A.A. Milne’s Winter Tale (2): in which a house is built at Pooh Corner for Eeyore
Well, there’s a second winter episode in the Winnie-the-Pooh books and, as you might expect, it’s in the second book whose original title is The House at Pooh Corner. The book was published in 1928 and was still illustrated by E.H. Shepard: the stories featuring Tigger are in this second book. The chapter in question […]
Well, there’s a second winter episode in the Winnie-the-Pooh books and, as you might expect, it’s in the second book whose original title is The House at Pooh Corner. The book was published in 1928 and was still illustrated by E.H. Shepard: the stories featuring Tigger are in this second book. The chapter in question is the very first one and it opens, as it often happens, with Pooh having nothing to do and going to pester his friends.
It was still snowing as he stumped over the white forest track, and he expected to find Piglet warming his toes in front of his fire, but to his surprise he saw that the door was open, and the more he looked inside the more Piglet wasn’t there.
While he waits for his friend, being a very polite bear, even if the door is wide open he waits outside and while he waits he hums a Good Hum. And the Good Hum is about snow.
The more it snows
(Tiddely pom),
The more it goes
(Tiddely pom),
The more it goes
(Tiddely pom),
On Snowing.
Catchy, isn’t it?
And nobody knows
(Tiddely pom),
How cold my toes
(Tiddely pom),
How cold my toes
(Tiddely pom),
Are growing.
I’m sure, at one point or another, we can all relate.
After this strike of poetry, Pooh decides to go home to see what time is it (it must be tough being a bear and not being able to wear a watch), take this chance to grab a scarf (which he calls a muffler) and then… well, go and pester someone else: the gloomy sand-filled Eeyore.
It so happens that, when he gets home, Piglet turns out to be far less polite than his friend the bear (or far less a vampire) because he has invited himself in and he’s sitting in his best armchair. As you might imagine, Pooh’s first reaction is wondering whose house he’s in.
They have the deepest conversation about it and, since Pooh’s clock is always stuck five minutes to eleven, they fix themselves a little snack before heading out, in the snow, to go and visit Eeyore. Because once you’ve made up a plan, there’s no point in revising it even if the situation has changed.
The wind has dropped once Pooh and Piglet head out and, instead of a snowstorm, the two walk through far more charming weather.
The wind had dropped, and the snow, tired of rushing round in circles trying to catch itself up, now fluttered gently down until it found a place on which to rest, and sometimes the place was Pooh’s nose and sometimes it wasn’t, and in a little while Piglet was wearing a white muffler round his neck and feeling more snowy behind the ears than he had ever felt before.
Still, it’s cold and Piglet is having second thoughts and, being a tricky little swine, he proposes to go back home in order to “practice the song”. Pooh, however, won’t be fooled: the song is a special Outdoor Song which Has To Be Sung In The Snow and cannot be practised indoors. Apparently, Pooh is a method singer. They then discuss the text of the song, which is something I’ll spare you. It’s one of those lovely moments, in the Pooh books, when you feel your neurons running away and trying to commit suicide.
In 1960, His Master’s Voice (the ones with the dog listening to the gramophone) recorded a dramatised version with songs put to music by Harold Fraser-Simson and starring Ian Carmichael as Pooh, but they only did Chapter 2 and 8, so you won’t be able to hear this one. Chapter 2 is the one “In Which Tigger Comes to the Forest and Has Breakfast”, while Chapter 8 is the one “In Which Piglet Does a Very Grand Thing” and you might remember it from the movies.
Anyway, Pooh sings the song for Piglet, in the hope to receive praise for his poetic effort, but Piglet keeps criticizing the lyrics. That’s what friends are for.
‘Pooh,’ he said solemnly, ‘it isn’t the toes so much as the ears.’
They eventually reach Eeyore’s Gloomy Place, after singing the song six or seven times in the attempt to keep warm, and while they’re at the gate they reach a Resolution: their friend doesn’t have a house and it’s far too cold to be out in the cold. So, they decide to build him a house made of sticks.
As it turns out, their thinking is very much aligned with Eeyore’s thinking, and we discover that in a parallel portion when the donkey is talking to Christopher Robin.
‘I don’t know how it is, Christopher Robin, but what with all this snow and one thing and another, not to mention icicles and such-like, it isn’t so Hot in my field about three o’clock in the morning as some people think it is. It isn’t Close, if you know what I mean – not so as to be uncomfortable. It isn’t Stuffy. In fact, Christopher Robin,’ he went on in a loud whisper, ‘quite-between-ourselves-and-don’t-tell-anybody, it’s Cold.’
Well, no shit.
‘And I said to myself: The others will be sorry if I’m getting myself all cold. They haven’t got Brains, any of them, only grey fluff that’s blown into their heads by mistake, and they don’t Think, but if it goes on snowing for another six weeks or so, one of them will begin to say to himself: “Eeyore can’t be so very much too Hot about three o’clock in the morning.”And then it will Get About. And they’ll be Sorry.’
So, in a beautiful version of a comedy of errors, Pooh and Piglet are building a house for poor Eeyore, and poor Eeyore had already built himself a house so that his friends wouldn’t feel sorry for him (or at least this is how he spells it out, in his passive-aggressive way of putting things).
Of course, something has to go wrong. Eeyore builds himself a house and then gets out. And when he gets back, the house isn’t there anymore. Not that he’s actively complaining about it. What do you think happened?
Christopher Robin joins forces with Eeyore and they go looking for the house, as you would go looking for a pair of lost gloves. We get another hint when we learn that the house Eeyore built himself was a house made of sticks, and who did we leave, looking for sticks in order to build Eeyore’s house?
Yup.
They both listened … and they heard a deep gruff voice saying in a singing voice that the more it snowed the more it went on snowing, and a small high voice tiddely-pomming in between.
Only this time, the song isn’t about the snow anymore, but it’s about how proud they are that they have finished a house.
They all get convinced that the wind must have blown the house to a different place and that’s it, they can go and get on with their day. And so can we.
And I know it seems easy, said Piglet to himself, but it isn’t every one who could do it.