The Captive Reader

I was delighted by Miss Elizabeth Bennet, enchanted by Belinda, and charmed by Mr Pim Passes By but I have a new favourite play: The Dover Road by A.A. Milne, from 1921.  None of the others even come close to matching it.

Anne and Leonard are eloping together, heading for the coast along the Dover Road.  When they encounter car troubles, they find themselves seeking refuge at a house along the road where the inhabitants are strangely prepared for their arrival.  It sounds like the beginning of a horror story but nothing could be farther from the truth.  They have found themselves at the home of Mr Latimer, a gentleman whose hobby is detaining and entertaining runaway couples for several days in his large house, giving them the chance to experience the informality of domestic life together – the dual tests of the breakfast table and the sick room are favourite challenges – and to reconsider their decision.

Mr Latimer is a wealthy man who has decided to use his wealth to make other people happy.  The way of doing that, he thinks, is by helping to make sure they don’t make foolish marriages:

…mostly it is my hobby to concentrate on those second marriages into which people plunge – with no parents now to restrain them – so much more hastily even than they plunge into their first adventure.  Yet how much more carefully they should be considered, seeing that one at least of the parties has proved his utter ignorance of the art of marriage.

Anne and Leonard are just such a couple.  She is young and hopeful but as excited about the idea of leaving her invalid father as she is at spending her life with Leonard.  Leonard is fleeing his wife Eustasia, confident that she will divorce him after this elopement.  And then what, Mr Latimer asks?

ANNE. He will marry me.

LATIMER. I see.  And then, as the fairy-books tell us, you will live happy ever after?  (ANNE is silent)

LEONARD.  I need hardly say that I shall do my best to –

LATIMER (to ANNE). And then, as the fairy-books tell us, you will live happy every after?  (ANNE is silent)  I live within my high walls which keep the world out; I am old–fashioned, Anne.  You are modern, you know the world.  You don’t believe the fairy-books, and yet – you are going to live happy ever after?

LEONARD.  I don’t see what you’re driving at.

LATIMER.  Anne does.

ANNE (raising her eyes to him). I take the risk, Mr Latimer.

LATIMER. But a big risk…Oh, believe me, I am not so much out of the world as you think.  Should I have known all about you, should I have brought you here, if I were?  I know the world; I know the risks of marriage.  Marriage is an act – well, it’s a profession in itself.  (Sharply) And what are you doing?  Marrying a man whose only qualification for the profession is that he has tried it once, and made a damned hash of it.

The seeds of doubt are planted in their minds.  Well, Anne’s mind at least.  Leonard is really too stupid to be capable of analytical thought.

But Anne and Leonard are not the only guests Mr Latimer has staying.  Another couple arrived a few days before: Leonard’s wife Eustasia and her lover Nicholas.  Nicholas was laid low by a cold immediately after arriving (a conveniently common plight for Mr Latimer’s male guests), forced to suffer through Eustasia’s oppressive nursing, but he is now recovered and they are almost ready to leave.  Mr Latimer’s cure has done its work: Nicholas is terrified by the prospect of spending the rest of his life with the charmless, tender-hearted but suffocating Eustasia, but doesn’t quite have the courage to break it off.  That is when the paths of the two couples cross.

This play is perfect.  That is all there is to it.  Anne is wonderful and you can’t help but be thankful that someone intervened to save her from a miserable life with incredibly dull Leonard.  Eustasia is gloriously terrifying, in the way that only a dull, well-intentioned, overly-affectionate woman can be.  Nicholas is clearly in over his head and Leonard…Leonard should seem a bit of a cad but he is really rather pathetic, grasping Anne as his means of escaping Eustasia.  But it is Mr Latimer who is the real wonder of the story.  He is magnificent.  So charming and quick-witted, you know he always has a twinkle in his eye and a smile lurking at the corners of his mouth.  He is particularly delighted by Anne, falling half in love with her himself, and their exchanges, both playful and serious, highlight the best qualities in both of them.

I know I have been recommending Milne’s plays zealously all year but, honestly, all gushing superlatives aside, this is the finest example of his skill as a playwright that I have come across yet.  It is a comedy but, unlike some of his delightful lighter works, it is a very thoughtful one, intelligently balancing serious issues with witty dialogue and intriguing characters.  I adored every line.