DAVID
Map of Peter Pan's
Kensington Gardens
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.
Kensington Gardens
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 Hump, which is the
part of the Broad Walk where all the big races are run
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.
In the Broad Walk you
meet all the people worth knowing
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.
The lady with the
balloons, who sits just outside
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.
(missing from book)
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.
The Serpentine is a
lovely lake, and there is a drowned forest at the bottom of it.
If you peer over the edge you can see the trees all growing
upside down, and they say that at night there are also drowned
stars in it
It is round because it is in the very middle of the Gardens,
and when you are come to it you never want to go any farther.
You can't be good all the time at the Round Pond, however much
you try. You can be good in the Broad Walk all the time, but not
at the Round Pond, and the reason is that you forget, and, when
you remember, you are so wet that you may as well be wetter.
There are men who sail boats on the Round Pond, such big boats
that they bring them in barrows, and sometimes in perambulators,
and then the baby has to walk. The bow-legged children in the
Gardens are those who had to walk too soon because their father
needed the perambulator.
You always want to have a yacht to sail on the Round Pond,
and in the end your uncle gives you one; and to carry it to the
pond the first day is splendid, also to talk about it to boys
who have no uncle is splendid, but soon you like to leave it at
home. For the sweetest craft that slips her moorings in the
Round Pond is what is called a stick-boat, because she is rather
like a stick until she is in the water and you are holding the
string. Then as you walk round, pulling her, you see little men
running about her deck, and sails rise magically and catch the
breeze, and you put in on dirty nights at snug harbours which
are unknown to the lordly yachts. Night passes in a twink, and
again your rakish craft noses for the wind, whales spout, you
glide over buried cities, and have brushes with pirates, and
cast anchor on coral isles. You are a solitary boy while all
this is taking place, for two boys together cannot adventure far
upon the Round Pond, and though you may talk to yourself
throughout the voyage, giving orders and executing them with
despatch, you know not, when it is time to go home, where you
have been or what swelled your sails; your treasure-trove is all
locked away in your hold, so to speak, which will be opened,
perhaps, by another little boy many years afterwards.
He was quite angry
when these two ran away the moment they saw him.
But those yachts have nothing in their hold. Does any one
return to this haunt 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 are toys, their owner a fresh-water
mariner; they can cross and recross a pond only while the
stick-boat goes to sea. You yachtsmen with your wands, who think
we are all there to gaze on you, your ships are only accidents
of this place, and were they all to be boarded and sunk by the
ducks, 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 are ordinary paths, which have a rail on each side, and
are made by men with their coats off, but others are vagrants,
wide at one spot, and at another so narrow that you can stand
astride them. They are called Paths that have Made Themselves,
and David did wish he could see them doing it. 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 have also
decided that the paths make themselves because it is their only
chance of getting to the Round Pond.
One of these gypsy paths comes from the place where the sheep
get their hair cut. When David shed his curls at the
hairdresser's, I am told, he said good-bye to them without a
tremor, though his mother has never been quite the same bright
creature since; so he despises the sheep as they run from their
shearer, and calls out tauntingly, 'Cowardly, cowardly custard!'
But when the man grips them between his legs David shakes a fist
at him for using such big scissors. Another startling moment is
when the man turns back the grimy wool from the sheep's
shoulders and they look suddenly like ladies in the stalls of a
theatre. The sheep are so frightened by the shearing that it
makes them quite white and thin, and as 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 worth eating. David
wonders whether they know each other, now that they are so
different, and if it makes them fight with the wrong ones. They
are great fighters, and thus so unlike country sheep that every
year they give my St. Bernard dog, Porthos, a shock. He can make
a field of country sheep fly by merely announcing his approach,
but these town sheep come toward him with no promise of gentle
entertainment, and then a light from last year breaks upon
Porthos. He cannot with dignity retreat, but he stops and looks
about him as if lost in admiration of the scenery, and presently
he strolls away with a fine indifference and a glint at me from
the corner of his eye.
One of the Paths that
have Made Themselves
The Serpentine begins near here. It is a lovely lake, and
there is a drowned forest at the bottom of it. If you peer over
the edge you can see the trees all growing upside down, and they
say that at night there are also drowned stars in it. If so,
Peter Pan sees them when he is sailing across the lake in the
Thrush's Nest. A small part only of the Serpentine is in the
Gardens, for soon it passes beneath a bridge to far away where
the island is on which all the birds are born that become baby
boys and girls. No one who is human, except Peter Pan (and he is
only half human), can land on the island, but you may write what
you want (boy or girl, dark or fair) on a piece of paper, and
then twist it into the shape of a boat and slip it into the
water, and it reaches Peter Pan's island after dark.
Old Mr. Salford was a
crab-apple of an old gentleman who wandered all day in the
Gardens
We are on the way home now, though of course, it is all
pretence that we can go to so many of the places in one day. I
should have had to be carrying 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 lovely place called Salford
where he had been born. He was a crab-apple of an old gentleman
who wandered all day in the Gardens from seat to seat trying to
fall in with somebody who was acquainted with the town of
Salford, and when we had known him for a year or more we
actually did meet another aged solitary who had once spent
Saturday to Monday in Salford. 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 Westminster Abbey first as
a starting-point. Him we carried in triumph to our other friend,
with the story of that Saturday to Monday, and never shall I
forget the gloating joy with which Mr. Salford leapt at him.
They have been cronies ever since, and I notice that Mr.
Salford, who naturally does most of the talking, keeps tight
grip of the other old man's coat.
Away he flew, right
over the houses to the Gardens
The two last places before you come to our gate are the Dogs'
Cemetery and the chaffinch's nest, but we pretend not to know
what the Dogs' Cemetery is, as Porthos is always with us. The
nest is very sad. It is quite white, and the way we found it was
wonderful. We were having another look among the bushes for
David's lost worsted ball, and instead of the ball we found a
lovely nest made of the worsted, and containing four eggs, with
scratches on them very like David's handwriting, so we think
they must have been the mother's love-letters to the little ones
inside. 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 us kindly with her shoulders hunched up. But
one day when we went there were only two eggs in the nest, and
the next time there were none. The saddest part of it was that
the poor little chaffinch fluttered about the bushes, looking so
reproachfully at us that we knew she thought we had done it; and
though David tried to explain to her, it was so long since he
had spoken the bird language that I fear she did not understand.
He and I left the Gardens that day with our knuckles in our
eyes.
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