Classic Voices

A.A. Milne

Description

Few people today realise that the author of Winnie-the-Pooh, A.A. Milne, was a successful writer of adult novels, plays, essays and poems. He wrote many short stories for Good Housekeeping in the 1940s and 50s. Five of them are published here and all reveal Milne to be a witty and imaginative writer in the style of P.G. Wodehouse

Sujets

• Short story

Informations

• Publié par: Hearst Magazines UK
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781905563784
• Langue: English

Extrait

Table of Contents
Copyright
About A.A.Milne
The Rise and Fall of Mortimer Splevin
Night at the Aldwinkles'
The Wibberley Touch
The Prettiest Girl
The River
Copyright

First published in Great Britain 2013

This collection copyright © 2013 Hearst Magazines UK (The National Magazine Company Limited)
‘The Rise and Fall of Mortimer Splevin’ © 1950 A.A.Milne
‘Night at the Aldwinkles’ © 1948 A.A.Milne
‘The Wibblerley Touch’ © 1950 A.A.Milne
‘The Prettiest Girl’ © 1950 A.A.Milne
“The River” © 1949 A.A.Milne
The right of A.A.Milne to be identified as the author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act of 1988.
The expression GOOD HOUSEKEEPING as used in the title of this book is the registered trademark of the National Magazine Company Ltd and the Hearst Corporation INC. The use of this trademark other than with the express permission of the National Magazine Company or the Hearst Corporation is strictly prohibited.
ISBN: 9781905563784
Published by Hearst Magazines UK (The National Magazine Company Limited), 72 Broadwick Street, London W1F 9EP
All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
About A.A.Milne

Nowadays, A. A .Milne is generally only known as the author of Winne-the-Pooh and other children’s books featuring Christopher Robin and his friends. However, in his time, Milne was a very successful writer of adult novels, plays, essays and poems.
Alan Alexander Milne was born in London in 1882 and educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1902 he was Editor of Granta , the university magazine, and moved back to London the following year to enter journalism.
By 1906 he was Assistant Editor of Punch , a post which he held until the beginning of the First World War when he joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. Leaving the army in 1919 he began to write plays, the best known of them being Mr. Pim Passes By , The Dover Road , The Truth About Blayds , Michael and Mary and an adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows - Toad of Toad Hall .
He married Dorothy Selincourt in 1913 and had a son, Christopher Robin. By 1924 Milne was already a successful playwright, and published the first of his four books for children, a set of poems called When We Were Very Young which he wrote for his son. This was followed by the storybook Winnie-the-Pooh in 1926, more poems in Now We Are Six (1927) and further stories in The House at Pooh Corner (1928).
In addition to his most famous works, Milne also produced many novels, including The Red House Mystery and Two People (1931), volumes of essays, detective stories and light verse, and continued to be a prolific writer until his death in 1956.
He wrote several short stories that were published in Good Houskeeping during the 1940s and 1950s.
The Rise and Fall of Mortimer Splevin

Have you forgotten to return that book? Don't - until you have read this story! You may decide it's more fun to keep it for another two years

Extract from “Readers' Queries” in The Literary Weekly :

Q.What is it which determines First Edition values? Is it entirely a question of the author's literary reputation?
A.Not entirely, but obviously to a great extent. An additional factor is the original size of the first edition, which generally means that an established author's earliest books are more valuable than his later ones. Some authors, moreover, are more fashionable than others with bibliophiles, for reasons not always easy to detect; nor does there seem to be any explanation why an author, whose reputation as a writer has never varied, should be highly sought after by collectors at one time, and completely out of fashion a few years later. So perhaps all that we can say with confidence is that prices of first editions, like those of everything else, are determined by the laws of supply and demand.

Mr. Henry Winters to Mr. Brian Haverhill:
Dear Mr. Haverhill,
It may be within your memory that on the occasion of an afternoon visit which you and Mrs. Haverhill were good enough to pay us two years ago I was privileged to lend her Chapman's well-known manual on the Viola, which, somewhat surprisingly, she had never come across; I say surprisingly, for undoubtedly he is our greatest authority on the subject. If by any chance she has now read it, I should be very much obliged by its return at your convenience. I would not trouble you in this matter but for the fact that the book is temporarily out of print, and I have been unable therefore to purchase another copy for myself.
Miss Winters is away for a few days, or she would join me in sending compliments to you and Mrs. Haverhill.
Yours very truly,
Henry Winters.

Mr. Brian Haverhill to Mr. Henry Winters:
Dear Winters,
I was much distressed to get your letter this morning and to discover that Sally and I had been behaving so badly. It is probably as much my fault as hers, but she is away with her people in Somerset just now, and I think must have taken your book with her; so for the moment I can do nothing about it but apologise humbly for both of us. I have of course written to her, and asked her to send it back to you at once, or, if it is here in the house, to let me know where she has hidden it.
Again all my apologies,
Yours sincerely,
Brian Haverhill.

Brian Haverhill to Sally Haverhill:
Darling,
Read the enclosed and tell me how disgraced you feel - and how annoyed you think Winters is. I don't care for that bit about purchasing another copy for himself. He meant it nasty-like, if you ask me. Still, two years is a long time to take over a book, and you ought to have spelt it out to yourself more quickly. I could have helped you with the longer words.
The funny thing is I don't seem to remember anything about this viola book, nor whether it is the sort you play or the sort you grow, but I do seem to remember some other book which he forced on us - essays of some sort, at a guess. Can you help? Because if there were two, we ought to send both back together. I have staved him off for a bit by saying that you were so devoted to Chapman that you had taken the damned book with you. It doesn't sound likely to me, but it may to him. And why haven't we seen Winters and his saintly sister for two years? Not that I mind - on the contrary - but I just wondered. Are we cutting them or are they cutting us? One would like to know the drill in case of an accidental meeting in the village.
My love to everybody, and lots of a very different sort to your darling self.
Bless you. Your Brian

Sally Haverhill to Brian Haverhill:
Darlingest,
I did mean to ring you up last night but our line has broken down or the rent hasn't been paid or something, and I couldn't do it in the village, not properly.
How awful about Mr. Winters! It was flowers of course, silly, not musical instruments, because I was talking about violas to him when you were talking about the Litany to Honoria. I remember it perfectly, I was wearing my blue-and-yellow cotton, and one of her stockings was coming down. But you're quite right about the other one, it was called Country Filth and very disappointing. It must be somewhere. Do send them both back at once, darling - you'll find Chapman among the garden books - and say how sorry I am. And then I'll write myself. Yes, I think he's really angry, he's not a very nice man.
No, I don't think we've quarrelled. I did ask them both to our cocktail party a few weeks later, but being strict T.T.s, which I only found out afterwards, Honoria was rather stiff about it. Don't you remember? And then I asked them to tea, and they were away, and then I sort of felt that it was their turn to write. I'll try again if you like when I come home...

Brian Haverhill to Sally Haverhill:
Darling Sal,
1. Don't try again.
2.I have found Chapman nestling among the detective stories. I deduced that it would be there as soon as you said garden books.
3.Books aren't called Country Filth , not in Honoria's house anyway, and if they were, what would you be hoping that they were like? Tell your mother that I'm surprised at you.
4.There are a thousand books in the library, not to mention hundreds all over the place, and I can't possibly look through them all for one whose title, size, colour and contents are completely unknown to me. So pull yourself together, there's a dear, and send me a telegram with all that you remember about it.
5.I adore you.
Brian

Sally Haverhill to Brian Haverhill:
SOMETHING ABOUT COUNTRY BY SOMEBODY LIKE MORGAN OR SEVERN SORT OF ORDINARY SIZE AND EITHER BISCUIT COLOUR OR BLUE ALL MY LOVE SAL.

Country Tilth: The Prose Ramblings of a Rhymester: by Mortimer Splevin (Street & Co.).

1. A World Washed Clean .
Long ere His Majesty the Sun had risen in His fiery splendour, and while yet the first faint flush of dawn, rosy herald of His coming, still lingered in the east, I was climbing (but how blithely!) the ribbon of road, pale-hued, which spanned the swelling mother-breasts of the downland. At melodic intervals, with a melancholy which little matched my mood, the lone cry of the whimbrel...

Brian Haverhill to Sally Haverhill:
O Lord, Sally, we're sunk! I've found the damned book - Country Tilth , by Mortimer Splevin. It's ghastly enough inside, but outside - darling, there's a large beer-ring such as could never have been there originally, and looking more like the ring made by a large beer-mug than any beer-ring ever did. You can almost smell