The Letters of Noel Coward

by Noel Coward

  Tonight I took Cissie Sewell and Elsie April to see Whoopee! (They deserved a treat having worked like dogs) and Eddie Cantor stepped forward and said that he wanted to introduce the greatest Theatrical Genius alive today and they popped a spotlight on me and I had to stand up and bow to me great American Public! All this mind you in the middle of somebody else's show!

  I've just had a wire from Ziegfeld saying that the theatre will never die as long as there is a Genius like me in it, which made me laugh quietly considering how convinced of failure he was before we opened in Boston. Anyhow, thank God I'm leaving on Sunday week for Hollywood for five days, then Honolulu for four days then Japan arriving December 20th Tokio where Jeffrey [Lord Amherst] is arriving on the same day. I got your nice long letter written just before you arrived. I've never heard of such grandeur as you've been giving out! Just the 14th Duchess of Ebony, that's what you are, my girl. Thank you both for your cable. I wonder how Erik is getting on. I hope I shall hear from you before I leave, if not I shall have to wait until Tokio.

  I must stop now, darling, and go to bed as I am exceedingly tired but very relieved and happy. Give my love to Erik and a good hug to yourself, if that's not possible get an Anaconda to do it in a nice way.

  All love,

  SNOOPIE

  When the text of Bitter Sweet was published Noël dedicated it to Charles Cochran: “My help in ages past, my hope for years to come.” But there were not to be too many more of them.

  Santa Fe Railroad

  New Mexico

  20th November 10:30 p.m.

  Hello Ma,

  Here I am trundling across the continent. I left Chicago where Jack saw me off yesterday morning early and arrive in Hollywood tomorrow night. I've been in bed ever since I got on this train and intend to stay there, it's so lovely just relaxing after all the fuss and furor. I had a hectic time in New York everyone gave farewell parties for me and handed me expensive presents and I departed in a blaze of glory. In Chicago we saw Ethel Barrymore and Katherine [Katharine] Cornell and Mary Garden. They were all in our old friend The Lake Shore Drive and the lake was starting to freeze and it all looked exactly the same.

  John Gilbert and Ina Claire are meeting me tomorrow, Charlie Chaplin is giving a large party for me, so is Ronald Coleman [sic] and Marion Davies. All the Movie Magnates are putting their cars at my disposal in the hopes that I'll work for them, which God forbid, but I shall use the cars and probably wee wee in them. I've caused more of a sensation in America this time than ever before, Bittersweet [even Noël never quite made up his mind whether this was one word or two] is the only show playing to capacity during this appalling Stock Market crash! It's really very enjoyable.

  I got several letters from you including one after you had arrived, I must say it does sound lovely and I am exceedingly glad Erik isn't fat…When I arrive in January or February or March or whenever it is we'll discuss Erik's future which ought to be great fun taken all round. I'm bringing a movie camera with me (not a projector so we won't be able to see the films) but I shan't be happy until I have a movie of Erik on a horse. Jack says I shall never need a projector as none of my films ever come out—how true—but if God wills that they do, we'll show them in the barn. Good night, dears.

  SNOOPIE

  And so the 1920s came to a triumphant close for Noël.

  When in 1957 his friend the writer Beverley Nichols was preparing a book on the twenties {The Sweet and Twenties) and asked Noël for his impressions of that unique decade, Noël answered him in a letter in which he also compared it to the 1950s—another decade immediately following a world war and attempting to adjust to it.

  Gertrude Stein, one of the Oracles of the Twenties, once made the following pronouncement “Everything is the same and everything is different!” This utterance, like most of Miss Stein's, is remarkable for a certain magnificent simplicity. However, my purpose is not to discuss Miss Stein but to consider the profundity and truth or otherwise of her phrase as applied to the Twenties and Fifties.

  Beverley Nichols (1898—1983) and Noël. Two survivors of the “diverting and highly exciting decade” known as the twenties.

  I'm afraid she was right, they are awfully the same and they are dreadfully different, so different that I might go so far as to say that the Fifties are much much worse…First the similarities. The Bright Young Things are just as determined to be bright as were their fathers and mothers; parapets are still walked at midnight it seems, and dinner-jacketed young men are still falling or being pushed into swimming pools or the river to round off successful parties. The desperate endeavours of the League of Nations are perpetuated by those of U.N.O. Cocktail parties, God help us, are still with us. Most musical comedies still have to come from Broadway. The latest dance from America—which shall be nameless because it will have become outmoded and been replaced in the short interval before these words get into print—is just as convulsive as the Black Bottom and the Charleston. Skin-tight jeans are just as exaggerated as were Oxford Bags [wide bell-bottomed trousers]. The same hectic determination to have a good time is presumably due to the fact that younger people today are just as “Post-War” as their mothers and fathers were and as resolved to catch up on their youth and any good times they may have missed during the years of austerity. And I don't blame them one bit.

  I will pass lightly over the many differences for the worse—H. (or even X) Bombs, television, the general decline in standards and the crushing down of initiative, originality and ambition, the lack of incentive, etc., because your book is about the Twenties and not the Fifties and in any case one must never, never say that things were better when one was young. Of course a great many changes have been for the better; people are healthier, better paid and there is little unemployment, hardly any of those pathetic ex-servicemen's bands in the streets and no ex-officers trying to sell writing paper at one's door. Whether people are happier or not is another matter, but then happiness is well known to be elusive.

  Were we happy in the Twenties? On the whole I think most of us were but we tried to hide it by appearing to be as blase, world-weary and “jagged with sophistication” as we possibly could. Naturally we had a lot of fun in the process.

  We all got over this period in our mental growth, or most of us did, and I can't feel we were any the worse for it. Should it be a matter for pride that we got over it without the help of psychiatry, considered so indispensable today, though not by me?

  Taken all in all the Twenties was a diverting and highly exciting decade in which to live and I wouldn't have missed it, not—as they say—for a King's Ransom.

  CHAPTER 8

  “MAD DOGS AND ENGLISHMEN”

  (1930)

  In a jungle town

  Where the sun beats down

  To the rage of man and beast

  The English garb

  Of the English sahib

  Merely gets a bit more creased.

  “MAD DOGS AND ENGLISHMEN,” WORDS AND MUSIC (19 32)

  December 1929. Noël on the SS Tenyo Mam en route for the Far East and a date with a dream about Private Lives.

  AFTER A FEW DAYS in Hollywood Noël sailed for the Far East. The few days’ stopover in Honolulu were fortunately less stressful than his previous visit, and then he was en route to Yokohama and Tokyo, where he was to meet Jeffrey Amherst, his traveling companion on this extended trip.

  On the way, he concentrated on finding an idea for the play he had promised to write for Gertie and himself in compensation for Bitter Sweet, but nothing would come to him. When he arrived at Tokyo's Imperial Hotel he received word that Jeffrey had missed the connecting boat from Shanghai and would be three days late arriving.

  That same night, Noël would write, “the moment I switched out the lights, Gertie appeared in a white Molyneux dress on a terrace in the South of France and refused to go again until four a.m., by which time Private Lives, title and all had constructed itself.”

  Jeffrey duly arrived, and the Eastern
odyssey began in earnest.

  Tsinanfu China January 12 th 1930 Darling,

  I'm writing in the train on the way from Peking to Tsing Tao where we get the boat tomorrow morning for Shanghai. I had no idea you were sailing as early as the ist as you said in your Japan letter you weren't leaving until February. I wired Erik from Peking to know how you were and he wired back that you were well and had sailed. I do hope you'll be all right and I shan't be really comfortable until I know you're safely at Goldenhurst…We had a nasty earthquake in Tokyo—very unpleasant…We really are having a lovely time. Japan was enjoyable but the Japanese are rather irritating, but still the scenery is beautiful and the Temples at Nikko and Kyoto simply glorious. We left from Shimonoseki and crossed the Japan Sea to Pusan in Korea, it was terrifically rough but we ate pickled onions and weren't sick, Jeffrey left the jar on the edge of the table and when we came in from having a breath of fresh air on deck, the entire table was carpetted with onions, very smelly but we rose above it.

  Jeffrey Amherst and Noël, 1930. Two world—and occasionally world-weary—traveling companions.

  From Pusan we went by train all through Korea to Mukden in Manchuria. It took two nights and a day. Korea is very lovely, snow clad mountains and bright sunshine and all the people in brilliant pinks and blues and greens, all except the married men who wear white robes and minute black top hats perched forward on their heads which look most peculiar. We arrived at Mukden at 6:00 in the morning with the temperature 35 below zero!…We've had a very regal time altogether because we met a Japanese Baron at the Embassy in Tokyo and he very kindly arranged for us to be met at every stop on our journey, consequently every time the train even paused, deputations of Japanese in silk hats and frock coats advanced with baskets of fruit and we all had to bow and exchange cards. Fortunately we have a lot with us because we've had to shower them like confetti, conversation was always rather difficult owing to a certain lack of Japanese idiom on our parts and no knowledge of English on theirs! But they all hiss a lot like snakes and show their teeth so everything went off very well. Mukden was too cold for comfort, and too near Siberia, so we got into a train for Peking and what a train! Absolutely filthy and no heating so we lay in a heap wrapped in fur coats and drank brandy for 26 hours which saved our lives. We're now heading for Shanghai after ten days of Peking which has left us quite exhausted. It's simply beautiful but we were far too popular. The first two days were too cold to bear, we nearly died until we had fur boots made which kept our feet warm in the rickshaws. The streets are fascinating and each one is called after what it sells. Jade Street, Flower Street, Crystal Street, etc.! Everything's dirt cheap owing to exchange, so we bought some things and crated them back to England to be held in Bond until we return….

  There were two other big affairs which we graced with our presence, to say nothing of countless dinner and lunch parties. We were driven out to the Hills by Martel, the French Minister, to a lovely temple, we were carried up in swinging chairs and the view was superb, all over Peking with the coloured tiled roofs glinting in the sun. The Temple of Heaven is indescribably lovely. Pink walls and deep, deep blue roof standing in among sage-coloured winter trees; it's deserted now and was really one of the most perfect sights I've ever seen. When we left last night everyone came down to see us off and here we are bouncing across China in a slightly more comfortable train than the last one we tried….

  Well goodbye now, my Sniglet, do take care of yourself and get well and strong by May.

  Give my love and kisses to Veitch and Pop and the dear doddies. I doubt if I shall get to Ceylon until the end of February, but I've told Erik to expect me when he sees me.

  All love and hugs

  COLUMBUS

  H.M.S. Suffolk

  January 31st

  Darling,

  We're having the most lovely time sailing down to Hong Kong on a smart and shining Man of War! We met several of the officers in Shanghai and they invited us to stay over a few days and go with them instead of using the ordinary boat service, we naturally jumped at it and here we are. It was marvellous sailing down the river past all the other warships, all different nationalities, French, Italian, Japanese and American, all saluting and playing the National Anthems like mad. It's tremendously interesting to be on board a cruiser like this in full working order. We've seen everything from the Boiler Room to the Gun Turrets and the Captain very kindly allowed us to take photographs (movies) which is entirely against the rules. We spent the morning on the Bridge and I'm getting up at 4 a.m. tomorrow to watch some nice Night navigation going on.

  We arrive in Hong Kong on Monday where we shall be met by fleets of Destroyers and Aeroplanes and a good deal of enjoyable fuss! We've been in Shanghai for two weeks, the first part of the time I had slight “Flu” and the last part of the time Jeffrey did, and in between while I wrote a new comedy for Gertrude Lawrence and me to do in the Autumn in London, so no time was wasted. It's good, I think, and anyhow gives us both marvellous acting opportunities.

  Shanghai is an extraordinary place, very cold of course at this time of the year, although not as bad as Peking…Shanghai is such a very strange mixture and completely unlike it sounds. To start with it's on the river instead of the sea, it's tremendously modern and looks like a cross between Brussels and Huddersfield. Every nation is represented in it and the poor Chinese have to struggle with so many languages. We met some charming people and had a lovely time. The Chinese part of the Town was marvellous.

  Last night when the Chinese New Year begins, all the shops open, fireworks going off and crowds and crowds of people all making the hell of a bloody noise if you will forgive a Biblical expression! But all highly enjoyable….

  We say goodbye to cold weather from now on. Hong Kong, Hanoi, Saigon, Ankor, Bangkok, Singapore! We are being met at Hanoi by the Governor of Indo China and are motoring from there to Saigon, and on to Siam!

  We really are having a glorious trip, everyone makes a lovely fuss of us and we get everything of the best everywhere.

  We were guests of honour on the French warships yesterday and how we all carried on, we had to make speeches (in exquisite French) and Oh Dear, Oh Dear, they all sang old sea shanties and we all kissed and it was very very funny indeed!

  I really must stop now as I'm being shouted for in the Ward room, it's tea time and the Navy is very particular about its tea!…

  Ever your lovable and sweet

  SNOOPIE

  To Gladys Calthrop:

  s.s. Tonkin

  February 12th 1930

  Well, old cock,

  This is the first letter I've been able to write to you owing to not knowing any of your plans. Jack wired me that you were in Florida and I'm tortured with curiosity to know why and wherefore and with whom. I wonder if you ever got to Mexico? I was glad to get your cable in Honkers on Sunday saying you were fine and dandy. I'm not going into long newsy descriptions of my trip, it's all far too variegated but it really has been enthralling so far….

  We stayed a fortnight in Shanghai and I wrote a light comedy for Gertie and me in the Autumn. It's completely trivial except for one or two slaps but it will be fun to play. I have an uneasy feeling that you won't approve of it, but I had a good think and decided that failing a really first rate emotional part for myself, I'd rather do a nice sparkling comedy with a few numbers in Act II. Both the parts are marvellous and the whole thing is very flippant and gay. And a couple of dainty sets for the old girl [Gladys] to fart about with.

  It was certainly a good idea to come away like this. I feel gloriously remote and my mind is clearing up something lovely! I think there is a sporting chance of something really dandy hatching out before I'm through.

  Jeff is a marvellous traveller and very funny and we pee ourselves a good deal. We met several very natty naval chaps in Shanghai and they invited us to sail with them on the H.M.S. Suffolk to Hong Kong. I've never in my life enjoyed anything so much. We took four days and did gunnery practice, and kept
watch on the bridge all night, drinking lovely ship's cocoa and made ourselves very popular. We were shown over the ship from stem to stern as you might say, and Oh God, a really up to date warship in motion is beyond words exciting. Sitting in a gun turret alone is enough to wreck you! Talk about the poetry of Higher Mathematics, one small lever is touched and enormous guns come rushing up at you out of a pit, load themselves and fire themselves and retire down to their hole again as quick as buggery! It really was splitarsingly loverly. And all the ritual of saluting the sun, and playing “Last Post” and sailors having special roaring tunes played by the ship's band for every job they do! We gave a grand dinner to all the chaps the night before we left HK— they're all really terribly nice (no monkey business anywhere, all above board and very enjoyable). We felt thoroughly sad to say goodbye to them.

  HK is I think the most beautiful place I've ever seen, specially at night with an enormous black mountain rearing itself out of the sea, covered with lights. And the most lovely harbour with thousands of ships of all sizes and sampans and junks farting ‘ither and thither for all the world like tainy insects.

  We're now on our way to Hanoi (capital of Indo-China). From there we are going to motor all the way through to Saigon and up to Ankor and finally Bangkok. Then down to Singapore and Java. I'm afraid India will have to be missed, there's too much to be seen up here. We're now bouncing along on a vile French ship, smaller than a channel boat, with a cargo of salt fish and Ford cars! We're the only white people on board except for one fat Frenchman and the two ship's officers, who are disagreeable sods anyway. Our cabin is filthy and filled with cockroaches and bed bugs and the food is really unbearable. Fortunately we stopped yesterday at a port called Quang Tchew Wan and buggered ashore in a sampan in a downpour of rain and bought a large supply of tinned food to last us until Saturday, when we arrive. The squalor of our cabin is lovely, what with our own lack of bathing and all the tinned food and the fish smell coming in at the window. Incidentally, it's very rough and I can't understand why we haven't been sick, but there's still time.