by Noel Coward
All my love to you and hand some out to everybody and get well soon.
Your heroic National minded Patriot [presumably a little dig at Erik's reported comment]
BRO
Hotel Schenley
Pittsburgh, PA.
January ioth 1933
Oh Darling,
A very sad letter from you today. I do wish I could do something but I know there's nothing to be done, also you might just as well write sadly because if you're cheerful I see through it and that's much worse. Christmas must have been awful and New Year's Eve! It really is amazing how much human beings have to bear sometimes.
How wonderful if he could die quietly in his sleep, I am so glad the nurses are nice and that he doesn't suspect anything.
Bear up, my darling, perhaps in the long run he will turn out to be lucky after all! Anyhow he could never go through what you're going through.
SNOOPIE
Noël's wish was granted. On January 22—two days before they opened in New York—he received a cable from his mother. Erik had indeed died peacefully in his sleep at Goldenhurst. Noël replied with a cable of his own saying that Violet and Vida must come to New York right away. He had booked them into the Beekman Towers, just around the corner from his own apartment at Beekman Place.
•
ON JANUARY 24, Design for Living opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre and was an immediate hit—so much so that Noël immediately agreed to play five months instead of his stipulated three.
For its time the play was ambiguously daring. Noël played Leo, a playwright in love with Gilda, who lives with Otto, an artist, who is also in love with Gilda. She in turn is in love with both of them. The permutations of this menage a trois make up the plot. By the end of the play each of them has come to accept that they cannot live without the other two.
Because of the unusual length of the run, Noël left Beekman Place and rented a cottage at Sneden's Landing, on the Hudson River, close to Katharine Cornell and husband Guthrie McClintic. There, in whatever free time he could snatch, he began work on his first volume of autobiography, Present Indicative,
Meanwhile, the play continued to be the season's big hit. Noël happily reported to Gladys:
April 5, 1933
Well, Pussy:
I received yours of the whatever it was and was haighly delaighted with it. We have all got to the stage now of counting the days until May 27th. Capacity and standees at every performance and very common people, dear—not our class at all—given to spitting and coughing and belching during the quieter passages.
I have taken for two months the most enchanting little cottage at Sneedons [Sneden's], just near Kit's. It is isolated in the middle of thick woods and looking out over the river, and it takes only thirty-five minutes to get there. It really is perfectly divine, and I commute every night except Tuesdays and Fridays before matinees. I get down there, have some hot soup, and am in bed by one o'clock. I get up early every morning and work all day on my book. I am now almost half through it, well over all the deeficult war part, which I think I have managed with great tact and discretion. I do do hope you will think it good. By the time I get back to England the first draft will be practically finished, and I am going to sit at Goldenhurst and polish and revise.
I will be back about mid-July The Lunts are coming over in September and we thought a dainty trip to Paris and Berlin might not come amiss. They are opening Reunion in Vienna in January, and I am beetling off with Jeff. I will give them my studio for the winter …
There is no particular news here. Gladys Henson continues to drink gin and gossip. Neysa and Alec are as sweet as ever. The Lunts are perfect, and everybody sends you their love. So there.
HITLER
April 12 th
SUNDAY THE WHATEVER IT IS
Oh Dear
Here I am in my tainy cottage and it's a lovely spring day and the trees are coming out and I am suffering (as usual) from the results of a kindness! That being Bill Sykes whom I asked out, fortunately only for Sunday! His painting is really good I think and I journeyed down to Fourteenth Street to see it but what is this questing, gala-had, chin out, striving after intellectually? It's very down getting— poor poor boy. He informed me just now that he really preferred metaphor to symbols! To which there is no adequate reply outside of “Shit!” I haven't paid much attention to him and have remained upstairs working. It's all coming along ever so. This place is really saving my reason. It's quite lovely and utterly quiet. Lynn and Alfred want you to do Reunion in V in January, which will be rather fun for you, hein?
We're all riding in the Circus Parade tonight on elephants—the Lunts, Neysa, … and me. I've had a message from Eva [Le Galli-enne] rather urgent, so I'm supping with her tomorrow. Could it be money, do you think! Oh dear—very ork if it is.
I'm counting the days now until the end of the run. It's become very routine and dreary. George J. Nathan launched a heavy and not very effective attack on me in Vanity F[air and has got himself into considerable eau chaud in consequence. I shall close now, work and drive the drooling Sykes into New York very rapidamente indeedy. I've come to the conclusion that the thing I hate most is a “Beauty Lover.” He's quite awful about Beauty Lovers. He's sitting downstairs at the moment finding poetry in the first draft of my book! He tells me that it's full of poetry—there now! Not moonlight and veiled stars and all that nonsense but real poetic words like inkpot and sixpence! Oh Christ, and he's so very nice really, it really is dreadful. He launched off into a glowing description of you— “strong,” “loyal,” “beautiful,” “still,” etc. I contradicted the whole thing immediately and said you were weak, shifty, ugly and over fidgety. He's now very puzzled indeed.
Hasta la farting vista
SHELLEY
Tuesday
Lynn and Alfred and Neysa and I had a gorgeous ever so time at the Circus on Sunday night and rode round the ring dressed as Rajahs on very large and lovely ellies! Lynn was terrified and sat crunched up in her How de dowdah like a snail!
We dined with Madame Radua who is very old and wears white satin and rides a horse. She also shoots a whole flock of multicoloured pigeons out of a box and they perch all over her. Her bubbles provide ample foothold for a flock of albatrosses! We asked her how she coloured the pigeons and she said—
EET ISS SOM JOB I TELL YOU
EACH FEDDER SEPARATE!
•
BY MAY, Violet was safely back in Goldenhurst:
Tuesday May 18th
Darlingest,
Well, we're closing a week earlier because we all decided we were far too tired to go on any longer. The result of this is that dense crowds are flocking to the theatre and standing five deep at every performance.
The day after you left I got a bad attack of laryngitis and couldn't speak, I really felt awful but I didn't miss one performance. I went straight into a nice quiet nursing home and went back and forth between it and the theatre, consequently with my usual remarkable recuperative powers, I was well again in a few days, but it was horrid while it lasted.
The other night I took Elsa Maxwell up to the top of the Empire State after the show and when we came down Jacobs {the driver} was white and trembling and said we had been followed by a car full of gangsters! So I called the superintendent who had a gun and also three elevator men and we went out of another entrance! The next day I got the police and they were all caught and turned out to be autograph hunters! Elsa meanwhile, without consulting me, telephoned all the newspapers! So there were headlines. I am absolutely furious with her and denied the whole thing and said that she only did it for publicity for herself. It was very annoying. I couldn't get into my dressing room for reporters and detectives with guns! And now I'm watched wherever I go, so I'm very safe and very uncomfortable! Still I turned the tables on Elsa nicely.
Drawing by Lynn Fontanne.
They gave a farewell supper at the Algonquin on Tuesday for Alfred and Lynn and me, and sang songs about us and toa
sted us and generally made a hell of a fuss …
SNOOPIE
But before he sailed he sent a farewell cable to the Lunts:
Darling Alfred, dainty Lynn,
Now the holidays begin.
Three superb but weary hacks
Comfortably may relax.
No more slaps to keep the chin up,
No long trains to trip our Lynn up.
Let us thank benign Jehovah
That the long, long trail is over!
CHAPTER 12
CONVERSATION PIECE … AND MISSING THE POINT
(1933-1935)
PAUL: Tell me, do you speak French?
EDWARD: Oui, unpeu.
PAUL: I never think that's enough, do you?
CONVERSATION PIECE (19 54)
MORTIMER: I always affect to despise human nature. My role in life is so clearly marked: cynical, detached, unscrupulous, an ironic observer and recorder of other people's passions. It is a nice facade to sit behind, but a trifle bleak.
POINT VALAINE (1 955)
NOEL MEANDERED BACK to England by way of Bermuda, where he joined HMS Dragon for a cruise of the Caribbean. Then on to Trinidad, with a side trip to an eccentric little island with a romantic shanty hotel called Point Balaine.
Even when he was supposed to be taking a complete break, Noël's mind was subconsciously looking for the next project, and he immediately filed away the setting for future use.
Meanwhile, on board, he came across a book called The Regent and His Daughter, and as had happened with Bitter Sweet, the sights and sounds of the Regency period began to fill his mind. On the long sea journey back to England he began work on the libretto for what became Conversation Piece, From the outset he knew who the star would be. On every visit to Paris— and there were many of those at this time—he would rush to see the latest operetta starring Yvonne Printemps. He would write a show for her.
Back in London he is writing to Alec Woollcott:
17 Gerald Road
August 22 nd
Dearest Acky-wacky-weesa,
At the moment I am working on something of which I am sure you will approve highly. It's a very small, light operette, half in French and half in English, for Yvonne Printemps and Romney Brent, which will be done here round about January or February. I am pretty excited about it. There are marvellous parts for both of them. I am just going off to France for a couple of weeks and when I come back I shall set to work in earnest on the Printemps play and fling my house open to receive the creaking and aged bodies of Alfred and Lynn. Lorn is looking lovely; Sybil Colefax has asked quite a lot of people to lunch; Mary Sherwood [Robert's wife] is still far too small; and everything is fine and dandy.
I miss you very much, Ackie dear, and think of you in the most beautiful way imaginable … in fact I have been saying to myself for weeks “I really must write to the rubbishy old sod.”
Love and kisses, love and kisses, love and kisses,
NOËL
Yvonne Printemps (1895-1977).
“Voila, cher Noël. Une photo prise a votre jardin.”
Back in Goldenhurst in the fall, he set to writing the score for Conversation Piece and making frequent trips to Paris to woo Mile. Printemps.
The story he devised is set in Regency Brighton, where Paul, the so-called Due de Chaucigny-Varennes has brought his ward, Melanie, from France in the hopes of rescuing both of them from imminent poverty by securing a good aristocratic marriage for her. It soon becomes clear that Melanie is in love with Paul, and all his machinations lead inevitably to a happy ending.
Cochran presented this “Romantic Comedy with Music” at His Majesty's Theatre on February 16, 1934, with Noël as Paul and Yvonne Printemps as Melanie. Mile. Printemps's English rarely rose above the phonetic, but by the end of the run the rest of the cast were speaking adequate French.
Noël could write to Woollcott:
17 Gerald Road
April 3rd 1934
I am now giving an exquisite performance as a syphilitic French duke, fortunately only for three weeks more; Romney comes occasionally and makes hideous Siamese faces at me from the side of the stage. [Romney Brent had been the original choice as Paul but had gladly handed it over to Noël—“ providing you let me still come to rehearsals and watch you find out what a bloody awful part it is”.]
The play is a great success; the music and lyrics are good and the production excellent, and Gladys has done a marvellous job. The play itself I think is dull and garbled and I am faintly ashamed of it.
He also found time to write to Clifton Webb, who was appearing on Broadway in the Irving Berlin/Moss Hart revue As Thousands Cheer and had suggested that Noël might have indulged in a little petty larceny as far as the “Easter Parade” sequence in Conversation Piece was concerned.
March 27th 1934
Clifton, my little dear,
I hear weecked, disquieting rumours that you think I cribbed the tableau idea of Easter Parade for my dainty Conversation Piece and oh dear, oh dear, I honestly and truly never even thought of it and was absolutely delighted with the originality of my plan. Now I realise that it must have been sitting in my subconscious mind. Anyhow you will be delighted to hear it is as effective as ever and, may I say, you wicked old drab, that if I had thought of it I will tell you honestly and deeply and from my heart I would have stolen it without a qualm and even, if possible, have pretended that you all got the idea from me first … so there. In Conversation Piece it is actually slightly better than in As Thousands Cheer, because I use the silences in order to allow dialogue to be heard … also, instead of doing it once, I do it over and over and over again until the audiences go mad with irritation.
Any more nonsense from you and I shall not only kill myself but Rockefeller, Ghandi [Gandhi] and all the Mdvani brothers and then where will your show be? In the meanwhile perhaps you would write me a letter saying you love me very much and telling me about your life from A to Z.
Goody Goody
NOËL
In the April letter to Woollcott he also found time to bring him up to date on matters more domestic:
Dearest Ackie-Weezer,
I said to myself, I said, Ackie is getting old and weary so I will write him a letter just to cheer him up and when he is sitting over the fire in the evening, dreaming of Edna Ferber and days that are no more, he will be able to take it out (the letter, I mean) and look at it.
We are all very cosy and happy, all meaning Lynn and Alfred and Jack and me, and we intend to produce a whole lot of beautiful plays with lovely messages for the World and it's all highly delicious. Gladys has had her appendix out and Jeffrey keeps on flying possees of disgruntled old ladies backwards and forwards to and from Le Touquet.
Lorn is looking very pretty but faintly silly; she is still in love with you and constantly slavers over a rubber doll which she thinks looks like you.
Father became suddenly ill and nearly joined the feathered choir, but was reclaimed by several expensive nurses and lots of oxygen tubes. Mother is in Monte Carlo and Auntie Vida is in Madeira, having quarrelled with Mother, so everything is dandy.
Showing off his French soon began to pall, and Noël was soon happy to hand over Paul to a real Frenchman, Pierre Fresnay, later to become Yvonne's next husband. Besides, he had other things on his mind.
One of them was to leave Cochran's management to set up on his own— or, rather, with friends. Transatlantic Productions would have four principals: Noël, Alfred, Lynn, and … Jack Wilson.
Noël wrote to break the news to Cochran:
April 9th My
Dear Cocky,
If you were a less understanding or generous person this letter would be very difficult to write; as it is, however, I feel you will appreciate my motives completely and without prejudice.
I have decided after mature consideration to present my own and other people's plays in the future in partnership with Jack. This actually has been brewing in my mind over a period of years, and I am
writing to you first in confidence because I want you to understand that there would be no question of forsaking you or breaking our tremendously happy and successful association for any other reason except that I feel this is an inevitable development of my career in the theatre.
Particularly I want you to realise how deeply grateful I am for all the generosity and courage and friendship you have shown me over everything we have done together … but above all, dear Cocky, I want to insist upon one important fact which, sentimental as it may seem, is on my part sincere, and that is that without your encouragement and faith in me and my work it is unlikely that I should ever have reached the position I now hold in the theatre, and that whatever may happen in the future I feel that there is a personal bond between us which has nothing to do with business or finance or production. Please understand all this and continue to give me the benefit of your invaluable friendship.
Yours affectionately,
NOËL
There was something of a hiatus before Cochran replied:
My dear Noël,
Many thanks for your letter of the 9th inst., which was found this morning under my bed, very much chewed up by my dachshund.
As you say, the development you refer to was inevitable, and I wish you and your associates the best of good fortune. Meanwhile, believe me,
Yours as ever,
CBC
Having gone to the trouble of being emollient, Noël was somewhat put out by what he considered Cochran's dismissive reply. It was only with the perspective of time that it became clear that none of his post-Cochran musicals would enjoy the same degree of success as the shows of that illustrious decade.