The Captive Reader

Oh, my friends, how delightful to have been alive in the 1900s and 1910s with a subscription to Punch!  What pleasure those readers had at their fingertips each week, opening their copies to find new pieces signed A.A.M.!  I may have missed the glory days of Punch by more than a few years, but at least I can still read the work of my favourite of its contributors in collections like The Day’s Play by A.A. Milne from 1910.  This is the earliest of the four volumes of his Punch pieces and, having read so much of his work from the late 1910s and onwards this year, it is amazing to see how defined his style already was at this time.

The Day’s Play begins with the introduction of the Rabbits.  I adore the Rabbits, a group of young people whose adventures Milne chronicled over the years as they caroused, married, and reproduced (my favourite piece from Once a Week – “The Heir” – was about the Rabbits).  Though some of the Rabbits are apparently employed, the stories generally catch up with them on the weekend, when they gather at some place or another to entertain us and one another with their frivolous little speeches, endless games, and good humour.  My only quarrel is that there is perhaps an excess of cricket talk in these pieces, most of which I could not remotely follow; all my knowledge of cricket comes from P.G. Wodehouse and now Milne, so I know nothing of rules but quite a lot about chats in the interval.  But the characters, despite their perverse and incomprehensible recreations, are delightful in their ability to make every activity and every conversation fun.  Our narrator, when cornered by his host’s fiancée, gives a typically Rabbit-like recitation (largely falsified) of her future husband’s virtues:

‘You’ve known him a long time, haven’t you?’

‘We were babes together, madam.  At least, simultaneously.  We actually met at school.  He had blue eyes and curly hair, and fought the captain on the very first day.  On the second day his hair was still curly but he had black eyes.  On the third day he got into the cricket eleven, and on the fourth he was given his footer cap.  Afterwards he sang in the choir, and won the competition for graceful diving.  It was not until his second term that the headmaster really began to confide in him.  By the way, is this the sort of thing you want?’

‘Yes,’ smiled Dahlia.  ‘Something like that.’

‘Well, then we went to Cambridge together.  He never did much work, but his algebra paper in the Little Go was so brilliant that they offered him the Senior Wranglership.  He refused on the ground that it might interfere with his training for the tug of war, for which he had just obtained his blue – and – It’s a great strain making all this up.  Do you mind if I stop now?’

Already in these pieces, Milne was writing remarkably good female characters.  Dahlia and Myra, the two chief female Rabbits, speak as wittily – though usually more intelligently – as the men and are viewed as their equals.  In The Day’s Play, Myra in particular impresses with the strength of her repartee with the narrator.  The highlight of the entire collection, for me, was a disastrous theatrical performance by the Rabbits Dramatic Company, which left Myra and the narrator stranded on stage in front of an audience to improvise until the wounded leading man could take his place.  Forced to rely on their wits, things do not go smoothly and their whispered asides to one another are wonderful as each tries to shift the attention off his or herself:

Rat-catcher. That ass Simpson’s hurt himself.  We’ve got to amuse the audience until he finishes bleeding.

Maid (sitting down with her back to audience). I say, is it really serious?

Rat-catcher. Not for him; it is for us.  Now then, talk away.

Maid.  Er – h’m. (Coyly.) Wilt not tell me of thy early life, noble sir, how thou didst become a catcher of rats?

Rat-catcher (disgusted).  You coward!  (Aloud) Nay, rather let me hear of thine own life. (Aside.) Scored.

Maid. That’s not fair.  I asked you first. (Modestly.) But I am such a little thing, and you are so noble a youth.

Rat-catcher. True.  (Having a dash at it.) ‘Twas thus.  My father, when I was yet a child, didst – did – no, didst – apprentice me to a salad binger –

Maid (with interest). How dost one bing salads?

Rat-catcher (curtly). Ballad singer.

The Rabbits portion of the book ends all too quickly but there are other delights in store.  The pieces are largely autobiographical, which makes them all the more interesting.  To read the “Bachelor Days” section is particularly intriguing, where Milne passionately decries the unsalted butter offered up by his housekeeper (slurs against unsalted butter show up in his work throughout his life), proves utterly incapable of organizing the washing that gets sent to the laundry each week  (causing him to remark: “Of course, it is quite possible to marry for love, but I suspect that a good many bachelors marry so that they may not have to bother about the washing any more.  That, anyhow, will be one of the reasons with me.”) and submits to the tyranny of a beloved sister-in-law intent on spring cleaning.

More sentimentally, there is a section entitled “Margery”, composed of pieces written after the birth of his niece Marjorie Milne, who he preferred to call Margery.  It begins with a series of letters between him and the newborn Margery (the infant’s mama acting as her scribe):

My Dear Margery, – When I heard that you really had arrived, I got out the broken teacup, filled it at the bath, and drank “To my niece!” with the greatest enthusiasm possible.  Had I been on the stage I should then have hurled the cup over my shoulder; and later on the scene-shifter would have come and collected the bits.  As it was, I left that part out; and you will forgive me, will you not, dear baby, when you hear that it was your uncle’s last cup, and he in a bad way financially.

As Margery grows, the letters give way to descriptive pieces about their encounters that are deeply affectionate and show that already Milne was paying attention to the ways of young children, many years before he would turn his hand to writing for them.

Not every piece works so well and some are downright dull.  There is an entire section entitled “More Cricket”; I thought I was confused after reading about the Rabbits’ sporting adventures but I knew nothing.  Some bits feel forced and others, slightly more successful, are amusing enough but hardly memorable – the kind of thing you would be happy to read over your breakfast but have forgotten entirely by lunchtime.  But the pleasure I got from the Rabbits, from Margery, from “Bachelor Days” more than makes up for any passing disappointments.  They are what made me laugh and smile and they are what I will remember.