The notorious scene in the nation's favourite BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, in which Colin Firth as Mr Darcy emerges wet-shirted and dripping from the lake of his country estate after an impromptu swim, has been celebrated in the shape of a 12-foot sculpture of the romantic hero.
The statue of superhuman proportions has been temporarily installed in the Serpentine lake in Hyde Park, London, and will tour the UK before settling at its final home in Lyme Park, Cheshire, where the eye-catching scene was filmed.
The scene – which does not feature in Jane Austen's original novel – spices up Darcy's relationship with Elizabeth Bennet in a way that would certainly have been frowned upon at the time. The novel keenly observes Regency England, including the emotionally stilted Mr Darcy, whose proposal to Lizzie is one of literature's most tender and awkward moments:
"… her spirits were very differently affected, when, to her utter amazement, she saw Mr. Darcy walk into the room. In an hurried manner he immediately began an enquiry after her health, imputing his visit to a wish of hearing that she were better. She answered him with cold civility. He sat down for a few moments, and then getting up, walked about the room. Elizabeth was surprised, but said not a word. After a silence of several minutes, he came towards her in an agitated manner, and thus began –
"In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you."
Elizabeth's astonishment was beyond expression. She stared, coloured, doubted, and was silent."
The fibreglass model has been created to mark the launch of UKTV's new channel Drama, after the lake scene, first screened in 1995 in Andrew Davies' adaptation, topped a survey asking viewers for their most memorable TV drama moments. Mr Darcy – or rather, Colin Firth as Mr Darcy – is a surreal addition to a venerable tradition of English fictional characters bodied forth as statues, from Peter Pan nearby in Kensington Gardens to Sherlock Holmes in Baker Street and Paddington Bear at Paddington station.
"I suppose it is inevitable that Pride and Prejudice be best known for a scene that Austen never wrote," commented critic and Austen expert John Mullan, author of What Matters in Jane Austen? Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved. "This is an installation that celebrates the imagination of Andrew Davies rather than that of Jane Austen."
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