It's Too Late Now

by A. A. Milne

  Up to now I had not taken much interest in politics. Until the age of ten I had been a Gladstonian Liberal. Then on one never-to-be-forgotten evening Papa came into the sitting-room and announced to his family that for the first time in his life he had voted against Mr Gladstone. He sat down, breathing heavily, and Mama and Ken and I became Liberal Unionists. So we remained until I came to London.

  Now it happened that in The St James’ Gazette one evening there was an article on ‘the miserable existence of the usher in a preparatory school.’ This was almost the only subject on which I had any special knowledge. I wrote a reply to it which was printed, and earned my first real guinea. This settled my college for me. I would graduate in letters at St James’ as had Barrie in Pall Mall, as ‘Saki’ was now graduating at Westminster. Always every week, sometimes every day, I sent up an article to The St James.’ No need to wait for a proof; I dashed out and bought a copy next day, to see where my contribution was. Looking for it in vain, and feeling that if one is looking for a thing one may as well look thoroughly, I read every word of The St James’ every evening, leading article and all. And in this way, inevitably, I became a Free Trader and a Liberal.

  Father had kept on friendly terms with H. G. Wells and they often wrote to each other. Wells had asked me to Sandgate that summer; had read some of my Granta articles; and had said, charmingly but incorrectly, that they were just the sort of thing with which he himself had begun, save that my touch was lighter than his. I was prepared to believe most things, but not this. It was much more of a thrill to be shown the manuscript of the book he was then writing, a novel called Kipps. He was now coming up to London for a few days, and asked me to dine with him at the National Liberal Club. I went eagerly.

  He was, as always, friendly and helpful. He advised me never to accept a job on a paper, but to remain a free­-lance. Since there was now no chance of anybody offering me the servitude of a regular job, I promised to retain my liberty. He said that I must join a club, so that by reading every sort of London and provincial paper I could keep in touch with the needs and ways of editors. ‘In fact,’ he said, ‘you’d better join this. I suppose you’re Liberal. Your father’s son.’

  I assured him that I was a Liberal, but not for the reason suggested. Father, I implied, had ratted on us. I also told him that there was nobody in London whom I could ask to put me up for this or any club.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll propose you and we’ll get Archer to second you.’

  ‘William Archer?’ I asked in awe.

  ‘Yes. You’ll have to meet him, of course. I’ll arrange it.’

  A day or two later, at some horribly early hour on a cold November morning, I breakfasted with Wells and William Archer. Archer had more gravity than any man I have met. In his grave, handsome presence it was useless to remind myself that Stevenson had once been delighted by the humour of his letters. One felt that humour in his presence would have as little chance of establishing itself as would some practical joke on a Bishop during the final blessing. Never was it more hopeful to be intelligent. Archer, one felt, knew it all, and had rejected it. They talked: wisely, profoundly, unceasingly: together they seemed as old and as wise as God. From time to time one of them would look to me for support against the other, and whichever looked first would get my support: ‘Er—yes,’ or ‘Oh, rather,’ or ‘Well, I suppose in a way it is.’ It wasn’t helpful. Contemplating myself from outside I got the impression of somebody who could do nothing but eat. With every mouthful I felt younger and more stupid; it didn’t seem possible that there could be any club for which Archer would not blackball me. However, when he had finished his breakfast, he filled in a form to say that he had known me intimately for several years, in the course of which I had proved to be a most entertaining companion. I was elected.

  For many years afterwards Archer and I would meet at the club. Neither of us had thought of this, and we didn’t know what to do about it. He was as shy of me as I was of him. We said ‘Hallo!’ or ‘Good evening’ gaily, as if each of us had much to tell the other. In the silence which followed the gaiety slowly died away. After a period of intense thought a smile would light up our faces, and we would say simultaneously: ‘Have you seen Wells lately?’ Wells was safely in Sandgate, away from all this, and we hadn’t seen him for some time. We said so­ simultaneously. Then he would say, ‘Well—er—’ and give a little nod, and I would nod back and say, ‘Well,’ and we would hurry away from each other. I find that if I start wrong with anybody I never get right again. Some years later we were fellow-guests at E. V. Lucas’ house in the country, and I hoped that this would bring us together; for a man may be tongue-tied in a drawing­ room, but sing his heart out under the open sky. Something, however–possibly the fact that Archer wore a bowler hat all the time–kept us spiritually in London. We returned there in the body on Monday, fortified by the knowledge that our repertory now included an enquiry as to when we had last seen Lucas.

  5

  Back at Westgate, Father and Mother were getting anxious. I suppose it would be fair to say that the average Victorian father expected little from his son as an individual and everything from him as his father’s son. As a tribute to Father the editorship of The Times would be a reasonable offer to make to me; as a reward for a young man who had slacked his way through public-school and University the offer was unlikely. So, however certainly with one half of his mind he was aware that my progress must be slow and difficult, with the other he was prepared for miracles. Surprisingly, there had been no miracles. Three months had gone by, and I had earned five pounds. What could he do about it? Only one thing. He wrote to ‘that man.’

  The first news which I got of this was the enclosure in one of Father’s letters of Harmsworth’s reply. It is always a temptation to glance at the enclosure in a letter before reading the letter. Unsuspecting I read: ‘Dear J. V. Very well, I will see your boy for you. Tell him to ring up my secretary and make an appointment.’ I was sick with indignation. How dare Father do anything so stupid? It was already settled that Harmsworth was to come, hat in hand, to me, not I to him. I didn’t want him, I was getting on perfectly well by myself; I had earned over five pounds, and my last contribution to The St James’ Gazette was so good that it was bound to be accepted. Over six pounds, then. Why should Father humiliate himself and me like this? At least he should have consulted me first. Then I would have told him of my own letter, and he would have seen how impossible it was.

  Well, it was too late now. I had to go. I was shown into the Great Man’s room, I sat down nervously, he spoke to me. He said that he was going to send me along to two of his editors. ‘I have been careful,’ he said, ‘not to let them know that your father is one of my oldest and greatest friends’ (and I told myself that Mother would like this), ‘because I want you to make your own way. So now it’s up to you.’ A page boy was summoned, and I was led away.

  First to Mr Arthur Mee, who, it seemed, had succeeded Mr Philip Gibbs as editor of ‘the articles you mention.’ He told me that, if I cared to send in contributions to The Dai/y Mail I could address them to him personally. I was in no mood to realize that this was a valuable concession; I felt that it just left me where I was before. We passed on to the next editor. I have forgotten his name, but still have a memory of shirt-sleeves and a half-smoked cigar. He was that sort of editor, and he was responsible for some twenty ‘comics,’ boys’ papers and what not. Humorous writers, he assured me with his feet up, were in demand, but I must realize that his public did not want anything subtle or refined. ‘Funny stories about policemen, y’know what I mean, umbrellas, knockabout, that sort of thing.’ I assured him that I knew what he meant. I left the building. I walked across the road to Temple Chambers. Telling myself that I mustn’t let Father think that his help was in vain, I sat grimly down and began to write a funny story about a policeman; not subtle, not refined. Knock­about. I wrote four hundred words. I think I can say tr
uthfully that those are the only words I have ever written which I did not write for my own pleasure. At the four hundredth word, I stopped, read them through, and with a sigh of happiness tore them into pieces. I was back on my own again; making, as Harmsworth said, my own way.

  6

  Punch remained my goal, and I was no nearer to it. Every week I sent something in, and every week it came back again. It was difficult to know what to do with the rejected contributions. If The St James’ didn’t like ‘Spring in the Black Forest’ (1,200 words), there was a chance that The Westminster might love it; and if The Westminster hated it, then it might be just the thing for The Globe. One could go on hoping, and hope was what, of all things, I wanted. But it was difficult to feel any hope about a six-hundred word sketch which Punch had rejected. There seemed to be no place for it but the waste-paper basket, a place, no doubt, entirely suitable. Luckily a new weekly paper called The Bystander was prepared to accept verse. Its editor was not quite such a formalist as Owen Seaman; a Cockney rhyme did not sear his soul; and even though he paid no more than a guinea for a set of verses, yet the thought of a guinea consolation prize was encouragement enough. I continued to send in verses to Punch.

  There was a legend in those days that the contributor of any joke to Punch, illustrated or not, received £5 for it. In April, I made my first contribution to the paper, a four-line paragraph. I might get £5, and if so I was a made man; but was it possible on the strength of one paragraph, to say that I ‘wrote for Punch’? Hardly. However, I had little time in which to wonder. In the following week the miracle happened, and a set of verses forced itself past Seaman into the paper. I was a real Punch contributor at last. To consolidate my position still more thoroughly, I had a small prose contribution, a narrow column, in the next number. All was well. I had proved that I could earn a living by writing. I would be Editor of Punch one day. I was the happiest man in London.

  Punch, like most papers, pays its contributors every month. At the beginning of May it sent me a cheque for my three April contributions. The cheque was for sixteen shillings and sixpence. It didn’t seem to make sense. I wrote to Rudie Lehmann asking him what it meant. He replied: ‘My dear boy, it’s a damned disgrace. I am writing to Phil about it.’ This was Phil Agnew, one of the proprietors of Punch. Phil replied, in effect, that the honour of writing for Punch was considered to be sufficient reward at first, but that when the honour began to wear off, then I should begin to get paid more.

  Well, I had had the honour, and I couldn’t afford to sustain it. There was no object now in sending contributions to Punch. I renounced the editorship.

  Fortunately a renewed attack on The St James’ met at last with success. I took an imaginary girl to the Zoo, to the Tower, to Earl’s Court, whence we proceeded together into print. In July I went round to the St James’ office to demand regular work. I saw myself as its literary or dramatic critic. The editor suggested that I should come into the office during August and write some of its ‘Notes of the Day.’ I pointed out that these were mostly political, and that I was a Liberal. ‘That doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘We’ll tell you what to write.’ I replied coldly that nobody could tell me what to write. He said, ‘Good afternoon.’ A little later he left The St James’ to edit a Liberal paper. Don’t ask me what his politics were. How should I know?

  Country Life wanted an assistant editor. So did The Hibbert Journal. I applied simultaneously to both. To Country Life I quoted my games record, my editorship of The Granta, and my early collections of birds’ eggs and butterflies. To The Hibbert Journal I quoted my profound interest in philosophy and theosophy, my early collections of birds’ eggs and butterflies, my games record and my editorship of The Granta. Neither application was successful.

  Then in August I wrote what I thought was a very funny dialogue about Hackenschmidt and Madrali, those famous wrestlers. I had, in fact, seen them wrestle; had paid four pounds ten for a seat; had arrived sixteen seconds late, and thus missed the first bout of fifteen seconds, but saw the whole of the second bout of a minute and a half. An expensive evening, to which some paper ought to con­tribute. The editor of The St James’ Gazette refused to; so did the editor of The Westminster; so did every other editor in London. I dropped the dialogue sadly in the wastepaper basket. Life for a moment seemed very difficult. Suddenly I remembered that there was a paper called Punch which paid a few shillings for articles. Since nobody else wanted my dialogue, and since even half-a-crown, and I could hardly get less than half-a-crown, was, as they say, half-a-crown, I pulled it out of the waste-paper basket, dusted it and sent it to Punch. Punch printed it. Punch sent me a cheque for £٢ 5s.

  All was well again. I had proved that I could earn a living by writing. I would be editor of Punch one day. I was the happiest man in London.

  September saw the end of my first year as a writer. I had earned twenty pounds, and spent the whole of my patrimony.

  Chapter Eleven

  1

  Father ‘always used to say’ (and the phrase was almost literally true of Father) that Nature meant him for a millionaire. He had a gift for extravagance. I inherited it from him. But the extravagance was combined with a Scottish common-sense and a Presbyterian horror of getting ‘wrong’ about money. We set our standards within our income and then enjoyed ourselves carelessly. Having thought once and for all as to what we could spend, we never thought twice about spending it. To-day I could be happy without a car, I could be happy without a country cottage, but I shouldn’t be happy if I couldn’t be reckless about golf-balls, taxis, the best seat’s at cricket grounds and theatres, shirts and pullovers, tips, subscriptions, books and wine-lists. What it comes to, I suppose, is that I prefer a dribble of smaller extravagances to one big extravagance. And when my income demanded that I should go without all the things which I have mentioned above, then I was quite happy being reckless about ’buses and butter.

  So, having £300 in the bank, I spent it in my own way. A good deal on tobacco; hardly any on drink. Hansoms to Lord’s, for only by hansom should one approach Lord’s (and how much Lord’s has lost since hansoms went out); but the tops of ’buses (and how much London has lost since the tops of ’buses went in), ’buses everywhere else. Subscription dances. Football and cricket on Saturdays for Old Westminsters. Dinners and plays with Ken while I was still rich. I spent nothing, but the money went.

  Ken had dragged out a miserable two months in an office off the Strand, discovering that the flaw in the process of becoming a solicitor was the fact that inevitably you became a solicitor. He hated it. One day he heard that there was a Department in the Civil Service for which qualified solicitors only were eligible. With one profound movement he shook off, perhaps for the only time in his life, his acquiescence; resigned; worked hard for two months, and passed into the Estate Duty Office. He was safe. He had achieved a future. Every day at one o’clock I walked down Fleet Street towards the Strand, and he walked up from Somerset House towards Fleet Street, and we met and had lunch together. I wrote of him once:

  There are who daily in the safe retreat

  Of some Department gather round and bleat

  Scandal and Art until it’s time to eat;

  Return at three, and having written ‘Dear

  Sir, your communication of last year

  Duly received and noted’ —disappear.

  His only criticism of this was that they began their letters ‘Sir,’ not ‘Dear Sir.’ But this was before the war. In the war, and afterwards, he worked himself to his death. Now I should be able no longer to walk down Fleet Street to meet him. I had only £٢٠ in the Bank, and I must find cheaper lodgings. I advertised for ‘two unfurnished rooms with use of bath, central,’ received news of furnished bed-sitting-rooms in Ponders End and maisonettes in Park Lane, refused all interest in anything from St John’s Wood, and came at the end of September to Chelsea. Wellington Square, Chelsea, is now becoming fashionable; when
I tell my friends that I used to live there they think that I have come down in the world. It was not so fashionable in 1904. I lived in a police-sergeant’s house; I paid ten shillings a week for the two rooms at the top of the house; and the bathroom, to which I travelled every morning, had been, until lately, a sort of conservatory linking up the backyard with the ground-floor passage. There was an incandescent mantle and a smell of gas in the sitting-room, there was some sort of music-hall singer in the floor below, there was a variety of police-sergeant’s children on the stairs. I paid sevenpence for breakfast, and had my other meals out. The sergeant’s wife was a big, friendly soul, motherly (as she might be with the practice she had) and embarrassingly kind. Her husband had been the champion revolver-shot of the Empire, or something like it, and the two targets, right and left-hand, which hung framed in the hall, explained why. I was very happy at Wellington Square, and life was exciting. Punch was a little more remunerative now. I had an occasional essay in The Daily News, for which I received two guineas instead of the usual guinea. Once I got three guineas for a story in The Westminster Gazette, my top price so far and therefore to be celebrated with Ken in some way, and reduced, in effect, to two guineas. And then on January 17th, 1905, I went to the Bank to draw out my weekly two pounds. Two pounds just about saw me through: four-teen shillings for rooms and breakfast, another fourteen for lunches and dinners, and two shillings for coal–leaving ten shillings a week for teas, ’buses, stamps, stationery, doctors, dentists, games, clothes, holidays and club-subscriptions. It was the club-subscriptions which put me out. I had lunched with Ken, my bank being in Fleet Street, and he came in with me to get the money. I was telling him proudly that I had a balance of nearly six pounds. The cashier took my cheque, went away and came back with the manager. The manager broke it to me kindly that I was overdrawn. I protested. He reminded me that I had signed a Bankers Order for the National Liberal Club subscription of six guineas, which had just been paid. I said, ‘Oh!’ There didn’t seem to be anything else to say. We waited. He asked if I should be paying any more money in immediately. Normally I could have said with absolute conviction ‘No,’ for there was no hope of getting anything from a paper until the end of the month. Then I remembered that to-morrow was my birthday. Father had sent me a fiver last year. Would he do it again? Probably. I announced with dignity that I should be paying in the tremendous sum of £٥ to-morrow; and my cheque was cashed.