Peter Rabbit and Winnie-the-Pooh

Friday March 30 was another grim day.  It rained almost the entire day until about 9:00 p.m. when it finally stopped.  The high was only 8C.

We started the day by walking to Ozone, one of our favourite cafés in the Shoreditch area.  We passed a few interesting vendors near the Overground station.

Posh Pork Pap  (The British have the best names for their food)

Ozone is quite a large place- there is a coffee roaster in the basement with some seating, and booths and a few bar areas on the main floor.  Everyone was having a Good Friday brunch.  We had about a 20 minute wait for our seats, but we were in from the cold and heavy rain which had just started.

Entrance at Ozone

Alain with his poached eggs on sourdough, a side of avocado and his flat white

After a great brunch, we headed down to Liverpool Station to catch the tube.

View of the Gherkin

We had to make one transfer and then got off at Knightsbridge.  Our plan was to visit the Victoria and Albert Museum, but first we stopped at Harrods (partially to get out of the rain).  The place was buzzing.  We discovered they had a tie-in with the film Peter Rabbit which had opened in cinemas in London in mid March.  We had seen the film and are big fans of the Beatrix Potter series, having seen a wonderful exhibit about her work at the Morgan Gallery in New York a few years ago.

Peters everywhere

Alain and Peter

With the Rabbit

We had forgotten the amazing escalators at Harrods.  All done in art deco Egyptian style.

Riding the escalator at Harrods

Beautiful ceiling

We got to the V&A at around 4:30 p.m.  The V&A was founded in 1852 and is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design.

When we arrived, we were told that all the tickets were sold out to the Winnie-the Pooh: Exploring a Classic exhibit for the rest of the day (the museum is open until 10:00 p.m. on Fridays).  We groaned, and told the woman at the ticket desk that we had come all the way from Canada and also from the East end of London in the rain to see the show and that we had planned to have dinner in the area afterwards.

We also pointed out that Winnie was named after Winnipeg where Alain was from.   She was very nice and said she would call a manager.  The manager came and spoke to us and then said to come with her.  She took us to the entrance of the exhibit and said that if we gave a total donation of 20£  (the tickets would have been 16£ for the two of us), we could go in.  She couldn't issue us actual tickets as the computer wouldn't have allowed it.  Phew, we were in!!

Poster for the show which ends next weekend

Sign as we entered

There was one wall when we first entered that had copies of Winnie-the- Pooh in different languages; parody books, cartoons, and other Winnie-related material.  Even a Russian video, with a very different looking bear designed for Russian audiences.

We like this cartoon.  The caption reads: "We need to address the heffalump in the room."

A Winnie dress

There was a display of pieces from a tea set presented to Princess Elizabeth in 1928.  The Queen shares the same "birth" year as Winnie-the-Pooh ⎯1926.  The maker, Albert Robertson, copied Shepard's imagery freehand on two hand-painted sets.  The second set was given to Christopher Milne.  Transfer-printed versions of these sets were sold commercially.

Hand-painted ceramic lent by the Queen

We then entered the main part of the exhibit which contained many of the original drawings for the books.  There was also background on both A. A. Milne and illustrator E.H. Shepard.  The author and illustrator were introduced through Punch magazine.  In collaborating on the Winnie-the-Pooh books,  both men drew inspirations from their sons, and their sons' teddy bears.

Alan Alexander Milne (A.A. Milne) (1882-1956), was already a well-known name before he wrote Winnie- the- Pooh.  In 1906, he became an assistant editor of Punch.  By the mid 1920s, he was an accomplished writer of humorous verse, social satire and plays.  His collection of children's verses, When We Were Very Young, published in 1924, was an immediate bestseller.  Winnie-the- Pooh was published two year later.

Ernest Howard Shepard (1879-1976), the illustrator, was also well-established by the mid 1920s.  He was a successful artist, preferring to draw in pen and ink.  From 1906, he was a regular contributor to Punch and during WWI, send sketches from the frontline.  His style complemented Milne's humour.

Christopher Robin Milne was the only child of A.A. Milne and his wife Daphne.  He was born in 1920 and Winnie-the-Pooh (or Pooh for short) was his favourite toy.  Other toys joined Pooh- Eyeore, Piglet, Kanga, Roo and Tigger.  While Christopher played with them, his father chronicled their adventures.  E.H. Shepard visited Ashdown Forest, near the Milne's family weekend retreat, to draw the forest scenes.  He drew Christopher's toys from life.  However, Shepard was also inspired by his son Graham and his teddy bear, named Growler.

At the beginning of Winnie-the Pooh, Christopher Robin drags his teddy downstairs to ask his father for a bedtime story.  He explains that Pooh, also known as Edward Bear, likes stories about himself, because he's "that sort of Bear."

Bump bump bump-first sketch 1926

Milne explains in his introduction to When We Were Very Young that Pooh was the name Christopher once gave to a swan.  Winnie, however, was a female black bear cub, named after Winnipeg (hurray!!!!) and given to London Zoo in 1914 by Lieutenant Harry Colebourn of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade.  Winnie, an army mascot, was very docile, and Christopher would often visit her.

Photograph of Christopher Milne and the bear, Winnie, at London Zoo

Teddy bears, named after U.S. President Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt, were popular toys in the early 20th century.  Daphne Milne purchased Winnie-the Pooh at Harrods' toy department (where we had just visited!) in August 1921 for Christopher's first birthday.

Daphne Milne, Christopher Milne and Winnie-the-Pooh 

Two of Milne's characters were invented: Owl and Rabbit.  Shepard gave them a natural appearance to distinguish them from the characters based on Christopher's toys.  He preferred to draw from life -- Rabbit is thought to be based on a specimen at the Natural History Museum.

Sketches for Owl and Rabbit- from The House at Poor Corner 1928

There was a case with two stuffed bears.  The one on the left is an 'Alpha' bear, by J.K. Farnell, the same model as Christopher Milne's Winnie-the Pooh.  The one of the right was a Steiff teddy which was similar to Growler,  E.H. Shepard's sons bear.

Alpha bear on left (about 1921) and Steiff bear about 1906-10)

Shepard actually based the Winnie-the-Pooh in his illustrations on his son's bear, Growler.

"Do you see, Piglet? Look at their tracks!" and "What?" said Piglet, with a jump
from Winnie-the-Pooh, chapter 3, 1926

Part of the exhibit had large posters and some interactive areas for the real children seeing the exhibit.

The first person he met was Rabbit

Winnie-the-Pooh enjoys visiting Rabbit.  One time he eats so much honey that on the way out he gets stuck in Rabbit's front door.  He has to stop eating for a whole week until he can lose some weight.

Pooh goes visiting...

Rabbit gave Pooh a hurrying-up sort of nudge 

Milne claimed to write neither for children nor for adults.  Instead, he wrote for himself - an adult aware of the child within.  The exhibit noted that "while young children are drawn to the stories of friendship and adventure, more experienced reader can delight in Milne's sophisticated and highly ironic humour".

The first Winnie-the-Pooh drawings were black and white.  Shepard made coloured ones later.

In 1970, Frank Herrmann (the Publisher) decided to add colour to Shepard's original black and white illustrations.  By then, Shepard was in his 90s and his eyesight was failing, so he made watercolour washes on specially enlarged printed versions of his originals.

Hand-colour proof: "The bees are getting suspicious".

A wonderful thought

Moi et Winnie-the-Pooh

It was a lovely exhibit.  The original drawing were wonderful as one can see the illustrations develop in Shepard's hands.  After the exhibit, we checked out the wonderful book and gift shops in the V&A.  As it was a late-opening Friday, there was music and drinks in the main lobby.

Main Lobby

We then wandered a bit and went for dinner at Ceru, a restaurant recommended by friends from Victoria who had been in London for a month last year.  It is a "contemporary Levantine restaurant serving dishes inspired by the flavours of the eastern Mediterranean coast."  It was only a few blocks from the V&A in South Kensington.  We had a lovely meal.

Entrance to restaurant

We shared a delicious red pepper and walnut dip with pita bread to start, a cauliflower dish; a beans and squash dish; and a melt-in-your-mouth piece of lamb shoulder cooked with 12 spices.

The beans and squash and lamb dish

We took the tube back to Liverpool Station and walked to our flat.  We are learning that it is really difficult to explore more than one area of London at a time as travel is time-consuming.  It took us just under one hour to get from the restaurant to our flat.  It was a great day, even with the rain.  Alain said "he was tired, but exhilarated".