The book was on the New York Times best-seller list for forty nine weeks and is still used as required reading in some college and university courses both in America and the U.K.
Pooh and the Psychologists was published later in England in 2000 by Egmont. Its author, Professor of Psychology, John Tyerman Williams, argues that the whole of Western Philosophy from the Cosmologists of Ancient Greece to the Existentialists of today can be found in Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner.
How to Catch a Woozle, said the reviews, is a commentary on Kant’s theory of phenomena, Piglet’s Anxiety is an example of Heidegger’s Being-towards-Death and Eeyore’s Party is a form of Nietzsche’s Ass Festival from Thus Spake Zarathustra.
However, to keep a sense of perspective, in 2009 Pooh was beaten into second place on the BBC children’s ‘Best Bedtime Story’ poll by The Gruffalo.
Chapter Eightteen
The Shop at Pooh Corner
MEANTIME WHILE ALL THIS was going on in Pooh’s new homeland, the activity generated in his name had also been escalating in the place of his birth.
Since the end of World War II, the little shops in Hartfield High Street had closed as one by one supermarkets in Tunbridge Wells and other nearby towns, went from strength to strength.
Then, early in 1978 a young potter, Mike Ridley, rented the white weather-boarded shop, formerly the home of the Jacques family and then run as the village bakery. It was a building echoing with the ghosts of summers past, when young Billy Moon would slip through the creaky door with Nanny Nou and Pooh to buy his special bulls eyes sweets.
Mike began by making children’s nightlights- pottery houses with animals inside, one of which was named ‘Wol’s House’. It was a good beginning but there were more excitements ahead. Mike realised, just in time, that October 1928, fifty years before, had been the publishing date of The House at Pooh Corner .
There was an anniversary to celebrate.
For the Ridleys – his wife Jan and daughters Clare and Emma – it was action time and within a few weeks they had converted and opened a gift shop. They called it ‘Pooh Corner’.
Was the village happy? Not at all. The success of the shop caused traffic flow problems in the narrow High Street and only the pubs were grateful to Pooh.
However, the rest of the world was delighted. Visitors began to flood in from far and wide, even from Iceland and in many cases people stopped over on their travels especially to pay their respects to Pooh. One couple even asked if they might be married on the premises!
At the last look in the shop’s visitors’ book, Pooh Corner had welcomed people, either through the door or on-line, from fifty six countries. The top ten are uK, uSA, Japan, Australia, Netherlands, Canada, Belgium, Germany, Argentina and New Zealand.
Mike says: ‘Pooh fans are the nicest people you could ever hope to meet’. He adds, ‘I’m a bit like Tigger myself – full of bounce but not very organised – I meet people every day in the shop, they laugh, they are happy and make me feel privileged to live and work in this wonderful place.’
Today, the shop overflows with ‘Poohfernalia’ selling a range of Pooh-inspired books, goods and gifts. It is now open throughout the year, and has a small tearoom with check tablecloths where Mike’s second wife, June, offers free birthday cake on 21 August – Pooh’s birthday. The tea-room is called ‘Piglit’s’ – spelt with a second ‘i’ and not an ‘e’ because that is how Piglet signs his name.
Above the shop is ‘Owl’s House’ a self-catering holiday flat. The original pottery itself has become a necessary warehouse.
Over the years, Pooh Corner has also been visited by many well-known people. Among them have been actors from TV soaps EastEnders and Neighbours, David Davis (uncle David from the BBC’s Children’s Hour) who adapted the Pooh stories for radio, and Norman Shelley who read them. In 2009, David Benedictus, long-ago friend of Elliott Graham, called in to sign copies of his surprisingly look-alike best-seller Return to the Hundred Acre Wood. This is a daring ‘Expotition’ into the original Pooh’s world in which the stories explain how Owl Becomes An Author and It Stops Raining For Ever .
Most importantly perhaps for Mike, was his introduction to Christopher Robin himself and, as he says in his own booklet The Official Pooh Corner Rules for Playing Poohsticks, ‘The memory of our all too few meetings will always bring a smile to my face and a glow in my heart.’
In the past he had taken TV presenters and an assortment of journalists and radio presenters on ‘Expotitions’ around the Forest. But 2009 was a special year; he was filmed for television programmes in both Germany and Central China and the year culminated in an approach from the Walt Disney Animation Studios in California.
Departmental heads, two directors and a film crew arrived to film the authentic landscapes for the setting of their latest Winnie the Pooh feature movie, due to be released in 2011. Mike’s efforts as a tour guide were to be rewarded and today he proudly says: ‘Thank you Pooh for the official confirmation from Disney of an agreement that states “Winnie the Pooh – Mike Ridley/Story Consultant”’.
First stop for most of the visitors has always been, of course, Pooh Bridge.
The Wobbly Bridge
By the 1970s Posingford Bridge, the wooden structure now known as ‘Pooh Bridge’, was showing signs of wear from all those feet pounding backwards and forwards. The side rails were not safe and the supports were crumbling. Local horse-riders complained that they could no longer ride across it. There was even talk of demolition. Something had to be done.
From 1975 onwards the local press ran articles which headlined the problems. In May 1976, there were warnings of the danger that children could even fall into the river. By 1978, the bridge was still ‘In peril’.
A ‘Save Pooh Bridge’ campaign was launched. Money poured in from children and adults worldwide and eventually the County Council contributed, as did the Westminster Bank, DLS Builders and the Trustees of the Milne Estate.
As a result the repairs were made and in May 1979, Christopher Milne himself returned – somewhat reluctantly – to Hartfield for the first of only two visits since 1947.
He was the obvious choice as a ‘celebrity’ to cut the tape and re-open the bridge. But Christopher, who had long ago tried to escape the notoriety that Pooh had given him, was still far away, happily running the bookshop in Dartmouth, Devon. The knowledge that his childhood friend Iva, daughter of John Osman, the original builder of the bridge, would be there to share the spotlight helped him to accept the invitation. But his emergence from self-imposed exile inevitably attracted a battery of television crews and the international press.
He told them: ‘I can look my dreaded namesake in the eye today and feel less embarrassed by him.’ They responded by comments in the local papers the following week such as ‘poor rich Mr Milne’.
In September that year he returned for the second visit to unveil a memorial honouring both his father and E.H. Shepard. The simple bronze plaque is set discreetly in rock on top of the Forest not signposted in order to preserve something of its magic character. For it was there long ago that Shepard drew the little boy Billy Moon, hand in paw with his bear, on their way up to the Enchanted Place. It was to be their last visit together before Christopher went off to school. The last time they would ever ‘do nothing’ together because ‘they don’t let you’, he had explained sadly.
Christopher Milne and Peter Dennis met for the first time at this ceremony when Peter was again invited to read extracts from Winnie-the-Pooh and their two families became close friends. It was Peter who read Pooh stories to Christopher and Lesley’s daughter, Clare. Eventually the Ashdown Forest Centre was opened at Wych Cross in 1983. The aim was to introduce visitors to the natural and historical wonders of the countryside but not, of course, to forget the most famous resident of all, who had been largely responsible for the undiminished flow of visitors and film crews.
Still the local press carried such headlines as, ‘More tourists
are not wanted on Pooh Bridge’ while posters appeared around the village declaring ferociously ‘TOuRISM? WHO WANTS IT?’
Then while Pooh was living a star-studded life across the Atlantic in America, in his native England he became almost overnight the figurehead of yet another even more worrying battle.
‘PB versus BP’
This is how Christopher Milne described the events that shook Sussex in 1987 when British Petroleum applied to sink a test bore hole into the very heart of the then privately-owned Ashdown Forest – still the largest area of lowland heath remaining in South East England.
They were looking for oil. The chosen spot was within sight of the Enchanted Place and the national press predictably carried headlines such as ‘Oilmen’s drill bears down on Pooh Corner’.
Nicholas Ridley, Secretary of State in Mrs Thatcher’s Government at the time, supported the application and proposed that the Council should relax their ‘no go’ policy.
Ironically, on this occasion, the leader of the opposition was the usually shy and retiring Christopher Milne. In the book by Barbara Willard, entitled The Forest he has described what happened:
The national press found him in his bookshop and there began a non-stop barrage of calls. In the end, he bought a whistle so that his wife, Lesley, could drag him in from the garden. Did he know that there was a threat to bring Dallas to the Forest? He didn’t and he was very angry. If the East Sussex County Council gave way, there would be nowhere safe left in Britain.
‘I realised’, he said with a chuckle, ‘that to my own small voice could be added, if I wished it, the infinitely louder voice of a teddy bear’. He felt that although he had spent sixty years of his life trying to escape Pooh Bear he was inviting his help. PB versus BP. How he relished the contest!
There was talk of a ‘little Texas’ and fears that the places where Pooh and his friends stomped in the 1920s searching for Small, trapping Heffalumps or looking for the North Pole, would be taken over by oil Barons and be blighted by giant wells, metal rigs and monsters of a different kind.
How were they all to know that there was, indeed, another monster bearing down on Ashdown Forest. On 15 October 1987, the worst storm for three hundred years swept across southern England destroying everything in its path. Ships were wrecked, houses flattened and people died. Less devastating, but symbolically poignant – the year that Winnie-the-Pooh moved into his new glass case residence in New York’s Donnell Library – trees of the Enchanted Place on top of the Forest had been uprooted.
The following year in February, Earl De La Warr, Christopher Robin’s childhood friend Billy died tragically and on 25 November the De La Warr family threat to split up the Forest into small parcels for sale on the open market was finally averted.
The County Council saved the day by successfully buying the freehold of the entire Forest area from the family, apart from the 500 acre wood. Of the £1.2m. purchase price, £330,000 was contributed by the Council. The remainder was the result of a national appeal led by Christopher Milne. ‘I am very, very glad’ he said. ’This is a very good example of public ownership over private. I trust Mrs Thatcher will listen and learn.’
The spirit of Winnie-the-Pooh had triumphed. But beleaguered Hartfield residents still protested. Sussex County Council’s new finger posts identifying for the first time the whereabouts of Pooh Bridge were often removed. The newspapers also quoted one un-named villager, who complained that anything that increased tourism was short-sighted. The hedges next to the bridge, he said, had gone and the river banks were being damaged. Besides, there was nowhere for visitors to park their cars.
In the 1980s the bridge was still in danger and by the nineties the East Grinstead Courier called it ‘The Bridge of Sighs’. Visitors were even being asked to bring their own sticks.
It was agreed to rebuild the bridge completely but where possible to use timber from the earlier structure. The design of the new bridge was based on photographs of the original.
A Maidstone builder, Cox Brothers Construction, offered to underwrite the project: ‘Somebody had to step in and protect our national heritage’ said Chairman Tony Stanbury. ‘I was not going to stand by and wait for Americans’, he added. Morgan Timber donated the green oak for the project and the actual construction cost was said to be £30,000 which would have been considerably higher without the generosity of local firms.
The Disney Corporation was also approached and is said to have contributed £10,000. The move again was strongly contested by many Hartfield people who were anxious about the impact of such a commercial giant on their village. ‘This is an English Bridge in an English Wood. We should keep it English’ was a typical comment in the Kent and Sussex Courier. The restored Pooh Bridge was finally re-opened in 2000.
In July the same year the Hartfield Parish Council and East Sussex County Council jointly commissioned a Pooh Bridge Management Plan. This recognised, at last, that the existence of Pooh-related tourism ‘has given rise to both problems and opportunities’ and looked forward to eliminating the first and maximising the second. This was, temporarily at least, oil on the troubled waters of the Bridge over the River.
Today, the only access to the bridge is down a footpath through the woods from Marsh Green Lane off the B2026 – a pilgrimage which thousands now make every year – yet you can still find residents of Hartfield itself who have never been to Poohsticks Bridge and for those who know when and where to go, it is still possible to be alone on Ashdown Forest.
Chapter Nineteen
Pooh the Philanthropist
FOLLOWING THE FOOTSTEPS of Winnie-the-Pooh has been a bittersweet journey. The bemused, benign and often bothered bear has stomped his loveable way across the world, bringing immeasurable happiness to millions but so many confused emotions and even bitterness to those who knew him best.
The curious phenomenon of the teddy bear cult was already established in Europe and America when Pooh left Farnell’s Acton factory in 1921. Toy makers had learned how to produce soft huggable bears which appealed instantly to all ages. It was the gentle wisdom and wit of A.A. Milne and the drawings of E.H. Shepard which gave Pooh his special status.
Internationally today arctophiles from all walks of life gather with many and varied missions but united by their reverence for teddy bears and Winnie-the-Pooh in particular.
The Teddy Bear Guide is published annually in Brighton to celebrate the birthday of President Theodore Roosevelt in October. Glenn and Irene Jackson began making teddy bears in 1985 and launched the guide two years later. Colourfully illustrated it takes its readers on an astonishing journey around the world. Glenn and Irene have accumulated a list of over 11,000 names of all teddy makers, collectors or museums there are or have ever been!
For them, Winnie-the-Pooh is the Patron Saint of teddy bears.
‘There can be little doubt that Winnie-the-Pooh is the most famous teddy bear in the world. This is due to the immense popularity of the books by A.A. Milne and also to the highly successful and lucrative Disney animations.
Without the teddy, there would have been no Winnie-the-Pooh books and without the books there would have been no Disney animations.’ they agree.
The Pembroke College Cambridge
Winnie-the-Pooh Society
Pooh seems to have had a surprisingly remarkable influence on learned minds even in places such as Cambridge university. The Pembroke College Winnie-the-Pooh Society is a club established at the beginning of 1993 which has become one of the most famous societies in the university. It is not a charity and its membership (honorary and otherwise) includes Her Majesty the Queen. The annual subscription is £2.
Clause III of their constitution states:
‘The aim of the Society shall be to meet for Elevenses and General Meetings in order to preserve and disseminate the works of A. A. Milne.
‘This is achieved by holding Elevenses Meetings at 4 pm (the most sensible time) every Saturday of Full Term, where we drink tea, eat (and perform surge
ry on) cake and read from the extant corpus of A. A. Milne. The society also holds special events such as formal Halls, pilgrimages to the real Hundred Acre Wood and the annual garden party during May week (which is obviously in June). The Queen is invited every year as are all the other honorary members but her commitments with Trooping the Colour have prevented her from being able to attend although she has sent several nice letters apologising.
Matters arising usually include correspondence on matters of Great Importance such as the concern in the name of Pooh over the price of Sainsbury crumpets.’
Clearly a respectful follower of Pooh, the Manager of the Cambridge store wrote in March 1997:
‘Please accept my heartfelt apologies for the retraction of our ‘12 for the price of 8 at 39p’ offer on our crumpets.
‘The twelve crumpets offer, I am sorry to say, has finished and they are now 52 pence. However, all is not lost as there are reward points available on these crumpets. These reward points can be exchanged for vouchers which will enable to you buy other goods. In considering the stance Pooh would have taken in this matter, I firmly believe he would advocate the purchase of honey, Tigger might require a new spring, and Rabbit may well be tempted by our organic carrot.
Alternatively, you can transfer your reward points into air miles and visit your favourite characters at Disney World, Paris, or perhaps take a glorious stroll through the Hundred Acre Wood and listen for the succinct sounds of Owl, Eeyore and and the rumblings of Gopher.
The possibilities are endless!
Signed Mr Norman White – a.k.a Christopher Robin’
This provoked an angry reply:
‘Dear Mr White,
Thank you for your kind letter of the 4th March 1997, which we received a long time ago, of course, regarding the shocking suspension of the special offer on Sainsbury’s crumpets.
The Life and Times of the Real Winnie-the-Pooh Page 13