Morning Read: An end to Squillions

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Morning Reads have all but fallen away entirely. There are two explanations. First, my mornings are now given over to combing the Internet and harvesting links. On the rare occasion when I’m done before lunch time, I’m far too agitated and muscid-eyed for straightforward reading. Second, I intensely dislike two of the books on this season’s list.

One of these is, of course, Moby-Dick. There the blame is all Melville’s. My objections to The Letters of Noël Coward are more complicated. I have enjoyed reading almost all of the letters of Noël Coward that appear in the book, edited (if that is the word) by Barry Day. Unfortunately, there are a lot of boring businessy letters from Coward’s colleagues. And because what Mr Day’s effort boils down to is a “life in letters,” the correspondence is a poor reflection of some of the important people in Coward’s life, such as Beatrice Lillie and Graham Payn. Ned Rorem has written about his relationship with Coward, but, perhaps because there were no surviving missives among the Englishman’s papers, the American’s name does not appear even in Mr Day’s index. Frustrating at first, this sense of off-stage life builds into a monstrous annoyance.

Also missing from the book is a sense of Coward’s sparkling presence. He writes cleverly but sincerely, but at the back of even the best letters there is a sense of duty discharged. Noël Coward was a very good writer, but his métier was performance. Looking at this clip, taken from his 1955 television special with Mary Martin (and oh, the letters to, fro, and about that collaboration — which began in 1946!), we can imagine what Coward must have been like at the height of his career, performing for a live audience: a magician. He may not have done tricks, but had a way of indicating that he was about to do something interesting — and then doing it, exactly right. In most of his movies, especially the late ones (Our Man in Havana, The Italian Job), Coward comes across as a distinctive character actor, one whom you might look forward to seeing in a movie, in the manner of Eric Blore or Edward Everett Horton. It takes a weird (and fairly unsatisfactory) film such as Bunny Lake Is Missing to elicit his facially acrobatic stagecraft.

¶ Last week, I sat down with the book that I’ve been calling Squillions and read through to the last page. So I’m done with it.

The moment that came closest to undoing him emotionally was the birthday lunch given in his honor by the queen. Would he consider accepting a knighthood, if offered? she asked. For once there was no ready Coward riposte, and his name was duly gazetted in the 1970 New Year’s Honours List. On February 3 came the investiture and, to the accompaniment of a military band appropriately playing “A Life on the Ocean Wave,” Sir Noël rose on painful knee with the recognition from his country he had deserved thirty years earlier.

There was an audible sigh of relief from the ranks of the other theatrical knights, and Sir Alec Guinness spoke for all of them when he said, “We have been like a row of teeth with the front tooth missing. Now we can smile again.”

Three books remain on the list (Rochefoucauld proved to be wholly unsuitable early on, but I never did take another picture of the books). I look forward to reading the rest of Don Quixote, and the collection of Lord Chesterfield’s letters, although perhaps not as “morning reads.” I dread the prospect of tackling Moby-Dick, indisputably the worst famous book that I have ever read, but that’s what’s next.