Peter Pan

[PETER AND WENDY]

by J. M. Barrie [James Matthew Barrie]

A Millennium Fulcrum Edition produced in 1991 by Duncan Research. Note that while a copyright was initially claimed for the labor involved in digitization, that copyright claim is not consistent with current copyright requirements. This text, which matches the 1911 original publication, is in the public domain in the US.

Contents

Chapter I. PETER BREAKS THROUGH
Chapter II. THE SHADOW
Chapter III. COME AWAY, COME AWAY!
Chapter IV. THE FLIGHT
Chapter V. THE ISLAND COME TRUE
Chapter VI. THE LITTLE HOUSE
Chapter VII. THE HOME UNDER THE GROUND
Chapter VIII. THE MERMAIDS' LAGOON
Chapter IX. THE NEVER BIRD
Chapter X. THE HAPPY HOME
Chapter XI. WENDY'S STORY
Chapter XII. THE CHILDREN ARE CARRIED OFF
Chapter XIII. DO YOU BELIEVE IN FAIRIES?
Chapter XIV. THE PIRATE SHIP
Chapter XV. "HOOK OR ME THIS TIME"
Chapter XVI. THE RETURN HOME
Chapter XVII. WHEN WENDY GREW UP

Chapter I. PETER BREAKS THROUGH

All children grow up—except one. Children soon learn that growing up is coming, and this is how Wendy found out. One day, when she was two years old, she was playing in a garden. She picked a flower and ran with it to her mother. She must have looked absolutely charming, because Mrs. Darling pressed her hand to her heart and cried, "Oh, why can't you stay like this forever!" That was the only thing said about it, but from then on, Wendy knew she would have to grow up. You always know, once you turn two. Two is where the countdown to growing up really begins.

The Darling family lived at house number 14, and before Wendy was born, her mother was the most important person in it. Mrs. Darling was a lovely woman with a dreamy, romantic mind—like one of those nested puzzle boxes from the Far East, where you open one box only to find another hidden inside, no matter how many you open. She also had a sweet, teasing smile, and on it sat one particular kiss that Wendy could never quite reach, even though it was plainly visible in the right-hand corner of her mouth.

Here is how Mr. Darling had won her heart: many young men who had grown up alongside her all realized, at the same time, that they loved her. They all rushed to her house to propose—all except Mr. Darling, who instead hopped into a cab and beat them there first. That is how he won her. He won most of her, anyway—except for that hidden inner box and that one elusive kiss. He never even found out about the box, and eventually he stopped trying to win the kiss. Wendy thought that Napoleon might have managed it, but she could just imagine him giving up in frustration and storming out, slamming the door behind him.

Mr. Darling liked to boast to Wendy that her mother didn't just love him—she respected him too. He was the kind of man who understood serious grown-up things, like stocks and shares (ways people invest and make money in business). Nobody truly understands all of that, but he seemed to, at least, and he often spoke confidently about stocks rising and shares falling in a way that impressed people.

Mrs. Darling had been married in a white wedding dress, and at first she kept the household accounts (the record of money spent) perfectly, almost as if it were a fun game—not even a single vegetable went unaccounted for. But over time, whole amounts began to go missing from the records, and in their place she drew little pictures of babies without faces. She sketched these when she should have been adding up numbers. They were her way of guessing at the children who were still to come.

Wendy was born first, then John, then Michael.

For a week or two after Wendy arrived, the family wasn't sure they could afford to keep her, since she was one more mouth to feed. Mr. Darling was incredibly proud of her, but he also took money seriously, so he sat on the edge of Mrs. Darling's bed, holding her hand and working out the costs, while she looked at him pleadingly. She wanted to just take the risk and figure it out along the way, but that wasn't his style. His way involved a pencil and paper, and if she interrupted with suggestions, he had to start his calculations all over again.

"Now don't interrupt," he would beg her.

"I have one pound seventeen shillings here, and two shillings sixpence at the office. I could cut back on coffee at work—say ten shillings—which makes two pounds nine shillings sixpence. Add your eighteen shillings threepence, and that's three pounds nine shillings sevenpence. Add five pounds from my checkbook, and that's eight pounds nine shillings sevenpence—who's moving over there? Eight nine seven, carry the seven—don't talk, dear—carry the—there, now you've made me lose count! Did I say nine nine seven? Yes, nine nine seven. The real question is: can we manage on nine pounds nine shillings sevenpence a year?"

"Of course we can, George," she cried. She was already on Wendy's side, though truthfully he was the more sensible one of the two.

"Don't forget the mumps," he warned her, almost like a threat, and started calculating again. "Mumps, one pound—that's what I've written, but it'll probably run closer to thirty shillings. Don't interrupt—measles, one pound five shillings, German measles half a guinea (that's ten shillings sixpence), which makes two pounds fifteen shillings sixpence. Stop wagging your finger at me—whooping cough, say fifteen shillings"—and on and on it went, the total changing every single time. But in the end, Wendy narrowly made the cut, once mumps was lowered to twelve shillings sixpence and both kinds of measles were counted as just one illness.

The same nervous calculations happened over John, and Michael's chances were even slimmer—but all three children were kept in the family. Soon you could see the three of them walking in a neat row to Miss Fulsom's kindergarten school, with their nurse walking alongside them.

Mrs. Darling liked everything to be done properly, and Mr. Darling was determined to keep up with his neighbors in every way—so naturally, they hired a nurse. Since the family didn't have much money (thanks to how much milk the children drank), this "nurse" was actually a very proper Newfoundland dog named Nana. She hadn't belonged to anyone in particular before the Darlings hired her. She had always taken children seriously, though, and the Darlings had first met her in Kensington Gardens, where she spent her free time peering into baby carriages. Careless babysitters hated her, because she would follow them home and report their sloppy behavior to their employers. She turned out to be an absolute treasure as a nurse. She was extremely careful at bath time, and she woke instantly at night if any of her young charges so much as whimpered. Naturally, her dog bed was kept in the nursery. She had a real talent for knowing which coughs needed no fuss and which ones required a scarf wrapped snugly around the throat. To her dying day, she believed in old-fashioned cures like rhubarb-leaf remedies, and she snorted with disdain at newfangled talk about germs. Watching her walk the children to school was like a lesson in good manners: she strolled properly at their side when they behaved, and nudged them back into line the moment they wandered off. On days when John had sports practice, she never once forgot his sweater, and she usually carried an umbrella in her mouth just in case it rained. There was a room in the basement of Miss Fulsom's school where the nurses waited for the children. The human nurses sat on benches while Nana lay on the floor—but that was really the only difference between them. They pretended to look down on her, as if she were beneath their social standing, and she, in turn, had no patience for their gossip. She didn't appreciate it when Mrs. Darling's friends dropped by the nursery uninvited, but if they did come, she would quickly whip off Michael's baby apron and replace it with the fancier one trimmed in blue, smooth down Wendy's hair, and straighten up John.

No nursery could have been run more properly, and Mr. Darling knew it—yet he sometimes worried anxiously about whether the neighbors gossiped about them anyway.

He had his reputation at work to think about, after all.

Nana bothered him in another way, too. He sometimes got the feeling that she didn't think much of him. "I promise you she admires you tremendously, George," Mrs. Darling would reassure him, and then she'd signal to the children to be extra sweet to their father. This would be followed by lively family dances, which sometimes included their only other servant, Liza. She looked so tiny in her long skirt and maid's cap, even though she swore up and down, when she was hired, that she was well past ten years old. Oh, how joyful those playful evenings were! And the merriest of all was Mrs. Darling, who would spin around so wildly that all you could really see of her was that one elusive kiss—and if you'd rushed at her right then, you might finally have caught it. There was never a simpler, happier family—until Peter Pan came along.

Mrs. Darling first learned about Peter while she was tidying up her children's minds. Every good mother does this nightly, once her children are asleep: she goes rummaging through their thoughts and sets everything back in its proper place, tucking away all the things that got scattered and messy during the day. If you could somehow stay awake (though of course you never can), you'd catch your own mother doing this very thing, and you'd find it fascinating to watch. It's a lot like tidying out a cluttered drawer. You'd see her kneeling there, lingering with amusement over some of what she finds, wondering how in the world you ever picked that up, making some sweet discoveries and some less pleasant ones—pressing one memory to her cheek like it was as precious as a kitten, and quickly hiding another out of sight. By the time you wake up in the morning, all the naughty behavior and bad feelings you went to bed with have been neatly folded and tucked away at the bottom of your mind, while on top—freshly aired out—are spread your nicer thoughts, ready for you to put on for the day.

I don't know if you've ever seen a map of someone's mind. Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of the body, and even a map of your own mind would be pretty fascinating—but just try getting them to draw a map of a child's mind! It's not only jumbled up, it keeps spinning and shifting the whole time. There are zigzagging lines across it, like the up-and-down lines on a fever chart, and these are probably the roads of the island—because the Neverland is always some kind of island, dotted with surprising splashes of color, coral reefs, sleek little ships out on the horizon, fierce tribespeople, hidden lairs, gnomes who mostly work as tailors, caves with rivers running through them, princes with six older brothers, a hut slowly falling apart, and one very small old woman with a hooked nose. That would be a simple enough map if that were all there was to it. But there's also the first day of school, religion, fathers, the neighborhood pond, sewing lessons, murders, hangings, grammar rules, chocolate pudding day, learning to wear leg braces, saying "ninety-nine" for the doctor, getting threepence for pulling out your own loose tooth, and so on—and either all of this is simply part of the island, or it's a second map showing through underneath the first. It's all rather confusing, especially since nothing on it will hold still.

Of course, every child's Neverland is a little different. John's, for example, had a lagoon with flamingos