If I May

by A. A. Milne

Well, so far as the children were concerned, the elephant was the success of the play. Up to the moment of its entrance they were--well, I hope not bored, but no more than politely interested. But as soon as the hero said, “Look, there’s an elephant,” you could feel them all jumping up and down in their seats and saying “Oo!” Nor was this “Oo” atmosphere ever quite dispelled thereafter. The elephant had withdrawn, but there was always the hope now that he might come on again, and if an elephant, why not a giraffe, a hippopotamus, or a polar-bear? For the rest of the pantomime every word was followed with breathless interest. At any moment the hero might come out with another brilliant line--“Look, there’s a hippopotamus.” Even when it was proved, with the falling of the final curtain, that the author had never again risen to these heights, there was still one chance left. Perhaps if they clapped loudly enough, the elephant would hear, and would take a call like the others.

What sort of pantomime do children like? It is a strange thing that we never ask ourselves “What sort of plays--or books or pictures--do public-school men like?” You say that that would be an absurd question. Yet it is not nearly so absurd as the other. For the real differences of thought and feeling between you and your neighbour were there when you were children, and your agreements are the result of the subsequent community of interests which you have shared--in similar public-schools, universities, services, or professions. Why should two children want to see the same pantomime? Apart from the fact that “two children” may mean such different samples of humanity as a boy of five and a girl of fifteen, is there any reason why Smith’s child and Robinson’s child should think alike? And as for your child, my dear sir (or madam), I have only to look at it--and at you--to see at once how utterly different it is from every other child which has ever been born. Obviously it would want something very much superior to the sort of pantomime which would amuse those very ordinary children of which Smith and Robinson are so proud.

I cannot, therefore, advance my own childish recollections of my first pantomime as trustworthy evidence of what other children like. But I should wish you to know that when I was taken to Beauty and the Beast at the age of seven, it was no elephant, nor any other kind of beast, which made the afternoon sacred for me. It was Beauty. I just gazed and gazed at Beauty. Never had I seen anything so lovely. For weeks afterwards I dreamed about her. Nothing that was said or done on the stage mattered so long as she was there. Probably the author had put some of his most delightful work into that pantomime--“dialogue which showed a wonderful insight into the child’s mind”; I apologize to him for not having listened to it. (I can sympathize with him now.) Or it may be that the author had written for men and women of the world; his dialogue was full of that sordid cynicism about married life which is still considered amusing, so that the aunt who took me wondered if this were really a pantomime suitable for children. Poor dear!--as if I heard a word of it, I who was just waiting for Beauty to come back.

What do children like? I do not think that there is any answer to that question. They like anything; they like everything; they like so many different things. But I am certain that there has never been an ideal play for very young children. It will never be written, for the reason that no self-respecting writer could bore himself so completely as to write it. (Also it is doubtful if fathers and mothers, uncles and aunts, would sacrifice themselves a second time, after they had once sat through it.) For very young children do not want humour or whimsicality or delicate fancy or any of the delightful properties which we attribute to the ideal children’s play. I do not say that they will rise from their stalls and call loudly for their perambulators, if these qualities creep into the play, but they can get on very happily without them. All that they want is a continuous procession of ordinary everyday events--the arrival of elephants (such as they see at the Zoo), or of postmen and policemen (such as they see in their street), the simplest form of clowning or of practical joke, the most photographically dull dialogue. For a grown-up it would be an appalling play to sit through, and still more appalling play to have to write.

Perhaps you protest that your children love Peter Pan. Of course they do. They would be horrible children if they didn’t. And they would be horrible children if they did not love (as I am sure they do) a Drury Lane pantomime. A nice child would love Hamlet. But I also love Peter Pan; and for this reason I feel that it cannot possibly be the ideal play for children. I do not, however, love the Drury Lane pantomime... which leaves me with the feeling that it may really be “the children’s pantomime” after all.

The Road to Knowledge

My pipe being indubitably smoked out to the last grain, I put it in my pocket and went slowly up to the nursery, trying to feel as much like that impersonation of a bear which would inevitably be demanded of me as is possible to a man of mild temperament. But I had alarmed myself unnecessarily. There was no demand for bears. Each child lay on its front, engrossed in a volume of The Children’s Encyclopaedia. Nobody looked up as I came in. Greatly relieved, I also took a volume of the great work and lay down on my front. I came away from my week-end a different man. For the first time in my life I was well informed. If you had only met me on the Monday and asked me the right questions, I could have surprised you. Perhaps, even now... but alas! my knowledge is slipping away from me, and probably the last of it will be gone before I have finished this article.

For this Encyclopaedia (as you may have read in the advertisements) makes a feature of answering all those difficult questions which children ask grown-ups, and which grown-ups really want to ask somebody else. Well, perhaps not all those questions. There are two to which there were no answers in my volume, nor, I suspect, in any of the other volumes, and yet these are the two questions more often asked than any others. “How did God begin?” and “Where do babies come from?” Perhaps they were omitted because the answers to them are so easy. “That, my child, is something which you had better ask your mother,” one replies; or if one is the mother, “You must wait till you are grown-up, dear.” Nor did I see any mention of the most difficult question of all, the question of the little girl who had just been assured that God could do anything. “Then, if He can do anything, can He make a stone so heavy that He can’t lift it?” Perhaps the editor is waiting for his second edition before he answers that one. But upon such matters as “Why does a stone sink?” or “Where does the wind come from?” or “What makes thunder?” he is delightfully informing.

But I felt all the time that in this part of his book he really had his eye on me and my generation rather than on the children. No child wants to know why a stone sinks; it knows the answer already--“What else could it do?” Even Sir Isaac Newton was a grown-up before he asked why an apple fell, and there had been men in the world fifty thousand years before that (yes I have been reading The Outline of History, too), none of whom bothered his head about gravitation. Yes, the editor was thinking all the time that you and I ought to know more about these things. Of course, we should be too shy to order the book for ourselves, but we could borrow it from our young friends occasionally on the plea of seeing if it was suitable for them, and so pick up a little of that general knowledge which we lack so sadly. Where does the wind come from? Well, really, I don’t think I know now.

The drawback of all Guides to Knowledge is that one cannot have the editor at hand in order to cross-examine him. This is particularly so in the case of a Children’s Encyclopaedia, for the child’s first question, “Why does this do that?” is meant to have no more finality than tossing-up at cricket or dealing the cards at bridge. The child does not really want to know, but it does want to keep up a friendly conversation, or, if humourously inclined, to see how long you can go on without getting annoyed. Not always, of course; sometimes it really is interested; but in most cases, I suspect, the question, “What makes thunder?” is inspired by politeness or mischief. The grown-up is bursting to explain, and ought to be humoured; or else he obviously doesn’t know, and ought to be shown up.