Courageous Coward
Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward By Oliver Soden Weidenfeld & Nicolson £30
The public persona Noël Coward first displayed to the world in the 1920s – the clipped way of speaking; the cigarette in its long holder; the tailor-made suit; the martini at hand – belied the fact that he was more often in the lonely company of his typewriter, tapping out a comic masterpiece such as Hay Fever.
Then there were innumerable revue sketches and song lyrics, the controversial play The Vortex, described by Bernard Shaw as ‘damnable and wonderful’, along with forgotten works.
As the Rev Peter Mullen writes on page 15, Coward died 50 years ago, aged 73, on 26th March 1973.
His reputation as a gadfly and man-about-town was sustained by well-timed appearances at posh cocktail parties and his natural gift for the spontaneous witticism that soon became the property of thousands of anecdotalists. It was all part of the show of being famous, as he well knew.
Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward isn’t in the cradle-to-grave tradition adhered to by more conventional biographers.
It’s composed of nine parts, beginning with an Edwardian comedy in six scenes called ‘The Rainbow’, featuring Master Noël embarking on a stage career.
That’s followed by an act concerned with the First World War and Coward’s unusual training for the military, which has the title ‘Services Rendered’.
‘Les Années Folles!’, the revue that comes next, is set in the ’20s. And ‘The Mask of Flippancy’, a play in three acts, has Coward writing Private Lives, the sparkling conversation piece that will ensure his lasting place alongside William Congreve and Oscar Wilde as a master dramatist.
‘The Tipsy Crow’, a play with music, which is fifth on the bill, accounts for the hectic years when the ever-industrious playwright, actor and songsmith was revelling in his hard-earned fame.
‘Tinsel and Sawdust’, the war film, shows Coward entertaining the Allied troops in often sweltering temperatures in Africa and the Middle East. He tries his hand at spying, too, besides scripting and starring in the movie In Which We Serve. The morale-boosting This Happy Breed is staged and then filmed.
Before Germany is defeated, when he is becoming a little bored with wartime restrictions, he produces the wonderfully funny Blithe Spirit, taking the rise out of spiritualism and even of death itself. Then comes Present Laughter, providing him with yet another whopping great leading role.
The remaining sections consist of eight short stories, collected under the title ‘The Desert’. They chart his increasing disenchantment with the modern world.
‘The Living Mask’ depicts the chronically ill Coward returning to his beloved West End in style, acting his heart out in three brand-new plays and getting ecstatic reviews, at long last, from the very critics he had come to despise.
Finally – the curtain comes down, as it were, with ‘An Awfully Big Adventure’. Coward’s four previous biographers (Sheridan Morley, Clive Fisher, Cole Lesley, Philip Hoare) met Oliver Soden (and numerous friends of Coward, all dead) to talk about their multi-talented subject.
Soden’s achievement in this bold and ambitious book is to have captured Coward’s personality in all its curious aspects, especially his need for disguise.
The theatre was a hiding place for homosexuals, and it helped that he was stage-struck at an age when most boys are interested in sport.
His mother, Violet, who had lost her first-born to meningitis when he was only six, showered her darling child with affection. With her support, he became a jobbing actor at 11, wearing a bowler hat in The Goldfish, a play for children written and directed by Miss Lila Field. His first words as a professional were ‘Any luck, Dolly?’
Almost a decade later, he was being recognised as a playwright. In I’ll Leave It to You, which was staged in 1919, there’s an indication of the verbal brilliance to come with this exchange: ‘You’ve wounded me to the quick.’ ‘I don’t believe you’ve got a quick.’ When Soden praises Coward’s ear for music, it’s not just the songs he has in mind. The staccato dialogue in his comedies is jazz-like in its edginess and inspired repetitions.
He notices, too, how often Coward employs the word ‘gay’, long before it took on its current meaning.
The well-known names are all here. His family of close friends, resembling disciples, with their babyish nicknames, are present and occasionally incorrect in their behaviour. The stage is set from the opening pages. And the show goes on until the end with its star in the spotlight, where he always reckoned – despite doomed love affairs, income-tax arrears, any number of bad reviews – he belonged.