Busby is the English name for the Hungarian prémes csákó or kucsma, a military head-dress made of fur, worn by Hungarian hussars. Those worn by the Hussars and the Royal Artillery are cylindrical in shape. The rifle busby is a folding cap of astrakhan (curly lambs wool) formerly worn by rifle regiments. It looks like a Glengarry but is taller and has straight plumes in the front.
The bearskin cap is much taller and is worn most notably by the five regiments of foot guards of the Household Division (Grenadier, Coldstream, Scots, Irish and Welsh Guards) who parade outside the Palace.
One day a soldier did come to play in Mallord Street. He was an actor, Louis Goodrich, who Blue knew at the Garrick Club. He was invited round by Blue and to everyone’s delight arrived in full regalia – scarlet tunic and tall furry bearskin. It didn’t matter if Moon thought it was a busby – the little boy was quite overcome with excitement.
‘Soldier’ came many times after that – always to nursery tea because he came to see Pooh and Moon and not the grown-ups. Anne was allowed to join in and sometimes after tea Soldier got everyone busy cooking. Nou collected bowls and jugs, icing sugar, egg white, cochineal and peppermint essence and the children started pouring, mixing, tasting, rolling and tasting again. It was blissfully noisy fun with a great deal of shrieking and giggling.
Moon adored him and certainly did not understand why his shy father couldn’t possibly compete with the extrovert Soldier or how hurt he must have secretly been by Soldier’s popularity.
There was even more military excitement at this time, for every Thursday, on his drill night, Nou’s young man, Alf, called. He was really good fun and was excellent at playing, too. He arrived in Territorial Army dress which was not spectacular like Soldier’s. Even so, Moon was all over him, Nou recalled.
Alf admitted later that he grew quite fond of ‘the little fellow’ and almost understood why Nou was loath to abandon him.
After her charge went off to boarding school when he was nine, she and the long-suffering Alf were finally married. They lived first in Croydon and then in the village of Three Oaks in the countryside near Bexhill. Their cottage was renamed ‘Vespers’ and furnished as a wedding present by the Milnes. They grew vegetables and filled the garden with statues of the children they were too late to have themselves, as well as reproductions of Pooh and other toys.
They also offered Bed and Breakfast holidays for select families.
One of these were the Pitt-Paynes. Today, musician Dr. James Pitt-Payne remembers all too well their visit when he was three years old.
‘The cottage was quite dark and creepy to a young child and I thought she was a bit of a grim old thing who rather put me in my place. She told me that Christopher Robin was always a very good boy, whereas I left rather a lot to be desired. I was not allowed to handle the much-treasured first editions of A.A. Milne’s work as I was somewhat grubby in those days’.
In 1965, Olive Brockwell looked back on her happy days with the Milnes in the Sunday Times – the only newspaper interview she ever gave.
She and Alfred talked to the reporter over tea, served from a special edition Pooh and Christopher Robin tea set which had been given to her as a birthday present. ‘I believe this is the second service. The very first service was given to the Queen, when she was little Princess Elizabeth’, she said. ‘She was a great lover of Pooh’.
Her own memories of Blue did not echo those of his grown-up son. She saw him as a devoted parent who entered the boy’s world of make-believe and gave voices to the toys, long before he gave them life in the books.
Olive died in 1978 and is buried alongside Alf in the graveyard of the Church of St. Lawrence in Guestling.
Occasionally, after breakfast in London, Moon and his father would leave Nou behind and take a stroll together round the neighbouring streets towards Fulham wearing their indoor shoes and no hats. ‘Quite informal. Not party at all’. Every time they passed the same postman and on one occasion Blue asked Moon to say ‘How do you do’ – which he did, of course. But the postman did not acknowledge him and the little boy explained rather sadly, ‘He doesn’t know me’.
It would not be long before the whole world would know the family. Moon would become the public’s Christopher Robin and fingers would point wherever he went. At first, he rather enjoyed his celebrity but this excitement was not to survive his growing-up.
Chapter Eight
Home to Hartfield
LEAVING LONDON ON THE B2026, just past Edenbridge you slip across the Kent border and into East Sussex. Down, and up and down again, the countryside becomes more and more agricultural until eventually you find yourself in a time-warp - the village of Hartfield - gateway to Ashdown Forest.
Hartfield is described on the Internet site ‘Tour uK’ rather unpromisingly as ‘only a small village but nicely formed’. In fact, although its best known residents have been a teddy bear and a pop star named Brian Jones, Hartfield’s history is quietly colourful. The picture of a deer on the roadside sign as you enter the village confirms the origins of its name: the Anglo-Saxon name for Hartfield was Hereot Feld – the field where harts roam. Certainly it is recorded that deer from the Forest once invaded the village in large numbers by night.
Local legend claims, probably incorrectly, that Henry VIII stayed overnight at Bolebroke (now known as Bolebroke Castle) maybe even with Anne Boleyn. Bolebroke Gatehouse is said to be the second oldest brick building in Britain.
Hartfield has changed very little externally since Pooh made that journey for the first time. In the summer of 1924 the Milne family piled into the large blue Fiat, with Pooh sitting in front with Nou and Moon alongside the chauffeur, Burnside.
They forked left, up Jib Jack Hill and then just before a small bridge they reached a well hidden turning on the right. This was the exciting bit. Burnside, who was not at all impressed by such rural things, hated it. ‘Jolly old lane’ he grumbled. He was rightly worried about his smart car as the surface of the lane leading to Cotchford Farm was – and still is – wonderfully bumpy and riddled with potholes made, in those days, by farm carts. When it rained they became yellow, muddy car traps.
It was not the sort of place a property developer would ever be likely to spoil. For four-year-old Moon, side by side with Pooh, it all promised unimaginable adventures ahead.
up and up the hill, beyond that lane, the road twists between woodland until at the top, without warning, the sky opens and as far as you can see in all directions lie woodland copses, heather clad moorland and hills, cobwebbed by little streams and rivulets stretching away towards the South Downs on the far horizon. This is the landscape that was soon to become known as ‘Pooh Country’.
Ashdown Forest looks dramatically different from its immediate surroundings as a result of its distinctive land-use over many centuries. Originally known as the Forest of Anderida, it stretched 120 miles from East to West and 30 miles from North to South.
When the Romans arrived they established their centre at Garden Hill high on the Forest near Wych Cross and began to exploit what was already a flourishing iron industry. Remains of the Roman Road which lies parallel to the B2026 can be seen near Blue’s Golf Club at Holtye on the road to East Grinstead.
In the eighth century, the Venerable Bede described the area as ‘thick and inaccessible; a place of retreat for large herds of deer, and swine’. Bear, wolf and wildcat were also present.
In 1296 a large part of the Forest was enclosed by a twenty three-mile ‘pale fence’, the gates of which are marked today in names such as Chelwood Gate and Chuck Hatch. It became known as Lancaster Great Park and was used for several hundred years as a royal hunting ground for red and fallow deer, much loved later by Henry VIII. The King shot deer from a specially built tower on a high point at the place now called King’s Standing.
By the sixteenth century Ashdown Forest had become a major industrial area. Forges and furnaces were everywhere and the country’s first blast furnace was constructed at Coleman’s
Hatch in 1496. A great deal of wood was required to provide the necessary charcoal for all this activity: the reason that Ashdown Forest is now a generally open landscape is because most of the tree cover was cut down to provide fuel for iron production and then ship-building.
The first cannon was cast in 1543 and, as conflict with Spain grew, so did the Forest’s reputation for guns. It is even claimed that the opposing fleets were both armed from Ashdown Forest.
Today glassy slag and cinder can still sometimes be seen on the ground, or in the beds of some of the streams. At times the streams, too, reveal the rustycoloured stains of the iron compounds that drew this early industrial activity to Ashdown Forest. These traces are all that now remain of the iron industry, since by the early eighteenth century iron-production techniques were changing.
In the late seventeenth century huge pillow mounds 200 metres long and seven metres wide were built on the northern edge of the Forest for the rearing of rabbits.
William Cobbett, passing through in January 1822 unkindly noted in his book Rural Rides: ‘The most villainously ugly spot I saw in England. This lasts you for five miles, getting, if possible, uglier and uglier all the way, till, at last, as if barren soil, nasty spewy gravel, heath and even that stunted, were not enough, you see some rising spots, which instead of trees, present you with black, ragged, hideous rocks’.
How different 102 years later was its impact on the young Moon, remembering, as an adult, sitting on the heather with his thoughts while the Forest talked to him of imaginary dream worlds. ‘The Forest was all mine.’
During the seventeenth century, the Forest had been granted to the Earls of Bristol and Dukes of Dorset and through the years significant areas were enclosed, parcels of land were taken for small-holdings and commoners became increasingly worried about their livelihoods.
Not until the first Ashdown Forest Act, passed in 1885, were the Forest borders defined and they are largely unchanged to this day. There are now about seven hundred families with Commoners’ Rights. The De La Warr family, descendants of the Dorsets, were still the freehold owners until 1988, when the Forest was purchased from the 10th Earl by East Sussex County Council. Today, it is managed by the Ashdown Forest Trust. Only the 500 Acre Wood (Pooh’s ‘100 Acre Wood’) is still maintained by the De La Warrs.
With careful protection by the Conservators, Ashdown Forest, with its ever-changing sky, bracing winds, swirling mists and dramatic sun rise and setting, is still a haven of outstanding natural beauty not so different today from the near-dream world of Christopher Robin’s childhood. Thanks (or maybe not, if you live in Hartfield) to the adventures of that small boy and his toys in the 1920s, to the inspirational story telling of A.A. Milne and the exquisitely sensitive work of artist, E.H. Shepard, their Forest has become today a place of pilgrimage for grown-ups and children from all over the world. Despite its new role, the silence and space remain, lifting and refreshing the spirit.
When the Milnes first drove down to view the old empty Cotchford Farm, there were still Highland Cattle and sheep roaming the adjoining land and wandering along the almost car-free roads.
They were soon to be joined by some more unusual residents– a small tubby teddy bear, his friend Piglet, and a melancholy donkey, who had started life with his head held high. Sadly, by the time the stories appeared, Eeyore’s neck had lost some of its stuffing with so much constant cuddling. His head had drooped and he had become the sad character who lived in a damp and gloomy bit at the bottom of the garden that nobody wanted. There was the bouncy Tigger and the motherly Kanga with her baby Roo. Originally, in Milne’s handwritten notes, Kanga was a ‘he’ but this was corrected and she assumed her role as the only female in the books. Then the sagacious Owl and busy Rabbit – both products of Blue’s imagination for the sake of the stories – arrived on the scene.
‘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 his mother joined him and gradually more character flowed into them until they reached the point at which his father could take over.
The places that Blue described – the ‘North Pole’, the ‘Heffalump Trap’, the ‘Enchanted Place’, and, of course, ‘Poohsticks Bridge’ – are there to be rediscovered. After years of villagers fighting against the promotion of Pooh, maps can now be bought in the village to show new arrivals where to find them. The suggested locations shown are, perhaps, a trifle ‘wobbly’ but a little imagination makes anything possible.
The weather is much as it always was. ‘In the country’ wrote Christopher Milne ‘weather matters’. He explained that in London you only notice weather if it is hot or cold or very wet. In the country weather brings exciting things to do everyday and sometimes it stops you doing the exciting things you had meant to do.
The story of Cotchford itself has been recorded in various historical documents. It was first mentioned in 1574 as Scotchford Furnace and Forge – and was playing an important role in the iron industry.
In 1924, when Blue discovered the house, it had been largely abandoned although some remaining farm buildings at the top of the drive were occupied by George Tasker and his wife. The farmhouse had been rescued by a Mr Jervis who partially restored it before selling it on to the Milnes.
There was still a huge amount to do and, to give her credit, Daff, sophisticated town-lover that she was, surprisingly had a vision of the potential in the garden itself– acres of overgrown field, jungle and bog bordered by the Forest and, excitingly, a small rather muddy stream said to be a nameless tributary of the river Medway.
Daff had grown up among the beautiful landscaped flowerbeds and gardens of the de Selincourt family home and Cotchford reminded her of the peace and solitude she had loved as a child.
She made frequent visits to the house before the family moved in. Equipped with sandwiches and a thermos she would travel, alone at first, from London on the train, taking dozens of her favourite daffodil and tulip bulbs, bought, of course, from Harrods. She would be met at the station by a driver from one of the village garages and driven up to Cotchford, where George and she began work on taming the wilderness.
Once the house itself was ready, tall, handsome George (who looked like a Spanish sea-captain) became the Milnes’ full time gardener – Daphne called him the Head Gardener. It sounded quite grand. At the end of the week he could be found wearing his smart brown suit and homburg hat, casually sweeping the brick path outside the house, to remind the mistress tactfully that it was pay-day. She never forgot. Her husband accepted his lot as ‘under Gardener’.
George was very proud of his prize-winning dahlias and chrysanthemums which he exhibited not only at the local Horticultural shows to which the Milnes never went, but also at the Chelsea Flower Show in London. The villagers observed, somewhat wryly, Daff’s condition that they should be entered but that they were not to be donated to the church!
The family moved in with Pooh and the other animals in 1925. So began their regular weekend one-and-a-half-hour car journey to Hartfield from London on Saturday mornings returning, in the early days, on Monday afternoons. At first, until Moon went to school, they stayed for a month in the spring and two ‘glorious’ months in the summer holidays.
Christopher Milne later described his mother as a cat in the country – revelling in the peace, taking walks by herself. As a child, he sometimes asked to go with her and she would say: ‘No, meet me on the way back. I like to be met’. Occasionally, when it was dark, they would walk to the Forest together, up the mysterious tree-lined road past Chuck Hatch, listening to owls and the wind and not talking at all. In those days, they had it all to themselves.
Blue, on the other hand, was at heart a Londoner which was, he said, ‘the right sort of place for a writer to live.’ He loved the country like a dog – always on the go, playing games, chasing a ball, climbing hills, riding a bike – never doing nothing. Everything had to have a purpose
which didn’t always suit Moon – who sometimes preferred being busy doing nothing. But he was not the insufferably spoilt child that some critics portrayed later. He also loved ‘dog games’ with his father, playing cricket, catching balls, bouncing balls. Nou was very useful and joined in fielding.
The stream became Blue’s project – the plan was to turn it into an attractive goldfish pond but somehow that never happened and as the weeds and brown scum flourished it became a wonderful hunting ground for Moon and his father, in boots. Together, usually watched by Pooh and with nets and golf clubs, they fished and dug for nobbly newts and dragonfly larvae, they hooked out snakes that were hunting fish under the weeds and flung them away into the bullrushes.
Eventually all the alterations were complete and staff quarters organised off the kitchen for Mrs Wilson the housekeeper and her daughter Pat. A rather damp, dark, north-facing little study along the corridor was set aside on the ground floor in which pipe-smoking Blue could write. Cotchford was ready to take its place in literary history.
Chapter Nine
Pooh’s Corner
LIKE MALLORD STREET, Cotchford Farm has hardly changed today from how it was described when the Milnes lived there. Here is the background, the building blocks of Moon's early years that his father wove through the stories of Pooh's life on the Forest.
Walking through the front door, to the left is the dining room with a chimney through which you could see up to the sky and to the right a drawing room with a similar fireplace which burnt slabs of peat that smoked and filled the house with fumes and was bricked up.
The Life and Times of the Real Winnie-the-Pooh Page 6