INTRODUCTION

'So why is this book dedicated to Peter and to J M Barrie ?
What is childhood ? 
The introduction reviews childhood and children's literature, and considers the significance of the family, parents, time and death.
And eventually we meet the subject of our story - Peter.'





'Tell me the stories of long, long ago...' - 'so long ago, so clear' 

"I always want to be a boy - and to have fun." 

The bright summers were warmer, the grass was softer, and the drowsy summer days stretched almost into infinity. 
There was always soft, powdery snow at Christmas, and the fire was always warm and inviting on those cosy, quiet evenings. 
People were more friendly, and life was gentle and easy. 
Was it really like that ? Well, we shall see - perhaps - as we look back on a childhood that now seems to have been 'so long ago, and yet so clear'. 
But to begin at the beginning - and possibly answer two questions ? 
Why is this work dedicated to J M Barrie, and who is Peter ? 
Well, to really find out about Barrie and Peter you need to read the whole book, - but here's a little attempt to give some sort of explanation.

Take a gentle stroll through Kensington Gardens on a soft, sunny summer afternoon. 
As you walk away from the glittering gold of the neo-gothic spires of the Albert Memorial (see left), down the avenue of tall trees to the Watts statue of 'Physical Energy', you can make a little detour towards the cool limpid waters of the Serpentine. 
There, by the lake, you will find the statue of a pretty young boy who is playing on some pipes. 
This statue is unique in London in that it portrays not an idealised personification of some 'virtue', or a famous historical figure, but rather a fictional character from a 'supposedly childrens' storybook. 

The statue is by the eminent Victorian sculptor Sir George James Frampton, (see left).
Sir George James Frampton, RA (18 June 1860 – 21 May 1928) was a notable British sculptor and leading member of the New Sculpture movement.
Frampton, the London-born son of a stonemason, began his working life in an architect's office before studying under William Silver Frith at the City and Guilds of London Art School (formerly Lambeth School of Art).
He went on to the Royal Academy Schools where he won the Gold Medal and Travelling Scholarship.
From 1887 to 1890 Frampton undertook further study and work at the studio of Antonin Mercie in Paris.
Frampton returned to England and took up a teaching position at the Slade School of Art in 1893.
He was married to the artist Christabel Cockerell and had one son, the painter and etcher Meredith Frampton.
Among Frampton's notable public sculptures are the figures of Peter Pan playing a set of pipes, the lions at the British Museum and the Edith Cavell monument that stands outside the National Portrait Gallery, London.
There are seven casts of the Peter Pan statue, following an original commission by J. M. Barrie.
The statues are situated in Kensington Gardens, London, England, Sefton Park, Liverpool, England, Brussels, Belgium, Camden, New Jersey, United States, Perth, Western Australia, Australia, Toronto, Canada, and Bowring Park in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada.

The lifesize bronze statue is of Peter Pan, the eponymous hero of J M Barrie's play, (because the model for the statue was a boy called James Shaw, and not Michael Llewellyn-Davies, - of who more later- Barrie was very disappointed with the result, and commented, "It doesn't show the devil in Peter,").
'Our Peter', (as we shall call the subject of this study), first saw the statue when he was about five or six years old, with Jane Crawford, his adoptive mother, and 'Auntie' Joe, - and you will hear more about Jane and 'auntie' Joe later.
They were on their way to Selfridges (see right) in Oxford Street, one crisp, sunny December afternoon, to do some Christmas shopping.
Strangely, on that day, our Peter was bought two presents in the toy department at Selfridges, - a plastic pirate's cutlass and a toy telescope - which, of course, should make us think of Captain Jas. Hook, and if you don't know who Jas. Hook is, then you have had a misspent childhood.




At that time, of course, Peter had no idea who Peter Pan was, or Jas. Hook for that matter, as no one had read him the book, and he had not seen Barrie's play or the Disney cartoon.
Now if Peter (that is our Peter) met J M Barrie (see right), who created Peter Pan, today, I don't think he'd like him very much, despite the fact that Barrie was very much like Peter's 'Uncle' Jack.
'Uncle' Jack was Peter's adoptive father's brother-in law; - Scottish, (as Barrie was), very short, dark and swarthy, - he was always smoking a pipe, played the violin and loved Verdi.
As a boy Peter adored 'Uncle' Jack, and was apparently inconsolable when he died when Peter was eighteen.
Now, many years later, however, Peter doesn't like short people, and particularly short people who smoke pipes.


It was thanks to another 'uncle', however, - 'Uncle Walt' (see right), that Peter was introduced to J M Barrie and Peter Pan in 1954, at the local Odeon cinema at Hounslow West, through that infamous and desperately kitsch cartoon 'Peter Pan'.
The only things that really attracted Peter to his namesake then were the sentimental song, 'The Second Star To The Right', the flying (had our Peter ever flown before ?), and the idea of never growing up.
But Peter apparently did grow up, and forgot about the other Peter, and his creator - no, not 'Uncle Walt', but J M Barrie, the little Scottish man with the awful cough and a way with words.

Then came a flurry of films about 'Pan', including one film, called 'Hook' (1992), directed by Steven Spielberg, in which a grown up Peter, (and how could Peter ever grow up ?), played rather bizarrely by Robin Williams, returns to Never Land to rescue his children, who have been captured by captain Hook, equally bizarrely played by Dustin Hoffman (see left).


Another film dealing with Peter Pan, 'Finding Neverland', featured a ridiculously handsome and tall J M Barrie, played by Johnny Depp, minus the moustache, who doesn't seem to have any of the pedophilic tendencies of the real man.
The film mainly dealt with the relationship between Barrie and the Llewelyn-Davies family, although the chronology was so distorted that the story made very little sense.



To make matters even worse, a very strange pop star named his home 'Never Land', and made some serious problems for himself by 'entertaining' children there, - unlike Barrie, who never seemed to arouse anyone's concern by spending suspiciously inordinate periods of time playing with little boys.
But the magic was still there.
Then, a film, simply called 'Peter Pan', with the Duchess of York providing a commentary, was released in 2003, financed by Mohammed Fyad (see right), and dedicated to the memory of Dodi; Fayed's wastrel son who died in Paris in mysterious circumstances.

The film had a real, and stunningly handsome boy, Jeremy Sumpter (see left), looking considerably younger than his fourteen years.
Wendy was the deliciously sweet Rachel Hurd-Wood (see right), and Hook and Mr Darling were played the same individual, as required by Barrie, the actor in question being Jason Isaacs.
The story was almost completely true to Barrie's original, but much revised play, and the absence of American accents in the cast was particularly pleasing - giving the production of this quintessentially English fantasy a truly English flavour.
Just prior to this release, our Peter had also, just out of sheer curiosity, read a couple of biographies of Barrie.
Much to Peter's surprise he had discovered from reading these biographies that there was a strong connection between Peter Pan and Kensington Gardens -
This was the same Kensington Gardens where Frampton's statue of Peter Pan, which little Peter had starred at somewhat uncomprehendingly all those years ago, still stands gazing out across the Serpentine (see left) - and the same Kensington Gardens where our Peter had spent some wonderful times with his own 'marvellous boy'. 

On reading Barrie's biography it also became clear to Peter that the adventures of the other Peter were based on the curious relationship that Barrie had engineered with a group of young brothers, the Llewelyn-Davies boys (see right).

Barrie, although he was married to Mary Ansell (see left), had no children, - although they did have a big St Bernard dog, Porthos, who reappears in Peter Pan as 'Nana', the canine nanny to the Darling children. 

Shortly after his disastrous marriage, Barrie befriended a young couple called Llewelyn-Davies who lived near by, in South Kensington.
At the time Sylvia (see right) & Arthur Llewelyn-Davies had three sons, George, Jack and Peter. Eventually two more sons were born - Michael and Nicholas. 
Barrie seemed to 'steal' these boys from their parents, endlessly playing with them, telling them stories and photographing them, (occasionally in the nude - when they were swimming - see left)). 
The boy's father, Arthur Llewelyn-Davies, not surprisingly, gave every sign of disapproving of this somewhat strange state of affairs but, being a gentleman, he never made a fuss. 

Equally, Arthur (see right) never made a fuss when Barrie made him the prototype for the ineffectual and spineless Mr Darling in 'Peter Pan'. Strangely, however, Barrie insisted that in the play the same actor who played Mr Darling should also play Captain Hook - so perhaps Barrie had a divided opinion about Arthur. 
After some years of being persistently neglected by Barrie, Mary took up with a much younger man, and Barrie was forced into a divorce.
With Barrie then spending even more time with Sylvia Llewelyn-Davies and the boys, Arthur conveniently died of cancer of the jaw, leaving Barrie to maintain what then became a paternal interest in the late Arthur's sons, and their widowed mother, Sylvia.

A short time after Arthur's death, the distraught, grieving mother; the beautiful Sylvia Llewelyn-Davies, who was Barrie's model for Mrs Darling (see left) in Peter Pan, also died of cancer, which we may speculate was exactly what Barrie secretly wanted. 
After having clandestinely, but clumsily 'doctored' Sylvia's will in his favour with regard to the boys, Barrie was left as the boy's guardian, and it is from those boys, and particularly Michael, that Peter Pan, 'the boy who never grew up', emerges.

Strangely, Barrie, who was a rather sickly man, and addicted to tobacco, outlived two of the Llewelyn boys, George and Michael.

George (see left) was killed at 'the front', in France, during the 1914-1918 war.
George Davies and his brother Jack met Barrie during their regular outings to Kensington Gardens, with their nurse Mary Hodgson.
As the oldest (he was four years old when he met Barrie) he featured most prominently in the early storytelling and play adventures from which the writer drew ideas for Barrie's works around that time about young boys.
He and Jack (and to a lesser extent Peter) were featured in a photo storybook 'The Boy Castaways' which Barrie made during a shared holiday at Barrie's Black Lake Cottage in 1901.
In the 1904 play 'Peter Pan', or 'The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up', Peter Pan is roughly 10 - the same age that Davies was when Barrie began writing the play in 1903.
Barrie reported taking some of the characterization of Peter and individual 'Lost Boys' from things Davies and his younger brothers said or did.
For example, in response to Barrie's oral tales about babies who died and went to live in Neverland, the boy reportedly exclaimed, "To die will be an awfully big adventure"; this became one of Peter Pan's most memorable lines.
Davies remained very close with "Uncle Jim" as he grew up and went away to school, with the two exchanging letters regularly.
His youngest brother Nico later described him (and their brother Michael) as "The Ones": the boys who meant the most to Barrie.

Michael (see right), (Barrie's true favourite, and probably the actual model for Peter Pan).
Michael Davies was the fourth of five sons of Arthur and Sylvia Llewelyn Davies.
He was born three years after Barrie became friends with his older brothers and mother in 1897.
He and his eldest brother George were the boys closest to Barrie, and he is widely reported as the individual who most influenced the portrayal of Peter Pan in the 1911 novel based on the play.
He was an infant as Barrie was writing the first appearance of Peter Pan as a newborn in 'The Little White Bird'.
He was four and a half years old when 'Peter Pan or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up' debuted in December 1904. The following winter, he was ill for several months, so in February 1906 Barrie and producer Charles Frohman brought scenery and some of the cast to the family's home in Berkhamsted to perform the play for him.
Barrie began writing a sequel to Peter Pan about the boy's brother, to be entitled Michael Pan, but instead incorporated this material (such as the hero's nightmares) into the novel Peter and Wendy.
He and Barrie remained very close as he grew up and went away to school, particularly after his eldest brother George died in combat in Flanders during World War I in 1915.
Michael attended Eton College, where he had difficulty adjusting to life away from his family, and exchanged letters daily with "Uncle Jim" Barrie.
He also suffered from nightmares, which he had experienced since childhood. Nonetheless, he made a number of friends and excelled at his studies, including art and writing poetry, and was described as a "brilliant boy", one destined for great things.
After finishing at Eton, Davies attended Christ Church, Oxford, where he continued to correspond regularly with Barrie.
He briefly decided to study art at the University of Paris, but returned to Oxford.

Several friends from Eton joined him there, but he also became very close to Rupert Buxton, the son of Sir Thomas Fowell Victor Buxton, 4th Baronet and a former pupil of Harrow School.
The two became inseparable friends, spending time both at the university and on holiday together.
Buxton was also a poet, and had an interest in acting.
Buxton was one of the few friends of Davies whom Barrie reported getting along with.
The closeness of Davies and Buxton, combined with the uncertain circumstances of their death, led to speculation that the pair had died in a suicide pact.
The Sandford Pool was well known as a drowning hazard (there were warning signs, and a conspicuous memorial for previous victims) and the pair had gone swimming there before.
The water was 20–30 feet deep, but calm.
Buxton was a good swimmer, but Davies had a fear of water and could not swim effectively.

A witness at the coroner's inquest reported that one man was swimming to join the other, who was sitting on a stone on the weir, but he experienced "difficulties" and the other dived in to reach him. However, the witness also reported that when he saw their heads together in the water they did not appear to be struggling.
Their bodies were recovered "clasped" together the next day.
Some later accounts report that their hands were tied to each other's.
Michael's brothers, Peter and Nico, each later acknowledged suicide as a likely explanation, as did Barrie.
Michael was younger, than George, and missed the War, but he died in his last year at Oxford University, when he was drowned with his young lover, Rupert Buxton (see left), so Michael, like Peter Pan, did not in fact grow up.

Peter (see left), who became a successful publisher, also committed suicide some years after Barrie's death, throwing himself under a train.
Peter Davies was an infant when Barrie befriended his older brothers George and Jack during outings in Kensington Gardens, with their nurse Mary Hodgson and him in a pram.
Barrie's original description of Peter Pan in 'The Little White Bird' (1902) was as a new-born who had escaped to Kensington Gardens, however, according to family accounts, his brothers George and Michael served as the primary models for the character as he appeared in the famed stage play (1904) and later novel (1911), as a pre-adolescent boy.
In 1904, the year when Barrie's play, 'Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up', debuted at London's Duke of York's Theatre, the Davies family moved out of London and went to live Egerton House, an Elizabethan mansion house in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire.
Their time there lasted only three years; in 1907, Davies's father died of cancer and his mother took Davies and his brothers George, Jack, Michael, and Nico back to London.
She too developed cancer and died in 1910, whereupon Barrie became the de facto guardian of Davies and his brothers.

Mrs Mary Hodgson continued to serve as nurse and surrogate mother for him and his brothers.
Peter Davies, like his brothers (apart from Jack), attended Eton College.
Peter volunteered along with his brother George to serve in World War I, and received a commission as an officer.
He was a signal officer in France and spent time in the trenches; at one point he was hospitalized with impetigo.
He ultimately won the Military Cross, but was emotionally scarred by his wartime experience.


In 1917, while still in the military, Davies met and began to court Hungarian-born Vera Willoughby (a watercolour painter and illustrator, as well as a costume and poster designer), a married woman 27 years older, with a daughter older than he was.

He stayed with her when on leave, which scandalized Barrie and caused a rift between the two.
His former nurse and mother figure Mary Hodgson disapproved strongly as well.
The relationship continued at least through the end of his military service in 1919.
In 1926 he published an edition of George Farquhar's 'The Recruiting Officer' featuring illustrations by her.
In 1926, Davies founded a publishing house, Peter Davies Ltd, which in 1951 released his cousin Daphne du Maurier's work about their grandfather, illustrator and writer George du Maurier, the Young George du Maurier, letters 1860–1867.
He married Margaret Ruthven in 1931, and had three sons with her: Ruthven (b. 1933), George (b. 1935) and Peter (b. 1940).
He grew to dislike having his name associated with Peter Pan, which he called "that terrible masterpiece".
Upon Barrie's death in 1937, most of his estate and fortune went to his secretary Cynthia Asquith, and the copyright to the Peter Pan works had previously been given in 1929 to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London.
Although Peter (and his surviving brothers) received a legacy, some have speculated that this drove Davies to drink — he eventually became an alcoholic.
Peter's son Ruthven later told an interviewer:

"My father had mixed feelings about the whole business of Peter Pan.

He accepted that Barrie considered that he was the inspiration for Peter Pan and it was only reasonable that my father should inherit everything from Barrie.


That was my father's expectation.

It would have recompensed him for the notoriety he had experienced since being linked with Peter Pan — something he hated."

In fact, Peter was sadly mistaken, as Michael was the model for Peter Pan, with Peter Llewelyn Davies only providing the eponymous hero's first name - Peter.
At the time of his suicide, he had been editing family papers and letters, assembling them into a collection he called 'The Morgue'.
He had more or less reached the documents having to do with his brother Michael's suicide.
Other possible contributing factors in his suicide were ill health (he was suffering from emphysema), as well as the knowledge that his wife and all three of their sons had inherited the usually fatal Huntington's disease.
Newspaper reports of his death referred to him in their headlines as "Peter Pan".


Only Jack and  Nico (see right), lived into relative old age.

Jack, (see left) and his elder brother George, first met Barrie on their regular outings in Kensington Gardens with their nurse Mary Hodgson and infant brother Peter in 1897.
He and George were the audience for the fantastic stories in which Barrie conceived of the character of Peter Pan.
They took part in play adventures with Barrie which provided much of the inspiration for the adventures in the 1904 stage play 'Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up' and its subsequent adaptations.
Shortly before writing the play, Barrie made a photo book titled 'The Boy Castaways', featuring the three oldest brothers pretending to be shipwrecked on an island and fighting pirates, themes that later appeared in the Peter Pan story.
The character of John Darling (see right), the older of Wendy's brothers, was possibly named after him.

In 1906 Jack was recommended by Barrie to Admiral Robert F. Scott for a position at Osborne Naval College, which was unlike his brothers, who all attended Eton College (see left).
Jack harbored some resentment of Barrie, at times believing the writer was trying to take his father's place (especially after his father died).
He was not as close to the writer as were his brothers, especially George and Michael.
Just prior to his mother's death, he joined the Royal Navy and served in the North Atlantic during World War I.
His brothers Peter and Nico (the youngest) out-lived him.
He married 19-year-old Geraldine "Gerrie" Gibb in 1917, without first asking permission of Barrie, who only grudgingly approved of the relationship, nonetheless, Barrie gave the couple charge of the Davies family house, where Michael and Nico still lived during school holidays, in the care of Mary Hodgson.
Jack had two children: Timothy, born in 1921, and Sylvia Jocelyn (named for Davies' mother, but always known as Jane), born in 1924.
He died in 1959 at the age of 65, several months before his brother Peter committed suicide.
It seems that the idea of never growing up, which is the main theme of a number of Barrie's books and plays, and is the central theme of 'Peter Pan', cast an ominous shadow over at least three of the boys. 
The lines "death would be a great adventure" are spoken by Peter in the book, 'Peter & Wendy', and in the play 'Peter Pan', - and perhaps it was that sentiment that echoed rather too forcefully in the minds of these brothers, causing George to raise his head over the parapet at the inopportune moment, Michael to take a morning dip with his boy-lover, when he couldn't swim, and Peter to step off the platform into the path of an oncoming train.


Those three boys died prematurely but Peter, the immortal boy, obviously lived on in endless revivals on the stage, in books and eventually in films. 



As the years passed people puzzled over what it was that each generation found so fascinating about the 'marvellous boy'. 
Some critics have suggested that the fateful character, Peter Pan, is not a 'real' child because he doesn't want to grow up, and of course 'real' children, we are led to believe, are only too keen to grow up. This is true to an extent. 
I think 'our Peter' looked forward to growing up, and probably so did his friends, but as he came closer and closer to 'childhood's end', in his late teenage years, I think that he began to look to the future with more apprehension, and began to look back to his boyhood, and the 'young Peter', with a certain amount of nostalgia and longing. 
Another mistake that many critics make, however, is to suggest that 'Peter Pan' is a book and a play, about a boy, or about children. Perhaps those who have considered the matter a little more deeply would suggest that 'Peter Pan' is a work that is essentially about adults – or at least for adults.
It is, in truth, about adult's thoughts and feelings about childhood - and has been described as a 'profound meditation on childhood, beginnings, time and death'. 
One thing is certain; 'Peter Pan' is not a 'children's' book' in the generally accepted sense of the term.

As we shall describe below, 'children's' books' are uniquely a product of the nineteenth and twentieth century. Peter Pan, of course, was written during that period, so it could, arguably, fit into that category. 
If, however, we compare it to a more recent 'children's' book', we shall see that it in fact occupies a completely different genre.

J K Rowling (see right) shot to fame of the basis of just one book about the boy-wizard, Harry Potter (see left).
Subsequently further books, featuring the same character, were produced, until eventually the character and the plots were played out. 
Now Harry has a couple of similarities to Pan. 
First he is a boy; not an adult.
Next, Harry has no parents, although, rather than being unknown, they are dead.
Equally Harry has special powers, like Pan, although these powers are not intrinsic to his nature, like Pan's, but are instead simply learned.

What Rowling cleverly, or maybe cynically, did was to adapt the traditional 'school adventure', which originated with 'Tom Brown's School Days' and continued with 'Stalky and Co' (see left), 'Just William' and 'Billy Bunter'. The genre had become essentially outdated, as few modern children would attend a private boarding school of the kind described in such stories - and so Rowling simply added a magic ingredient; - that ingredient being, of course, 'magic'.
So we had the same rambling Gothic building (see right), the same prefect system, the same arcane customs and rituals, and the same eccentric teaching staff - but with the added attraction of magic, to breath new life into a thoroughly decrepit literary form.
Critically, however, Harry Potter has practically no appeal to adults, who see through Rowling's sham, and recognize the books as weak pastiches, which make excellent 'children's books', but have very little depth or substance.

Now take 'Peter Pan' and compare him to 'pasty-faced' Harry.
Far from being a pastiche, or a reworking of another genre it is, in itself, quite unique, having no antecedents.
And while 'Peter Pan' does appeal to children, much of the text is way beyond their understanding, and is obviously aimed at adults.
Barrie was quite obviously not writing just for them, the children - but for us and, of course, himself !






CHILDHOOD & CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

What we often don't realises is that 'childhood' itself is a very odd concept.
For example, before the nineteenth century there was no such thing as 'childhood' - children were just 'miniature adults' (see right).
Equally, no one would possibly think of writing a book about 'childhood' or children before the nineteenth century.
You can look through all the literature of the Ancient world, the Medieval world and the Renaissance and you will find almost nothing about children.

The only significant literature about children before the Enlightenment are poems by Greek and Roman authors about their young boy-lovers (see left), and of course Shakespeare and his  'Mr W H, - but pederastic poems are not particularly popular in contemporary society.

'And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.'




With the 'Enlightenment' came the philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau, (see right) (1712 -1778), and it is from him that we get our first 'modern' view of children and childhood in 'Emile', the story of a boy and his education.



Right up the end of the 19th Century children were dressed as and treated as adults, and this included the fact that they were expected to work from an early age.

It is only with the publishing of 'The Water Babies' by Reverend Charles Kingsley in 1863 that the Victorians began to think of childhood as a distinct and unique period in an individual's life - a period which should not be encumbered with the responsibilities and tasks of the adult.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (see left), the mathematician and author, better known as Lewis Carol, continued the trend of romanticizing childhood in his most famous works, 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' and its sequel 'Through the Looking-Glass'.
Interestingly Carol was similar in some ways to Barrie in that he did not just write for and about children, but was rather besotted by them, photographing (see Alice Liddell right) them in various states of undress, and forming deeper relationships with them than with his contemporaries.
Like Barrie he escaped any censure at the time with regard to these activities, but unlike Barrie, Carol was attracted to little girls rather than little boys.


To us a more acceptable writer would be R. M. Ballantyne, who established the 'boy's adventure story' genre, and is best remembered for 'The Coral Island' (1857).
This work aimed specifically at young boys, and a story that almost certainly influenced Barrie when he came to create the Never Land, which was an island, and the pirate ship and Captain Hook.



Robert Louis Stevenson (see right) was not only a contemporary of Barrie, but also a close friend.
While 'Kidnapped' (1886), may be critically acclaimed as one of his best novels, 'Treasure Island' (1883) (see left) is undoubtedly his most famous, and Long John Silver seems to be undoubtedly an antecedent and model for Captain Jas. Hook in 'Peter Pan'.




By the time Barrie and Stevenson were writing, childhood had become for the Victorians a unique period in a person's life.
Amongst the upper and middle classes children were seen a being little lower than the angels, particularly in regard to children's purity and innocence.




Later writers, like Edith Nesbit (1858 - 1924) (see right), author of 'The Railway Children' (1906) (see left), and Alan Alexander Milne (1882 - 1956), author of 'Winnie the Pooh' (1926) and 'When We Were Very Young' (1924), continued the trend of children's book which described children as sweet, gentle and innocent.
What is surprising about Barrie, however, is that the Lost Boys, and Pan in particular, are not at all sweet gentle and innocent.
Now while Barrie, partly because of his own nature, and partly because of the times in which he was writing, could not show that Peter was lacking in innocence, (particularly with regard to sexual matters) he did make it quite clear that Peter and the Boys were in no way sweet or gentle.
Peter and the boys were incredibly violent, and Peter even 'weeded out' some of the Lost Boys when they began to grow up by simply killing them. (remember Barrie's comment about the statue in Kensington gardens - "It doesn't show the devil in Peter.") (see right).
Peter, by his very nature could not love, had no idea of the difference between truth and fantasy - and for fantasy we could substitute lying - and he had not the slightest empathy or sympathy with or for anyone other than himself.
So Barrie 'bucked the trend' in children's literature to some extent, but significantly he did valorise childhood in the same manner as his contemporaries, giving it a status far above the dullness and dreariness of adult life.

One of the reasons why the Victorians and Edwardians were so enamoured of the child was because of the appalling rate of child mortality that existed at the time.
Unlike in the West today, death in childhood was not something rare and unusual, and in fact is was almost the norm. Children were lucky to survive childhood.
The children who did die were of course the ones who stayed forever young and, like Pan, never grew up.
Caught in the eternal innocence of childhood or adolescence these individuals took on a god-like status and were mourned with an intensity and a ferocity that we would find hard to comprehend today.

When Darwin's daughter Annie (see right),(1841-1851), died at the age of ten Darwin was heartbroken, and the girl's death resulted in him completely losing his religious faith.
Now Darwin (see left), of all men, having been one of the first to clearly see Nature as being 'red in tooth and claw', should have been able to deal with the death of his daughter with a certain degree of equanimity.
Quite the reverse was the case, however, and seeing this innocent 'angel' cut off in her prime, Darwin gave in to the most extravagant grief.



Barrie (see left), then an old man, mourned George with a ferocity that frightened his friends, but that was as nothing when compared to his grief when Michael died.






Michael (see right), Barrie's favourite, drowned in 1921.
After Michael died Barrie was never the same, and almost all the fire and creativity left him.
George was dead and would never grow up, but the boy who was the real Peter Pan, Michael, was also dead - and yet Peter Pan couldn't die - and Barrie simply was unable to 'square the circle'.



And that brings us back to 'Peter Pan', which is arguably, one of the most significant books written in modern times, because it deals with not just childhood, but with all the important aspects of life, such as fathers, mothers, children, growing up, growing old, dying, time, (the clock in the crocodile (see right) - Barrie's symbol of our decay and death), feelings, and above all love, as symbolised by 'the kiss'.

Interestingly, Peter Pan, when offered a kiss by Wendy, doesn't know what a kiss is and so he holds out his hand (see left).
Wendy, not wishing to embarrass the strange, but fascinating boy, gives him a thimble.

There is, of course, another kiss in the story, Mrs Darling's kiss (see right), which is concealed in the right hand corner of her mouth and is, significantly, out of reach of all three children and Mr Darling.

But perhaps we still haven't answered the question of why this book is dedicated to Peter.
Well of course 'our Peter' and Peter Pan share the same name, but that is not enough in itself.
However, both Peters have no mother, and perhaps less crucially, no father.
Both have a penchant for flying, as you will discover later, and both stubbornly refuse to grow up.


THE ETERNAL CHILD

So that is why this little book is dedicated to J M Barry and Peter - but what kind of book is it ?
Well I suppose it could be described as an 'biography', but really it is closer, in a way, to Barrie's 'Peter & Wendy', being a meditation or perhaps an étude, - although maybe not so profound - on a particular childhood - But it tries also to be an extrapolation to childhood in general, as we now understand it, and also on the beginning of things and their loss.
It may be argued that most biographies and autobiographies are somewhat strange for a number of reasons. The first is that the chapters about the subject's childhood and adolescence are almost always remarkably short.
Now of course if you live to seventy-five or eighty, then your childhood and adolescence only amounts to twenty-five percent of your life in terms of years.
Even taking this into account, however, most biographies and autobiographies only allow a maximum of ten percent, if you are lucky, of the narrative to cover this part of an individual's life.
If, however, we ignore the purely temporal significance of the first twenty years, and instead consider the emotional and psychological importance and significance of this period of a person's life, we can see that most biographies and autobiographies leave many areas of their subject's character and personality completely unexplained and unexplored.
Of course many biographer's do not have access to information regarding an individual's early life, as this is usually far less well documented that the subject's later life - especially if they are dealing with an 'important person'.
With regard to autobiographies, however, this is not an acceptable excuse - we all know what happened to us when we were young, unless we have suffered brain damage or some other event
that has caused amnesia. Most of us, however, if we ever come to recount our life history, prefer to dwell on our triumphs, or even our disasters if they make us appear heroic or interesting, rather than the seemingly strange and possibly embarrassing events of our childhood and youth, and it is probably for these reasons that childhoods are so thin on the ground, at least in literary form.
The significance of childhood, of course, brings up another consideration.
There is a fascinating theory, forming the centrepiece of 'The Eternal Child' by Clive Bromhall (see left), that suggests that human beings are 'neotenous apes'.
The theory basically derives from the remarkable similarity between a pre-natal chimpanzee and an adult human, which implies that humans are basically immature apes, not only in terms of biology, but also in terms of behaviour and psychology.
So, to a certain extent, we are all 'Peter Pans' - all children masquerading as adults. But more of that theory later.

Another area of life that is so often neglected or ignored in biographies and autobiographies is sex.
Now this may be understandable in biographies originating in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, but since the advent of Sigmund Freud's theories of human sexuality it seems strange that contemporary biographies and autobiographies should give those matters such little attention.
While Freud's (see left) convoluted ideas regarding the Oedipus and Electra complexes may be far from proven, and subject to much revision, and even rejection in some quarters, there is general agreement about the importance of infant and childhood sexuality simply because there is so much evidence to confirm much of what he suggested.
Equally Kinsey's (see right) researches into childhood and adult sexuality showed, much to the consternation of American society at the time, that sexuality was an important part of most individual's lives, and the great variety of sexual activity that Kinsey recorded shows that there is not a standard or normative set of sexual responses to which the majority of individuals adhere.
With adolescent males thinking about sex every ten minutes or less, it does seem strange that such an important aspect of individual's lives is often almost completely absent from the majority of biographies and autobiographies.
Such an absence, of course, removes the motivations and emotional and physical 'well-springs' that are responsible for so much of what makes us the persons that we have been, are, and will become.

Something else that is often left out of biographies and autobiographies is the matter of 'things'.
Our lives are made up of all sorts of 'things', some of them important and significant, and others that are peripheral.
Some would say that we put too much store by material possessions, but that is to misunderstand the situation.
It must be remembered also that this is the story of Peter's childhood, and for Peter 'things' have a significance that they may not have for other people.

Take for example that white rocking horse, where ever it was. Now it may not have even been real, but it was a very significant 'thing' when Peter was very young.
There are no memories of people, - adults or other children, - just the wooden, white painted horse, and it was this 'thing' to which Peter related - and maybe even gave his love - if he was capable of giving love.

As we will see later, Peter was unable, for very profound reasons, to relate to other people, and so it was his relationships with 'things' that were particularly significant for him.
Take, as a number of examples, such 'things' as a 'wireless', some Bakelite egg cups, a 'Dansette' record player.
Each of these items needs to be seen, or at least described, and such items can have a poignant significance for the lives of those that used them.
The radio, for example, a Murphy SAD94L (see left) is powered by valves, which means no computers, no Internet and no mobile phones.
The luminous, glowing dial on the front, with its pointer for tuning, is inscribed with the names of such places as Paris, Cairo, Amman, Moscow and Leningrad, to name just a few.
Such a radio is like a magic carpet, taking one to all those exotic and far-away destinations. 
The egg-cups (see right) are Bakelite, and Bakelite, invented not surprisingly by a Mr Baekerland, a Belgian, in 1922 was the world's first synthetic substance.
Bakelite, of course, means a world without modern plastics.
A world where things are heavy, and have substance - have gravity, and the colours are limited.
And Bakelite has a distinctive aroma - the aroma of the past.
The Dansette record player  (see left) is a gateway to a teenager's private world of music, and a private and new culture - the culture of youth.
It means that there are no cassettes, no CDs and no MP3s.
It can play 78 rpm records (see right), as well as 45 rpm and 33 & 1/3 Vinyl records.
78 rpm records are 12 inches in diameter and, unlike other records, are made of shellac, and if you don't like them you can smash them - which is far more satisfying than deleting an MP3 from your I-Pod.

'Things' tell us about the world that we inhabit.
'Things' are important. 

Now before we settle down to look at our Peter's 'early days', it may be useful to consider what the world was like in nineteen fifty, when Peter came to Hounslow.
The fifties and sixties were a period of very rapid technological change, but for the purposes of this study it is not the science that we are interested in, but rather the effects that the science and the technology had on ordinary people's lives.
There are a number of important inventions that are very significant and influential in the twenty-first century that had little or no effect on the middle years of the twentieth century.

For example, the electronic computer, (and here we must ignore Babidge's invention, which was a purely mechanical machine), was invented during the Second World War, by Alan Turing (see right|), with the purpose of breaking the German 'Enigma' codes, yet 'computing for all' only really became a significant force in society in the last decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the new century.
Equally, colour photography was invented in the middle of the nineteenth century, but only became available to the great mass of people in the nineteen-sixties.
Another example would be recorded music, which was an invention of the American inventor Edison in the nineteenth century, but then underwent a number of modifications and transformations in the intervening decades, and eventually emerged in the twenty-first century as the incredibly portable MP3.
So, in nineteen-fifty we should realise that the technology of the time limited people's ability to see, record, enjoy and interpret their world.
In Peter's biography there are a considerable number of photographs, but this is in some ways surprising.
In nineteen-fifty, to take photographs one needed to buy relatively expensive 'roll-film' (see right).
On most cameras this meant that one was limited to eight or twelve pictures per roll, unlike the almost infinite number of photos that can be taken by the digital camera.
More significant was the fact that photos could not be 'previewed', and then either deleted or retained. The only way to see one's photos was to take them to a photographic shop, or a chemists, and then have the film developed and printed - a process that usually took about a week.
In addition, until the nineteen-sixties, most people were restricted, on purely financial grounds, to taking 'black and white' photos, as colour was prohibitively expensive, and difficult to use.

Also, photographs could only be stored physically, either by being kept in envelopes, in drawers or cupboards, or mounted in expensive albums.
And if one wanted to share photos with other people, one had to have additional, and expensive 'prints' made, which had to be physically given, or sent to the other person in question.
Finally, one had to be careful with regard to the content of photographs.
Nudity or any image that could be interpreted in a sexual or explicit manner would either not be printed or, in extreme cases, would be reported to the local constabulary.
The only way round this problem was to develop and print one's own photos, or find, usually at some considerable extra expense, an individual who would develop and print the photographs with 'no questions asked'.
The result, of course, was a distinct lack of amateur pornographers.
Moving pictures, of course, were only for the seriously wealthy, or the odd enthusiast.
And what about music.
Well in the early fifties, amazing though it may seem, many people still owned clockwork powered 'gramophones' (see right), usually dating from the 1930s, which had to be wound up with a handle, and would only play a four minute, 78 rpm, 10 inch shellac record.

Peters neighbour's, the Downings, who you shall meet later, had an electric 'radio gram' (see left), but this still only played what were known as 'seventy-eights'.
It was only in the sixties that electric 'record players', that were capable of playing the new thirty-three and a third rpm vinyl 'microgroove' records became common,and then later still before people started buying stereo 'sound-systems'. So, we went from the gramophone to the record player to the sound-system.

Then came the cassette, which sought to supersede the vinyl disk, but could never cope with the problem of tape-hiss, despite the best efforts of the Dolby Corporation.
The cassette, however, brought recorded music to the car, and, of course, made music mobile through the Walk-man (see left)..

Closely following on from Phillips' development of the cassette was the great miracle of the CD (see right), which supposedly banished hum and hiss.
These, however, were all variations on a theme, being mechanical systems, with all the imperfections that such systems entail. 

Finally, however, there was the MP3 player (see right) - apparently perfection in sound.
Sound that could be edited, and sound that was so ethereal that thousands of pieces of music could be stored in a device no larger than a packet of cigarettes - not that carrying a packet of cigarettes was approved of in the health conscious twenty-first century. 


And this, of course, brings us to the computer (see left).
Not that many people use the computer to calculate, as the naively 'gay' mathematician, Alan Turing, munching on his lethal but financially lucrative Apple, foolishly imagined they would.
Instead, computers are used to watch films and videos, look at photos, communicate by email, make purchases at un-godly hours, and peruse pornography. 
In fact, your are probably reading this now on a computer ! 

Equally cars, which were an invention of the nineteenth-century and made popular by the ultimate industrialist, Henry Ford, were still the preserve of the affluent in the nineteen-fifties. 

Also, all sorts of consumer good, from telephones, to washing machines, to fridges, to vacuum cleaners, to televisions were still rarely possessed by the average person immediately after the war. 
And the result of all of this apparent 'austerity'  well, people's lives were a lot simpler; their expectations were a lot lower, and their horizons were decidedly limited.
But they did talk to one another, eat together, and judging by all the most recent an reliable research - they were happier ! 

But what about 'our Peter' - who grew up in the nineteen-fifties ? 
Well - Peter has the same name as Peter Pan, and you may say, 'So what !'
But how many Peters do you know ? Not such a popular name now - but very popular in the fifties.
But Peter Pan and our Peter share many other traits. 
Both, to many, seem to be amoral, lacking in empathy.
Both seem to be egotistical, and both Peters seem, essentially, to want to 'always be a boy and to have fun.' 
So this is why, this little story is dedicated to Peter Pan and his creator.


'So come with me, where dreams are born, and time is never planned.'


For 'our Peter' it now seems that Peter Pan had been flying around in his mind since he was nearly eight, and first saw the Walt Disney cartoon with Jane and John Crawford at the local cinema. 
Like Peter Pan, 'our Peter' did not know the identity of his parents. Peter Pan forgot, and 'our Peter' was never told, and like Peter Pan, Peter had always thought of mothers as 'very over-rated persons'. 
On occasions, when things have looked very hopeless, Peter had the sneaking thought, like Peter Pan, that 'death might be a great adventure', although as time passed, Peter was not so sure. 
Like most young people, Peter was very keen on growing up when he was a child, but when he got older he began to have doubts, and sometimes thought that maybe the best part of life had already been lived.
Barrie, after all said that 'nothing much of any importance happens to you after you are twelve', and Salvador Dali (see right) made the same comment, but upped the age to sixteen. 
As the years passed, the conviction that the best part of his life had already been lived became stronger and stronger, and eventually Peter gave up on the aspirations that mature adults are supposed to have, and started to try and fulfil his childhood desires - and childhood desires, especially for boys, means 'play'.

Our Peter cannot be like Barrie's Peter Pan and stay young physically, but mentally it is possible to retain the optimism and sense of wonder that is the hallmark of a boy - a boy like Peter Pan, who could cry triumphantly, 
'I am youth ! I am joy !'.

In some ways, however, Peter - that is Peter Pan, was not just an immature boy.

Peter, as Barrie described him, did have feelings, and these could be as intense and profound as any adult's, although he always tried to vehemently deny it. 
These feelings, denied but real and intense, were yet another part of Pan's paradoxical being, which remained a mystery to both Wendy and Hook (see right). 
Wendy said perceptively, 'You say so, but I think it is your biggest pretend.', when Peter denied his feelings. 
Undoubtedly Peter felt strongly about Wendy, and was heart-broken when 'Tink' was dying. 
He thought that death might be 'a great adventure', and was sad when he watched through the Darling's nursery window, and saw the family life of which he could never become a part.

Peter, however, remained childish, although not typically childish, in one very significant way, - and in this he shared something with both 'our Peter', (the subject of this book), and Pan's great nemesis, Captain J Hook (see left) – Peter could not love ! 
And why ? 
Well perhaps it was because he had never known a mother, and a mother's love. 
Having escaped from his nursery, Peter Pan lost this mother's love. 
Hook, equally lost his mother's love when he was bundled off to preparatory school, and then to Eaton.
'Our Peter', of course, had no memory of his real mother, and probably no mother at all for his first four years. 
Maybe this was the reason for Peter Pan's, Hook's and 'our Peter's' inability to love, - and maybe not - but sufficient to say that all three characters are essentially tragic characters because of this lack of love. 
Peter, in 'Peter & Wendy' (see right), says to Wendy, "Don't have a mother", and Barrie carefully adds,
'Not only had he no mother, but he had not the slightest desire to have one. He thought them very over rated persons. Wendy, however, felt at once that she was in the presence of a tragedy.'
And that is probably what many people instinctively feel when they are in the presence of 'our Peter'.

Richard Wagner, (who will appear later in our story), that great explorer of the some of the most profound human emotions and motivations, tells us that – 'fear of our end is the source of all lack of love'. Here, for once, he may be wrong. 
Lack of love is not a problem of our end, but of our beginnings, and while we can probably alter the path to our end, about our beginnings we can do nothing, and that is why an inability to love is so very truly tragic.
And what is the essence of a lack of love. Well it's a lack of empathy; a lack of sympathy and essentially an inability to accept the reality of others. It is a monstrous form of egotism, which may fill the soul with a triumphant sense of delight, echoing Peter's cry, 'I am youth ! - I am joy !'. 
And so the individual in question exalts himself above all other things as being the only true reality, yet it locks that individual in a tragic torment of loneliness.
As Barrie wrote in 'Peter & Wendy',
'Peter had ecstasies innumerable, that other children can never know, but he was looking at the one joy from which he must be forever barred' – the companionship and love of a family (see right).
Peter could neither belong to a family, nor would he create a family of his own, so Peter was condemned to be fundamentally alone. 
When our Peter, little Peter, was nearly eight years old, some months after seeing the Disney cartoon version of Peter Pan, he was lying in his little bedroom singing himself to sleep, as was his custom at that age.
There was a song from the film 'Peter Pan' called 'The Second Star to the Right'. The song was very popular, and was played regularly on the radio.
Peter had learned all the words, and was singing it quietly to himself in bed.
As Peter sang the song to himself tears came to his eyes, and he involuntarily choked on some of the words. Jane Crawford, lying in bed in the other bedroom, must have heard, and came to the boy's door.
'Are you all right ?', she asked, which was just the sort of inane question that mothers are so good at asking.
Peter said yes and stopped singing, unwilling to bring any more attention to himself. 
But what was going on in that little mind, to make a choking sadness in the empty darkness of the night out of a children's cartoon ? 

A longing for Neverland ?
A longing to fly - once again ?
A vaguely remembered place of true happiness, - briefly known and now lost forever ?

And how do you find Neverland ?



'Easy !'

As Peter said, 'Take the second star to the right, and fly straight on 'till morning ! '



THE SECOND STAR TO THE RIGHT 

'The second star to the right, 
Shines in the night for you. 
To tell you that the dreams you planned, 
Really can come true. 

The second star to the right, 
Shines with a light so rare, 
And if it's Neverland you need, 
Its light will lead you there. 

And when our journey is through, 
Each time we say 'goodnight', 
We'll thank the little star that shines, 
The second from the right.




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