by JM Barrie
J. M. BARRIE
PETER PAN
Introduction by Anne McCaffrey
Illustrations by F. D. Bedford
THE MODERN LIBRARY
NEW YORK
CONTENTS
Title Page
Frontispiece
Illustrations
J. M. Barrie
Introduction by Anne McCaffrey
A Note on the Text
Peter Pan
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
Reading Group Guide
Editorial Board
Modern Library Online
Children’s Classics Available from The Modern Library
Copyright
ILLUSTRATIONS
From drawings by F. D. Bedford
PETER FLEW IN
PICTORIAL TITLE-PAGE
THE BIRDS WERE FLOWN
“LET HIM KEEP WHO CAN”
THE NEVERr NEVERr LAND
PETER ON GUARD
SUMMER DAYS ON THE LAGOON
“TO DIE WILL BE AN AWFULLY BIG ADVENTURE”
WENDY’S STORY
FLUNG LIKE BALES
“HOOK OR ME THIS TIME”
“THIS MAN IS MINE”
PETER AND JANE
J. M. BARRIE
James Matthew Barrie was born in Kirriemuir, Scotland, on May 9, 1860, the seventh living child and youngest son of David Barrie, a hand-loom weaver, and Margaret Ogilvy. The death of Margaret’s favorite child, David, in an ice-skating accident played an important role in shaping Barrie’s character. Hoping to ease his mother’s overwhelming grief, the six-year-old Barrie attempted to take David’s place in his mother’s heart. Pleasing his mother would become a guiding principle in Barrie’s life.
While still at school, the young theater-loving Barrie decided to become a writer. His family persuaded him to continue his education at Edinburgh University, where he could study literature under the famous scholar David Masson. Barrie began to work as a freelance dramatic critic and book reviewer for an Edinburgh newspaper even before he earned his M.A. degree in 1882.
After graduation, Barrie worked for nearly two years at the Nottingham Journal while continuing to publish ever more widely in quality newspapers and magazines. In 1885 he went to London, determined to live by his pen and to make his mother proud of him. He began to smoke heavily, pacing his rooms and writing feverishly. This overwork paid off financially and personally as he began to regularly place articles in a number of publications and to gain a reputation among literary lights and society men as a “rising young author.” Barrie continued to haunt the theater for professional and social reasons. He worshipped the beautiful actresses he saw onstage, yet his diminutive stature (he stood just over five feet tall) made him painfully shy and insecure with women.
Barrie’s ambition to be a great author led him to try novels, yet his achievement in this venture, too, was limited at first. His early novels, published in the late 1880s—many with a Scottish setting and theme—faded quickly. The acclaim awarded to his first popular novel, The Little Minister (1891), however, cast a glow upon some of his earlier works. Writing for the stage was Barrie’s next undertaking, and he found success—and someone new to admire—there as well. He met Mary Ansell, a pretty actress, at the auditions for his play Walker, London (1892) and was immediately smitten. Barrie and Ansell would eventually marry quietly in 1894. Although Barrie appeared to idolize Ansell—as he would a number of lovely, intelligent women over the years—the marriage was to be troubled from the first.
Barrie’s fame and wealth grew steadily as his melodramatic and whimsical novels, such as Sentimental Tommy: The Story of His Boyhood (1896), and charming plays found eager audiences in England and America. In 1896 he was invited to travel to the United States to meet Charles Frohman, a powerful New York theater producer, who became a friend and important business associate.
In 1897, Barrie was introduced to Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, a society matron who would ultimately dominate his life in myriad ways. The childless Barrie often met her three boys walking in Kensington Gardens with their nurse, and would amuse them with his attentions and adventure stories. The Barries and Davieses soon began to socialize regularly, and Barrie became a fixture in the Llewelyn Davies household, to the chagrin of Sylvia’s husband, Arthur Llewelyn Davies, a struggling independent barrister. Mary Barrie ignored the romantic infatuation her husband had for Sylvia Llewelyn Davies.
By 1898, Barrie was, by all accounts, one of the leading literary figures of the day. He spoiled the Llewelyn Davies boys—eventually there would be five—and met them almost daily. The story of Peter Pan, which would become Barrie’s most enduring work, was begun in tales told to the boys. Peter Pan, named for Peter Llewelyn Davies, made his first public appearance in a novel for adults, The Little White Bird (1902). Combining some of the elements of traditional Christmas pantomime, stories of pirates and adventure beloved by the Llewelyn Davies boys, a mother-girl based on his own mother, and a hero who, like Barrie himself, never grew up, the play Peter Pan was first produced in 1904. It was a smashing success and would be revived annually during the Christmas season. In 1911, Barrie adapted the play into novel form as Peter and Wendy.
After the tragic illnesses and deaths of Arthur and Sylvia Llewelyn Davies in 1907 and 1910, Barrie assumed parental responsibilities for the boys, now age six to seventeen years old, in addition to the financial assistance he had been providing for many years. In the last year of Sylvia’s illness, Barrie received a different shock: his long-suffering wife asked for a divorce and married a man twenty years her junior. Two of the Llewelyn Davies children would die young, multiplying the tragedies of this family: George, the eldest, in the First World War, and Michael, Barrie’s favorite, of drowning, while a student at Oxford, six years after George’s death.
Although tragedies depressed the private man, the playwright kept busy writing and overseeing productions and accepting accolades. He became a baronet in 1913. During the First World War, Barrie, always generous with his money, financed an unofficial refugee home for women and children in France. He was elected rector of St. Andrews University in 1919, a great honor for the Scotsman. Barrie’s health began to suffer from overwork: his ever-present cough grew worse, and he suffered from insomnia. Heroin was prescribed for his sleeplessness.
In his later years, although his output of plays slowed, his contributions to literature continued to be recognized. In 1922, Barrie was invested with the Order of Merit at Buckingham Palace. He donated the rights to Peter Pan (play and novel) to London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children. In 1928, he accepted the invitation to become the president of the Incorporated Society of Authors, succeeding Thomas Hardy. Barrie hired Lady Cynthia Asquith, well-bred and always in need of money, as a secretary to handle his voluminous correspondence. Lady Asquith was the last beautiful woman to receive Barrie’s worship. They worked closely together for almost twenty years, and he left the bulk of his estate to her. Barrie died on June 19, 1937, at the age of se
venty-seven.
Lynne Vallone
Texas A&M University
INTRODUCTION
Anne McCaffrey
When I was asked to write this introduction to Peter Pan, I immediately went to one of my usual bookshops in the Dublin area so that I could refresh my memory. I was horrified to find that they didn’t have a copy on their shelves, but they were happy to order one for me. While I was waiting for its arrival, I searched for further information on the net and discovered that there are 1,610,100 entries available for “Peter Pan,” so the mischievous lad is still alive and well in our mundane world.
It was as well I reread the text, as I had forgotten some of the little niceties that Sir James inserted, winking to be sure some reader would get the point. I also heard faint echoes of my mother’s voice. Sometimes it’s good to reread old books, if only for the nostalgia evoked.
It was more than seventy years ago that my mother read Peter Pan aloud to my two brothers and me. I still remember two things from that first reading: the directions to the Neverland, which never allowed me to get there (“Second to the right, and then straight on till morning” was a curious way to give directions, I thought at the time), and the magical possibility of reviving a fairy (Live, Tinker Bell!).
I also remember my mother’s slightly dubious tone when she read the part about Nana, the Newfoundland dog who was the Darlings’ nursery maid. The odd part about it is that when I grew up, I, too, had a dog doing nursery duty. Wizard, our German shepherd, took it as his duty to keep my overly adventurous son, Todd, from wandering off our premises, as we lived on a fairly busy road. His technique was to follow the boy everywhere. When Todd would get close to something that Wizard thought was dangerous, the dog would trip my son up and sit on his chest and howl—at which point I would arrive. To be truthful, I don’t think I recalled Nana at the time I allowed Wizard to take charge. But it worked as long as a human listened. Poor Nana, she tried to tell the Darlings that there was trouble the night Peter Pan entered the children’s bedroom. Nana made me wonder about Barrie’s upbringing in Scotland. He was the ninth child of a weaver, and I could almost imagine them having a sheep dog who kept a watchful eye on such a mob. And then I learned that Barrie was accompanied by his Saint Bernard dog in Kensington Gardens when he first met the Davies children, the lads who would soon inspire the adventures of Peter Pan and the Darlings.
Sir James Michael Barrie wrote Peter Pan as a cautionary tale, as so many such fantastical tales are. He first wrote it as a play, which was performed in London on December 27, 1904, and became an annual Christmas institution. He later turned it into a novel, adding the charming final chapter called “When Wendy Grew Up,” with the further adventures of Peter Pan and Wendy. (I rather like the notion that Peter Pan came to fetch her to the Neverland in time to do the spring cleaning . . . and then conveyed her female descendants, one by one, a tradition that will continue “as long as children are gay and innocent and heartless”).
As I mentioned, the directions to the Neverland have stayed with me all my life: “Second to the right, and then straight on till morning.” Well, even before I became a practicing science fiction writer, I had doubts about the usefulness of such ambivalent directions. However, on close examination, if one were facing north in London, right would be east. And straight on till morning . . . depending on when you took off—and I presume that the Darling children were put to bed about seven—you’d run into morning over India or the Micronesian sea, which has ever so many lovely untouched islands where pirates might still anchor, and coves and lagoons and the tropical vegetation that F. D. Bedford captured so enchantingly in his illustrations. So, whimsical as it may seem, “straight on till morning” is valid. Barrie never suggests that the Neverland is not on earth somewhere. Using fairy dust as an early antigravity spray and conjuring happy thoughts do speed one up on good days.
While Peter is more interested in luring Wendy to the Neverland, he recruits her brothers easily enough with the prospect of matching wits with not only “redskins” but pirates. What red-blooded boy could resist such treats? Indeed, this is why John and Michael insist on accompanying their sister. She, on the other hand, is ultimately persuaded by the prospect of meeting mermaids.
The story is, as I said, a cautionary tale—about the necessity of growing up, which Peter eschews with immense fervor and cleverness. He has no intention of ever growing up and assuming the responsibility of making a living, marrying, and having children to raise to a similar sense of duty and responsibility. And he has gathered about him a group of “lost boys” with whom to play, who admire his cleverness and bravery. We still have lost boys with us today, and I think we always will. They can be exasperating, arrogant, and selfish, wanting, as Peter Pan did, for things to work out their way, according to their plans, because they are so clever. But they can also be irresistibly charming.
However, I know I shouldn’t like someone who only wanted my company for my spring-cleaning or storytelling abilities. Ironically, while Peter does not wish to grow up, he pushes Wendy prematurely into motherhood—all for his benefit. She is diligent and responsible in her duties as the lost boys’ surrogate mother. She darns and mends for Peter and the lost boys, who are constantly ripping the knees from their trousers and putting holes in their socks. She insists on a proper bedtime and good food. She even keeps them from eating the sweet cake with which the pirates hope to ensnare them.
If Wendy is Mother, then it occurs to her that Peter Pan, as the leader of his troupe, is Father, a position that Peter denies.
“I was just thinking,” he said, a little scared. “It is only make-believe, isn’t it, that I am their father?”
“Oh yes,” Wendy said primly.
“You see,” he continued apologetically, “it would make me seem so old to be their real father.”
“But they are ours, Peter, yours and mine.”
“But not really, Wendy?” he asked anxiously.
“Not if you don’t wish it,” she replied; and she distinctly heard his sigh of relief.
One of the most delightful aspects of Peter Pan is Barrie’s ability to reveal the inside of a child’s mind, showing how faint the line is between imagination and reality. Wendy insists on a midday rest for the boys, especially after eating (whether the food is pretend or real.) She also makes sure they take their medicine at night. (One never knows why the medicine is needed, only that it is supposed to be taken at night.)
I think that nowadays girls, having been exposed to full women’s liberation, would not fall for Peter Pan’s soft talk. And while their fantasies might include traditional ones like “playing house,” they would certainly include other adventures too, such as training dragons, or becoming a doctor or prime minister. I also wonder just how many girls now would know how to thread a needle to sew Peter’s shadow onto his foot, much less darn socks and mend trousers.
Yet the world still needs a Peter Pan, if only to remind us of that marvelous stage of life—childhood. To show that we can confound most dangers and be stalwart survivors of piratical threats as well as attacks by crocodile teeth and even the machinations of the dastardly Captain Hook, who is secretly jealous of Peter Pan’s youth and vigor.
More important, Peter Pan reminds us of a need to “believe.”
One of my favorite moments in the book is when we are all called upon to save the life of Tinker Bell, Peter’s mischievous companion and Wendy’s rival. She has drunk the poison that Captain Hook left in Peter’s medicine cup. As the bright spark fades from her fragile body, Peter attempts to revive her.
Peter flung out his arms. There were no children there, and it was night time; but he addressed all who might be dreaming of the Neverland, and who were therefore nearer to him than you think: boys and girls in their nighties, and naked papooses in their baskets hung from trees.
“Do you believe?” he cried.
Tink sat up in bed almost briskly to listen to her fate.
She fancie
d she heard answers in the affirmative, and then again she wasn’t sure.
“What do you think?” she asked Peter.
“If you believe,” he shouted to them, “clap your hands; don’t let Tink die.”
Peter sends out this message to every child who might be dreaming of the Neverland, and the response is sufficient to revive the dying fairy. There is some unreconstructed, immature childlike part in us still clinging to the notion that fairies can exist. For me, a writer of unbelievable and as yet undiscovered frontiers, it is essential to believe. I do believe in fairies, I do, I do, I do. And in Peter Pan.
One last point—as of December 27, in the year 2004, Peter Pan was one hundred years old. That’s even older than I am. Not bad for a lad who didn’t wish to grow up, don’t you think?
ANNE MCCAFFREY was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College, where she majored in Slavonic languages and literatures. A prolific bestselling author, McCaffrey is best known for her Dragonriders of Pern series. She lives in County Wicklow, Ireland.
A NOTE ON THE TEXT
Peter Pan, the novel as we know it today, was written by J. M. Barrie in 1911. The novel’s original title was Peter and Wendy. It was based on Barrie’s successful stage play called Peter Pan, or, The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up, which was first produced in London in 1904. The text and illustrations of this Modern Library Paperback Classic edition of Peter Pan are taken from the first American edition of Peter and Wendy, published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in October 1911.
This a facsimile of the title page from the original 1911 edition.
CHAPTER I
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.