Text 49

WASTE

I had written to Aunt Maud,

Who was on a trip abroad,

When I heard she'd died of cramp

Just too late to save the stamp.

NECESSITY

Late last night I killed my wife,

Stretched her on the parquet flooring;

I was loath to take her life,

But I had to stop her snoring!

Of the same generation was another, Walter de la Mare. In 1891, at 16, he started working for an Anglo-American oil company. For almost twenty years he worked there. His first volume of poetry was entitled Songs of Childhood. His poetry seems unaffected by the fashions of the times in which he lived. The poems are skillfully crafted, unassuming, and delicate in their technique. De la Mare wrote lyrical poems about nature, country life, simple people, and tried to discover poetic charm in everyday things. His verses, even those not meant for children, are often naive in tone, but full of deep and genuine feeling. Their tone is one of quiet intensity.

Probably the most famous children's author of the 'lost generation' was Alan Alexander Milne (1882—1956). His plays or essays are little known today. It was his fatherhood that brought him incomparably great popularity due to the four books written for Christopher Robin, his beloved son. These books are his most lasting contribution to world literature. Along with two tales about Winnie-the-Pooh, two collections of poems, When We Were Very Young (1924) and Now We Are Six (1927), recreate the world of his infant son.

As was said earlier, Milne was one of the 'lost generation'. He fought in the First World War, at the same front with Richard Aldington. Yet there is very little about war in his writings. Everything is as peaceful as it can be.

When Christopher Milne grew up, he wrote a book about his father. In it, he points out the importance of the books' titles – When We Were Very Young (1924) and Now We Are Six (1927): "...the titles trip from the tongue and we scarcely pause to ask ourselves who exactly is meant by 'we'? It is, of course, the obvious pronoun. 'He' might have done instead but would have been a bit limiting. They' is a bit condescending. It' and 'you' are clearly wrong. So only 'we' remains. But that still leaves the question 'who is we'? Is it the 'we' with which so many adults address the young? 'And how are we today?' Heaven forbid! It is then the universal 'we': all of us - for, whatever our age now, we were all young once? Possibly this was how it was meant to seem. But I guess that in his heart my father intended it for just two people: himself and his son."

Christopher's childhood was cloudless and as happy as one might be. And nannies also were there; they came, as he put it himself, somewhere in the middle in the domestic hierarchy. The nursery room was with their charge. He wrote: "We lived together in a large nursery on the top floor. We lived there, played there, ate there – the food being brought up from the kitchen on a tray – and then at the end of the day we retired, each at our appointed time, to the night nursery next door. So much we were together that Nanny became almost a part of me. Consequently it was my occasional encounters with my parents that stand out as the events of the day. Our first meeting would be after breakfast when I was allowed to visit the dining-room. There was a large chest by the window and it was opened for me and I climbed inside while my father finished his marmalade and tea and my mother ate her apple." Maybe, The King's Breakfast was conceived on just such a day (Text 50).