The magic of Pooh
Winnie lives on at the V&A’S intriguing new exhibition
Winnie-the-pooh: Exploring a Classic V&A Museum, London SW7
On one hand, it is sad that the sprawling acreage of the Victoria & Albert Museum is no longer solely dedicated to serried ranks of pot shards, figurines and obscure, ornate reliquary, as it once was, but there’s no denying their embrace of modernity and relevance has brought us some wonderful and unexpected shows.
In the past few years I’ve enjoyed the Bowie, Pink Floyd and Revolution exhibitions, and this month – under the steerage of new director Tristram Hunt – the museum is opening its first show aimed specifically at families with younger children: Winnie-thepooh: Exploring a Classic.
In keeping with the general feel of AA Milne’s books, the exhibition is small – a couple of rooms, very charmingly designed by the same Tom Piper who created the flow of ceramic poppies at the Tower of London in 2014 – and is very playful.
There are mock-ups of the bridge from which Christopher Robin and Pooh dropped their sticks (although the flowing water is only digital, and anyone hoping for a proper game will be left disappointed); a picnic table in the Hundred Acre Wood; the bee tree, and, of course, Eeyore’s house, after Pooh and Piglet rearranged it. Likewise, there are various balloons and umbrellas and other props dotted about the place, each derived from the delightful artwork of Milne’s collaborator, EH Shepard. Across them all, though, flitting in and around, are the stories themselves. Letters and words are projected everywhere. They flow through the water, hang as mobiles from above and they spool across the ceiling, reminding you of just how clever and impish the stories really are: “Grrrr – oppp – ptschschschz”, for instance, or “He squeezed and he squoze and then with one last squoze he was out”.
There are screens you can swipe, and various little hands-on toys aimed at youngish-child-level. This sort of thing is Roald Dahl-esque catnip for children, of course, but above all these multisensory delights unfurl the more mundane yet no less intriguing story of Milne’s life, before, during and after the incredible success of his Winniethe-pooh books. All of it is beautifully explained and illustrated with carefully chosen artefacts, some of a more fragile nature.
Much of the story is broadly familiar – though I laughed to hear Milne, aka Alan, had brothers named Barry and Ken – but the exhibition fills in many of the gaps, and fills out his life story. Milne later wrote in his autobiography It’s Too Late Now (1939) that his “real achievement… was to be not wholly the wrong person, in the right spot at the right moment”, but that is too modest. He was already a successful playwright, novelist, and humorist (well, he wrote for Punch, anyway) before he wrote When We Were Very Young, the book of poems which introduced Pooh to the world, in 1924.
The initial print run of this book was 5,000, but it sold 44,000 within the first three months, propelling Milne to literary superstardom and placing an unwelcome emotional burden on his son, poor old Christopher Robin, who hated being portrayed with an Edwardian hairstyle and wearing unflattering clothes, and later took up boxing to defend himself from bullies.
There are some intriguing letters between Milne and Shepard, detailing the formation of their partnership. To begin with Milne did not, apparently, think much of Shepard, but very soon the two were firm friends, and Milne invited the artist to come and meet Winnie-the-pooh and Piglet and so on, and the exhibition has displays of some of Shepard’s earliest sketches, rough things that he would go on to refine, including Christopher Robin dragging the bear up the stairs, and the original sketch of the three friends standing on Poohsticks bridge.
It is interesting to see how Shepard tweaked them as he went on, not just making Pooh fatter (the pictures were based on Shepard’s own son’s bear, Growler) but adding lovely touches such as Pooh standing on his toes on the bridge, and Christopher Robin letting his shoe slip from his heel.
Milne invited Shepard down to his farmhouse in Surrey to draw nearby Ashdown wood, the model for the Hundred Acre wood, and there are some very fine sketches of trees in particular, that would go on to appear in the books. So familiar are they, they appear like some distant memory, and you find yourself trying to remember where you yourself saw them.
The exhibition also has a great collection of ephemera to show the extent to which this Bear of Very Little Brain has entered our collective imagination, not just in the words we use – Eeyorish, Tiggerish, Tiddelypom – but in art, fashion, design, politics and even philosophy.
His image and influence seem to get everywhere. Gathered here are various calendars, dresses, games, songbooks and translations (into Latin and Russian, both surprisingly popular), and a highlight of the exhibition – though in fact, dare I say it, perfectly ordinary-looking – is a Winnie-the-pooh bear china tea set, one of only two ever made, that belongs to the Queen. The other set went to Milne.
This is not a blockbusting exhibition to rival Bowie or Pink Floyd, but it is certainly very satisfying, and will be popular with grandparents (and grandchildren), and it really does make you want to return to Milne’s original material and start re-reading them all over again. I think rather than just explore a classic, it reminds us why it is a classic in the first place.