by J. M. Barrie
XIII. The Grand Tour of the Gardens
You must see for yourselves that it will be difficult to follow ouradventures unless you are familiar with the Kensington Gardens, as theynow became known to David. They are in London, where the King lives, andyou go to them every day unless you are looking decidedly flushed, butno one has ever been in the whole of the Gardens, because it is so soontime to turn back. The reason it is soon time to turn back is that yousleep from twelve to one. If your mother was not so sure that you sleepfrom twelve to one, you could most likely see the whole of them.
The Gardens are bounded on one side by a never-ending line of omnibuses,over which Irene has such authority that if she holds up her fingerto any one of them it stops immediately. She then crosses with you insafety to the other side. There are more gates to the Gardens than onegate, but that is the one you go in at, and before you go in you speakto the lady with the balloons, who sits just outside. This is as near tobeing inside as she may venture, because, if she were to let go her holdof the railings for one moment, the balloons would lift her up, and shewould be flown away. She sits very squat, for the balloons are alwaystugging at her, and the strain has given her quite a red face. Once shewas a new one, because the old one had let go, and David was very sorryfor the old one, but as she did let go, he wished he had been there tosee.
The Gardens are a tremendous big place, with millions and hundreds oftrees, and first you come to the Figs, but you scorn to loiter there,for the Figs is the resort of superior little persons, who are forbiddento mix with the commonalty, and is so named, according to legend,because they dress in full fig. These dainty ones are themselvescontemptuously called Figs by David and other heroes, and you have a keyto the manners and customs of this dandiacal section of the Gardens whenI tell you that cricket is called crickets here. Occasionally a rebelFig climbs over the fence into the world, and such a one was Miss MabelGrey, of whom I shall tell you when we come to Miss Mabel Grey's gate.She was the only really celebrated Fig.
We are now in the Broad Walk, and it is as much bigger than the otherwalks as your father is bigger than you. David wondered if it beganlittle, and grew and grew, till it was quite grown up, and whether theother walks are its babies, and he drew a picture, which divertedhim very much, of the Broad Walk giving a tiny walk an airing in aperambulator. In the Broad Walk you meet all the people who are worthknowing, and there is usually a grown-up with them to prevent theirgoing on the damp grass, and to make them stand disgraced at the cornerof a seat if they have been mad-dog or Mary-Annish. To be Mary-Annishis to behave like a girl, whimpering because nurse won't carry you, orsimpering with your thumb in your mouth, and it is a hateful quality,but to be mad-dog is to kick out at everything, and there is somesatisfaction in that.
If I were to point out all the notable places as we pass up the BroadWalk, it would be time to turn back before we reach them, and I simplywave my stick at Cecco's Tree, that memorable spot where a boy calledCecco lost his penny, and, looking for it, found twopence. There hasbeen a good deal of excavation going on there ever since. Farther up thewalk is the little wooden house in which Marmaduke Perry hid. There isno more awful story of the Gardens by day than this of Marmaduke Perry,who had been Mary-Annish three days in succession, and was sentenced toappear in the Broad Walk dressed in his sister's clothes. He hid inthe little wooden house, and refused to emerge until they brought himknickerbockers with pockets.
You now try to go to the Round Pond, but nurses hate it, because theyare not really manly, and they make you look the other way, at the BigPenny and the Baby's Palace. She was the most celebrated baby of theGardens, and lived in the palace all alone, with ever so many dolls, sopeople rang the bell, and up she got out of her bed, though it was pastsix o'clock, and she lighted a candle and opened the door in her nighty,and then they all cried with great rejoicings, "Hail, Queen of England!"What puzzled David most was how she knew where the matches were kept.The Big Penny is a statue about her.
Next we come to the Hump, which is the part of the Broad Walk where allthe big races are run, and even though you had no intention of runningyou do run when you come to the Hump, it is such a fascinating,slide-down kind of place. Often you stop when you have run abouthalf-way down it, and then you are lost, but there is another littlewooden house near here, called the Lost House, and so you tell the manthat you are lost and then he finds you. It is glorious fun racing downthe Hump, but you can't do it on windy days because then you are notthere, but the fallen leaves do it instead of you. There is almostnothing that has such a keen sense of fun as a fallen leaf.
From the Hump we can see the gate that is called after Miss Mabel Grey,the Fig I promised to tell you about. There were always two nurses withher, or else one mother and one nurse, and for a long time she was apattern-child who always coughed off the table and said, "How do youdo?" to the other Figs, and the only game she played at was flinging aball gracefully and letting the nurse bring it back to her. Then oneday she tired of it all and went mad-dog, and, first, to show that shereally was mad-dog, she unloosened both her boot-laces and put out hertongue east, west, north, and south. She then flung her sash into apuddle and danced on it till dirty water was squirted over her frock,after which she climbed the fence and had a series of incredibleadventures, one of the least of which was that she kicked off both herboots. At last she came to the gate that is now called after her, out ofwhich she ran into streets David and I have never been in though we haveheard them roaring, and still she ran on and would never again have beenheard of had not her mother jumped into a bus and thus overtaken her.It all happened, I should say, long ago, and this is not the Mabel Greywhom David knows.
Returning up the Broad Walk we have on our right the Baby Walk, which isso full of perambulators that you could cross from side to side steppingon babies, but the nurses won't let you do it. From this walk a passagecalled Bunting's Thumb, because it is that length, leads into PicnicStreet, where there are real kettles, and chestnut-blossom falls intoyour mug as you are drinking. Quite common children picnic here also,and the blossom falls into their mugs just the same.
Next comes St. Govor's Well, which was full of water when Malcolm theBold fell into it. He was his mother's favourite, and he let her put herarm round his neck in public because she was a widow, but he was alsopartial to adventures and liked to play with a chimney-sweep who hadkilled a good many bears. The sweep's name was Sooty, and one day whenthey were playing near the well, Malcolm fell in and would have beendrowned had not Sooty dived in and rescued him, and the water had washedSooty clean and he now stood revealed as Malcolm's long-lost father. SoMalcolm would not let his mother put her arm round his neck any more.
Between the well and the Round Pond are the cricket-pitches, andfrequently the choosing of sides exhausts so much time that there isscarcely any cricket. Everybody wants to bat first, and as soon as heis out he bowls unless you are the better wrestler, and while you arewrestling with him the fielders have scattered to play at somethingelse. The Gardens are noted for two kinds of cricket: boy cricket, whichis real cricket with a bat, and girl cricket, which is with a racquetand the governess. Girls can't really play cricket, and when youare watching their futile efforts you make funny sounds at them.Nevertheless, there was a very disagreeable incident one day when someforward girls challenged David's team, and a disturbing creature calledAngela Clare sent down so many yorkers that--However, instead of tellingyou the result of that regrettable match I shall pass on hurriedly tothe Round Pond, which is the wheel that keeps all the Gardens going.
It is round because it is in the very middle of the Gardens, and whenyou are come to it you never want to go any farther. You can't be goodall the time at the Round Pond, however much you try. You can be good inthe Broad Walk all the time, but not at the Round Pond, and the reasonis that you forget, and, when you remember, you are so wet that you mayas well be wetter. There are men who sail boats on the Round Pond,such big boats that they bring them in barrows and sometimes inpe
rambulators, and then the baby has to walk. The bow-legged childrenin the Gardens are these who had to walk too soon because their fatherneeded the perambulator.
You always want to have a yacht to sail on the Round Pond, and in theend your uncle gives you one; and to carry it to the Pond the firstday is splendid, also to talk about it to boys who have no uncle issplendid, but soon you like to leave it at home. For the sweetestcraft that slips her moorings in the Round Pond is what is called astick-boat, because she is rather like a stick until she is in the waterand you are holding the string. Then as you walk round, pulling her,you see little men running about her deck, and sails rise magically andcatch the breeze, and you put in on dirty nights at snug harbours whichare unknown to the lordly yachts. Night passes in a twink, and againyour rakish craft noses for the wind, whales spout, you glide overburied cities, and have brushes with pirates and cast anchor on coralisles. You are a solitary boy while all this is taking place, for twoboys together cannot adventure far upon the Round Pond, and though youmay talk to yourself throughout the voyage, giving orders and executingthem with dispatch, you know not, when it is time to go home, where youhave been or what swelled your sails; your treasure-trove is all lockedaway in your hold, so to speak, which will be opened, perhaps, byanother little boy many years afterward.
But those yachts have nothing in their hold. Does anyone return to thishaunt of his youth because of the yachts that used to sail it? Oh, no.It is the stick-boat that is freighted with memories. The yachts aretoys, their owner a fresh-water mariner, they can cross and recrossa pond only while the stick-boat goes to sea. You yachtsmen with yourwands, who think we are all there to gaze on you, your ships are onlyaccidents of this place, and were they all to be boarded and sunk by theducks the real business of the Round Pond would be carried on as usual.
Paths from everywhere crowd like children to the pond. Some of them areordinary paths, which have a rail on each side, and are made by menwith their coats off, but others are vagrants, wide at one spot and atanother so narrow that you can stand astride them. They are called Pathsthat have Made Themselves, and David did wish he could see them doingit. But, like all the most wonderful things that happen in the Gardens,it is done, we concluded, at night after the gates are closed. We havealso decided that the paths make themselves because it is their onlychance of getting to the Round Pond.
One of these gypsy paths comes from the place where the sheep get theirhair cut. When David shed his curls at the hair-dresser's, I am told, hesaid good-bye to them without a tremor, though Mary has never been quitethe same bright creature since, so he despises the sheep as they runfrom their shearer and calls out tauntingly, "Cowardy, cowardy custard!"But when the man grips them between his legs David shakes a fist at himfor using such big scissors. Another startling moment is when the manturns back the grimy wool from the sheeps' shoulders and they looksuddenly like ladies in the stalls of a theatre. The sheep are sofrightened by the shearing that it makes them quite white and thin, andas soon as they are set free they begin to nibble the grass at once,quite anxiously, as if they feared that they would never be wortheating. David wonders whether they know each other, now that they areso different, and if it makes them fight with the wrong ones. They aregreat fighters, and thus so unlike country sheep that every year theygive Porthos a shock. He can make a field of country sheep fly by merelyannouncing his approach, but these town sheep come toward him with nopromise of gentle entertainment, and then a light from last year breaksupon Porthos. He cannot with dignity retreat, but he stops and looksabout him as if lost in admiration of the scenery, and presently hestrolls away with a fine indifference and a glint at me from the cornerof his eye.
The Serpentine begins near here. It is a lovely lake, and there is adrowned forest at the bottom of it. If you peer over the edge you cansee the trees all growing upside down, and they say that at night thereare also drowned stars in it. If so, Peter Pan sees them when he issailing across the lake in the Thrush's Nest. A small part only of theSerpentine is in the Gardens, for soon it passes beneath a bridge tofar away where the island is on which all the birds are born that becomebaby boys and girls. No one who is human, except Peter Pan (and he isonly half human), can land on the island, but you may write what youwant (boy or girl, dark or fair) on a piece of paper, and then twistit into the shape of a boat and slip it into the water, and it reachesPeter Pan's island after dark.
We are on the way home now, though, of course, it is all pretence thatwe can go to so many of the places in one day. I should have had to becarrying David long ago and resting on every seat like old Mr. Salford.That was what we called him, because he always talked to us of a lovelyplace called Salford where he had been born. He was a crab-apple ofan old gentleman who wandered all day in the Gardens from seat to seattrying to fall in with somebody who was acquainted with the town ofSalford, and when we had known him for a year or more we actually didmeet another aged solitary who had once spent Saturday to Monday inSalford. He was meek and timid and carried his address inside his hat,and whatever part of London he was in search of he always went to theGeneral Post-office first as a starting-point. Him we carried in triumphto our other friend, with the story of that Saturday to Monday, andnever shall I forget the gloating joy with which Mr. Salford leapt athim. They have been cronies ever since, and I notice that Mr. Salford,who naturally does most of the talking, keeps tight grip of the otherold man's coat.
The two last places before you come to our gate are the Dog's Cemeteryand the chaffinch's nest, but we pretend not to know what the Dog'sCemetery is, as Porthos is always with us. The nest is very sad. Itis quite white, and the way we found it was wonderful. We were havinganother look among the bushes for David's lost worsted ball, and insteadof the ball we found a lovely nest made of the worsted, and containingfour eggs, with scratches on them very like David's handwriting, so wethink they must have been the mother's love-letters to the little onesinside. Every day we were in the Gardens we paid a call at the nest,taking care that no cruel boy should see us, and we dropped crumbs,and soon the bird knew us as friends, and sat in the nest looking at uskindly with her shoulders hunched up. But one day when we went, therewere only two eggs in the nest, and the next time there were none. Thesaddest part of it was that the poor little chaffinch fluttered aboutthe bushes, looking so reproachfully at us that we knew she thought wehad done it, and though David tried to explain to her, it was solong since he had spoken the bird language that I fear she did notunderstand. He and I left the Gardens that day with our knuckles in oureyes.