Isn’t it what we all want, really? To run away and live in the woods. Enjoying magically replenishing food resources (in the form of “hunny”), surrounded by a community of good friends and looked after by a benevolent overseer who takes care of any real problems?
Winnie-the-Pooh provided that fantasy of escape for many of us growing up. And now, incredibly, the most famous resident of Hundred Acre Wood is one hundred years old himself. Few fictional characters of any variety manage to make it to their centenary, so how did a “bear of very little brain” and his companions manage to survive for so long and remain such a beloved figure, delighting generation after generation of readers?
Before we broach that question, it’s important to disentangle Winnie-the-Pooh from Winnie-the-Pooh. Those hyphens do a lot of heavy lifting. The Pooh we’re discussing here is the one that appears in AA Milne’s original poems and stories, illustrated by EH Shepherd. The Disneyfied Winnie, let’s just say, took more than a few liberties (a gopher? In East Sussex?). It’s this Pooh that now dominates, overtaking Milne’s original vision and replacing Shepherd’s exquisite line drawings with a cuddly, red-sweatered replicant. But we will set that non-hyphenated Pooh to one side and move on.
The Winnie that concerns us, the original Winnie, isn’t Winnie at all. The first time we meet him, he’s quite clearly named “Edward Bear”, lives in a house that has a sign reading “Mr Sanders” over the door (this is never explained) and possesses the full sobriquet Winnie-the-Pooh, though he’s always addressed as simply Pooh or Pooh Bear (Pooh being the name of a swan known to the Milne family).
This overly convoluted naming structure is an indication of one very important thing, integral to the success of the books. AA Milne, Pooh’s creator, was not a children’s writer, despite being one of the most successful children’s writers of all time. Already established as a playwright and humourist for Punch magazine, he fell into writing for children due to his own perverse attitude to his career. Constantly restless, he was always determined to tackle something new, even if his publishers and agents were desperate for him to repeat any previous successes. He had no interest in following up a bestselling mystery novel (The Red House Mystery – the only one he ever wrote) with another crime caper, so he did the exact opposite. Light verse for younger readers.
His 1924 collection of poems for children, When We Were Very Young, was staggeringly successful, outselling the later Pooh books for many years. The poem Teddy Bear featured the first appearance of a Pooh-like character, and Shepherd drew the distinctive, pudgy bear for the cover. The bear in the poem was purchased for Milne’s only child, Christopher Robin, on his first birthday.
Now on display at the New York Public Library (along with the other original toys that featured in the books), he doesn’t look very Pooh. This is because Shepherd drew his own son’s teddy, a “magnificent bear” called Growler, as the model for Winnie. Sadly, no photographs of Growler appear to exist.
Unusually for Milne, he decided to stick to the same genre and followed up When We Were Very Young with another book for children. Winnie-the-Pooh was based on the stories he told Christopher Robin at bedtime (which were also inspired by a bear named Winnie they had seen at London Zoo). When the usual tales of dragons and knights proved to be too exciting, he turned to more pastoral stories of his son’s teddy bear, living in the woods, alongside a menagerie of other stuffed toys and Christopher Robin himself. The calmness of the bear’s non-perilous adventures would soon lull him to sleep.
Milne decided to transpose the stories into a book. Being an incredibly adept writer in many fields, he adopted his own distinctive approach. Unfettered by any children’s book conventions, he employed bizarre naming conventions and used language that was often extremely sophisticated (“Well,” said Owl, “the customary procedure in such cases is as follows.”) It’s one of the reasons that the stories are still such a joy to read out loud and continue to entertain readers of any age.
This also helped them to become a huge success with the book-buying public, though Milne grew to resent his creation, never considering himself a mere “children’s writer”. His autobiography deals with all his children’s books over seven scant pages.
The beauty of Milne’s creation is its simplicity. Unlike the characters in Kenneth Graeme’s Wind in the Willows (perhaps the only influence on Milne’s story), the residents of Hundred Acre Wood are not anthropomorphised animals leading somewhat human lives. They are quite evidently toys that have come to life, living in a child’s imagination. That means anything can happen, logic need not apply and adventures can go anywhere.
The major concerns of the stories are a child’s concerns. Fairness, curiosity, friendship, freedom and attention. While the book’s occupants tend to display an over-arching characteristic – Pooh is dim, Piglet nervous, Rabbit fussy, Eeyore melancholy and Owl a faux-intellectual – they also contain multitudes. Pooh can be clever when pushed, Piglet displays incredible bravery and even Eeyore is occasionally cheery.
It feels like the sort of story a young child would make up, completely disregarding any rules and simply traveling wherever they wish. Pooh can become a cloud, the North Pole can magically appear in the woods and kangaroos make sandwiches. Though the world is limitless, it exists within the limits of what a child could conjure up. And in reading and rereading the stories it reminds us of a time when our imagination was everything. How it fuelled our entire lives, before reality slowly kicked in.
But perhaps the most vital component of the stories is their willingness to celebrate nothingness. As Christopher Robin states…
“But what I like doing best is Nothing.”
“How do you do Nothing?” asked Pooh, after he had wondered for a long time.
“Well, it’s when people call out at you just as you’re going off to do it, What are you going to do, Christopher Robin, and you say, Oh, nothing, and then you go and do it.”
Pooh and his friends are dedicated to the pursuit of nothing. Their lives purely revolve around play and adventure. There’s little self-improvement, no commerce, no signs of the outside, adult world. They’re just in the woods, up a tree, without a plan. Which sounds delightful.
Reading the stories instils that rhythm of nothingness into us. Everything is wide-open spaces and glorious vistas both in the writing and the terrain. The pace drifts, but Milne’s skills as a dramatist and a comedy writer ensure that the action never lags. It feels more like a dream, a nostalgic dream, the otherworldliness instantly transporting the reader.
We’re constantly being told to slow down. To stop. But this can be a challenge. Reading the Pooh stories now provides that much-needed respite. The Hundred Acre Wood lives rent-free in all of our minds, an essential nugget of childhood that offers instant comfort.
That’s one of the many reasons why Pooh survives. The stories provide an instant solace, a literary hug, a balm for the brain. Of any size.