by A. A. Milne
That became a play called Green Curtains, until it suddenly occurred to me that a better title would be Mr Pimm Passes By.
Plot 4. This interval of labour between the end of one ‘work’ and the beginning of the next, when (as Wells put it picturesquely to Daphne once) I am in the basket again, is not only agony for myself but a tribulation to those who live with me. Indifference to my suffering is as much resented as anxious enquiries as to how I am ‘getting on.’ Nothing which anybody can say or do is right.
But once there was no interval.
I had just finished Michael and Mary. It was summer, we were at our cottage in Sussex. My collaborator walked into the village with the precious play, to register it to New York where a manager was waiting for it. She was to come back by way of the fields, and I would meet her. I hate the business side of writing, even though my agent spares me most of it; as I walked I wondered unhappily if we should have the usual wrangle about film rights. The more I thought of it, the more unwarranted did a manager’s claim to a share of film-rights seem to me. I would not give way, but I shrank from the arguments and letters which my resistance would entail. . . .
We met at the stile and sat down for a little.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ I said, ‘about these damned film-rights.’
‘Oh, but you always keep those.’
‘No, listen, this is a sudden idea. It might be funny. You see, A writes a book and sells it to B who takes half the film-rights, and C dramatizes it and takes half the dramatic rights including the film-rights, and an English manager D buys the play, including the American rights and of course half the film-rights, and sells it to an American manager E, who naturally insists on half the film-rights. And the film-rights are eventually sold for whatever it is. So what?’
‘A doesn’t get much of it,’ said Daphne cautiously. ‘Does each one get half of what’s left, or how does it work?’
‘Well, that’s the point. Suppose A had never written anything before, and drew his own agreements up, very carelessly, then each new gangster might get, or assume he was getting, half of the full sum paid by the film company, so that if the company paid £1,000, A would have to hand over £٢,٠٠٠—for his own film-rights.’
‘So the more he sells it for, the more he loses.’
‘Exactly. It might easily happen. Well then, suppose the man has insisted on one thing in all his agreements—let’s say he’s very keen about films and wants to be sure that it is done, or isn’t done, by an English company, with or not with, Ronald Colman or somebody—well, anyway, he remembers suddenly that, according to all the agreements, the final word as to which company shall be allowed to make the film is his. And the play is a terrific success, and film offers pour in, and the five of them meet to discuss which offer shall be accepted. And A refuses to consider any of them. Because he’s just had an offer from his dentist to buy the rights for a penny. And he produces the letter—and four ha’pennies . . .’
‘What happens?’
‘They all sign new agreements taking 10 per cent. each. He’s got them. There you are: in the old Punch days that would have been next Friday’s article.’
‘Oh, but you mustn’t waste it! Couldn’t you make a short story of it?’
‘Well, yes, I suppose you could.’
‘Promise you will? You will, won’t you?’
‘I dare say. I must do some short stories some day. They might be fun.’
‘Just begin this one after tea, just so as you don’t forget all about it.’
‘I’ll write the first paragraph, if you like..’
‘Will you promise?’
‘Absolutely.’
So after tea I wrote the first paragraph. At dinner I said, ‘I think I’ll finish that story now I’ve begun; it won’t take long.’
‘Is it going all right?’
‘I think so. I’m liking it.’
At the end of the week Daphne said, ‘How’s the story getting on?’
‘Just on five thousand words.’
‘How long is a short story?’
‘About five thousand.’
‘Then you’ve practically finished it?
‘Well, actually I haven’t begun yet. The plot isn’t even in sight. I suppose we shall get there one day.’
‘What happens if you don’t?’
‘Then you’ve written a novel, I suppose.’
‘Is that how novels are written?’
‘Don’t ask me. I don’t know how anybody writes anything. I’m just writing about two people, and having the time of my life. We shall probably know more about it by the end of the year.’
By the end of the year it was quite clearly going to be a novel called Two People.
How conceited of the man to refer to his books and plays as if we had read them all and knew what he was talking about! Or the other way round if you like. How modest of him to assume that only those who know all his books and plays could possibly be reading this.
Chapter Sixteen
1
Young Friend: And to what, sir, do you attribute your success?
Author: Don’t call me ‘sir.’ I hate being called ‘sir.’ I’m not as old as all that.
Y.F.: Sorry. And to what–if you’d just get your back to the light . . . and I think a hat . . . thank you—And to what, young man, do you attribute your success?
A.: Meaning by ‘success’?
Y.F.: Anything you like. The fact that I bought your last book–I mean got it from the library—I mean it’s on my list–dammit, you know quite well what I mean.
A.: Well, as long as it’s clear that I don’t mean more than you do.
Y.F.: That’s all right. You see, what I think you ought to give us now—last chapter and all that—is Something for the Little Ones. A few Helpful Words on Speech Day. Advice to Young Man about to make his way in World. Sum it all up. What’s the secret?
A.: There’s only one rule.
Y.F.: Well?
A.: Never take advice. Of all sad words of tongue or pen the saddest are ‘Why did I listen to Tomkins?
Y.F.: That doesn’t rhyme.
A.: If his name were Benjamin it would.
Y.F.: But do you really mean it?
A.: Absolutely.
Y.F.: And that’s why you’re where you are?
A.: Wherever that is—yes.
Y.F.: How do you know you wouldn’t have been much more successful if you had followed other people’s advice?
A.: I don’t. But you didn’t ask me to what I attributed my failure.
Y.F.: In other words you’ve always done what you wanted to do, and haven’t listened to other people?
A.: In other words I’ve listened to other people, and then tried to do what I wanted to do.
Y.F.: Which wasn’t what they wanted you to do?
A.: Not as a rule.
Y.F.: And that’s your advice to young authors—young men generally.
A.: Yes.
Y.F. (after profound thought): You do see, don’t you, that if they take your advice, then they won’t take your advice, which means that they will take advice, which means that—this is getting difficult.
A.: I know. It’s a difficult world.
Y.F.: Oh yes, that reminds me. Oughtn’t you to tell us how much more difficult Life has become since you were a boy? Something about the leisurely ease of The Good Old Days. Laus temporis acti and all that.
A.: Well, for one thing we didn’t pronounce it like that in the good old days.
Y.F.: Splendid. Anything else you’ve noticed?
A.: Well—
Y.F.: Come on, this is the last chapter. Tell us What You Believe, or What’s Wrong with World, or something.
2
A very clever young man was telling Reinhardt how to produce Shakespeare
. None of this elaborate spectacle, none of this gorgeous scenery. Just simple black curtains. That was the way to do it: so much more artistic. Reinhardt nodded encouragingly. ‘It is also easier,’ he said. I have a theory that what is wrong with the world (or, quite possibly, what is right) is that to-day everything is ‘also easier.’ Let me give a few examples of what I mean, and if it be said that I am choosing examples to prove my case, the answer is that this is exactly what I am doing.
In what I shall call ‘my day’ anybody who wanted to earn a living as a singer had to learn to sing. In tune. It is hard work learning to sing—in tune. So now you needn’t. You croon. The convention that crooning is singing enables all those people who cannot sing, but wish to earn a living by singing, to do so without going through the labour of learning to sing. In my day dancing was waltzing, and waltzing was not only hard work but was something which had to be learnt. To-day, with a minimum of fatigue and an entire absence of technique, it is possible to claim that one is dancing. Drawing is difficult. A famous drawing-master of my day used to go round the work of his pupils, saying to each one as he compared the work with the model, ‘It is always a good thing to be something like.’ It is also a difficult thing. Modern technique, both in painting and sculpture, avoids the difficulty of being something like; just as modern hot music avoids the difficulty of disclosing a new tune. In my day poets said what they had to say in song. This song (poetry it was called) demanded rhyme or, at least, rhythm from its devotees, and in consequence was hard work. It was obvious, therefore, that if you were going to improve poetry you would improve it most comfortably by omitting the things which were difficult to manage—rhyme and rhythm—and concentrating on what might come to anybody, inspiration. In my day a novelist who wanted to put down the thoughts in his hero’s mind, as often he might want, would spend hours of hard work reducing them to an orderly grammatical sequence in which they could be easily followed. The modern, so much admired, technique allows you to throw them onto the paper just as they came into the hero’s mind (which means just as they came into the author’s mind), and if there is any hard work to be done, it must be done by the reader. And the latest technique of all seems to throw the work on the proof-reader.
So much for the arts. I could stop there, but I shan’t. In my day beauty in women was for the favoured few, for it demanded such rare gifts as a beautiful complexion, beautiful hair, beautiful features. Nowadays it is no longer difficult to be beautiful. Complexions, hair and features can be bought. The modern world has accepted the convention that obviously-painted lips and obviously-gummed-on eyelashes are beautiful, and beauty is within the reach of all. Even men need no longer be ugly; they can emphasize their ugliness with a beard and become ‘striking.’ It is, let us admit, not always easy to grow a beard, so we must look forward to the day when gummed-on beards will be admissible. In my day there was something called Society, into which (unless you were born there) it was almost impossible to enter; and if you were outside it, as I was, you read about it in the society papers with awe or indifference or an assumed contempt. Terrible for modern youth to think that there was any reservation, however contemptible, to which it had not the right of entry. To-day a study of the society papers shows that there is no barrier through which the sports car of the gigolo has not crashed, no frontier over which the passports of the interior decorator (‘special peculiarities’ and all) will not take him.
I shall now drag the moss out of my hair, and regard the matter dispassionately. Is it a good thing or a bad thing that the arts and graces are now so much easier to achieve? First let me admit, before it is ‘pointed out’ to me, that it is still difficult to be a good crooner (if there is such a thing) or a good ball-room dancer; indeed, it is obvious that a modern expert in the rumba, the lumbar, and the black bumba has need to be more expert than the old-fashioned expert in the waltz. No artistic standards could make Weatherley’s drawing-room ballads of greater literary value than the best modern free-verse, nor even of greater literary value than such early examples of free-verse as Caesar’s Commentaries. Pretty girls, in spite of their make-up, are still pretty, if less kissable; and who cares anyway if men are ugly and Society is dead? Yet the modern eagerness to lower standards and abolish ‘form’ remains a distress to the mossy. It is as if democracy had said, not: ‘The arts and graces shall be open to all,’ as it has every right to say, but: ‘Achievement in the arts and graces shall be the perquisite of all,’ which is nice for all of us, but not so good for the arts and graces. Sometimes I think it is a pity that, having gone so far, we do not go further, and say: ‘Achievement in sport shall be the perquisite of all.’ As a golfer I should like to be able to look contemptuously down upon the old-fashioned practice of raising the golf-ball in the air and to abolish the old-fashioned rule which says, how foolishly, that the player who does the hole in the least number of shots shall be the winner. It is more in keeping with modern ideas (and it is also easier) to go from one point to another in a straight line rather than in a parabola, and the playing of eight shots expresses your personality, which is really all that matters, much more completely than the playing of one, but alas! in sport you can only feel superior to the champions of the past by beating them at their own game and under their own rules. In the arts you can denounce the target, change the rules, aim in a different direction, hit nothing, and receive the assurances of your friends that you are the better man.
The abolition of form. Looking for something else, I have just come across a letter dated ‘April 12th 1929,’ which begins: ‘Several months ago I wrote to you, but have not yet had a reply.’ These unanswered letters turn up from time to time and cause an acute remorse, tempered by the happy reflection that it is now too late to do anything about it. This particular letter, however, had so nearly been answered as almost to excuse me. It was from one of those earnest Americans who are engaged upon what may or may not turn out to be a text book for schools, and who wish to make it as authoritative as possible by getting other people to do the writing for them. In this case it was to be a text book on ‘the technique of the drama,’ and the technique was to be provided (free) by dramatists. Would I answer the following questions? Well, apparently I did. That is, I scribbled answers in pencil against the questions, and presumably intended to have them typed and sent to him. But apparently I didn’t. Reading them again I see that the fifth question and answer are strangely appropriate to my theme.
5.Don’t you think that the present conventional form of play structure and the physical limitations of the stage hinder the dramatist from expressing himself as freely and as fully as he might in the cinema form?
Answer. Certainly. One is also hindered by the conventional form of the sonnet. How much more freely and fully Wordsworth might have expressed himself about Westminster Bridge if he had been writing a guide-book.
This passion for freedom untrammelled by form is attributed by Deans to the evil influences of Bolshevism and other red perils. Unfortunately I cannot share their conviction that Bolshevism is a synonym of lawlessness. On the contrary I associate it with an excess of law, a complete sacrifice of the right to self-expression, and a passion for filling up forms. In poetry the totalitarian state is best symbolized by the villanelle, which may be described as a reiteration on two notes: as it might be ‘Heil, Hitler’ and ‘To hell with Russia,’ or the other way round. But free verse seems to be the corollary of free speech, which is the attribute of democracy. Form: craftsmanship: all difficulties imposed from without, such as ‘It’s a good thing to be something like,’ or the three walls of a stage; all these are barbed-wire fences which stand between democracy and the green slopes of Helicon. Away with them!
Well, what about it? In middle-age we not only forget that we are no longer young (which is not surprising, since we are always telling ourselves how young we are keeping), but we forget that our contemporaries are also middle-aged–which is astonishing since we are always telling ou
rselves how old the poor fellows are getting. Thus I found myself saying the other day that the extravagances of this cosmetic age proved finally that women adorned themselves for women only, not for men; in proof of which I assured my company that without exception every man I knew preferred a clean face to a painted one. And then I realized that the men whose support I was quoting were (naturally) my friends and contemporaries, and that possibly the modern young man did not agree with me. To him, it may be, blood-red finger-nails, even blood-red toe-nails, are beautiful. Yet he must admit that it is an easy way of being beautiful, and he will allow the middle-aged to think that he is easily pleased. We shall continue to think also that a society which is satisfied with crooning and hot music is easily pleased.
So in conclusion it may be asked: If the young are easily pleased nowadays, is that not a good thing rather than a bad thing? Perhaps it is. There is little enough reason for happiness in the world to-day; let us be thankful that there are so many causes of pleasure. We have made the world a wilderness, and it is ridiculous to blame those whom we have put into it (accidentally as often as not) for being satisfied with the little we have left them to find there.