England wants its bear back. Not just any bear, of course. The English want Winnie-the-Pooh, the original stuffed bear, the one from before the stories and movies and millions of toys made based on his imaginary adventures. They want the actual stuffed bear whose head bump, bump, bumped down the stairs behind Christopher Robin as the two prepared to listen to tales from the world of Pooh, before it became the book The House at Pooh Corner.
They want the bear that Christopher Robin handed over to the book's American publisher in 1947, noting he was an adult now and had left childhood behind for, as his father's work explained growing up, "Kings and Queens and Factors and islands and Europe and how you make a Suction Pump (if you want to)."
Pooh stayed in the publisher's office until 1987, when he donated it to the New York Power Authority, which handed it over to the New York Public Library.
That bear is now on display "in the basement" of the library, as the British press has sniffed recently. As the Times of London noted in a recent editorial, "Winnie-the-Pooh is not just a reference to a fictional bear, but to a national concept of a childhood Eden - an identifiable woodland in which stuffed animals, belonging to an archetypal nursery, roam in gentle complacency.
"It is obvious then that Winnie-the-Pooh, whatever else he is, is not an American."