“Winnie-the-Pooh” by A. A. Milne (post 3): Poems, not by brain, “find you”; alternate personalities named “Hoo”; Milne “never sentimental” about children 

“Did you make that song up?”

“Well, I sort of made it up,” said Pooh. “It isn’t Brain…but it comes to me sometimes” (1, p. 247).

“Because Poetry and Hums aren’t things which you get [by using your brain], they’re things which get you. And all you can do is to go where they can find you” (1, p. 312).

From author’s introduction to “When We Were Very Young,” a collection of children’s poems, some written by “Hoo,” the name of a group of alternate personalities, ranging in age from four to twenty-eight:

“You may wonder sometimes who is supposed to be saying the verses. Is it the Author, that strange but uninteresting person, or is it Christopher Robin, or some other boy or girl, or Nurse, or Hoo?…I don’t know if you have ever met Hoo, but he is one of those curious children who look four on Monday, and eight on Tuesday, and are really twenty-eight on Saturday…” (1, p. 350).

Note: In multiple personality, it sometimes happens that a group of alternate personalities will be referred to by one collective name rather than be named individually. A previously cited example is Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which the name “Dorian Gray” refers to a group of alternate personalities. Search “Dorian Gray.”

“Never Sentimental”

Another indication that alternate personalities may have been involved in the writing of Milne’s children’s books is the remarkable discrepancy between the sentimental feelings that readers sense in these books and the unsentimental attitude that Milne (host personality) expresses in his autobiography:

Milne says he is “not inordinately fond of or interested in children…I have never felt in the least sentimental about them” (2, p. 282). He says “It is easier in England to make a reputation than to lose one. I wrote four ‘Children’s books,’ containing altogether, I suppose, 70,000 words—the number of words in the average-length novel” and then “I gave up writing children’s books. I wanted to escape from them…” but the public wouldn’t let him (2, p. 286).

1. A. A. Milne. The Complete Tales & Poems of Winnie-the-Pooh [1924-1928]. Decorations by Ernest H. Shepard. New York, Dutton Children’s Books, 2001.

2. A. A. Milne. Autobiography. New York, E. P. Dutton, 1939.