100 years of Winnie the Pooh: 'Without the First World War he would not have existed'
Adventuring in the Hundred Acre Wood and always searching for honey. There can only be one: the world-famous bear Winnie the Pooh. One hundred years ago, the first book about him appeared, later followed by many Disney cartoons.
The story collection by the British writer Alan Alexander Milne was published on October 14, 1926. Milne was already a successful author but had mainly written plays until then. For the Pooh stories, Ernest Howard Shepard made the drawings, but he did not give the bear the famous red shirt. That came in the early 1960s when Walt Disney bought the rights.
Milne wrote the stories for his son: Christopher Robin. He also ended up as one of the main characters in his father's books. That character is known in the Dutch stories as Janneman Robinson.
The bear was inspired by a mascot of a unit of the Canadian army during the First World War. This black bear was named after the city of Winnipeg. When the soldiers left England, Winnie stayed in the London zoo. There Milne's son got to know him. He named his teddy bear after the Canadian bear.
Christopher Robin's stuffed animals can still be seen in the public library in New York:
The Hundred Acre Wood is also based on something from Milne's life, namely the place in the English countryside where he and his family moved after the First World War. Moeyes points out that the stories take place in the countryside.
"The writer had a farm with a considerable piece of land," he says. "There Christopher Robin could play to his heart's content with his toy animals. It is an isolated, timeless world, but also innocent and incredibly safe." Moeyes thinks that is why the stories appealed to so many people.
'Groundbreaking'
A hundred years later, the yellow bear is still enormously popular. "The stories are timeless," said curator of Huis Doorn Cornelis van der Bas earlier. Years ago, there was an exhibition with Shepard's drawings in that museum. "Everyone has a cuddly toy and fantasizes stories about it. And everyone wants to have adventures in that landscape, with that pristine nature. You actually step right into the animal world."
Milne was ahead of his time. Children's books were almost non-existent then, and if they existed, they mainly contained moralizing stories. "Winnie the Pooh was little moralistic and really written from the perspective of children," explained the translator of the Winnie the Pooh books, Annelies Jorna, on Sunday at OVT on NPO Radio 1.
She calls the stories "much more playful" and "groundbreaking." The late 1920s was a gloomy time, but Winnie the Pooh was cheerful and encouraging. And therefore also appealing to adults, Jorna believes. "Inside every adult there is always a little child. At least if they can read aloud."
The lasting power, according to the translator, is that the characters are always kind to each other. "All the silly things are given a twist, so it always turns out well."
In the Pooh stories there is no place for the First World War, a period in which Milne served in the British army. Yet some researchers think the stories and characters have something to do with the war. They suspect Milne processed his war experiences and PTSD complaints in the stories. He suffered from that his entire life. "Without the First World War, Pooh would not have existed," says Moeyes.
"Each character has its own psychological trait," translator Jorna also thinks. Eeyore is always gloomy, Piglet is very scared, and Rabbit wants to keep everything under control.
It was probably a way for Milne to explain his feelings and behavior to his little son. His son was present when, for example, he was startled by a swarm of bees. He thought they were bullets. Also, the sound of popping balloons made him duck away.
To boarding school
Only two Pooh books were published: in 1926 and 1928. The second book ends when Christopher Robin is 8 years old. Then he goes, like other wealthy boys, to a boarding school. Just like Milne's son.
Despite the small size of the Pooh catalog, the books proved to be incredibly popular. "My edition is from 1969," says Moeyes. "That is already the sixtieth edition. As a writer, you can only be green with envy about that."