I started to read Peter Pan. The last time that I came into contact with the characters of the story was in the movie Hook, which invented a sequel to the original Peter Pan. I have not heard about the plot of the original story since childhood and almost completely forgotten it. Reading the book today, therefore, is just like reading a new story. It starts in the most delightful way: 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,
Of course they lived at 14, and until Wendy came her mother was the chief one. She was a lovely lady, with a romantic mind and such a sweet mocking mouth. Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get, though there it was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner.
The way Mr Darling won her was this: the many gentlemen who had been boys when she was a girl discovered simultaneously that they loved her, and they all ran to her house to propose to her except Mr Darling, who took a cab and nipped in first, and so he got her. He got all of her, except the innermost box and the kiss. He never knew about the box, and in time he gave up trying for the kiss. Wendy thought Napoleon could have got it, but I can picture him trying, and then going off in a passion, slamming the door.
The entire text of Peter Pan is available on the web at Bibliomania.
Note: I am not reading Peter Pan to get in touch with my inner child. I never let it go. 
Your Comments
0 Responses. Comments closed for this entry.