Ivor Novello
ON March 6th of this year Ivor Novello died. The loss to our theatre cannot yet be estimated ; it is too soon to assess the value of his work or measure his stature as an artist. Mr. Macqueen- Pope, who writes this story of his life, calls him " the last of the Romantics—or at least the last within sight." Whether this descrip- tion should be applied to all his writing is open to question: some of his early plays show a robust earthiness, a relish of the common- place, at variance with the romantic tendency of his ,mnsic. But, as life around him grew grimmer, he seems to have withdrawn more and more into the world of his imagination, creating in his big musical plays an escape from reality that was eagerly seized by thousands.
Ivor Novello belonged, body and soul, to the theatre ; it was his home, his workshop, his whole existence. His story is in the best traditions of romantic drama, the final exit as abrupt and moving as the curtain of a Novello play. Mr. Macqueen-Pope, with his vast knowledge of the past and contemporary theatre and his personal knowledge of Ivor Novello, embarks on this book well equipped. Unfortunately his writing lacks the economy and precision that characterised Novello at his best. The story is told in a rambling, leisurely manner, though it shows signs of having been written in a hurry. It suffers badly from repetition, a fault which the author seeks to excuse by declaring naively, " I do that on purpose because I know there is a habit amongst readers of ` skipping '." I. suspect him of emulating the Victorian playwright whose dictum it was that . to make a point with an audience you must-make it three times.
In all his books Mr. Macqueen-Pope luxuriates in Ifts memories of the theatre ; and he cannot resist the temptation this story affords of occasionally leaning back, as it were, and launching into a nostalgic Macqueen's Rhapsody, on the excuse of providing a background for his central figure. He has a passion for lists—lists of actors, lists of figures, lists of plays—which he indulges far too often for the comfort of readers who have not acquired the skipping habit. Oddly enough, Mr. Macquem-Pope is at his best in this book when he is not directly concerned with the theatre. There are moments in the early chapters where music and " Mam " predominate, when the young Ivor is clearly and beautifully brought to life. Towards the end, when he again leaves the theatre to describe the Petrol Case, he is entirely successful. His vindication of Ivor is masterly: indeed, if the book had no other value it would be worth while for the sake of this unprejudiced account of a strange and tragic episode. A man of Ivor Novello's calibre was clearly unfitted for the grim battle with the law into which the result of folly, impetuosity or sheer bad luck had forced him. One is struck by the terrible incongruity of his trial and punishment.
The book suffers from faults of manner rather than matter, and in the course of his story the author succeeds in presenting a shrewdly observed and lifelike portrait. The character which it reveals—though'. by no means flawless—is that of a likeable and fundamentally genuine person. The letters which Mr. Macqueen- Pope includes are extremely interesting ; it is a pity there are so few. In them, and in his dealings with his mother—the redoubtable " Mam "—Ivor shows signs of that dual personality of which the author makes such a point.
The portrait may be incomplete. Novello was a man of many facets, and few people can have known him fully, though all his life he surrounded himself with friends. Did he unconsciously echo Dr. Johnson's " I live in the crowds of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself " ? His diary, written in the agonising solitude of his prison sentence, suggests that—during some part of his life—this may have been so. TnEA HOLME.
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