The Captive Reader

Michael and Mary by A.A. Milne is my last Milne play of the year (most likely) but it was an excellent one to end with.  Published in 1930, it combines elements from many of the earlier plays I also read this year, which greatly added to my enjoyment.  After reading play after play where Milne toyed with the idea of bigamy for comic effect, it is nice to see him finally treat it seriously and not entirely conventionally (as though I would expect anything less of AAM).

Michael and Mary meet in the British Museum in 1905.  To me, this brought to mind Topaz’s mention in I Capture the Castle of her assignations there with Mr Mortmain before their marriage; these two books have nothing else in common, I just like the idea of the British Museum as a backdrop for clandestine affairs.  Michael, a bright young man and aspiring writer who seems to have much in common with his creator, is there for an assignation.  Mary, distraught and tearful, definitely is not.  Abandoned by her husband and utterly alone in the world, she is facing a horrifyingly bleak future.  Michael, noticing the poor girl, immediately strikes up a conversation and it isn’t long before he has uncovered her sad story and is trying to help her.  I think it is fair to say that Michael’s idea of “help” is more than generous, especially given his own youth and relative poverty:

MICHAEL:  Well, now I’ve got £200 in the bank which my mother left me.  I’ve rooms in Islington, if you know where that is.  I don’t know why, except that it’s a cheapish part of London, and Lamb used to live there.  I’m trying to be a writer…Even if I don’t earn anything for a year, I can almost live on half my balance – well, I can quite if I try.  The question is, Can you live on the other half?

MARY (incredulous).  Me live for a year on a hundred pounds?

MICHAEL. Yes

MARY. Well, of course!

MICHAEL (looking at her thoughtfully).  I suppose I eat more or something.  Anyhow I can do it, and I will.  That gives us a year each, apart from what either of us earns in that time, which is bound to be something.  How old are you?

MARY. Twenty.

MICHAEL.  You child…And I’m twenty-three.  Both young enough to do anything.  And we’ve got a hundred pounds each.  It looks good enough.  What about it?

MARY. You mean you – Your father doesn’t give you an allowance?

MICHAEL. Good Lord, no.  He couldn’t if he would, and he probably wouldn’t if he could.  To a father “writing” just means shirking a real job.

MARY. So that’s all you have in the world?

MICHAEL. Except a fountain-pen with a gold nib. (He displays it proudly.)  A golden nib, indeed, as you shall see one day.

MARY. And you’re going to give me half of all you have in the world?

MICHAEL. Don’t keep on saying “all you have in the world” as if it included a couple of yachts and a coalmine.  I’m going to give you the extremely small sum of £100.

It is an extraordinary gesture and one that changes both their lives.  A year after befriending one another, and now quite in love, Michael and Mary decide to get married – ignoring the difficultly of Mary’s most-likely-still-alive husband.

Michael finds success as a writer, they have a much-adored son, and everything is going quite well until Mary’s husband surfaces after the war; having discovered his wife’s crime, he is now eager to blackmail the couple.  But in the middle of this attempted blackmail he falls down dead: it is convenient for Michael and Mary in that he can no longer blackmail them, but not so convenient in that they now have a dead body in their apartment and must explain its presence to the police without revealing who the man was.  It is a strange act, between the drama of the confrontation, the death, and the interview with the police, not to mention the moral questions that ensure in the wake of Mary’s husband’s death.  Should she and Michael get married again, legally this time?  Would that change anything?

The third act is the best.  After more than twenty years of marriage, Michael and Mary are perfectly happy.  They adore each other and worship their now adult son, David.  When David arrives home with his wife, having unexpectedly eloped, they decide to tell him the truth about their own marriage.  Milne heightens the tension around the reveal with David’s prim comments on morality and his ideas about the conventionality of his parent’s youth.  Like most children, he can’t imagine that his mother (known as Bubbles) and father indulged in anything beyond the most timid and unexceptional courtship, little dreaming of anything so extraordinary as that initial encounter in the British Museum:

DAVID (smiling at MICHAEL affectionately).  I suppose you and Bubbles, having obtained the co-operation and consent of your respective Papas and Mamas, got solemnly engaged to each other, and were allowed five minutes alone in the drawing-room together, after promising that you would be careful with the aspidistra and only kiss each other once?

It is David, not his parents, who is the conservative member of the family, though he is slightly ashamed to admit it, even to his wife:

DAVID.  I’ve got a confession to make.

ROMO. A very bad one?

DAVID. It is rather.  (Solemnly.)  I believe I’m Early Victorian.

ROMO. What a nice thing to be.

DAVID. It’s not really modern –

ROMO. I wonder sometimes if any of us are; if it isn’t just an invention of the newspapers and the novelists.

But some people are modern: just not the ones David or Romo would expect.  Poor innocents, with their affectionate contempt for the ”stodgy” older generation.

The parent-child bond here is as perfect as any could be – probably as AAM hoped his would be with Christopher (Robin) when he grew up – so of course David’s affection and respect for his parents never wavers, despite their shocking revelation.  The scene between them is sentimental but affecting.

To be perfectly honest, I like when Milne indulges his sentimental side.  There is an entire preface to the play in which he refutes the criticisms the play received when it ran, most of which seem to have focused on expressions of honest goodness and affection, whether it be Michael offering to share half of his worldly possessions with a total stranger and expecting nothing in return or David, moved by his parents’ confession, kissing their hands.  Goodness was just as unfashionable then as it is now.  This was not the sort of thing 1930s audiences wanted from Milne, whose comedies with their quick-witted nonsense were better received, but, having read so much of and by him this year, this romantic, more emotional side seems just as much a part of him, if less frequently expressed.  The father-son exchanges are particularly poignant, capturing first the awkwardness between Michael and his clergyman father and then the closeness and comfortable affection between Michael and David.  I found the image of Michael’s father leaving him after a not altogether successful encounter, filled with love for his son but only able to awkwardly express it, particularly moving:

MICHAEL. It’s awful cheek to say it, but however many other commandments I may break, I do honour you, father.  There’s something about sheer goodness that always gets me.  Mind you, I disagree with you profoundly about everything under the sun, sometimes you irritate me intensely – and – and yet (with a little ashamed laugh) I believe I love you.  Good-bye.

(But however near FATHER has come to SON in this speech, the VICAR is always between them)

ROWE (coldly). I don’t think you need break any commandments, Michael.

MICHAEL (lightly).  Well, you never know.  Pray for me, father.  I’m not so bad as you think.

ROWE (gravely).  I pray for you every night.

MICHAEL.  You would…Well, I try to be good, and I daresay I make a mess of it, and shall make a worse mess later on.  But anybody who sees into my heart knows that I try.  Well, good-bye and – er – thanks awfully.

ROWE. God be with you, my son.

MICHAEL (opening the door).  He will, if you ask him…I’ll come down with you.

ROWE (going out).  No, no.  You have work to do.

(He goes down the stairs…to the station…to the lonely Bedforshire vicarage…saying over in his mind all that MICHAEL said to him, all the loving things which he meant to have said to MICHAEL.  We shall not see him again; only little bits of him in MICHAEL, perhaps even in MICHAEL’s son.)

Though I love Milne’s nonsensical bantering in his other plays, it was wonderful to see him treat a serious topic seriously for once, with both sensitivity and intelligence.  Michael and Mary’s ponderings on the morality of their marriage at various stages in their lives is fascinating but, more than anything, I think Milne excelled here at writing about the bonds between family members.  Whether it was Michael and his father or David and his parents, Milne captures the unique blendings of awkwardness and unwavering love that in one case made for a deeply uncomfortable and unsatisfying relationship and, on the other, provided mother, father, and son with immense joy.