Verónica's blog

Manhood: The state of being man as a human being, or man as distinguished from a child or a woman.

Here you can see the ones employed in the first hypertext of this “collection” and contrast them with the ones employed in “Make me a Superman” (some of them are included in this blog).

Women’s fluids, essences, and powers are dangerous and inimical to men.
An older man bleeds an initiate’s nose during the first purging of female
pollution from maternal contact. -Gilbert Herdt 1981Guardians of the Flutes

If a woman is going to have a male child, she has a healthy complexion, if a female,
she has a poor complexion. -Hippocrates

Biologists proved that sperma of the male actually enters into the veinal circulation of the woman.
-Huneker, J.G.1920 Painted Veils . Introduction 1964 by Van Wyck Brooks

Here you can read some of the different opinions they have. These are related to the principle of manhood and we can see the contrast between them and the ones added in “Make me a Man”:

You have me to thank for your eyebrows. Your father had these little wispy eyebrows that don’t amount to much. – Barack Obama’s Mother

I knew as well that traveling down the road to self respect my own white blood would never recede into mere abstraction. I was left to wonder what else I would be severing if and when I left my mother and my grandparents at some uncharted border. – Barack Obama

If you want to grow into a human being you’re going to need some values. – Obama’s Mother

A video where you can watch and listen to the poem I have added in the fourth point of the bibliography:

Disobedience

Literary career

1903 to 1925

After graduating from Cambridge in 1903, A. A. Milne contributed humorous verse and whimsical essays to the British humour magazine Punch, joining the staff in 1906 and becoming an assistant editor.

During this period he published 18 plays and 3 novels, including the murder mystery The Red House Mystery (1922). His son was born in August 1920 and in 1924 Milne produced a collection of children’s poems When We Were Very Young, which were illustrated by Punch staff cartoonist E. H. Shepard. A collection of short stories for children Gallery of Children, and other stories that became part of the Winnie-the-Pooh books, were first published in 1925.

Looking back on this period (in 1926) Milne observed that when he told his agent that he was going to write a detective story, he was told that what the country wanted from a “Punch humorist” was a humorous story; when two years later he said he was writing nursery rhymes, his agent and publisher were convinced he should write another detective story; and after another two years he was being told that writing a detective story would be in the worst of taste given the demand for children’s books. He concluded that “the only excuse which I have yet discovered for writing anything is that I want to write it; and I should be as proud to be delivered of a Telephone Directory con amore as I should be ashamed to create a Blank Verse Tragedy at the bidding of others.”

1926 to 1928

The real stuffed toys owned by Christopher Robin Milne and featured in the Winnie-the-Pooh stories. They are on display in the Donnell Library Center in New York.

Milne is most famous for his two Pooh books about a boy named Christopher Robin, after his son, and various characters inspired by his son’s stuffed animals, most notably the bear named Winnie-the-Pooh. Christopher Robin’s bear, originally named “Edward”, was renamed “Winnie-the-Pooh” after a Canadian black bear named Winnie (after Winnipeg), which was used as a military mascot in World War I, and left to London Zoo during the war. “The pooh” comes from a swan called “Pooh”. E. H. Shepard illustrated the original Pooh books, using his own son’s teddy, Growler (“a magnificent bear”), as the model. Christopher Robin Milne’s own toys are now under glass in New York.

Winnie-the-Pooh was published in 1926, followed by The House at Pooh Corner in 1928. A second collection of nursery rhymes, Now We Are Six, was published in 1927. All three books were illustrated by E. H. Shepard. Milne also published four plays in this period. He also “gallantly stepped forward” to contribute a quarter of the costs of dramatising P. G. Wodehouse‘s A Damsel in Distress.

1929 onwards

The success of his children’s books was to become a source of considerable annoyance to Milne, whose self-avowed aim was to write whatever he pleased and who had, until then, found a ready audience for each change of direction: he had freed pre-war Punch from its ponderous facetiousness; he had made a considerable reputation as a playwright (like his idol J. M. Barrie) on both sides of the Atlantic; he had produced a witty piece of detective writing in The Red House Mystery (although this was severely criticised by Raymond Chandler for the implausibility of its plot). But once Milne had, in his own words, “said goodbye to all that in 70,000 words” (the approximate length of his four principal children’s books), he had no intention of producing any reworkings lacking in originality, given that one of the sources of inspiration, his son, was growing older.

His reception remained warmer in America than Britain, and he continued to publish novels and short stories, but by the late 1930s the audience for Milne’s grown-up writing had largely vanished: he observed bitterly in his autobiography that a critic had said that the hero of his latest play (“God help it”) was simply “Christopher Robin grown up…what an obsession with me children are become!”.

Even his old literary home, Punch, where the When We Were Very Young verses had first appeared, was ultimately to reject him, as Christopher Milne details in his autobiography The Enchanted Places, although Methuen continued to publish whatever Milne wrote, including the long poem ‘The Norman Church’ and an assembly of articles entitled Year In, Year Out (which Milne likened to a benefit night for the author).

He also adapted Kenneth Grahame‘s novel The Wind in the Willows for the stage as Toad of Toad Hall. The title was an implicit admission that such chapters as Chapter 7, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn”, could not survive translation to the theatre. A special introduction written by Milne is included in some editions of Grahame’s novel.

Several of Milne’s children’s poems were set to music by the composer Harold Fraser-Simson. His poems have been parodied many times, including with the books When We Were Rather Older and Now We Are Sixty.

After Milne’s death, his widow sold the rights to the Pooh characters to the Walt Disney Company, which has made a number of Pooh cartoon movies, as well as a large amount of Pooh-related merchandise.

Royalties from the Pooh characters paid by Disney to the Royal Literary Fund, part-owner of the Pooh copyright, provide the income used to run the Fund’s Fellowship Scheme, placing professional writers in U.K. universities.

Written Works:

• 1905: “Lovers in London” (H.G. Wells suggested he publish this series of articles in book form).
• 1915: “Wurzel Flummery”. (A Play).
• 1921: “Toad of Toad Hall”. (Play first produced in 1929).
• 1922: “The Red House mystery” (Detective Novel).
• 1924: “When We Were Very Young” (Collection of verses originally published in “Punch”).
• 1925: “In Which We are Introduced to Winnie the Pooh and Some Bees and the Stories Begin.” (Article in the London Evening News, December 24^th. (Broadcast by BBC Radio on Christmas Day, read by Donald Calthrop.)
• 1926: “Winnie the Pooh”. (Handwritten manuscript bequeathed to the library of Trinity College, Cambridge).
• 1927: “Now We Are Six” (Second book of verses).
• 1928: “The House at Pooh Corner”. (Handwritten manuscript bequeathed to the library of Trinity College, Cambridge). “Toad of Toad Hall”.
• 1934: “Peace with Honour” (Anti-war book).
• 1939: “It’s Too Late Now” (Autobiography). “Chloe Marr” (Novel).
• 1952: “Year In, Year Out.”
• Other Plays: “Mr. Pim Passes By”, “Belinda”, “The Lucky One”,  “The Boy Comes Home”, “The Red Feathers”, ”The Camberley Triangle”, “The Stepmother”, “The Great Broxopp Success”, “The Man in the Bowler Hat”, “To Have the Honour- or Meet the Prince” “Ariadne”, “Portrait of a Gentleman in Slippers.”, “Other People’s Lives”, “The Dover Road”, “Truth About Bladys”, “Miss Elizabeth Bennett, “Miss Marlow at Play”, “The Ivory Door”, “The Fourth Wall- or the Perfect Alibi”, “Michael and Mary”, “The Romantic Age”, “The Ugly Duckling and Before the Flood”.
• Other Novels: “Mr. Pim Passes By”.

-Bibliography 1-

Alan Alexander Milne (January 18, 1882 – January 31, 1956), also known as A. A. Milne, is an English author best known for his books about the talking stuffed bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, and for various children’s poems. Milne had made several reputations, mostnotably as a playwright, before the shade of Pooh obscured all else. So, as he has also written some different genres of literature like novels, non-fiction books, poetry, …  we are going to arrange his different books depending on the genre they belong to.

This is the following “schèma” about his whole bibliography:

Novels

• Lovers in London (1905) (Some consider this more of a short story collection; Milne didn’t like it and considered The Day’s Play as his first book.)
• Once on a Time (1917)
• Mr. Pim (1921) (A novelisation of his play Mr. Pim Passes By (1919))
• The Red House Mystery (1922)
• Two People (1931) (Inside jacket claims this is Milne’s first attempt at a novel.)
• Four Days’ Wonder (1933)
• Chloe Marr (1946)

Non-fiction

• Peace With Honour (1934)
• It’s Too Late Now: The Autobiography of a Writer (1939)
• War With Honour (1940)
• Year In, Year Out (1952) (illustrated by E. H. Shepard)

 Punch articles

• The Day’s Play (1910)
• Once a Week (1914)
• The Holiday Round (1912)
• The Sunny Side (1921)
• Those Were the Days (1929) [The four volumes above, compiled]

Selections of newspaper articles and introductions to books by others

• The Chronicles of Clovis by “Saki” (1911) [Introduction to]
• Not That It Matters (1920)
• By Way of Introduction (1929)

 Story collections for children

• Gallery of Children (1925)
• Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) (illustrated by E. H. Shepard)
• The House at Pooh Corner (1928) (illustrated by E. H. Shepard)
• Short Stories

 Story collections

• A Table Near the Band (1950)

 Poetry

• For the Luncheon Interval [poems from Punch]
• When We Were Very Young  (1924) (illustrated by E. H. Shepard)
• Now We Are Six (1927) (illustrated by E. H. Shepard)
• Behind the Lines (1940)
• The Norman Church (1948)

 Plays

Milne wrote over 25 plays, including:

• Wurzel-Flummery (1917)
• Belinda (1918)
• The Boy Comes Home (1918)
• Make-Believe (1918) (children’s play)
• The Camberley Triangle (1919)
• Mr. Pim Passes By (1919)
• The Red Feathers (1920)
• The Romantic Age (1920)
• The Stepmother (1920)
• The Truth about Blayds (1920)
• The Dover Road (1921)
• The Lucky One (1922)
• The Artist: A Duologue (1923)
• Give Me Yesterday (1923) (a.k.a. Success in the U.K.)
• The Great Broxopp (1923)
• Ariadne (1924)
• The Man in the Bowler Hat: A Terribly Exciting Affair (1924)
• To Have the Honour (1924)
• Portrait of a Gentleman in Slippers (1926)
• Success (1926)
• Miss Marlow at Play (1927)
• The Fourth Wall or The Perfect Alibi (1928)
• The Ivory Door (1929)
• Toad of Toad Hall (1929) (adaptation of The Wind in the Willows)
• Michael and Mary (1930)
• Other People’s Lives (1933) (a.k.a. They Don’t Mean Any Harm)
• Miss Elizabeth Bennet (1936) [based on Pride and Prejudice]
• Sarah Simple (1937)
• Gentleman Unknown (1938)
• The General Takes Off His Helmet (1939) in The Queen’s Book of the Red Cross
• The Ugly Duckling (1946)
• Before the Flood (1951)

‘Mr Pim Passes By’ is the film version of one of Milne’s more successful plays. The opening credits list Milne’s play as the source, but (in the print I screened) no scenarist is identified as author of the adaptation. Milne’s stage play is an unfortunate vehicle for adaptation as a silent film, as most of the humour in this comedy of manners derives from the dialogue. This film (by a director unknown to me) features many, many intertitles with long, long pieces of dialogue in them … but I don’t believe that the director or scenarist should be blamed; this particular material just doesn’t work very well without audible voices handling the dialogue. ‘Pim’ is a comedy of a very English sort, and even in England this type of humor is no longer in fashion.

Olivia Marsden was formerly married to Jacob Tellworthy, but he died during a period when they were physically separated, so she only learnt of his death second-hand. (They were emotionally estranged all along.) Five years ago, she married the much older George Marsden: a wealthy skinflint from a blueblood family, who rules Marsden House (his stately home) as an absolute tyrant. Olivia has no say in the household’s affairs, no power over her own life. Neither does her daughter Diana, who is in love with the aptly-named Brian Strange … who is meant to be a sympathetic character (the juvenile lead), yet whom I despised straight off. Brian Strange is one of those sensitive young artists who insist on painting landscapes that don’t resemble anything seen in nature. (One intertitle identifies him as a ‘modernist’.) George Marsden absolutely dominates his wife and stepdaughter, and forbids Diana to have any contact with Strange.

One day, into Marsden House ambles the absent-minded Mr Pim, seeking an introduction to the neighbour next-door over. Overhearing a reference to Jacob Tellworthy, he speaks of him in the present tense. It seems that Tellworthy is in fact alive; Mr Pim knows him quite well, and saw him only just recently. Having dropped this bombshell, Mr Pim ambles off.

Olivia and her oh-so-very respectable husband (to say nothing of his mother, the dowager Lady Marsden) are scandalised to learn that their marriage is illegal, and that Olivia is guilty of bigamy. Now along comes Mr Pim again, with a new bit of information. It seems that Tellworthy was indeed alive all these years, but he has just lately died. Olivia is indeed a widow, but she and Marsden have been living together all these years in an illegal marriage. Scandalous! Having dropped this second bombshell, Mr Pim once again ambles off.

By pulling a few strings, Marsden contrives to file a backdated marriage certificate. But Olivia refuses to consent to this. SPOILERS COMING. Realising that Marsden is desperate to remarry her (for the sake of his own reputation), Olivia renegotiates the terms of their marriage: she will receive more household money and some new drapes. Oh, and while he’s about it, Marsden is to consent to his stepdaughter Diana’s engagement to that modernist ‘artist’. Happy endings all round (for all except Marsden) … and now once again Mr Pim passes by. It seems he’s just remembered that the fellow he knew wasn’t Jacob Tellworthy after all. It was someone named Polwittle!

‘Mr Pim Passes By’ does not make a wholly successful transfer to the silent screen, as it is dependent upon so much dialogue that must be *read* in the intertitles. All of the actors give good performances; in one case, perhaps *too* good. Henry Kendall succeeds so thoroughly in conveying the arty-tarty pretensions of the ‘modernist’ painter Strange, he makes it clear that Strange is a dilettante and that Marsden is absolutely right to thwart his romance with Marsden’s stepdaughter. I was disappointed that Diana is permitted to throw her life away on this berk. Campbell Gullan is doddering and indecisive in the title role, but that’s appropriate to the character. In all, I’ll rate ‘Mr Pim Passes By’ 5 points out of 10.

I have incorporated this section in this page because I think it’s interesting to know what people think about the novel before reading it. So, here we have some opinions of people that have still read it. But, remember that only you can decide if you want to read it or not, maybe some of them are wrong to your point of view.

• Raymond Chandler’s opinion (an Anglo-American novelist and screenwriter who had an immense stylistic influence upon the modern private detective story: Chandler’s essay rejects this model, declaring that “It is the ladies and gentlemen of what Mr. Howard Haycraft (in his book Murder for Pleasure) calls the Golden Age of detective fiction that really get me down.” He uses The Red House Mystery to illustrate the problems he saw in many mystery stories of this type, particularly the central puzzle (which was intricate and clever but implausible in many ways) and the fact that the amateur detective’s chance to shine comes only because the police are incompetent and surprisingly willing to put up with a “brash amateur” romping through their territory (“English police seem to endure him with their customary stoicism; but I shudder to think of what the boys down at the Homicide Bureau in my city would do to him.”) Chandler noted that The Red House Mystery seemed to have been in print in the US for about sixteen years. “That happens to few books of any kind.”

   For more information about his opinion, click here.

• Alexander Woollcott called it “one of the three best mystery stories of all time”.

•  A contemporary opinion of a common young girl: Anyone who thinks Winnie the Pooh was written by a wimp. How I love this mystery! It’s terribly, terribly English and Edwardian, a la Agatha Christie’s best, and bursting with delicious humor. Goes to show that A.A. Milne wasn’t a one-trick pony. Like E.B. White, he could write great stories for adults as well as children.

I leave you the trailer of “Mr. Pim passes by” to illustrate the other post of this section. I hope you enjoy it !

Mr. Pim passes by trailer