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Peter Pan
J.M. Barrie
HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.‘Second to the right … and then straight on till morning!’Desperate to hear bedtime stories, Peter Pan waits outside the nursery window of Wendy, John and Michael Darling. When Peter asks Wendy to fly with him to Neverland, the Darling children are whisked away to a world of adventure – of daring fairies, wondrous mermaids and The Lost Boys.But there is danger in Neverland too: the villainous Captain Hook is out for revenge and will stop at nothing to take it.Poignant and unforgettable, J. M. Barrie’s classic tale is one of the greatest works of children’s literature of the last century. Its imaginative scope, tender humour and vivid characters will enchant adults and children alike.Published in association with Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity.
PETER PAN
J. M. Barrie
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William Collins
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This eBook edition published by William Collins in 2015
Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie published in association with Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity.
Life & Times section © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
Silvia Crompton asserts her moral right as author of the Life & Times section
Classic Literature: Words and Phrases adapted from
Collins English Dictionary
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Cover image: Illustration for Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie (gouache on paper), Grahame Johnstone, Anne (Contemporary Artist)/Private Collection/Bridgeman Images.
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Source ISBN: 9780007558179
Ebook Edition © May 2015 ISBN: 9780007558186
Version: 2016-02-29
History of Collins (#ulink_f832419f-7058-54f9-82c5-17bbc65a26ef)
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Life & Times (#ulink_be9086ca-01db-5b65-b1d5-6e2c926a175f)
About the Author
‘Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves’ – an apt sentiment indeed for the author of a tale that has enchanted readers for well over a century. J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan has appeared in stage productions, novels, films and cartoons, inspiring hope and bravado in children and adults alike. But sunshine was often in short supply in the author’s own life – certainly prior to the invention of his most famous character.
Family and Failure
J. M. Barrie was often consumed with a sense that he did not quite live up to expectation. He was a small child, the ninth of ten born to a weaver in Kirriemuir, Scotland, and always felt overshadowed in his mother’s affections by his older brother David. When Barrie was six David died in a skating accident, a tragedy that affected their mother so profoundly that the young boy took to assuming David’s mannerisms and clothes in an attempt to ease her disappointment.
Barrie found solace in stories and books and dreamt of following in the footsteps of Jules Verne and James Fenimore Cooper, but his family had other ambitions for him, and persuaded him to go to university. He was an unenthusiastic student at Edinburgh University and channelled his energies into writing theatre reviews instead, an experience that ultimately led him to defy his family’s wishes and immerse himself in the theatrical and literary world of faraway London.
A series of flops and moderate successes marked Barrie’s early years as a writer – he first wrote stories about Scotland and then turned to comedic plays – and it was during the staging of his third play that he met the young actress Mary Ansell, whom he married against even his own better judgement in 1894. He had always loved children but they had none of their own, and the marriage ended in 1909 following her affair with a fellow playwright. Barrie remained single until his death almost thirty years later.
The Creation of Peter Pan
But out of this series of unshakeable disappointments Barrie drew inspiration for what was to become his greatest work and one of the most popular stories in the world. Since his brother’s death in 1867, he had remained intrigued and consoled by the notion that David would forever be thirteen – he would never grow old, or feel the weight of expectation and responsibility – and gradually these thoughts gelled around the idea of a ‘boy who wouldn’t grow up’.
Around this same time, the early years of his unhappy marriage, Barrie had taken to walking alone in Kensington Gardens, where in 1897 he encountered three young brothers out playing with their nanny. George, John and baby Peter Llewelyn Davies were easily amused by the mercurial writer and a friendship with the family – which soon had two new children, Michael and Nico – developed. Their mother, Sylvia, a member of the du Maurier literary dynasty and the aunt of Daphne du Maurier, became a particular friend to Barrie; to the boys he was ‘Uncle Jim’. The children provided the final inspiration for his new character. He later told them, ‘By rubbing the five of you violently together, as savages with two sticks to produce a flame, I made the spark of you that is Peter Pan.’
The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up
Peter Pan made his debut in Barrie’s 1902 novel The Little White Bird, in which he was a baby who could fly. (Barrie had often joked to the Llewelyn Davies boys that their brother Peter could fly.) In 1904 an older Pan was the star of Barrie’s play Peter Pan, an ambitious and visually stunning production that debuted to rave reviews. The Guardian went so far as to say ‘no such play was ever seen before on any stage. It is absolutely original – the product of a unique imagination.’
Peter Pan was such a hit that the Duke of York’s Theatre in London staged it annually for the next ten years, although Barrie was compelled to make some adjustments in the name of health and safety: ‘After the first production,’ he wrote in a later foreword, ‘I had to add something to the play at the request of parents about no one being able to fly until the fairy dust had been blown on him; so many children having gone home and tried it from their beds and needed surgical attention.’
In 1911 Barrie produced ‘the book of the play’, Peter and Wendy (known more commonly as Peter Pan), which brought the Neverland adventures of Wendy Darling and her brothers to an even wider audience.
An Awfully Big Adventure
Thanks to Peter Pan, and the children who inspired him, J. M. Barrie at last found his place in the world. He became someone who brought hope in times of darkness rather than someone who struggled to come up to scratch. When the Llewelyn Davies’ father, Arthur, died in 1907, Barrie supported the family financially; when their mother, Sylvia, died just three years later he became the boys’ guardian.
It is not just the author but the character himself who has proved a source of great inspiration – a hero to those who refuse to grow old and sensible. One great fan was the British explorer Captain Robert Scott, who was introduced to Barrie in 1906 and was taken by him to a rehearsal of Peter Pan; he later named his only child, Barrie’s godson, Peter. Captain Scott was particularly struck by the notions of bravery and great spirit espoused by Peter Pan and his friends – Wendy’s ‘last words’ to the Lost Boys during a moment of peril at the hands of Captain Hook (‘I feel that I have a message for you from your real mothers, and it is this: “We hope our sons will die like English gentlemen.”’), as well as Peter’s bold claim that ‘To die will be an awfully big adventure.’ In the weather-battered tent in which Scott and his companions died in 1912 after their catastrophic, heroic expedition to the South Pole, he left a letter for his great friend J. M. Barrie, which the author carried with him to his death: ‘I never met a man in my life whom I admired and loved more than you,’ wrote Scott. ‘I never could show you how much your friendship meant to me – for you had much to give and I nothing.’
Great Ormond Street Hospital
Before his death in 1937, J. M. Barrie ensured Peter would for ever come to the rescue of children in need by bequeathing the copyright in Peter Pan to London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. It was an extraordinarily generous gift from a man who loved and was loved by children but never had any of his own. He claimed that Peter had once been a patient at ‘The Hospital for Sick Children’ (as it was then known), ‘and it was he who put me up to the little thing I did for the hospital’. When the term of copyright expired in 1987, the UK government authorised a special exception for Peter Pan, granting the hospital royalties from all UK stage productions and publications, including this one, in perpetuity.
CONTENTS
Cover (#udb6e047f-ce7f-5680-a7bd-d7df5dfb3e29)
Title Page (#uffeb5c91-b9e8-5bf0-af0d-14cb186c3311)
Copyright (#u510b7097-22ab-5499-a97c-6c08b896feb4)
History of Collins (#u694ddbdf-9c47-5959-b391-52c16389c478)
Life & Times (#u1879ad5e-b826-5442-a212-ee23f7e3b03e)
Chapter 1 (#u564b1029-be3e-57f2-9e6b-2cb5ce94bf6b)
Chapter 2 (#ua92047fa-41d9-5e9e-b9bd-857d916cb472)
Chapter 3 (#u44418387-76a6-5665-b0a9-c788f9cf0c34)
Chapter 4 (#u20c76ada-0987-5d57-900d-f0e37947942a)
Chapter 5 (#ueea1e341-5aaf-54db-8f2e-b179c3138b0e)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Classic Literature: Words and Phrases (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_3fd23114-fdbf-570d-ac0f-c33f1b15285d)
Peter Breaks Through (#ulink_3fd23114-fdbf-570d-ac0f-c33f1b15285d)
All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, “Oh, why can’t you remain like this for ever!” This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.
Of course they lived at 14, and until Wendy came her mother was the chief one. She was a lovely lady, with a romantic mind and such a sweet mocking mouth. Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get, though there it was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner.
The way Mr. Darling won her was this: the many gentlemen who had been boys when she was a girl discovered simultaneously that they loved her, and they all ran to her house to propose to her except Mr. Darling, who took a cab and nipped in first, and so he got her. He got all of her, except the innermost box and the kiss. He never knew about the box, and in time he gave up trying for the kiss. Wendy thought Napoleon could have got it, but I can picture him trying, and then going off in a passion, slamming the door.
Mr. Darling used to boast to Wendy that her mother not only loved him but respected him. He was one of those deep ones who know about stocks and shares. Of course no one really knows, but he quite seemed to know, and he often said stocks were up and shares were down in a way that would have made any woman respect him.
Mrs. Darling was married in white, and at first she kept the books perfectly, almost gleefully, as if it were a game, not so much as a Brussels sprout was missing; but by and by whole cauliflowers dropped out, and instead of them there were pictures of babies without faces. She drew them when she should have been totting up. They were Mrs. Darling’s guesses.
Wendy came first, then John, then Michael.
For a week or two after Wendy came it was doubtful whether they would be able to keep her, as she was another mouth to feed. Mr. Darling was frightfully proud of her, but he was very honourable, and he sat on the edge of Mrs. Darling’s bed, holding her hand and calculating expenses, while she looked at him imploringly. She wanted to risk it, come what might, but that was not his way; his way was with a pencil and a piece of paper, and if she confused him with suggestions he had to begin at the beginning again.
“Now don’t interrupt,” he would beg of her.
“I have one pound seventeen here, and two and six at the office; I can cut off my coffee at the office, say ten shillings, making two nine and six, with your eighteen and three makes three nine seven, with five naught naught in my cheque-book makes eight nine seven—who is that moving?—eight nine seven, dot and carry seven—don’t speak, my own—and the pound you lent to that man who came to the door—quiet, child—dot and carry child—there, you’ve done it!—did I say nine nine seven? yes, I said nine nine seven; the question is, can we try it for a year on nine nine seven?”
“Of course we can, George,” she cried. But she was prejudiced in Wendy’s favour, and he was really the grander character of the two.
“Remember mumps,” he warned her almost threateningly, and off he went again. “Mumps one pound, that is what I have put down, but I daresay it will be more like thirty shillings—don’t speak—measles one five, German measles half a guinea, makes two fifteen six—don’t waggle your finger—whooping-cough, say fifteen shillings”—and so on it went, and it added up differently each time; but at last Wendy just got through, with mumps reduced to twelve six, and the two kinds of measles treated as one.
There was the same excitement over John, and Michael had even a narrower squeak; but both were kept, and soon, you might have seen the three of them going in a row to Miss Fulsom’s Kindergarten school, accompanied by their nurse.
Mrs. Darling loved to have everything just so, and Mr. Darling had a passion for being exactly like his neighbours; so, of course, they had a nurse. As they were poor, owing to the amount of milk the children drank, this nurse was a prim Newfoundland dog, called Nana, who had belonged to no one in particular until the Darlings engaged her. She had always thought children important, however, and the Darlings had become acquainted with her in Kensington Gardens, where she spent most of her spare time peeping into perambulators, and was much hated by careless nursemaids, whom she followed to their homes and complained of to their mistresses. She proved to be quite a treasure of a nurse. How thorough she was at bath-time, and up at any moment of the night if one of her charges made the slightest cry. Of course her kennel was in the nursery. She had a genius for knowing when a cough is a thing to have no patience with and when it needs stocking around your throat. She believed to her last day in old-fashioned remedies like rhubarb leaf, and made sounds of contempt over all this new-fangled talk about germs, and so on. It was a lesson in propriety to see her escorting the children to school, walking sedately by their side when they were well behaved, and butting them back into line if they strayed. On John’s footer days she never once forgot his sweater, and she usually carried an umbrella in her mouth in case of rain. There is a room in the basement of Miss Fulsom’s school where the nurses wait. They sat on forms, while Nana lay on the floor, but that was the only difference. They affected to ignore her as of an inferior social status to themselves, and she despised their light talk. She resented visits to the nursery from Mrs. Darling’s friends, but if they did come she first whipped off Michael’s pinafore and put him into the one with blue braiding, and smoothed out Wendy and made a dash at John’s hair.
No nursery could possibly have been conducted more correctly, and Mr. Darling knew it, yet he sometimes wondered uneasily whether the neighbours talked.
He had his position in the city to consider.
Nana also troubled him in another way. He had sometimes a feeling that she did not admire him. “I know she admires you tremendously, George,” Mrs. Darling would assure him, and then she would sign to the children to be specially nice to father. Lovely dances followed, in which the only other servant, Liza, was sometimes allowed to join. Such a midget she looked in her long skirt and maid’s cap, though she had sworn, when engaged, that she would never see ten again. The gaiety of those romps! And gayest of all was Mrs. Darling, who would pirouette so wildly that all you could see of her was the kiss, and then if you had dashed at her you might have got it. There never was a simpler happier family until the coming of Peter Pan.
Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her children’s minds. It is the nightly custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day. If you could keep awake (but of course you can’t) you would see your own mother doing this, and you would find it very interesting to watch her. It is quite like tidying up drawers. You would see her on her knees, I expect, lingering humorously over some of your contents, wondering where on earth you had picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet, pressing this to her cheek as if it were as nice as a kitten, and hurriedly stowing that out of sight. When you wake in the morning, the naughtiness and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out your prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on.
I don’t know whether you have ever seen a map of a person’s mind. Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of you, and your own map can become intensely interesting, but catch them trying to draw a map of a child’s mind, which is not only confused, but keeps going round all the time. There are zigzag lines on it, just like your temperature on a card, and these are probably roads in the island, for the Neverland is always more or less an island, with astonishing splashes of colour here and there, and coral reefs and rakish-looking craft in the offing, and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and caves through which a river runs, and princes with six elder brothers, and a hut fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a hooked nose. It would be an easy map if that were all, but there is also first day at school, religion, fathers, the round pond, needle-work, murders, hangings, verbs that take the dative, chocolate pudding day, getting into braces, say ninety-nine, three-pence for pulling out your tooth yourself, and so on, and either these are part of the island or they are another map showing through, and it is all rather confusing, especially as nothing will stand still.
Of course the Neverlands vary a good deal. John’s, for instance, had a lagoon with flamingoes flying over it at which John was shooting, while Michael, who was very small, had a flamingo with lagoons flying over it. John lived in a boat turned upside down on the sands, Michael in a wigwam, Wendy in a house of leaves deftly sewn together. John had no friends, Michael had friends at night, Wendy had a pet wolf forsaken by its parents, but on the whole the Neverlands have a family resemblance, and if they stood still in a row you could say of them that they have each other’s nose, and so forth. On these magic shores children at play are for ever beaching their coracles. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more.
Of all delectable islands the Neverland is the snuggest and most compact, not large and sprawly, you know, with tedious distances between one adventure and another, but nicely crammed. When you play at it by day with the chairs and table-cloth, it is not in the least alarming, but in the two minutes before you go to sleep it becomes very real. That is why there are night-lights.
Occasionally in her travels through her children’s minds Mrs. Darling found things she could not understand, and of these quite the most perplexing was the word Peter. She knew of no Peter, and yet he was here and there in John and Michael’s minds, while Wendy’s began to be scrawled all over with him. The name stood out in bolder letters than any of the other words, and as Mrs. Darling gazed she felt that it had an oddly cocky appearance.
“Yes, he is rather cocky,” Wendy admitted with regret. Her mother had been questioning her.
“But who is he, my pet?”
“He is Peter Pan, you know, mother.”
