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‘A Household Book’ – A.A. Milne

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As promised yesterday, here is the essay ‘A Household Book’ from A.A. Milne’s Not That It Matters.  It might come with some surprises – unless you happened to read Peter’s comments yesterday…

Once on a time I discovered Samuel Butler; not the other two, but the one who wrote The Way of All Flesh, the second-best novel in the English language.  I say the second-best, so that, if you remind me of Tom Jones or The Mayor of Casterbridge or any other that you fancy, I can say that, of course, that one is the best.  Well, I discovered him, just as Voltaire discovered Habakkuk, or your little boy discovered Shakespeare the other day, and I committed my discovery to the world in two glowing articles.  Not unnaturally the world remained unmoved.  It knew all about Samuel Butler.

Last week I discovered a Frenchman, Claude Tillier, who wrote in the early part of last century a book called Mon Oncle Benjamin, which may be freely translated My Uncle Benjamin.  (I read it in the translation.)  Eager as I am to be lyrical about it, I shall refrain.  I think that I am probably safer with Tillier than with Butler, but I dare not risk it.  The thought of your scorn at my previous ignorance of the world-famous Tillier, your amused contempt because I have only just succeeded in borrowing the classic upon which you were brought up, this is too much for me.  Let us say no more about it.  Claude Tillier – who has not heard of Claude Tillier?  Mon Oncle Benjamin – who has not read it, in French or (as I did) in American?  Let us pass on to another book.

For I am going to speak of another discovery; of a book which should be a classic, but is not; of a book of which nobody has heard unless through me.  It was published some twelve years ago, the last-published book of a well-known writer.  When I tell you his name you will say, “Oh yes!  I love his books!” and you will mention So-and-So, and its equally famous sequel Such-and-Such.  But when I ask you if you have read my book, you will profess surprise, and say that you have never heard of it.  “Is it as good as So-and-So and Such-and-Such?” you will ask, hardly believing that this could be possible.  “Much better,” I shall reply – and there, if these things were arranged properly, would be another ten per cent. in my pocke.  But believe me, I shall be quite content with your gratitude.

Well, the writer of the book is Kenneth Grahame.  You have hard of him?  Good, I thought so.  The books you have read are The Golden Age and Dream Days.  Am I not right?  Thank you.  But the book you have not read – my book – is The Wind in the Willows.  Am I not right again?  Ah, I was afraid so.

The reason why I knew you had not read it is the reason why I call it “my” book.  For the last ten or twelve years I have been recommending it.  Usually I speak about it at the my first meeting with a stranger.  It is my opening remark, just as yours is something futile about the weather.  If I don’t get it in at the beginning, I squeeze it in at the end.  The stranger has got to have it some time.  Should I ever find myself in the dock, and one never knows, my answer to the question whether I had anything to say would be, “Well, my lord, if I might just recommend a book to the jury before leaving.”  Mr. Justice Darling would probably pretend that he had read it, but he wouldn’t deceive me.

For one cannot recommend a book to all the hundreds of people whom one has met in ten years without discovering whether it is well known or not.  It is the amazing truth that none of those hundreds had heard of The Wind in the Willows until I told them about it.  Some of them had never of Kenneth Grahame; well, one did not have to meet them again, and it takes all sorts to make a world.  But most of them were in your position – great admirers of the author and his two earlier famous books, but ignorant thereafter.  I had their promise before they left me, and waited confidently for their gratitude.  No doubt they also spread the good news in their turn, and it is just possible that it reached you in this way, but it was to me, none the less, that your thanks were due.  For instance, you may have noticed a couple of casual references to it, as if it were a classic known to all, in a famous novel published last year.  It was I who introduced that novelist to it six months before.  Indeed, I feel sometimes that it was I who wrote The Wind in the Willows, and recommended it to Kenneth Grahame… but perhaps I am wrong here, for I have not the pleasure of his acquaintance.  Nor, as I have already lamented, am I financially interested in its sale, an explanation which suspicious strangers require from me sometimes.

I shall not describe the book, for no description would help it.  But I shall just say this; that it is what I call a Household Book.  By a Household Book I mean a book which everybody in the household loves and quotes continually ever afterwards; a book which is read aloud to every new guest, and is regarded as the touchstone of his worth.  But it is a book which makes you feel that, though everybody in the house loves it, it is only you who really appreciate it as its true value, and that the others are scarcely worthy of it.  It is obvious, you persuade yourself, that the author was thinking of you when he wrote it.  “I hope this will please Jones,” were his final words, as he laid down his pen.

Well, of course, you will order the book at once.  But I must give you one word of warning.  When you sit down to it, don’t be so ridiculous as to suppose that you are sitting in judgment on my taste, still less on the genius of Kenneth Grahame.  You are merely sitting in judgment on yourself… You may be worthy; I do not know.  But it is you who are on trial.

Not That It Matters – A.A. Milne

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It’s been about a decade since I blitzed most of A.A. Milne’s very many books, and now I’m enjoying revisiting them.  I thought a trip down Milne Memory Lane would be a handy way to cross off 1919 on A Century of Books, so I picked up his collection of humorous essays from that year, Not That It Matters.

The first piece (although they are not in chronological order) starts ‘Sometimes when the printer is waiting for an article which really should have been sent to him the day before, I sit at my desk and wonder if there is any possible subject in the whole world upon which I can possibly find anything to say.’  (The final line in the book, incidentally, is ‘And Isaiah, we may be sure, did not carry a notebook.’  Which gives you some sense of the wide variety Milne covers in this collection.)

Some of the essays are very indicative of their time – from 1910 to 1919, as the essays appeared during that period in The Sphere, The Outlook, and The Star.  I’m not sure ‘Smoking as a Fine Art’ would appear anywhere today, except as a consciously controversial piece, nor could any 21st century essayist take for granted that his reader went for frequent country houseparties, attended Lords, and had strong memories of the First World War.  On the other hand, many of the topics Milne covers would be equally fit for a columnist today, if we still had the type who were allowed to meander through arbitrary topics, without the need to make a rapier political point or a satirical topical comment.  Milne writes on goldfish, daffodils, writing personal diaries, the charm of lunch, intellectual snobbery, and even what property programme presenters would now call ‘kerb appeal’ – but which was simply ‘looking at the outside of a house’ in Milne’s day.

I love Milne’s early work, because it is so joyful and youthful.  In the sketches and short pieces published in The Day’s Play, The Holiday Round and others, ‘The Rabbits’ often re-appear – these are happy, silly 20-somethings called things like Dahlia and (if me) addressed by their surnames.  They play cricket (badly), golf (badly), and indoor party games (badly) on endless and sunny country holidays.  It’s all deliciously insouciant and, if not quite like A.A. Milne (or anybody) really was, great fun to read.  When Milne turns to essays, he can’t include this cast, of course.  And he was in his late thirties when Not That It Matters was published – still young, perhaps, but hardly youthful.  He was a married man, though not a father quite yet, and his tone had changed slightly – from the exuberance which characterised his earliest books, to the calmly witty and jovial tone which was to see out the rest of his career.  Here’s an example, more or less at random, of the style which makes me always so happy to return to Milne:

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,” said Keats, not actually picking out celery in so many words, but plainly including it in the general blessings of the autumn.
My main qualm with these essays is that they do often end in rather a forced manner.  He’ll put in a reference that drags everything back to the opening line, or finishes off pat in a slightly different direction.  It doesn’t feel especially natural, and is perhaps indicative of the looming deadlines Milne mentions in the first essay…

As the title suggests, nothing of life-changing importance is addressed in Not That It Matters.  He does not adopt a serious voice at any point – indeed, I cannot think of a time in any of his books where he becomes entirely serious, not even in Peace With Honour, a non-fiction (and excellent) book wherein he put forth his pacifist views.  Even at these moments his weightiest points are served with a waggle of the eyebrows and an amusing image.  That’s how he made his impact.

I do prefer the whimsy of his fictional sketches to the panache of his essays, but it is still a delight and a joy to have Not That It Matters and its ilk waiting on my shelf.  It definitely bears re-reading, and I’ll be going on a cycle through Milne’s many and various books for the rest of life, I imagine.

Tomorrow I’ll type out a whole of one of his essays, ‘A Household Book’, because I think it’ll surprise quite a few people.  And will show to my brother that I was RIGHT about something I’ve been saying to him for a decade.  Ahem.  The essay is in praise of a then-underappreciated book by a famous author… and ends with this paragraph (come back tomorrow to see what it was!):

Well, of course, you will order the book at once.  But I must give you one word of warning.  When you sit down to it, don’t be so ridiculous as to suppose that you are sitting in judgment on my taste, still less on the genius of ******* *******.  You are merely sitting in judgment on yourself… You may be worthy; I do not know.  But it is you who are on trial.

Mr. Pim (Passes By)

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I have come back from a really wonderfully enjoyable Possibly Persephone? event, which I will write more about soon – hopefully tomorrow. But tonight I shall leave you in no further doubt as to the choice I took along with me – it’s Mr. Pim Passes By by A.A. Milne, and I left my copy with lovely Nicola Beauman, so I will wait and see what she thinks. Onto my review…

Every now and then I write about A.A. Milne’s works, and mention that he was my first great grown-up-books love – ironically, given that he is best known as a children’s writer. Two People and The Red House Mystery have both recently come back into print, and yet there is a huge amount of AAM’s work which is mostly overlooked. Some of his whimsical sketches are currently appearing on Radio 4 – thanks for the heads-up, Barbara! – and you can listen to previous episodes and read more info here.
But today I’m going to write about the most amusing of A.A. Milne’s novels, and the first that he wrote – Mr. Pim (1921). It has a slightly confusing publication history. It is an adaptation of his (once) very popular play Mr. Pim Passes By – and in later editions of the novel it reverts to this title. Confusing, no? Incidentally, it is dedicated to Irene Vanbrugh and Dion Boucicault (the picture is them in the play version, nabbed from Wikipedia) – the former’s autobiography is one of the more interesting and unusual books I’ve read this year. I read it in 2002, and recently re-read it – finding it just as much a joy this time around.

Mr. Pim concerns the family living at Marden House. George Marden is a very proper gentleman, with very proper views. His niece and ward Dinah is rather flighty; her very-nearly-fiance Brian is modern and sweet; George’s wife Olivia is… well, here description rather falters. Milne’s strongest suit is his female characters, and Olivia is perhaps the best role he ever wrote for the stage – and then novel. Olivia, like many of Milne’s heroines, though doubtless infuriating should one encounter her in real life, is an absolute delight on the page. She is strong-willed without ever being remotely antagonistic; she is sweet without being saccharine; she can be flippant or passionate with equal conviction, and yet never quite lets her guard down. Being married to George must be rather difficult, yet one feels that Olivia is the only person who could possibly ameliorate him in any way – and it’s rather lucky that she happens to love him.

Here’s a conversation between Dinah and Brian which rather sets the tone of the family:

Brian, lying back on the sofa, looked at her lazily with half-closed eyes.

“Yes, I know what you want, Dinah.”

“What do I want?” said Dinah, coming to him eagerly.

“You want a secret engagement –“

She gave an ecstatic little shudder.

“– and notes left under doormats –“

“Oh!” she breathed happily.

“– and meetings by the withered thorn when all the household is asleep. I know you.”

“Oh, but it is such fun! I love meeting people by withered thorns.”

Her mind hurried on to the first meeting. There was a withered thorn by the pond. Well, it wasn’t a thorn exactly, it was an oak, but it certainly had a withered look because the caterpillars had got at it, as at all the other oaks this year, much to George’s annoyance, who felt that this was probably the beginning of Socialism.

As the novel opens, Olivia wishes to hang some orange curtains which George considers far too modern for his house. Of such things are narratives spawned – Milne wrote in his autobiography that this idea was the catalyst for the whole story. Elsewhere, Dinah and Brian are almost engaged, and Dinah is trying to find a way to tell her uncle. George himself is busy pontificating: “Tell me what a man has for breakfast, and I will tell you what he is like.” George, I’m sure you will.

Milne was keen to point out that Mr. Pim isn’t simply the play with ‘he said’ and ‘she said’ thrown in, and indeed it is not. The plot is the same, and the characters are the same, but the authorial comment and wry narrative (at which Milne was such an expert) come fully into play. At this juncture, Milne himself breaks off into an amusing account of various breakfasts at Marden House. It’s too long to type out, but he does this sort of thing so well.

And we haven’t even got to Mr. Pim yet. His passing-by is the spark which sends the whole household into frenzy – and quite inadvertently. Mr. Pim is delightfully absent-minded – he takes absent-mindedness into a whole new category. And, lucky Mardens, Mr. Pim has a note of introduction to George. Here he is on his way, being sent off by mutual friend Brymer:
“You’ve got the letter for George?” [said Brymer]

Mr. Pim looked vague.

“George Marden. I gave it to you.”

“Yes, yes, to be sure. You gave it to me. I remember your giving it to me.”

“What’s that in your hand?”

Mr Pim looked reproachfully at the letter which he held in his hand, as if it had been trying to escape him. Then he put it close to his eyes.

“George Marden, Esq., Marden House,” he read, and looked up at Brymer. “This is the letter,” he explained courteously. “I have it in my hand.”

“That’s right. It’s the first gate on the right, about a couple of hundred yards up the hill. He’ll put you on to this man, Fanshawe, that you want. His brother Roger used to know him well – the one that died.”

“Dear, dear,” said Mr. Pim gently, emerging from his own thoughts to the distressing fact that somebody had died.
Mr. Pim ends up coming to Marden House several times that day, for various reasons – George being busy, or realising that he has said the wrong thing. But mostly he doesn’t know quite what a stir he creates – for, on one of his little visits, he happens to mention having seen an ex-convict from Australia, named Telworthy. What Mr. Pim doesn’t know is that Olivia’s first husband, missing presumed dead, was a convict from Australia named Telworthy…

Cue all manner of confusion and upset, panic and madness. Bigamy appears to have arisen at the most proper, law-abiding house in all the county. More importantly, this crisis in George and Olivia’s ‘marriage’ allows Olivia to see exactly how much George esteems reputation, and how much he loves her…

Milne inherits just enough of the wit of the 1890s to let his characters chop endless logic, and has enough of the 1920s to let them do it for a reason. Although all the insouciant characters give off the impression of taking nothing even remotely seriously, in fact there is an overtone where decisions do matter, and changes can happen. It is all incredibly funny, and fairly fanciful – one can only imagine what would have resulted had George Bernard Shaw turned his hand to it – but it is not flimsy.

I’m so pleased that I loved Mr. Pim as much the second time around as the first. I worried that I’d outgrown whimsy, which is a dirty word for some, but I think it would be impossible to outgrow the joy of reading Milne. I encourage you to hunt this one down – it’s quite different from Two People, and very different from The Red House Mystery, and different again from Winnie the Pooh – and it is an absolute delight. Go on – let Mr. Pim pop in for a bit. You never know what might happen.

In the presence of…

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I do like it when bloggers share little snippets from books they’ve read, or are reading, especially when these excerpts are anecdotal in nature. And so I thought I’d share something I read years ago in A.A. Milne’s (brilliant) autobgioraphy, and which has stayed with me:
[J.M.] Barrie told me of an occasion when he was present at a gathering of young authors all very busy talking about style. An older man sitting aloof in a corner, but listening intently, was asked to contribute to the discussion. He confessed uncomfortably that he had never thought about the subject: he would rather listen and learn what he could: he really would have nothing to say of any value: they all knew much more than he did. Fearing to be drawn more deeply into the argument, he added that he had to go now, and slipped out. “Who was that?” Barrie was asked. Barrie, who had brought him there, explained that it was Thomas Hardy.

A Dab of AAM

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I haven’t been feeling very well today, so have postponed more thoughtful posts in lieu of continuing the short story theme for the week. Whenever I write about short stories, the number of comments go down – they’re not as popular as novels with you folks, are they? – but I thought you might enjoy this, from A.A. Milne’s collection of stories and essays called Happy Days.
THE LUCKY MONTH “Know thyself,” said the old Greek motto. (In Greek—but this is an English book.) So I bought a little red volume called, tersely enough, Were you born in January? I was; and, reassured on this point, the author told me all about myself. For the most part he told me nothing new. “You are,” he said in effect, “good-tempered, courageous, ambitious, loyal, quick to resent wrong, an excellent raconteur, and a leader of men.” True. “Generous to a fault”—(Yes, I was overdoing that rather)—”you have a ready sympathy with the distressed. People born in this month will always keep their promises.” And so on. There was no doubt that the author had the idea all right. Even when he went on to warn me of my weaknesses he maintained the correct note. “People born in January,” he said, “must be on their guard against working too strenuously. Their extraordinarily active brains——” Well, you see what he means. It is a fault perhaps, and I shall be more careful in future. Mind, I do not take offence with him for calling my attention to it. In fact, my only objection to the book is its surface application to all the people who were born in January. There should have been more distinction made between me and the rabble. I have said that he told me little that was new. In one matter, however, he did open my eyes. He introduced me to an aspect of myself entirely unsuspected. “They,” he said—meaning me, “have unusual business capacity, and are destined to be leaders in great commercial enterprises.” One gets at times these flashes of self-revelation. In an instant I realised how wasted my life had been; in an instant I resolved that here and now I would put my great gifts to their proper uses. I would be a leader in an immense commercial enterprise. One cannot start commercial enterprises without capital. The first thing was to determine the exact nature of my balance at the bank. This was a matter for the bank to arrange, and I drove there rapidly. “Good morning,” I said to the cashier, “I am in rather a hurry. May I have my pass-book?” He assented and retired. After an interminable wait, during which many psychological moments for commercial enterprise must have lapsed, he returned. “I think you have it,” he said shortly. “Thank you,” I replied, and drove rapidly home again. A lengthy search followed; but after an hour of it one of those white-hot flashes of thought, such as only occur to the natural business genius, seared my mind and sent me post-haste to the bank again. “After all,” I said to the cashier, “I only want to know my balance. What is it?” He withdrew and gave himself up to calculation. I paced the floor impatiently. Opportunities were slipping by. At last he pushed a slip of paper across at me. My balance! It was in four figures. Unfortunately two of them were shillings and pence. Still, there was a matter of fifty pounds odd as well, and fortunes have been built up on less. Out in the street I had a moment’s pause. Hitherto I had regarded my commercial enterprise in the bulk, as a finished monument of industry; the little niggling preliminary details had not come up for consideration. Just for a second I wondered how to begin. Only for a second. An unsuspected talent which has long lain dormant needs, when waked, a second or so to turn round in. At the end of that time I had made up my mind. I knew exactly what I would do. I would ring up my solicitor. “Hallo, is that you? Yes, this is me. What? Yes, awfully, thanks. How are you? Good. Look here, come and lunch with me. What? No, at once. Good-bye.” Business, particularly that sort of commercial enterprise to which I had now decided to lend my genius, can only be discussed properly over a cigar. During the meal itself my solicitor and I indulged in the ordinary small-talk of the pleasure-loving world. “You’re looking very fit,” said my solicitor. “No, not fat, fit.” “You don’t think I’m looking thin?” I asked anxiously. “People are warning me that I may be overdoing it rather. They tell me that I must be seriously on my guard against brain strain.” “I suppose they think you oughtn’t to strain it too suddenly,” said my solicitor. Though he is now a solicitor he was once just an ordinary boy like the rest of us, and it was in those days that he acquired the habit of being rude to me, a habit he has never quite forgotten. “What is an onyx?” I said, changing the conversation. “Why?” asked my solicitor, with his usual business acumen. “Well, I was practically certain that I had seen one in the Zoo, in the reptile house, but I have just learnt that it is my lucky month stone. Naturally I want to get one.” The coffee came and we settled down to commerce. “I was just going to ask you,” said my solicitor—”have you any money lying idle at the bank? Because if so——” “Whatever else it is doing, it isn’t lying idle,” I protested. “I was at the bank to-day, and there were men chivying it about with shovels all the time.” “Well, how much have you got?” “About fifty pounds.” “It ought to be more than that.” “That’s what I say, but you know what those banks are. Actual merit counts for nothing with them.” “Well, what did you want to do with it?” “Exactly. That was why I rang you up. I—er——” This was really my moment, but somehow I was not quite ready to seize it. My vast commercial enterprise still lacked a few trifling details. “Er—I—well, it’s like that.” “I might get you a few ground rents.” “Don’t. I shouldn’t know where to put them.” “But if you really have fifty pounds simply lying idle I wish you’d lend it to me for a bit. I’m confoundedly hard up.” (“Generous to a fault, you have a ready sympathy with the distressed.” Dash it, what could I do?) “Is it quite etiquette for clients to lend solicitors money?” I asked. “I thought it was always solicitors who had to lend it to clients. If I must, I’d rather lend it to you—I mean I’d dislike it less—as to the old friend of my childhood.” “Yes, that’s how I wanted to pay it back.” “Bother. Then I’ll send you a cheque to-night,” I sighed. And that’s where we are at the moment. “People born in this month always keep their promises.” The money has got to go to-night. If I hadn’t been born in January, I shouldn’t be sending it; I certainly shouldn’t have promised it; I shouldn’t even have known that I had it. Sometimes I almost wish that I had been born in one of the decent months. March, say.

Pulling No Punches

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Ok, now that my internet is behaving most of the time, I’ll explain why I asked about Punch – and thanks for all your interesting responses. I recently re-read A.A. Milne’s book Once a Week (1914). It’s in a series of books by Milne that Methuen published, mostly collections of sketches and essays which had previously appeared in Punch. Although Punch ran from 1841-1992, and again from 1996-2002, in my mind it is completely associated with the 1910s, ’20s, and ’30s – when A.A. Milne was assistant editor, for instance. All my knowledge of Punch comes from Ann Thwaite’s brilliant biography A.A. Milne: His Life and Milne’s own autobiography It’s Too Late Now.

Which is why I wanted to ask you all what came to mind when you thought of Punch – and was interested to hear the differing answers. Cartoons obviously came up – and yes, you were all right that the cartoon I posted gave rise to the expression ‘curate’s egg’. It was drawn by George du Maurier, grandfather of Daphne, and is an expression/joke I’ve always found inexplicably popular. To me, it’s just not that funny. BUT, having said that, I absolutely don’t agree that certain humour is dated or of its time. Certain humour appeals to certain people, and that’s that, really. Perhaps more of those people were around in the 1910s, or whichever decade you choose, but – well, put it this way: I’d hate for anyone to think in 2060 that everyone in 2010 found Frankie Boyle funny. Just as I find him farcically unamusing now, so I find the whimsical humour of 1910s’ Punch delightful.

But Punch had quite an odd status. It was incredibly popular in its heyday, and in some ways represented the tone of the time, but even then was looked down on by many. Here’s an excerpt from Civilisation (1929) by Clive Bell (husband of Vanessa Bell – i.e. Virginia Woolf’s brother-in-law):
And obviously an Englishman who cares for beauty, truth, or knowledge, may find himself more in sympathy with a Frenchman, German, or Chinaman who shares his tastes than with a compatriot who shares those of Punch and John Bull.Q.D. Leavis – the country’s most famous snob after Margot Leadbetter – put it like this in Fiction and the Reading Public (1932):
For the crude power of the bestseller the literary novelists substitute a more civilised tone; the temperature of their writing is slightly below instead of a good deal above normal; they deal in the right kind of humour (the Punch kind), and are the best fellows in the world.And yet it was Punch magazine which came up with this rather scathing definition of the middlebrow: ‘It consists of people who are hoping that some day they will get used to the stuff they ought to like.’ (1925)

Which is all a rather convoluted way of saying that Punch doesn’t – and didn’t – really conform to any one type, or position in the national consciousness! I hope you don’t mind a meander through various books like this – it’s the bit of my research which I thought might be least dull to share.

And all this is an introduction to Once A Week by A.A. Milne! About which I am not going to say all that much about it, because the tone of Punch is more or less the same as the tone of this collection. If you love the sort of whimsy that skirts around Diary of a Nobody, or that is a very toned down Wodehouse, or… well, a grown-up Winnie-the-Pooh perhaps – then you’ll love this. It’s a collection of stories and sketches about people having fun together – arguing over cricket, or who has to order the coal. Lots of silliness, nothing too serious ever encroaching. Rereading it this time – and I read all Milne’s Punch books back in 2001 – I can see how it might wear thin for some people. The lighthearted way which the characters treat even the infancy of their child is perhaps a step too saccharine – but, on the whole, this is the sort of humour I will happily dive into.

Is it escapism? Perhaps – but I don’t really believe there is such a thing. I don’t think gritty realism is actually any more real than people being daft in a holiday cottage. It reminds me of an A.A. Milne quotation I somewhat overuse:
People are always telling me I should write about Real Life – preferably in a public house or brothel, where Life is notoriously more Real than elsewhere.If you fancy a taste of life that is real, but rather more fun and whimsical than most portrayals of it, then I think A.A. Milne’s superbly-crafted stories and sketches can scarcely be beaten. You can even read it online here. Just one word of warning – Once A Week could be considered a curate’s egg.

The Play’s The Thing

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On Sunday it was Love Oxford – an annual event where many of the churches from across the city gather together for one massive service in South Parks. It’s always brilliant, and this year was no exception – although for the first time I’d volunteered to steward. Just the sort of weather you want to be adding layers, in the form of a fluorescent yellow jacket. And a mic-headset thingummy, which I never quite understood.

Anyway, once the service we over we all sat in the sun (or, in my case, the shade) for a picnic – and because I’d brought a book (Three Plays by A.A. Milne) and my housemates hadn’t, we decided to do a play reading for ourselves! Well, Mel and Lois and I did; our other housemate Liz moved far away from us and pretended she didn’t know us.


I don’t know if you ever read plays, either out loud or in the normal way, but I think it’s one of the great neglected areas of fiction. It’s very unlikely that anybody is going to put these plays back on the stage, and so it’s great fun to read them. With an author like A.A. Milne, as well, there are added advantages to reading instead of watching – his stage directions are often very funny, and purely for the benefit of the reader. Since Milne was one of my first author-obsessions, I got very used to reading plays (he wrote a lot, and was famous for them long before Mr. Winnie-the-Pooh came along) but I know a lot of people would never even consider it.

The play we read was one of Milne’s most popular, and P.G. Wodehouse said it was his favourite play (even when saying he’d like Milne to trip over and break his neck… they had a bit of a public falling-out after the Berlin Broadcasts) – it’s called The Dover Road. Leonard and Anne are running away to France together; Leonard abandoning his wife Eustacia in the process. Their car breaks down, and they are forced to come to ‘a sort of hotel’, run by Latimer. It quickly emerges that Latimer intends to keep them prisoner there for a week, in order that they can think things through before acting impetuously – and see each other in a new light. Little known to them, another couple have already been there for a week… Eustacia and her runaway partner Nicholas.

Yes, the scenario is a little contrived, but who cares about that – The Dover Road is a very funny play about the benign meddling of Latimer and the various mismatched pairings under his roof. For just a taste, here’s Anne complaining about Leonard’s failure to get her safely to France (the ellipses are all in the original) : What made you ever think that you could take anybody to the South of France? Without any practice at all? . . . Now, if you had been taking an aunt to Hammersmith – well, you might have lost a bus or two . . . and your hat might have blown off . . . and you would probably have found yourselves at Hampstead the first two or three times . . . and your aunt would have stood up the whole way . . . but still you might have got there eventually. I mean, it would be worth trying – if your aunt was very anxious to get to Hammersmith. But the South of France! My dear Leonard! it’s so audacious of you.I can’t find The Dover Road online, although quite a few of A.A. Milne’s plays can be read here. Otherwise, next time you’re in a secondhand bookshop, go and have a look in the Plays section – there’s quite often a volume of AAM’s work there.

And, to go back to the first question – do you read plays? And if not, is it because you have tried and failed to enjoy it, or just never thought about it? Answers on a postcard… or, if you prefer, in the comments box…(!)

Two People

StuckinaBook All , , 9 Comments

Hurray for Capuchin Classics, reprinting an AA Milne novel – Two People, which was first published in 1931. A slightly less significant event in the Two People timeline is January 2003, when I first read it. This was back in the days when I could really blitz a single author, and read everything they’d written – by the time I read Two People (doing quick sums) I had read 29 books by AAM in the space of two years. Gosh. I’ve read only nine since, so I was pretty much getting to the end of the available AAMs.

With plays, sketches, essays, short stories, an autobiography, pacifist literature, poetry and, of course, children’s books to his name, his novels have always felt a little like an afterthought. Not quite the same joyously whimsical Milne of the early days, nor yet the serious Milne of the Second World War. And, for the most part, I have forgotten everything that happens in his novels. What really remains is a single image from the book – for Mr. Pim it is a pair of orange curtains; for Four Days’ Wonder it is a haystack; for Chloe Marr it is a woman looking into a mirror. For Two People I mainly remembered those two people standing by a pond… which turned out to be fairly insignificant.

As Ann Thwaite points out in her short introduction, and is evident to any who has read her very excellent biography of AAM (in print, or available from a penny on Amazon), Two People is pretty autobiographical. Not only is the male half of those two people a writer, but the portrayed marriage between Reginald and Sylvia Wellard bears a striking resemblance to that between Alan Alexander and Daphne Milne. There are two novels in Two People – one about a naive rural novelist seeing his first book, ‘Bindweed’, become a success in London literary society; one about a man married to much younger, beautiful woman who is not his intellectual equal.

And that’s the crux. Sylvia is often wise, always kind, ludicrously good – but she doesn’t understand Reginald’s jokes, ignorantly assumes any obstacle will be simple for him, would be content to live a quiet, unassuming life in Westaways – a thinly disguised Cotchford Farm, the Milne’s Sussex residence. At first I though Sylvia’s astounding beauty was showing the prejudiced viewpoint of Reginald, but people all over the place stumble over themselves and exclaim involuntarily at her beauty – which is sweet but a little exaggerated and, it has to be said, no true depiction of Daphne Milne.

Ann Thwaite warns in her introduction that even those who ‘have an aversion to novels about writers’ will enjoy this. I didn’t know people had such aversions – I think novels about novelists are fascinatingly revealing about the author. But there is much more to Two People than that – I’d be astonished if anyone could finish the novel thinking Reginald wholly appealing (his views about laying on water for villagers are rather reprehensible, for example) but, much more importantly, it is an honest and true depiction of a marriage. Says I, who is not married, but certainly it seems to deal with the genuine, everyday issues that a marriage would face – with temperaments as catalysts, rather than adultery and murder and all those extremes.

Being Milne, the novel is also very funny. I recognise that AAM is an acquired taste – some find the whimsy a trifle sickening, whereas I find it delightful and clever. Two People isn’t the most representative of Milne’s work (I’d look towards The Sunny Side for an in-print example, from Snow Books) but I do encourage you to seek it out. Milne’s non-children’s work is seriously underrated, and I loved this novel upon re-reading it. Bright but also with a serious undertone – and possibly the nearest thing Milne wrote to an autobiography of his marriage, since his actual autobiography It’s Too Late Now rather skirted around it.

Here’s a scene which illustrates the perils-facing-a-writer strand, and the humour (they’re at a tennis party):

“Fella in the Sixtieth out in Inida with me wrote a book,” said Colonel Rudge suddenly.

“Oh?” said Reginald

“Fact,” said the Colonel. “Fella in the Sixtieth.”

Reginald waited for the rest of the story, but it seemd that that was all. The Colonel was simply noting the coincidence of somebody over here writing a book and somebody in India also writing a book.

[…]

“Tranter, that was the fella,” came from his right. “Expect you know him.”

Reginal awoke and said that he was afraid he didn’t. (Why ‘afraid’, he wondered. Afraid of what?)

“Well, he wrote a book,” said the Colonel stubbornly. “Forget what it was called.”

[…]

“What d’you say your book was called?” said the Colonel, evidently hoping that this would give a clue to the title of Tranter’s book.

“Bindweed,” grunted Reginald, feeling suddenly ashamed of it.

“What?”

“Bindweed!” (What the devil does it matter, he thought angrily.)

“Ah!… No, that wasn’t it. Bindweed,” said Colonel Rudge, pulling at his moustache. “That’s the stuff that climbs up things, what? Gets all over the garden.”

“Yes.”

“Thought so. […] Sort of gardening book, what?” said Colonel Rudge.

“What?… Oh… No.”

“It is the stuff I mean, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“The what-d’you-call-it.”

“Is what?”

“What I said. Climbs up things. Gets all over the garden?”

“Oh yes, yes. Always!”

“What d’you say it was called? This stuff?”

“Bindweed.”

“Yes. And what d’you say your book was called?”

“Bindweed.”

“That’s right,” said the Colonel fretfully. “That’s what I said.”

This, thought Reginald, is one of the interesting people brought down from London who want to talk to me about my book.

Year In, Year Out

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There are two authors whom I often talk about and get little response. Not on here, specifically, but in all the bookish circles (both internet and face-to-face). They are Virginia Woolf and AA Milne. I think that’s to do with preconceptions: Woolf is “that difficult feminist writer who killed herself” and Milne just wrote that children’s book/Disney film. Neither are true, of course, and it would be a shame to leave them unexamined. Not that I can blame anyone – though The Carbon Copy never tires of exhorting me to read Lord of the Rings, my preconceptions (aided by the film) persist, and I resist and desist and subsist and all other sorts of similar words.

But today we shall turn our attention to Milne. I may well repeat bits of a letter I recently wrote to my friend Barbara-from-Ludlow, but I’m sure she’ll forgive me for that. I’ve just finished a re-read of Year In, Year Out which, according to my notebook, I first read in early 2001, in the brief period before I kept more accurate records that year. It was Milne’s last book, published in 1952 (Milne died in January 1956) and Our Vicar will be pleased to know it is non-fiction. How to describe this book? It is a miscellany of musings, some whimsical, some political, some incidental. The sorts of things which couldn’t really be developed into anything more than a thought or an anecdote, and are thus collected together, divided fairly arbitrarily into twelve months. He points out how frequently trains would have to run in The Importance of Being Earnest; he also discusses the history of his pacifism. He covers The Art of Saying Thank You (‘The schoolboy’s “Oo, I say, thanks frightfully” sets the standard. It is difficult to better this, though you may throw in an awed “Coo!” if you feel that it comes naturally to you’); he berates the food subsidies and supertax. My favourite sections are anecdotes concerning his earlier work – never Pooh et al, but his plays or his poetry.

It is improbable that such a book could ever be published now; it is indeed improbable it would have been published then, had it not been for the debt Methuen felt they owed Milne. Pooh had raised them rather a lot of money, and they felt prepared to indulge the whims of an aging author. That’s what lends Year In, Year Out its pathos – though often cheery and witty, it is also unconsciously nostalgic, not in the sense of thinking in the past, but in thinking the present can be turned into the past. His best days, authorially and in every other way, have happened – and Milne perseveres with his wonderful, inimitable, light-but-serious tone.

Year In, Year Out probably isn’t the best place to start reading non-children’s Milne, but I encourage you to give something a whirl. He did it all – plays, poetry, sketches, essays, detective novel, literary fiction, autobiography, non-fiction work on pacifism. Something for everyone.

Something special about Year In, Year Out, though, is that it is the last collaborative work of A. A. Milne and E. H. Shepard – in fact, Pooh and the gang appear (with some assorted others) in the little illustrations for January and December. Somehow that seems a fitting, and wonderful, culmination of Milne’s writing career.

50 Books…

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5. It’s Too Late Now – A. A. Milne

It was only a matter of time before Mr. Milne got a mention on these pages. Wait, he had one the other day, didn’t he?

The Secret Option to my potential Summer Reads may be the only way in which most people have come across Alan Alexander – but he wrote far more than the children’s books. In fact, like almost every successful author of children’s books that you could care to mention, he came to look on them as something of a distraction from his other work. During his lifetime, though, he was a renowned playwright, novelist, detective-novelist, poet, sketch-writer, essayist and even wrote one of the only three official works for the national Pacifist movement. Busy man.

Back in 2001, I decided to familiarise myself with the adventures of Mr. W. Pooh et al (still some of the best children’s books ever written – like most, wasted on children and most adults), and this led to me reading Christopher Milne’s autobiographical trilogy, The Enchanted Places, The Path Through The Trees, and The Hollow on The Hill. Look out for mention of them later. My Aunt Jacq, who shares many of my reading tastes, lent me several volumes of his work for Punch (of which he was sometime Assistant Editor) and the rest, as they, is history. I’ve read nearly everything he wrote (which is a LOT) and can recommend all of it – for those wishing to dabble, and don’t mind doses of whimsy, track down The Holiday Round as a starting point. If you don’t like whimsy, then try Two People, his best novel. His most popular non-children’s work was the detective novel The Red House Mystery, which was written before the Golden Age and thus looks a bit like a poor cousin – but still highly enjoyable.

BUT. The reason I’ve chosen It’s Too Late Now as the fifth book in my ’50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About’ is that is the perfect ‘way in’ to going beyond Winnie. This is his autobiography (in fact, published in the US as just An Autobiography), and is as representative of his work as anything else – funny, self-deprecating, anecdotal… and provides a great companion to the rest of his work. If you’d prefer a more impartial work, which also focuses more on his literary output, rather than his childhood, try Ann Thwaite’s excellent book A.A. Milne: His Life. She writes with evident enjoyment of his work, and presents extensive research without hitting you over the head with it.

Sadly, both books are out of print (well, the Thwaite keeps wavering, and is easier to come across) but both certainly worth locating. Milne’s ‘other work’ has become unjustly neglected, and needs re-discovering. Hope I’ll make some converts! He is such an amusing writer, and once you enter his world, you’ll never want to leave. Joie de vivre characterises almost all his work, especially the early plays and sketches. Oh yes, read Mr. Pim Passes By too, in either novel or play form. Oh yes, he did it in both. Another interesting point of comparison is the play The Great Broxopp, which is about an advertising tychoon whose child features in the adverts, as a baby – and the effect childhood fame has on the boy as he grows up. All written before Christopher Robin Milne was even born.

P.s. sorry for lack of cartoons over the past few days – hope people do enjoy them when they appear?? Instead, you have a nabbed picture of Ashdown Forest, the inspiration for the Hundred Acre Wood. The Clan went a few summers ago, and it is a wonderful place. An enchanted place, if you will.