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Winnie-the-Pooh: The Bear Behind A.A. Milne
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17140 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1990 |
3,457 Words |
| Author
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John Bremer
John Bremer, a Cambridge philosopher and educator, writes
mostly on Plato. |
A.A. MILNE
The Man Behind Winnie-the Pooh
Ann Thwaite
New York: Random House, Inc., 1990
554 pp., $29.95
For most of us Winnie-the-Pooh created A.A. Milne, and if it were not for Mr. Edward Bear we would not care to know much, if anything, about Alan Alexander Milne.
Pooh appeared in When We Were Very Young (1924), poems for children, Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), a story for children, Now We Are Six (1927), poems for children, and The House at Pooh Corner (1928), a story for children. That was all, but in the four books of those four years. A.A. Milne had been created and a wish had been granted: "I suppose that every one of us hopes secretly for immortality; to leave, I mean, a name behind him which will live forever in this world, whatever he may be doing, himself, in the next."
So Milne wrote in 1926. When he died, thirty years later, there was no doubt of his immortality - but it left him bitter and frustrated.
To understand Milne, born in 1882, it is necessary to understand late Victorian and Edwardian England. He lived in the period, but he made fun of it, mocked it, imitated it, and revealed it; he never joined it.
Ann Thwaite's biography is a full-scale study of Milne is his milieu. Clearly and compellingly written, with the cooperation of Milne's son, and using letters and other sources not previously available, a picture begins to emerge of the man in his times. Especially significant is the richly documented childhood.
Reading this meticulously researched and presented biography, as detailed as it is and must be, the picture of Milne becomes fuller and richer, and the outline of his character begins to emerge. But Thwaite is a careful writer and is able to convey as much by what is not said as by what is said. For example, it becomes apparent that there is no evidence - no letters and few comments - provided by Milne's wife, Daphne, or her immediate friends. The letters between husband and wife seem to have been destroyed by Daphne, and the few of her friends still living are not saying very much. The reader is left to interpret and to draw a conclusion. The biographer's judicious reticence and an unwillingness to speculate beyond the
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