Evening Star Newspaper, October 29, 1936, Page 28

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Yellow gold $26.50 7-Jewel Gruen Raised gold figure $ 175 Let Us Open a Charge Account for You k anfris ad LD, JEWELERS + SILVERSMITHS - DIAMOND MERCHANTS 1101 F St. N.W. Est. About Noel Coward THE EVENING STAR, WASHINGTON Traveling Around , English-American, Sentimental Cynie, Explosive Dreamer. Noel Coward . . . a paradox always. This is the fourth in a series of articles on people and places in England and France, as they ap- pear to a Star reporter traveling at random. BY I. WILLIAM HILL, Staff Correspondent ot The Star. ONDON.—A crowd of British | dowagers was rather densely populating the tea room of & wayside inn near London the | other Sunday. Over at a corner| table two men sat for a long whuei unnoticed. | Then one of the dowagers leaned; toward a companion: | “Don’t look now, my dear but isn't that Noel Coward?” | The companion waited a ladylike | length of time then looked, nodded and leaned toward the woman on her right. The word went ‘round, and after the requisite number of ladylike lengths of time the entire party arose | and filed out quietly without so much | as & glance at the corner table. Exit by Mr. Coward. | It was Mr. Coward whom they had seen, and we imagine that at the time he felt a little grateful for their reticent reserve. If that be true, how- ever, the life of the feeling was short. | For outside the tea room the dow= | agers had lined up against both walls | of the corridor. As Mr. Coward| strode through they still said noth- | ing. They maintained that much reticence. But what they did was to clap their hands in dignified ap- plause while the playwright-actor= | composer-musician strolled on, bow- | ing suavely this way and that. “Thank | you. Thank you. Thank you very much.” He might have been enjoying the incident—but he wasn't. Later, re- calling it in a conversation at his London hoe, he described it as one of his most embarrassing moments. ‘We were inclined to believe him. Em- barrassed sophistication fitted into the paradoxical puzzle that Noel Coward had always seemed to be. We had always been curious about him. We regarded him as one of those few writers whose work was not enough—a man who wrote and yet did not reveal the unique personality that made him the artist he was. If the sentimental “Bitter Sweet,” with its aroma of rosemary and laven- der, revealed Mr. Coward—what of | the cynic who nurtured the brittle wit of “Design for Living,” or the| dreamer who devised the epic gran- | deur of “Cavalcade”? Which was Mr. Coward? That was what we re- | solved to find out when we were given the opportunity of visiting at his home in Eaton Square, Chelsea. | Questions Are Formulated. | We formulated questions to this end as we contemplated the wooden | gateway to Mr. Coward’s residence, | 15-Jewel Elgin 10-k. White or yel- low gold $9Q.i5 filled case. 39 17-Jewel Hamilton 10-k. white or yellow gold filled $4 )00 iy 40 17-Jewel Harvel 14-k. yellow § a5 gold case 24 1874 Phone DI. 0916 with its brass plate instructing the postman to forward all mail to an-| other address. | Since the wooden gate was too high to see over, we pushed it open. A | stony passage that seemed to disap- pear in shadow beneath a projecting upper story of the house lay ahead. We followed this and finally con- fronted a door with a heavy knocker on it. We knocked. A silken-voiced butler wanted to know if we were expected and then | admitted us to a tiny, dimly lit hall- | way, from which we were escorted up a winding stairway. On the sec. ond floor we suddenly found our- selves in a studio room large enough | to entertain the entire Senate and half the House of Representatives all at once. The butler disappeared, and | we looked hastily around, a little afraid we had missed seeing Mr. Coward in one of the giant overstuffed chairs. A draped window made up half of one wall and served as a frame for | the boughs of a great tree outside. On the same side of the room the floor was raised, like a stage, with a grand piano at each end. On each piano was a hugh vase containing a bouquet of mixed flowers too large for even Sophie Tucker to carry all at one time. Another side of the room was covered by a balcony filled wit! bookcases so that it somewhat resem- bled the stacks at the Library of Congress. In one corner beneath the balcony there was a bar glistening with hundreds of glasses and things to put in them. Entrance Like a Genie. | We had just gotten around to no- | ticing the fireplace and numerous | deep jars of cigarettes when we be- | came conscious of motion at one end of the room. Before we had gotten | our eyes properly focused Mr: Coward | had appeared with the speed of a genie, had learned our first nme.‘ had stuffed a tinkling bit of glass- | ware between our fingers, had popped ] down with his legs thrown over the | arm of a chair, had asked about | E. de S. Meicher, and was half way through an account of the tribula- tions of producing a play. “We ran ‘Tonight at 8:30° five | months in London,” he said. “It| was too long. I always prefer to limit | an engagement to three months” | He paused to light a cigarette. In| the interval we tried frantically to recall the questions we were going to ask, but they were gone. energy of the man swept away all the formality of an interview, leav- ing our preconceived plans decidedly windblown. We found ourselves in- terested, not in what Mr. Coward might say in answer to our ques- tions, but in what he would say of his own accord and the way he would say it, with those quick gestures of his deft hands. Thinking of the methodical slow- ness of the everyday English to whom we had become accustomed, we said lamely: “Maybe you're English, but—>" Likes American Tempo. He smiled a not displeased smile as we explained that we supposed we had been abroad long enough to as« sociate energy and speed with Amer- ica. “You know,” he said, “that’s what I like about America—the tempo. It gets things done.” Then he went on talking, only words on paper don't have the suaye, clipped speed of his voice. Before he slowed up again he had praised New York for its vitality, discussed the madcap fun he had with Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur making the film “The Scoundrel” and denied he had written a line of dialogue for the picture, as confiden- tially related by a number of critics. It was about then the telephone rang. He snatched it up. “Hello,” he said in an assumed voice that might have been that of The | the croup. D. C, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1936. a butler in the advanced stages of “This is Mr. Coward's secretary speaking. . . . Who's calling, please? . . . Who? ... . I'm sorry, Mr. Coward is not here.” Resuming our conversation without pause, he told us the following things, still talking at the undiminishing speed of the Golden Arrow. He had taken a vacation this S8um- mer over much the same route as King Edward VIIL Finishes Autobiography. He particularly likes Egyptians. He had started and finished a 120,000-word autobiography during the six weeks of his vacation. Since his typewriter had broken down about chapter two or three, he had to fin- ish it writing longhand. He writes in longhand sometimes, anyhow, the only difference being that he finds it more tiring. His favorite of his own plays is “Bitter Sweet” Of the nine short plays in “Tonight at 8:30,” which will open in Washington, D. C., No- vember 9, he prefers “Hands Across the Sea,” “Still Life” and “The As- tonished Heart.” He thinks “Ways and Meai since it is similar in style to “Private Lives,” is too old fashioned. He thinks writing witty dialogues is too easy and distracts from the progress of a play, anyhow, since it calls attention to itself rather than to development of a plot. He likes sentiment but whimsy. He writes what he writes without hates Beauty and Visibility Combined in One . .. INVISIBLE BIFOCAL LEN SES” Far and Near Vision Ground in One Lense Regularly $12—Special in Our New Modern Optical Department Use your Letter of Credit to purchase these fine quality bifocal lenses. Fitted to your eyes by our registered eyesight specialist FINEST QUALITY TORIC Fitted to your eyes for far or near viion at approximately one-half the usual chearge. 'LENSES - 3.50 EYES EXAMINED FREE *Astigmatic Lenses Not Included Optical Department . « « Balcony. 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Out in the night we started to total up. But try as we might, Mr. Coward still remained an enigma—an English American, a sentimental cynic, a dreamer with apparent energy enough to tow the British Isles across the Atlantic to New York Harbor, a paradox always. Next: The English theater. iy NEW Y O.un Bvery reom is mew. different ... decor vated by Anne Tiffany. Daily rates, single rooms from $6, doubte from $8, suites from $12. James O. Stack, General Mgr. HOTEL ST. REGIS, Fifth Ave. at 35th Street, New York T G Street GIRL HURT IN FALL Mary Louise McIntosh, 14, of the Clifton Terrace Apartments, Four- | teenth and Clifton streets, was in Emergency Hospital today suffering from a head injury received when | thrown from a horse on PMomAc‘ Parkway, near Twenty-fourth and P‘ streets, yesterday afternoon. She suffered brain concussion and | possibly a fractured skull. 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