Happy Half-Hours

by A. A. Milne

  Now for the second reason; for I would not have you think that I am a model of unselfishness and parental duty, who never comes to a decision save in the interests of another. No doubt you who read this will remember the occasion when you first met Mr Snooks, the famous author, at a party. He had just published Woodlice. You smiled graciously upon him, you said a few nice things about his books … and you came away with the feeling that Snooks was the most rude, intolerable and boorish fellow you had ever met. ‘My dear,’ you said to your friend, ‘I simply fawned on the man, and he looked as if he wanted to bite me!’

  Well, that often happens. But authors are not really so vain and so self-conscious as you think. Your fault was not in praising Snooks too little or too much, but in praising him for the wrong thing. If you told Snooks that you adored Slugs, I am not surprised that he scowled at you. If you committed the unforgivable sin, and said to him, ‘Why don’t you write some more books like Centipedes?’ – then I am not surprised that he looked like biting you. The wonder is that he didn’t actually do it. I certainly should have. But if you had praised Woodlice, he must have trembled with inarticulate gratitude.

  For all an author’s hopes and fears and interests are centred in his latest book. As he writes ‘The End’, he is saying to himself, ‘The best thing I have done.’ In his heart he may know it is not the best, but he longs to think it is, and will love you for helping him to persuade himself.

  Can I go on writing these books, and persuade myself that each is better than the one before? I don’t see how it is possible. Darwin, or somebody, compared the world of knowledge to a circle of light. The bigger the circumference of light, the bigger the surrounding border of darkness waiting to be lit up. A child’s world of the imagination is not like that. As children we have explored it from end to end, and the map of it lies buried somewhere in our hearts, drawn in symbols whose meaning we have forgotten. A gleam from outside may light it up for us, so that for a moment it becomes clear again, and in that precious moment we can make a copy of it for others. But when the light has gone, to go on making fair copies of that copy – is it worth it?

  For writing, let us confess it unashamed, is fun. There are those who will tell you that it is an inspiration, they sing but as the linnet sings; there are others, in revolt against such priggishness, who will tell you that it is simply a business like any other. Others, again, will assure you (heroically) that it is an agony, and they would sooner break stones – as well they might. But though there is something of inspiration in it, something of business, something, at times, of agony, yet, in the main, writing is just thrill; the thrill of exploring. The more difficult the country, the more untraversed by the writer, the greater (to me, anyhow) the thrill.

  Well, I have had my thrill out of children’s books, and know that I shall never recapture it. At least, not until I am a grandfather.

  MARRIED LIFE

  – Wedding Bells –

  Champagne is often pleasant at lunch, it is always delightful at dinner, and it is an absolute necessity, if one is to talk freely about oneself afterwards, at a dance supper. But champagne for tea is horrible. Perhaps this is why a wedding always finds me melancholy next morning. ‘She has married the wrong man,’ I say to myself. ‘I wonder if it is too late to tell her.’

  The trouble of answering the invitation and of thinking of something to give more original than a toast rack should, one feels, have its compensations. From each wedding that I attend I expect an afternoon’s enjoyment in return for my egg stand. For one thing I have my best clothes on. Few people have seen me in them (and these few won’t believe it), so that from the very beginning the day has a certain freshness. It is not an ordinary day. It starts with this advantage, that in my best clothes I am not difficult to please. The world smiles upon me.

  Once I am in church, however, my calm begins to leave me. As time wears on, and the organist invents more and more tunes, I tremble lest the bride has forgotten the day. The choir is waiting for her; the bridegroom is waiting for her. I – I also – wait. What if she has changed her mind at the last minute? But no. The organist has sailed into his set piece; the choir advances; follows the bride looking so lonely that I long to comfort her and remind her of my egg stand; and, last of all, the pretty bridesmaids. The clergyman begins his drone.

  You would think that, reassured by the presence of the bride, I could be happy now. But there is still much to bother me. The bridegroom is showing signs of having forgotten his part, the bride can’t get her glove off, one of the bridesmaids is treading on my hat. Worse than all this, there is a painful want of unanimity among the congregation as to when we stand up and when we sit down. Sometimes I am alone and sitting when everybody else is standing, and that is easy to bear; but sometimes I find myself standing when everybody else is sitting, and that is very hard.

  They have gone to the vestry. The choir sings an anthem to while away the kissing-time, and, right or wrong, I am sitting down, comforting my poor hat. There was a time when I, too, used to go into the vestry; when I was something of an authority on weddings, and would attend weekly in some minor official capacity. Any odd jobs that were going seemed to devolve on me. If somebody was wanted suddenly to sign the register, or kiss the bride’s mother, or wind up the going-away car, it used to be taken for granted that I was the man to do it. I wore a white flower in my button-hole to show that I was available. I served, I may say, in an entirely honorary capacity, except in so far as I was expected to give the happy pair a slightly larger present than the others. One day I happened to suggest to an intending groom that he had other friends more ornamental, and therefore more suitable for this sort of work, than I; to which he replied that they were all married, and that etiquette demanded a bachelor for the business. Of course, as soon as I heard this I got married too.

  Here they come. ‘Doesn’t she look sweet?’ We hurry after them and rush for the carriages. I am only a friend of the bridegroom’s; perhaps I had better walk.

  It must be very easy to be a guest at a wedding reception, where each of the two clans takes it for granted that all the extraordinary strangers belong to the other clan. Indeed, nobody with one good suit, and a stomach for champagne and sandwiches, need starve in London. He or she can wander safely in wherever a red carpet beckons. I suppose I must put in an appearance at this reception, but if I happen to pass another piece of carpet on the way to the house, and the people going in seem more attractive than our lot, I shall be tempted to join them.

  This is, perhaps, the worst part of the ceremony, this three hundred yards or so from the hymn-sheets to the champagne. All London is now gazing at my old top-hat. When the war went on and on and on, and it seemed as though it were going on for ever, I looked back on peace much as those old retired warriors at the end of last century looked back on their happy Crimean days; and in the same spirit as that in which they hung their swords over the baronial fireplace, I decided to suspend my old top-hat above the mantelpiece in the drawing-room. In the years to come I would take my grandchildren on my knee and tell them stories of the old days when grandfather was a civilian, of desperate charges by church-wardens and organists, and warm receptions; and sometimes I would hold the old top-hat reverently in my hands, and a sudden gleam would come into my eyes, so that those watching me would say to each other, ‘He is thinking of that tea-fight at Rutland Gate in 1912’. So I pictured the future for my top-hat, never dreaming that in 1920 it would take the air again.

  For I went into the war in order to make the world safe for democracy, which I understood to mean (and was distinctly informed so by the press) a world safe for those of us who prefer soft hats with a dent in the middle. ‘The war,’ said the press, ‘has killed the top-hat.’ Apparently it failed to do this, as it failed to do so many of the things which we hoped from it. So the old veteran of 1912 dares the sunlight again.

  We are arrived, and I am greeted warmly by the bride’s parents. I look at the mother closely so that I shall
know her again when I come to say good-bye, and give her a smile which tells her that I was determined to come down to this wedding although I had a good deal of work to do. I linger with the idea of pursuing this point, for I want them to know that they nearly missed me, but I am pushed on by the crowd behind me. The bride and bridegroom salute me cordially but show no desire for intimate gossip. A horrible feeling goes through me that my absence would not have been commented upon by them at any inordinate length. It would not have spoilt the honeymoon, for instance.

  I move on and look at the presents. The presents are numerous and costly. Having discovered my own I stand a little way back and listen to the opinions of my neighbours upon it. On the whole the reception is favourable. The detective, I am horrified to discover, is on the other side of the room, apparently callous as to the fate of my egg stand. I cannot help feeling that if he knew his business he would be standing where I am standing now; or else there should be two detectives. It is a question now whether it is safe for me to leave my post and search for food … Now he is coming round; I can trust it to him.

  On my way to the refreshments I have met an old friend. I like to meet my friends at weddings, but I wish I had not met this one. She has sowed the seeds of disquiet in my mind by telling me that it is not etiquette to begin to eat until the bride has cut the cake. I answer, ‘Then why doesn’t somebody tell the bride to cut the cake?’ but the bride, it seems, is busy. I wish now that I had not met my friend. Who but a woman would know the etiquette of these things, and who but a woman would bother about it?

  The bride is cutting the cake. The bridegroom has lent her his sword, or his fountain-pen, whatever is the emblem of his trade – he is a stock-broker – and as she cuts, we buzz round her, hoping for one of the marzipan pieces. I wish to leave now, before I am sorry, but my friend tells me that it is not etiquette to leave until the bride and bridegroom have gone. Besides, I must drink the bride’s health. I drink her health; hers, not mine.

  Time rolls on. I was wrong to have had champagne. It doesn’t suit me at tea. However, for the moment life is bright enough. I have looked at the presents and my own is still there. And I have been given a bagful of confetti. The weary weeks one lives through without a handful of anything to throw at anybody. How good to be young again. I take up a strong position in the hall.

  They come … Got him – got him! Now a long shot – got him! I feel slightly better, and begin the search for my hostess …

  I have shaken hands with all the bride’s aunts and all the bridegroom’s aunts, and in fact all the aunts of everybody here. Each one seems to me more like my hostess than the last. ‘Good-bye!’ Fool – of course – there she is. ‘Good-bye!’

  My hat and I take the air again. A pleasant afternoon; and yet to-morrow morning I shall see things more clearly, and I shall know that the bridegroom has married the wrong girl. But it will be too late then to save him.

  – Love and Marriage –

  Is love necessary to a happy married life? It depends on what you mean by ‘love’. My answer to the question would be that what I mean by ‘love’ is only experienced by the happily married. Obviously I do not mean ‘married’ in the technical sense. No formula of Church or State makes two people one. But it is not until a man and woman have lived together for years in utter contentment of each other that they know what love is; as distinct from passion, as distinct from affection, as distinct from friendliness, community of interest, good-comradeship; as distinct from everything else which this world has to offer. Is love necessary to a happy married life? Well, then, it depends on what you mean by ‘happy’.

  Married life, of course, is difficult. It would hardly offer such complete happiness if it were not. The Victorians found it more easy. The wife said ‘Yes, John’ and ‘No, John’, and went on having children. Was the husband happy? At least he was comfortable; and part of his comfort was derived from the fact that his marriage was a success. Never a disagreement between them! ‘Yes, John,’ ‘No, John.’ Was the wife happy? I know of Victorian women who spent the first five years of their married lives in an agony of fear: fear that they were going to have children, fear of the children whom they knew they were going to have. No doubt the husband had often said at the club, cigar in mouth, ‘My wife has no secrets from me.’ Yet I think she had this one secret. Otherwise, surely, he could not have been so comfortable.

  Today women have no secrets from us. It makes life more difficult. That is why we dislike beggars in the street; not because they pester us, but because we are reminded of their shameful secret; their poverty. How easy marriage would be if we could go on saying ‘My house’, ‘my children’, ‘my money’, and the woman went on saying ‘Yes, John’, and kept her secrets to herself; just as the fox keeps his secret to himself, and enables us to assure him that he enjoys being hunted. But Woman talks to us now as man to man, and Man is suddenly in the horrible position of realizing that ‘a happy marriage’ in some ridiculous way has got to mean happiness for the woman also. Is it any wonder that there is this rush of unhappy marriages? What would happen to all the happy shooting-parties each autumn, if they had suddenly to include happiness for a vocal pheasant?

  But are we, then, to renounce the real happy marriage as too difficult of attainment? Those who are content with what is called the ‘French marriage’ have already done so. If marriage in France is truly regarded as a means to one end only, the founding of a family, no doubt a ‘safe’ marriage – in which little of value, as between husband and wife, is given, and little asked – is the best form of marriage possible. But I confess (and I am aware that it may be a personal idiosyncrasy of mine) that mere propagation has never seemed to me an overwhelming achievement in itself. To provide the next generation seems to me less praiseworthy than to provide for the next generation, and even this is less important than that the present generation should do something of value with its own lives. One really happy marriage today is a greater achievement than the provision of human material for a thousand loveless marriages in the future. To miss the most beautiful thing in life in order that there shall be a next generation to miss it too, is a poor way of expressing one’s personality. Not for a moment do I deny that there is beauty in childhood, beauty in motherhood, beauty in the relation of parent to child. If any man or woman says ‘I love children; I have not the temperament for a happy marriage, but I could make a child happy. And I want to experience the joys of fatherhood or motherhood,’ then let him or her make a ‘safe’ marriage, convenient for the purpose. But if he says, ‘I must marry so as to keep up the birthrate,’ then honestly I do not know what he is talking about. Is he trying to help God – or the British Empire? Probably he makes no distinction.

  How can the happy marriage be achieved? I think it is less a matter of choice and more a matter of temperament than is supposed. The assumption of every unhappy husband is that if he had only met Mary before he met Jane, all would have been well, and that, as soon as Jane has divorced him, he and Mary will at last have a chance of being happy together. I fancy that it is a small chance. He didn’t choose the wrong woman; he was, and will always be, the wrong man. I shall never win the Mixed Doubles at Wimbledon, however carefully I choose my partner. My form is hopeless for Wimbledon anyhow. There are thousands of men and women whose form is hopeless for Dunmow.

  What, then, is the correct form? I should say it was found in an eagerness, all day and every day, to see things from the point of view of the other. It is difficult; particularly for the man, who can never quite forget that his wife promised to obey him … and never quite remember that he has endowed her with all his goods. It is always difficult to see the other person’s point of view; always lamentably easy to say ‘Oh, but that’s different.’ However, one gets better with practice.

  And is this, you ask, what I mean by love – just seeing things from each other’s point of view, making allowances for each other? Of course not. This is merely the top-dressing which gives the ache, the long
ing, the glory, the misery, all that you first felt when you pledged yourselves to each other, a chance to grow into real love. Love, as I mean it, can only be experienced by the happily married, but I doubt if the happily married will ever experience it unless they were ‘in love’ at some time first. So perhaps that is the answer to the question.

  – The Order of the Bath –

  ‘We must really do something about the bath,’ said Celia.

  ‘We must,’ I agreed.

  At present what we do is this. Punctually at sixt-hirty or nine, or whenever it is, Celia goes in to make herself clean and beautiful for the new day, while I amuse myself with a razor. After a quarter of an hour or so she gives a whistle to imply that the bathroom is now vacant, and I give another one to indicate that I have only cut myself once. I then go hopefully in and find that the bath is half full of water; whereupon I go back to my room and engage in Dr Hugh de Sélincourt’s physical exercises for the middle-aged. After these are over I take another look, at the bath, discover that it is now three-eights full, and return to my room and busy myself with Dr Archibald Marshall’s mental drill for busy men. By the time I have committed three Odes of Horace to memory, it may be low tide or it may not; if not, I sit on the edge of the bath with the daily paper and read about the latest strike – my mind occupied equally with wondering when the water is going out and when the brick-layers are. And the thought that Celia is now in the dining-room eating more than her share of the toast does not console me in the least.