Oh my goodness me, Capuchin Classics have done it again. What a simply terrific book. Forget about Tigger, Pooh and the Hundred Acre Wood, wonderful though they are. A A Milne, like Frances Hodgson Burnett and Richmal Crompton, did not just write for the children's market - this is very much a book for the discerning adult and very much in the Persephone mould (surprised that this publishing house has not picked up on these A A Milne non-Pooh stories, they would fit beautifully into the Persephone ethos). Never mind, Capuchin have given us this treat and I am most grateful to them for so doing and for sending me a copy which I shall treasure, and read again.
And the reason I will read it again is simple. This is a perceptive, discerning and understanding look at a marriage. A marriage of an older man for a younger woman, a marriage where the couple are deeply in love, a marriage where everything they could want is vouchsafed to them. No money worries, living in a beautiful house in the country, all is idyllic. Reginald and Sylvia are blissfully happy and then Reginald writes a novel. This novel is taken up by a publisher and is successful and here is where the first note of disenchantment creeps in. He tells Sylvia:
"Fancy!" she said.
Reginald, for some reason which he couldn't explain, felt suddenly on the defensive.
"After all man must do something" he said
"Darling" smiled Sylvia lovingly "I'm not blaming you"
"When a man tells his wife he has written a novel" he began "the entire absence of blame is in itself, no doubt, a sort of encouragement. At the same time, if anything more enthusiastic should be offered him ---"
"But darling, all I said was Fancy!"
Reginald opened his mouth to answer and then closed it again. What was the answer? There was none. The conversation had to die there. A pity. When Shakespeare told Ann Hathaway that he had written Othello did she say Fancy!"
Now, I take no pride in saying that I am a double divorcee, always difficult to acknowledge one's failures, but I tell you now, A A Milne has written an incredibly perceptive book about what can make a marriage come to grief. At my daughter's wedding last year I read Shakespeare's Sonnet which begins "Let me not to a marriage of true minds admit impediment" and when you have such a meeting and coming together of two people who feel and think the same, it is truly a wonderful thing. It can be a great shock, as Reginald found, to realise that much though you love a person, you are not on the same wavelength and there is a total lack of understanding of something that is precious to you. This is where later lines further on in the same sonnet 'love is not love which alters when it alteration finds' need to be remembered.
Ok well, back to the book which is, after all, why I am here. What happens next?
The novel is a success and later is dramatised and the Wellards take a house in London for the season where they start to lead separate social lives. Reginald is taken up with rehearsals at the theatre and meets and engages with acquaintances who can meet him on his own intellectual level, one of these being an actress who he used to have a crush on when a young man. He begins to ponder on marriage:
"What I really want he thought, what every man wants is a harem. Three wives, one to look after me, one to talk to, one to love. And the loved one must be sacred. Nobody must see her nobody come near her but myself. But is that nonsense? Yes I think it is. Damnably unfair anyhow..."
My blood pressure, which had started to rise at the start of this paragraph, settled down as I realised that Reginald at least had the insight to realise that he was being inconsistent and unfair. He is a mass of conflicting emotions and while he, as narrator, lets us into his thoughts, we are left to make up our own mind as to Sylvia's feelings. She remains tantalisingly distant, on the edge of it all and yet, it seems to me that she is not quite as simplistic as portrayed. Though much younger, she has a mature understanding of her husband and while I, as a modern woman, might want her to stand up to him and put him in his place, she is wise enough not to do this though I was infuriated by the last line of the book and her self-effacement:
"Stay beautiful my sweet Sylvia"
"I'll try my darling, I expect it's what I'm for"....
Earlier this year I read A A Milne's one and only mystery story, which I did not care for at all and cannot help but think he made the correct decision not to produce another, but for those of us who think A A Milne is an author who writes only about bears and honey, Two People is a huge and welcome surprise.
Do read.
(PS - and for another appreciative post, do please nip over to Stuck in a Book and read what Simon has to say)
