The Letters of Noel Coward

by Noel Coward

  I think this is all my news, really. The Governor and his lady are very sweet but so constricted with shyness that conversation is a trifle difficult. One of the A.D.C.'s has carbuncles. There is a sandstorm going on. I am looking fascinating. I love the widow Loraine very, very tenderly. I am also devoted to Divorcee Calthrop, Maidens [Clemence] Dane, Bowen [Olwen] and Carey.

  Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.

  MASTER

  •

  THE SOUTH AFRICAN TOUR was virtually a replica of the Antipodean—major venues alternating with troop concerts, hospital visits, broadcasts, endless meetings both formal and informal. Less of a strain this time, because Noël was now practiced in what was required. The public performances alone netted almost twenty thousand pounds for local war-related charities.

  Early May found him in Bulawayo, Rhodesia. All that now stood between Noël and the trip home were a few last concerts in Nairobi and Mombasa. Then, via Cairo, to London. But just as he was packing to leave, a letter arrived from Mountbatten, now in charge of the war in Southeast Asia:

  SOUTH EAST ASIA COMMAND HEADQUARTERS

  16th February 1944

  My dear Noël,

  I have now been round most of the Burma front where I found our troops in great heart and fighting well.

  The one universal cry is for entertainment and visits from distinguished people. You can judge in what a bad way they are by the fact that the troops were even prepared to listen to me standing on a soap box and talking to them and you can imagine how much sooner they would have heard Mr. N. Coward with a mini-piano singing “Mad Dogs and Englishmen”.

  Joking apart, I am certain that a tour by you would be immensely appreciated out here and if you will let me know whether you can come, and if so between what dates, I will arrange to have a tour laid on for you which would include visits to British and American soldiers and airmen …

  I can assure you that a visit to the Burma front is quite unlike any other experience. The roads which our soldiers have cut through mountainous jungle in the last three or four months are past belief and the conditions under which they work are pretty lousy.

  I am telegraphing to Major General Harrison of my staff who is at present in London to contact you and see whether you would be prepared to come so that he can make the necessary arrangements with you on the spot.

  Yours ever,

  DICKIE

  A trip of this nature would entail traveling extensively through the war zones of Assam and Burma at the height of the monsoon season. It was the last thing Noël needed, but it was a request from a source that, for obvious reasons, he found it impossible to refuse.

  •

  ON MAY 1 6 he sailed for Ceylon on HMS Rapid to help reassure the “Forgotten Army” (the Fourteenth Army) that they were not really forgotten. “I knew he would not have asked me to go unless he had considered it really important.”

  Ceylon, Calcutta (“an authentic foretaste of hell and damnation”), Delhi, Bombay—by now Noël was practiced in handling any kind of audience in any kind of context. Wherever he went there was a retinue of official “minders” to take care of the logistics—not always the easiest of tasks in wartime. Inevitably there were the occasional “lash-ups,” as Noël called them.

  In the eventual thank-you letter, his host recalled that “Your arrangements went well from the time you left Calcutta, except for a short period when you broke loose in your car and charged lamp posts and sea walls in Bombay.”

  The tone was lighthearted; the incident was not. The car Noël was traveling in was broadsided by a Navy lorry and but for a convenient palm tree would almost certainly have crashed through the seawall and into the ocean way below. It was only in the context of what he had seen elsewhere that the accident could be shrugged off.

  For these few weeks he was to crisscross the subcontinent, gaining as he did so an overview of the war denied to the fighting men focused on any one area of it. One day he would be competing for his audience's attention with enemy gunfire in the next valley, another would have him going the rounds of one more hospital visit. There were endless mud-splattered rides in bumpy jeeps. All of it a far cry from the comparative luxury of his earlier tours.

  Through all of it he was accompanied by the imperturbable Norman Hackforth, accompanist become friend, and The Little Treasure, the name he bestowed on the borrowed piano Norman tuned faithfully every single day.

  There were moments that would stay etched in his memory long after the war was over. At Imphal, in Burma, he arrived to join Mountbatten when one of the critical battles of the war was taking place just the other side of the hills. Noël found it hard to summon up his signature sangfroid when the breeze brought the smell of piles of rotting Japanese corpses from a nearby clearing. It was at times like this that it was brought home to any touring entertainer that this was a far different booking from the kind of provincial tour he might have been used to.

  By this time Noël was living on his nerves. His weight—usually about 150 pounds—had dropped to 120.

  Finally he found himself back in Ceylon, where “what I had been dreading for a long time finally happened” and he did collapse. After a brief recuperation at Colombo's Galle Face Hotel, he was put on a plane for home.

  Then came Mountbatten's personal message:

  SOUTH EAST ASIA COMMAND HEADQUARTERS

  29th July, 1944

  My dear Noël,

  Although I thanked you publicly in the presence of my Staff for what you and Norman Hackforth did to entertain the Allied Forces in the South East Asia Command, I feel I must also write a private line to tell you how really deeply grateful I am.

  I realise that it was at great personal inconvenience that you came on to South East Asia from South Africa and that the tour you undertook was terribly strenuous.

  You have the satisfaction of knowing that you are the first British star to have come and entertained our troops at the front, and quite apart from any musical and histrionic merit that your performance may have (and I am not erudite enough to be able to judge!!!) the greatest value your visit will have is to make the men feel that they are not forgotten by the people back home …

  Yours ever,

  DICKIE

  Recollections in comparative tranquillity:

  TO ADMIRAL THE LORD LOUIS MOUNTBATTEN

  It isn't for me

  To bend the knee

  And curtsey and cringe and pander

  Because my JUNIOR happens to be

  A really SUPREME Commander,

  But nevertheless

  I must confess

  Dear Dickie, my stay in Kandy,

  Apart from being a great success

  Has made me feel fine and dandy.

  It's been the peak

  Of a rather bleak

  And perilous undertaking

  To lie in state for nearly a week

  While history's in the making.

  The food we had

  (Though the films were bad)

  Was definitely nutritious

  And nobody but a graceless cad

  Could say it was not delicious.

  The roguish chaff

  Of the Chief of Staff

  On any official question

  While never failing to raise a laugh

  Was dicing with indigestion.

  To joke with glee

  With a C-in-C

  When only a drab civilian

  Could never really happen to me

  Except in the King's Pavilion,

  When all is done

  And the war is won

  How happy these days will seem—0

  I'll shed salt tears for the games and fun

  I shared with the dear SUPREMO

  NOËL COWARD

  BREAD AND BUTTER, CEYLON, JULY 1944

  And in rather more serious vein:

  17 Gerald Road

  S.W.i.

  July 3rd 1945

  My dear Dickie,<
br />
  I have a sudden urge to write to you about nothing in particular and for no especial reason except that your old woman [Mountbatten's wife, Edwina] came and lunched with me the other day and we talked so much of you! She is looking lovely, as usual, and full of energy and vitality and it was a fair treat. I moaned to her rather, because I said that I would always have a slightly guilty conscience about going sick on you in Ceylon. I have a feeling I was much more tiresome than I realised at the time. Actually, of course, I was good and exhausted by South Africa even before I started. I know you understand all that, so I am not going on about it and, though I might have been rather petulant and irritating with you, I do believe, as far as the troops were concerned, that my tour was a success on the whole. I have had several pleasant repercussions from 14th Army men who have come up to me in the street and wrung me by the hand, which comforts me a great deal.

  Edwina says that apart from having had a go of dysentry you are in fine form and rising above everything with your usual resilience. I have heard you twice on the radio … once on VE-day and once on a Naval programme a week or so later. On both occasions you said exactly the right thing in exactly the right way and were brief and to the point and extremely moving.

  I hear rather discouraging reports of Basil Dean's trip to India. He certainly has a genius for antagonising not only the people who work for him but also the fighting men he should be working for. I do wish that earlier in the War we could have got ENSA on a sound working basis run by an efficient committee rather than by one man. He has much in his favour, being both energetic and determined, but he is over jealous of authority and his psychological judgement is nonexistent.

  Dear old Blithe Spirit is still playing to virtual capacity, never having missed a performance in spite of doodle-bugs and V2s since that glamorous Summer evening in 1941 when you came to the opening performance.

  I hope you have by now enjoyed This Happy Breed and Blithe Spirit films; the new one, Brief Encounter, is practically finished and looks jolly nice.

  I often think of those gay cinematic evenings in the King's Pavilion. Take care of yourself, dear Dickie, and go from strength to strength and give my love to anyone who cares for it.

  Yours ever,

  NOËL

  •

  WHILE NOëL WAS TOURING, the Cineguild trio—David Lean, Ronald Neame, and Anthony Havelock-Allan—had been busy filming This Happy Breed, Back in early 1943 Noël had told the Lunts:

  February 1st 1943

  My Film Unit [though it's doubtful if his “little dears,” as he was inclined to call them, saw themselves in that light] is making Happy Breed in Technicolor with Robert Donat and Johnny Mills and it looks as though it might be good …

  The announcement is a little strange, since Donat had politely but firmly turned them down a year earlier:

  2 5 Davies Street

  London W. I

  April 24th 1942

  Dear Noël,

  I've loved reading the play. It's thick with atmosphere and your great gift for conveying essential detail in a line or two gives us a sense of depth and size far beyond the limits of the room we see. But isn't the time past for it? For me, the play fails at the big jump. Right at the end. I don't believe in the things that Frank believes in. He's human and lovable and above all he's adult and I like him enormously— until he tries to justify himself and his kind; then I'm mad with him. Rightly or wrongly, I believe it is just that very political irresponsibility that got us into another war. I don't believe he does know “what we belong to, where we come from, and where we're going”. Until we do know it, with our brains and hearts and souls as well as our roots, we shall go on fighting these bloody wars. Therefore, for me, the whole play crashes at the end. (But I am only a bloody actor.) I'm immensely proud that you even thought of me.

  Yours ever,

  ROBERT

  In the event, the part of Frank Gibbons was played by Robert Newton, whose drinking problem necessitated a special “fine” clause in his contract for every filming day he cost the production. By the time the film was finished Newton had left most of his salary behind.

  Noël continued:

  I am exercising remote control but I want them to get used to doing films without me being actually there. As you will be interested but not be surprised to hear that I loathe the whole Film business as much as I ever did if not more, but never again am I going to sell my plays to the movies without having the whole thing controlled by my own unit.

  Even before he arrived back in England, producer Havelock-Allan is bringing him up to date on the distribution complexities that del Guidice (now Two Cities Films) has involved them in:

  ANTHONY HAVELOCK-ALLAN

  DENHAM 2345

  BUCKS

  26th April 1944

  My dear Father,

  I might have saved you the boredom of my letter about distribution because within ten days of my sending it, for some quid pro connection with Two Cities’ future plans which has not yet emerged, Fil-ippo had a complete change of heart and has embraced Eagle-Lion and all its works with passionate fervour. In future all Two Cities pictures will be distributed by Eagle-Lion, not only here, but in the rest of the world. It is all a little bewildering but in the best Neapolitan tradition, and only needs a little music by Rossini. However, it leaves me with an uncomfortable feeling of having treated with owlish solemnity a gay farrago which only concerned the fate of an important film and rather more than £20,000.

  So far Happiers [This Happy Breed} has only been seen by a few people apart from the pre-view audience, but a tremendous enthusiasm seems to be building up for it. It went to Chequers last weekend by special request, and the comment that came back after the showing was, “A very fine film—thoroughly enjoyed it”. It opens in London on Whit Sunday evening, May 28th, and the special benefit performance for the Actors’ Orphanage will take place on June 1st. I imagine there is a reasonable chance of your being back in this country by then if you are not already on the Road to Mandalay.

  There has been considerable labour unrest in the Studio for some time, culminating about five weeks ago in a ban from the Unions on working overtime, coupled with a policy of non-cooperation. This has slowed down progress to a snail's pace and depressed us all a very great deal. Just at the moment making pictures seems to get steadily more and more difficult, unenthusiastic and expensive, which is a great pity, since we have for the first time a golden opportunity of securing on merit our fair share of the world's screen time, which is important both economically and politically.

  I have already told you in my cable about the Trade show success of “Happiers,” and the excellence of the Trade notices. Although nobody seems to have rumbled Bobby Newton, at least the majority have the grace to like his performance less than those of the other principals.

  We sent a birthday telegram to your Mother, and David got a very sweet and very gay letter back. She wrote from North Wales about which her only complaint was that country life was turning her into a cabbage! When she returns to London she is coming down to the Studio to see This Happy Breed,

  I don't know what the war of second front nerves is doing to the Germans, but I can tell you of one Home Guard whose equipment whenever he puts it on makes a noise like castanets.

  Much love from us all,

  TONY

  Meanwhile, Noël's “Film Unit” had finished filming Blithe Spirit, and Noël turned his mind and hand to adapting Still Life, one of the plays in the Tonight at 8:30 set, for the screen. It would become Brief Encounter and would be, along with In Which We Serve, one of the two films by which he is likely to be remembered.

  In November he, as he put it, “dismounted graciously from my high horse” and agreed to perform for ENSA in Paris and Brussels. To see Paris again he found a slightly unsettling experience. Although the lights were bright and the boulevards bustling, he had a sense that the city somehow didn't want to meet one's eyes. In four years too many things had happened there o
f which it was too ashamed to speak.

  He soon gave up inquiring which of his friends had been collaborators with the Germans, as everyone had contradictory, self-exculpatory versions and it merely “confirmed my belief that worse things than bombardments can happen to civilians in wartime.”

  He did have news of his Paris apartment before he left, though he does not record having visited it while he was there. The news came from an unlikely source. On the Brittanic to New York back in 1940 he had run across “a man whom I had known slightly before called Ingram Fraser.” Fraser turned out to be another of Little Bill's “boys,” and their paths clearly crossed more than once in future, though Noël never refers to him again. In Future Indefinite, Noël insists that it was Fraser who introduced him to Little Bill in New York, though later accounts—as we have seen— suggest otherwise. He refers to his “casual acquaintanceship” with Fraser, though the tone and detailed content of Fraser's letter that September rather beg that question:

  21 st September 1944

  My Cabbage, my old—

  This will be a straightforward letter, without frills. Of frills and chichi, impressions, incidents, anecdotes, there are many, too many for writing. They will have to wait until we meet. This may be quite soon, so reserve an evening.

  Now, the flat. I visited it. The concierge nearly fell on my neck. The place has been occupied by what must have been a particularly unpleasant pair of Gestapo hounds, never properly house-broken. The filth is indescribable, but I think it is more surface than anything else. The chief victims are the carpets, notably in the dining room, which bear an historical record of the gastronomic, alcoholic—and I much regret the coarseness—purely colic history of the inhabitants during a twelvemonth. C'etaient des salauds, et plus que qa. There are too some remarkable stains on the bed, notably on the brown satin headboard, which, if my deductions are correct, are a remarkable commentary on the acrobatic agility of the occupants.