Perhaps my earliest memory is of a stay at Chautauqua’s Hotel Atheneum with my cousin and our grandmother. Mimi was just at that age where enjoying the young elevator boys would have filled her days had she not, I’m sure, been put in charge of me. I was probably four or five. Grandma was obviously older. I don’t remember her there at all.

To keep me entertained (if not pacified), Mimi spent many hours reading to me. With a liberal childhood in Bermuda, she was a font of fascinating books – just right for me. Of all those we read, it’s Winnie-the-Pooh that remains with me to this day.

They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace –

Christopher Robin went down with Alice.

We looked for the king, but he never came.

“Well, God take care of him, all the same,”

Says Alice.

The words want to rhythm which makes them perfect for reading aloud – as I did with all three of my girls.

There are four books in the series: “Winnie-the-Pooh” and “The House at Pooh Corner” are accounts of Pooh and his friends while “When We Were Very Young” and “Now We are Six” contain the marvelous verses.

When I saw that this year marks his 90th anniversary – actually on the fourteenth of this month – I knew a column had to be done to commemorate my favorite bear.

Pooh’s creator was much older of course. Alan Alexander Milne was born January 18th in 1882. His father ran a boys’ school where H.G. Wells was one of Alan’s early science teachers. He graduated from Cambridge with a degree in mathematics but, even by then, writing was at the forefront of his interests. A successful playwright and mystery writer, all of Milne’s other works were largely forgotten after Pooh came on the scene.

Translated into over thirty-five languages (Winnie ille Pu became the only Latin book to make the NYT best seller list), the bear’s hyphen was dropped by Disney when their Pooh versions became a series of popular films.

I admit a personal prejudice for I’ve never accepted the Disney illustrations. E.H. Shepard remains my artist of choice. It was he who also illustrated the marvelous “Wind in the Willows” (which I must revisit in the not-too-distant future).

The beloved characters are not quite as fictitious as one might think. Christopher Robin was Milne’s only child. Called Billy Moon by his family, the boy named his toy bear after one frequently seen at the London Zoo. (A hunter sold the cub to a Canadian Lieutenant who brought it to England, naming it after his adopted hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba.) “Pooh” was a swan the family met on vacation. while his stuffed donkey, kangaroo, and tiger became Eeyore, Kanga and Roo, and Tigger.

As to why the bear got both names, I’ll let Milne explain: “But his arms were so stiff … they stayed straight up in the air for more than a week, and whenever a fly came and settled on his nose he had to blow it off. And I think – but I am not sure – that that is why he is always called Pooh.”

The family purchased a country home near Ashdown Forest, Sussex, which became the setting for two of the Pooh books. “The Hundred Acre Wood” was actually five hundred acres. Many of Shepard’s drawings can indeed be matched to actual views, “allowing as we must” for a degree of artistic license.

It might not be terribly surprising to learn that, as he grew older, Christopher Robin came to resent the books and the fame it brought him. Classmates teased him mercilessly. Once an adult, Christopher’s resentment of his father grew: he “had filched from me my good name and left me with nothing but the empty fame of being his son.” In his final years (confined to a wheelchair after a stroke), the father was basically ignored by his son.

Interviewed around 1980, a reporter described Christopher as “consciously charming, courteous, kindly, gentle but forthcoming, amusing, amused,” “slim, a little bent, owlish glasses, tweed jacket. ‘Of course we must talk about Pooh,’ he had a mischievous twinkle. ‘It’s been something of a love-hate relationship down the years, but it’s all right now.'”

After suffering for a number of years with myasthenia gravis, Christopher died on April 20, 1996.

Little Boy kneels at the foot of the bed,

Droops on the little hands little gold head.

Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares!

Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.

Susan Crossett has lived outside Cassadaga for more than 20 years. A lifetime of writing led to these columns as well as two novels. Her Reason for Being was published in 2008 with Love in Three Acts following in 2014. Both novels are now available at Lakewood’s Off The Beaten Path bookstore. Information on all the Musings, her books and the author may be found at Susancrossett.com.