If you ask your mother whether she knew about Peter Pan when she was a
little girl she will say, “Why, of course, I did, child,” and if you
ask her whether he rode on a goat in those days she will say, “What
a foolish question to ask; certainly he did.” Then if you ask your
grandmother whether she knew about Peter Pan when she was a girl, she
also says, “Why, of course, I did, child,” but if you ask her whether he
rode on a goat in those days, she says she never heard of his having a
goat. Perhaps she has forgotten, just as she sometimes forgets your name
and calls you Mildred, which is your mother's name. Still, she could
hardly forget such an important thing as the goat. Therefore there was
no goat when your grandmother was a little girl. This shows that, in
telling the story of Peter Pan, to begin with the goat (as most people
do) is as silly as to put on your jacket before your vest.
Of course, it also shows that Peter is ever so old, but he is really
always the same age, so that does not matter in the least. His age
is one week, and though he was born so long ago he has never had a
birthday, nor is there the slightest chance of his ever having one. The
reason is that he escaped from being a human when he was seven days'
old; he escaped by the window and flew back to the Kensington Gardens.
If you think he was the only baby who ever wanted to escape, it shows
how completely you have forgotten your own young days. When David heard
this story first he was quite certain that he had never tried to escape,
but I told him to think back hard, pressing his hands to his temples,
and when he had done this hard, and even harder, he distinctly
remembered a youthful desire to return to the tree-tops, and with that
memory came others, as that he had lain in bed planning to escape as
soon as his mother was asleep, and how she had once caught him half-way
up the chimney. All children could have such recollections if they would
press their hands hard to their temples, for, having been birds before
they were human, they are naturally a little wild during the first few
weeks, and very itchy at the shoulders, where their wings used to be. So
David tells me.
I ought to mention here that the following is our way with a story:
First, I tell it to him, and then he tells it to me, the understanding
being that it is quite a different story; and then I retell it with his
additions, and so we go on until no one could say whether it is more
his story or mine. In this story of Peter Pan, for instance, the bald
narrative and most of the moral reflections are mine, though not all,
for this boy can be a stern moralist, but the interesting bits about the
ways and customs of babies in the bird-stage are mostly reminiscences
of David's, recalled by pressing his hands to his temples and thinking
hard.
Well, Peter Pan got out by the window, which had no bars. Standing
on the ledge he could see trees far away, which were doubtless the
Kensington Gardens, and the moment he saw them he entirely forgot that
he was now a little boy in a nightgown, and away he flew, right over the
houses to the Gardens. It is wonderful that he could fly without wings,
but the place itched tremendously, and, perhaps we could all fly if we
were as dead-confident-sure of our capacity to do it as was bold Peter
Pan that evening.
He alighted gaily on the open sward, between the Baby's Palace and the
Serpentine, and the first thing he did was to lie on his back and kick.
He was quite unaware already that he had ever been human, and thought he
was a bird, even in appearance, just the same as in his early days, and
when he tried to catch a fly he did not understand that the reason he
missed it was because he had attempted to seize it with his hand, which,
of course, a bird never does. He saw, however, that it must be past
Lock-out Time, for there were a good many fairies about, all too busy
to notice him; they were getting breakfast ready, milking their cows,
drawing water, and so on, and the sight of the water-pails made him
thirsty, so he flew over to the Round Pond to have a drink. He stooped,
and dipped his beak in the pond; he thought it was his beak, but, of
course, it was only his nose, and, therefore, very little water came up,
and that not so refreshing as usual, so next he tried a puddle, and he
fell flop into it. When a real bird falls in flop, he spreads out his
feathers and pecks them dry, but Peter could not remember what was
the thing to do, and he decided, rather sulkily, to go to sleep on the
weeping beech in the Baby Walk.
At first he found some difficulty in balancing himself on a branch, but
presently he remembered the way, and fell asleep. He awoke long before
morning, shivering, and saying to himself, “I never was out in such a
cold night;” he had really been out in colder nights when he was a bird,
but, of course, as everybody knows, what seems a warm night to a bird
is a cold night to a boy in a nightgown. Peter also felt strangely
uncomfortable, as if his head was stuffy, he heard loud noises that made
him look round sharply, though they were really himself sneezing. There
was something he wanted very much, but, though he knew he wanted it, he
could not think what it was. What he wanted so much was his mother to
blow his nose, but that never struck him, so he decided to appeal to the
fairies for enlightenment. They are reputed to know a good deal.
There were two of them strolling along the Baby Walk, with their arms
round each other's waists, and he hopped down to address them. The
fairies have their tiffs with the birds, but they usually give a civil
answer to a civil question, and he was quite angry when these two ran
away the moment they saw him. Another was lolling on a garden-chair,
reading a postage-stamp which some human had let fall, and when he heard
Peter's voice he popped in alarm behind a tulip.
To Peter's bewilderment he discovered that every fairy he met fled from
him. A band of workmen, who were sawing down a toadstool, rushed away,
leaving their tools behind them. A milkmaid turned her pail upside down
and hid in it. Soon the Gardens were in an uproar. Crowds of fairies
were running this away and that, asking each other stoutly, who was
afraid, lights were extinguished, doors barricaded, and from the grounds
of Queen Mab's palace came the rubadub of drums, showing that the royal
guard had been called out. A regiment of Lancers came charging down
the Broad Walk, armed with holly-leaves, with which they jog the enemy
horribly in passing. Peter heard the little people crying everywhere
that there was a human in the Gardens after Lock-out Time, but he never
thought for a moment that he was the human. He was feeling stuffier and
stuffier, and more and more wistful to learn what he wanted done to his
nose, but he pursued them with the vital question in vain; the timid
creatures ran from him, and even the Lancers, when he approached them up
the Hump, turned swiftly into a side-walk, on the pretence that they saw
him there.
Despairing of the fairies, he resolved to consult the birds, but now he
remembered, as an odd thing, that all the birds on the weeping beech had
flown away when he alighted on it, and though that had not troubled him
at the time, he saw its meaning now. Every living thing was shunning
him. Poor little Peter Pan, he sat down and cried, and even then he did
not know that, for a bird, he was sitting on his wrong part. It is a
blessing that he did not know, for otherwise he would have lost faith
in his power to fly, and the moment you doubt whether you can fly, you
cease forever to be able to do it. The reason birds can fly and we can't
is simply that they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have
wings.
Now, except by flying, no one can reach the island in the Serpentine,
for the boats of humans are forbidden to land there, and there
are stakes round it, standing up in the water, on each of which a
bird-sentinel sits by day and night. It was to the island that Peter now
flew to put his strange case before old Solomon Caw, and he alighted on
it with relief, much heartened to find himself at last at home, as the
birds call the island. All of them were asleep, including the sentinels,
except Solomon, who was wide awake on one side, and he listened quietly
to Peter's adventures, and then told him their true meaning.
“Look at your night-gown, if you don't believe me,” Solomon said,
and with staring eyes Peter looked at his night-gown, and then at the
sleeping birds. Not one of them wore anything.
“How many of your toes are thumbs?” said Solomon a little cruelly, and
Peter saw to his consternation, that all his toes were fingers. The
shock was so great that it drove away his cold.
“Ruffle your feathers,” said that grim old Solomon, and Peter tried most
desperately hard to ruffle his feathers, but he had none. Then he rose
up, quaking, and for the first time since he stood on the window-ledge,
he remembered a lady who had been very fond of him.
“I think I shall go back to mother,” he said timidly.
“Good-bye,” replied Solomon Caw with a queer look.
But Peter hesitated. “Why don't you go?” the old one asked politely.
“I suppose,” said Peter huskily, “I suppose I can still fly?”
You see, he had lost faith.
“Poor little half-and-half,” said Solomon, who was not really
hard-hearted, “you will never be able to fly again, not even on windy
days. You must live here on the island always.”
“And never even go to the Kensington Gardens?” Peter asked tragically.
“How could you get across?” said Solomon. He promised very kindly,
however, to teach Peter as many of the bird ways as could be learned by
one of such an awkward shape.
“Then I sha'n't be exactly a human?” Peter asked.
“No.”
“Nor exactly a bird?”
“No.”
“What shall I be?”
“You will be a Betwixt-and-Between,” Solomon said, and certainly he was
a wise old fellow, for that is exactly how it turned out.
The birds on the island never got used to him. His oddities tickled them
every day, as if they were quite new, though it was really the birds
that were new. They came out of the eggs daily, and laughed at him at
once, then off they soon flew to be humans, and other birds came out
of other eggs, and so it went on forever. The crafty mother-birds, when
they tired of sitting on their eggs, used to get the young one to break
their shells a day before the right time by whispering to them that now
was their chance to see Peter washing or drinking or eating. Thousands
gathered round him daily to watch him do these things, just as you watch
the peacocks, and they screamed with delight when he lifted the crusts
they flung him with his hands instead of in the usual way with the
mouth. All his food was brought to him from the Gardens at Solomon's
orders by the birds. He would not eat worms or insects (which they
thought very silly of him), so they brought him bread in their beaks.
Thus, when you cry out, “Greedy! Greedy!” to the bird that flies away
with the big crust, you know now that you ought not to do this, for he
is very likely taking it to Peter Pan.
Peter wore no night-gown now. You see, the birds were always begging him
for bits of it to line their nests with, and, being very good-natured,
he could not refuse, so by Solomon's advice he had hidden what was left
of it. But, though he was now quite naked, you must not think that he
was cold or unhappy. He was usually very happy and gay, and the reason
was that Solomon had kept his promise and taught him many of the bird
ways. To be easily pleased, for instance, and always to be really doing
something, and to think that whatever he was doing was a thing of vast
importance. Peter became very clever at helping the birds to build their
nests; soon he could build better than a wood-pigeon, and nearly as well
as a blackbird, though never did he satisfy the finches, and he made
nice little water-troughs near the nests and dug up worms for the young
ones with his fingers. He also became very learned in bird-lore, and
knew an east-wind from a west-wind by its smell, and he could see the
grass growing and hear the insects walking about inside the tree-trunks.
But the best thing Solomon had done was to teach him to have a glad
heart. All birds have glad hearts unless you rob their nests, and so as
they were the only kind of heart Solomon knew about, it was easy to him
to teach Peter how to have one.
Peter's heart was so glad that he felt he must sing all day long,
just as the birds sing for joy, but, being partly human, he needed an
instrument, so he made a pipe of reeds, and he used to sit by the shore
of the island of an evening, practising the sough of the wind and the
ripple of the water, and catching handfuls of the shine of the moon, and
he put them all in his pipe and played them so beautifully that even the
birds were deceived, and they would say to each other, “Was that a fish
leaping in the water or was it Peter playing leaping fish on his pipe?”
and sometimes he played the birth of birds, and then the mothers would
turn round in their nests to see whether they had laid an egg. If you
are a child of the Gardens you must know the chestnut-tree near the
bridge, which comes out in flower first of all the chestnuts, but
perhaps you have not heard why this tree leads the way. It is because
Peter wearies for summer and plays that it has come, and the chestnut
being so near, hears him and is cheated.
But as Peter sat by the shore tootling divinely on his pipe he sometimes
fell into sad thoughts and then the music became sad also, and the
reason of all this sadness was that he could not reach the Gardens,
though he could see them through the arch of the bridge. He knew he
could never be a real human again, and scarcely wanted to be one, but
oh, how he longed to play as other children play, and of course there
is no such lovely place to play in as the Gardens. The birds brought him
news of how boys and girls play, and wistful tears started in Peter's
eyes.
Perhaps you wonder why he did not swim across. The reason was that he
could not swim. He wanted to know how to swim, but no one on the island
knew the way except the ducks, and they are so stupid. They were quite
willing to teach him, but all they could say about it was, “You sit down
on the top of the water in this way, and then you kick out like that.”
Peter tried it often, but always before he could kick out he sank. What
he really needed to know was how you sit on the water without sinking,
and they said it was quite impossible to explain such an easy thing as
that. Occasionally swans touched on the island, and he would give them
all his day's food and then ask them how they sat on the water, but as
soon as he had no more to give them the hateful things hissed at him and
sailed away.
Once he really thought he had discovered a way of reaching the Gardens.
A wonderful white thing, like a runaway newspaper, floated high over
the island and then tumbled, rolling over and over after the manner of a
bird that has broken its wing. Peter was so frightened that he hid, but
the birds told him it was only a kite, and what a kite is, and that it
must have tugged its string out of a boy's hand, and soared away. After
that they laughed at Peter for being so fond of the kite, he loved it
so much that he even slept with one hand on it, and I think this was
pathetic and pretty, for the reason he loved it was because it had
belonged to a real boy.
To the birds this was a very poor reason, but the older ones felt
grateful to him at this time because he had nursed a number of
fledglings through the German measles, and they offered to show him how
birds fly a kite. So six of them took the end of the string in their
beaks and flew away with it; and to his amazement it flew after them and
went even higher than they.
Peter screamed out, “Do it again!” and with great good-nature they did
it several times, and always instead of thanking them he cried, “Do it
again!” which shows that even now he had not quite forgotten what it was
to be a boy.
At last, with a grand design burning within his brave heart, he begged
them to do it once more with him clinging to the tail, and now a hundred
flew off with the string, and Peter clung to the tail, meaning to drop
off when he was over the Gardens. But the kite broke to pieces in the
air, and he would have drowned in the Serpentine had he not caught hold
of two indignant swans and made them carry him to the island. After this
the birds said that they would help him no more in his mad enterprise.
Nevertheless, Peter did reach the Gardens at last by the help of
Shelley's boat, as I am now to tell you.