His master's echo
Sir : Peter Daubeny (8 November) says I was quoted in a misleading context in Sheridan Morley'srhook about Noel Coward. What I told Sheridan was that I remembered two contradictory reactions—first, when we were in a house party at the villa of a friend in the South of France in the early 1930s, and the chaps sped off in a car after dinner to do night spots in nearby Toulon. I was furious at being left behind, and wanted to go, so when one of the girls swooned about Nogrs brilliance I said, 'Noel Coward—they grow on trees where I come from.' Next Christmas the card he sent me had a tree drawn by himself with figures hanging from the branches marked NC.
That was not the first time I met Noel. I already admired him, I was just angry. The second contradictory 'reaction' endeared him to me for ever. In the war I was abso- lutely dedicated to starting the Stage Door Canteen in London. I had letters from Eisen- hower, Montgomery and many in the field asking for it. I worked harder than at any- thing I had ever done before. When the day arrived four hundred people from the stage, Members of Parliament and businessmen came to be convinced of the project. Before arriving I walked twice round the block with paralysing nerves—never experienced on the stage! Noel had refused, saying that he had too much to do. As I went in the Piccadilly entrance, complete with butterflies inside. there was Noel. He said, 'I was wrong, you were right. 1 am here to go on committees. on stage, anything you like.' This produced a slight tear in my eye and gave me the bounce to face that formidable audience. He doesn't know how much it meant to me, but I shall tell him someday.
Wasn't there a little more human interest to the above than what was printed? Or was it a case of overzealous editing?
Dorothy Dickson 42 Eaton Square, London, swl Sir: Some years ago an American publisher suggested that I should write a biography of Noel Coward. Had Noel been approached? No, but if I would only write a specimen chapter—so he assured me—Mr Coward would be so enraptured by its brilliance that he would give the project its blessing.
I thought this improbable, but as I has.' been in a position of almost permane- genuflection towards the Master for nearly forty years, I decided to have a shot at it.
The chapter was never written, not because there was not enough material but because there was too much. And because all thi• material—whether it came from Coward', own two autobiographies, his. dramatic and literary works, or the memories of the countless friends whom he has dazzled with his conversation over the years was so exqulidtely individual that any attempt to paraphrase it was a work of supererogation.
This is the essence of Mr Peter Daubeny's delicately perceptive review of Mr Sheridan Motley's current biography (8 November). Too much of it. inevitably, is a paraphrase.
Mr Morley protests that only 'one page Is fire of the book contains direct quotations from Coward's own writing'. That is not the_ paint. The more direct quotations from Coward the better. What Mr Daubeny is complaining about is the fact that . Mr Morley has sometimes been rash enough to attempt to echo the Master's voice in his Own words. It can't be done, because . . . to quote Mr Daubeny . . . 'everything the Master has done carries his own signature, his own particular and totally personal ..echo".'
We have received a number of other letters from Mr Daubeny's friends to this effect— Editor, SPECTATOR.
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