Now you know of course that verses have rhymes in them; but even more important than the rhymes is what is called ‘rhythm’. It is a difficult-looking word, but what it means is just ‘the time that the verse keeps’. Every piece of poetry has a music of its own which it is humming to itself as it goes along, and every line, every word, in it has to keep time to this music. This is what makes it difficult to write poetry; because you can’t use any words in any order as long as it’s sense and grammar, but you have to use particular words in a particular order, so that they keep time to the music, and rhyme when you want them to. If you can find words which keep time to the music, and which are just the words you want to say, then the verses which you write are verses which sing themselves into people’s heads, and stay there for ever, so that even when they are alone and unhappy they have this music with them for company.
Milne also made it clear that there were three sources for the poems. ‘There are three ways in which a writer knows about people: by remembering, by noticing, and by imagining.’ He was remembering his own childhood, the things he and his brother Ken had done, the things he had felt himself. ‘As a child I kept a mouse; probably it escaped – they generally do. Christopher Robin has kept almost everything except a mouse. But he did go to Buckingham Palace a good deal (which I didn’t) . . . And most children hop . . . and sometimes they sit halfway down the stairs.’ He was obviously ‘noticing’ his small son, never very far from his thoughts. Billy had a new pair of braces and was proud of them. Perhaps they were a present for that third birthday in Wales. Certainly ‘Growing Up’ was one of the poems that was written in the summer house and so was ‘Happiness’, as the small boy splashed through the puddles in his Great Big Waterproof Boots. In that poem Milne called the child John (as he had often called Ken in his writing). Although Christopher Robin comes ‘very trippingly off the tongue’, as Milne remarked, it certainly didn’t work in that poem. In fact, as Milne said, ‘Christopher Robin is definitely associated with only three sets of verses’. He is actually named in four out of forty-four in that first collection. But even Milne, for all his remembering and observing, could not resist imagining a few fairies, though Twinkletoes (without the illustration) could easily be a butterfly.
Milne had written about a quarter of the book by the time they left Wales. Giles Playfair suggests the Milnes left early:
They decided to cut their holiday short and leave before the proper time. They were at no pains to conceal their pleasure at going and I shall never forget their happiness on the morning of departure.
My father, however, refused to be outdone. He made his family and house-party see the Milnes off. We were instructed to form a circle round their car and sing in lusty voices, ‘The Milnes are going, hurray, hurray,’ to the tune of ‘The Campbells are coming . . .’ The Milnes drove away with the song ringing in their ears.
Milne now had to break the news to his agent and publishers that his next book was to be not the detective story or straight novel they were hoping for, but a collection of children’s verse. John Macrae of Dutton’s was over in London that autumn. He had published both The Red House Mystery and a collection of Punch pieces, The Sunny Side, in New York the year before. Milne took him to lunch at the Garrick. There was talk of Milne making his first visit to America in the winter. ‘So far it is mostly talk. But I have promised to so often that I must. We feel it would be good for trade.’ It would be another eight years before he got there. His American publisher remembered:
During the halting conversation, which is likely to take place between author and publisher, Mr Milne genially informed me that he was about to send me his new manuscript – a volume of poetry for children. We are all aware that probably the most hopeless kind of manuscript a publisher expects to receive from his favourite author is that of poetry for children.
I have no complaint about children’s poetry by a genius. However, Milne had not yet demonstrated that he could write poetry. You can imagine my chagrin and disappointment. However, I covered up my feelings and held them in harness until the manuscript arrived.
Milne was aware of Macrae’s lack of enthusiasm for the project and he realised himself, as he indicated in a letter to Irene Vanbrugh in late September, what a mixed collection the poems were.
I am writing a book of children’s verses. Like Stevenson, only better. No, not a bit like Stevenson really. More like Milne. But they are a curious collection; some for children, some about children, some by, with or from children.
In this same letter, we get a glimpse of the daily life of father and son. They went for a walk after breakfast every morning in their indoor shoes and without hats (‘quite informal, not party at all’). They walked each day as far as the Fulham Road and then home again by a different route. Every day they passed the same middle-aged postman. One day Milne said, ‘Say good morning to the postman.’ Three-year-old Billy obediently said, ‘Good morning.’ When the postman took no notice whatsoever, the child sensibly suggested, ‘He doesn’t know me’, which seemed to his father ‘a dignified way of concluding the episode’. Only too soon a great many people would know the child and murmurs of ‘That’s Christopher Robin!’ would accompany his walks.
In October, E. V. Lucas seems to have been worried that Milne was playing too much golf. He thought Milne would be the better for a little more structure in his life and suggested that he should start writing regular prose again for Punch. Milne did not resent Lucas’s advice about his ‘literary career’. ‘I have always been grateful to you for your interest in it’, but he rejected the suggestion that he was idle – though he hesitated to mention that, for the moment, he really had no need to work, with money constantly flowing in from performances of the plays all over the place. A production of The Truth about Blayds by Liverpool Rep had been a particular success and earned Milne the best review (in the Manchester Guardian from C. E. Montague) that he said he had ever had in his life. Mr Pim Passes By even ran for three months in Berlin in a German translation and accumulated ‘a trifle of two thousand billion marks or so’ at that time of runaway inflation in Germany. Mr Pim was also put on in Vienna that year. Milne wrote to Lucas: