Writing to Swinnerton on 9 March 1928 he said: ‘I feel poetical for some reason. Possibly the result of joining the Athenaeum. But I’m afraid I must chat to Sticko – I mean stick to Chatto.’ Swinnerton had left the firm, after eighteen years reading for them, and was trying to persuade Milne to take his plays away. But Milne would not be persuaded. Harold Raymond, at Chatto, if not as entertaining an editor as Swinnerton, seemed keen and conscientious. Profits and sales were tiny compared with the children’s books, but at least the plays were kept in print in attractive editions, which was the most important thing.
One source of income – from his manuscripts – Milne was not at all keen to exploit. When Carl Pforzheimer approached him for the manuscript of The Ivory Door, Daphne wrote:
My husband has found the MS of The Ivory Door and suggests that I ask 1,000 dollars for it. He doesn’t suppose that it is worth this or any other particular sum, but if it hasn’t got any considerable value for anybody else, he would sooner keep it – partly from sentiment, because it is his favourite play, and partly because manuscripts sometimes get more valuable later on. Of course he will quite understand if you don’t want to pay this for it – in fact he says that in your place he certainly wouldn’t.
But Pforzheimer was not to be put off. He asked for a ‘special foreword’ for his wife and, when that arrived, dispatched $1,000.
Milne was extremely famous, but there were still some people who had never heard of him. One night the telephone rang and Daphne said to the stranger at the other end of the line that Mr Milne was out:
STRANGER (After apologies) What I wanted to ask Mr Milne was, Has he any relations living in Weybridge?
DAFF: I don’t think so. I’ve never heard of any.
S: Oh! (With an apologetic laugh) You see, we’re having a Treasure Hunt in Weybridge, and one of the clues was something to do with A. A. Milne, so I looked him up in the Telephone Book to see his Weybridge address, and found that he lived in Chelsea, so I wondered if any of his family—
D: But surely it referred to one of his books?
S: His what?
D: Books!
S: I’m sorry—
D: Books!
S: (bewildered) Oh!
D: You knew he was the well-known author—
S: The what?
D: AUTHOR!
S: Oh! . . . Oh, well, you see, I’m afraid that’s not much in my line, all that sort of thing. Thanks so much. Sorry to have troubled you for nothing.
Goodbye. (Exit to resume hunt – but I doubt if he was successful.)
The Milne phone number was obviously not ex-directory and there would sometimes be calls from strangers with hard-luck stories. There would also be begging letters, among the piles of praise and requests for articles, appearances, autographs. It was now that Milne began to develop the habit Christopher Milne described of doing nothing about some things – which, as Owl said wisely, was sometimes the best thing. But Milne had plenty of charitable impulses: he gave generously both to the Royal Literary Fund for indigent writers and the Society of Authors Pension Fund. He would often write something for good causes. In a sense, it was guilt money. He would say how easy it was to give money, how difficult to do anything for those worse off than ourselves. At least writing fundraising letters was more worthwhile than just writing cheques. He raised funds for the Children’s Country Holiday Fund, writing regular annual letters about the scheme in The Times. In one he said, ‘Ladies may regret their last hat, and a man the new brassie which has not added twenty yards to his drive. The only money which we are never sorry to have spent is the money which we have given away.’
Milne supported Toc H. In one appeal he wrote for Tubby Clayton, he expressed again his feeling that no one should congratulate themselves as having earned their good fortune, no one can claim to be a self-made man. ‘Idiots we are, if we can look at ourselves, however high our achievements, however great our success, with anything but humility and thankfulness. Our achievements, our possessions, are not of our own making; they were given to us. There is only one honest answer to that hackneyed question of the interviewer: “To what do you attribute your success?” And the answer is “Luck!”’ He appealed to people to say thank you for their good fortune by helping others who had been less lucky.
On another occasion, he wrote an extremely successful appeal letter on behalf of a hospital, signing thousands of letters and writing hundreds of thank-yous. It began like this:
I expect you know the story of the man who took his friend to the bar, and said, with a large and generous air, ‘Now then, what would you like?’ – to which the friend replied that he thought he would like a pint of champagne. ‘Oh!’ said his host, ‘Well, try thinking of something nearer threepence.’
What the Hampstead General Hospital would like is ￡10,000, and it would be a simplification of its finances if you were charming enough to send them a cheque for that amount in the enclosed envelope; but if you would prefer to think of something nearer threepence I shall understand. Not near enough to give you the bother of buying stamps or postal orders; something in guineas, I suggest, which will give you no more trouble than the opening of your cheque-book. But just as you like, so long as you help us.
Milne drew the line at appearing at the Savoy luncheon or the Mayfair Hotel dinner in connection with the appeal. He rarely appeared in public. ‘I may be unique in not wanting to say anything aloud at any time,’ he once said, and on another occasion: ‘I dislike public appearances, always avoid them, and am, in fact, not very good at them.’ ‘“Some can and some can’t, that’s how it is”, as Christopher Robin’s friend, Pooh, used to say,’ Milne quoted, at a time when he was still quoting Pooh. (There would be times when the very name would make him shudder.)