Description:

Milne A.A.

Single page ALS, 5.25" x 7", extensively written both recto and verso, on Cotchford Farm, Hartfield, Sussex letterhead. Dated "30.3.44", and signed by A.A. Milne using the nickname given him by his son of "Blue".

Milne banters about with his dear longtime friend and peer, Vincent Seligman, lamenting on hearing about Vincent's pleurisy and pneumonia, while making jocular comments about the cold and damp "The radiator has been so cold that to touch them accidentally gives you frost bite". He then quickly moves to his favorite topic of his son, Christopher Robin who was stationed abroad in a battalion in WWII with the Royale Engineers.

"So it is done. He went off … in January - his first time out … since Salerno. … he and his (illegible) had had to take over from the infantry for a fortnight in their muddy perpetually rained on  trenches … during which time he grew a beard "a fair, crisp thing."

One envisions a most disturbing vivid image of Christopher Robin, now sporting a beard surrounded by Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore, Piglet and friends whilst in the trenches of war instead of the bucolic setting of the Hundred Acre Woods. What twenty years can bring since the innocence of the infamous stories that bonded father and son as the reader is thrown in the harsh reality of WWII. Milne continues with his concern for Christopher Robin "he and his (illegible) had had to take over from the infantry for a fortnight in their muddy perpetually rained on trenches … I hear from my spies that at last, after months of it, his division is going to have a rest. I should like to think that they were doing it in Capri, but I should think Campania is more likely. Anyway he will be safe for a bit. He does get about, doesn't he?"

A lovely lengthy letter, penning incredible imagery between the harsh cold of the winter and the harsh reality of war.

And in his last comment, Milne notes:

"P.S. Hooray the sun is coming out. I must go outside and get warm …" One only wishes that perhaps he is speaking both physically and metaphorically.

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