savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and caves
through which a river runs, and princes with six elder brothers, and a
hut fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a hooked
nose. It would be an easy map if that were all, but there is also first
day at school, religion, fathers, the round pond, needle-work, murders,
hangings, verbs that take the dative, chocolate pudding day, getting
into braces, say ninety-nine, three-pence for pulling out your tooth
yourself, and so on, and either these are part of the island or they
are another map showing through, and it is all rather confusing,
especially as nothing will stand still.
Of course the Neverlands vary a good deal. John s, for instance, had a
lagoon with flamingoes flying over it at which John was shooting, while
Michael, who was very small, had a flamingo with lagoons flying over
it. John lived in a boat turned upside down on the sands, Michael in a
wigwam, Wendy in a house of leaves deftly sewn together. John had no
friends, Michael had friends at night, Wendy had a pet wolf forsaken by
its parents, but on the whole the Neverlands have a family resemblance,
and if they stood still in a row you could say of them that they have
each other s nose, and so forth. On these magic shores children at play
are for ever beaching their coracles. We too have been there; we can
still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more.
Of all delectable islands the Neverland is the snuggest and most
compact, not large and sprawly, you know, with tedious distances
between one adventure and another, but nicely crammed. When you play at
it by day with the chairs and table-cloth, it is not in the least
alarming, but in the two minutes before you go to sleep it becomes very
real. That is why there are night-lights.
Occasionally in her travels through her children s minds Mrs. Darling
found things she could not understand, and of these quite the most
perplexing was the word Peter. She knew of no Peter, and yet he was
here and there in John and Michael s minds, while Wendy s began to be
scrawled all over with him. The name stood out in bolder letters than
any of the other words, and as Mrs. Darling gazed she felt that it had
an oddly cocky appearance.
Yes, he is rather cocky, Wendy admitted with regret. Her mother had
been questioning her.
6