Chapter 1

PETER BREAKS THROUGH

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 [their house number  on  their  street],  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  com-plained  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 [in England soccer was called football, "footer" for short] 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 [simple boat]. 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."

At first Mrs. Darling did not know, but after thinking back into her childhood she just remembered a Peter Pan who was said to live with the fairies. There were odd stories about him, as that when children died he went part of the way with them, so that they should not be frightened. She had believed in him at the time, but now that she was married and full of sense she quite doubted whether there was any such person.

"Besides," she said to Wendy, "he would be grown up by this time."

"Oh no, he isn't grown up," Wendy assured her confidently, "and he is just my size." She meant that he was her size in both mind and body; she didn't know how she knew, she just knew it.

Mrs. Darling consulted Mr. Darling, but he smiled pooh-pooh. "Mark my words," he said, "it is some nonsense Nana has been putting into their heads; just the sort of idea a dog would have. Leave it alone, and it will blow over."

But it would not blow over and soon the troublesome boy gave Mrs. Darling quite a shock.

Children have the strangest adven-tures without being troubled by them. For instance, they may remem-ber to mention, a week after the event happened, that when they were in the wood they had met their dead father and had a game with him. It was in this casual way that Wendy one morning made a disquieting revelation. Some leaves of a tree had been found on the nursery floor, which certainly were not there when the children went to bed, and Mrs. Darling was puzzling over them when Wendy said with a tolerant smile:

"I do believe it is that Peter again!"

"Whatever do you mean, Wendy?"

"It is so naughty of him not to wipe his feet," Wendy said, sighing. She was a tidy child.

She explained in quite a matter-of-fact way that she thought Peter sometimes came to the nursery in the night and sat on the foot of her bed and played on his pipes to her. Unfortunately she never woke, so she didn't know how she knew, she just knew.

"What nonsense you talk, precious. No one can get into the house without knocking."

"I think he comes in by the window," she said.

"My love, it is three floors up."

"Were not the leaves at the foot of the window, mother?"

It was quite true; the leaves had been found very near the window.

Mrs. Darling did not know what to think, for it all seemed so natural to Wendy that you could not dismiss it by saying she had been dreaming.

"My child," the mother cried, "why did you not tell me of this before?"

"I forgot," said Wendy lightly. She was in a hurry to get her breakfast.

Oh, surely she must have been dreaming.

But, on the other hand, there were the leaves. Mrs. Darling examined them very carefully; they were skeleton leaves, but she was sure they did not come from any tree that grew in Eng-land. She crawled about the floor, peering at it with a candle for marks of a strange foot. She rattled the poker up the chimney and tapped the walls. She let down a tape from the window to the pavement, and it was a sheer drop of thirty feet, without so much as a spout to climb up by.

Certainly Wendy had been dreaming.

But Wendy had not been dreaming, as the very next night showed, the night on which the extraordinary adven-tures of these children may be said to have begun.

On the night we speak of all the children were once more in bed. It happened to be Nana's evening off, and Mrs. Darling had bathed them and sung to them till one by one they had let go her hand and slid away into the land of sleep.

All were looking so safe and cosy that she smiled at her fears now and sat down tranquilly by the fire to sew.
It was something for Michael, who on his birthday was getting into shirts. The fire was warm, however, and the nursery dimly lit by three night-lights, and presently the sewing lay on Mrs. Darling's lap. Then her head nodded, oh, so gracefully. She was asleep. Look at the four of them, Wendy and Michael over there, John here, and Mrs. Darling by the fire. There should have been a fourth night-light.

While she slept she had a dream. She dreamt that the Neverland had come too near and that a strange boy had broken through from it. He did not alarm her, for she thought she had seen him before in the faces of many women who have no children. Perhaps he is to be found in the faces of some mothers also. But in her dream he had rent the film that obscures the Neverland, and she saw Wendy and John and Michael peeping through the gap.

The dream by itself would have been a trifle, but while she was dreaming the window of the nursery blew open, and a boy did drop on the floor. He was accompanied by a strange light, no bigger than your fist, which darted about the room like a living thing and I think it must have been this light that wakened Mrs. Darling.

She started up with a cry, and saw the boy, and somehow she knew at once that he was Peter Pan. If you or I or Wendy had been there we should have seen that he was very like Mrs. Darling's kiss. He was a lovely boy, clad in skeleton leaves and the juices that ooze out of trees but the most entrancing thing about him was that he had all his first teeth. When he saw she was a grown-up, he gnashed the little pearls at her.