The Captive Reader

A.A. Milne is proving incredibly useful for my Century of Books: Belinda, an oh so silly and far from brilliant but still fun comedy, allowed me to check off 1918 from my list.  Of the 22 years I’ve completed (meaning actually posted reviews for), 6 of them have been done with books and plays written by Milne.  How convenient to have discovered my love for him just as I was beginning this project!

It is the end of April and Belinda Tremayne, a middle-aged beauty, is down at her country home in Devon.  A light-hearted and skilful flirt of the very best sort, Belinda has two local gentlemen vying for her affections: Harold Baxter, a middle-aged statistician, and Claude Devenish, a twenty-two year old poet.  They are not quite up to the usual standard of Belinda’s admirers but she is in the country and it is only April.  She must make do with what is available.

I would like to pause to appreciate Milne’s gift for bestowing the most perfect names on his characters.  What could be more perfect for an impish beauty of a certain age than Belinda?  Or Harold Baxter for a deeply unexceptional and entirely dull man?  And Claude Devenish is the perfect name for a poetic young man fond of floppy hair and awful verse.

As the play opens, Belinda is delighted to find her eighteen year old daughter Delia returned from Paris and Delia is equally enchanted to hear all about her mother’s most recent conquests.  It would be too upsetting for the men, they both agree, to be reminded of Belinda’s advanced age by the presentation of an adult daughter so they decide to introduce her to Messrs Baxter and Devenish as Miss Robinson, Belinda’s fictitious niece.  It is a plan that gives them both much amusement, and why not?  It is hardly as though Belinda is in love with either man.  She may like to have men propose to her – adore it, in fact – but she is not going to marry any of them.  Even if she did feel affection towards them, she still has a husband, somewhere.  Tremayne and Belinda parted ways eighteen years before, after only a few months of marriage, before she even had time to tell him about the pending arrival of Delia.  They were both young and not quite capable of handling the little daily conflicts that crop up in any relationship:

BELINDA. […] he was quite certain he knew how to manage women, and I was quite certain I knew how to manage men.  If one of us had been certain, it would have been all right.

Baxter and Devenish, both passionately devoted to Belinda, present an amusing rivalry when they appear together to pledge their devotion.  Devenish enters into it with the hyperbolic spirit of a poet, a speech deeply improved by Baxter’s derogatory insertions:

DEVENISH. Money – thank Heaven, I have no money.  Reputation – thank Heaven, I have no reputation.  What can I offer you?  Dreams – nothing but dreams.  Come with me and I will show you the world through my dreams.  What can I give you?  Youth, freedom, beauty –

BAXTER. Debts.

After they have both proposed to Belinda, she sets for them what should be an impossible task: to find Miss Robinson’s father.  His name, she tells them, is unknown and he can only be known by a mole just here on his arm.  Once he is found, she says, she may consider their proposals.

But a gentleman with a mark just here on his arm has just arrived in the neighbourhood, bizarrely enough, and begins paying suit to Belinda under the pseudonym of Robinson.  He knows her in an instant but eighteen years is a long time and Belinda, Mr Robinson having very properly left his arms and any marking they might have covered when in her presence, does not recognize him.

Meanwhile, Devenish is no longer so keen to win the hand of the fair Belinda now that he has seen her ‘niece’.  He falls instantly and most suitably in love with the age appropriate Delia, who is not quite so romantic as her mother:

DELIA. What lovely flowers!  Are they for my aunt?

DEVENISH. To whom does one bring violets?  To modest, shrinking, tender youth.

DELIA. I don’t think we have anybody here like that.

Belinda is delighted with this transference of affections, being very fond of Devenish but not at all romantically inclined towards him.  With him removed, there is only one lover more to get rid of before she’s left with the only one she wants: her husband.  I must say, the unravelling of identities at the end is treated remarkably calmly and presents the weakest scene in the whole play.  It would have been much stronger if Jack Tremayne had expressed some amount of amazement or anger at being presented with an 18-year old daughter he knew nothing about.

I did love Delia.  She is one of Milne’s no-nonsense young women: practical, game for anything, and fondly but not irrationally affectionate.  I particularly admire her ability to quickly transform Claude Devenish into a presentable human being, convincing him to abandon his awful poetry, cut his silly long hair, and put his mind to getting a job:

DEVENISH. I don’t quite see your objection to poetry.

DELIA. You would be about the house so much.  I want you to go away every day and do great things, and then come home in the evening and tell me all about it.

DEVENISH. Then you are thinking of marrying me.

DELIA. Well, I was just thinking in case I had to.

I do wonder how familiar Angela Thirkell was with this play, since this Delia seems to have much in common with Thirkell’s Delia Brandon, daughter of the widely-adored Lavinia Brandon (see The Brandons).

This is a fun little play, but by no means a brilliant one.  It nothing else, it is amusing for the opening scene of Belinda attempting to gracefully manoeuvre herself into a hammock, knowing what a lovely image she will present when found reclined in it.  Of course, it does not quite work so well as planned but Belinda is more than capable of a little improvisation.  I unfortunately read this as an e-book and the edition available via Project Gutenberg was an acting version, with lots of distracting blocking notes but none of Milne’s narrative flourishes.  They were deeply missed.