Word: cowardly
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POMP & CIRCUMSTANCE (308 pp.)-Noel Coward- Doubleday...
...Noel Coward once hymned a certain Poor Uncle Harry, who wanted to be a missionary and who sailed to the South Seas. "The natives," Coward's saga went...
...Coward returns to Harry's wicked island, or one just like it, in what turns out to be, surprisingly enough, this all-round entertainer's first novel, written at 60. Years have passed, and less corruptible missionaries have done their work in Samolo.* The natives now dine on the tourists' bounty, not on the tourists. In fact, the place has become so civilized that it possesses a Royal Governor, a fairly intricate gin-drinking plantocracy, and is an important enough bastion of empire to occasion a visit by Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip...
...Coward at his best-and there are patches in this somewhat lengthy foolishness when he is not-means dialogue that is blithe and blithery: "'I don't want to go to Jane's,' said Maisie. 'She gets even drunker than I do. The last time I dined there, she sat in a fruit salad.' 'Perhaps she'll do it again if we hurry.' Michael gripped her firmly by the arm. 'Come along.'" Most readers will come along happily enough...
...inevitable attempt to define the national character: It "is based on the idea of the impoverished and downtrodden little man getting the better of the world around him by sheer cunning. Add to this the salt of a self-deprecating humour and you have the immortal Greek. A coward and a hero at the same time; a man torn between his natural and heroic genius and his hopeless power of ratiocination...