A Talent to Amuse: A Life of Noel Coward Read online

  When the six months were up, the operatic lady decided she would like a little longer in Battersea, so the Cowards returned to Southsea for Christmas with Noël’s grandmother. Immediately afterwards he was sent back to London to be there in ample time for the first day of the new term at the Chapel Royal School: the plan was that the rest of the family should return a week later and reinstall themselves in Battersea. Noël spent the week staying with his Uncle Randolph in St George’s Square, and for the first time in his life was deeply unhappy. At the best of times he was not fond of school anyway, and during this one week early in 1909 he became obsessed with the idea that he would never see his mother again:

  ‘The dramatic scenes I visualized were terrifying; first the fatal telegram arriving at the house, and my aunt and uncle calling me into the drawing-room on the first floor to break the news, then a tear-sodden journey in the train, and Auntie Vida meeting me at Fratton Junction, very small and morose, in black. Then, as a fitting climax, I imagined the front bedroom enshrouded in a funereal twilight with the blinds down and Mother lying still and dead under a sheet like a waxwork.’

  So far from being still and dead, his mother returned from the country in splendid health and Noël returned happily to their flat in Battersea; it was perhaps the first time that he became aware of his deep devotion to the woman who remained the most powerful figure in Noël’s life until she died almost fifty years later at the age of ninety-one.

  In the next year Noël started to sing a good deal, sometimes in church, but more often at concerts which he preferred because there the audience applauded. After his performance at one of these, given in a private house, the hostess was heard to murmur ‘how sweetly pretty’ – though whether she was referring to Noël’s voice or his general deportment is not clear. His mother, having discovered with a good deal of pride but not much surprise that her boy had talent, soon decided that the time had come to train it.

  So for six weeks early in 1910 every Thursday and Friday afternoon, Noël set off across the city to a dancing academy run in Hanover Square by Miss Janet Thomas. He enjoyed the lessons only slightly less than the journey through London, on which, travelling alone, he was able to accost old ladies in trains with gruesome stories of a sordid but entirely mythical home life. On successful afternoons they would take pity on this angelic child sobbing about his drunken father and diseased tubercular sisters, and Noël would be treated to a large tea in Fuller’s; on one less successful afternoon he was pinched on the knee by a clergyman and decided there and then to abandon the whole practice. During these weeks, apart from perfecting a theatrical ability to tell lies convincingly, Noël also acquired a penchant for travelling alone which stayed with him until his sixties. Though not an anti-social man, he travelled like all writers in search of material and found this easier to pick up on those occasions when he was alone. It is true that in this way he laid himself open to the endless stories of innumerable bores in countless hotel bars, but that would appear, as Maugham also discovered, to be the price paid.

  Just before the end of the dancing lessons an advertisement in the Daily Mirror announced that Miss Lila Field was in search of ‘talented boy with attractive appearance’ to play in her all-children production of The Goldfish, a piece she had written herself. Mrs Coward replied to the advertisement at once, and soon afterwards Noël clambered back into his Eton suit and went off to an audition room near Baker Street. There he sang ‘Liza Ann’ unaccompanied, an achievement he followed with a brisk dance while his mother, in the absence of a pianist, sang. Miss Field, unlike Doctor Alcock at Chapel Royal, was impressed. She told Mrs Coward that she would like to engage her boy for the part of Prince Mussel in the play, and that the fee would be one and a half guineas a week. There was a terrible pause, at the end of which Mrs Coward murmured that she would not, alas, be able to afford it. Miss Field laughed politely, explained that it was she who would be paying, and Noël Coward had his first job.

  It was 1910 and to celebrate his triumph, the boy actor and his mother went to Selfridge’s for ice-cream sodas.

  2

  1910–1913

  I can remember. I can remember.

  The months of November and December

  Were filled for me with peculiar joys,

  So different from those of other boys.

  For other boys would be counting the days

  Until end of term and holiday times

  But I was acting in Christmas plays

  While they were taken to pantomimes.

  I didn’t envy their Eton suits,

  Their children’s dances and Christmas trees.

  My life had wonderful substitutes

  For such conventional treats as these.

  I didn’t envy their country larks,

  Their organized games in panelled halls:

  While they made snowmen in stately parks,

  I was counting the curtain calls.

  Rehearsals for The Goldfish were held twice a week for many months; this was partly because there seemed to be some difficulty in finding a theatre, and mainly because the cast kept changing as various mothers grew impatient and withdrew their children. Some however did last the course, among them a girl called June, who later married Lord Inverclyde, and a ten year old boy called Alfred Willmore who later translated his name back to its original Irish and became known as Micheál Mac Liammóir. For him as for Noël it was the first professional engagement:

  ‘I went into this room in Hanover Square – it was a big studio with a polished floor on which I nearly fell over. And I was ten and I presume Noël was too and I remember this beautiful autumn day in 1910; there were a lot of children there, a crowd of children, and among them was one who looked strangely grown up, more poised than all the others. The voice was very mature and the eyes were already observant, not cynical but shrewd and humorous and ambiguous – in a way they seemed to tell you nothing. I was very miserable on that day, and Noël after a few preliminary boyish grins, was the first person who spoke to me. I think he asked how much work I’d done; I do know that during the course of that conversation I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. He electrified me by saying, “An actor of course, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. What do you want to be?” And then I said miserably that I didn’t really know – I was sure it wasn’t an actor by that time because I was hopelessly at sea with all the other children. But Noël evidently knew even then exactly what he wanted to do with his life; he was a lively, brilliant, settled, quarrelsome, vivid boy. He was also extraordinarily urbane for his age, already enjoying phrases, and I remember that I had enough sense of words myself to notice how he enjoyed saying brisk and beautifully balanced things like “Mother nearly had a fit in Oxford Street today”. And I thought how typically perfect – she didn’t have colly-wobbles in Hampstead, she had a fit in Oxford Street.

  ‘Noël was Jack in the play and I was Charlie in the first act and the Goldfish in the second. I forget any of the lines I said – they were quite colourless and meant nothing to me. But Noël’s first was, “Crumbs, how exciting”, and then I remember him saying “Boo” behind a little girl’s ear – her name was Dolly. And then she said, “Oh Jack, you brute! To frighten me like that!” and he said, “Oh really, Dolly, good gracious! If you start like that when anybody comes up behind you at your age, you’ll have electric wires sticking out all over you when you grow up.” Noël had then exactly the same cadence that we all know so well now. I don’t think I’ve ever known a man in my life who has changed less.’

  Mac Liammóir was getting £2 a week for his first engagement, 9/6d. more than Noël was being paid for wearing a small black hat and executing a dance later described by the Daily Mirror as ‘spirited’. The Goldfish was a fairy story in three acts, with music by Lila Field herself and lyrics by Ayre O’Naut. Originally it had been a one-act play performed by a cast entirely consisting of girls, but the 1911 production which opened on January 27th for a week of matinées at the Little
Theatre with Noël as ‘Prince Mussel’, June Tripp as ‘Princess Sole’ and Micheál Mac Liammóir as ‘King Goldfish’ was an entirely reorganized undertaking. Miss Field herself, a daunting character who also wrote a fashion column and found time to be a lady aviator, took complete charge. After the production she was engaged in a rather bitter correspondence with Noël’s mother, who claimed only to have received one week’s salary for her boy, but by the time she and Noël next met some forty years later all that was forgotten, and he was persuaded to add an introduction to The Goldfish which Miss Field was hoping to publish. In fact it never appeared in print, but this in part is what Noël wrote:

  ‘Rehearsals, sometimes sporadic, sometimes daily, had taken place in basements, gymnasiums, dance-halls, and even private houses of members of the cast with furniture pushed back and tea served afterwards with little cakes, drop scones, and, on one occasion, watercress sandwiches.

  ‘During the week immediately before production when there was no longer any doubt that the play was at last going to open, the excitement rose to fever pitch – anxious mothers, clutching their offsprings’ shoes, shawls and “Dorothy” bags, lined the walls of rehearsal rooms whispering sibilantly and now and then swaying slightly as the winds of rumour eddied around them – “Miss Field has said this ...” – “Miss Field has said that”.

  ‘Everything, Life and Death and the stars in their courses depended on what Miss Field had said.

  ‘Occasionally, there was an outburst of hysteria – faces were slapped, tears were shed; mothers bowed icily to each other and sat tight-lipped, watching with disdain the cavortings of their rivals’ progeny, who, serenely unaware of those primaeval undertones, were enjoying themselves tip-top.

  ‘Finally, the great day dawned. The curtain rose, I think, at 2 p.m. but it may have been 2.30; however, it did definitely rise disclosing a pretty garden scene crowded with bright and eager children all hell bent on future stardom, and all under fourteen years of age with the exception of one who shall be forever nameless, for we suspected then and I still suspect that she was nineteen if she was a day. The opening chorus was led by a radiant fair little girl and a plumpish, very assured little boy in a white knicker-bocker suit. The girl was described in the programme as “Little June Tripp” and the boy was Master Noël Coward. They sang with extreme abandon “School, School, Goodbye to School”. Fifteen years later, on that same stage, Master Noël Coward, grown to man’s estate, was portraying with equal abandon a drug addict in his own play The Vortex.

  ‘I remember clearly, so very clearly, Master Alfred Willmore as King Goldfish singing “I lived within my bowl of glass – Heigho – a prisoner I” – Master Burford Hampden as the ruthless King Starfish: “I am a really first class King, O’er the sea my praises ring” – and of course, my own song as Prince Mussel the Court Jester:

  “Fairest Queen you’ll never guess

  How I praise your loveliness,

  I’ve a heart that loves you so ...

  But alas you must not know.”

  ‘I remember hearing for the first time in my life an audience in a theatre laughing and applauding. I remember for the first time the drying size on canvas, the pungency of hot gelatine in the limelights and footlights, the unforgettable indescribable dressing-room smell, greasepaint, face-powder, new clothes and cold cream. I remember, I remember the house where I was born: that, actually, I cannot remember at all; but I certainly remember the theatre where I was born and the play in which I was born and that play is The Goldfish, which retains for one rapidly ageing little boy a magic that will never die.’

  In the six months that followed Coward’s first appearance at the Little Theatre, The Goldfish was revived twice; first at the Crystal Palace for two performances, during one of which a rat ate Noël’s powder-puff in the dressing-room, and then at the Court Theatre in Sloane Square where they played for a week in another condensed version. This last engagement brought a number of notices in the press: The Stage found Noël ‘resourceful’ in his singing, the Daily Telegraph considered that his ‘robust appearance gave excellent point to his woebegone song of love for the Queen of the Coral Islands’ and the American Register announced rather surprisingly that ‘all Mayfair flocked to the performance’. These reviews must have made up for the disappointment of Noël’s first notice, in the Daily Telegraph of January 28th 1911. This, referring to the earlier production of The Goldfish, had read simply ‘Among other tiny artists who deserve a congratulatory pat on the back are Miss Noël Coward, Miss Nellie Terriss and Miss Peggie Bryant’.

  The girls in the production included a very young Ninette de Valois, though it was June who retained the most vivid impressions of the young Coward. She remembers ‘a boy with elfin ears and a foul temper’, and records that when he hit her over the head with a ballet slipper it was Mac Liammóir who came to her rescue. June’s sole line in the play was apparently, ‘Let us run away to little Sunny Cove’, and at one performance she failed even to get that out:

  ‘Everything seemed set for fair as the curtain parted; but somewhere along the line, between supervising the sketchy scenery and making certain that none of the actors got locked in the lavatory, Miss Field had slipped up. Instead of the little painted blocks of wood, representing cakes, which we had used at rehearsals, there were real pastries on the table. And, when my cue came, I was completely immobilized by a chocolate éclair. Ninette chirped her line, “What shall we do?”, and after a short but deathly silence I heard a slightly cracked voice say “Let us run away to little Sunny Cove”. Turning indignantly I beheld Noël Coward closing his lips in a triumphant smirk. I could have throttled him.’

  Later, at home Mrs Howard-Tripp did not exactly endear herself to her daughter June by retelling the story of Noël’s step taken into the breach: ‘What a brilliant boy!’ she enthused. ‘What superb presence of mind! Mark my words, he’ll go a long way.’ Without warning, June was quietly sick over the table-cloth.

  Noël has said that The Goldfish was the play in which he was born: but it was not really the play in which he got his theatrical education. For that he had to wait until later in 1911 when, at the end of the summer, he was sent by Bellew and Stock, Theatrical Agents, to see a gentleman called E. M. Tarver. By this time Noël’s official schooling had become a bit sparse as even when he wasn’t actually rehearsing or playing in a show he was inclined to wander off to Waterloo Station to watch the trains, or else potter up and down the embankment wearing an alarming red beard made from crêpe hair bought from the local chemist for a penny. He skipped school yet again to keep his appointment with Tarver, then the stage manager for Charles Hawtrey’s company at the Prince of Wales, who was looking for a boy to play the page in the last act of a new comedy called The Great Name which was due to open in a few days’ time. Tarver decided that Coward would do, and engaged him for two pounds a week (of which Messrs Bellew and Stock took four shillings in commission). Noël only had one line, addressed to Hawtrey himself who as a composer was discovered in one scene playing a piano in the artists’ room at the Queen’s Hall. Noël had to enter as the page-boy and demand, ‘Stop that noise at once, please. In there they’re playing The Meistersingers. Making such a horrible noise. We’re used to good music here.’ As they were within three days of the first night by the time Noël joined the company, he and his mother carefully rehearsed and re-rehearsed the line at home, with Mrs Coward trying out her skills as a director and the dining-room table pushed back to make more room.

  Fully rehearsed and thoroughly aware of all the possible emotions that could be worked into his one line as Cannard the page-boy, Noël presented himself at the Prince of Wales, performed it at the top of his voice, and made an exit that would not have disgraced a chorus girl in the Ziegfeld Follies. Hawtrey swivelled round on the piano stool and watched the small boy’s departing back with a look of glazed horror. Then, interrupting the rehearsal and sending for his stage-manager, Hawtrey murmured, ‘Tarver, never let me see that boy
again.’ Later, however, he relented, and Noël was allowed to play the part on condition he be re-rehearsed by Tarver and make rather less of a meal out of what was meant to be an insignificant walk-on.

  The Great Name, which opened on September 7th 1911, was not a marked success; nevertheless, Hawtrey’s play remained at the Prince of Wales until the last week in October and in that time Noël learnt a great deal about the theatre from him. Charles Hawtrey was, before Gerald du Maurier, the first of the new ‘naturalistic’ actors of the time. Coming directly after a period of great declamation in the theatre, Hawtrey in contrast appeared to act on the stage very much as he would in real life. In fact his casual, soft-spoken, throwaway style hid as much care, as much projection and as much technique as the more obvious theatricality of Irving or Beerbohm Tree.

  But Hawtrey did not appear to be ‘acting’ in the way that his predecessors did, and Coward, astute eleven-year-old child that he was, realized that here was a man from whom he could learn – by what he taught and, more important, by the way he acted on stage.

  During the six weeks of The Great Name, Hawtrey was haunted by a small, adoring child who followed him around like a sheep, seizing every opportunity to chatter at him, get his autograph (seventeen times, in a book covered with sweet peas) or just stare at him. The effect on Hawtrey was convulsive; not only did he once miss an entrance because Coward was talking to him but he also began to believe that the child was really haunting him, and that wherever he turned in his life there Coward would be. On one occasion, Hawtrey was coming down the main staircase at Buckingham Palace after an official reception, and there at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at him, was a small child dressed as a page-boy. He swore it was Coward, who to this day can hear Hawtrey’s quiet voice edged with exasperation murmuring, ‘Go away, boy, for God’s sake, leave me alone.’