by Noel Coward
February 2nd, 1927
Dearest Noël,
I do hope you are feeling well and rested again, and that you will come back to us soon again!
The play is delightful and we are producing on the 16th at the Criterion. You know what that means!—
I tried to find Gladys [Calthrop] but heard that she was in America and that left us very little time to get sketches, etc. So, we decided to get the very best possible, and Wm. Nicholson has done the scene and the men's dresses. The women's I have attended to. I may tell you that no library, picture gallery, antique furniture and silver shop have been overlooked to have everything period and correct. I do hope you will be pleased with us.
Francois Cellier is playing Estaban beautifully—Robert Harris, Jacques—Eileen Sharpe, Adrienne—Charming…My dearest [William Graham Browne, her husband] is going to be excellent as Raoul, and I hope for the best. Anyway, dearest, you know that we are doing our d—t!
Your writing of the play is, to me, amazing. I cannot tell you how much I love it all!
All my love,
MARY
The Marquise ran for a successful 129 performances.
•
SOMEONE ELSE who was relieved to see Noël back in London was Basil Dean, who was anxious to revive the Coward-Dean partnership. This time, however, Noël was determined not to be rushed. He would set himself and his house in order.
First came the house. When he was offered the option of buying the freehold of Goldenhurst, he took it “at a ridiculously small price” and he and Jack started the work of improving it.
With the work under way, they took off for an extended summer holiday in Europe. Noël left behind a new comedy, Home Chat, for Basil to mull over.
On August 5 he is reassuring Noël:
I have seen the Lord Chamberlain's Office, and subject to certain alterations, I have been given to understand that both plays will be licensed. [In fact, Home Chat had been submitted under another name, as To Err Is Human,]
The alterations with regard to Sirocco are more than futile and need not concern you at all. The alterations with regard to the comedy are three in number and involve three good lines, one of which you can guess … I have said that I prefer to leave the matter over until early in October when the Lord Chamberlain will be back in town, to ask him to follow the procedure previously adopted with success, and to invite Major Gordon to witness some of our rehearsals to settle outstanding points then.
Noël wrote to Violet:
Lac d'Annecy, Savoie, France
Darling,
I haven't written before because we have been traveling all the time. We've been to Vienna [to see the German version of The Marquise] and Budapest, which was frightful—then a day and a night in the train to Innsbruck and up to a lake called Achen See in the middle of the Tyrol, but we hated the people so we left the next day and have now arrived here….
This is heavenly—a beautiful lake in the mountains just above Aix les Bains. This hotel is ten miles from a town and right on the edge of the lake with a sweet little terrace and balconies outside our rooms looking across at the most lovely mountains—it's utterly peaceful and so very lovely. I've never felt so well in my life—travelling agrees with me…It's quite the most beautiful place I've ever seen. We have our own little boat and bathe from it all day….
Noël considered Edward Molyneux (1891-1974) a couturier in a class of his own. (Molyneux designed Gertie's dresses for Private Lives.) As a friend, Noël found him entertaining and irritating in equal measure.
BELOW: Molyneux's house, La Capponcina, on Cap d'Ail, Cote d'Azur.
We've been everywhere second class and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves—not being grand is somehow a tremendous comfort for a change. Vienna was perfectly grand—but out of season, of course. Budapest was huge and flat and hot and stupid. The Tyrol was far, far too crowded with pot bellied Germans in mustard coloured plush hats and Alpenstocks tramping about everywhere.
Goodnight, darling. I'll write again soon.
All love
SNOOP
From there they moved on to Edward Molyneux's villa, La Capponcina, on Cap d'Ail.
•
ON SEPTEMBER 6, Basil Dean wrote:
I shall (soon) be wanting to put your comedy into rehearsal with Madge [Titheradge]. I would greatly appreciate it if you would get in touch with her and chat over the cast with her. Meanwhile I am looking round for a Theatre and, if I can arrange it, I have a fancy to go to the Duke of York's where I have already done two of your plays, both of which were fairly successful, and I have a feeling that a third of your plays there may be the best success of the three.
Home Chat opened on October 25, but Dean was wrong. It ran for only thirty-eight performances. Noël was bitterly disappointed at its critical reception and wrote to tell Dean so in no uncertain terms:
October 1927
Dear Basil,
You still remain in my opinion the most important producer in London but I feel very definitely that light comedy is not your metier,
I am writing this to you because the chief value of an association like ours is the accepted fact that we can both say quite frankly what we really think.
I have now seen three satirical comedies produced by you. This Was a Man, The Constant Wife [Maugham] and Home Chat and in all three plays the primary defects have been over-meticulous business and slowness of tempo and in Home Chat these defects have been increased by the fact that you have been occupied in other directions and have not given the play your full attention.
To my mind the production of the play has fallen between two stools; to wit farce and serious comedy, neither of which it happens to be. Farce is indicated in bits of business such as stuffing biscuits into their mouths, the two Mothers’ entrances and exits together and Paul and Mavis in their arm in arm moments and serious comedy notably in scenes at the end of the first act and last act respectively.
I don't wish you to imagine that I am blaming you entirely for my bad notices, although I think things would have been very different if the play had been played swiftly and brightly.
The reason of this letter is really a direct appeal to your intelligence with regard to The Second Man, I am completely convinced that this has got to be played and produced with three times the speed and finesse that has been devoted to Home Chat,
If in producing me you apply the same methods of measured delivery and unalterably set movements and business, I foresee grave scenes in the theatre, for I should have to stand on my own experience and knowledge and frankly refuse to accept your direction.
I am looking forward tremendously to Sirocco about which I have no doubts at all as far as you are concerned. You can handle serious plays with more understanding than anyone else in England.
Please accept this letter in the spirit in which it is offered as a piece of honest criticism and not as a disgruntled personal attack.
Yours ever,
Noël
November 1st
My dear Noël,
Of course I do not mind your critcising me. As you say, mutual frankness is the basis of our association. No doubt there is truth in what you say.
My chief concern in this matter is lest your natural chagrin at the manner in which your play has been received should not rob you of what is a sincere artist's greatest privilege; namely to profit more by his failures than by his successes. This also is written in sincere friendship.
Yours ever
BASIL DEAN
In his autobiography Dean recorded that the play was “a light comedy written in Noël's brightest manner, but decidedly thin, which was not surprising seeing that he had announced that he had written it in a week—an injudicious form of publicity.”
In any case, by now he was mentally focused on the second play, Sirocco,
October 28th
Dear Noël,
You will doubtless be interested to hear that this play read very well yesterday, and I think the cast is goo
d. I think the anticlimax of the last scene, without which the play has no point, may militate against its chances commercially, but that cannot be helped.
Noël cabled from Berlin, where he was staying:
ARRIVING EVENING TENTH WOULD LIKE IF POSSIBLE SEE PLAY
THROUGH FRIDAY AND IF CONSIDER ALTERATIONS LAST ACT
NECESSARY WILL DO THEM OVER WEEKEND STOP NOëL
Whatever changes Noël eventually made did nothing to help the play. Written in 1921, it had been consigned to the same bottom drawer as The Rat Trap, along with several other fledgling efforts, and should have stayed there.
On paper, Sirocco looked promising. The beautiful Frances Doble teamed with matinee idol and silent film star Ivor Novello. On paper was one thing. On the stage was another. The play was thin, and neither of the principals had the stage presence at that time to rescue it. It was hooted off the stage, and some of the galleryites spat at Noël as he left the theater. Twenty-eight performances later, the piece was history and part of the salutary lesson Noël was learning about preparing his material properly. He would later claim that he was grateful that he was forced to learn it at a critical point in his career, but at the time the taste was bitter.
The only possible reaction was to pick himself up, dust himself off, and carry on, regardless—which he proceeded to do.
•
SOME MONTHS EARLIER the Lunts had insisted he read S. N. Behrman's latest play, The Second Man, with which they had just had a great success in New York. In point of fact, so enthusiastic were they that they read it aloud to him, playing all four parts. Noël immediately agreed to act in the London production—once again a Basil Dean enterprise.
December 8th 1927
My dear Noël,
“THE SECOND MAN”
I had a long talk with MacLeod today, about the general arrangements for the above play. I think they feel that it would be a good thing for the four players who are to take part in it to be featured equally [Raymond Massey, Ursula Jeans, and Zena Dare] and I must say I agree with them in this point of view. I think they will be writing to you in the course of a few days putting their views, and asking you to agree to this. Meanwhile, I am writing this private letter to suggest to you that it would be a wise gesture and would probably bear fruit. I am going to suppress my own name a good deal in this connection because just at the moment the public don't seem to be particularly fond of the Coward-Dean combination! But I regard this merely as a piece of diplomacy, and you must not take it as in any way a reflection upon your ability to carry the play over to success, and I am quite sure that you will do so. But I hope you don't mind my writing to you as a friend and making this suggestion.
Kindest regards,
Yours sincerely,
BD
The play ran for 109 performances at the Playhouse Theatre—with costumes by Gladys Calthrop, who had returned earlier in the year from her Le Gallienne episode.
Before the critics could weigh in, Dean wrote:
7 Hill Street
Knightsbridge
London S.W.
Wednesday
My dear Noël,
Before I see any of the papers do let me tell you what an impression your performance made upon me. It was one of supreme distinction, and in the true line of descent from the best sources of English comedy acting, lightened by what was almost a French sense of style. Good luck to you! I hope you won't overdo things, and begin working on your nerves again. I know how fatal that is…am off tomorrow for a week by the sea to work, and see whether I can't pick a roasted chestnut out of the fire for myself.
Yours ever,
BASIL
Another letter that meant a lot to Noël was from John Gielgud.
I can't tell you how much pleasure you gave me last night, not how much I enjoyed the play but I did think your performance quite superb, and such as no-one else could possibly have equalled, in America or anywhere else. The two moments of sincerity make the most wonderful “setoff” to the rest of the characters, and that scene with the pistol in the last act is simply brilliantly done. How envious you made me of your ease and unselfconsciousness, and the way you make use of any mannerisms you have in such a way as to illuminate your character without losing it for a moment—and you manage, too, to talk at a tremendous rate without losing any words or any appearance of spontaneity, which to me would be the hardest of all. This letter is great nonsense, but I am so glad of your tremendous success—heaven knows you deserve it. Don't bother to answer, I'll come in and see you some time if I may.
With The Second Man Noël certainly managed to pull his own personal chestnut out of the critical fire, and now he could move on to his revue for Cochran, This Year of Grace, The revue was aptly named, because 1928 was to become just that for Noël.
The Coward-Dean partnership was over. The next time their professional paths almost crossed would be during the war, when Dean was in charge of providing entertainment for the fighting forces.
PART TWO
THE YEARS OF GRACE
CHAPTER 7
THIS YEAR OF GRACE!
(1928-1929)
Were we happy in the Twenties? On the whole I think most of us were … I wouldn't have missed it, not—as they say—for a King's Ransom.
LETTER TO BEVERLEY NICHOLS (1957)
THE YEAR 1928 proved to be the way back. Not only was Noël commended for his performance in The Second Man but the new Cochran revue, This Year of Grace!, was bubbling nicely. After a successful Manchester tryout, it opened at the London Pavilion on March 22. Starring Jessie Matthews, Sonnie Hale, and Maisie Gay, it ran for 316 performances.
The critic for The Observer, St John Ervine, created an alphabet of superlatives in his review: “The most amusing, the most brilliant, the cleverest….” and so on, until he got to “the most uberous, the most versatile, the wittiest—blow, ‘x’ has stopped me…if any person comes to me and says that there has ever, anywhere in the world, been a better revue than this, I shall probably tweak his nose.”
A grateful Noël wrote to thank him: “I can't tell you how very much I appreciated your letter and I'm awfully glad to have proved to you that my real ambition is to write good stuff and not fritter away my talents on flippant nonsense …” And in another letter to Ervine came a rare admission:
When I read a novel like your The Wayward Man it makes me despair of ever writing myself because my imagination doesn't feel strong enough to reach things which have not actually happened to me— and constant repetitions of Parisian coquettes having cocktails at the Ritz bar are apt to become a bore.
Cochran wrote to Noël:
27 th March 1928
My dear Noël,
Since I received your wire on the first night, for which thanks, I have told you all that I feel about your big part in the success of the revue. You have given me such brilliant material that the rest was fairly easy, but beyond that, we are all grateful for your help in production. From the moment you read me some of the book, and played the tunes, I had no doubt as to the success of the show.
I ask you to promise me one thing, and that is not to undertake a revue or any part of a revue for any other Manager. One revue a year at the London Pavilion is all you should do; also, let me remind you that you owe me a play with music and a play without music. Don't undertake to write them by Thursday next, but let me have them when the spirit moves you.
Never have I worked with an author with such pleasure as with you on This Year of Grace! The same goes for the lyricist and the composer.
Yours as ever,
CHARLES B. COCHRAN
The revue also enlisted for Noël one unlikely new fan: Virginia Woolf.
The chronology of their correspondence at the end of that year of grace is more than a little confusing, but the tone of mutual admiration is clear enough.
Noël had been introduced to Woolf in January, at a party given by society hostess Lady Sybil Colefax (1874—1950), and there appears to have been an imme
diate rapport. On the publication of her controversial fictional “biography” Orlando (1928), in which the leading character changes sex, Noël wrote her what can only be described as a fan letter—from New York, where he was then starring in the Broadway production of his show:
I am still hot and glowing with it … At the risk of sounding insincere, I am completely at your feet over it. Oh, I do so congratulate you and thank you for the lovely “unbuttoned” feeling you've given me and I hope to God it will last…If ever I could write one page to equal in beauty your “Frozen Thames” description … I should feel that I really was a writer. Please when I come back to England let's meet and talk a good deal.
November 22nd. [1928]
52 Tavistock Square
W.C.I.
Dear Noël Coward,
I was enchanted to get your letter—though I had to keep it for Sybil Colefax to decipher the signature. When sure that it was yours, my heart leapt that you should have liked that innocent story and I feel—not like a dog—like a cat that is purring all over with pleasure at your praise and generosity.
Yours, Virginia
Woolf
November 28th
Dear Noël Coward (but I hope you will drop Woolf—stick to Virginia)
How very charming of you to write to me! I liked your letter so much that I put off answering it. I didn't want to scribble a line. But I will now plunge, and say that it gave me immense pleasure. I can't conceive somehow why you—being such a success and all the rest of it—would like what I write. But if you do, I am, I repeat, immensely pleased.
Your secretary has sent me two books of yours, much to my delight. Now I am going into the matter of Noël Coward and his plays very seriously. I didn't like to tell you at Sybil's how some of the things in This Year of Grace struck me on the forehead like a bullet. And what's more, I remember them and see them enveloped in atmosphere—works of art in short….