PETER PAN
IN KENSINGTON GARDENS
By
J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie
(1860–1937)
Illustrated by
Arthur Rackham
(1867–1939)
© 2018 SKRIPTART
www.skriptart.de
ISBN 9783748152163
Titlepage
About This Ebook
List of Illustrations
Peter Pan’s Map
Frontispiece
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens
1 The Grand Tour of the Gardens
2 Peter Pan
3 The Thrush’s Nest
4 Lock-out Time
5 The Little House
6 Peter’s Goat
Peter Pan’s Map of Kensington Gardens
Kensington Gardens
The Kensington Gardens are in London, where the King lives
The lady with the balloons, who sits just outside
In the Broad Walk you meet all the people who are worth knowing
The Broad Walk in winter
The Hump, which is the part of the Broad Walk where all the big races are run
There is almost nothing that has such a keen sense of fun as a fallen leaf
One of the paths that have made themselves
The Serpentine is a lovely lake
The island on which all the birds are born that become baby boys and girls
Old Mr. Salford was a crab-apple of an old gentleman
Away he flew, right over the houses to the Gardens
The fairies have their tiffs with the birds
He popped in alarm behind a tulip
A band of workmen rushed away
The timid creatures ran from him
He put his strange case before old Solomon Caw
The birds on the island never got used to him
Peter screamed out, ‘Do it again!
Peter clung to the tail
The birds said that they would help him no more
‘Preposterous!’ cried Solomon in a rage
For years he had been quietly filling his stocking
You meet grown-up people who puff and blow
He passed under the bridge
There now arose a mighty storm
Fairies are in hiding until dusk
They are so cunning
They skip along pretty lively
They stand quite still pretending to be flowers
A fairy ring
The fairies are exquisite dancers
They sometimes slyly change the board on a ball night
Linkmen running in front carrying winter cherries
When her Majesty wants to know the time
The fairies sit round on mushrooms
Butter is got from the roots of old trees
Wallflower juice is good for reviving dancers
They all tickled him on the shoulder
Peter Pan is the fairies’ orchestra
One day they were overheard by a fairy
Weaving their summer curtains from skeleton leaves
The Gardens were white with snow
She ran to St. Govor’s Well and hid
There was a good deal going on in the Baby Walk
An elderberry stood chatting with some young quinces
A chrysanthemum said pointedly, ‘Hoity-toity, what is this?’
She escorted them up the Baby Walk and back again
The trees warned her about the fairies
Queen Mab, who rules in the Gardens
The doctor murmured, ‘Cold, quite cold’
What they say is, ‘We feel dancey’
Looking very undancey indeed
‘I have the honour to inform your excellency that your grace is in love’
Building the house for Maimie
If the bad ones among the fairies happen to be out
They will certainly mischief you
The two tombstones of Walter Stephen Matthews and Phoebe Phelps
TO
SYLVIA AND ARTHUR LLEWELYN DAVIES
AND THEIR BOYS (MY BOYS)
I
THE GRAND TOUR
OF THE GARDENS
YOU MUST SEE for yourselves that it will be difficult to follow Peter Pan’s adventures unless you are familiar with the Kensington Gardens. They are in London, where the King lives, and I used to take David there nearly every day unless he was looking decidedly flushed. No child has ever been in the whole of the Gardens, because it is so soon time to turn back. The reason it is soon time to turn back is that, if you are as small as David, you sleep from twelve to one. If your mother was not so sure that you sleep from 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 your nurse has such authority that if she holds up her finger to any one of them it stops immediately. She then crosses with you in safety to the other side. There are more gates to the Gardens than one gate, but that is the one you go in at, and before you go in you speak to the lady with the balloons, who sits just outside. This is as near to being inside as she may venture, because, if she were to let go her hold of the railings for one moment, the balloons would lift her up, and she would be flown away. She sits very squat, for the balloons are always tugging at her, and the strain has given her quite a red face. Once she was a new one, because the old one had let go, and David was very sorry for the old one, but as she did let go, he wished he had been there to see.
The Gardens are a tremendous big place, with millions and hundreds of trees; 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 forbidden to mix with the commonalty, and is so named, according to legend, because they dress in full fig. These dainty ones are themselves contemptuously called Figs by David and other heroes, and you have a key to the manners and customs of this dandiacal section of the Gardens when I tell you that cricket is called crickets here. Occasionally a rebel Fig climbs over the fence into the world, and such a one was Miss Mabel Grey, 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 other walks as your father is bigger than you. David wondered if it began little, and grew and grew, until it was quite grown up, and whether the other walks are its babies, and he drew a picture, which diverted him very much, of the Broad Walk giving a tiny walk an airing in a perambulator. In the Broad Walk you meet all the people who are worth knowing, and there is usually a grown-up with them to prevent them going on the damp grass, and to make them stand disgraced at the corner of a seat if they have been mad-dog or Mary-Annish. To be Mary-Annish is to behave like a girl, whimpering because nurse won’t carry you, or simpering 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 some satisfaction in that.
If I were to point out all the notable places as we pass up the Broad Walk, it would be time to turn back before we reach them, and I simply wave my stick at Cecco Hewlett’s Tree, that memorable spot where a boy called Cecco lost his penny, and, looking for it, found twopence. There has been a good deal of excavation going on there ever since. Farther up the walk is the little wooden house in which Marmaduke Perry hid. There is no more awful story of the Gardens than this of Marmaduke Perry, who had been Mary-Annish three days in succession, and was sentenced to appear in the Broad Walk dressed in his sister’s clothes. He hid in the little wooden house, and refused to emerge until they brought him knickerbockers with pockets.
You now try to go to the Round Pond, but nurses hate it, because they are not really manly, and they make you look the other way, at the Big Penny and the Baby’s Palace. She was the most celebrated baby of the Gardens, and lived in the palace all alone, with ever so many dolls, so people rang the bell, and up she got out of her bed, though it was past six 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 all the big races are run; and even though you had no intention of running you 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 about half-way down it, and then you are lost; but there is another little wooden house near here, called the Lost House, and so you tell the man that you are lost and then he finds you. It is glorious fun racing down the Hump, but you can’t do it on windy days because then you are not there, but the fallen leaves do it instead of you. There is almost nothing 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 with her, or else one mother and one nurse, and for a long time she was a pattern-child who always coughed off the table and said, ‘How do you do?’ to the other Figs, and the only game she played at was flinging a ball gracefully and letting the nurse bring it back to her. Then one day she tired of it all and went mad-dog, and, first, to show that she really was mad-dog, she unloosened both her boot-laces and put out her tongue east, west, north, and south. She then flung her sash into a puddle and danced on it till dirty water was squirted over her frock, after which she climbed the fence and had a series of incredible adventures, one of the least of which was that she kicked off both her boots. At last she came to the gate that is now called after her, out of which she ran into streets David and I have never been in though we have heard them roaring, and still she ran on and would never again have been heard 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 Grey whom David knows.
Returning up the Broad Walk we have on our right the Baby Walk, which is so full of perambulators that you could cross from side to side stepping on babies, but the nurses won’t let you do it. From this walk a passage called Bunting’s Thumb, because it is that length, leads into Picnic Street, where there are real kettles, and chestnut-blossom falls into your 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 the Bold fell into it. He was his mother’s favourite, and he let her put her arm round his neck in public because she was a widow; but he was also partial to adventures, and liked to play with a chimney-sweep who had killed a good many bears. The sweep’s name was Sooty, and one day, when they were playing near the well, Malcolm fell in and would have been drowned had not Sooty dived in and rescued him; and the water had washed Sooty clean, and he now stood revealed as Malcolm’s long-lost father. So Malcolm would not let his mother put her arm round his neck any more.
Between the well and the Round Pond are the cricket pitches, and frequently the choosing of sides exhausts so much time that there is scarcely any cricket. Everybody wants to bat first, and as soon as he is out he bowls unless you are the better wrestler, and while you are wrestling with him the fielders have scattered to play at something else. The Gardens are noted for two kinds of cricket: boy cricket, which is real cricket with a bat, and girl cricket, which is with a racquet and the governess. Girls can’t really play cricket, and when you are watching their futile efforts you make funny sounds at them. Nevertheless, there was a very disagreeable incident one day when some forward girls challenged David’s team, and a disturbing creature called Angela Clare sent down so many yorkers that—However, instead of telling you the result of that regrettable match I shall pass on hurriedly to the Round Pond, which is the wheel that keeps all the gardens going.