Mid-Autumn Books
Knight errant
Simon Raven
The Life ot Noel Coward Cole Lesley (Jonathan Cape £7.50)
If, as they say, you can tell about a man from his friends, you can tell at least as much about him from his enemies. During the first half of Cole Lesley's new Life of Noel Coward it becomes clear that the late Sir Noel detested (among not very many others) Hannen Swaffer, the first Lord Beaverbrook, and His Majesty King Edward VIII: Swaffer, because he was a vulgar, prying nuisance; Beaverbrook, because he pandered to and exploited the envy, stupidity and bigotry of the common man; Edward VIII, becaCase he betrayed his family, and indeed all of us, by deserting his post and then Whining that he did it for love.
Coward's distaste for this trio is instructive. We immediately infer that he himself valued the things which they did not : the Civility and restraint which were alien to Swaffer, the pithy candour (as opposed to suburban golf club rant) which was eschewed by Beaverbrook, and the sense of loyalty, to kin, kind and country, of which Edward ,VIII was wholly devoid. We might further Infer, and on Cole Lesley's showing we should not be wrong, that Sir Noel was open-minded, open-hearted, open-handed, °Pen-eyed, open-eared and open-mouthed the latter, it has to be said, in every sense: in the purely physical sense (see some of the fascinating photographs in this volume), in the pejorative (high words and indiscretions abound), and in the benignant (few men were less grudging of praise).
The story which Mr Lesley has to tell is broadly known to all of us. The infant
Prowgy-.
who was taken up by high society;
the actor and playwright of apparently effortless amateur elegance which was only achieved by ruthless professional diligence; he idol of the 'thirties; the scapegoat of the forties. At which stage we might pause to fObserve that Coward was an obvious target °I' egalitarians, busybodies, demagogues, Duritans, authoritarians and denigrators both of pleasure and of merit, wherever these might lurk. The war and its aftermath With them the excuse they needed to emerge. Purpose their nasty catchphrases about the mill.rPose and conduct of `the people's war', directed the drivelling malice which they against 'the old school tie gang who are out to hog your peace', they were easily Purveyor to represent Coward as the over-paid prrv.eyor of decadent pleasure to the redivileged few. He wasn't Tommy Trinder, u, °lent of cup-ties and whelks, or Jack Zrner, gruffly concerned to comfort the iiA;11-trodden; he was the friend (and hirei;the entertainer (and parasite) of 'them'.
The time-serving critics, eager to make their numbers as 'committed' supporters of the proletariat (a role undeniably the most fashionable in the short run and perhaps the safest in the long) joined in with a will; even In Which We Serve, much applauded when it first appeared, was a little later used as a weapon against Coward and a doubleedged one at that: for in the first place, it was charged, what a sickening pretence it was on the part of the effete Mr Coward, with his silk dressing gowns and liqueur chocolates, to pose as a Captain of the Royal Navy; and in the second place, if he had by any chance got the part right, then he was a bloody chauvinist officer-pig.
The courage and good humour, the professional and personal resilience with which Mr Coward battled on during this period, are effectively 'under-produced' by Mr Lesley—who does not, however, trouble to disguise his glee when recounting how the levellers and austerity-mongers were at last rejected by a population sick to death of moral and social cant and now eager to be amused once more by Coward instead of preached at interminably by Cripps. The rest of the story is quietly triumphant : the revival of Coward's fortunes and reputation in the placid and tolerant 'fifties; his smooth survival, though the climate was again turning sour, as Grand Old Man through the 'sixties; his investiture, surely long overdue, as knight bachelor in 1970; and his timely death in Jamaica soon afterwards, while Grand Old Men and Knights Bachelor were still (if only just) honoured for their talents and their qualities.
An old-fashioned success story, then, about a funnY, amiable and thoroughly decent man, with enough 'ups' and 'downs' to add drama, occasionally melodrama. What does Cole Lesley make of it ?
At the beginning, when describing the years before he knew Coward, Mr Lesley presents us with a frothy stream of anecdote and theatrical gossip. There is no attempt, at this stage, to analyse Coward as boy or young man, to consider the gifts which advanced his cal eer or to assess the manner in which he applied them. Until 1936, when Mr Lesley joined Coward (first as servant, later as companion, finally as friend and secretary), the narrative is just gush. However, as soon as the author himself appears on the scene, there is a serious improvement. Mr Lesley, while he does not obtrude his own person, makes it clear by his demeanour that he was au lair both with Coward's private life and public progress, and with what kept him ticking throughout both.
Mr Lesley does not tell us all he knows of Coward the man, nor does he know any
thing worth telling (other than the commercial problems) of Coward the artist ; but he is at some pains to deal very fairly with us on a practical and commonplace level. He is good on Coward's money and agents, domestic preferences, modes of travel, devices for coping with bores and spongers, and his unfortunate tendency to assume that geese ('or even lame ducks') were swans until the opposite was clearly and often calamitously proven. Resolutely reticent about 'the Master's' love life, he nevertheless and very pertinently reveals that Coward hated being in love because it humiliated him, made him lose control of himself, and sometimes goaded him into acts of cruelty the guilty horror of which lingered for years afterwards. Mr Lesley's picture of Coward contra rnunduni in the 'forties, and his marshalling of the financial, political and theatrical factors which then threatened Coward or assisted him, are in my view very workmanlike (despite too many nasty clichés); his descriptions of Coward's friendships and show-biz alliances are concrete, if a little too anxious to smooth over unpleasantness; and his portraits of some of the supporting cast are pleasantly rendered. His style is breathless, but somehow he manages not to expire altogether; his sense of humour is pawky, but he gets the emphasis right in comic stories. As a day to day record, though not as a biography proper and still less as a critical study, the thing will do well enough.
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