New Year’s Eve: our London family, sheltered through two generations of Victorian prosperity, awaits the headlong cavalcade of the Twentieth Century…’
(First caption of the 1933 movie version)
Introduction
Copied from the Wikipedia article (why reinvent the wheel?) with my own adaptations:
‘Cavalcade’ is a play by Noël Coward with songs by Coward and others. It covers three decades in the life of the Marryots, an upper-middle-class British family, and their servants, beginning in 1900 and ending in 1930, a year before the premiere.
Its 22 scenes each focus on a major historical event of the period, including the Relief of Mafeking (17 May 17 1900), the death of Queen Victoria (22 January 1901), the sinking of the RMS Titanic (12 April 1912), scenes from World War I and so on. Popular songs from each period are woven into the score.
The play was premiered in 1931 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, directed by Coward himself. It took advantage of the large stage of Drury Lane with its hydraulics and moving components to stage a spectacular pageant.
Presented by the impresario Charles B. Cochran, the spectacular production involved a huge cast and massive sets. The first night was met with a standing ovation and it proved a hugely popular play, running for almost a year.
Background and production
During the run of his successful comedy ‘Private Lives’ in London in 1930, Coward discussed with the impresario C. B. Cochran the idea of a big spectacular production to follow the intimate small scale of ‘Private Lives’.
Coward considered the idea of an epic set during the French Revolution, but when he saw a photograph of a troopship leaving for the Boer War in an old copy of the Illustrated London News the germ of the new play came to him.
He outlined his scenario to Cochran and asked him to secure the Coliseum, London’s largest theatre. Cochran was unable to do so but was able to book the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, which was not much smaller, provided Coward could guarantee an approximate opening date.
Coward and his designer Gladys Calthrop inspected Drury Lane and found it adequate in terms of the size of its stage and its technical facilities, although two extra hydraulic lifts had to be installed for quick changes of scenery, and unlike the Coliseum it lacked the revolving stage Coward wanted. While Calthrop began designing hundreds of costumes and twenty-two sets, Coward worked on the script, which he completed in August 1931.
‘Cavalcade’ premiered on 13 October 1931, starring Mary Clare and Edward Sinclair as the Marryot parents and featuring John Mills, Binnie Barnes, Una O’Connor, Moya Nugent, Arthur Macrae, Irene Browne and Maidie Andrews in supporting roles. The performance was a big success and the play went on to become one of the year’s biggest West End hits, running for 405 performances. It closed in September 1932.
Photos
The printed text of the play contains 22 photos from the production. In the online version I read these are all of shockingly poor quality so I wasn’t tempted to include any here.
The working classes
The play is immediately different in feel from anything else by Coward I’ve read because it features working class characters, in fact it opens with working class people, instantly differentiating it from the posh people dressing for dinner ambience of all the other plays.
Somewhere I’ve read a quote from Coward saying he was born into the middle class and so felt close to, or detached from, all the others. How working class characters here strike me as every bit as stereotypical as his upper middle class characters.
Synopsis
Part 1
Scene 1: Sunday 31 December 1899. The drawing-room of a London House
It is nearly midnight on New Year’s Eve 1899. The whole vast production opens in the kitchen of the posh Marryot family where we find the married parlourmaid Ellen and the butler, Bridges, fretting about preparing supper for their lords and masters, but also about the fact that Bridges has been called up to go and fight in the Boer War.
Cut to ‘above stairs’ where the master class, Robert (35) and Jane (31) Marryot, are seeing in the New Year quietly together. Jane’s brother is besieged in Mafeking, and Robert himself will shortly be going off to serve.
Robert and Jane invite their Bridges and Ellen toast the new year. Bells, shouting, and sirens outside usher in the New Year, and Robert proposes a toast to 1900.
Hearing her two boys stirring upstairs, Jane runs up to see after them, and her husband calls to her to bring them down to join the adults. He has some droll lines:
ROBERT: How very impolite of the twentieth century to waken the children.
Scene 2: Saturday 27 January 1900. A dockside
A month later, a contingent of volunteers are leaving for the war. On the dockside Jane and Ellen have parallel parting scenes with their men, Robert and Bridges. the basic dichotomy between the master class and the rude mechanicals reminds me of Shakespeare, goes back at least 300 years…
As the men go aboard Jane comforts Ellen, who is crying and a band strikes up ‘Soldiers of the Queen’. The volunteers wave their farewells to the cheering crowd.
Scene 3: Friday 8 March 1900. The drawing-room of the Marryots’ house
The Marryot boys – Edward (aged 12) and Joe (8) – are playing soldiers with a young friend, Edith Harris. She objects to being made to play the Boers, and they begin to quarrel. The noise brings in their mothers. Joe throws a toy at Edith, and is sharply slapped by Jane, whose nerves are on edge with anxiety about her brother and her husband.
Her state of mind is not helped by a barrel-organ outside, playing ‘Soldiers of the Queen’ under the window. Ellen the maid brings tea and the women commiserate about their menfolk in danger. Margaret, friend of Jane’s and mother of young Edith, sends the organ-grinder away then suggests taking Jane out tonight, to dinner at the Cafe Royal then on to the theatre to take her mind off her worry.
But left alone, Jane is tormented by the sound of the wretched barrel organ and collapses into hysterical tears.
Scene 4: Friday 8 May 1900. A theatre
Jane and Margaret are in a stage-box watching chorus girls performing ‘The Girls of the C.I.V’. The performance of the then popular musical comedy ‘Mirabelle’ continues but the performance is interrupted when the theatre manager comes onstage to announce that Mafeking has been relieved, triggering joyous uproar breaks out, the audience clapping, cheering and singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’.
Scene 5: Monday 21 January 1901. The kitchen of the Marryots’ house
The cook, Annie the parlour maid, and Ellen’s mother Mrs Snapper are preparing a special tea to greet Bridges on his return from the war. He comes in with Ellen, looking well, and kisses his little baby, Fanny. He tells them that he has bought a public house off a chap he met in Africa and is staying out there. So he and Ellen can work for themselves in future.
The celebratory mood is dampened when Annie brings in a newspaper reporting that Queen Victoria is ‘sinking’.
Scene 6: Sunday 27 January 1901. Kensington Gardens
This scene is all in mime. Robert and Jane are walking in Kensington Gardens with their children when they meet Margaret and Edith Harris. Everyone is in black, solemn and silent, following the Queen’s death.
Made me think of the death of our Queen Elizabeth II, who had reigned as long as anyone could remember, and the deep sense of loss many many people felt.
Scene 7: Saturday 2 February 1901. The Marryots’ drawing-room
On the balcony, Jane, Margaret, their children and the servants are watching Queen Victoria’s funeral procession. Robert, who was awarded the Victoria Cross is walking in the procession. Jane tells her children to stand respectfully as the coffin passes, especially after one of the boys drops a piece of cake onto the hat of a woman in the crowd. As the lights fade, Joe comments, ‘She must have been a very little lady’.
Scene 8: Thursday 14 May 1903. The grand staircase of a London house
Jane and Robert are attending a grand ball given by the Duchess of Churt. The Major-domo announces, ‘Sir Robert and Lady Marryot’.
Part II
Scene I: Saturday 16 June 1906. The bar parlour of a London public house
Jane has brought her eldest son Edward, now 18, to see Ellen and her mother, Mrs Snapper, in the flat above the public house. They are just having tea, together with Flo who is over-dressed and embarrassingly pretentious and George, who is a greengrocer. Alf and Ellen’s daughter Fanny is now seven-years-old and has been dancing to entertain them.
Ellen and her mother make excuses for Alf’s absence, lying that he is upstairs in bed after hurting his leg in a bicycling accident.
Alf Bridges enters, clearly drunk. Jane, dismayed, makes a tactful departure. Bridges starts to bully Fanny. He sees that Fanny has a nice new doll, just given her by Jane. Furious, he snatches it from the child and throws it into the fire, shouting that he can buy his own child a doll if he wants, he doesn’t need no bloomin’ charity. Ellen goes for Alf who punches her and is grabbed and thrown out the room by George.
Scene 2: Saturday 16 June 1906. A London street (exterior of the public house)
Alf emerges from the pub into a wonderful street scene with scores of Cockneys dancing and drinking and partying to the sound of a penny-in-the-slot piano, with much singing and laughter, costermongers hawking their wares, and a Salvation Army band performing. Fanny is happily dancing with some adults. Alf sees her and makes a grab at her but the men push him away, over offstage. Moments later there’s a screaming. Flo and Ellen had emerged from the pub to look for Fanny and, hearing the shouting, Flo runs offstage to see the scene, the re-enters to tell Ellen her husband has been run over and killed.
Scene 3: Wednesday 10 March 1909. The private room of a London restaurant
The Marryots’ eldest son, Edward Marryot, is holding his twenty-first birthday party, with many smart young guests. Rose, an actress from the old Mirabelle production, proposes his health and sings the big waltz number from the show.
Scene 4: Monday 25 July 1910. The beach of a popular seaside resort
On the beach crowds of holidaymakers are listening to Uncle George’s Concert Party performing from a bandstand. Ellen and her family are there and Fanny wins a prize for a song and dance competition.
Promenading are the posh people – Jane and Margaret, and their children, Edward, Joe and Edith. Edward and Edith are now young adults and sweet for each other. They unexpectedly bump into the roles – Ellen, little Fanny, George the greengrocer and Flo.
Ellen tells them that she has kept on the pub since her husband’s death and that Fanny is now at a dancing-school and determined to go on the stage.
A couple of unknown women walk by talking about the Crippen murder and how he was spotted and caught trying to escape on a liner, July 1910.
There’s a roll of thunder and it starts to rain. The beach becomes a sea of umbrellas (must have been impressive to see) and everyone walks or runs offstage leaving ‘One fat old woman is left asleep in a deck chair.’
A tremendous roll of thunder wakes her abruptly and she struggles to get up, and falls back into the chair, which collapses.
We are in the era of the Keystone cops.
Scene 5: Sunday 14 April 1912. The deck of an Atlantic liner
Edward has married Edith Harris, and they are on their honeymoon. They speculate blithely how long the initial bliss of marriage will last.
EDWARD: How long do you give us?
EDITH: I don’t know—and Edward—(she turns to him) I don’t care. This is our moment—complete and heavenly. I’m not afraid of anything. This is our own, for ever.
As they walk off, she lifts her cloak from where it has been draped over the ship’s rail, revealing the name Titanic on a lifebelt. The lights fade into complete darkness and the orchestra plays ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’ very quietly.
Scene 6: Tuesday 4 August 1914. The Marryots’ drawing-room
Joe asks his father if he will fight (probably) and then is frightfully keen to sign up himself. Father urges caution. A newspaper seller in the street outside shouts that war has been declared, and Robert, Joe and Margaret join a toast to victory, but Jane – who I’ve realised is the ‘moral core’ of the text – delivers an impassioned diatribe against the stupidity of war before running out.
JANE: Drink to die war, then, if you want to. I’m not going to. I can’d Rule Britannia! Send us victorious, happy and glorious! Drink, Joey, you’re only a baby, still, but you’re old enough for war. Drink like the Germans are drinking, to Victory and Defeat, and stupid, tragic sorrow. But leave me out of it, please!
Scene 7: 1914–1915–1916–1917–1918. Marching
Above the proscenium 1914 glows in lights. It changes to 1915-1916, 1917 and 1918. Meanwhile, soldiers march uphill endlessly. Out of darkness into darkness. Sometimes they sing gay songs, sometimes they whistle, sometimes they march silently, but the sound of their tramping feet is unceasing. Below, the vision of them brightly-dressed, energetic women appear in pools of light, singing stirring recruiting songs.
Scene 8: Tuesday 22 October 1918. A restaurant
Joe and Fanny – now a rising young singer and dancer – are dining in a West End restaurant. Jane is now nineteen and extremely attractive. Joe is in army officer’s uniform. He is on leave but is about to return to the Front. They discuss marriage but she imagines his family would object. She gives him a locket with her picture in.
Scene 9: Tuesday 22 October 1918. A railway station
Jane sees Joe off at the railway station. Like many of the women on the platform she is distressed. This is conveyed by a simple but effective piece of stage business: as stretchers bearing wounded men are carried past her, she lights a match to light her cigarette but is so distracted by the sight of the wounded that she lets the match burn out.
Scene 10: Monday 11 November 1918. The Marryots’ drawing-room
Ellen, now very swankily dressed, comes to visit Jane. She announces that Joe is emotionally involved with her daughter. The two mothers fall out: Ellen thinks Jane regards Fanny as beneath Joe socially.
As Ellen says a pointed goodbye they hear the guns going off outside to signal the Armistice. At that exact moment the maid brings in a telegram. Jane opens it and tells Ellen, ‘You needn’t worry about Fanny and Joe any more, Ellen. He won’t be able to come back at all, because he’s dead.’ And she faints.
Scene 11: Monday 11 November 1918. Trafalgar Square
Surrounded by the frantic revelry of Armistice Night, Jane is walking, dazed, through Trafalgar Square. With tears streaming down her face, she cheers wildly and waves a rattle, while the band plays ‘Land of Hope and Glory’.
Part III
Scene 1: Tuesday 31 December 1929. The Marryot’s drawing room
Margaret and Jane, both now elderly, are sitting by the fire. Margaret leaves, after wishing a happy New Year to Jane and Robert, who has come in to drink a New Year toast with his wife. Jane drinks first to him and then to England: ‘The hope that one day this country of ours, which we love so much, will find dignity and greatness, and peace again’.
Scene 2: Evening, 1930. A night club
Robert, Jane, Margaret, Ellen and the full company are in a night club. At the piano, Fanny sings Coward’s song ‘Twentieth Century Blues’.
Scene 3: Chaos
When the song is finished, people rise from table and dance without apparently any particular enjoyment; it is the dull dancing of habit. The lights fade away from everything but the dancers, who appear to be rising in the air. They disappear and down stage left six ‘incurables’ in blue hospital uniform are sitting making baskets. They disappear and Fanny is seen singing her song for a moment, then far away up stage a band is seen playing wildly. Then down stage Jane and Robert standing with glasses of champagne held aloft, then Ellen sitting in front of a Radio loud speaker; then Margaret dancing with a young man. The visions are repealed quicker and quicker, while across the darkness runs a Riley light sign spelling out news. Noise grows louder and louder. Steam rivets, loud speakers, jazz bands, aeroplane propellers etc until the general effect is complete chaos.
Then it all fades into darkness and silence and away at the back a Union Jack glows through the blackness. The lights come up on the massed company singing ‘God Save the King’.
Music
In addition to compositions by Coward, more than fifty popular songs, national anthems, hymns, ballads, and topical tunes relevant to the years portrayed were used in the film. Wikipedia lists just some of them. There have been numerous recordings, of all the songs, or just Coward’s songs, and a Cavalcade Suite developed from them. Here’s a record made of music from the show, with a spoken introduction by Coward himself.
The fantastical
The absurdist surreal fantasies, the mad spur-of-the-moment imaginings of Elyot and Amanda in ‘Private Lives’ has alerted me to the vein of fantasy, or flights of fancy, which pop up at unexpected moments in Coward’s plays.
Thus Edward and Edith’s moment on the Titanic is intensified by Edith’s strange flight of fantasy:
EDITH: Wouldn’t it be awful if a magician came to us and said: ‘Unless you count accurately every single fish in the Atlantic you die to-night?’
How strange but how strangely effective it is in accentuating that short scene, in giving it an extra dimension of tragedy: the idea that not just people were drowned but that the priceless gift of fantasy and imagination was drowned with them.
A few scenes later the family arrive back in the house which has been locked up for a while and has no food in. Jane asks where her husband is, and her son Joe says:
JOE: Groping about in the wine cellar like an angry old beetle. He says strong drink is essential in a crisis.
JANE: We must have something to eat, too. I wonder if there is anything.
JOE: There’s a strong bit of cold tongue in the larder. I just put my head in and it sang the Marseillaise.
!
Different histories
History in an absolute sense is the record of everything that’s ever happened i.e. is an incomprehensibly vast amount of material which is being continually added to.
History is also an academic subject with its own sub-divisions and specialities, all subject to the changes in academic and social fashion. When I was a student Marxist history was still a going concern with notables such as Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm and E.P. Thompson at their peak in the post-1960s radical ’70s and ’80s. But even at the time friends who actually studied history told me they were old hat and the new fashion was for social history from the bottom up, along with a new interest in regional history. I saw all this for myself in the eclipse of Christopher Hill’s Marxist accounts of the English Revolution by the regionalist approach of John Morell and the constitutional analysis of Conrad Russell.
Since then the study of British history has been shaken by at least three newer schools of thought or interpretation. The most obvious one is feminist history, which simply wants to redress centuries of dominance by men and reclaim the history of women, showing that women had more agency and influence than previously admitted, plus simply telling the stories of women from the well-known queens to the humblest working girls.
Alongside this has gone an equal surge in interest in Black history. In a sense the core of this is a proliferation of histories of the slave trade accompanied by the contentious claim that most of Britain’s eminence and the origin of the industrial revolution ultimately stemmed from the profits from the slave trade (see Industry and Empire: From 1750 to the Present Day by Eric Hobsbawm for a classic statement). But around this central core are new works emphasising the role of Black people from across the Empire, from Africa and the Caribbean, in fighting in the two world wars, and providing manpower in less well-known places such as in the merchant navy.
Thirdly there is the rise and rise of postcolonial studies, an interdisciplinary field of academic inquiry which includes history, literature, film etc to examines the cultural, political and economic effects of colonialism and imperialism with a special emphasis on the colonised, on the victims of imperialism.
Fourthly, over the same timescale, the rise and rise of Queer studies: an interdisciplinary academic field that examines gender and sexuality, challenging traditional notions and exploring the social construction of these identities.
By now you can see where I’m going with this. It is to state the obvious fact that the political, social and cultural world in which Coward wrote this work, and the historical narrative of unquestioned, unified, white, imperial British supremacy which it unashamedly promotes, has been smashed to pieces over the last 50 years or so. That the play, the script and the movie made from it are not just a little dated, but come from a different world, far closer to the values of Queen Victoria than to us (it was only 30 years from Victoria’s reign but is 90 years distant from us).
I feel like I just about have a vestigial contact with that world and its values, through the books and TV and films I consumed as a boy just 40 years after the play was premiered. But to my kids, the entire thing comes from another planet.
The Woolf connection
I learn from Philip Hoare’s wonderful 1995 biography of Coward that in 1928 he met and became friends with Virginia Woolf who, for a period, was awed and impressed by him, while he did everything he could to butter up to this scion of England’s intellectual set, extravagantly praising her most recent production, Orlando.
The idea of following an upper-middle-class family across several generations and dotted with key historic incidents from the period is also the plot of Virginia Wool’s 1937 novel, The Years. I wonder what she made of Coward producing something so similar in subject matter and scale while she was struggling so hard to create her book.
Upstairs, Downstairs
Interesting to learn that the 1970s television series, ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’, was to some extent based on ‘Cavalcade’.
As Karl Marx famously remarked, history repeats itself: first as tragedy, then as ITV costume drama.
The 1933 movie
‘Cavalcade’ was quickly snapped up by Hollywood which released a movie version in 1933. Directed by Frank Lloyd, the film version is an epic two hours long and won three Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Coward was still only 34. The scale of his success is breathtaking.
Philip Hoare
‘Cavalcade unashamedly reaffirms stereotypes: the characters seem almost Dickensian as Coward mixes comedy and tragedy… The overwhelming impression of the production was of nostalgic national introspection and sentimentality, somewhat redeemed by Coward’s handling of his material, technical skill and sense of spectacle. The result was a triumph of style over content.’ (Noel Coward: A Biography by Philip Haore, page 234)
Books & Boots 