On October 14, 1926, Alan Milne's "Winnie the Pooh" was published by the London publishing house Methuen & Co.
Children, as well as adults, love fairy tales, they allow you to be transported to a new world, embraced by kindness, and besides, every fairy tale has a good ending. Everyone is well aware of the brightest characters of famous children's fairy tales, such as Christopher Robin from the fairy tale about Winnie the Pooh, Alice from Wonderland and Peter Pan, but few people know that all these characters were not just fictional, but based on the personalities of real children.
We invite you to see these little-known children, who were the real prototypes of the heroes of three famous fairy tales, and find out how their fate developed, from childhood to death.
Source: 4tololo.ru
Christopher Robin
Christopher Robin, son of English writer Alan Milne, prototype for Christopher Robin in the Winnie the Pooh storybook. Later he writes: “There were two things that darkened my life and from which I had to be saved: the glory of my father and“Christopher Robin”.
A girl was expected in the Milnov family, and a boy was born, who was still raised as a girl. Relations with parents did not work out - the mother was busy only with herself, the father - with his work.
The child grew up very kind, nervous and shy, most of the time, alas, spending with the nanny. "A prototype of Christopher Robin and Piglet at the same time," as psychologists would later say about him.
The boy's favorite toy was the Teddy bear of the London firm "Farnell", which his father gave him on his first birthday.
He became the only friend, interlocutor, and a little later, the main character of Alan Milne's books about Winnie the Pooh.
Christopher was not particularly close with his father and became friends with him only when his mother left them, leaving for three years with her lover. This time Christopher will remember as the happiest.
He fought during the Second World War, was wounded. He did not communicate with his mother, or rather she was with him: Dorothy Milne did not want to say goodbye to her son, even when she was dying. After the war, he married his cousin against the wishes of his father, who feared for their future offspring. And, in general, not in vain: Christopher's daughter was born with cerebral palsy. Although Alan Milne no longer found his granddaughter, he died three years before her birth.
Alice in Wonderland
Alice Liddell is the prototype of "Alice in Wonderland" from the book by Lewis Carroll. Daughter of the rector of the University of Oxford. She, perhaps, has a calmer biography. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (who worked under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll) was a close friend of their family, often walking with Alice and her sisters, entertaining the girls with a fairy tale that he invented on the go. Later, at the request of Alice, Lewis wrote it down and two years later gave her a manuscript with the inscription "A Christmas present for a dear girl in memory of a summer day." The manuscript was accompanied by a photograph of Alice, taken by himself.
Alice Liddell at age 7, photo by Lewis Carroll, 1859.
Friendship with the girl was innocent, although Alice's parents told how Carroll once approached them with a request to allow him to ask for her hand in marriage when she grew up.
She lived a long life. She married successfully, gave birth to three sons, two of whom died during the First World War.
After her husband's death in 1926, to pay utility bills, Alice put up for auction a handwritten copy of "Alice" donated to her by Dodgson, which was sold at Sotheby's for 15,400 pounds.
Peter Pan
Peter Pan from the tale of the Scotsman James Barry. He is Michael Davis, the son of the writer's friends, Sylvia and Arthur Davis. In general, Barry dedicated the magical tale of an eternal child who does not want to grow old to his older brother, who died while skating the day before his 9th birthday.
And he knew the Davis for a long time, was friends with all their five sons, but it was four-year-old Michael (a brilliant boy, as they said about him) who became the prototype of Peter Pan. Rather, his age, character traits and nightmares.
Years later, the storyteller became so close to the boy's mother that, after the death of her husband, he divorced his wife and moved to live with the Davis. True, they never got married - in 1910, Sylvia Davis died of inoperable breast cancer. After which Barry became the guardian of her five sons.
Well, what about Michael? The boy grew up and, shortly before his 21st birthday, he drowned with his lover in a pond a few miles from Oxford.