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Goodness, How Sad! – Robert Morley

Posted in A Century of Books, Play, Robert Morley, The 1937 Club on April 21, 2024| 4 Comments »

Only one brief entry for me in this week’s 1937 Club: Goodness, How Sad! by Robert Morley. It’s described as “a comedy in three acts” and while it certainly has three acts, the comedic angle is more suspect.

Dealing with a struggling theatre company currently encamped in an unnamed Midlands town, the entirely of the play takes place in the sitting room of Mrs Priskin’s theatrical lodging house. It is here that Carol and Christine, two young women in the company, are currently residing and where their colleague Peter frequently (especially around mealtimes) visits, much to the annoyance of Mrs Priskin. Carol, the younger of the two women, has just about made up her mind to have an affair with Peter, less out of any passion for the likeable Peter than out of a desire for the experience which she thinks may also improve her acting (“so original”, the more world-weary Christine remarks).

Also about the house are “Mother and Father”, an older married couple who travel the country with performing animals – currently, they have trained seals though Father, properly Captain Otto Angst, still thinks with longing of the beautifully-trained elephants he toured with before the First World War. More mysteriously, there is another lodger who takes great care to stay out of sight. What nefarious past, the girls wonder, is he hiding? Mrs Priskin seems remarkably unperturbed that she is almost certainly (they conclude) harbouring a murder or a sex maniac.

But the real, absorbing interest of the three young people is the failure of their current show and the fate of the upcoming performance of The Constant Nymph. Closure seems imminent and, with it, the loss of a paycheque. It’s not that it’s a bad play or cast, just that it has nothing to capture the town’s audience and lure them away from the lazy allure of the cinema.

When the identify of Mrs Priskin’s other border is revealed, there is suddenly the promise of a saviour: he is not a murder or sex maniac, but Robert Maine, a British theatre actor turned Hollywood movie star. He is hiding out at Mrs Priskin’s for a break from stardom (and perhaps other things) and while Carol and Christine are briefly impressed by his fame, they soon spot the opportunity to save their own futures: after all, wasn’t it the very play they are staging right now that made Maine a star? And surely he wouldn’t mind stepping back into it for a performance or two if it means saving their livelihoods?

Robert, drawn to the lovely Carol, does not mind as it makes it all the easier to conduct his flirtation and Carol, dazzled by fame and eager for experience, is delighted to be swept along. Within days, she’s rethinking her entire future and whether her dedication to the stage is as strong as she once thought.

Suitably, Goodness. How Sad! premiered in the provinces, at the Perranporth Summer Theatre in Cornwall. It reached London in late 1938 and was (based on the reviews in the edition I read) very well received there with frankly overly generous praise about its wittiness and charm. I think the News-Chronicle came closest to the mark when it claimed “It easily persuades you to laugh: it comes near to making you cry” because, yes, it has its humour but it is also a story about disillusionment and the heartbreak wrought by longed-for experience.

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The Fourth Wall (or, The Perfect Alibi) – A.A. Milne

Posted in A Century of Books, A.A. Milne, Play on January 29, 2024| 4 Comments »

When I first did a Century of Books in 2012, it helpfully coincided with my discovery of a new favourite author: A.A. Milne. He was so prolific that a full 18 years of that century were filled by his works and while he won’t prove quite as helpful for my 2024 ACOB, I will work him in wherever possible, starting with The Fourth Wall (or, The Perfect Alibi), a “detective story in three acts” from 1928.

Like all good mystery stories, we open at a country home, owned in this case by Arthur Ludgrove. Generally quiet, the house is this time full of people: there are the usual occupants – Arthur, his ward Susan who is acting as hostess, and his nephew Jimmy – plus a charming widow and her adult daughter, a Major who hopes he is still eligible at 60 for the attentions of said charming widow, and two middle-aged men to round out the group, Mr Carter and Mr Laverick.

The play begins like so many Milne plays with affectionate bantering between our young leads. The notes have already explained the situation between Jimmy and Susan to us before we ever hear them speak: “They were not engaged, but it would be ridiculous for them to put it off much longer”. Jimmy at 27 is “one of those charming and apparently not very intelligent young men whom the Universities empty into the world so hopefully and so regularly” while Susan, a bit younger, is the typical quick-thinking Milne female, always a few steps ahead of her menfolk and far more practical. Reclining with one of her beloved detective stories, she can’t help but offer her advice to Jimmy when she discovers that the letter he is writing is one that will benefit the houseguest she has taken against so strongly since his arrival:

JIMMY: If you want to know, I’m giving Laverick a letter of introduction.

SUSAN: I shouldn’t.

JIMMY: Why?

SUSAN: Because people hate losing their pearls

Jimmy, bless him, won’t stand for such libel, even though he too admits there is something about the man that he finds unsettling. But quickly they segue to discussing the sensational story Arthur told the night before. Or rather, Jimmy tries to segue until Susan reminds him that she never heard the story:

SUSAN: I’m afraid, James, that the ladies – God bless them – had withdrawn. Doubtless wisely.

JIMMY: It wasn’t that sort of story.

SUSAN: Even though it wasn’t, I should like to hear it.

JIMMY: He was in South Africa when the Boer War was on. Did you know that?

SUSAN: I knew that there had been a so-called Boer War which excited our ancestors tremendously and I knew that Arthur had been in South Africa. I didn’t know they had met.

It transpires that years before Arthur had been in South Africia working for the police. While there, he rounded up a gang of three criminals, one of whom was executed while the other two were sentenced to penal servitude for life. Before they were taken from the courtroom, the two sentenced men swore the get their revenge on Arthur one day.

Before Act One ends, revenge has been sought and Arthur is dead. And we as readers witness the entire thing.

The remaining two acts deal with the investigation, first by the local P.C. and his visiting son, a Scotland Yard sergeant, and later, and more successfully, by the intrepid Susan whose passion for detective stories has made her observant, suspicious, and far better equipped to get to the truth than the professionals.

This is one of Milne’s middling works. You would have a pleasant evening at the theatre watching it or at home reading it, and then forget it entirely – as I almost had, after reading it for the first time five years ago. Milne loved detective stories so it’s natural enough that he tried writing a few, but he never mastered them. Too much explanation is required in such stories, which hardly gives him the time to engage in the quick, clever dialogues he wrote so well. But middling Milne is still fun and I was glad to have picked this up again.

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The Romantic Age – A.A. Milne

Posted in A.A. Milne, Play, The 1920 Club on April 19, 2020| 4 Comments »

For me, the 1920 Club this week has been a chance to discover some of the few works of A.A. Milne that I hadn’t already read. I started the week with The Stepmother, a slight one-act play, flipped through the articles featured in If I May, and have now finished the week with the best of the bunch: The Romantic Age, a three-act comedy.

In her late teens, Melisande Knowle longs for the romance of knights and ballads, for a world of courtly love and grand gestures. Instead, she is plagued by all the trappings of middle-class comfort and a family – two parents and her visiting cousin Jane – who can’t see why tennis games, dance parties, and perfectly nice young men from the stock exchange to partner with at both are to be sneered at rather than enjoyed. This is made particularly clear to Bobby, a young man lamentably employed on the stock exchange, who is visiting for the weekend and deeply infatuated with Melisande, when he attempts to propose:

MELISANDE: Oh, Bobby, everything’s wrong. The man to whom I give myself must be not only my lover, but my true knight, my hero, my prince. He must perform deeds of derring-do to win my love. Oh, how can you perform deeds of derring-do in a stupid little suit like that!

Poor Bobby.

The Knowles casually lament their daughter’s romantic flights without taking them too seriously. For Mrs Knowles, an invalid not overburdened with brains, part of the problem comes back to her daughter’s name. She thought her husband had suggested Millicent, a perfectly nice sort of name, the kind that belongs to a nice, helpful sort of daughter. To discover her baby was saddled with the outlandish Melisande was quite a shock – one which, years later, Mrs Knowle still hasn’t entirely recovered from. To protect her daughter from the absurdity of her name, the family calls her Sandy. As you’d expect, the young lady herself finds this disgusting but her mother has very strong reasons for doing so:

MRS KNOWLE: Well, it never seems to be quite respectable, not for a nicely-brought-up young girl in a Christian house. It makes me think of the sort of person who meets a strange young man to whom she has never been introduced, and talks to him in a forest with her hair coming down. They find her afterwards floating in a pool. Not at all the thing one wants for ones daughter.

JANE: Oh, but how thrilling it sounds!

MRS KNOWLE: Well, I think you are safer with “Jane,” dear. Your mother knew what she was about. And if I can save my only child from floating in a pool by calling her Sandy, I certainly think it is my duty to do so.

Contemptuous of the romances she’s heard tell of in real life, Melisande dreams of something more dramatic for herself.

And she gets it. Into her life comes Gervase Mallory. Romantically named, romantically handsome, and, at the time, romantically dressed in blue and gold on his way to a costume ball. It is a shock of attraction for them both and when they meet again they find they both can weave a beautiful fantasy of their love.

But in the third act – the best of all – it all unravels. Melisande, confronted with the idea of Gervase the man rather than the fantasy, of a man who when not dressed in blue and gold instead wears a loud golfing suit, who when not frolicking in glades with her is so unromantic as to work on the stock exchange, promptly convinces herself that he is not worth loving.

Gervase, however, while happy to spin a romantic tale, is rather more practical than the object of his affections. After his first glimpse of Melisande he’d encountered a peddler in the woods, Master Susan, and had a conveniently timed conversation about the benefits of a friendly marriage:

SUSAN: When you are married, every adventure becomes two adventures. You have your adventure, and then you go back to your wife and have your adventure again. Perhaps it is a better adventure the second time. You can say the things which you didn’t quite say the first time, and do the things which you didn’t quite do.

Susan is also helpful in reminding Gervase that looks are not the only thing that matter in the long term:

GERVASE: Do you believe in love at first sight, Master Susan?

SUSAN: Why not? If it’s the woman you love at first sight, not only her face.

Thanks to this encounter (and just being altogether more sensible than his beloved), Gervase arrives for the reunion with his feet on the ground and his heart already given away. Melisande, not even remotely prepared to believe the real world could have any acceptable romance to offer her, is horrified and the entire scene is delightful. There are so many Milne plays I wish I could see performed and this has moved high up on that list.

Lighthearted and fun throughout, the play also doesn’t neglect its minor characters. Bobby, realising he’s had a lucky escape from Melisande, quickly transfers his attentions to her pretty cousin Jane, which is all very satisfying. Mrs Knowle flutters about – a kind but featherbrained sort-of-person – while Mr Knowle shows up every so often to be surprisingly funny. They are a kinder, fonder version of the Bennets:

MR KNOWLE: […] We have a visitor coming, a nice young fellow who takes an interest in prints.

MRS KNOWLE: I’ve heard nothing of this, Henry.

MR KNOWLE: No, my dear, that’s why I’m telling you now.

MRS KNOWLE: A young man?

MR KNOWLE: Yes.

MRS KNOWLE: Nice-looking?

MR KNOWLE: Yes.

MRS KNOWLE: Rich?

MR KNOWLE: I forgot to ask him, Mary. However, we can remedy that omission as soon as he arrives.

MRS KNOWLE: It’s a very unfortunate day for him to have chosen. Here’s Sandy lost, and I’m not fit to be seen, and – Jane, your hair wants tidying –

MR KNOWLE: He is not coming to see your or Sandy or Jane, my dear; he is coming to see me. Fortunately, I am looking very beautiful this afternoon.

All ends well, of course, proving that romance can survive in the modern age – just not quite as Melisande had envisioned it. (Thank goodness.)

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The Stepmother – A.A. Milne

Posted in A.A. Milne, Play, The 1920 Club on April 13, 2020| 12 Comments »

Is The Stepmother by A.A. Milne the shortest possible thing I could have chosen to start The 1920 Club off with? Very possibly and I love it for that; it means I was able to sneak something in on Sunday afternoon to start the week with. And it’s a suitable way to start: for me, this week is going to be devoted not just to 1920 but even more specifically to the works of A.A. Milne. 1920 fell during his most prolific period and, remarkably, I still have a few things left by him I haven’t read or reviewed yet, like this short one-act play.

The Stepmother premiered in November 1920, just a few days after the second anniversary of the armistice. The war’s legacy is felt in the story, which is brief and rather sentimental – far from the more substantial and far more polished works Milne premiered both the year before (Mr Pim Passes By) and the year after (The Dover Road). It’s a slight work and, yes, an inferior one but still enjoyable.

We open at the London home of Sir John Pembury, MP where a young man – the Stranger – has arrived and demanded to speak with Sir John. He will not give his name and refuses to say what his business is, insisting the butler tell Sir John only that “someone from Lambeth” is here to speak with him, confident Sir John will know what that means. The Stranger warrants one of Milne’s typically detailed introductory notes:

[The butler] has already placed him as “one of the lower classes,” but the intelligent person in the pit perceives that he is something better than that, though whether he is in the process of falling from a higher estate, or of rising to it, is not so clear. He is thirty odd, shabbily dressed (but then, so are most of us nowadays), and ill at ease; not because he is shabby, but because he is ashamed of himself. To make up for this, he adopts a blustering manner, as if to persuade himself that he is a fine fellow after all. There is a touch of commonness about his voice, but he is not uneducated.

With the butler gone to fetch Sir John, the Stranger is not left alone long before Lady Pembury comes in. She is, as Milne makes clear in another introductory note, just the right person for a disgruntled young man to meet:

In twenty-eight years of happy married life, she has mothered one husband and five daughters, but she has never had a son–her only sorrow. Her motto might be, “It is just as easy to be kind”; and whether you go to her for comfort or congratulation, you will come away feeling that she is the only person who really understands.

The Stranger quickly (it is a one-act play after all with an obvious title) quickly reveals his reason for coming. Lady Pembury, faced with the knowledge that not only does her husband have an illegitimate son whom he knew about but that this son, having lost his job, has now come to demand money, steels herself magnificently and in a few short moments mothers the boy in a way he has been missing since the death of his own mother two years before. Alone in the world and down on his luck, he has become something he is embarrassed by, pride destroyed to the point where he is preparing to blackmail his own father for money. Lady Pembury, she who has always wanted a son to mother, teases out the best parts of him, finding the man who wants to stand on his own, to take responsibility for himself and to one day present himself to his father not as a beggar but as a son to be accepted.

The Stranger’s meeting with Sir John is not at all the one he’d planned, in the end, and he goes off with a much-needed sense of optimism about the future. Lady Pembury, on the other hand, goes on with her life quietly and calmly but with its foundations shaken.

For a writer who was excelling at artful waffling – pages of his plays from this era consistent of charmingly light dialogue that bubbles along like champagne – this is a melancholy piece. It is sentimental and gives you hope that the young man will piece his life together, as so many young men were trying to do. He will do it alone and be honorable and keep his pride. But he will struggle, as he has been struggling for years, and the tiredness and loneliness will not leave him any time soon. In comparison, Lady Pembury’s disillusionment with her husband is mild but something, some innocence, has been taken from her as well.

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The Truth About Blayds – A.A. Milne

Posted in A Century of Books, A.A. Milne, Play on November 14, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Reading The Truth About Blayds by A.A. Milne, I had no difficultly understanding why it was one of Milne’s favourites of his many plays. Written in 1920, during his most productive period, it is devoted to the thing he loved to write about most: middle class struggles with morality. And, for once, that struggle doesn’t take the form of bigamy, something we can only be thankful for (see Mr Pim Passes By, Michael and Mary, and, to some extent, Belinda for Milne’s delight in that subject).

We open on the household of Blayds, the great Victorian poet, the (as some call him) “Supreme Songster of an Earlier Epoch”. His family is gathering to celebrate his birthday, which is delightful because it gives Milne a chance to introduce them all one at a time. Milne excels at character descriptions in his stage directions and he surpasses his usual genius here. Those gathering include Blayds’ two adult daughters, his grandson and granddaughter, and his overly attentive son-in-law. It is for this son-in-law that Milne truly shines:

William Blayds-Conway was obviously meant for the Civil Service. His prim neatness, his gold pince-nez, his fussiness would be invaluable in almost any Department. However, running Blayds is the next best thing to running the Empire.

Can’t you just picture him? A man who not only added his wife’s name to his own upon marriage but who has made it his life’s work to serve as secretary to his great father-in-law, curating every slip of paper that has passed through Blayds’ blessed hands, recording every word he utters in order to capture the brilliance for posterity. Blayds, old but no fool, can see exactly what his son-in-law is doing and what the future will bring, as he explains to a birthday visitor, Mr Royce:

Blayds: My son-in-law, Mr Royce, meditates after my death a little book called “Blaydsiana.” He hasn’t said so, but I see it written all over him. In addition, you understand, to the official life in two volumes. There may be another one called “On the Track of Blayds in the Cotswolds” but I am not certain of this yet.

While Mr Blayds-Conway is happy to have his life’s direction set by his relationship to Blayds, his children are not. Both daughter and son feel that they are held slightly captive, particularly twenty-something Oliver who has found himself working in politics despite his love of mechanics:

Oliver: Do you think I want to be a private secretary to a dashed politician? What’s a private secretary at his best but a superior sort of valet? I wanted to be a motor engineer. Not allowed. Why not? Because the Blayds in Blayds-Conway wouldn’t have been any use. But politicians simply live on that sort of thing.

They need to live up to the Blayds name and find that takes quite a lot of work.

But then the critical discovery is made that Blayds’ fame is based on a grand deception. This comes after his death so there are many things for the family consider. Money, legacy, and the value of their own name all weigh heavily as they try to decide what to do. Perhaps the Blayds name wasn’t such a curse, not really, not when it came with respect and a healthy income, and served to open so many doors into the best places. As the Blayds-Conway family members rationalise their selfish instincts into a protective cocoon of moral comfort, Blayds’ younger daughter and the journalist Conway can only look on in amazement and repulsion.

It’s all very neatly done, with excellent dialogue throughout and a tidy ending, but it doesn’t have as much heart as Milne’s best plays. Here it seems the concept was very much the thing, not the characters. He carries it off very well but I still longed for the world of The Great Broxopp or, bigamy and all, Michael and Mary, with real-feeling characters.

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The Great Broxopp – A.A. Milne

Posted in A Century of Books, A.A. Milne, Play on November 2, 2018| 6 Comments »

The Great Broxopp by A.A. Milne is often referred to as prophetic. Written in 1921, it features a man who feels his life has been blighted by his father’s commercial success with the baby food he used his infant son to advertise. Milne’s own son was still an infant when this was written – years away from being immortalized as Christopher Robin – but the parallels are very clear. But, sadly for Milne, the fictional son is much more forgiving than his real one would one day be.

The play opens, perfectly, on young Mrs Broxopp conferring with her maid of all work, giving instant insight into the family finances:

Nancy: Yes, Mary?

Mary: It’s about the dinner, ma’am.

Nancy: (With a sigh.) Yes, I was afraid it was. It isn’t a very nice subject to talk about, is it, Mary?

Mary: Well, ma’am, it has its awkwardness like.

Nancy: (After a pause, but not very hopefully.) How is the joint looking?

Mary: Well, it’s past looking like anything very much.

Nancy: Well, there’s the bone.

Mary: Yes, there’s the bone.

Nancy: (Gaily.) Well, there we are, Mary. Soup.

Mary: If you remember, ma’am, we had soup yesterday.

Nancy: (Wistfully.) Couldn’t you – couldn’t you squeeze it again, Mary?

Mary: It’s past squeezing, ma’am – in this world.

Broxopp, you see, is not yet great. But the first act is brief and by the time we meet him again twenty odd years later, greatness has been achieved. A born salesman, he has built a successful business and established a comfortable life. He and his wife live in a large home in the best part of town. They have a butler who used to work for a duke. Their son, Jack, went through Eton and Oxford and is now pursuing his dream of becoming an artist (heavily subsidized by his father). They have the success they dreamed of and are proud of it, with the Great Broxopp still excited each day to look for ways to make the business – and the name of Broxopp – even greater.

Young Jack, on the other hand, wants to abandon the name entirely. He has fallen in love and plans to marry the lovely, eminently sensible Iris. But Iris – and even more importantly Iris’s father, the masterful Sir Roger Tenterden – can’t stomach the name of Broxopp and the commercial activities that it is associated with. Jack, for his part, is more than happy to abandon a name that has plagued him all his life:

Jack: I’m simply fed up with Broxopp’s Beans.

Broxopp: (Surprised.) But – but you haven’t had them since you were a baby.

Jack: (Seeing the opening.) Haven’t had them? Have I ever stopped having them? Weren’t they rammed down my throat at school till I was sick of them? Did they ever stop pulling my leg about them at Oxford? Can I go anywhere without seeing that beastly poster – a poster of me – me, if you please – practically naked – telling everybody that I love my Beans. (Bitterly.) Love them! Don’t I see my name – Broxopp, Broxopp, Broxopp – everywhere in every size of lettering – on every omnibus, on every hoarding; spelt out in three colours at night – B-R-O-X-O-P-P – until I can hardly bear the sight of it. Free bottles given away on my birthday, free holidays for Broxopp mothers to celebrate my coming of age! I’m not a man at all. I’m just a living advertisement of Beans.

Broxopp shows his greatness in what he does next. He accepts his son’s point of view and, to smooth his son’s way into a respectable future with no taint of business, he sells the business and changes the family name to Chillingham, his wife’s maiden name. And then they retire to the country to live sedate, unexceptional lives in beautiful surroundings.

When we meet them again, all seems to be going well enough but the Great Broxopp is not so great anymore. Country life does not suit him and he yearns to be back at work, to have something to strive for every day. Jack is married but still living off his parents, not making much of an effort at his art, and Iris’s father, Sir Roger, has been left in charge of everyone’s money but will tell no one about any of it. And then the inevitable happens: the money disappears. Mismanaged by Sir Roger (with a final, artful push from Mrs Broxopp), the Broxopp fortune is lost. But the loss brings a new beginning for everyone and no one could be happier than the Great Broxopp, now facing a challenge worthy of his ambitions.

Milne’s dialogue is not up to his snappiest best but I loved this play. It had a huge amount of heart and the central relationship between Mr and Mrs Broxopp was wonderful, a true and supportive partnership. They worked together to build Broxopp’s Beans and we have no doubt as the play ends that they will work together again to make the name of Chillingham just as great.

Knowing Milne’s life, it’s not difficult to see the factors from his own life at play here. From all I know of Daphne Milne, I suspect her family would have shared Sir Roger’s prejudices about being too closely associated with business. And I know for certain Milne himself felt that work and success were something to be proud of and celebrated, not looked down upon. But the one thing he couldn’t foresee was that he would put his own son under a spotlight many, many times greater than the one Jack Broxopp grew up in. And his son, unlike Jack Broxopp, would never quite forgive him for it.

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Mini Updates for Mediocre Books

Posted in A Century of Books, David French, Fiction, George Barr McCutcheon, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Madeleine L'Engle, Memoir/Biography, Non-fiction, Play, Willa Cather on September 19, 2018| 10 Comments »

A few quick reviews from my less interesting reading encounters:

Graustark by George Barr McCutcheon (1901) – I loved Brewster’s Millions (despite its many quirks and frankly bizarre plot twists) so was determined to read more by McCutcheon. When I learned he’d written a series of Ruritanian novels, starting with Graustark, it was clear where I would start. I love a good Ruritanian romance. However, it turns out this is not good. It starts well enough, yes, with our young hero meeting a beautiful, mysterious girl on the train as they travel across America. By the time they reach Washington, DC, he is in love but she must depart for home, a small European principality he has never heard of. Naturally, it isn’t too long before he finds his way there and ridiculous adventures involving hidden identities, dastardly aristocrats, and national debt ensue. The saving grace was our hero’s stalwart friend and travel companion, who provided a bit of levity and a merciful dose of common sense when everyone else lost theirs. A ridiculous book – yet I’m still strangely tempted to try the next book in the series…

A Lost Lady by Willa Cather (1923) – this novella by Cather was a lovely reminder of just what a beautiful writer she was. As usual, her characters are a bit flat (particularly the lady at the center of the tale) but Cather’s passion for her setting – a small Western town of fading importance – and the simple elegance of her writing made this a pleasure to read. That said, the memory of it is already fading from my mind, unlike her best works which remain vivid even years later.

A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L’Engle (1972) – This is the first volume of L’Engle’s Crosswick Journals and, as usual, I approached them all out of order. I read the last one first (Two-Part Invention – still one of my favourite bookish discoveries), then the third (The Summer of the Great-Grandmother), and now jumped back to the start. The problem with that is that L’Engle rose to such heights with her later books that this first one can’t compare. Those later books are deeply personal and she shares her memories and emotions in a way she probably hadn’t imagine when she wrote this first book. This is an interesting look at her life and some of her thoughts, particularly around the communities she belongs to, but it lacks a compelling focus and I missed the sense of L’Engle herself that was so strong in the other books. I still have An Irrational Season, the second book, left to read and will be interested to see how it compares to the others.

The Doctor’s Sweetheart and Other Stories by L.M. Montgomery (1979) – what a throw back to my childhood. After I discovered Anne of Green Gables, I spent the next few years obsessively reading anything by or about Montgomery, including all the collections of her short stories. This was one of many volumes that was put together drawing on pieces she’d had published in magazines (both before and after Anne, her breakthrough novel, was published), most of which had some sort of linking theme – here it is lovers who are parted. I remembered them as repetitive and melodramatic, and was a bit embarrassed that anyone had wanted to draw attention to them by republishing them. Twenty-two years later, that is still how I feel about them. Well done ten-year old Claire for being such an astute literary judge. From a scholarship point of view, this collection does have some interest – you can see Montgomery playing around with plots she would eventually use in her novels – but on their own they are best forgotten.

Salt-Water Moon by David French (1984) – part of a cycle of plays about the Mercers, a Newfoundland family, this focuses on the parents’ story, looking back to their youth. It is just one-act, set on a moonlit summer night in 1926 when Jacob Mercer reappears in his small Newfoundland hometown a year after having left for Toronto. He’s come to see Mary, his girl, and learn why she’s become engaged to the town schoolteacher. Jacob is a chatty fellow and the two bicker back and forth all evening in enjoyable interplay. By the end, of course, they have decided to face the future together, even though for Mary it might not be as practical as the future she had talked herself into with the hapless schoolteacher. This wasn’t particularly special on its own but I’m intrigued enough to want to read more about the Mercers in French’s other plays.

This post contains affiliate links from Book Depository, an online book retailer with free international shipping. If you buy via these links it means I receive a small commission (at no extra cost to you).

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The Ivory Door – A.A. Milne

Posted in A Century of Books, A.A. Milne, Play on June 17, 2018| 11 Comments »

I love fairy tales and I love A.A. Milne. When you put them together, I’m a happy woman. And thankfully Milne used fairy tales – or at least fairy-tale-esque settings – in a number of his writings. I’d already encountered this happy combination in his early novel, Once on a Time, in his one-act play, Portrait of a Gentleman in Slippers, and in his uproariously funny play, The Ugly Duckling, so I was delighted to find it again in The Ivory Door, a play from 1928.

We begin with King Hilary and his son, young Prince Perivale, in the throne room having a friendly chat about life. Perivale is eight- or nine-years old and starting to make sense of the world and his place in it. His father, however, is making things a bit difficult by throwing in his king-ly perspective:

PERIVALE. […] Kings are the wisest men, aren’t they?

HILARY .It is commonly said so.

PERIVALE. And the handsomest, and the best swordsmen, and the cleverest painters, and the greatest generals, and – and everything.

HILARY. It is well that the people should think so.

PERIVALE. Shall I be when I grow up?

HILARY. So it will be said.

PERIVALE. But shan’t I be?

HILARY. It is almost too much to expect of one man, Perivale.

PERIVALE. Even if he is the King?

HILARY. The more so if he be the King.

And here we have our theme, ladies and gentleman: the gap between perception and reality, what people desire to be true and what is actually so. It’s hard on a king to try and live up to romantic expectations and legends, as Perivale will discover.

But he will not discover it quite yet. For now, he moves on to questioning his father about the mysterious ivory door in the throne room. He’s been told it leads to hell or at the very least that to enter it means certain death. And his father, wise as he might be (for all kings are wise), cannot tell him differently. He can only tell him that what lies on the other side is unknown but the kings who have passed through the door have never been seen again. It’s a legend that looms large in their kingdom – the Ivory Door that leads to certain death – and for Perivale the need to know the truth is intense. But the key is lost so the door – and what lies on the other side – remains a mystery.

Years pass, good King Hilary dies, and Perivale becomes king. But he has never lost his inquisitive nature and now he finally has the key to the Ivory Door. And on the eve of his wedding, he decides he cannot live with the uncertainty any longer. So he opens the door and goes through.

The legend of the Ivory Door, as one of the characters says, “…is our own; something which joins us together. We talk of it often. We tell each other stories. We could not lose it.” So when Perivale emerges unscathed and alive, having discovered the door merely leads to a passage that ends outside the palace walls, it is deemed impossible. Perivale must be an impostor or some wicked soul switched in hell with the true, good King Perivale. The arrival of his fiancée, Princess Lilia, only complicates matters. After all, everyone in the kingdom knows their great secret: that the two met while in disguise as peasants and fell in love only to then discover one another’s true identities. It is always thus for kings and princesses. Except Perivale and Lilia had never set eyes on one another and the lack of recognition only serves to further condemn Perivale. He may look like their king but King Perivale passed through the Ivory Door and therefore gone forever. It is inconceivable, despite all the evidence, that Perivale could have lived.

On the Milne spectrum of silliness, The Ivory Door should be classed on the more serious side. It has its moments of levity thanks to Milne’s typically snappy dialogue but is primarily a cautionary tale. Perivale’s people had lived for generations with the legend of the Ivory Door. It formed part of their identity. And, as Perivale says, “when I came safely through the Door, I was telling each one of my people that he was a fool and a coward. A fool to believe, a coward to fear.” It is never safe to be the person who makes other feels like fools and cowards. Only bad things can come from that.

Bad things for Perivale, yes, but good things for the reader. I really enjoyed this (as I always enjoy Milne) and loved that it was of a more serious bent than some of his other plays of the era. I love a good comedy of errors about bigamy but a change is nice.

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Wurzel-Flummery – A.A. Milne

Posted in A Century of Books, A.A. Milne, Play on January 23, 2018| 5 Comments »

In April 1917, a not particularly important but rather enjoyable thing happened: Wurzel-Flummery by A.A. Milne premiered in London. It was his very first play, had absolutely nothing to do with the bloody war going on, and started off a career that would establish him as one of the better-known playwrights of the time. And most importantly, it is very, very funny. During its initial run, the play was part of a trio of one act plays (the other two by Milne’s friend and advocate J.M. Barrie) for eight weeks and was well-reviewed “with words such as ‘witty’, ‘delightful’, and ‘brilliant’ freely used” (so Ann Thwaite tells us in her excellent biography of A.A.M.). Exactly so.

The concept of the play is fantastical and fun: two MPs, one old and pompous (Robert), one young and earnest (Dick), are approached with an incredible offer. A man unknown to either of them has left them each £50,000 in his will, the caveat being that they must change their respectable, well-known family names – names they have spent their careers trying to make known – to the absurd Wurzel-Flummery.

The way they approach the dilemma is typical of their characters. Dick, the younger, has been staying with Robert’s family and has fallen in love with Viola, the daughter of the house. Their engagement is a secret one as the play begins, largely because they are concerned how Robert will react. He is, as Viola reminds her fiancé, not terribly keen on the younger man:

VIOLA: He said that your intellectual arrogance was only equalled by your spiritual instability. I don’t quite know what it means, but it doesn’t sound the sort of thing you want in a son-in-law.

A man of principles and strong ideals, it is easy for Dick to reject the offer outright. He will not compromise his honour and make himself a laughing stock! However, bills must be paid and wives, his future one assures him, have a habit of running these up. Soon he starts to waver.

Robert, on the other hand, brazens through. He tries to convince himself it is a noble thing he is doing, fulfilling a dying man’s wishes and taking a good old (almost noble, really) English name – even when he’s bluntly told by the executor of the will that it is no such thing. He is a man who can convince himself of anything to preserve his dignity – a dignity that could be much better supported if he had an extra £50,000 in the bank.

It’s a quick, sparkling play and amazing assured for someone who was just starting as a playwright. And, delightfully, it includes one of the revealing character introductions invisible to the audience but which are to me such a characteristic element of A.A.M.’s style and always a pleasure to read:

Enter MARGARET. MARGARET has been in love with ROBERT CRAWSHAW for twenty-five years, the last twenty four years from habit. She is small, comfortable, and rather foolish; you would certainly call her a dear, but you might sometimes call her a poor dear.

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The Boy Comes Home – A.A. Milne

Posted in A Century of Books, A.A. Milne, Play on January 11, 2018| 12 Comments »

When I first did A Century of Books back in 2012, I discovered a) that I love reading plays and b) that I adore A.A. Milne. The two discoveries were not unrelated: I read 15 plays by Milne that year and 22 of his works in total. But still my work was not finished – there is plenty of Milne still left for me to read, including a number of his plays. I hope to spread them out through the year but have started with one of his earliest, The Boy Comes Home, a one-act play from 1918.

Twenty-three-year-old Philip has spent the last four years serving as an officer in France. Now, with the war just over, he finds himself back in his Uncle James and Aunt Emily’s house, living yet again under his uncle’s rules – a strange place for a man who has spent the last four years giving orders and growing up very fast. Philip, as we are introduced to him, is very much one of Milne’s charming young men, tossing off amusing dialogue while displaying general contentment and disinclination to be ruffled:

EMILY: And did you have a good breakfast? Naughty boy to be late for it. I always thought they had to get up so early in the army.

PHILIP: They do. That’s why they’re so late when they get out of the army.

EMILY: Dear me! I should have thought a habit of four years would have stayed with you.

PHILIP: Every morning for four years, as I’ve shot out of bed, I’ve said to myself, “Wait! A time will come.” [Smiling] That doesn’t really give a habit a chance.

Uncle James and Aunt Emily are rather different. I always love reading Milne’s plays for his authorial asides, descriptions and stage directions. In this case, I loved his descriptions of these characters: Aunt Emily is “a kind-hearted mid-Victorian lady who has never had any desire for the vote” while Uncle James, Philip’s guardian and withholder of his inheritance until he reaches the age of twenty-five, is “not a big man, nor an impressive one in his black morning-coat; and his thin straggly beard, now going grey, does not hide a chin of any great power; but he has a severity which passes for strength with the weak.”

Uncle James, a profitable jam producer, is very much a man who wants things done his own way – we know this even before he appears since Philip’s request for breakfast at ten upset the entire household, who know that breakfast is only ever served at half past eight. More crucially, he is one who feels he has made plenty of sacrifices over the last four years so can’t be expected to feel much sympathy for his soldier nephew, as he reminds his wife:

JAMES: I don’t want to boast, but I think I may claim to have done my share. I gave up my nephew to my country, and I – er – suffered from the shortage of potatoes to an extent that you probably didn’t realise. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for your fortunate discovery about that time that you didn’t really like potatoes, I don’t know how we should have carried on. And, as I think I’ve told you before, the excess-profits tax seemed to me a singularly stupid piece of legislation – but I paid it. And I don’t go on boasting about how much I paid.

Frustrated by his nephew’s lackadaisical ways (breakfast at ten in the morning! I ask you!), Uncle James is eager to lay down the law when he invites Philip into his study to discuss the younger man’s career plans now that he is out of the army. What ensues is either a fantastical nightmare or a bizarre act of intimidation by a cunning and deeply disturbed young man. Uncle James will never be quite sure and nor will we.

Milne, like Philip, had served in France but for nowhere near as long – he had been invalided back to England after the Somme (in 1916) and spent the rest of the war on desk duties. But he knew what it was like out there and knew the good and the bad that it did to young men. And he certainly knew the relief young Philip feels when it is all over:

PHILIP: Uncle James, do you realise that I’m never going to salute again, or wear a uniform, or get wet – really wet, I mean – or examine men’s feet, or stand to attention when I’m spoken to, or – oh, lots more things. And, best of all, I’m never going to be frightened again.

Though he had been writing professionally for more than a decade when The Boy Comes Home was published, Milne had only published his first play (Wurzel-Flummery) the year before, in 1917. It was a form he excelled at; he proved to be extremely successful as a playwright (it is what made him famous even before he began writing for children) and, particularly in the 1920s, extraordinarily prolific. The Boy Comes Home is not quite as skilled as the charming Belinda (also from 1918) but it does show an attempt to engage with more serious subjects. While this is only a minor effort, it’s a fascinating glimpse into the mind of an ex-soldier at the end of the Great War and an equally fascinating step in Milne’s progression towards mastery of the form.

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