Classic of the month: A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond (original) (raw)

A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond (Collins, £4.99)

One forgets, with the near-total ubiquity of Paddington pencil-cases, bean-bags, lampshades and, naturally, stuffed toys, that Paddington actually started life as a book.

But let us not blame Paddington himself for this. Conceived by a 36-year-old Michael Bond in 1958, Paddington's phenomenal success is down largely to the serene unobjectionableness of this Candidean bear. Seek in vain here for subtexts, dark undercurrents, and significant symbolism - unless it is to note, in passing, that Paddington is both an exile and an orphan. Raised by his Aunt Lucy, his parents are, in all senses, off the map. Like children, he hardly knows anything about where he came from; we are all, so to speak, from Darkest Peru. Paddington was, in the original draft, from Africa; but Bond's editor told him that there were no bears there. "Children either know this or should know this and I suggest you make suitable amend," he advised Bond.

But, of course, Paddington is English - or learning to be. He's halfway there, with his instinctive politeness and his fondness for marmalade. And while he may have arrived in 1958, the mood in the books, by Bond's own account, is very much pre-war. Yet, weirdly, Paddington's London has not dated that much. There are still antique shops in the Portobello Road; and there are still officious shop assistants or tube workers, pompous actors who need to be taken down a peg or two by a frank, disingenuous stare. ("Paddington had a very persistent stare when he cared to use it. It was a very powerful stare. One which his Aunt Lucy had taught him and which he kept for special occasions.")

Being English - or being like the English were in those days - Paddington spends a lot of time being scandalised by the prices of things. Understandably, the currency in the newer editions of the Paddington books is no longer in pounds, shillings and pennies, and one misses the original force of Paddington's eruptions - for some reason, they always sound better in pre-decimal currency - but we can still sympathise when he resents the gouging he has to suffer for a theatre programme and a coffee in the interval. ("'Seven pounds and fifty pence?' he repeated. ' Seven pounds fifty?' ") Or the fact that he has to spend 20p on opera glasses he can't even take home. ("' Twenty pence! ' he said bitterly. 'That's two buns' worth.'")

I make no claims for Paddington as literature. I doubt that anyone would. It is basically a utopian fantasy; and it is nice that Bond took the trouble to introduce Mr Gruber, the kindly, courteous Hungarian antique-shop owner, representative of the displaced wartime immigrants whom Bond came to know when working for the BBC Monitoring Service. Come to think of it, Paddington is himself an evacuee; only this time, London is being repopulated, rather than emptied.