The Heresy of Peter Pan

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 311, 23 March 1928, Page 14

The Heresy of Peter Pan

I Written for The San.] THE annual performance of “Peter Pan” has become as much a matter of routine in London as the Lord Mayor’s Show; and the fact of its last revival’s being the twenty-first was tactfully ignored by the British public. The boy who would not grow up cannot be expected to observe a birthday, far less a majority. The prompt copy of the play has become stereotyped, like the prompt copy of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera. Controversy will rage about the dressing of Peter, as it has done about the dressing of Hamlet or “The Mikado.” A few years back they put the whole cast of the latter into authentic costume, an act of doubtful propriety. One prefers one’s “Tit-willow” from a willow-pattern Ko-Ko, who could not decapitate a daisy. The authentic headsman may be realistic, but realism is not art. When Gladys Cooper played Peter in shorts she might have found documentary warrant for the change, otherwhere than in “The Little White Bird”—there are folk who can produce documentary evidence that Bacon wrote Hamlet. As a matter of simple fact, it does not greatly matter how any actress dresses Peter because the presentation of the essential Peter Pan belongs to an art other than hers. The central fact in Peter Pan’s history has been perpetuated in dumb bronze. His heresy, in the literal sense of the term (for heresy means choice), has set him apart in an isolation more dreadful than the isolation of the cross-roads. To realise this, one has but to stand in the little throng about Sir George Frampton’s statue on a fine Sunday morning, with the hells of Saint Mary Abbots ringing in one’s ears. Peter Pan’s refusal to grow up was not an auto da fe. It was an act of desertion. The furred and feathered creatures grouped about the plinth are turned to bronze with the wistful debonair figure that surmounts them. It is by no mere accident that they remind one of the creatures struck dumb with wonderment, as David was visited with his vision on his return from the tent of Saul. For the children who have to grow up, Peter has nothing to offer as has the child of David’s vision. He saved himself. Others he could not save. One is tempted to wonder whether Barrie is sometimes not a little appalled at the persistency of the Peter Pan legend. He has tinkered with the play in the course of years, adding and withdrawing whole scenes. There is enough of rollicking fun to divert the healthy pagan in every child. We would, if we could, cut the philosophy, and come to the pantomime, but that is just what we cannot do. “Come along, Tink. We don’t want any silly old mothers.” says Peter; and, despite that memorable declaration to Captain Hook. “I am youth and hope,” he is in reality the spirit that denies When 'Barrie wrote “The Little White Bird” he knew not what lie did. Nc writer of fantasy can say whither his fantasy will lead him. “I intended an ode, and it turned to a sonnet,” wrote Austin Dobson. Inversely, Barrie intended a pastorale, and it turned to the text book of a cult. Sir George Frampton’s statue is a greater work than Sir James Barrie’s play; but both statue and play have their genesis in “The Little White Bird.” One encounters numerous enthusiastic Peter Pantheists who have never heard of “The Little White Bird.” The idyl! of Kensington which enwraps the story of Peter Pan is the most delicate piece of sentimentality ever wrought by the chartered sentimentalist among British authors. If you would discover Peter Pan for yourself, short of a pilgrimage to Kensington Gardens there is only one way. Secure a copy of “The Little White Bird,” and study Barrie’s fantastic map of the gardens which acts as flyleaf. It is not enough to read “Peter and Wendy”. Therein you will discover cryptic references to one David, which you may pass over, as one passes those printer’s hieroglyphs on the lower margins of pages, ha!

afraid lest they should lose their esoteric charm, if explained. But David loses nothing by closer acquaintance. What do they know of Peter Pan, who only Peter know? To know him truly one must read how David and the Colonel came to think of him in their fancy-freedom. They did not know that they were compounding a heresy. C. R. ALLEN. Dunedin. >