“Got all my notices from New York. All absolutely
insulting and nearly all idiotic. I suddenly realized how foolish it is to
allow one’s mind ever to be irritated by reviews. I write what I wish to
write—later on the world can decide if it wishes to. There will always be a few
people, anyhow, in every generation who will find my work entertaining and
true.”—Noel Coward, diary entry for April 23, 1951, in The Noel Coward Diaries,
edited by Graham Payn and Sheridan Morley (1982)
He did not always remember this wise admonition to
himself about not getting irritated by reviews, especially when British critics
were bypassing his drawing-room comedies in favor of the “kitchen-sink” dramas
of the “Angry Young Man” movement heralded by John Osborne. But Sir Noel Coward—who died peacefully on
an early morning at his Jamaica home, Firefly, on this date 40 years ago, at
age 73--was perfectly correct that the value of his work would be confirmed by
posterity.
I could say this occurred for the simplest of
reasons--he knew how to make people laugh—but that is only partly true. This
famous bon vivant was also the most
industrious of men, not only churning out all kinds of work—plays, short
stories, a novel, several memoirs, and hundreds of songs—but also laboring
painstakingly over their construction. Not a bad model for a writer.
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