Peter Pan, The Story Behind The Story


“All children except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up… this is the beginning of the end.” The first paragraph of James Matthew Barrie’s classic novel, Peter Pan, rings eerily close to his life story – a story that is said to be the inspiration behind the boy who never grew up.

Born the ninth of 10 children in a small weaving town in 1860 Scotland, Barrie lived in the shadow of his mother’s love for his older brother David for the first six years of his life.

Tragically, on the eve of his 14th birthday, David had an ice skating accident and died. Then, essentially, Peter Pan was born.

To comfort his mother, little James began imitating his brother’s mannerisms and mimicking his speech. This went on for years, and simply got more strange. When James reached 13, the age at which David had died, he literally stopped growing. He never stood taller than 5 feet, and didn’t shave until he was 24. He also always had a thin, high-pitched voice.

James Barrie

The notion of the everlasting childhood stayed with Barrie and became one of the defining reasons for his lifelong love of children, as well as the inspiration for his most famous play, Peter Pan.

It would be another 33 years before that inspiration emerged in the shape of Peter Pan, but the germ was rooted in his mind from the age of 6.

He eventually married, but it wasn’t consummated, and didn’t last due to his impotency and intimacy issues. He was, in fact, Peter Pan — physically and emotionally stuck in a perpetual state of boyhood.

Barrie and Davies

Though James had no children of his own, he had many as friends. He had previously known a little girl, Margaret Henley, who died at the age of 6. She called him “my friendy,” which she lisped as “fwendy,” and he named the Peter Pan heroine Wendy in her honor.

In 1899, Barrie befriended young George, John, and Peter Davies and their mother, Sylvia, in London’s Kensington Park. He then became a frequent caller at their home, and even rented a cottage nearby when they went on vacations in Surrey.

The writer met with the children daily in the park or at their home – and played Indians together, or pretended to be pirates, forcing each other to “walk the plank.” He would also make up stories for the children, which featured talking birds and fairies, and acted them out. One summer after taking photographs of the boys’ games and exploits, he turned them into a book, The Boy Castaways — which became the precursor to Peter Pan.

'Lost boys' Peter Pan

James’ life with the boys and their free-spirited youth has been explained as the strongest inspiration for the creation of Peter Pan, and on the dedication page of the printed version of his play, he wrote, “I made Peter by rubbing the five of you together, as savages with two sticks produce a flame.”

In Peter Pan, the author himself appears as Captain James Hook, whose right hand is gone. Barrie suffered paralysis of his right hand from tendonitis.

And Hook is relentlessly pursued by a crocodile that has swallowed a ticking clock, which biographers say was “a metaphor of Barrie stalked by cruel time.” Porthos, his St. Bernard, became nurse-dog Nana.

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