Moon is in the thick of school life. Daff thinks he’s aged ten years. I don’t think it’s quite as bad as this, and anyway, if he’s 12 one moment, he’s 2 the next. Also instead of saying ‘No, Blosh’ (corruption of ‘Blue’) when I tell him to do anything, he now says ‘Yes, sir’ and does it. But somehow I fancy that the novelty of this will wear off. He is very happy, and began Latin and French on the same day, and is now grappling (a little prematurely, I think) with the domestic life of the four Georges.
It was time to leave the Forest. As Christopher Robin said to Pooh:
‘I’m not going to do Nothing any more.’
‘Never again?’
‘Well, not so much. They don’t let you.’
This is not sentimental. It is an occasion for real feeling and, if we cannot accept it, it is our fault, not Milne’s. It is only in the memory that ‘a little boy and his Bear will always be playing’, as the final often-quoted words of the last children’s book have it.
To stop while the going was good, that was the point; and, if possible, to protect his son from any further glare of publicity. In 1929 Milne wrote at length, and cogently, about the reasons behind his decision. He had been amazed at the way readers, back in 1924, had singled out the child:
You can imagine my amazement and disgust, then, when I discovered that in a night, so to speak, I had been pushed into a back place, and that the hero of When We Were Very Young was not, as I had modestly expected, the author, but a curiously named child of whom, at this time, I had scarcely heard. It was this Christopher Robin who kept mice, walked on the lines and not in the squares, and wondered what to do on a spring morning; it was this Christopher Robin, not I, whom Americans were clamouring to see; and in fact (to make due acknowledgement at last), it was this Christopher Robin, not I, not the publishers, who was selling the book in such large and ridiculous quantities.
Now who was this Christopher Robin – the hero now, since it was so accepted, of When We Were Very Young; soon to be the hero of Winnie-the-Pooh and two other books? To me he was, and remained, the child of my imagination. When I thought of him, I thought of him in the Forest, living in his tree as no child really lives; not in the nursery, where a differently named child (so far as we in this house are concerned) was playing with his animals. For this reason I have not felt self-conscious when writing about him, nor apologetic at the thought of exposing my own family to the public gaze. The ‘animals’, Pooh and Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga, and the rest, are in a different case. I have not ‘created’ them. He and his mother gave them life, and I have just ‘put them into a book’. You can see them now in the nursery, as Ernest Shepard saw them before he drew them. Between us, it may be, we have given them shape, but you have only to look at them to see, as I saw at once, that Pooh is a Bear of Very Little Brain, Tigger Bouncy, Eeyore Melancholy and so on. I have exploited them for my own profit, as I feel I have not exploited the legal Christopher Robin. All I have got from Christopher Robin is a name which he never uses, an introduction to his friends . . . and a gleam which I have tried to follow.
However, the distinction, if clear to me, is not so clear to others; and to them, anyhow, perhaps to me also, the dividing line between the imaginary and the legal Christopher Robin becomes fainter with each book. This, then, brings me (at last) to one of the reasons why these verses and stories have come to an end. I feel that the legal Christopher Robin has already had more publicity than I want for him. Moreover, since he is growing up, he will soon feel that he has had more publicity than he wants for himself. We all, young and old, hope to make some sort of a name, but we want to make it in our own chosen way, and, if possible, by our own exertions. To be the hero of the ‘3 not out’ in that heroic finish between Oxford and Cambridge (Under Ten), to be undisputed Fluff Weight Champion (four stone six) of the Lower School, even to be the only boy of his age who can do Long Division: any of these is worth much more than all your vicarious literary reputations. Lawrence hid himself in the Air Force under the name of Shaw to avoid being introduced for the rest of his life as ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. I do not want C. R. Milne ever to wish that his names were Charles Robert.
The comparison between Lawrence of Arabia and Christopher Robin, which at first seems rather ridiculous, has real reverberations. Robert Graves once wrote of Lawrence, ‘He both despised and loved the legend that surrounded him’, and this was also true of Christopher Milne at different stages of his life. The great difference, of course, was that Lawrence’s legend was based on his own achievements, Christopher Robin’s on nothing he had done himself – and his mixed feelings would eventually transfer from the legend to his father, the author of it.
Milne had another reason to stop writing for children. A writer has to believe that his latest book is his best:
Can I go on writing these books, and persuade myself that each is better than the one before? I don’t see how it is possible. Darwin, or somebody, compared the world of knowledge to a circle of light. The bigger the circumference of light, the bigger the surrounding border of darkness waiting to be lit up. A child’s world of the imagination is not like that. As children we have explored it from end to end, and the map of it lies buried somewhere in our hearts, drawn in symbols whose meaning we have forgotten. A gleam from outside may light it up for us, so that for a moment it becomes clear again, and in that precious moment we can make a copy of it for others. But when the light has gone, to go on making fair copies of that copy – is it worth it?
For writing, let us confess it unashamed, is fun. There are those who will tell you that it is an inspiration, they sing but as the linnet sings; there are others, in revolt against such priggishness, who will tell you that it is simply a business like any other. Others, again, will assure you (heroically) that it is an agony, and they would sooner break stones – as well they might. But though there is something of inspiration in it, something of business, something, at times, of agony, yet, in the main, writing is just thrill; the thrill of exploring. The more difficult the country, the more untraversed by the writer, the greater (to me, anyhow) the thrill.
Well, I have had my thrill out of children’s books, and know that I shall never recapture it. At least, not until I am a grandfather.
A. A. Milne never did know himself to be a grandfather. His only grandchild, Clare, was born, severely disabled, a few months after his death.