The Letters of Noel Coward

by Noel Coward

  Irene Worth, Noël, and Lilli Palmer in Come into the Garden, Maud, a play in the sequence Suite in Three Keys (1966). It would be Noël's last appearance on any stage.

  Carlotta Gray (Lilli Palmer) and Hugo Latymer (Noël) in A Song at Twilight (1966).

  What emerged was A Song at Twilight. The moment he had finished the first draft, he sent it off to Lorn posthaste:

  March 30th 1965

  Here, my darling, is my new play. I think and hope you will like it. I think it's quite a rouser. It is actually the first of my “Hotel Suite” series. I would like to play it myself with possibly Maggie Leighton and Irene Worth or Irene Worth and Wendy Hiller, or Maggie Leighton and Celia [Johnson].”

  The idea for the play had been at the back of his mind for some time, inspired by an incident recounted in Max, Lord David Cecil's biography of Max Beerbohm. Beerbohm in old age was visited by a former lover, the over-vivacious actress Constance Collier. The occasion was humorously embarrassing in real life, but in turning it into drama, Noël admitted to his Diaries, “My play is more sinister, and there is Maugham in it as well as Max.”

  In Maugham's later years Noël had come to see his less likable side— such as his failed attempt to disown his daughter, Liza, and adopt his lover/companion Alan Searle [Gerald Haxton's successor] as his legal heir. By the time Maugham died that same year, Noël had come to refer to him as that “scaly old crocodile.”

  When Emlyn Williams came to see the play, he wrote mischievously to Noël that he was “trying to spread the rumour that [it] was based entirely on J. B. Priestley, but little luck so far!”

  The twist on the original anecdote that Noël provided was to make his leading character, the writer Sir Hugo Latymer, a closet homosexual. The visit of his former lover threatens to expose a secret he imagined was long since safe from discovery.

  And, of course, what adds to the intrinsic interest of the play itself is that it was the one and only time that Noël dealt overtly with the subject of homosexuality. To the end of his life—even when the social climate had become more permissive—he remained firmly private in his private life, a decision that one wishes today's gay community would honor.

  In April he turned to the second play, a comedy called Come into the Garden, Maud, Naturally he reports to Lynn and Alfred:

  October 3rd, 1965

  My Darlings,

  This is a brief outline of my immediate plans on account of I feel you should be kept IN THE KNOW about everything that happens to your wandering boy.

  I have finished my three plays, one full length one and two one hour ones, to be played on alternate nights. They all take place in one set which is a suite in the Beau Rivage Hotel, Lausanne and they only have three characters and an Italian waiter in each play.

  I really do think the plays are good. Binkie is mad about them. I start rehearsing here on January 16th for two weeks. Then London for two weeks on the stage, then Dublin—February 21st for three weeks, then London March 10th with a special preview for our darling Queen Mum on the 7th.

  In the meantime I have had several chins taken away in London by a brilliant plastic surgeon who, unhappily, has since died, so I cannot go back to get rid of the other six. He was a dear man and I now look an old twelve. This, of course, is a dead secret except for Ed [Bigg] whom I've already told and, of course, Louella Parsons.

  The summer, to coin a phrase, has been a “fucker” and we haven't been able to see our hands before our things. (Which we were tired of doing anyway.) I have been whisking about a bit and had a peculiar week on Sam Spiegel's yacht with Burt Lancaster. I also suddenly won a thousand pounds in the Cannes Casino. Several old ladies were trampled to death I was in such a hurry to get out. I NEVER WENT BACK which proves that I have a very, very strong character as well as being beautiful as the day.

  Coley sends you all sorts of love, even the love that dare not speak its name.

  Love, love, love love, love

  RABBIT'S BOTTOM

  Although the spring and summer turned out to be a productive period, there was to be more sadness. In that same month Clemence Dane, Noël's beloved Winnie, died. A month later, Lornie was told that her cancer had returned, while in July Noël lost Irene Browne, who had played important parts in many of his shows. (“Another dear old friend gone … With all her grumbling and faults, she was a wonderful friend and I shall never forget her.”)

  It was as well he had other work to distract him. As he had written to Gladys: “I'm doing a week's work in a film with Larry [Olivier], directed by Otto Preminger [Bunny Lake Is Missing}. It's a terribly exciting script and a brief but effective part—an elderly drunk, queer masochist! Hurray! That's me all over, Mabel! Lovely lolly, too.”

  By August he had finished the third piece, Shadows of the Evening, and was well content with his achievement in constructing three separate plays all in the same set. (Neil Simon was not to write Plaza Suite until 1968.)

  First there was the question of casting. Irene Worth was soon on board:

  11 East 9th Street

  New York 10003

  May 1st 1965

  Darling, clever Noël,

  Fabulous—I put those plays down with such a feeling of excitement and exhilaration. I can't tell you how much I admire the 1st play—so spare, true, somehow the first play in spite of all the oblique plays that have been skirting the issue—so grown-up, human, vulnerable, touching, very powerful, full of pity for all men, and great dignity. You and Maggie [Margaret Leighton] will be divine in it. And I should love to play the wife.

  And for the second. I think we could be very funny together. Your observation of American speech has not gone unheeded all these years—oh, Heaven preserve us—the only word you've left out is genius … And I already have visions of the voice and that Kitty-in-a-bad-mood snapping like a terrapin, bossing and billowing around with diamonds.

  But, being an ambitious actress, Worth inevitably had a few small caveats:

  I find myself greedy—in one's actor's way—asking for more and you will understand that more than anyone. Do you have plans to balance my part in the weight of the three of us? Or do you intend the season for you and Maggie, as it seems now?

  It's the greatest joy to see you writing roles which ask for versatility and characterizations, such a relief from actors just playing themselves. I believe the plays will be an electric success and of course no one could be more brilliant than you and Maggie. I think she's the most dazzling actress there is today. I couldn't admire her more. Or you. I shall never forget you as King Magnus. How I wish I'd seen you with Gertie and the Lunts.

  Noël, dear, I am deeply touched by your asking me to be in them. I know how high your standards are and therefore it gives me a nice feeling of self-respect for I'm always limping about thinking I'm no good. Thank you from my heart.

  All admiration and love,

  IRENE

  Margaret Leighton, however, dithered interminably. Noël admired her talent and had enjoyed working with her in The Astonished Heart, She had also been a perfect foil to his King Magnus in The Apple Cart, as well as several audio recordings. Nonetheless, he shared the irritated affection many of her colleagues felt for her—a condition that varied by degree according to whom she happened to be married to at the time. At this point she was Mrs. Michael Wilding.

  Mutual friend Terence Rattigan—even then suffering from the cancer that would finally take him off—had painted a typical picture sometime before:

  29 Eaton Square

  London S.W.I.

  July 20th 1963

  Dearest Noël.

  If doctors allow I hope to get to NY for early November, so I shall have a chance to see The Prince [The Girl Who Came to Supper] before your opening—if you think I can be of any help—and, of course, at the opening itself—to which I shall ask Loopy Leighton, if she's available and not in some bin somewhere.

  At the moment she is staying chez moi in Ischia and sounding slightly less loopy than when I saw h
er off at Victoria Station a week ago. (This incident, in itself, gave me a severe relapse.) She had, I think I'm not exaggerating, 36 pieces of luggage with her—she's not allowed tax-wise to come back here for a time—and we arrived five minutes before the Night Ferry was supposed to go. As I wasn't allowed past the barrier, she insisted on having a farewell drink, which had to be champagne, and there is no bar at Victoria where you can get champagne, but Victoria is a big station and, at one minute past take-off time, she was still looking for one, and a hundred frantic officials were looking for her—a fairly conspicuous sight, I grant, but moving at some speed through the crowd and uttering loud cries o£”Fuck the lot of them. Cunts, That's what they are. All cuntsl” I was staggering, grey-faced, I've no doubt, fifty yards behind her. Well, we didn't get our champagne, but she got her train—just—and I went to bed for five days. (That was our beloved Mag's departure from our shores.)

  She's going to do Enid Bagnold's new play [The Chinese Prime Minister] in New York this winter, playing a lady of seventy (you can't stop her, can you—I certainly can't—from playing old ladies when she should be playing beautiful sex-boxes, while she still can). Anyway, it's a nice play—better than Chalk Garden, and Enid Bagnold is my new lover.

  As for me, I'm fairly queer, I grant, but have hopes that I'm not, after all, quite as queer as Dr. Bodly Scott (better known as Dr. Bodkin Adams) thinks I am. Horace Evans feels fairly sure I'm not, anyway, and I have put on half a stone since May by dint of drinking some nauseating baby food, and a Swiss health drink called Rivella— or is that what you wear? …

  Which reminds me—I can't think why—The Daily Mail has a competition on to find the modern equivalent of “Anyone for tennis?” I have it—but won't, I promise you, submit it. It's “Anyone for a swim at Cliveden?” [The stately home that was the setting for the Profumo scandal.]

  Noël reported to Joyce on the state of play:

  Les Avants

  Sur Montreux

  SOUS LE TEMPS

  Sept. 3rd 1965

  I take my electric typewriter in hand to write to my poor darling Doycie who is flogging her way through those ill-favoured provincial towns that we know so well. This will reach you in Birmingham which, you may or may not know, was the birthplace of Miss Margaret Leighton who has lately been much in my mind having made a Royal Charlie of herself. She has frigged about for four months and we've all been beating our breasts wondering whether or not Michael Wilding were or was or could or couldn't come to England. It had actually occurred to me a long time ago that I didn't want that silly mumbling ass anywhere near me, and if it is so necessary for him to be near Maggie, she had better stay out in that sub-acqueous aquarium where she can cook him unsavoury little supper dishes and drag him whimpering and belching to the nightly grind.

  The “comble” ‘ow you say? came when the redoubtable Hugh French (who was excellent as the small waiter in Bittersweet [sic]) sent Binkie a cable graciously agreeing that Michael should come to England but that Maggie couldn't commit herself as she hadn't read and approved the third play! Meanwhile, of course, we had offered the whole proposition to darling Lilli Palmer who accepted immediately, turning down two films in order to do so. I have written to the besotted Maggie explaining, fairly succinctly, the whole situation and it makes me veree veree happee to think of her and Mumbleguts crouching together over their synthetic Hollywood hearth, reading it aloud to each other. The new play [Shadows] really is the best of the three I think. Ask Binkie to let you read it, if he has not already done so. It's a tear jerker but not too much so, I hope. Oh dear, Oh dear, Oh dear what a silly silly girl is Miss Margaret Leighton. Actually, I am very relieved. Lilli is very intelligent, untiresome and a bloody good actress, whereas poor Maggie has, I fear, already become tainted by those awful Hollywood values and probably wouldn't be nearly so nice to work with as she used to be.

  Les Avants

  September 1, 1965

  Dearest Maggie,

  Believe me when I say that writing this letter to you is a good deal more difficult than writing any play, but it has to be done, and so here goes. Perhaps if I explain my point of view it may clarify things a little, for up to now it seems that you have been occupied only with your own. I am the first to understand and sympathize with your situation. I know, as an old friend, that you have been searching for personal happiness for many years and that, having at long last found it, it is natural that you should not wish it to be disturbed by even a limited season. This to me is perfectly fair and comprehensible, if perhaps a trifle exaggerated. What, however, is neither fair nor comprehensible is that you should only agree to appear in my plays if Michael is permitted to come to England with you. This surely is a personal problem between you and Michael and Hugh French? It certainly has nothing whatsoever to do with Binkie, Glen [Byam Shaw, who was the original choice to direct] or me. Personally I am very fond of Michael and would be enchanted to see him at any time, but not as a contractual obligation.

  Over four months ago I told you of this project, which is of immense importance to me, and sent you A Song At Twilight and Come Into the Garden, Maud, You agreed to do them with me, providing certain complications were straightened out. So far so good. Now, after four months of letters, cables and telephone calls, the complications have not been straightened out. Hugh French cables to Binkie graciously permitting Michael to come to London but saying that you will not be able to commit yourself without reading and approving the fourth play. He adds that negotiations can now begin and says something about “adjustments” being made. I cannot quote the cable accurately as when I read the copy Binkie sent me I was so irritated that I tore it up. I have no idea what “adjustments” he had in mind and whether you or Michael or he were going to suggest them. All I do know is that I most strongly resent being treated as though I were a hack writer of movie scripts and that I consider that cable both in tone and content to be bloody impertinent. I also consider that your refusal to commit yourself to doing an unwritten one-act play by me, both pompous and silly. None of the three plays was intended to be a star vehicle for you, Irene Worth or me. They were intended to be three good plays for three first-rate actors to play to the best of their ability.

  When you said in your letter that I had, in the re-written version of A Song At Twilight improved Hildi's part at the expense of Car-lotta's (which was totally inaccurate, as I had not touched the end of the play) I knew, with a sinking heart, that our professional values were sadly at variance. If you had troubled to read the script more intelligently and more impartially, you might have noticed that my own part, out of the three, is the least sympathetic and hardest to play. In fact, dear Maggie, having with admiration and affection asked you to share this fairly exciting theatrical adventure with me, I am both offended and disappointed that your ultimate, possible acceptance should depend on such eccentric and irrelevant conditions. After discussing the situation exhaustively with Glen and Binkie, we all three decided that, all things considered, we should really be better off without you. Whereupon we decided to approach Lilli Palmer. This may sound over-blunt, rude and unkind, but it is the truth. If you choose to place your domestic felicity above your career as an actress, you obviously have a perfect right to do so and, although as a theatre man I strongly disapprove of such a course, as a human being I cannot but sympathize with it, but you really cannot successfully serve two masters, your heart and your profession, and as, for the time being, it is the latter that I am concerned with, I have no intention of embarking on a difficult job with anyone who is liable to give it second place. Nor can I, with three parts to learn, rehearse and play, allow myself to be remotely concerned with anyone's personal emotions over and above the immediate business we are occupied with.

  You have had over four months to make up your mind. It is not yet made up. Neither Binkie, Glen nor I have any more time to waste. Everything has to be finally fixed now before I go off on my travels. Both Irene Worth and Lilli Palmer accepted the offer enthusias
tically and at once without even knowing what the third play was to be about. Happily, as things have turned out, their confidence in me was not misplaced for the third (not the fourth) play is now finished and is considered by all concerned to be the best of the three. I know this looks as though it were intended to be a nasty dig, and perhaps, in a way, it is. I shall always love you, whether you like it or not, although, at the moment my love is slightly tarnished by your lack of consideration of me as a friend and your lack of faith in me as a playwright.

  We shall have to forgive and forget, shan't we?

  xxxxx

  Noël.

  The XXXXX are kisses. If unacceptable they can be regarded as snarls.

  The lady apologized profusely and returned xxxxx's. (“Yours were received most gratefully”)

  •

  IN EARLY OCTOBER Noël set off on his “travels,” and for once he W^J traveling alone. His itinerary was to take him to Cairo, then Bombay, then on to the Seychelles for a month, where he intended to see whether this might be a suitable alternative to Jamaica. From there he would travel to Mombasa and then home, ready to start rehearsals for Suite in Three Keys.

  As always, the journey was well documented to his loved ones, although its outcome was not the usual happy ending:

  To Coley:

  Taj Mahal Hotel

  Bombay

  October 10th 1965

  I arrived here at 8:30 (Bombay time) — 4.30 ours. I had full VIP treatment, on account of the Big Shot of the line being on board. He is a little like a greenish Fritzi Massary to look at, although a good deal younger. He is Unmarried and lives with a Boxer (a doggie, not a pugilist). Anyway, he drives me in style to the hotel in a Mercedes and is inviting me to meet some of his young friends! Oi! Oi! I was whisked through the Customs by a tan-coloured Angel who is coming to have a drink this evening with his “friend”. I have BAD news to impart, however, for the drink will have to be Coca-Cola for this is a DRY state! I have procured a permit to buy ONE bottle of Scotch to last me the week! If only I'd been warned, I could have brought a couple. It's unobtainable today being Sunday! The Injuns are very very silly and Inja is very very dirty but, oh the bliss of being really hot.