FOR POOH THERE WERE to be three memorable return visits to England. The first was in 1969. He was guest of honour at the Victoria and Albert Museum’s celebration for the 90th birthday of Ernest Shepard. Pooh was given red-carpet treatment by British Airways for his flight from New York.
It was at this celebration that British film and stage actor Peter Dennis was first introduced to Winnie-the-Pooh, the bear that was to transform his life too. He was so enthralled that he went away to write a one-man stage show, which he called ‘Bother!’, based on selections from the four books by A.A. Milne.
Pooh and his friends, he believed, represented the whole of humanity. Peter captured unforgettably the bear’s ponderous thought processes; the jumpily anxious Piglet (peppered with grunts and snorts); the lugubrious melancholy of Eeyore; the clipped, efficient tones of Rabbit and the pompous grandiloquence of Owl.
For the rest of his life the actor gave ‘Pooh readings’ in venues that ranged from the Palace of Westminster in London to the Hollywood Bowl. He became the Voice of Pooh.
After one of these events at the Lee Strasberg Institute, Los Angeles, Charlton Heston, who had been in the audience, went backstage and greeted Peter with a very bouncy ‘Hi! I’m Tigger and this is my wife Piglet.’
‘There was Moses reflected in my mirror,’ Peter Dennis told The Times. ‘He wrapped his arms around me and said it was one of the most wonderful evenings he had ever spent in the theatre.’
The second nostalgic journey for Pooh was in 1976. This was the 50th birthday celebration of the publication of Winnie-the-Pooh but it was also, sadly, the year that E.H. Shepard died.
Elliott’s diary records:
1976 Thursday May 27th
Fair
British Airways building at Kennedy Airport. I received a regal welcome from a Miss Levy as soon as I had checked in; I was told I was expected and that I must go to the Monarch Room, the VIP lounge on the second floor …… The other VIPs were a seedy lot – harassed businessmen and over-age pop singers (my guess) and they were galvanized with attention when 2 men were admitted … to photograph Mr Elliott Graham. He took out of his briefcase a copy of Now We Are Six asked me to sign it for his daughter and with Pooh under my arm I went down to the Security Chief’s to find a pretty hostess for the picture taking.
1976 Friday May 28th
Overcast
So here we are in Paddington again, after 11 months.
On Saturday May 29th he went to see Betjemania written by David Benedictus at Richmond Theatre.
1976 Wednesday June 2nd
Cold
… Jet lag, room 143, hotel has lost a bit of ground since I was last here, reception area carpet shabbier, the great array of bathroom towels dwindled to face towel and a bath towel. Not even a wash cloth.
On 5th June (Fair) Elliott Graham had lunch at El Vinos in Fleet Street, with Jan Hopcraft of Methuen, Pooh’s English publisher, to prepare for his return visit to the Forest:
I am sick when I think of all the things I have to prepare for Pooh’s birthday.
Referring to the Hartfield playgroup organiser he added:
Jan thinks the Pooh picnic Mrs Hartfield has set up is a great thing and is trying for BBC coverage. Jan and her husband will drive me down to Hartfield. I wish it were here tomorrow.
So it was, on the morning of 15th June, that the children stood waiting eagerly outside the former Hartfield railway station, once used by Pooh and the Milnes for steam train journeys to London. The building had lain derelict for years after the line was closed and parents had raised funds to buy and convert it into a home for the village playgroup.
There were many grown-ups in the village who were very worried that Pooh’s real life appearance might expose the truth they had hidden for years which would end the rural peace and quiet they still treasured.
Two minutes after midday the film crew arrived and a large black saloon turned into the station yard from which emerged Elliott Graham, carrying his usual home-made travelling bag, with Pooh’s head peeping over the top. Hands were shaken and smiles exchanged and then, once inside, Elliott sat down on one of the little red playgroup chairs and lifted the visitor out to greet the children. Pooh was looking surprisingly well as, awestruck, they came one by one to gently shake his paw.
This was the first time that Pooh had returned to Hartfield since his departure for America in 1947.
The film crew buzzed around while the children played with Pooh until he was ready to drive up to the Enchanted Place for more photographs and a game of ‘Poohsticks’ on Posingford Bridge. They all trooped down to the wooden bridge over the river where the game had been invented so many years before. A small blond boy named Peter Taylor who looked just like Christopher Robin and was already known as ‘Pooh’ to his family, took his namesake by the paw and helped him to throw sticks into the water once again.
Peter lived just up the track in Cotchford Lane and so his mother Mary invited Pooh back for a quick ‘smackerel’ of something in their garden where Pooh, seated comfortably in a high chair, was the centre of attention.
Back at the station, it was finally time to move on and Pooh was driven away. Sadly he forgot to take the very large welcome card the children had made for him and which is today looked after as a much-prized memento of that special visit.
The following Saturday ‘it rained and it rained and it rained.’ The appalling weather revived memories once more of that fateful day when little Piglet had been stranded in his tree house, entirely surrounded by water.
Pooh returned from London and with a bus-load of press made a nostalgic drive to Cotchford Farm where the owner, Alistair Johns and his wife Harriet had laid on lunch. Playgroup supervisor Sonja LeVay and actor Peter Bull watched them go off for another very muddy photo shoot on Poohsticks Bridge.
There were five hundred people and their bears present that second day for the picnic at Forstal Farm in the next village of Withyham. The crowds paddled stoically around the deeply muddy field with plastic sheets and umbrellas protecting their bears. A table had been laid for the celebrities: the real-life Pooh sat at the head, with toy bears playing Paddington, Rupert and Mary Plain at his side. There, too, was the elderly author, Gwynedd Rae who had created the loveable Mary Plain from the Berne bear pits in Switzerland, and all the way from Edinburgh came Colonel Bob Henderson, the Teddy Bear historian and arctophile who represented the children’s charity Good Bears of the World.
This was Pooh in his element, surrounded by Friends and Relations, happily content and with only the incessant downpour to dampen spirits. Not to be deterred, when, eventually, the rain eased, Pooh and his bodyguard set off once again for the Enchanted Place for yet more photographs. Jan Hopcraft planted a tree and arctophile author and broadcaster Brian Sibley, protecting Pooh’s paws in some plastic bags, read stories from Winnie-the-Pooh.
The last trip, seven years later, on 28 August 1983 was extra special for Pooh who travelled supersonically by Concorde with American author Nancy Winters as his escort. His ursine companion on the flight was Nancy’s own teddy bear, Moreton Hampstead. She had bought him for 5p in a British charity shop and travelled with him to some of the smartest places in the world.
With Moreton as founder-member, Nancy had recently launched the ‘Take a Teddy to Tea Club’ in New York’s very smart, literary Algonquin Hotel. Meetings were to be held annually to honour A.A. Milne’s birthday, on 18 January. Winniethe-Pooh had replied to that first invitation that he would be delighted to come.
Earlier, in the baking heat of 27th July, Elliott took Pooh down to the Algonquin (his favourite hotel) where Nancy was staying. The Manager admired Pooh’s travelling bag. ‘Really!’ wrote Elliott, sarcastically, in his diary. ‘He sees bags all the time.’
On Concorde with Moreton Hampstead sitting at his side, Pooh, unusually travelling without Elliott, was treated as a VIP and was taken on to the flight deck and presented with a certificate signed by the Crew. The Captain, who obviously knew to Whom he was talking, had written ‘Concordes are faster than Heffalumps’.
On arrival in London, Nancy and the bears took up residence at the Savoy Hotel in the River Suite, where they were welcomed by Mr Bashford, the hotel commissionaire. He bowed politely and invited Pooh to ‘Come along Edward’.
Also staying at the hotel on that occasion were Peter and Diane Dennis. Peter was by this time well known in England for his broadcasts and public readings from A.A. Milne’s books.
The couple were living in London and had been invited to the teddy bears’ tea party Nancy was planning for the following day in the Savoy’s elegant ballroom.
An arctophile is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as a ‘lover and collector of teddy bears’. The word is exactly the same in most European languages.
Arctophile actor Peter Bull was naturally there too, with about thirty other guests and their bears. While they were all enjoying themselves, the cream-coloured telephone rang.
It was Christopher Milne! He said that he was very sorry that he had not been able to accept the invitation, so Nancy asked him, ‘Would you like to speak to Pooh?’ To which he replied – ‘Oh, I’m too old – he won’t remember me!’
‘Pooh loved London’, says Nancy. ‘Especially travelling in black cabs, although he was much impressed by the occasional limousine.’ During that two-week holiday, he stayed in a number of very smart establishments such as Brown’s. He also took tea in Claridge’s elegant restaurant in Brook Street and at The Ritz and Simpsons. When it was not appropriate for a bear to join the party, he would remain reclining on the chaise longue in Nancy’s suite at the Savoy, overlooking the Thames.
As a treat he was taken out sight-seeing when he was always the centre of attention. ‘Wherever we went children recognised him and were thrilled to be introduced’, Nancy recalls today.
Pooh returned to a New York sweltering in temperatures of 94 degrees. He was taken by Nancy to Tiffany’s for a little ‘smackerel’ and then, with Moreton alongside, on to Dutton’s. Elliott was somewhat stunned by her dramatic all-black attire and large black glasses and by her gift – a jar of orange marmalade from Paddington bear!
Nancy admits that she had thought of kidnapping Pooh: ‘I really felt that he belonged there in England’, she says and being an honourable person, she had rung Dutton in New York to suggest the plan but Elliott said ‘No. It’s too late now’.
It probably was too late. That year in America, Dutton saw the beginning of a period of turmoil within the company largely because they were losing money and were ripe for a take-over. It was a time which has been described since, by many of those who were there, as a bloodbath.