If I May by A. A. Milne

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For the whole idea of a fixture or fitting can only be that it is
something about which there can be no individual taste. We furnish a
house according to our own private fancy; the "fixtures" are the
furnishings in regard to which we are prepared to accept the general
fancy. The other man's curtain-rod, though easily detachable and able
to fit a hundred other windows, is a fixture; his carpet-as-planned
(to use the delightful language of the house-agent), though securely
nailed down and the wrong size for any other room but this, is not a
fixture. Upon some such reasoning the first authorized schedule of
fixtures and fittings must have been made out.

It seems a pity that it has not been extended. There are other things
than curtain-rods and electric-light bulbs which might be left behind
in the old house and picked up again in the new. The silver
cigarette-box, which we have all had as a birthday or wedding present,
might safely be handed over to the incoming tenant, in the certainty
that another just like it will be waiting for us in our next house.
True, it will have different initials on it, but that will only make
it the more interesting, our own having become fatiguing to us by this
time. Possibly this sort of thing has already been done in an
unofficial way among neighbors. By mutual agreement they leave their
aspidistras and their "Maiden's Prayer" behind them. It saves
trouble and expense in the moving, which is an important thing in
these days, and there would always be the hope that the next
aspidistra might be on the eve of flowering or laying eggs, or
whatever it is that its owner expects from it.

Experts

The man in front of the fire was telling us a story about his wife and
a bottle of claret. He had taken her to the best restaurant in Paris
and had introduced her to a bottle of the famous Chateau Whatsitsname,
1320 (or thereabouts), a wine absolutely priceless--although the
management, with its customary courtesy, had allowed him to pay a
certain amount for it. Not realizing that it was actually the famous
Whatsitsname, she had drunk it in the ordinary way, neither holding it
up to the light and saying, "Ah, there's a wine!" nor rolling it
round the palate before swallowing. On the next day they went to a
commonplace restaurant and drank a local and contemporary vintage at
five francs the bottle, of similar colour but very different
temperament. When she had finished her glass, she said hesitatingly,
"Of course, I don't know anything about wine, and I dare say I'm
quite wrong, but I can't help feeling that the claret we had last
night was better than this."

The man in front of the fire was rather amused by this, as were most
of his audience. For myself, I felt that the lady demanded my
admiration rather than my amusement. Without the assistance of the
labels, many of us might have decided that it was the five-franc
vintage which was the better wine. She didn't. Indeed, I am inclined
to read more into the story than is perhaps there; I believe that she
had misunderstood her husband, and had thought that the second bottle
was the famous, aged, and priceless Chateau Whatsitsname, and that, in
spite of this, she gave it as her opinion that the first wine, cheap
and modern though it might be, was the better. Hats off, then, to a
brave woman! How many of us would have her courage and her honesty?

But perhaps you who read this are an expert on wine. If so, you are
lucky. I am an expert on nothing--nothing, anyhow, that matters. I
envy all you experts tremendously. When I see a cigar-expert listening
to his cigar before putting it in his mouth I wish that I were as
great a man as he. Privately sometimes I have listened to a cigar, but
it has told me nothing. The only way I can tell whether it is good or
bad is by smoking it. Even then I could not tell you (without the
assistance of the band) whether it was a Sancho Panza or a Guoco
Piano. I could only tell you whether I liked it or not, a question of
no importance whatever.

Lately I have been trying to become a furniture-expert, but it is a
disheartening business. I have a book called Chats on Old Furniture--a
terrible title to have to ask for in a shop, but I asked boldly.
Perhaps the word "chat" does not make other people feel as unhappy
as it makes me. But even after reading this book I am not really an
expert. I know now that it is no good listening to a Chippendale chair
to see if it is really Chippendale; one must stroke it in order to
find out whether it is a "genuine antique" or only a modern
reproduction; but it is obvious that years of stroking would be
necessary before an article of furniture would be properly responsive.
Is it worth while wasting these years of one's life? Indeed, is it
worth while (I ask nervously) bothering whether a chair or a table is
antique or modern so long as it is both useful and beautiful?

Well, let me tell you what happened to us yesterday. We found a
dresser which appealed to us considerably, and we stood in front of
it, looking at it. We decided that except for a little curley-wiggle
at the top it was the jolliest dresser we had seen, "That's a fine
old dresser," said the shopman, coming up at that moment, and he
smacked it encouragingly. "A really fine old dresser, that." We
agreed. "Except for those curley-wiggles," I added, pointing to them
with my umbrella. "If we could take those off." He looked at me
reproachfully. "You wouldn't take those off----" he said. "Why,
that's what tells you that it's a Welsh dresser of 1720." We didn't
buy that dresser. We decided that the size or the price was all wrong.
But I wonder now, supposing we had bought it, whether we should have
had the pluck to remove the curley-wiggles (and let people mistake it
for an English dresser of 1920) in order that, so abbreviated, it
might have been more beautiful.

For furniture is not beautiful merely because it is old. It is absurd
to suppose that everything made in 1720--or 1620 or 1520--was made
beautifully, as it would be absurd to say that everything made in 1920
was beautiful. No doubt there will always be people who will regard
the passing of time as sufficient justification for any article of
furniture; I could wish that they were equally tolerant among the arts
as among the crafts, so that in 2120 this very article which I write
now could be referred to with awe as a genuine 1920; but all that the
passage of time can really do for your dresser is to give a more
beautiful surface and tone to the wood. This, surely, is a matter
which you can judge for yourself without being an expert. If your
dresser looks old you have got from it all that age can give you; if
it looks beautiful you have got from it all that a craftsman of any
period can give you; why worry, then, as to whether or not it is a
"genuine antique"? The expert may tell you that it is a fake, but
the fact that he has suddenly said so has not made your dining-room
less beautiful. Or if it is less beautiful, it is only because an
"expert" is now in it. Hurry him out.

The Robinson Tradition

Having read lately an appreciation of that almost forgotten author
Marryat, and having seen in the shilling box of a second-hand
bookseller a few days afterward a copy of _Masterman Ready_, I went in
and bought the same. I had read it as a child, and remembered vaguely
that it combined desert-island adventure with a high moral tone; jam
and powder in the usual proportions. Reading it again, I found that
the powder was even more thickly spread than I had expected; hardly a
page but carried with it a valuable lesson for the young; yet this
particular jam (guava and cocoanut) has such an irresistible
attraction for me that I swallowed it all without a struggle, and was
left with a renewed craving for more and yet more desert-island
stories. Having, unfortunately, no others at hand, the only
satisfaction I can give myself is to write about them.

I would say first that, even if an author is writing for children (as
was Marryat), and even if morality can best be implanted in the young
mind with a watering of fiction, yet a desert-island story is the last
story which should be used for this purpose. For a desert-island is a
child's escape from real life and its many lessons. Ask yourself why
you longed for a desert-island when you were young, and you will find
the answer to be that you did what you liked there, ate what you
liked, and carried through your own adventures. It is the "Family"
which spoils _The Swiss Family Robinson_, just as it is the Seagrave
family which nearly wrecks _Masterman Ready_. What is the good of
imagining yourself (as every boy does) "Alone in the Pacific" if you
are not going to be alone? Well, perhaps we do not wish to be quite
alone; but certainly to have more than two on an island is to
overcrowd it, and our companion must be of a like age and disposition.

For this reason parents spoil any island for a healthy-minded boy. He
may love his father and mother as fondly as even they could wish, but
he does not want to take them bathing in the lagoon with him--still
less to have them on the shore, telling him that there are too many
sharks this morning and that it is quite time he came out. Nor for
that matter do parents want to be bothered with children on a South
Sea holiday. In _Masterman Ready_ there is a horrid little boy called
Tommy, aged six, who is always letting the musket off accidentally, or
getting bitten by a turtle, or taking more than his share of the
cocoanut milk. As a grown-up I wondered why his father did not give
him to the first savage who came by, and so allow himself a chance of
enjoying his island in peace; but at Tommy's age I should have
resented just as strongly a father who, even on a desert-island, could
not bear to see his boy making a fool of himself with turtle and
gunpowder.

I am not saying that a boy would really be happy for long, whether on
a desert-island or elsewhere, without his father and mother. Indeed it
is doubtful if he could survive, happily or unhappily. Possibly
William Seagrave could have managed it. William was only twelve, but
he talked like this: "I agree with you, Ready. Indeed I have been
thinking the same thing for many days past.... I wish the savages
would come on again, for the sooner they come the sooner the affair
will be decided." A boy who can talk like this at twelve is capable
of finding the bread-fruit tree for himself. But William is an
exception. I claim no such independence for the ordinary boy; I only
say that the ordinary boy, however dependent on his parents, does like
to pretend that he is capable of doing without them, wherefore he
gives them no leading part in the imaginary adventures which he
pursues so ardently. If they are there at all, it is only that he may
come back to them in the last chapter and tell them all about it...
and be suitably admired.

_Masterman Ready_ seems to me, then, to be the work of a father, not
of an understanding writer for boys. Marryat wrote it for his own
children, towards whom he had responsibilities; not for other people's
children, for whom he would only be concerned to provide
entertainment. But even if the book was meant for no wider circle than
the home, one would still feel that the moral teaching was overdone.
It should be possible to be edifying without losing one's sense of
humour. When Juno, the black servant, was struck by lightning and not
quite killed, she "appeared to be very sensible of the wonderful
preservation which she had had. She had always been attentive whenever
the Bible was read, but now she did not appear to think that the
morning and evening services were sufficient to express her
gratitude." Even a child would feel that Juno really need not have
been struck by lightning at all; even a child might wonder how many
services, on this scale of gratitude, were adequate for the rest of
the party whom the lightning had completely missed. And it was perhaps
a little self-centred of Ready to thank God for her recovery on the
grounds that she could "ill be spared" by a family rather
short-handed in the rainy season.

However, the story is the thing. As long as a desert-island book
contains certain ingredients, I do not mind if other superfluous
matter creeps in. Our demands--we of the elect who adore
desert-islands--are simple. The castaways must build themselves a hut
with the aid of a bag of nails saved from the wreck; they must catch
turtles by turning them over on their backs; they must find the
bread-fruit tree and have adventures with sharks. Twice they must be
visited by savages. On the first occasion they are taken by surprise,
but--the savages being equally surprised--no great harm is done. Then
the Hero says, "They will return when the wind is favourable," and
he arranges his defences, not forgetting to lay in a large stock of
water. The savages return in force, and then--this is most
important--at the most thirsty moment of the siege it is discovered
that the water is all gone! Generally a stray arrow has pierced the
water-butt, but in _Masterman Ready_ the insufferable Tommy has played
the fool with it. (He would.) This is the Hero's great opportunity. He
ventures to the spring to get more water, and returns with
it--wounded. Barely have the castaways wetted their lips with the
precious fluid when the attack breaks out with redoubled fury. It
seems now that all is lost... when, lo! a shell bursts into the middle
of the attacking hordes. (Never into the middle of the defenders. That
would be silly.) "Look," the Hero cries, "a vessel off-shore with
its main braces set and a jib-sail flying"--or whatever it may be.
And they return to London.

This is the story which we want, and we cannot have too many of them.
Should you ever see any of us with our noses over the shilling box and
an eager light in our eyes, you may be sure that we are on the track
of another one.

Getting Things Done

In the castle of which I am honorary baron we are in the middle of an
orgy of "getting things done." It must always be so, I suppose, when
one moves into a new house. After the last furniture van has departed,
and the painters' bill has been receipted, one feels that one can now
settle down to enjoy one's new surroundings. But no. The discoveries
begin. This door wants a new lock on it, that fireplace wants a brick
taken out, the garden is in need of something else, somebody ought to
inspect the cistern. What about the drains? There are a hundred things
to be "done."

I have a method in these matters. When I observe that something wants
doing, I say casually to the baroness, "We ought to do something
about that fireplace," or whatever it is. I say it with the air of a
man who knows exactly what to do, and would do it himself if he were
not so infernally busy. The correct answer to this is, "Yes, I'll go
and see about it to-day." Sometimes the baroness tries to put it on
to me by saying, "We ought to do something about the cistern," but
she has not quite got the casual tone necessary, and I have no
difficulty in replying (with the air of a man who, etc.), "Yes, we
ought." The proper answer to this is, "Very well, then. I'll go and
see about it." In either case, as you will agree, action on the part
of the baroness should follow.

Unfortunately it doesn't. She, it appears, is a partner in my
weakness. We neither of us know how to get things done. It is a
knowledge which one can never acquire. Either you are born with an
instinct for the man round the corner who tests cisterns, or you are
born without it, in which case you never, never find him. There are
men with the instinct so highly developed that they can tell you at a
moment's notice the name and address, not merely of a man who will
test your cistern for you, but of the one man in your neighbourhood
who will test it most efficiently and most cheaply. If your canary
moulted unduly, and you said to your wife, "We must do something
about Ambrose," they could tell you at once of the best canary-mender
to approach. These are the men I admire. But there are weaklings (of
both sexes, unfortunately) who would not even know whether a
greengrocer or a veterinary surgeon was the man to send for, and who
are entirely vague as to whether a cistern is tested for water or for
lead-poisoning.

The press speaks of this or that politician sometimes as the
"Minister who gets things done." I have always felt that, given an
adequate permanent staff, I might go down to fame as the householder
who got things done. As you see, my staff lets me down. I am quite
capable of sitting in my office and saying to an under-secretary, "We
must do something about this shell business." This, in fact, is just
my line. I am quite capable of saying firmly, "I must have ten
million big guns by August." And if the undersecretary only made the
correct reply, "Very well, sir, I'll see about it," my photograph
would appear in the papers as that of "the man who got the guns."
But when your under-secretary refuses to carry on, where are you?

What I want, and what, I imagine, most people who have moved into a
new house want, is an intermediary to get things done for us. I
suggest this as a profession to any demobilized soldier looking for
work. He should walk about London, making a note of the houses which
have just been sold or let, and as soon as the new residents have
taken possession, he should send round his card. "Tell me what is
worrying you," he would say, "and I will see that something is done
about it." He might charge a couple of guineas as his fee. Perhaps it
would be better if he said, "Let me tell you what is likely to worry
you"--if, that is to say, his business was to go round your house
directly you got into it, to make a list of the jobs that wanted
doing, and then, armed with your authority, to go off and get them
done. Many people would gladly pay him two guineas for such excellent
services, and he could probably pick up a trifle more as commission
from the men to whom he gave the work. It would be worth trying
anyway.

But, of course, such a man would have to have a vast knowledge of
affairs. He would have to know, for instance, how one buys string. In
the ordinary way one doesn't buy string; it comes to you, and you take
it off and send it back again. But the occasion may arise when you
want lots and lots of it. Then it is necessary to look for a string
shop. A friend of mine spent the whole of one afternoon trying to buy
a ball of string. He wandered from one ironmonger to the other (he had
a fixed idea that an ironmonger was the man), and finally, in despair,
went into a large furnishing shop, noted for its "artistic suites."
He was very humble by this time, and his petition that they should
sell him some string because he was an old customer of theirs was
unfortunately worded. As far as I know he is still stringless, just as
I am still waiting for somebody to do something about the cistern.

Christmas Games

The shops are putting on their Christmas dress. The cotton-wool, that
time-hallowed substitute for snow, is creeping into the plate-glass
windows; the pink lace collars are encircling again the cakes; and the
"charming wedding or birthday present" of a week ago renews its
youth as a "suitable Yuletide gift." Everything calls to us to get
our Christmas shopping done early this year, but, as usual, we shall
put it off until the latest possible day, and in that last mad rush we
shall get Aunt Emily the wrong pair of mittens and overlook poor Uncle
John altogether.

Before I begin my own shopping I am waiting for an announcement in the
papers. All that my paper has told me is that the Christmas toy
bazaars of the big stores are now open. I have not yet seen that list
and description of the new games of the season for which I wait so
eagerly. It is possible that this year will produce the
masterpiece--the game which possesses in the highest degree all the
qualities of the ideal Christmas game. The unfortunate thing is that,
even if such a game were to appear in this year's catalogue, we should
have lost it by next year; for the National Sporting Club (or whoever
arranges these things) has always been convinced that "novelty" is
the one quality required at Christmas, the hall-mark of excellence
which no Christmas shopper can resist. If a game is novel, it is
enough. To the manager of a toy department the continued vogue of
cricket must be very bewildering.

Let us consider the ideal Christmas game. In the first place, it must
be a round game; that is to say, at least six people must be able to
play it simultaneously. No game for two only is permissible at
Christmas--unless, of course, it be under the mistletoe. Secondly, it
must be a game into which skill does not enter, or, if it does, it
must be a skill which is as likely to be shown by a child of eight or
an old gentleman of eighty as by a 'Varsity blue. Such skill, for
instance, as manifests itself at Tiddleywinks, that noble game. Yet,
even so, Tiddleywinks is too skilful a pursuit. One cannot say what it
is that makes a good Tiddleywinker, whether eye or wrist or supple
finger-work, but it is obvious that one who is "winking" badly must
be depressed by the thought that he is appearing stupid and clumsy to
his neighbours, and that this feeling is not conducive to that
happiness which his many Christmas cards have called down upon him.

It is better, therefore, that the element of skill should be absent.
Let it be a game of luck only; and, since it is impossible to play a
Christmas game for money, you will not be depressed if you lose.

The third and last essential of the ideal game is that it must provoke
laughter. You cannot laugh at Tiddleywinks, nor at Ludo (as I hear,
but I have never yet discovered what Ludo is), nor at Happy Families.
But the ideal game is provocative of that best kind of laughter--
laughter at the undeserved misfortunes of others, seasoned by the
knowledge that at any moment a similar misfortune may happen to
oneself.

Just before the war I came across the ideal game. I forget what it was
called, unless it was some such name as "The Prince's Quest." Six
princes, suitably coloured, set out to win the hand of the beautiful
princess. They started at one end of a long and winding road, and she
waited for the first arrival at the other end. The road, which passed
through the most enthralling scenery, was numbered by milestones--"1"
to "200". Suppose you were the Red Prince, you shook a die (I mean the
half of two dice), and if a four turned up, you advanced to the fourth
milestone. And so on, in succession. So far it doesn't sound very
exciting. Rut you are forgetting the scenery. Perhaps at the twelfth
milestone there awaited you the shoes of swiftness, which carried you
in one bound to the twentieth milestone; thus by throwing a three at
the ninth, you advanced eleven miles, whereas if you had thrown a four
you would only have advanced four miles. On arriving at other lucky
milestones you received a cloak of darkness, which took you past
various obstacles which were holding the others up, or perhaps were
introduced to a potent dwarf, who showed you a short cut forbidden to
your rivals. One way and another you pushed ahead of the other
princes.

And then the inevitable happened. You arrived at the eighty-fourth
milestone (or whatever it was) and you found a wicked enchanter
waiting for you, who cast upon you a backward spell, as a result of
which you had to travel backwards for the next three turns. Undaunted
by this reverse, you returned bravely to it, and perhaps came upon the
eighty-fourth milestone again. But even so you did not despair, for
there was always hope. The Blue Prince, who is now leading, approaches
the ninety-sixth milestone. He is, indeed, at the ninety-fifth. A
breathless moment as he shakes the die. Will he? He does. He throws a
one, reaches the ninety-sixth milestone, topples headlong into the
underground river, and is swept back to the starting-point again.

A great game. But our edition of it went to some hospital during the
war, and I fear now that I shall never play it again. Yet I scan the
papers eagerly, hoping for some announcement of it. Not this actual
game, of course, but some version of it; some "Christmas novelty,"
in which, perhaps, the princes are called knights, but the laughter
remains the same.

The Mathematical Mind

My daily paper just now is full of mathematical difficulties,
submitted by its readers for the amusement of one of its staff. Every
morning he appeals to us for assistance in solving tricky little
problems about pints of water and herrings and rectangular fields. The
magic number "9" has a great fascination for him. It is terrifying
to think that if you multiply any row of figures by 9 the sum of the
figures thus obtained is divisible by 9. It is uncanny to hear that if
a clock takes six seconds to strike six it takes as much as thirteen
seconds and a fifth to strike twelve.

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