“Pooh,” I said, “your stories have a Distinctive and Irresistible Manner.”
“Do they?” said Winnie-the-Pooh.
“Oh yes,” I said, “it’s practically contagious. Have you heard of the Walt Disney Company? They make versions of your stories. They aren’t very interesting versions, but they’ve made the company extremely rich.”
“That is a fine thing for them,” said Pooh. “If you are Extremely Rich, you can have as much honey as you want.”
“Certainly you may. You could probably fill a lake with honey.”
“I can’t imagine that would be very helpful,” said Pooh, “for the Fish.”
“No indeed. It’s unfortunate in some ways. But still, you must enjoy being so famous.”
“I don’t know,” said Pooh, “I rather like being just another bear. If I am just another bear, then I am not any bear in particular, so there is More of Me to go around.”
“Well, you used to be Edward Bear,” I said.
“Was I? That sounds familiar.”
“Yes,” I said. “You were introduced under the name Edward Bear in a poem called ‘Teddy Bear’ in A.A. Milne’s first book for children, ‘When We Were Very Young.’ You know who A.A. Milne was, right?”
“Oh yes, I’ve heard Christopher Robin mention him.”
“He was Christopher Robin’s father. The book is dedicated to Christopher Robin. It’s a lovely dedication, but also a sad one, considering how much Christopher Robin came to resent his father’s work. He once said it sometimes felt as if his father had ‘filched from me my good name and left me with nothing but the empty fame of being his son.’”
“Oh, that can’t be right!” said Pooh. “That doesn’t seem like Christopher Robin at all. He is always very brisk and cheerful.”
“Well, there is your Christopher Robin and then there is … Christopher Robin, the person. They’re the same but different. Rather like how you are Edward Bear and also Winnie-the-Pooh. In ‘When We Were Very Young’ Milne even says that Christopher Robin called a swan ‘Pooh.’ So did the swan become you? It’s a little Confusing who is who at times. Some people think Christopher Robin isn’t really Christopher Robin so much as A.A. Milne thinking about himself as a child.”
“Oh dear,” said Pooh. “This is a bit much for a bear. Could we just talk about the poem? The one that has me — I mean, This Me — in it?”
“Sure. As I said, it’s called ‘Teddy Bear,’ and the bear in question — Edward Bear — is definitely you. Milne even calls you Edward Bear at the start of ‘Winnie-the-Pooh.’ Then he switches to Pooh. That’s odd when you think about it, isn’t it? It would be like referring to ‘Ivan the Terrible’ as ‘Terrible.’ But Milne liked letting names and voices Drift a Little, as I said. In the preface to ‘When We Were Very Young,’ he even says, ‘You may wonder sometimes who is supposed to be saying the verses. Is it the author, that strange but uninteresting person, or is it Christopher Robin, or some other boy or girl, or Nurse, or Hoo?’”
“That is very confusing indeed,” said Pooh. “I don’t know who this ‘Hoo’ person is supposed to be. Although,” he continued thoughtfully, “it Does Rhyme with ‘Pooh.’”
“It does, doesn’t it?” I said. “The whole book rhymes, you know. ‘When We Were Very Young’ is entirely poems, no stories at all. And it is One Hundred Years Old this month.”
“How wonderful!” said Pooh. “One hundred years! That’s almost as old as Owl. Do people still read that book?”
“They do. But I’m afraid it doesn’t get as much attention as your stories.”
“That doesn’t seem fair. I like a good poem. I call them Hums sometimes, because I Hum them.”
“I know,” I said. “And I agree. But we are stuck in the minority, Pooh.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” said Pooh. “I was once Terribly Stuck in Rabbit’s doorway. Being stuck in the minority sounds even worse.”
“We will persevere, Pooh. Would you like to know what’s especially good about ‘When We Were Very Young’?”
“Oh yes! My favorite part of being told about things is when I am Given Reasons. I’m not a very clever bear, so when I am Out of Reasons, I am not entirely sure what to do.”
“Well, first of all, it began A.A. Milne’s career in children’s books. He wrote a poem called ‘Vespers,’ which led to another poem called ‘The Dormouse and the Doctor,’ which led to an entire book. It sold amazingly well — half a million copies in 10 years — so we might say this was what opened the door for ‘Winnie-the-Pooh,’ which appeared two years later, in 1926. We probably wouldn’t have A.A. Milne, Children’s Book Author, if we didn’t have ‘When We Were Very Young’ first.”
“I suppose that’s a reason,” said Pooh. “But saying something led to something else is not saying much about the First Something, if you see what I mean.”
“You’re right,” I said. “And that brings me to my second reason. This is that Milne is a meticulous and daring children’s poet. He once said that ‘When We Were Very Young’ is the work of ‘a light-verse writer taking his job seriously, even though he is taking it into the nursery.’ You can see what he means when you look at his stanzas. Would you like me to show you part of a poem?”
“Oh yes,” said Pooh. “Although I am not sure if I am Serious enough to understand.”
“When Milne said ‘seriously,’ I think he really meant, ‘Doing the best that I can.’ Here is the first part of ‘Lines and Squares,’ which is about the way children try to avoid stepping on cracks.
Whenever I walk in a London Street,
I’m ever so careful to watch my feet;
And I keep in the squares.
And the masses of bears,
Who wait at the corners all ready to eat
The sillies who tread on the lines of the street,
Go back to their lairs.
And I say to them, ‘Bears,
Just look how I’m walking in all of the squares!’
“The anapestic meter is clear enough to please a child, but not so singsong as to be tedious, and the doubled rhyme of ‘bears’ and ‘squares’ is a treat. If I were more Full of Myself, I would say this is a child’s sense of humor given the dignity of adult intelligence. I don’t know whether Milne loved children — he said he was not ‘inordinately fond of or interested in’ them — but I’m certain he Respected them. If you’ve ever tried to write a poem for or about anything, you understand it’s more important to respect the thing in question than to love it.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Pooh. “I love honey, and I would sing many Hums about it. But I am not sure how I would go about respecting it.”
“You’re smarter than you think,” I said. “Don’t you remember what you once said about poetry? You said — and this was in your second book, the one with the Sad Ending — you said, ‘Poetry and Hums aren’t things which you get, they’re things which get you. And all you can do is to go where they can find you.’ That sounds to me like understanding respect and humility.”
“Did I say that?” asked Pooh. “It sounds far too wise.”
“Well, someone said it, and he said he was you, so he may as well be you, don’t you think? In books and poems we’re always who we say we are, until we aren’t. A.A. Milne understood this very well. Do you know ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’?”
“No,” said Pooh sadly, “I have never met a single wizard.”
“Silly bear, I meant the book. And the wizard isn’t really Magical. He’s an ordinary person, just like you, or me, or A.A. Milne. The wizard uses tricks to seem like different things to different characters when they encounter him on their own. He is a Terrible Monster, a Lady, a Ball of Fire. But when the characters are gathered before him, he’s a Single Voice that they all hear. So one way to think about the wizard is that he’s many different voices and just one voice at the same time. It’s also a way to think about poems.”
“As Things Wizards Say?”
“In a sense.”
“Well,” said Pooh, “this is all very Interesting. But I am only a simple bear, and just One Bear, if you please. I am glad Mr. Milne wrote his poems, and I will recommend them to Piglet. Now I must go in search of Something Sustaining from the larder.”
With that, Pooh trundled down the street. If you had passed him, you would have heard a quietly hummed song involving “bears” and “squares,” and observed him stepping with great precision, as always, between the lines in the pavement.
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