Archibald

Ormsby-Gore Baron Harlech, of Harlech in the County of Merioneth, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1876 for the Conservative politician John Ormsby-Gore, with remainder to his younger brother William. He had previously re ...

, better known as Archie, was the teddy-bear of

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poet laureate A poet laureate (plural: poets laureate) is a poet officially appointed by a government or conferring institution, typically expected to compose poems for special events and occasions. Albertino Mussato of Padua and Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) ...

John Betjeman Sir John Betjeman (; 28 August 190619 May 1984) was an English poet, writer, and broadcaster. He was Poet Laureate from 1972 until his death. He was a founding member of The Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture, ...

. Together with a toy elephant known as Jumbo, he was a lifelong companion of Betjeman's. Betjeman brought his bear with him when he went to university at

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in the 1920s, and as a result Archie became the model for

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, Sebastian Flyte's bear in

Evelyn Waugh Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (; 28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires ''Decli ...

's novel ''

Brideshead Revisited ''Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder'' is a novel by English writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1945. It follows, from the 1920s to the early 1940s, the life and romances of the protagonist Charles ...

''. In the 1940s, Betjeman also wrote and illustrated a story for his children, entitled ''Archie and the Strict Baptists'', in which the bear's sojourns at the family's successive homes in

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and

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are fictionalised. Archie is here described as a member of the

Strict Baptist Reformed Baptists (sometimes known as Particular Baptists or Calvinistic Baptists) are Baptists that hold to a Calvinist soteriology (salvation). The first Calvinist Baptist church was formed in the 1630s. The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith ...

denomination, riding a hedgehog to chapel, and enjoying amateur archaeology, digging up molehills, "which, he considered, were the graves of baby Druids". A version of the story with illustrations by Phillida Gili was published as a children's book in 1977, Jock Murray, Betjeman's publisher, having declined to publish Betjeman's own coloured illustrations on grounds of cost. Betjeman also wrote a poem "Archibald" in which the bear is temporarily stuffed in the loft for fear of Betjeman appearing "soft" to his father. Archie and Jumbo were in Betjeman's arms when he died in 1984.

Bibliography

*Betjeman, John (1977). ''Archie and the Strict Baptists''. London: John Murray. *Waugh, Evelyn (1945). ''Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder''. London: Chapman & Hall.

Other sources

Introduction
to an exhibition on Betjeman at the

Bodleian Library The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford, and is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. It derives its name from its founder, Sir Thomas Bodley. With over 13 million printed items, it is the second- ...

''Betjeman: a "whim of iron"''
article by Brooke Allen in ''

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''
Advertisement for a facsimile
of Betjeman's original version of ''Archie and the Strict Baptists''.
John Betjeman at St. Pancras
Teddy bears {{Toy-stub