G.K.C. ON PETER PAN.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1324, 30 December 1911, Page 9

G.K.C. ON PETER PAN.

' Mr. G. K. Chesterton wrote for tbo London "Nation" the following review of Mr. Barrie's new '.'Peter and V/endy":— • In one way Mr. Barrio is unlucky among the nien of genius of our time; he is unlucky in his very good luck. He has the two elements of real artistic greatness-rsimplc elements enough, but both very noble ones; he is original and he is popular. ■ Being popular, in the just sense of that exulted term, means giving the people what' they want; a thing every inch as essential and idealistic in art as it is in politics. But if popularity means giving the people what they want, originality., means having it to give. Tf the pcoplcbnd it, they could not be said to want it. Originality is the power' of going behind the common ruiml. discovering what it desires as distinct from what it'says it desire?, satisfying the sub-consciousness. Fair modern writer-; have enjoved so much n= Mr Barrio this high pleasure of "iyin" people what ther wanted, but did not expect. "Peter Pan" is perhaps the one perfect example of this element in contemporary ait: it is our nearest approach to a legend. There is something anonymous about its popularity; we feel as if we had all, written it. It is mack, out of fragment* of our own foreottt'n dreams, and stirs tho heart with sleep.* unquiet, like pictures from a previous, exigence. But this very-qualify, as ot a fairy-cap fitting evervonp. as it is Mr Barrie/s peculiar'glory,"so it is his peculiar danger or mistake. A thing like Peter Pan is so obviously our natural food that most of us tend to swallow it whole; to enjoy without attempting to criticise. For this as well as other" roa sons the now prose version ho has pub. « riv'in? elCr Bnd , W e'» l y-" » valuable 4»,1™ ? '"I "?P ortl »'''J- for a malum judgment o the work, when we hav* Brown accustomed to its remarkable combination of universality and noveltv. ' lor, while tline is no modtni writer whoso romantic clairvoyance more disarms criticism, there is also no author whose quaint and somewhat chaotic thoughts more require criticism to ker-p them at their best. Ther? runs tlir.iugli .Air. extraordinary mind e.n" element of liie perverse amounting to the disordant; something that cm only be described as an impish batii.is. Hits of his books seem to have got in by mistake out of other books: irhcle scene-; ,-iiul groups of figures, excellent in (hem.' Ivp<<. will be so out of focus as to be ol mr gigan-/ he and invisible. He cannot be uniformly nonsensical, like n ste.-.dy, sensible fellow, t-juick-witted, ami even cunning as he is. he has a curious faculty of making ouito a small mistake so Unit it looks like a big mistake, '"he value and meaning of tliat excellent play. "What Every 'Woman Knows." lav in ihy character of John Shand, with lii'.- s:demn worldliness and innocent e;otis,ii. It did not depend particularly on'the liitlo joke at the end about women being marie from man's fumiy-lxme and not hi? rib. Tho ideii simply was to bring the curtain down on a man's first attempt at laughter; and, as a matter of fact, a bad joke was even more artistically appropriate than a good one. But by this mysterious maladroitness that runs across Mr. Barrio's cleverness, lie contrived to give most of the critics and spectators a notion that tho whole'four acts fumed on this Adumic elboii'-jomf. Ho left them villi notion that this anatomical fact was

really all that every woman knows; aiid many journals almost confined themselves to the criticism that tho joko was not good enough. In tho same way the horrible death of Sentimental Tommy on a spike-is theoretically quite detctisililo; but there is something nameless in tho way it isMoue (or perhaps in tho way tho rosr of the book is done) that makes the reader simply feel that tho thing does not belong to the story at nil. That iron spike is of another material; it' is lino an iron spike iu a chair of carved wood. It is the same in that episode of the barber-baronet in the delightful romp of "When a -Man's Single"; one docs not know whether to lake it seriously or not. But, curiously enough, it was in his greatest and most famous work, "Peter Pan," that the most startling instances occurred of this violation of the congruitv of nonsense, this knack of allowing trifles to stand iu the light of triumph*. The scene of the dog who put the children to bed, pretty and popular as ,it was. was a great mistake. Such things could only happen if the children were in fairvlaiid already; and this extracts all the, thrill and thought out of tho csoip,.! into fairyland. The front scene, so to speak, the human interior, should have been not only ordinary, but even dull. .For it is on those dull, rainy mornings, or hot, empty afternoons that both children aud men look out of the I window for I'etcr. Pau.

In this respect, the story in book-form is vastly better; the miraculous dog is, comparatively speaking, a sleeping dog, and we are permitted to let him lie. The opening scenes aro more domestic and less pantomimic. Again, the new illustrations by Mr. P. D. Bedford, though not so mystically creative as thoso of .Mr. Kackhum. have a certain mixture of .solid impossibility and exact detr.il, which is tho thing that children lovo' most. In the picture called "Summer Hays on the Lagoon" there is a sort of microscopic cosmology that reminds one of Albert Hurer, or tho old Gothic draughtsmen, who drew 'hofore .Natural History Jiad become as unnatural as it is. '

Hut all these iiici.lentiil improvements aro dwarfed by an essential improvement which never appeared (so far as I saw it; and I saw it threo times) in the play. At the end cf the story Mr. Barrio put (or ought to hive put) a really vital question to I'etcr Pun. Is it better to be a Pagan god or a Christian man? Is it better to grow up", to drink the wine of Cana and the vinegar of Calvary; or is it better to be inespon-' sible for eternity? At (he end of the play tho challenge was frankly shirked. Wendy vas to visit Peter once a year; Without reference to'the fact that sho would ho ninety at the end of what Peter would regard as a half-holiday. In this book tho challenge is accepted. Wendy '.grows up, and has a little daughter, and the god of youth cheerfully traasters his attentions fo the daughter. That is good, clean, philosophical courage. But T shall be always oun of those who wish that Peter, when tho choico was offered him, had gone to school and married and died.