Peter Pan

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

Every child grows up eventually—except one. Children usually figure this out early, and here is how Wendy learned it. One day, when she was two years old, she was playing in the garden. She picked a flower and ran to show her mother. She must have looked charming, because Mrs. Darling pressed a hand to her heart and cried, "Oh, why can't you stay like this forever!" That was the whole conversation, but from then on, Wendy understood that she was destined to grow up. You always know, once you turn two. Two is where the countdown begins.

The Darling family lived at house number 14, and before Wendy was born, her mother ran the household. Mrs. Darling was a lovely woman with a romantic imagination and a sweet, teasing smile. Her imagination was like one of those nested puzzle boxes from the Far East—open one, and there's always another hidden inside. And her teasing mouth held one particular kiss, tucked in the right-hand corner, that Wendy could see perfectly clearly but could never actually get her mother to give up.

Here is how Mr. Darling won her: many men who had grown up alongside her all realized, at the same time, that they were in love with her, and they all rushed to her house to propose. All except Mr. Darling, who simply hailed a cab and got there first. That's how he won her hand. He got all of her—except that innermost box and that elusive kiss. He never even found out about the box, and eventually he stopped trying for the kiss. Wendy suspected that only someone like Napoleon could have captured it, but I imagine even he would have tried, failed, and stormed off in frustration, 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 stocks and shares (investments in businesses that can rise or fall in value). Of course, nobody truly understands the stock market, but he seemed to, and he'd casually mention that stocks were up or shares were down in a way that impressed people.

Mrs. Darling had been married in white, and at first she kept the household accounts perfectly—almost as if balancing the books were a fun game. Not even a single vegetable went unaccounted for. But over time, she began losing track of entire grocery lists, and instead of numbers, she'd doodle pictures of babies without faces. She drew these when she should have been adding up expenses. They were her way of imagining the children she hoped to have.

Wendy arrived first, then John, then Michael.

For a week or two after Wendy was born, it wasn't certain the family could afford to keep her—she was, after all, another mouth to feed. Mr. Darling was incredibly proud of her, but he took financial responsibility seriously. He'd sit on the edge of Mrs. Darling's bed, holding her hand, calculating costs, while she looked at him with pleading eyes. She wanted to simply take the risk and figure it out as they went, but that wasn't his style. His method involved a pencil and paper, and if she interrupted with suggestions, he'd have to start the whole calculation over.

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

"I have one pound seventeen shillings here, plus two shillings sixpence at the office. I can 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 around?—eight nine seven, carry the seven—don't talk, dear—carry the seven—now look, you've made me lose my place!—did I say nine nine seven? Yes, nine pounds nine shillings sevenpence. The real question is: can we manage on nine nine seven for a year?"

"Of course we can, George," she said. But she was biased in Wendy's favor—though honestly, he was the more sensible one of the two.

"Don't forget about mumps," he warned, almost like a threat, and started over again. "Mumps—one pound, that's my estimate, though it'll probably run closer to thirty shillings. Don't interrupt. Measles—one pound five shillings. German measles—half a guinea (a guinea being an old British coin worth slightly more than a pound), which brings us to 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 time. But in the end, Wendy narrowly made the cut, with the mumps estimate reduced to twelve shillings sixpence and both kinds of measles combined into one cost.

The same nail-biting calculations happened for John, and Michael's chances were even slimmer—but all three children were kept in the end. Soon you could see the three of them walking in a neat row to Miss Fulsom's kindergarten, always accompanied by their nurse.

Mrs. Darling liked everything to be done properly, and Mr. Darling was determined to keep up appearances with the neighbors—so naturally, they hired a nurse. Since the family's finances were tight (largely due to how much milk the children drank), this nurse turned out to be a very proper Newfoundland dog named Nana. She hadn't belonged to anyone before the Darlings hired her; she'd simply always taken a strong interest in children and had spent much of her free time in Kensington Gardens peering into baby carriages. Careless nannies despised her, since she'd follow them home and report their carelessness to their employers. She turned out to be an absolute treasure as a nurse. She was thorough at bath time and would wake instantly if one of her young charges so much as whimpered in the night. Naturally, her dog bed was kept in the nursery. She had an instinct for knowing when a cough was nothing to worry about and when it called for a scarf around the throat. Until her final days, she trusted old-fashioned remedies like rhubarb leaves and scoffed at newfangled talk about germs. Watching her walk the children to school was practically a lesson in good manners—she stayed calmly at their side when they behaved and nudged them back into line the moment they wandered off. On John's sports days, she never once forgot his sweater, and she typically carried an umbrella in her mouth just in case of rain. Down in the basement of Miss Fulsom's school, there's a room where the nannies wait during lessons. They sat on benches while Nana lay on the floor—that was the only real difference between them. The human nannies pretended she was beneath them socially, and she, in turn, looked down on their gossip. She resented it whenever Mrs. Darling's friends visited the nursery, but if they did show up, she'd quickly strip off Michael's smock and dress him in the one with blue trim, straighten Wendy's appearance, and hastily fix John's hair.

No nursery could have been run more properly, and Mr. Darling knew it—yet he sometimes worried uneasily about what the neighbors might say.

He had his professional reputation in the business world to think about.

Nana troubled him in another way, too. He often sensed that she didn't think much of him. "I know she admires you tremendously, George," Mrs. Darling would reassure him, and then she'd signal the children to be especially sweet to their father. Lively family dances would follow, and sometimes the household's only other servant, Liza, joined in. She looked so tiny in her long skirt and maid's cap, though she'd insisted, when she was hired, that she was well past ten years old. Those romps were full of joy—and no one was more joyful than Mrs. Darling, who would spin so wildly that all you could see of her was that mysterious kiss. If you'd dashed toward her at just the right moment, you might have finally caught it. There was never a simpler or happier family—until Peter Pan came into their lives.

Mrs. Darling first heard the name Peter while she was tidying her children's minds. Every night, after her children fall asleep, a good mother rummages through their thoughts and sets things in order for the next morning—putting back in place all the ideas and impressions that wandered loose during the day. If you could somehow stay awake (though of course you can't), you'd see your own mother doing exactly this, and you'd find it fascinating to watch. It's a lot like organizing a messy drawer. You'd see her kneeling there, pausing thoughtfully over odd little things, wondering where on earth you'd picked them up, discovering some things that delight her and others that don't, pressing one memory to her cheek as if it were as sweet as a kitten, and quickly hiding another out of sight. By the time you wake up, all the bad behavior and rough feelings you went to bed with have been folded up small and tucked away at the bottom of your mind—while on top, neatly aired out, sit your nicer thoughts, ready for you to put on for the day.

I wonder if you've ever seen a map of someone's mind. Doctors sometimes draw diagrams of other parts of the body, and even a map of your own mind might be endlessly interesting—but try asking them to map out a child's mind. It's not only a jumbled mess, but it never stops moving. Zigzag lines run across it, like the lines on a fever chart, and these are probably meant to represent roads on an island—because the Neverland is essentially always some kind of island, dotted with startling bursts of color, coral reefs, adventurous-looking ships in the distance, native tribes, 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 elderly woman with a hooked nose. That alone would make for a fairly simple map—but there's also the first day of school, religion, fathers, the neighborhood pond, sewing lessons, murders, hangings, verbs that take the dative case (a grammar rule from certain languages), chocolate pudding day, learning to wear leg braces, reciting numbers at the doctor's office, earning three pence for pulling out your own loose tooth, and so on. Either all of this belongs to the island, or it's really a second map bleeding through the first one—either way, it's all rather confusing, especially since nothing on it ever holds still.

Of course, everyone's Neverland is a little different.