 Upper George Street
Bryanston Square
W.I.