We had intended to call it Rosemary, but decided that Billy would be more suitable. However, as you can't be christened William—at least, we didn't see why anybody should—we had to think of two other names, two initials being necessary to ensure him of any sort of copyright in a cognomen as often plagiarized as Milne. One of us thought of Robin, the other of Christopher, names wasted on him who called himself Billy Moon as soon as he could talk, and has been Moon to his family and friends every since. (Autobiography, 278)
So if I seem ill at ease posing as Christopher Robin this is because posing as Christopher Robin does today makes me feel ill at ease. And if I seem to write most happily about the ordinary things that boys do who live in the country it is because this is the part of my childhood that I look back upon with the greatest affection. (The Enchanted Places, 5)The world knew him as Christopher Robin, the young boy around which the Pooh stories are based. And many people always knew him as such. But Christopher Robin Milne's life wasn't always what was portrayed in the stories, and as he grew up, he left the world of Cotchford Farm behind him.
Many people would say that A. A. Milne was a hard man to get to know. He tended to be uncomfortable with meeting people, and he was also uncomfortable around children.
Some people are good with children. Others are not. It is a gift. You either have it or you don't. My father didn't—not with children, that is. Later on it was different, very different. But I am thinking of my nursery days. (The Enchanted Places, 36)It was quite different in later years, but Christopher's parents weren't all that involved with his upbringing during his nursery years. That task fell to his nanny.
She had me when I was very young. I was all hers and remained all hers until the age of nine. Other people hovered around the edges, but they meant little. My total loyalty was to her... She was just a very good and very loving person; and when that has been said, no more need be added. (The Enchanted Places, 31)As Christopher grew up, his parents spent more time with him.
I enjoyed playing with my mother. This was something she was good at. There were plenty of things that she couldn't do, had never been taught to do, didn't need to do because there was someone to do them for her, and she certainly couldn't have coped alone with a tiny child. But provided Nanny was at hand in case of difficulty, she was very happy to spend an occasional half hour with me, playing on the floor, sitting me on her lap to show me how the gentlman rides, reciting (for the hundredth time) Edward Lear's "Calico Pie". (The Enchanted Places, 21)Growing up, Christopher had only three close friends. The first was his nanny. The second was a girl he had met that lived near Cotchford named Hannah. The third was Anne Darlington, who lived in London and was his closest friend for many years.
Anne Darlington lived half a mile away in a flat in Beaufort Mansions. She was eight months older than I was, and, like me, without brothers or sisters. So instead we had each other and we were as close and inseparable as it is possible for two children to be who live half a mile apart. It was a closeness that extended to my parents, for Anne was and remained to her death the Rosemary that I wasn't. (The Enchanted Places, )
Christopher was always skinny as a child. He was given strengthening
medicine (quite similar to Roo's) to help him build up some muscle and
took gymnasium classes and boxing lessons. Nothing really seemed to
work. As he got older, he would spend more time outdoors, gaining
exercise by hiking through the woods, helping his mother garden, or
playing golf or cricket with his father. In his books, Christopher makes
a note that his parents didn't often do activities together, and he
would have to divide his time up between them.
In fact, there were really few things that they did enjoy doing together. So wisely, they did them separately, then met afterwards and told each other of their adventures: and if something funny had happened to one of them, they could both laugh together about it and be happy.Perhaps it was due to the time he spent separately with each parent that Christopher gained the talents of both. He enjoyed working with his hands, just as his mother did in her garden.This meant that when, in 1930, I came downstairs to join them, I found that I was either doing things with my mother or doing things with my father; not very often with both. (The Enchanted Places, 105)
[Mother] responded to the beauty, peace and the solitude that [the country] offered. She found this in her garden and she found it too in the countryside beyond. Solitude. She was happiest alone. (The Enchanted Places, 44)He once took apart his nursery lock at the age of 7, and owned his own set of tools. Among his creations was modifying a cap gun to fire real bullets (His parents would later take the gun from him.) and the clockworks for a grandfather clock. Christopher mentions in The Enchanted Places that the poem "The Engineer" was not about him.
The poem begins:Christopher also shared talents with his father, such as his love for mathematics and for playing cricket. Christopher also shared in the creation of the stories that his father wrote about.Let it rainand it ends up:
Who cares
I've a train
Upstairs
With a brake
Which I make...It's a good sort of brakeI may have been a bit undersize. I may have been a bit underweight. I may have looked like a girl. I may have been shy. I may have been on the dim side. But if I'd had a train (and I didn't have a train) any brake that I'd wanted to make for it — any simple thing like a brake — WOULD HAVE WORKED. (The Enchanted Places, 40)
But it hasn't worked yet.
As a young child, Christopher enjoyed being associated with the Pooh stories. He and his friends once put on a play in the forest for the parents, enacting out one of the stories. He also took part in helping his father come up with the stories.
It is difficult to say which came first. Did I do something and did my father then write a story around it? Or was it the other way about, and did the story come first? Certainly my father was on the look-out for ideas; but so too was I. He wanted ideas for his stories, I wanted them for my games, and each looked towards the other for inspiration. But in the end it was all the same: the stories became a part of our lives; we lived them, thought them, spoke them. And so, possibly before, but certainly after that particular story, we used to stand on Pooh-sticks Bridge throwing sticks into the water and watching them float away out of sight until they re-emerged on the other side. (The Enchanted Places, 58)
It wasn't until boarding school, at the age of 10, that Christopher began to hate his association with Christopher Robin. Previously, he had been upset that some of the newspaper articles that had been written about him were wrong about certain facts, but for the most part, he enjoyed being associated with the stories. However, away from the family and amongst a new group of boys, he was often teased about being Christopher Robin. Earlier, a gramophone recording of Christopher singing Vespers had been made. Some of the boys at school had managed to get a copy of the recording.
I vividly recall how intensely painful it was to me to sit in my study at Stowe while my neighbors played the famous—and now cursed—gramophone record remorselessly over and over again. Eventually, the joke, if not the record, worn out, they handed it to me, and I took it and broke it into a hundred fragments and scattered them over a distant field. (The Enchanted Places, 164)Like his father had done, Christopher went to Cambridge on a mathematics scholarship. He only spent about eight months at school, having lost his love for mathematics and deciding to join the army to help with the war effort.
The division left Kirkuk in March, and four weeks and 3200 miles later, was engaged in the final battle against the Germans in Tunisia. Although Christopher didn't see much fighting himself, he had managed to catch malaria, get stung by a scorpion, and discovered a new type of land mine. This qualified him to receive the Africa Star.
The division then crossed the sea and landed in Italy. There, Christopher would find some more action. In October of 1944, he was wounded near Sant'Arcangelo, on the edge of the Plain of Lombardy. He was evacuated to Fano where a piece of shrapnel was removed from his head. By December, he had rejoined the division.
Like his father before him, Christopher came to hate the horrors of war.
In war you may be killed or wounded. But people are killed and wounded every day on our roads and we don't talk about the horror of driving. The horror of war is not what it does to the human body (which anyway it probably does only once if at all) but what it does to the human spirit. It is the sight (and sound and smell)
BaCk To MaIn PaGe
