For me, the 1920 Club this week has been a chance to discover some of the few works of A.A. Milne that I hadn’t already read. I started the week with The Stepmother, a slight one-act play, flipped through the articles featured in If I May, and have now finished the week with the best of the bunch: The Romantic Age, a three-act comedy.
In her late teens, Melisande Knowle longs for the romance of knights and ballads, for a world of courtly love and grand gestures. Instead, she is plagued by all the trappings of middle-class comfort and a family – two parents and her visiting cousin Jane – who can’t see why tennis games, dance parties, and perfectly nice young men from the stock exchange to partner with at both are to be sneered at rather than enjoyed. This is made particularly clear to Bobby, a young man lamentably employed on the stock exchange, who is visiting for the weekend and deeply infatuated with Melisande, when he attempts to propose:
MELISANDE: Oh, Bobby, everything’s wrong. The man to whom I give myself must be not only my lover, but my true knight, my hero, my prince. He must perform deeds of derring-do to win my love. Oh, how can you perform deeds of derring-do in a stupid little suit like that!
Poor Bobby.
The Knowles casually lament their daughter’s romantic flights without taking them too seriously. For Mrs Knowles, an invalid not overburdened with brains, part of the problem comes back to her daughter’s name. She thought her husband had suggested Millicent, a perfectly nice sort of name, the kind that belongs to a nice, helpful sort of daughter. To discover her baby was saddled with the outlandish Melisande was quite a shock – one which, years later, Mrs Knowle still hasn’t entirely recovered from. To protect her daughter from the absurdity of her name, the family calls her Sandy. As you’d expect, the young lady herself finds this disgusting but her mother has very strong reasons for doing so:
MRS KNOWLE: Well, it never seems to be quite respectable, not for a nicely-brought-up young girl in a Christian house. It makes me think of the sort of person who meets a strange young man to whom she has never been introduced, and talks to him in a forest with her hair coming down. They find her afterwards floating in a pool. Not at all the thing one wants for ones daughter.
JANE: Oh, but how thrilling it sounds!
MRS KNOWLE: Well, I think you are safer with “Jane,” dear. Your mother knew what she was about. And if I can save my only child from floating in a pool by calling her Sandy, I certainly think it is my duty to do so.
Contemptuous of the romances she’s heard tell of in real life, Melisande dreams of something more dramatic for herself.
And she gets it. Into her life comes Gervase Mallory. Romantically named, romantically handsome, and, at the time, romantically dressed in blue and gold on his way to a costume ball. It is a shock of attraction for them both and when they meet again they find they both can weave a beautiful fantasy of their love.
But in the third act – the best of all – it all unravels. Melisande, confronted with the idea of Gervase the man rather than the fantasy, of a man who when not dressed in blue and gold instead wears a loud golfing suit, who when not frolicking in glades with her is so unromantic as to work on the stock exchange, promptly convinces herself that he is not worth loving.
Gervase, however, while happy to spin a romantic tale, is rather more practical than the object of his affections. After his first glimpse of Melisande he’d encountered a peddler in the woods, Master Susan, and had a conveniently timed conversation about the benefits of a friendly marriage:
SUSAN: When you are married, every adventure becomes two adventures. You have your adventure, and then you go back to your wife and have your adventure again. Perhaps it is a better adventure the second time. You can say the things which you didn’t quite say the first time, and do the things which you didn’t quite do.
Susan is also helpful in reminding Gervase that looks are not the only thing that matter in the long term:
GERVASE: Do you believe in love at first sight, Master Susan?
SUSAN: Why not? If it’s the woman you love at first sight, not only her face.
Thanks to this encounter (and just being altogether more sensible than his beloved), Gervase arrives for the reunion with his feet on the ground and his heart already given away. Melisande, not even remotely prepared to believe the real world could have any acceptable romance to offer her, is horrified and the entire scene is delightful. There are so many Milne plays I wish I could see performed and this has moved high up on that list.
Lighthearted and fun throughout, the play also doesn’t neglect its minor characters. Bobby, realising he’s had a lucky escape from Melisande, quickly transfers his attentions to her pretty cousin Jane, which is all very satisfying. Mrs Knowle flutters about – a kind but featherbrained sort-of-person – while Mr Knowle shows up every so often to be surprisingly funny. They are a kinder, fonder version of the Bennets:
MR KNOWLE: […] We have a visitor coming, a nice young fellow who takes an interest in prints.
MRS KNOWLE: I’ve heard nothing of this, Henry.
MR KNOWLE: No, my dear, that’s why I’m telling you now.
MRS KNOWLE: A young man?
MR KNOWLE: Yes.
MRS KNOWLE: Nice-looking?
MR KNOWLE: Yes.
MRS KNOWLE: Rich?
MR KNOWLE: I forgot to ask him, Mary. However, we can remedy that omission as soon as he arrives.
MRS KNOWLE: It’s a very unfortunate day for him to have chosen. Here’s Sandy lost, and I’m not fit to be seen, and – Jane, your hair wants tidying –
MR KNOWLE: He is not coming to see your or Sandy or Jane, my dear; he is coming to see me. Fortunately, I am looking very beautiful this afternoon.
All ends well, of course, proving that romance can survive in the modern age – just not quite as Melisande had envisioned it. (Thank goodness.)
