IVOR NOVELLO
MEMORIAL ADDRESS

St. Martin-in-the-Fields
March 29th, 1951

(Written and delivered by Christopher Hassall)

   FOR more than three weeks now the British Theatre has been in mourning, and we are met here this day to render thanks;  humble thanks to God who fashioned for our solace a Prince of gaiety, a friend who in dark times eased the burden of our weariness and so won for himself the affection of millions whom he never met.  Ours is a sorrow and a sense of pride that is shared throughout Britain, nowhere more deeply than in Wales, the well-spring of his music.  Ruling in his kingdom of the theatre, he would go a progress through our great industrial cities, but all the time the voice of the inner man that spoke through his melody was the voice of a place far away where there are wild woods and hills and ancient traditions of song.

   Endowed with equal grace of mind and body, he was blessed above all with a heart to perceive the joy in life and a genius that enabled him to share it with his fellow men.  But one cannot reduce his qualities to a sentence.  The Powers that singled him out for especial favours managed to devise a wildly improbable person who was nevertheless real.  Consider what they did.  No one so good-looking should have been a composer hummed and whistled throughout the English-speaking world, in charm and fertility of invention second only to Sullivan;  or, if so, he should not as well have been a popular playwright;  but if we are obliged to grant this much, then let him not be a romantic actor whose appearances were one of the most assured attractions of his time.  Very well; --though credulity grow sick and die, let all this be so , but let him at least be a trial to his friends and martinet among the smaller fry of the stage, -- but no.   He was loved like a brother, and he carried his unique position and all its power with the same looseness and graceful ease as he might wear an open-neck shirt and lounge at leisure in the sun.  In truth, being a very gentle soul, he was strangely democratic for a despot and loved not power but the Theatre which it served.

   He was essentially just one of the crowd, from which even his extraordinary gifts could not altogether set him apart.  Despite appearances he was at heart always no more nor less than the average member of the audience, and therein lay his strength as a servant of the public.  By making sure of pleasing himself he could safely count on delighting his neighbour.  There was nothing here either of condescension or of contrivance.  He had but to rely on an instinct that long experience had made almost unerring, and dispense with reason, even good reasons, altogether.  Of a certain invaluable philosopher and friend he once remarked--'One should always ask her advice then do exactly the opposite.'  Reaching maturity in an age forlorn, subjected to unparalleled stresses and unable to escape, he was a physician who providentially suffered from the same ailment as his patient.  And so they went together, himself and the public hand in hand, on melodious and joyous excursions into now this, now that province of the lovely land of Might-have-been.

   Once arrived we note that others do all the singing and others generally deliver the best lines.  The plan is, or so it seems, for this latter-day Prospero merely to be there in person, at once a dreamer and the centerpiece of his own drama, while things happen round him.  The perfectly ordinary struggling inventor or penniless musician would be shown suddenly caught up in a  series of unlikely yet just plausible and wholly enchanting events.  But the happy ending does not come at all as expected.  Just when it looks as though the end must be a slow heart-break, a new element is introduced, a sort of compensation, and the tale abruptly turns a corner out of shadow into light.  The inventor has been deprived of his beloved, the musician, grown old and weary, has fallen a victim to brutal oppression, but the horizon suddenly widens, becomes almost limitless, and the dancing years are shown to be still dancing and the carefree music still exulting.  After the first instance, in the first of the big musical plays, some variant or other of this principle was never omitted.  This was not merely the device of a master showman.  It was necessary for his personal satisfaction.  Looked at from any angle, he seems to be saying, life makes sense.  There is a pattern.  It is various, vastly amusing and unexpected, at times ridiculous, often very touching--especially when loyalty or tradition is the theme--and if there is sorrow it is not unmitigated.  Fate gives even while it takes.  So the make-believe was not wholly divorced from reality after all!  A majestic and flamboyant theatrical gesture has been made, and made in a way natural to the performer.   It is therefore sincere, and so at the last entirely effective.  It was in May 1935 and at Drury Lane that he discovered his full and peculiar scope.  Thereafter night after night he drew to himself numberless multitudes, showed them their dreams, then sent them back into the austere world of everyday, invigorated and not without a memento, for they were humming the tunes that flavoured a whole epoch. 

   By St. Cecilia and all the household deities of the Drama, it was an epoch that needed flavour!  I fee; I may speak for many thousands who did not know him personally when I say that if Ivor Novello leaves behind him a legend, as indeed he does, it is a rare one, a legend of abounding happiness, unmixed with the darker side of life.  In an age of cynicism he maintained unspoiled his faith in the simple and tender affections;  when our spirits were oppressed with dullness he came to our rescue with Romance;  when we were jarred by the crude realities of our time he visited us with the balm of make-believe;  not the humdrum of modern life he brought colour, colour ever new and more resplendent, and the continual surprise of refreshing laughter;  for with him, whatever might happen in the newspapers, gay was always the word.

   For those who worked with  him, what can I say?  Many are the artists and of many kinds whom he noted, watched, and helped to self-discovery, honestly rejoicing in their success as if it were his own.  We learned from him the gentle and vital art of communal effort, each man in his place and at his best, and absolute devotion to the job in hand.  The story of the British Theatre moves on, once more enriched, and we are proud to think that some of us are entitled to be mentioned in the footnotes of that glittering chapter which bears his name. 

   God's final blessing upon him and upon us was this--that at the height of his powers, yet with a life already abundantly fulfilled, he should be spared even so much as the chance of the slightest failure or falling off--

   But at such an hour and in such a place as this, of what avail are all the gifts of mind most valued among men without those graces of character which are especially beloved of God?  In the time of his humiliation, as time there was, he showed a resilience of spirit and resources of courage unsuspected even among his closest friends, and came through untainted by the slightest bitterness or inclination to reproach.  Through a life of fabulous success nothing so became him as his demeanour in tribulation which only served to increase his moral stature.  The constancy of his friendship and the compassionate readiness of his helping hand to all who sought and showed they could deserve it are well known and a large part of the reason why we are assembled here to do him honour and to pray.

   Here, under God's roof, and confident in our prayers, we commend to His loving care the immortal soul of a good man.  Only the deepest conviction can warrant the use of so brief yet so comprehensive and conclusive a phrase.  Happy indeed is he who deserves it.  Yet just such a man was this true and faithful servant who leaves behind him the memory of nothing that was not comely and of good report.  And now while we enter with thankfulness into the inheritance of melody and laughter which he has left us, we may take good comfort.  The peace of God which passeth all understanding is assuredly upon him, our friend and benefactor, and it abides with him always.