Category:Paddington Bear

Unlike Winnie the Pooh (who lives in a wood, but is a toy bear), and Rupert Bear (who seems to have the social status of a teenager, and whose bear-y nature seems to be almost irrelevant), Paddington is a real bear, from a community of (talking) bears that have evaded being noticed by Western society. Paddington is an orphan, and has been taught English by his Aunt Lucy, who has always wanted him to travel abroad.

Origin

The Paddington Bear character was created by Michael Bond for the children's book "A Bear Called Paddington" which appeared in 1958.

In the books, the bear stows away on a ship and ends up at Paddington Railway Station, London, after journeying from "Deepest, Darkest Peru". He is discovered with a sign around his neck that says "Please look after this Bear", and his adoptive family, the Browns, decide to name him after the station where they discovered him.

Since Paddington Station is the London terminus of the old Great Western Railway linking London to the South-West, it is likely that Paddington's ship from Peru came up the Bristol Channel and docked at a port in northern Devon or Cornwall, or South Wales.

Character

Paddington has been well brought up to be earnestly polite at all times.

However, he is a bear, and has trouble adjusting to human furniture and implements that were never designed for use by bears, and as a result he is extremely accident-prone.

Food preferences

Paddington arrives in London wearing a battered wide-brimmed hat, and carrying a battered suitcase containing an empty marmalade jar, the contents of which sustained him on his journey. Peru is the fourth largest producer of citrus fruit in the southern hemisphere. A freighter from Peru takes a fortnight to get to the UK, so it's perhaps natural that a bear that likes fruit, would take supplies of high-energy preserved fruit in the form of jam or marmalade. Given the easy availability of bulk citrus, the natural choice for the journey might be marmalade.

Paddington expresses a fondness for marmalade, which is a special treat, and the Browns promise him that he can have marmalade every morning, after which his adventures are fuelled by marmalade sandwiches, which he keeps under his hat.

Clothing

To go with the hat, the Browns supply Paddington with a hand-me-down duffel coat, and he also acquires a pair of wellington boots, which are able to fit onto a bear's back feet, to stop his paws getting dirty from the London streets.

Paddington soft toys usually have the full suite of wellies, hat, and duffel coat, and often a suitcase.

The duffel coat

The duffel coat was an extremely sturdy coat made from Duffel cloth produced in the town of Duffel, Belgium (the hard-wearing material was also originally used for duffle bags). Coats made of duffel were supplied to troops in WW2, and post-war, excess supplies of Duffel and army surplus Duffel coats made them a cheap form of winter clothing for students.

After the war, adults with enough money to buy a normal coat tended not to wear them (unless they were ex-military), because of the awkward inflexibility of the material, but the coats were cheap winter coats for students on a budget, and were also useful as cheap winter coats for children, who would quickly outgrow them.

As a result, children often wore duffel coats that were hand-me-downs from older siblings, and in Paddington's case, he ends up being assigned a Duffle coat that the Brown children have outgrown.

Because the thickness and inflexibility of the material prevents the use of normal buttons, duffel coats usually use distinctive wooden toggles, which also have the advantage that they can be manipulated while wearing thick gloves in cold weather. This allowed troops to open a coat in bitterly cold weather without freezing their hands.

The availability of war-surplus duffle-coat toggles after WW2 was exploited by Pelham Puppets, who used the toggles as feet for some of their puppets.

Species

Spectacled Bear, Houston Zoo (via WikiMedia Commons) [image info]

Paddington is an Andean Bear, often known as a Spectacled Bear due to the markings of some individuals. The spectacled bear is the only bear native to South America, and is approximately human-sized, with a long lifespan, and a shortish snout and flattish face, which means that although Paddington's features may seem anthropomorphised compared to many real bears, they are accurate for an Andean bear, the sort that might be expected to live in Peru.

Only 5-7% of the bears' diet is thought to be meat, and this might be scavenged rather than caught by hunting. With no obvious natural predators apart from humans, the Andean bear, while reserved and cautious around people rather than being overtly "friendly", is also not thought to be naturally aggressive or violent unless cornered and defending its young. As bears go, they can be considered very nice bears. Since they are hunted by farmers, their caution around humans also suggests that they are not entirely stupid.

Andean bears are largely herbivorous, and tend to live in high mountain rainforests that can produce the quantities of fruit and other edible vegetation that the bears like. This chimes nicely with Paddington's fondness for marmalade sandwiches.

Paddington seems to be a very realistic Andean bear other than his ability to talk (in the stories, the community of bears that he comes from can all talk). The idealised cosmopolitan Londoners in the books are understandably surprised by the novelty of a talking bear, but, being Londoners, adjust very quickly.

Geography

The habitat of the Andean bear follows the mountain ranges of the Andes, passing through Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Columbia. The bears' fondness for a rainy climate probably makes it more likely that Paddington would enjoy London (despite the lack of vegetation or mountains).

External links

• Duffel Coat (wikipedia.org)