An open letter to Noel Coward
from Beverley Nichols
It is now forty-six years since I published a little book called 25, an ' autobiography ' which, much to my surprise and everybody else's, became a best-seller. One of the chapters bore the title ' Containing the Hideous Truth about Noel Coward.' This greatly alarmed Eddie Marsh, before he had read it. (For the benefit of younger readers, Sir Edward Marsh was Winston Churchill's secretary, the friend of Rupert Brooke, and the sanest and most civilised patron of what we called 'Georgian Poetry'.) He rang me up about it: "Beverley, how can you possibly attack Noel like this?" I explained that the title was intended to be ironic, and that though a number of critics had attacked you quite virulently, I was not among them and never would be.
I feel that this brief preamble is justified in case you, or anybody else, should be offended by what follows. This concerns the latest book about you, which bears the simple title Noel*. This has been put together by a young South African called Charles Castle, and, so we gather from the blurb, forms the basis of a television documentary which has already been sold to over fifteen countries. I use the words " put together" because it is a scissorsand-paste job. Of its 260 pages over 100 are made up of extracts from your plays and lyrics. The remaining 160 pages contain approximately sixty photographs and cartoons of yourself and a similar number of the various figures with whom you have been associated. To hold this miscellany together there is a thin trickle of text provided by a galaxy of stars who comment on you with considerable monotony and a further trickle of text, provided by yourself, which, needless to say, is the reverse of monotonous, and often sparkles with wit.
All this for £3.50, superbly produced by W. H. Allen and Co. (who happen to be one of my own publishers), suggests that Noel will be a triumphant success. For your sake, for our mutual publishers' sake, and for young Mr Charles Castle's sake I hope so. But not for posterity's sake.
For there is one thing wrong about this book — very wrong indeed. It tells me absolutely nothing about you that I did not know already. Worst of all it tells little that is likely to comman4 the attention of any serious student of the theatre and nothing, but nothing whatsoever, that could possibly engage the interest of any serious student of our times. It is the portrait, not of a man, but of a mask. Which seems to me rather more than a pity.
You may retort that this is no fault of yours, and that if people choose to amuse themselves by making masks of you, to brighten up the contemporary scene, it is not your place to stop them. I disagree. It is your fault, for though you cannot stop the manufacture of these masks, at least you need not encourage it, which you seem to do. And before you start wagging your finger at me let me explain why.
You occupy a unique position in the English speaking world. Your lightest utterances are treasured, chronicled, trans lated, and sent buzzing into space via Telstar. In short, you have a great deal of power. And what do you do with it? Well ... what? It is no use telling me that you have never claimed more than "a talent to amuse." Even if that were true, which it is not, it would be irrelevant. In this strange bric-a-brac society of ours, the words of the Court Jester may carry greater weight than the words of the Queen's Confessor. Even if you were no more than a jester with cap and bells — and you are a great deal more — you could ring such a carillon that the world would listen.
For example. Although you are not a political person, presumably you must have some politics. A man 'without politics,' in this day and age, is a stateless person, with no frontier that he considers worth defending. What are your politics, and why? Left, right, or centre? Unless my voices are more than usually misleading, they tend to the right. If this is the case, why not say so? Even if you say it in waltz time?
You must have something to say about Socialism. Why keep silent? Sometimes, watching the antics of the socialists on the television panels I have said to myself, " If only Noel were here to answer these buffoons! He could do it with one short sharp prick of wit which would deflate them before the eyes of the entire country." But you keep silence.
Again: violence; permissiveness; drugs; modern art; the new theatre. The list could be prolonged indefinitely. Here I can anticipate a positive fusillade of fingerwagging. And I can hear your voice reminding me that you have already made it crystal clear where you stand on these matters. I am well aware of this. You delivered a shattering onslaught on violence in a quartette called 'Juvenile Delinquents.' As far as drugs and permissiveness are concerned, your attitude was foreshadowed long ago in The
Vortex and 'Dance Little Lady.' Modern art was exquisitely exposed in Nude with Violin, and as for the 'new theatre' . . . if I don't know your views on that, I have no right to be discussing you at all.
All this is true. I might even add something that you might be too modest to say for yourself — that your whale life, in peace and in war, has been in a paradoxical way a practical example of the old-fashioned virtues which are in danger of being forgotten. Discipline, integrity, loyalty — the essential decencies of human relationships.
So what more do I want? Am I suggesting that you should hire the Albert Hall, and fly over from Montreux to deliver a series of passionate tirades, against a background of the Union Jack? This would indeed be a lively occasion.
But seriously, what. more? That is difficult to say, but I suppose it really comes down to this . . . that you should put away the mask and reveal the man, even if it meant stepping off the stage of the theatre for once in a way, and stepping on to the stage of the world. Whichever stage you choose, you will be spotlit and your voice will be heard. There is so much to say, and so little time in which to say it. And nobody could say it with the authnrity of the Master.
As ever, Affectionately. Beverley
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