The Enchanted Places

by Christopher Milne

  But sometimes I liked the rain. ‘It rained and it rained and it rained’ and little by little the level of the water in the stream rose until it was peering over the top. Then it began to creep up the putting lawn . . . The stream that was really only a moat was now indeed a stream. The water was racing in through the little tunnel under the bridge at the top end, and piling up against the little tunnel under the other bridge at the bottom end. Perhaps I ought to put on Wellington boots and a macintosh and go and poke a stick through to clear it. Perhaps I might go down to the river to see what was happening . . . Exciting! The river which usually ran, brown and peaceful, between high banks, was now only a few feet from the top, and fairly swirling and frothing and bubbling and seething and roaring along. Alders which grew at the edge of the water were now marooned on islands in mid stream, a fierce current racing between them and the mainland. The place where a tree root held back the river to make a waterfall – a sort of miniature, natural weir – could hardly be found, for the water below and the water above had both risen to the same level. I explored all along, then returned home to report. And still it rained. And it was still raining when I went to bed. And now I hoped that it would go on raining, and that when dull night was out of the way, I would wake up to find it coming down as hard as ever. Once again I rushed to the window as soon as I was awake. But I could hear the rain beating on the glass and knew before I got there that all was well. My bedroom window faced north. I would have to go to the window in the passage if I was to see what I wanted to see. And from the passage window I saw it. The water was over the top, over the top of the river and coming towards us across the meadow, over the top of the stream, half way up the putting lawn, and already into the rose garden.

  All morning I watched it – we all watched it – fascinated. And every now and then I went out with a stick to mark the place where the tide had reached, a line of sticks getting nearer and nearer to the steps up to the path that ran outside the drawing-room.

  Every morning he went out with his umbrella and put a stick in the place where the water came up to, and every next morning he went out and couldn’t see his stick any more . . .

  But though it rained and rained and rained, and though the river and the stream joined hands and the entire meadow became a lake, and though the rose garden and the mauve garden disappeared, the floods never reached the house. The men who, centuries earlier, had chosen to build Cotchford at the bottom of the hill, knew what the river could do, knew the highest point it could reach and laid their foundations eighteen inches above it.

  The wind roaring in the trees, roaring in the giant sycamore that grew in the lawn just outside my nursery window (‘What would happen if the wind blew it down? Would it flatten the house, do you think?’) The rain beating on the water and the river rising to meet it. The snow, a rare visitor, and so all the more exciting when it came. Misty days when Gill’s Lap vanished and it might be fun to see if you could get lost and then cleverly find yourself again. Sunny days when the trees were dark and heavy with leaf and the air was heavy with the scent of meadow-sweet and the river was almost asleep. These were the Cotchford weathers, new and exciting to me; and for my father, perhaps, awakening memories of country holiday weathers when he was a boy. These are the weathers you will meet in the books.

  I am often asked if I can remember when the stories were first read to me. Who read them? And where? And what did I think of them? Oddly, I can remember virtually nothing. One incident only survives.

  My mother and I were in the drawing-room at Cotchford. The door opened and my father came in. ‘Have you finished it?’ ‘I have.’ ‘May we hear it?’ My father settled himself in his chair. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we’ve had a story about the snow and one about the rain, and one about the mist. So I thought we ought to have one about the wind. And here it is.

  ‘It’s called:

  ‘IN WHICH PIGLET DOES A VERY GRAND THING ‘Half way between Pooh’s house and Piglet’s house was a Thoughtful Spot . . .’

  My mother and I, side by side on the sofa, settled ourselves comfortably, happily, excitedly, to listen.

  11. Animals Tame and Animals Wild

  Though at Decoy I was allowed to keep a rabbit, and though my only recollection of our holiday in Wales is of being shown a dead snake that Griffiths, the butler, had bravely slain, it was not until we came to Cotchford that animals really entered my life – never, I hope, to leave it.

  We started with two dogs, fox terriers – and a great mistake, though I never knew whose. They stayed with us only slightly longer than the gardener after whom one of them was named. He too proved to be a great mistake. After that we went in for cats.

  It was Tasker, I think, who produced the founder of the family, a small tortoiseshell kitten. It was shown to me and I was asked to name it. ‘His name,’ I said, ‘is Pinkle; but I shall call him Tattoo.’ So Tattoo it was; and since cats don’t immediately need more than one name (though they may later acquire two or three), Pinkle was available when Tattoo had grown up, discovered herself to be a girl, and produced her first offspring.

  Tattoo was the mother of Pinkle Purr,

  A little black nothing of feet and fur;

  After that, kittens flowed thick and fast, though we managed to hold the adult population down to four. Pinkle was the only one to travel with us up to London. The others stayed at Cotchford, looked after by Mrs Tasker, greeting us at weekends in the rather offhand way that cats do, but nevertheless glad to see us. I adored them, of course, and felt tremendously flattered when one of them sat on my lap or lay on my bed or knocked on my bedroom door in the morning. Looking back on them and comparing them to cats I have known since (our present gang, for instance) I am bound to say that they were a dullish lot really. The only remarkable thing about them – and I never realized this until years later – was that we could safely leave a joint of meat on the sideboard or a plate of fish-paste sandwiches on the tea tray without first carrying out a thorough search of the room and then locking and bolting all doors and windows. No one believes this when I tell them, but I’m sure it’s true. How different from our present lot, on whose account we have had to devise double locks for our food cupboards.

  The other early addition to the family was Jessica, a donkey, and no connection whatever with Eeyore, except that she lived in a field a little like Eeyore’s. It was Nanny’s job, helped by Tasker and slightly helped by me, to catch her and saddle her. Sometimes this was easy, sometimes not. Our first outing was a cautious trip up the lane where, with luck, nothing too disastrous could happen. And I can still recall the horrifying moment when Jessica stopped and her legs began to sag. I was snatched from her back and Nanny and I watched, appalled, as she crumpled up on the ground, then rolled on to her side, then on to her back, then kicked up her legs in the air and let out an ear-splitting bellow, then rolled – still bellowing – from side to side, then scrambled to her feet and waited for me to remount. But Nanny said: ‘I don’t think you’d better, dear.’ And I didn’t think I’d better, either. And we all three walked home.

  On subsequent trips we knew what to expect, that it was just one of the things Jessica liked doing, and so, when her legs started sagging, I got off and waited until it was all over. Subsequent trips included our weekly visit to Hartfield, a mile away along the main road, up a steep hill, down a steep hill and in at the door of the first shop on the left hand side. Jessica needed no urging and the woman behind the counter no instructions. It was a pennyworth of bullseyes for each of us.

  Other creatures came and went. Frog spawn made its annual appearance in a jam jar on the windowsill in my nursery. Hedgehogs were discovered, given lodgings, stayed for a while, then made their escape. Bantams laid an egg or two in the potting shed. Ducks swam on the stream until their wing feathers had grown. Pigeons coo-ed from the dovecot. A mouse squeezed himself between the floorboards in my bedroom and for a few happy days found a piece of cheese waiting for him. And Alexander Beede lived briefly in
a matchbox.

  But though I made my wish, as Nanny told me I should, when I ate my first raspberries, and though I never told anybody what I had wished for, I never got the elephant, the real live elephant, that I had really set my heart on.

  12. The Toys

  I must now introduce the toys.

  Pooh was the oldest, only a year younger than I was, and my inseparable companion. As you find us in the poem ‘Us Two’, so we were in real life. Every child has his favourite toy, and every only-child has a special need for one. Pooh was mine, and probably, clasped in my arms, not really very different from the countless other bears clasped in the arms of countless other children. From time to time he went to the cleaners, and from time to time ears had to be sewn on again, lost eyes replaced and paws renewed.

  Eeyore, too, was an early present. Perhaps in his younger days he had held his head higher, but by the time the stories came to be written his neck had gone like that and this had given him his gloomy disposition. Piglet was a present from a neighbour who lived over the way, a present for the small boy she so often used to meet out walking with his Nanny. They were the three round which the stories began, but more characters were needed and so two were invented: Owl and Rabbit. Owl was owlish from the start and always remained so. But Rabbit, I suspect, began by being just the owner of the hole in which Pooh got stuck and then, as the stories went on, became less rabbity and more Rabbity; for rabbits are not by nature good organizers. Both Kanga and Tigger were later arrivals, presents from my parents, carefully chosen, not just for the delight they might give to their new owner, but also for their literary possibilities.

  So there they were, and to a certain extent their characters were theirs from birth. As my father said, making it all sound very simple, you only had to look at them to see at once that Eeyore was gloomy, Piglet squeaky, Tigger bouncy and so on. But of course there was much more to it than that. Take bears, for example.

  A row of Teddy bears sitting in a toyshop, all one size, all one price. Yet how different each is from the next. Some look gay, some look sad. Some look stand-offish, some look lovable. And one in particular, that one over there, has a specially endearing expression. Yes, that is the one we would like, please.

  The bear took his place in the nursery and gradually he began to come to life. It started in the nursery; it started with me. It could really start nowhere else, for the toys lived in the nursery and they were mine and I played with them. And as I played with them and talked to them and gave them voices to answer with, so they began to breathe. But alone I couldn’t take them very far. I needed help. So my mother joined me and she and I and the toys played together, and gradually more life, more character flowed into them, until they reached a point at which my father could take over. Then, as the first stories were written, the cycle was repeated. The Pooh in my arms, the Pooh sitting opposite me at the breakfast table, was a Pooh who had climbed trees in search of honey, who had got stuck in a rabbit hole, who was ‘a bear of no brain at all’ . . .

  Then Shepard came along, looked at the toy Pooh, read the stories and started drawing; and the Pooh who had been developing under my father’s pen began to develop under Shepard’s pen as well. You will notice this if you compare the early Poohs in Winnie the Pooh with the later Poohs in The House at Pooh Corner. What is it that gives Pooh his particularly Poohish look? It is the position of his eye. The eye that starts as quite an elaborate affair level with the top of Pooh’s nose, gradually moves downwards and ends up as a mere dot level with his mouth. And in this dot the whole of Pooh’s character can be read.

  That was how it happened. And when at last the final story had been written, my father, looking back over the seven years of Pooh’s life, wrote his dedication. It was to my mother.

  You gave me Christopher Robin, and then

  You breathed new life in Pooh.

  Whatever of each has left my pen

  Goes homing back to you.

  My book is ready, and comes to greet

  The mother it longs to see –

  It would be my present to you, my sweet,

  If it weren’t your gift to me.

  In the last chapter of The House at Pooh Corner our ways part. I go on to become a schoolboy. A child and his bear remain playing in the enchanted spot at the top of the forest. The toys are left behind, no longer wanted, in the nursery. So a glass case was made for them and it was fastened to the nursery wall in Mallord Street, and they climbed inside. And there they lived, sometimes glanced at, mostly forgotten, until the war came. Roo was missing. He had been lost years before, in the apple orchard up the lane. And Piglet’s face was a funny shape where a dog had bitten him. During the war they went to America and there they have been ever since . . .

  If you saw them today, your immediate reaction would be: ‘How old and battered and lifeless they look.’ But of course they are old and battered and lifeless. They are only toys and you are mistaking them for the real animals who lived in the forest. Even in their prime they were no more than a first rough sketch, the merest hint of what they were to become, and they are now long past their prime. Eeyore is the most recognizable; Piglet the least. So, if I am asked ‘Aren’t you sad that the animals are not in their glass case with you today?’ I must answer ‘Not really,’ and hope that this doesn’t seem too unkind. I like to have around me the things I like today, not the things I once liked many years ago. I don’t want a house to be a museum. When I grew out of my old First Eleven blazer, it was thrown away, not lovingly preserved to remind me of the proud day I won it with a score of thirteen not out. Every child has his Pooh, but one would think it odd if every man still kept his Pooh to remind him of his childhood. But my Pooh is different, you say: he is the Pooh. No, this only makes him different to you, not different to me. My toys were and are to me no more than yours were and are to you. I do not love them more because they are known to children in Australia or Japan. Fame has nothing to do with love.

  I wouldn’t like a glass case that said: ‘Here is fame’; and I don’t need a glass case to remind me: ‘Here was love’.

  13. Husky at Pageants

  When I was about eight years old I spent a fortnight at Littlehampton-after-Whooping-Cough (as my mother used to call it, to distinguish it from Littlehampton-after-Chicken-Pox where I had gone the previous year). I went with Nanny, and since we stayed at the same boarding house on each occasion I find it difficult now to disentangle the two visits; but it was certainly on our second that I had riding lessons. I could ride Jessica, of course. That is to say I could sit on her broad back and be carried down to the village. But that wasn’t real riding. That wasn’t what I was learning to do now, for the first time, at Littlehampton-after-Whooping-Cough.

  But this chapter is not about riding, although riding became then and remained for the next seven years or so my passion in life. I mention it for another reason, because of a remark that my riding instructor made that has stuck in my memory. I had asked if I could do something, I forget what, something more difficult, more daring, more exciting; and he had said, ‘No.’ Then he added: ‘You see I’ve got to take care of you. After all, you’re quite an important little personage.’

  This chapter, then, is about being quite an important little personage.

  The books were published and each as it appeared met with immediate and enormous success. The names of Pooh and Christopher Robin became known to thousands of children and their parents.

  Throw a stone into a pool of water and you make a splash from which the ripples travel outwards. The bigger the splash, the further the ripples travel before they die away. Pooh made a big splash and the ripples travelled a long way. But a child has small horizons and they soon passed over the edge of mine and vanished out of sight. I had my own copies of the books, of course. I read them often (the stories more than the poems), knew them well and loved them greatly. My friends had their copies, and they liked them, as I would have expected. But if the books were also being read an
d enjoyed by complete strangers in Edinburgh and New York, this was something I knew nothing about. Were the reviews rapturous? Even if I had known, I could not have measured their rapture nor compared it with the rapture that had greeted other children’s books. And even if I had been able to measure it, I would naturally have expected my father’s books to be better than anyone else’s. Was Bumpus reporting record sales? Was Methuen ordering reprint after reprint? What did I know of this? What would the figures have meant to me even if I had known them?

  Most of the ripples, then, travelled over my horizon and away; so that a child in Los Angeles was better able to judge the fame of Pooh than I was. But some were reflected and came back; and of those that came back, some were allowed through my nursery door.

  My nursery door. Was it left open or did they keep it shut? If shut, how carefully was it guarded? How many of all who hoped to come through were turned away? These are questions I never wondered about until now, and now it is too late to find the answers. I can only record my memories of what did get through. Letters, for a start, though probably not every letter. Today I still get letters from children asking after Pooh; so I imagine I got them then, though I cannot very vividly recall them. Perhaps they were mostly intercepted. If ‘Wol’ was to be their answer, it was surely better and kinder to all that this decision should be my parents’ rather than mine. So perhaps I was only allowed to read those that seemed extra nice, extra appealing, extra deserving, those where a reply really would bring pleasure outweighing the wearisomeness of writing: the letters from Farm Street School, for instance.