The Life and Times of the Real Winnie-the-Pooh

by Shirley Harrison

  The twisty corridors and low-hung doorways were a hazard for heads especially at night. The house was lit mainly by candles and they made their own gas which supplied the lights in the passage at the top of the stairs and the drawing room.

  Water was pumped up from the well every day after breakfast by Tasker’s nephew, and for the first bath of each visit ran from the tap as a rather brown murky tea-like liquid.

  Upstairs were the bedrooms for Daff and Blue. It was here, through his mother’s room, that Moon discovered the ‘Secret Passage’ running behind the wall. At first it was used as storage for cases but these were removed and Moon made it his own. He loved his mother’s bedroom where he would sit on the soft carpet to be dried after a bath.

  Moon’s recollection as an adult was of his father’s room and study being the darkest, dingiest places in the house. ‘Most of us have small, sad places somewhere in our hearts’, he wrote years later. Blue, he said, kept his sadnesses to himself and then let them spill out into his writing. Was it perhaps, that his shabby armchair, in his little north-facing study, and his miserable bedroom were the origin of Eeyore’s gloomy place? Did he, maybe, transfer some of his own inner loneliness into the character of the gloomy, isolated donkey everyone loved?

  Moon and the animals shared the tip-tilted day nursery with its sloping floor, along the corridor next to the night nursery and Nou’s bedroom.

  Up again was Mrs Wilson’s bedroom and the room which became Moon’s very own ‘carpenter’s shop’. As he grew older Moon became a dedicated maker of furniture, a craft that was to be a lifelong passion. From his earliest childhood he loved making and unmaking things. He sewed and knitted, he made tapestry pictures and from his Meccano set he built a working clock. He once took a dead mouse to pieces to see how it was made and threw it away when he couldn’t see the answer. He dissected the lock on the nursery door but when he couldn’t put it back together an ironmonger had to be called. Generally everything Moon made worked and by the age of seven he was the family’s ‘Chief Mender’.

  The furniture and interior décor were Daff’s province and she brought all her skill into mixing, matching and making a home. She had her own distinct eye for what was beautiful. She hated antiques, particularly polished mahogany. She consulted Peter Jones’ store in London and with their help she created a gay, cheerful setting for colourful hand-painted furniture. Caring for it, she left to others.

  The first real animals at Cotchford were a couple of fox terriers which were ‘a great mistake’ and they were followed by cats. George Tasker produced the founder of the family, a tortoiseshell kitten. Moon announced ‘his name is Pinkle but I shall call him Tattoo’. However, Tattoo turned out to be a she – and produced a kitten they called ‘Pinkle Purr’ who sometimes travelled to London with Pooh in the car. Pinkle Purr features in Now We Are Six. Jessica the donkey also arrived quite early and Moon and Pooh used to ride down to the village with Nou holding the reins.

  Mrs Jacques ran the bakery and bread was delivered by van drawn by Bridget, the horse. Mrs Jacques also sold sweets and knew that Moon had come for a pennyworth of his favourite bulls eyes. Later her daughter Mary took over and eventually, much later still, Mary’s daughter, Dawn (now Mrs Boakes) used to help out delivering Coburg and cottage loaves baked in solid fuel ovens on the premises, to Cotchford Farm and to Earl De La Warr’s family at Buckhurst Park, in nearby Withyham. She was a familiar sight around the lanes in a rather less romantic but more practical blue Ford van.

  As a little girl, Dawn remembers seeing Daff, tall and slim, with blue-rinsed hair and shocking bright-red lipstick walking, always in the middle of the road, past the shop as if to avoid meeting anyone. ‘People thought she was a bit standoffish’ she says. ‘Very few people really knew who the Milnes were’.

  There were many more shops in the village High Street then than there are today. There was a post office, a cobbler, a blacksmith, an undertaker and two grocers, a tea shop, two butchers and a wonderful shop called ‘The Candy Box’ which sold every kind of sweet a child could want: mint éclairs, lemon sherberts, barley sugars, blackberry and custards, ‘Army and Navies’ – greyish blue drops with a spicy flavour – and ‘Tom Thumb’ drops. There were also three pubs.

  Cars were a rarity. In fact, according to Tommy Mitchell whose father and uncle ran Mitchell’s Garage at the other end of Cotchford Lane, the lads used to play cricket in the ‘main’ road. Burnside eventually taught Blue to drive but by common agreement he was a menace. He could be heard a mile off, revving up and ambling very slowly round the village. Tommy thought Burnside was a really good bloke and remembers how he sometimes used to drop in to the garage for a cup of tea.

  The Mitchell brothers had a splendid car which they bought from Lord Abergavenny and never removed the impressive family Coat of Arms on the bonnet. It also had a talking tube between the driver and his passengers and was, on occasion, used to transport Pooh and the family.

  There was at least one other garage in the village, whose work included chauffeuring and haulage. Sometimes they ferried Mrs Milne, Moon and Pooh into Tunbridge Wells, eight miles away, to get a paw patched or an eye restored.

  At first it was Pooh, Nou and Moon who embarked on adventures to explore the mysteries and the promises of the surrounding country.

  Very soon Anne Darlington (with her nanny) joined them at weekends and sometimes in the holidays, especially at Easter. Sometimes, when Nou was on holiday Moon would go with Pooh and join Anne and her family on the Kent coast, and at Christmas they were together in Mallord Street, but the summer belonged to Cotchford. These were the ‘buttercup days’ of their childhood.

  Most importantly there was the river, which was really a stream, a tributary of the Medway (which was a proper river). It ran slowly, deep down between high slippery banks carved in the winter when the water rushed faster and murkier. Here was their favourite spot. It was just possible to swing across on a useful branch, just deep enough to swim for three or four strokes. They called it ‘Dragon’s Bridge’ because, sure enough, the tree had been moulded over the years to look like the snout and green back of a dragon down which, on brave days, Moon and Anne could clamber over to the other bank. Here Moon made his rope ladder and built a hut of twigs – just like the home that Pooh and Piglet built for melancholy Eeyore when his own stick and twig house blew down. Here also, they searched for snipe and butterflies and watched a weasel family out for a walk.

  Soon they made more friends.

  There was Hannah Symons, who lived at Kilnwood Chicken Farm up the lane. She was playing outside as they passed one day and Nou called to ask her mother (she didn’t have a nanny) if Hannah could join them. Of course, Mrs Symons said ‘yes’.

  In 2009 Hannah (by then Mrs Rooth) remembered how she and Moon played and shared their gardens – although she was never invited inside Cotchford Farm itself and Moon never visited her home. They paddled in the stream, dug a hole in the river bank which became their ‘Channel Tunnel’, climbed trees and pretended to be monkeys and they helped with haymaking and apple-picking while Pooh looked on, his back against a tree.

  Hannah was particularly good at climbing trees – a very useful talent in the woodland. Very soon Moon would be just as good and even better at falling out. There was a special apple orchard at the top of the lane where the trees were old and bent and so were brilliant for climbing.

  Imagine the distress when, one afternoon, back at the house for tea they discovered that Roo was missing. Nou and Moon searched and searched but he was never found. Piglet too suffered a terrible mishap when his nose was badly bitten by a neighbour’s dog.

  As well as Hannah and Anne, there was Iva Osman (who became Mrs Iva Hill), daughter of John Osman estate manager for Cotchford when it was a farm and importantly the builder of Poohsticks bridge. The Osmans lived up the lane from Hannah’s house. For years Moon kept in touch with Iva, sent birthday cards and holiday letters from Normandy, signed with ‘lots of love’. They a
re now in the Sussex Records Office in Lewes.

  Iva described in an interview how she used to run free in Cotchford Farmhouse when it was still empty, before the Milnes came. She paddled in the streams which were alive with trout and dragonflies and her family’s Sunday walk was up to the clump of trees which eventually became ‘The Enchanted Place’.

  Opposite Cotchford Farm lived Les and Mary Hallett. Mary, who died in 2004 at the age of 93, had been born on the farm, the youngest of five children. East Grinstead five miles away was the farthest she ever went from home. She always said that Moon was not the little angel as sometimes alleged and often told the story of the day her brother had thrown a bucket of water over him to stop his pranks.

  It was on a visit to Posingford Wood, over the bridge which crossed Posingford Brook, that Pooh and Moon went one day with Nou and discovered the charcoal burner who appeared later in Now We are Six, the third of the Pooh quartet. He was a rare breed, even in those days and he told them wonderful stories. He said he had actually seen a fox.

  E.H. Shepard was to capture those moments with two simple drawings of Pooh and Moon on the Forest floor huffing and puffing at their own little kiln of twigs and then sitting together on a log and listening enthralled,

  ‘Oh, the charcoal burner has tales to tell! And he lives in the Forest and knows us well.’

  Posingford Bridge itself was soon to rank with other historic bridges of the world and named by Daff as ‘Poohsticks Bridge’. It was from this bridge that Moon and his friends would drop sticks and race across to the other side to see whose stick came through first. The game was old but the name they gave it was new. ‘Poohsticks’ was to become an international sport.

  One day Eeyore, having fallen into the stream, floated under the bridge, legs in air, while his friends tried to ‘hoosh’ him to the bank, by dropping a large stone in the water.

  Trees played an important part in the children’s lives. Pooh and Moon shared a real-life house in the old walnut tree at the top of the drive. There was just enough room to squeeze inside through the split in the trunk and sit on the soft sandy floor.

  The bedroom was on a branch and the dining room on the branch below. It was the first of many tree houses and has long gone. Hannah’s house was in one of the nearby ruined farm buildings used by the Taskers.

  When Anne came to Cotchford she of course, needed a house, too. So Anne lived in the new wooden well house which was bigger than Moon’s house and he and Pooh came visiting. Sitting on the floor with Pooh and Jumbo they made mud pies and sang and laughed at jokes.

  Sometimes they went on family outings across the Forest. Blue was a bad rambler but a keen walker and trees became very important for him, too, in the stories that he was about to write. There everyone lived in trees. Pooh had his own tree, so did Piglet. Piglet’s tree was called ‘Trespassers W’. He explained that his Grandfather was named ‘Trespassers William’ and the tree was named after him.

  One of Moon’s favourite walks with Nou was across the main road from the Enchanted Place and up into the dark and mysterious ‘100 Aker Wood’. which was really Earl De La Warr’s 500 Acre Wood and into a different kind of forest. Here was a real forest where the trees were ancient oak and ash and beech and the floor was soft and rustled as they walked. Moon and Nou sometimes met the young Lord Buckhurst (who was the same age and was also known as Billy). His Nanny was Nanny Buckhurst. She and Nou became friends and the boys went adventuring together.

  There was one particular tree which Moon, Nou and Pooh discovered on their first ‘Expotition’ to the wood. It was this tree which Shepard eventually used to illustrate the story Eeyore Loses a Tail and which when Moon was grown up was vividly recalled in The Enchanted Places. It looked, he said, as though over the centuries it had grown tired of holding its arms up to the sky and had allowed them to droop. Those drooping branches were a challenge to small boys. They were slippery and you could slide along them bit by bit until you were scarily high and able to swing your legs.

  This, they agreed, was Owl’s house, known as ‘The Chestnuts’. It was a charming, old-world residence and was far grander than anybody else’s home because it had a knocker AND a bell pull.

  The sad events on the Blusterous day when The Chestnuts was blown down are described in The House at Pooh Corner. Pooh and Piglet were visiting and the front door letter box ended up in the ceiling. Piglet had to do a ‘Very Grand Thing’ to escape and go for help to get them all out.

  With his usual attention to simple details, Shepard insisted first on sketching draft drawings of exactly how he imagined the inside of Owl’s house would have looked before it was uprooted. He was then able to illustrate more accurately the devastation caused by the gale.

  It is a moving story because eventually Eeyore found a very suitable new residence for Owl which he had already decided to call ‘The Wolery’. The trouble was that it was really ‘Trespassers W’ and it belonged to Piglet. So Piglet, being the kindly little creature he was, gulped and said nothing except that he hoped Owl would be happy in it and he went off to live with Pooh.

  These were halcyon days for Pooh. Moon learned to make crazy paving and built a path from Pooh’s house. Tasker made him a wooden sundial at the end to give the path somewhere to go and he built a ‘heffalump trap’ covered with sticks in case too many people walked down the path and spoilt it. His first victim was poor Mrs Tasker and then he really was in disgrace.

  Blue was watching and absorbing it all. The ‘Pooh books’, as they were to be called affectionately, were simmering in his imagination. He was now busy trying to write more stories like that commissioned by the Evening News for its 1925 Christmas number.

  That story began:

  ‘Once upon a Time, a very long time ago now, about last Friday, Winnie-the-Pooh lived in a forest all by himself.’

  Pooh was destined not to be alone for long.

  Soon, in the tales that followed, he would take centre stage and the Forest would be shared with his friends the second Piglet, Rabbit, Eeyore, Tigger, Kanga, Roo and, of course, Christopher Robin. First, the Forest had to be introduced to E.H. Shepard.

  Chapter Ten

  His Fingers Blew Across the Page

  ERNEST H. SHEPARD was an artist whose talent as a painter in oils, of portraits and English landscapes, is largely unknown to the world in general. Forgotten, too, are his many years as a Punch cartoonist and illustrator of over one hundred books. All that the public remembers today is that this gentle, kindly man was, as his biographer, Arthur R. Chandler, defined him, The Man Who Drew Pooh.

  Just as Pooh eclipsed Milne’s ambitions to be considered a serious literary figure and dramatist, so was it to be with the artist Shepard.

  In 1925 Milne was caught up in all the brouhaha of the bonanza around When We Were Very Young – and enjoying it. So was Daphne. She wrote a ‘PS’ on the bottom of one of his letters: ‘We are all very well and happy and pleased with each other.’

  Milne’s letters to his new ‘collaborator’ are mostly in the Shepard Archive at Surrey university in Guildford. They are invariably addressed to ‘Dear Shepard’ and the replies to ‘Dear Milne’. No ‘Kipper’ or ‘Blue’. Milne’s writing is small and slopes in triangles from the top left to the bottom right of each page. Infuriatingly they are mostly undated.

  Shepard always said that he found Milne difficult to know, but the author’s letters are friendly and almost paternal, although Milne was, at forty-four, three years younger than Shepard. He says, in one letter, early in the relationship, that this would be ‘the last time that infernal man Milne is bothering you. Pray forgive him and believe that he is ever yours in friendship and admiration.’

  The first invitation to Cotchford appears to have been for September 1925, when Shepard and his wife, Florence, went down to meet the animals again and to explore the Forest which was their home – in reality and in imagination. There Shepard discovered a different Milne: relaxed and no long stiff and reticent as he had
been at their first meeting in Mallord Street.

  Moon, who had very little experience of playing with boys – even of his own age – was also delighted to discover that Shepard’s son, Graham, at the age of 18 and about to leave for Oxford university, was up for splashing about in the stream and doing muddy things, such as turning a floating log into a battleship and then an alligator.

  The family returned to Hartfield in the spring of the next year and the two men set off on an ‘Expotition’ to explore the Forest which Moon and Pooh already knew so well.

  At that time of year the gorse is ablaze on the moorland and woods are heavy with the scent of bluebells. They too followed the sandy track up to the high point of what Milne called ‘Galleon’s Lap’ – sixty something trees in a circle from where the sunrise is breathtaking and the whole world spread out until it reached the sky.

  Moon said that he knew it was ‘Enchanted’ as no one had ever been able to count the trees and you could sit down carelessly up there and not be forced to get up in a hurry and look for somewhere else, because the grass was quiet and soft and green. ‘The Enchanted Place’ was to become the centre of Pooh’s world.

  The Forest touched Shepard, too, and he began to draw. He was a keen observer. There is nothing static in his pictures; whether it is the prickliness of the gorse or the tail-drooping gloom of Eeyore, everything is alive.

  His step-granddaughter, Penelope Fitzgerald, wrote sensitively about Kipper’s work, in the Sunday Telegraph on 22 December 1991: ‘He let his fingers blow across the page.’

  The secret of Pooh’s personality lay in the way in which her grandfather placed his eye far lower down and further back than in any previous teddy bear. It was this that gave him the uniquely, bemused, anxious-to-please expression that prompted Christopher Robin (and the rest of the world) to say lovingly ’Oh Bear, how I do love you!’

  ‘We all love your pictures’, wrote Milne to Shepard, ‘you have made a delightful book of it.’