posted on 10 Nov 2015

Meeting old literary friends

One of the pleasures of retirement is being able to go for early morning walks in my local area. If I time it right, as I did today, I pass and say  a cheery hello to the tall, skinny bespectacled white haired old lady from the Babar books strolling with her little dog. What on earth is this strange French character first devised by Jean de Brunhoff in 1931 doing living in Malvern? Well, maybe it's her grown up elderly daughter (or more likely a niece as I doubt she had any children). Whatever the relationship, she is certainly an absolute dead ringer for the original with her pleasant vague smile, crinkly white skin, dark well cut clothes and general air of shabby gentility. This got me thinking about all the other book characters I have met and whether other people do the same thing trying to attribute familiar physical characteristics and behaviours based on their experience of characters first met in books.

Some of these are very common and sometimes exquisitely represented in animal rather than human form. For example most of us would recognise a 'Tigger' and describe a person as such knowing that the cultural reference to 'Winnie the Pooh' by A.A.Milne would be shared and understood. I've certainly known plenty of these exhausting individuals ranging from those fizzing with boundless energy to those bordering on the manic, a couple of my own family and friends included. In reality, Tiggers can be extremely irritating and difficult to spend time with, but thank goodness there are few in the mix to keep life interesting. I have also known several 'Eeyores'  from the same book, most recently a manager who although not a particularly big man, somehow exuded deep gloom and heaviness in his body language casting a long heavy shadow. There are plenty of feisty, assertive classic fictional girls from Alice ( Lewis Carroll) to Matilda ( Roald Dahl) who I continue to recognise in children and young teenagers that I meet. I think I was a ' Pollyanna' as a child as I was unnaturally interested in helping people and doing good from a very young age. Was this influenced by a religious upbringing, purely altruistic or driven by the desire to please and be praised by adults I wonder? 

Over the years I have taught plenty of children like Max ( 'Where the Wild a Things Are' by Maurice Sendak) and Bernard's ( 'Not Now Bernard' by David McNee). I particularly remember the school trip with the stubborn sturdy four year old who would insist on running into the muddy sea at Weston with all his clothes on, despite being told not to. His defiant grinning face along with that of the five year old boy who would repeatedly stroll into class with a rolled up bus ticket in his mouth immediately make me think of The Artful Dodger  ( 'Oliver Twist' by Charles Dickens) and William ( 'Just William' by Richmal Crompton). All these memorable, richly painted characters are imprinted on my imagination and keep coming back - may they never fade away because they make real life even more meaningful. Perhaps I will see Babar the elephant in his splendid, double breasted green suit on the hills with the old lady one day - I live in hope!

 

Karen Argent

10th November 2015