A Spectator's Notebook

The pre-London fanfares of publicity are in full blast for Cockie, a musical based on the career of the late Sir Charles B. Cochran.

"Magnificent singers! Wonderful dancers! Stunning costumes! Unforgettable music!" This is what we are.told to expect. And the on 'lit is that anybody who ever had the remotest connection with the maestro has been consulted in order to ensure the accuracy of the Portrait. If this is the case I am frankly Puzzled that no one thought it worthwhile ringing me up, for my connection with Cockie' was far from remote. My most revealing memory of him is set in Blackpool on the morning after the premiere of a revue of which I had written the greater part of the book and the lyrics, and some of the music. Although it later ran for a year at the London' Pavilion, the notices were appalling. Never, Proclaimed the critics, had such a tasteless, tuneless, witless production disgraced the boards.

I was sitting up in bed, filled with gloom, studying these opinions, when there was a ,knock on the door. Enter 'Cockie,' in a dressing gown of scarlet velvet. "Reading the notices?" Near to tears, I began to stammer that I'd let him down, that I wouldn't even enter the theatre again, that I couldn't look the company in the face . . . He made no answer. Instead he handed me a slip of paper on which he has typed a brief message. " I thought I'd better get your approval of this announcement before I release it to the Press this morning."

I took the paper and this was what I read:

"Mr C. B. Cochran wishes to state that he is 80 delighted with the Beverley Nichols review, currently running at the -Theatre, that he has today commissioned Mr Nichols to Write the Cochran revue for next year."_

Never a word of reproach. Never a suggestion that there might be something Wrong — and there was, indeed, a great deal, wrong, though eventually we managed to put it right. Nothing but total loyalty to his artists, which is why he commanded such total loyalty to himself.

'Cockie' was, of course, a master of Publicity, and it may be worth recording that in his opinion the secret of all successful Publicity lay in. the fact that it must be true.

Here are two examples. One day, during rehearsal, one of the chorus girls, who were known as Mr Cochran's Young Ladies, fainted on stage. He came up to see what was the matter. and discovered that the reason for her collapse was that she had not had a square meal for days. Like most of the other young ladies she was on one of the drastic slimming diets which were fashionable in those days. This was too much for 'Cockle.' Fashion or no fashion, he was not having that sort of thing. He promptly went round to a neigh bouring restaurant, booked a table for twelve, for the run of the show, and ordered twelve large steaks to be provided every day, instructing the headwaiter that the young ladies were not to be allowed to leave the table until the steaks were well and truly inside them. And the bill, of course, was on him.

Bird to lunch

The other story concerns a sparrow. .1 was lunching with him one day in Montagu Street, to meet a young South American star of quite exceptional allurement. But the star had a competitor ... a small, scruffy London sparrow, which had perched on her shoulder when she was sitting on a bench in Hyde Park and — quite understandably — refused to go away. So she had brought the sparrow to luncheon and here it was among us, sliding over the polished table, squeaking, perching on wine-glasses, and occasionally — if we must be frank — misbehaving itself.

"This," I said to 'Cockie,' "is a most marvellous story. We ought to have a photographer." He shook his head.

"But isn't it a natural? The beautiful homesick girl, the little Cockney sparrow? Hasn't it got everything?" Another shake of the head. And a pronouncement which all publicity agents would do well to remember. "If a story is to

have any value," said 'Cockie,' "it must not only be true, but be seen to be true. And

though this story is true, nobody would believe it. Which is why it will never be published." Well, at long last it has been published, and it is true, and I hope that the kindly ghost of a great showman will forgive roe for recalling it.

'Scandalous' loves

The book of the,moment, it seems, is still Portrait of a Marriage, and in my somewhat conservative circles there are fierce arguments as to whether it should have ever have been published at all. Of course it should have been published. Apart from the fact that Vita obviously wrote with an eye to posterity (she always hated the thought of wasting a manuscript), the book is one of the most moving of all the love stories in the catalogue of 'deviant' literature, and it has been edited with exquisite tact and tenderness.

God only knows what would have happened if it had appeared today. I am old

enough to remember the mob hysteria which greeted The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall, after it had been attacked in a Sunday paper by an unctuous journalist called.James Douglas, who stated in all seriousness that it would be better if parents gave their daughters a vial of prussic acid rather than permit them to open this poisonous volume.

Although Radclyffe Hall was a friend of mine I must admit that she did rather ask for it. She was a difficult person to champion, not for what she was, but for what she looked like. In an era of ultra-femininity she cut her grey hair very short, sported a Napoleonic cape and a Regency stock, and had a habit of standing in front of fireplaces, bending her knees like a policeman. She was a great first-fighter and whenever I saw her striding briskly towards me I used to beat a hasty retreat to the gentleman's lavatory to which, by an unfortunate freak of nature, she was denied admission.

Have you ever read The Well of Loneliness? You should. Not for kicks, but in order to appreciate the fantastic change which time has wrought in contemporary attitudes. I was rather intimately concerned in the affair and can therefore state with authority that the core of the book's offence was contained in a sentence of seven words. The sentence comes at the end of a chapter where the heroine and her friend have been walking about in a field at dusk, babbling interminably, like two rather itchy girl guides. Night falls, they go indoors, they retire. Then comes the fatal sentence. Hold it ...

'And that night they were not divided."

Because of those seven words bishops fulminated, acres of abuse poured from the national presses, fortunes were made by the lawyers. And the book, of course, was banned, though it was later to appear in the shadier quarters of Soho, discreetly tucked away behind piles of rubber appliances and French treatises on the niceties of flagellation.

Nature note

On the pardonable assumption that there may be some gardeners among the readers of this diary, may I suggest that they take a walk across Ham Common, where they will see, outside the gate of a modest cottage, a glint of gold. (If the weather holds.) This gold, lucent

'and glistening, comes from a cluster of the rare Sternbergea lutea, and why it should be

so rare I cannot imagine, because it could not be easier to grow, if you know how. It is sometimes called the winter daffodil, but it bears no relation to the daffodil, botanically or. structurally. Winter flowers have always been one of my obsessions. Winter heathers, winter honeysuckles, Christmas roses, the little winter aconites that put the summer buttercups to shame.

There is only one drawback to winter flowers. So many of them have such difficult names, and the names are always changing. Which brings back a memory of a very beloved jester, called A. P. Herbert. Alan was not an accomplished gardener, but even when he was discussing subjects about which he knew nothing, he adorned them with his wit. And it was Alan, champagne glass in hand, who "on one enchanted evening" came out with a splendid gardening invention which may now be released for the benefit of mankind. "If you can't remember the name of a flower when you are showing people round the garden," he said, "give it the name of a disease. Not a nasty disease, but some minor bother we all -suffer from."

On the spur of the moment Ile invented Hiccupia incontrollaba, Anaemia blanda, and Dandruffia vulgaris.

None of these treasures, as it happens, can presently be inspected in my garden. But the Sternbergeas are in their full glory, and I shall now lay down my pen, and go out to salute them.

Beverley Nichols