0 A.A. Milne's first book

I seem to be having a little spate of reading author's first books (look out for Agatha Christie's coming up soon!) and I decided a good way to tackle one of the remaining years of A Century of Books would be a re-read of A.A. Milne's first - Lovers in London (1905).  I wrote a little about it back here, in January 2010, but that was mostly about the topic of print-on-demand books.  Lovers in London is one of the very few POD books I own, and it isn't very attractive - but it's impossible to find a non-POD edition anywhere, mostly because Milne disowned the book and bought back the copyright to prevent anyone reprinting it. 

That will probably make you assume that it is appalling, and it isn't at all.  It might only be for Milne completists, but it is nonetheless interesting to see where and how he started.  As you might expect, it is about young lovers - only at the beginning they haven't met.  Edward (or Teddy) is the narrator in the mould Milne wrote so well at the beginning of his career - the jovial, cricket-loving, occasionally-writing-for-Punch sort of upper-middle-class man; Amelia is his godfather's daughter, travelling to England from her native America.  We're early let into the obvious secret - that by chp.24 (and there are only 125 pages; these are not long chapters) Amelia and Edward will be betrothed.

It's all very cheery and insouciant and very AAM in his sketch-writing days.  If you've had the pleasure and privilege of reading The Day's Play, The Sunny Side, The Holiday Round or things like that (and if you haven't, you should) then you'll recognise the sort of fun they have:

As we went under the bridge to get to the elephant-house Amelia insisted on buying buns for the rhinoceros.
 
"But they don't eat buns," I objected.
 
"He will if I offer it to him," said Amelia confidently.
 
"My dear Amelia," I said, "it is a matter of common knowledge that the rhinoceros, belonging as it does to the odd-toed set of ungulates, has a gnarled skin, thickened so as to form massive plates, which are united by thinner portions forming flexible joints.  Further, the animal in question, though fierce and savage when roused, is a vegetable feeder.  In fact, he may be said to be herbivorous."
 
"I don't care," said Amelia defiantly; "all animals in the Zoo eat buns."
 
"I can tell you three that don't."
 
"I bet a shilling you can't - not straight off."

 I instanced the electric eel, the ceciopian silk moth, and the coconut crab.  So Amelia paid for our teas.  But in the elephant-house the rhinoceros took his bun with verve - not to say aplomb.

The most successful sections are such as these - when Amelia and Teddy wander around and indulge in frivolous conversation.  It's witty - not the structured, repeatable sort of wit we meet in Wilde, but the variety that puts a happy smile on one's face.

Some chapters were less well done, to my mind, and these tended to be where Milne's imagination got the better of him - particularly one where action wandered (in Teddy's mind) to a desert island.  A little too fanciful, and a little too silly.  But for the most part, it is all very entertaining and jolly.  What Teddy writes about himself could equally be said of Milne:

I am a harmless, mild-mannered person.  There is nothing "strong" about my work; nothing that calls for any violent display of emotion on the part of my puppets.  I doubt if there could be an illegitimate canary (even) in my stories...

I can't see quite why Milne took so against Lovers in London.  If it is not up to the standard of his next few books, it isn't so far behind them as to make it embarrassing.  If it were available in bookshops across the land, I wouldn't hesitate in telling you to get a copy to enjoy on a rainy Sunday afternoon - as it is, in pricey POD editions, you'd be much better off hunting for the much cheaper, much more attractive editions of slightly later books by AAM.

Detail: A.A. Milne's first book

0 'A Household Book' - A.A. Milne

As promised yesterday, here is the essay 'A Household Book' from A.A. Milne's Not That It Matters.  It might come with some surprises - unless you happened to read Peter's comments yesterday...

Once on a time I discovered Samuel Butler; not the other two, but the one who wrote The Way of All Flesh, the second-best novel in the English language.  I say the second-best, so that, if you remind me of Tom Jones or The Mayor of Casterbridge or any other that you fancy, I can say that, of course, that one is the best.  Well, I discovered him, just as Voltaire discovered Habakkuk, or your little boy discovered Shakespeare the other day, and I committed my discovery to the world in two glowing articles.  Not unnaturally the world remained unmoved.  It knew all about Samuel Butler.

Last week I discovered a Frenchman, Claude Tillier, who wrote in the early part of last century a book called Mon Oncle Benjamin, which may be freely translated My Uncle Benjamin.  (I read it in the translation.)  Eager as I am to be lyrical about it, I shall refrain.  I think that I am probably safer with Tillier than with Butler, but I dare not risk it.  The thought of your scorn at my previous ignorance of the world-famous Tillier, your amused contempt because I have only just succeeded in borrowing the classic upon which you were brought up, this is too much for me.  Let us say no more about it.  Claude Tillier - who has not heard of Claude Tillier?  Mon Oncle Benjamin - who has not read it, in French or (as I did) in American?  Let us pass on to another book.

For I am going to speak of another discovery; of a book which should be a classic, but is not; of a book of which nobody has heard unless through me.  It was published some twelve years ago, the last-published book of a well-known writer.  When I tell you his name you will say, "Oh yes!  I love his books!" and you will mention So-and-So, and its equally famous sequel Such-and-Such.  But when I ask you if you have read my book, you will profess surprise, and say that you have never heard of it.  "Is it as good as So-and-So and Such-and-Such?" you will ask, hardly believing that this could be possible.  "Much better," I shall reply - and there, if these things were arranged properly, would be another ten per cent. in my pocke.  But believe me, I shall be quite content with your gratitude.

Well, the writer of the book is Kenneth Grahame.  You have hard of him?  Good, I thought so.  The books you have read are The Golden Age and Dream Days.  Am I not right?  Thank you.  But the book you have not read - my book - is The Wind in the Willows.  Am I not right again?  Ah, I was afraid so.

The reason why I knew you had not read it is the reason why I call it "my" book.  For the last ten or twelve years I have been recommending it.  Usually I speak about it at the my first meeting with a stranger.  It is my opening remark, just as yours is something futile about the weather.  If I don't get it in at the beginning, I squeeze it in at the end.  The stranger has got to have it some time.  Should I ever find myself in the dock, and one never knows, my answer to the question whether I had anything to say would be, "Well, my lord, if I might just recommend a book to the jury before leaving."  Mr. Justice Darling would probably pretend that he had read it, but he wouldn't deceive me.

For one cannot recommend a book to all the hundreds of people whom one has met in ten years without discovering whether it is well known or not.  It is the amazing truth that none of those hundreds had heard of The Wind in the Willows until I told them about it.  Some of them had never of Kenneth Grahame; well, one did not have to meet them again, and it takes all sorts to make a world.  But most of them were in your position - great admirers of the author and his two earlier famous books, but ignorant thereafter.  I had their promise before they left me, and waited confidently for their gratitude.  No doubt they also spread the good news in their turn, and it is just possible that it reached you in this way, but it was to me, none the less, that your thanks were due.  For instance, you may have noticed a couple of casual references to it, as if it were a classic known to all, in a famous novel published last year.  It was I who introduced that novelist to it six months before.  Indeed, I feel sometimes that it was I who wrote The Wind in the Willows, and recommended it to Kenneth Grahame... but perhaps I am wrong here, for I have not the pleasure of his acquaintance.  Nor, as I have already lamented, am I financially interested in its sale, an explanation which suspicious strangers require from me sometimes.

I shall not describe the book, for no description would help it.  But I shall just say this; that it is what I call a Household Book.  By a Household Book I mean a book which everybody in the household loves and quotes continually ever afterwards; a book which is read aloud to every new guest, and is regarded as the touchstone of his worth.  But it is a book which makes you feel that, though everybody in the house loves it, it is only you who really appreciate it as its true value, and that the others are scarcely worthy of it.  It is obvious, you persuade yourself, that the author was thinking of you when he wrote it.  "I hope this will please Jones," were his final words, as he laid down his pen.

Well, of course, you will order the book at once.  But I must give you one word of warning.  When you sit down to it, don't be so ridiculous as to suppose that you are sitting in judgment on my taste, still less on the genius of Kenneth Grahame.  You are merely sitting in judgment on yourself... You may be worthy; I do not know.  But it is you who are on trial.

Detail: 'A Household Book' - A.A. Milne

0 Not That It Matters - A.A. Milne

It's been about a decade since I blitzed most of A.A. Milne's very many books, and now I'm enjoying revisiting them.  I thought a trip down Milne Memory Lane would be a handy way to cross off 1919 on A Century of Books, so I picked up his collection of humorous essays from that year, Not That It Matters.

The first piece (although they are not in chronological order) starts 'Sometimes when the printer is waiting for an article which really should have been sent to him the day before, I sit at my desk and wonder if there is any possible subject in the whole world upon which I can possibly find anything to say.'  (The final line in the book, incidentally, is 'And Isaiah, we may be sure, did not carry a notebook.'  Which gives you some sense of the wide variety Milne covers in this collection.)

Some of the essays are very indicative of their time - from 1910 to 1919, as the essays appeared during that period in The Sphere, The Outlook, and The Star.  I'm not sure 'Smoking as a Fine Art' would appear anywhere today, except as a consciously controversial piece, nor could any 21st century essayist take for granted that his reader went for frequent country houseparties, attended Lords, and had strong memories of the First World War.  On the other hand, many of the topics Milne covers would be equally fit for a columnist today, if we still had the type who were allowed to meander through arbitrary topics, without the need to make a rapier political point or a satirical topical comment.  Milne writes on goldfish, daffodils, writing personal diaries, the charm of lunch, intellectual snobbery, and even what property programme presenters would now call 'kerb appeal' - but which was simply 'looking at the outside of a house' in Milne's day.

I love Milne's early work, because it is so joyful and youthful.  In the sketches and short pieces published in The Day's Play, The Holiday Round and others, 'The Rabbits' often re-appear - these are happy, silly 20-somethings called things like Dahlia and (if me) addressed by their surnames.  They play cricket (badly), golf (badly), and indoor party games (badly) on endless and sunny country holidays.  It's all deliciously insouciant and, if not quite like A.A. Milne (or anybody) really was, great fun to read.  When Milne turns to essays, he can't include this cast, of course.  And he was in his late thirties when Not That It Matters was published - still young, perhaps, but hardly youthful.  He was a married man, though not a father quite yet, and his tone had changed slightly - from the exuberance which characterised his earliest books, to the calmly witty and jovial tone which was to see out the rest of his career.  Here's an example, more or less at random, of the style which makes me always so happy to return to Milne:

"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness," said Keats, not actually picking out celery in so many words, but plainly including it in the general blessings of the autumn.

My main qualm with these essays is that they do often end in rather a forced manner.  He'll put in a reference that drags everything back to the opening line, or finishes off pat in a slightly different direction.  It doesn't feel especially natural, and is perhaps indicative of the looming deadlines Milne mentions in the first essay...

As the title suggests, nothing of life-changing importance is addressed in Not That It Matters.  He does not adopt a serious voice at any point - indeed, I cannot think of a time in any of his books where he becomes entirely serious, not even in Peace With Honour, a non-fiction (and excellent) book wherein he put forth his pacifist views.  Even at these moments his weightiest points are served with a waggle of the eyebrows and an amusing image.  That's how he made his impact.

I do prefer the whimsy of his fictional sketches to the panache of his essays, but it is still a delight and a joy to have Not That It Matters and its ilk waiting on my shelf.  It definitely bears re-reading, and I'll be going on a cycle through Milne's many and various books for the rest of life, I imagine.

Tomorrow I'll type out a whole of one of his essays, 'A Household Book', because I think it'll surprise quite a few people.  And will show to my brother that I was RIGHT about something I've been saying to him for a decade.  Ahem.  The essay is in praise of a then-underappreciated book by a famous author... and ends with this paragraph (come back tomorrow to see what it was!):

Well, of course, you will order the book at once.  But I must give you one word of warning.  When you sit down to it, don't be so ridiculous as to suppose that you are sitting in judgment on my taste, still less on the genius of ******* *******.  You are merely sitting in judgment on yourself... You may be worthy; I do not know.  But it is you who are on trial.

Detail: Not That It Matters - A.A. Milne