Disobedience by A A Milne (read by Tom O'Bedlam)

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A police spokeman said that James' mother had been seen in the red light district during the schoolday wearing thigh boots and a short gold lamé dress that barely covered her pelvis. They have interviewed her regulars except for Weatherby and they'd like to hear from anybody who knows his whereabouts.

Dr. Phil opined, "Kids will find some way to blame themselves for their mommy's misdeeds but in this case James is a controlling, insufferable little prig." James replied that he looked like a Heffalump. Dr. Phil said sternly, "Look here boy, y'gotta realise that callin people names is jest plain flat-out wrong, 'cepting when ah'm doin' it. Don' fergit this ole country boy is a hunnerd times biggern y'all."

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

I had to write an essay called "Disobedience" once. At the time I was becoming an expert on the subject, as boys do in adolescence. I remember that I was acting-up in Biology - showing off for the girls most likely - and the lady teacher, whose name I conveniently forget, inflicted the punishment on me. She demanded an essay on "Disobedience" by the following morning.

Like a red rag to bull, it was. She had not stipulated that I should write from any specific point-of-view, so I chose to be "for" rather than "against" - I said what a great thing disobedience was because it saved mankind from the oppression of tyrants. And so on, for the stipulated thousand words.

I kicked off with a quotation from Bernard Shaw, "Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of all the virtues, is rarely distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonist of all the vices."

The essay didn't go down at all well. I had expected admonishment and pique tempered by a badly-hidden smile or two. Not a bit of it. She had a melt-down into a puddle of incontinent rage, showered me with spittle during her angry expostulations and forced me to do it over again. She made me miss the school-bus home. This meant I had to walk six miles when I could have been sitting next to Mary M***** who always permitted a few surreptitious liberties with her person.

The injustice of it all offended me greatly. Damn it, it was a fine essay and a legitimate argument: I took a couple of hours over the writing of it. Her reaction made me question whether frumpy, middle-aged spinsters had any sense of humour and whether their state could be explained by their lack thereof. I thought her funny bone must have been missing that protruberance labelled "irony" in Gray's Anatomy.

Now I reflect on the matter I realise that I was a terrible, impudent fellow and, worse still, over the years I must admit I haven't improved that much. However I'm in good company:

"Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion." said Oscar Wilde.

"Disobedience: The silver lining to the cloud of servitude." said Ambrose Bierce.

"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves." said James Henry Thoreau.

The picture is from "When We Were Very Young", the anthology of children's verse which includes this poem.

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Beautiful reading of this poem. I used to know it as a child, and I'd forgotten all about it until now.

TheArchDandy

It was interesting listening to a rendition so different than my mother's :-) Different intonation and emphasis. All the same -- one of my favorite poems ever. The time has come to read/recite it to my grandkids...

ninarimon

Thank you for this reading and your story, Tom. This is my favourite poem from "When we were young" which I had in a volume that also included "Now we are six". Fantastic stuff. My interpretation (not that there has to be one even, that's part of the charm of good poetry) is that James is a little boy who is very attached to his mother and despises those times when she goes anywhere without him. He *imagines* the golden gown, how beautiful she is to him, and that when she goes away she goes all-too-far and who-knows-where. And so he has this fantasy that's managed to arrange things so that she can't go anywhere without him (how frustrating it must be for young children that they have so little control over their parents, their mothers especially!). But then the fantasy goes off the rails and she does go off without him, things go terribly wrong, and as this is such an important happening of *course* everyone, all the way up to the King, would have to get involved. The ending, when he tells his other relations not to go blaming *him*, is just... so... British lol. Speaking as someone who was raised in an atmosphere of benign neglect, in part by a father who was from England. But at least there were a lot of excellent books around.

Finally, this poem has even greater meaning for me because in trying to decide what my new but very special boyfriend's secret name should be, I decided on James, and thought of this poem, which I recited for him on our 4th date... which was absolutely magical.

stephaniebenger

When I was younger I thought she put on a golden gown and went food shopping you know as you do ... Now reading it as an adult she's a single Mum it seems with a three year old son she was obviously trying the impress at the end of the town in her golden gown ...But what happened... Ok the king said he was sorry ... so that's it no investigation as to what happened to this boys Mum .... quite a dark poem ..

rachelsolomons

Thank you for your appreciation. Yes - you can embed it or provide a link to it. It appears in a few places on the web.

SpokenVerse

My name is James, and when I visit some of my more "mature" customers, I have people chanting this at high speed, so I am here on youtube to look up what this is about. Also, I have had people singing "James James hold the ladder steady", a song by Sue Thompson from 1963.

jamespeter

Beautiful reading of a well-loved poem from my childhood. Thank you.

And long live irony!

Cogskate

I have owned a boxed set of A.A. Milne books since, well, since I was very young. A distant relation had given the set to me and when my mother would pass on news from her I'd say, "Who is she?" and my mother would say, "Winnie the Pooh."

When I was young I only read a few of the poems in the first two books but I loved the Pooh stories in the last two books. As I got older I realized the poems are just as good.

My children have the set now. And so it goes.

crywalt

@laRazaDJesus A A Milne was the creator of Winnie-the Pooh and many other much-loved characters and stories. The poem is from "When We Were Very Young", published in 1924, the quintessence of British humour.

We see things the way we are - not the way they are.

SpokenVerse

Thank you! I was working on an entry for King John (Shakespeare) and this poem kept popping into my mind. Lucky me - I found you had recorded it! My mother was a big fan of A. A. Milne and gave us (my younger sister and I) Milne's books of poetry for Valentine's Day when we were little. This was one of my favorites. As was also "The dormouse and the doctor." I'll cross my fingers for a possible future reading of that one! - janet

Janet-in-the-attic