Barry Day, editor
THE LETTERS OF NOEL COWARD
800pp. Methuen. £25.
978 0 7136 8578 7

Noël Coward had at least three personae. First there was the self-invented public face – the ultra-sophisticate dispensing effortless clipped wit over a martini. Later in life came the blimpish Coward – fiercely patriotic, but denouncing modern Britain and its angry young playwrights. Third, there was the simpler, private Coward: warm-hearted, with a passion for “laughter and the love of friends” and happy in the company of fellow professionals. I think I glimpsed this third Coward when he came for a second time to see the very successful revue Cowardy Custard (1972–3). On the first night, the Master – a sobriquet he shared with Henry James and P. G. Wodehouse – was clearly moved but, amid all the champagne, flowers and ecstatic applause, he could only murmur congratulations to the cast, of which I was a member. On the second occasion he turned up unannounced, having come to England to see a West End revival of Private Lives, for which he seemed not to care greatly. (“Can’t complain – mustn’t grumble” was the highest praise he could muster.) Refusing an invitation to a party the following night, he opted to see our show again instead.

“I want to see my children”, he said, and although crippled with phlebitis arrived full of continued sparkle, trailing his exhausted inner circle of friends: his long-standing lover, Graham Payn; his secretary companion, Cole Lesley; Joyce Carey, the actress from the station bar in Brief Encounter; and the designer Gladys Calthrop. Sitting in the stalls after the show he seemed quite at ease with our company. I don’t remember any witticisms as such, but I do remember Derek Waring offering Coward a cigarette. “Silk Cut, Sir Noël? They’re very mild – low tar, low nicotine.” “They sound”, said the Master, taking one, “perfectly beastly, don’t they?” He appeared a cosy, kindly old pro – which is what he was, I believe, at heart.

My belief was reaffirmed after reading the monumental new volume of hitherto unpublished letters assembled by Barry Day. Although there have been many – too many – books about Noël Coward, this one is a worthy companion to the best: Cole Lesley’s official biography and personal memoir. Day’s book takes the form of a potted life, linking letters written by Coward and also many letters written to him. His enormous circle of acquaintances ranged all the way from Gertrude Lawrence to T. E. Lawrence, and this book gives not just a picture of one man’s life in the theatre but also that of an age: from the Edwardian era through two World Wars and their aftermaths. How, one wonders now, did people find the time to write such long, detailed letters – especially Coward himself, always a man in a hurry. Apart from his prolific professional life, he wrote page upon page of correspondence, was a keen amateur painter and cook and an inveterate traveller; he had a crowded social life and was always on hand to advise a friend with troubles – Marlene Dietrich and her tedious obsession with Yul Brynner, the Oliviers, and many other temperamental stars.

It is said that Coward led a charmed life; that he had a talent exactly suited to the flippant mood of the 1920s, and a Victorian’s self-discipline to sustain it. Yet despite all the triumphs of his plays and songs he was the object of continual sniping from sections of the press when he became a national celebrity. Simple jealousy and, I suspect, veiled homophobia accounted for their opprobrium; ironically, his own opinions were often reactionary enough for any tabloid leader-writer.

After taking a brave stand against the Munich agreement and ashamed of his abortive soldiering in the First World War, Coward was indefatigable in his support for Britain’s Second World War effort. It is revealed for the first time in Day’s book that he was recruited by the arch-spymaster William Stephenson as an undercover agent in the United States and South America. Coward’s contribution may have been a minor one, but he impressed Stephenson with his courage and dissembling skills. However – cruelly – because his mission was a secret one, questions were asked in the House of Commons, and raised by the popular press, as to what this frivolous 1920s throwback was doing socializing in America. It is no wonder that Coward – always thin-skinned – should have felt persecuted, though his stock rose again with the huge success of his stirring naval film In Which We Serve (1942). However, the Beaverbrook press, which had doubted his suitability to play a naval captain, continued to hound and harass right up to 1955, when money problems forced Coward into tax exile.

His paranoia was also fuelled by the negative critical reaction to his post-war plays. They did reasonably well at the box office but, whether he sensed it or not, he had lost his light touch. When he saw the “kitchen sink” playwrights receive more praise than himself, he set about attacking them in a series of somewhat pompous Sunday Times articles. Eventually John Osborne hit back in what was mainly a fan letter. Osborne called Coward’s collusion with gutter journalists “unkind and unnecessary”. Coward wrote back apologizing and stating his own admiration for Osborne. The letters show both men at their best. Coward’s friendships with Arnold Wesker and Harold Pinter also reveal his generous nature and a willingness to help younger writers, though one doubts whether he was ever much reconciled to modern drama apart from Pinter. “I would rather”, he wrote, “play Bingo every night for a year than pay a return visit to Waiting for Godot.”

Coward enjoyed youthful company, being himself perennially youthful. The letters show little change in him over the years, apart from an increased seriousness about current affairs, often rather tritely expressed. The facetious use of baby talk by Coward and his friends now looks embarrassingly arch; particularly extreme in letters to the critic Alexander Woollcott, starting “Dear Ackie Weeza” and ending “All my love you wicked grasping old bitch, Noelie Wolie Polie”.

I have heard that Coward’s much-copied manner of speaking evolved because his adored mother, Violet, to whom he wrote a weekly gushing letter, was hard of hearing. Certainly his ultra-precise diction greatly enhanced his spoken wit. His letters are full of exuberant, humorous, sometimes bawdy use of language, but few actual bons mots. Though there is the famous reply to (Aircraftman) T. E. Lawrence, who headed his letters: A/C 338171. Coward wrote back: “Dear 338171 (may I call you 338?)”. Among other distinguished correspondents were Virginia Woolf, Edith Sitwell and Alec Guinness. I particularly enjoyed the director Margaret Webster’s account of working with some forgetful old actresses, but I sadly found Gertrude Lawrence’s letters quite uninteresting. Coward’s most touching and longest-lasting correspondence was with Esmé Wynne, whom he had met when they were teenage actors. She understood his chief weakness – that he was uncomfortable with “depth”.

Indeed, anyone seeking profundity in Noël Coward will be disappointed. But to have been the foremost British light entertainer of the twentieth century is surely enough – even if, as we sang in the Finale of Cowardy Custard, “The most [he] had was just / A talent to amuse”. These letters are highly recommended.

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