The story started with AA Milne and his meeting with Daphne (Daff) de Selincourt and their eventual marriage in St Margaret’s, Westminster.
The American connection and names that were to surface later came through the story of a bear cub named after President “Teddy” Roosevelt. Also, a different black bear cub rescued at the outbreak of WW2 by Lt. Colebourn in Canada, eventually bringing it back to England where it became the regimental mascot, before being given to London Zoo when it grew too large, hence the name ‘Winnie’ after Winnipeg. An extraordinary picture of Christopher Robin at a young age actually hugging the black bear bigger than himself at the zoo, was particularly startling!
It is worth adding at this point that Gilly’s huge collection of slides was outstanding.
It seems that ’Daff’ would have preferred a girl and as many well heeled families of the time, she handed her sons upbringing from the age of 18 months to ‘Nanny Nou’ as she was known. Ruling the roost Nanny Nou restricted parental contact to 3 periods of ½ an hour per day! Whilst this probably satisfied his mother, his father as the assistant Editor for Punch Magazine started to pour his thoughts of his son onto paper. The famous poem “Vespers” illustrated by EH Shepard – a Punch illustrator – with Christopher Robin kneeling saying his prayers as seen by his father through a crack in the door, was his first piece. He handed it to Daff and said that if she could do anything with it she could have the royalties. Daff managed to get it published in Vanity Fair magazine in 1925 and it became an instant hit.
Cotchford Farm in Hartfield was bought by AAM in 1925 when Christopher Robin was 5 years old and they would visit from their London home at weekends and holidays, eventually moving to Hartfield permanently. It was here that Christopher Robin met Hannah from Cotchford Lane and they would spend endless hours roving Ashdown Forest, with Nanny Nou supervising. This was a gentler time in England with fields full of wild flowers, coming home with arms full from their picking expeditions. The games and adventures they had would be relayed to AAM and Daff on their return home for tea, this was when AAM’s fertile imagination got to work. Christopher Robin didn’t realize that the stories that were being read to him, were also being enjoyed by children all over the world.
“When We Were Young” was published in 1924 and the collection of soft toys with which Daff had played with her son in their ½ hour interludes became the characters around which AA Milne crafted the stories, Pooh, Piglet & Tigger being inspired by characters from The Wind in the Willows.
Christopher Robin was sent to boarding school in Guildford at the age of 9 and then on to Stowe by which time his fame as the character in the books led to terrible teasing – especially the rather dire singing that had been recorded on to an HMV record. When he managed to get hold of the record being played by his teasers he smashed it to smithereens. And he never forgave his father.
AAM died in 1956 at the age of 74 whilst Daff lived another 15 years but in all that time only seeing her son once. AAM died a disappointed man because he had written many plays and articles, however, his public ONLY wanted his Winnie-the-Pooh stories.
Christopher Robin married his first cousin, Lesley, the problem being that both sides of the family hadn’t spoken for 30 years which certainly distanced him from his parents. They had one daughter, Claire, who was disabled.
The huge popularity of the AA Milne stories meant that Christopher Robin Milne was forever associated with them and despite thinking he might find it easy to get a job after WW2 he eventually opened a bookshop in Dartmouth where he doubtless sold ‘his’ books amongst others for many years. He finally died in 1996 having come to terms with who he was and leading a happy and fulfilled life, doing what he wanted to do in a part of the country of his choosing with the family he loved.
So, the end of this rather strange and in many ways, sad, story of relationships was of course that Christopher Robin, and all his friends, that were created for AA Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh books will live on forever. Translated into 30 languages whilst Hartfield on the Ashdown Forest, with its Enchanted Places and Pooh Bridge, will remain embedded forever in the minds of children and adults alike, despite there having only been 4 books in all.
See some of the pictures in the section called ‘Winnie the Pooh’
(Edited with additions by Gilly Halcrow 13th April 2016)
