I’d like to write a nice story, a happy story, about A.A. Milne today. This day, January 18th, is his birthday. He came into this world in 1882, in a place called Hamstead, England. I’ve never been there but it sounds awfully nice, as I am very fond of ham. That’s might be something Pooh would say, if he liked ham instead of honey.
But A.A. Milne’s story is not overly happy and bright.
He went to Cambridge to study mathematics. However, he began to focus on writing while he was a student. Even after getting his math degree in 1903, he was engrossed with writing. He started cranking out a bunch of humorous pieces for the magazine Punch, and became the assistant editor at Punch in 1906.
Through all of this, he kept up the conviction that he wanted to write novels. That was his true desire as a writer. But everyone around him told him he needed to stick to humor. Then, they eventually pressed him into writing children’s books. So he did. I for one, am very glad he succumbed to the pressures of his agents and such. As Winnie the Pooh, and the entire bunch from the 100 acre wood, are some of my favorite characters in literature.
I’m not alone. With his stories about Pooh, et al, Milne brought so much joy into the lives of many people. But as I mentioned, unfortunately, his own life was less than joyous.
He only wrote two books decisively around that honey-loving bear named Pooh. He also penned two nursery rhyme series around the same theme. But he bucked against doing any more. And, all the while, he continued to write plays, novels and other works, all during the 1930s and 1940s. But he never found the success of his earlier writing. He had been typecast as a children’s writer, and he strongly disliked that fact.
His family life soured too. That Christopher Robin. His boy. As an adult, Christopher Milne held a strong resentment toward his father. Chris wrote an autobiography and in it, he said his father “had filched from me my good name and had left me with nothing but the empty fame of being his son.” Father and son barely saw each other in Christopher’s adulthood. So. That was that.
And, some years later, toward the end of 1952, Milne had a stroke. From that point, he was confined to a wheelchair until his death in 1956. I feel sad for him, as I write all this about his life. It goes beyond merely the disparaging story though.
I think maybe I wanted magic for his life. I wanted somehow, to find that he had exulted in the wisdom of Pooh, and that he, and his boy, took long walks with that stuffed bear. That they had picnic lunches with Pooh, and could somehow know that beautiful, innocent, insightful spirit, as they set a pot of hunny in front of him, and watched that little bear smile.
I wished that he died a happy man, knowing, as Pooh once said, “I always get to where I’m going by walking away from where I have been.”
Maybe he didn’t want the magic. And maybe that’s where the rest of us step in. Anyone who has ever fallen in love with Pooh doesn’t forget it. All of us who have reached down to hold Piglet’s hand, just because. Yes, we are the lucky ones.
Perhaps all that magic is ours, and all we have to do, is see it. And, as Pooh once said, “If it’s not Here, that means it’s out There.”
==========
“Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.”
—Winnie the Pooh
==========
“The things that make me different are the things that make me, me.”
—Piglet
==========
“If the string breaks, then we try another piece of string.”
—Owl
=========
“What’s wrong with knowing what you know now and not knowing what you don’t know until later?”
—Winnie the Pooh
==========
