Noel Coward: The Complete Short Stories (1985)

     Noel Coward The Complete Short Stories (1985) Coward was a very clever writer. All of these stories are worth reading, but few stick in the memory or move the heart. I think he constructed stories rather than told them. Several are more or less gloomy shaggy dog stories: "The Wooden Madonna" tells how a self-satisfied young playwright patronises an ordinary bloke Englishman and becomes the unwitting mule for diamond smugglers. Others show a rather too neat resolution of the plot: In "Nature Study" the dissatisfied wife of a stuffed shirt type runs off with the chauffeur. Coward has a sharp eye for folly, smugness, complacency, hypocrisy, and worse vices. But he also has a soft spot for people who are just trying to get by as best they can, held back from worldly success by kindness and decency.

       He knows the theatre, and several of his best pieces are set in that milieu. The characters in these stories have the ring of truth: I wonder if someone who knew Coward and his career intimately would recognise their prototypes. In the best story, "Me and the Girls", the narrator recounts his life as a small-time manager/producer who wanders the show circuit with a troupe of girls who perform in shows devised to make the most of their small talents in singing, dancing, and sketch comedy. He’s a man who has made the best of his few chances at love and affection; now he’s dying, and we realise that his tawdry and messy life has been marked by courage and kindness. Not a bad legacy for anyone. I saw video versions of this and "Mrs. Capper’s Birthday", and enjoyed them both.
     Nor are these stories a bad legacy for Coward. They are skilfully made, and they consistently make heroes of those who practice the ordinary virtues of kindness and decency. You may guess from this that the tone is often rather sad and occasionally world-weary. You would be right. His short stories amount to novels in miniature. Like other short story writers, Coward can suggest a whole life in a few incidents. I enjoyed reading these stories, even the early ones where the mechanics of the plot were a little too obvious. ** to ***