by Noel Coward
Hold on to everything because I think I shall be coming home for a couple of nights. Promise not to break down when you meet me at the station, you will notice many great changes in me. To begin with I have barely any nose at all owing to having picked it away and my eyes look terribly haunted and tired after all the horrors I've seen.
I have had a series of rather depressed letters from the Baybay [Jack Wilson]. Do try and cheer him up. He seems to be taking the war too big, if you know what I mean.
I am doing my own job very well apparently and everything is going down like anything and my French is getting worse and worse with every day that passes … I entertain nightly the highest officials to the nastiest dinners and my success passes all bounds.
Love and kisses
Germaine de Stael
It's a strange life and oh dear, what material for a writer!!
To Violet:
September 26th
Everything is getting more into a routine now. I get to the office every morning at 9 o'clock and then all hell breaks loose until we get our dispatches and reports done to catch the bag which leaves at 11:30. Fortunately we have now been given a boy scout who runs about Paris for us, so our legs and our time is saved.
I think after all I shall have to have a uniform of some sort and until this is approved by the authorities it's no good my coming over, as I must have it made by my own tailor and have it ready to fit when I arrive. It will, I think, be Naval!
Keep out of London the moment War really starts.
To Gladys:
October 25 th
Well, Cock,
I haven't heard a peep out of you lately so I thought I'd just drop a line to remind you that I am in dire distress, having a cold and wind, to say nothing of the exhaustion following on the dashing visit of my Chief who whistled through Paris France like a dose of salts and left various articles of clothing in all directions.
The whole thing is expanding like mad, if you know what I mean, and it won't be long now before you will see my face on the French coinage.
I am, needless to say, entranced with the goings on in England. I was particularly touched by the House of Commons cheering the U-Boat Commander who sunk the Royal Oak and drowned eight hundred of our sailors. I think gentlemanly behaviour is really very important particularly at a moment like this when those vulgar Germans are so terribly lacking in decency. I'm furious with them, I really am.
I dined last Sunday evening at [interior decorator] Elsie Mendl's with the Windsors and [journalist] Godfrey Winn and it was all very glamorous. Godfrey Winn thinks our Air Force is simply marvellous and very very brave indeed and the French Army is very brave too and filled with a wonderful sort of spirit which after all is very important and a sort of touching united quality which is very important too. The Duke of Windsor thinks the German spirit is very important because they are awfully dogged and capable of really surprising endurance in the face of practically anything, which is very important.
You will gather from the above that the conversation was of a distinction formidable,
I had a large envelope from the Lunts in Washington with no letter inside it but all the latest notices of The Taming of the Shrew, I had a long letter from John Gielgud saying that he is quite all right and that Edith Evans is quite all right and that there is a possibility of Michel St. Denis [Saint-Denis] being quite all right too and so that's all right.
I am having daily lessons in French from a sweet old girl who has been in love with [Louis] Jouvet [the actor] for twenty years and I am making well the progress and can say a lot of very important things.
I haven't any other news whatsoever. Actually, of course, I have a lot of very secret information, because I am very mysterious and doing a very important job for my country but you couldn't expect me to tell you anything because you are so garrulous.
Keep a brave heart and look to the future for sweet bugger all.
Love and Kisses
Charlemagne
To Violet:
November 9th I've just got back from three days up at British Army Headquarters … I walked about on Vimy Ridge and looked at all the remains of the last war and the whole thing seems very pointless and futile but when countries have bad diplomats and worse politicians these catastrophes are inevitable.
Before too long the whole enterprise came to have an amateur, school-boyish air about it that rubbed off on Noël. One can picture him having read the day's mail (“Most Secret, Confidential and Dull”) and increasingly frustrated that he could not get on with his real work. Other men would have filled the idle hours with crossword puzzles or the flying of paper aeroplanes. Noël's mind took to verse, and he wrote to and about anyone and everyone in a series of verse letters. (Cole Lesley would recall that in later years Noël would “re-read these letter-poems so often with reminiscent pleasure!”)
There would be letters to the Coward “family” and to Lorn in particular. In October he writes to her on British embassy stationery:
Lornie, whose undying love
Pursues me to this foreign clime,
Please note from the address above
That master is not wasting time
In pinching all that he can see
From His Britannic Majesty,
Master regrets he has no news
To gladden Lornie's loving heart.
Hitler's still beastly to the Jews
And still the battle does not start,
Kindly inform my ageing
Mum That I am reasonably bright
Working for peace and joy to come
By giving dinners every night.
Give her my love and also Joyce,
Thus echoing your master's voice.
And as for you, my little dear,
Please rest assured of my intense
And most devoted and sincere
And most distinguished compliments,
And if you do not care a bit
You know what you can do with it!
October 28th
Pretty Pretty Pretty horn,
Timid as a hunted faun,
This engaging little rhyme
Merely serves to pass the time,
Tho’ my hands with cold are numb
Give my love to dear old Mum,
Also it would make me glad
Now that dear Almina's mad—
If you shut her up alone
Where there was no telephone.
Dear Virginia Vernon's here
In my hair and in my ear.
Hoytie Wiborg too still sits
Drinking deeply in the Ritz,
And I've heard from Giraudoux
That he's sick to death of you,
Reynaud on the other hand
Thinks you're absolutely grand,
Which will prove most sinister
Should he be Prime Minister,
Gamelin and Ironside
Puff and blow and burst with pride
For I sent a carrier dove
Saying horn had sent her love.
In this first strange year of the “phoney war,” more domestic concerns would occasionally intrude, especially when they had their roots in America, which was three thousand physical miles removed, and a great deal more than that emotionally, for many Americans.
Noël had sent the Lunts a copy of Present Laughter hoping they might play it in the United States, but, perhaps with Point Valaine still fresh in memory—or perhaps it was the fact that the play would have a show-stopping part for Alfred but a relatively supporting one for Lynn:
Technical High School Auditorium, Omaha, Nebraska
October 22nd, 1939
Darling, darling,
Our first instinct was to ask you to make a few alterations, so that the play would be more suitable for both of us, then go ahead and do it, knowing that we would have a big hit on our hands, and that we would be doing Noly's play, all of which would make us very happy; then we thought of how long we have held out, tu
rning down one obvious Lunt-Fontanne vehicle after another, in order not to be stuck with that kind of thing forever, and so we decided that we will not do a new play until something exciting, dramatic, and on the serious side comes along, I know the Sea Gull [their 1938 production] was serious and God knows too, but we only played it for five weeks in New York preparatory to leaving and doing Amphitryon in London.
I would not bother you with these trivialities while you are in the middle of a war, except that I do want you to thoroughly understand why we do not want to do your play and also, we feel that it is such a comedy classic and a sure fire hit, not difficult to cast, really. Meanwhile, believe it or not, we are whoopsing across the country with The Taming of the Shrew, and so far (we are in the first three weeks), playing to capacity business …
We think of you all the time, and now that the big offensive has begun, with a certain amount of anxiety, although we hope you are fairly safe. What we wouldn't give for a little heart to heart talk.
Next week we shall be in St. Louis at the same hotel, in the same rooms exactly that we saw you last and the war that we talked of then is now an accomplished fact, although, I still feel as if I am dreaming. We are keeping our thumbs crossed all the time about the repeal of the embargo. [America was neutral and officially unable to send materials to the United Kingdom.] Even if they don't repeal it, there will be factories set up in Canada and everything will be all right, although not so quick or convenient.
Since I began this letter Turkey has signed her pact with England and we are so excited and happy about it. Now Mussolini, then Russia and next America, then we will have the bugger [Hitler] cornered. I don't think he is any too sure of Russia by the quick way he hastened to ratify the pact, as soon as he heard of Turkey, and well he mightn't.
I expect you will be far too busy to wade through as far as this, but I have written while making-up every night and it has given me a nice cozy feeling of talking to you.
Au revoir, my sweet. If you want me to go on writing these rather ponderous letters and they don't bore you, let me know and I will, because there is one good thing about them, you won't have to answer them.
Love, love, love darling from us both ever your,
LYNNIE
IN EARLY NOVEMBER he heard that his old friend playwright, painter, novelist Clemence Dane (Winifred Ashton) had slipped and fallen in the blackout:
Saturday, November 4th
Why did you fall, Winnie?
Why did you fall?
Were you just drunk, dear,
Or not drunk at all?
Were you preoccupied?
Were you in doubt?
Or were you merely Just bashing about?
Were you too early,
Or were you too late?
Were you in full
Conversational Spate?
Where was dear Olwen [Davies, her secretary],
And what was she at?
Letting you hiccup
And stumble like that!
What were you thinking of,
Was it a plot?
Was it a painting,
A sculpture, or what?
Was that which caused you
To fall in the street
Something unpleasant
Or charming or sweet?
What was the cause
Of this fall down the drain?
Was it some quirk
In your functional brain?
Was it your strange
Intellectual strength
heading you sadly
To measure your length?
Once and for all, darling,
Once and for all
Why did you fall, Winnie?
Why did you fall?
(COMPOSED AND TYPED PERSONALLY BY NOËL COWARD AMID THE HORRORS OF WAR IN PARIS 19 5 9)
“REPLY, REPLY”
(SEE SHAKESPEARE, MERCHANT OF VENICE)
Noël! A string-and-scissors mind,
One with, and to officialdom cemented,
Ignobly, though bi-lingually, contented
With the Parisian grind,
Cannot conceive how mysticals like me
Can trip it on a lea!
It was economy
That caused the smash—
The old desire for sausages-and-mash
At Bow Street, in a bar
Where once our virgins raised a nunnery
And now policemen are.
Clemence Dane (Winifred Ashton) (1888-1965). Dramatist, novelist, artist, sculptor, friend, and—second only to John Gielgud—incomparable dropper of verbal bricks.
Thither I sped to eat;
But, as I made my way down Floral Street,
(a pleasant touch
for one to whom the meanest flower that blows
Does mean so much!)
In the black heavens arose
Balloons,
Those oblong, argent, artificial moons,
And lolloped o'er the sky
Ever so high!
I thought they looked a treat,
So, carelessly, as Olwen trolloped by
I pointed out each separate silken blob.
I carolled: “Aren't they neat?
Sheer poetry of motion!
They rhyme, they lilt, they scan!”
I did not watch my feet.
I had no notion
They did not know their job.
I trusted them: they failed me: and I fell,
Hurting myself like hell!
Oh—what a fall was there, my countrymen!
CLEMENCE DANE
Occasionally Noël would be able to get a seat back to England on an official plane, although he could never be sure until the last minute. Sometimes the war got in the way:
TO LORN
Monday, November 20th
Because of vast political intrigues
I cannot yet my fond Mama embrace
Nor traverse those uncompromising leagues
To see your pallid and unchanging face
Because of vast political intrigues.
Because of sinister, far-reaching plots
And desperate excursions and alarms
I must forego those twin forget-me-nots
Men call your eyes; I must forego your charm
Because of sinister, far-reaching plots.
Because of secret work that must be done
I may not hear your loving, heavy tread
Nor see, caught by the early morning sun,
Your shining dentures looming o'er my bed
Because of secret work that must be done.
Because of my unconscionable task
I cannot yet come whirling through the air
Nor yet of Destiny politely ask
To lose myself in your three strands of hair
Because of my unconscionable task.
Next week end is pretty certain anyhow!
On Christmas Eve his Christmas card to Lorn was another verse letter:
Dearest sympathetic lovely
Lorn Very many years ago tomorrow
Jesus Christ was definitely born
Into this unpleasant vale of sorrow.
Unpremeditated, this event
Caused a pretty fair amount of chatter, hater years
He adequately spent
Wresting with mind; disowning matter
Breathing new life into the newly dead,
Juggling with loaves and little fishes,
Walking on the water (it is said Contrary to many people's wishes!)
Working several miracles a week,
Making an enormous lot of speeches;
Telling the conceited to be meek;
Contemplating God on lonely beaches;
Urging local prostitutes to pray;
Blackguardly the rich and aged fossils;
Emphasising every seventh day;
Eating rubber rolls with His apostles
All of this with amiable intent
Hoping against hope
the human being
Might succeed in being more content
Not by far, but just by further seeing.
To pursue this story to its end
Might show lack of taste—I'm sure you'd hate it.
Must we watch the human star descend?
“What the hell,” we cry,
“Why celebrate it?”
None the less, in spite of and because
I, with others, must obey convention,
Making in my busy life, a pause
Long enough, my darling Lorn, to mention
That I hope this gay and festive time (Tho’ I fear, without apparent reason)
Might be gladdened by my little rhyme.
Bringing comps of this delightful season.
To Gladys he was in a less flippant mood. Once again his equivocal attitude toward organized religion comes over loud and clear:
WITH ALL BEST WISHES FOR A MERRY CHRISTMAS. 1939
Back to the nursery. Back to the nursery.
Let us enjoy this sublime anniversary
Full nineteen hundred and thirty-nine years
Let us forget the despair and the tears
Let us ignore all the slaughter and danger
(Think of the Manger! Remember the Manger!)
Let us envisage the star in the East
(Man is a murderer! Man is a beast!)
Let us forget that the moment is sinister
Let us uphold our devout Foreign Minister
Let us not prattle of Simon or Hoare
Or Mr, Chamberlain's diffident war.
Let us not speak of Belisha or Burgin
(Think of the Virgin! Remember the Virgin!)
Let us from ridicule turn to divinity
(Think of the Trinity! Think of the Trinity!)
Now as our day of rejoicing begins
(Never mind Poland—Abandon the Finns)
Lift up your voices “Long Live Christianity!”
(Cruelty, sadism, blood and insanity)
So that the Word across carnage is hurled
God's in his Heaven, all's right with the world!
The correspondence to the “family” continued intermittently throughout the war, even when news was thin on the home ground. Winnie herself was anxious to contribute to the war effort, over and above her writing, but, like so many older women, was frustrated by finding herself confined to menial tasks. These, for her, were just as much “the perils of war” as the Blitz.