ON CHRISTMAS EVE in 1925, the Evening News ran a banner headline on the front page which was to launch Moon's teddy bear into his new life as the celebrity Winnie-the-Pooh. A story, it explained, had been commissioned especially for the paper and was one that his father had told to Moon at bedtime. It was illustrated by J.H. Dowd and was the first in a series of unforgettable tales that were later published under the title Winnie-the-Pooh. The hyphens are there in the original handwritten manuscript and were removed years later by Disney.
How did he get such a strange name?
Pooh it seems came first. Blue had his own explanation for the origin of the Pooh.
From time to time in the early days, he explained, the family escaped from London to the country. One of their haunts was the pretty South Downs hamlet of Poling in Sussex not far from Arundel.
The entry on Google for Poling is amusing. It claims Poling ‘has few public facilities apart from an historical Norman church, a phone box and two post boxes. The only industry is farming and a mushroom factory. You can buy eggs from Peckham’s Farm but that’s about it. You should definitely stock up well before you arrive.’
The family rented a pretty seventeenth-century thatched cottage called ‘The Decoy’, on the estate of the Duke of Norfolk. The cottage itself overlooked a large pond which was the home of a swan.
Blue said that Moon had named the bird ‘Pooh’. He had decided that Pooh was a very good sort of name for a swan because, with childish logic, he explained that if the swan didn’t want to stop what he was doing and come over for a chat, you could show him that you didn’t want him anyway by shouting ‘POOH!’
So, when they left The Decoy they took the name with them and it later became attached to the bear.
But where did the WINNIE come from?
In 1914, at the outbreak of World War I Harry Colebourn, a British-born veterinary surgeon left the Department of Agriculture in Winnipeg, Canada and joined the 34th Regiment of Cavalry. This was to become the 34th Fort Garry Horse.
According to his diary, on 24 August, Lieutenant Colebourn stopped off at White River, Ontario, on his way to join the Second Canadian Infantry Brigade.
The Decoy cottage is on the edge of a lake and is named after a decoy which has been disused since 1868. A decoy is a living or artificial bird or other animal used to entice wildfowl or other game into a trap or within shooting range.
In 1825 Joseph Hume, M.P. the well-known radical statesman and author wrote: ‘There is a Decoy at Angmering. It has been established for two centuries, and from November to March supplies all the neighbourhood with Ducks, Teal, and Wigeon. The pool is square, of about one acre, in a hollow surrounded by plenty of trees of different kinds, and is a secluded, quiet spot. There a small rill of water runs down the hollow, and two or three large fishponds are on the N. E. of it, from which, one year with another eight cwt of fish are drawn.
The Decoy pool has a strong spring of water in it, and they have the power of raising the water 12in or 14in when required. One man has attended this Decoy for 50 years, and his son is now assisting him’.
In 1976, The Wildlife and Wetlands Trust took over the conservation and management of the reed beds near the decoy which, in the days when the Milnes were on holiday, were much wilder.
There the Lieutenant met a hunter with a small black bear cub whose mother had been shot. He bought the cub and called her ‘Winnie’ after his adopted home town.
The Lieutenant’s diary entries for that momentous purchase are briefly matterof-fact. Yet the terrible journey young Winnie was about to make was more memorable than Lieutenant Colebourn could have imagined.
Bought (Winnie) cub Bear at White River Ont. Paid $20.00
The seven-week journey to England first by train across Canada and by boat over the Atlantic must have been as traumatic for the little bear cub as it was for the soldiers. One month later the Lieutenant’s diary records:
Sept 24th
Making Preparations to leave Canada
Sept 25th
Standing by all day ready to Embark. Raining like Hell all day
Sept 28th
Embark S.S. Manitou in the afternoon
Oct 3rd
Left Gaspe Bay en route for England
Oct 15th
Arrived in England
Oct 17th
Disembarked and left Devonport 7 P.M. for Salisbury Plains
Oct 19t
Arrived on Plains in the Mud
Winnie had become very tame and as the unofficial mascot of the regiment she was a popular tourist attraction on Salisbury Plain. But when orders came for the regiment’s embarkation to France, Lieutenant Colebourn decided to give his bear to the London Zoological Society, in Regent’s Park.
Dec 9th
Took Winnie to the Zoo.
But it was not as simple as that! The newspapers recorded that Winnie had travelled by car from Salisbury to London with Lieutenant Colebourn but on arrival was obviously suffering from claustrophobia and escaped her escort! Although she was a docile animal, there was naturally panic among spectators who weren’t too happy about a bear having fun and games in their midst. Eventually she was caught and led quietly to her new home. Winnie was not alone in London Zoo. A number of other regiments had donated mascot-bears to the safe-keeping of the curators for the duration of the War but none of the other bears was to achieve her fame.
In July 1915, Lieutenant Colebourn returned to London from France and made several visits to his friend but at the end of the War Harry Colebourn (by then a Captain) hoped to take Winnie home with him to Canada. However, she had become such a celebrity that he hadn’t the heart and so he decided to let her stay in London.
That was where the bear called Winnie was living, when the little boy known as Moon paid her a visit.
E.V. Lucas, chairman of Methuen, was a Member of the Zoological Society at the time and had special privileges. He would have been able to open doors and gates not accessible to the public. His friend Laurence Irving, grandson of the renowned actor Sir Henry Irving, claimed in a letter to The Times in 1981 that through him he had been able to organise a birthday outing to the London Zoo for his daughter Pamela and that Moon was invited.
The children were taken by the Zoo keeper into a dark cavern and up some steep steps, through narrow passages, to the grille at the back of the bear pit. This was opened for them and the now large, furry animal ambled out to greet them and they were allowed into its den to play.
At first Moon was timid and tearful but very soon they were all hugging and rolling around with the docile people-friendly animal who apparently never needed to have her toe nails cut and who loved golden syrup and condensed milk – but not ‘Hunny’.
No Health and Safety worries in those days!
According to Laurence Irving, Pamela reacted strongly to the smell of Winnie’s fur and let out a disgusted cry of ‘POO!’ That was the answer! Moon’s bear became Winnie-the-Pooh.
As in so many good detective mysteries there is another even less likely explanation for the origins of the teddy bear’s full and final name, but one which is accepted by many people in Canada. It emerged recently in an old family album. The album was left to Pauline Mori from Burnaby in Canada by her uncle John (Jack) Hewat. Jack was only 17 years-old when he lied to the authorities in order to join the Second Canadian Rifles.
Pauline’s story was published in 2009. In that album, she says, she found a photograph showing her uncle Jack with a group of young soldiers, including Lieutenant Colebourn, laughing at the sight of a young black bear sitting on a Harley Davidson motorcycle. The bear was Winnie.
She told how Jack used to describe to her that long, arduous journey from White River to England. He said all the men took pity on Winnie and used to take food to her in the ship’s hold.
One of their less pleasant tasks was dealing with large quantities of ‘poo’ which had to be shovelled overboard and so, by the time she reached London and met Moon she was already known by them all as Winnie the Poo! Could this really have been the name by which keepers introduced her to Moon? It seems unlikely and sadly the Zoo records don’t say.
Wherever that unforgettable name came from, with the help of Blue, the voice of Daff and, eventually, with the drawings of E.H. Shepard, that teddy began to develop his personality.
Somewhat belatedly in 1981 a statue in Winnie’s memory by Lorne McKean was unveiled at London Zoo by Christopher Milne himself. There is also a statue to the famous animal in Winnipeg. It seems a very odd sculpture indeed to come across in such a robustly multicultural and bracingly matter-of-fact prairie city as Winnipeg.
Then, in 2000, the Pavilion Gallery in Winnipeg paid $243,000 for the only known oil painting of Pooh by E.H Shepard. The picture was to be hung in what was described as a ‘Poohzeum’. The bid was made by art dealer David Lock on the phone from Toronto to Sotheby’s in London and the extravagant gesture was justified to the press as the ‘Pooh meaning of Friendship’ towards an ‘Ambassador to the United Nations’ – they meant Pooh!
The local press reported that children were breaking open their piggy banks, seniors were dropping off $20 bills and well-heeled Winnipeggers were brandishing their cheque-books so the city could buy the oval-shaped painting of the famous bear, paw in honey pot. ‘A poll conducted by a local radio station hasn’t turned up one person who is against the idea’, said Mayor Glen Murray. ‘People here are very attached to Winnie-the-Pooh and Winnipeggers get downright indignant when people don’t know that the Winnie in Pooh is the same Winnie as in Peg.’
In London, Christie’s also sold a 14.5 cm by 19 cm ink drawing of Pooh by Shepard for $112,500 (U.S.) The catalogue estimate was $30,000 to $45,000 (U.S.), the same as that for the 93 cm by 71 cm oil painting.
Winnie died in 1934 and her obituaries in Canada and in London occupied many column inches in the newspapers. She too had become a star.