MEANWHILE LIFE IN Mallord Street had continued fairly quietly. The Milnes often entertained at home and although Pooh was not generally present for their small, intimate dinner parties, he was sometimes introduced informally when Moon was brought down to say 'howdyerdo' politely to guests.
That guest list was star-spangled. Friends such as H.G. Wells, who had taught young A.A. Milne at Henley House School, Kenneth Grahame and J.M. Barrie, were among those who came to dinner.
The Milnes’ neighbour, author Denis MacKail, a grandson of Burne Jones and related to both Rudyard Kipling and Stanley Baldwin, has recalled how he first met A.A. Milne at a disastrous lunch party in Mallord Street. He and Milne were squashed elbow to elbow at a too-small refectory table and both were dull and tongue-tied. Despite this the two men eventually overcame their inhibitions and were to remain lifelong friends.
Round the corner lived the composer H. Fraser Simson with his wife Cicely, and their spaniel Mr. Henry Woggins. He would one day set the verses from When We Were Very Young to music. Journalist and drama critic, W.A. Darlington, was only a short distance away, living with his wife and young daughter, Anne, in Beaufort Mansions.
But the idea of dropping in was not the Milnes’ custom at all. ‘We don’t call very well. I hate knowing people for geographical reasons’.
Theodore and Kermit Roosevelt, sons of the former American President, popped in to meet Pooh for tea just after When We Were Very Young was published. They were on their way to shoot tigers in Turkestan, and Milne wrote to his brother Ken afterwards saying that Theodore almost wept because he only had an American and not an English first edition to be signed. The poems, having taken America by storm, were being quoted at official banquets, university seminars and dinner parties.
In the Middle East, grown-up Arab merchants were ‘hoppity-hopping’ around the bazaars (Hoppity). Children everywhere were trying to avoid walking on the lines in the street (Lines and Squares) and asking for butter for the royal slice of bread (The King’s Breakfast).
At this time Moon’s own excitements were very simple. He liked to stand on the ottoman with Pooh and watch the happenings in the street below, through the bars of the window. Not that much happened in Mallord Street in those days. There were very few people and even fewer cars so he would wait for a noise to alert him to some event about to happen.
There were certainly no bears waiting to gobble up boys who walked on the lines, as his father had described (not that he would have dared to tempt them!).
The log man with his horse and cart yodelled to announce his arrival, a handbell introduced the muffin man and a roaring noise meant the coalman was shooting his wares into the cellar next door. There was also the organ grinder, which made Moon feel so sad that he threw him a penny. But the melancholy harp man, with his black hair and small moustache, made him feel even sadder and he was allowed to go down and put two pennies into his velvet bag.
Best of all was the sound of a ‘coo-ee’ down below which announced the arrival of Anne Darlington who lived twenty minutes away.
For forty-eight years, her father was the acerbic theatre critic of the Daily Telegraph, who once wrote that Richard Briers played Hamlet like a ‘demented typewriter’. He was no less caustic about some of Milne’s own later plays, which he thought were lacking in content and somewhat superficial. A.A. Milne hated criticism and so when Darlington first called at Mallord Street, both were overcome by shyness and embarrassment.
Anne Darlington was eight months older than Moon and rather bossy, so she tended to take charge of whatever was going on. It was she who broke the shocking news to him that there was NO Father Christmas! She had an infectious giggle as a little girl. Friends and family remember her laugh, and recall how as a beautiful grown-up, she became a very feisty lady.
In the Mallord Street days, Anne, like Moon, was an only child. She became his constant companion in London and later in Sussex, after the Milnes bought their country home in Hartfield: Anne’s sister, Phoebe, was twelve years her junior.
The Darlingtons also had a rural retreat on the South Downs in Sussex, not so far away from Hartfield. Their home was a beautiful eighteenth-century house. A mile from the sea, at the end of a no-through lane, it was a haven in those days, not only for the Darlingtons. The Asquiths had a house there, as did the McKails. The Milnes, too, loved the tranquility of the flint cottages and old English gardens. The village has not altered in any way since those times.
Anne had a toy monkey, known, illogically, as ‘Jumbo’, who was as dear to her as was Pooh to Moon and the four went everywhere together with their nannies. They were inseparable.
Anne’s nanny, like Nou, was a family institution. But with her black-rimmed glasses and a black straw hat, was a far more formidable figure than Moon’s nanny. When they were feeling wicked, the children giggled behind her back because of the way her many chins wobbled when she spoke, so they called her ‘Jam Puff’’ and she pretended not to hear.
Blue adored Anne; she was the Rosemary he and Daff would never have and they both secretly hoped that when the time was right Moon and Anne would marry. Their wish never came true. Anne eventually became an almoner and married Peter Ryde, golf correspondent for The Times. The first time that the Milnes accepted a dinner invitation to their house in London, Peter remembered how Anne rushed around cleaning and polishing. Oysters and smoked salmon were on the menu but although Blue was as ever, courteous and polite, he made very little effort to be entertaining and remained locked within himself. Moon was not there.
Peter and Anne had two daughters, Julia and Katie. They remember, with affectionate nostalgia, visits to their Darlington grandparents in the country, lovingly safeguarding the moving memorabilia and photographs of that time.
Back in 1924, standing on the ottoman, clutching the safety rails over the window four–year- old Moon would respond to that ‘coo-ee’ and wave as Anne and her nanny arrived for the day’s outing.