Noel Coward wrote only one novel, I say only one, I am surprised he had time to write it at all considering the amount of plays he was writing and producing, all over the world and though I wish he had written even more, I am delighted with this one, which is a GEM. I am a huge admirer of The Master as regular readers of Random will know, and cannot work out why I have never read this book until now. I think I wanted to keep it in reserve, as you do, a treat to be looked forward to but this is a treat that has been waiting a long time and a few weeks ago I sat down to read it and spent the next day in total delight.
The entire book is one long giggle. It is not a laugh out loud hilariously funny book but one that keeps the reader in a state of beguilement the entire way through at the total silliness of it all, the delightful settings and the characters. And of course, the lines - oh the lines, pure Noel Coward, each sentence quite quite perfect. Just read this:
"Michael is a nice enough boy. Robin says he is 'wet' and I suppose he is in a way, but he is devoted to poor Maisie and looks after her loyally; he also had a definite talent for interior decoration"
No more need to be said. The mention of interior decoration says it all....
Masterly.
The story is set on the island of Samolo (for Samolo read Jamaica where Noel had a house ) and a royal visit is expected by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh (the book was published in 1960 so it would be a very young Queen and her consort who had not been on the throne for very long). The narrator of the story is a woman (Noel had no difficulty in getting in touch with his feminine side...) and she is great friends with the wife of the Governor-General who is put in charge of all the necessary arrangements for the visit, including entertainment, garden party, deciding who meets who etc. The forthcoming visit throws everyone into a ferment of excitement, back biting and jealousy and Coward milks this for all it is worth. Pretty sure that he is using real life events here as the Queen Mother visited him in Jamaica and it all got a tad fraught as I remember reading from his diaries and letters.
There is also another plot line concerning Bunny, a friend of the narrator and her husband, who is having an affair with an empty headed and glamorous Duchess who comes over to Samolo to stay with him and this has to be hidden and kept secret as it will be a huge scandal if it all comes out. The machinations and trials and tribulations suffered by this irritating pair form the core of the story even when it becomes plain that everyone on the island knows exactly what is going on and has done from day one. Again, if my memory serves me right from my reading of Coward's diaries, this is also based on fact.
The book was a huge success and well received from the critics which amazed Coward used as he was to being permanently vilified by the British press who loathed him uniformly. He was too successful that was the problem and they felt he needed to be put in his place. One looks at the tabloid press today and nothing has changed. Build them up and bring them down. Noel gets his own back by giving these words to one of his characters:
"The press of the world will descend upon this little Pacific Paradise and leave it looking like Hampstead Heath after a Bank Holiday. They will impart an air of scruffiness to the loveliest day. They will huddle in cliche sodden groups in all the bars of all the best hotels.....the whole dreary unappetizing lot of them will come tumbling out of aeroplanes at our feet and, what is more, we shall have to be nice to them, we shall even, if asked to do so by high authority, be compelled to ask them to our houses, because the fallacy of the Power of the Press is still rampant in this decaying and foolish world.
'I have a great friend who is a journalist' I said 'She's a darlilng'.
'Then she must be a very bad journalist. No good journalist could go on being a darling even if she had started as one'"
Noel took deep pleasure in the opportunity to get his own back on the whole lot of them. He never forgave them for the way they sneered and scorned him and accused him of being a traitor in the Second World War when he left the country, even though it was revealed years later that he was engaged on intelligence work. One of the reasons he agreed to do it, knowing what the papers would say and that they already despised him, is that he did not think it could get any worse. Well, it did.
The sharp wit and sly humour of Pomp and Circumstance put me in mind of, once again, The Diary of a Provincial Lady. Could not be in a more different setting than this exotic and sleepy, hedonistic island in the Pacific, but the observation of human frailties and their inconsistencies and stupidities is just the same. I thought of EM Delafield after reading the following conversation between two of the protagonists:
"There's a woman from the British Council doing a lecture tour in Japan'.
'What does she lecture about?'
'I'm not sure, something to do with the Victorian novelists and their influence on modern literature'
'Do you really think that will interest the Japanese?'
'Of course. Everything interests the Japanese, they are as keen as mustard on British culture and Progressive Western Ideas'
'I wouldn't call a lecture on the Victorian novelists exactly progressive'
'You never know. Imagine a group of those hissing geisha girls crouched over a really good translation of Mill on the Floss. It might alter their whole view of life!'"
Sheer perfection. So glad I saved up this treat and though I will read this book again as I know I will get even more enjoyment out of it each reading, the first read is always the one to treasure with the thrill of discovering something new. Luckily, when I was in a charity shop the other day, I stumbled across a copy of Noel Coward's short stories, another find which I have not read, so now another treat to be hoarded and gloated over.
