enough, was young Frank Henderson, whose delightful old father ties a
red tie better than any other Socialist in London, and runs ‘The Bomb
Shop,’ where one may buy the sweetest seditious literature on this side
of the English Channel. ‘I used to sit at the back of the shop, without
a bob, talking to Frank,’ he said. ‘I still do. We roar with laughter
as we see people coming in to buy _Mayfair_.’
_The London Venture_--£30 profit--a visit to Bruce Ingram, the Editor
of _The Sketch_--a commission to do twelve short stories of 1,500 words
each, at a remuneration of £8 apiece. ‘And now,’ he tells me, ‘I have
a contract for the rest of my life, which brings me in £900 for every
short story I write, whether it is published or not. Isn’t it silly?’
I liked that remark, ‘Isn’t it silly?’ It is the sort of remark that
any young man, with his pockets full of unexpected dollars, might make.
He sits down and writes. His stories are sent drifting round the world.
They come drifting back. Then, one day, they do not drift back. They
are published. They create a sensation. And he is ‘made.’
‘I have never met anybody who liked my books.’ Now that I have put it
down, that seems to me the most extraordinary sentence I have ever
written. ‘Never met anybody who liked my books.’ I can see him now,
as he said it, propped up against a pile of cushions in his flat in
Charles Street. The flat in question is at the extreme end of the
street, rather crowded out by its richer relatives, like a raw recruit
who has just shuffled hastily into line, and tries to look as though he
had been there from the beginning.
‘You see,’ he went on, ‘I’m not really a fashion. I’m a disease. An
international disease. Nobody likes me. Most of the people who read me
say, “How horrid, or how silly, or how tiresome.” And yet they read me.
They’ve _got_ to, don’t you see? That’s really the cleverest thing I
did. I saw the rather feverish state of the body politic and social.
And I disseminated my poisonous prose right and left. They did not
catch it at first. A few people who have been thoroughly inoculated by
a habit of taking Wordsworth neat have not caught it even yet. But the
great majority have fallen by the wayside. And how they hate it!’
* * * * *
I don’t like people who do not adore their mothers. It seems a strange
thing to say, just like that, in the middle of this little caper with
Michael Arlen, but it is not quite so irrelevant as you think. Michael
Arlen is a nice young man, and he adores his mother. The first proceeds
of _The Green Hat_ may now be seen round Mrs. Arlen’s neck, in the
shape of a chain of glistening pearls.
‘She reads _The Green Hat_ serially in an Armenian paper published in
Constantinople, which is sent to her in Cheshire,’ he told me. ‘You
see, she hardly speaks a word of English. But,’--and here he looked
almost earnest for a moment--‘I defy anybody to tell me that I write
English like a foreigner.’
He doesn’t. He analysed his style to me as ‘influenced by an early
study of de Quincey, with a side glance at the eighteenth century.’
I think it a very beautiful style. A liqueur style, of course, to be
sipped with discretion. But one does not sneer at yellow chartreuse
because one cannot turn it on from a tap. There is a lingering cadence
about it, a lazy passion, as though he were lying on a sofa by a bowl
of roses and picking them to pieces one by one. I shudder at that awful
simile. But it shall stand. It vaguely expresses what I mean.
I mentioned yellow chartreuse. Immediately it brought into my mind’s
eye the huge yellow Rolls-Royce which he suddenly bought, and equally
suddenly gave away--(to his mother). Somehow that car seemed to help
me to understand him. It was luxurious, and he adores luxury. It was
six inches longer than any other car in London, and who would not, in
their heart of hearts, delight in that distinction? And it had, on the
number plate, M.A. He had taken the car all the way to Manchester to
be registered, in order to have that mark put on it. ‘It is exactly
the sort of car that my sort of success demands,’ he said, a little
wistfully. It was.
I remember driving round and round Hyde Park in this car, on one of
those early summer evenings when one feels one’s whole life has been
devoted to the consumption of strawberries. We drove round until I felt
slightly dizzy. But in spite of the dizziness I remember a great many
things we said, for we were in good form just then, and Michael had
been lying in bed all day, ‘from fatigue.’
‘One day,’ he said, and his eyes were half closed, ‘there will be a
house in a square--fountains and silky animals--women....’
I wondered. Silky animals? Women? Which was which? Or was each,
neither? If you understand me....
‘And,’ he said, ‘I shall go away, sell everything, go right away.’ The
car whirled round a corner. ‘With two innovation trunks.’
We were on a straight piece of road, and my head was clearer.
‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘about _The Green Hat_.’
‘There is nothing to tell.’
‘There is everything to tell about something which makes one a
millionaire.’
‘Ah!’ The Albert Memorial hove in sight, and we were both silent, and
a little awed. Then, ‘It was written in two months. At a place called
Southport, in Lancashire. I wrote solidly every day for ten hours. Lots
of drink and no friends. I would write all the morning. Then, in the
afternoon, I would read what I had written. Then in the evening I would
re-write it again.’
The Albert Memorial had vanished into the distance, as even Albert
Memorials do (which is the consolation of life), and he told me more.
‘And on each new morning,’ he said, ‘I would begin by writing the last
two pages over again, to get me into the mood of the thing. There are a
hundred thousand words in _The Green Hat_.’
‘It makes me feel exceedingly hearty,’ I said, ‘to think that “we
authors”’ (you see, the Albert Memorial was still with us in spirit),
‘are capable of such a physical strain.’
The car whizzed once more round a bend. ‘Look quickly,’ I said. ‘Over
there. A pink chestnut has forgotten the time of year. It ought to have
been over long ago. And look at it now. _Please_....’ I was becoming
agonized.
‘I never look at views,’ he said, examining his small hands with
intense interest.
‘A pink chestnut is not a view. It is an emotion.’
He flicked his fingers, and sighed. ‘Only people,’ he said. ‘And
streets, of course. But I hate views. Going across America I never
looked out of the window. I was too excited by the people inside. Trees
and hills and valleys say nothing to me. Weather says very little to
me. Environment leaves me cold.’
We had whizzed far enough. I called a halt, and I got out. And Michael
Arlen waved his hand with an eighteenth-century grace, the pink
chestnut outlining his head like a halo that has missed its way.
_Au revoir_--you charming person! I seem to see you wandering away from
me, rather inconsequently, down one of the grey, misty streets of the
Mayfair which you love. You make, in some vague way, romance even of
Berkeley Square. I had always regarded it as dull. But to you, it has
a beauty. It tells you so many secrets. And though, in the morning, I
feel that I know the answer to those secrets, at night you touch them
with magic, you colour them with something of your own subtle spirit.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Containing the Hideous Truth about Noel Coward
I should like to draw Noel Coward rather than to talk about him--to
take up my pen and trace, with infinite subtlety, the rather bumpy
forehead, the keen nose, the darting eyes--the mouth, especially the
mouth, which seems constantly on the point of uttering delicious
impudences.
But when I draw people, they are always Queen Victoria. They have
invariably the same dejected eyelids, the same flaccid lips. Even
the addition of a moustache fails to conceal the resemblance. And
though Queen Victoria and Noel Coward have much in common--(e.g., an
invincible determination, and a well-founded conviction that they are
typical of their age)--I must content myself with words, and not with
lines.
I first really began to know him one evening before the production of
_London Calling_. It was a cold night, there had been a party, and, as
far as I remember, a number of us found ourselves in a long, golden
room, faintly fragrant with something of Coty’s. It was late, but
nobody minded, for there was a feeling about the room which was neither
of night nor of day, but of that exquisite indetermination which lulls
the senses into a lazy oblivion. To complete the picture, you must add
an immense couch, covered with green cushions and purple women, and one
of those sleek, black pianos that simply demand to be played upon.
It was played upon, by Noel Coward. I wish I could recapture that
scene--his curious, agile fingers, the husky voice in which he half
sang, half spoke, his lyrics--rather insolently tossing us an
occasional spark of wit, drifting with complete indifference, into a
line of baroque poetry:
‘_Parisian pierrot, society’s hero_....’
And all the time, propped up against the piano, a languid French doll
was regarding him with painted eyes, as though it were saying, ‘_You_
are the only person who understands me here.’
But it wasn’t. I think I understood him, too, rather better than the
purple women. For he was outside this curious and typical scene, as
a spectator, not as a participator. Even though he was the centre
of attraction, he was, in a sense, hovering on the edge of it all,
intensely interested, entirely detached. Somebody would say to him,
‘Isn’t that marvellous?’ And though he replied, ‘_too_ marvellous,’
with exactly the intonation that was required of him, there was a look
in his eyes which suggested that he really meant, ‘It is not marvellous
at all. And you, my dear, are an empty-headed fool for calling it so.’
‘_Parisian pierrot, society’s hero_....’
There is more in those four words than most of the amiable young ladies
who play it in the wrong key would imagine. Something of a sneer, I
believe. I have an imaginary picture in my mind which illustrates the
phrase. The party is over, the last cigarette has burnt itself into an
obscene mess in the ash tray, the roses have drooped their expensive
and artificial heads in a despairing gesture. Only the doll remains
alert, staring in front of it with the same painted eyes. This is the
doll’s hour. And Noel goes up to it, smiling--(I should like to say
‘sardonically,’ but it sounds too like a tailor’s advertisement), and
negligently twitches its hand, and fingers its ruff, and probably, as a
final gesture of contempt, flicks his finger on its stumpy nose.
As a matter of fact, no such touching scene was enacted after this
particular party, for we walked back to my flat together, and there, in
an atmosphere devoid of dolls, in front of one of those gas fires which
look like skulls roasting in hell, I learnt a great deal about Noel
which I had never hitherto suspected.
I learnt, for example, that his first trip to the United States, which
was announced with so harmonious a flourish of trumpets, had been
accomplished on the sum of £50. ‘Nobody would put on any of my plays,’
he said. ‘There was nothing for me to do in England. So I sold some
songs and went to America. I published a book which nobody read. I was
a failure. But--oh--how successful I pretended to be.’
That was typical of Noel. His conceit he reserves only for his public.
For himself and for his friends he has none at all. That bold and
impudent mask with which he covers his real feelings when attacked by
the Press is gently lowered as soon as the last reporter has vanished
through the front door, and with a sigh he returns to the abnormal,
weary of misrepresenting himself to mediocre minds. He is not in the
least affected by the numerous women who powder their noses at his
newly erected shrine. He demands criticism.
One picture of him will always remain in my mind. It was behind the
stage at the Everyman Theatre after the first night of _The Vortex_.
Noel was hunched up in a chair in front of a fire, on which a kettle
was making pleasant domestic noises. His face was still haggard from
the ghastly make-up which he wears in the third Act, and he flaunted
a dressing-gown of flowered silk which I have never ceased to covet.
We were in semi-darkness. As the firelight flickered, so did our
conversation--staccato, a little taut and weary.
‘You’re terribly kind,’ he said. ‘And now please tell me the truth.’
‘I’ve told you nothing but the truth.’
‘The whole truth?’
I laughed. ‘Well--the last Act--the very last few minutes....’
The flowered silk rustled. He was sitting upright.
‘Yes.’
‘I thought it too indeterminate. You plunged us into that terrible
swamp of emotion and you left us there, sticking. I wanted some sort of
sign-post. I didn’t know whether I was going to sink or swim.’
‘I know. You’re absolutely right. I muddled that to-night.’
I thought to myself how infuriated I should have been if anybody in
that triumphant moment had dared to suggest imperfections, especially
if I had asked them to do so.
‘There _is_ a sign-post,’ he went on. ‘Just the words, “we’ll both
try.” I meant to say them very clearly. I always shall in future.’
It is the habit among many dreary young men, whose failure in life may
be measured by the faultless fit of their waistcoats, to croon to each
other: ‘Noel, twenty-five? My dear, he’s at least thirty.’ One has the
impression that their pockets are stuffed with the birth certificates
of their enemies. It is not on the tedious evidence of a birth
certificate that I should accept the evidence of Noel’s youth. There
have been moments when I have felt, although we are about the same age,
that I was old enough to be his grandfather.
One such moment was when we were lunching together and he suddenly
said, ‘I’ve got a secretary!’ He said it with such gusto, such a ring
of glee, that I felt exactly as though some pink and perfect child had
approached me, saying, “Look what _I’ve_ got! And if you wind it up it
will run right across to the fender.’ I am sure that Noel’s secretary
does not need to be wound up.
On another occasion--(I do trust that I am not being impertinent. I am
only trying to put before you the real Noel. If he wished to pose as
a rich dilettante whose first epigrams had echoed under expensive and
ancestral roofs, it would be different). On another occasion, I met
him in the street, strangely enough, opposite a toy shop, and he said,
in an awed whisper, ‘I almost bought a manor house the other day.’
There was something magnificent in that remark. I stood quite still,
slightly pale at the thought, and looked fixedly at one of the most
beautiful golliwogs I have ever seen. ‘I almost bought a manor house.’
That wasn’t the remark of a depraved, doped genius. ‘I almost bought
a golliwog.’ Almost, you note. I knew, and he knew, in that rare and
transient moment, that he could not really mean what he said. It was
only bluff. It was a doll’s house that he was talking about.
That last paragraph is involved, but it is meant to convey to you the
spirit for which nobody ever gives him any credit--the spirit of gay
adventure which is perhaps the most attractive thing about him.
I wish I could be a Boswell, but I am quite sure that I couldn’t. I
should always be writing down my own remarks instead of those of other
people, which is probably what Boswell really did. And so, out of all
the delicious flow of impudences which has sparkled through Noel’s
lips, I can gather up not one single drop.
But at least one thing I must say--that if Noel Coward could fall in
love, he would certainly write a greater play than _The Vortex_, in
the truest sense of that much-abused word. It may sound foolish, but I
should imagine that he found it exceedingly difficult to fall in love.
Love, in the accepted sense of the word, demands quite a great deal
of stupidity on the part of both concerned. Most of us have it. Noel
hasn’t. In the firm contours of his mind there appear none of those
unsuspected cracks through which occasionally the divine foolishness
may escape. It is as though his brain were like a perfect emerald
without a flaw in it, which is a paradox, for as Monsieur Cartier
will tell you, no emerald which does not possess a flaw is perfect.
One day, I believe, he _will_ fall in love, and the prospect is so
intriguing that I could close my eyes and allow my pen to scrawl
ahead indefinitely at the delicious prospect of Noel singing lyrics
(‘as clean as a whistle’) in the scented darkness outside many magic
casements.
And when he does, something amazing is going to happen. For he writes
as a bird flies, swiftly, without looking back. With a bird’s-eye
view, too, of the theatre, which seems to give to his work a poise and
a dexterity which is almost uncanny. He showed me once the original
manuscript of _The Vortex_. The words, lightly written in pencil,
darted down the pages like a flight of swallows. They were eloquent of
the ordered frenzy which produced them.
Finally, when anybody tells me that Noel Coward is ‘decadent,’ I feel
like hitting them across the mouth. Do you realize, you outraged
mothers and fathers of England, who sit back in your stalls deploring
the depravity of the author of _Fallen Angels_, that you are watching
a young man who for sheer pluck can give you all the points in the
game? Is it decadent to go on the stage as a little boy, and fight,
and fight, and fight, when your own sons are learning to be fools in
the numerous academies for English gentlemen which still mysteriously
flourish in our midst?
Is it decadent to go on writing, without money, without encouragement,
with very few friends, always in the dim hope that one day, perhaps,
a play may be produced? And when that play is produced, to see it a
commercial failure--and the next play too? And when success comes, at
the age of twenty-five, to work harder than ever, to stand up to the
critics and to say, ‘I don’t care a damn’? Is that decadent? Or are you
merely being slightly more silly than usual?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
In which I allow Myself to be entirely Sentimental
And thus, abruptly, I end. A line drawn, a cigarette thrown out of an
open window, a pile of manuscript pushed into the corner of one’s desk,
waiting to be sent to the typist.
And thus, I suppose, youth ends. A line drawn under one’s eyes, a
sudden realization, as one is laughing or drinking, that the ‘stuff
which will not endure’ has worn itself threadbare. To what purpose? God
alone knows. Not I.
I have enjoyed the writing of this book far too much to indulge in
any sudden moralizations. But I know my generation, this post-war
generation which has so baffled the middle-aged onlookers, who, from
the gallery, have watched the dance whirling beneath. And I know that
the one thing of which we are always accused--that we live for the
moment only--is the one thing of which we are disastrously innocent.
We are none of us living for the moment. We are far too self-conscious
for that. We have formulated a creed of which the first principle is
that happiness, as an actual emotion, does not exist. ‘Happiness,’ we
proclaim, ‘consists either in looking forward to things which will
never happen or in remembering things which never have happened.’ We
are therefore young only as long as we can cheat ourselves, as long
as we can go on dressing the future in bright garments, and spinning
a web of illusion over the past. But in both cases the kind stuff of
imagination has to be produced out of our innermost cells, like spiders
forced every day to spin two webs. The process is apt to be exhausting.
And yet--we are constantly forgetting our philosophy. A bright summer
morning will do it. An apple tree in fluffy and adorable bloom will do
it. Sometimes (for those of us who are most depraved), pink foie gras
will do it. But even then, we will not allow that we are happy. We only
admit the possibility of happiness--i.e., that there may be some form
of heaven, or even a mildly exhilarating hell.
Again--I have done. Twelve o’clock strikes. There should really be
slow music playing outside my window, so that I might work myself into
a frenzy of pathos at the thought that another day has arrived to
carry me on to middle-age. I should rather like to stay, just a little
longer. But then--better not. Accept the joke of life for what it is
worth. It is not such a very brilliant one, after all. And was there
not a man, called Browning, who wrote:
‘Grow old along with me,
The best is yet to be.’?
_The End_
Transcriber's Notes:
Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.
Perceived typographical errors have been changed.